Title: Undercover
Directed by: Vincent Mc Eveety
Written by: Gerry Day
Air Date: May 2, 1994
Previous: Butterfly in Shades of Grey
Next: Strange Bedfellows
Guest Starring: Ed Begley Jr., Harrison Page, Burt Young, Shera Danese, Kristin Bauer van Straten, Tyne Daly
"Undercover" is a 1994 Columbo TV movie.
A burglar makes his way into a shabby apartment in a dilapidated building in a seedy neighborhood. He tears the place up, looking for a scrap of paper, until he finally finds it hidden inside a paper towel roll. Cue the occupant of the apartment coming home, and spotting the light on inside. The occupant pulls a gun...
Cut to Lt. Columbo and his partner Detective Arthur Brown (Harrison Page) looking at two corpses. It seems that apartment occupant J.J. Dillinger shot burglar Eugene Ehrbach, but Ehrbach had enough life in him to stick a knife in Dillinger's neck before Dillinger pulled the trigger a second time and they both fell over dead. There's little mystery, other than one odd thing: Ehrbach was found with that strange scrap of paper, a portion of a photograph cut in the shape of a puzzle piece, clutched in his hand.
Columbo and Brown are back at headquarters, still wondering about the puzzle piece, when one Irving Krutch (Ed Begley Jr.), an insurance investigator, shows up at police HQ and explains everything. Six years ago a bunch of crooks robbed a bank insured by Krutch's company. All of the bank robbers were run down and killed, but not before they managed to hide the loot, a safe containing $4 million. They then took a photo of the hiding place, which they sliced up into puzzle pieces and gave to other people for safekeeping. Krutch recently contacted the widow of one of the bank robbers, and managed to obtain a torn-in-half list revealing some of the names of people with puzzle pieces. Armed with this knowledge, and with one of the puzzle pieces to show his bona fides, Columbo goes...undercover as a hoodlum, looking for the money.
This episode is actually an adaptation of the 87th Precinct novel Jigsaw by Evan Hunter, pen name Ed McBain. Shera Danese, Peter Falk's wife, makes the fifth of her six Columbo guest appearances.
Tropes:
- Alliterative Name: The burglar at the beginning, Eugene Ehrbach.
- And Starring: Just three episodes after she starred in "A Bird in the Hand...", Tyne Daly gets "Special Guest Star" credit. She stars as a low-rent prostitute and aunt to one of the bank robbers, who has a piece of the puzzle.
- Bland-Name Product: Dillinger receives in the mail a magazine called "Suave" which, from the centerfold that falls out of it, looks to be a men's magazine like Playboy or Penthouse.
- Camp Gay: Bradley, Gerry's partner at the art gallery, is extremely camp and effete.
- Cat Scare: Played straight as an arrow when Detective Brown sneaks into the art gallery for an illegal search, and a black cat darts out from Gerry's office door.
- Celebrity Paradox: Gerry says the hoodlum who came to her art gallery "looks like the guy who played in Rocky." Of course, it is the guy who played in Rocky (namely, Burt Young, who played Rocky's brother-in-law Paulie).
- Dismantled MacGuffin: The picture of the hiding place, cut up into puzzle pieces, which Columbo and the cops have to find.
- Doesn't Like Guns: One of the few nods this episode makes to Columbo formula is when Columbo is reluctant to carry a gun when he goes on his first undercover mission. His chief forces him to.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Dillinger takes out his gun and quietly cocks it after discovering an intruder in his apartment.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: Based on the Ed McBain novel Jigsaw and thus has little resemblance to the typical Columbo plot. There's no Reverse Whodunit, there's no Perp Sweating (not until the end where Columbo grills Susan, that is), no stories about Mrs. Columbo. He carries a gun. He kicks down a door. He's trying to find hidden bank loot. He puts on disguises, pretending to be a mobster or a homeless guy. Like "No Time to Die", it's a Columbo episode In Name Only.
- Improvised Clothes: When Columbo checks into a hospital to get his head injury looked at after he's assaulted while undercover, he needs to contact Brown and check out early, but his nurse doesn't let him make any phonecalls and takes his pants to make sure he doesn't try to sneak out before a doctor takes a look at him in the morning. As a result, he has to sneak to another room to make the call and ask Brown to find some pants for him to wear when he returns to check him out, which end up being a ridiculously garish pair of parachute pants that Columbo has to wear while exiting the hospital and for the entire duration of his first visit to Krutch's apartment.
- I Was Quite a Looker: When Columbo mentions a picture, worn-out alcoholic hooker Dorothea (Tyne Daly) misinterprets him and thinks he's talking about some nudie pictures she posed for 20 years ago.Dorothea: I was some little cookie those days.
- Last Breath Bullet: Last breath knife. Dillinger shot Ehrbach, but Ehrbach was still able to stick a knife into Dillinger's neck before Dillinger shot Ehrbach a second time and they both died.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Another part of the Out-of-Genre Experience, as Columbo kicks in a door and pulls a gun on Mo Weinberg.
- Mutual Kill: Dillinger shot Ehrbach, Ehrbach stabbed Dillinger, and they're both dead.
- Never One Murder: The search for the money gets serious when Mo Weinberg is found in his apartment murdered. And Columbo's concern for Gerry's safety is shown to be well-founded when she's found dead in the art gallery.
- No Name Given: We never did learn Lt. Columbo's first name, but this episode is one of a few in which that fact is lampshaded, this time when Gerry is trying to butter Columbo up.Gerry: What's your first name?
Columbo: Lieutenant. - Obfuscating Stupidity: Susan Endicott comes off as Irving's vapid, giggling sex partner, who cheerfully alibis him for the murders of Mo and Gerry. But when Columbo produces the quarter from the parking meter with Irving's fingerprint on it, she turns cold and hard on a dime and reveals that he was in fact absent at the time of both murders.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The second Columbo episode based on an 87th Precinct novel, after 1992 episode "No Time to Die". Like that one, this is a generic crime thriller with Columbo pasted in as the lead detective. "No Time to Die" was a kidnapping story and this is a find-the-money story with some murders along the way; neither bore much resemblance to the typical Columbo in which the detective gradually unraveled the story of a murderer in a Reverse Whodunit.
- Plot Hole: The story as told by Krutch is that the bank robbers crashed their car within minutes of the robbery, while making their getaway, and were all shot and killed by the police. So when did they find time to sink the safe in the ocean by a pier?
- Precision F-Strike: When Columbo tells Gerry that she needs to give him her puzzle piece for her own safety, Gerry says "Bullshit". This is the only swear word in the Columbo canon (and presumably it was bleeped or edited out when this episode aired on ABC).
- Running Gag: Columbo's disheveled appearance was a running gag for the entire series, like in this episode where one of the other cops suggests that he would be a natural to go undercover as a Skid Row bum.
- Sexy Shirt Switch: When Columbo and Brown interrupt Irving and Susan in the middle of the night, Susan is wearing nothing but one of Irving's shirts.
- Sinister Switchblade: Ehrbach's switchblade makes a satisfying "click" noise as he flips it open so he can start slicing up stuff in Dillinger's apartment.
- Third-Person Person: Irving Krutch has an irritating tic of referring to Irving Krutch in this way, especially when he's excited.
- Title Drop: "You have to go undercover," says Columbo's chief.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Dillinger shoots Ehrbach, the woman on the downstairs pay phone is not too fussed. Probably because it's a very bad neighborhood.[bored, tired voice] I have to hang up, Thelma. There's shooting upstairs.
