This new project of watching all the female murderers and accomplices on Columbo is not making an expert out of this first-time viewer. My sense is that the men who kill here are far more cold-blooded, motivated by greed, envy and a lust for . . . well, anything. And, from the feedback I’ve been getting, the idea of the female of the species being more deadly is moot here: the male might be more entertaining, and when it comes to dueling with the detective, more purely . . . Columbo. 

At this point, if I want to discuss a true female monster, I’d have to go all the way back to Lee Grant in “Ransom for a Dead Man.” I suppose Honor Blackman didn’t have much heart, either, but then she was an actress . . . The rest of our line-up tends to invoke some measure of sympathy for whatever brought them to this homicidal crisis – and that factor usually involves a man! Susan Clark barely survived a bullying father, only to have her brother take up the mantle. Anne Baxter killed her deceiving husband in the past, setting off a chain of tragedy. Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, and Joyce Van Patten all found that whatever heights they had reached in their work were jeopardized by men. And Ruth Gordon sought justice – rightly or wrongly –against the man she believed responsible for the death of her beloved niece.

That theme continues today with “Make Me a Perfect Murder,” which features Trish Van DeVere as Kay Freestone, a television executive who, at the start, believes she is living the good life. Kay works hard, and not just at her office desk. Believing in a new TV-movie, she edits it herself. Standing up for an old friend (Lainie Kazan) who was once a great song-and-dance star but is now plagued by alcoholism, she gets her a job and then troubleshoots every time the star goes off the rails. And she juggles a secret relationship with her boss Mark (Laurence Luckinbill) who has promised to take her with him on his rise to the top. 

It’s a surefire bet that when Mark gets that raise, he dumps Kay, buying her a snazzy new car as a consolation prize. With both her heart and her ambitions shattered, it takes Kay no time at all to conceive a murder plan that contains one of the series’ most heart-stopping examples of time management. This sequence is a real kick, with Kay literally racing against the clock to gun down her faithless lover and provide herself with an alibi. 

Van DeVere is terrific here, and while the episode focuses on her, we get a fine character study of a woman stuck in a particularly chauvinistic field who is just trying to do her job and get recognized for it. It’s clear that Kay needs to work twice as hard and never fail, and still she is perceived as “less than” by her male counterparts. In scenes with Luckinbill or with Patrick O’Neal as the head honcho from the East, the men tend to “handle” Kay and fear her getting upset “because she’s a woman;” their patronizing attitudes are so strong  that even a viewer’s trigger finger will start to itch. 

The problem here for me – and this is never a good sign – is Columbo himself, who is given all sorts of subplots to “entertain” us, beginning with a rare appearance in the opening sequence of the episode. Here, he gets involved in an auto accident and ends up with a brace around his neck, which Falk mines for “humor” for half the episode. His attitude toward Kay is also very strange: unlike the past several episodes where he treats his adversaries with both respect and fondness, here he seems to be, yes, patronizing Kay. True, Columbo’s methods include being a constant nudge, but his interruption of Kay’s work becomes Humorous Subplot #2, “Columbo’s Fondness for Pushing Buttons and Mishandling Technology. We’re dealing with another 95-minute episode here, and if we could have done away with the neck brace and the button pushing, I would have been much happier with the whole affair. 

In the end, I wonder how much more interesting this might have been as an inverted mystery without Columbo. Van DeVere is so good playing the many facets of Kay Freestone, and she has enough male adversaries trying to bring her down (and ultimately succeeding) without being accosted by the shambling detective in a raincoat. But the show isn’t called Kay. On the brighter side, we do get another glimpse of my favorite series character: Dog, the basset hound; in fact, it’s Dog’s love of watching TV that gives Columbo the clue he needs to crack the case!

“Make Me a Perfect Murder” debuted in the middle of Season 7, a season that marked the end of the 1970’s run of Columbo on NBC. The detective would not reappear until 1989 when he leapt over to ABC for a series of twenty-four longer “specials” averaging 90 – 120 minutes in length that appeared sporadically until 2003. I have no idea why this happened, but I’m sure I’ll get the scoop from my buddy Sergio Angelini when we draft together since Columbo is one of his favorite shows. I have to admit I approached the final ten episodes on our distaff list with trepidation, fearing that the later Columbo episodes would play faster and looser with a character with whom I’m not particularly in love. But since at least a couple of these made Sergio’s Top Ten list, I know I have something to look forward to. 

So let’s start with “Sex and the Married Detective” . . . 

I’ll say it right at the start: Lindsay Crouse is absolutely wonderful here as Dr. Joan Allenby, a renowned sex therapist whose medical research and popular radio program have helped open society’s eyes about the secrets to having an amazing sex life. Joan practices what she preaches with her lover and business partner, David Kincaid (Stephen Macht), and so she is disappointed when business prevents David from joining her on a business trip to Chicago. But when her flight gets cancelled and Joan decides to return home by way of the office, she is shocked to approach her clinic’s guest bedroom and learn that David’s business is funny business with her own assistant. 

As we all know, “hell hath no fury . . . yada yada yada,” and at least Joan’s murderous solution is sex positive. She makes a date with David to skip a fund-raiser for the symphony in order to engage in some kinky sexual fantasy, heads to the symphony hall herself to establish an alibi, and then changes costume to become “Lisa,” David’s fantasy woman for the evening. (It’s amazing what a black wig, man’s fedora, and sexy costuming will do to a woman’s appearance, as everyone who sees “Lisa” fails to recognize her as Joan!) Her plan works like a charm, with David ending up shot to death in the same clinic boudoir where Joan saw him cheating on her. 

Of course, the police are called in, and a Lieutenant from Homicide is placed in charge of the investigation. He is played by Peter Falk . . . but I almost have no idea who this guy is! Okay, it’s Columbo, but he has become a clown version of himself. We’re used to seeing him play the fool in order to lull his quarry into complacency. Here, though, Columbo just as often acts genuinely foolish, from his opening faux pas of smoking on an elevator to one of the series’ low points where we learn that Columbo played the tuba as a kid. 

I confess that these “endearing” character moments for our hero are nails on a chalkboard to me. You can tell it’s getting to Dr. Joan as well, which I understand is the point. The point is that, for me, an oversized Columbo has a great capacity to undercut my enjoyment of an episode. It’s to Crouse’s credit that she carries me through, not only because she stands up to Columbo’s antics but because she pretty much has to stand alone here against a supporting cast of boobs. Stephen Macht is great as her cheating beau, and it’s lovely to see Marge Redmond (who I usually saw play nuns, whether in The Trouble with Angels or The Flying Nun.) But all of the other characters . . . Joan’s nerdy fellow doctors, the horny Russian cleaning woman, and the various patrons of the symphony – oh, and that tuba teacher!!! –  constitute an effusion of weak comic relief. 

Clearly, the passage of years and the move to ABC wrought some uncomfortable changes to the approach to Columbo, both as a character and as a program. Coming up: two cases from 1990, including – or so I’m told – one of the worst and one of the best of the series.