A brief appreciation of Peter Falk in Columbo, by Joe Dator in The New Yorker
This came around again and this time it reminded me of something very important to me.
I have a friend who’s an emergency-room specialist who keeps frustrating her bosses and her staff with her ability to diagnose, and successfully treat, people that other doctors would have just negligently killed. I would class her as one of the top-three diagnosticians in America.
And she says she feels stupid most of the time. A lot dumber than a lot of the doctors she works with. She says there’s nothing special about her, and is baffled that so many of us love her. She can’t explain how the other, smarter doctors can’t seem to save as many lives.
I tell her every chance I get, and now I’ll start using Columbo as an example of why, that smarts aren’t everything. She has something that the fictional Detective Columbo had that can’t be taught, apparently, that you either have or you don’t:
She gives a shit.
“We tried all *three* of the obvious things and nothing worked, so I guess the criminal is going to get away with it/the patient is going to die”? She hasn’t got an ounce of that in her, no matter how recalcitrant and/or sullen the patients or her staff are, no matter how frustrated and tired she gets. If she doesn’t know the answer, she can’t stop asking the question, because just letting the patient die, giving up on them, is literally not a thing she knows how to do.
(God, I love this woman.)
If you can learn how to consistently give a shit, that’s a superpower. You should cherish. The people around you should cherish you for it.
