On May 14th, 1990, Lieutenant Columbo closed out his ninth season with a trip to the beach, a romance novelist, a wildly self-confident playboy, and one of the strangest little twists in the entire Columbo casebook: Murder in Malibu.
This is not the clean, clockwork Columbo of the 1970s. It is
a glossy ABC-era outing full of big hair, bigger beach houses, overheated
dialogue, and a murder plan that depends on timing, luck, and one very specific
item of women’s clothing. Honestly, it's a difficult 90 minutes.
I have it ranked 66th out of 69 episodes.
Andrew Stevens plays Wayne Jennings, a professional charmer
whose actual profession seems to be letting wealthy women buy him things.
Brenda Vaccaro is Jess McCurdy, sister and literary agent to bestselling
romance author Theresa Goren, played by Janet Margolin. When Theresa winds up
dead in her Malibu home, Wayne looks guilty, then looks innocent, then somehow
keeps acting so guilty that Columbo has no choice but to keep circling back.
Meet Wayne
We open with Wayne Jennings behaving exactly like the sort
of man this episode wants us to believe he is: irresistible, shameless, and
always within easy reach of somebody else’s wife.
The episode asks a lot of the audience here. We have to accept that Wayne is such a magnetic lothario that women practically lose motor control around him. The script keeps insisting on it, which is usually the first warning sign that the screen is not quite doing the job by itself.
The fact that nearly every woman on the screen breathlessly throws themself at Wayne is one of the things that makes this episode hard to watch. Stevens is a good looking guy, but come on...are we really to believe that every waitress and housekeeper he meets practically throws their underwear at him?
Meet Wayne's Car
In mint condition today that car would easily cost $80,000.
Theresa says yes
Theresa Goren, meanwhile, is surrounded by adoring fans of
her romance novels. She is older than Wayne, richer than Wayne, and apparently
wise enough to know he is no bargain. She also has the misfortune of being
talked into announcing that she will marry him in front of a studio audience.
It is a fun setup in theory. A romance novelist who writes
fantasy for a living gets trapped by one of her own fantasies in public. The
problem is that the scene plays less like an emotional turning point and more
like a daytime talk-show dare. Still, it gets the pieces where they need to be:
Theresa commits, Jess fumes, and Wayne sees dollar signs.
Also...Tom Dreeson
Jess is not amused
Brenda Vaccaro brings a lot of energy to Jess McCurdy, and
the episode needs it. Jess is Theresa’s sister, agent, protector, critic, and
probably the only person in the room willing to say out loud that Wayne is a
parasite in tennis whites.
But ultimately, and rather unbelievably, Jess succumbs to
Wayne’s charms too. It stretches credibility that a strong woman like Vaccaro, who seethes at Jennings, and who knows that he tried to kill her sister, would just swoon when he presents himself.
There is a potentially sharp family drama buried in here:
two sisters bound together by money, career, resentment, and a man neither of
them should trust. The script hints at that version of the story, then mostly
veers toward melodrama.
The murder plan
After Theresa apparently breaks off the engagement by phone,
Wayne makes a fast drive back from Palm Springs. He also leaves a strategically
timed message for insurance agent Helen Ashcroft, who he is of course also sleeping
with, hoping to place himself somewhere else at the crucial hour.
Then we see him at Theresa’s beach house, firing into the
room. It looks open and shut. Wayne has motive, opportunity, a shaky alibi, and
the emotional restraint of a man who would absolutely shoot first and rehearse
his grief later.
But this is where Murder in Malibu decides to get cute.
Theresa was already dead when Wayne shot her. That means Wayne is guilty of
many things, including being a creep and making terrible life choices, but
maybe not the murder Columbo is investigating. For a while, the episode turns
into a shell game: did Wayne kill her, did Jess kill her, or is the whole thing
somehow even more complicated?
The twist that almost works
The idea of a killer shooting a corpse to create a
misleading timeline is not bad. In a tighter episode, it could be terrific. It
briefly puts Columbo and the audience in an unusual position: we saw Wayne
shoot Theresa, but we may not have seen the murder.
That is a clever reversal of the usual Columbo contract.
Normally we know the killer and wait for Columbo to catch up. Here the episode
appears to show us the killer, then tries to take that certainty away. It is
almost a whodunit wearing a howcatchem’s raincoat.
The trouble is that Wayne never really becomes less
suspicious. Even after the medical examiner’s timeline complicates things, he
behaves like a man with a neon sign over his head reading: PLEASE CONTINUE
INVESTIGATING ME.
Enter Lieutenant Schultz
Floyd Levine’s Lieutenant Schultz is one of the better
ingredients here. Columbo often works best when he has a straight-arrow police
colleague nearby, partly because it lets Falk play the Lieutenant’s odd rhythms
against someone who is just trying to get through a normal workday.
Still…it’s odd that Schultz enters the episode introducing
himself to Columbo. You’d think two veteran LAPD detectives would have met
before.
Columbo on the beach
The Malibu setting is one of the episode’s few pleasures.
Theresa’s home gives the story a classic Columbo playground: money, ocean
views, glass walls, a safe, servants, sports cars, and enough open space for
the Lieutenant to look spectacularly out of place.
Koenig notes that the estate is hidden behind gates, walls,
and trees, which is disappointing for sightseers but very on-brand for a
Columbo victim with money.
The repeat location is a nice bit of accidental continuity. Malibu in Columbo is never just a beach. It is where rich people go to build houses with too many windows and not enough trustworthy friends.
The romance-novel problem
The episode seems to want a satirical edge around Theresa’s
romance-writing career, but it never quite decides what it is satirizing. Her
fans are treated as hysterical, Wayne is treated as irresistible, Jess is
treated as jealous, and the women around Wayne are mostly written as
punchlines.
That makes the whole thing feel much more dated than many
earlier Columbo episodes. The 1970s shows could be old-fashioned too, of
course, but they usually had enough class tension, performance texture, or
procedural detail to balance it out.
About that gotcha
The final clue hinges on Theresa’s underwear. Specifically,
Columbo concludes that Wayne dressed Theresa after her death because her panties
are on backwards.
As gotchas go, this is memorable. Whether it is convincing
is another matter. Columbo has built cases on typewriter ribbons, cigar ash,
wine temperatures, and contact lenses. Compared with those, the lingerie logic
feels awfully thin.
The clue also has the unfortunate effect of making the
episode’s big finish feel more tawdry than triumphant. There is a decent
mystery idea here, but the final turn does not quite carry the weight placed on
it.
Could Jess have been the better killer?
The more I think about Murder in Malibu, the more I wonder
whether Jess would have made the stronger murderer. Brenda Vaccaro has the
presence for it, Jess has a complicated emotional stake in Theresa’s life, and
framing Wayne would have been deliciously mean.
Imagine a darker ending: Jess kills her sister, successfully
exposes Wayne as a parasite, and Columbo has to untangle a crime committed for
reasons that are ugly but emotionally understandable. Wayne would still be
awful, but he would not be the murderer. That version might have had more bite.
Instead, the episode keeps Wayne at the center, which means
everything depends on whether we buy him as a fatal attraction. I am not sure
the case survives that burden.
Falk still finds moments
Even in weaker Columbo episodes, Peter Falk remains a marvel
of small choices. Watch how he lets Columbo seem vaguely embarrassed by the
sexual politics of the case without ever losing focus. He is not shocked
exactly. He is just quietly collecting details while everyone else is acting as
if a Malibu soap opera has broken out around him.
There are nice little Falk beats throughout: the polite
questions, the sidelong looks, the way Columbo allows other people to
underestimate him because correcting them would be less useful than letting
them talk. Murder in Malibu is not peak Falk, but Falk is still Falk.
Just a couple more things...
• Sondra Currie gets a brief part as the wife of Al Rocca, the
producer Wayne says he wants a part from. Naturally she’s sleeping with him
too. She has a much better part, in season 10’s Murder of a Rock Star as
Sergeant Habach.
• Janet Margolin gives Theresa enough warmth and vulnerability that
you can imagine a better version of the episode spending more time with her
before the murder.
• Patrick Williams’ score is very much in late-80s/early-90s
television mode. Your tolerance for that sound may vary.
• Theresa Goren’s house as the same property used for Charles
Clay’s home in Last Salute to the Commodore: 33148 Pacific Coast Highway in
Malibu.
So many problems…
Supposedly there was a lot of expensive jewelry in the safe
that disappeared after the murder. Setting it up to look like a botched robbery
makes sense, I guess, but what did he do with the jewels.
Wayne is filling in, in a celebrity tennis tournament, but
nobody in the episode seems to know who he is. Not the strongest “celebrity”.
Wayne has a room in the house? Does that mean he doesn’t
sleep in Teresa’s room?
A relief that he only shot a dead body? Really?
Final diagnosis
Murder in Malibu is not one of the greats. It is not even
one of the stronger revival episodes. But it is interesting in the way misfires
can be interesting: you can see the bones of a more daring Columbo hiding under
the glossy execution.
The central twist, the Malibu setting, Jess as a possible
alternative culprit, and the idea of Columbo moving through the world of
romance fiction all have promise. The finished episode just does not knit them
together with enough wit or precision.
Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening than
watching Columbo politely ruin a beachside lifestyle built on charm, lies, and
convertible Jaguars. Just do not expect the case to be as sturdy as the view.
Learn more
• IMDb: Columbo: Murder in Malibu
• The Columbo Wiki: Murder in Malibu
• The Columbophile: Episode review: Columbo Murder in Malibu
Comments
Post a Comment