Traveling Man

I love "Columbo". On a whim, I checked the discs containing the first "season" out of the library, and I watched them and the rest with my roommate. We noticed a lot of peculiarities in the show, one of which concerns the titular detective's relaxed attitude about jurisdiction. He was always getting into cases that took him well outside of Los Angeles, which is where he lived and worked. It was amusing, but infuriating. It was never even brought up as a problem. He just went places.

If I got into every time he went elsewhere in California, this would go on for some time. If I confine myself only to the most egregious cases, it's long enough. I started thinking about the whole thing when an episode in which Colombo visits England. It seems to me he may have done that a couple times. He's purportedly a guest of Scotland Yard, getting to see how they handle the crime-fighting business, which is conceivable, but unlikely just the same to me.

Columbo also handled a murder on a cruise ship, which seemed problematic from a legal standpoint to me as well. I guess I shouldn't pretend to know how those things work, and anyway Columbo was on vacation (with a present and yet never-seen wife). He was often worming his way into cases that he probably shouldn't have been allowed any influence in. That was part of his charm, of course. Still, I feel he oughtn't have been involved in that one.

I recall also an episode in which Columbo found himself down in Mexico. I don't recall at all why he was there, but it seemed like yet another case of the detective getting well away from home with there being no concern about it from anyone. There are plenty of murders within the municipal limits of Los Angeles, and a fair amount of them go unsolved. The detecting powers of Columbo would prove useful in most of them, and as he was paid by LA taxpayers, it seems fair that they should be the ones who get them.