Did E.B. (John Lithgow) die in the new Perry Mason episode?

Ever since HBO’s new Perry Mason miniseries debuted last month, a question has hung over it. The character of Perry Mason is best remembered today for the 1957 TV series starring Raymond Burr, where he was a criminal defense attorney who was somehow always representing people who didn’t do what they were accused of doing. When the show was briefly rebooted in the ’70s, Perry Mason was a defense attorney. When Raymond Burr returned to the role for a string of TV movies, Perry Mason was a defense attorney. In the original 1930s detective novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason was a defense attorney. But in HBO’s show, he’s a…private detective working for a defense attorney?

What gives? We won’t now for sure until the miniseries wraps up, but from the start I’ve wondered if the show would end with Perry — now played by The Americans star Matthew Rhys — becoming an attorney himself, or at least taking the bar exam or getting admitted to law school or something.

Or course, if that were the case, the show would have to explain what happens to the lawyer he works for, Elias Birchard “E.B.” Jonathan, and tonight, it may have done just that.

SPOILERS beyond this point.

We’ve seen E.B. looking at a loss for a few episodes now. He’s doing his best to represent Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin), a woman falsely accused of killing her own infant child. But clearly, the stress is getting to him. We’ve had shots of him looking forlornly into his mirror as he gets dressed in the morning. His wealthy client dropped him after public opinion started to turn against Emily, and even when he has a break, Los Angeles district attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) stomps on it by threatening to get him disbarred for misappropriating some of his clients’ funds years back.

The newest episode, “Chapter 4,” finds him absentmindedly remembering simpler times when he kept an office near a blacksmith and a saddlery, feeling very much like a relic of older times. At the end of the episode, he goes into his…oven room? Is that how ovens worked in the 30s? Whatever. He goes into a room and pipes in a whole lot of gas, sits down, and prepares to end it all.

Something tells me that E.B. doesn’t die quite yet. John Lithgow is listed as a main cast member and it’d be a shame to lose him so soon, especially since he’s giving such a solid performance. It’s been rough watching E.B. get continually flummoxed by opponents who keep outflanking him, but Lithgow is selling it. His watery-eyed, haunted looks throughout the last few episodes have told us all we need to know about where his mind is at.

Plus, I have no idea how the gang could hope to save Emily if this really is the end for E.B.; Della Street (Juliet Rylance) clearly has a sharp mind, but she’s not a lawyer, and it doesn’t seem like she could become one in enough time to keep Emily from the electric chair.

Then again, E.B. dying this early would certainly be unexpected, and maybe the show wants to throw its characters a curveball. So far it’s been a fairly standard crime procedural. This would shake things up.

That’s not to suggest that it hasn’t been good. Standard or not, Perry Mason grows more compelling by the episode. The performances are all top-notch, and I like how the show is filling out the characters in ways that a series that debuted in the ’50s never could. For example, revealing that Della is in a relationship with a woman was a great way to deepen her as a character; no wonder she feels so much sympathy for Emily, a woman unfairly demonized by the public.

We’ll find out the truth of how this all shakes out when “Chapter 5” airs on HBO next Sunday.

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