April 26, 2025
It has always been a source of disappointment to me that ABC denied us Columbo’s Last Case, Peter Falk’s proposed final farewell to Columbo.
OK, maybe it isn’t as disappointing as the 2006 NLCS, but I was there, I saw the series end on Carlos Beltrán taking strike three, thank you very much, so yes, maybe I take that one a little personally.
SWING YOU BASTARD!
But I digress. The Columbo series may not have been at the top of it’s game, but the final movie, Columbo Likes the Nightlife (2003) showed that there was still “just one more thing” left in the series. Falk had an idea of a final episode to retire Lt. Columbo, but the brass at ABC thought, among other things, that Peter Falk was too old and his health wasn’t good enough and did not think they could insure him. (They may have had a point, but I’m not going to go into that here.) Paramount tried the same thing with DeForest Kelley at one point.
So what would retirement look like for Lt. Columbo? He and his wife may or may not have had children (some fans aren’t convinced he had a wife) but he did have nieces and nephews, and he did take pride in his family, so I think his later years would look something like this:
Yup. that’s about right.
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