My partner and I have been watching through "Columbo" over the past few months(?year?). We don't always have a lot of time to sit down together and watch a show right now, so we've been chewing through it very slowly. It's a very good time! I'm a sucker for detective fiction in general, but the format of "Columbo" is real neat - you get establishing moments and motivations for the killers and the victims right out the gate, so it becomes less of a "whodunnit" and more about watching someone with no context piece together things you already know while watching some rich smug asshole sweat about it. It's an interesting glimpse into the United States as of the 60's and 70's, both in terms of its production history & the realities of the world it tries to convey; I don't know terribly much about US history myself, but it's been interesting to look things up about the period & the places & the people, through things my partner knows & things friends of ours know. It's fascinating and kind of fun to see a relatively big network TV series show such open, honest contempt for the rich and well-to-do, and - something a pal pointed out that would've flown over my head completely (thank you Frankie!) - it feels very deliberate that the protagonist is a lower-class Italian American guy, who very easily acts friendly and empathetic with people of colour, and women, and the homeless, and other similarly downtrodden kinds of people. It's fascinating! Hell, there's been a bunch of points where it feels like it's trying to say things about the nature & efficacy of the LAPD!
(It's a very interesting contrast to "Star Trek: The Original Series", another show of the era I've slowly been pecking through with buds. I've had people tell me for years that the show's an egalitarian, utopian sci-fi, & while I understand there's a lot about it that was landmark for TV at the time, it's also very, very blatantly Having Some Things To Say about US capitalist & military & political righteousness. It's a product of its time and all that, & also not all that surprising when you remember Gene Roddenberry's history working on "DRAGNET", but it's still very interesting to look at the two, & what they're saying, & what they're trying to say, & how that fits in with the times they were made in, let alone today.)
At this point you've maybe re-read the title of this post & guessed something's up.
Every* episode of "Columbo" that we've watched so far has at least one horse hidden in it.
I'm serious. Go watch ANY of the first thirty episodes. (We haven't watched past that point yet.) Keep your eyes open. Stay focused. Horse are OUT THERE and they're LURKING in PLAIN SIGHT. It is unreal. It keeps happening. I haven't seen anyone fucking talk about this ever. My partner and I are losing our fucking minds over this.
Why???
I doubt there's one single answer. There's probably multiple answers. Horses are a status symbol to some people. A symbol of wealth, or success, or high ranking in something or other. I've spent an inordinate amount of time frantically searching things like "HORSE STATUE MEANING" and "WHAT DOSE HORSE MEAN TO PEOPLE" recently.
My partner, Puzz, has some experience with prop & set design, and some experience doing Work For Rich Clients, & also used to be a horse girl. She has Hands On Experience here. Her working theory here is a mix of "the stuff I said above" plus "it makes sense to re-use props you have lying around" (BUT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND: IT'S NOT ALWAYS THE SAME HORSE PROP POPPING UP - THERE IS VARIANCE) plus "Holly you need to understand, rich assholes have really bad taste in art displays and interior decorating".
Horses have weird gaunt faces and piercing eyes and haunting sounds and maybe that's supposed to represent the paranoia of being watched, of being caught, of your guilt trampling you alive inevitably when some schlubby dude who keeps talking about loving his wife throws the book at you. If you wanna get real "ASH WAS IN A COMMA DREAM ALL ALONG" about it, maybe the horses themselves are driving people to commit criminal deeds. They're basically always in the abodes of the perpetrators, or in their place of work, or in the place the crime was committed, or in at least one case covering a shirt worn by the killer's wife. Maybe it's a fundamental truth of the "Greater Extended NBC Mystery Movie Universe" that horses are some kind of devil that feast on all good will and sense and leave you writhing, husked, alone, with nothing but fear and malice and nightmare in your heart. (Hypothesis as of yet unconfirmed - I haven't watched "McCloud" et all yet.) Maybe one of the set designers was a horse & got a real kick out of this.
Maybe, somewhere, at some point in time, a pair of detective fiction screenwriters in the 60s had a startling vision of a fat lesbian in the far future, haunted, frantically searching their works for hidden horses, and they felt compelled to write a show about it.
Maybe it's just fun to read into things and look for patterns that aren't there.
I spent a while searching the internet to see if anyone's talked about this before. I couldn't find anything. It's possible that we're breaching new ground here.
I DID find out that there was at least one racehorse named "Lt. Columbo", though. A great cosmic circle in my heart is complete.
(*There's one single episode where we didn't find a horse. I can't remember which one, though.)
