Columbo (season 5)

Columbo (season 5)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	6
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	September 14, 1975 – May 2, 1976

This is a list of episodes from the fifth season of Columbo.

Broadcast history

The season originally aired Sundays at 9:00-10:30 pm (EST) as part of The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie.

DVD release

The DVD was released by Universal Home Video.

Episodes

No. in series	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Runtime	Original air date
32	1	"Forgotten Lady"	Harvey Hart	Bill Driskill	92 minutes	September 14, 1975
When elderly physician Henry Willis (Sam Jaffe) refuses to finance a return to the spotlight for his wife, aging former movie star Grace Wheeler (Janet Leigh), she kills him in his sleep, passing it off as a suicide. Her butler (Maurice Evans) believes that Grace was in a private screening room the entire time, watching one of her classic films. This is the only episode where the murderer is not arrested, as Ned Diamond (John Payne), her longtime song and dance partner, falsely confesses to save Grace, after Columbo points out to him that she is dying of a brain disease {ironically the reason her husband refused to finance her return} and doesn't even remember the murder. Columbo has no choice but to arrest Diamond, both of them realizing that by the time he is cleared, Grace will have died after spending her last days living happily in the past. The episode features excerpts from the 1953 musical comedy Walking My Baby Back Home, which starred Leigh. (This movie ran while she was committing the crime.)
33	2	"A Case of Immunity"	Ted Post	Teleplay: Lou Shaw Story: James Menzies	73 minutes	October 12, 1975
Hassan Salah (Héctor Elizondo), chief diplomat of the Legation of Swahari, an Arab nation with a new young king, has a scheme for shifting power within his government. He enlists Rachman Habib (Sal Mineo), a naïve idealist in the Legation, to help him stage the murder of a security officer, then plants evidence to make it look like the work of radicals. Salah pins the murder on the now-absent Habib, who, as part of the plan, has gone into hiding. Columbo quickly unravels the truth, but finds himself stymied by the fact that Salah has diplomatic immunity and cannot be arrested. Columbo then meets the new king, who is on a diplomatic visit to the United States, and impresses the young monarch with his down-to-earth personality. Columbo gets Salah to confess the murder with his monarch in the next room listening. To stay in the U.S. rather than face Middle Eastern justice, he waives his immunity from prosecution. Jeff Goldblum, in his first TV role, non-speaking, is a protestor outside the embassy.
34	3	"Identity Crisis"	Patrick McGoohan	Bill Driskill	94 minutes	November 2, 1975
A CIA operative codenamed "Geronimo" (Leslie Nielsen) recognizes the man he was sent to cut a deal with as speech-writing consultant Nelson Brenner (Patrick McGoohan, who also directed), a CIA double agent from the past. This forces Brenner to kill Geronimo before Brenner's true identity is exposed. Columbo finds himself blocked at every turn by a man accustomed to keeping secrets, and even by a visit from the Director of the Agency (David White). The episode features another French car, the Citroën SM. An in joke is that the Director's name is Philip Corrigan (aka Secret Agent X-9). In a nod to McGoohan's role on The Prisoner, his character repeatedly uses the phrase "Be seeing you" in the episode.[1]
35	4	"A Matter of Honor"	Ted Post	Brad Radnitz	73 minutes	February 1, 1976
Retired and renowned matador Luis Montoya (Ricardo Montalban) is a Mexican national hero. His trusted bookkeeper, Hector Rangel, has a son Curro, who is also a bullfighter. But when Curro (A Martinez) is gored in the bullring and hospitalized, Montoya unintentionally freezes up in fear, rather than show the bravery he's known for. To spare his reputation, Montoya decides to kill Hector. He lures Hector to the ring, and tranquilizes him, then unleashes the bull on him, since Hector is now vulnerable. The result is that it looks like Hector tried to avenge the bull that gored Curro. Columbo, who happens to be in Tijuana for the weekend, is recognized by the local chief of police (Pedro Armendáriz, Jr.), who enlists Columbo's help.
36	5	"Now You See Him..."	Harvey Hart	Michael Sloan	85 minutes	February 29, 1976
Jesse Jerome (Nehemiah Persoff) is the owner of the Cabaret of Magic, and headlines the Great Santini (Jack Cassidy), a magician extraordinaire. On the side, though, he's blackmailing Santini because he knows that Santini is really Sgt. Stefan Mueller, a former Nazi SS prison guard. To avoid being exposed, Mueller kills Jerome in the middle of his famed water tank escape act, thereby giving himself what he believes to be an airtight alibi. To do so, he sneaks out of a room where he hides during the act, makes his way through the cabaret's kitchen dressed as a waiter up to Jerome's office, shoots him, then returns to his act without anyone missing him. Robert Loggia portrays Harry Blandford, the club's maître d’ and Jerome's partner. This was Jack Cassidy's last Columbo episode.
37	6	"Last Salute to the Commodore"	Patrick McGoohan	Jackson Gillis	98 minutes	May 2, 1976
Commodore Otis Swanson (John Dehner) is a retired naval officer who owns a shipbuilding company, and is not happy with the shady dealings of his son-in-law Charles Clay (Robert Vaughn), who has turned the modest and upstanding business into a name-brand production line for status-seekers. Nor is he pleased with any of the people closest to him -- his alcoholic daughter Joanna Clay (Diane Baker), his middle-aged playboy nephew Swanny Swanson (Fred Draper), his lawyer Jonathan Kittering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), and his ship yard foreman Wayne Taylor (Joshua Bryant). He announces at his birthday party his intention to sell the company. That night, someone murders the Commodore. Although we don't see the murder on-screen, Clay is seen covering up the death by taking the Commodore's body out on his yacht at night and throwing it overboard. Columbo investigates with the help of a veteran sergeant and a 29-year-old novice. The detective's conviction that Clay committed the crime proves premature; when Clay himself turns up dead, Columbo realizes that someone else is responsible for both murders. This episode departs from the usual Columbo format in several ways. First, the man implied to be the killer is not, and thus the episode becomes a true whodunit, with the actual murderer revealed at the end. Second, neither murder is shown. Third, Columbo's personality is atypically agitated, impatient and less amiable than in other episodes. Fourth, regular cliches such as "Just one more thing" and "Something's been botherin' me" are absent from this episode. Fifth, rather than working alone, Columbo works closely alongside two other police officers, who at times interrogate suspects. Finally, the episode departs from the usual style in presenting a far greater emphasis on comedy, including some minor slapstick elements, and features a far more light-hearted and less dramatic tone.

References

1. Britton, Wesley Alan (2004). Spy Television. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 110. ISBN 9780275981631. Retrieved 7 August 2014.