samgslp

The second half of Season 5 has some real gems and "The Case of the Mystified Miner" is certainly one of them. This episode is based on the Gardner novel "The Case of the Spurious Spinster." The only misleading thing about that title is the implication that there is only one spinster.

"Mystified Miner" centers on Susan Fisher, a secretary for the Corning Company - owned by Amelia Corning. She works directly for Mr. Campbell, whose job is not particularly well described. Nonetheless, Campbell's son runs into the office on a Saturday and hands a shoe box to Susan (he says it's treasure that he needs to hide from the pirates, how cute). She discovers that it's filled with genuine treasure indeed - $200 thousand dollars! Before she can notify Mr Campbell, Mrs. Corning calls and tells Susan she's just arrived from South America and to pick her up at the airport right away. This sets off a chain of events that cause Susan Fisher to look awfully bad. Fisher (played by Kathie Browne, who was in 4 episodes of Perry Mason and 3 episodes of Ironside) does a good job playing the trusting but naive good girl. Every time she does something stupid, it's only a little annoying to watch.

The basic idea is that somebody is embezzling from the company, and the murder that takes place is undoubtedly tied into the embezzlement. Simple enough, but the relationships between the characters are unclear which can make the story rather confusing. On the other hand, the episode has excellent pace. From the moment the kid runs into the office with his "treasure," something interesting is always happening and it isn't until the very end that it actually makes sense. Like a lot of Perry Mason epilogues, there's a lot of explaining to do.

Della mentions her age to a mechanic (I can't tell if it's supposed to be a joke or not) and Tragg has a funny scene in Mason's office. There's also a clever tactic employed by Mason to tamper with evidence in a circuitous manner, which winds up being completely irrelevant. Overall, there are a lot of good reasons to watch this one.

If you are prone to motion sickness, take some Dramamine before watching The Case of the Glittering Goldfish, because you are in for some very abrupt and constant camera motion - in particular, some rather intense close-ups. But before the dramatic direction goes into full effect, we are shown a monumental innovation: the cure for gill fever! Tom Wyatt has spent the better part of his recent years perfecting the formula. What he doesn't know is that, in order to fund the experiments, his employer (Gage Clarke as Frederick Rollins) has sold the fish store to a man named Huxley.

Huxley's purchase made him sole owner of Wyatt's cure for gill fever, because it was done in Huxley's store with Huxley's lab equipment. As you can imagine, both Wyatt and Rollins are pretty cheesed with Huxley and they do the intelligent thing by consulting Perry Mason, who promises to look over the contract and find a loophole that will restore ownership of the fish medicine to Wyatt and Rollins. Unfortunately, Wyatt's blood is found all over the scene of the crime when Huxley's corpse is found- he's been poisoned with morphine. Wyatt is arrested and the search for the killer begins, a search complicated by the fact that everybody hated Huxley. Including Huxley's wife.

Cecil Kellaway plays Huxley's drunken scientist (Darrell Metcalf), assigned to break down the formula for the gill fever cure. Kellaway is hilarious as the drunken genius. One scene has Kellaway and Mason trading fish metaphors during a discussion of the murder, and even the stone-faced William Hopper can be seen trying to stop himself from laughing.

The aforementioned direction is a bit jarring and not to my taste, but it adds to the general feel of campy late-50s noir. All in all, this is not up there with the best of the Perry Mason episodes. It's corny, complicated, and predictable if you're an avid Mason fan. But Kellaway's performance is every bit as contagious as gill fever, and for that, it's a fun hour of television.