Recap / Columbo S 03 E 04

Doctor Breen again? We haven't seen the last of him.

Episode: Season 3, Episode 4
Title:"Double Exposure"
Directed by: Richard Quine
Written by: Stephen J. Cannell
Air Date: December 4, 1973
Previous: Candidate for Crime
Next: Publish or Perish
Guest Starring: Robert Culp, Louise Latham

"Double Exposure" is the fourth episode of the third season of Columbo.

Dr. Bart Keppel (Robert Culp, in the third of his four appearances on Columbo, the first three as the murderer) is an expert in the field of "motivational research", namely, how to use advertising to get people to buy things. Among other things, he is a pioneer in the use of Subliminal Advertising, the insertion of single frames of images into films in order to subconsciously influence people to buy a product. For example, inserting a single frame of a bag of popcorn into a movie will lead moviegoers to buy popcorn at the concession stand.

Dr. Keppel is showing a motivational film to some of his clients. One of them, Vic Norris, is pretty pissed off at Keppel, because Keppel has tried to ensnare him into blackmail via the use of a Honey Pot named Tanya Baker. Norris isn't cooperating, however, and has threatened to go to the authorities. Keppel decides to kill him instead, in a way that will cast suspicion towards Norris's wife. First, he makes a call to Mrs. Norris claiming to be Tanya's "boyfriend", asking her to meet him somewhere where she won't have an alibi. Then, during the reception before the screening, he gets Norris loaded on some incredibly salty caviar. Next, he splices some subliminal inserts of a refreshing drink into the film so that Norris will feel the urge to get up and go to the fountain in the lobby for some water. For his alibi, Keppel makes everyone think he's narrating the film from a podium on the stage, when in reality they're listening to a prerecorded narration track. After mouthing along with the recording for several minutes, Keppel dismisses himself to a back room, and waits for Norris to exit the theater. When Norris exits, Keppel barges into the lobby and shoots him with a .45 caliber from his office that he's fitted with a calibration converter so it will fire .22 caliber ammunition. Immediately after the shooting, he returns the gun to the display cabinet, hides the converter in a lamp, and returns to his place at the theater podium just as the film is concluding.

He has two problems, though. First, there's the projectionist, Roger White, who catches Keppel messing with the hall monitor and eventually figures out what happened, forcing Keppel to kill him with a gun stolen from the Norris's house. Secondly, there's Lt. Columbo, who notices the usual niggling details (if the killer came from the street outside, how would they know when Norris was leaving the screening room?), and begins to zero in on Keppel.

Third and last episode with Robert Culp as the villain, however he does appear in a supporting role as the father of Justin in "Columbo Goes to College".

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Tropes:

• Absence of Evidence: Keppel changes the reel on the film Roger is screening at the Magnolia so that it will seem like he was killed later, while he's talking with Columbo in his office. However, the alibi is broken when Columbo points out that Roger always left a nickel in the reel that was rigged to fall to the floor to signal when it was time to change the reel, and there was no nickel on the floor where his body was found.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Columbo agrees with Keppel that without the latter's technique he'd never have solved the case and tells him that if there was a reward he'd support Keppel's claim on it, Keppel can't help laughing.
• Amateur Sleuth: Played with. As is typical of Columbo's method, he recruits Keppel to "aid" him in his investigation, even though they both know Keppel did it, and Columbo attempts to feed Keppel's ego by saying that Keppel would be a great detective. While it works, Keppel's intelligence, even if he is completely egotistical, is pretty much on-par with Columbo's own, and keeps him from tripping himself up and giving Columbo an easy win in his take down of him, especially since he knows in every instance that Columbo is trying to trap him.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Dr. Keppel, who else?
• Rage Breaking Point: Keppel finally snaps on Columbo once, when Columbo harasses him in the middle of a high-stakes golf game nitpicking Keppel over the witness testimony that they saw him in the auditorium, when in actuality he was on stage behind a curtain. Keppel seethes that until one of the witnesses recants their testimony that they saw him, Columbo's suspicious are fruitless.
• Blackmail Backfire:
  • This is actually what kicks off the murder. Dr. Keppel tried to blackmail Vic Norris into funding his research. However, Norris refuses to play ball and plans to report Keppel to the police.
  • Roger figures out how Keppel committed the crime. He then demands $50,000 for his silence. Keppel kills him instead.
• Chekhov's Gun: A literal example. The Colt .45 Keppel uses to kill Norris is locked in a gun case in plain sight right on Keppel's wall, and a "calibration converter" Keppel used to convert the slug from a .45 to a .22 is screwed into a lamp in Keppel's office. Due to the use of the converter, the .45 doesn't appear to have been fired when examined by police. When Columbo subliminally gets Keppel to reveal the location of the converter, Columbo uses it to seal Keppel's fate.
• Chekhov's Skill: Keppel displays a mastery of using a phony voice when he lures Mrs. Norris out of her house to "meet" the jilted boyfriend of Tanya Baker, who he claims Vic Norris is having an affair with. Mrs. Norris does go to the phony meet, and thus has no alibi for when her husband was murdered. Columbo doesn't fall for the ruse at all, and says if his wife, who has no head for crime, killed him, she could come up with a better phony alibi than that, and thus, he believes Mrs. Norris' claim.
• Continuity Nod: Columbo mentions offhandedly that he hasn't been getting much sleep because he's been up late working on "the Hayward case". That's a reference to the previous episode, "Candidate for Crime".
• Dead Pan Snarker: Dr. Keppel, much more so in this episode than in other installments with killers played by Robert Culp. A particularly good one occurs after Columbo begs Keppel to accompany him to the crime scene of Roger White's murder. Keppel knows Columbo is trying to catch him out, and he agrees to it anyway.

  Keppel: "Alright, Lieutenant. I'll play."

• Fair-Play Whodunnit: Just like every episode. We see how Keppel committed the crime. Right before the final sequence, the audience sees Columbo taking photos of himself in Keppel's office, and it would be possible to infer Columbo is going to use them to subliminally message Keppel himself, and get him to give up the location of the converter.
• Frame-Up: Keppel manipulates things to make Norris's wife look guilty. He tells her about her husband's affair while pretending to be someone else and asks her to meet him at an intersection. This gives her a plausible motive and leaves her without a compelling alibi. If Lt. Columbo weren't running the case she probably would be the prime suspect.
• The Ghost: Tonya Baker, the Honey Pot model whom Keppel used to manipulate Norris and whom he's apparently used more than once in similar schemes. She's discussed several times, and Columbo even mentions calling her, but we never see the character. Although her performer is still listed in the end credits. (Although you can see her picture in Keppel's film. She isn't hard to spot.)
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: The "calibration converter" would not work at all (and is mis-named). Caliber conversion kits do exist for many guns, they require disassembly of the weapon, because the whole barrel gets replaced, and often other parts.^note The .45 automatic shown, for example, requires a new slide and a different recoil spring. It's not as simple as dropping a tube down the muzzle of a gun, it would just fly out when the gun was fired. Of course, that would probably still kill someone.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The gun used to shoot Norris was hanging on the wall in Keppel's office the whole time. Keppel used a calibration converter to make the gun fire a different type of bullet than what the gun was chambered for to throw the police off the trail.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: How Columbo gets Keppel in the end. He puts some subliminal inserts of his own into Keppel's film, photos showing Columbo searching Keppel's office. It works, as Keppel goes back to his office to check that the calibration converter is still there, and pulls it out of its hiding place, at which time Columbo steps out of the shadows.
• Idiot Ball: Once Roger figures out how Keppel committed the murder, he blackmails him for $50,000 without anything to dissuade Keppel from murdering him too. Even more stupid is he naively believes that Keppel will follow through, and gets shot at his secondary job while alone in a projection booth.
• I Know You Know I Know:
  • Columbo and Keppel start playing this game right around the time that Keppel, with Columbo's prompting, explains how someone could have hypothetically gotten Norris to leave the theater via subliminals, especially by encouraging him to eat salty caviar before the screening to make him thirsty. They play this game some more when Columbo confronts Keppel at the golf course and starts asking uncomfortable questions about Tanya Baker. Keppel cheats at his golf game, pulling a ball out of the rough and saying very pointedly to Columbo, "and no one will ever know." After this Columbo drops the façade and, in response to a challenge from Keppel, says that he thinks Keppel killed Norris.
  • This also comes up when Keppel offers to drive Columbo to the scene of Roger's murder. He points out that Columbo probably expects him to drive to the crime scene (which he shouldn't know the location of) and incriminate himself. Keppel just asks for directions in a smarmy tone.
    Keppel: "Right or left. You didn't tell me where the murder was committed...So I couldn't POSSIBLY know how to get there, could I?"
• Irony: Keppel's method of using subliminal messaging to draw Vic Norris into the lobby for Keppel to murder him is used in exactly the same way to get Keppel to go to his office and reveal where he hid the calibration converter while Columbo is waiting to catch him.
• Jerkass: Mr...er...DOCTOR Bart Keppel. And you can see that Robert Culp is absolutely having the time of his life playing him. Not only does he commit two murders, but he tries to pin them on the first victim's completely innocent wife, who wasn't even aware her husband was having an affair until shortly before his death.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Roger White. He's a very nice guy with a sick mother and immediately hits it off with Columbo, showing he has a heart of gold, but he's willing to keep his knowledge of Keppel committing the murder of Vic Norris a secret if Keppel pays him $50,000.
• Manipulative Bastard: Keppel's first 10 minutes consist of him telling Mrs. Norris her husband is cheating on her with a girl named Tanya Baker, and that he knows because he's her boyfriend and had hired a private detective. All so he can have a scapegoat for Mr. Norris's murder. The poor woman falls for it hook line and sinker.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: After Columbo's incessant questioning causes Keppel to muff a couple of shots during a high-stakes golf game, Keppel cheats right in front of Columbo and throws the ball onto the fairway in order to return the odds to his favor.

  Keppel: "Ah! Here's my ball. There it is. I'll just toss it out a bit...And no one will ever know...And I can go on with my game."

• No Warrant? No Problem!: Subverted. Columbo goes to Keppel's office with a police photographer. As the photographer snaps pictures while Columbo looks around, he protests about searching without a warrant. Columbo says "We're not searching, we're looking". And he's right, as what he's really doing is setting up the pictures that he will use as subliminals to get Keppel to come back to the office and lead them to the evidence.
• Phoney Call: A twist on the trope. Keppel starts out by narrating his movie for Norris and the rest of the audience. Then he starts playing a tape of his narration. He then ducks out of the darkened theater to kill Norris without anyone realizing he's gone.
• Reclining Venus: In Dr. Keppel's motivational film about advertising, there is a shot of a half-lying, half-sitting model in a bikini, used as a demonstration of a sales tactic.
• Recorded Audio Alibi: The source of Keppel's alibi. He starts screening a film for his clients who commissioned it, and notes that since they may wish to revise the script later on, there is no narration yet and Keppel will be providing the narration live from a podium on-stage. In actuality, he puts on a prerecorded narration track, then after mouthing along for the first few minutes, slips out to commit the murder. He times things so that he'll be back at the podium in time to mouth along to the last few lines of the recording and look like he was there the whole time.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Robert Culp always wore great suits in his Columbo appearances, but he knocks it out of the park in this episode. Standouts are the sharp double-breasted pinstripe suit and vest he wears to kill Vic Norris, and certainly no one else in the world could have sold the bright yellow motorcycle jacket as smartly as Culp does in the supermarket scene.
• Simultaneous Arcs: As shown in Continuity Nod above, Columbo off-handedly mentions working on the Hayward case. Given that he's talking in present-tense, it's implied that "Candidate for Crime" is happening concurrently with this episode, specifically within the prolonged time gaps in which Columbo is off-screen.
• Skeleton Key Card: How Keppel gets into the Norris home to plant a gun in an effort to frame Mrs. Norris. Probably possible in the 1970s, although one would think a home as fancy as that would have a deadbolt.
• The Smart Guy: Keppel proves to be one of Columbo's strongest adversaries, despite Columbo's I Know You Know I Know interchanges with him, largely because he masterfully eliminated virtually all of the evidence that connects him to the crimes. Columbo has dozens of suspicions, and Keppel is cockily aware of this, but Columbo has absolutely zero physical evidence to act on until the very end.
• Spotting the Thread: Naturally, this is an episode of Columbo. Despite Keppels efforts to frame Mrs. Norris for her husband and Roger White's murders, and his cleverness in disposing of virtually all of the evidence that can connect him to the crime, Columbo still notices the inconsistencies and never wavers in his suspicion of Keppel as the culprit, eventually finding the one piece of evidence that will allow him to bring Keppel to justice.
• Subliminal Advertising: The whole plot. The show ends when Columbo uses subliminal inserts of his own to subconsciously influence Keppel into going to his office and searching for something incriminating—namely, a calibration converter.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Columbo repeatedly addresses Keppel as "Mr. Keppel", only for Keppel to irritatedly correct him with "Doctor Keppel." It's obviously a deliberate effort by Columbo to irritate his suspect.
• Too Dumb to Live: Roger White reveals he knows Keppel murdered Vic Norris, and how he was able to do so, and confronts him in a blackmail scheme without putting in place any fail safes to prevent Keppel from murdering him instead of paying the blackmail money. Since Keppel is a Jerkass, he naturally takes the cheaper option and simply murders the big, lovable boob.
• Voice Changeling: Keppel manages to uncannily mimic a much younger-sounding, cuckolded boyfriend to lure Mrs. Norris out of her house and prevent her from having an alibi for her husband's murder.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Roger's decision to blackmail Keppel instead of turning him over to the police, he says is due to the fact that his mother is very sick, he works two jobs to take care of her that don't pay well, and he intends to use the blackmail money to fund a new career in real estate prospecting. Keppel ends up murdering Roger, and we never find out what happens to Roger's ailing mother now that she's lost the son who was taking care of her, nor does Columbo ever speak of her reaction to finding out about Roger's death.
  • Also, Mrs. Norris. After her initial interview scene with Columbo, where he tells her he believes her weak alibi, we see her once more leaving her house before Keppel breaks in to steal Norris' gun to kill Roger, and she's never seen again, and is only referenced in dialogue until the episode's end.