Well, another unique thing about Columbo is that he is an outsider who functions successfully on the inside. The archetype of the public avenger as total outsider was probably best defined by Raymond Chandler, whose hero, Philip Marlowe, brandishes his identity as a *private* investigator to shield him from the corruption of the police and maintain his purity as knight errant. As Chandler famously described his hero in "The Simple Art of Murder": "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The [private] detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."
Columbo, a master of finesse, is able to go Marlowe one better and actually work *within* the system -- making use of the resources of the LAPD without being burdened and tainted by its authoritarian values. In one memorable episode, Columbo manages to nab a murderer who is in fact his superior on the police force, the LAPD Deputy Police Commissioner (played by Richard Kiley).
It's remarkable indeed that Columbo can do his outsider-on-the-inside shtick since his character is affiliated with the LAPD, arguably the most rigid, militaristic pack of police mofos in the US. But there he is at the crime scene -- a guy with long uncombed hair, wearing a rumpled suit, standing in a sea of crew-cut, spit-and-polish, patrolmen dressed in SS-black uniforms. Columbo is the only cop on the scene who isn't carrying a gun (and can't really remember where he stored his), but he's the only one there who knows what's going on and what to do. A subversive guy, Columbo.
Carl
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