‘Perry Mason’ Season 2 Finale: Case Closed

Season 2, Episode 8: ‘Chapter Sixteen’

Camilla Nygaard lies back silently as yellowjackets, held by tweezers, sting her repeatedly under the eyes. A filmy mask is laid atop her face, “American Psycho”-style. Flowers are placed upon her eyes, making her look like a horticultural horror straight out of “The Last of Us.” If it wasn’t clear already, the opening scene of this season finale makes it so: She’s a monster, and here, she finally looks the part.

But if you thought this story would end with the monster safely defeated and the world set to rights, you’re mistaken. Just as the first season of “Perry Mason” hinged on the myth-busting idea that no one confesses on the witness stand, this one bursts the happy-ending bubble.

Granted, things could be a lot worse. Utilizing Camilla’s attorney, major-domo, and hitman-hiring go-between, Phippsy, as an erstwhile ally, Perry and his team recover her cache of incriminating photos on all of Los Angeles’s major players, neutralizing her blackmailer’s hold over the closeted district attorney Hamilton Burger. (Not to mention averting the potential extortion of the similarly situated Della, who finds and hides the pictures of her and her lady friend Anita before anyone else can see them.)

With that out of the way, Burger is finally free to hash out a plea deal with Perry on behalf of the Gallardo brothers. The older sibling, Mateo, who pulled the trigger on Brooks McCutcheon, takes the rap all by himself and is sentenced to 30 years without parole; not great but better than the noose. His artistically gifted kid brother, Rafael, walks out of the courtroom a free man.

At Perry’s insistence, Della is feted as a hero on the courthouse steps. Deservedly so! Thanks to her expert performance in court, Brooks has been exposed for the sexual predator he was and the McCutcheon name is in the mud. (“She’s better at that than you,” Paul says to Perry, correctly, of Della’s post-trial news conference on the courthouse steps.)

The McCutcheon patriarch, Lydell, is in the wind: The FBI is onto his and Camilla’s illegal oil trade with Japan, so he’s stuck in that imperial island nation for the foreseeable future.

As a bonus, the ambitious, unethical assistant district attorney, Tommy Milligan, has been neutralized, yanked from the case by his boss, Burger. His impotent rage alone is worth the price of your soon-to-be-Max subscription.

But that’s where the good news ends.

Mateo will spend the best years of his life in jail. Everyone further up the food chain than he in the murder plot, most notably Camilla and Phipps, walk free without their guilt even being brought up in court.

Scarred by the beating he was forced to dole out during the investigation, Paul pays off the victim — still alive, despite earlier appearances to the contrary — and quits the team. He then goes to work for Perkins, the very gangster who ordered the beating; he’ll be gathering blackmail material himself now, albeit for the worthy cause of forcing city councilmen to grant Perkins permits for a park and pool for the city’s Black residents.

Thanks to his buddy Pete Strickland’s bit of B&E, Perry is on the hook for hiding the murder weapon, and agrees to a four-month prison sentence in exchange for being able to see the case to its conclusion. Both his partner, Della, and his girlfriend, Ginny Aimes, will be waiting for him when he gets out, but he’s clearly concerned his young son won’t be so understanding.

Our old pal Holcomb, the crooked cop who worked with Brooks, decides to beat a retreat from the casino-boat business, torching the ship with a Molotov cocktail using his own black tie for a wick.

The times being what they are, Ham, Della and Anita still have to live in the closet; Anita looks on smilingly as Ham and Della pose as a happy couple for the public.

But before that, Della confronts Camilla, a woman she once greatly admired, about her rampant criminality: the murder, the extortion, the smuggling, all the ugly things beneath her glittering surface of power, glamour and sophistication — the monster behind the mask. As the FBI approaches, Camilla promises Della they’ll meet again. As with Milligan, Team Perry has made a potentially formidable enemy.

And Team “Perry” has made an indisputably formidable show. It’s true that this season was less dark and psychologically rich than its predecessor, with its themes of religion and infanticide. But it’s really no less successful a work of art on its own terms. With its murderers’ row of a cast — a hugely enjoyable performance seems to have been waiting around every corner Perry Mason turned — and its sordid, surprising and frequently sexy story from the new showrunners Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, it is a period crime drama done right.

It’s a dual mystery: More than just a question of whodunit and why, “Perry Mason” entices the viewer with the riddle of the title character. How can a damage case with a melancholic temperament save himself, much less anyone else?

We get our answer in his final scene with Della, I think. Using the secretly water-inflated melons peddled by his grocer client Sunny Gryce as a metaphor, Perry tells Della, “It’s not justice that’s an illusion; it’s the system.”

“OK,” she replies. “So what are we supposed to do with that?”

“We fight,” he says simply. He says this even as he’s preparing to go to prison over that fighting spirit.

That’s the message I’m taking away from this season: If you’ve got that fight in you at all, then fight you must.

From the case files

• Milligan to Burger, on the plea deal: “Why would you go behind my back?” Burger to Milligan, seemingly shocked he even needs to say it: “I’m the D.A.” In two lines you have a portrait of Milligan as a self-aggrandizing grasper and Burger as the justifiably confident voice of authority.

• Another great Burger-related exchange comes when Perry and Della present him with Camilla’s incriminating negatives. “So now you know,” he says to Perry. “I don’t care,” Perry reassures him. “I do!” Burger retorts. It’s not that he distrusts Perry, with whom he’s maintained a cordial relationship despite their professional opposition; it’s that he resents having control of this personal information taken away from him, even when done by someone who’s got his back.

• In an image that echoes Holcomb’s use of expensive booze and a black tie to burn the boat, Pete confides in Perry that he urinated in Milligan’s expensive bottle of Napoleon-owned cognac before quitting his job with the district attorney’s office. I guess that’s one way to say you’re sorry for landing your one-time best buddy in the clink on behalf of a jerk like Milligan.

• Considering how recognizable the composer Fred Steiner’s original Raymond Burr–era “Perry Mason” theme is, you might think it a mistake for this reboot not to use it every week. Then it drops it on you over the closing credits of the season finale and the weight of recognition hits you like an anvil. It’s the sound of “We fight.”

• As a pretty much miserable guy who’s sincerely angry about injustice, Perry Mason is a hero for our time.