The Deadly Double: So who really wrote it?

So I did watch The Deadly Double. It’s never actually been a big favorite of mine; even when I was a lot younger, I remember it wasn’t one of the ones I often wanted to re-watch. I can’t even put my finger on why!

It does feel different from most Perry episodes in that it seems like there really aren’t a lot of suspects. Usually, as one reviewer of the episode pointed out, there are many guest-stars, any one of whom could be the guilty party. In this episode, it seems like the only choices are the defendant (played brilliantly by Denver Pyle), Helen or Joyce, and Joyce’s boyfriend. So in the end, it actually doesn’t feel like as much of a mystery. We know the defendant is very unlikely to be the one. It does seem for a while that Perry thinks it might be Joyce (until he reveals that he always thought the boyfriend had the strongest motive), but I can’t recall that I ever suspected her too much.

I really enjoy Denver Pyle’s Perry performances. I should give him a spotlight post soon. It really surprised me the first time I paid attention to seeing his name in the credits. He is an amazing actor. Although a hillbilly goofball like Briscoe Darling or someone like the Uncle Jesse character (I don’t know enough about the latter to say whether he’s of the same breed as Briscoe, albeit I do imagine Briscoe may have been early inspiration) have typecast him, he can play so many other kinds of characters. On Perry, he is always a serious fellow, whether it’s the defendant, a suspect, the victim, or the murderer. His emotional breakdown in court in The Renegade Refugee is a powerful moment.

The one other main thing I do like about this episode is Constance Ford’s performance. The way she portrays both personalities is really quite incredible. It’s a flawless transformation from Helen Reed to Joyce Martel. The climatic scene in court really brings that home.

I can’t even quite place which scenes are missing in the television version. I watch the cut version so seldom that I couldn’t remember. I know it must be cut on television, but pretty much everything I watched seemed familiar, even though I’ve only seen the uncut version once before.

And then I spotted something that is very confusing and goes back to that question of whether Samuel Newman and Sam Neuman are the same person. IMDB.com credits this episode to Samuel Newman, which I took as the truth in a previous post. It’s actually Sam Neuman who is credited as the writer, so I will have to correct that with IMDB.

But I still wonder if they’re the same man. Even though Samuel Newman died in 1977, before two of Sam Neuman’s scripts appeared, I suppose the scripts could have been written before his death and then were just delayed in appearing. Sam Neuman seems to have vanished after the end of the 1970s.

When I was watching The Deadly Double I was a bit confused by knowing the IMDB information that Samuel Newman wrote the script. To me, it didn’t feel like one of his. When I saw the Sam Neuman credit, that made a lot more sense to me. While it’s true that they’ve both written some offbeat Perry scripts, they seem to have different preferences.

Samuel Newman’s strangest Perry ventures are probably the more supernatural-themed The Meddling Medium and The Fatal Fetish. By contrast, Sam Neuman seems to prefer more psychological storylines and other oddities that can’t quite be classed. He wrote The Clumsy Clown, which, while I like it, is certainly one of the most bizarre Perry episodes ever. The girl and guy are just secretly married, the other guy who’s always pined for her gets clawed by a tiger, and the girl decides the thing to do is to leave her poor new husband and go to the injured guy and try to make him happy by making him think she’s going to marry him (even though they only go through a mock ceremony and are not really married).

Of course, that still isn’t proof that the two writers are not the same. Many are the writers who have used different pennames to write different things with each one. And there are actors who are credited several assorted ways, whether on purpose or by accident.

I would really like to solve this mystery. Since Samuel Newman served as story consultant for four seasons, it seems a bit odd that we don’t know more about him. Someone must know whether he and Sam Neuman are the same. If they are, their credits on IMDB should be linked and merged. And if they’re not, mistakes like IMDB currently listing Samuel Newman as the writer of The Deadly Double shouldn’t be happening.

Chamberlin

I did eventually finish and post that piece about Tobin Wade and company: http://31-days.livejournal.com/2976050.html

And this is the first part of it, from some time ago: http://31-days.livejournal.com/2921402.html

I always worry a bit when writing such pieces that the one hurt by the other will come off stubborn and for it to look terrible if they can’t readily forgive. But Aaron Stuart has every right to be struggling with it, after what was done to him and Marian. I still wanted a hopeful resolution, though.

I love how the episode shows what a great person he is in contrast with Tobin. The thought that he killed Tobin, even accidentally, is so sickening to him that he feels he can scarcely even begin to atone for it. Aaron is not a person who would deliberately harm anyone out of spite, no matter what was done to him first.

(And I find it amusing and interesting that Milton Selzer and H.M. Wynant appeared together in several other assorted episodes of shows. But they don’t share any scenes except in the Hawaii 5-O episode While You’re At It, Bring in the Moon. That’s a fun one.)

This past evening, faced with the choice of two episodes that don’t have Hamilton, on my local station and on Me, I finally chose my local station’s. It’s the last of the Chamberlin episodes, The Wintry Wife, so I decided to watch it and see if I could glean any inspiration for Chamberlin’s future role in The Malevolent Mugging, since he’s a supporting character in it.

I have the feeling that episode is one of the ones most heavily butchered. There were so many places where a scene and its music stopped abruptly, indicating a cut. I wonder if Chamberlin features into any of the clipped scenes.

Since that is the episode where we see him a lot outside of court, I paid special attention to how he was written and portrayed. And I was a bit surprised to note that in his first scene, when he talks to Perry in his office, he sounds a lot like Hamilton in season 1. He’s very formal with Perry (which is to be expected) and very stubborn about the case he’s setting up. Not that Hamilton isn’t always firm about his cases when he believes there’s enough evidence to substantiate them, but the actual stubbornness did lessen as time went on and he grew more willing to listen to Perry’s thoughts.

In court, Chamberlin is very businesslike in his approach, almost making him seem a bit detached from the situation. He definitely doesn’t have Sampson’s passion, and his approach doesn’t seem like Hamilton’s, either. So it’s nice to see that Robert Karnes did try to give him his own style.

Somehow now I imagine Chamberlin and Andy getting along particularly well, since Andy uses a businesslike approach himself.

I’m wondering if the way Chamberlin is written in his first scene has anything to do with the episode’s writer. It was Samuel Newman’s third Perry script. Perhaps the main episodes he was familiar with when he set about writing were from season 1. Those early episodes certainly are popular with fans. It’s not hard to believe that perhaps even while the series was originally running, those episodes could have been used as a guidepost for how to write the scripts.

Looking up his earlier Perry scripts, I’m intrigued to note that he wrote The Deadly Double, the infamous split-personality episode. Although dated now, and not an episode I often seek out, I’m still very impressed by Constance Ford’s performance as both girls.

The other script he wrote prior to this one is The Resolute Reformer, the season 4 episode featuring John Hoyt. And since it is one of the ones without Hamilton as well, that does mean that Samuel Newman’s only previous experience writing Hamilton came from season 1. It’s interesting that he went from that to being one of the champions of writing for the district attorney’s office, even penning The Fatal Fetish in season 8.

Out of curiosity now, I’m probably going to dig out my uncut copy of The Deadly Double and see how he wrote for Hamilton in that first attempt. There definitely were times in season 1 when Hamilton had awesome scenes, and it would be nice if Samuel Newman wrote a couple of them.

The Illicit Illusion

I am still trying to figure out what happened to all those topics I had in my mind a couple weeks ago. I’m so sorry! From now on, posts may sometimes come on any day at all, at least for a while.

I would have had a post on time for the weekend if I’d managed to review The Illicit Illusion on Saturday night. (I didn’t have much luck catching MeTV’s the previous evening.) As it turned out, I didn’t get the chance until today.

It’s actually never been a big favorite of mine, even though I love both season 7 and Samuel Newman’s writing in general. Every writer turns out some lesser episodes at some point, and regardless of whether this is Mr. Newman’s, it’s probably my least favorite of his scripts.

I think the main thing I’m unsure on what to think about is when Hamilton and Andy’s actions to try to prove the murder suspect’s guilt are proclaimed entrapment by Perry. I’m glad that Mr. Newman’s usual kindness towards Hamilton is present, however, and Andy is quick to assure Perry that there was no entrapment and the thought of taking flight was never even suggested to the defendant. But since Hamilton (and the police) have so many strikes against them already, I’m not sure what to think of another being added, even if proven untrue. Despite what was said in their defense, it still seemed that a bad feeling towards their actions lingered through the rest of the court case.

One interesting thing, though: it does show, once again, that Perry can be quick to throw accusations at Hamilton and the police, just as they often did, mostly in the past, towards Perry. I suppose one could take it to mean that Perry, having grown tired of being accused, has decided to start voicing suspicions of his own. Of course, he is always quick to announce such suspicions and accusations, if he has them, in every season. But it seems like he does it much more frequently later on.

Aside from that angle, I do have one other, more general complaint. We never do learn exactly who killed the old lady in New York. It’s certainly implied that it really was Ambrose, and yet unless he’s just trying to make himself look better, there’s the thing where he yells at Leslie, his accomplice, that he’d told her he didn’t want anyone to be hurt. He seems distraught that she  killed Kirk Cameron. And that left me puzzling over whether he truly killed the woman in New York, even though he was swindling her. Unless even the DVD episodes aren’t entirely complete, Mr. Newman left the confirmation of that killer’s identity out of the story. I don’t like loose ends of those proportions being left hanging.

Pushing those issues away, the episode is interesting. There’s a definite Gaslight type plot going on, where the hapless woman is made to think she’s going crazy by various events, notes, phone calls, etc. Things she sees are later construed so as to not have happened, while she’s told of phone calls she’s made that she can’t remember making. She’s so convinced that she’s going bonkers that she absolutely insists her doctor isn’t telling her the truth when he says she’s just overworked and exhausted and run ragged by her bad marriage.

I do think it’s a bit preposterous how susceptible she is to the idea that she’s teetering on the brink of insanity, particularly when she’s struck over the head after seeing the desk a mess. When she wakes up and finds the desk normal, it seems it should be obvious that whoever hit her cleaned up the mess! No matter how many times I see the episode, that part always strikes me as bizarre. The audience is apparently supposed to accept that by that point, she’s so deeply into the “illusions” being crafted that she can’t even accept that being struck was what actually happened to her. But that doesn’t make much sense to me. It should convince her that something is going on other than what she’s being made to believe.

The illusion that really seems eerie and unexplained is when she staggers down the stairs after the elevator isn’t working and drops her purse before tripping and swooning. There’s no indication of anyone else being there, yet she comes to discovering her purse seemingly unaffected by the fall and standing upright. Now that’s creepy stuff.

I do like how compassionate and worried she is about her husband, wanting Perry to defend him when he’s arrested for the murder in New York. And another interesting point: I think this might be the second episode in season 7 where Perry does not defend a potential client but does offer some form of help (the other episode being The Woeful Widower).

On another topic, tomorrow is the anniversary of William Hopper’s death. It would be a good day to watch a Paul-centric episode or two. Episodes I can think of offhand with lots of good Paul scenes and/or plotlines are:

Paul Drake’s Dilemma

The Impatient Partner

The Nervous Neighbor

The Wooden Nickels

The Carefree Coronary

The Sausalito Sunrise

One thing Paul is always worried about is doing anything that could possibly be interpreted as breaking the law, which would get him in big trouble. I saw that again today on a favorite season 1 episode, The Moth-Eaten Mink. I have to admit, I don’t always think it’s right for Perry to put Paul in situations where he’s in danger of losing his license. He knows Paul won’t refuse to help him, because they’re friends and Paul can’t stand to leave him high and dry. (And also because Paul knows Perry is ultimately working towards justice.) To some extent, sometimes it does feel like Perry takes unfair advantage of Paul.

Yet on the other hand, as was mentioned in one of my stories, whenever Paul gets into trouble, Perry is generally getting deep into it as well. And he doesn’t ask Paul to do things that he wouldn’t do himself. That whole plotline in that story, where Dr. Portman tries to turn Paul against Perry and Paul is fighting against it and having conflicting thoughts, is basically my exploration of my own conflicted thoughts on the matter.

Later in the week I plan to have a comparison up between The Moth-Eaten Mink and The Sausalito Sunrise. Having now seen them both within a relatively short amount of time, I have some assorted opinions on how the plots of each hold up.

The Case of the Meddling Medium

So I’ve decided to start a community on Livejournal for Perry. I keep finding fans there and I determined we need a place to play. If you’re on Livejournal, drop on by! http://perrymason-lj.livejournal.com/profile In fact, if you’re not on Livejournal, come sign up! It’s awesome.

And I’ve finished the Halloween story. That’s definitely a weight off my mind, and off the month’s schedule. It should be easy to just work with blog posts and the remaining pieces of the ten-part writing challenge, particularly since the latter will be spread throughout the rest of the month.

Meanwhile, I’m putting up the Halloween story in several parts, since it ended up way too big to be a long oneshot. It’s an ensemble piece, but Della seems to have become highly prominent. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8583453/1/

Also, you may notice I changed the blog’s background. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, and thus spotlight characters from all throughout the series run and not only the original Core Five. It seems highly appropriate, especially since two of my favorite characters are not part of the original Core Five.

I determined to take the paranormal episodes of Perry in the order they aired. But since The Dodging Domino has no supernatural elements and instead takes place right at Halloween, I’m undecided whether it will be a part of my series or if I’ll spotlight it later, perhaps on Halloween.

The first time Perry delves into the paranormal is season 5’s The Meddling Medium. And I think it is rivaled only by The Fatal Fetish for a creepy and chilling presentation of the paranormal.

The Meddling Medium takes place at a large and isolated mansion. The lady of the house, Sylvia Walker, is consumed by a desire to contact her dead son Thomas. Her nephew Philip Paisley shows up and promptly seems to go into a trance, delivering a message from Thomas via automatic writing. The message consists of a poem Thomas wrote right before his death, which only his mother Sylvia ever saw. Immediately she is convinced that Philip has really been in contact with Thomas. Over the ensuing months, Philip moves in and repeatedly goes into trances and delivers further messages.

Sylvia’s daughter, Bonnie Craig, is not convinced in the least. She is certain that Philip is pulling off a cruel fraud for reasons of his own, but she can never prove it.

One evening, when Perry is visiting the house at Bonnie’s request, it all comes to a head. Philip goes into a mood and refuses to keep trying to enter the trance that night. He tells Bonnie that she should do it instead, if she’s so convinced he has no powers. And, hoping to prove him a fraud, she goes to the table to do so.

She ends up in a trance-like state herself, and writes a verse, backwards to boot. Perry holds it up to the mirror and reads what sounds like a warning on Philip’s life. Philip leaves in disgust to take the in-house elevator to the bottom of the hill. Thomas was killed in that elevator before Philip insisted it be repaired. But tonight something has gone wrong again. Philip dies the same way Thomas died before him. And Bonnie is accused, especially after it’s revealed that she was seen going in the direction of the elevator with some tools.

There’s the matter of her death note, too. Of course, there’s no way for Perry to prove that Bonnie really went into a trance to write it. But he learns he may be able to legally prove whether Bonnie has ESP, and hence, may have written her macabre message after sensing the thoughts of someone else in the room. With the help of a parapsychologist friend of David’s (who played himself, by the way; he really was a parapsychologist!), an elaborate test is prepared and okayed by the judge. It does eventually prove that Bonnie has miniscule ESP abilities, and due to an electric Faraday cage, reveals the true murderer—an electrical expert—to boot.

Hamilton’s opinion on the paranormal is consistent throughout the series, which, while being a little detail overall, is something I’m impressed with the writers for remembering. The great Samuel Newman wrote two of the paranormal episodes (in fact, the two I find the eeriest), but he did not have any involvement with the other two. In this episode, Hamilton makes a hilarious quip about Perry utilizing ectoplasm and other macabre methods to build his case. And throughout the subsequent ESP test, Hamilton looks very skeptical, although he says very little.

The uncut version of the episode reveals to the audience from the beginning that Philip is faking his trance. The usual, syndicated version of the episode leaves this out, making the audience unsure of whether it’s real or not. But in any case, Bonnie’s trance is very much unexplained until the very end when her ESP is confirmed. The scene where Bonnie writes her mirror message of death is, I think, the creepiest scene in any of the paranormal episodes. The last thing the audience is expecting is for her to space out, let alone to write something like The fraud whose hoax turned hope to dread, shall take his place among the dead.

Even the house looks eerie. The exterior shots of the mansion on the hill, complete with a raging lightning storm, look like something out of an old horror picture.

I wonder to whom the title refers, anyway. “The meddling medium” could either be Philip, meddling by pulling off his fraud, or Bonnie, meddling by unwillingly inserting her own trance in place of Philip’s. Or it could even be, I suppose, the medium Philip asks for help in faking a trance.

The Meddling Medium was most likely intended to be a Halloween episode. It even aired towards the end of October. And I give it a very high approval rating. It’s a perfect Perry episode to watch on a dark, cold autumn night.

Mannix, season 2 episode 12: A very Perry-inspired case

This past week I happened to be watching an episode of Mannix, entitled Fear I to Fall. It’s a very intriguing episode, especially for a Perry fan. There are many parallels with our series. That’s not too surprising, either, since it was written by veteran Perry writer and story consultant Samuel Newman!

The plot concerns Mannix being sent an urgent message from a client and a plane ticket for New Mexico. When he flies out, however, he learns that the message came from the district attorney’s office, the “client” is a man who was murdered, and he’s wanted as a prosecution witness! The sheriff (played by Dana Elcar, later of Baa Baa Black Sheep) greets him by promptly slapping a subpoena in his hand.

The case involves a man who was killed during a robbery. The defendant is a known thief that Mannix tangled with in the past.

In court, the defense attorney makes a couple of amateur mistakes and ends up deciding she isn’t fit to defend her client. The judge decides that it’s such a grave matter for her to drop out that he will grant a twenty-four hour continuance so she can think things over.

The sheriff escorts Mannix back to the airport to catch a flight back to Los Angeles, now that he’s given his testimony. Mannix, still ticked off at having been called out on a pretense, slaps the subpoena back in the sheriff’s hand and decides to stay and find out what’s going on. Some things about the case don’t seem to add up. He knows that, despite being a thief, the defendant isn’t a violent man. Also, there’s a girl he was with who should be able to back up his story, albeit they haven’t been able to find her.

Going back to the defense attorney, he presents his case and encourages her to stay on it. Her father was a very prominent attorney in town, before his death in a car accident, and she feels she can never live up to what he was. But Mannix convinces her to keep at it and they continue the investigation together.

The case becomes very convoluted and heart-breaking when it looks like the celebrated lawyer was actually a blackmailer, tormenting the man who was killed during the robbery. I actually remember the victim’s name without going to look it up. But then again, it’s hard to forget a name like Dobby Dobson!

District Attorney Bartlett comes to them that night with a letter that seems to cement the blackmail angle. If they go to court, he regretfully says, he’s going to have to bring the letter out, no matter who gets hurt by it. The defense attorney, Phyllis, is conflicted. But in the end, she herself brings it out first, knowing that it has to be that way for justice to be done for her client.

When they go back to court, there’s also a very Perry-ish scene where Mannix and Phyllis demonstrate the way that the murder weapon would have had to be held to strike Dobby where he was hit. And they also demonstrate that, due to a twisted left hand, the defendant could not have done it that way. Bartlett tries to suggest that perhaps it was held in both hands, with the right one bearing the brunt of the weight. Mannix agrees that it’s possible, but says there’s a witness who can prove that the defendant is innocent. Like Perry, he’s hoping to scare the real murderer into action.

He adds a little touch to the plan by having Phyllis pretend to be the missing witness, whom they’ve continued to look for everywhere but can’t find. She calls the sheriff on the phone and says she’s scared of coming forward, but she wants to do the right thing. The sheriff says he’ll be right out for her. He picks up and leaves without so much as calling Bartlett to let him know.

Throughout the episode, I was worried that Bartlett would be the bad guy. I didn’t want that, for more reasons than one. Prosecutors take enough snide treatment from the media as it is. And when there’s a prosecutor played by Richard Anderson, well, I’m especially biased in his favor!

As it turned out, it’s the sheriff and the sheriff alone who’s mixed up in the garbage and murdered Dobby. He also framed Phyllis’s father for the blackmail. Bartlett has been let in on Mannix’s scheme and is there waiting with him and Phyllis when the sheriff shows up and tries to kill who he thinks is the missing witness. The sheriff hits a pane of glass in front of her instead. He tries to flee, but Mannix tackles him on the hood of the car and subdues him.

Afterwards, Bartlett questions Mannix as to why he wasn’t considered a suspect himself. Mannix explains the clues that led him to realize it had to be the sheriff, particularly how the sheriff was aware of things that only the criminal should know.

There were a few things going on during the court scenes that seemed a bit odd and probably would not have been permitted on Perry, although offhand I can’t recall the specifics. (Perhaps part of it involved Mannix being allowed to arrange the demonstration in court, although I’m not sure. Especially since he was considered an expert witness. It seems like it was other, smaller things earlier on.) Since Perry was praised in general for its handling of legal matters (aside from things such as the confessions), I would assume that it is the more accurate of the two.

Overall, though, I was highly impressed with the intense, twisting script and the characters. And Samuel Newman proved once again that he is usually kind to prosecutors by allowing Bartlett to be one of the good guys. Despite his unorthodox method for getting Mannix out there in the first place (due to fear that he would not testify if he was simply told the truth), all he wants is to see justice done. When he later argues against Mannix’s theories about the box, he’s only being a good prosecutor and wanting to make sure all the possibilities have been brought to the table. He definitely reminds me of Hamilton in some ways, from his courtroom style to his genuine kindness and his regret.

And to get technical, I wondered and still wonder if Bartlett was even aware of the way Mannix was brought out there. It was the sheriff who told Mannix about it. I can’t help pondering on the possibility that Bartlett requested the sheriff to get Mannix out there and didn’t know the way the sheriff chose to do it.

Of course, aside from the Perry feel of the script and Richard Anderson’s presence, there’s another connection between Perry and Mannix. Mannix himself, Mike Connors, was one of the fill-in lawyers for season 8, in The Bullied Bowler (which was also written by Samuel Newman!). The episode is generally disliked, to my knowledge, but I thought it was fine . . . despite the silliness of trying to have a bowling alley closed for being “evil”. That’s one argument I’ve never heard against a bowling alley before. Pool halls, yes. Bowling, no.

Speaking of Samuel Newman, does anyone know what the deal is with the Perry writer billed as Sam Neuman? Are they the same person? I know that alternate spellings do not always mean it’s a different person, and it seems quite a coincidence to have two Sam New(u)mans writing for the same show. Of course, it could happen, and Sam Neuman appears to have written a few things after Samuel Newman was dead. But then again, maybe it’s the same person and he just wrote those other scripts before he died and they were filmed posthumously?

The Case of the Sleepy Slayer: The writer most certainly wasn't sleeping!

One episode I enjoy watching repeatedly is season 8’s The Sleepy Slayer. It’s a very intense and twisted episode with some delightful extras, including a pleasing scene with Perry and Hamilton and (finally!) a male secretary who’s a good guy.

This is one of Samuel Newman’s episodes. He’s one of my most favorite recurring writers for the series. He usually tends to be kind to Hamilton in his scripts. And the plots are generally very intense and surprising. I wonder what season 9 would have been like if he had remained as Story Consultant.

I wonder how someone even gets chosen as Story Consultant. It seems that they would need a great deal of knowledge and understanding as to how the characters tick. Samuel Newman performed very well. Some others . . . well, always didn’t seem to as much.

But back to The Sleepy Slayer. It opens showing us one of the most dysfunctional households throughout the entire series, which is quite an arguable accomplishment. The old and nasty patriarch of the household, Abner Gordon, throws a temper tantrum and refuses to take his medicine. To the poor young nurse’s horror, this results in a stroke and a collapse. It’s not the first time it’s happened. But he’s too filled with hate to die off. The doctor comments that not even death wants him and that this could go on for years.

Rachel Gordon, Abner’s niece, still lives there. For the past fifteen years, it’s been because Abner has threatened that if she leaves or gets married, he’ll disinherit her. And she thinks one and a half million dollars is worth staying in the Hell Abner’s created for her. She keeps hoping he’ll die. And she threatens to kill him herself if he doesn’t.

The household, from the doctor to the nurse to Bruce Jay the secretary, as well as the other staff members, all feel sorry for Rachel and are sickened by how far she’s been pushed to the edge of a nervous breakdown. I, personally, had a hard time feeling sorry for her from the beginning. Her poor, oppressed persona didn’t feel believable to me, not when she showed such unbridled hatred not only to Abner Gordon (where it was certainly understandable), but to the hapless Bruce Jay, who had never done a thing to her. She snarls at him that she’ll see he’s thrown out of the house someday. And in spite of that, Bruce continues to worry about and defend her.

Perry is handling a legal matter for Bruce, who is concerned that money Abner promised him will not be handed over if the second will is introduced. He wants to leave the house and marry the nurse, and Abner doesn’t seem to want him to go, either. Bruce was staying there in the first place because of an accident in a plant owned by Abner, an accident that caused Bruce’s lungs to become gravely injured. Abner paid his bills and offered for him to stay at the house as a secretary. He said that if Bruce ever wanted to leave he would give $50,000, but it’s possible he may refuse to do so aside from Bruce inheriting it in his will after his death.

There’s a mysterious attempted break-in at the Gordon house. When the police arrive, the sergeant wants to talk with Rachel but she refuses to see him. At the same time someone tried to break in, she was stealing money from Abner’s desk. She’s been secretly seeing a man on the side, a repulsive fellow who only wants her money and doesn’t care a bit about her. When Abner and his accountant learn of the missing money and Abner threatens her to return it by Monday if she doesn’t want him to replace his current will with the one that disinherits her (and everyone else), she begs her boyfriend to return the money she’s already given him. He says he can’t and walks out, telling her to pray her uncle dies before Monday.

Rachel still hasn’t talked to the sergeant about the attempted break-in. Instead she goes out and tries to buy a gun. Not wanting a police record to exist, she opts for a second-hand gun at a pawnshop and bribes the pawnbroker into not adding her name and address to his record. In one of the series’ most chilling and shocking scenes, Rachel practices her shooting in the middle of a lightning storm. As the thunder crashes and disguises the sounds, she fires repeatedly at a dead log while envisioning Abner’s sneering face.

Everything is set up so Rachel seems to be the usually poor, misunderstood, and innocent defendant. After telling the other household members that she wants to teach Abner a lesson in how he can’t torment them for the fun of it, and instructs them all to leave for twenty-four hours starting the next day, she drops scalding coffee on her arm due to a loose coffeepot handle and screams in utter agony. The doctor treats and sedates her, saying that she’s very close to a complete breakdown.

Early the next morning, the housekeeper gets up and hears that someone else is up. Upon curiously going upstairs and to Abner’s room, she discovers in horror that Rachel is shooting Abner with her gun. Rachel then collapses, having apparently been under the influence of the drug’s inhibitor-removing properties.

Upon the horrifying events of the murder, Bruce asks Perry to come to the house. He does, and while waiting for Bruce, discovers an upsidedown book on law in the library. All the others have dust on them, but not the one out of place.

Bruce enters and pleads with Perry to defend Rachel. Perry says he can’t because of the conflict of interest, but agrees to talk with her until she can find her own counsel. However, she is wheeled out on a gurney, unconscious and again sedated, and on her way to the prison ward of the hospital. Andy says that Hamilton won’t allow anyone to see her without an Okay from his office.

There are some classic lines of dialogue from the characters throughout the episode. One of my favorites is from Andy in this scene. Upon being told that Rachel has been through a terrible experience, he dryly and flatly replies, “Yes. I saw Abner Gordon’s body.”

Investigative goings-on happen. The accountant talks of the missing money and gives an intriguing and very sad possible insight into Abner’s behavior. “Did you ever stop to think that the last thing in the world he wanted was for Rachel to leave him?” Perhaps it was so. And Bruce had said that Abner was kind to him when the plant he owned caused Bruce’s lifelong illness. Certainly Abner did not seem to be of the same caliber as the most wretched and evil of the murder victims.

Paul tries to talk with Rachel’s boyfriend and is thoroughly disgusted by him and his uncaring and unconcerned attitude towards Rachel. He even says he’ll make her look guilty if he’s put on the witness stand. While observing him getting ready for a date with another girl, one who has a lot of money, Paul casually (and deliberately) knocks the bottle of cologne off the dresser and causes it to spill all over the guy. He exclaims in indignation. Paul just smiles and says, “Tracey-boy, you smell real pretty. You might just get yourself a platoon of promoters.”

It’s one of Paul’s best and most unexpected scenes. We don’t usually see him get so thoroughly revolted by someone, and it’s even less often that he does something about it. Still less often than that when he does it with a smile. Tracey is a new breed of rat, and Paul responds highly unfavorably and unusually.

Eventually Paul learns that Abner was dead when Rachel fired at him. He was poisoned. Consequently, Rachel has been released. Andy comes in with a warrant for Bruce.

The hearing proceeds with some wonderful and thorough handling by Hamilton, who questions the witnesses on every angle and wants to make sure he has everything correct. Perry remains extraordinarily silent, bewildering Hamilton and everyone else. Of course, Perry has a plan.

That night he, Hamilton, Paul, and the police are waiting on a cold and rainy street. Hamilton wanders over to Perry and says that they’ve been there for over two hours. Perry wonders if Hamilton has lost his curiosity, to which Hamilton replies in the negative. Perry says that the man they’re waiting for is a creature of habit, in more ways than one. Hamilton’s answer is gold: “Yes, and that’s the problem—so am I! And one of my habits is sleeping at night!”

At last the person they’re waiting for arrives. He’s caught buying drugs, which are hidden in a book. He’s revealed to be Tracey. As Paul approaches he says, “Tracey-boy, you just got yourself that platoon of promoters.”

In court the next day, Tracey admits that he’s a drug addict. Rachel tried to stick him in a recovery program but it didn’t take. He was hooked to her pocketbook and she to him. The night of the murder, she called him at midnight and told him she’d left a bit more money under his pillow. The problem is, she was supposed to have been under heavy sedation at midnight, put under an hour earlier. And Tracey insists he didn’t kill Abner so that Rachel would inherit all the money; he wouldn’t kill and anyway, he was out getting a fix.

Perry gets Rachel on the stand. And in one of his most awesome examinations ever, he pokes holes in her story and reveals her true plan: to get everyone to feel sorry for her and think she was having a nervous breakdown, then kill Abner Gordon “not once, but twice” to throw suspicion off of herself. She burned herself with the coffee on purpose so the doctor would have to sedate her. Then she negated the effect of the drug with a drug she stole from Tracey and called him at midnight. She deliberately poisoned Abner with the drug Bruce uses to breathe easier when his lungs hurt him, in order to throw suspicion on him. And three hours after Abner was dead, she went into his room, pretending to be in a drugged stupor, and fired three times.

She tries to protest that she didn’t have present ability when she shot Abner. Perry corners her on that and asks her how she knows the legal term if she hasn’t been reading law books. She studied up on every angle of the crime, and was the one who left the volume upsidedown in the library. “I have never heard of such a deliberately evil plan,” Perry declares. Rachel finally breaks down in tears on the witness stand.

The epilogue finds Della wondering how Perry knew the upsidedown law book was really a clue and not just a random coincidence. Perry smiles and reminds Della of a famous saying by Justice Holmes. Smiling too, Della quotes, “Even a dog can tell the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.”

I have to say that, since I never liked Rachel, I was pleased to see that my feelings were quite justified. But we’re left wondering exactly how much of her sympathetic act was indeed just an act. She was hateful and bitter towards both Abner and Bruce, yet she appeared to genuinely love Tracey. Or at least, she seemed needy around him and most unlike the evil woman who hated and plotted. And her crying in court may or may not have been faked.

Bruce Jay was far kinder to her than she ever deserved. Despite her clear hatred of him, he still worried about her and wanted Perry to defend her after the shooting. And he staunchly defended her to Perry and others, insisting on how cruelly Abner had mistreated her and pushed her to a breakdown.

And of course, Hamilton was wonderful. I enjoyed his careful examinations of all the witnesses, particularly the doctor, as he wanted to make certain he had all of the facts straight. That would have been awesome enough, but then Sam Newman also threw in that scene with Hamilton joining Perry and the others on a stakeout. An absolute, perfect surprise.

All of the main characters really get their chances to shine in this episode. And the plot is so dark and twisted. For once, we’re actually really seeing the murderer’s plan unfolding, and who the murderer is, but it’s so obvious that it seems it can’t be and that Rachel must be the poor, poor person she pretends she is. Seeing Perry expose her for the wicked woman she truly is, is delicious. I believe that, even though Perry's scenes of exposing the murderers are usually always epic, I’ve only rarely enjoyed Perry’s examinations as much or more than this one.