On February 1st, 1976, the 4th episode of season 5, A Matter of Honor, aired for the first time. Truth be told it's not one of my favorite episodes, and apparently wasn't a favorite of many of the people who worked on it (especially Falk) either.
📺Watch it for free on Freevee. (May not be available in all regions)
Ricardo Montalban stars as Luis Montoya, a famous retired bullfighter and national hero. Montalban had been working as an actor for 35 years at this point but remarkably his star was still rising. He was a year or two away from starting Fantasy Island - an iconic TV series from the late 70s - and also on the verge of winning an Emmy award.
What to Watch For
A few things I found interesting from the episode.
High billing for the "Car washing guy"
Jorge Rivero plays Carlos, the guy washing Montoya's car and it seemed odd that for a guy who is only on-screen for a couple of minutes in a fairly inconsequential role he got pretty high billing. But it turns out he was kind of a big deal in Mexico in the 60s and 70s. Known as "The Robert Redford of Mexico".
Having such a prominent credit was a condition of him taking the role, and was likely an effort to appeal to a Mexican audience by featuring such a familiar and popular actor.
Hector Rangel est mort
Robert Carricart plays Hector Rangel, the victim. He's not Mexican, in fact he was born in Bordeaux, France. He was pretty active from the late 50s to the late 70s.
Carricart was not the first choice to play the role. According to David Koenig's Shooting Columbo, Peter Falk wanted legendary Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez but they couldn't agree on financial terms.
Not very nice...
You can almost feel sympathetic for the aging matador wanting to save his reputation, but the gesture where he holds up the dart for the doomed Hector to see feels malicious and personal.
Mrs. Columbo
Columbo talks about Mrs. Columbo with Commandante Sanchez early in the episode. At this point Columbo has no idea that a murder has happened, or who any of the key participants are. And he's only in the company of fellow police officers - albeit officers from another department in another country.
A nod to the earlier case
Columbo doesn't often reference other cases on screen, but this one starts off with Commandante Sanchez expressing admiration for how Columbo solved the murder on the cruise ship. He's referring, of course, to season 4's Troubled Waters, where Robert Culp kills lounge singer Poupee' Boucar for her 17 minute long rendition of "Volare"...and for blackmailing him over their affair.
Nice ride
Columbo is interested in Montoya's classic Cadillac, but not to be overlooked is the 1954 MG TF that Montoya's daughter Nina arrives in.
A Fish out of Water
They really play up the factor of Columbo being out of his element in Mexico, in particular the language barriers. Sometimes they're a bit over the top but other times they work nicely. For example Columbo's line when he's looking at the accident report where he says "I see Hector Rangel's name...I don't understand anything after that."
Or, when Columbo is looking at the weather report and notes that it's in Spanish. Commandante Sanchez responds "Yes, I know that, the people at the weather bureau speak it very well."
A slightly different Columbo?
I wonder if the theme of him being in a strange land, and nominally on vacation, also meant that he dropped a lot of the pretense of himself as less than the killer? This Columbo is a little more reminiscent of the Columbo we got in Prescription Murder, cool and capable. Other than his open-handed learning about the culture and language, he doesn't really pretend to be out of his depth like he usually does.
He's a wise mentor to Sanchez, and coolly drives the investigation forward right from the start.
He's also fairly direct with Montoya, asking direct questions. This helps unnerve the suspect, who realizes early that Columbo is a threat, but is also somewhat different from his usual act of making the suspect over-confident and letting them mess up.
At no point does Columbo tell Montoya that "My wife is a big fan of yours".
Montoya unravels
In the scene where Columbo is looking at Montoya's books and questioning why Montoya would believe Hector if he already knew the books were finished, you see Montoya start to unravel the way a number of Columbo killers do. They've created a narrative that explains the death and when Columbo doesn't buy into it they start to get pretty upset.
You also see this in Playback, when Van Wyck is caught at the end, and he seems to have a mental break because he never conceived of somebody not seeing his narrative as the obvious answer.
Here you see Montoya bellowing "If you knew the first thing about bullfighting you would not question Hector's death!" That's the frustration that Columbo isn't coming along with Montoya's story.
On reflection Montoya's arrogance that nobody would dare challenge his story is pretty much his undoing. He gets caught in a lot of easy lies.
A tough one
This was apparently a difficult episode to shoot. Crew issues - half the crew were Columbo regulars from the U.S. and half were unfamiliar crew from Mexico - actor issues, and script issues (nobody, including Falk, thought the script was good) meant this episode went way over time and way over budget.
My problem with this episode...
...is that I don't really buy the motive. Montoya was a proud man and zealously guarded his reputation for bravery, but it's not clear to me how murdering Rangel would preserve it. Surely Rangel wasn't the only witness to what happened with Curro and the bull? And there's no indication that Rangel planned to tell people that Montoya froze that day. He wasn't blackmailing Montoya as far as we could tell, and wasn't really a particular threat to him.
It's also never clear to me how Columbo knew Montoya froze in the ring the day Curro was injured. Presumably scenes of that happening were left on the editing room floor.
and the gotcha...
Montoya freezing in the ring doesn't mean very much. He could probably argue that bulls react to motion and with his injured leg and age he knew he wasn't in any condition to fight the bull. So, remaining still and letting his vaqueros distract and remove the bull was the safest option.
That said, there is a lot of other circumstantial evidence that might be enough.
The winds
I do like the wrap up about the winds and the water on the cape. That's a nice touch and a compelling way to establish the time of death. Montoya's alibi falls apart quickly.
Respect
There was a nice moment at the end when Montoya, recognizing that he's caught, wraps up the muleta and hands it and the sword to Columbo, with a nod.
Just a few more things
- I really liked Pedro Armendariz Jr. as Commandante Sanchez. His performance is natural and pleasant and his relationship with Columbo is maybe the highlight of the episode.
- Likewise, Enrique Lucero, as the ranch foreman Jaime, is very good, though he doesn't have much to do.
- Some characters, like Montoya's daughter Nina, don't seem to have any purpose in this episode. She doesn't really advance the story, and yet she's pretty much the leading female character. I have to suspect that more scenes with her ended up edited out or cut very short.
- NBC apparently ordered the Columbo folks to portray the Mexican locals in a positive light and avoid ugly stereotypes, but they didn't do a great job of that. Armendariz is commendable as the smart and respectable police commander, but the car crash scene at the beginning - with the fake injuries - played up to the local scammers "take advantage of the American tourist" trope.
- I almost forgot to mention A Martinez who played Curro. He has a good scene or two as the brooding young matador, but sadly he's another character who felt under-utilized and I can't help but wonder if more of him also ended up on the editing room floor.
What did you think of A Matter of Honor? Let us know in the comments below.
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