Quirky justice!
Some actors are born to play a certain character that would become their identity. For Peter Falk, it was Columbo, for Tony Shalhoub, Monk and for Carrie Preston, Elsbeth. Although the new series is a spinoff of another successful series The Good Wife, nothing links them together except for Elsbeth Tascioni, the quirky attorney who turns detective here.
What makes the show different from the many police procedurals is its ability to make the ‘howcatchem’ format look easy and pleasing. Opposed to the traditional ‘whodunit’ format where the audience keeps guessing the killer till the climax, in the ‘howcatchem’ format, they know who the killer is from the very beginning, and wait for the detective to catch them.
Not many TV shows besides Columbo have been able to master the inverted detective story, and the entry of Elsbeth makes it a welcome addition to the category. The way creators Robert and Michelle King penned the ten episodes of the first season will make it a good series to be binge-watched.
The Plot
Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) is an astute but unconventional attorney who moves to New York after a successful career in Chicago. Although she has been sent to dig up dirt on Captain Charles Wagner (Wendell Pierce), she decides to do that by helping a young NYPD officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson) in her cases. Due to her singular point of view to make unique observations, she can corner brilliant criminals during the first season.
Every episode begins by showing someone being murdered by someone powerful, arrogant, and confident of himself or herself. In the murderer’s mind, the act they have committed is nothing short of a perfect crime. However, Elsbeth’s entry makes them rethink their strategy since she immediately zeroes in on the killer, befriends them, and keeps annoying them with her interesting questions, until they implicate themselves.
Her nemesis in the inaugural season includes a theatre professor, a real estate broker, a reality show producer, a celebrity matchmaker, a tennis coach, a plastic surgeon, a wealth management CEO, an entrepreneur promoting a faulty crime-reporting app, a cocktail bar owner and a fashion designer. Interestingly, all these individuals use their profession to commit a crime which in their minds is perfect until they meet Tascioni.
The character uses her charm to disarm her opponent, distracts the person by constantly appearing in their lives, and finally makes them a part of the investigation by luring them for help. With all the boxes ticked, she makes her final move and catches the killer using their overconfidence to her advantage. In some cases, she struggles but that doesn’t mean she fails because when you search for truth and justice, nothing stands between the American way!
The Good
The best part is that you don’t need to watch either The Good Wife or The Good Fight to know who Tascioni is. Yes, she appeared in 19 episodes of the two shows combined but that’s about it, the baggage isn’t carried into the new series but her behavior is. A brilliant lawyer whose eccentric behaviour threw off the protagonists of those two series is now doing the same to the comparatively inferior criminals who think they are uncatchable.
Elsbeth is unique as a character; like Columbo, she has a funny name and everyone wants to know its backstory. Like the great detective, her appearance is misleading; unlike Columbo who dressed more like a homeless person than a detective, Elsbeth looks more like a tourist than a lawyer. She loves asking questions even if it has nothing to do with the case but somehow, she makes it seem as if it is relevant to both her and the case.
Since the inverted detective format is also a common factor in both Columbo and Elsbeth, the camera acts as another character, honing in on small details that the other characters might miss, allowing viewers to solve the case with the lead character. It could be anything as relevant as a key piece of evidence or as irrelevant as a torn piece of paper that nobody would miss, but Elsbeth is not nobody. She knows exactly what she is looking for and uses the other person’s nature to help her solve the case.
At first, Elsbeth might seem mentally--challenged to a few individuals but that’s not the case. She is just preoccupied with the truth like most good cops on TV, or in detective fiction. Since she doesn’t lie (there are exceptions in her case), and always says what’s on her mind, deception ticks her and makes her work harder. That’s why she does her best to ensure that whoever is responsible for a crime doesn’t stay around to enjoy it as a free person.
Wendell Pierce is as charming as ever in the role of a precinct Captain under investigation, and even though he sees Elsbeth as a nuisance, he realises that she is integral to her precinct. Patterson is more than Elsbeth’s liaison and works her way from a nobody to somebody in the same precinct, mainly because she acts as a sounding board for Elsbeth and listens to her when nobody else does.
The Bad
What is a Chicago lawyer doing in New York, solving crimes is the first question that comes to mind while watching Elsbeth. The creators did their best to place Elsbeth by making her oversee a consent decree on the NYPD’s major case division, but not everyone lives in the US. What made Columbo different back in the day was its ability to appeal to the entire world and even use characters from the Middle East as antagonists. In the case of Elsbeth, consent decrees are meant to investigate and prevent abuses of power by law enforcement, hence Elsbeth’s entry.
It is up to her to make sure which procedure is right and which isn’t, and the only way she could do that is by inserting herself in the investigations. Yes, it looks silly when the series begins but once you are through it, it seems like a good ruse to entertain the viewers. However, Elsbeth’s real mission is the real distraction, because it keeps her away from zeroing on to the killer. She is sent to investigate the captain but instead of dragging that till the final episode, the arc could have wrapped in two or three weeks, giving ample time to the audience to accept both the captain and the ace in his arsenal more.
Also, the similarity with another Columbo-inspired series Poker Face doesn’t go down well with the fans of both the series. Had it aired a few seasons after the conclusion of Poker Face, it would have helped the series, but Poker Face is still set for its second season, and the same goes for Elsbeth which might be shorter than the competition in duration, but the aim and objectives are the same.
The Verdict
Network television and OTT platforms might be more in number than ever before but they don’t have that ‘special’ feeling yesteryear TV shows had; Elsbeth is here to remind the audience of that feeling with its well-layered storyline, old-school charm, and an ability to engage the viewers despite them knowing the answer, before even knowing the question.
Not only does it come across as a blend of comedy and drama, it does that in an easy-going manner which isn’t an easy thing to do considering the audience’s taste has changed. They want gadgets, action, and drama on top of gadgets and action which Elsbeth doesn’t have. Elsbeth can stand in a world of FBI series, NCISes, and CSIs, and emerge as the winner just by giving the audience what they were missing.
The modern-day Columbo would also make the viewers go back to the Peter Falk-series Columbo which was way ahead of its time. Its format was later followed in Matlock, Diagnosis: Murder, Motive, and even in some episodes of Monk but Columbo remains the frontrunner even after fifty years.
Perfectly cast guest stars are also one of the reasons why the show has an old-school feeling; Murder She Wrote became popular because the lead actress Angela Lansbury cast her colleagues more often than not and while she may have had her reasons, the audience loved it because they got to see golden-era actors on the smaller screen. Elsbeth does that as well and even though they haven’t gone the MSW way, the writers have used actors who are famous for other characters and then made them the villain here. The juicier, the better, for Elsbeth, and the viewers.
Omair Alavi is a freelance contributor who writes about film, television, and popular culture
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author