On February 18, 1974, Columbo wandered into a world of whirring tape drives, giant blinking panels, and a full-sized robot. Mind Over Mayhem is Season 3’s swing at near-future science… and it’s one of those episodes that’s better the less you ask it to be ‘realistic’ and the more you enjoy it as a very 1970s idea of what tomorrow would look like.
Meet Dr. Cahill
José Ferrer plays Dr. Marshall Cahill, the director of a
cybernetics institute who carries himself like a man personally keeping
civilization from falling apart. He’s brilliant, sure — but the key is that
he’s also utterly certain he’s brilliant, which makes every conversation feel
like a lecture.
The cold open is a war simulation that lets Cahill sneer at a room full of military and scientific brass. It’s a fun way to establish the episode’s central vibe: a bunch of people pretending this technology is magic, while Ferrer sells the idea that he’s the sorcerer-in-chief.
Did you spot Lally?
If you’re watching carefully you’ll notice that one of the lab-coated
assistants in the opening scene is the legendary Michael Lally…delivering messages
to the participants.
The problem child (not the one you think)
Cahill’s son Neil is about to receive a major Scientist of
the Year award. The catch: the work isn’t really his. Professor Howard
Nicholson (Lew Ayres) knows Neil plagiarized a late colleague’s research and
plans to expose him. Neil’s guilt matters, but Marshall’s pride matters more —
and that’s the episode’s murder motive.
The victim: Professor Nicholson
Lew Ayres brings a lived-in weariness to Nicholson: smart,
stubborn, and a little prickly.
Instead of poison, or a lab ‘accident,’ Cahill goes for
something brutally simple: a hit-and-run, executed by honking the car horn to
lure Nicholson into the driveway and then mowing him down.
A murder method that tells you everything about Cahill
For all the episode’s talk of computers, the killing is very
analog. Cahill doesn’t create a clever machine-based alibi. He just uses the
oldest trick in the book: make it look like a brutal robbery and let everyone’s
assumptions do the work.
Unfortunately, here his intellect gets him in trouble. It
never occurs to him that a regular druggie wouldn’t know that C₂₁H₂₃NO₅ is heroin.
But Columbo spots it right away and it blows up the story about this
being a simple robbery.
Cahill also does something puzzling - he takes the victim's wallet and the heroin, but then he deliberately sets the scene with the two glasses to make it appear that Nicholson was having drinks with his killer before the murder. So was it a druggie that robbed him...or somebody he knew?
Ironically Cahill might have had a better chance if he'd dragged Nicholson back into the lab and staged the struggle and robbery there.
Columbo arrives… with Dog trouble
In a nice change of pace, Columbo’s first scene isn’t at the
body. He’s dealing with fallout from dog obedience school — because yes, even
in the high-tech future, Dog remains a force to be reckoned with.
That domestic little opener is important: it sets up the
episode’s best contrast. Cahill is all control, status, and brainpower. Columbo
is chaos in a raincoat, apologizing for a dog, and asking questions like he’s
doing you a favor.
Mrs. Columbo…and kids!?
There’s a moment in the dog school dean’s office that many
viewers might miss. Columbo asks if the dog can stay just a bit longer because
he has to go to the murder scene…and his “wife AND KIDS” are away visiting
family.
The dog school dean isn’t a suspect so there’s no real
reason to invent a fake wife, but also…no reason to invent fake kids.
This is solid evidence that Mrs. Columbo does exist…and the
first good evidence that he might have kids.
Small story hole
Margaret Nicholson tells Columbo that nobody but Howard and
the murderer were in the living room after she left for her group therapy
session. But…how could she know that when she wasn’t there.
Ross is too small, and familiar
It’s sort of a nice moment when Columbo has gone to meet
Ross at Cahill’s office. Ross’s car may have been the murder weapon (it was)
but Columbo knows from the scuff mark that the murderer had to be a larger man.
Cahill: “Why did you tell him he’s not a suspect? To throw him off?”
Columbo: “He’s not a suspect.”
Cahill: “Since when?”
Columbo: “Since I saw him. Too small.”
Of course, I’m not sure why Columbo is sure Nicholson had to
be carried in the murderer’s arms. Perhaps Ross could have hoisted the body
over his shoulder. Still, it’s a fair point that a smaller fellow like Ross
might have had trouble moving the body of a much larger Nicholson.
If Ross looks familiar, by the way, it’s because regular TV
fans are used to seeing him in a lab coat…as Harlan, the mechanic, on the popular
70s TV show CHiPs.
Enter the boy genius: Steven Spelberg
One of the episode’s most charming choices is pairing
Columbo with a kid — Steve Spelberg (Lee H. Montgomery) — a junior robotics
whiz who treats Columbo with the kind of honest curiosity most adults have
lost.
The name is obviously a wink to the Murder By the Book
director, the famed director Steven Spielberg, and the character gives the
episode a human bridge into all the blinking-light nonsense.
MM7: Robby the Robot takes a Columbo gig
And then there’s MM7: the institute’s robot — played by
Robby the Robot, the iconic sci‑fi creation from 1956’s Forbidden Planet. The
episode wisely uses him as a piece of flavor rather than the solution to the
case.
Falk does exactly what you want here: a mix of polite
amazement, mild suspicion, and a kind of delighted confusion. He reacts like a
normal person meeting a robot, which helps the scene land even if the prop now
looks like it runs AA batteries.
The therapy angle (a genuinely interesting complication)
A wrinkle the script toys with is confidentiality:
Nicholson’s wife Margaret is a psychiatrist, and Neil is connected to therapy
sessions. It’s one of those ideas that feels like it could power an entire
episode on its own — a character who knows too much but can’t say why. Here, it
mostly adds tension and motivates behavior, but it’s still a neat concept in
the middle of all the sci‑fi window dressing.
Columbo’s ‘mean’ move, and why it works
Late in the game, Columbo does something he doesn’t always
do: he plays hardball. He effectively corners Cahill by framing Neil — not
because Columbo truly wants the son, but because he knows the father can’t
tolerate that outcome.
It’s ruthless, and it’s also perfectly calibrated. Cahill
has spent the whole episode trying to manage and protect Neil. So Columbo uses
that relationship as leverage: confess or let your son take the fall. And
Cahill chooses love over pride.
That final smoke
The closing scene — Columbo and Cahill sharing a cigar after the confession — is quietly effective. It doesn’t absolve Cahill, but it does humanize him. The great irony is that the moment Cahill finally acts like a father, it’s after he’s destroyed everything he was trying to protect.
Locations: the Muirfield driveway
If you’re the kind of fan who likes to match the show to real Los Angeles geography, David Koenig identifies Howard Nicholson’s home as 165 S. Muirfield Rd. in Los Angeles. The view is limited from the street, but it’s the same slanted look the episode uses to introduce the house. As always: it’s a private residence, in fact, it's currently the residence of the Counsel General of Canada, so look respectfully from public space and keep moving.
Just a few more things…
- The episode’s tech has dated like milk, but that’s also part of the charm: it’s a time capsule of what ‘the future’ looked like in 1974.
- I'm not sure why Cahill had to look at an index card to find the "Finch" file in an alphabetically organized drawer. Especially when it seems to have been clearly placed fairly close to the front.
- Falk’s scenes with the boy genius are a gift. Columbo is at his best when he’s patient with people who *aren’t* trying to outsmart him.
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