Episode review: Columbo Goes to College

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Episode synopsis: Columbo Goes to College

Spoilt rich kids Justin Rowe and Cooper ‘Coop’ Redman have managed to get themselves into a fix. Their criminology lecturer, Professor DE Rusk, has discovered they stole a copy of their impending test paper – and he’s either going to flunk them from his class or see them expelled from the college altogether!

Either way spells doom for the students. Justin’s future at Harvard Law School will go kaput, while the virile Coop has just been informed that his parents will cut him off if he commits one more faux pas having made three girls pregnant in the past 18 months. Neither lad is keen on their style being cramped this way, so they conclude that Rusk needs to be made history, stat.

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They’re already aware of Rusk’s affair with the college basketball coach’s wife, June Clarke, and also that Rusk is working on a tell-all expose of crime and corruption at the highest levels of society – a project that has led to death threats being made against his life. The man has many enemies who would be glad to see the back of him, which means plenty of suspects!

Quite what their fiendish plan to rid the world of the Rusk menace is isn’t fully revealed until much later. However, we do see the pair break into the dingy apartment of dim-witted campus security guard, Joe Doyle, and make off with his handgun. It’s an intriguing opening.

Rusk’s next criminology class duly arrives featuring a special guest speaker: Lieutenant Columbo of the LAPD. The professor doesn’t get to enjoy much of Columbo’s lecture, though, as he excuses himself to head out to a dinner appointment with Justin’s father. The appointment, however, is a phony cooked up by Justin and Coop as part of their murderous scheme. And when Rusk makes his way to the faculty car park, they kick into action.

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