An analysis of the hit television series Columbo and the investigative methods of its eponymous main character.
In the iconic detective show, which aired from 1968 to 2003, Lieutenant Columbo was known for his Socratic method of rhetorical inquiry. Feigning ignorance and employing a barrage of questions about minute details, the detective enacts a persona of “antipotency,” or counter authoritativeness, to affect the villains' underestimation of his attention to inconsistencies, abductive reasoning, and rhetorical efficacy. In his predominantly dialogue-based investigations, Columbo exhausts his suspects by asking a battery of questions concerning all minor details of the case—an aggravating, tedious provocation for the killer trying to maintain innocence.
In this engaging interdisciplinary study, Christyne Berzsenyi explores the character and his influences, dissects his methods of investigation, and assesses the show’s enduring legacy in academia and popular culture. While critical and theoretical, the text is also accessible to interdisciplinary readers, practical in application, and amusing for Columbo buffs.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING THE LIEUTENANT AND HIS VILLAINS
- Introduction: Introduction to Columbo And Columbo
- Columbo, An Inverted Mystery
- A Snapshot of Television and Film History: Pre-Columbo
- The Underestimated Detective (1910)
- Scholarship and the Lieutenant
- Historical, Literary, and Television Contexts: Shift to Grit and Realism
- Columbo and the Lieutenant: Literary Influences
- The Firsts in Short and Long Detective Fiction in English (1841-62)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Lieutenant Porfiry Petrovitch: Pretenses (1886)
- Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: Genius Detective (1887)
- British Golden Age, Drawing Room Mysteries, The Cozy (1920-40)
- Characterology and Character-Based Detective TV Shows
- The Lieutenant with His Sergeants
- Columbo: A Blend of Genres, Influences, and Deviations
- Columbo, The Suspect Charmer
- Suspects as Resistant Responders
- Charming the Stinging Villains
- Glamour in Columbo
- Two Sides of Columbo Presented on a Case by Case Basis
- Columbo Talks to “Dog,” “Étude in Black” (1972)
- Columbo and a Resistant Responder, “Double Shock” (1973)
- Dual Personae, “An Exercise in Fatality” (1974)
- Columbo and the Ancient Greek Virtue of Sophrosyne
- Looking for the Right Word: Antipotency
- The Columbo Killer
- White, middle-aged, wealthy, intelligent, cultured, successful, arrogant
- Audience-Villain Relationships and Columbo
- Columbo’s Five Types of Villains
- Columbo, Women of His Investigations, and the Equal Rights Movement
- The Women’s Professional Movement Strategic Male Chauvinism
- Columbo’s Female Villains: Ladylike but Lethal
- Columbo and the Female Accomplices
- Columbo and the Female Witnesses
PART TWO: COLUMBO’S METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
- Crime Scene Examination and Ratiocination
- What Viewers Know and Don’t Know about What Columbo Knows
- The Working Cop’s Habit of Asking Questions: A Rhetoric of Inquiry
- Power of Asking Different Types of Questions
- The Socratic Method of Dialectic, aporia, and Standard Elenchus
- Techniques of Columbo’s Rhetorical Inquiry
- Fake Questions Types with Multiple Functions
- Probing Questions Types with Multiple Functions
- Killing Them Softly: Irritating the Suspects in Seven Modes
- Obligating the Suspect with Appeasement Pressure and the Extrication of Any Threat
- False modesty, Excessive flattery
- Repeated, Disingenuous Apologies
- Wasting the Suspect’s Time
- Circumstantial Speech and Inane Storytelling
- False Exits, “Oh, I almost forgot”
- False Exits, “Just one more thing”
- Special Cases of Direct Confrontation: Columbo Gets Mad
- Columbo Closes the Case: Capture and Consequences
- Lieutenant Columbo: Virtuous or Villainous?
- Columbo: The Denouement
PART THREE: COLUMBO’S LEGACY IN POPULAR CULTURE AND ACADEMIA
- Television Detectives Influenced by Lieutenant Columbo
- Spoofing the Lieutenant
- Using Columbo’s Method in Our Everyday Lives
- “Just One More Thing”: Columbo and Spectatorship