Exercise in Fatality, (Columbo: I Gotcha!)

Episode synopsis: Columbo An Exercise in Fatality
Milo Janus runs his health spa network like a despot. He’s got controlling interests in pretty much every supplier to the network and is charging franchisees over the odds for everything from gym equipment to pens and paper.

It’s a ‘healthy’ little racket – but perhaps not for long. Gene Stafford, owner of the Chatsworth franchise, has had enough. Gene’s been seeking evidence of profiteering and thinks he’s getting close to bringing Janus’s gym empire crashing down around his ears.

Summoning Janus to a meeting, Gene tells him that his days are numbered. “I can smell flim-flam right down to the paper clips you make me buy,” he sneers, before promising Janus he won’t rest until he has enough evidence to start a class action against him.

It’s fighting talk, but Janus has both the stomach and physique for a scrap. All Gene is saying is true. Janus has been channeling company funds out of the country and is planning to do a runner to Europe to live off his ill-gotten gains. As Janus himself confides to partner-in-crime Buddy Castle: “In eight months I’ll be in my villa overlooking the Adriatic with 2 million in Swiss francs to keep me warm.”

He’s sufficiently spooked, however, to know he has to prevent Gene from blowing his cover. And the best way to do that? Cold-blooded murder! And so coercing his hot young secretary / lover Jessica Conroy to leave the office early, Janus finds a tape-recorded phone call made by Gene to his office earlier that day and gets a-splicing. He returns home to plant the sham tape recorded message in his study, pointedly removing a light bulb from his phone that indicates when one of its two lines is in use. Why? Watch the video analysis.

We next encounter Milo Janus back at the Chatsworth spa. It’s after hours, and he sneaks in through a rear door to confront Gene in his office. Gene is in high spirits, believing he’s found what he needs to see Janus charged with grand larceny – and that’s when Janus springs into action.

Whipping a metal pipe out of his back pocket, Janus attempts to strangle Gene against a wall. His attempt fails as Gene pours a pot of coffee on his assailant’s arm and takes flight through the empty building. His bid to escape is short-lived, however, as Janus chases him down and chokes him to death.

The apple of many a viewer’s eye for more than 40 years, Gretchen Corbett’s bikini-wearing Jessica Conroy takes the number one spot by a distance!

From the moment she opens the front door of Milo Janus’s house to the confused Lieutenant, it’s all eyes on her. We’ll never know for sure if it’s the sight of Jessica looking trim, taut and terrific in her tiny, cherry-patterned bikini that so addles Columbo, but he’s certainly thrown off kilter during the subsequent conversation with beefcake Milo.

Jessica rocks a variety of looks throughout the episode, but it is the bikini scene that places her firmly in the role of true Columbo icon. Gretchen Corbett, we salute you!

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