Columbo Fever
State your plans and God laughs.
I spent the dying hours of the late year arranging my plans for the next. I've been re-plotting my novel (don't ask) for weeks. My original intent was to have a re-write done by Christmas break! Well, so much for that. But at least I could get the plot done.
And I did! I had to go all the way back to damn cards-on-a-note-board, but I got there, forty beats across three acts, a good chunk of my original story preseved, but more of everything good and reason to believe I could start the new year right by writing/re-writting my unpublished novel.
Then I got the flu.
Not just any flu. No one know what it is. It's not COVID. It's not even flu, not according to the tests. But whatever it was, it layed both me and my wife out flatter than hammered shit. And so the first of the year came around and I didn't start back in on my book. My outline lay there unreferenced, my word count burn-down chart was not sparked, my daily logs of activity recorded only the absence of the same.
Instead I was in bed, watching sunlight crawl up the wall.
Writing was out of the question. I couldn't concentrate well enough to read (inflicting a days-long delay on another project plan for 2024, studying the American Civil War). Sleep was difficult owing to fever and my throat draining when I was on my back or side.
Pretty much the only thing left was to watch TV.
I went for comfort food, which for me is 1970s cop shows. I started with Adam-12, which is perfection in so many ways. Perfect formula. Perfect interplay between A and B stories. Perfect tropes. Perfect blue collar work ethic. Perfect copaganda. Perfect moral admonishment and an irresistable come-on that The Men Know What They Are Doing And Everything Will Be OK. I love that show, and touched on it in my guest blog for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
But after a dozen episodes (or more, who can say, when you have a fever) even I got tired of the reassuring, authorty-knows-best adventures of officers Reed and Malloy and wanted something else.
So I watched Columbo.
I was a kid in the seventies so of course I saw Columbo growing up. Like all the shows on the NBC Mystery Movie, it was a kind of ambient presence in my home. My parents would watch. I'd watch, now and then. I remember the title credits with the guy with the flashlight and the weird whistling soundtrack. So, sure, I'd seen Columbo.
But I'd never really watched Columbo, not until this week.
It is as perfect in its way as Adam-12, with its inverted mystery formula, the charming rumpled detective who always gets the best of the slick guest star, and the wardrobe of visual props -- the coats and cars and cigars and even the dog that shows up now and then. References to the never-seen "Mrs. Columbo," the avuncular hand gestures, and of course, "There's just one more thing." Good lord but I love a great formula, and this show is the Manhattan Project of great formula writing.
If you've never seen the show, or haven't seen it in awhile, start with "Murder By The Book" ... if you want to spoil yourself. It's written by Steven Bochco and directed by a 25-year old Steven Spielberg and it's not television. Sure, it's shot in 4:3 and uses the same hideous sets and mustard melange colors that vomited out of the Universal prop department for the rest of the series but this feels like a movie. The opening sequence uses camera to introduce us to world-famous mystery writing partners while building suspense that one is going to kill the other, with no more audio than the clatter of a typewritter. Great opening, and the show never lets up, continuing to use camera to tell story in ways rare for 70s television. Bonus for me -- the victim is Adam-12's Martin Milner. The streams converge, my fever spikes.
Central of course to this show and all the series is Peter Falk as Columbo. I can think of no greater example of the maxim of "Casting Is Detiny" than Peter Falk in this role. It was originally offered to Bing Crosby. Let that sink in. Bing Freaking Crosby. David Crosby would have been a better pick.
But Bing passed on the opportunity and we are all immeasurably better for it, with Falk owning the role in a way so inseparable from the character we can safely assume it will never be revived. (Oh who am I kidding?). Anyway, Falk is so warm and so humble and so devious as Columbo that it doesn't matter if his mysteries don't make a lick of sense -- you're on board with the guy the whole distance. And if his case is held together by bubblegum and dental floss then who cares? Jack Cassidy will confess anyway.
Great show. Great mystery. Great formula. I am jealous, as a writer, of how much meaning an actor can pack into an expression or the tone of their voice. We don't get that "for free" when we write, and it requires a master of the craft to create an indelible character in the space between your ears using only the written word. The best I can manage is writing with, say, William Bendix in mind (I know, I know) and then hearing my dialogue in that actor's voice. It is a small theft, but I confess.
Do I have a point? I guess my fever-induced infatuation with Columbo owes to my already-confessed love of formula fiction. I've focused on plot-as-formula, but of course character-as-formula is even more a backbone of mystery writing. Through the eyes of your Columbo or Sherlock or Spenser or Archer the crime might be the same but the story will be different. Because we as the audience are along as much to enjoy how the detective unravels the crime as we are to unravel the crime itself. And when the character is really good -- and Columbo is a really good character, maybe even good enough to survive Bing Crosby, though I doubt it -- you will overlook crazy-ass plots where the bad guy hides his crime with a record player, an umbrella, a dictonary, an ink marker, electric wires, and some squibs. (I am fevered, but I did not imagine this). You enjoy it for the same reason you enjoy a crazy-ass story made up by a parent when they put you to bed -- because you love the person telling the story.
And my fever is coming back. Time to watch more Columbo.
Visit the Columbophile Blog -- the guide I used for watching the series.