The Case of the Devious Delinquent

Honestly, I quit watching halfway through. That's the first episode I've lost interest enough to not finish watching - and not care whodunnit!

Not only did I not care, but about half the cast should have been knocked off due to bad writing! Was there a writer's strike going on? Was Hollyweird on vacation? Nothing about this episode was interesting. The 'rebel without (or with) a cause' stereotypes, the ailing grandfather (who looked like he'd played a great 18 holes of golf at the club that morning) the sneering brat of a spoiled child as the grandson - who probably needed a little prison time to straighten him out! Good grief! "Mrs Olsen" should have stuck with her coffee commercials instead of her role as the housekeeper! Ugh!

Usually, there is the final scene of the episode where Paul, Della, & Perry discuss the motive--and resolve all the viewers' questions, I guess there wasn't time for this. Otto Kruger is the grandfather, the ONLY character that shares a believable motivation for his grandson--but if you know this, I think you can enjoy the remainder of the characters. I might have given this episode a lower rating, but I have not viewed any with a lower rating. Difficult to follow--and no, it's not challenging--it's one where Hamilton Burger is left with the most interesting motive in the episode. When you're producing 28 episodes a season, at least one has to be filmed in "the mansion set." Blame it on MeTV editing, but it just doesn't work for me.

Tim Balfour has returned to America from Italy after his parents died in an auto accident there. His grandfather (Otto Kruger) is bedridden from the aftermath of a heart attack. His uncle doesn't like or trust young Tim because of his slacker ways and his equally slacker friends.

Up to the present, the sum total of Tim's offences consists of him having a couple of moving violations and being chronically absentee from his skate job at the family business. But one night his delinquent buddies decide to rob a store and Tim, although he protests, winds up being the driver of the getaway car. He is told by one of his two associates that he'll need to get money so that "Chick" and his friend can hide out or else they'll say he was the ringleader in the robbery. The price rises to two thousand dollars. Tim can't go to a relative, so he asks the Balfour housekeeper for the money, lies about the severity of the trouble he is in, and even lets her steal the money from his grandfather for him. But Tim and Chick get into an argument when he goes to give the money to Chick, and Tim shoots at Chick and drives away leaving behind his gun. Later, Chick is found dead, shot to death as Tim feared, but shot in the back, while Tim shot when Chick was facing him. Tim is arrested for murder and Balfour company attorney Perry Mason is on the case.

Complicating factors include Tim's grandfather wanting to give TIm a piece of his company in his will and TIm's uncle vowing he'll do anything to stop it. Also, where did that pesky accomplice of Chick's go to? He seems to disappear in thin air after he robs the store.

Lots of people seem to really hate hate hate the defendant in this case. I admit it's hard to feel sorry for him when he is so sorry for himself, and that Johnny Washbrook's performance as Tim Balfour is hardly subtle, but then it's not hammy either. I looked up Mr. Washbrook's acting credits, and it looks like he was primarily a child actor who aged out of such parts by age 20, the year after this episode.

Also note that Billy Benedict is playing a drunk old man who may or may not have been run over by Tim. Benedict has acting credits that go back to the 1930s and was in the Monogram Bowery Boys films. He is only 46 when he made this, but looks much older.

Something was "off" for this episode. Disagreeable characters, unfortunate/unbelievable casting, amateurish directing. One of the rare episodes where I just stopped watching.

As many have commented, the delinquent defendant does not seem to have any depth. His friend chick is disagreeable, and one wonders why the defendant would have any interest in having him as a friend at all. The screenplay for the Friends of the delinquent sounds like bad gangster talk from the 1940s. Just nothing working... Not sure what else to add here, except that nothing in this particular episode seem to be adding up.

Just another in a too-long line of poorly conceived and overwrought scripts. I guess the writers were attempting desperately to push the envelope where stories were concerned, but this one falls exceptionally flat.

For one thing (and I have to say the main thing), the defendant here exudes no sympathy whatsoever. While I'm not going to go all out and say that the kid deserved to be convicted of murder, I honestly think he should have done time just for his sheer stupidity. I blame the writers.

It really started nowhere, ended up nowhere, and passed nothing in-between. On the up side, look for Billy Benedict (Bowery Boys) & John Mitchum (Dirty Harry) in small roles...