"YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY“ PERRY MASON, EPISODES 4-8

NOTE: This review contains spoilers.Â

Chances are that most of us hate something. We love to hate. To oppose something helps us to confirm our identity. It gives our life meaning. And if a group shares our beliefs, the more the better. More proof that we“re on the right side of the topic at hand, maybe even on the right side of history. Full disclosure: I am a hater as well. I hate snakes. I know from a logical standpoint that snakes are animals like all other animals. There“s nothing bad or evil about them which should make me hate them. Still, deep down on a visceral level, I find them repulsive. Even the sight of them will cause a sense of nausea in me. It is not that I am afraid of them, not more than I“d be afraid of an attack dog that has broken free of its metal chain, with such a beast now charging towards me, its bared fangs gleaming with spittle in mad, raging anticipation. I wouldn“t hate this canine. I“d simply try to outrun it (and most likely fail at that). However, snakes disgust me, their appearance, the way they move. To me, snakes seem like an insult to Nature herself. Small wonder that we will associate certain negative character traits in humans with those of a snake. Are snakes not by design treacherous, are they not cursed? They are liars that will whisper sweet lies to us, to fool us. Well, at least according to legend (or faith if you like that word better) going all the way back to Eve. The snake seduced Eve to reach for a fruit from the tree of knowledge. But of course, as we can expect from such a low reptile, there was a catch. When Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree and she passed it on to Adam, the knowledge they gained was a truth they could never unhear nor could not ever not know. As the first couple was driven from Paradise, they learned that truth can be a dangerous thing. Truth might not say what you want it to say. Perhaps this was the greatest betrayal of the vile reptile, to let mankind know that truth is the most potent poison, that truth will not act the way you want it to. Don“t you just hate it when you are wrong? Once we start into the second act of “Perry Mason”“, it turns out that it is a show about snakes, both real (as real as modern CGI can render them, which is plenty of real to me) and imagined. If you“re like me, this may already suffice to make you hate this show, but as with the first storyteller in fiction (or depending on your point of view or faith, history), it“s a snake that will tell you one story to tell you a very different tale, which is, if perhaps not a sin, the ultimate betrayal. So, you see, there“s plenty to hate about this show. With the first episodes aired, you could read reviews how this betrayal manifested itself. As with any pre-existing material, there will be a version that is well liked, and which is the accepted truth. We know who Perry Mason is. In short, he“s a successful criminal defense lawyer who“s never lost a case, which makes his opponent, D.A. Hamilton Burger a perennial loser. Mason“s clients are innocent without fail, and in his quest to uncover the real perpetrators, which he“ll always do in the third act, he“s assisted by his loyal secretary Della Street, with whom he“s in a will they or won“t they relationship, and his able-bodied private investigator Paul Drake. We even know what Perry Mason looks like, since actor Raymond Burr gave him his voice, his face and his body, though the rather portly Burr had to shed 60 pounds to garner the coveted role for the drama series that ran from 1957 to 1966, and again as a series of made-for-TV movies between 1985 and 1995. The original version of Perry Mason is closely tied to the 1950s, to a television version of the 1950s that is. Thus, we know it as comfort food. The former show was there to offer a little bit of excitement (what last minute trick would Perry pull now to save his client from the gas chamber), but it mainly existed to confirm our belief in a legal system that was always just, a concept that is akin to writer and philosopher Ayn Rand“s Objectivism: “The innocent was not penalized, the guilty was not rewarded.”“ As Rand“s most fervent disciple, comic writer and artist Steve Ditko once put it: “there is black, and then there is white. And there was nothing in-between.”“ It“s not surprising that one reviewer of the new version remarked: “There“s not enough Raymond Burr”“, that this was a reimagined version, that wasn“t that show with its assurance that the good guys always won because they were on the right side. This “Perry Mason”“ show is not set in the 1950s, but in 1931 and 1932, a setting that is surprising, again if you were expecting a new version of the former show. However, the character made his first appearance in 1933, in the first of many novels by his creator Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry arrived fully formed in “The Case of the Velvet Claws”“, the book in which he premiered. By moving their series slightly before even the 1933 date, Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones, the show“s producers and head writers, give themselves room to tell Perry Mason“s origin story, his Year One if you will. With this woman who called herself Eva Griffin as the first client who got introduced to the readers, a client who Ms. Street observes is “all velvet and claws”“, here was the chance to see how Perry Mason came about. As there often will be when novels are transferred into a different medium, there are changes, rarely for the better. Case in point, the 1936 movie version of “The Case of the Velvet Claws”“ (not the first Mason film) featured Perry and Della as a married couple. A minor change, most likely born out of a desire to please the morals of that time (the movie was shot after the Production Code was put into effect), especially when directly compared to what the writers of the new version have in store for us. When we meet this Perry, he“s not even a lawyer, but a private investigator. Though he might be good at this job, he“s also a bit of a grifter and a bum who is out of his luck. If you think that he“s arrived at his lowest point when he gets beaten up and spit at as he“s trying to make a call to his infant son, just wait for the snakes. He owns the main house of the run-down dairy farm his parents left him which is surrounded by the airfields that belong to his love interest. Then there are his only friends, his work partner Pete, and a would-be mentor, lawyer Elias Birchard Jonathan. And since this is “modern reimagining”“ of characters created almost a century ago, characters that are very much in the collective consciousness in the way they were portrayed on the 1950s television show (“not enough Raymond Burr”“, remember?), and we live in a period when an author“s nihilistic worldview has become a perquisite for good storytelling, he must lose the little he“s got. By the end of the show, Pete will have turned his back on Perry, and not only is his romantic relationship smashed to pieces, his lady friend will have (legally) stolen his farm from under him. Though Perry“s financially compensated, losing his late parents“ home stings two-fold. For one, his lover“s action is a betrayal of the trust they“d shared, with Mason telling her that this makes her “a snake”“. Then there“s the fact that Lupe Gibbs is a woman from Mexico. In this period, Lupe should be beneath a man like him, a white man. However, like during the intimate moments of their affair, Lupe has been on top of him the whole time. In the end, he“s little choice but to make peace with what she“s done and to take the money. He has one request, though. In a note he“s left for her in lieu of saying goodbye, which she discovers with the fact that he“s moved out, he asks her to take care of the last few remaining dairy cows, something we“ve seen him do on occasion. Lupe might do so, since she still has a soft spot for this loser, but this won“t keep her from demolishing the house Mason was born in, since it stands in the way of progress. This also seems to be the approach of the writers, this dreaded mantra of “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”“ Thus, Jones and Fitzgerald go all in on dismantling Perry“s life and the past. In a shocking twist, which ends the fourth episode, we see Mason“s mentor, who is well into his seventies, kill himself. And what seems even worse, when we follow Perry and Della, who was the man“s assistant, as they bring the body to his family, they discover that he and his ways are not wanted there either. All this while a seemingly innocent woman is about to be hanged for the kidnapping of her baby which resulted in the child“s death. This is not the lawyer we know who hasn“t lost a case (yet). Perry, who is also haunted by war time trauma and who is unable to fix the relationship with his ex-wife (she doesn“t want Mason to stay for dinner when he makes a trip to the place where she staying to visit her and his son while he“s still reeling from the suicide of his long-time friend), has finally hit rock bottom. This is not what you have come to expect from a character who wasn“t created by the writers, a character we want to see treated with respect. This type of revisionism is the fruit from the poisonous tree (to use a legal term) we call “subverting expectations”“, a trap many inexperienced writers will fall into easily, writers who care little for the established lore they“re allowed to work with, writer chomping at the bit to re-work these characters to tell the story they want to tell. What are these writers but snakes that“ll betray the trust the audience put in them, like Lupe ostensibly did with Perry? Let the record reflect on where I stand in regard to snakes. Jones and Fitzgerald won“t stop just there yet. Like a snake that will wait in the tall grass for its next victim for hours on end, they have woven their own kind of mantrap into the DNA of the show and the story they“re telling us. Using the name “Perry Mason”“, they“ve snared us to ultimately bare these fangs that we“ll find in many stories that re-work old characters and concepts, i.e. the idea of diversity. While many will applaud this modern trend of virtue signaling with writers forcing their precious representation into this, that and the other thing, there are those who will cry foul, and perhaps rightfully so. Of course, private investigator Mason is unable to locate the most important clue that will help him crack the kidnapping-murder case. Instead the evidence is handed to him by Paul Drake, the guy who“ll eventually become his investigator. Drake“s a regular patrol officer when we“re introduced to him on this show, still he“s presented as an observant crime scene investigator who is more capable than Mason. Paul Drake is a black man. Then we get Della Street who isn“t just uber-competent, she aspires to become a lawyer herself while she“s seemingly just biding her time as the associate of a failed lawyer (Jonathan) who“s a pathetic relic of the past, and who constantly underappreciates her (in the four episodes he“s in). But Della is also a lesbian who is in a not-so-secret relationship with a hand-model who seems a bit vapid but who is also stunningly brave. There seems to be no limit to what this Della can do who baby-sits Mason and who serves as his motivational coach when necessary. To add insult to injury, it“s Della who turns Perry Mason into a lawyer (was there really any doubt that this was where he“d end up in the course of the show) by forging the signature of her late employer on a legal document, and by using her connections. We begin to see why the show“s protagonist is presented as a man who“s not just drunken off his ass half the time, but who“s also smart. Writers who want to tell an engaging story in current year but who want to check the right boxes at the same time, often resort to this trick. In order to make the diverse supporting cast stand out more, every previously established successful white character must be taken down a few pegs. In financial matters this is referred to as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”“ Where the writing is concerned, your story will suffer for it, and this is why you hate this, right? Because a ploy like this, this sneaky way of ruining characters that once were competent and strong, will make your storytelling weak. Lo, with “Perry Mason”“, this is not what happens. Not only do the writers of “Perry Mason”“ make it work, they do it exceptionally well, and in a way that works in an established universe. As a television drama, “Perry Mason”“ tells you a lot about 1932 and 2020 and while doing so, the show and its writers will reveal knowledge to you, as well as a truth, that“s anything but comfortable. If this specific truth is something you rather don“t want to hear or you don“t ever want to know, or you hate, remember, there“s the old show with Raymond Burr.

Before we take a deeper look at how the show subverts its established characters in an organic manner, vs. changing them to fit what some might call the “woke agenda”“, the former requiring a bit more talent than the latter obviously, let“s discuss what makes this such an outstanding mini-series from a technical point of view and as far as the overall story structure is concerned. And just in case you were wondering, yes, there are some shortcomings as well. Let“s begin with literally the most obvious thing: this a great looking show. Though the show“s talented crew and its showrunners strive for a naturalistic look (they clearly have the budget to do so), with many scenes shot and around Los Angeles made to look like the 1930s and extremely detailed set designs, they also let you know that this is a work of fiction. It isn“t a bad prop or some obviously fake set that drives this point home, but the impressive level of competence on display. This fourth wall breaking, as far as the visual storytelling is concerned, is no accident either. This show is designed top-down, and things like the color grading will make you forget that it is a made for television series, though you“ll notice the creative hands behind such a high degree of craftsmanship that is on par if not better than many production for the big screen with ten times the budget. There“re but a few shots that aren“t beautifully composed or where the blocking feels off. One or two examples during the courtroom scenes are a bit glaring only because the staging works so well otherwise. It“s also impressive to see that once directorial duties are handed over from Tim Van Patten to talented helmer Deniz Gamze ErgÃ¼ven for the three episodes that make up the second act, there is not the slump you“ll often see with serialized television productions. ErgÃ¼ven is well up to the task and she manages to build on the visual language that Van Patten uses to bookend the show in act one and three. Another set of praise needs to go to the score and its composer Terence Blanchard who has been in the business since 1980 and who served as the artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for eleven years, this on top of being a recording artist in his own right as a jazz trumpeter. The score is marvelous. If you want to talk about representation, if your show is set in America in the 1930s and it comes with a lot of Jazz, you seriously want to hire a black composer. Blanchard has composed unique tracks that close out each episode (but for the third installment) and his compositions work well on their own and especially well with the end credits and title cards which are created to fit the mood of the last scenes. When E.B. commits suicide, we observe how he puts out water for the birds for the very last time. This is mirrored in a gut-wrenching end credit sequence in which we get animated birds slowly flapping their wings. You also need to give a huge shoutout to the casting for the show. The lead roles are all perfectly cast, with Chris Chalk as Paul Drake and Tatiana Maslany as standouts. There are some weak spots. Gayle Rankin, who plays murder suspect Emily Dodson is a bit one-note, though not for lack of effort. Since this is also a story about a ministry, namely the Radiant Assembly of God, ostensibly lead by the charismatic and at times enigmatic Sister Alice, the casting pulls off two small wonders. When we flashback to the past in a haunting scene in which Alice“s mom calls on her then underage daughter to offer herself to a man who provides them with gasoline (and money we assume), not the first time Alice is asked to do such a thing at her mother“s behest, the casting of Ella Kennedy Davis is spot-on as a teenaged Alice. Davis is a dead ringer for a younger Maslany. When Della and Perry meet Jonathan“s son after bringing the late lawyer“s body up north to his family and the crypt at the cemetery, Byron is played by Ian Lithgow, the actor“s real-life son who is a fine actor and who resembles his famous father a great deal. This makes a scene in which a son rejects his father even in death even more poignant. The bitterness the young man shows his late parent feels utterly believable least of all thanks to their near identical looks, separated by twenty-seven years of age and their identical mannerisms. On the other end of the spectrum, actress Gretchen Mol does receive a fairly high billing as Mason“s ex-wife, though she appears only in one scene which seems odd and which might indicate that some of her work was left in the edit bay. Then we“ve a story structure that works with many symmetries. Originally, there are four kidnappers which pair off in two groups of two. Two hired hands and two men connected to the conspiracy created to extort the funds needed to sustain the ministry which has amassed considerable debt due to bad investments. It“s also a show that begins with a dead child and ends with one child that has taken his place among us the living, a miracle child resurrected from the dead (a fraudulent scheme devised by Alice“s mother). While this child is of dubious origin, we see another child born into the world and a loving family, Paul Drake“s child. Alice herself is seen as a child with jet-black hair and this is the hair color she returns to once she runs away from her own church, the same church that is split into two warring factions due to her wild promise that God has charged her with the resurrection of the dead baby Charlie Dodson. Then we“ve two lawyers (first Jonathan and then Mason) opposing two men from the District Attorney office, with one man working in the glaring light of the flashlights from the reporters“ cameras and the other staying mostly in the shadows. Then there are two autopsies performed on the same man, Emily Dodson“s not-so-secret lover and one of the kidnappers. And as we see with District Attorney Maynard Barnes, who uses the spectacular trial for his own political ambitions, there“s a dual role for the press, at least as it“s perceived by men who seek power. They“ll welcome favorable press coverage when it serves their goal, but once things don“t go as planned, members of the press are peddlers of lies. Though some may take this as a comment on current political events, this is a truth that seems to hold true no matter the year we“re in. The show offers two more circles that see their completion at the end of the series. The show started with Charlie already dead. Later we learn that he died since the baby was nursed by a prostitute on heroin during the time of his abduction. Ultimately, this led to his death by asphyxiation. Detective Ennis, who is one of the men involved in the kidnapping and who goes free since Mason has no evidence to tie him directly to the crime, or rather he can“t use the evidence Paul has given him, is drowned by a group of Mexican workers at the behest of his partner who understands that Ennis is a lose canon and that he“s liable to compromise the man if Ennis is allowed to continue on his path. Ennis dies violently as he struggles with the men, but finally he suffocates in a fountain on the grounds of a crime boss who is allowed to operate his casino as long as the cops are paid off. There is nothing black and white about this show and the story we are told. As far as the guilty not being rewarded, one has to wonder. Emily is de facto innocent in the death of her child; however, she has no issue with pretending that a strange baby that is put into her arms is her son reborn for the attention this will get her, and the money she is able to raise while she is helping the ministry to rebuild its number of followers sans Sister Alice. Perry“s hands are also tainted by money since he pays Pete to bribe one of the jurors. Thankfully the show does avoid the pitfall a lesser show would have walked into. There are a few quick glances that pass between Alice and Perry, and there“s clearly some chemistry, but when he tracks her down at the end of the last episode, he rejects the idea of a romance, not because he is a better man now, but because he knows from his own experience what a broken person looks like. Perry has just fixed himself, with a lot of help from Della and Paul. Here“s a man who doesn“t want to be dragged down again. Speaking of Sister Alice, the show uses real-life events for the narrative that aren“t based on the source material. As mentioned in my review for the first three installments, the kidnapping and killing of Charlie Dodson is modeled on the real-life abduction that happened to a young girl named Marion Parker in 1927, a case that was also used on “City of Angels”“, a show shot around the same time which bears a striking resemblance to this series. As far as Sister Alice is concerned and the radio evangelist on the other show, she and her church are based on Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson who was also known as Sister Aimee. Elizabeth was a Canadian Pentecostal evangelist who pioneered the use of modern media in her services as it became widely available in the 1920 and 1930 to draw much bigger crowds than the American revival preachers who toured the Midwest could. After initially moving to Rhode Island with her mother Mildred, she set her eyes on Los Angeles where she gained immense popularity due to her faith healings which included perfectly choreographed stage performances. Being able to raise donations of three hundred thousand dollars before the country was thrown into economic disaster at the end of the decade, the Sister had a megachurch built in her adopted hometown. The Angelus Temple, a massive structure that is still in use today, was completed in 1923. It became the base of operation for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded by McPherson. As many Americans lost their jobs during the Depression, the Sister started many soup kitchens across the city and other charitable organization. The Sister was fiercely pro-integration and claimed she“d shown many members of the Ku Klux Klan the error of their ways. But life was not all peachy for Sister Aimee, and this is where the show draws some close parallels. There were fights between her and her mother, and huge money problems, and the Sister disappeared for a while to later reclaim her empire which was falling apart. Though millions of dollars passed through her hands, when she died in 1944, with her death linked to a number of barbiturates she was using, her personal estate amounted to $10,000. Her mother, who had split from her, was awarded a severance settlement of $200,000 in cash and property in 1927. The church Sister Aimee had established was able to move beyond their liquidity issues and at the time of her death it had assets worth nearly 3 million dollars. There is a rich tapestry of real history, lore and myth-making the writers can draw from for their Sister Alice, and Jones and Fitzgerald definitely make the most of it. The first act of “Perry Mason”“ ended with the shocking revelation that Sister Alice had been charged by God, or so she claimed, to bring the baby back from the dead on Easter Sunday. When the second act begins, the church starts to fracture. There is turmoil among the church elders, some of which take objection to the very idea, and there are those in her congregation and among her followers who do as well. And while one faction sets up a new church that stands in opposition to her radical promise, a development that is akin to the history of the churches of the Bay Colonies in New England, others want to see Alice dead for her blasphemy. As she recuperates from a seizure she“d suffered on stage while offering her bold proclamation, a family of her worshippers makes a house call. A little girl presents her with a box she says contains a cake she“s made herself for the Sister“s recovery. But when Alice opens the carton, what she and we get are a bunch of, you guessed it, poisonous snakes. The Sister survives the attempt on her life, barely, still she isn“t ready to back off from her prediction. While this is set up to parallel Mason“s life, as he sees his former friends turning away from him while he begins his professional ascent, and Perry seems surrounded by snakes, well, metaphorical ones, albeit still treacherous ones, the writers make an interesting comment on the phenomenon of celebrity culture. A person beloved by the masses can fall from grace from one day to the next with those who were the most fervent believers, now ready to send death threats or worse. It is a fate that feels very 2020 but timeless as well. Clearly, a show that manages to tell such an ambitious story while pulling off the rare feat to tell it well, can hardly be without a few minor missteps along the way. Those war flashbacks of Perry“s? Was there a point to those? Likewise, his quick visit with his ex-wife. Sure, we learned that he is a good father to his son, that Linda trusts him around the kid, but not that much that she“ll allow him to take his boy back to Los Angeles for a few weeks, and that Linda and his relationship seems beyond repair, though she hasn“t moved on yet. Then there“s the whole business of Perry becoming a lawyer within two weeks, him being able to go toe to toe with a D.A. with decades of courtroom experience, a man who doesn“t play fair. Sure, Mason sucks at this lawyer thing, but then he stops sucking and is actually very good at it. The most glaring mistake is the unanswered question of what actually happened to the ransom money, the MacGuffin of the series. The official version is that Emily“s lover burned it before he committed suicide, only that he didn“t since it was staged by Detective Ennis who was helping out his buddy at the church. Why would he burn the money? And if it went into the ministry“s coffers, why was their chief financial officer, Ennis contact, asking the bank for a loan? If you know the answer, feel free to hit me up on social media, not saying that I might not have missed it. However, what the show does extremely well is how it re-works Della and Paul, and not, or not only, to gain woke points. Should you hate the idea itself, that they needed to be re-imagined at all, well, I won“t tell you otherwise. If you want to find out how they did in a way that makes for a better story, read on.

“John operated a successful fishing shop. He needed a new bait cooler which had to be in place by May 1, the opening day of, you guessed it, the fishing season.”“ These lines, spoken by a character introduced at the end of episode five, mark the turning point of this mini-series while it also reveals two of its core themes. It is also a good starting point to understand how the show introduces its cast and how it makes good use of these characters that we created in the 1930s. The man who meets up with Perry in a small diner to help him with his preparation for the Bar Examination, is none other than Hamilton Burger. It“s a name that is familiar to Mason in his world and to fans of these characters in their many incarnations. He is the District Attorney of Los Angeles, only that Burger hasn“t achieved this status, like Perry Mason isn“t a lawyer just yet. At this point in the show, Burger is an Assistant D.A. It“s his boss Maynard Barnes who is Perry“s opponent as an investigator and later in court. Burger has ulterior motives, of course. By helping Mason to become a lawyer in the first place and trusting that ultimately, he“ll be able to defeat Barnes in the murder case which has caused quite the media frenzy, this will open up a path for his own ascent. Little does Burger know, we suspect, that by doing so he is creating his own worst enemy. Perry Mason will go up against Burger in court time and again, and, as we know from Gardner“s books as well as from the every movie and TV show ever produced around the upstanding criminal defense attorney, Perry will always come out on top, making Burger the worst D.A. in the (fictional) history of Los Angeles. While Burger“s betrayal of the District Attorney“s office and the man himself, constitutes another snake-like behavior in a show that has many characters acting this way, the questions remains why Hamilton Burger should know of Perry in the first place (his desire to represent Emily Dodson has been a recent event) and why he should trust that this man who has no legal training would be able to beat, let alone to humiliate, Barnes when he has his day in court. This of course is something that makes this show this clever, the writers tell us exactly how we get to this point. First of all, Burger is friends with Della Street. With the way these two act (Justin Kirk is a revelation as Burger and he makes the most out of the little screen time he“s been given), we understand that they both come from money, so it makes sense that they should know each other. In Gardner“s original novels, Della“s father lost the family“s wealth during the stock market crash, hence she had to find a job as a secretary, a fate she shared with many women in those days who came from a sheltered upbringing. The show tweaks this in a way that makes sense in the revised context. This Della has left her family behind, and the financial security it offers her, since she didn“t want to marry the man who“d been selected for her. You could argue that this is because she is a lesbian in this new version, but that would be only half the story. By forcing a woman, any person really, who this headstrong into something she (or he) isn“t just comfortable with, you will automatically cause anger and hatred in this person and dissent. It“s a perfect recipe to split apart a family or a church. Della remains a character with a lot of agency who“s willing to do all that is necessary to see that Emily is acquitted, even if this means to turn Perry into a lawyer by forging a signature and enlisting help from Burger, who at one point calls her his only friend. As Perry rightfully (or perhaps wrongfully) points out, Della is so eager to believe in Emily“s innocence, because she views her as a victim in a world dominated by men and their morals. Victimhood is a mantle Della claims for herself even though she“d moved past any state of self-pity and she“s found a way to channel her anger into something constructive. She does not take no for an answer and won“t be refused. After her attempts to secure new legal representation for Emily fail, after the suicide of her employer, her ploy to help Perry become a lawyer is the only road open to her and she has no compunction to do just that. An old adage says that you are your own worst enemy. This is a myth told by others, by those who do a perfectly fine job at being your enemy and who will tell you that you only have yourself to blame. Drinking too much? You have only yourself to blame, they say. The whole system turns on Emily because she“s an easy target. Her infidelity is grounds enough to charge her with killing her own child. This is why Della is fighting for Emily, because she herself feels railroaded by the system and men calling the shots and assigning labels. All this righteous anger of the oppressed would avail her naught were it not for her friendship with Mr. Burger, who has “a law degree from Yale [and] twenty-two years of trial experience”“, but here“s the rub: Della isn“t friends with Burger because of their wealthy, conservative background but despite of it. The Assistant D.A. is a homosexual, a closeted homosexual of course, given the time period, his profession and his political ambition. Della and he are both outsiders who in this society must lead secret lives. This moves them into each other“s orbit, but they also work in their own ways to dismantle the system from the inside. It goes the show“s strength that it not only reinvents Burger as somebody who comes across as very competent, but as a gay person, he“s no saint. When he and Della have dinner and he introduces her as his fiancÃ©e, he checks out a young waiter like a straight man might ogle a young attractive waitress. Like Della, this Hamilton Burger feels like a well-rounded character, warts and all. The same goes for Paul Drake, the only other character on the show who has an arc. When we meet him, he“s a beat cop who“s relegated to patrolling black neighborhoods exclusively. We learn that he has good people skills, that he is a good person who wants to do the right thing and that he is a very competent detective (in the latter two aspects he stands above Perry by a mile). But he is also an angry man. He is made aware of his place in a predominantly white police force that is corrupt and deeply racist. When Perry questions his police report, Drake was present at one of the crime scenes, he reacts in the only way he can. He punches Mason. This is a very understandable reaction since any attempt to rock the boat could spell disaster for him and his family. Drake is proud of his achievements, he“s a police officer after all and he“s very good at his work, but it“s not for career considerations that he“s keeping his head down. With his wife expecting their first child, there are very real stakes. Still, his conscience forces him to hand over a piece of evidence to Mason he has secured from the crime scene, evidence he“s kept since Detective Ennis (our bad guy) and his watch commander have pressured him into filing a report that is convenient to an investigation in which Emily Dodson is the sole murder suspect. Paul“s wife has made peace with the way this world works, a world in which the white man rules supreme and unquestioned and you “render unto Caesar”“ because that“s the way things are and that is expected from you if you are a person of color. But what he witnesses at work makes Paul even more angry and eventually his wife gives him license to do what he feels is right. Still, two things need to happen for this system to turn Drake into its enemy. When Perry calls Drake to the stand, he“s still willing to play ball, even though he knows that Mason is aware that he knows more about the murder case than Paul is willing to let on at the trial. When Drake“s watch commander hands him an envelope with plenty of cash for rendering the desired testimony, he“s close to the tipping point. He can affect change from within the police force, he tells himself. But when he and his wife and friends are spending some time on a beach in Santa Monica, they are evicted by white policemen. Not only are the beaches segregated, the city“s mayor doesn“t like black people at any part of the beach, and he uses the police to enforce a decree he“s signed to this effect, the same police force Paul is a part of. Though the officer he questions about what“s going on and why they are needed to leave, isn“t unsympathetic to his frustrations, the man is just doing his job by seeing the mayor“s orders through, he also tells Drake that it doesn“t matter that they are colleagues. Drake is a black man. If you still wonder why this “race-bending”“ of a character who was originally written as a “white”“ character was necessary, other than to collect “woke points”“ (that this is a question that needs an answer should give you pause when a simply “why not?”“ should suffice), the answer is, because it makes for compelling television and since it fits to the overall theme. Like Della, Paul“s turn comes as a consequence of a system that“s unfair and thus will created its own enemies. This show“s Paul Drake starts out as a classic trope from detective fiction. He is the one honest cop who“s no longer willing to turn a blind eye to what he witnesses around himself. That this show cast a black actor in this role only makes his actions more logical. Even if Paul does what is expected from him, he will always be an outsider. So why should he stick with the system at all? That he turns on his employer and eventually ends up as Perry“s new investigator makes sense, both from a character point of view and within the narrative. As with Della and Burger who cannot openly admit to who they are, Paul has no other choice really, the difference being that his skin color is not something he can hide. But this is also a limitation that makes him a more interesting character. Paul needs to be more resourceful as a detective than Perry, as Paul tells Mason, even as a police officer he“s not allowed to cuff a white man and a white suspect will always stand above him. But working with Drake will make Perry a better lawyer. Once the two join forces, he still can“t call Drake to the stand again to offer what he really knows for fear of reprisal against Drake and his family. Instead, Mason must find another way. This is how you create an exciting narrative while making your cast diverse. Pete, Perry“s work partner, goes into the exact opposite direction. Pete becomes an enemy of the system, too, still for a distinctly different reason. When their suspect Ennis tries to bribe Pete with a young Chinese prostitute from the same brothel the corrupt police detective and his more seasoned partner shake down for money, Pete takes this as a personal insult, and he quickly returns to Mason“s side to take Ennis down for this slight he“s just experienced (Pete is a womanizer and Ennis“ proposal has clearly hit a nerve). Eventually, Pete and Perry have a fallout that destroys their friendship which is something that must happen, and this is not caused by Perry asking his pal to bribe one of the jurors. Pete“s a “by the book”“ kind of guy. In that, he“s a very different detective than Mason who will follow a hunch and then stop at nothing. All things being equal, Pete is a much better investigator, something which must hurt especially hard when Perry ascents to the role of a criminal defense lawyer this quickly. That Perry“s much better in this line of work adds only more insult. Thus, by becoming an attorney and the ultimate social climber, Perry creates his own enemy in Pete. In consequence, his erstwhile friend and work partner takes up employment with Mason“s future nemesis Hamilton Burger. Yet another example for a perfect symmetry, and for a snake.

“What kind of man are you, Mr. Mason?”“ is a question that only gets asked once on the show, still it is the most important one. When we“re introduced to this show“s version of Perry Mason, we meet a guy who“s down on his luck in all ways that matter. His marriage has fallen apart, his family“s farm is ruined and surrounded by airfields that make it a relic of a past that seemed happier and full of promise. Perry Mason is dirt poor, like many losers in an economic system that is no longer working and mightn“t ever have, at least not for the little guys. He“s haunted by war trauma and he“s been kicked out of the army he“s given years of his life to. But unlike many television shows (and movies for that matter) that don“t trust their own audience and will hit you over the head with exposition heavy dialogue, the writers of “Perry Mason”“ ask you to become a detective. It is in the scenes in which we see Mason during the war, and later with his estranged wife Linda, that we find out who he is. There“s his anger and bloodlust that led to his dismissal from the armed forces. Then we learn that Linda rejected his first marriage proposal. Perry didn“t relent and he got what he wanted, but when we see the two of them for the first and only time on the show, he asks her: “Why did you ever say yes to me?”“ There“s a lot of anger in his voice, as he almost spits the words into her face, but knowing what we know about Perry by then, if there“s any blame to go around, since this is a broken relationship there surely must be, we don“t side with Mason. When the show takes us through one of his cases as an investigator, this is when our doubts begin. He“s hired by the boss of a film studio to find compromising material on one of their former stars who does not cut it in the new era of talkies (a character very loosely based on comedian Roscoe Arbuckle). Mason has no issue with helping the studio with destroying the man“s career and livelihood. He“s willing to dig up the dirt required without any fail. Actually, quite the contrary. When he acquires additional intel he feels the studio doesn“t want to be made public, Mason has taken pictures of the comedian and one of the studio“s rising female stars while they are having sexual intercourse, he has no qualms about trying to up his agreed upon fee by using a little blackmail. But things go south rather quickly, and his gamble also destroys his chance of ever seeing any payment for his troubles (except for one dollar), money he was to share with Pete, his partner on the case. Perry is reckless, and he acts on the spur of the moment. As it turns out, the two war flashback scenes and his confrontation with Linda did amount to something. These complete a portrait not of one man who is brought low by the circumstances he finds himself in, but of a man who“s very flawed and crooked and shady when he feels he needs to be, or an opportunity presents itself. To call this Perry Mason an honest man is a stretch, but then there is his tempering with the jury pool (quite unnecessary since in the end three jurors will not move to convict Emily which leads to a mistrial). Looking at his starting point on the show and where he eventually ends up, we“re tempted to give Perry a pass. Here“s this sometimes loveable, pitiful, yet tenacious, occasionally clever screw-up who becomes a competent lawyer on a crusade to defend the innocent. Only that“s the thing. He does not change that much. What Della offers him, what his new profession allows him to do, is to channel his anger into more constructive ways. Once he“s able to move past his initial fumbling in an arena that is completely new to him, as soon as he gets a few licks in, and he can stick it to D.A. Barnes with some of the same showmanship his opponent displays, there“s an almost sadistic glee in his eyes, and he goes for the kill like on the battlefield in Europe. His road to the courtroom is an interesting one for sure. We see how Della is approaching many experienced lawyers with all of them turning her down. The reason one of them gives her for not wanting to associate himself with this spectacular trial is as simple as it is honest: there“s nothing to be gained here once you“re already part of the system, a system that“s willing to see a woman convicted for the murder of her child because she was engaged in an extramarital affair. Della Street doesn“t pick Perry because he delivers a half-way cohesive, drunken rant that amounts to a half decent opening argument, Della picks him because she knows what kind of man he is. Obviously, Mason has some talent for giving his self-styled anger rather eloquent expression, like when he charges that Barnes “raised public outcry. And then he attacked this woman.”“ Still, Della is keenly aware that in Mason, she and ultimately Emily Dodson have an ally who is willing to take on the system because he“s nothing to lose and everything to gain, a man who knows that the system is unfair, a system that is not working for himself or for his client, but also a man willing to play equally unfair. Imagine what damage such a man can do once he“s given the opportunity to take on the system from the inside, and here he has Della and Burger ready to give him the key to do just that. We see this perfectly encapsulated when Perry Mason delivers his oath as an attorney at law in front of the Bar Association at the end of episode five. As he is surrounded by a group of clean-cut young men who are brimming with hopeful optimism and honesty that borders on naivety, the camera moves in tighter on Mason“s face. We end on a close-up of his features as he says the words “So help me God!”“ with one eyebrow slightly cocked up. Here“s a man ready to rumble. For fans of the character, how he“d been traditionally portrayed, especially on the show Perry“s most closely associated with, and after the all depressing scenarios the creators of this reimagined incarnation had put him through, here“s your fist-pumping moment. But what this scene is telling us, is that if you“re a champion of the oppressed and you find yourself in an unwinnable situation or going up against a rigged system, you really have to know how to fight dirty. Obviously, there“s some precedent in popular fiction. It is Perry Mason by the way of Star Trek“s Captain Kirk. When confronted with impossible odds during the Kobayashi Maru exercise, the future Captain of the starship Enterprise won nevertheless, making Kirk the first cadet to do so. How he did it was easy. Once he had figured out that the Kobayashi Maru was a training exercise that was ostensibly designed to make you fail, he fixed the system. With Emily Dodson on trial for her life, this is clearly no training exercise, but the system is equally rigged. Even discounting the public outcry from a mob whipped into a frenzy by a media hungry for clicks, the newspaper-friendly shenanigans of a duplicitous D.A. with political ambitions and a police force run by commanding officers willing to coerce patrolmen into falsify their reports and detectives ready to alter physical evidence, and with Mason unwilling to feed Drake to the wolves, Perry is set up to fail for the simple fact that his client has been set up to fail. A woman who is unhappy with her lot in life cannot be allowed to stray outside of her marriage, not in this world, not in this society that is ready to cancel you for the slightest mistake that violates the invisible tenets of an unknowable moral code. Whose code and whose morals don“t matter much to this neo-puritanic public. In the end, Mason wins, and we cheer him on for it. The stage is set for his first case and his next client. With 1.7 million viewers on average, “Perry Mason”“ was the most watched new drama for HBO in two years. It has received the go-ahead for a second season. “City of Angels”“, the offering from rival Showtime that told a very similar story, albeit as a supernatural potboiler in the mold of pulp fiction, has just been cancelled. If there is a lesson to be learned from what“s now the first season of the new “Perry Mason”“ show, perhaps it“s this one: “Find truth, seek justice. In that order.”“ Words to live by before we judge others or before we hate.

Score: 5 out of 5.

Author Profile

Chris Buse

A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.