‘Perry Mason’ Season 1, Episode 2: In the Trenches
Season 1, Episode 2: ‘Chapter Two’The flashbacks occur at intervals throughout the episode. They take us to the trenches of World War I — still without its even more savage sequel by the time “Perry Mason” takes place — where our title character is an American military officer, leading his men in a charge over the top. In the chaos of the no man’s land, the charge breaks down. Those who’ve survived German machine guns and flame throwers now must contend with a huge wave of enemy troops mounting a counterattack … and the lethal poison gas clearing their way.As Perry flees, ordering his men before him, he sees that some are too badly wounded and maimed to move. Unwilling to let them suffer or leave them at the mercy of the gas, he takes his handgun and shoots them to death himself, one after another. When one of them begs — whether for death or a reprieve from it isn’t entirely clear — Mason murmurs, “Forgive me,” and pulls the trigger.If it accomplished nothing else, this week’s episode of “Perry Mason” established why the private detective seems so perpetually ground down. With memories like that playing in your head every time you take a cigarette break, wouldn’t you look and feel exhausted? Moreover, it accounts for his dishonorable discharge from the military — and, according to his wealthy backer Herman Baggerly, his bloody nickname: “The Butcher of Monfalcone.”Even for a private eye, a career for which an unsavory reputation kind of comes with the territory, it’s a lot of weight to bear.But Perry is now on a different kind of mission than the one he was on in the trenches: Clearing his client Matthew Dodson of the kidnapping of his own infant. Suspicion falls on Mr. Dodson when District Attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root, who, as always, seems to be having the time of his life) uncovers a secret of Dodson’s own: He’s Baggerly’s son from a one-night stand, back before the magnate found Jesus. Suddenly it makes sense why someone would try to extort a grocer for $100,000 — and who is in a better position to do so than the man who knows best that Baggerly would pay on his grandson’s behalf?The story, of course, stinks, and only partially because the murderous Sergeant Ennis (Andrew Howard), who killed the kidnappers himself, is on board with Dodson’s arrest. For one thing, Dodson has an alibi, though not the sort that would necessarily hold up in court: He was out gambling that night, and there are eyewitnesses to that effect; the witness who placed Dodson at the scene of the murder of the accomplices was coached by Ennis and his partner, Detective Holcomb (Eric Lange). The two men also tamper with the findings of a beat cop, Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), a black officer forced to change his observant report on a blood trail at the scene to fit his white superiors’ preferences.Perry, meanwhile, is poking at loose ends of his own. His suspicion falls on Mrs. Dodson rather than on her husband when he learns from a nosy neighbor that she spends hours on the phone when her husband’s away. A little skulduggery with the phone company after tailing the bereaved mother lands him in hot water with Della Street, the legal secretary for their mutual employer, E.B. Jonathan. But it also leads him to a house were he finds a dead body, its head blown to gory, 1980s-horror-movie mush by a shotgun … and a cache of love letters from Mrs. Dodson.Now an alternate theory of the crime develops, thanks in no small part to Perry’s distaste for Mrs. Dodson’s cheating ways. It now seems likely that her lover, George Gammon, helped set up the kidnapping after finding out from the missis that her husband had a rich dad, and that the baby’s death was a horrible accident. (It’s implied, but not stated outright, that the killer stitched the child’s eyes open as a macabre way to indicate a wish that the boy was still alive.)Everything comes to a head at the baby’s lavish funeral service, held before an audience of Los Angeles luminaries — should the mayor get an aisle seat, or should it be reserved for Clark Gable? — at the temple of the evangelical preacher Sister Alice. As played by Tatiana Maslany, Alice is not at all what I expected her to be: She seems to be a true believer rather than an obviously hypocritical mountebank, and her style of speaking is down to earth as well as passionate. A lot of characters of this sort are so flagrantly unappealing that it’s impossible to sympathize with anyone who follows them; Sister Alice (whose business affairs are run by her mother, played by Lili Taylor) is a more convincing shepherd of her flock.That said, she sure throws a monkey wrench in the political feasibility of any attempt to strike a plea deal when she delivers a fire and brimstone sermon about the need to execute whomever killed the Dodsons’ baby. (“Blessed be the hangman,” she thunders in an inversion of Christ’s Beatitudes). In a pair of private moments, she also seems to “hear” a baby crying, though whether these are memories or reveries is unclear.In the end, Perry’s suspicions win the day, somewhat to his own chagrin. Mrs. Dodson is arrested as her baby’s coffin is loaded into a hearse on its way to burial, in full view of all the gathered mourners and bigwigs and news media. Turns out Mason and Jonathan ratted Emily out regarding the love letters, and the cops inferred that she and her dead lover, George, were in cahoots on the kidnapping.But when push comes to shove, Perry backs down off his righteous rage against her: “Infidelity isn’t murder,” he says, repeating what his colleagues had already told him multiple times.In a closing musical montage, Della delivers a blanket to Emily Dodson in jail. Officer Banks returns to the scene of the crime and discovers half a set of false teeth in the alley below the rooftop where the blood trail ran cold — the other half of which is lodged in the “suicidal” George Gammon’s mouth, indicating the body was moved. And Perry, his memories still consumed by his wartime trauma, is drawn to a singer on a street corner (Tunde Adebimpe, vocalist for the art-rock band TV on the Radio), performing the Washington Phillips gospel song “Lift Him Up That’s All.”It’s a note of uplift that seems almost ironic. Mason has spent this episode wrestling with his wartime demons and with witnessing Emily Dodson in the throes of absolute grief — first when he brings her news of the death of her lover, then when she is pulled away from her baby’s coffin during her arrest. It’s too much misery for a song or a cigarette to salve. A whodunit with a severe emotional palette commensurate with the tragedy and atrocity uncovered by the investigator? That’s a rare and valuable thing we’ve uncovered.From the case files:If you’re not familiar with Adebimpe’s work with TV on the Radio, might I suggest “Province,” the band’s duet with David Bowie?After her hang-’em-high sermon, Sister Alice exchanges a pointed, prolonged glance with Perry. Her mother, Birdy, asks her, “What was that?” about the sermon; I’m wondering the same thing about the stare-down.“We do what we don’t like when there’s a greater good to be served,” E.B. tells Perry after they draw the heat off Mr. Dodson by blaming his wife. “You more than anyone should know that.” This apparent reference to Mason’s wartime mercy killings indicates that his boss is somewhat less troubled by Perry’s past than Perry is. More
