Everything comes together on a thrilling new episode of Perry Mason

I started out a Perry Mason skeptic, found myself getting involved about halfway through the first season, and now I can’t wait for the finale.

Let me take you on a brief tour of my Perry Mason journey: when I first heard HBO was making this show, I was skeptical. A revival of a detective show most popular with people who watched the Raymond Burr series that debuted in the ’50s? Doesn’t HBO have anything more modern to show us? My skepticism didn’t really abate when I watched the first couple episodes. They were good enough, sure, but the new version of Perry Mason himself, played by The Americans star Matthew Rhys, seemed like a retread of antihero tropes that have become well-worn: Perry is tortured, he drinks too much, he sucks at relationships, but he gets the job done. Eh, call me when you have something new.

And yet I kept watching, because the 1930s setting was beautifully rendered, the performances were excellent, and the mystery surrounding the death of Emily Dodson’s (Gayle Rankin) infant son was intriguing. And how did the Radiant Assembly of God, Emily’s church, play into this? Then, around the time Perry’s boss E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) died, I realized I wanted to see what was going to happen next. After that, the show steered away from the nihilistic hole it seemed to be diving into and actually got kind of optimistic, with Perry passing the bar exam and taking E.B.’s place as Emily’s defense attorney. There were more characters to root for here than I thought, including E.B.’s savvy legal secretary Della Street (Juliet Rylance), his contact in the police department Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), and finally Perry himself.

With “Chapter 7,” I’ve become a full-on convert. This episode was terrific, and I cannot wait to see how it all wraps up with “Chapter 8.”

A lot of the fun of “Chapter 7” comes from the show knocking down a lot of the dominoes it’s been setting up for weeks now, as Perry, Della, Paul and Perry’s investigator Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) piece together what really (probably) happened with little Charlie Dodson. It ends up that the Radiant Assembly of God, which has been helping fund Emily’s defense thanks to the do-gooding instincts of its poster-woman Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany), kidnapped the baby, and then attempted to ransom him back to his rich grandfather (Robert Patrick) for $100,000.

Or at least, that’s what Perry has to prove. And he can, if only he can get corrupt LAPD detective Joe Ennis (Andrew Howard), who’s been bumping off everyone who might be able to squeal about the plot, on the stand. “I can break him,” Perry says.

The original Perry Mason show was famous for scenes where people admit to the crime in open court, so persuasive are Perry’s lawyering abilities. Does this happen in real life? No. Could someone like Perry go from being a private investigator to a lawyer this quickly? Probably not. Are Perry and LA district attorney Maynard Barnes (the ever-reliable Stephen Root) following the rules of civil procedure, especially when it comes to sharing evidence? I’m gonna venture no. The courtroom scenes in this show aren’t particularly realistic, but man are they exciting, and I fully want to see Joe Ennis confess to everything on the stand, realism be damned.

In a way, Perry Mason is a fantasy show — I wanna underline again how no one confesses to a crime on the stand in real life — but that’s okay, because I’m a fantasy fan and this is a fantasy site. And there’s something so affirming and fun about the idea of a justice system where justice is actually done, where the scrappy underdog goes the distance, roots out the real corruption, and saves the life of their innocent client. There’s the promise of hope and goodness at the end of the tunnel for Perry Mason, and I guess it’s something I need right now, cause the finale can’t get here fast enough.

At the same time, the light is only beautiful because it shines through the darkness, and there’s a lot of darkness on Perry Mason. Ennis is becoming a monster of a villain, and “Chapter 7” finally had the much-hyped “resurrection” scene, where Sister Alice promised to bring Charlie Dodson back from the dead.

It doesn’t go as planned. To start, when she opens the coffin, there’s nothing inside (*gasp*), the assembled crowd gets very violent very fast, and we end with Alice’s mother Birdy McKeegan (Lili Taylor), who’s been grooming her daughter for her role as a figurehead since childhood, taking an unexpected turn and “finding” a newborn baby in the middle of the street.

Obviously, Birdy arranged for the baby to be there because she knew that the resurrection trick wasn’t going to work, showing us how far she’ll go to hold onto her position at the head of one of the most powerful churches in the country, even if it shatters Alice’s faith in her own miraculous abilities. “There’s nothing else out there, above, below and in between,” she tells Alice, chillingly. “It’s just you and me.”

I’ve wondered for a while exactly what the point of Alice’s story was on this show, but like a lot else, it all came together in this episode. Paul Drake, who’s been on the sidelines for much of the season, also starts to work more closely with Perry after Pete quits as his investigator. This is a show gelling at just the right time.

The one thing I didn’t like about the episode was when Perry and Paul go to a Chinese brothel to get information about Charlie’s death. It does plug a crucial hole in the plot: it ends up that Charlie died in the first place because, after he was kidnapped, Ennis brought in one of the prostitutes to nurse him, but because she was addicted to heroin, her milk killed the baby instead. But I didn’t like how little character the prostitutes were given despite their huge role in the plot. It looked like the show was glancing at their plight before quickly moving on to other things.

Then again, the show was just renewed for a second season, so who knows where it could go? Until then, I’ll eagerly anticipate “Chapter Eight.”

Episode Grade: A-

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