I love hotels. The Intercontinental Hotel, where our beloved dynamic duo of Provenza and Flynn, now made a trio with their boy wonder Buzz, try and serve the hilarious Adam Arkin who played dual roles in this episode as Hirshbaum and Esposito, is not really the Intercontinental Hotel but the glamorous Century Plaza Hotel built in the 196s and designed by the same architect who designed the famed now tragic Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC. As a young boy in the mid sixties I longed to visit and stay at the Century Plaza. The city that my family and I would travel to from rural Colorado, Colorado Springs, had the Antlers Plaza also built in the 1960s and managed by the same company as the Century Plaza. Every time we would check into the Antlers Plaza and the brochure for the Century Plaza would be in the hotel room welcome packet I dreamed I was in Los Angeles lounging by the pool, sipping on a Shirley Temple watching handsome leading men and stunning starlets saunter by in designer clothes and big sunglasses. Believe it or not I had dined at the Century Plaza, attended a Bob Mackie fashion show at the Century Plaza, even shot a photo of Barbie standing in front of the Century Plaza for my 2004 book "Barbie Loves L.A.," but I had never been in one of the guest rooms until we shot this episode there. It was thrilling to stand on one of the curved balconies looking west where the eyes drop into the Pacific ocean and realizing how compact these rooms were that as a child I thought for sure would be spacious suites of rooms fit for the rich and famous. Ahhh, the fantasies of a vivid imagination and the reality of the adult experience, similar but oh so far apart.

So, Provenza, Flynn and Buzz pull up to the hotel in the Prius and after serving who they thought was Hirshbaum, Esposito falls from that curved balcony and lands on top of El Buzzo's car. Both Esposito and Hirshbaum wore velour track suits not by Juicy Couture but by a company in Nevada that specializes in velour track suits of EVERY kind! they're called Sweatsedo and you can buy them on line. The hilarious bumbling lawyer Owen Doyle wore a wash and wear suit from JCPenney that we actually washed and he wore. I needed to have Doyle look a bit rumpled so even his tie went into the Maytag and got soaped and suddsed!

Brenda looked picture perfect in a Pure Collection charcoal tweed sheath with an oversized zipper up the back, and we added a Pure black cropped cashmere cardigan to complete the outfit. The widow Shannon Hirshbaum and daughter Andrea Hirshnaum were Beverly Hills Housewifey: Shannon in a black DVF knockoff wrap dress by Club Room at Macy's, her jewelry was Cartier fakes and her handbag that was never really seen was the latest ginormous Dior red leather bag. Andrea was frugal with her clothing, buying her top and jeggings at Forever 21, but her jewelry was anything but cheap. It was faux Van Cleef and Arpels, Alhambra style knockoffs in gold and black lacquer. She carried a Chanel quilted scrunchy pocketbook, fake of course.

The crime was actually solved at not a fabulous, glamorous, 5 star hotel, but at a rundown downtown pay-by-the-hour place ... really! But I was surprised that even by the hour this place was clean and recently redecorated – is that an oxymoron? Yes, I have stayed at 5 star properties and my share of Holiday Inn Expresses and Best Westerns but only once did I check into a "by the hour" motel. I was visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico during the height of the tourist season and the ONLY place was a cinderblock motel on the outskirts of town. The carpet was indoor outdoor and stained, the bedspreads were threadbare. My dog, Blanche, crawled under the bed and came out the other side with a half smoked joint in her mouth, but the crowning glory of the experience was as I pulled down thin stained bedspread there was dried vomit all over the bare box springs ... I picked up my dog andthe bags, hoping no bed bugs had hopped a ride, threw them and ourselves in the car and sped out of town ... oh for a Holiday Inn or Best Western ... oh for my own bed – similar but oh so far away from that fantasy Century Plaza.