Recap / Columbo S 10 E 06

Episode: Season 10, Episode 6
Title: A Bird in the Hand...
Directed by: Vincent Mc Eveety
Written by: Jackson Gillis
Air Date: November 22, 1992
Previous: No Time to Die
Next: It's All in the Game
Guest Starring: Tyne Daly, Greg Evigan

"A Bird in the Hand..." is a 1992 Columbo TV movie.

Harold McCain (Greg Evigan, My Two Dads) is a gambling addict and all-around wastrel. Finding himself deep in debt to some Vegas gambling bosses, he goes to his rich uncle "Big" Fred McCain, for help. But Fred is tired of bailing his loser nephew out and refuses. Harold has been having an affair with his sugar mommy, Fred's blowsy alcoholic wife Dolores (Tyne Daly, Cagney & Lacey), but she does not have access to enough cash to pay off Harold's tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Harold resolves on murder. He fashions a pipe bomb that he places under Fred's Rolls Royce. He drives on up to Fred's Beverly Hills mansion the next morning and sees cops swarming all over the place, because Fred has been killed...in a hit and run collision while he was out jogging. Harold is unable to disarm the pipe bomb before it blows up and kills Fernando the gardener who was trying to move the car.

Lt. Columbo of the LAPD is on the scene, and he starts to zero in on Harold based on evidence such as the scuff marks on the asphalt, which match Harold's boots. But there are more twists than usual in this episode, many involving Dolores, who has secrets of her own.

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Tropes:

• Alcohol Hic: Dolores's alcoholism is underlined by her hiccuping in the middle of an early scene where she's talking to Harold about his debts.
• Artistic License – Sports: The supposed NFL game is extremely unconvincing Stock Footage (it's actually a CFL game), but aside from that, the narration has the Stallions kicking on third down. No football team would ever do that unless it was the last play of a half.
• As You Know: Happens in Harold's conversation with Fred where Harold complains about Fred "throwing me out" and "cutting me off".
• Blackmail Backfire: Harold, who is pretty sure that Dolores killed her husband, chooses to blackmail her for $15,000. She kills him.
• Car Fu: Before Harold's car bomb can get him, Delores bumps off Big Fred by bumping him with Fernando's truck.
• Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Harold intends to murder Fred via a pipe bomb under his car... but before his pipe bomb goes off, Dolores steals a truck and mows her husband down in the street.
• Da Chief: Lt. Robertson, as can be expected from a character being played by Frank McRae.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Dolores dramatically chambers a round in her gun before going off for her fatal meeting with Harold.
• "Eureka!" Moment: The scuff marks Columbo makes as he's crawling around under a Rolls-Royce at the dealership leads him to realize what the scratches on the asphalt in the driveway are.
  • Later on, while interrogating the hairdresser that Harold visited, Columbo is told that Harold had gotten his hair cut as one of his freshening up treatments, which leads him to realize that the cowboy hat Harold wore would prove that he wasn't sleeping at the time of his murder.
• External Combustion: Goes wrong when Harold rigs up a pipe bomb for Fred, only to discover that Fred died from a different cause earlier that morning. He is unable to disarm it before the gardener attempts to move the car and is killed.
• The Gambling Addict: Harold has racked up massive gambling debts and been forced to tap from his rich uncle repeatedly. Dolores says near the end of the episode that Harold had a problem and couldn't stop gambling.
• Hidden Depths: Hidden murderous depths. Dolores, who comes off for the first half of the episode as a pathetic Lady Drunk, carefully planned the murder of her husband, and kills Harold too when he threatens her.
• Justice by Other Legal Means: Columbo at the end admits that he doesn't have any firm evidence and can't pin Fred's murder on Dolores, but he can get her for Harold's murder, and that's good enough for him.
• The Killer Was Left-Handed: Columbo observes that from the positioning of the car on the driveway, the location of the scuff marks, and the obstacles in the undercarriage, whoever hooked up the bomb must have been left-handed. Harold, who is left-handed, doesn't miss the implication.
• Lady Drunk: Dolores is swilling vodka in the morning, visibly intoxicated as she complains about how her husband ignores her, and she's pathetically grateful for Harold's attentions. Unlike many Lady Drunks however, she realizes that she's being taken advantage of by both Fred and Harold and takes drastic action.
• Murder by Mistake: Harold plants a bomb in Fred's car, but Fred is killed by someone else first. Harold can't get to the bomb in time to disarm it, and it kills Fernando, a poor gardener who was asked to move the car.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Had Harold not done anything to try and kill Big Fred, or (unsuccessfully) blackmail Dolores over Big Fred's death, Columbo would most likely never have found out that she was Big Fred's actual killer, since hit and runners are commonplace in Los Angeles. Dolores even calls the posthumous Harold an idiot for this at the end.
• Not-So-Small Role: Despite being structured similar to a Who Dun It, The viewer may soon realize that Dolores has a larger role than it appears because it is she who ends up benefiting greatly from Big Fred's murder, and had close knowledge of Fred's routines. The character being played by Tyne Daly might be a tip off as well.
• Oddball in the Series: One of two Columbo episodes that was structured as a more standard mystery rather than the usual Reverse Whodunit. The other was Season 5 episode "Last Salute to the Commodore".
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Columbo does this with the police video of the pipe bomb explosion to show Dolores that Harold flinched in advance of the detonation.
• Title Drop: When Dolores says that Columbo can't prove she killed her husband, he shoots back that it doesn't matter as he has her nailed for Harold's murder.
  Columbo: One in the hand is better than two in the bush.
• Starter Villain: Harold is initially presented as if he'll be the main villain that Columbo is investigating. However, he is beaten to his original planned murder by another person and is himself murdered by the same person before the final act. One of the subplots is Columbo piecing together how Harold accidentally killed the gardener Fernando.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Harold is in dire straits when his uncle Fred isn't going to pay off any more of his gambling debts, so he resolves to murder him with a car bomb to get himself closer to his bank account. However, Dolores beats him to it, and the bomb ends up killing the wrong person before Harold can disarm it. Also, Dolores decides she isn't going to be taken advantage of by Harold, and kills him when he blackmails her for money.
• Verbal Irony: Harold calls Dolores and demands $15,000 or he goes to the cops. Dolores agrees, but tells Harold "This is the last time"...while she's chambering a round in her gun.
• The Watson: Lt. Robertson, who investigates along with Columbo, and is helpfully wrong about everything (he falls for the misdirection with the window pane and the cat's bowl of milk), thus making Columbo look good.
• Widow's Weeds: Dolores goes the whole nine yards, with black dress and veil, for her husband's funeral.