William Shatner makes his second appearance in the Columbo series in Butterfly in Shades of Grey. To stop his daughter from running off to pursue a writing career, radio talk show host Fielding Chase kills the man who was shopping her book; but Columbo suspects that Chase’s alibi may be too perfect. Shatner gives a charismatic performance and has great interplay with Falk. However, the Chase character is too much of an obvious parody of Rush Limbaugh; which distracts from the plot. Still, the mystery is quite intriguing and has some cleverness to it. Despite its overt political tones, Butterfly in Shades of Grey is a solid crime thriller.
Fun episode with Peter Falk once again going head to head with William Shatner. While it wasn't a central part of the mystery, it was pretty progressive / ahead of its time in 1994 to have the victim be a gay man and it being treated in a fairly matter-of-fact fashion rather than a sensationalist way or it being the reason for his murder.
Shout by Nitzan SchwarzVIP BlockedParent2024-04-09T13:54:22Z
There is absolutely no way it took the dude 4 minutes to do all we saw him do. There had to be a longer gap there. Also, this is potentially the creepiest episode as far as motives for murder go.