History Recap / ColumboS09E01

Whatever the secret is, it's bad enough that Max can't risk Louise ever telling her new lover. He smothers her into unconsciousness with a rag soaked in paint thinner and then drowns her in the ocean. Max thinks it will look like Louise drowned while swimming, but of course Lt. Columbo of the LAPD is not fooled. If Louise went out swimming, why did she put on only one contact lens and leave the other in its case?

* BlandNameProduct: A throwaway moment has Julie offering Max a bucket of fried chicken. It's colored like a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket (white with red stripes), it uses the same typeface as KFC packaging, but it just says "fried chicken".

* FreudianCouch: Played for laughs when Columbo interviews the victim's psychiatrist, with him lying on his own couch and Columbo's interview sounding a lot like a therapy session.

* TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: Played for laughs; Barsini spends the episode painting a portrait of Columbo, but warns him that it will reveal his dark, tormented policeman's soul. It turns out to be... just like the Columbo we know.

* SheepInSheepsClothing: Before he began his painting, Barsini intended to uncover a dark and hardened nature underneath Columbo's good-natured exterior. In the ending, his painting reveals... he's every bit on the inside who he is on the outside. With Columbo, what you see is what you get, and the painting is no different.

** When she and Julie are leaving Barsini, Vanessa gives a [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech speech]] about his selfishness, mentioning an analogy about how he eats well and complains about heartburn, while his wives go hungry and feed on scraps. This is meant to reflect the nature of their polyamory, how Barsini basks in the wives' attention while they have to fight tooth and nail just to get his affection.
* ToplessnessFromTheBack: Some fanservice when Julie the model poses for Barsini's latest painting.

* AsYouKnow: When Louise and Max see a photo of them with another man in Vito's restaurant, she makes sure to describe the other man as "Harry, with the monocle. Your first art dealer." This is {{Foreshadowing}} to indicate that the long-lost Harry has something to do with Max's dark secret.

Max Barsini (Creator/PatrickBauchau) is an artist with a pretty great life. He's rich. He has a fancy Malibu beach house. And if that's not enough, he has a harem of three women: his middle-aged but still attractive first wife Louise (Creator/FionnulaFlanagan), his younger, good-looking current wife Vanessa (Creator/SheraDanese, Creator/PeterFalk's wife), and his still younger, gorgeous model/mistress Julie (Creator/IsabelGarciaLorca), who all live together with him.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Max kept badgering Julie and Vanessa to get along "for Louise's sake" in order to regain some semblance of the previous normality they had. Indeed, at some point, Julie and Vanessa have a heart-to-heart and finally form a friendship. The problem is, their new-found friendship has evaporated the very jealousy towards each other that kept them wrapped around Max's finger. Between the two of them, they convince each other they're too good for Max, and subsequently leave him.

** In Louise's third and final dream, she imagines that the man's monocle is a pocket watch. Max notes that it's as though she was worried for the time she lost. For all intents and purposes, [[ExactWords he wasn't wrong]]: Louise was afraid she was running out of time before he got her too.