The arrival of the TV movies on broadcast television

MeTV has released their Fall schedule, which starts September 2^nd, and it contains news for Perry fans! Although the schedule is shifting around a good bit, both showings of Perry are still firmly in place. Awesome.

Also, on their chart, for Fridays they list something called the “MeTV Made-For-TV Movie.” Now, just from looking at the chart itself, there is no information on what this movie is. It is a confusing puzzle. However, if you visit the page on their site where they describe the new stuff, they explain what this is. They’re going to air the television movies made with characters (or sometimes actors) from the shows on MeTV. And they specifically mention Perry Mason.

So it looks like, for those who like them, have wanted to see them, and/or those who don’t feel that Perry ends with The Final Fade-Out, the 1980s and 1990s television movies with Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale will be on MeTV! I recommend that if you’ve wanted them, be sure to record them when they come on. I know Hallmark has shown them (probably in a vastly chopped-up state, knowing Hallmark), but for those without cable or satellite in general or Hallmark in specific, there likely hasn’t been any access.

As for me, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing about it. I don’t consider the movies canon, and I think it’s sad to see reunion films where most of the cast is absent, but like them or leave them, they are a part of the television Perry legacy. I consider them a possibility, one possibility of a future for the characters, but not the absolute, only truth. And it is a treasure, to see Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale take up their iconic roles of Perry Mason and Della Street once again. I think that, if MeTV will be showing lots of the films and not just the first one, I should record them to have them. I’ve seen clips from at least one of them and I honestly liked what I saw and thought it was fun.

I also think that I should get around to watching my DVD copy of the very first one before any others in the series possibly air.

When it comes to Perry movies, there was some rumor floating around a while ago that Robert Downey, Jr. had decided to make a Perry movie and that he was going to set it in a verse similar to the books. According to articles, that meant a period piece set in the 1930s, the time the earliest Perry novels were written. Johnny Depp and Robert Downey, Jr. were both being considered for the coveted lead role.

Apparently this movie is still going to happen; doing an Internet search on it is turning up a few fairly recent pieces, including one from March this year. I don’t see it getting the same level of promotion as the Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie that’s been getting quite a bit of publicity recently and seems to be full steam ahead, but maybe if I had visited the Yahoo Group recently I would have found them discussing it.

This is the most interesting of the articles I’ve just turned up about that movie project: http://screenrant.com/robert-downey-perry-mason-sandy-134777/

What I’m still a bit concerned about regarding this idea is, of course, how Hamilton will be portrayed if they’re sticking so closely to the books. I have heard one interesting, dissenting opinion that Hamilton was actually portrayed better in the books than in the television series, with the person particularly disliking Hamilton’s glee in the series when he makes a point over Perry in court. But everyone else I’ve talked to about the books has told me that Hamilton’s glee wasn’t a deviation from the books, but something carried over from them.

Naturally, I will have to draw my own conclusions on that matter, and on Hamilton’s portrayal in the books in general (although I still lean towards the opinion that Hamilton and other prosecutors were not portrayed as well in the books as in the series). And one interesting thing that might happen if this movie comes out is that the books could get a long-overdue re-release. I’ve expressed surprise before that the books are out of print; it’s rather baffling, unless the majority of the population simply prefers the television series (or unless the books are tied up in a copyright web). If they come out again, and I like enough what I see, I will probably buy some. I honestly rather doubt I will care for them as much as the television series, especially where Hamilton and the police are concerned, but I’m willing to keep an open mind and admit that I could be surprised.

And back to the television series, this is the week where it all wraps up on DVD. I’m hoping to get hold of the second half of season 9 as soon as possible, but as is usual for me, it will probably take a while. Good luck to everyone who is planning to get hold of this set right on the release date this Tuesday!

Birthday Tribute: Richard Anderson

Today is the 87^th birthday of our still-living cast member Richard Anderson! I wanted to get this post up earlier in the day, but it’s been hectic and I wanted to be relaxed to write it.

I hope Richard has been having a thoroughly wonderful day and that the rest of it will also be grand! He certainly deserves it.

Over the past year, I have been greatly enjoying continuing to find Richard in assorted guest-spots, as well as to watch as much of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman as I can get my hands on.

Oscar Goldman is definitely a great character, so serious a lot of the time, but capable of relaxing, and he’s really a big softie. I was just watching an episode the other day, One of Our Running Backs is Missing, and a bookie who knew Oscar back when he was a public prosecutor said that once his mother was very ill in the hospital and Oscar bailed him out with his own money so he could go to her, even though Oscar was prosecuting him. Awww.

I admit, I previously had the idea that Oscar was more stern and serious and bureaucratic until he met Steve Austin and started learning Steve’s way of thinking. Maybe to some extent that’s true. But that episode clearly shows that Oscar has always been softhearted, even before ever meeting Steve.

One of the great things about Richard being a main cast member on two immensely popular series is that he’s in just about every episode. Another great thing is merchandising. I think Richard is the only one of my favorite classic television actors to have his likeness on an action figure. Two, actually—the original Oscar Goldman figure from the 1970s, which I’ve never seen in person, and the newly released one out this year (after a delay of six months). I can’t fully say how accurate the original figure is, but I got hold of the new one as soon as I was aware it was out, and it really does look like Richard! It currently stands just to the side of the computer.

I also have a shirt that features Lee Majors and Richard on it. And I’m aware of a shirt with Richard that lists some of the shows he’s appeared in. I intend to get hold of that one, too.

Another show in which Richard is a main cast member is Dan August. As far as I know, it hasn’t been officially released on DVD at all. And I have to wonder why, since the titular character is played by Burt Reynolds. You’d think that would cause it to be released for sure. Of course, Richard is the main attraction on that series for me, and I want very much to see it!

Among my favorite of the new guest-spots I’ve discovered is definitely his Wagon Train episode, in which he plays a Quaker vowing never to fight. His reason is that he feels he was responsible for a man’s death in the past, when his temper got the best of him. It’s a very intense and dramatic episode and has a happy ending, unlike some Wagon Train episodes I’ve stumbled across. (Two of H.M. Wynant’s are absolutely heartbreaking.)

Richard has been in so very many things that it seems I’m always discovering something I didn’t quite notice before when I examine his credits on IMDB. The other day I found that he was in an episode of Alias Smith and Jones, a show I’ve meant to try sometime anyway. Well, that cinched it, and I found myself watching it later that day. I can’t say I cared much for the episode (or the show, if it’s always as off-the-wall as that episode), but it was definitely a treat to see Richard (even though he was the bad guy and unfortunately died).

Another off-the-wall thing I saw a while back is his episode of The A-Team. I haven’t quite figured out what to make of that show yet, and I wish they had given Richard more screentime, but as he always does, he made the best of what he was given. And his character was central to the entire plot, as he was the psychiatrist for one of the main characters and was abruptly abducted by some creeps. So rescuing him became the goal for the episode. Awesome.

Last year I mentioned longing to see his second Rifleman appearance, The Lariat. As I predicted, MeTV got to that episode before Netflix was ready to send the disc. And it was so worth waiting for! Richard turned out a glowing performance as an old friend of Lucas McCain’s, a professional and honest gambler. I’ve seen all six of his Rifleman appearances now, and The Lariat is by far my favorite.

He also does extremely well in Flowers By the Door, probably the most disturbing episode of the whole series. He plays a madman, a bookseller who gives out flower seeds and seduces and kills lonely women. It’s very chilling to see him in the part, especially since he makes it so believable. In a complete turnaround, he masquerades as the easy-going bookseller, entrancing Mark McCain by telling some of the stories found in the encyclopedias he’s selling. He made the stories so fun that I couldn’t help thinking it would be awesome if he had released an album of storytelling, like Andy Griffith did a couple of times.

The only episode I was rather disappointed with is The Bullet, his final appearance, and my reason has nothing to do with his performance (which was outstanding, as always). Rather, it’s because I felt the episode totally underused him. His character was a plot device just to get the guest-starring sheriff to test his theories of ballistics. He did have a good amount of screentime, but I definitely felt that the script could have been better and should have utilized him more. Instead it’s all rather contrived, with Richard’s character just acting out things as the sheriff predicted he would, right down to eventually trying to kill Lucas and being shot in a quick, anti-climatic scene. He doesn’t even get to talk in that last scene.

Other favorite guest-spots include some more of his Big Valley characters, particularly in The Long Ride and also in Fall of a Hero. He interacts a bit with Lee Majors again in the latter, if I remember right. It’s always interesting to see actors interact in shows long before the main interaction that made them famous as a team.

I’ve also seen Richard appear in shows ranging from Gunsmoke and The Virginian to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I Spy (where he plays Ronny Howard’s father; epic). And I’m greatly looking forward to upcoming guest-spot discoveries and more episodes with Oscar Goldman in the upcoming year.

Happy Birthday, Richard!

Misinformation on the season 8 case

So yesterday I had the first chance to actually see one of the season 8 sets for sale in person. I didn’t buy it, because it was at the horrifying price of $49.99. But I did notice a very interesting and rather amusing bit of misinformation on the back.

It turns out Andy is indeed mentioned on the case for Volume 1. But very strangely, he’s listed as a member of Perry’s team, working feverishly to help clear the innocent clients! Of course he’s working towards the ultimate goal of justice from where he is, but he isn’t on Perry’s team and certainly isn’t working to clear the clients, unless he has ample reason to believe they’re not guilty. Considering how uptight Andy can be, and how he seems to shy away from any interaction with Perry and company that isn’t necessary, I’m not sure that he would be too pleased with the DVD case’s description!

Also, I noticed that in person, the colorized picture of Andy on the front doesn’t have as dark of hair as it looks in the online stock photos. But it’s still darker than it’s supposed to be.

Well, even with the goofy misinformation and wrong color of hair, I’m happy Andy finally gets acknowledged, since he isn’t for the other three seasons in which he appears. Perhaps it’s because 8 is his only completely solo season, without Tragg there even once—sadly due of course to Ray Collins’ illness and eventual death mid-season. Andy has to take complete center stage for the police department (a role that he had almost taken over by necessity in season 7), and hence, it makes sense for him to be mentioned at last on the DVD case.

Upon thinking about it, I believe it’s only in episodes that Andy carries by himself when he’s uptight, in any season. When Tragg is there too, Andy adopts more of the easy-going nature that people always seem to remember him most for. That isn’t to say that every time Andy carries an episode he’s uptight (that definitely isn’t true, and episodes such as season 6’s The Prankish Professor show that), but only that I’ve only noticed it happening in some episodes where he is carrying on alone.

In some other episodes, Andy tries to maintain a strange balance between being uptight and being more relaxed. He approaches The Case of the Golden Oranges with rigid determination, yet finds time to admire a lovely suspect with Paul. This was an angle not used often; either he seemed to be fairly easy-going throughout an episode or fairly uptight.

Occasionally he would show another interesting side, that of visible reluctance to go through with his job, such as when he has to arrest the judge in The Witless Witness. I’m not sure there is another episode where he shows such reluctance. It’s a very powerful scene, attesting to Andy’s obvious feelings of deep respect for the judge, and it’s a nice glimmer into his personality that parallels, to some extent, his agony over possibly finding evidence to prove Jimmy guilty in The Hateful Hero.

I would be curious to know if it was mostly the writers who portrayed Andy with the more uptight mannerisms or if it was Wesley Lau who thought of at least some of it, wanting to give the character a bit of spice. It’s certainly an approach that makes him different from both of his counterparts. Wesley Lau was a wonderful actor who could take on any role. I’m not sure, however, how much freedom he was given with Andy’s characterization, considering his frustrations over the formulaic nature of the show and of what Andy did within the episodes.

Even if, however, Wesley was allowed some measure of decision in how Andy reacted to various situations, it would still be limited control in a very formulaic environment. Andy would still largely only be able to appear, investigate, arrest people, and testify—and occasionally be frustrated with Perry or agree to help him with a new angle. He only really had the spotlight in The Hateful Hero, and while I love it, I wish there had been more episodes like it. One of the few things I appreciate about television shows today is that most likely, Andy would have been allowed more character-defining episodes. Writers and producers today seem more willing to acknowledge the importance and appeal of the entire cast and try to allot time to develop each one.

Another thing about television shows today is that Tragg and Andy never would have been able to vanish without a trace. There would have been a mention of what happened, at least, or even, depending on the situation, an entire episode devoted to what happened. I can’t say I would have liked an official episode acknowledging Tragg’s death after his actor passed away; I prefer to think of Tragg still alive and kicking (and still on the force). At the same time, though, I don’t like how characters could vanish from classic television shows without so much as a mention, even if they were critical to the main plot. It’s interesting how television writing has changed in that respect; in the old days, I think only shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and M*A*S*H were really good about acknowledging vanishing characters.

However, I’ll admit that the one good thing about a character disappearing with no mention is that anything goes. Whatever you want to have happen to the character can happen; you don’t have to face a canonical declaration of a death or a retirement or whatever you most don’t care to envision happening to the character. I appreciate the workout that can give to one’s imagination.

The Uncut Bogus Buccaneers

Happy August! August is such a fun time, an interesting, transitional time, as summer moves towards fall. And for everyone who has had too much of this extremely hot summer, like me, autumn surely sounds like a glorious relief!

August is positive for Perry fans in that the 8th will be the birthday of Richard Anderson, our Lieutenant Drumm. (Yay!) But August is also a bittersweet time for Perry fans, marking the deaths of two Perry cast members (on the same day!). And for me, the death of Perry alumnus Simon Oakland as well.

This particular August should be exciting for Perry fans, as we will see the release of the final DVD set. That will be bittersweet too, really, but wonderful to know that all the episodes are at last available uncut! I can hardly wait to see the uncut Sausalito Sunrise and Fanciful Frail.

It also marks the second anniversary of this blog. I will do my best to make August an interesting month here!

I don’t know if I’m going to have to officially bring the blog back to single posts a week for a while. I haven’t had much luck getting up weekend posts for the last couple of weeks. I still need to review the uncut version of The Bogus Buccaneers, and by now it’s been so long that I wonder if I need to go over it again to make sure I remember all the missing scenes. I’ll give it a try and see how well I do.

The first missing scene is right near the beginning, after the wild woman and Tony have their fight. We see the police rounding up the confused Buccaneers and Tony running when they come for him.

I also seem to recall that the lineup scene is longer, with one of the Buccaneers (Mike Woods, the one who goes missing for publicity reasons later) actively complaining about being brought in. The cut and the uncut versions meet when he’s told to go stand in the lineup.

I always thought something was cut around the area where Steve is talking to parole officer Abe, but according to the disc, the scenes in that part are intact. However, I want to say that the part where Perry talks to Tony is longer. I’m not sure I remember the early part of the conversation, with Tony thinking he’s a charity case and Perry being annoyed and wanting him to stop wallowing in self-pity.

Some of the cuts in this episode are very short, but they help flesh things out better anyway, such as the little bit with Clay fussing over Tony’s wife and the telling of the special diet he has her on.

Also available is a scene right when Perry and Paul come to the murder scene to look around. Brice tells them they can come in within five minutes, when Steve will be ready. Meanwhile, they discuss the case, including the weird fact that the victim only lived there for three days.

There’s also a very short scene later showing the girl and Della heading for the car and that guy following and watching them. That takes place right before the scene where he holds them hostage (and Della gets to be awesome bonking him with a frying pan).

I recall a scene right before the reading of the fan letters, where Paul talks to the producer of the show and is given a box of letters. He’s told that it takes a whole storage room to hold them all. He inquires how the sample lists work and if the murder victim’s name was on one of them. He’s told that it was, and that they select people at random after they’ve sent in some sort of card. Paul wants to see hers, but is told that it would be very time-consuming to dig it out.

The part where Perry goes to talk to the star of the show is longer, and in the uncut we see that Della is with him. She ends up accidentally colliding with said star and having a very nice exchange with him—the dream of many girls who are nuts over certain actors. His wife comes and comments that on the show, girls are paid to run into him. When Perry asks to speak with him in his dressing room, Della and the wife are left to themselves.

The Bogus Buccaneers is one of the most interesting commentaries the show did on other television shows, what with its goofy commercials and promotional door-to-door samples and the extended parts on fan letters. And, of course, the fear of the show falling apart if there’s any hint of scandal about the star. Television certainly was different in those days, behind the scenes as well as on camera.

The only thing that seems to be relatively the same these days is fan mail. There’s no more silly commercials, rarely if ever any door-to-door promotions, and people sure don’t worry about scandal like they used to. Although I suppose to some extent some still must, considering how Charlie Sheen got booted from Two and a Half Men. But, for the most part, people didn’t seem to worry that the show would crumble without him.

The Uncut Velvet Claws

Wow, what a week. I am so sorry. Sunday was rather hectic, I was ill from Sunday night through early Wednesday morning, and Wednesday was busy, too. I’m hoping I can get things steered back on track now.

It was very interesting to watch The Velvet Claws uncut. My original reason for doing that recently was in hoping to find a little more footage of Andy. I did, although the smidgen of what was cut of him puzzles me.

The very first scene that’s absent is right at the beginning, after Eva and her guy escape the joint (which seems to be the vine-covered house used as the Barkley mansion on The Big Valley). They’re stopped on the road near the house by the police and Eva has the guy hide under a raincoat so he won’t be seen and identified while she gives the officer a song and dance about being the neighbors and she’s trying to get her sick husband to the doctor. The officer is reluctant to believe her, but finally does, and lets them through.

I’m confused over why he does, too, since when he goes to look in the car it looks like all he sees is the raincoat and not any (unidentifiable) form hiding under it. I thought sure he would bust Eva when he came back and that he would say she didn’t have anyone else in the car, but instead he told her to go on through.

It’s an illogical setup. In order to make the officer think there’s someone else in the car, and ill, it seems that Eva should have told the guy to wrap the raincoat around himself and slump down towards the driver’s side of the car so he won’t be recognized. Having him get under the raincoat while it’s on the floor, so it looks like there’s no other person there at all, just doesn’t make sense considering what happens after the officer looks in the car.

It ends up being a fairly important scene for character understanding, but I wonder if it was cut both because of the illogic and also Eva’s playfulness with her guy. While he’s hiding under the raincoat, she gets back in the car and talks with him about her desire to find one good man who loves her, and how she’ll lie, cheat, or steal to have that. As she talks, she starts running her bare foot over his face. (Eww!) He responds by kissing the top of her foot.

Also cut is a scene where Perry goes to talk to the guy. He defends Eva’s erratic behavior by telling of how she’s always had a terrible life and says he loves her.

It’s very exasperating that so much of his screentime is missing from the standard version of the episode. One of the things that always baffled me about the cut version is how we don’t see much of him for the longest time and then we hear about him fleeing town after the murder. It makes him seem rather spineless, even with them keeping the later bit where he admits he shouldn’t have left and only did because Eva told him to (and that he came right back when he heard about the murder). I felt that he just wasn’t involved enough in everything that was happening and it was hard to swallow that he really cared about Eva. The uncut largely solves that problem with these other scenes and makes so much more sense—although I still don’t know if I would want someone like him to attain a high political office.

And then Andy is very puzzling. The bit missing with him seems to be when Perry goes downstairs to talk to Eva after the murder and she tells him she’s sure that he was the one arguing with her husband right before his death. Andy suddenly appears at the top of the stairs and bellows, “Goodnight, Counselor!” Perry then takes his leave.

Wow, Andy. Why so insistent? The police are currently investigating upstairs not down, Andy acted like he was through talking with Eva, and Eva is Perry’s client. (Not to mention the house is hers.) Why can’t Perry talk to her whenever he feels like it, especially when she isn’t even under arrest?

Of course, the police generally don’t like when Perry is hanging around while they’re trying to investigate a place. I imagine they don’t want him poking around through everything and Andy was concerned of that happening. But the scene would have made more sense if Perry had indeed been poking through something when Andy caught him, instead of just talking to his client.

It seems to be one more instance of Andy showing rather clipped and stressed behavior, as he does now and then in seasons 6 and 7 and in season 8 a lot more. It also seems an unnecessary bit; the scene could have easily ended, as the cut one does, with Perry staring at Eva in disbelief. Not that I’m knocking any extra footage of Andy; I’m happy to see him, but it doesn’t take away my puzzlement over the purpose of the bit.

Sometimes it seems like the writers like to slip in anything anywhere they can to show the strained feelings between Perry and the police. But it usually ends up making either one side or the other look bad, as it does here for Andy. They could have instead had Andy appear at the top of the stairs and rather casually or confusedly mention that he had thought Perry was leaving, which is his reaction in some episodes with similar scenes. Whereupon Perry could still take his leave as he does at that point in the episode.

The episode, overall, has never been a particular favorite of mine, in any form. But it is interesting, unique, and significant, considering it’s the televised version of the very first book.

Perry is always a puzzle in it; despite his insistence that he’s in it to stop Spicy Bits, it certainly seems obvious over time that he has some interest in the mixed-up, twisted Eva. If nothing else, the fact that he agrees to continue being her attorney at the end shows that he doesn’t hold the dislike for her that he does for some other clients.

I’ve heard that the plot in the book is quite a bit different, naturally, and that it also has the rather interesting ending of Della kissing Perry and Eva being upset about it. Considering that in the episode Eva’s interest is in the guy she keeps fighting to protect, I highly doubt it would have bothered her at all if Della had kissed Perry in that version.

Eva is certainly treacherous, the way she weaves Perry into her trap and threatens to make it look like he was present on the scene when her husband was killed—hence making him the prime suspect. But honestly, in the television series at least, I don’t really mind her. (I can’t say how I would feel about her book counterpart.) Aside from her nastiness in the bit about the murder, she kind of amuses me and appalls me all at once. And I do like how she really seems to love that guy so much and is so desperate to protect him. At the end she goes off with him, so the fans of the Perry/Della pairing surely don’t have to worry about her trying to break up any possible relationship between them.

Eva’s actress, incidentally, is the highly talented Patricia Barry, who often seemed to play femme fatales on Perry. She’s also the duplicitous Janet in The Frantic Flyer and the older woman luring David Gideon into a trap in The Grumbling Grandfather. Recently I saw her on Ironside, for once playing a relatively normal (by comparison) television producer—albeit she was in love with a very bad man. Her tastes certainly left something to be desired. She also toned down her usual, very distinctive voice. If not for seeing her name in the opening credits, I’m not sure I would have recognized her!

I wonder if Patricia and Raymond Burr were friends in real-life, since that seemed to be the case sometimes when actors recurred on Perry or on both series.

The Long-Legged Models and The Singing Skirt

So last night I watched The Long-Legged Models.

A lot of the time I stared blankly at the screen, rather confused. I think I need to watch the uncut again; season 1 episodes are mangled even worse because of their longer running time.

Of course, I could follow the basic plot along alright. And I still spotted those similarities with The Singing Skirt, although now I realize I also have another episode mixed up in my thoughts. I’ve been thinking The Long-Legged Models is the episode that features the real-life spot Gardena, as opposed to The Singing Skirt’s apparently made-up Rowena. But it is not, and now I’m wondering which is the Gardena episode. I’m positive there is one.

There are still enough similarities between the episodes, however, that the parallels run about as good as those between the original versions of the stories and the ones that have announced themselves as remakes (i.e., The Silent Partner versus The Candy Queen, etc).

Gambling does play a part in The Long-Legged Models, albeit it’s more in the background than in The Singing Skirt.

There’s still those pesky three guns that confuse everyone from the defendant to Perry himself. But Hamilton doesn’t make as big a deal out of what Perry does with the guns as he does in The Singing Skirt, even though it seems like what Perry does in The Long-Legged Models is much more blatant.

Perry still tries to use said guns to confuse the issue and make his client look less guilty, but instead everything turns upside-down and the murder gun is discovered in her possession anyway. The difference is that in The Long-Legged Models, she deliberately switches guns to protect someone else, instead of the guns being switched on her without her knowledge as in The Singing Skirt.

A girl whom the defendant thinks of as her friend ends up playing a part in framing her for the murder. In The Long-Legged Models, she’s also the actual murderer. In The Singing Skirt, she is not.

All in all, I definitely still consider the episodes connected, in the same way I notice similarities between The Fugitive Nurse and The Frantic Flyer, even though the latter doesn’t officially claim to be a remake of the former.

One unique difference where The Long-Legged Models and The Singing Skirt are concerned, however, is that both are based on separate stories written by Mr. Gardner, instead of the pseudo-remake being a television-only thing. And I have to wonder why he used the idea of multiple guns more than once. I thought that in general, if there’s such a unique plot point as the confusion over multiple guns and Perry inadvertently making it worse, the author would try not to repeat it. To his credit, he did have Perry do different things with the guns in each case to confuse the issues, but still, it surprises me to have used that plot angle twice.

Scrolling through the plot summary for the book version of The Long-Legged Models, I notice that while the murderer is still the same person as in the episode, she kills in self-defense in the book. In the episode, the implication is that it’s premeditated murder. I much prefer the idea that it was self-defense, especially since (at least in the episode) she’d been trying so hard to turn her life around.

On the series, self-defense killings don’t happen too often, but enough so that I might do a post to gather them together. Those, and the sub-category of when it’s an accident. They’re kind of a refreshing change from it so often being premeditated, although it is amazing how every one of the people who kills accidentally or in self-defense can never seem to speak up until Perry puts the pieces together in court. Some of them say they would never allow the wrong person to be convicted, at least, but they sure let things go on and on before they reveal the truth. Of course, I realize it's that way for the sake of the plot.

I’m looking forward to watching The Long-Legged Models uncut soon, to pick up the rest of the episode’s story once again. I just came from watching the uncut Velvet Claws, and it makes so much more sense in its originally intended state!

Ray Collins and the uncut Fatal Fortune

It was so hectic on Thursday that I neglected to mention that the day, July 11^th, was the anniversary of Ray Collins’ death.

MeTV, currently running season 1 in the evenings and season 4 in the mornings, has a lot of Perry offerings with great Tragg moments. The Moth-Eaten Mink and The Clumsy Clown are two of many classic episodes where Tragg has very good scenes. Nevertheless, I still wouldn’t say that either of them are Tragg-centric in nature.

I still puzzle over the fact that Lieutenant Tragg really doesn’t have a proper spotlight episode. Does anyone know if he gets one in any of the books? I think he may have one in The New Perry Mason, but that wouldn’t be Ray’s Tragg.

And on to The Fatal Fortune, one of the paranormal Perry episodes. I detailed the plot last October, so here I’ll try to focus mainly on the many scenes chopped from the standard television version.

The very first scene is when Max is still in the hospital and being released. Beth, the secretary, is there with him and the doctor is giving him instructions. Max is very irritable and cranky (as Perry says, “Max is being Max again”) and tells the doctor not to worry, he’s still going to inherit the money for his clinic when Max dies. Also present in the scene is the whistle Pat gave him, which Max declares he’s going to use.

The next scene is right after Max gives Pat the pearls. Pat takes them back to her office, admiring them, and Beth comes in and admires them with her. They then begin to discuss the men in Pat’s life and she mentions Max’s newest proposal. She comments how she’s just not in love with him and then excitedly tells Beth that Marius’s prediction about meeting her white knight has come true. Beth says she feels Pat should marry Max instead.

Our third missing scene features Gordon Evans arriving at the location where Pat has gone to meditate on the marital issues. He asks the desk clerk about Pat and is told she’s at the pool.

The episode proceeds the same as the cut version for a while, until after Max is heartlessly killed. Our next missing scene is when Perry goes to see Hamilton after Pat has been arrested, wanting to ask for her release. Hamilton refuses, very calmly and maturely. Perry manages to get in a wild accusation at Hamilton, which Hamilton denies, and he explains why he can’t comply with Perry’s wishes. There’s quite a bit of evidence stacked up against Pat.

Our final scene is right after Paul announces that Marius has returned after being mysteriously absent. Perry and Della go to see him and have their fortunes told. Perry uses Paul’s name, which Marius reveals he is aware of as he eerily tells Perry that he is like two people. He finally ends his fun and drops his charade, admitting that Hamilton told him Perry would likely be coming around. He then offers to give Perry a real fortune, for his true self.

It’s certainly preposterous how much is missing from the usual television version! I think there’s even more edits here than in The Impatient Partner, which is also one of the most mangled episodes. There are mainly pieces of scenes missing from the latter, but in this venture, it’s mostly entire scenes gone! Good grief.

The episode makes alright sense without all the absent pieces (unlike some episodes that just fall apart without one or more of the scenes), but it certainly presents a much fuller, more well-rounded plot with all of them intact. I always felt that the standard television version was much too short. Now I definitely see why.

The Silent Six and The Runaway Racer

So I watched The Silent Six yesterday. I saw it uncut some time back, but I’d forgotten pretty much all of those scenes!

In the cut version, we see Perry telling Steve that he doesn’t know how he can possibly take on another case right now. That looks fine by itself, but in the uncut we actually see why he’s so overwhelmed. He talks on the phone with a client who is having problems, tries to instruct a young law graduate (the same one we see in the cut version who comes out of the library), and is late for dining with a judge. His swamped tone of voice when he tells Della he’ll see Steve now makes so much more sense.

There’s also more Steve content. After speaking with Monk Coleman and Hampton Fisher, Perry and Paul join Steve and Sergeant Brice at the apartment houses. They converse for a few minutes on the sidewalk about the progression of the case and Perry’s feelings that Dave Wolfe really is innocent. Steve still isn’t convinced, although he wishes he were.

One very long missing scene is after the questioning of the people in the apartment houses. Paul comes to report that Dave needs to see Perry right away. The whole scene where they talk is absent. And that scene is very important, as Dave is going bonkers behind bars due to worrying over Susan, and he’s trying to convince Perry to plead him guilty on a lesser charge instead of going through the agony and uncertainty of trying to be found innocent. Perry refuses, saying the situation has changed since he suggested that very thing to Dave in the morning, and he won’t let Dave drag himself and the entire police department through the dirt with a false confession.

Hamilton doesn’t appear in The Silent Six very much, and I had hoped for a bit more with him in the uncut version, but his scenes are intact even in the cut print.

One thing that fascinates me about The Silent Six, in addition to its dark tones and lots of Steve, is that I just realized yesterday how many of the clues are right there to be seen. A lot of times, we don’t even find things out at all until we get to court. But in this episode, we can plainly see things like the three candlesticks in Susan’s apartment, the three phones in Mr. Jefferson’s, and the one candlestick in Linda Blakely’s. We don’t know what the significance is until we get to court, but the clues are there, laid out for us to think about. It reminds me of detective stories such as Ellery Queen, actively trying to involve the audience in putting the pieces together in ways that Perry usually didn’t. Usually the audience, like the other characters, just sits back and watches in awe as Perry fits all of the strange pieces together.

I do get my wish for more Hamilton in the uncut Runaway Racer. The scene where he first appears, in Clay’s Grill, is longer and he and Steve are both present for a little more screentime before we get to what the cut version shows us.

Overall, The Runaway Racer doesn’t have as many edits as I was expecting after seeing The Fatal Fortune, but it does have a couple of fairly large scenes gone. I’m sure that at least half the scene where the defendant is confronted by the injured man’s wife is new to me.

There’s also an entire sequence where he goes to the hospital cafeteria and converses with his partner and Perry. He and his partner are definitely at odds after what happened on the racetrack with the car malfunctioning and his friend being badly hurt. He doesn’t want to race on Saturday, feels that something shady is going on, and wonders how to get a look at their books. Perry tells him he doesn’t need a court order, since he’s one of the partners. The partner is unconcerned and tells him to go ahead and look.

You know, usually the murderer ends up being a surprise, but in The Runaway Racer it doesn’t feel like much of one, despite the alibi. Pappy Ryan is the sort of obvious suspect who could have just as easily been the innocent defendant in another version of the script. That bad temper is a staple of many Perry defendants. To see him be the murderer is a rather blatant move that feels a lot like how it goes in real-life, since the obvious suspects often really are the guilty parties.

The Runaway Racer has never been a big favorite of mine, mostly because I have no interest in car racing. But I noticed something about it this week that kind of intrigued me.

It has a feel about it similar to some of the season 5 episodes. I’m not sure exactly why; the epilogue may be part of the reason. The bit with Paul ending up in the racecar as it takes off, with Perry and Della amused, reminds me of a couple of season 5 episodes where they tease Paul and are quite entertained by it, such as The Left-Handed Liar and The Angry Astronaut.

Also, season 5 as a whole really feels like it’s taking the show in a whole new direction. They’re experimenting with a lot of topics they haven’t tried before, and for the first time, one of the people they’ve brought in as supplemental to the cast becomes a regular.

Compare that with season 9, which seems to clearly be an attempt at a facelift for the show after season 8. There’s a new regular in Steve Drumm, and actually, another in Terrance Clay. Many of the plots, as with season 5, are something very different. There’s levels of social commentary in season 9 that didn’t exist before, particularly in episodes such as The Golden Girls and The Twice-Told Twist. The latter feels, in some ways, a lot like an episode of Ironside, which is often quite socially conscious.

Season 5 is, I think, the first season to really have episodes concerning sporting activities, including a vacation gone tragically wrong in The Jealous Journalist and hunting in The Crippled Cougar. While there are some elements of hunting in season 3’s The Prudent Prosecutor, it’s never really brought to the forefront the way it is in The Crippled Cougar for at least a couple of scenes. And I don’t think sports of any kind are really ever at the forefront again until The Runaway Racer. (Well, aside from any episodes about horses, of course, which I admittedly didn't think about when originally writing this entry.)

In any case, it’s always fun to see the additional scenes in the episodes. I’m definitely enjoying the exploration.