About 20 years ago a study came out suggesting that patients about to have surgery should be warned that they would be experiencing pain afterwards. This led to better pain management than when patients were reassured that the pain wasn't going to be that bad. I don't know if those results were ever replicated, but I think the findings of this study are relevant more broadly. For instance, I have been warned by numerous reviews on imdb and elsewhere, that "Last Salute to the Commodore" is one of the worst, possibly the worst episode of Colombo ever. So I went into watching it with extremely low expectations and therefore ended up mildly enjoying it. I agree it's weird, and some of the scenes are just plain annoying, such as the one in the boat yard when Colombo starts screaming and everybody's screaming to be heard over the industrial noises in the background. That seemed gratuitously irritating, but other odd scenes were amusingly absurd. It almost seemed like Robert Vaughn's character had been written for Patrick McGoohan. Was the original plan to have McGoohan both act and direct? For instance Robert Vaughn said something like "I like my findings preliminary," and when asked "Smoke?" answered, "Erratically." That sort of quirkiness seemed out of character for a character played by Robert Vaughn.
I enjoyed having young Mac on board and getting to see Bruce Kirby's character play a bigger role than usual. This episode broke from the formula in that we didn't see the murder committed, so we got a little bit of a plot twist. I found the educational bits about sailing mildly interesting. I like that Colombo typically teaches you something about some kind of subculture or area of endeavor in each episode. I thought the absurd and goofy tone was okay for one episode and it seemed that this might have been a significant episode in some way. I wonder if there had been a plan to end the series with this one. I think I read somewhere that McGoohan had been asked to take over for Peter Falk in the season following this one and refused. If there was some dissatisfaction among the creatives involved, could the bizarreness of the episode have been a little bit of "up yours" to the powers that be? The final scene with Colombo rowing the boat into the horizon with a melancholy rendition of "This old man" playing made me think it was perhaps a last salute to Colombo... but fortunately no.
I enjoyed having young Mac on board and getting to see Bruce Kirby's character play a bigger role than usual. This episode broke from the formula in that we didn't see the murder committed, so we got a little bit of a plot twist. I found the educational bits about sailing mildly interesting. I like that Colombo typically teaches you something about some kind of subculture or area of endeavor in each episode. I thought the absurd and goofy tone was okay for one episode and it seemed that this might have been a significant episode in some way. I wonder if there had been a plan to end the series with this one. I think I read somewhere that McGoohan had been asked to take over for Peter Falk in the season following this one and refused. If there was some dissatisfaction among the creatives involved, could the bizarreness of the episode have been a little bit of "up yours" to the powers that be? The final scene with Colombo rowing the boat into the horizon with a melancholy rendition of "This old man" playing made me think it was perhaps a last salute to Colombo... but fortunately no.