Just One More Thing: Murder Under Glass

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

Welcome to Cinema Basement's newest segment, Just One More Thing, an exploration and appreciation for Columbo and named for his famous catchphrase, which often preceded a crucial question that begins to unravel the killer's plot. Now that we've covered the first two films that led to the official run of the series, it's time to find a place for the rest of them. Not every episode is a gem, some are downright no good, but they all have the most lovable detective in TV history.

Arrogant and narcissistic food critic Paul Gerard, played by Louis Jourdan, who plays the exact same character in 1983 as Kamal Khan in Octopussy, extorts money from restaurant owners in exchange for glowing reviews. When Vittorio Rossi tries to back out and threatens to expose the scheme, Gerard fatally poisons him with poison from the Japanese fugu blowfish. Gerard has a near perfect alibi as he had already left and Rossi died after opening the wine bottle that killed him.

I am working on a post where I rank my ten favorite Columbo's and I'll give a spoiler and say Murder Under Glass is my favorite episode of Columbo. There's a lot going on in this episode that make me love it so much. A lot of the usual tropes of Columbo episodes are at their best for me here. The cat and mouse game with the killer. A near perfect crime. Columbo's relentlessness that eventually breaks the killer down. The final showdown. Columbo's admiration for a famous killer at first. It's all here and in my opinion, at it's best. It's also one of the rare instances in the show where we're not shown every step of how the killer commits the crime and discover it along with Columbo. For that reason I don't want to dive too much into this one as I don't want to risk giving away any of the beats.

I'll focus on the scene that makes this my favorite. This is my favorite one on one showdown with the killer in the last act of the episode for the entire run of the show. Columbo and Gerard prepare a veal dish together as Columbo tells Gerard he knows why he did it, how he did it, and how he's going to prove it. The back and forth between Falk and Jourdan is brilliant and it's accompanied by the episodes main theme, this kind of somber but cool jazz riff. The character work elevates all of this for me. There's this odd level of respect between the two men but also they hate each other. Sometimes Columbo will really start to hate a killer as the episode goes on, he'll raise his voice when he's really disgusted, but he never gets there with Gerard. He respects the man's talents too much, as Gerard does at the end when Columbo beats him. I love this episode so much. Are there better episodes? Yes. I don't think this is the best episode. But for me it's my favorite.

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