Dale Cooper and Columbo
The two greatest TV detectives of all time.
shareMaybe the two best detective characters of all time... not too sure about Cooper's skill and methods. Rosenfield was better than him... the original Dr. House.
shareCooper depended on dreams and magic. Columbo stalked his suspects and wore them down with stories about his wife. Both used pretty unorthodox methods that a real detective would probably take issue with in a lot of ways. But for sheer entertainment value -- they were both sexy (yes, in his crumpled way Columbo had a certain sex appeal), enigmatic, and profoundly weird but also unfailingly human -- they were hard to top.
shareEntertainment value I totally agree... but when you are throwing regulation baseball pitches to narrow suspects... it no longer feels like detective work to me. Sherlock and House are better at their jobs... but I could listen to Dale Cooper's (the original vlogger) observations about life all day long
share Cooper and Columbo are detectives the way Indiana Jones is an archeologist. I love Indiana Jones, and he is cinema's greatest archeologist, but his greatness is hardly attributable to how accurate a depiction of a real archeologist his character is.
Great observation about Cooper being the original vlogger. One of my favorite "Diane" -moments of his is the one shortly after he's shot. As Cooper is wont to do when relating matters to Diane he let's his guard down and starts talking about Audrey: "I find myself thinking not of clues or of evidence but the content of her smile."
I too could listen to Cooper ramble about Audrey's smile, or Columbo delineate for unreceptive suspects his wife's culinary habits, for hours.
Good point... but most of the time it felt like Lynch was just trolling everyone... playing snippets of the terrible soap opera his denizens would watch and then laughing at us as we'd watch the same shit with prettier people, music, scenery and production values. It felt a lot like Miller's Crossing... where the Coen's would take some old gangster film trope and beat it to death for their own shits and giggles. He does that in all his films... like his riff on pomade in O Brother Where Are Thou.... but Miller's felt like he couldn't decide whether to make an outright parody or a more subtle satire. Twin Peaks is the same way... so in that sense I view it more as a comedy or social commentary than a detective show. Don't get me wrong... I love both of these artists (Lynch and the Coens) but their works tend to be kind of genre defying.
shareMan, I'd love to see the Coen Brothers tackle "Columbo." With someone like Mark Ruffalo or Christopher Waltz in the lead they could really breathe life into "Columbo" the way they did another moribund propery, "True Grit."
There is definitely something very meta about both Columbo and Cooper. They don't exist to carry on the tradition of Joe Friday but are instead playful commentaries on the detective genre itself. They're not prickly like Holmes but awe-struck and child-like; they seem genuinely amazed, as much I might be, to find themselves smack dab in the middle of a detective yarn. And yet they're also ahead of their fellow players, just like all detectives must.
The idea of the Coen Brothers taking on a Columbo remake is definitely intriguing ; Mark Ruffalo in the lead as well. I'm reminded of his performance as a detective in Zodiac , albeit not exactly Columbo - like.
shareI think Ruffalo is great at playing the earnest, slightly dull everyman... I'm not sure I see him playing Columbo... Falk's Columbo would play act as that traditional Ruffalo persona... but there always was a twinkle in his eye letting you know that he's still in full command of the situation. Christoph Waltz on the other hand... could perhaps pull off the role... although physically Ruffalo makes more sense. I'm not sure however, what the Coen's could bring to the table... other than the fact that they are almost always brilliant in general. Columbo seemed to rely solely on Falk's charisma... just like Moonlighting needed Willis. Without either they may as well be CSI or NCIS clones.
share