Why I Love Perry Mason

The Perry Mason TV series

This will sound extremely silly, I know, but I love to watch an old detective show called Perry Mason. My great grandparents watched this show—it was one of the first full hour programs they could get on the first TV set they owned. When my parents began to court they would drive out to the coastal farm where together the entire family: Great Grandpa Richard, Great Grandma Lula, Grandpa Hal and Grandma Grace and my mother and father would watch Perry Mason. I imagine the women put the meal together while the men rushed through the evening chores: feeding the animals and such as the program came on at around 7:00 p.m.

I love the show for its utter predictability: sometime between minutes three and seven somebody thoroughly deserving winds up murdered in a completely tidy and bloodless way. The most likely suspect is, of course, accused and Perry Mason, a dashing defense lawyer, is cajoled into taking the case (around minute 17). By minute 34 the drama moves to the courtroom with jump-cuts to clue findings by Perry’s intrepid side-kick, Paul Drake, who is always one step ahead of the police. By minute 54 strafing cross-fire questioning reveals the true murderer, who confesses amidst tears or curses, as the case may be and justice rolls down like a river, predictably.

I study this show as historical documentation of social ideology, customs, prejudice, fashion. The show is a snapshot of southern California in the 1960s, or at least the scriptwriters idealized presentation of California.

I study it as a means of understanding my grandparents who loved it, the tremulous trumpets blaring out the intro, the quick and sure justice suggestive of simpler times in which all problems can be summed in a closing argument and a jury returns the correct answer. And I know I study the program as a way to know the great grandparents I really never knew.

clothes iron

Even today my mom and I still watch it, though we do so separately, she in her house and I in my mine. Now the show airs every day at noon. We both plan our days around it. She works while she watches, ironing Dad’s shirts. Here’s where the guilt comes in: I’m not as industrious as she is. I wish I were. I’ll admit, I do hear whispers Puritan work ethic whispering against my tympanic membranes: you should be working. But I’ve found that if I adjust the volume on the TV loud enough, I CAN drown those noises out.