Team Toobworld knows how much I love coming up with theoretical connections between TV series, usually in the form of theories of relateeveety. But every so often I find links within one series.
Most of those times, it was deliberate. For example, the callbacks to past episodes. As this will eventually be about 'Columbo', the big example would be the Lieutenant's many references to the Nelson Haywood case in which the Senatorial candidate killed his manager in "Candidate For Crime".
Here are the two episodes involved:
NBC's "A STITCH IN CRIME"
ABC's "AGENDA FOR MURDER"
In the first one, the murderer was Dr. Barry Mayfield, played by Leonard Nimoy. Mayfield was a brilliant surgeon and research scientist who was planning to cause his senior partner's death through corrective surgery for his arterial disease. But his intended victim survived, although two other people were murdered by Mayfield in his attempt to cover up his premeditated murder attempt.
The connection to "Agenda For Murder" may be a trivial one, but for me it's a fun link and making me happy is ultimately what is important.
In that later episode had political strategist Oscar Finch murdering the one man who could derail Governor Montgomery's bid to be President. (Whether or not that was the reason, Owen Marshall's identical cousin ended up not even getting the nomination from his party.)
In plotting out the murder, Finch used aluminum foil to hold the used gun powder which he was going to put on the hand of the man whom he was going to kill, making it look like a suicide.
As you can see from this screen grab, the brand name for the aluminum foil he used was "Mayfield".
I floated this idea in the Columbo TV Facebook page yesterday and decided to flesh it out.
Barry Mayfield's college career and medical school were all paid with money from the family fortune which had been amassed to their holdings in the aluminum industry. Mayfield Aluminum was probably founded by his great-grandfather in the late 1800s, but it was under his grandfather's stewardship in the 1920s when they went into full production using new techniques.
But the family's wealth and power didn't help him in avoiding punishment for his crimes, however. For murdering Sharon Martin and Harry Alexander, I believe Dr. Mayfield was sentenced to two consecutive life terms and died in prison. He may have been a model prisoner, serving in the medical wing, but he was never going to see a pardon.
I may be alone in that judgement. The Ultimate Columbo Site thinks the case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
So there you are - an inner link connecting two episodes of 'Columbo'.
ABC's "AGENDA FOR MURDER"
The connection to "Agenda For Murder" may be a trivial one, but for me it's a fun link and making me happy is ultimately what is important.
In that later episode had political strategist Oscar Finch murdering the one man who could derail Governor Montgomery's bid to be President. (Whether or not that was the reason, Owen Marshall's identical cousin ended up not even getting the nomination from his party.)
As you can see from this screen grab, the brand name for the aluminum foil he used was "Mayfield".
I floated this idea in the Columbo TV Facebook page yesterday and decided to flesh it out.
I may be alone in that judgement. The Ultimate Columbo Site thinks the case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
So there you are - an inner link connecting two episodes of 'Columbo'.
BCnU!
I've often thought that a great many of Columbo's cased were dismissed for insufficient evidence. May of them were very circumstantial indeed, and the suspects had access to money and the best legal gunslingers available. The California prison was not then, and is not now, filled with rich men and women.
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