What I know at this moment about Columbo:
Columbo is a show about the world's most autistic detective (like actual detail obsessed autistic detective, not "look he do nunbies maths" "autistic detective") reaching the conclusion before everyone else about who did a crime action.
Once he finds the crimesters, he very gently and slowly suggests to the crimester about how maybe, theoretically, possibly, the case could be solved by someone in the room right now, who is NOT the crimester. He does this because he dreads confrontation and wants the crimester to REALLY UNDERSTAND that about that CRIME the CRIMESTER, MAYBE SOMEONE will DO AN ARREST at them, IMAGINE THAT.
Doing an offensive job inoffensively is Peter Falk's Conceit of Character.
I think he hates social interaction. He likes witnesses like House likes clinic duty, UNLESS they are the crimester, which is his hyperfocus. Because, like, astonishingly, this "You did a bad thing and I'm going to tell" continues across the *entire episode* without the criminal getting the hint.
I just watched a *full hour* of a detective going "Huh, it would be a shame if someone had very specific evidence to convict you of that murder, like maybe I have that evidence already, maybe you should leave the country, MAYBE" and the murderer going
...except Columbo doesn't lose his cool, he just goes "Okay then" and leaves, and then a few scenes later comes back to go "BY THE WAY, FURTHER DAMNING EVIDENCE, THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW"...
And for the record, it's fucking delightful.
I don't know how I feel about the Falk Maneuver. On the one hand, it's the closest we've seen to police by consent in this country. On the other hand, a dude winds up dead. On the other other hand, that's way fewer dudes than regular police.
At any rate, it is an apparent truth that there's a monkey in this show, and this is a public apology for absolutely not believing my sister on that front, like, remotely. I pay my monkey tax in Monkeyshines, as per general agreement.
Forget not the holy scrip:
Once there was a man whose prison was a chair
The man he had a monkey, they made the strangest pair
The monkey ruled the man, it climbed inside his head
And now as fate would have it, one of them is dead
1st Monkeyshines: An Experiment In Fear 19:88
Watch Monkeyshines, watch Columbo, and most of all, watch the skies
Goodnight, Night Vape, goodnight
Welcome to Night Vape was in the running for series names for what we now know of The Midnight Gospel, but they were afraid of running into legal trouble.
