Columbo/Awesome


 * Columbo's deductive flourishes -- as revealed to his target at the end -- sometimes approach this. As do the occasional brief scenes in which he drops the fawning and tells the perp exactly what he thinks of him.
 * One of the rare times Columbo is seen upset is when he's facing Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy is playing an open heart surgeon who's working on a crucial research project with a senior partner. Nimoy also has to operate on his partner, by repairing his heart valves with permanent sutures. Nimoy instead uses dissolving sutures, which when dissolved will cause his partner's heart to rupture, killing him in a few weeks, leaving Nimoy to hog all the credit for the project. A nurse discovers this and Nimoy kills her (which is how Columbo first gets on the case). In a genuinely chilling moment, Columbo abruptly drops all pretense and actually slams a coffee cup onto a table! He angrily informs Nimoy that
 * In another episode (can't remember which), Columbo gets so fed up with the perp that he tells him "she thinks you killed him, and you know what? So do I."
 * Pretty much every episode of Columbo ends with a CMoA when the villain realises how Columbo has pwned him.
 * Then there's "A Friend In Need," where he catches the police commissioner:
 * Another episode.
 * An Insufferable Genius who had murdered a fellow member of a Mensa-like organization asked Columbo if he had ever been tested himself. After Columbo said no, the killer pulled down a book with an example test in it and asked him a random question, which Columbo answered correctly after only a moment's thought. The killer was almost relieved to have been caught by what he now considered a Worthy Opponent.
 * Any of the four episodes with Patrick McGoohan as the guest villain. Pure classics, and McGoohan won two Emmys for his guest roles. (He also directed five episodes and wrote the scripts for two).
 * In an episode in which a wine connoisseur (Any Old Port in a Storm) had killed his half-brother by locking him in a wine cellar with the environmental controls off, sealing the room.
 * Every episode when he says "Just one more thing...' that is until the later seasons where most bad guys are wise to his act.
 * While it's a case of Characterization Marches On it's pretty awesome in Prescription: Murder when Columbo shows he's not bumbling, confronts the murderer's accomplice and even screams at her for her crime.
 * In the second pilot movie, Columbo explains to the murderess what her mistake was: "Mrs. Williams, you have no conscience and that's your weakness. Did it ever occur to you that there are very few people who would It didn't, did it? I knew it wouldn't."
 * Undercover- Columbo, undercover as Artie Stokes, is walking to the apartment of Mo Weinberg, one of the criminals to meet him for an arranged deal. He looks through the key hole and sees the guy with a gun. Columbo  It was quite a moment of Took a Level In Badass for Columbo.
 * The "endless fence" scene from Murder, Smoke & Shadows as Columbo and Alex Bradey discuss reality and perception.
 * The "endless fence" scene from Murder, Smoke & Shadows as Columbo and Alex Bradey discuss reality and perception.