July 15, 2023
Columbo is a rare TV show that deserves the accolades it has received. It is both a critical darling and a viewer’s favorite. It is also one of my favorite shows, which is why one particular episode annoys me as much as it entertains me, Swan Song, season 3, episode 7.
In all honesty, this is one of my favorite episodes. Johnny Cash is superb, the killing original, and the story and acting top notch. Briefly, Johnny Cash is an ex-convict who is a megastar gospel singer. The only problem is, he sees none of the money since he is being blackmailed by a woman who is using all the money he earns to build a Church. As Columbo murderers do, he murders her and stages it to look like an accident, a plane crash. The fact that he also breaks his leg adds authenticity to his story.
Tommy Brown (Cash) is portrayed very sympathetically throughout. He’s a victim, he’s being used, he’s being forced to do things against his will. All true, as far as it goes. Columbo feels great sympathy for him, even liking him.
But here’s the problem. that’s not as far as it goes. Columbo captures the murderer with the old chestnut of means (the airplane), motive (he was being blackmailed), and opportunity (he was piloting the plane on a foggy night.) However, Columbo never asked one simple question- WHY was Tommy Brown being blackmailer? What was the hold over him? Columbo never tried to find out.
And here is where Columbo got it wrong. Tommy Brown was a pedophile. He was sleeping with underage girls. And whatever he was in jail for (we never find out, but it clearly wasn’t for this), this is worse, and there is proof of his signature on hotel registers.
And while some murderers are sympathetic- and Columbo clearly has sympathy for Brown, poor blackmail victim who sings like an angel. And while it bad enough that Tommy Brown murdered his blackmailer, Columbo ignores the other victim- the other coldly calculated victim. Tommy Brown in that same place crash murdered the underaged girl he had slept with, removing the only witness to his crime.
Tommy Brown murdered the girl he first victimized when he slept with her as a minor, and then murdered her for the sole reason that she was the girl he victimized.
Tommy Brown is a beast.
At the end of the episode Columbo even shares a tender moment alone with Brown, alone in his car. At no point in this investigation did Columbo care what Brown did that gave the blackmailer hold over him. He never cared that a young girl who was, to him, an innocent victim died in the crash. He never mentioned her at all.
And what makes matters worse, from a production point of view, is that this plot and structure is a copy of an episode from earlier in season 3, Any Old Port In A Storm, episode 2.
Donald Pleasance plays Adrian Carsini, another fine actor in a great role. This story is yet another personal favorite, and it gets right all that Swan Song gets wrong. Adrian Carsini is a sympathetic murderer. He played the owner of a winery to which he had given his life. It was all he lived for, all he wanted, yet his brother, who owned the property, sold the land out from under him to a competitor. In a fit or anger and rage, he hit his brother over the head with a heavy object. Tommy Brown, on the other hand, planned out his killing in advance. It cold and calculated and Brown knew exactly what he was doing. And while I am not letting Adrian Carsini off the hook, he had no plans to kill anyone, it was his temper that got the better of him.
At the end of Any Old Port, Columbo sits in his car and sips wine with Carsini, who really was no killer, although maybe not that nice of a person. Columbo realized that there was never any intent to kill, and respected this man in other ways. Before going off to jail, Columbo shares a bottle of wine with him.
It is a scene duplicated in Swan Song, but Swan Song gets it all wrong. Whereas Carsini was an unintentional murderer, Brown was someone who had planned a double murder. Whereas Carsini was being tortured by his crime, Brown had no such qualms. Add to this is the fact that not only was Brown a pedophile in the past, he attempted to get with more young women in the course of the episode. He was unrepentant and unremorseful.
Tommy Brown is not the equal of Adrian Carsini in any way. Yet they steal the ending of Any Old Port to portray him that way!
It doesn’t work.
I can only imagine the look on Columbo’s face when it comes out in court that he was idolizing a pedophile, someone who was actively trying to sleep with young girls even as Columbo was investigating him, and someone who committed a double homicide, a person who had no qualms of killing someone whose only reason to die was that Brown had preyed upon her in the past and she could testify against him.
Tommy Brown may have been the most evil of Columbo murderers, yet Columbo celebrated him.
Columbo got it wrong.
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