PLOT:
This is a Columbo whodunnit. Big Fred is killed in a hit and run 'accident' and it looks as if his nephew Harold McCain is responsible. Columbo arrives on the scene and immediately starts interrogating him. Then when McCain plants a bomb in a car which blows up in the grounds of the first victim's house, killing another man, the Police videotape shows McCain flinched before the bomb went off. Columbo is convinced he is the killer and looks for the evidence to arrest him. The motive seems obvious- McCain is a gambler and his uncle had told him that he wouldn't pay off his debts, so by killing him off he would inherit money in his will. However, things become complicated when McCain himself is murdered. Suspicion begins to fall on Big Fred's wife Dolores, who had been having an affair with her nephew McCain. Then the episode starts to become a bit silly, with Columbo finding the most insignificant of clues such as wet socks and automatically coming up with the right answers. This leads him to Dolores, who had also murdered her husband Big Fred. Columbo arrests her without much evidence, though he thinks he has.
VERDICT: This episode has a plotline like no other. The writers seem to make it up as they go along and it is rather farfetched. Tyne Daly is the evil Dolores and is a very unlikeable villain. It is unusual that the initial crime isn't shown and the person Columbo initially suspects isn't responsible, though he does commit one of the three murders. It is all very complicated (in an incoherent way) and difficult to follow at times.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Dolores..................Tyne Daly
Harold McCain..........Greg Evigan
Big Fred.............Steve Forrest
Lieutenant Robertson...Frank McRae
Bertie................Don S. Davis
Fernando...............León Singer
Mr. Hacker.........Michael Gregory
Casino manager.......Stephen Liska
