The Uncut Impatient Partner

So I finally got Sampson into my Wild Wild West time-travel story. He hasn’t encountered his sadistic counterpart Pinto at all. Instead, he converses with a different counterpart, Coley Rodman, and one of his friends. Coley and Sampson have had several personality conflicts throughout the chapter, and it was a lot of fun comparing and contrasting them. It really brought home all the more what a wonderful actor H.M. Wynant is, to be able to portray such vastly different characters!

I’ve been watching the uncut Impatient Partner semi-frequently since getting my DVD set of the first half of season 5. And, after also seeing the cut version a couple more times, I discovered that my original evaluation of everything that was missing was wrong. Actually, The Impatient Partner is one of the most cut-up episodes there is.

First off, there is a very brief bit with Amory that was clipped, where he’s first informed of his wife calling him. He tells Vivian Ames that he doesn’t want to speak with his wife and hangs up. Then comes the scene that’s the same in both, where Paul storms in to confront Amory with news of his real identity.

The scene with Vivian and Burt is missing, as I originally noted. And with it gone goes a subplot fleshing out their characters more. They’re friends and apparently tried to be more, but Vivian wanted someone with more money than Burt had. She treats him very snidely in the scene. I really don’t like Vivian, and the way she acts with Burt is the main reason why. It suddenly occurs to me, too, that maybe the reason Burt decided to go along with Ned Thompson in selling the Martin project behind Amory’s back is that he was hoping to get enough money to satisfy Vivian. Ugh, she isn’t worth it.

The whole scene with Tragg, Perry, and Paul in Ned’s apartment is gone. There’s no reading of the note, which makes it extremely confusing in court when Perry asks questions about said note.

The first third or so of Frank’s conversation with Paul is missing. The cut version goes directly to him telling Paul that there isn’t anything between Ned and Edith. Gone is the part where they discuss the whereabouts of the siblings while Ned was being murdered, and where Paul queries if Edith has talked to Ned.

And then the whole sequence with Perry trying to find Vivian at her apartment and talking to Burt is gone. We learn a little more about him and Vivian here; he says they have a special knocking code so one will know the other is there.

All in all, there must be around six minutes of edits. Compare that with the more usual three or four.

I wonder what happened to Burt. Naturally he’d go to prison, but maybe just for a short while. I wonder if he and Vivian would get along any better after he got out, or if she’d still be obsessed with finding someone who has a lot of money. Maybe she’d already have someone. Or maybe she’d try someone and fail again. Maybe she’d finally think Burt was worth something and recognize what a loyal friend he is to her.

I also wonder what happened to Frank. In The Malevolent Mugging, Edith mentions him in a monologue and says he’s in prison. But I wasn’t sure if he really would be or if he’d be executed. Killing Ned was definitely premeditated by at least a few minutes.

Poor Edith, in a situation where she has to lose either a husband or a brother. She’s so subdued in the last scene, most likely both because of hurt over Amory’s past accusations and because of Frank being the murderer (and one who was willing to deliberately frame Amory for it, the weasel). I love that Amory apologizes to her for his groundless accusations.

Suddenly I remember that one plot thread I had considered for The Malevolent Mugging (which is alluded to in the trailer I made for it) was that someone was trying to get at Edith by going after Amory. I didn’t end up using that one and it would likely only clutter things up to try to experiment with it at this point in the story. But it could be an interesting idea for something else later. It would be a confusing surprise, for Edith to have an enemy like that.

Amory and Andy

QUICK EDIT: For the last couple of hours I've been playing with this: http://lucky-ladybugs-lovelies.tumblr.com/ I'll be posting a lot of random pictures of Perry actors, and some Perry episodic pictures, so it may be of interest to readers here. I do squeal and fangirl a bit, which I try to avoid doing here, but come for the pictures!

This is a problem I’ve been running into repeatedly while working on The Malevolent Mugging. It pertains to episodes as much or more than one fan story, and I thought I might bring some of my ponderings here.

What is Amory Fallon really like?

In The Impatient Partner we see an agonized, highly stressed, and excitable man. He suspects his partner Ned of embezzlement and arson, and worse, trying to murder him in the explosion at the plant. He thinks Ned is having an affair with his wife, Edith. And as his life spirals further out of control, he only becomes more and more upset. Being accused of Ned’s murder does not help.

Well, who wouldn’t be upset under those circumstances?

Most anyone, naturally. But Amory seems to have a knack for making molehills into mountains. Perry points out to him that he could be mistaken on just about every one of his suspicions, which are based around odd coincidences. And his brother-in-law Frank tells Paul that there has never been anything between Edith and Ned, but that it’s a suspicion that keeps building up inside of Amory, tormenting him beyond reason.

The indications are that at least the latter problem has been going on for a long time, only getting worse. We’re never told what triggered it. We only see Amory accusing Edith of the affair while in a highly wound-up state, already stressed from everything else piling on him. Seeing Ned appear on the company building’s back stairs, where Edith came to see Amory, is the last straw. In Amory’s already tortured mind, it’s logical to think that Edith is there for Ned and not him.

Maybe Amory has a bit of an inferiority complex. Maybe he’s just plum paranoid. Maybe it’s a bit of both in addition to the agonies of everything else that’s happening.

In The Malevolent Mugging, I try to explain Amory’s hysteria with the idea that he suspected Ned for a long time of doing shady things with the company, and that his suspicions about Ned and Edith only started after that, while he was already feeling a deep-rooted sense of betrayal. That is possible.

But it’s also equally possible that he suspected the affair first and only later started suspecting Ned of betraying the company. It seems to be hinted at by Frank that the suspicions of the affair have been going on for ages. That could mean it came first, especially if Amory only started suspecting Ned of shady business practices within the past month or two.

We don’t really have a clear picture one way or the other, however, making it fair game for pretty much any idea one wants to come up with.

Edith is frantic to help Amory as everything falls apart around him. She exclaims that his behavior isn’t like him at all. Does that mean that Amory is not generally a high-strung person? Or does it merely mean that it isn’t like him to ignore her and not call her, despite being a high-strung person?

There are some interesting clues in court that may further clarify the matter. Vivian Ames, the secretary to both Amory and Ned, tells in her testimony that Ned wanted her to avoid Amory if she found the file Ned wanted and came to bring it to him. Amory was hanging around the building and had tried to force his way inside Ned’s apartment, Ned said. He had been drinking and was in an ugly mood.

It could be interpreted from that, that Ned knew Amory is not usually like that. Amory rarely drinks, so explaining his especially bad mood as the product of his drinking suggests that it was the only possible explanation. Of course, he was already in a terrible mood before that, but the drinking certainly heightened it. And I wonder if Ned had seen Amory drunk before and was aware that he gets into his worst moods when that happens.

In any case, Amory’s expression when Vivian Ames tells what Ned said is interesting and possibly telling. He looks very mild, very meek, and perhaps somewhat surprised or guilty. He certainly doesn’t look like a high-strung, hysterical person. He looks very sweet and gentle.

Of course, he could be both gentle and anxious, swinging from one persona to the other as his moods change. And he might be realizing in court just how uptight and stressed some of his behavior has been and be feeling guilty over it.

Also, the episode shows us that this is a man descending into desperation and despair. Amory starts the episode much like Andy, in a suit and tie and with his hair perfectly combed. As everything starts to collapse around him and his mood grows worse and worse, we eventually see him drunk and disheveled, with a loosened tie and wild hair (which he later tries to comb at least somewhat to see Perry). By the time he knows Ned has been murdered, he’s taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and his shirt even more, and his hair is a complete mess. Clearly he was running his fingers into it. Would he behave that way if he didn’t have some high-strung tendencies to begin with?

It’s possible, especially if he’s supposed to be a man coming apart at the seams whereas before his life seemed perfectly normal and happy. Everyone reacts differently to high levels of stress; I think each defendant, when their reaction is shown, has a unique way of handling their problems. Amory could either be high-strung in general or just be falling apart in spite of previously showing few to no signs of this. Or he could just become stressed in certain intense situations, rather than being that way much of the time.

Tentatively, I would say that I kind of picture him as being prone to more mild levels of stress in general, but that it becomes intense when things are going extremely wrong. No one other than Edith seems that surprised by Amory’s mood swings, making me conclude that Edith may have been mainly talking about the way Amory treats her and not about him being stressed overall. And she also could have meant that it was unlike him to be stressed to that extreme.

(Also, something interesting and also a bit sad that I noticed. I’m not sure Perry even likes Amory that much. In general, unless I haven’t been paying attention, I thought Perry usually addressed the defendants with their proper titles—Mr., etc.—at least in court. Perry repeatedly refers to Amory as just “Fallon”, both in and out of court. I realize Perry even refers to people he knows and likes on a surname basis, especially Hamilton and Paul, but the key is, he doesn’t do it in more formal situations. And even if on occasion a usage of “Drake” might slip in court, it’s not steady.)

Then there’s a whole other issue. Amory and Andy have some traits and speech patterns that are similar. How does one successfully contrast the two and make them come across as the very different people they are? Not even Amory’s stress levels can fully help there, if we’re taking Andy’s season 8 behavior into the equation. Andy is very capable of becoming stressed as well, albeit he hasn’t ever been shown going to the extreme levels Amory can attain. But we don’t know if he couldn’t eventually get there.

I’ve been tinkering with this issue as well as trying to more fully flesh out Andy’s personality. Steve is honestly less of a mystery to me than Andy. Steve makes sense to me, while Andy, with his series of odd and contradictory behavior, is an intriguing riddle. Which is the real Andy? He’s easy-going. He’s stressed. He’s friendly. He’s stern. He visits Perry and company in connection with cases. He doesn’t associate with Perry and company in social scenes. He’s been on the force for fifteen years, a seasoned and mature man. He idolizes Lieutenant Tragg. He’s usually very sharp. Sometimes he has very cringe-worthy moments.

Putting it down on paper, so to speak, just makes it sound like Andy is a very multi-faceted person. Actually watching his behavior onscreen is what leaves me scratching my head. It’s one thing to make a character multi-faceted; they did that with Steve very well. All of his various behaviors can be ultimately traced back to traits he showed right from his first episode. But with Andy, I really get the feeling that the writers often didn’t know what to do with him, and that they pretty much had him do whatever they wanted at the time, whether or not it made sense with prior characterization. If so, I wonder if that was also a source of frustration to Wesley. Wesley was so good at playing every type of character imaginable, and he did wonders with Andy too, but it must have been exasperating if the writers couldn’t agree on what the character was like.

So rises the dilemma of exactly how to portray Andy and make him multi-faceted but not absolutely inconsistent. Since I am still confused on what is and what is not out-of-character behavior for Andy, the only way I know how to solve the issue is to try to cram in everything the writers wrote for him and try to somehow make it make sense.

It certainly isn’t easy. I tried writing a private, experimental, extended conversation between Della and Andy, just as an exercise. The thing meandered all over the place as I desperately groped for a lost and forgotten train of thought on what they should talk about and had Andy try to explain why he avoids social scenarios with Perry and company. I’m concerned over whether I was really able to give Andy his own unique voice or if it sounds too much like conversations I’ve written between Della and Hamilton.

Andy is easy to write when just keeping to the ideas the writers had about him at first: that he is an amiable but businesslike introvert, seeking to catch the criminals and not liking Perry and Paul’s law-bending, but not trying to trap them in it. Trying to peel back those layers, as well as to add what the writers threw in around season 8, makes it all very complicated. I’m up to the challenge, though. I want to portray a character befitting Wesley’s wonderful depiction, while connecting the dots in a way the writers didn’t.

Andy as I write him has all of the basic traits. His stress in season 8 is explained as coming into play when Tragg was nearly killed and Andy had to temporarily accept many of his responsibilities. He doesn’t join Perry and company in social scenarios—a particularly baffling thing in light of his friendliness—because he holds them at arm’s length, not wanting to become too close due to his concern over not becoming privy to any law-bending activities. And perhaps also because he fears it would become too awkward and straining on their friendship, were he to have to arrest one of them.

I’m not sure if I’ve strung everything together well, particularly on the latter points. But it’s visible for everyone to see that Andy never has lunch or dinner with Perry and company, whereas Steve and even Tragg often do. There has to be some reason for the omission. All I can do is draw on canonical knowledge of Andy and try to knit something out of it.

In the story, Amory muses to Edith on some of the differences between him and Andy. He feels that he would not have been able to concoct such a complex escape plan as Andy did while being held prisoner. He also thinks that if he had, the vicious dogs would have made him surrender. Amory is not a coward; he simply isn’t trained as a police officer and likely would not think of some of the same things Andy would. Amory is a businessman, which is a world likely foreign to Andy.

Amory is rarely in dangerous situations, while Andy faces them every day. Amory says in the episode that when he was nearly killed in the explosion, he stood by his car, shaking, for a few minutes. He, very likely as a common everyman, doesn’t quite know how to handle it. But he does well, all things considered. Instead of hiding away, he immediately sets out to solve the mystery, despite not having any experience in such a field.

In the story, he is held at gunpoint and, mistaken for Andy, told to get his hands in the air, “Cop”. Amory is too alarmed to spend time saying he isn’t a policeman (probably a smart decision, taking the assailant’s mood into consideration), so he puts up his hands and plans to reveal his true identity at that point—although he isn’t given the chance.

Later on, while recovering from the resulting attack, he is stressed by both that and the realization that he is still in danger. Finding out that Andy was abducted by people really wanting Amory doesn’t help. And he is only thrown further into turmoil and conflict by a surprising letter Andy was given that Ned wrote right before he was killed.

Amory never descends into the extreme stress of The Impatient Partner episode, though. Edith is standing by him, and with his faith in her long restored, he has her to lean on for support.

(. . . And who is “The Impatient Partner”, anyway? I’m not sure it’s ever clear whether they mean Amory or Ned.)

I’m planning that Amory will play an active role in the rest of the fic, helping the police and becoming involved in the various convoluted events. He and Andy have only met once so far, and they’ll have many more meetings before it’s over. I’ve tried to contrast them in every one of the scenes in which one or both of them appear. Hopefully it will be even easier to show their differences, in spite of some similarities in speech patterns, in their scenes together.

The Case of the Impatient Partner

It’s always nice, to finally see the uncut version of a well-loved episode. Sometimes additional scenes are available with favorite characters, either important to the plot or to the character’s personality. Other times, not much has been snipped.

My local station is usually pretty good about getting prints with most of the episodes’ content intact. Season 1 episodes, which seemed to be longer than later ones, usually suffer the most. Others, by around seasons 5 and 6, are generally only missing one or two scenes.

When I saw the uncut version of The Impatient Partner, I had hoped for more scenes with Amory Fallon. There were none. What had been cut from my station’s copy was a short scene between plant chemist Burt Nichols and Amory’s secretary Miss Ames, as well as a longer scene with Perry and Burt conversing outside Miss Ames’ apartment. So the main thing I hadn’t previously known was that Burt and Miss Ames were friends and had been a couple in the past, before she started going out with Amory’s partner Ned Thompson.

Aired as the second episode of season 5, The Impatient Partner would really have quite an impact on the majority of the rest of the series. It gave us our first Perry-related glimpse of Wesley Lau.

I wonder how they stumbled across him. From what I’ve read of how television writers and other crew members operate, they often have specific people in mind when they write parts. Could that have been the case with Wesley, who was already a familiar character actor (mostly in Westerns and a few movies)? Or did they not have anyone in mind and Wesley just showed up for an audition? That would be really interesting to know.

Rare for the series, The Impatient Partner opens in Paul’s office. Amory Fallon, a client of Paul’s, is questioning an old lady. She has trouble sticking to the subject and exasperates Amory when she starts to ramble. He tries to stay calm and polite as he pays her for her time and ushers her out. Paul also leaves, to take a call in his very full waiting room. (Wow, I wonder if days are usually that crowded for him? They’ve definitely given the impression that he runs a large-scale agency, not some dinky little thing. He’s referenced many operatives over the seasons. Then again, maybe the office was so full that day because of all the ladies showing up to be questioned.)

A mousy fellow who has been observing things in the office gets up to talk with Amory. It seems Amory brought him along because he’s Amory’s brother-in-law and Amory thinks he might need a witness. He also thinks that the lady who just left is the woman he’s been looking for.

After further conversation with the woman at her apartment, however, Amory realizes she is not the one. He’s looking for someone who was standing outside the Fallon Paint company Monday night, when there was an explosion. This woman was at the nearby bus stop Sunday night, but not Monday. Frustrated, Amory leaves and remarks that it was her coat that fooled him.

The audience, and not Amory, sees the woman take the coat across the hall to the woman who really was there. The coat was a loan, and its real owner would have gone with her friend to the office, had she not come down with a cold.

Amory is a built-up bundle of nerves. In addition to his paranoia that his wife is having an affair with his business partner, he is certain that someone tried to kill him in that explosion. Though it was set up to try to look like a group of punk kids did it, Amory believes (and it’s later discovered he’s right) that it was someone else, someone deliberately trying to cover up a crime and destroy some important files that revealed it. And he believes it was someone in his company.

Apparently he didn’t tell Paul all of this. Paul shows up at the Fallon Paint company, angry at being used and worried that he’s done something wrong that may jeopardize his license. Amory breaks down and admits the truth to Paul and tells him that nothing out of sorts was being done. And he has no desire to keep anything from the police. He just wants to find out if the woman at the bus stop might have seen someone going in or out of the company building right before the explosion, and if she could identify said person.

Before and while they’re attempting to converse, Mrs. Fallon calls several times trying to talk to Amory. He doesn’t want to talk with her, convinced of the affair and certain that he really means nothing to her. He hasn’t even been home since returning from a month-long trip to Mexico the other day. Instead, he’s been staying in a hotel.

He talks with his partner, who appears in the office, and introduces Paul as Mr. Henry. He then goes around the building speaking with other employees as he tries to get to the bottom of what happened in the explosion. He learns that the suspicious files were moved to where they would be blown up on orders of Ned Thompson.

As he finally leaves the building at the end of the workday, he goes by way of the back stairs. He stumbles across his wife Edith, who has come down out of worry and bewilderment over why he hasn’t been home. He softens at her concern and is trying to work out a reply when Thompson appears on the same stairs. This tips Amory over the edge and he decides that Edith must have really come to see his partner. He screams that he doesn’t want to ever see her or speak to her again. As he flies off in his overwrought state, Edith stares after him in shock. Thompson looks on, his expression impassive.

Meanwhile, Paul has finally located the woman who actually was at the bus stop Monday night. They observe everyone coming out the main entrance of the company building, but she doesn’t recognize anyone. That night Paul has her at the apartment building where Thompson lives. He’s the last possibility, so they figure it must have been him. Suddenly the woman sees who she saw, and amid a flurry of exclaiming and pointing, Paul hurries out and across the street to apprehend him. He grabs a drunk and dazed Amory Fallon.

Back at Perry’s office, Amory finally tells his entire story while Perry and the others listen. Though sympathetic and declaring to help by speaking with Ned Thompson, who refused to see Amory when he showed up, Perry also very frankly tells Amory that a lot of what he thinks is wrong could be in his own mind. There isn’t enough evidence to support the idea of the affair between Edith and Ned, nor is it likely that the arsonist was trying to murder Amory, since no one even knew he would be at the building that night.

Amory doesn’t say whether or not Perry’s assessment makes sense to him, but he is grateful for the offer of help. He mentions writing a note and shoving it under Thompson’s door when he wasn’t allowed admittance to his apartment. Being drunk at the time, a state he’s rarely ever in, he can’t remember what he wrote. Perry says they’ll get the note back.

That turns out to be impossible. So is conversing with Thompson. When he and Paul arrive, Lieutenant Tragg answers the door. Thompson is dead.

One interesting note on Thompson’s apartment: he must really like chess. Not only does he have a board set up with some of the largest chess pieces I’ve ever seen, there’s also a huge statue of a knight chess piece on the floor near the body.

Paul talks with Amory’s brother-in-law during the investigation, who tells him that there was nothing between Edith and Ned and that it was something that just built up in Amory’s mind over a period of time, torturing him. When Paul leaves, Mrs. Fallon comes out and insists to her brother that she has to help Amory.

The court scenes are very intense, as everyone tries to unravel the mysteries surrounding Thompson’s death and the activity at the paint company. Someone was embezzling money and the books were doctored to reflect it. Thompson photographed everything, certainly making it seem like he couldn’t possibly have been the embezzler. Perry finally uncovers that there were two embezzlers and Thompson was indeed one of them. The pictures he took displayed the other embezzler’s work.

And there was also a deal going on under the table with Thompson and Burt Nichols working together with businessman Carlos Silva of Mexico. Thompson and Amory already had an aboveboard deal pending with him. That was the reason for Amory’s trip. But Amory knew nothing of the other deal.

Perry also pieces together why Amory can’t remember anything that happened after he tried and failed to get into Thompson’s apartment. There’s a forty-five minute gap between that and him stumbling out of the building. Perry finally gets Burt to admit that Amory was asleep on the stairs due to his uncharacteristic, heavy drinking. Burt was going to visit Ned to further discuss the deal with Silva. But Burt insists he did not kill Ned.

It’s Edith, Amory’s devoted and worried wife, who manages to close the case for them. In between court sessions she revealed information to Perry about her brother that made Perry suspect him as the second embezzler. And when Perry accuses him of the murder in court, the weasel leaps up, it having been bubbling inside him all during the examination of Burt, and repeatedly screams that yes, he did kill Thompson! Edith covers her face in sickened grief while everyone else in court stares on.

The epilogue finds Perry noting the great sacrifice Edith made in telling the information about her brother’s heavy gambling and money losses. Amory acknowledges that he’s aware of that, and apologizes to Edith for all of his wild imaginings concerning her and Ned. The episode ends on a happy note with them reunited.

Amory is one of my favorite oneshot characters. As already mentioned, he was responsible for making me realize my fondness for both Wesley Lau and Lieutenant Anderson. His tense, jumpy behavior is so completely different from Andy’s usually calm, aloof nature. When I first saw the episode and saw him so anxious, I wondered whether he would be the defendant or the victim. (Or the killer.) I was very happy that he was the defendant!

I was also happy that Edith really wasn’t having an affair with Ned, and that she was so loving and devoted in spite of Amory’s imaginations. As I’ve mentioned, I get a little tired of seeing so many marriages on the rocks. It was refreshing to see one that could be mended.

Also, something a bit amusing. While Amory does lie to Paul at the beginning, he never lies to Perry. And that is a rarity among his clients! It seems like they're always either lying or holding something back. I think I could count on one hand the clients who tell Perry the whole truth.

After I’m able to return to and finish my mystery The Denying Detective, which I hope to do in July, I have been toying again with an idea involving a double of a main character. In the past I had considered one where Hamilton has a bad double creating havoc for him, but I abandoned that after becoming aware of The Dead Ringer. Although the series has touched on doubles more than once (even with one of Perry’s season 6 stand-ins!), I don’t think there has ever been an episode where the double and the main character are both good guys.

Being as fond as I am of Amory, I had the thought of featuring him as well as Andy in one of the mysteries. Perhaps one of them (probably Amory) is found lying unconscious in a park, stripped of all identification, and is thought to be the other. Meanwhile, the other (probably Andy) is abducted for some reason. One of them is a mistaken target while the other is the one meant to be taken. And so far I haven’t quite sorted out which should be which. Amory’s already had so much trouble with people causing trouble for him in his company. But Andy’s had trouble in one of my past stories with someone trying to kill him, so it probably evens out.

There’s also the question of motive. If it’s some nut out for revenge on Andy, it could start seeming too much like my past story The Memento Mori Murderer, where some nut is out for revenge on Perry. And in that case, it might be better for it to be Amory who was the real target all along, and for a reason other than revenge.

If I decide to write the story, I’ll get it all sorted out by that point.

If someone else had played Amory, The Impatient Partner still would have been a good episode. But it would not likely have been significant in the overall picture. With Wesley Lau in the role, the episode’s place as an important installment is assured.

I wonder what viewers thought when Wesley appeared two episodes later as a Homicide detective. Maybe they were used to character actors popping up repeatedly and they didn’t bat an eye. In any case, they must have been receptive. If only the crew and not the audience had liked Wesley, it likely wouldn’t have worked out for any length of time. But he would be regularly present over the next four seasons.