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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie Oleson" data-source="post: 441898" data-attributes="member: 8">Interesting connection between this giant, threatening chess set and the playing cards in The Manchurian Candidate.It certainly suggests that we're going to have a neurotic killer, and Laurence Harvey plays it in his typically hammy style. That's not always a bad thing, and here it is that overwrought intensity that gives the episode some flair.His victim and chess opponent is a very kind and helpful man and that makes the crime extra nasty, I think.Were we supposed to understand that it was a hearing aid, or did they mention something about it at the very beginning of the episode? I might have missed that, maybe I was lighting a cigarette and stopped paying attention for 2 seconds.Fifteen minutes into the episode I still didn't know what it was, I thought maybe sort of a walkman with relaxing music and I even considered the idea that Laurence Harvey himself needed whatever it was supposed to be.Eventually they mentioned the word   and I felt silly that I had only thought of the most far-fetched explanations.This time I could predict the killer's mistake: using his own pen for the fake "goodbye and sorry" note. Only because the pen was a "thing" in one of the scenes, not because I know a lot about the uniqueness of pen ink. However, the more theatrical gotcha comes after this reveal, except that it only proves the hypothetical failure of a hypothetical murder and this makes Columbo look like a show-off. It doesn't prove that the killer was there, or why it was murder and not an accident. Although an accidental slip should not allow a person to plunge into a trash grinder, and at the very least you'd expect them to sue the hotel (was that not custom yet in the 1970s?)There was the safety measure of the grinder automatically shutting off - which I didn't know at the beginning, hence my surprise when the victim was ambulanced to the hospital. How much body did they manage to save, I asked myself.Ah, the cliché failed murder attempt that needs to be finished off in the hospital. The villain who disguises him/herself as a nurse with the plan to inject the IV bag with poison or air. Or just the old-fashioned pillow.TV and movie patients are usually in single-bed rooms and the real doctors and nurses are busy St. Elsewhere.But our victim is diabetic so the killer has to get the wrong medicine into the hospital, and the sneaking in and out of rooms happens in the hotel.Lloyd Bochner doesn't get much to do but the Russian accent is funny.The plotting is kinda shaky but overall it's an enjoyable episode (except for the last part, and considering the scenery it would be wise to keep the dog on a leash).</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?