What is your favourite Columbo episode so far?
ooouh well it most obviously is Lovely but Lethal, cus of the character dynamics for me. The big three being:
cold and calculating Viveca Scott,
manipulative yet naive Shirley Blaine,
and the EVER so iconically sassy corporate rival; David Lang.
There's just a LOT between all of them; even if we take the murder plot out of it. Viveca and Lang have a tense rivalry as competitors in the cosmetic industry, but Lang like to slyly hide it by playing this spry, mustache-twisting guy as a front (I imagine that's just how he is though).
He KNOWS that Viv can't lash out at him (at least in public) because so many factors were finger-waggling in her face, and he's reeeaally smug about it. 1.) She's a woman CEO in the '70s, it was considerably rare(r) for women to even reach THAT kind of positional power, so her every action will be far more scrutinized than a man's. 3.) Lashing out at Lang means he can take advantage of the situation and use it to deface Viv's company.
ALSO☝🏼🧙🏼♂ even when she's not all up in his face or him all up in HER face, he still keeps tabs on controversies she's involved in, for example: "You haven't really hit with a really good new product since you, uh, pirated those French lipsticks two years ago."
So, when they exchange verbal blows, it's very underhanded, in a 'knives concealed in a bouquet of flowers' kinda way.
Then we have Shirley; sandwiched between it all. In the beginning where we meet the trio, it was Lang's first time publicly appearing w/ Shirley in front of Viv because he introduced her as secretary (he wouldn't need to do that IF he introduced the two in some prev interaction). And we know Shirley is Viv's mole, so their history goes BEFORE this. How long did they know each other? How did they meet? How many times did they meet? The duo is pretty comfy w/ each other to the point where they can talk casual smack (quote: "Did you hear of anything so insufferably male?") , so probably for a while + recounting that they've met at Viv's fat farm retreat multiple times.
I could talk more about the episode, but just to wrap it up: there's a lot of wiggle room in the story where the audience can interpret several things in their own way. I CAN MAKE SO MANY HEADCANONS AUAGHH AUGH AUGHH. This episode alone can kick off into its own series if it really wanted to (sadly, it didn't).