Just One More Thing: The Most Crucial Game
Notes and screenshots for The Most Crucial Game: Originally broadcast on November 5, 1972, starring Robert Culp as team manager and homicidal ice cream man Paul Hanlon, Dean Stockwell as ne'er-do-well gridiron golden boy Eric Wagner, plus Valerie Harper, Dean Jagger and James Gregory and, of course, Peter Falk as Columbo.
"The manager of a football team murders its callow owner, making it look as if the young man had had an accident in his swimming pool. Lt. Columbo is on the case."
-IMDB Summary
"“The Most Crucial Game” has ace Columbo foe Robert Culp as the frustrated manager of a sports team empire. When he sees a chance to kill the heir to the family business, he dresses as an ice cream man and puts the party animal on ice. But, not for any real motive that we can actually determine. The episode has a lot of things going for it- beautiful direction, great performances, nice individual scenes, a good score, but the parts just don’t quite come together. Author Glen Erik Hamilton (Past Crimes, Hard Cold Winter) is on the program to pick out just why it all doesn’t seem to add up."
-RJ's episode summary
Listen to the original podcast episode here:
Season 2, Episode 3
Director: John T. Dugan
Writers: Jeremy Kagan
I had mentioned during our podcast for The Most Crucial Game that I was reshooting scenes for this episode in my head as though they were shot by the Coen Brothers. It was either a case of seeing what you want to see or happenstance, but there were more than a handful of shots in the episode which I thought would seamlessly fit their catalog. Heck of a thing to imagine, though, "The Coen Bros' Columbo."
Next episode: Dagger of the Mind
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