So. I wasn’t expecting to discover another
recurring character. Mr. Snell, Robert Colbert’s district attorney character in
The Grinning Gorilla, also appears in The Hasty Honeymooner.
Of course, the end result of that is that Snell
really doesn’t come off looking too competent, since he’s the one Perry lobs
many legitimate complaints about prejudicial conduct about. And it’s hard to
really think of the man otherwise, since this is our only glimpse of him in a
courtroom setting. At least poor Hamilton, whose courtroom conduct is very
badly written and almost a mirror of Mr. Snell’s in the following episode, The
12th Wildcat, has many opportunities to show that he is
competent and that the writing in The 12th Wildcat is really
a fluke.
When I previously remembered Mr. Snell only from The
Grinning Gorilla, I liked him alright. He seemed competent enough, as did
the police. I never really understood Perry screaming “Entrapment!”, since all
they did was wait to see if their suspect would come retrieve the check she had
previously hidden in the squad car. They didn’t induce her to commit a crime
she was otherwise unlikely to commit, which is the definition of entrapment. I
suppose it’s a bit of a gray area, but it seemed perfectly fine to me. But in
any case, Mr. Snell mentioned having a word with the police about the incident.
It seems like Robert Colbert had a bit of an
unlucky streak with his recurring characters. He was also the one unfortunately
chosen by Warner Brothers to basically replace the Bret Maverick character
after Roger Moore quit the series, citing low-quality scripts for his Beau
Maverick character. (While Beau is actually my favorite Maverick, I do have to
agree with Roger that the scripts were rather below par, for the most part.)
Robert ended up playing a character called Brent Maverick, a third brother to
Bret and Bart. In his dress, speech pattern, and mannerisms, as well as his
similar name, he was clearly meant to be another Bret. He was aware of this,
too, giving the famous quote that he would rather have to cross-dress than do
what Warner Brothers wanted of him. The character went over about as well as
expected, disappearing after two episodes.
I wonder if they were planning to use Mr. Snell
for more than two episodes? I suppose it’s possible that if they had, they
would have used the character more favorably, as they did in The Grinning
Gorilla. It’s hard to say, since their track record with writing for the
prosecutors was up and down. And in season 9, which often wanted to go back to
being season 1, there were several very bad “down” ventures.
I
would say that it’s interesting in any case to use a recurring character in two
different seasons, and only two seasons (unlike more frequent visitors D.A.
Hale and Sergeant Landro), but I’ve heard that seasons 8 and 9 were filmed as
though they were one big season, a thought which the production numbers back
up. Also, it isn’t the first time Perry brings back characters seemingly
at random in different seasons. Deputy D.A. Alvin appeared twice in season 4,
then disappeared until he very randomly showed up again in season 6. Likewise,
Detective Toland of Robbery made appearances in two separate seasons, albeit unlike
Alvin, those were consecutive (6 and 7, I believe). It’s kind of neat to see
the cast and crew remember these characters sometime after their original
appearances.
