Another good Columbo, not one of the best, but an original and distinctive episode made all the better by Theodore Bikel's excellent portrayal of Oliver Brandt. A hefty-sized Columbo villain who in this case is a member of the Sigma Club, a group of people with high IQ's who meet up at an ornate club house. While Oliver is ostentatiously socialising downstairs at the club, loud gunshots are heard upstairs. Oliver and his clubmates run up the stairs only to see the door ahead slam shut and Oliver's business partner Bertie Hastings lying dead.
Columbo soon gets doubts about the sequence of events, and before long he realises that the gunshots everyone heard and the door everyone saw slam may not have actually been caused by an intruder. In fact a ridiculously intricate chain of events (involving an umbrella, a record player and a dictionary) has been set in motion by Oliver Brandt in order to trick everyone into thinking the murder happened while he was downstairs. The more Columbo delves into Oliver and Bertie's accountancy business, the more he uncovers of Oliver's shady dealings. It's not long before he realises Bertie was killed by Oliver, one way or another, because he had discovered Oliver's embezzlement of company funds. He just has to work out how and when he did it.
There are a couple of things wrong with this episode which are symptomatic of the slight drop in quality towards the very end of the original run. My main issue is with the cartoony, unrealistic way most of the bright people are portrayed. It's a bit like "Mind Over Mayhem" but even more so, where people with intelligence are regarded as freakish and peculiar, kept apart from normal society in some kind of ivory tower! Particularly cheesy and annoying is the way Columbo tells one girl that not only is she bright but also very pretty. It seems insincere and patronising.
But Oliver Brandt and Bertie Hastings themselves are much more three-dimensional characters. The scenes where Oliver teases Bertie are great, they show the love-hate relationship between two very different business partners: one big, confident and rather cruel; the other small, round and the always the butt of his partner's merciless ribbing.
Another slight downside is that Oliver never really seems to get annoyed in Columbo's presence, although he does become extremely jittery and nervous (if you've read any of my other reviews you'll know I love it when Columbo villains start panicking). It's not that he's not angry, far from it, as the scene where he ferociously loses his temper at one of his employees demonstrates: all the anger that he is suppressing in front of Columbo suddenly explodes.
As for the crime and the clues, well even after repeated viewings my mind still gets tangled in knots as I try to work out exactly how he did it. I obviously don't have a Sky High IQ. But a greater mind than mine, that of Lt Columbo, manages to piece together the evidence. In a climactic showdown set during a ferocious thunderstorm, Oliver Brandt finally has nowhere left to run.
I like this episode a lot, it makes my brain hurt analysing the murder too closely, but nothing obviously stands out as flawed or illogical, so I'm happy just to sit back and let Columbo do all the work. It would have been even better if some of the Sigma members were either cut out altogether or given better roles. But the short Jamie Lee Curtis waitress scene is funny and much more realistic!
I'll give it 8 out of 10.
Columbo soon gets doubts about the sequence of events, and before long he realises that the gunshots everyone heard and the door everyone saw slam may not have actually been caused by an intruder. In fact a ridiculously intricate chain of events (involving an umbrella, a record player and a dictionary) has been set in motion by Oliver Brandt in order to trick everyone into thinking the murder happened while he was downstairs. The more Columbo delves into Oliver and Bertie's accountancy business, the more he uncovers of Oliver's shady dealings. It's not long before he realises Bertie was killed by Oliver, one way or another, because he had discovered Oliver's embezzlement of company funds. He just has to work out how and when he did it.
There are a couple of things wrong with this episode which are symptomatic of the slight drop in quality towards the very end of the original run. My main issue is with the cartoony, unrealistic way most of the bright people are portrayed. It's a bit like "Mind Over Mayhem" but even more so, where people with intelligence are regarded as freakish and peculiar, kept apart from normal society in some kind of ivory tower! Particularly cheesy and annoying is the way Columbo tells one girl that not only is she bright but also very pretty. It seems insincere and patronising.
But Oliver Brandt and Bertie Hastings themselves are much more three-dimensional characters. The scenes where Oliver teases Bertie are great, they show the love-hate relationship between two very different business partners: one big, confident and rather cruel; the other small, round and the always the butt of his partner's merciless ribbing.
Another slight downside is that Oliver never really seems to get annoyed in Columbo's presence, although he does become extremely jittery and nervous (if you've read any of my other reviews you'll know I love it when Columbo villains start panicking). It's not that he's not angry, far from it, as the scene where he ferociously loses his temper at one of his employees demonstrates: all the anger that he is suppressing in front of Columbo suddenly explodes.
As for the crime and the clues, well even after repeated viewings my mind still gets tangled in knots as I try to work out exactly how he did it. I obviously don't have a Sky High IQ. But a greater mind than mine, that of Lt Columbo, manages to piece together the evidence. In a climactic showdown set during a ferocious thunderstorm, Oliver Brandt finally has nowhere left to run.
I like this episode a lot, it makes my brain hurt analysing the murder too closely, but nothing obviously stands out as flawed or illogical, so I'm happy just to sit back and let Columbo do all the work. It would have been even better if some of the Sigma members were either cut out altogether or given better roles. But the short Jamie Lee Curtis waitress scene is funny and much more realistic!
I'll give it 8 out of 10.