He is always admiring their clothes, houses and cars, while looking like a homeless person and driving a piece of junk. So this is what Columbo is always playing at, he puts himself deliberately beneath the subjects, because they like to put themselves over others. In the case of Raskolnikov its self-hatred, in the case of Columbos suspects its arrogance. In doing that, both are feeding into the main personality trait of the suspects, that compelled them to do the murder. But at the same time, both let the suspect know early on, that they are indeed suspecting them, only to return to the friendly off topic conversation the next time they meet. Both involve the suspect in multiple long and friendly conversations that hardly touch upon the murder. Both Columbo and Petrovich know who commited the murder but don't have any proof for it. The character of Columbo as well as the whole structure of the episodes seem to be based on Dostoevskys "Crime and Punishment" and the investigator "Petrovich". Columbo: Doctor, I don't think I'm gonna find the second print. If I were you, I'd get busy and find that second print. They are almost always rich, arrogant, focused, unsympathetic and uptight, while he is poor, humble, distracted, sympathetic and loose. Bart Keppel: TWO prints Well, that's an interesting notion, too. Columbo has the opposit personality of his typical suspect. They rather belive him to be naive, distracted or quirky. No character is assuming that a Lieutenant is dumb.
I think Falk is making an important distinction there. Pulling apart which behaviors of Columbo's are spontaneous and which are strategic is perhaps the most distinctively entertaining aspect of the show. The occasions when he acts star-struck and rambly when initially meeting famous people within the world of the show, I interpret to be genuine expressions of the character's folksiness and not part of his "act." To be fair though, better words for how he behaves would be coy, deferential, and cagey rather than "dumb." I'm not sure if he genuinely misunderstands the character (doubtful) or if he is just being momentarily imprecise (much more likely), but Columbo very clearly does play a version of "dumb" on purpose in order to put the criminal at ease. So he is both genuinely "dumb" (or distracted) as a consequence of his concentration and deceptively "dumb" (or naive) as a consequence of his investigative strategy.įor whatever reason, Falk seems to conflate the actor's performance with the character's performance in this interview and thus feels the need to defend Columbo as not being dumb. At least for the first couple interactions of each episode.
COLUMBO CAVORITE SAYING SERIES
This visibly leaves many of the killers in this series with the impression that he is confused, rather than savvy. In addition, the character does often purposefully mask both his intent in questioning and his theory about a case. However, much of this is apparently due to a savant-like hyper-focus on the most relevant details. The character is clearly sincerely disorganized and distracted in general.
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