In my continuing onslaught to force-feed my husband Columbo episodes..we watched Death Lends A Hand tonight. I will probably be all over the board here in my comments, and I will be rambling from one thing to another..so bear with me...these were some of the things that me and big Al (my honey )were discussing as we watched......
He agreed with me that Arthur Kennicut has the best backyard and pool!!! Wow! Amazing!!
Loved the Jazzy Mod music when Brimmer is transporting the body to the junkyard...it has the wonderful undercurrents of the Columbo theme. But the way he violently tosses the body to the ground is rather creepy.
Loved his Mod 70's beach house...soooooo 70's...I used to have those types of lamps in my bedroom as a teenager..those round silver ones that are shown at his house and also his office.
Great line in that one scene with R.J. Denning, Brimmer's underling..and also a Pat Sajak look-a-like!!...when he is showing Columbo around and he shows him the enormous memory banks..and he tells Columbo that the electical impulses in the room are more than are in Columbo's brain!! and Columbo comes back with.."Hard to believe."
I looked up "Quenella of Sole", the lunch they were having in Brimmer's office...and it is supposedly oval shaped pieces of fish, in this case sole, topped with a cream sauce. And that lovely improvised moment when Peter accidentally dips the end of his tie into the tomatoes and Robert discretely wipes it off.
Leo's dippy wife still annoys me...boy she was really under her husband's thumb!! She says it is a "household rule" that Leo doesn't discuss his work with her...and then she admits that if he did tell her, she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret and it would be "all over the laundrymat"!!!! What a Dip!!
Columbo shows signs of the more intense Columbo that we see in later seasons....he doggedly hounds (no pun intended! ) Ken Archer into a panic...and then there is that ominous scene where Ken is trying to run off only to see Columbo sitting in the front seat of his car puffing away...that had to scare the heck out of him!
Some ethical stuff.....
Brimmer is talking to Lenore in the beginning and she is so surprised that he is not going to rat on her to her husband. Brimmer's response is that he is a "moralist"..a "vanishing species"...and then he turns around and tries to blackmail her into supplying information to him!!! HULLO?!?!?
Loved the little thing when Columbo was leaving Brimmer's office and he mentions how close Brimmer's beach house is to Kennicut's beach house...and Brimmer gives him a big "No"..it's a couple of miles..and Columbo shoots back.."OH, that close"..delicious!!
And then there is our beloved Columbo...who, even though he is offered 3 times the salary that he is now making...he cannot take the job, because he would have to give up on the Kennicut case...and he just can't find it in himself to desert it. His passion for his job and his dedication to it is so very apparent.
And did you ever notice when Leo is wrestling with his son Teddy on the floor of their home that Leo's blue shirt is the same exact blue color of Teddy's socks???? Ok....time to haul me off to the looney bin!!!!!!!

One final thing..........."You take a potata.............."

It is unquestionable that Columbo is very dedicated to his job regardless of the salary. However, his refusal to accept Brimmer's lucrative job offer has more to do with the fact that he suspects Brimmer of the crime. Having suspected Brimmer from the first time they met (as referenced in the last scene of the episode), Columbo knows that the job offer is a set-up to mask the truth--and this is proven when Brimmer tells Columbo that he would not be working on the Kennicutt case if he took the job. Perhaps Brimmer should have been more cagey about that.

I realize that David...and I was going to add that point in...but my post was getting a little "long-in-the-tooth" and I didn't want to ramble on longer than I did already.

Just a great post Cassa. I didn't read your post at work, I saved it to read it leasurely at home. And I am glad I did. Great observations and I agree with every one of them...very insightful stuff.

thank you paul