The Startled Stallion

It’s been so long since I’ve seen the uncut version of The Startled Stallion, as I’m pretty sure I did once, that I can’t fully remember what’s missing from the television version. But one thing present in both versions that I always love seeing is the awesomeness of Lieutenant Tragg.

Even before he realizes that the case is murder and not death by frightened horse, he doesn’t like the idea of putting down a beautiful animal like this horse. Probably some of that is recognizing how valuable the horse is, but he just comes across as someone who appreciates animals in general and doesn’t like to see them killed unless absolutely necessary.

Also present in this episode is another element that occurred several times around season 3, that of Tragg teaching Sergeant Brice some of the clues he looks for in an investigation. The bit with determining it had to be murder because the wheelchair-bound man could not have locked himself in the barn is great. I love any scenes showing that the police are not idiots. Of course, the wrong person gets arrested, as always, but there is definite evidence against her.

I also like how Hamilton seems to be acknowledging the problem of the wrong people getting arrested when he tells Perry, “You know what we go through before we indict someone.” It doesn’t just happen at random; they are making an effort to get the right person arrested. The only reason it doesn’t work is because of the formula. And I do have to give points to the books for apparently not falling back on said formula all the time. I just don’t like that the reason they don’t is because Perry’s clients sometimes (or often) are guilty. As I said, I rather romanticize the character due to his television counterpart!

Another fun thing about The Startled Stallion episode is Elliott Reid playing the defendant’s brother. I’ve liked him for years because of his roles in Disney movies, so I was happy to see him pop up on Perry.

Of the episodes about horses, I think I like this one a lot more than the season 6 episode The Fickle Filly. I find it so sad in the latter episode when the horse goes lame. It’s sad for the horse and also for the people, since they thought they had a great racehorse. Of course, there is the bit in the epilogue where they plan to breed the horse, so it’s nice that all of their plans don’t have to just go down the drain.

What’s strange about the syndication copy of The Startled Stallion, however, is that I honestly can’t remember if I’ve ever seen the first scene on television before, the part that shows the actual mock wedding and reveals in their car that the secretary didn’t really marry the old man. It seems like all the other times I’ve seen the episode on television, it’s opened with the racing horses. That is very weird if there really is a syndication episode floating around without that key opening scene, although I definitely wouldn’t put it past networks to clip it out for commercial time.

Back to Sergeant Brice, it’s fun seeing him becoming an important fixture on Perry. By season 3, he’s there almost all the time when it’s an in-town episode. According to IMDB, Lee Miller was playing Sergeant Brice, uncredited as the character, in several season 1 episodes. I don’t recall seeing him, but the broadcast prints of season 1 episodes are bad, so I should check my DVDs to see if I see him anywhere.

What I do know is that once or twice in season 2, they had a character called Sergeant Brice who was not played by Lee Miller. Even if Lee’s character in season 1 is thought to be Brice, I am quite sure he is never actually addressed as such until late in season 2, when they decided Tragg should have a steady partner instead of different ones most of the time. And instead of keeping the actor who was originally playing a Sergeant Brice character, they brought in Lee, which was a stroke of genius.

Lee is perfect as the quiet Sergeant Brice, silently observing everything and speaking when necessary. He interacts with Tragg, Perry, Hamilton, suspects and witnesses, Andy, Steve, and even Della. Those who have only seen syndication versions of the episodes won’t have seen it, but one of the good things about The 12^th Wildcat is the bit where Brice wanders in and greets Della, jokingly asking if Perry and Paul are giving her a bad time. She responds by touching his arm and saying if they do, he’s her policeman. Aww. Brice has been shown to be friendly to Perry and company on several occasions, and indicates in The Careless Kitten and The Impetuous Imp that he has a lot less problems with them poking around investigating than his superiors do, but that brief and telling interaction with Della says that he must interact with them (and her) a lot more than we ever see onscreen. I still want to write a story with him and Della sometime.

Perhaps they can have some interaction if I write a Halloween story this year. I was thinking that if I did, it would be a great time to write that masquerade-themed adventure I always wanted the show to have. It will kind of be The Dodging Domino as the title made me think that episode should have been. I was thinking of setting it around season six or seven, but I might just set it after season 9 instead, as per most of my stories.

The Case of Paul Drake's Dilemma

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone! Today, as promised, I am going to muse on Paul Drake’s Dilemma. But first, a brief follow-up on The Startled Stallion.

It’s interesting how the same scene can apparently come across differently to two separate people. I wasn’t bothered by Hamilton’s derogatory remarks (referred to as “snide” in the summary), at least not during the scene I was referencing. (Earlier on someone gave a false confession and Hamilton promptly accused Perry of setting it up. While some of the stuff Hamilton accuses him of has basis in fact, that doesn’t, so that was most unappreciated and strange.) Hamilton’s tone was quite calm and even, not really mocking or snide as it is sometimes. What he actually said was a comment on Perry’s antics seeming more suited to a country fair than a courtroom. I was kind of amused. (What Perry did there was rather shocking, although it certainly had the results he hoped for.) And the judge wasn’t reprimanding Hamilton, as I saw it. He just calmly said that the court had been informed of Perry’s plan. I was happy when Hamilton said that he was aware of that, still in a calm and mature tone.

On to Paul Drake’s Dilemma. It, along with The Prudent Prosecutor, was something I had longed to see for years, ever since learning of its existence from The Perry Mason TV Show Book. I’ll be honest in that I’ve never really been crazy about plots where someone in the main cast is accused of a crime and ends up in jail and on trial. For some reason, that’s one thing that tends to rub me the wrong way. I guess I hate seeing someone I really care about behind bars. (Although it’s not often as tense a situation on Perry as it is on more recent shows.) I made an exception for Paul Drake’s Dilemma, due to what I’d learned about how Hamilton behaves in it.

The episode concerns a hit-and-run accident, with the driver a son-in-law in a wealthy business family. Not wanting a lot of embarrassing publicity concerning the incident, the patriarch decides that they have to cover it up. And they’ll pay the widow off, secretly.

Frank Thatcher, the son-in-law, cooks up a phony story to feed Paul in order to get him to try to give the money to the widow. Paul falls for it at first, but after talking with the widow some of the puzzle pieces in Frank’s story fall out of place.

Now that he starts to realize he’s being used, Paul becomes furious. He seeks Frank out in the apartment of an old flame of his, an aspiring singer. Eventually they get into a fight, started by Frank. But the angry Paul says he’s glad Frank did that. He strikes back. Frank, however, soon clubs Paul over the head and leaves him unconscious on the floor.

Paul wakes up with a record playing over and over on the phonograph (a crucial detail later), the police pounding on the door, and Frank dead, shot twice with Paul’s gun.

Both Tragg and Hamilton are upset about the case. Tragg sadly wonders why Paul had to get mixed up in a mess like this in the first place. Hamilton tells Perry that, being a public servant, there’s not much he can do. He says this without Perry having said anything. And he is oh so clearly regretful and saddened. Perry is understanding of Hamilton’s position.

Perry and Paul have a wonderful friendship scene when Perry goes to talk with him. After Paul tells about what happened and the evidence stacked against him, including the fact that he has powder on his hands from recent shooting practice, he asks Perry if there’s anything else Perry wants to ask. The implication is that he wonders if Perry will ask if Paul killed Frank. But Perry just smiles and says the only doubts he has are what Paul will say when he sees the bill.

During the hearing Hamilton looks to Paul more than once, seeming to be absolutely agonized over having to prosecute him. Paul unfortunately remains deadpan, although at one point he looks away and then back again, possibly as though uncomfortable with Hamilton’s discomfort. Della, on the other hand, more clearly reacts to Hamilton’s feelings with her attentive expression.

The episode would have been a marvelous chance for a scene between Hamilton and Paul. They surely must have interacted; Hamilton had to talk with him before the hearing. But I’ve seen the uncut version of this episode and there is no such scene. I’m grateful for the silent exchanges between them, though. We’re left quite puzzled on Paul’s feelings, but Hamilton’s are apparent.

When he tells Perry to cross-examine one particularly damning witness, he speaks quietly and barely discernibly, just as he does many seasons later in The Positive Negative when he doesn’t want to prosecute the retired General. And while Perry cross-examines the apartment manager and scores a few points, Hamilton is in the background smiling and seeming to be enjoying it. When it concludes with the gallery laughing over the final point (concerning the shooting down of the manager’s faulty claim that he gets along well with everyone—except, it seems, his past four wives), Hamilton chuckles as well.

The episode winds to its conclusion when Perry points out the record being played in the murder room was a demo record and wonders how it ended up there. The singer’s manager finally confesses to the murder, due to Frank’s ill treatment of the girl through so many years. The girl, heartbroken, sobs on the railing of the witness stand.

One other source of disappointment to me is that Paul doesn’t have any speaking parts after the hearing starts, save for a brief conversation with Perry at the noon break. It’s Paul’s episode, and yet he doesn’t even appear in the epilogue. It almost seems as though the wealthy family is the real driving force behind the episode, as the epilogue involves Perry interacting with the patriarch.

It is a very good and rather chilling conclusion, as throughout the episode the man has been hindering the case and hiding evidence, believing that one of his children is the murderer. (He even buys the recording studio the girl is trying to sell her record to and then bribes her into refusing to help Perry and Paul as she previously said she would!) He calls Perry in the epilogue wanting to offer him a check. Perry tells him that even though Paul is “just a friend”, Perry never once doubted his innocence. (And they’re going to dinner. Paul will pay the bill and that is the fee for Perry defending him.) But this man is so far removed from reality that he believed every one of his children capable of committing murder. Perry tears the check in half and leaves.

I wonder if a subtle thing the episode tries to bring out is the good and bad of humanity. Not that every episode doesn’t do that to some extent, but it seems more prominent here, especially with that focus on it in the epilogue. We have the girl, who knows information that could help prove Paul innocent, refusing to help him because her career is suddenly at stake due to her recording studio being bought out. We have the wealthy patriarch, doing everything he can to not get his family name dragged through the mud because he doesn’t want bad publicity. And on the other hand we have Perry fully believing in Paul’s guiltlessness in the crime and Hamilton’s anguish over having to prosecute him.

(There are also shades of gray, in the murderer’s motive. His outrage over Frank Thatcher’s treatment of the girl, while not a justification for murder, still doesn’t rank him with the very worst of the Perry criminals.)

In spite of any flaws or things that could have been done different, the episode is well-written and amazing. And it’s a milestone episode in that we see how Hamilton reacts when really being faced with prosecuting one of these frustrating people he runs across time and again. It isn’t hard to believe that Paul would think Hamilton would gloat, especially after Paul’s vocal dislike of him in season 1. Instead, Hamilton’s behavior couldn’t have been further from that.

I’ve toyed off and on with the possibility of a short story involving missing scenes and unseen thoughts from that episode, particularly where Hamilton and Paul are concerned. After seeing the episode again I had enough inspiration to write it. It’s part of my current Livejournal writing project, and features Paul flashing back on the events while searching for Tragg in The Broken Ties. It will be posted there on the 21^st, although I’m so pleased with it that it’s tempting to put it up today on fanfiction.net.

Various Season 3 Musings

You may notice I stuck a fancy little header up here. I found that picture of Perry and Hamilton among my screengrabs, loved it, and decided I had to do something with it. And I thought maybe I’d toy with the idea of a header. It looks like I didn’t stretch it far enough, though; I see part of the original, lighter red header waving at the side. Oh well.

Yesterday was kind of a bizarre day and I haven’t come prepared with a topic. I’m not quite sure whether to make some commentary on an episode or talk about something at random.

My local station has gone into season 3 now and I’ve resumed recording, since I don’t have any season 3 DVDs. Syndication-cut episodes are better than no episodes at all! (And better than Hallmark-level cuts. Eeep.) So far I’m enjoying season 3, as I remembered I did. Hamilton has seemed quite peaceable and congenial so far. It’s always nice when the writers do that. And as always, he’s interested in justice above everything else.

According to Storrer’s episode guide, he makes some sort of derogatory comments in The Startled Stallion tonight, but that’s part of his personality too. And judging from the context surrounding his complaint, I can’t say I blame him for being upset. Apparently Perry unleashed one of his courtroom theatrics and Hamilton protested. Then the judge reprimanded him and said he was in on it. But since nobody bothered to tell Hamilton, that just makes him look unfairly ridiculous. If Perry’s going to tell the judge, it seems it would only be right to tell Hamilton too. In later seasons, he would have told them both. Several times in seasons 7 and 8 we see them all conferring in the judge’s chambers. I’ll know more what I think when I see the episode again tonight. But it doesn’t seem like the judge should get prickly when he was in on the scheme and Hamilton didn’t have a clue.

Paul Drake’s Dilemma will be on tomorrow, and since I haven’t made a commentary post on that one yet, maybe I’ll plan that for the weekend post, after I’ve had a chance to see it again.

Season 3 is interesting in several ways, both good and bad. There were mostly TV-only scripts that season (as opposed to book-inspired). Sometimes the results were amazing, such as with Paul’s episode and The Prudent Prosecutor. Other times, as I recall, they continued to fall back on the book-inspired, wild and unfounded accusations towards Perry. Those stuck around through some of season 4 and then faded away, from what I can tell. (Which only makes their abrupt return in season 9 all the more bewildering.)

Also, I think season 3 is the only season in which William Talman is seen wearing bow ties. I wonder why. Were they especially popular that year? And why did he stop? Did he decide he really didn’t care for them? In any case, it’s an interesting look for him. Sometimes he wears a necktie in the first set of court scenes and then comes back with a bow tie for the second set.

Of course, season 3 is also the time when that disaster happened that resulted in William Talman’s arrest and subsequent suspension. I have to admit, I’m still puzzled as to exactly what really happened at that wild party, since William insisted he was innocent on all charges. But I figure that there’s probably no one left who really knows what happened (unless Barbara Hale or someone in the crew does), and that regardless, it’s really not important now. It’s over and done with, and William is thankfully remembered not for that but for his portrayal of Hamilton Burger—and his courage in speaking out against smoking.

When season 3 was on last year, I hadn’t prepared myself for those episodes coming up as soon as they did. I had thought season 3 finished alright and season 4 was where things first messed up. So when the cherub episode started and the truncated opening was first shown, I was rather unhappy. I later heard that they were in the middle of filming that episode when William was arrested. I wonder if any footage exists of Hamilton in that episode instead of a deputy.

Apparently in reality, the worst of the disaster must have been over by the time season 3 ended, since CBS decided to air two of their shelved finished episodes with William and test audience reaction. And the audience was willing to forgive and forget. Although I wonder why it took so long to get everything squared away when season 4 started up. I think Hamilton was only in three episodes in the first half of season 4, and two of those were the other episodes filmed earlier that year as part of season 3.

I confess, I really wish CBS would have been releasing the seasons as full sets and not in halves. I would love to have DVD copies of The Prudent Prosecutor and The Fickle Fortune, but that would entail buying the season halves that overall have very few episodes with Hamilton. Which puts them at the bottom of my priority list. I wish the prices on the second half of season 4 and all of season 6 would come down a bit.

(Speaking of season sets, CBS is finally going to release season 5 of Touched by an Angel this summer. And it’s reportedly going to be a full set, not a half, as they were doing with it before. Could this possibly mean anything where Perry is concerned? Oh wow, if season 7 would be released in one chunk . . . !)

I tried to figure out once the order in which I would rank the seasons. It’s probably drastically different from most people’s lists. From favorite to least favorite, I believe I ended up with:

Season 2

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 1

Season 9

All the seasons that were the least book-inspired rank high. 3 and 4 hover around the middle, for their level of character presentation and development as well as the unfortunate absence of . . . certain persons. And the seasons that seemed more book-inspired rank lower.

Please note that I admit the plots of many book-inspired episodes are incredible. Gardner apparently did know how to write a good mystery, if those episodes are fairly accurate to his stories. But I rank character development higher than overall plot, so I frankly enjoy episodes in some of the other seasons much better. And anyway, I think some of the plots in seasons 7 and 8 are sadly underrated and are quite exciting and intense in their own right.

As a parting, I forgot to mention on Sunday that I started a new experimental Livejournal writing project. I’m afraid it’s getting me a bit sidetracked from the current mystery. I’m posting a short fanfic a day again, using this month’s writing prompts on 31 Days. And this time I’m exploring missing scenes from my story The Broken Ties. There were several things I wanted to get into but didn’t have the chance, and I’ve long wanted to try this project. This month’s themes made me decide that now is a perfect time.

I am gathering all of them under this link, if anyone wants to look. I got started late, so the first four themes will be posted on the 31^st, along with the story for that day. They are not going up in chronological order, since the themes inspired me all over the place, but I always say where in the story they fit in.

I am a bit surprised with how these are coming out. They’re mostly darker than the original story, and some of them are more from the villains’ points-of-view. (Although the main focus appears to be Hamilton’s difficulties, since Vivalene wanted to specifically make things a horror for him.) My Vivalene character seems to want to be even more devilish than before, too. Hmm.

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=insaneladybug&keyword=lost%20scenes%20from%20the%20broken%20ties&filter=all

I’m particularly excited to post Saturday’s; it will have Leon and I’ll be trying to patch up any oversights I made with him in the original story.