FAT — FATTER — FATTEST — FATIGUE

JAKE AND THE FAT MAN — COMPLETE COLLECTION — CBS — 2017 — originally 1987–1992

Those stories are detective stories mostly in Los Angeles with something like one year deported to Hawaii. The original is old, so the remastering was not possible that easily and the pictures are slightly distorted to fit in a wide screen. They did not bother to add the now standard subtitles for hard-of-hearing people. That’s ok when the bulldog is speaking, meaning barking or grumbling, but with human characters, it is slightly difficult.

This series comes from a time when, in one way or any other, the main culprits were naturally women. If men get in the way of the police or justice, it is only and most of the time always because the poor man got entangled with a bad woman. It is in many ways irritating to brandish such sexism. The first two seasons even went further, and in the title sequence, an allusion to the sexual activities of the investigator, Jake, with women, were his way to be able to have the great life he had, but the Fatman doubted how he could do it with the simple pay of some kind of police or district attorney’s investigator. And the allusion to his being a gigolo in a way, was heavily repeated for at least two years if not three. Then, in later seasons, the flimsy skin-rubbing scenes were only thrown onto the screen from time to time but without the gigolo allusion.

Maybe I overdo it by calling Jake a gigolo. In fact, he was just a complacent and easy partner who could not resist the temptation systematically thrown in his way by any woman trying to get some advantage from this semi-cop. It is true it would be difficult to imagine Columbo doing that kind of sport, especially since Columbo has a wife somewhere. But it is the Fatman who is the impersonation of Columbo. A fat slob is quite similar to the sloppily-dressed character that cannot be missed at any time of this presence anywhere because of his odd behavior. The Fatman is just plain fat, and he eats so much and so badly that he is literally killing himself. He even pushes the connection with Columbo one step farther, and he has a dog he…