Great Old TV Episodes...from Columbo

 

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, NBC had a great programming concept: the NBC Mystery Movie, in which over the course of weeks they would show episodes from a multitude of ongoing series including MacMillan & Wife, McCloud, Faraday & Company, Tenafly, Banacek, The Snoop Sisters, Ellery Queen...and perhaps the most beloved, Columbo. Initially I didn't care for this series as I foolishly automatically opposed murder mysteries where the perpetrator is known from the start...but it's the psychological duel between the killer and Peter Falk's enduring character of Lt. Columbo, always in his ratty old raincoat and seriously underestimated by all, that gives it such a great, enduring appeal.  The murder is always conceived to be airtight, but right off the bat Columbo starts poking holes in the scheme and spends most of the episode politely hounding his suspect, tearing bit by bit at their sense of security until it's all completely uncovered at the end.  Such was the case in the Season 2 episode The Most Dangerous Match, first shown in early 1973 and starring Laurence Harvey as Emmett Clayton, an obnoxious, overly proud and arrogant chess master threatened by an old champion from Eastern Europe, played by Jack Kruschen who has come out of retirement for a special, highly-publicized match that just so happens to be taking place in Columbo's home territory.  After being humiliated by his elderly opponent in a private warm-up match (see above picture), Clayton plots his demise in order to escape the public humiliation he sees for himself if the match goes on...but he hasn't foreseen an even more formidable opponent: Lt. Columbo...

I've been writing for the past few weeks about various games, but have so far avoided discussing chess...not to fear, I plan to do so before long.  For some reason, chess causes a lot of folks to get very uptight as if their whole sense of worth is tied up in their performance...Harvey's character in this episode is an extreme example.  But it doesn't have to be chess: it could be any kind of endeavor that can serve as a snare drawing one's fanatical devotion and sometimes creating a bubble of superiority and infallibility that, when popped by another, can be personally devastating. Diversify your interests, I say, even if that means you come up playing "second fiddle" to others from time to time. I remember an excellent old Twilight Zone episode, A Game of Pool, starring Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters, with a very similar theme but a different game...