Review: Elsbeth, “High Class Problems” | Season 3, Episode 17
Would that we all suffered from "Sudden Wealth Disorder"
“Looks like the band is back together.”
If you're writing a procedural TV show that pays homage to Columbo, you don’t have to make the murderer wealthy. But the most successful riffs on the mystery show that popularized the “howcatchem” style are shrewd enough to do so. It is true that a recent example of this homage, the recently departed Poker Face, sometimes eschewed the wealth aspect with its weekly criminals. However, its co-creator Rian Johnson has had plenty of success with a quirky detective and lots of very rich people in the Benoit Blanc movies. (In a movie like Glass Onion, characters being laughably wealthy is by design.) Elsbeth is a bit more of a traditional homage, and has made the high-class aspects of its killers a built-in detail from the word go. It’s not just that the show is set in a big city like New York, and that the title character’s NYPD boss is in the upper echelons of the societal ranks. So many of the show's killers aren’t just wealthy, but flaunt that wealth. So it tracks that we would finally get an episode literally called “High Class Problems,” focused not only on the wealthy but on the people who help them navigate the challenges of being wealthy. (Ah, to dream.)
Yet one of the obvious deviations between Columbo and Elsbeth is that Elsbeth Tascioni is not strapped for cash. As much as Columbo the show was about very well-off killers, Columbo the man was not well-off, also very much by design. Columbo was not destitute, and over the course of the show’s 1970s-era run, his status within the ranks of the LAPD rose specifically because of the cases he kept solving. We can talk all day about how much Columbo’s outwardly shambolic personality was a ploy to fool his quarry, and how much of it was genuine. I've always thought it's no less than a 50/50 split. I say “outward personality,” because Columbo’s shabby style was coupled with him often encouraging suspects to talk about their fancy duds or their expansive apartments. In one of the series’ best episodes, “Etude in Black,” Columbo literally spends a few minutes asking the murderer of the week (John Cassavetes, one of Peter Falk’s best real-life friends) how much his expansive mansion costs, the amount of money he spends on utilities, etc.
I can only imagine how amazed Lt. Columbo would be at the very idea of a “wealth therapist,” in short. Elsbeth can (rightfully) scoff at the notion, but not in the same way that a guy like Columbo would. Elsbeth isn’t quite so rich that she would actually need a wealth therapist to help her live her best life. But you don’t have to know that much about Elsbeth’s past in Chicago to know she’s doing just fine in the Big Apple. That, at least, is what made a key aspect of her head-to-head moments with Dr. Mallory Haynes (Constance Wu) somewhat head-scratching. The detective accompanying Elsbeth notes how quickly Haynes is able to get under our heroine’s skin, primarily for having the temerity to point out that she has enough money to spend on clothes that may seem colorfully garish but still cost a ton. I get that Elsbeth has worked hard to move past being the person she was in Chicago, and I have no particular interest in seeing her turn back into that person. But if the writers wanted Elsbeth to feel challenged or discomfited by her money, that's a subplot we could have dealt with many episodes ago.
