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I've had some of the same problems, DV, wonder if the TV and movie message boards here will catch on. As to Perry I think that due to its long run of nine years,--with many more episodes per season than TV series today--and the glib titles (the Case Of The Ravishing Redhead, The Case Of The Ovoid Oligarch,--whatever...) it's difficult for many of us to keep track of the actual titles. Sometimes an actor will stand out.
The other night they ran The Case Of The Velvet Claws, pretty good, with a wonderfully campy, over the top lead performance from Patricia Barry but for the life of me I can't remember much else about it but the plot. Tonight it was The Case Of Paul Drake's Dilemma,--I think that's right--with good work from supporting players Basil Ruysdael, Simon Scott and Bruce Gordon. Their characters were less developed than the story but it was a decent episode.
One of my favorite Perrys of all is the first season The Case Of The Sardonic Sergeant, with its intriguing back story of the burning of American dollars just prior to the U.S. surrender to the Japanese in the Phillipines, and it featured some very well developed characters along the way.
Long time since I've seen this show...
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That's great to hear. The ending of Paul Drake's Dilemma was strong, though I can't help but wonder how Perry makes a living when he does things like what he did at the end of the episode. The old man was played by Basil Ruysdael, whom you may remember as the policeman in the 1929 Coconuts, the first Marx Brothers film, made in Paramount's Astoria studio. I can still remember his singing in that one ("I lost my shirt!..."). Anyway, he was more of a stage actor (and singer) appeared on and off in films. I love it when they use veteran players on Perry, real old-timers, whether from stage or screen.
I think that with the Velvet Claws being unpopular it's Patricia Barry's performance, line readings and quite frankly the lines themselves. The episode rather violates some of what seem to be the unwritten rules of the series, one of them being that the episodes should be absolutely serious a and that it should never make fun of itself. Humor is permissible between regulars or in a minor character but should never be introduced to the "detriment" of the show's seriousness. Star Trek was much the same, although it featured truly lighthearted episodes, while Perry's eps were serious, seriouser and very serious. They seldom lightened up. Miss Barry practically made the Velvet Claws the Carol Burnett version.
It was the terrific real life history aspect of the Sardonic Sergeant that really turned me on. The ep was fine anyway but it had that wistful long ago and far awat quality to its fall of the Phillipines
back story,--I'm a history buff, and that part of the war, the same time as the Pearl Harbor attack, fasinates me--so the ep had me hooked the first time. Add to that the personal histories of some of the main characters lent it (to me) a larger than life quality. I think that strong back stories can add immeasurably to any TV episode, movie or short story. Some of the best are in large measure based on fragments of information the viewer acquires along the way...
...got cut off (too long a post?). Think of such diverse classic films as King Kong, The Maltese Falcon, Citizen Kane, Casablanca,--just for starters--and you can see how information plays a huge role in how a tale develops. Or the 1932 horror, The Mummy, in which back story is a key element. The 1944 Murder, My Sweet is another. Lots of details about things that happened a long time ago, which in movie terms can be anything from three years to three centuries. The 1946 The Killers is another like that.
Perry doesn't dwell in back stories as much as I sometimes wish it would but when it goes there it shines brighter IMO than when an episode is essentially linear, with one event leading to another but more sequential as to presentation that the darting around that happens when the viewer has to do some digging along with Messrs Mason and Drake, so yeah!
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I watched most of TCO The Deadly Double (I think I got it right), the late in the final season entry that really breaks a few rules, and aside from offering Raymond Burr a chance to play a character other than himself,--a drunken, larcenous Limey sailor hired to impersonate Perry Mason--it's a mediocre episode at best.
The story might have actually worked if the plot had been better worked out and had it been done without the double, just another actor in the role Burr played. I like Raymond Burr, but he was never a bravura actor and this hurts his Limey impersonation. His accent isn't terrible but his playing is way too broad, and while the actor appears to be having a ball I can't say that I did while watching him.
Nor does the "light touch" this episode,--and many 9th season entries--had work in its favor. It's like the producers, directors, writers and actors knew the show was going into its final season and instead of going out with (if you'll excuse the expression) a killer season, one to match the first three or four, they got lazy, went for contemporary feeling stories featuring very young people,--teens and rockers--and I'm sort of glad that the series ended by at least not looking old-fashioned, with everyone locked in a kind of Fifties time warp, but I'd rather they'd gone for "dying with dignity" rather than throwing up their hands and saying "we're through!".
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That's right. I think they just ran out of ideas, of approaches. "Dying with dignity" is seldom an option in Hollywood, especially where TV series are concerned.
Gunsmoke and Bonanza went steadily downhill in their later seasons. You'd think they'd have had the good sense to shut down Bonanza after Don Blocker's death, but nooo...
Then there was The Fugitive's final season, in color, no less, though they had a few decent episodes. As to The Man From UNCLE, the less said, the better. I Spy went downhill fast.