Perry Mason repeatedly jumped the shark

Early this year I presented early Perry Mason episodes as the epitome of the episodic. Since then I have watched several more seasons of the show. In the following I will be spoiling a few episodes and some diversions from the purely episodic.

Late in Season 4, Perry Mason defends David Gideon, a directionless young man, from a murder charge. The latter is so impressed that he decides to become a lawyer. For the next season, he appears several times in episodes, presumably to provide a fresh, younger perspective on what is going on, and occasionally relieving Mason and Paul Drake (and their much over-worked actors) of some acts of investigation and action. He stands out as taking some narrative with him - his very presence is justified by his encounter with Mason and his crew in a previous episode.

My initial reaction to him being added was "oh, he's a Jimmy Olsen character". It seems like his function was to be a foil for explaining things to the audience about the minutiae of law - there is a long scene where he complains about one of District Attorney Hamilton Burger's maneuvers, and Mason gives him a long talk about the importance of the adversarial system in bringing about truth. But scenes where Mason, or Della Street, or Drake had to explain or clarify things for him never became other than a bit stilted. It's no surprise that he was dropped after the fifth season.

What I felt was another departure in that season, which nevertheless has not recurred, was taking the supernatural seriously - Episode 6, "The Case of the Meddling Medium", has a guest appearance by Dr. Andrija Puharich, a parapsychologist playing himself. The actual solution involved subterfuge rather than a serious use of ESP, but there was something unsettling about the usual cast taking this seriously.

For much of the series, Mason avoided putting his client on the stand, as cross-examination could lead to an unpredictable and unmitigated disaster. It was a big deal when in Season 5, Episode 27, "The Case of the Counterfeit Crank", he did put one on the stand - but managed to avoid a cross-examination. However, in the next season, in Episode 6, "The Case of the Weary Watchdog", alongside many outrageous variations, he finally puts the client on the stand, and Burger gets to cross-examine. Apparently this is a recurring theme in later episodes, a real shame, as the tension of how Mason would manage to avoid doing so was important for my enjoyment, at least. That episode also included one of the rare times where a jury actually got to deliberate and come back with a verdict - although Mason manages to maneuver out of that one through a process in another, related court case.

Nevertheless, I think my statement that there wasn't real development in the writing still holds true, outside of Gideon's intervention in the fifth season, which notably did not leave a mark. Things change because the writers might get new ideas, or they might feel the audience might benefit from shaking up the status quo, but not because of an internal, inter-episode logic that would make this a true serial.