The latest MeTV Perry news

Happy Halloween!

I was a bit surprised when I turned on the television and discovered not The Envious Editor, but The Glamorous Ghost. But it only took me a minute to realize that it was not MeTV screwing up; it was their attempt at a Halloween celebration.

To my pleasure, The Envious Editor will show on Friday. I would be very irritated indeed if we were not getting our full showing of Deputy D.A. Sampson goodness on this round.

Actually, aside from the title and that eerie opening scene with the girl in white, torn clothes in the park, The Glamorous Ghost has little to nothing to do with anything related to Halloween or spooky subjects. I think a better choice would have been The Fatal Fetish, The Fatal Fortune, or The Wrathful Wraith!

MeTV is going to be celebrating Halloween all day and night and it’s going to be awesome. For Perry fans on October 31st, The Meddling Medium will air in the morning and The Dodging Domino at night. (One of these days I am so going to write a Perry story about a masquerade party. That title always makes me think that episode should have been about one.) Also, there will be a nice, creepy Ironside episode about a weird house.

Speaking of Ironside, Barbara Hale’s guest appearance will broadcast on Monday, November 4^th! That will definitely be something delightful for Perry fans to tune in for. I haven’t seen that episode before and am greatly looking forward to it. There should also be another episode with Richard Anderson coming up pretty soon, but I haven’t located it on the schedule yet. Actually, I’m a bit worried that they’re going to skip it, especially since they seem to have already skipped one early season 5 episode.

And MeTV’s movies have been all over the place lately. Following the second Columbo movie, they skipped around to show a Diagnosis Murder movie and then the pilot for Vega$. (I find it both clever and ridiculous at the same time that they use the dollar sign for the S.) November will continue in the same vein, with movies for The Mod Squad and The Andy Griffith Show on the first two Fridays.

However, we’re going to get another Perry movie on the third Friday in November! The Glass Coffin will broadcast on the 15th. Hmm, even though it’s about magicians, it’s such a creepy title and object that perhaps they should have scheduled it for this Friday instead!

You know, when it comes to the Perry Halloween episodes, one oddity I was recently thinking about is that James Forrest plays the murder victim in both The Meddling Medium and The Dodging Domino. And it gets weirder. Both characters are named Philip/Phil and both are rather obnoxious. But while Philip Paisley seems to have no particular redeeming qualities, Phil Schuyler does at least get a kick out of Halloween and wants to have things fun for the kids. And he’s a bit more amusing instead of just outright obnoxious (although some of his lines are cheesy as heck). I always feel kind of sad that he gets killed.

Both characters are also murdered in unusually brutal and cruel ways: Philip Paisley in the falling elevator and Phil Schuyler with an electric heater in the bathtub. Yikes.

And regarding actors from The Dodging Domino, I should do a spotlight on Robert H. Harris sometime. He pops up all over the place too, including in several Perry episodes. I’ve been running across him a lot lately.

Paul and the "Overshadowed by Awesome" trope

The first half of season 9 is out this Tuesday! I found this very nice review for it on a blog I follow: http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2013/06/digital-digest-2012-2013-season-of-cbs.html

I agree with the reviewer’s assessment that the series never jumped the shark. I’m unhappy with certain episodes in season 9, but ignoring them, the season is very good. All seasons of Perry have value to them.

My local station has been having their pledge drive this past week. Usually that means Perry gets kicked off for special programming. This time, however, he stayed! The pledge drive hosts made it clear that the reason is because the viewers have let them know that they don’t like it when Perry is removed during the drives. That is so awesome, both that there were enough people just in this area to complain, and that the station listened!

So I watched The Glamorous Ghost one night this week, via the local station. And it got me to thinking. I’ve already observed how unique the episode is in having Paul and Della do a lot of the investigating together. They rarely have scenes together aside from brief office quips. And there’s something else quite unusual about the aspect as well.

Usually, in Paul’s investigation scenes, he’s either alone or with Perry. And pretty much any time, it’s rare for him to come up with stunts such as in Glamorous Ghost, where he figures out that room 211 is important and why. Normally, it would be Perry deducing such a thing and Paul standing by in confusion and surprise.

There’s a popular website called TV Tropes, which picks apart all media (not just television) by exploring the various plot twists and clichés they use. I’m not a big fan of the site, as somehow it often feels slightly mocking of the shows, especially with the often-humorous names for the specific tropes. But one I always think of in regards to Perry is called “Overshadowed by Awesome.” Basically, it’s when a character who is not of a certain profession seems to do better at the profession than the characters in the series who do belong to it. Perry certainly qualifies.

Usually we think of him overshadowing the prosecution and the police with his “awesome”, but after watching Glamorous Ghost it occurs to me that Paul is often a victim of the overshadowing as well. Paul does get some really neat investigating scenes throughout the series, as do even the prosecution and the police, but it’s generally always Perry coming up with the big brainstorms. Paul is the detective, yet Perry often does most of the visible detecting. More than once on the series, Paul comments on having missed something important, or Perry and Della even joke about just that. It certainly ends up making it look like Paul has trouble doing his job right, especially when he is often baffled by Perry's ideas while they're investigating together. You'd think he might come up with at least some of them himself, or at least not always be so amazed by most of them. But of course, with the formula, Perry must be the main crime-solver, front and center. And everyone must stand in awe of his insights.

I think Paul got more detecting scenes as the series went on and Raymond Burr was growing tired of the role. But, even still, scenes along the lines of Glamorous Ghost are rare for Paul. Usually we only see him finding whomever he’s trying to find, not how he found out where to look or how he put together clues like he does in Glamorous Ghost. With Perry's detecting scenes, we generally see at least some of that (although of course, some surprises are kept from the audience until the climax and epilogue).

All in all, that definitely makes Glamorous Ghost a treat for Paul fans. And I find it very interesting to discover that it isn’t just Perry’s opponents who often get “overshadowed by awesome”!