thanks, now i'm gonna spend the next few months randomly interrupting my friends "what are sneeches?"
I've been watching a lot of OTA TV lately and I find the Columbo formula refreshing. It frees the series from a lot of mystery tropes like trying to keep the audience guessing with red herrings, or otherwise trying not to make it obvious who the killer is. You don't even have to see the beginning to know who the killer is in a Columbo episode; you can tune in in the middle and it's still obvious (and almost always the most famous guest star).
You know I was talking about Columbo recently and it was brought up that he's a cop and ACAB so is therefore Columbo also a bastard?
I thought about this. So firstly he's a fictional character and you don't apply that kind of thing to fictional characters, which Bongo pointed out. And also he's a detective, not a cop exactly. Even in a society without cops you'd still need detectives to solve crimes. Buuuuut, I do think there's an undercurrent in Columbo that sort of sets him apart, and it's one that others have noticed: he almost always (or very nearly always) goes after the rich.
There's been a lot of back and forth about the classism aspect of Columbo that even I, who only recently got into the show a few years back, have seen a lot of discussion about. Whether the writers and creators of the show intended that aspect to be there doesn't really matter to me, though. I think the message of a bunch of rich assholes who are used to getting their way no matter what being pecked to death (well, jail) by Columbo to not so gently remind them that they actually can't do whatever they want and they are NOT above the law is a good one.
Cops exist, in actual form and function, to protect the property of, and serve, the rich. Columbo escapes ACAB by doing exactly the opposite of that.
