PLOT: Dick Van Dyke's character Paul Galesko is one of the most evil cold-blooded killers in the entire series. First he ties up his wife while she is still conscious and calmly tells her that he is going to kill her. He takes several photos of her (used in a kidnapping cover up he has devised) and then shoots her. Then he shoots the man he has framed with kidnapping her at a dumping ground for old cars. Having done so he approaches the man's body, places the gun in the dead man's hands, aims the gun on his own leg and fires. As Galesko stumbles to his car he comes across an old drunk, who had been in one of the old wrecks when he heard shots. Galesko is rushed to hospital, where it turns out his wound is superficial. Galesko claims that the man shot at him and hit him on the leg and then he took out his own gun and shot him in self-defence. Columbo turns up on the scene and speaks to the old drunk, who claims he heard two shots, with a delay between each one. This puzzles Columbo, as he can't understand the delay between the shots. Other things also puzzle the Lieutenant, such as why the victim, who had recently been in jail, took a driving test the morning of the kidnapping. Wouldn't this have been risky? What if he had failed the test? He begins to suspect Galesko of the murders. Galesko becomes irritated with the Lieutenant's persistence, but Columbo can not get any concrete proof that he is the murderer. In the end he tricks Galesko into incriminating himself. He produces a blow up picture of Galesko's wife tied up in the chair. The clock in the background shows 2pm, but Columbo reverses the picture show the hands on the clock show 10am. He shows Galesko this photo and tells him that the murder was committed earlier than previously thought, and that he had no alibi, as he was supposedly alone with his wife at 10am. Galesko tells Columbo he must have reversed the picture by mistake but Columbo says he accidentally destroyed the original. Then Galesko tells Columbo the negative would probably still be in the camera and picks up the camera, one of several on the shelf, and takes the role of film out. He has unwittingly fallen into Columbo's trap, as of all the cameras on the shelf, Galesko knew which one was the one used in the murder. Galesko is stunned and says "you reversed the negative deliberately. You were relying on me to pick up the camera!"
VERDICT: This is a good episode and Van Dyke is a convincing murderer. It is a successful departure from the many good guy roles that have become Van Dyke's trademark. It may seem like a long shot that Columbo relied on to incriminate Galesko. However, if you examine what Columbo did then actually it was very good thinking on his part. He boxed Galesko into a corner. He basically had two choices. The first choice would be to accept what Columbo had told him about the photo. He couldn't do this because Columbo was telling him that he had proof that he committed the murder (Galesko had no way of knowing Columbo had set the whole scene up). The second choice was to do what he did. He couldn't have asked Columbo to find the negative himself because Columbo had already been proven untrustworthy (Galesko probably thought he deliberately falsified the evidence and destroyed the original photo). Of course Galesko hadn't had time to think so he wasn't aware that he was incriminating himself by taking the camera, but even if he had he'd probably have had to do the same thing, because he couldn't trust the police, based on what he thought Columbo had done.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Paul Galesko.........Dick Van Dyke
Alvin Deschler..........Don Gordon
Mr Weekly.............Larry Storch
Frances Galesko...Antoinette Bower
Sister of mercy...Joyce Van Patten
Ray..................David Sheiner
Sergeant Hoffman....Michael Strong
Lorna McGrath.......JoAnna Cameron
Thomas Dolen...........Vito Scotti
