Title:"Grand Deceptions"
Directed by: Sam Wanamaker
Written by: Sy Salkowitz
Air Date: May 1, 1989
Previous: Sex and the Married Detective
Next: Murder, a Self-Portrait
Guest Starring: Robert Foxworth, Janet Eilber, Stephen Elliott
"Grand Deceptions" is the fourth and last episode of the eighth season of Columbo.
The First Foundation for American Thought is a military think tank which funds its activities, at least in part, by hosting two-week faux-boot camp military training sessions for weekend warriors and survivalist types. The Foundation is owned by elderly retired four-star General Jack Padget (Stephen Elliott) but run day-to-day by retired Colonel Frank Brailie (Robert Foxworth), who is, all-in-all, an arrogant jerk.
Padget has grown to mistrust Brailie, so he tasks Lester Keegan, the Sgt. Major at the training camp, to investigate his boss. Keegan finds out that Padget is quite right to mistrust Brailie: Brailie is using foundation funds to support illegal gun-running to Africa, and is embezzling even more for himself, and when he's not busy doing that, he's having an affair with the general's much much younger, gorgeous wife Jenny (Janet Eilber).
Rather than report back to Padget, Keegan makes the mistake of going to Brailie and attempting to blackmail him into a piece of the action. Brailie then murders Keegan, trying to make it look like Keegan was killed by one of the explosive charges used to simulate mortar detonations. However he doesn't count on Lt. Columbo, who wonders why Keegan was lingering in the forest long enough to get blown up, and catches Brailie cleaning mud from the floor of Keegan's quarters.
Tropes:
- The Alleged Car: Columbo is still driving the same dilapidated old Peugeot that he was 18 years earlier. When Janet notices the car and tells him that she used to have one like it a long, long time ago before getting rid of it, Columbo claims she made a mistake and that it now qualifies as a "collector's item."
- Artistic License – History: The failure of Pickett's Charge was most certainly not caused by James Longstreet being late.note
- Artistic License – Law: Columbo was always casual with evidence dating back to the earliest episodes of the 1970s show, and he is again here. He pilfers Jenny's travel toothbrush from Brailie's apartment without a warrant.
- Attack on the Heart: Brailie kills Keegan by stabbing him right in the heart, one of only two stabbing deaths in the series.
- Blackmail Backfire: Sergeant Keegan tries to squeeze money out of Brailie by threatening to reveal his illegal activities if he isn't given a cut. Three guesses as to how that goes for him, and the first two don't count.
- Book Ends: The episode begins and ends with long close-up tracking shots of all the toy soldiers in Padget's model of Pickett's Charge, although the ending one also shows a Columbo figurine.
- Boot Camp Episode: Sort of. The foundation raises funds by running faux boot camps for would-be soldiers-of-fortune and survivalist types. Brailie takes advantage of a night-time boot camp exercise to murder Keegan.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The show ends with a shot of a tiny Columbo figurine amidst all the toy soldiers.
- Covert Group: Brailie's "Special Projects Fund" is involved in some seriously shady business, including gun-running.
- Crazy Survivalist: There's a brief appearance of a wild-eyed survival type among the boot camp trainees, who explains his attendance thusly: "You many not care, but they aren't going to get me and mine!!" Columbo shortly writes off the boot camp attendees as harmless loons.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Keegan acts like this for the boot camp trainees, putting on a blustering Sgt. Hulka persona, although an exchange with an underling afterwards reveals that he doesn't take his wanna-be trainees seriously at all.
- Hidden Depths: A conversation with Padget reveals that Lt. Columbo has a surprisingly in-depth knowledge of the events of the Battle of Gettysburg.
- Idiot Ball:
- It's probably unduly optimistic to expect the detonation of a faux mortar charge to cover up a stab wound to the heart, and in fact the coroner does find the stab wound.
- Far dumber is Brailie's handling of the secret report. Brailie, in possession of Keegan's original report detailing all of his various illegal activities, locks it up in his safe rather than destroying it. And then, he simply tells his secretary to shred the report, on a day when he isn't even in the office. Naturally, the unwitting secretary blunders into Lt. Columbo and he gets his hands on the highly incriminating original report, and then that copy ends up in the hands of General Padget.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: When Jenny confesses her affair to her husband, he tells her that he knew that, as a younger woman, she'd have needs he was unable to fulfill, and that he was prepared to make allowances for the sake of their love. This secures her devotion - when Brailie tries to blackmail the General, Jenny firmly takes her husband's side.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Brailie stages Keegan's corpse over one of the fake mortar charges, hoping to cover up the evidence of a stab wound to the heart. It doesn't work.
- May–December Romance: Jennifer Padget is much younger than her husband, the General. They're genuinely devoted to each other, and stick together even as the affair and the the blackmail are revealed.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Brailie is an obvious stand-in for Oliver North and the whole plot feels like the production team having Columbo solve Iran-Contra.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: One of the things that makes Columbo suspicious of Brailie is finding him scrubbing mud off of the floor (he had tracked it in from moving Keegan's body). Columbo mentions that he simply could not see a man as arrogant as Brailie stooping to do such menial work.
- Plot Hole: The final gotcha is Columbo pointing out that the box from the bookstore was too small to hold all the books and must instead have held the soldiers, while the larger box marked "Military Minatures" must have held the books. So it was the soldiers that were delivered in the morning, which means Brailie lied and his alibi about setting up the soldiers is fake. Left unexplained is why the bookstore delivered books in a box marked "Military Miniatures" while the toy soldier company delivered toy soldiers in a box from a bookstore.
- Shrunken Head: Brailie is something of a Collector of the Strange, if the shrunken head in his office is any evidence. Brailie says it's a warning to watch out for his enemies.
- Stealing from the Till: Brailie's crimes include embezzling from foundation funds. Brailie kills Keegan rather than sharing.
- Verbal Irony: A soldier in the diorama gets knocked over by the rumbling from the fake mortar charges off at the training grounds. Padget says "Look at that, I think we've lost one of our men!" This is right after Brailie killed Keegan.
