Murder, Smoke, and Shadows

On February 27^th, 1989, the second episode of the revival, Murder, Smoke, and Shadows premiered. It’s a mystery set in a fake world of fog machines, miniature streets, studio politics, and movie mythology, which makes it one of the series’ most self-aware, and sometimes self-indulgent, outings. Columbo isn’t just solving a murder here; he’s wandering through the machinery of illusion itself.

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As the second film of the 1989 revival, it also had an obvious job to do: prove that Columbo could come back after a long absence without seeming dusty or out of step. Setting the story inside a contemporary studio and making the killer a hotshot young director was a smart way to do it. The episode feels slicker, glossier, and a little more openly playful than much of the 1970s run, but it still works because the central pleasure remains the same. Give Columbo a vain, self-confident murderer and let him start tugging at loose threads.

The studio setting helps that theme at every turn. Almost every scene reminds us that artificiality is Alex’s natural habitat. Streets are façades. Buildings are shells. Weather is manufactured.

And, of course, Universal found it convenient to film right on their own studio lot and not even have to fake very much. In fact, many scenes feature crew members moving around in the background and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them were actually the real crew members for Columbo.

Alex Brady: gifted, insecure, and thoroughly awful

Alex Brady is exactly the kind of killer the revived series liked to showcase — younger, flashier, more image-conscious, and very aware of his own brilliance. He doesn’t have the old-school patrician polish of a Ken Franklin or a Dale Kingston. He’s more modern than that: ambitious, volatile, media-savvy, and convinced that talent excuses character. That makes him a great opponent for Columbo, because Columbo’s whole method depends on patiently exposing the difference between performance and truth.

Fisher Stevens is very good here. He gives Alex a jittery, arrogant intensity that never lets the character settle into the easy elegance that many Columbo murderers cultivate. He’s not always given the best material and a bit too much time is spent with Alex giving pretentious speeches about light and shadows, but he does a good job with what he has.

There’s also something fittingly ugly about the fact that Alex’s crime grows out of filmmaking itself. He manipulates perspective, uses equipment and geography to his advantage, and treats people around him as disposable pieces in a production. He is a director in the least flattering possible sense.

And right from the beginning - his opening line is a quip about being unbearable - you see that in him. Alex is pretty unbearable.

Modeled after a real director

Apparently the Alex Brady character was modeled after a more sympathetic director in the Columbo universe: Steven Spielberg. As far as we know Spielberg never murdered anybody, but he did direct the first regular episode of Columbo: Murder by the Book.

He’s also has a unique distinction

Stevens is the youngest actor to be arrested by Columbo – he was 25 years, and 3 months old when this episode first aired.

The oldest? Ruth Gordon in Try and Catch Me. She was 81 years and 1 month old when the episode aired.

A bit of overt symbolism

When Alex checks on Jenny in the black and white film, he's got blood on his hand. A bit symbolic to indicate that he's responsible for her death.

And a good reminder that Alex really killed two people - though the first one was out of depraved indifference rather than malice.

Poor Lenny

Jeff Perry is very good as Leonard Fisher. He has the tricky task of making a relatively brief role feel indispensable, and he succeeds. He brings a great nervous energy.

And you can feel it in the lead up, Lenny is on the tour but he's gripping the handrail and mostly staring forward, barely even distracted by the shark. His mind is on the confrontation he's about to have with Alex.

And Lenny reminds us of a time-honored Columbo truth: Never confront and threaten the killer, especially alone. Ask Roger from Double Exposure, or Verity from Ashes to Ashes.

Trivia: Lenny was born on Cinco de Mayo - May 5th, 1957.

The Tour Guide

I was momentarily intrigued by the Universal Tour Guide and wondered if perhaps she was a real Studio Tour guide. Not clear if she was, she's actually Meg James and this was her only acting credit.

Alex's story actually makes sense (even though it's a lie)

When Alex is trying to persuade Lenny that the film is fake he throws out a bunch of filmmaker terms. "Generational grain" and "matte lines". I wondered if he was making those up, but actually they're real terms a film expert might use if he's talking about a faked film.

"Generational grain" is a term used to talk about the accumulation of grain with each successive duplication of a film.

"Matte lines" are lines that appear when two pieces of film are pieced together.

The belt was actually a nice touch

The first few times I watched this episode I thought the “money belt” angle was a bit hokey, but on reflection it actually works. Lenny is exactly the kind of guy who would travel with a travelers check in a money belt, and he works in a men’s store so he probably gets an employee discount on them.

And Columbo a bit uncomfortable

And it didn't escape me how they put Columbo in not one, but two, "fish on a waterbed" situations when he goes to meet Alex. First awkwardly on the beanbag chair...then almost as awkwardly on the waterbed.

Good symbolism for the youth vs older detective dynamic.

Pretty confident in studio security

Notice that the “Boys Club” door is never locked? Alex just goes in and out, Lenny comes in without a knock, Columbo comes in and plays with the trains.

The door only has a knob lock, but it’s never used. Seems odd for a celebrity clubhouse full of valuable equipment and memorabilia. Including apparently at least three Oscars scattered around on shelves.

The murder is pure movie logic

The episode doesn’t overcomplicate Alex’s motive, and it doesn’t need to. The incriminating film is enough. Once you accept that, the story can concentrate on the more interesting question: how long can Alex keep directing the narrative after Columbo arrives?

The answer, of course, is not very long. Columbo is almost uniquely immune to glamour. He can appreciate the novelty of a movie lot, but he’s never intimidated by it. In fact, settings like this usually make him more dangerous, because every suspect around him is so busy performing importance that they underestimate how carefully he’s watching.

And the score helps

Notice the circus-style music when Alex takes Lenny to the brownstone street to kill him? Alex is setting his scene, putting on a show, manipulating Lenny to get him to the right spot. The ringmaster, in a manner of speaking.

Ruthie and the human cost

Because Alex is such a vivid villain, it would be easy for the emotional side of the story to get lost. But the episode does a decent job of reminding us that there are real casualties here, not just plot devices.

Molly Hagan does good work with what is, on paper, a difficult role. Ruthie has to feel central to the plot even though the story really isn’t about her and Alex. She feels charming and genuine and Alex’s manipulation of her is revealing of his character. He didn’t leave her to actually die, like he did Jenny, but he pushed her in front of an emotional bus to serve his own needs.

She’ll be back…

If you like Molly Hagan stay tuned. She’ll be back in Season 12’s Butterfly in Shades of Grey. Hagan has the misfortune of being in two of my bottom 7 episodes, but she’s one of the best things in them.

"Exit, pursued by a bear"

That famous line is from Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" 

Another Hollywood line

At one point Ruthie says she's seen Phil Crossette somewhere before. Alex points out that he's an actor, and she says a line that Hollywood folks will recognize as an common term in movie town. "No, I mean somewhere real." That distinction between the studio lot, and "somewhere real."

Speaking of Phil

I thought Al Pugliesse did a nice job as Phil Crossette.

Sergeant Burke is back

He has the briefest of roles, and he’s missing his trademark moustache, but that’s Jerome Guardino as Sergeant Burke helping Columbo at the beach crime scene.

But the body in the trunk test is kinda silly

But I'm not sure why Columbo is really proving with his fake body in the trunk test. He's proving that a book could have fallen out of a coat that wasn't Lenny's if somebody who wasn't Alex carried the body just so out of the trunk of a different car? I would think it's obvious that there are ways the book could have been dropped, and that test proves nothing useful.

A Rose by any other

Forgive another Shakespeare quote. Nan Martin does a nice job as Rose, Alex's "too old" secretary, who turns out to be a lot more shrewd than he gives her credit for.

Her instance on referring to Columbo as "Inspector" was charming.

Martin was 62 years old when this episode came out, and kept working until she was almost 80.

Flashbacks

This isn’t the first episode that spends a lot of time on the Universal lot or that shows the Jaws shark. You may remember Fade into Murder had the Lieutenant momentarily fascinated by the shark. (and with a premature chalk circle on his coat)

Alex on the crane

Alex up on the Titan crane with Columbo reminds me of Ransom for a Dead Man where Leslie tried to make Columbo uncomfortable in the plane.

“Coming in on a dead run!”

A sneaky easter egg in Columbo is the line “Coming in on a dead run!” It appears again and again, from different characters, in various episodes. Here Stanley utters it to give Alex status on the water truck. In It’s All in the Game a young cop uses that line to tell Columbo his coffee is coming. Likewise, in Publish or Perish.

The gotchas before the gotcha

The last half hour of the show, especially, things are really unraveling for Alex. Columbo is inching closer and his attempts to seduce Ruth have fallen apart as she has figured out his manipulation of her and Brian. 

It’s almost the final straw when Steven Hill (Mr. Morasco) calls Alex into his limo to tell him that the free ride is over. The girl, the job...and momentarily his freedom too. There’s something about seeing an arrogant insufferable brat like Alex lose everything.

And Steven Hill brings welcome authority to the studio boss. He doesn’t need much screen time to suggest an entire Hollywood power structure.

The big gotcha: satisfying, if not top-tier

I like the ending, though I wouldn’t put it among the series’ most devastating gotchas. It’s satisfying in a thematic sense because Alex is ultimately trapped by the same instinct that made him dangerous in the first place: he believes he can control the frame. He thinks he can manage the evidence, manage appearances, manage the people around him, and when that confidence finally breaks, it breaks in public.

The guy who is a master of setting scenes has been caught in a scene that Columbo set for him. Columbo has become the “Ringmaster” quite literally at the end.

A couple of problems

I don’t think the episode is flawless. For one thing, the timeline is a little odd. Even if you accept that Stevens was playing a character who is 7 years older than he actually is, it seems strange that a 32-year old director would already have “Created more blockbusters than anybody in history” and have a popular book about his career already. He's done an awful lot in just 10 years.

For another it's not really clear why Columbo locks onto Alex so early in the story. All he's got is a book that may or may not have belonged to the victim that had Alex's office number written inside the cover. I didn't see anything in their initial meeting that Columbo could consider a red flag - especially given at that point there was no apparent connection between them. Is it just the ice cream glasses? Seems thin.

Empty glasses

When Columbo is at the Boys Club he does a nice job of explaining the half-full ice cream glasses. When he leaves Alex throws the ice cream glasses down in the sink in frustration, shattering them. But now they're empty.

That was just a crew shortcut. Columbo was looking at real glasses, but for safety they don't want Fisher Stevens to shatter real glass so they replace the real glasses with replica glasses made out of a material that breaks easily and safely, and they didn't bother to refill the ice cream.

The magic projector

When Columbo is on the stage and Alex is teasing him by projecting big scenes behind him on the screen...Columbo is between the projector and the screen. Those images would have had to be projected from the rear, or else you'd see a shadow (and the images on Columbo himself). So what Alex is doing with the projector is just for show.

Likewise when Alex is standing in front of the screen at the end when Columbo has Stan show the Jenny film.

Just a few more things…

• James Frawley directs with exactly the right energy for this material. The episode moves briskly, but he never lets the visual cleverness drown out the detective story.
  
  
• Peter Falk often looks as though he’s having genuine fun rediscovering his iconic character.
  
  
• Dog makes the briefest of appearances, it's his debut in the revival of the series. And yes, it's a different dog than the one we saw more than a decade earlier.

I have this episode ranked 66th overall at the moment, though on reflection it might be a little better than that. Not much better though. It’s just a bit too long winded, and self-indulgent, in places. Columbo’s incessant “Would your audience find this interesting, sir?” schtick seems to even annoy Falk at times. And we just have too many minutes of Alex giving pretentious speeches about shadows and light.

What did you think of Murder, Smoke, and Shadows? Let us know in the comments below!