Title:"Columbo Goes to the Guillotine"
Directed by: Leo Penn
Written by: William Read Woodfield
Air Date: February 6, 1989
Previous: The Conspirators
Next: Murder, Smoke and Shadows
Guest Starring: Anthony Andrews, Karen Austin, Anthony Zerbe
"Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" is the first episode of the eighth season of Columbo.
Elliott Blake (Anthony Andrews) is a phony psychic. He and his girlfriend/partner in crime, parapsychologist Dr. Paula Hall (Karen Austin) are attempting to scam a group of U.S. military intelligence analysts into hiring Blake for a cushy government position where he'll use his "powers" against the Soviets. Blake and Hall rig a test with a stock set of Zener cards
, but the leader of the government officials, Mr. Harrow, wants more proof of Blake's abilities.
Mr. Harrow gets Blake to agree to do another test, one conducted by an outside consultant, to determine if he can intercept a person's thoughts from a distance. This consultant is Max "the Magnificent" Dyson (Anthony Zerbe), a magician with a side job in exposing fake psychics. Dyson, who has never failed to expose so-called mind readers and mentalists and psychics as charlatans, devises a cunning test for Blake. Three Army officers will drive to randomly selected areas and take pictures of whatever they see. Then they will attempt to transmit those images to Blake with their thoughts.
To the surprise and delight of the Army guys, Blake passes the test. What they don't know, however, is that Blake and Dyson are acquaintances that go way way back. In fact, they both did time together in a Ugandan prison. Dyson helped his old friend rig the test for old times' sake. Unfortunately for Dyson, Blake harbors a grudge against him. In Uganda, Blake was plotting an escape when Dyson ratted him out to the guards, getting himself an early release and getting Blake three more years. Given a chance at revenge, Blake takes it: he traps Dyson in his own homemade guillotine and chops off his head.
The investigating officer is, of course, Lt. Columbo of the LAPD, still wearing the rumpled raincoat, still driving the ancient 1959 Peugeot. Columbo's attention is first drawn to Blake simply because Blake passed Dyson's last test right before Dyson died. But Columbo notices how oddly moved Blake was at the funeral of a man that supposedly he barely knew. Then there's the matter of Dyson holding the wrong screwdriver. Columbo now must solve the case before the government can whisk Blake out of the city and change his identity.
"Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" was the first new episode of Columbo in 11 years. The show was Un-Canceled and sent on a Channel Hop to ABC after seven seasons on NBC, 1971-78.
Tropes:
- Ambiguously Bi: With a dash of Noodle Incident and possibly Situational Sexuality. When Blake pulls the gun, Dyson starts frantically begging, remembering their time in prison: "Try to remember what we meant to each other in that place, what we gave to each other." But as we see in the rest of the episode Blake is in a relationship with Hall, so he would seem to be bi.
- Artistic License – Biology: The institute claims to be researching the emotions of plants, and have one wired up to electrodes that shakes and digitally "screams" when agitated by a researcher. It does so again when Columbo approaches it, which he attributes to it being frightened of his cigar.
- Batman Gambit: The most reckless one Columbo ever pulls. He switches the labels on the guillotine stock and lies down on the guillotine. Blake takes the bait, slams the stock down, and drops the blade in an attempt to kill Columbo, but fails because the labels were switched. If Blake had simply played the guillotine trick without actually trying to kill Columbo, he would have killed Columbo due to the reversed labels.
- Best Served Cold: Blake waits over a decade before a chance at revenge presents itself.
- Bloodier and Gorier: We obviously don't see the... results of the guillotine, but not only is blood seen dripping in from the ceiling, we see more blood in this episode than any other in the series up to now.
- Bury Your Gays: The obviously gay Dyson loses his head.
- Camp Gay: Dyson is effete in manner. Plus, he and Blake apparently had a relationship in prison—see Ambiguously Bi above.
- Chekhov's Gun: The screwdriver that Dyson drops as his head is sliced off (he had been fiddling with the guillotine). Blake puts the screwdriver back in his hand—but he picks up the wrong kind of screwdriver from the tools on the floor, a flathead. The guillotine is put together with Phillips-head screws. This is Columbo's big clue that Dyson's death was murder.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Subverted. Blake pulls a gun on Dyson and cocks it dramatically, scaring the bejesus out of Dyson, but he doesn't shoot him. The sight of the guillotine apparently leads Blake to come up with a sneakier murder plan on the spot.
- Evil Brit: Anthony Andrews uses his native British accent as Blake.
- Foreshadowing: When Tommy the teen magician is doing the "pick a card, any card" routine with Columbo, the camera reveals that every card in Tommy's deck is the ace of diamonds. This is probably a result of the actor making a mistake with the prop, but it later turns out that part of the way Dyson and Blake rigged the test was by printing fake mapbooks where every page was the same.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": At Dyson's funeral, several magicians do sleight-of-hand magic tricks, then drop the props on top of the coffin as it's being lowered into the ground.
- I Have Many Names: Blake has changed his name several times in the past. He started using his current name after he got out of the Ugandan prison.
- Locked Room Mystery: Blake finds a way to lock the door to the freight elevator leading up to Dyson's workshop while still inside the elevator, to further suggest that the death was an accident or suicide. Columbo manages to figure out how it was pulled off by reading one of Dyson's books.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Max Dyson is obviously inspired by James Randi, a magician who had a second job exposing fake psychics.
- Off with His Head!: How Max Dyson bites it. It is a guillotine, after all...
- The Oner: The episode starts with a long panning shot all the way around the psychic institute's lab, as Blake is taking the card test that's revealed to be rigged.
- Phony Psychic: Blake is a con artist who hopes to scam his way into a cushy government job.
- Rain of Blood: How the murder is discovered. Dyson's workshop is above a bar. The barkeep calls the cops after noticing blood leaking through the ceiling and onto his bar.
- Ripped from the Headlines: James Randi vs Uri Geller
- Shout-Out: Not only is Max Dyson an obvious clone of James Randi, there's a Randi poster on the wall of his shop.
- Smoking Is Cool: Used for Columbo's dramatic entrance after an 11-year hiatus. We see the Peugeot pulling up to the curb, silhouetted in front of a street lamp. The car stops, a match is lit, and we see the face of Columbo for the first time since 1978 as he lights his cigar.
- Sore Loser: After his deceptions are exposed, Blake attempts to kill Columbo while the latter is lying down on the trick guillotine. Unfortunately for him, Columbo had already switched the labels, so the detective is left unharmed.
- Stage Magician: Max Dyson's job, although we don't see him doing it. A teenaged magic enthusiast named Tommy helps Columbo figure out how the Army test was rigged.
- The Stool Pigeon: Dyson snitched on Blake to the guards when they were both in prison, and so got released early while Blake had to serve three more years.
- Twin Telepathy: Among the subjects Hall's institute studies are a pair of twins whose brain waves are perfectly synchronized.
- We Do Not Know Each Other: Dyson and Blake pretend not to know each other when Dyson makes his introduction at the institute, to hide the fact that Dyson is rigging the test.
