After another hour spent in Perry’s company, I get the sense that injustice and tragedy are, to him, almost like a physical malady from which he suffers. There are times when he can simply take no more and springs into action, as he did with Emily’s case in the first place, and as he is doing with the Gallardo brothers now. It’s this almost impulsive zeal that leads him to stand up against the oil tycoon Lydell McCutcheon, whose goons strong-arm Perry into a meeting that devolves into threats. (Elsewhere in the episode, McCutcheon maims a man who comes looking to collect on a debt owed him by his dead son, Brooks, so we know he is willing to make good on those threats.)
But Perry is also capable of ignoring this kind of pain until it’s too late, then wallowing in it, even exacerbating it. Yes, he is the kind of guy who can deftly, gently shame the new case’s slightly pretentious presiding judge (Tom Amandes) into having the Gallardos placed in protective custody after they report finding broken glass in their jailhouse chow. But he is also the kind of guy who’ll deliberately drive his motorcycle at unsafe speeds rather than admit to Della that he may have contributed to his former client’s sense of suicidal isolation and despair.
Perhaps the sad tale of his service in the Great War — he was discharged after mercy-killing his own wounded men in the trenches — says everything you need to know about Perry. He’ll fly in the face of authority and society at large to do what he feels is right, but as that judge points out to him, he almost never does so in a way that will lead to a happy ending for anyone.
I reviewed the third episode of Perry Mason Season 2 for the New York Times.
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