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Columbo's whole shtick is to pretty much pilpul people into confessing, while being smarmy and faking modesty the whole time.
One of the episodes of it that I remember most was when "Best Jew" Bill Shatner plays a TV detective who goes toe-to-toe with Columbo. Sadly, Columbo won, and Shatner's character gets arrested for being a legitimate victim and committing a public service.
You're kind of right, but attention to detail is what makes a good detective, so idk if pilpul is really the right expression. Haven't seen the Shatner episode, but I look forward to it.
Also I remember at least 1-2 episodes that ended where Columbo couldn't prove it... "Publish or Perish", S03E05. Essentially it ends with Columbo speculating how the murder went down, but there's no confession, no convicting evidence. It just kind of ends... I'll have to rewatch it now, but I seem to remember thinking "that doesn't really prove he killed anyone" when the credits rolled.
From what I recall, Columbo's shtick is to nag everyone, all while blatantly pretending to be a sort of nebbish, culminating in his famous "just one more thing" catchphrase.
Pilpul might not be the right word for what for what Columbo does, but what he does comes off as a Jewish technique to me and, well, pilpul is the only word I know for Jewish tricks in the form of wordplay. I appreciate that Columbo's nebbishness is done in a way where we the viewer know that his suspects know he's not the wimpy rube that he chooses to present himself as, but still his presentation as being the opposite of the normal hard-boiled, assertive detective seems to me like a bit of a Jewish subversion of the genre.
Have you seen the "Spock" episode?
Also I remember at least 1-2 episodes that ended where Columbo couldn't prove it
I've noticed that come up in the crime shows over the decades as well. I don't know if it is just the writers dropping the ball, the show thinking an unsolved crime would be edgier, or if the editors cut out too much when they pared the show down.
Maybe it's my bias, but it seems to me that leaving loose ends really rankles the audience of detective shows lol
but it seems to me that leaving loose ends really rankles the audience of detective shows lol
I wasn't really rankled by it; I was just kind of like, "Well, that won't hold up in court. Guess he got away with it!"
Yea I've see Leonard Nimoy surgeon one - which is another that quite possibly didn't hold up in court. Nimoy planted the dissolving sutures on Columbo in the OR, and Columbo didn't notice at the time. Columbo later appears in Nimoy's office and pulls the dissolving suture out from his pocket... now a court is supposed to believe that Nimoy planted the suture on Columbo? Or that Columbo just had some suture in his pocket and is claiming it belongs to his prime suspect... like that's really easy for Nimoy to say "Wait wait wait jew... you're pulling suture out of your pocket... and telling me it belongs to me? That I put it there?" Pretty flimsy, especially for a case where Columbo's been studying and pocketing suture throughout the entire episode. "That suture could have come from anywhere" is a viable defense.
Mind you this is before DNA could be pulled off the suture to match the patient... also I know Columbo is supposed to be Italian but that does seem like a jew trick a la "crying out in pain as he strikes you."
Also pilpul to me implies sort of a torturing of the language. Like "the Holocaust was real in my mind therefore it was real." Like yes, your mind exists in reality, so therefore your thoughts are real to some extent, but to equate your thoughts with physical, objective reality is an exercise in pilpul. It is a common lawyer tactic.
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