Welcome, welcome! Thank you for joining us! Around these parts, we do not spend the second Monday in October celebrating the existence of the man who is most singularly responsible for bringing genocide to an entire hemisphere. Instead, we prefer to celebrate the (admittedly fictional) life of the greatest detective the US has ever known, Lieutenant Columbo!
For past Columbo’s Days, we’ve brought you classic episodes starring Leonard Nimoy, Johnny Cash, and Dick Van Dyke. With Star Trek finally back in production, I thought it would be appropriate to bring you all another delicious tale of murder and deception starring Leonard Nimoy’s legendary commanding officer William Shatner in “Butterfly in Shades of Grey,” which first aired on ABC on January 10, 1994. In this episode, the Shatman plays a conservative talk radio host who is clearly patterned after Rush Limbaugh—in fact, I very clearly remember ABC airing promos for this episode using the obvious “rush to judgment” pun. Infamously, Shatner has himself become quite a right-wing boob on Twitter within just the last couple of years, which saddens me in the same way that I felt when my beloved late grandfather took a reactionary turn at the very end of his life. But just as I always loved my grandfather, I will always love Captain Kirk, and it is in that spirit that I ask my audience to regard this delightful Columbo tale.
We open on an aerial shot of Los Angeles at night to the opening fanfare of John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," a passage I unabashedly love, but which in 2018 is so trite as to make the most conservative Republican roll his eyes in exasperation. An anonymous voiceover hack, who sounds for all the world like a 20-year-old broadcast major at USC who hates what economic and scholastic necessity has forced him to become, informs us that within seconds he will be inflicting upon us “the hard-hitting controversial commentator and analyst Fielding Chase, who plays no favorites, pulls no punches, and tells it like it is.” So yeah, you younger kids, we were dealing with this “fairandbalanced” bullshit two full years before Fox “News” Channel went on the air. Fielding Chase is played by William Shatner sporting a ridiculous little Robert Goulet mustache that’s almost as visible as the one Bryan Cranston wore in the first season of Breaking Bad. Already we can tell we’re in for a fantastic hour and a half of television. Chase patiently listens to the incoherent stream of consciousness being spewed by his halfwit insomniac caller before gently shutting him down with “I know exactly what you mean, my inarticulate friend,” and saying that that's exactly why the President needs to have the line-item veto, which was a semi-popular hobby horse among conservative talk radio hosts at the time. God, I miss the days when right-wing radio hosts didn't actually give a shit about the things they advocated. Chase takes a few more dumbass callers from across America, then suddenly perks up as he glimpses radio reporter Gerry Winters (Jack Laufer) entering the producer's booth. Chase watches the younger man like a hawk as he delivers a standard conservative anti-environment spiel on autopilot.
Chase throws to news as Gerry meets up with Victoria “Vicky” Chase (Molly Hagan, who was a particular crush of mine from the era), Fielding Chase's call screener and foster daughter. Vicky, an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties and an aspiring novelist, is none too thrilled to learn that Gerry shared her manuscript with a literary agent, and tells him so. Chase interrupts the argument by starting a new one with Gerry, who says that the hot lead Chase sent him back East to chase down turned out to be a wild goose chase (look, I'm sorry, but when your main character is named Chase, puns are just gonna happen). Gerry is gay, so his interest in helping Vicky can’t be ascribed to romantic aspirations—but he hates working for Chase and wants to help Vicky escape from under his wing, which is something that Vicky clearly wants as well.
Back at home, Chase turns out to be as pompous in real life as he is on the air, as he berates a staffer over the phone about an upcoming interview with Senator Gordon Madison from some unnamed state back East. (At the time, believe it or not, Democratic senators felt obligated to appear on wingnut radio shows such as Chase's, because there simply was no comparable left-of-center media apparatus, and the mainstream media's stubborn adherence to the gospel of bothsidesism made it all but impossible for a Democrat to get his message out in his own words. So yeah, maybe think about that the next time some Трампer blathers on about the left-wing media conspiracy.) Anyhoo, Vicky tells Chase about the literary agent, and Chase claims to be happy about Vicky’s newfound opportunity, though he certainly doesn’t act like it. Later, the literary agent calls Gerry to tell him that his boss hated Vicky’s manuscript—but that when the agent was in his boss’s office, he got a call from none other than Fielding Chase. Hmm.
Later, Chase is delivering an address at a rubber-chicken dinner for a realty association, when who should turn up like a bad penny but Gerry Winters. Gerry accuses Chase of getting Vicky’s novel scotched in order to keep Vicky bound to him, not least because Chase has an interest in his foster daughter that is other than fatherly. Whoa. This shit just got dark. Chase slaps Gerry across the face. “What are you going to do, kill me?” Gerry asks, clearly never having seen an episode of Columbo before. Chase slaps him upside the face. Gerry threatens to take Vicky away from Chase and destroy him professionally.
Back at the studio, Chase wants Vicky to help him prepare a bunch of loaded questions for Senator Madison, but she can’t help, because she’s going to be in New York meeting with the literary agent. Chase, who took Vicky in when she was ten years old, gets super creepy in a way that I’d really rather not dwell on. Eww.
Captain Kirk calls Gerry up and arranges a phone meeting for the following day so they can come to an agreement regarding Vicky, and Gerry agrees. The next day, Chase shows up at Gerry’s place wearing a hilarious disguise and lets himself in with a key. Gerry calls Chase’s house at the agreed-upon time and reaches his answering machine. As Gerry is leaving a message, Chase picks up the extension (at Gerry’s house) and apologizes for being late to answer the phone. As the two men converse, Chase sneaks up behind Gerry and shoots him twice in the back.
“Gerry! What happened!? I thought I heard shots!” Chase says, super-convincingly. Hearing no answer, Chase hangs up, wipes his prints off the phone and the gun, and peaces out—leaving the handkerchief he used to wipe down the phone and gun as evidence. As he leaves Gerry’s house, Chase calls 911 on his car phone to report the shooting.
It’s time for Lieutenant Columbo to show up. He drives his shitty car up to Gerry’s house and double-parks, looking exactly as middle-aged as he did 20 years ago. A uniformed officer points him toward Fielding Chase sitting in his car talking on his cell phone. Columbo has no idea who he is, but goes over to talk to him. The detective listens to Chase spinning bullshit on his phone for a few minutes, then introduces himself. Captain Kirk oh-so-subtly tries to pin the crime on Gerry’s new boyfriend, a soap opera actor named Ted Malloy (Mark Lonow). “Not that his sexual orientation made any difference to me, but those people do have a reputation for… unusual behavior.” Oh, fuck you. Columbo, to his eternal credit, notes that most of the domestic disputes he’s investigated have involved husbands killing wives, or vice versa. Columbo sucks up to Chase by enthusing about how awesome his newfangled cellular telephone thingy is, and Chase offers to share his personal files regarding Gerry with the detective.
Columbo follows Chase to his gorgeous house on a Malibu cliff, where we see that the red light is still blinking on his answering machine. Vicky arrives shortly thereafter, and Chase asks her to review the messages on the machine as he plays bartender for Vicky and himself (Columbo never imbibes while on duty). Heartbreakingly, we witness Vicky breaking down as she hears her dear friend Gerry murdered on tape, as Chase disingenuously rushes back into the room to stop the playback. (I love you, Molly Hagan. Call me.)
Chase just feels so damn guilty about all of this, not because he personally shot Gerry, but because he didn’t take steps to stop the murder when he had a chance. He would love it if Vicky would stay home while this is all being resolved, instead of going to New York to meet with the literary agent like she had planned. “Dad, don’t worry about it. I’ll stay. The rest can keep.” God I hate this guy.
Gerry’s funeral. Columbo has determined that whoever killed Gerry must have been let in to the house by the victim, or had a key of their own. He talks to Vicky and learns that boyfriend Ted had a key, but that Vicky also had a key. Funny thing, though: when Vicky arrived at Gerry’s house the night of the murder, she couldn’t find Gerry’s key on her ring, but when she looked again the next morning, it was there. Well, I guess she must have just been distraught.
Columbo visits the soundstage for Ted’s soap opera, where the director mistakes him as for an extra playing a homeless person. Ha ha! Naturally Columbo screws up the take by digging for his badge at exactly the moment that the heroine has her big scene. Columbo meets with Ted, who recognizes the scent from the handkerchief as actors’ pancake makeup, but has a pretty solid alibi: at the time of the murder, he was at a department store downtown with his castmates, signing autographs for several hundred fans.
We cut to Chase at another ritzy club. He’s roped in a woman who claims she was a lover of Senator Madison. You guys, I know this is rilly rilly hard to believe, but there was a time when Republicans absolutely believed the word of a female accuser… as long as the man she was accusing was a Democrat. Chase presses her about the matter, and she agrees that she did have an affair with him, but that he was not the father of her newborn child. When she denies the allegations, he presses the young woman with his claim that he has two eyewitnesses who will swear that Madison visited her several times when she was confined at the state mental institution. For the past two decades I have made my living—and it is a handsome living, thank you—as a writer, and yet I find myself utterly without the words to express my hatred for this Трампian shitstain and his sociopathic lack of concern for the women, including his own foster daughter, who face these kinds of challenges every day. My great love for William Shatner leads me to hope that he might be made to recall his experiences filming this episode and what it should have taught him about the dignity of all human beings, male or female.
...anyway, let’s skip forward a few minutes, because in light of the recent success of Darth Boof I’m not sure I could continue otherwise. Columbo crashes the fancy restaurant where Chase is eating. Per his usual MO, he quickly disarms his target with tales of his cousin Dominick, who never misses Fielding Chase’s show, not even for the Lakers! “Dominick, he don't have much of a life.” Ha ha! Anyway, just one more thing, sir: most of the files that involved Gerry were stored at the station, so why did you want me to meet me at your house instead? Well, Chase purrs, my dear daughter Vicky was at the station at the time, and I didn’t want to subject her to the trauma. Uh huh.
Gerry’s friend, the literary agent Lou Caton (Richard Kline), meets Vicky at a gallery. He wants to rep her, but Vicky remains true to her dysfunctional relationship and says that she only wants to help her father. Lou drops the hammer and tells Vicki that her father sabotaged her novel with Lou’s former employer, which was why he quit. She can’t believe that her own father could be so duplicitous, and busts in on him while he’s on the phone dealing with another matter. She can’t believe that Captain Kirk’s newspaper could be blatantly lying about the Central American drug cartel (which he totally is) for political gain. He looks up at her as innocent as a newborn babe.
Columbo drops by to pester Chase again, this time taking Chase’s private funicular railway down to the shore to visit him as he works out. (Someday I will have my own funicular. I swear it.) Columbo thinks the murderer had a key, but not many people had a key. That implicates Vicky, who is the only key owner without an alibi. Chase insists that Columbo is a fool—Vicky could not possibly have killed Gerry. Later, Vicky concedes that she did lose track of her key, but that was on a Saturday, and it turned up the next morning. Hmm.
In the studio, Chase and Vicky are fielding (sorry) calls from more wackadoodle callers. Chase tells Vicky that a call will come through in a few minutes on the back line and that she is to patch it through immediately. But Dad, these calls are supposed to be random! Oh, you sweet summer child.
Columbo shows up at the studio as Chase is interviewing Senator Madison. Chase doesn't want to see him. Columbo butters Chase up. Vicky receives the aforementioned call on the back line, and yeah, it turns out that "Collier from Roanoke, Virginia," intrepid unbiased investigator that he surely is, asks about a supposed sexual liaison the senator had that supposedly led to an illegitimate child. Vicki buries her head in her hands. Today, of course, we are advanced enough to recognize that allegations of sexual impropriety such as this should be immediately and assiduously followed up on for as long as it takes to arrive at the most definitive conclusion possible, unless they are made against a Republican nominee.
Chase pretends to be astonished, this is a very grave accusation, blah blah blah. Vicky can't handle this shit anymore and peaces out. Chase visits Vicky when his show is done, but she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. I wonder why. Worried that his plan might have backfired somehow, Chase glares evilly into the distance.
At his house following a huge blowup with Vicky regarding his bullshit lie about Senator Madison, Chase is surprised to see Lieutenant Columbo again. Columbo says he has a witness who claims Chase offered him $10,000 to kill Gerry. Well, that’s just ridiculous, and Chase demands to meet the witness. Absolutely, Columbo agrees, but… well, Columbo got a ride here from literary agent Lou Caton, and you don’t mind driving us to visit the witness, do you, sir? Chase agrees, and they take his sweet Mercedes convertible down the hill until they encounter an accident: a cyclist got hurt when a coyote ran across the road. In a move that I'm certain must be absolutely 100 percent legal, the cyclist's companion takes advantage of Chase being distracted to roll under Chase's car and tamper with something using a pair of pliers. Hooray, police!
Chase gets back in the car but is unable to start it. Columbo offers to help. Fuming,Chase demands to know if Columbo is a mechanic. “Uh, no sir, but whenever I have a problem, I start pushing those wires around, and sometimes, you never know, it works like a charm.” Well, that's certainly good enough for me, but Chase demurs. He tries to call AAA, but can't get through. Columbo offers to loan Chase his own phone, which he's obtained from the cell phone company as a loaner, on account of the fact that it costs $800. My God, that's outrageous! Columbo hauls out his murder-weapon-sized Motorola DynaTAC and tries to call AAA, but he also can't get through. Columbo theorizes that it might be because of the mountains, which at the time would have been entirely plausible.
It's time for the good lieutenant to drop the act. You said you called 911, sir, but how could you call from here? We're using the same cell provider, so how could you get through when I can't get through? Yesterday Columbo came out with a couple of experts from the police department, and they couldn't get a signal anywhere near Chase's place. But if he'd called from Gerry's neighborhood, Columbo says, Chase could have gotten through.
Chase protests: “You have the tape recording of my telephone conversation with Gerry Winters when he was shot!” But we both know, Columbo says, that that could have only happened if Chase had been on the extension at Gerry's house. While Columbo busts him, Chase quietly unzips a suspiciously rifle-shaped case in his car trunk. It’s a rifle! “I suppose you’re right,” Chase says triumphantly. “You're behaving stupidly, confronting me with this, alone, on a deserted stretch of road. I know you're not armed.” Columbo concedes that, indeed, he is not armed, but… “I’m certainly not alone.” Columbo honks the Mercedes’s horn, and instantly five bicycle cops and a black-and-white appear from over the horizon. Busted!!
Columbo: Butterfly in Shades of Grey is available for download and streaming from the Internet Archive, which seems awfully certain that this episode is in the public domain, and who am I to argue? While you’re at it, please also check out the Columbo Podcast for this episode, from Scotland’s biggest Columbo fans, Gerry and Iain! Have fun, and we’ll see you again next October!