The Case of the Fanciful Frail

I watched this episode today and it was so different from what I expect from Perry Mason that I had to look it up. I'm not a huge follower of the show but enjoy watching it with my elderly mother so maybe there are other episodes I just haven't seen before.

I've never seen them use handheld cameras like they do here. Am I mistaken about that?

Anyway, while watching I kept getting impressions of moments in David Lynch's movies and twin peaks. The whole random meeting and switching identities and tone of the entire episode of it being so ridiculous that even the characters can't believe it. It really makes me wonder is Lynch was a Perry Mason fan as a kid.

Actually in the 50s Ford was a sponsor, he usually drove dark Ford convertibles, but once in a while he would be in black Cadillac Convertibles. I found out that the sponsor was not always Ford, and when GM was a sponsor he was in a Cadillac. In fall of 60 he started driving the new Lincoln Continental Convertible that had just came out. But by 65-66 he was in Cadillacs again. Also all through most of the 60s when he was in Continentals, and Ford was a sponsor, someone important to the story was usually driving a Buick Electra or Wildcat . Sometimes in the last year of the show, the police were driving AMC cars.

For the second episode in a row, the writers set up a crazy situation which would be enough. But then a melange of characters enter. It starts with 50,000 dollars connected to two entities, or is it three, or is it four. Mason is confused. Drake is confused. The defendant is confused. And the solution seemed to come out of the blue.

I found this one a fun and fanciful late entry of the very long running Perry Mason series, and highly entertaining. It's a tale of murder, identity swapping and corporate intrigue. For much of its length I found myself smiling and occasionally laughing at the near surreal events it depicted.

It seems that the powers that be at Paisano Productions, which produced the series, allowed the stories and the characters depicted therein get more than a bit offbeat, at times downright odd as the show drew to a close in its final season. This one's better than most, and nicely acted by a fine guest cast.

I highly recommend this episode for fans of the series who possess a sense of humor. No, it's not a comedy or a send-up; more like everyone having some good clean fun, all the while keeping straight faces while doing so.

Then you are either a genius or crazy!

It's like they took twenty plot lines, threw them out onto a table and said, "Pick ten, splice 'em together and We got us a show...".