Recap / Columbo S 04 E 05

Alternate episode title: "The Left Eye Was The Real One"

Episode: Season 4, Episode 5
Title:"Playback"
Directed by: Bernard L. Kowalski
Written by: David P. Lewis and Booker T. Bradshaw
Air Date: March 2, 1975
Previous: Troubled Waters
Next: A Deadly State of Mind
Guest Starring: Oskar Werner, Gena Rowlands, Martha Scott

"Playback" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of Columbo.

Harold Van Wyck (Oskar Werner) is the chief executive of his in-laws' family business, Midas Electronics. His paraplegic wife Elizabeth (Gena Rowlands) adores him, but his mother-in-law Margaret Midas (Martha Scott) hates his guts. Margaret is angry about Harold's investment in experimental high-end technologies, which she believes are hurting the company's profit margin. She also has found out that Harold has been cheating on Elizabeth. She also is plainly quite mean, and simply cannot stand her son-in-law.

All of those factors lead to Margaret demanding that Harold resign as head of the company. She gives him an ultimatum and says that if he doesn't quit she'll reveal his infidelity to Elizabeth. Harold, who doesn't want to step down and clearly hates his mother-in-law just as much as she hates him, resolves on murder. He takes advantage of the state-of-the-art security system, designed by Harold himself, in the lavish family mansion that they all live in. He makes a recording of the living room when it is empty, then splices it into the closed-circuit security camera system and starts it up. He then shoots Margaret to death in the living room, and then sets that camera feed to start up on a delay. Then he leaves, establishing an alibi for when the security guard sees the tape-delayed murder.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is Lt. Columbo, who notices troubling details, like how the supposed burglar didn't track any dirt into the house, or how he didn't jump out of the window when supposedly fleeing from a murder, or how Elizabeth was able to see around her bedroom when it should have been dark...

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Tropes:

• Absence of Evidence: One of the first problems Columbo notices with the scene is how the burglar supposedly broke in through the side window, but did not track in any of the mulch that was all over the dirt just outside that window. Later on, Columbo notes there should be a huge buldge outside the house underneath the window, but isn't.
• As You Know: Margaret makes sure to mention in the opening scene that Midas is "my electronics company", establishing that it's an electronics company and she owns it.
• Asshole Victim: Margaret might be the victim, but she still was very rude, dismissive and bossy towards Harold and didn't shy away from spying on him and blackmailing him.
• Blackmail Backfire: Margaret attempts to squeeze Harold out of the company saying that she'll ruin his marriage if Harold doesn't quit. He takes another option.
• Camera Spoofing: Harold's alibi plot. Play a recording of an empty study, so the security guard won't see the murder that's taking place there. Then rig the recording of the murder to play on a delay after he leaves, making the guard his alibi witness.
• Chalk Outline: One drawn of Margaret on the wheelchair ramp where she fell down and died.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The disabled-access doors in the house which open when someone claps. They end up ruining Harold's alibi. Columbo determines that the shot must have been fired before Harold left, because the doors to Elizabeth's room were open when she woke up, the sound of the shot having caused the doors to open.
  • Harold's art gallery invitation. The fact that he presented it to the gallery itself, and yet it appears in the footage of Margaret being shot proves that Harold doctored the footage.
• Cool House: Van Wick's home is filled with crazy technology, security systems and surveillance equipment, surely better than anything before the dawn of smart homes.
• Does Not Like Guns: A running gag with Columbo. He says "I hate guns" before performing his test which requires firing a gun in the study, and then grimaces as he does so.
• Enhance Button: Columbo zooms in on a frame of the recording of the murder to reveal Harold's invitation to the Grant Gallery, complete with legible writing. Impressive for what amounts to a couple of pixels on a 70s camera setup.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Inverted. Columbo's dog immediately loves Elizabeth, who treats him kindly in return, establishing her Nice Girl cred.
• Fake Alibi: Harold rigs his home surveillance system to show footage of the study in which nothing is happening. While it is playing, he records the footage of him actually shooting Margaret (with him out of view, of course). He rigs the footage to play at a time when he has already arrived at an art gallery. Columbo eventually discovers that the footage of Margaret being shot has Harold's invitation to the gallery still on the desk nearby, even though Harold had shown it to the people at the gallery just minutes "before" the the shooting happened.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Harold uses his high-tech equipment to give himself an alibi. Too bad his cameras also catch his invitation which blows his alibi as soon as spotted.
• In the Back: Harold shoots Margaret as she is running away from him.
• It Will Never Catch On: As mentioned, Margaret thinks Harold's interest in what was then advanced technology was making the company suffer. If she'd only been willing to wait a few years, she might have had some surprises coming...
• Mistaken for Exhibit: While Columbo visits the Grant Gallery to confirm Harold's alibi, he first takes a look at the various pieces of modern art, each one with a price tag higher than the one before it, until he finally points at a square thing placed high on the wall, notes there's no name on it and asks what it's called, to which the gallery manager replies "sir, that's the grate for the ventilation system".
• Obnoxious In-Laws: An extreme example, as Harold and Margaret loathe each other, and Harold is driven to murder.
• Oh, Crap!: It's not the most visible, but Harold is clearly having one of these feelings when Columbo shows him the invitation on the desk.
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Although from Columbo's point of view, another killer has been apprehended yet again, there's something all too sobering about seeing that betrayed look in Elizabeth's face as she realizes the one person she had left to trust was the very man who murdered her mother.
• Opposites Attract: Elizabeth is warm and empathetic, Harold is cold and intellectual. The extent to which he reciprocates her love is a bit unclear—on the one hand he wired the house to make it easier for her to get around, on the other, he had nothing to say to her when he was arrested. It's also mentioned early on that he's cheating on her with multiple other women.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: The lack of this is what ultimately nails Harold in the end: his invitation to the party where he supposedly was during the murder was placed on the table in the room where the murder took place and was visible on tape during the murder, meaning that either he picked it up after committing the murder or that he noticed that he had forgotten it and had to return to retrieve it, and the latter option would've caused him to practically trip on the victim's body twice over since it was right next to the table with the invitation.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Columbo discovers the ruse when spotting the party invitation on the desk in the footage of the shooting, which vanishes seconds later and was presented at the party itself.
• Stealth Insult:
  Harold: Have you done something to your hair?
  Margaret: No.
  Harold: Just what I thought.
• Techno Wizard: Harold is absolutely obsessed with technology and can do almost everything with it, especially when it comes to surveillance cameras, automated doors and video recorders. Too bad his tools work a bit too well and catch an important detail that will incriminate him later.
• Tempting Fate: Towards the end of the episode, Elizabeth comments to her husband how grateful she is that he was away at the art gallery party when the robber broke in and killed her mother. After all, she couldn't bear to lose him to. Not moments later, she does lose him, but not to death like she feared. Rather, she's learned the truth that he's the one who murdered her mother.
• Unnecessary Time Precision: One of the first things that draws suspicion to Harold is that he gets precise with times when asked about when he left the house. While running around with a digital watch might explain his obsession with exact numbers, it remains more and more suspicious that his biggest problem is giving a precise time to an inspector upon first investigation, when a murder just occured in his house.
• Visual Title Drop: Title drops of any sort are usually averted for Columbo episode titles, but in this one we see the word "PLAYBACK" as one of the labels on Harold's elaborate home security system.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Columbo drops the gotcha on him, Harold falls apart, practically begging Elizabeth to lie for him. When she doesn't, he shakes almost spasmodically, like he's trying to hold back a full on tantrum.
  Harold: This is insane. This is...a-a-absolutely insane. Elizabeth, tell the lieutenant: before I left the house, I saw your mother coming up to the room to wish you good night! Tell him! I saw her, I saw her alive before I left! TELL HIM, ELIZABETH!
• The Von Trope Family: Harold goes by the surname Van Wick. Oscar Werner was an Austrian actor after all.
• Wham Shot: The final zoom in on Harold's art gallery invitation, on the desk immediately after Margaret was shot. This proves: a) the murder happened before Harold left the house, as Harold had to take it with him to present it at the art gallery and b) Harold must be the killer, because to retrieve his invitation, he would have encountered Margaret's body on the floor and he would have no reason to keep silent about this, unless he committed the murder himself.
• Zeerust: Most of Harold's home security and disabled access system comes off as pretty zeerusty, but the amazement that everyone shows at Harold's digital watch really stands out. Columbo is initially suspicious that Harold knows down to the minute exactly when he left the house, and then is boggled when he sees Harold's watch with a digital readout.