Just One More Thing: Exercise in Fatality

Notes and screenshots for Exercise in Fatality: Originally broadcast on September 15, 1974, starring Robert Conrad as health huckster Milo Janus, Gretchen Corbett as a favor to bikinis, the underrated Pat Harrington Jr as Janus' creepy factotum, and, of course, Peter Falk as Columbo.

"A health and fitness franchiser who sells supplies to his franchisees at exorbitant prices murders one of them after the man discovers his criminal business practices. Lt. Columbo must outsmart the crafty killer to solve this one."

-IMDB Summary

"In “An Exercise in Fatality,” gymnasium chain magnate Milo Janus’ (Robert Conrad) business double-dealings are about to be exposed by a disgruntled franchisee! What’s his wisest course of action? Why, cancel the fellow’s contract with a metal pipe to the throat and make it look like a tragic gym accident! As Columbo tries to put it all together, you’ll be plunged into a world of vitamins, sweaty dudes, X-rated Italian horror films, soulless bureaucracy, and Jim Rockford’s ladyfriend in a bikini. Critic Phil Dyess-Nugent is here to spot Jon and RJ as they try to lift the heavy, heavy barbell of 70s murder show recapping."

-RJ's episode summary

Listen to the original podcast episode here:

Episode 34: Skipping Cigars, Giving up Beer, No More Chili with our guest Phil Dyess-Nugent.

Exercise in Fatality 

Season 4, Episode #1

Director:  Bernard Kowalski

Writers: Larry Cohen, Peter S. Fischer

This ended up being a surprisingly compelling episode, despite what may have seemed at the start like something of a forced premise. A crooked health spa franchise mogul with a hearty streak of paranoia murdering a suspicious subordinate and disguising his despicable act with a pre-recorded gamble while hosting an X-Rated horror movie at his beachside pad. Still, performance, story, direction, pacing and premise all came together beautifully.

I’m not sure what it means in the larger scheme of things, but this episode featured more shots of people walking away from the camera than any other television program or film I can recall seeing. 

Many episodes of Columbo - to fill the two-hour requirement on most episodes - indulge in some light comedy or other time-killing padding. This episode may boast the legitimately funniest and most relevant bit of color ever to grace a Columbo, with the most humane and humanist detective in television history stuck under the thumb of a faceless digital monolith and its uncaring subordinates. Our favorite lieutenant definitely reflects the frustration so many everyday folks felt at the apex of the increasingly computerized world of the 1970s.

Although his character, Milo Janus, was described as being in his mid-Fifties, Robert Conrad was 39 when this episode was filmed. That’s a neat trick if you can pull it off.

There were so many neat shots in this episode that I decided I’d like to do a second photoset. If nothing else, I’d like to celebrate both the only up-lit gym in the history of the industry, and the recently-deceased Pat Harrington’s astonishing wardrobe in this episode. I included his most egregious collection of patterns and fabrics, but suffice it to say he had at least another three winners over the course of the program. It’s a shame that his character basically vanishes halfway through the story. 

One thing which this episode reiterates for us is that Columbo is torn apart at the idea of suicide - accidental or otherwise - particularly when it’s a woman who’s the victim. It’s after meeting with Mrs.Stafford in the hospital after her nearly-fatal cocktail of “pills and booze - a deadly combination” (thanks doc!) that Columbo loses his temper in the waiting room, a fantastic scene all around.

Columbo’s reaction to suicide was left largely unexplored in the show (outside of Etude in Black, season 2, when he offers an intense monologue on the topic). I generally feel that Columbo’s backstory should be left intentionally vague and generally unexplored (lest we’re confronted with “The Young Columbo Mysteries” or something of that ilk).

Still, somewhere in what I ashamedly admit is my Columbo headcanon, I suspect the visceral reaction which the detective has to a woman’s suicide hints as to a formative event in his youth. Imagine if young Frank Columbo fell in love with a young lady, although she loved someone else. Imagine if owing to some lie, betrayal, or neglect, she takes her own life, shattering poor Frank’s heart. Then, years later, he meets the woman who will one day become Mrs.Columbo -- wouldn’t that early loss and tragedy prove the inspiration for his doting affection on his wife, his encyclopedic knowledge of her extended family, his constant happy indulgence of her every whim? Just by knowing that an unkind word, a lie, could make it all disappear in a snap?

More to the point, would that explain why the laid-back, apparently easy-going, slobby and unkempt detective launches into a tireless pursuit of murderers (we know he’ll stay on a case for years if he needs to)? Because he knows how much it hurts the people left behind?  When he lays into a killer (like he does with Robert Conrad in this episode) is it because that man or woman is a surrogate for young Frank’s anger and loss?

This is putting a lot of thought into a passing scene, of course, and it’s mostly to suit my tastes -- the happier a hero is in the modern-day, the more tragedy I like for them to have lived through earlier, to prove that there’s joy after loss I suppose ...

Next episode: Negative Reaction