The Case of the Telltale Tap

The victim here is one of those who truly deserved to get it. Her homicide was definitely a public service.

Jeanne Bal is the executive secretary to president Roland Winters of a conservative investment house. She's the real power behind the throne of the congenitally lazy Winters and she's maneuvering for Linden Chiles whom she's crushing out on to eventually succeed Winters. The fact that Chiles is seeing Winters's niece is something she doesn't count on. When she winds up dead, Chiles who had hired Paul Drake to expose some shenanigans at the company has Perry Mason at his disposal as an attorney.

And Bal really has quite a few things going for herself including putting a tap on her own boss's line for some insider trading. Maybe in a more recent time Bal would have been one of the official players instead of her sex restricting her to these kind of manoeuvrings. Still she's got a nice list of enemies.

Good cast here, but Jeanne Bal really steals this episode.

Raymond Burr complained that the plots in Season 8 were too complicated for even him to figure out, and this episode is an exemplar of this. As the end credits rolled, I still had little idea just what the hell happened.

Five stars is about as few as I'd give any Mason episode (at least of the ones Burr actually appeared in). The acting is good, as usual, especially by Jeanne Bal and H.M. Wynant, whom you reliably hate in every appearance (his character, not the actor). But the story itself is another of the "explain it all in the last five minutes" variety that makes you wonder if they also WROTE it in five minutes.

Still, at least they didn't go for one of their novelty shots. The characters, even though burdened by forced plot machinations, fit right in.

Money is being embezzled at a company. A head secretary to the CEO has total knowledge of the operations. She has an interest in a young man who does not share her beliefs. She is a tyrant and strikes fear into several of the people in the loop. A disreputable electrician is a specialist in wiretapping and he pays a huge price for helping with a fraud. Not a bad story.

There isn't much question here that Jeanne Bal owns this episode. She is absolutely magnificent in her potrayal of the evil and tyrannic secretary Vera Wynne. Despite her relatively short screen time, she makes the most of every second. The rest of this entry is more-or-less fluff. The plot is too confusing, the rest of the cast is adequate, but it slips downhill after Bal's exit. Unfortunately, the writers must have thought the more complex the issues, the more interesting the stories would be -- but as the cliche goes, less is more. The confession in the end is the low point. Watch it for Jeanne Bal -- she makes the rest worthwhile...

I don't get some of the reviewers' comments and ratings. It seems as though they're expecting academy award plots and performances. When I watch these episodes, my rating starts at "5" because it's Perry Mason and I so enjoy the main actors and their chemistry with one another, and get to see classic autos and great character actors that remind me of other shows that aired at the time and later. The rest of the rating is based on two things: can I determine the murderer before he/she is revealed, and can I figure out how Perry figured it out? Both are tough sometimes.

In this episode, the plot was terrific, albeit a bit glossed over at times, which is sometimes necessary in a 51-minute show, and the killer wasn't revealed until the last few minutes, and was a bit of a curveball. I like that. One reviewer complained that the end was rushed, but again, a 51-minute show doesn't allow for drawn-out confessions. One thing I don't like, because it's unrealistic, is when the killer confesses from the gallery. I don't care for that, it's better when it's done on the stand under cross. There seem to be a lot of gallery confessions this season, even one off-screen after a gallery examination. I wonder if the court reporter records gallery dialogue. Anyway, I also liked this episode for the Mayberry mayor and the sexy hot psycho.