‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: Anchors Aweigh

Season 2, Episode 7: ‘Chapter Fifteen’

Barring one last surprise … my goodness, what am I saying? This is “Perry Mason,” a mystery show constructed entirely from surprises. It’s probably best to hedge our bets even now, you know?

Be that as it may: Barring one last surprise, it sure does seem that we have a viable working theory of the “Who killed Brooks McCutcheon?” case. In one sense, yes, it was the Gallardo brothers, but they were merely a combination of hired guns and fall guys. The real culprit is whoever paid them to pull the trigger, and the real mystery is why.

And now we know. Assuming, once again, that there are no further twists to come, the architect of the Brooks McCutcheon murder was the rich and glamorous piano-playing weed enthusiast Camilla Nygaard. As a business partner of Brooks’s father Lydell in an illegal scheme to smuggle oil to the imperial Japanese government despite sanctions against such transactions, she was as worried as anyone that Brooks’s extracurricular activity as a Depression-era produce black marketeer — activity for which he and his own business partner Goldstein had been subpoenaed to testify — would expose her far more lucrative scheme.

So she used a series of proxies to arrange the assassination. Her catspaw was her devoted lawyer Phippsy (Wallace Langham), whose wife is a junkie. Utilizing her connections to the underworld, namely the now-deceased dealer Ozzie Jackson, he orchestrated the hit on Brooks on his mistress’s behalf. The brutal sexual “indiscretions,” the stadium boondoggle, the gambling-boat rivalries, Lydell’s own violent tendencies? Red herrings. It’s all about a scheme to make bank off the books by funding Hirohito’s war machine, and Camilla is the black heart beating at the center of it all.

The crack squad employed by Perry to crack the case is a veritable dream team of lead and supporting players from all sides of the conflict. For starters, it includes Pete Strickland, who admits that it was he who found the Gallardos’ smoking gun in Perry’s safe on the prosecution’s orders, and who catches an admirably sloppy beating from Mason for his troubles. He rejoins Team Perry to make amends; it’s his idea to board a McCutcheon cargo ship to find out exactly what’s going on. (It’s also his idea to swim to shore afterward, but I won’t hold it against him if Perry won’t.)

The crew also includes Detective Holcomb, the guy who stakes out the McCutcheon vessel in the first place. I’ll state for the record here that I am a huge, huge mark for instances of cooperation between characters who have every reason to choose not to get along; I hold out hope that Holcomb (and the actor Eric Lange, who plays him) will eventually be incorporated into Mason’s brain trust. (To be clear: I may be holding out hope, but I’m not holding my breath.)

It includes the formidable Della Street, who gets her friend, the district attorney Hamilton Burger, to admit he’s being blackmailed about his closeted sexuality in order to bring the case to a quick close. It’s also she who ferrets out from the federal Department of Agriculture that Brooks was under investigation, an investigation that compromised department figures are determined to prevent from seeing the light of day.

It includes not only Paul Drake but also his wife Clara, who’s so tired of Paul’s obsessive diligence that she volunteers to take on some of the responsibilities herself. It’s she who spots the blue car while her husband naps. It’s she who enters into the home in the guise of a humble Jehovah’s Witness, only to be mistaken for Josephine Baker by the strung-out lady of the house, who promptly has a heroin-induced seizure. It’s she who sees Phippsy, whose home it is, run to the rescue of his addict wife. It’s she who steals a letter confirming the ID of the homeowner — all the evidence they need to connect the Gallardos to Nygaard.

Finally, it includes Marion, the dutiful receptionist who first proffers the theory that it’s all a scheme to fuel the Japanese military. Given her Korean ethnicity, she’s familiar with Japan’s military conquests in the Far East, and thus precisely the person required to give Team Perry this final piece of the puzzle.

Not that any of this will necessarily help Perry himself. After Pete and his paymaster, the assistant district attorney Tommy Milligan, expose Perry’s concealment of the murder weapon, he’s facing not only disbarment but also serious jail time. (The scene in which Milligan practically salivates over the prospect of destroying Perry in front of the judge while Burger rolls his eyes at his protégé’s every move, is an episode highlight.) It seems that all Perry is really hoping for is one last shot at getting the Gallardos a fair shake and finding out the real culprit before the curtain closes on his legal career for good.

And that’s the beautiful thing about “Perry Mason”: Behind Perry’s explosive anger and perpetual melancholy, there’s an instinctual zeal for ensuring the guilty are punished and the innocent spared. This, more than any other factor, is what enables him to bring together such disparate figures as Della, Pete, Paul, Marian, Clara and Holcomb in the service of a single case, all while also winning the sympathies of his professional rival Ham Burger.

Perry’s not especially charismatic, as was Raymond Burr’s interpretation of the character back in the day. God knows he’s not very pleasant to be around, either. But he is unimpeachably dedicated to justice, which he’s determined to serve by any means necessary. No wonder this show is such a delight to watch! We all need a little Perry right this now.