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I Never Saw a Guy Unwind That Fast

Wayne Jennings is a tennis layabout and wannabe actor who’s romancing several women at once, including a famous romance novelist. When she (apparently) threatens to break off their relationship over the phone, he drives across the great state of California to shoot her in cold blood. Well, except maybe he didn’t? Because she might have already been dead? Or maybe not? Or maybe she didn’t call him in the first place? Because there’s this sister of hers you see and… oh, whatever. It’s all very soap-opera-ish. Jon loved, loved, loved it. RJ and guests Donna Bowman (AV Club) and Noel Murray (Rolling Stone, New York Times), not so much. WHO WILL BE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY? Also discussed: expectations of genre, Detroiters and Swamp Thing.

11 Comments

  1. Lisa Stein Lisa Stein

    I was so wrong – RJ didn’t like episode and Jon loved it. I respect Jon even more for this decision. Enjoying this episode of podcast. Like the mention of Charlie’s Angels in reference to speaker, etc. Just one of those Kevin Bacon things – Columbo gets even closer to Charlie’s Angels – since Andrew Stevens was married to Kate Jackson for a brief period.

  2. Chana Masaledar Chana Masaledar

    As Jon feels about Robby the Robot, I feel about attempts to merge Columbo with romance novels and/or soap operas. Virtually nothing about this episode worked for me, and Andrew Stevens in particular was excruciating.

    But the podcast was fun! It was nice to hear a good debate.

  3. Meagen Meagen

    Sadly my usual Entirely Legitimate Sources could not provide me with a viewing of this episode. (All I could find was an episode of Cover Up with the same title.)

    In the past couple podcasts there’s been questions about Jon’s past ratings. When did he start doing them? What varied objects were used as the “out of ten” currency? What did he give to a particular Columbo? It’s not like you can just ask RJ to go back and listen to your old episodes!

    Wouldn’t it be convenient if some listener of yours, one with a particular interest in arranging data in neat rows *and* way too much time on her hands, went back and compiled all of Jon’s ratings into a Google spreadsheet? It would probably look something like… this:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iQG7YzHAD5U2vXcNOPjQIVreUMRIjaiJN-SvSLANqwY

    • Holy moley.

      Well, this saves me some time — I was going back through old eps and making my own list. This is, though … I’m not sure what we did to inspire such endeavor

      • Meagen Meagen

        You started giving out numbered ratings. It was only a matter of time until some huge nerd with too much time on her hands put the numbers in a spreadsheet.

        Possibly follow-up that I’m leaving to some other nerd: list of “the podcast we’ll be doing after/instead of this” jokes by episode.

    • I hadn’t realized that “Jon–?” “Yessir!” was a thing but now that I think of it, yes, it’s a thing.

      Also, “JOMT Antichrist” is just terrific.

  4. Chana Masaledar Chana Masaledar

    Wow, Meagen, that’s really impressive.

    By the way, I agree that it’s generally a bad idea to do a vocal impression of Columbo, but can we officially declare that the exceptions to this rule are “mizzen boom” and “panties”?

  5. Jason Brown Jason Brown

    I watched this twice back to back, and rather enjoyed it (in a ‘it’s Columbo, of course I’m going to enjoy it way’ – not all episodes can muster that…). Again, the pod is making me look deeper into these later ones, and enjoy them far more than I might.

    These ‘outlier’ episodes are almost like Columbo fan fic: what if Columbo were in X? I think he suits the ‘romance novel’; not sure the novel suits him, though. Stick him in a Jackie Collins novel!

    What I do think is that this episode is the most ‘Murder She Wrote’ of them. Make of that what you will.

    The bad guy is an utter douche, even by the 90’s standards. Screws around, no remorse for anyone, is quite happy to kill, utterly selfish.

    So when will the Swamp Thing podcast happen?

    • I think you’re probably smack on with the Murder She Wrote comparison, although there’s another episode coming up — A Trace of Murder — which may compete.

      Also, it’s bad enough I write about Swamp Thing, I dunno if I could commit to talking about it on a regular basis too

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