Captain Janeway used to be married to Columbo, sort of

Originally published at: Captain Janeway used to be married to Columbo, sort of | Boing Boing

5 Likes

Finally showing “(S)he Who Must Not Be Seen” [warning: TV Tropes link] seldom works out well.

4 Likes

Hey, that’s Dr. Carol Marcus with her (Bibi Besch) from Wrath of Khan. It’s a two-fer of future Star Trek stars!

5 Likes

How I imagined Mrs Columbo.

15 Likes

And it’s got Don Stroud from before the knife fight! Though I’ll always remember him for Mike Hammer.

1 Like

No, that’s Magnum’s friend. You haven’t seen the crossover episode!?

7 Likes

At least Columbo has an excuse for all the bodies that turn up every week. Assuming that she’s not killing them herself, she should be locked up by the SCP Foundation.

6 Likes

I have every episode of Columbo including every Kate Mulgrew spinoff. They reside on a flash drive in my RV for rainy days.

As for the age thingy, on Mike and Molly, in real life, Carl and his grandma are only 6 years apart. They pulled it off well.

The internet is always pointing out “plot holes” in various shows, I never give much thought to things like that, it’s all pretend so none of it matters to me.

Mrs. Columbo was also raising a child. Through all the years of Columbo, he sometimes had kids and sometimes he didn’t. In one episode, A freind In Deed, he also appeared to be a bachelor.

Today’s Columbo trivia… His actual wife appeared in six episodes of Columbo.

15 Likes

Murder, She Wrote is my comfortable throwback show. Perhaps as I get older I hope her style rubs off, since who wouldn’t want to be a jet-setting senior who solves crimes and may (or may not) be knocking people off on the sly?

OTOH, not dating that doctor; no thanks!

Edited to share this awesome blog that breaks down each MSW show hilariously: https://murdersheblogged1.wordpress.com/

8 Likes

While Columbo had high praise for his wife and even sometimes gave her credit for being smarter than him I still think Mulgrew is talented and smart enough on her own that she deserved better than a spinoff.

Well, that particular spinoff anyway.

5 Likes

At least his wife didn’t get pregnant, have the kid then die in a plane crash, never to be mentioned again. Not a lot of respect for spouses on the mystery wheel.

McMillan & Wife

3 Likes

I would say my comfort watch in this vein is Star Trek: Voyager. Which happily has Kate Mulgrew, who I still think was the best ship’s captain (even when the show’s writers were doing her wrong).

4 Likes

The UK classic, Minder, had Arthur Daley always referring to his never-seen missus as “her indoors”.

In one rather wonderful episode she went suspiciously missing to the consternation and delight of the local police who were always trying to pin something on him. They went as far as to dig up his car sales forecourt where they thought he might have buried her. It turned out she’d gone to a health farm in the country for the week without telling anyone, including Arthur.

She was never seen on screen. So the artifice of an episode when she went missing was rather delightful.

3 Likes

When it comes to grandparents a weird age discrepancy can have all kinds of explanations, like the “I’m My Own Grandpa” sorta situation. Being married at age 12? Not so much.

1 Like

Not sure I’m reading you right but you know Columbo came back at the end of the 80s for another decade or so, right? Getting slowly more ridiculous (IMOSHO) as it went on as it tried to keep up with the times.

The final ever episode is… wow… set in the early 90s ‘Rave’ community. A treat for sure.

4 Likes

They also had a fake-out episode circa 1990 in which Mrs. Colombo had seemingly been murdered and we see a photograph of her after the funeral. Then it is revealed that it was just a ruse to catch a killer and the photograph was actually Mrs. Colombo’s sister.

6 Likes

Except for the whole fiction thing. She’s an actress, she can play or act any age.

But, the creators of Columbo never acknowledged that Mrs. Columbo was actually his wife and neither did the series, they even divorced her later in the show.

Of course none of that matters because it’s all fiction in TV land.

There are long lists of actors who played roles much younger or much older than their actual age.

Most of what we knew about his personal life came from the small talk he used to coax information out of suspects and we know from Rest in Peace, Mrs. Colombo that he wasn’t afraid to fib on that front.

My personal fan theory is that Mrs. Colombo was one of those “Norma Bates” situations.

3 Likes

My favourite age WTF is chitty chitty bang bang, dick van dyke being six months older than his ‘dad’ lionel jefferies.

4 Likes
14 Likes