Perry Mason goes from cynical noir to optimistic fable in “Chapter Five”

At first, I thought HBO’s Perry Mason was going to be a gritty crime where everyone was pretty miserable at the end. Now, things are looking much brighter:

Last week, the characters on HBO’s Perry Mason show hit a new low point, as attorney E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow), despairing over his inability to pay his debts, decided to end it all. “Chapter Four” wrapped up before we saw if he succeeded, but “Chapter Five” leaves no doubt: E.B. committed suicide.It seemed like the natural next step for a show that has been bleak since the start. The character of Perry Mason has been around since the 1930s, when the HBO show is set, but never like this. As played by Matthew Rhys, he’s a despondent drunk, a cynic who’s stagnating in a world he doesn’t want to be a part of. Sure, he seems like a decent guy underneath it all —  after all, he’s committed to helping Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin), a woman falsely accused of her own infant’s murder — but what does it matter if he’s not going to act on it? As E.B.’s secretary Della tells him in this episode, “I find it offensive that you choose to mask your intelligence and decency with cynicism and slothfulness.”

But cynicism is one of the marks of film noir, and since Perry Mason seemed noir to its bones, I expected our descent into the dark depths of humanity to continue. But then came “Chapter Five,” and I wonder if I’ve been getting this show all wrong: it’s starting to look like it’s a fable where optimism trumps cynicism, where integrity wins over corruption, where good triumphs over evil.

Or everything goes to hell in the next three episodes, I don’t know, but despite the fact that E.B. committed suicide, things are looking pretty rosy by the end of “Chapter Five.” In the last few minutes of the episode, Perry goes on a cynical rant about how the little guy can’t win. “If you walk out that door and think for one second that you’re entering into a nation of laws, you are a complete f***ing idiot,” he rails. But Della, always the moral center of this show, hears the passion in his voice and sees an opportunity. She and Perry hatch a plan to make him a lawyer, and just a couple weeks later, he passes the Bar Exam and we have our champion.

It was an unexpected swing towards the light, and as fun as it is, I can’t be the only one who thinks it happened really fast. And I have questions. Is two weeks really enough time to prep for the Bar Exam, even if you cheat? Where did Della find Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk), an assistant defense attorney willing to tutor Mason in he hopes that he’ll win the Emily Dodson case and make the current D.A., Burger’s boss, look like a fool? It feels like a lot of that could have been fleshed out.

At the same time, I’m cheered by the idea that this is going to be a happy story in the end, one where Mason will prove Emily’s innocence and justice will be served. Over the past couple of decades, we’ve had a lot of great TV shows about men who do horrible things to maintain their lifestyles (The Sopranos), or who start with good intentions but are brought low by their greed and ambition (Breaking Bad), or who are caught in unjust systems (The Wire). A show where people band together to do good could be incredibly refreshing.

Although it may also be unrealistic. Recent events have shown a light on how unjust many of our systems — including the justice system — still are, but shows that depict a version of the system where it works the way it’s supposed to can give us a reprieve, and maybe even inspire future good. Did you know that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was inspired to get into the law by watching the original Perry Mason show as a child? That’s not a bad feather in its cap.

As for the rest of the storylines, we’re still following beat cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), although he’s kind of operating outside of the Perry-Della-Emily drama so I don’t know what to make of his story just yet. Sister Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) is another interesting X-factor. If this were another show, I’d say that her do-gooding instincts were probably a front for something cynical and malicious — certainly she’s part of an organization that uses people’s faith to extract money from them — but after the optimistic upswing, I wonder if she’s exactly what she appears to be.

“There’s what’s legal and there’s what’s right.” Go get ’em.

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