The introduction develops one of the primary claims of the book and its interpretive methods. That is, Columbo trains its viewers as detectives of television. Detecting television requires a form of attention that is always divided and multiplied at once. Given both its historical origins in the United States as a broadcast medium and its twenty-first-century iterations through streaming platforms, television is forever an intertextual form. This chapter traces and defines intertextual reading practices—what Jorge Luis Borges might call “a labyrinth of labyrinths”—and it showcases the series’ own delight in knowing through its eponymous detective and the affection viewers acquire for him and his methods. Finally, this introduction offers a breakdown of each primary chapter of the book.