Just One More Thing: Murder, Smoke and Shadows

Notes and screenshots for Murder, Smoke and Shadows: Originally broadcast on February 27, 1989, starring Fisher Stevens as an impulsively homicidal Steven Spielberg -- or, I dunno, John Landis maybe -- and, of course, Peter Falk as Columbo.

"An egocentric young director murders a childhood friend who threatened to expose his complicity in the negligent death of the friend's sister years before he found fame and success. Lt. Columbo is investigating."

-IMDB Summary

"What happens when control freak director Alex Brady (Fisher Stevens) is confronted with a problem he can’t direct or FX away? Well, in season eight’s “Murder, Smoke and Shadows,” the answer is an old-fashioned movie backlot electrocution. And, as much as he’d like, no amount of 3-D holographic technology, rear projection or fancy soundstage lighting will deter Columbo from closing in on his current (and past) sins. Abed Gheith returns to the show to discuss the episode, along with possums, Megaforce and so much more."

-RJ's episode summary

Listen to the original podcast episode here:

Episode 36: Ask and Listen, Listen and Ask with our guest Abed Geith.

Murder, Smoke and Shadows

Season 8, Episode #2

Director: James Frawley

Writer: Richard Alan Simmons

Is there any plot the Columbo writers love more than Hollywood’s constant manufacture of fantasy versus its sleazy, mundane reality? It’s a plot they’ve revisited periodically, with the moral being very much in tune with Columbo’s general message -- Glitz and glamour usually hide atrocities, it’s better to be a little rumpled but honest.

MS&S probably comes closest to feeling like an original 1970s Columbo, compared to the other 90′s episodes and their frequent flirtation with film noir and inversions of the successful Columbo formula. In doing so, though, it does highlight one of the differences between the decades; In the Nineties, you couldn’t really tell the poor, victimized schlubs from the wealthy, conniving fancy-pantsers. Everyone’s hair is equally moussed in the Nineties, everyone’s outfits look equally rumpled and oversized. You can tell the victims from the victors in a mess like that.

This is also the closest Columbo has ever come to embracing magical realism or - more to the point - entertaining the internal life of its killer. Repeatedly, the action on the screen is clearly hallucinatory, filtered through Alex Bradey’s (Fisher Stevens) self-aggrandizing imagination. The final blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot is one of the oddest in the history of the show, but it’s also the coda to Bradey’s apparent ego collapse. 

Also, I’d like to reiterate what I started to say on the podcast, that you don’t need to fly all the way from Albany to Los Angeles just to buy cocaine. You don’t even have to hop the train, just swing by The Alpine Inn outside of Mahopac in Putnam County, there’ll be some Canadian long-distance truckers more than happy to hook you up. Tell ‘em Just One More Thing sent ya!

Next episode: Sex and the Married Detective