i was thinking of this last night. mr brymmer offered columbo a job and columbo showed interest especially if he stayed on the kendicott case , we all know that brymmer said that he would put columbo on things more urgent which in the end swayed columbo's decision not to join his company.
for obvious reasons brymmer did not want columbo to have anything to do with the kendicott case.
however if this was in the real world , could brymmer have offered columbo the job and said yes to him being on the case in question just to get him to join his company and then on the first day of work say to columbo something like " other cases have emerged that are far more important thus taking columbo of the kendicott case completely.
this would then pave the way clear and brymmer would be free.
just a thought if it was for real.

Interesting thought. I think though that Columbo was just humouring Brimmer by even considering the job, and had no intention of taking it. By that stage he already had strong suspicions that Brimmer was guilty.

Of course, if he had taken the job, the Columbo series would presumably have had to end after 2 episodes, and we wouldn't be talking about it here.

"Of course, if he had taken the job, the Columbo series would presumably have had to end after 2 episodes, and we wouldn't be talking about it here."

LOL true indeed. Also makes you wonder what if Beth Chadwick couldn't be bought with flattery . . what if the horn in Fielding Chase's car was malfunctioning and Columbo couldn't signal the other cops . . what if Johnny Cash *was* all bad . . .

I don't see how tommy brown would've murdered columbo in a car, he didn't have a gun and columbo murderers tend to only know how to murder in the same way (see paul gerard retrying to poison columbo after using the same method for vittorio rossi), but makes sense for the other 2 examples; also if eliott blake decided to not murder columbo with the guillotine, maybe to see where columbo's investigations were going, ironically columbo would've died there due to having the labels switched.