Grandpa Columbo
Okay, another thing: Yesterday evening, during channel-surfing, I stumbled upon an age-old episode of Columbo. While watching, it suddenly occured to me that Columbo just might be the great-great-grandfather of Agent Seeley Booth - in an intertextual way, of course. I admit, the similarities are few and far between, and they are quite different type-wise (comparing Peter Falk to DB ... no, I won't even go there ...). But the most basic thing about Columbo does very much remind me of Booth: It's Columbo's thing to instantly know who the murderer is, the moment that person steps in the room for the first time. The rest of the episode normally consists of Columbo shifting the evidence around until they fit what he already knows to be true and of annoying the murderer in the process (and if it doesn't, I get peeved, because the makers are trying to be original by destroying what is distinct about the series). Now, Booth isn't that extreme, but in his relying on his "gut instinct", on his trademark empathy, he appears to me as a kind of literary great-grandson of Columbo's, especially amidst all the more fact-oriented investigators surrounding him, both on the show itself as well as on other series' (as far as I know). Plus: Booth employs basically similar, if superficially quite contrary, ways of standing out of the crowd of his fellow law-enforcers as Columbo does: their clothes. That Columbo uses an old raincoat and dirty shoes and Booth colourful ties, striped socks and "provocative belt-buckles" constitutes, I think, merely a difference in approach, not in intent.