One of the most enjoyable, this is the episode that takes place on a Mexican cruise ship, with Robert Vaughan the kempt murderer. Briefly, Vaughan shoots a blackmailing girl friend and tries to frame a band member, Dean Stockwell, for the crime. Columbo enlists Vaughan's help in figuring out what happened and dupes him into revealing himself as the perp.
The episode doesn't have any outstanding scenes in it -- except for the fact that it was obviously filmed aboard a ship at sea. And the plot is heaped with more than the usual number of improbabilities. I'll give one example. Vaughan has used a pair of surgical gloves when he fired the pistol that killed the young lady. Okay. Then he throws the gun into a laundry cart where it will be found. Columbo of course finds the gun but is puzzled in that it has no fingerprints. That means, supposedly, that the murderer wore gloves. But no gloves were found during a search. Where are the gloves, wonders Columbo. "Maybe he threw them overboard," says Vaughan helpfully. Yes, but if he didn't have time to throw the gun overboard, how could he have managed to throw the gloves overboard? The gloves must be hidden somewhere, insists Columbo. If he could only find them. Well, of course, Vaughan is able to steal another pair of surgical gloves, fire another pistol (?) in order to put powder burns on them, and turn them over to Columbo to seal the frame. Instead, the gloves merely prove that Vaughan is the murderer. Question: Why does everyone assume the murderer, if he couldn't have had time to fling the incriminating gloves over the side, must have hidden them somewhere. They were surgical gloves. He could have burned the damned things -- or flushed them down the toilet.
But these kinds of plot holes, through which a viewer unwilling to suspend disbelief might drive a Volkswagon, are common in all the episodes. What holds this story together so tightly is that the incidents, the separate scenes, bind it together. There isn't any wasted time. (There's only one really comic moment, with Columbo about to vomit.) And there is the exploration of various nautical settings -- the ship's sick bay, the ballroom, a weather deck with the wind howling about the actor's ears, and there is Jane Greer, looking just great, as a savvy older wife. It's nice to see Patrick MacNee as the Captain too, and Robert Douglas, immortal as Lord Wolfingham in The Sea Hawk, as the ship's doctor. The real passengers on this cruise to Mazatlan must have had a ball. You can see some of them grinning in the background of some shots, tickled pink to be in the movies. (Did they get a box lunch at least?) In fact everyone seems to be enjoying himself. You probably will too.
The episode doesn't have any outstanding scenes in it -- except for the fact that it was obviously filmed aboard a ship at sea. And the plot is heaped with more than the usual number of improbabilities. I'll give one example. Vaughan has used a pair of surgical gloves when he fired the pistol that killed the young lady. Okay. Then he throws the gun into a laundry cart where it will be found. Columbo of course finds the gun but is puzzled in that it has no fingerprints. That means, supposedly, that the murderer wore gloves. But no gloves were found during a search. Where are the gloves, wonders Columbo. "Maybe he threw them overboard," says Vaughan helpfully. Yes, but if he didn't have time to throw the gun overboard, how could he have managed to throw the gloves overboard? The gloves must be hidden somewhere, insists Columbo. If he could only find them. Well, of course, Vaughan is able to steal another pair of surgical gloves, fire another pistol (?) in order to put powder burns on them, and turn them over to Columbo to seal the frame. Instead, the gloves merely prove that Vaughan is the murderer. Question: Why does everyone assume the murderer, if he couldn't have had time to fling the incriminating gloves over the side, must have hidden them somewhere. They were surgical gloves. He could have burned the damned things -- or flushed them down the toilet.
But these kinds of plot holes, through which a viewer unwilling to suspend disbelief might drive a Volkswagon, are common in all the episodes. What holds this story together so tightly is that the incidents, the separate scenes, bind it together. There isn't any wasted time. (There's only one really comic moment, with Columbo about to vomit.) And there is the exploration of various nautical settings -- the ship's sick bay, the ballroom, a weather deck with the wind howling about the actor's ears, and there is Jane Greer, looking just great, as a savvy older wife. It's nice to see Patrick MacNee as the Captain too, and Robert Douglas, immortal as Lord Wolfingham in The Sea Hawk, as the ship's doctor. The real passengers on this cruise to Mazatlan must have had a ball. You can see some of them grinning in the background of some shots, tickled pink to be in the movies. (Did they get a box lunch at least?) In fact everyone seems to be enjoying himself. You probably will too.