Recap / Columbo S 01 E 06

Episode: Season 1, Episode 6
Title:"Short Fuse"
Directed by: Edward M. Abroms
Written by: Jackson Gillis
Air Date: January 19, 1972
Previous: Lady in Waiting
Next: Blueprint for Murder
Guest Starring: Roddy McDowall, Ida Lupino, James Gregory, William Windom, Anne Francis

"Short Fuse" is the sixth episode of the first season of Columbo.

Roger Stanford (Roddy McDowall) is the spoiled, pampered heir to a large business, Stanford Chemical. Unfortunately for him his uncle by marriage David "D.L." Buckner (James Gregory) is working on a deal to sell the company to a larger conglomerate and deprive Roger of his birthright. David is trying to get his wife Doris (Ida Lupino) to agree to sell her shares, and he demands that Roger resign from the company and talk Doris into selling. If Roger refuses, David will reveal to Doris Roger's sleazy past history, which includes using drugs and stealing money from Doris.

Roger decides on murder. He puts his Ph.D. in chemistry to use by rigging up a bomb in his uncle's cigar box. When David and his chauffeur Quincy (who doubled as David's private investigator and dug up the dirt on Roger) are duly blown up on a mountain road, Roger seems to have succeeded in taking control of Stanford Chemical. However, he didn't plan on meeting Lt. Columbo.

First of two appearances for James Gregory, who pops up as neither the murderer nor a victim in Season Two's "The Most Important Game".

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Tropes:

• The Alleged Car: Columbo's ancient Peugeot is described by Roger as "that old heap".
• Artistic License – Law: Really pushed to the limit in this episode. Lt. Columbo, a homicide detective, is called in even before anyone knows that David and Quincy are dead. And he's investigating the case even when the murder is discovered to have happened way up in the mountains, far out of the LAPD's jurisdiction.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Roger dresses like a dandy, acts like an immature teenager, and has a long history of getting into trouble. Behind all that is a mind that's both homicidally ruthless and dangerously intelligent. He claims to have no fewer than three advanced degrees (a doctorate in chemistry, an MBA and a law degree).
• Bikini Bar: Roger takes Valerie out to a nightclub that features a go-go dancer, dancing in a cage.
• Blackmail:
  • David tries to use Roger's sordid past against him to force him out of the company. It backfires.
  • Roger also forges incriminating information about his last rival in the company, Everett Logan, to make it look as if Quincy was blackmailing him as well. The forged information causes Doris to fire Logan.
• Bluffing the Murderer: How Columbo gets Roger. Columbo, Roger, and Logan are on the gondola to the top of the mountain. Columbo then pulls out of his bag what he claims to be the cigar box from David's car, found unopened. Roger, who thinks that the box is going to explode after Columbo opens it, freaks out, scrambling to throw the cigars away, revealing his guilt.
• Cigar Chomper: David. His cigar habit is central to Roger's plot: he apparently can't go for a long drive without lighting up, so Roger removes the cigars from his coat and his car, causing him to open the rigged cigar box while on the road.
• Dawson Casting: Possibly. Roger is portrayed as a trendy man who keeps up on the latest technology and parties like the proverbial prodigal son. He acts young, but the actor was only a year younger (44) than Columbo's (45).
• Dragon with an Agenda: When confronted by David and Quincy, Roger (in an insinuating tone) asks Quincy why, since he's so good at digging up dirt on people, he can never seem to get any information to blackmail David's company rival Logan. It's not clear whether Quincy had ever actually tried this or not, but Roger apparently thinks it's believable enough that he ends up forging such evidence and hiding it in Quincy's apartment.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When Columbo and Roger are touring the chemical plant, Roger advises Columbo not to light up his cigar, as that would cause an explosion. While this gesture can be taken as Pragmatic Villainy (given that Roger wants to misdirect Columbo, not kill him), it would indeed be unwise to cause two accidental deaths in that type of industrial area.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Discussed Trope, and dismissed by Columbo and the local cops, who agree that the gas tank could have exploded but probably didn't. Also invoked, as Columbo tricks Roger into believing that the gas tank blew rather than the cigar box in order to get him to expose himself as the murderer.
• Evil Genius: Roger had a Ph.D. in Chemistry before he was 21. and went on to earn an MBA and law degree.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Roger hasn't graduated from pulling stupid pranks. Even his murder weapon is an exploding cigar.
• Explosive Cigar: Roger's expertise with chemicals turns this prank deadly, as he's hidden a powerful explosive in a cigar casing in his uncle's cigar box.
• Forged Message: One of the incidents David plans to use against Roger is forging his aunt's signature on a check to get gambling money in Vegas.
• Frame-Up: Two posthumous ones, and one live one. Roger makes it seem as though his uncle David was having an affair with Valerie, smearing their names in order to make it seem to his aunt Doris as though David's hostility and mistrust toward him was a result of Roger confronting him about the "affair". This gets Valerie fired. He also makes it seem as though Quincy had been a Dragon with an Agenda, planning to blackmail David with information about said "affair".
• Gold Digger: Roger accuses David of marrying Doris in the hopes of getting access to her money and company stocks.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Roger tries to kill his Uncle using a cigar box rigged as something else, designed to explode as his uncle rides a vehicle up a mountain. Columbo exposes him using the exact same method, except the cigar (box) is just a cigar (box). Roger even seems to recognize the irony.
• Laughing Mad: Ends with Roger having a breakdown, cackling madly, giving Columbo his honor society medal and patting him on the cheeks. Then again, he'd just been given a taste of his own medicine, without exploding.
• Mad Scientist: Roger's a brilliant chemist who's clearly unstable.
• Match Cut: From Roger snapping a picture with his ever-present camera, to David flicking his cigarette lighter.
• Noodle Incident: In order to persuade Roger to leave the company, DL and Quincy reference a number of incidents which the company covered up that would get him in a lot of trouble if they were revealed. Among the ones we hear about: A "drug thing" in college, a mess in Acapulco, and a car theft report, and blowing half a million (1972) dollars on "research".
• Painted-On Pants: Roger wears some absurdly tight 1970s pants. As in "Oh, Roddy, didn't know you dressed left."
• Parental Abandonment: Roger's parents died in a chemical accident.
  • It could be taken to imply that he's a Self-Made Orphan: his parents died when he was a young adult (just old enough to inherit), it's described as a "freak explosion" (much like the murders we see Roger commit), and it appears that he was a chemistry prodigy at a young age (receiving his PhD at 21).
• Practically Joker: Roger is an early, unbuilt example. He's a psychopathic narcissist with ingenious skills in applied science and a taste for pranks, right down to killing his uncle with an Explosive Cigar. Rather funny, since Roddy McDowall had played another costumed villain—the Bookworm—on Batman (1966).
• Sexy Secretary: Valerie (Anne Francis). Roger and Valerie were dating, and he took naked pictures of her. He uses those pictures to trick Doris into thinking that Roger's late uncle David had an affair with Valerie; Doris then fires her (although he claims she's just getting sent to live in Arizona).
• The Sociopath: Roger has it all: superficial charm, hedonism, poor impulse control, and complete lack of both conscience and empathy. He's not only willing to kill to get what he wants, but will also befriend or romance people, then turn on them the moment it's to his advantage.
• Time Bomb: Roger's bomb will go off sixty seconds after the box is opened. This is what first leads Columbo to suspect Roger, when he sees Roger checking his watch as they listen to the message on Doris's machine.
• Wham Line: As soon as Columbo opens up the cigar box, Roger starts to panic as the seconds tick away, eventually throwing open the door to the cable car and haphazardly grabbing the cigars to dispose of them... as Everett and Columbo begin to casually light up some cigars themselves.
  Everett: Where did you get that, uh, that box of cigars, Detective?
  Columbo: From your secretary.

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