Speaking of the forensics shows, what they need is a "Columbo" character, who's completely grossed-out by all those things. (Of course, I haven't seen enough of them to know that they DON'T have characters like that ; someone would have to tell me.)

The late Jerry Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Brisco on Law and Order, was an "old school" type detective, that really didn't get too much into modern police techniques. Many times when something was being explained to him, he would say "In English!"

He is also one of my favorite characters, with his witty sarcastic humor.

Manhood
Cragen (trying to persuade Briscoe and Logan to drop an investigation of other cops): I'm worried about you losing your house and eatin' macaroni the next 20 years.
Lennie: I lost 2 houses already, and I like macaroni.

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Replying to:

Speaking of the forensics shows, what they need is a "Columbo" character, who's completely grossed-out by all those things. (Of course, I haven't seen enough of them to know that they DON'T have characters like that ; someone would have to tell me.)

i think it's in "columbo likes the nightlife"???? when columbo figures out that the murderer wrote an email by noticing that gloves smudged out the fingerprints on the most-used keys......essentially a technique that would have worked just as well for a typewriter in 1969.


i still chuckle at that miraculous 3,000 VCR. and the scene in "ransom" when columbo completely baffles leslie williams by calling her and immediately walking into her office ("care to tell me how you did it?"). i had to watch that scene twice before i realized why she was so baffled...cell phones are so ubiquitous now that i didn't catch the mystery the first time.

and i love columbo's utter awkwardness when getting lewis lacey's answering machine in "exercise"....and his description of the shock of it all later on: "that sort of thing makes an impression on you!"

my favorite example of his use of science to solve a case is the final clue in "columbo likes the nightlife." i/we keep fish, so the rule about how much volume is needed in the tank per fish was a clue dear to my heart.

Columbo's fax-ination in Frank Staplin's office. It's hard to believe that in the 1990's someone *still* hadn't heard of a machine that's been in almost every for close to a decade.