Dead Weight

The 3rd episode of season 1 aired on October 27th, 1971 and features Eddie Albert as a shady retired General who kills a conspirator in a war-profiteering scheme, and Suzanne Pleshette as a divorcee' who witnesses the crime, only to be (nearly) charmed out of her testimony.

This episode is not one of my favorites - and apparently wasn't a favorite of the cast either. Peter Falk was having a dispute with the studio about his contract and held out for the first part of the filming. The tension affected everybody, apparently, Albert and Pleshette both felt that Falk behaved badly.

📺Watch Dead Weight for free here: https://www.imdb.com/tv/watch/tt0066931 (May not be available in all regions)

What to watch for...

Putting aside the issues with filming, here's some things I found interesting about the episode.

Home sweet home

The episode starts at General Hollister's house, which in real life is located at 2 Collins Island in Newport Beach, CA and was at the time owned by....

...Peter Falk? Apparently, no. It's a popular series legend, but author David Koenig has done some research and found that the house was apparently owned by Raymond Nemec at the time, not Falk.

Koenig speculates that the legend of Falk actually owning the house may have been started by tour guides who do boat tours of Newport Harbor.

A calm day on the water

If you watch carefully in the scene where Mrs. Stewart witnesses the murder you'll notice that the boat isn't actually moving at all. It's probably tied to the dock with the camera crew filming from the dock.

Age is just a number but...

Eddie Albert is 31 years older than Suzanne Pleshette; old enough to be her dad. Kate Reid, who plays her mom in the episode, is only 6-1/2 years older than Suzanne Pleshette...so not old enough to be her mom. 

Lotta fruit salad

Hollister is a decorated war hero, and, as it turns out, so was Eddie Albert. He earned the Bronze Star in the Navy during WWII.

Hello Val Avery

The fellow who owns the boat rental is none other than Columbo occasional Val Avery, who fans will probably know best as Artie Jessup from A Friend in Deed.

Avery also had noteworthy appearances as the private investigator in The Most Crucial Game, and a bartender in Identity Crisis.

To be Frank...

One of the more controversial scenes of the entire series happens when General Hollister opens the door for Columbo. Columbo shows his police ID and now that we can freeze frame it and zoom in on the image we can see that...

...a prop man has decided that Columbo's first name is Frank. More on this at What is Columbo's first name? (acolumboblog.blogspot.com).

Hello Mrs. Melville

Apparently General Hollister is a Mrs. Melville fan. The sharp-eyed among you may spot a couple of Mrs. Melville books on his shelf when Columbo and Hollister are inspecting the crate of museum donations.

He also seems to have a few duplicate books on the shelf.

And welcome back Bert!

Timothy Carey returns as nostalgic chili-slinger Bert. We first met him in Ransom for a Dead Man.

Bert shows Columbo his WWII combat helmet, but Timothy Carey would have been just 16 years old when WWII ended.

May I have this dance?

The dinner and a dance scene in Hollister's house was probably intended to advance the narrative of their unlikely romance, but to me it felt a bit like filler. Perhaps Peter Falk's holdout for contract reasons left them a scene short of a full episode so they added this one - it only required Albert and Pleshette - to fill time?

Just a few more things

• Kate Reid's character is named "Mrs. Walters" but when she and Pleshette return to the boat dock after witnessing the shooting Val Avery refers to her as "Mrs. Wallace." Given that he probably only knew her casually it's not a huge goof.
• Hollister's boat shares his nickname: "The Iron Horseman".
• For a decorated marksman and military hero General Hollister has pretty poor trigger discipline. His finger is on the trigger the whole time he's walking around with his target pistol.
• The power cord for Hollister's bedroom lamp goes out under the door to the hallway. Also odd that the lamp is set up directly in front of a mirror.
• When General Hollister takes Columbo out on his boat after Colonel Dutton is found, we can see the wake of the camera boat a few times.

Plot holes

As a gun owner myself it's not clear to me why the gun he was donating to the museum would have been loaded. All the other guns he was donating apparently, and sensibly, had their firing pins removed, but his pearl handled Colt was not only intact but loaded?

Speaking of loaded for action...I found it hard to buy the Hollister/Stewart romance. Albert is 31 years older than Pleshette (who was herself only 34 years old when this episode aired) and his General Hollister character struggled to pull off "charming" on a consistent basis. I suppose his fame and fortune might buy him some leeway but still, a legitimate Hollywood beauty like Pleshette would have had lots of options that weren't grumpy murderers nearly twice her age.

I have heard it suggested that Mrs. Stewart's poor self-esteem probably made her more likely to accept the advances of General Hollister, which is a fair point.

The big plot hole for me is that Hollister probably would have gotten away with it if he'd just said "Good night" to Columbo and left it at that. Hollister's tracking down Mrs. Stewart and pursuing the relationship is what caused Columbo to to pursue the case.

Also...Colonel Dutton's car was parked right in front of Hollister's house; odd oversight that neither Columbo, nor Officer Sanchez, thought to look up (or even just write down) the license plate number.