I love CFC. The end scene has a similar "zap" effect as in "Suitable for Framing."

A typically good cast. Cooper, of course, perfect as an insincerely friendly politician. Ken Swofford is somewhat likable as the swaggering, burly, no-nonsense Harry. (But that "I know where your bodies are buried. Hell, I helped bury them" line was meant to be a figure of speech,wasn't it? )
Tisha Sterling as Linda does well with her character's embarassed awkwardneses and Joanne Linville's Victoria is a very three-dimensional portrayal with many good extra touches. And Vito Scotti whose polite defense of sartorial eloquence is put to a test with Columbo!

I also think CFC justifies its running time. Not always the case with the 90 minute plus episodes.

Mark

This has always been one of my favorites, too, for all the reasons thus far presented. The writers used Watergate revelations as part of the plot, and Cooper was superb as the superficially likeable guy with countless skeletons buried in his political backyard. Maybe it's my own political leanings showing, but I've always pictured the Cooper character as a rightwing Republican running on a law and order ticket--and Columbo showing how (at least during Watergate)phoney that issue was at the time.

I especially love that one scene where Columbo is in Hayward's office and he is doing the thing with the cars on the back of the poster.....it is such a long scene...it is classic Columbo..and Vito Scotti outdoes himself in this episode...absolutely wonderful...it is one of the very few time where I am not looking at Peter...my eyes are zoned in on Vito!!!
The ending is great...Columbo seems to take such pride in catching him....if you remember, he said his wife was going to vote for Hayward, but he was still on the fence...maybe he got his revenge...and as Michael said..Hayward seemed like a right-wing Republican, and I always felt that Columbo was a staunch Democrat.
Joanne Linville as Victoria Hayward was just wonderful...she played the role to the hilt....and boy!!! what a figure!!

Frankly, I didn't see any political statement in the episode at all. To me, the genius of Columbo is that at a time when TV shows were starting to hit people over the head with a load of political statements (and usually from one direction only, which is sadly still true today), Columbo could at least provide some pure fun and be non-partisan even when dealing with a politician as a killer.

Eric..what about all the underbelly stuff that was discussed? The buried "bodies" , the fake plots of supposed assassination attempts, the crude way that Hayward was pretending to be Mr. Nice Man..when in actuality he was just another crooked politician......and also that little remark that Columbo makes at the beginning, and he says it doesn't matter which party..black or white..well I know he wasn't saying "black or white" as a racial thing but as a democrat and republican thing..
I think that the writers were trying hard to stay on the edges of political craziness..but they sort of plopped over the line just a bit.............

I love the clue about the gas station closing early, so there would have been no way for the call to have been made there. Hayward thinks he has provided a perfect explanation, and then Columbo shocks him and tells him how it is impossible. I love that stunned and deflated look on his face.

"Eric..what about all the underbelly stuff that was discussed? The buried "bodies" , the fake plots of supposed assassination attempts, the crude way that Hayward was pretending to be Mr. Nice Man..when in actuality he was just another crooked politician......"

I don't see anything ideological in that. Just because Hayward is promising to be tough on crime doesn't mean he's an automatic conservative Republican, just as he wouldn't have to be pegged as a liberal Democrat if there was a scene of him talking about fighting for the little man (heck, I could say that a guy who pretends to be Mr. Nice but who is a crooked politician reminds me of a certain non-Republican who shall remain nameless). The writers just chose something that didn't say a lot, they didn't have Hayward make disparaging remarks about his opponent (we never learned anything about what was different about his opponent from him) to highlight the general ideological drift.

It was definitely a goodie!!

I also believe that a political statement is being made - politicians' credibility is questioned on a continuous basis to this day.

The marvellous irony here is that Nelson Hayward is bluffing the voters into thinking that he is the most sincere, caring man on the planet, yet he is having an affair and he has just murdered his campaign manager. He bluffs his wife and his lover. The only one he can't bluff is Columbo!

Of course we don't know what the writers had on their minds when that episode was written; however, the writers knew what was on most Americans' minds. Republicans--at that time--were making a lot of political hay out of "law and order" issues. The Cooper character was a "law and order" candidate. Also at that time we had a Republican administration that on a daily basis the public was finding out had no regard for "law and order" just as the Cooper character. What really convinced me was at the press conference scene when an aide comes up and whispers something about info gained from spies in the opponent's campaign . . . how many Americans even thought about such a sleasy tactic until the Watergate revelations. I do agree, however, that Columbo is a wonderful show and can be enjoyed by all regardless of their political leanings (He is a small-d democrat in that he is the ordinary guy's hero)

And what about all the stuff in the beginning of the episode when Harry Stone is on the phone with someone named Gomez, he is trying to get an endorsement out of him, and he tells Gomez to save all that bleeding heart minorty stuff for the 3000 creeps he controls (the union).
And later he is on the phone again and you can hear him ranting to someone to dig up a couple of Chicano kids, slip them a few bucks and let it look like they work for the opposition, and get them to bust into the east LA campaign headquaters.
There is a lot of shady business going on.

"And what about all the stuff in the beginning of the episode when Harry Stone is on the phone with someone named Gomez, he is trying to get an endorsement out of him, and he tells Gomez to save all that bleeding heart minorty stuff for the 3000 creeps he controls (the union)."

Can easily apply to a Democrat who takes the union vote for granted and isn't very sincere to begin with when it comes to delivering for them.

This just comes back to the fact that no matter what the writers own political beliefs were, they were just using a good occupation for a killer that was timely in that day and age. That's the same reason why they used a conservative talk radio host as a killer in the 90s, because the occupation was timely, not because they wanted to make a political statement (that's why Peter Fischer told Rush Limbaugh personally in a letter that they did not want to make Fielding Chase anything like Limbaugh from a personal standpoint. Just like to use a similar example, Milo Janus in "Exercise In Fatality" is a man a lot like Jack LaLanne in terms of success and occupation but Janus is nothing like Jack LaLanne personally).

Okay, I'll buy some of that; but remember in '72 the AFL-CIO didn't endorse the Democratic presidential ticket, and the Teamsters (and some other smaller labor unions) actually endorsed Nixon. A big story back then was how much of the labor vote ended up in the Republican column. Overall, I still think the Cooper character looks and sounds like a conservative Republican candidate.

As I recall, the Teamsters endorsement
of Nixon was made in return for Nixon
releasing Teamsters' President
Jimmy Hoffa from Federal prison.

I think you're right--obviously this could not have been a quid pro quo out-in-the-open arrangement, but a deal cut by shady phone calls and under-the-table stuff as suggested by the Cooper character's campaign manager. The campaign manager's phone calls about the "dirty" tricks reminded me of Donald Segretti's (sp?) stories of the pranks he and a handful of others pulled on Democratic candidates.

.....And we haven't even gotten into the whole MAFIA talk that goes on between Columbo and his dentist!! Boy!!! this episode is chockful of controversy!!!!