It’s been enjoyable to watch the early season 3 episodes
on MeTV this past week. A lot of them I haven’t seen in quite a while.
I particularly delighted in The Blushing
Pearls. I generally really like the episodes with Oriental twists, and Nobu
McCarthy is one of my favorites of the Oriental actresses who were often seen
on classic television. Her character is so cute and sweet, and I felt so bad
for her, being manipulated by the other characters in the story.
I agree with Perry in thinking that the guy she’s
dating, Grove, is a heel and worse. He seems so adamant in having faith in her
until he sees the picture, and then suddenly his entire viewpoint changes and
he unshakably believes she’s guilty. It reminds me of something Officer Eve
Whitfield says on Ironside, when she can’t believe in the innocence of
someone she’s been interested in. The guy ends up being proved innocent, and
Eve says that if she had really loved him, she would have believed in him all
along.
Now, I'm not saying that there are never cases where it's human to doubt even someone you care about, or even that sometimes doubt is justified, but in this case I think it's terrible for Grove to completely refuse to even consider that the poor girl might be innocent. (I'm not typing her name because I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm getting two different spellings from different websites, and I had personally thought her name was something else.)
The Perry episode works out good and
satisfying in the end for both Nobu’s character and Grove. He (presumably) has
the girl who has loved him all along and Nobu’s character has her uncle’s
bookkeeper Toma, who has likewise loved her. Although Grove will also have to
deal with the shame of his father being the murderer, oh gosh.
It also boasts the infamous scene where Perry
starts a fire in the alley to convince the real thief of the genuine pearls to
try to run out with them and get caught. I love the epilogue, where Hamilton
sends him a citation for burning trash without a license. Paul, who was so sure
that Perry would get in big trouble for his stunt, gets quite a kick out of it.
The Blushing Pearls
has a very intriguing, eerie, and ominous music score, one that I don’t think
is used very often on the series. It’s also featured in The Impatient
Partner, where it perfectly suits the bizarre things happening to poor
Amory Fallon. Since I watch that episode more, I’ve thought for some time that
the music score was created for it. It was a bit of a surprise to hear it in
this earlier episode. I’ll be paying close attention to see if it gets into any
other episodes.
Another thing I managed to see a bit of this week
was the Avenging Ace movie. I wasn’t available for the one last week,
and my negative feelings on the first film made me most unenthusiastic about
even trying to catch the one this week even though I was available, but from
what I managed to see of it, I think I like it better than the first
installment. I’ll have to see it in full and make an assessment then.
One of my other issues with Perry Mason
Returns was how little time was actually spent in the courtroom. It looked
like The Avenging Ace went to court a lot sooner and probably spent more
time there. Also, it’s one of the films with David Ogden Stiers as the
prosecutor, and I wish I had remembered beforehand that he might be in it, because
I am very interested in seeing all the ones with him. Charles Winchester is one
of my most favorite characters on M*A*S*H.
I feel a bit chagrined, as I try to make a
practice of never judging a series by its pilot. A pilot, with a different feel
and tone from the series proper, is usually never a good judge of what an
entire series is like, particularly if it’s a pilot movie. The only pilot movie
I have ever seen that’s really a good example of the series that follows is the
one for Cannon. It’s glorious, just like an extended episode instead of
something darker, more suggestive, and with different characterizations, as the
ones for, say, Hawaii 5-O, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Kolchak:
The Night Stalker are. (Okay, so at the time they made at least The
Night Stalker movie a series wasn’t in the works, but still.)
Anyway, Perry Mason Returns can definitely
be considered a pilot for the television movie series. And I judged the entire
series on it. I should watch at least one other movie in the series before
determining if it’s all like that.
I do know that in any case, just having Perry and
Della around won’t feel like Perry Mason proper to me. But if the plots
are executed better than in the first film, and they spend more time in court,
I think I might be able to appreciate the series a bit more.
This weekend is the 56th anniversary of the
premiere of our series. I’m trying to decide whether to make a post on the
actual day or if I should wait till the next day, since the 21st is
on a Saturday. I also have a birthday post to make this week, which is
certainly a happier prospect than a memorial post.
Speaking of both birthday and memorial posts, I
was watching The Untouchables on Friday night and ran across Mort Mills.
(He pops up everywhere.) I realized that I’ve never really highlighted him or
his Perry character on the blog. And that is totally a terrible
omission, as his Sergeant Landro character recurs for several seasons. I think
we see him at least eight times.
Originally I didn’t like the character too much
and that was why he didn’t appear in my stories or on the blog. Now, however, I’m not even
sure why I didn’t like him. He’s a perfectly fine character and a good, upright
policeman. And even if I didn’t like him, I shouldn’t allow personal feelings
to keep me from highlighting a recurring character on the blog.
I
should try to find a place for him in a story. I still may have a bit of
trouble with that, however, as when he appears it means something is happening
in Los Angeles County rather than the city, and the city police will most
likely not be involved. I think I’d find it a bit hard to write a whole multi-chapter
story without the city police! On the other hand, though, there are those
episodes where Andy appears if some element of the crime involves his
jurisdiction, so maybe I could get Sergeant Landro into a story that would have
the city police, too.
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