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mrwitticism's Replies
In the reviews for this episode on IMDB, some people commented that Cassidy always played characters that were older because he looked older than he actually was (49 when this episode aired).
I just re-watched that episode last night on ME-TV (they air episodes Sunday nights at 8pm P.S.T.), and had an interesting realization about it this morning: The real reason Cassidy's character hated his daughter's singer-boyfriend was because he was Jewish - his name was Danny GREEN. If this subtext was purposely inserted by the episode's writer, Michael Sloan, it was well-done, very subtle. I wouldn't have picked up on it at all but for Santini calling Danny "boy" in a rather derogatory tone.
I like the names people have come up with. But, reframing the question to stay within the <i>possible</i> <b>-</b> i.e., actors not <b>dead</b> (Alan Rickman), <b>too old</b> (Cosby), <b>possibly too sick</b> (Cosby - eyesight; Tim Curry - stroke in 2012), <b>in jail</b> (Cosby, again), and <b>would do American television</b> (which might rule out Gary Oldman; Curry, J.K. Simmons, Jim Carrey, Sam Rockwell have all done/are doing U.S. TV shows) (I'm not sure Page, or Anna Kendrick - from what I know of her - would make a believable villian; I don't know enough about Alice Eve to make a judgment; Will Smith and Tom Cruise as stated wouldn't do TV - but then again, with their good-guy images, they wouldn't make good villians either) <b>-</b> how about:
James Spader
Lucy Liu
Tom Ellis ("Lucifer")
Kathy Bates
Viola Davis
Sarah Paulson
Jason Isaacs
and Columbo's most challenging villian ever... Betty White (as herself!). He may have all of the evidence, the weapon, the motive and opportunity, but he knows no jury in the world would convict her!
"Make Me A Perfect Murder": When a female television network executive is passed over for a promotion, she executes a tightly-timed murder of her boss/lover as revenge and to get his job. She stashes the murder weapon, a gun, through a trapdoor at the top of the elevator before the police (including Columbo) arrive. She's going to retrieve it after the building has been searched by them. Later one evening, the exec is riding the elevator with Columbo and she happens to look up. The gun must've somehow have been dislodged from where it was because now it sits on the glass portion of the elevator's ceiling, and the shadow of the gun is VERY VISIBLE. Luckily for her, Columbo doesn't seemed to have noticed. When they reach the bottom floor, she makes an excuse to have to go back up to her office. When she gets back in the elevator alone, she gets the gun, and then disposes of it in a sewer. Of course, Columbo had already found the gun, and set the whole thing up - though this is only one of the things in the episode that Columbo uses to prove her guilty of the murder.
In "Negative Reaction," a photographer pretends his wife has been abducted and is being held for ransom. But he really plans on killing her, which he does - framing an ex-con for it, whom he also then murders. Part of the photographer's alibi is a photo showing his wife being held hostage, with the clock in the background showing a certain time. Columbo pulls a cheap trick on the photographer by reversing the image, which changes the time shown on the clock, ruining his alibi. Columbo shows him a blow-up of this photo inside a police evidence room filled with cameras - including the one which took the photo. The photographer rightly calls out Columbo for reversing the image and says that the negative of the photo will show that <i>this</i> image is backwards. Unfortunately, Columbo says, he accidentally destroyed it while making the blowup, so there is no original that will back up the photographer's alibi. The photographer is outraged and thinks Columbo has done his on purpose to frame him.
BUT THEN! the photographer remembers the plate on the back of the inside of the camera will retain the original image, and he goes to the shelf to get it. Columbo asks the first cop, "Did you just see that?" The cop answers in the affirmative. Then Columbo asks the same question to the second cop, "Did you see that?" Same answer. Third cop, same question, same answer. Like the police commissioner in "A Friend In Deed," he photographer has just incriminated himself by demonstrating knowledge of something that he shouldn't have - in this case, only someone who took that ransom photo would know which camera it was, out of alllll the cameras there in the evidence room. The photographer was right. Columbo did destroy the original (or at least <i>said</i> he did) on purpose so that the photographer would lose his cool.
I think there were many great times when the villians got "Columbo'd" (as I call it), including the one you mention. For example:
In "Blueprint For Murder," Columbo searches the foundation of a building under construction for the body of the murder victim, and doesn't find it. This leaves the killer to think he's free and clear to hide the body there after Columbo and the police have left. Of course it's a trap, and Columbo catches the killer red-handed.
In "A Friend In Deed," a friend of a police commissioner accidentally kills his wife, and the commissioner helps cover it up. Then, the commissioner kills his <i>own</i> wife, and makes his friend help cover it up. When Columbo gets too close, the commissioner orders the Lt. to stick to known suspects, especially one who's M.O. seems to fit the crimes. The commissioner wants to frame this suspect, an ex-criminal, for the two murders.
Seeing that Columbo has files piled on his desk of various suspects, the commissioner looks through them until he finds the address of the ex-criminal. Then he goes to that address and plants a gun and other evidence. Meanwhile, that ex-criminal has begun extorting money from the commissioner's friend (arranged by Columbo, of course). During the second extortion attempt, the commissioner leads a group of police to arrest the man, and now the commissioner has a reason to go to the address, where he'll "find" the gun and other planted items. He and the police find those, but they also find other items - which all belong to Columbo! Columbo lives there, having moved-in recently. Because of course Columbo placed a false address for the suspect in that file, and only Columbo and whomever else saw the file would know of that address. By planting the evidence, the commissioner incriminated himself.
I just realized... the 60th anniversary IS ONLY TWO YEARS AWAY!!! How cool is that? I'd love to see Christopher Eccleston return for that. Team him up with Capaldi and Jodie.
Yeah, this is The Mirror we're talking about. Wait till you here it through official channels, otherwise this is meaningless.
It'd be a cop-out if destroying Gallifrey and The Master's anger toward The Doctor was all just to "mess with the Doctor's mind for a long time" when it's been built into importance in the plot of the show. This isn't just some minor scheme by The Master where he dons some hokey disguise that we see through immediately as soon as he's introduced (*COUGH*EveryOriginalSeriesDrWhoMasterEpisode*COUGH*)
I do like some musicals - dark ones (like Cabaret and Carousel) as well as more classic fare (High Society, Guys and Dolls) and some more recent releases (such as Chicago, Moulin Rouge, and Beyond The Sea). Anything corny or hokey though, count me out.
Yep. They should've done that in the Halloween III reboot.
No thanks. There's much better fiction to read.
You know that "Allah" is the same god of Abraham that xtians and jews worship, just the Arabic word for it, right?
Lust For Life, Kirk Douglas overacts. Van Gogh would never go hungry the way Douglas chews the scenery. He's miscast, in any case.
Frankenstein (1931). Kind of slow-moving, logic-deficient actions by characters, and lack of horror or suspense. Loved it as a kid, though.
Sound of Music. Don't get me started with those songs, especially "Doe, a deer, a female deer..." AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!
Maybe Mustache was successful in warning everyone (though we don't know for certain, as the film's ending was left ambiguous) but years later young Michael Meyers found an overlooked Silver Shamrock mask that he would put on on that fateful Halloween night!
Same here, though it would've been nice to know a little more about <spoiler>the two strangers who also remembered The Beatles, one of whom was Russian and one of whom was British. How did they find one another? What were they doing at the time of the freak blackout that allowed them to remember the band?</spoiler> Though that probably would've ended up adding too much exposition. Maybe Danny Boyle could add a DVD extra on that.
BTW, are you a native of Washington D.C. or Washington State? I'm in the latter.
It was Robert Carlyle, though I don't think he was aged enough to look like a 78 year old Lennon. Had the same question about not crediting an actor to play Paul if one was credited to play Ringo.
Oddly enough, Wednesday Morning, 8 AM was the first episode of A.P. Bio that I watched. It was just all right, but the next episodes were even better: Toledo's Top 100 and, especially, J'accuse. I finished the rest of the season and really enjoyed it. I think Helen became my favorite character (especially when she throws her arm into the air in the last episode and freezes in position... twice.) Then I went back and binge-watched the first season online, and all of the second season episodes again, and then went to IMDB to see what trivia there was for the show. And that's when I found out it had been canceled! Now I'm devasted. I was really looking forward to seeing it return in the Fall.
Some of it still isn't clear. In fact, A LOT of it still isn't clear. I doubt Lucille 2 was alive after Cinco. The telephone calls that Michael kept receiving from her were pre-recorded messages from the Lucille Austero campaign, something Michael wasn't smart enough to figure out as he never listened to the calls the entire way through.
One theory is that Lucille 2 was "the happiest corpse" because she and Buster f*cked and then she had a heart attack. (The "happiest corpse" is a lyric from the song Cabaret, from the musical of the same name, btw, and the last episode ends with an instrumental version of the song; Liza Minnelli starred in the film version of Cabaret). So her death could've been entirely non-murder-y, but Buster would've felt responsible or that he was supposed to take the blame (like he did for Mimi's death, even though he actually did push her down the stairs).
I'm still confused by what happened at the stair car. Was Buster genuinely surprised that her body was disappeared? What happened on the five minutes of videotape that were deleted? Did Fake Block actually do that?
On the other hand, we've seen through out the series some of the things Buster's done. And maybe he actually [i]was[/i] a monster like he kept saying!
Another possibility was that her brother Argyle killed her - but there's no, err... concrete evidence to support that.
Buster then hid her body but had difficulty digging her up for the wall trick - which he alludes to. He used her body in place of the mannequin - maybe the same one Tony Wonder substituted during the closet switch trick. This would explain why Buster used Lucille 2's body in the wall instead of a mannequin: he'd dumped it in the ocean (which ended up getting caught on tape).
Ironically, Lucille 2 didn't want to build the wall but she did!
yeah, they kind of screwed up by choosing a film that came out at the end of the 90s. So doesn't this place Schooled about 10 years in the future of The Goldbergs? (Lainey, Erica, Johnny Atkins, and Evy - nice that they remembered to include her in there, though she kinda disappeared after Erica stole Geoff from her - all attended their high school reunion, probably their 10th) In which case, Lainey and the other teachers whom we know from the Goldbergs (Coach Mellor, Glascott, etc), don't look 10 years older on the spin-off.