The Lt. Columbo Forum

An area where fans from all over can ask each other questions and voice their own ideas and opinions on anything Columbo.

This Forum is fondly dedicated in memory of  "cassavetes45"  (Carleen Zink),
Columbo's greatest fan and a great friend to us all.
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The Lt. Columbo Forum
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12 month sentence up!!

Well, 12 months ago to day, I put the Columbo DVDs to one side and said "right, no watching them for a year...indeed, no Columbo for a year...in 12 months time, you can start watching and they'll all look fresh again!"

Stuck to it thought it wasn't easy!

So - your suggestions, please, as I've put time aside for two episodes tomorrow evening.

Which two go "best" together?
ie watched one after the other?

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

If I were going to do a double feature, I'd probably pick By Dawn's Early Light and Etude in Black. Great guests, unusual relationships between Columbo and his adversaries, terrific whammo final clues, and memorable, somewhat poignant endings in both episodes. Plus, very cool to watch Mr. Falk having fun with his friends -- it shows in the acting. Sides, Etude will always be a sentimental favorite for me as the first network episode I ever watched -- it blew me away, and I seldom ever missed an NBC Mystery Movie afterwards.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

i went back and watched "Ransom for a dead man" and "Death lends a hand" last night. season 1 has some of the very best. luv the old stuff but then again i like them all

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

ransom for a dead man the victim may of had the least air time with only 2.5 words spoken. there was a thread about this recently

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

Your post was interesting to me because I'm about the only one I know who deliberately sets recordings aside for a year or so, and for the same reason, to keep the novelty from going out of them.

I'm not so sure about pairs. I always connect EXERCISE IN FATALITY and NEGATIVE REACTION, not just because they came out so close together but because that's also how I first SAW them (even though it was in reruns). But of course those two don't really go together in other ways.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

Well, you deserve credit for a giggle. I've never encountered a true Columbo fan who needed to tantalize to revitalize. I mean, why would anyone torture themselves in order to maintain a genuine interest in the topic? It doesn't make sense, but then, I've never taken the veracity in the vast majority of entries posted here for granted anyway.

For instance, I watch the five seasons I have on DVD constantly and the last thing I've ever gotten is weary of doing it. In fact. I'm thinking of buying fresh copies of seasons 2 and 3 because I've worn the original discs out, even though this true Columbo fan vowed never to do it. Get it?

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

I don't know about Steve, but I can answer the question in my case. It's a lot like a pain threshold, where your threshold is different from someone else's, so you can't take a particular piece of entertainment as many times as that other person can, even a GREAT piece of entertainment.
Or it's like how much of a particular food you can eat without the novelty going out of it - no matter how nice the food is, you can only eat it so many times without that happening, so you put it aside for a long while till the novelty comes back. So that's what I do with the Columbos and countless other kinds of entertainment.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

I too have given myself enforced breaks from some of my favorite shows. When I retire next January, I want to view them fresh. In fact, I missed almost the entire run of Homicide on network and ordered the DVDs to save for retirement.

The only shows I've been able to watch over and over again and not get burnt out have been Seinfeld and House.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

With me the biggest exception is MST3K, and that's because it's so full of "out of left field" jokes that it's hard to memorize that many of them, so the novelty has a way of staying with them.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

Loved that show on a Saturday morning -- especially the man with a flashlight/Sunday Mystery Movie gag.

Re: 12 month sentence up!!

Yes, I think that joke was in one of the first episodes I ever saw "Pod People." And a few others, of course.

Steve asked about pairing episodes. I just saw "Playback" for the first time in a long while, and it goes awfully well with "Etude In Black." There's the "straying" husband, the mother-in-law who tries to keep a tight grip on him (though it's more obvious in Playback), the wife who's pictured as TOO understanding (of both the husband and the mother), and of course there's the Gena Rowlands / John Cassavetes connection.