Columbo's Drapes
As mentioned previously, I ended up thinking about Columbo a lot in my time as a Bug Detective. He felt very relatable to me, bumbling around, bothering people with obvious questions about stuff he didn’t know anything about, making connections no one else could see.
There were a few defect updates that I found myself all but dropping a “Oh, just one more thing…” without even meaning to.
Anyway, I’ve been digging through old notes, and apparently this is something I actually said to someone, to explain the help I needed from them:
SO, what I need at this point is someone with more context on how these pieces fit together.
Like you know the scene in an episode of Columbo where he’s in a diner, looking at photos of the murder scene, and the waitress comes over to refill his coffee, and he’s like “Say, do you know anything about drapes?” and the waitress is like “Oh, I know all about drapes, why do you ask?” and he points to the drapes in one of the photos and he’s like “See, my wife always complains about our drapes, she says they’re not the right kind. She says we need fancy Italian drapes, but they’re expensive to install. But these drapes here, these look like the ones she wants, but look how they’re installed. That doesn’t seem right, is that right?” and the waitress looks at the photo and she’s like “No, that’s not right, see this hook here, that’s installed backward,” and Columbo is like “See, that’s what I thought” and it cracks the whole case wide open?
I’m at that kind of stage here, so I need someone who knows more about these drapes than I do.
Now, I did a little digging—not a lot, just some cursory duck-duck-go-ing—and I’m pretty sure there was no drapes episode of Columbo. I’m pretty sure that’s not something from an episode I’d just watched.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I made that whole scene up entirely.
So, I guess if you wanted to know a little more about what I’m like to work with…