'Aaron Hubble'


***this comment has possible spoilers***
The alcoholic forger ‘Aaron Hubble’ (played by Robert H. Harris) in ‘Case of the Purple Woman’ is one of the more repellant characters ever to grace a Mason episode. With his oafish manners and unkempt appearance, he's quite the jolt after we’ve seen so many well spoken and well dressed characters on the program over the years, even the murderers!
To me the character has few equals for unsavoriness. However, a couple of candidates: Dan Seymour in ‘Silent Partner’ exudes a certain tough guy menace but even he is nicely dressed and relatively well behaved. Then there’s the inimitable Elisha Cook, Jr. in ‘Pint-Sized Client,’ who is certainly unsavory and disheveled but really more knife-edged neurotic than anything else.
Then again … on second thought, I’m not sure it’s so much a case of Hubble being a repulsive figure as actor Harris overplaying the character, in contrast to most of the actors on the series who play their roles pretty much deadpan straight, or at least nowhere near as over-the-top as much as Harris’s flamboyant take.

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I liked him though. He reminds me of one of my uncles who was a fairly successful Chicago big band pianist in the early '40s who wasn't good enough to make it when the genre died and jobs became rare, but always felt he was a fantastic musician who was screwed by TPTB. I thought he was pretty good but that's just my pedestrian taste talking. Anyway he also became an alky and died of cancer at 52 still blaming everyone but himself for his failure and problems.

He was good to me and I loved him and miss him; I guess that's why I always feel a certain tenderness for Aaron Hubble. (Uncle was never a murderer though.)


Feministas praising Sharia law are like Jews praising Nazism.

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I’m not sure it’s so much a case of Hubble being a repulsive figure as actor Harris overplaying the character, in contrast to most of the actors on the series who play their roles pretty much deadpan straight, or at least nowhere near as over-the-top as much as Harris’s flamboyant take.


Have you seen all nine seasons? Harris has quite a few rivals in the flamboyance department.

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