"Columbo Goes to College" was the first of what the DVD sets refer to as the "10th season" of Columbo, but it's actually more complicated than that. Up to this point, the Columbo revival had been airing as part of the ABC Mystery Movie, a relaunch of the old NBC "wheel" format with several different mystery movies rotating in the same weekly time slot. In the first season, Columbo was accompanied by Louis Gossett, Jr.'s Gideon Oliver and Burt Reynolds's B.L. Stryker; in the second, it was accompanied by a second season of Stryker, Jaclyn Smith's Christine Cromwell, and a brief revival of Telly Savalas's Kojak. But the wheel was cancelled in 1990, and only Columbo remained in production, with the new installments airing as intermittent TV movie specials rather than under the banner of a regular series.
And "Columbo Goes to College" is a good example of why this series deserved to continue. It's a strong episode, another format-bender with Columbo as a guest lecturer for a criminology professor who gets killed during his lecture. So it's unusual not only in that Columbo becomes acquainted with both victim and killers before the murder, and not only in that he's one of the people who discover the body, but in that he's actually used by the killers as their alibi, along with the other students who are genuinely eager to help him solve the case. Stephen Caffrey and Twin Peaks' Gary Hershberger are pretty effective as the killers, a pair of rich, privileged college students who believe they're entitled to literally get away with murder because they're smart enough, and who treat the entire process of leading Columbo astray as a big frat-boy prank. It's really kind of chilling to see such young people be so sociopathic.
It's also more of a mystery than usual, because we know who the killers are and why, but the how is kept a mystery until the end. I'd actually forgotten that aspect of it. Usually we're shown the killers' preparations and methods in detail, and the suspense is in finding out what tiny flaws in the plan Columbo will latch onto. Here, we're shown parts of the plan and the result, but we have to discover how it all fits together along with Columbo. It's a nice twist. Although it's kind of amusing in retrospect to see small, portable remote cameras treated as a novel breakthrough, and to see Columbo referring to a camera the size of a large flashlight as "this tiny thing." I do remember finding those cameras pretty impressive at the time, though. (My gosh, how did it get to be 17 years into the 21st century already?)
The movie also features the return of 3-time Columbo guest star Robert Culp -- who at the time was tied with Jack Cassidy for the most appearances on the show -- making his fourth appearance, which would be record-setting until Patrick McGoohan tied it in 1998. Although it's the first time Culp appears without playing the murderer, instead appearing as the father of one of the killers. Unfortunately, it's not one of his more interesting roles, a strident and hectoring attorney who treats Columbo as an idiot. It's a one-note, off-putting performance, and it raises a credibility issue, because by now, Columbo should have something of a reputation in police and legal circles, so it shouldn't be hard for Culp's character to determine that Columbo knows his stuff.
And "Columbo Goes to College" is a good example of why this series deserved to continue. It's a strong episode, another format-bender with Columbo as a guest lecturer for a criminology professor who gets killed during his lecture. So it's unusual not only in that Columbo becomes acquainted with both victim and killers before the murder, and not only in that he's one of the people who discover the body, but in that he's actually used by the killers as their alibi, along with the other students who are genuinely eager to help him solve the case. Stephen Caffrey and Twin Peaks' Gary Hershberger are pretty effective as the killers, a pair of rich, privileged college students who believe they're entitled to literally get away with murder because they're smart enough, and who treat the entire process of leading Columbo astray as a big frat-boy prank. It's really kind of chilling to see such young people be so sociopathic.
It's also more of a mystery than usual, because we know who the killers are and why, but the how is kept a mystery until the end. I'd actually forgotten that aspect of it. Usually we're shown the killers' preparations and methods in detail, and the suspense is in finding out what tiny flaws in the plan Columbo will latch onto. Here, we're shown parts of the plan and the result, but we have to discover how it all fits together along with Columbo. It's a nice twist. Although it's kind of amusing in retrospect to see small, portable remote cameras treated as a novel breakthrough, and to see Columbo referring to a camera the size of a large flashlight as "this tiny thing." I do remember finding those cameras pretty impressive at the time, though. (My gosh, how did it get to be 17 years into the 21st century already?)
The movie also features the return of 3-time Columbo guest star Robert Culp -- who at the time was tied with Jack Cassidy for the most appearances on the show -- making his fourth appearance, which would be record-setting until Patrick McGoohan tied it in 1998. Although it's the first time Culp appears without playing the murderer, instead appearing as the father of one of the killers. Unfortunately, it's not one of his more interesting roles, a strident and hectoring attorney who treats Columbo as an idiot. It's a one-note, off-putting performance, and it raises a credibility issue, because by now, Columbo should have something of a reputation in police and legal circles, so it shouldn't be hard for Culp's character to determine that Columbo knows his stuff.
