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- This is a list of episodes from the fifth season of Columbo. (en)
- La saison 5 de la série télévisée Columbo comporte six épisodes diffusés de septembre 1975 à mai 1976. (fr)
- Grace Wheeler (Janet Leigh), famosa attrice e ballerina nei suoi splendenti anni di maturità, conclude un contratto per la realizzazione di un nuovo musical che la vede come protagonista. Il marito, Henry Willis (Sam Jaffe), non vuole però concederle il prestito finanziario necessario ad avviare la produzione. Colombo giunge alla villa della coppia dopo aver ricevuto una chiamata d'emergenza: durante la notte Henry Willis è stato trovato morto nella sua camera da letto, ma come abbia fatto l'assassino a entrare è quasi inspiegabile.
* In questo episodio si vede Colombo indossare per la prima volta un abito elegante, diverso dal suo famoso impermeabile. Lo stesso abito elegante appare anche nell'episodio seguente, Un caso di immunità. Colombo afferma che glielo ha prestato il cognato, che di lavoro fa il cameriere.
* Il vecchio film in cui appare Grace Wheeler, e che lei rivede più volte, è Walking My Baby Back Home (1953), interpretato dalla stessa protagonista Janet Leigh.
* È l'unico caso in cui Colombo, pur conoscendo l'assassino, non procede con l'arresto. (it)
- Пятый сезон американского телесериала «Коломбо», премьера которого состоялась на канале NBC 14 сентября 1975 года, а заключительная серия вышла 2 мая 1976 года, состоит из 6 эпизодов. (ru)
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- Commodore Otis Swanson is a retired naval officer who owns a shipbuilding company, and is not happy with the shady dealings of his son-in-law Charles Clay , who has turned the modest and upstanding business into a name-brand production line for status-seekers. Nor is he pleased with any of the people closest to him - his alcoholic daughter Joanna Clay , his middle-aged playboy nephew Swanny Swanson , his lawyer Jonathan Kittering , and his shipyard manager Wayne Taylor . He announces at his birthday party his intention to sell the company. That night, someone murders the Commodore. Although we don't see the murder on-screen, Clay is seen covering up the death by taking the Commodore's body out on his yacht at night and throwing it overboard. Columbo investigates with the help of a veteran sergeant and a 29-year-old rookie. The detective's conviction that Clay committed the crime proves premature and inaccurate, an unusual development for Columbo. Clay himself turns up dead and Columbo realizes that someone else is responsible for both murders.
Final clue/twist: When Columbo holds what he says is Commodore Swanson's pocket watch to every suspect's ear, only Swanny disputes it, saying "'Tisn't" when he hears it ticking. The watch was broken at the time of the murder to create a false time frame, and only the murderer would have known the watch no longer works.
This episode departs from the usual Columbo format in several ways. First, the man implied to be the killer is not, and thus the episode becomes a true whodunit, with the actual murderer revealed at the end. Second, neither of the two murders is shown. Third, Columbo's personality is atypically agitated, impatient and less superficially amiable than in most other episodes. Fourth, regular clichés such as "Just one more thing" and "Something's been bothering me" are absent from this episode. Fifth, rather than working alone, Columbo works closely alongside two other police officers , who at times interrogate suspects. Finally, the episode departs from the usual style in presenting a far greater emphasis on comedy, including some minor slapstick elements, and features a less dramatic tone. (en)
- A CIA operative code-named "Geronimo" contacts fellow CIA-operative, now working undercover as speech-writing consultant Nelson Brenner , to demand his share of money from a previous operation they were involved in. The go-between is Otis Young. It motivates Brenner to kill Geronimo. Columbo finds himself blocked at every turn by a man who knows a lot of private and classified secrets, and even by a visit from the Director of the Agency .
Final clue/twist: Brenner's alibi, a taped speech for a client, is proven false when Columbo establishes that some statements in the speech were based on news that was not known until hours after the recording was allegedly made.
The episode features another French car, the Citroën SM. An inside joke is that the Director's name is Philip Corrigan . In a nod to McGoohan's role on The Prisoner, his character repeatedly uses the phrase "Be seeing you" in the episode. (en)
- Hassan Salah , chief diplomat of the Legation of Suari, an Arab nation with a new young king, has a scheme for shifting power within his government. He enlists Rachman Habib , a naïve idealist in the Legation, to help him stage the murder of a security officer, then plants evidence to make it look like the work of radicals. Salah pins the murder on the now-absent Habib, who, as part of the plan, has gone into hiding. Salah later kills Habib as well. Columbo unravels the truth, but finds himself stymied by Salah's diplomatic immunity. Columbo then meets the new king, who is on a diplomatic visit to the United States, and is liked by the young monarch.
Final clue/twist: Columbo gets Salah, still under diplomatic immunity, to confess to the murder with the king listening in from the next room. To stay in the U.S. rather than be sent back to Suari and the torture that it is implied he would face, Salah signs a confession and waives his immunity from prosecution. (en)
- Retired and renowned matador Luis Montoya is a Mexican national hero. His trusted bookkeeper, Hector Rangel 's son Curro is also a bullfighter. When Curro is gored in the bullring, Montoya freezes up in fear and does not challenge the bull. He later decides to kill Hector, who knows what happened. Montoya lures Hector to the ring, where he shoots him with a tranquilizer gun, and unleashes the bull on the prone man. The result is that it appears Hector tried to take revenge on the bull that gored his son. Columbo, who just happens to be in Tijuana for the weekend, is recognized by a suspicious local chief of police , who enlists Columbo's help.
Final clue/twist: Due to the condition of the muleta used to attract the bull, Columbo deduces the time frame of the murder, a period for which Montoya has no alibi. To prove Montoya's motive, Columbo persuades Curro to lure Montoya into the ring. The bull is then released, and the ex-matador again becomes paralyzed with fear, this time in front of witnesses. This episode is noteworthy as the murderer's motive is not revealed until the very end.
Montoya watches a film of himself as a matador, which uses footage from the 1947 movie Fiesta, in which Montalban plays a matador. (en)
- The Great Santini is a magician extraordinaire at a cabaret. He is also being blackmailed by his insatiably greedy employer, impresario Jesse Jerome , over the fact that he is actually Sergeant Stefan Mueller, a former Nazi SS prison guard. Mueller tires of the arrangement and Jerome's demand for more money, and kills his blackmailer in the middle of his famed water tank escape act, giving himself what he believes to be an airtight alibi. He sneaks out of a room where he hides during the act, makes his way dressed as a waiter through the cabaret's kitchen and up to Jerome's office, shoots him, then returns to his act with nobody noticing. Robert Loggia plays Harry Blandford, the club's maître d' and Jerome's less than enthusiastic business partner, whose personality was such that another character says of the late Jerome, "To know him was to detest him."
Final clue/twist: Santini is undone by the used carbon ribbon on Jerome's IBM Selectric typewriter. The carbon ribbon has a clear imprint of everything written with it, so it is in effect a copy of the letter Jerome was typing to send to federal authorities, which revealed the motive for the murder. At his arrest Santini remarks that he thought he had created the perfect murder; Columbo remarks that a "perfect murder" is only an illusion.
This was Cassidy's third and final Columbo episode. In all three he played the killer. (en)
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