Despite what some might say, William Shatner's performance is not one of these potentially fatal flaws. He tones his trademark hamminess down enough to be a quite credible murderer. High marks also go to the other major players: Bert Remsen as Shatner's addled alibi; and Lola Albright, much icier than she had been on Peter Gunn as the murder victim.
What does present a problem is the lack of challenge. At the end of the day, Columbo is a cat and mouse game where the cat seems very dim but still catches the mouse. If the criminal doesn't seem up to it, there's no payoff. Case in point "The Most Dangerous Match", where Laurence Harvey's paranoid chess player is too off the wall crazy to get the job done right and the story drags as a result.
If Ward Fowler's (Shatner) crazy act is just an act, he is in fact very stupid. He stages the murder as a robbery but uses his own voice in front of both the victim and a witness. He also leaves his ski mask disguise lying around smeared with actor's makeup. If Columbo's near-constant laughter isn't lack of discipline on the part of Peter Falk, it might indicate that the Lieutenant can't even pretend to take this guy seriously.
There are other pitfalls. The parallels between Fowler's show and Columbo itself are clever but get used too much. And the evidence that finally allows Columbo to get his man is just dropped in at the end without being introduced beforehand.
So why does the episode work? It might be because the cast and crew had built up enough energy that they could coast for a while. Or it could be something else entirely. Art sometimes rises and falls on mysterious bases.
2 comments:
Between your description and my bad memory for tv shows I had to check with IMDB and wikipedia for some reminders.. and a bit of youtube too. There were some funny moments in this episode. Peter Falk has a great sense of humor, but when you bring in someone like William Shatner to play Lt. Lucerne, a "fictional tv detective" .. it was brilliant. Shatner was given free range to ham it up playing a ham actor playing a sharp dressed detective condescending to rumpled actual detective thinking he's showing Columbo how it's done while the lieutenant lets him go on and on.
Those of us who watched Shatner's campy overacting from Star Trek got some amusement from a number of lines his detective character spit out such as "Let's stop pretending that I'm brilliant and you're simple" or "One little drink isn't gonna turn you into a pumpkin you know.."
I loved Lola Albright in Peter Gunn when she was considerably younger but she was very good as a sophisticated mature woman - as you say, an icy one.
Lt Lucerne has spent his whole life acting, lying, and taking on various identities jumping from one to another. Having spent his whole life in such a tangled mess and by the end seems to be entirely lost within them, so much so that even he isn't sure which one he might actully be by the end.
One interesting fact I happened across was that at the time this episode was made Peter Falk had been having a long drawn out battle with the studio executives about his contract and compensation for same. This was going on right between series 5 and 6 and he was successful in the end gaining the unheard salary of $300,000 yearly.
IMDb is a handy resource. There's the occasional mistake or omission, but if you're looking for "the one where..." it can be a big help. The Lt Lucerne costume looked great. It's at least as unlikely a look for a police lieutenant as Columbo's battered overcoat, but in the opposite direction. Must have been a fun character to play both in the main plot and the show-within-a-show.
Leonard Nimoy had such a great impact when he was on the show it may have been inevitable that they'd have Kirk on in addition to Spock. Those are a great couple of lines. Pretending to be simple is Columbo's go-to tactic, of course, so at least Fowler got that one right. As for the pumpkin, perhaps his memory of Cinderella is foggy.
Lola Albright was a great presence as Edie, and her singing was quite nice as well. She made other appearances afterwards, although she eventually retired. Playing a blackmailer who pushed things too far was a good addition to her resume.
You have to feel for Fowler on a certain level. His life doesn't seem to have been his own for a long time. There's a nifty in-joke in part of his cover story being that he's really Canadian, considering Shatner is actually from Montreal.
Yeah, he had become the highest paid actor on TV, at least on a per-episode basis. Some viewers must have been aware of it too. His future wife is in this one too. She's the secretary the victim's husband has been dallying with. She's pretty good in this small role. In the 90s revival she'd get much bigger roles, which is usually a sign you can safely skip the episode.
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