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Tag: Boris Sagal

Daddy’s Here!

So, this pilot for Mrs. Columbo,  this “Word Games.” It has Kate Mulgrew. It has Robert Culp. It has Edie Adams. It has Bob Dishy. It has a host of other good people. It has the car. It has Dog. It does not have Columbo. But, it also has a great deal of unpleasantness. A great deal of missed opportunity. The whole thing is just odd and confounding, so much so that Jon and RJ actually go through an episode in chronological order FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. Historian and author Amanda Reyes (Are You In The House Alone?: A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999) is back on the program, to help sort through the whole mess. If you’d like to see for yourself, it’s on YouTube.

Torpedoes Running Straight, Hot, and Normal

In Season Two’s “The Greenhouse Jungle,” Ray Milland and his nephew cook up a fake kidnapping scheme to get at the nephew’s $300,000 trust fund. The scam goes off without a hitch- well, except for the nephew, who ends up getting murdered by his uncle. It’s a broad, odd anomaly of an episode, but Milland plays things to such a ridiculous hilt that it retains the fun, despite a few bumps here and there. Kevin Mellon (Archer) is here to talk about the whole thing, along with the Kubert School, deadly clowns on Matlock, the Goo Goo Dolls, and the Human Hickory Farms Log.

Still a Lot of Wear in This Fella

Politics. No one’s tired of that yet, right? Ha. Ha. Ha. Yeah. So, in “Candidate for Crime,” Jackie Cooper is Nelson Hayward, a US Senate candidate who’s sick and tired of his campaign manager telling him what to do. Does he fire him? Nope, it’s a literal Saturday Night Massacre, as the pol kills him in cold blood, then tries to pin it on a mob assassination attempt. Of course, Columbo doesn’t buy this angle for a minute and engages in a one-man filibuster against…. murder. JD Ryznar (Beyond Yacht Rock) returns to the program to talk about the (rather uneven) episode, Dixieland jazz, the arcane world of writing credits, and oh so much more.