The killer always admitting the crime before ever going to court! As if an annoying cop would make them own up to everything! But hey it's Hollywood
shareStick with reality tv--that's so much less fake.
(nd if you're using HoC as a username, be classy and stick with the much superior UK version as your avatar, lol.)
50 Is The New Cutoff Age.
The killer always admitting the crime before ever going to court! As if an annoying cop would make them own up to everything! But hey it's Hollywood
This is a function of television of the time, before police procedurals became more evidence and court-oriented. It does feel odd, but never detracts from the show to me, maybe because I grew up on it. And not every suspect admits guilt outright. Some merely walk away with the apparent awareness that they've been caught.
I'm sure you'd have a similar problem with how Perry Mason always managed to extract a confession on the stand from the actual killer - a formula regurgitated on Matlock and elsewhere.
I was about to mention Perry Mason too. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of that show. I like how with Perry Mason you don't know who did it and are always guessing, but with Columbo you know who it is but see how he figures it out. I watch them both and it's a good contrast. I think back then maybe, admitting it must have been more common in real life, where as today it's deny deny deny. I wasn't alive when PM was out and a baby when Columbo came out, so idk if it seemed campy back then or it's what happened in real life more than not.
shareWell he wants everyone to know that he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids and that mutt of theirs!
shareLol so true
shareI'm not so sure that everyone gives a real confession. Some just say "I suppose we'll go to the station now" or "you're a smart guy" or whatever. As a criminal defense lawyer I can say that I can fight some of those somewhat vague statements (plus no Miranda). On some of the shows there are absolute confessions. In the episode with Janet Leigh he doesn't even take the real killer to the station (tried to keep that from being a spoiler. Hope I succeeded).
Now Perry Mason is the best. I've been doing this since 1988 and I still haven't had a witness or someone in the gallery start yelling "OK I did it!! I had to kill him! He was blackmailing me!" or the like.
The show is fiction. Does that make every fiction show "fake". If it showed real life investigation, evidence retrieval, interviews, blah blah it would bore most people to death. Even cop "reality" shows leave most stuff out because it's too boring. I think Columbo as a character is very endearing. He makes me smile. I see something a bit new whenever I watch it. I'll watch the reruns at 2 am any night (morning).
One of the things I was surprised with was when I was recently on another of my old favs message boards ThenTwilight Zone.
I'm not trying to start a bru ha ha here --
But it's amazing to me how many people start threads that show how little they "understand" the show they are supposedly weighing in on.
What I mean by "understand " to be clear
Is the very essence of the show . They seem hung up on details supposed " weaknesses" " plot holes " in the show.
I suggest they try to see the forest for the trees. These shows are entertainments
Not documentaries not cinema verities.
Columbo is not a visual documentation of actual crime cases. And I suggest that contrary to what they might like you to think neither are law and order and csi.
Likewise in the twilight zone it's NOT important to figure out how this or that came to be in the stories--the stories are trying to convey things about life itself--
Not the fictional life within the stories which is the tool to accomplish that through --about the life we all exist in.
It's amazing to me how some people seemingly focus on these very meaningless details and completely miss the episodes and the shows real point.
These shows are entertainments
Not documentaries not cinema verities.
Columbo is not a visual documentation of actual crime cases.
Totally get your point--
If the plot holes are too big they are distracting from whatever the show is trying to do entertain enlighten moralize etc
Absolutely there are better held together plots in certain Columbos in certain TZs.
The point I was trying to make is just that I find some "fans" of these shows evaluating those plots in ridiculous ways that do NOT relate to what the show is.
Hence we get postings about "Couldn't Vera Miles just karate chop Columbo and run?" And "Maybe the doctors and nurses in eye of the beholder were just wearing masks"
They don't "get it"--
That's the nicest way I can say it ;)
A lot of television shows fall down if you apply real world logic to everything that happens in every scene.
In detective shows, we rarely see the trial after the criminal has been caught. This is just a plot device to confirm that the suspect have been defeated.
It doesn't really matter if it was how a person would act in real life, or if it would stand up in an actual court in the real world. It's a TV show.
It's not a fake show. It's an actual, real show.
shareWith shows like this, it's like tge ending gives the impression that the perp is caught bang to rights and the programme ends .
But in reality, there would be a trial that could last months, and the verdict may not be guilty.
Hence why the showmakers decided to end each show on a kind of happy noter.
Thats what made Columbo such a great detective
shareMethinks the OP would rather prefer a 19 hour interrogation show (filmed under torchlight) instead of the exposition required to entertain people
shareNow Perry Mason is the best. I've been doing this since 1988 and I still haven't had a witness or someone in the gallery start yelling "OK I did it!! I had to kill him! He was blackmailing me!" or the like.
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Indeed Perry Mason(the 1957-1966 Raymond Burr original) is the PERFECT analogy to Columbo. Both shows went out of their way to create FANTASY versions of justice, in which the bad guys simply gave in and fessed up -- showing that even murderers have consciences.
That said, a few Columbos ended with the killer NOT fessing up (the one with Robert Conrad comes to mind) and all sorts of Columbo "gotchas" smelled of entrapment that might fall down in court, or "guesses" that defense attorneys would tear apart.
Which is why real life is hard -- sometimes the bad guys get away with it, or the courts clear them.
And this is why audiences "dig" the fantasy and the fun of killers giving up. On Columbo and Perry Mason.