While trying to think of a topic for today, I wandered
into the Perry Mason Yahoo Group again to see what was being discussed. The interesting
topic of “Do any episodes literally depress you” jumped out at me and I began
to ponder.
Honestly, I don’t tend to be depressed by Perry
episodes. Sometimes the death itself depresses me, but that’s rare, and
generally doesn’t impede my enjoyment of the episode overall.
The closest I think I came to being depressed by
a Perry episode is The Silent Six. The disturbing revelations
that the murder victim was killed because the shooter thought he was the one
beating up Susan Wolfe, when he wasn’t, left me with a bit of a cold, shaken
feeling. However, on later viewings, that was countered by all the wonderful
screentime for Steve. I look forward to seeing this episode every time it’s on,
in spite of still being disturbed by the climax in court. Undoubtedly that has
to be one of the darkest, most ironic cases.
Other deaths that seem particularly depressing to
me are in The Empty Tin and The Lover’s Leap, two episodes I
absolutely love.
In The Empty Tin, I did not like that the
old man’s nephew (played by Warren Stevens) was killed right after his
marriage. And the poor bride was shot too, but she was going to live. What a
horrible thing for her to wake up to! I wish that they would have had the
husband critically wounded as well, but still alive. I doubt I could even write
a little story to save him, since he seemed to have been shot right in the
heart.
And in The Lover’s Leap, one of the key
plot points is the fact that the angry, divorcing couple was putting on an act
and truly loved each other. When the husband fakes his own death and later is
killed for real, his wife is so grief-stricken and distraught that she has to
buy tranquilizers to try to hide it. Perry eventually breaks her down on the
witness stand, as she sobs and wails that she can’t take it any more. At the
end, when the killer is revealed, Mrs. Comstock collapses against Perry in
tears, still overwhelmed and unable to bear her husband’s death. The guy was a
jerk, and she surely could have done better with her romantic interest, but
since they did genuinely love each other, the plot thread was discouraging and
depressing and left me with a feeling of “What’s she going to do now?”
I very briefly explored a possibility of that in
one of my stories. When I wrote a series of scenes to be woven together into
the Livejournal.com story Lux Aeterna, one of them features a despondent
woman assisting the madwoman Florence when she takes over the world. The woman
tells David Gideon that she’s aligned herself with the megalomaniac because she
doesn’t care about the old world now that the only person she loved isn’t in
it. I never named her, but I did intend for that to be Mrs. Comstock.
Other deaths I find depressing are Captain
Caldwell from The Misguided Missile and Mr. Jeffers from The Nine
Dolls. Caldwell was killed for knowing too much and not being willing to
back down on bringing the criminal to justice. Mr. Jeffers was killed because
he had discovered his long-lost (to him) granddaughter and intended to change his
will and leave everything to her.
There are a few other scattered deaths throughout
the series of people killed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong
time, as well as a few other people who knew too much and several killed for
other, equally unfair reasons. I felt bad for the woman in The Fiery Fingers
who died because her cousin was so jealous of her. It would be boring if
the victims were always slimeballs who pretty much deserved to die, but
that doesn’t change that it’s depressing when a good person (or even one not as
bad as some of the others) gets offed.
(Then there are the occasional times I find it
depressing when one of the slimeballs is killed, such as Simon Oakland’s other Perry
character in The Frantic Flyer. That generally happens if I like the
actor or if the character exhibits some behavior that makes me pity them in
spite of their slimy actions. In that fellow’s case, it’s both. I felt bad for
him that he truly loved Janice and she was out to betray him. And then he got
killed by the guy who mended his leg, someone he probably came to trust a good
deal after all those weeks. That episode is a true parade of slimeballs. Not that
many episodes aren’t, but it particularly stood out to me there.)
Overall,
though? I still can’t come up with even one Perry episode that depressed
me all the way through. I might dislike the death or some other elements, but on
the rare occasions that I find an episode truly awful . . . I get irritated,
not depressed. And if by some chance I get depressed by an episode on one
viewing, I probably won’t on the next.
