10 ms·

‘Columbo’ shows the benefits of asking just one more thing

155 points by hhs 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago
It would have been nice for the article to tie this in with business a little more. At first I thought they might be tying this in to "And what else?" of The Coaching Habit.
bediger4000 5y ago
The use of a fictional character deprives this of value. Of course Columbo gets a lot of benefit from his "Oh, just one more thing..." schtick. Columbo is the hero of a detective mystery series. If Columbo didn't solve the mystery in an hour (less commercials!), or if Columbo used the same methods as other contemporary TV detectives, the show wouldn't have been successful. The question is, can you, an ordinary human, in ordinary circumstances where almost everything is beyond your control, gain benefit from this technique? There's a similar problem with "$N business lessons of ${HISTORICAL_FIGURE}" - you're not going to invade Russia, or lay siege to Vienna, or conquer the Gauls. Your situation is entirely different. What Napoleon or Saladin or Boudicca are reputed to have done is almost certainly beyond you, and instead is being used to puff up an article containing entirely mundane and well-worn advice.
- gowld 5y ago
  Huh? It's just an article about a TV show the author liked, not business advice. Also: > This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Avenger in a raincoat" The online article headline is just clickbait.
  - joegahona 5y ago
    Publications often change the headline for clickbait reasons, but they also try to make it clearer to searchers what the article is about. "Avenger in a Raincoat" works fine for a print magazine -- the end user is someone sitting captive on a flight or on their couch. In the crowded world of search results or social-media posts, you need to be clearer about what the article contains. I haven't read this article (for it is paywalled), so I can't tell where this falls on the clickbait scale. (I think of "clickbait" as a pejorative.)
    - lupire 5y ago
      It's half paywalled -- try incognito or something if you want to read it.
      - olvy0 5y ago
        Or archive.is.
  - yoyopa 5y ago
    the bot you're replying to is suggesting that nothing can be learned
- arrow7000 5y ago
  So you mean "Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs" isn't actually a good book to buy?
  - flobosg 5y ago
    They’re printouts.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Most of Plato's dialogues are essentially a masterclass in this technique, and if you let it, it can absolutely change how you engage with ideas in a very powerful way. The very real benefit that you, the ordinary human, can gain from these techniques is an awareness of many of the assumptions you have been making, and how little there actually is to justify them. It's been said that a fish will be the last to discover water. This will show you the proverbial ocean you've been oblivious to swimming in all your life. It may not be for everyone, but few authors have changed the way I think quite as drastically as reading Plato has.
- literalsunbear 5y ago
  i am begging you to please shut up and relax
failedengineer 5y ago
As an equally valid counterpoint, I submit data from the classic film "Dude, where's my car?" where the simple question "and then?" so greatly exacerbates the customer that there's a strong chance they will never return.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  if you'll recall from that movie they evidently liked it so much they recommended the place to a couple of out of town acquaintances. on edit: so what I'm saying, is like, word of mouth?
- jasondigitized 5y ago
  and then?
mbg721 5y ago
Columbo shows the benefits of having reality bent around the assumption that you know the culprit instantly even if you don't know why. Is there a single Columbo episode where he asks "just one more thing" of someone who isn't the murderer?
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Ooh a cop show deconstruction where the protagonist has to confront the fact that 75% of his successes were incorrect would be great
  - mbg721 5y ago
    I saw an anecdote where someone asked the actor who played Perry Mason, "Haven't you ever lost a case?" and his answer was "I don't try the hard ones on Saturday night."
  - duxup 5y ago
    I don’t know if it is still on but I’m the US there was a show where they followed actual detectives. The bad guy gets away because they don’t have enough evidence. People confess when there is hardly any evidence (a lot). The detectives realize they were wrong. Lots of things happen. Detectives being wrong isn’t a very dramatic like you might think. Many operate like scientist, gathering data, testing their theory along the way and adjusting. One of the most interesting episodes was when they investigated a murder of a local girl in a park. Whole department assigned to work it because her ex and the main suspect was a guy who was a local criminal who had done time for murder before and was suspected in other cases. Lots of misc evidence pointed at bad guy, but not enough to prosecute him, just lots of elements that pointed to him. Bad guy was smart enough not to talk to the police when they brought him in. Near the end they got back some cell phone location info ... in the park that night wasn't the bad guy... but her current boyfriend (the local good college boy) phone was there. He claimed he was elsewhere / hadn't seen her that night... Good boy confessed when they confronted him. That episode was wild.
    - watwut 5y ago
mc32 5y ago
Tangential but someone mentioned that S Jobs got his “one more thing…” from that show.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
If you like mystery TV shows. I can recommend these two below. 1. Magnum P.I. (Original) Private investigator on Oahu https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2937961753?ref_=vp_rv_1 2. It's about a monk solving crimes in medieval Europe. Mystery!: Cadfael https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Derek Jacobi, also amazing in "I, Claudius".
  - nwatson 5y ago
    That's the best TV show of all time.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  My favorite mystery show of all time is A&E's "A Nero Wolfe Mystery", an incredibly faithful and visually perfect adaptation of some of the best of Rex Stout's many Nero Wolfe mysteries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe_(2001_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe_(2001_TV_series) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/ANeroWolfeMystery https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/ANeroWolfeMyst... One of the best ones is "The Doorbell Rang": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang >An hour later we were having a pleasant evening. The three guests and I were in the front room, in a tight game of pinochle, and Wolfe was in his one and only chair in the office, reading a book. The book was The FBI Nobody Knows. He was either gloating or doing research, I didn't know which. — Archie Goodwin writing in The Doorbell Rang, chapter 12 >Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover. >The Doorbell Rang generated controversy when it was published, due largely to its unflattering portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents. It was published at a time when the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed and the Bureau was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King Jr. Some dismissed the book: National Observer described it as "little more than an anti-FBI diatribe," and Nero Wolfe fan John Wayne wrote Rex Stout a terse note of goodbye after reading the condensed magazine version.: 461 But Clifton Fadiman, quoted in a Viking Press advertisement for The Doorbell Rang, thought it was "… the best of all Nero Wolfe stories." [...] >The FBI and The Doorbell Rang >Researching his book Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors (1988), journalist Herbert Mitgang discovered that Stout had been under FBI surveillance since the beginning of his writing career. Most of the heavily censored pages he was allowed to obtain from Stout's FBI dossier concerned The Doorbell Rang: >About one hundred pages in Stout's file are devoted to the novel, the FBI's panicky response to it and the attempt to retaliate against the author for writing it. The FBI's internal memorandum for its special agents told them that "the bureau desires to contribute in no manner to the sales of this book by helping to make it the topic of publicity." Orders came from headquarters in Washington that any questions concerning the book should be forwarded to the Crime Records Division, thereby putting book and author in a criminal category. >An internal memorandum by Special Agent M.A. Jones (name surprisingly not censored) summarized the novel and went on to write a critique for the FBI's top command — a rare "literary" honor accorded to few books in its files ... Following the review came a series of recommendations — first, Stout was designated as a person "not to be contacted" without prior approval by FBI headquarters in Washington ... >In April 1976, the Church Committee found that The Doorbell Rang is a reason Rex Stout's name was placed on the FBI's "not to contact list", which it cited as evidence of the FBI's political abuse of intelligence information.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Every Time Columbo Asked One More Thing | Season 1 | Columbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-jlomZhHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-jlomZhHU
lolive 5y ago
The Columbo TV show is, in my humble opinion, a masterpiece in disguise. The basic scheme of each episode is well known. But the beauty is in the details. The few minutes in each episode where the character is not in representation and you can grasp a few moments of his mental process. That's where you discover that: - he takes NOTHING as assumed - he works A LOT (usually not shown on screen, but sometimes mentionned by him, and you can infer that a given piece of information took a lot of time to discover) - he always starts from the ground up, asks (what seem to be) stupid questions - All of his actions are here to close the options. Conversations are done with no malice, but with that clear objective in mind. I do a lot of the Columbo way at work, and it works surprisingly well.
- bgroat 5y ago
  I watched Columbo for the first time in the past year and I *don't* think the format is well known (I was born in the 90s, so it may be a generational thing). I want to expand on it because it's really unique and amazing. For those who don't know, each episode opens with us seeing the crime being committed and covered up. We always know who it is, immediately. Then in the 2nd act we're introduced to Columbo, and we observe him trying to figure out what we already know. For all of the reasons stated in the parent article, Columbo is one of the most perfect representations of a "real smart person" in media. Another favourite of mine is Jonathan Creek
  - mgkimsal 5y ago
    Just started rewatching the JC catalog last week. The tech seems a bit dated (big cellphones, cars, etc) but the stories generally hold up well (so far, and FWIR). I do wish there was some effort to remaster/restore/polish up the video. What we have (and what I've seen rebroadcast) just looks a bit... washed out. Also, I watch with headphones on, and it's amazing to me how much food people eat, and how loud they are, in many TV shows. Just went through Blue Murder (also with Caroline Quentin in it) and every episode there's one or two roundtable shots of the group eating... loudly. But yeah, JC is good, and I'll be watching another one tonight :)
    - 5y ago
concinds 5y ago
One thing might interest this community - the amusing amount of common actors between the Columbo and Star Trek series (and Quantum Leap, if you want to extend this). Obviously Shatner and Nimoy, but also the lovable John Fiedler (of 12 Angry Men fame, as the possessed Mr. Hengist in TOS's "Wolf in the Fold" and a cardiologist in Columbo) and the fantastic Theodore Bikel (as the murderer in Columbo's "Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", and as Worf's adoptive dad in TNG's "Family"). Ed Begley Jr, whose father was in 12 Angry Men, is in ST:VOY as Henry Starling, and in Columbo's "How to Dial a Murder" as Officer Stein. Laurence Luckinbill is Sybok (STrek V) and the victim in Columbo's "Make Me a Perfect Murder". Michael Strong: Columbo's "are you a witness to what he just did?" scene, and TOS's Dr Korby. There are metric tons of links with minor characters, for example James Greene in the Columbo classic "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" is also in TNG and DS9. Dozens more are discussed here: http://pub10.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=806565873&frmid=6&msgid=1308831&cmd=show http://pub10.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=8065... There are other amusing non-Star Trek but sci-fi-related coincidences too, like Robert Culp (IMO the best Columbo villain, a first-rate actor) voicing Dr. Breen in Half-Life 2. Obviously you could do this with absolutely any TV show, since there aren't that many actors in America, but this is a fun exercise and fans of both shows have a lot to be happy about. And if you're a fan of one, and start watching the other (I started with Columbo, possibly unlike most people here), try spotting common actors as a fun exercise.
- mbg721 5y ago
  There might have existed a moment where every broadcast television signal on Earth was showing John Fiedler (Mr. Peterson on the Bob Newhart Show, Piglet in Winnie-the-Pooh, a thousand other credits). He was everywhere in the same way people make fun of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. For Columbo side-roles, Vito Scotti is a fun one to spot. I think he was in four or five episodes.
- dcminter 5y ago
  I was once home sick from work and watching daytime TV between naps on the sofa. After I'd been watching an episode of Columbo for about three hours I realised it was actually an episode of Columbo, Diagnosis Murder, and Murder She Wrote (I think) consecutively with a few common bit-part actors and I'd nodded off between them :) Edit: I remember it as being Dick van Dyck in all of them, but it was a long time ago and that seems unlikely!
olvy0 5y ago
I too watched Columbo, together with my mom, when I was younger, and later watched some older episodes on my own. At some point at my job I found myself "debugging" people's requests for help/support using his "one last thing" technique. Especially if they are the type of enthusiastic, semi-sophisticated users, who try to second-guess how the application is written or why it crashed, without actually knowing anything about the code, and often make silly guesses and make suggestions which have little to do with reality. Before I started doing that, I would often be quite rude to people and cut them off, saying things like "no, that's not how the code works, I know that for a fact because I wrote it, the bug is somewhere else entirely". Then when I started using it instead, I would stare at them and say something like "oh, well, that's a very interesting option! Why didn't I think of that!" Then shut up for a few seconds like I'm deep in thought, then say "Oh, wait, I just thought of something. Do you mind showing me what you did on that screen again? I apologize but I have just this awful short term memory, can't remember what you wrote on that bug ticket ". Then they would indulge me, and I would say "Oh, wait, stop right there, that gave me a great idea what could have gone wrong, thank you". And then explain them in some details what caused the bug and how to work around it. Or I would say "thank you", get up and go after they showed me, and then pause at the door and say "oh, wait, there's this one thing I just thought about, do you mind if we try just one more thing? Sorry for taking your time" and then try the workaround, show them that it works, and explain it. All this when I actually understood what was the problem a few seconds after they showed me the problem. So I wasted a few more minutes being nice to this person and pretending I'm kind of dumb, but I know now they will won't be afraid to report future bugs to me or to suggest features, without fearing they will look dumb themselves. Unfortunately I have to be in the right frame of mind to do this, and lately I've found myself slipping more and more often back to the "that's not how the code works" retorts. It's good that this came up on NH today, it's a good reminder to try and go back to being a little more Columbo and a little less rude to people who try to be useful to me.
- alar44 5y ago
  That's ridiculous. I can't imagine tip toeing around people like that. There's a big difference between being rude and being to the point. What you're describing is manipulative, patronizing, and weird.
incomplete 5y ago
https://archive.is/8N3Ln https://archive.is/8N3Ln
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
My favorite: "How did you know it was me?" "Well, when I saw the crime scene, there was a match in the ashtray, and a lighter on the table. The lighter worked. So I knew..." "You knew a pipe smoker had been in the room. You weren't looking for a killer; you were looking for a pipe smoker. And there I was." "And there you were."
amelius 5y ago
So this is where Jobs stole "one more thing" from.
mwexler 5y ago
Columbo also was unlike many other crime shows of the time in that it showed the viewer the crime in opening minutes. Through the show, you knew who the murderer was, even if you didn't know all the whys or twists. Watching with that knowledge changes the story, as you see how the detective weaves together threads to get to where you know he needs to be by the end of the (somewhat overly drawn out) episodes.
hdivider 5y ago
Some quotations I took from Columbo, to try to gain some insight into his methods: "I like to get that background information very precise if I can." "You know what it's like; you get hold of half of something, and you can't get a hold of the other half." "Tell me about these movie stars. What do they do? They drink a lot?" (great open-ended question) "Do you think you could just talk about the suture, sort of describe it in so many words?" "It's just one of those things that gets into my head and keeps rolling around in there like a marble." "There is something else sir, but I don't know where all that leads to just yet...I'll just wander around sir. Thank you very much." "When people do something for the first time, detectives always want to know why."
donohoe 5y ago
I’m a big Columbo fan but it is a work of fiction. You cannot reasonably pull life lessons from a scripted work of fiction.
- ska 5y ago
  > You cannot reasonably pull life lessons from a scripted work of fiction. I think I know what you are aiming at here, but this statement is way, way too strong. It flies in the face of, well, being human. Most of we actually learn, for good or for ill, is from stories. Even most of the stuff we don't think of that way.
  - donohoe 5y ago
    Good point. You are right. Thanks for adding this. I’m being too cynical.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Of course you can, who is going to stop me, the life lesson police? In fact this is funnily enough a (meta?) lesson of Columbo. You can extract something out of anything. Whether it's true, a lie, fiction, non-fiction, if something is made with intent there's something to learn. Columbo's acuity lies in his perception and his mind much more so than in the often mundane things he looks at. It's his lack of prejudice and child like curiosity that stands out and that is as true in the world of Columbo as it is in the real one. And also maybe as a side note, most foundational texts concerning the big questions of life and underpinning most of human civilization are to large extent scripted and deliberately composed works of fiction, from the Vedas and Talmud to Shakespeare.
- pfarrell 5y ago
  I take it you’ve never watched “The Wire”
- kiutroap 5y ago
  You could use this show to teach people never to talk to the police. Someone pays for it in almost every single episode.
Sebguer 5y ago
This New Yorker comic is a really good read on the magic of Columbo: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rediscovering-columbo-in-2020 https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rediscovering-c... and this thread is a great follow-on: https://twitter.com/garius/status/1325743272493510656b https://twitter.com/garius/status/1325743272493510656b
PopAlongKid 5y ago
There is one Columbo episode "Forgotten Lady" that is somewhat unique in that his questioning technique doesn't exactly work out as usual, and even when he figures out the truth, it doesn't lead to justice. And he even wears a tuxedo! It is considered one of the better episodes of the original series, at least according to reviews at IMDB, and my own recent serendipitous viewing.
codeulike 5y ago
Got a box set of Columbo a few years ago and I'd never watched it before and like many people here are saying, each episode is almost movie length and brilliant in its own right, and the format of 'you the viewer know who did it, how can Columbo figure it out' is fantastic. One striking thing is that technology often plays a part - technology that would have been 'clever' at the time. e.g. "The Most Crucial Game" the bad guy uses a radio to pretend he's still in a private box at a football statium. In "Fade in to Murder" the bad guy provides an alibi for himself by drugging a friend, changing the time on his watch and then watching a VCR recorded football match with him, pretending that its live. There are lots of things like that, I suppose the never ending quest for clever twists led the writers to lots of gizmos and gadgets of the time.

155 points by hhs 5y ago

It would have been nice for the article to tie this in with business a little more. At first I thought they might be tying this in to "And what else?" of The Coaching Habit.

bediger4000 5y ago

The use of a fictional character deprives this of value. Of course Columbo gets a lot of benefit from his "Oh, just one more thing..." schtick. Columbo is the hero of a detective mystery series. If Columbo didn't solve the mystery in an hour (less commercials!), or if Columbo used the same methods as other contemporary TV detectives, the show wouldn't have been successful. The question is, can you, an ordinary human, in ordinary circumstances where almost everything is beyond your control, gain benefit from this technique? There's a similar problem with "$N business lessons of ${HISTORICAL_FIGURE}" - you're not going to invade Russia, or lay siege to Vienna, or conquer the Gauls. Your situation is entirely different. What Napoleon or Saladin or Boudicca are reputed to have done is almost certainly beyond you, and instead is being used to puff up an article containing entirely mundane and well-worn advice.

gowld 5y ago
Huh? It's just an article about a TV show the author liked, not business advice. Also: > This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Avenger in a raincoat" The online article headline is just clickbait.
- joegahona 5y ago
  Publications often change the headline for clickbait reasons, but they also try to make it clearer to searchers what the article is about. "Avenger in a Raincoat" works fine for a print magazine -- the end user is someone sitting captive on a flight or on their couch. In the crowded world of search results or social-media posts, you need to be clearer about what the article contains. I haven't read this article (for it is paywalled), so I can't tell where this falls on the clickbait scale. (I think of "clickbait" as a pejorative.)
  - lupire 5y ago
    It's half paywalled -- try incognito or something if you want to read it.
    - olvy0 5y ago
      Or archive.is.
- yoyopa 5y ago
  the bot you're replying to is suggesting that nothing can be learned
arrow7000 5y ago
So you mean "Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs" isn't actually a good book to buy?
- flobosg 5y ago
  They’re printouts.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
Most of Plato's dialogues are essentially a masterclass in this technique, and if you let it, it can absolutely change how you engage with ideas in a very powerful way. The very real benefit that you, the ordinary human, can gain from these techniques is an awareness of many of the assumptions you have been making, and how little there actually is to justify them. It's been said that a fish will be the last to discover water. This will show you the proverbial ocean you've been oblivious to swimming in all your life. It may not be for everyone, but few authors have changed the way I think quite as drastically as reading Plato has.
literalsunbear 5y ago
i am begging you to please shut up and relax

failedengineer 5y ago

As an equally valid counterpoint, I submit data from the classic film "Dude, where's my car?" where the simple question "and then?" so greatly exacerbates the customer that there's a strong chance they will never return.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
if you'll recall from that movie they evidently liked it so much they recommended the place to a couple of out of town acquaintances. on edit: so what I'm saying, is like, word of mouth?
jasondigitized 5y ago
and then?

mbg721 5y ago

Columbo shows the benefits of having reality bent around the assumption that you know the culprit instantly even if you don't know why. Is there a single Columbo episode where he asks "just one more thing" of someone who isn't the murderer?

oneoff786 5y ago
Ooh a cop show deconstruction where the protagonist has to confront the fact that 75% of his successes were incorrect would be great
- mbg721 5y ago
  I saw an anecdote where someone asked the actor who played Perry Mason, "Haven't you ever lost a case?" and his answer was "I don't try the hard ones on Saturday night."
- duxup 5y ago
  I don’t know if it is still on but I’m the US there was a show where they followed actual detectives. The bad guy gets away because they don’t have enough evidence. People confess when there is hardly any evidence (a lot). The detectives realize they were wrong. Lots of things happen. Detectives being wrong isn’t a very dramatic like you might think. Many operate like scientist, gathering data, testing their theory along the way and adjusting. One of the most interesting episodes was when they investigated a murder of a local girl in a park. Whole department assigned to work it because her ex and the main suspect was a guy who was a local criminal who had done time for murder before and was suspected in other cases. Lots of misc evidence pointed at bad guy, but not enough to prosecute him, just lots of elements that pointed to him. Bad guy was smart enough not to talk to the police when they brought him in. Near the end they got back some cell phone location info ... in the park that night wasn't the bad guy... but her current boyfriend (the local good college boy) phone was there. He claimed he was elsewhere / hadn't seen her that night... Good boy confessed when they confronted him. That episode was wild.
  - watwut 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

Tangential but someone mentioned that S Jobs got his “one more thing…” from that show.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

If you like mystery TV shows. I can recommend these two below. 1. Magnum P.I. (Original) Private investigator on Oahu https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2937961753?ref_=vp_rv_1 2. It's about a monk solving crimes in medieval Europe. Mystery!: Cadfael https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108717/

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Derek Jacobi, also amazing in "I, Claudius".
- nwatson 5y ago
  That's the best TV show of all time.
DonHopkins 5y ago
My favorite mystery show of all time is A&E's "A Nero Wolfe Mystery", an incredibly faithful and visually perfect adaptation of some of the best of Rex Stout's many Nero Wolfe mysteries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe_(2001_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe_(2001_TV_series) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/ANeroWolfeMystery https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/ANeroWolfeMyst... One of the best ones is "The Doorbell Rang": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang >An hour later we were having a pleasant evening. The three guests and I were in the front room, in a tight game of pinochle, and Wolfe was in his one and only chair in the office, reading a book. The book was The FBI Nobody Knows. He was either gloating or doing research, I didn't know which. — Archie Goodwin writing in The Doorbell Rang, chapter 12 >Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover. >The Doorbell Rang generated controversy when it was published, due largely to its unflattering portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents. It was published at a time when the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed and the Bureau was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King Jr. Some dismissed the book: National Observer described it as "little more than an anti-FBI diatribe," and Nero Wolfe fan John Wayne wrote Rex Stout a terse note of goodbye after reading the condensed magazine version.: 461 But Clifton Fadiman, quoted in a Viking Press advertisement for The Doorbell Rang, thought it was "… the best of all Nero Wolfe stories." [...] >The FBI and The Doorbell Rang >Researching his book Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors (1988), journalist Herbert Mitgang discovered that Stout had been under FBI surveillance since the beginning of his writing career. Most of the heavily censored pages he was allowed to obtain from Stout's FBI dossier concerned The Doorbell Rang: >About one hundred pages in Stout's file are devoted to the novel, the FBI's panicky response to it and the attempt to retaliate against the author for writing it. The FBI's internal memorandum for its special agents told them that "the bureau desires to contribute in no manner to the sales of this book by helping to make it the topic of publicity." Orders came from headquarters in Washington that any questions concerning the book should be forwarded to the Crime Records Division, thereby putting book and author in a criminal category. >An internal memorandum by Special Agent M.A. Jones (name surprisingly not censored) summarized the novel and went on to write a critique for the FBI's top command — a rare "literary" honor accorded to few books in its files ... Following the review came a series of recommendations — first, Stout was designated as a person "not to be contacted" without prior approval by FBI headquarters in Washington ... >In April 1976, the Church Committee found that The Doorbell Rang is a reason Rex Stout's name was placed on the FBI's "not to contact list", which it cited as evidence of the FBI's political abuse of intelligence information.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Every Time Columbo Asked One More Thing | Season 1 | Columbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-jlomZhHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-jlomZhHU

lolive 5y ago

The Columbo TV show is, in my humble opinion, a masterpiece in disguise. The basic scheme of each episode is well known. But the beauty is in the details. The few minutes in each episode where the character is not in representation and you can grasp a few moments of his mental process. That's where you discover that: - he takes NOTHING as assumed - he works A LOT (usually not shown on screen, but sometimes mentionned by him, and you can infer that a given piece of information took a lot of time to discover) - he always starts from the ground up, asks (what seem to be) stupid questions - All of his actions are here to close the options. Conversations are done with no malice, but with that clear objective in mind. I do a lot of the Columbo way at work, and it works surprisingly well.

bgroat 5y ago
I watched Columbo for the first time in the past year and I *don't* think the format is well known (I was born in the 90s, so it may be a generational thing). I want to expand on it because it's really unique and amazing. For those who don't know, each episode opens with us seeing the crime being committed and covered up. We always know who it is, immediately. Then in the 2nd act we're introduced to Columbo, and we observe him trying to figure out what we already know. For all of the reasons stated in the parent article, Columbo is one of the most perfect representations of a "real smart person" in media. Another favourite of mine is Jonathan Creek
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  Just started rewatching the JC catalog last week. The tech seems a bit dated (big cellphones, cars, etc) but the stories generally hold up well (so far, and FWIR). I do wish there was some effort to remaster/restore/polish up the video. What we have (and what I've seen rebroadcast) just looks a bit... washed out. Also, I watch with headphones on, and it's amazing to me how much food people eat, and how loud they are, in many TV shows. Just went through Blue Murder (also with Caroline Quentin in it) and every episode there's one or two roundtable shots of the group eating... loudly. But yeah, JC is good, and I'll be watching another one tonight :)
  - 5y ago

concinds 5y ago

One thing might interest this community - the amusing amount of common actors between the Columbo and Star Trek series (and Quantum Leap, if you want to extend this). Obviously Shatner and Nimoy, but also the lovable John Fiedler (of 12 Angry Men fame, as the possessed Mr. Hengist in TOS's "Wolf in the Fold" and a cardiologist in Columbo) and the fantastic Theodore Bikel (as the murderer in Columbo's "Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", and as Worf's adoptive dad in TNG's "Family"). Ed Begley Jr, whose father was in 12 Angry Men, is in ST:VOY as Henry Starling, and in Columbo's "How to Dial a Murder" as Officer Stein. Laurence Luckinbill is Sybok (STrek V) and the victim in Columbo's "Make Me a Perfect Murder". Michael Strong: Columbo's "are you a witness to what he just did?" scene, and TOS's Dr Korby. There are metric tons of links with minor characters, for example James Greene in the Columbo classic "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" is also in TNG and DS9. Dozens more are discussed here: http://pub10.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=806565873&frmid=6&msgid=1308831&cmd=show http://pub10.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=8065... There are other amusing non-Star Trek but sci-fi-related coincidences too, like Robert Culp (IMO the best Columbo villain, a first-rate actor) voicing Dr. Breen in Half-Life 2. Obviously you could do this with absolutely any TV show, since there aren't that many actors in America, but this is a fun exercise and fans of both shows have a lot to be happy about. And if you're a fan of one, and start watching the other (I started with Columbo, possibly unlike most people here), try spotting common actors as a fun exercise.

mbg721 5y ago
There might have existed a moment where every broadcast television signal on Earth was showing John Fiedler (Mr. Peterson on the Bob Newhart Show, Piglet in Winnie-the-Pooh, a thousand other credits). He was everywhere in the same way people make fun of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. For Columbo side-roles, Vito Scotti is a fun one to spot. I think he was in four or five episodes.
dcminter 5y ago
I was once home sick from work and watching daytime TV between naps on the sofa. After I'd been watching an episode of Columbo for about three hours I realised it was actually an episode of Columbo, Diagnosis Murder, and Murder She Wrote (I think) consecutively with a few common bit-part actors and I'd nodded off between them :) Edit: I remember it as being Dick van Dyck in all of them, but it was a long time ago and that seems unlikely!

olvy0 5y ago

I too watched Columbo, together with my mom, when I was younger, and later watched some older episodes on my own. At some point at my job I found myself "debugging" people's requests for help/support using his "one last thing" technique. Especially if they are the type of enthusiastic, semi-sophisticated users, who try to second-guess how the application is written or why it crashed, without actually knowing anything about the code, and often make silly guesses and make suggestions which have little to do with reality. Before I started doing that, I would often be quite rude to people and cut them off, saying things like "no, that's not how the code works, I know that for a fact because I wrote it, the bug is somewhere else entirely". Then when I started using it instead, I would stare at them and say something like "oh, well, that's a very interesting option! Why didn't I think of that!" Then shut up for a few seconds like I'm deep in thought, then say "Oh, wait, I just thought of something. Do you mind showing me what you did on that screen again? I apologize but I have just this awful short term memory, can't remember what you wrote on that bug ticket ". Then they would indulge me, and I would say "Oh, wait, stop right there, that gave me a great idea what could have gone wrong, thank you". And then explain them in some details what caused the bug and how to work around it. Or I would say "thank you", get up and go after they showed me, and then pause at the door and say "oh, wait, there's this one thing I just thought about, do you mind if we try just one more thing? Sorry for taking your time" and then try the workaround, show them that it works, and explain it. All this when I actually understood what was the problem a few seconds after they showed me the problem. So I wasted a few more minutes being nice to this person and pretending I'm kind of dumb, but I know now they will won't be afraid to report future bugs to me or to suggest features, without fearing they will look dumb themselves. Unfortunately I have to be in the right frame of mind to do this, and lately I've found myself slipping more and more often back to the "that's not how the code works" retorts. It's good that this came up on NH today, it's a good reminder to try and go back to being a little more Columbo and a little less rude to people who try to be useful to me.

alar44 5y ago
That's ridiculous. I can't imagine tip toeing around people like that. There's a big difference between being rude and being to the point. What you're describing is manipulative, patronizing, and weird.

incomplete 5y ago

https://archive.is/8N3Ln https://archive.is/8N3Ln

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

My favorite: "How did you know it was me?" "Well, when I saw the crime scene, there was a match in the ashtray, and a lighter on the table. The lighter worked. So I knew..." "You knew a pipe smoker had been in the room. You weren't looking for a killer; you were looking for a pipe smoker. And there I was." "And there you were."

amelius 5y ago

So this is where Jobs stole "one more thing" from.

mwexler 5y ago

Columbo also was unlike many other crime shows of the time in that it showed the viewer the crime in opening minutes. Through the show, you knew who the murderer was, even if you didn't know all the whys or twists. Watching with that knowledge changes the story, as you see how the detective weaves together threads to get to where you know he needs to be by the end of the (somewhat overly drawn out) episodes.

hdivider 5y ago

Some quotations I took from Columbo, to try to gain some insight into his methods: "I like to get that background information very precise if I can." "You know what it's like; you get hold of half of something, and you can't get a hold of the other half." "Tell me about these movie stars. What do they do? They drink a lot?" (great open-ended question) "Do you think you could just talk about the suture, sort of describe it in so many words?" "It's just one of those things that gets into my head and keeps rolling around in there like a marble." "There is something else sir, but I don't know where all that leads to just yet...I'll just wander around sir. Thank you very much." "When people do something for the first time, detectives always want to know why."

donohoe 5y ago

I’m a big Columbo fan but it is a work of fiction. You cannot reasonably pull life lessons from a scripted work of fiction.

ska 5y ago
> You cannot reasonably pull life lessons from a scripted work of fiction. I think I know what you are aiming at here, but this statement is way, way too strong. It flies in the face of, well, being human. Most of we actually learn, for good or for ill, is from stories. Even most of the stuff we don't think of that way.
- donohoe 5y ago
  Good point. You are right. Thanks for adding this. I’m being too cynical.
Barrin92 5y ago
Of course you can, who is going to stop me, the life lesson police? In fact this is funnily enough a (meta?) lesson of Columbo. You can extract something out of anything. Whether it's true, a lie, fiction, non-fiction, if something is made with intent there's something to learn. Columbo's acuity lies in his perception and his mind much more so than in the often mundane things he looks at. It's his lack of prejudice and child like curiosity that stands out and that is as true in the world of Columbo as it is in the real one. And also maybe as a side note, most foundational texts concerning the big questions of life and underpinning most of human civilization are to large extent scripted and deliberately composed works of fiction, from the Vedas and Talmud to Shakespeare.
pfarrell 5y ago
I take it you’ve never watched “The Wire”
kiutroap 5y ago
You could use this show to teach people never to talk to the police. Someone pays for it in almost every single episode.

Sebguer 5y ago

This New Yorker comic is a really good read on the magic of Columbo: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rediscovering-columbo-in-2020 https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rediscovering-c... and this thread is a great follow-on: https://twitter.com/garius/status/1325743272493510656b https://twitter.com/garius/status/1325743272493510656b

PopAlongKid 5y ago

There is one Columbo episode "Forgotten Lady" that is somewhat unique in that his questioning technique doesn't exactly work out as usual, and even when he figures out the truth, it doesn't lead to justice. And he even wears a tuxedo! It is considered one of the better episodes of the original series, at least according to reviews at IMDB, and my own recent serendipitous viewing.

codeulike 5y ago

Got a box set of Columbo a few years ago and I'd never watched it before and like many people here are saying, each episode is almost movie length and brilliant in its own right, and the format of 'you the viewer know who did it, how can Columbo figure it out' is fantastic. One striking thing is that technology often plays a part - technology that would have been 'clever' at the time. e.g. "The Most Crucial Game" the bad guy uses a radio to pretend he's still in a private box at a football statium. In "Fade in to Murder" the bad guy provides an alibi for himself by drugging a friend, changing the time on his watch and then watching a VCR recorded football match with him, pretending that its live. There are lots of things like that, I suppose the never ending quest for clever twists led the writers to lots of gizmos and gadgets of the time.