Good-bye, Lieutenant Columbo
By: Whiteling
Columbo with his beloved canine, Dog
My favorite detective, other than the classy Jessica Fletcher who solves murders in Murder She Wrote (I blogged about her here), is her complete opposite: the scruffy Columbo. Fletcher looks, and acts, efficient and observant. Her method is methodical. Columbo, with his scruffy jacket, mop of a hair, squinting eye (which he lost due to cancer at age three, and which is a prosthetic) and exuberant side-kick dog, is less threatening. People don't notice him much, so he gets away with rummaging through homes, cars and other private properties.
"He looks like a flood victim," Falk once said. "You feel sorry for him. He appears to be seeing nothing, but he's seeing everything."
Columbo's side kick dog is a large, friendly basset hound, with a deep and boisterous bark and an incessantly wagging tail. He is also pretty stubborn, and at times makes his master Columbo carry to where he's supposed to go. And Columbo obliges, even when he has not time for stubborn, tail-wagging dogs sabotaging his murder investigations.
The dog's name is...Dog. Nothing else would fit, is Columbo's excuse for not naming the poor Dog.
Columbo is a detective of Italian descent. He is actually played by Jewish actor Peter Falk. But to my surprise, during the episode Identity Crisis, Columbo rips through in Italian with one of his co-actors, Vito Scotti, who plays Salvatore Defonte, an Italian winemaker.
But, Dog takes over the scene whenever he appears, which is why Columbo leaves him in the car (with promises of ice-cream) as he goes about the important work of solving murders.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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