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RiotDoll [she/her, she/her] @hexbear.net

Why is columbo so good when all other cop shows are dreck?

Is it because he's always nailing smug weirdo rich fuckbags? Is it the peter falk hard carry? Is it because despite being canonically a cop he does anything but act like a cop?

Is everything downstream of columbo an attempt to erase his legacy as the hound of wealthy sociopaths?

Is Columbo a demigod?

63 comments

  • One reason it's so good is it doesn't rely on twists like other mystery type stories. You always see the crime happening in the first few minutes with full confirmation on who did it. So the audience has all the information already, you're watching Columbo put it together and trap the criminal. So you're not figuring out the mystery alongside Columbo, rather, it's like he's breaking down the whole story for you. It's really formulaic, but it's usually fun and varied.

    He's also just not a normal cop. He's a weird small man who's annoying and talks about eating chili. He's usually only shown solving crimes committed by completely vile smug assholes. My favorite episode is the one where Leonard Nimoy plays a surgeon who wants to steal his colleague's research out of a lust for fame. So Doctor Nimoy comes up with a plan to purposefully botch his colleague's heart surgery, but a nurse finds evidence of the plan, so Doctor Nimoy kills her with a tire iron and makes it look like a random heroin addict killed her. I love this episode because multiple times Columbo drops the dopey goofy detective thing and lapses into anger. He tells the surgeon just how despicable the whole thing is. I guess that's the good thing about Columbo, is that he has the outer vibe of an everyman. He's just some gremlin man from New York who talks funny and has an invisible wife. But at his core he has a sense of justice and what he despises most are abuses of power.

    He's not a real cop is what's good about it. He's a heroic character who doesn't have a real life analogue, so he's a cop out of writing convenience. He's more like a whimsical spirit of justice than an LAPD pig.

    • Another great character thing is that he loves his wife. Like, this shouldn't be a huge thing, but look at every. single. cop. show. it's wife hate and marital strife. Look at basically every comedic thing a boomer or gen xer ever touched, it's a load bearing amount of "hate my wife" jokes.

      Columbo out here just, clearly adoring his spouse and it's just... i dunno i love it.

      He's completely wholesome, but a chameleon gremlin with the prescience of like, Paul Atreides and a disposition to ruining the untouchable class.

      • He fears his invisible wife's power and her vast stores of relative-proferred knowledge. He knows better than to displease the Wife.

  • It's definitely not just that the crooks are rich. Not that I watch a ton of cop shows, but I've seen many episodes of shows like Law and Order where rich people get taken down. The writers are smart enough to know that's what people want to see, and it's part of how copaganda works.

    I think the thing that makes Columbo feel so different is that every episode is like an intellectual duel between Columbo and the murderer, and the tone is usually pretty light and sometimes comedic. Then there's Columbo himself; I know he's technically a cop but he feels more like he's from the tradition of Holmes or Poirot. He's a detective because he's an eccentric. And the fact that he's seemingly given such a wide berth by the other police makes him feel independent, like Poirot or Holmes, and not part of the police power structure.

    • Columbo is like sober-and-in-a-stable-marriage Harrier DuBois

      OK, so he doesn't take off his pants to make a 3-foot jump when he could have just as easily climbed down like a normal jagoff anywhere in the course of the show, but you know what I mean.

  • he goes after rich people who think they are untouchable, he doesn't use violence or aggression (except in the first tv movie), he hates guns and doesn't carry

  • I think it's in large part because Columbo isn't really trying to portray a "real" police officer, but instead a pleasant fantasy. Shows that try to emulate what's real are also usually fantasies, but they don't portray it like that, instead trying to portray abuses as "good" or "necessary", and dealing with serious topics only on the surface level.

    Columbo doesn't wear the uniform most cops do, he doesn't really do "beat cop" type activities, he's the kind of cop most people will never interact with. He also has a very distinct and recognizable persona and style. If you take a look at the worse cop shows, the police officers tend to be very similar, less distinct.

    Also, I think that "The Wire" is pretty good, despite being a cop show. It tries to be real, but it does a much better job than most cop shows. It's not all black and white, and doesn't hide a lot of the issues the way other shows do.

  • My favorite thing about the show is that while often times maybe you're not gonna catch everything columbo catches, and some stuff can be contrived, the show is still begging you to pay attention. If you were impressionable and going to model whatever came on your TV, being observant and thoughtful would be the outcome for watching this. Columbo always notices details that are amiss - the idea that if something like a murder has taken place, but has been staged to seem accidental or otherwise non-criminal, there are tells. there are signs. there are disturbances. inconsistencies between people, alibies, and the truth of an event - and i think i love that. It's a good moral to try and impart, but i think it might be lost on decades of boomers, gen xers, millenials, and zoomers memeing too hard, but i also think it's right there to pick up on if you're willing

  • Columbo is a cop but Columbo isn't a cop show. It's a twist on the classico murder mystery but otherwise falls into the same Holmesian lineage of poirot and Jessica Fletcher. It's a vibe thing

63 comments