“THIS IS NOT THE STORY WE’RE TELLING“ PERRY MASON, EPISODES 1-3
Chris Buse (RIP)
*This review contains spoilers.
In issue No. 64 of DC Comics“ then popular team-up comic book Justice League of America readers were introduced to a brand-new character who went by the name Red Tornado. Though the name had been used back in 1940 for a woman made of flesh, this Red Tornado was decidedly different. Writer Gardner Fox and artist Dick Dillin revealed how different. Their creation was not human at all, but a machine, a robot so advanced that he needed to receive a designation that better reflected his status among other mechanical men and lesser machines. Their Red Tornado was an android. And herein lay a twist: though created whole cloth from man-made parts, Fox“s artificial man was still sentient. Because that, he was perhaps more than a man. Only a few months, if not weeks after Red Tornado made his debut, another comic book writer, Roy Thomas, featured his own android character in the pages of Marvel Comics“ The Avengers, which was DC“s budding competitor“s answer to Justice League of America, if not historically, but in spirit. Naming his artificial man The Vision, Thomas“ also co-opted the moniker of a hero from the so-called Golden Age of Comics. Like with Red Tornado, the cover of The Avengers No. 57 gave readers the impression that they weren“t witnessing the introduction of a new superhero but a supervillain. For good reason apparently. Once you learned that these were not creatures of living, breathing flesh with functioning human brain, how could you trust them to know the difference between right and wrong? Fox“s Red Tornado was good, and he had feelings that seemed similar to what we call emotions. Thomas went a step further altogether. In the next issue he revealed a startling fact about The Vision with which he pretty much guaranteed that his character won the hearts and minds of many comic book fans across the nation. Since The Vision“s brain was “not truly a brain at all, but a maze of printed circuits of a mind long dead”“, Roy Thomas suggested that his synthetic man might even possess a soul. While both stories, coincidentally, both were two-parters, came with a hopeful message of inclusivity, Thomas understood his creation and his young audience a bit better. Not only was his android accepted by the heroes he“d been created to fight like Red Tornado, The Vision responded to the kindness awarded to him by these humans by displaying a very human reaction. With his story, Thomas showed comic fans that at Marvel Comics, “Even an Android Can Cry.”“ This was indeed a potent statement, especially to an eight-year-old reader who hailed from the baby boomer generation, this generation of girls and boys who unlike their mothers and fathers saw no benefit in holding back their emotions with somber and stoic silence. They did cry, these kids, and if their heroes, and especially a synthetic man who was less than a human being, yet who seemed more than human at the same time, were allowed to likewise, it endeared these men and this artificial man in particular even more to them. Both books were published in 1968. With even the two covers bearing a striking resemblance to each other, with lots of reds used throughout and the androids depicted as bad guys, the writers couldn“t have been any more different from one another in their experiences and outlook on life. Gardner Fox was born in 1911 and when he entered into the field of writing for comic books in the 1940s, this was in fact his second career. Ten years earlier, he“d been responsible for many stories and novels in the then popular genre of science fiction which saw print in the pulp magazines of those days. When writing prose about worlds that might become real in a future that in most cases turned out very different from our present, ceased to be commercially viable, he did switch to writing for the funny books which were in an ever-increasing high demand by that time. Thus, Fox became one of the pioneers in his second medium of choice, something he missed out on when he entered the world of sci-fi literature decades after its inception. Thomas on the other hand, nearly three decades his junior, was one of the kids who grew up reading comic book stories written by former pulp writers. Comic books were his first love, and this was what he wanted to be, a comic book writer. That these two men should develop and introduce a very similar concept at nearly the same time, does seem like one hell of a coincidence, but then again, this is far from being unusual, even down to the idea of a man made of metal and synthetic flesh who serves as a foil for the writer and us, the readers to examine what it truly means to be human, and it wasn“t the first time either. Though the idea of synthetic heroes had entered into the mainstream by the end of the 1960s thanks to shows like “Star Trek”“, “The Outer Limits”“ and “The Twilight Zone”“, chances are that both writers were also influenced by the Adam Link stories, the first of which was also featured on the original “Outer Limits”“ show as well as being adapted into the medium of comics, first by EC Comics and later by Warren Publishing. Originally put out at the end of the 1930s and in the early 1940s, these ten stories centered around a robot made in the likeness of a man who was able to develop a consciousness, were written by Eando Binder and published in the very same pulp magazines Fox wrote for. Eando Binder was the pen name used by two brothers, Otto and Earl, but Adam Link was the sole creation of the younger sibling Otto who“d soon followed many of his peers into the nascent comic book industry, the difference being that he already had an in since his other brother Jack had established himself as a successful comic book artist who would operate his own studio to produce complete books for one of the many comic book publishers who seemingly came into existence overnight. Binder“s first Adam Link story, first published in January 1939, is called “I, Robot”“, though many science fiction fans will closely associate this title with a different writer and what pretty much amounts to this author“s most seminal work. Coincidentally, again, around the same time Binder began his Adam Link series, Isaac Asimov created a loose sequence of stories which also dealt with the theme of artificial intelligence and sentient men made from metal. Though Asimov later admitted that he soon became aware of the other writer“s works and that there was a certain influence, who is to say how and when the basic idea saw its initial spark in the very human brain of each author? However, it was not his choice but that of his publisher Gnome Press to give the first collection of stories that would make up Asimov“s “The Robot Series”“ eventually, the title Binder had used for his first Adam Link story when they published the former author“s early tales as a re-worked fixup novel in 1950. At the end of the day, both writers treated the basic premise of an artificial man who develops a set of emotions very different from one another, not unlike Fox and Thomas with their man-made (in Thomas case machine-made) men. And sure enough, there have been other occasions when writers came up with very similar ideas around the same time, even down to some of the finer details. Marvel“s The X-Men premiered its first issue in the summer of 1963 (cover-dated September 1963). At the same time, DC Comics had their own group of outsider superheroes to hit the newsstand, The Doom Patrol, which made their debut in No. 80 of the already established My Greatest Adventure. Both super teams were led and mentored by a mysterious, much older man who was wheelchair-bound. Similarly, in 1971, Marvel“s Man-Thing and DC“s Swamp Thing saw print just one month apart from each other, however these monster characters trace back to The Heap, comics“ original swamp monster which showed up as early as Air Fighter Comics No. 3 (cover-dated December 1942). All three characters have a very similar origin story, especially the two later incarnations. However, the original writers, and those creators who subsequently worked on these stories, made these works their own. Though the creative community of any given medium may be small and people, especially freelancers, do travel in similar circles and might even know each other on a personal level, ideas seem to float around us as freely and as invisible as atoms. Every so often, a hand, or a creative mind, will reach out and make contact. Chances are, the very same thing will happen somewhere else nearly at the same time. What remains, is less the original concept, but the execution.
When we look at moviemaking, or by extension to the creation of television shows, weird coincidences do occur more often than not. Whereas Marvel“s “Civil War”“ and Warner Bros.“ “Batman v Superman”“, which were both released in 2016, are very different films in story and execution, each picture features a non-superpowered antagonist who serves as a conduit to increase a conflict between the heroes that arises from a contrarian worldview and the underlying moral principles. Both movies open with a scene that depicts the slaughter of innocents with the mayhem caused by those wielding the powers of gods. In “Civil War”“ it“s Iron Man who sides with the government“s approach to place some check and balance onto the actions of these supergods. In Zack Snyder“s world of “Batman v Superman”“, Batman operates outside the law, yet his alter-ego billionaire Bruce Wayne has access to seemingly unlimited resources. In that, Batman is the wish dream of any one-percenter who wants to retain the status quo by fighting anyone who might pose a challenge to their way of life. In Hollywood, movies that have premises that are very similar are not a rare beast and often these films will compete with each other for the audience at the box office. Thus, in one year there might be two films about a volcano eruption, or two films that depict the effect a huge comet racing towards Earth might have, and often with very surprising results. Whereas “Deep Impact”“ (1998) is a movie that strives for a certain realism while harkening back to the disaster flics of the 70s, and it does have a depressing non-happy ending, Michael Bay“s “Armageddon”“, which had nearly the same release window in the same year, is anything but. As is his wont, Bay did not latch onto the emotional core at the center of the premise, though he did feature a love story and the heroic death of his lead character, but the shallow spectacle. Interestingly, both movies are built around the same story: a crew is sent on a mission to the destroy the huge object in space which is threatening all life on Earth. Both films did well upon release, with “Deep Impact”“ landing the bigger opening, but in the end, Bay“s tale of a dirty dozen in space coupled with a lot of flag waving was more in the zeitgeist. Not only did “Armageddon”“ outgross “Deep Impact”“ by nearly doubling its cume, making it the biggest hit of 1998 globally, “Armageddon”“ has stood the test of time in that people will watch it now and then for its cheesy quality and cool special effects. And well, to see a very young Ben Affleck making out with an even younger Liv Taylor. Just recently, two major studios were vying to have two competing versions of “The Jungle Book”“ out in theatres before one another. Considering how long it sometimes takes for a movie to get developed or even greenlit, these overlaps in ideas are even more astonishing. However, this brings us right to 2020 and the world of television. This year saw the release of the first season of a show about homicide detectives in the Los Angeles of the 1930s. One of the detectives faced a lot of pushback from his colleagues on the police force which was depicted as racist and corrupt, that is with the exception of his older partner who served as his mentor while the man himself struggled to find his path in a landscape of ever moving goal posts of morality. With the older man trying to keep his compass of what is right and what is wrong mostly intact, he would fail of course, his young partner was haunted by a tragic past which was referred to throughout the show. Then, in the second episode viewers were introduced to a charismatic blonde radio evangelist who held a powerful sway over her many followers while she herself was getting steered by a domineering mother. With much religious fervor on display thanks to the antics of the religious Sister Molly who combined the swoon and sway of the revival circuit with much hoopla and trendy sing-alongs, we saw a supernatural element introduced into the show as well. Then there was the abduction of a child for ransom, sadly not a too unusual crime during the days of the Great Depression and earlier still. In this case, there was an especially gruesome detail that we weren“t spared, neither in words nor visually. When the girl“s father meets one of her kidnappers with the ransom money in hand, he has a chance to briefly catch a glimpse of his daughter. Though it would seem that she“d been drugged, her eyes were open. Satisfied that here was the proof of life the father had so desperately been hoping for, the man eagerly handed over the money to ensure that no further harm would come to his child. Snatching the money, the kidnapper made good on his escape, but not before he“d threw the bundle he“d been holding, presumably the other man“s child, from his vehicle. To his shock and horror, the father quickly discovered that his child was dead when he raced towards the discarded body which was wrapped in blankets except for the girl“s head. To create the impression that she was still alive, the kidnapper had stitched her eyes open with piano wire. And he“d done more to her than to simply kill her. Her arms and legs had been sawed off and she had been disemboweled. On the show, this was first a horror story one of the child characters told to other kids during a slumber party, but still, we got the horrific image of the dead girl seemingly brought back to life to haunt those who had allowed this to happen to her and the innocent alike. Clearly, this was the stuff of nightmares, intended to frighten the show“s young characters and us the viewers. What makes this even sadder and impactful is how the creators of the show blend their fiction, which is a fiction within a fiction, with the real-life abduction that happened to a young girl named Marion Parker in 1927. That this is but a minor plot point does not make the image that is presented to us less depressing. Watching this show, we are invited into a hellish realm in which life is cheap and death comes easy to the just and the wicked alike. The show in question is “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels”“, and though it was billed as a follow-up to the original series which ran for three seasons on Showtime from 2014 to 2016, this was a brand-new story with hardly any points of reference to its predecessor. “City of Angels”“ received a series order from the pay cable network as early as 2018, which puts its development process sometime around one or two years earlier. Coincidently, right around the same time HBO reportedly began development on a show based on a series of books of crime fiction centered around a defense lawyer. Originally to be written by Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of “True Detective”“, the project stalled when Pizzolatto opted out to work on the third season of the latter show. However, when writers Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald entered into the development process, the work in progress received a new lease on life. Even though the final version of what is marketed as a miniseries seems to have Pizzolatto“s fingerprints all over it, the result is markedly different to the scripter“s usual pulp fiction influenced works which he cleverly laces with a grim and gritty vibe of realism. By contrast, even sharper when directly compared to “City of Angels”“, a show that uses some of the same plot points. In fact, all the aspects mentioned above mirror the latter series in some shape or form. A detective lead who is traumatized by past events. Check. A wiser, more worldly mentor figure struggling with his own morality and mortality? Check. A beautiful, blonde radio personality who is the figurehead of a religious cult who is controlled by her scheming mother who we are introduced to in the show“s sophomore installment. Check, as well. A corrupt police force that does value fast convictions over finding the real perpetrators. The setting of a Los Angeles of the 1930s with the depiction of a growing, already crowded metropolis still in the throes of an economic disaster that further escalated the many swelling racial and social tensions while the very wealthy ride to more cash on the backs of the exploited? Conspiracies lurking in every corner and clandestine agents working from the shadows? Events that might be supernatural, mystical or simply of an allegorical nature? All of these are checks as well, even the abduction of a child in a way that is based on the real-life kidnapping and murder case of Marion Parker. Indeed, it“s one hell of a coincidence that two separate sets of creators should be working on a TV show each right around the same time that encompasses all these elements. But apparently, like two comic book writers coming up with a sentient android character within weeks apart from each other or writers creating a swamp-based creature who is poorly misunderstood, this is what happened. However, like with these examples from the world of comics, we are left with two very different shows. It“s like giving two chefs the same ingredients. You“ll most likely get two distinct meals.
Just looking at some of the character tropes and plot points that figure into the tale that “City of Angels”“ is telling and Jones and Fitzgerald“s show “Perry Mason”“, it seems a safe bet to assume that both shows are deeply steeped in the type of genre fiction that was the bread and butter of many pulp writers, this heightened sense of melodrama and over-the-top violence that was sure to garner the attention of the readers during a time when entertainment needed to be cheap and thrilling. This is far from the truth, however. For starters, it“s interesting to note that the former show uses completely original characters. Whereas the original show “Penny Dreadful”“ presented a mix of characters that were invented for the series and literary figures from the Victorian Era and the Romantic which were re-purposed, the follow-up show did forego this approach in favor of characters that could have appeared in any pulp magazine of the period it depicted. “Perry Mason”“ on the other hand is based on pre-existing material, but really not on the source material that people will be familiar with. If you“ve at least a passing familiarity with the character, chances are this stems from reruns of the erstwhile television show by that name. “Perry Mason”“, the first incarnation on TV, ran from 1957 to 1966 on CBS with Mason portrayed by Raymond Burr, a prolific theatre and movie actor. Though Burr had been in the business since the 1940s, by the time he took on the role of the smart defense-attorney Mason, viewers most likely knew him from his turn as wife-killer Lars Thorwald in Alfred Hitchcock“s “Rear Window”“ (1954) and from “Godzilla, King of Monsters!”“, a 1956 Americanized version of the Japanese “Godzilla”“ (1954), a smash hit for its studio Toho. Burr had original read for a different part when CBS was putting the legal drama together, but a female executive felt that Burr was perfectly suited for the lead, that was if he lost 60 pounds. Knowing full well that the show which was based on writer Erle Stanley Gardner“s very popular books series, had to be the big break he“d been hoping for all these years, the actor went on a crash diet. Burr beat every other actor who read for the title role and the show became a huge success, also in syndication, making Burr a fixture on television for years to come. After taking on other roles on TV, Burr did return to Perry Mason when the show was revived for a series of made-for-television movies between 1985 and 1995. This revival came after another attempt with a new cast in 1973 had failed. Set in then contemporary Los Angeles, the original television series is very much tied to the 1950s which cemented the character of Perry Mason and his supporting cast of characters as a man of the Eisenhower days. In this world, as portrayed on the television shows of that time, there was little room for ambiguity. The just were always innocent and the guilty were punished. However, this is not the true origin of the character nor is Perry Mason a character of a period that many people view as a vastly simpler time due to how the 50s were shown on television and in many films back then. Erle Stanley Gardner premiered what is arguably his most famous creation in a novel called “The Case of the Velvet Claws”“ which was first published all the way back in 1933. Gardner went on to write more than eighty novels and stories featuring his creation, but he also had a prolific career as writer for radio productions and non-fiction works. English novelist Evelyn Waugh called Gardner “the best living American writer”“ in 1949. Interestingly, Gardner worked as a lawyer like Perry Mason himself before turning to writing full-time. Originally, his output found its way into the pulp magazines, but with a character like Perry Mason, he knew he was sitting on a gold mine if marketed mainstream. With the radio and Hollywood soon calling, in fact Perry Mason appeared in five films during the 1930s and on a long-running radio program starting in 1943, Gardner kept Perry Mason a product of its time while keeping him firmly entertaining and clean-cut. Perry Mason had one purpose only: to assure readers, movie-goers and radio listeners that the world ultimately was a place in which justice would always prevail, a world in which the famed legal eagle never lost one single case and all his clients were innocent. Thus, it“s not without precedent that the 1950s TV show became very much a mix of a procedural detective show with a soap opera. Perry Mason was not a character of pulp fiction, but like the characters on “City of Angels”“, his world was always a literary one and a world that was paper-thin and artificial. Though they are using some of the same ingredients as “City of Angels”“ in their version of “Perry Mason”“ and they do retain some of that literary feel of both the Showtime show and the original novels by Gardner, this is not the world Jones and Fitzgerald are building nor is this the story they“re telling. With a budget of seventy-five million dollars for eight one-hour-long episodes, the two showrunners and lead writers do not only return the time period of the character“s inception, but they turn their focus on a version of the late 1920s and early 1930s that comes more from history books and the works of Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris than from Gardner“s original novels, but still seen through a lens that is very 2020, much more so than “City of Angels”“, a show which ostensibly mirrors a world that feels like ours but which unfortunately undermines its own approach every step of the way by revealing its true nature, thereby risking nothing and alienating no one. It“s fiction made for TV. “City of Angels”“ mixes its potent ingredients into a fast food dish that gives you your fill but one that“ll leave you hungry again once an episode has aired. “Perry Mason”“ is less than a delicious meal, but one kick in the gut with a foot in a heavy boot. This is a case of when a story is not told in the way you want to.
In all fairness to Gardner“s original approach, the Great Depression did feature in his earlier works. How could it not with unemployment reaching an all-time high and many fortunes destroyed overnight. Had he completely ignored what was also a world in which most pulp detectives of those days operated, he most likely would have run the risk of losing half his audience from the get-go. When we are introduced to Mason“s secretary Della Street in Gardner“s first Perry Mason novel, we learn that she comes from a family that was once rather wealthy but had seen their funds wiped out by the stock market crash. This way, Gardner immediately told readers that Della was good girl from the right side of the street, a girl whose existence would have been sheltered from having to work had circumstances been different. In that, she became a wish fulfillment for male and female readers. Men would consider themselves very lucky if they could ever land a secretary who was a nice girl from a good family and thereby beyond any and all reproach, while women who were forced to go looking for a job could fantasize about someone who was a good boss like Perry. Though Gardner alluded to a spark of romance between her and Mason, their relationship always stayed professional. Then there was Perry“s right-hand man, his investigator and friend Paul Drake, a tall and nondescript man as bland as they come, to perfectly blend in and not to distract from the main character in any way. Portrayed by actor William Hopper on the original TV show, Paul quickly became quite the ladies“ man, but he drew the line where Della was concerned, out of respect for her as viewers were told. This version of Drake was of course in keeping with the idea of a single man and a single woman in the 1950s. While unattached males were allowed to roam until they ultimately settled down with the right woman, who in Della“s case was clearly reserved for Mason who was too much of a gentleman to ask her out, since he was already married to the law. Della Street had to remain virtuous all the time. That was what a nice girl did. These two characters are also featured on the new incarnation of the show, but with a twist that is of their time, the 1930s and our time. That this still works, is owed to the writers, the actors, a smart script and a gambit that pays off handsomely, at least during these three episodes. Della (Juliet Rylance) and Paul (Chris Chalk) don“t work for this show“s Perry Mason. This is as far from the truth as it could be. Della Street is employed as a legal secretary by this show“s mentor figure, elderly lawyer Elias Jonathan (John Lithgow). She has the agency of a woman who must keep her workplace together, with her boss alternating between spurts of cunning brilliance and bursts of ill-advised showmanship while he“s slowly coming apart at the seams. She has to navigate a male-dominated world that seems hostile towards working women. Della Street is smart herself, and she knows how to fight for what she believes is right without coming off as a shrill shrew. All in all, she is a modern woman not given to self-sacrifice or to suffering in silence but hands-on when needed. Paul on the other hand isn“t a private investigator nor is he a womanizer. Paul“s married and he“s a patrolman on the police force. He does have the right skill set for a detective and he“s particular good at observing the world around himself and the way people will act towards each other and towards men like himself. Like Della, he doesn“t delude himself into believing that the world is fair place. Both Della and Paul come off as well-rounded, realistic characters and the show spends just enough time with them this far that they do not read as current year insert characters. Though they are a bit too confident for who they are in this time period, they are believable in the naturalistic setting the show is going for. What might only work on paper and otherwise feel a bit too much like modern-day politics of diversity, still works here. It makes sense that neither Della nor Paul are sympathetic towards Mason who is not necessarily a nice guy. And why should they? The two of them are extremely good at their jobs, but in this world, even a man like Mason who is down on his luck on his best days and a total screw-up and a hustler on his worst behavior, has a leg up since Della Street and Paul Drake belong to the invisibles in this society and this time. It“s rather sad and telling that they still might be invisible, to some degree, if the show was set in our time. Della is a woman, Paul is black. Still both characters seem stronger and far more put together than our titular character. That this approach works this smoothly is owed to the concession the writers asks us to make. In lieu of giving us a lead character who is familiar to us from the Raymond Burr show, who“s in fact Raymond Burr, and then to have him taken down a few pegs by his supporting characters, thereby breaking Mason as he“s getting written away from the viewers“ expectations, to allow a woman and a person of color more room to shine, Jones and Fitzgerald offer us a look at this character before we ever met him. Once you roll with it and you know that this is the time period in which Perry Mason was created by Gardner, it isn“t a stretch to see this as a loose prequel to the Burr show if you want to. This Perry Mason doesn“t need to be a shrewd, brilliant lawyer without fail, because that is not who he is just yet. This Perry Mason can be rough. He“s allowed to make mistakes like Detective Santiago Vega on “City of Angels”“. This is the origin story of a man who might become a great man one day but who“s still just one bad day away from screwing up his life completely. In a way, this is Perry Mason Year One, or Perry Mason, “who he is and how he came to be”“, to borrow from another fictional character from the world of comics, the World“s Greatest Detective, The Batman. And like Vega and Batman or Bruce Wayne, this Perry Mason is driven by unresolved trauma from his past, but unlike Vega, or Bruce Wayne in his earlier adventures, Perry has already lived a full life, thus he is caught between a world that once was a happy one and a present that has no pity for him or anyone. All of this is not established through dialogue, for the most part it isn“t, which is the opposite of the often overly verbose, very melodramatic “City of Angels”“. What “Perry Mason”“ does well, is that it“s “show not tell”“ where the world is concerned the series is set in, and the backstory of our protagonist. There are many examples throughout the first three episodes, but the opening to episode two sums up this approach just perfectly. At the beginning, we are tossed into a scene set during World War One with a younger Perry readying some men as they are about to go on the attack. This is dirty war which was fought in the trenches in European countries, with dirt, sweat, fire and blood everywhere, and the scene plays out appropriately visceral. This is both chaos and madness, and as we see Perry“s men getting picked off one by one, there is little explanation. What we get instead is one man“s descent into hell and the darkness of mind. As Perry goes near crazy in a mad dash to make it across the no man“s land and into the territory held by the enemy, we“re once again reminded what war actually is: the fight over real estate at the high cost of human lives which are cheap to the men who simply stare at some maps they want to rearrange as they see fit. The staging of this sequence, the visuals, the sound effects and the camera work, let alone the acting are on par with any recent movie production depicting a battle scene in a modern war. Still, what makes this better, no small feat, is the storytelling within the frame of the overall narrative. It“s the first time we see our hero in his younger years, more than a decade younger, and we immediately understand where some of his brokenness and his cynical outlook on life come from, and his tenderness which is buried deep. He“s a mad man in battle, because he needs to be in order for him and his men to survive, but he“s instinctively aware of his surroundings as he tries to save as many men as he possibly can on the suicide mission, he and his troops find themselves in. While Perry is bracing himself to go onto the attack, we cut to a street in the now of the series. We get a sideway view to a street in what we assume is downtown L.A. There is a homeless man sleeping on the side of the street, one of the many men who got destroyed by what is going on across the nation and the world at large. Like on a battlefield in Europe, there“s a war going on in the heart of America, one that leaves broken men, woman and children in its wake. As the camera pans to the left, Perry Mason comes into frame who“s standing at the corner of one of the tall buildings that tell a story of a prosperity and optimism that seem to have vanished. He looks a bit worse for wear with a shifty look to his posture and a filterless smoke tugged into one corner of his thin mouth. Though the brim of his hat is keeping his eyes well hidden from us, he still betrays the tristesse in his glance. He takes a puff from the cigarette and lets the smoke escape. In the background, a huge black dog moves in on the man who has passed out and who is sprawled out and who has nowhere to go. At first it would appear as if the creature belongs to the man and that the animal is about to lick his face, yet its bouncing movements aren“t in anticipation of a friendship that“s about to get revived. The large canine is hunting for scraps, bits and pieces of food, tiny leftovers, anything really. Then, after some nervous sniffing and frenzied probing with its long snout, alas, there is success. While the sleek, black animal begins to feed on a morsel as the derelict man continues with his sleep, that“s what this is we hope, our lead has found a small crate made from wood to sit down on in a squatting position next to the hobo and the dog with his back pressed against the side of the building that is facing the street. Perry Mason is but one man in a legion of fallen men. This is when titles for “Perry Mason”“ come into view, huge, clean letters in white that fill the entire screen, but which merge with the street scene as if our characters simple walk among this huge font that is austere and commanding. There“s nothing tender about these letters or this world.
“Perry Mason”“ is a masterclass on how to introduce your protagonist in a visual medium. All of the first three episodes are meticulously directed by Tim Van Patton. He, Jones and Fitzgerald and their team of David Franco (DP), Mako Kamitsuna (editing), John P. Goldsmith (production design), Chris Farmer (art direction) and composer Terence Blanchard hook us into this world from the first frame. The colors that are used throughout the show are muted and the tone is somber, but since we are thrown into the tale with a cold opening, the excitement is there from the first minute. Nothing is explained to us and as we suspect, nothing is the way it seems. Still we must act as a detective and piece everything together. As we witness a child abduction and a blackmail scheme that goes terribly wrong, or very right when seen from the perspective of the kidnappers, a first image emerges, and we pad ourselves on the back. What we are watching is a show that respects its audience. Nothing is handed to us; we must figure it out. As this is the case with this kidnapping caper, not a too unusual occurrence in the time of the Depression, a crime that leads to the murder of the child, a baby still, and our main plot, while we“re introduced to this show“s Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys), we must continue to work as a detective as we immediately learn who this Perry is and who he is not. For starters, the man is not doing so well financially and he“s not some big shot defense lawyer. He is a private investigator and though he might be quite intelligent, he is not that smart either, nor is he successful. Mason rides around in a milk delivery truck that belongs to the dairy farm he has inherited from his family. The truck, much like the farm, is dilapidated and just another relict from a happier past. Perry and his now and then work partner Pete (Shea Whigham) are on a surveillance job. They are following a portly movie star at the behest of his studio boss. This is the time that gave rise to the talkies and some silent era stars under contract did not make the cut. Mason has been hired to find some dirt on the man so the studio can invoke the morality clause without having to buy him out. Perry does and what he finds gives him the opportunity to try some blackmail with the men who run the studio. But even then, when Mason asks for three times the fee, they“d initially agreed on to keep it hush hush, he makes a blunder and he even loses the money that is owed to him. Still, he is not a pariah nor some sociopath nor is he the cockroach the legitimate detectives of the police think him to be. But he“s also not a romantic ideal in a fedora and a trench coat who has one hell of a beautiful dame walk into his office. Mason is one guy down on his luck among many, and he“s willing to look the other way no questions asked if this will yield him an extra buck. Rhys infuses the character with enough sadness and vulnerability for us to understand where Mason is coming from, though we do not like him. Perry Mason is not a guy you want to hang out with, still he has the kind of loser charisma that proves magnetic not only to us, but to a female pilot who is a fiercely independent, tough as nails Mexican lady and his next-door neighbor. In fact, his family farm is surrounded by an airstrip, and he even has to put up with a guard on the premise when he wants to get to his place of residence. Lupe (Veronica Falcón), the aviator, views him as a piece of meat first and foremost, but she“s also looking out for him and for his interests. Though she“s a realist where he“s a bit of a dreamer and a cynic, she does have a big heart, which doesn“t keep her from offering him some cash for his farm, too little he tells her. It is interesting to see how the balance of power is tipped in her favor. While it“s not really that unusual that in a story in the hardboiled crime genre, the detective will meet a woman who comes from means, Lupe is clearly not that. She is from across the border and not from old money, and we understand that she has made the money she has by herself or through her past marriages. Like Perry, she is slightly past her expiration date. Her sexual aggressiveness when perusing her goals and her wealth allow her to do as she pleases and to hope for a second chance in life or even a third one. Mason is too, but not really with Lupe. Perry is still tied to the past. We do not learn about his war time trauma, not yet at least, but when he picks up his mail and there“s a big box marked “return to sender”“, we understand his backstory. Perry Mason has been left by his wife and she“s taken their child. When his benefactor E.B. Jonathan shows up with a job offer, E.B. wants Perry as his investigator on the child murder case, with E.B. serving as counsel to a wealthy man who claims that he“s helping out the child“s parents since they“re members of his church, Mason isn“t exactly chomping at the bit. There“s no pop psychology connection and no soap melodrama motivation. This is not Perry“s chance to redeem himself, no “if I only found the baby“s killers this would make everything alright with my child and perhaps my wife as well.”“ Perry gets in on the case because the lawyer tells him that he has nothing else going on, and that the retainer he has received pays nicely. E.B. is not a fatherly friend who wants to set Perry straight, though there“s some of that, but ultimately, it“s a partnership out of convenience. There is no romance to be found. E.B. isn“t Perry“s long-lost daddy and his secretary Della isn“t subservient to him only because he“s a man and a detective, whereas she“s a woman and she“s treated by her boss as part of the furniture. What works so great on this show: none of the characters state their motivations or their feelings in long monologues. Everything is developed organically and with tiny details you may catch or miss. Viewers are treated like adults and are expected to follow what“s going on, which is refreshing for a change. Still, as we learn in episode three, this show is also about storytelling and about telling a story, but this is once again treated very differently when compared to “City of Angels.”“ While the latter show presented itself and its world as a fabrication to us and it revealed rather quickly that nearly every character was telling a lie, “Perry Mason”“ links up to our time when we see how E.B. and his rival D.A. Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) make their case, the case, to the press. When first the baby“s father and then his mother are implicated in the child“s death by the police who is out to get a quick conviction (though unbeknownst to our main players, one of their own is indeed involved in the abduction and the subsequent murder of the child and his kidnappers), we see that the press is having a feeding frenzy. A public hungry for sensational and sensationalistic news isn“t something that has come about in recent years. But what exactly is the truth? Jones and Fitzgerald tell us that there is not one truth and if there were, it wouldn“t matter much. The truth is what gets printed in the papers and if you want your truth to win, you must tell a better story and you must scream a bit louder and with moralistic outrage and vitriol. Evidently, if people are buying what you are selling and they follow you and every statement you will make on the matter at hand, what has actually happened becomes less relevant. If the truth does not have a compelling story to tell, or the victims, this story will beat it in the court of public opinion. A lie is only a lie if we agree that this is what it is. Again, this show brings all of this across without telling us what to believe and how this is wrong in so many ways. We“re invited to watch. And perhaps to judge. The show“s message is an unambiguous one, though. This is the story we“re telling you about the media in regard to the news and the truth. You can believe it, because that is what everybody does. But you“re also perfectly welcome to tell your own story. But make it good.
If you have ever been to a religious gathering on the revival circuit, chances are that you“re familiar with what is happening there. You will encounter a flock of the faithful from all walks of life in a blissful state of rapture in a room packed with people. There“s a lot of singing, loud cheers of hallelujahs and amen, praise the Lord, perhaps people will swoon, perhaps the sick will be healed. If you look at this spectacle, this question begs asking. What is religion but the collective belief in magic? And if one acknowledges the magical mystery show of the bible or as it“s presented on stage by some charismatic preacher with a drawl, how can we deny the supernatural? In “City of Angels”“ we got both. Two powerful deities from Mexican folklore who were supposedly steering the destinies of men, and a battle of the saints and the devil, courtesy of a blonde radio evangelist, Sister Molly of the Ministry of Joyful Voices. Molly was one to oppose Satan with but a smile and a song. Though she did create many reveries among her followers, and Molly ostensibly became the love interest of our brave Mexican homicide detective, there was not one scene in which she was seen preaching to her congregation or a live radio audience. Likewise, the inner workings of her church stayed hidden to us. Surely, we got that her mother Adelaide was running the show, both as her manager and as the church“s chief administrator, with Molly relegated to the role of a performer, a face, and an ambassador of hope. Molly did tell us and her beau something about her pastoral calling when she and Tiago had their meet cute in one of the soup kitchens which her ministry operated across Los Angeles. But other than her singing voice and her peppy brand of Swing, Molly did not have a voice on stage, at least not one that rose above the cutesy. The show stayed on the surface level where her religion or religion with a thought-out message was concerned. This was not the story this show was telling. But it is the story that “Perry Mason”“ is telling. Like with the former show, we“ve a charismatic, very beautiful preacher. She is Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) and she does preach, boy, does she preach. With Sister Alice we get a preacher and a leader. Her church is the Assembly of God and thanks to her, her church doesn“t just attract a nondescript audience like on “City of Angels”“, but people who range from the poor to those who still have wealth and power. Such is Alice“s message. We see how her mind works, her thought process, and we hear her sermons which make sense in this context and to the people she“s preaching to. Whereas Molly was aloof and extremely self-involved, in Sister Alice we have a religious leader who doesn“t just stand in an extremely clean soup kitchen to do the dishes while she talks about her calling. Sister Alice is hands-on, she is opiniated and she goes where she feels she is needed, including the women“s prison where Emily Dodson is held, the mother of baby Charlie. Both Sister Molly and Sister Alice follow the instructions of their mothers, but when Molly went off script, she was looking for a guy to have some fun with. Alice goes rogue when she feels that it“s the right thing to do as far as her sermons are concerned and doing so, she doesn“t care if she ruffles some feathers with some of her flock or the elders in her church. The show actually finds the time to introduce us to some of the inner workings of the Assembly of God, the various levels of administration, the many functions needed to run such a place efficiently or at all, really. We see different steering and planning committees and we discover that some of its leaders wear richly ornamented uniforms with white caps. Like in every organization, status and image are everything. There“s much substance to all of the aspects depicted, an emotional heft, a sense of meaning. The naturalistic world building that is on display is but a wonder in itself and everything feels real and not like some cardboard cut-out. If you wonder to what end we are allowed such intimate look at this tapestry of a world we get one answer in the last moments of the third episode with Sister Alice on stage and the blonde woman being distracted by something or someone who seems to have taken hold of her focus and maybe her mind. This is when the show veers into supernatural territory. This has been seeded throughout, but whereas “City of Angel”“ wore this on its sleeve and it was very much part of that show“s makeup, here these occurrences were brief and very subtle, that is until we come to the dramatic conclusion of the episode. The setting on stage is one lifted from something that feels like a school play. There are performers who are dressed up like they“re the crew of a rowboat who find themselves in rough water. This is when Alice rises into their midst when hitherto she was hidden under some canvas. As her audience and we take hold of her frame we discover that she is wearing a navy-blue blazer over her white, silken dress and a tricorn hat on top of her most radiant platinum blonde hair. This is in keeping with the cosplay around her. But with the worshippers now singing and chanting joyfully, something goes awry. Alice begins to hear voices, then she slips and falls backwards into the rowboat. With everyone around her now very concerned, shocked and puzzled, as is to be expected, Alice“s eyes are closed, and her body is rocked by convulsions. She is experiencing a seizure which seems to have been brought on by Alice“s intense faith. Preachers or members of their congregation achieving such a state of religious bliss, are pretty much a staple of the revival circuit, but all of that is more often than not a part of some prearranged stage acting or a form of hysteria. In Alice“s case we“re told to trust our eyes that something otherworldly is happening around her and to her. The scene is inter-cut with another scene. Before we switch back to Alice with her mother now with her, to entice her to come back to her and to a wakening state, Perry and Pete discover another clue in Charlie“s murder, with all of the kidnappers dead, except for the dirty police detective and Baby Charlie“s parents who may or may not have had some involvement in the abduction and the subsequent homicides. Alice does open her eyes eventually, but not before one of the church elders makes the best out of it and he has everybody singing and clapping their hands. When Alice is back, she has a most cryptic message to share with her mother Birdy: “You don“t have to worry about Charlie Dodson. God told me just now”¦ I am going to resurrect him.”“ The camera rests for a moment on Birdy“s bewildered face, then it goes for a wide shot and we are now longer on the stage. Instead we have the rowboat with Alice in it as it floats on the water of the open sea. The singing and clapping fades more and more into the background and the sound of the waves goes for a crescendo. The camera pulls up in one remarkable shot that creates a forced perspective, one which conveys the false impression that the boat is sinking into the waves. It is very much an illusion, the boat is still afloat, but it is increasingly harder to see as there is also a hint of mist that is obstructing our vision. With that we cut to the end credits that are made visually arresting by a neon blue cross, the one we“ve already seen when Alice came out of her seizure. Now the cross is moving towards us from the black background as the names of everyone involved in the episode flash across the screen in a white font. While a boat at sea is one powerful religious symbol, least of all since it is closely tied to the tale of Jesus testing the faith of his disciples, it“s also reminiscent of the boat that is the scene of the crime, first, an accidental one at that, in Theodore Dreiser“s “An American Tragedy”“, perhaps the last American novel ever to be written which followed the ideas of Naturalism. The concept itself derives from the idea of Realism which supplanted any notion of Romanticism which got shattered in the Civil War. Naturalism on the other hand is Realism plus science, the stipulation that what starts bad, will end bad. Losers are born and they will always lose. But when a generation of American writers, men who fought in the First World War, elected to live in Paris, a new literary trend took hold that was less grim and fatalistic, but as to be expected from veterans of yet another war, even more nihilistic. It quickly became a staple of Modernist writing to tell readers that the truth was broken, that you had to re-set different strands of a seemingly contradictory narrative like a doctor would with a broken leg or an arm that has many bones pointing every which way. The truth is extremely broken on “Perry Mason”“ and he and we must put the pieces together. But whereas the show is set during the early 1930s, we“re a modern, nay post-modern audience. Perhaps, underneath the naturalistic veneer and its naturalistic approach to storytelling, the show will reveal something much more profound than a grim story about a child“s gruesome murder. Back in 1968, Roy Thomas showed us a world in which even a manufactured man can cry. In this show“s 1932 and our 2020 the truth is something that can be equally created at will and out of thin air. Because what is the truth really, but a story we“re telling. Be that as it may, and time will tell over the next few weeks, this incarnation of “Perry Mason”“ is the show to watch in current year and well beyond. And this is not even a lie, but the truth. That is unless you“ve a better to story to tell.
Score: 5 out of 5.
Author Profile
Chris Buse (RIP)
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.
