Perry Mason (Season 2)

It has been some months since Perry (Matthew Rhys) won the Emily Dodson case.  Well, it was a hung jury, but the DA declined to try the case again, so essentially a win.  Despite that, Perry has avoided criminal law.  He and Della (Juliet Rylance) have acquired a litigious grocer (Sean Astin) as a client who allows them to pay the bills and even hire a receptionist.  Though his legal career was on an even keel, his emotional state was a wreck.  His farm was sold, so he lived in an apartment and was reduced to riding a motorcycle.  Emily Dodson had since drowned herself.  Yes, time for more drinking and feeling sorrowful.

Then a big case arrived.  Two Latino brothers were arrested for the murder of Brooks McCutcheon, the son of the wealthy wheeler-dealer Lydell McCutcheon.  Though Perry was approached by the family of the brothers, he initially declined the case.  However, Della pushed and he investigated just enough to think they might be innocent.  And so began his latest case.

Much of the cast from last season is back.  Detective Holcomb (Eric Lanuge), who killed his partner in the last season, has returned as a shady business partner to the murdered Brooks McCutcheon.  Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) had split from Perry at the end of last season and now works for the DA's office, a fact which Perry proves oblivious despite hearing about it repeatedly.  Assistant DA Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk) has been elevated to DA, but he is being blackmailed for being gay.  Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) was the prime investigator for Perry, but also had outside jobs, including one for the DA's office.  Then there is Perry's ex-wife and son, who move back to Los Angeles.  His son is enrolled in a private school where Perry soon finds himself involved with his son's teacher, Miss Ginny Aimes (Katherine Waterston).  Della Street's love life also changed, where she abandoned Hazel (Molly Ephraim) for the more exciting & wealthy Anita St. Pierre (Jen Tullock).

In order to fill 8 episodes, it had to be a more complicated case than expected.  Of course, that also means that all the introduced characters are probably linked to the crime.  Yes, that proved to be the case.  Brooks' antics were small time but, if investigated, could reveal much bigger crimes related to his father and his father's business partners.  The murder was strategic, to prevent something worse.  Are the Latino brothers just scapegoats or assassins for hire?

Perry proved to be mostly an idiot.  In an early episode, he took measurements about the murder scene and of the two brothers.  This convinced him that they were not the shooters and that he should take the case.  He never brought this up in court and it proved to be bogus.  So, he was an idiot then, but you should have forgotten that from episode 2 by the time we reveal evidence in episode 5.  Right.  Later, the DA somehow learned of critical evidence in the defense's hands.  How could that possibly be?  Well, the obvious solution is that Pete Strickland - who had been in the office many times before and was now working for the DA - might have done some snooping.  This is even more likely when you consider how Pete and Perry have had a falling out.  What does the brilliant Perry Mason deduce?  It must have been his son's teacher, Ginny Aimes!  He confronted her immediately.  Ugh.  When Pete later admitted to it, Perry was dumbfounded.  What?  The DA's investigator investigated my office?  Duh!

By contrast, Della was on the ball.  She gets to have the final confrontation with the main villain and she gets to do much of the strategizing.  She's not some depressed drunk, but a mostly well-adjusted lesbian whose life and career are looking good.  And just to battle those rumors, she and Hamilton start attending events together and hint at marriage.

The season ends with Perry Mason in jail!  Yeah, his withholding of key evidence - accessory after the fact - put him in the klink.  Is it any surprise that the series was cancelled after this?

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Perry Mason

The day after Christmas in 1931, an infant, Charlie Dodson, was kidnapped for a ransom of $100,000.  Though the ransom was paid, the child was dead. The police suspected the child's father.  However, his alibi checked out and the child's mother was arrested and charged.  The kidnappers were discovered dead in a murder-suicide scenario.  Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin) had been having an affair with the lead kidnapper.  E. B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) had accepted the case when the father, Matthew Dodson, was accused.  However, Matthew's father, Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), was unwilling to foot the bill for an adulteress.

Sister Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) was a radio preacher with a nation-wide following.  Herman Baggerly was a supporter of her ministry, and the Dodsons were members of the church.  Alice involved herself in the case, much to the irritation of the church fathers and her own mother, Birdy McKeegan (Lili Taylor).  Curiously enough, the lead kidnapper and Emily's lover had been an accountant for the church.  It is noteworthy that Sister Alice is largely based on a real person, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), a radio preacher based out of Los Angeles.

Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) was a divorced father, a dishonorably discharged officer from the Great War, a failed dairy farmer, and a private eye living a hand to mouth existence.  He is a man with few friends and spends much of his time depressed or drunk, often both.  He has the emotional self-control of a toddler who wants his mother to buy a toy at the store.  He is only too happy to cheat, if that is what it takes to get his way.  "There's what is legal, and there's what is right."  Perry is E. B. Jonathan's investigator, who more often argues with his boss; it is a wonder that E. B. put up with him.  This Perry Mason is a foul-mouthed slob.  The number of F-bombs dropped might compete with a Tarantino film's use of the N-word.  This guy is an interesting character, but he isn't Perry Mason.

Della Street (Juliet Rylance) was E. B. Jonathan's secretary, though she spent most of her time arguing with her boss, quite similar to Perry.  She must be repeatedly reminded to answer the phone.  Della lived in a boarding house; one of the other boarders, Hazel (Molly Ephraim), is her lover.  Yes, Della is a lesbian; must get that representation in there.  Oh, Assistant DA Hamilton Burger is also homosexual; don't want to leave the fellas out.  It turned out that Della did most of the work for the law firm and expects to be a partner in a couple of years.  Really, E. B. proved to be an empty suit with an over-inflated ego.

As a Depression-Era show, one expects a downer soundtrack.  Such is delivered.  There is a repeated melody that signals sadness and depression.  There are no breaks in the gloomy setting, just one long tale of woe and dread.  It's a miracle that there were not more suicides among these characters.

The trial, which serves as Perry Mason's first as a lawyer, is ludicrous.  DA Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) pinned his entire case on the fact that Emily was having an affair with the kidnapper.  He proved beyond any doubt that she was an adulteress, therefore you must find her guilty of murdering her child and sentence her to hang!  Not only is his case thin on evidence, he knows the detectives on the case were corrupt; heck, he demanded that the detectives eliminate anyone who knew too much.  Yes, the whole justice system is rotten to the core.  Half of the stuff that Perry and his fellow investigators, Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) and Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), uncover proved to be inadmissible.  Sure, that's nice for the audience to see the full story but it helped the case not at all.  Then there was the imaginary cross-examination of the actual killer that harkened back to the Raymond Burr series.

Excellent cast, a terrific film noir setting, this had lots of potential.  However, it should have been some original character, not an origin story for Perry Mason that changes all the characters.  Watch Spider-Noir instead.