Howdy! It’s the second Monday in October, which for many people means celebrating the life of the sadistic slave-driver Christopher Columbus. But for me, it means celebrating the career of a much better human being, Lieutenant Columbo. Happy Columbo’s Day, everyone!
This is the seventh Columbo’s Day I’ve been fortunate enough to celebrate; feel free to check out the writeups from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 if you like.Today, we’re taking a look at “The Most Crucial Game,” which originally aired on NBC on November 5, 1972.
Are you ready for some football? No? Either way, we open on an aerial shot of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the stadium fills before a classic matchup between the Los Angeles Rockets and the Pioneers of somewhere else. Paul Hanlon (Robert Culp, in a truly splendid haircut and mustache), the general manager of the Rockets, enters the owner’s box, dismisses a young flunky, and places a phone call. At the other end of the line is Eric Wagner (Dean Stockwell), the dissolute young owner of the Rockets, cranky after attempting to sleep off a night of booze and sex and God knows what else. Paul wants to discuss a trip they’re taking to Montreal later that day to see about buying a hockey franchise. Eric is like, whatever, old man. Paul is trying to build a sports empire, but Eric doesn’t give a shit about any of it, as long as he has enough money to live in a nice house and party every weekend. They bicker for a while about Eric being a useless piece of crap who doesn’t care about the football team his father built. Paul tells Eric to sober up and take a few laps in his backyard pool to get himself into some semblance of shape before the meeting. Next, Paul calls the Rockets’ coach (James Gregory, best known for his memorable roles in The Manchurian Candidate and Barney Miller) and starts barking orders about who to play and when, which gets about the reception you’d expect, and tells the coach to come visit him in his box at halftime for more orders. Making friends all over the place today.
The Rockets and the Pioneers get down to business, but Paul’s not watching—he’s disguised himself as a peanut vendor, complete with paper hat and bow tie, and used the disguise to escape the stadium unnoticed and take off in an ice cream van, as the game plays over the radio. Way out into the country, probably on Mulholland Drive or some other rich-people area in the Hollywood Hills, he stops at a pay phone. With the game playing on a transistor radio, he calls Eric, who is lounging on the slicky-slide at his pool, having just placed an order for liquor delivery(!). Suddenly all conciliatory, Paul cheerfully suggests that they carpool to the airport together, to which Eric is like, whatever, old man. They agree that Paul will pick Eric up at 5:30, and Paul once again tells Eric to get his laps in.
Wasting no time, Paul guns the ice cream truck and heads to Eric’s house. Retrieving a large piece of ice from the truck’s refrigerated compartment, he heads back to the pool, where the younger man is swimming. Eric is surprised to see him so early, but before he can ask why Paul is dressed like a stadium vendor, Paul whips the ice at his head. Unconscious, Eric falls back into the pool and drowns.
Paul tosses the ice into the pool. The perfect crime! Except… he accidentally stepped into shallow water on the pool stairs, and now he’s tracking water all over the place. Panicking, he takes his shoes off and hoses down the pool deck to hide his footprints. Given that Eric was home alone with no known appointments, it seems to me that those footprints would likely evaporate long before anyone was likely to show up and find him dead, but then I’m not a criminal mastermind like Paul Hanlon. Heading back to the stadium, Paul enjoys a celebratory popsicle as the game clock ticks down the final few minutes of the half, and is back in time to greet Coach Rizzo at halftime in his box wearing his regular clothes. To me it seems like a bit of a tall order to take off from the Coliseum after kickoff, drive to the Hollywood Hills, kill a guy, and be back in time for halftime, but whatever, it’s not like I know Los Angeles that well. Anyway, back to the meeting. In theory, Paul and Coach Rizzo are disagreeing about a proposed second-half substitution, but Paul gives in without a fight, because he only ever invited the coach up to establish an alibi for himself anyway.
Cut to Lieutenant Columbo at the murder scene, sitting in his shitty car listening to the second half kickoff on the radio. This all seems to be happening really fast, but apparently the liquor deliveryman showed up, found Eric dead in the pool and called 911, probably using the poolside phone Eric used to call in the order in the first place. A uniformed officer eventually convinces Columbo to do his job, and he shuts off the radio in frustration and heads to the pool. The coroner, pointing to the standing water on the pool deck, explains that Eric was probably diving and hit his head on the diving board; false alarm, no need for Homicide to get involved. Columbo is more interested in the game playing on the coroner’s assistant’s radio than in what the coroner is saying, but he eventually rouses himself to investigate the pool. Like Paul, Columbo accidentally steps in water on the pool stairs, ruining his cheap shoes. In frustration, the detective makes an interesting observation: the water on the pool deck is fresh, while the water in the pool is chlorinated—which mean that someone hosed the deck down. Yes, Columbo discovers this by tasting the water.
Columbo learns from another detective that Eric probably gave all his servants the day off in advance of his wild party the previous night, so it wouldn’t have been a gardener or a pool attendant who hosed down the deck. Columbo orders a full workup on the house and pool, while he heads to the Coliseum.
Columbo arrives at Paul’s box shortly before the end of the game. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, this is all happening during the course of a single three-and-a-half-hour football game. The detective breaks the bad news about Eric’s death, to which Paul pretends to be shocked and devastated. He emphasizes that he called Eric from the box twice that day. Eric’s wife is in Mexico doing charity shit at the moment, so Paul promises to catch her up on the bad news. Inquiring about the party, Columbo asks whether Eric might have had his pool service in on Sunday. Paul says no pool service companies work on Sundays, like duhh, everyone knows that. An ornamental clock in Paul’s box strikes 4:30 or whatever, which will definitely not be important later in the episode. Columbo bothers Paul about the water on the deck for a few more minutes, then seeks out Coach Rizzo in the locker room.
Rizzo downloads about Paul chewing him out before the game, then being perfectly chill when he went to visit at halftime. It’s weird, Columbo reflects, because the Rockets had a horrible first half; why would Paul, a legendary asshole, have been so even-tempered about it? They jaw some more, and Columbo takes off.
Columbo goes back to Eric’s house, where an overstretched secretary is wrangling Eric’s lawyer, a superannuated fellow named Walter Cunnell (Dean Jagger). As Paul and Cunnell argue, Columbo overhears the secretary fielding a call from a Miss Rakoczy. The stereo is playing classical music, and Columbo notices a weird hum when the secretary picks up the phone. She tries to hand the call off to Paul, who rudely tells her not to bother him. Paul takes off to handle the funeral arrangements, and Columbo leaves too. Cunnell is disquieted to learn that this is a murder investigation.
Columbo drives to LAX, where he finds Paul at a bank of pay phones. Paul is not thrilled that he’s been tailed, while the detective observes that people don’t usually make “funeral arrangements” at airports. Paul informs him that he is there to pick up Shirley Wagner (Susan Howard), Eric’s widow. Shirley understood about Eric’s proclivities and general manchild tendencies, Paul explains, but put up with them—as Columbo notes, she stands to inherit everything he owned. Anyway, Columbo has an interesting fact to share: a neighborhood kid reported seeing an ice cream truck near Eric’s house around the time of his death. Funny thing is, that ice cream company has no routes in the area at that time. Paul’s slow burn is interrupted by the arrival of Shirley, fresh off the plane. She’s emotional, and Paul escorts her out of the airport, telling Columbo not to bother her.
Back at Paul’s house, late at night. A man sporting some splendiferous sideburns and carrying a flashlight is skulking around the pool. He breaks in to the house and starts tampering with the phone, only to be surprised by Columbo and a uniformed officer. The weird hum Columbo noticed earlier turned out to be RF leakage from a bug in the telephone, and the police staked out the house hoping to catch the person who planted it. Sideburns is Ralph Dobbs (Val Avery), a licensed private investigator, and he insists that the identity of his client is “privileged information.” Um, really? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. Anyway, Columbo sensibly observes that Dobbs doesn’t have any privilege that prevents him from being arrested for breaking and entering, illegal wiretapping, or accessory to murder. Dobbs doesn’t bite yet, but Columbo is pretty sure he will.
Columbo finds Paul at a high school gym, where the GM is watching a group of professional basketball players play a 3-on-3 game. (In real life, all of the players were members of the Los Angeles Lakers at the time, including an uncredited Pat Riley.) “In two weeks they’re all gonna be working for me,” he says. Columbo tells Paul he found the bugs at Eric’s house, and assumed Paul was behind it—but then the police found Dobbs’s bugs at Paul’s office too. Dobbs and his client have tapes of all of their conversations for the past two weeks. Paul is shocked and distressed to learn that someone possesses a tape of a conversation that would explicitly exonerate him.
Back to the house, where Columbo and Paul confront lawyer Cunnell, for it is he who has retained Dobbs’s services. As they head inside, Columbo tells Paul that the ice cream truck that was sighted in Eric’s neighborhood the day of the murder turns out to belong to the company that holds the ice cream concession at the Coliseum. Hmm. Inside, they listen to the tape of Eric’s conversation with Paul from the beginning of the episode, which leads to a uncomfortable moment when Eric gushes about “that little chick you put me on to.” Thinking fast, Paul explains that the “chick” was a new maid that Eric had hired due to Paul’s recommendation. Uh huh. They move on to the call Paul made from the pay phone, with the game audio playing on Paul’s transistor radio—on the call, he says it’s the game feed piped up to the box. Dobbs confirms that the call was placed at 2:29 pm the day of the murder, and notes that the radio station would have a record of the broadcast too. If Paul was in his box when he placed the call, he couldn’t have gotten to Eric’s house in time to kill him. Shirley is pissed at everyone, but especially at Cunnell for bugging Eric’s phone to drive a wedge between Paul and the Wagners.
Some time later, Columbo is eating lunch at a seaside diner when Dobbs finds him to ask for his license and surveillance devices back. Columbo muses about how strange it is that a football GM would make a phone call when his own team just got called for pass interference on the 2 yard line. Dobbs suggests that maybe Paul made the call from somewhere else with the radio playing in the background, but Columbo is frustrated that he can’t hear any background noises that would prove it. Columbo asks Dobbs how he managed to plant the bugs; Dobbs protests, but eventually confesses that he planted a woman named Eve Babcock in Paul’s office as a secretary, and got her to run an errand to Eric’s house. Dobbs uses Eve all the time, but “that’s not her usual line of work.”
We meet Eve Babcock at her apartment as Columbo rings her doorbell. It’s Valerie Harper! Eve is a prostitute, of course, and she mistakes the detective for her incall, a stockbroker from Cincinnati who’s in town for a convention. There’s an entertaining period of misunderstanding before the real Cincinnati shows up. Columbo explains to both of them that he’s a police detective and Cincinnati fucks off immediately. Eve freaks out until Columbo explains he’s not there for her.
Columbo knows she planted the bugs, he explains, and wants to know why Paul fired her after three days, because “if you don’t mind me noticing, you’d be an ornament in any office.” Ugh. Columbo suggests that Paul might have noticed her planting the bugs and bought her off. Eve gets agitated, and slips into a distinctly European accent as she protests. Columbo apologizes for getting ahead of himself, and turns to leave. Oh, just one more thing, miss: Columbo noticed the accent and correctly pegs it as Hungarian, which he recognizes because his nephew’s Hungarian wife has the same accent. (This is as good a time as any to point out that Hungarians are huge fans of Columbo, to the extent that the city of Budapest erected a statue in his honor in 2014.) Did Eve ever have a different last name, he asks? Like, for example, Rakoczy (i.e., the name of the woman who called Eric’s house while Columbo was there the other day)? Eve doesn’t answer, and Columbo leaves.
Columbo visits Paul’s travel agent to find out whether he really did make a reservation for Montreal the day of the murder. Apparently it’s Sunday again, because an employee has the Rockets game playing on a radio at his desk. Columbo talks over his frustration about the case with the man, who ignores him as politely as he can. A cuckoo clock in the office sounds two o’clock… and a look of understanding spreads across the great detective’s face.
Back in the owner’s box. The Rockets are doing much better than last week, and Paul is in good spirits until Columbo darkens his door again. Columbo wants to talk about Eve, and how Paul left Eric’s house immediately the day she tried to reach him. Columbo supposes that that was because Paul knew the phones in the house were bugged and wanted to call her back from a different location. And if Paul knew the phones were bugged, Columbo reasons, that means he knew he could use the phone to set up his perfect alibi. The detective produces a tape recorder, and, at precisely 2:29 pm—exactly one week to the second after Paul’s second call to Eric—begins replaying the call. The detective explains how he listened to the call over and over for a week, listening for sounds—an ambulance, a fire truck, anything—that would have given away that Paul was not in the owner’s box when he made that call. But it wasn’t until that day that Columbo realized that what he should have been listening for was something that should have been there but wasn’t. And just like that, the clock in Paul’s office sounds 2:30—but doesn’t sound on the tape. And because there’s no way a clever defense attorney could possibly explain that away, Paul knows he’s caught.
Columbo: The Most Crucial Game can be watched for free in the US on Peacock, the streaming service from NBC. After you watch the episode, head over to the Columbo Podcast for trenchant analysis from Gerry and Iain, Scotland’s biggest Columbo fans. That’s it for me, my dudes. See you next year.