TCOT Duplicate Daughter. It's on this morning.
There are way too many characters. There are too many important, unseen characters, including the murder victim.
This is one where I couldn't tell the players, even if I had a scorecard.
This is GREAT question. I don't recall being bothered by Duplicate Daughter. Confusing cases tend to result from over-written scripts (with too much exposition and too many characters). Unfortunately, many "Perry Mason" episodes fit this description. Ominous Outcast comes to mind. Shoplifter's Shoe. Sweet Jesus--SIMPLE SIMON (probably the most over-written script in the series' history). Reckless Rockhound. Feather Cloak. Place Called Midnight (despite that episode having the arguably most heartrending female protagonist in nine years).
Lots of confusing cases.
My vote goes to "Illicit Illusion". I had to watch that one twice to figure what I saw in the first place, and I'm a member of Mensa.
shareAgreed, in spades. I write summaries and criticism of all "Perry Mason" episodes, and "Illicit Illusion" has the dubious distinction of requiring the most godawfully long synopsis. Excruciating.
shareI loved your reviews even when I didn't entirely agree with them. A thousand curses on this site for deleting board postings more than a few months old.
shareOne of my "votes" (there are others) goes to the "Drifting Dropout". Over the course of a few years when it would come up on the "Hallmark Channel" I would watch it and STILL had a few questions...so I started checking out Perry Mason DVD's at the library so I could really try and "get" it. Too many commercials and time cut - but I think this one was also on the "funny" side at times. A lot of humour and great acting -BUT who was Natalie Norwick? Never saw her in anything else - but she was a "Hoot" - funny!
shareI loved your reviews even when I didn't entirely agree with them. A thousand curses on this site for deleting board postings more than a few months old.
...ALL OF THEM!! (I still watch, though...for the smoking:)
shareMy wife and I were watching an S-9 disk last night and she commented on how PM must have had a tobacco sponsor. I said if you watch closely, there's not nearly as much smoking in S7-9 ('64 to '66) as there is in the first 3 seasons. Perhap's Tragg's COPD and Burger's cancer slowed it down? (Plus the AG report in '65, IIRC.) I can't recall the exact year that tobacco advertising was banned from TV ('70?) but I do remember the Marlboro man and lots of cig advertising prior to that.
shareI believe tobacco ads were banned in 1971.
shareClaims have been made that Perry Mason had a tobacco sponsor at some time…but while cigarette packs are shown, the brand names are either illegible or fictitious. Perry has a pack on his desk in TCOT Restless Redhead which has something written on it, one word, and a longer one at that, but you cannot make out one single letter. In TCOT Violent Vest, when Perry makes Paul dump everything, really everything he carries on himself on the table, one of the items is a pack of cigarettes. You get a good view of it, I froze it, and the pack has MARLEY written on it, in all caps, and underneath is a very simple drawing of a horse. Definitely not Marlboro, which, I think, wasn't a popular brand at that time.
No "Call for Philip Morrays" on that show.
I also noticed that the cigarette formats on the show vary a bit. In TCOT Restless Redhead, Perry's cigarettes clearly have cork-tip filters, but in later episodes, Perry and Paul smoke all-white filtered cigarettes. In one episode, a sarcastic Tragg offers a cigarette with a cork-tip filter to a suspect, though. When Paul Picerni appears on the show for the first time, he smokes queen-sized cigarettes, i.e. longer than the king-sized cigarettes that are now considered standard…from a hard pack. This is the only appearance of a hard pack on the show that I remember. Burger always smoked non-filtered cigarettes.
You may cross-examine.
I said he had tobacco sponsors tongue in cheek because of the huge number of smokers in the earlier years especially. Did Della smoke? I can't remember ever seeing her doing so. But it seems like almost every adult character smoked.
I found this on a Google search:
Along the way, the show picked up more and more sponsors, such as Libby-Owens-Ford and Bristol-Myers. Soon the program became so popular that advertisers were drooling to get a piece of the action. (One story goes that a group of nuns--favorites of Raymond Burr--were asked to pray that the show get sponsored in its second year. Eventually so many advertisers signed up, a mutual friend called the convent and asked the nuns: "Don't you think you've overdone it?") The multiple sponsorship of the show was great good fortune for the producers and cast. Besides the financial rewards, there wasn't one single major sponsor butting in with almost always useless "suggestions," something that single-sponsor shows had to live with. This is not to say the sponsors had no influence. For instance, in the 1958-59 season, the show had a cigarette sponsor, which caused Raymond Burr to observe: "All of a sudden, the scripts are loaded with smoking."
I certainly haven't seen all the Mason episodes, but so far I would rate "Fan-Dancer's Horse" as a strong candidate for the most confusing episode. Among other things: two Lois Fentons, very abbreviated scenes in the courtroom, a truncated ending, and all sorts of goings on in the middle of the night in a hotel room.
Update: I'd rate the Caretaker's Cat a strong honorable mention. But my current choice may well be The Howling Dog, which has, as in many cases, a truncated ending with lots of plot twists and turns explained rather hurriedly in the quintessential, witness chair confession.
I still believe "Illicit Illusion" is the most confusing episode. But, after having had plenty of time to think it over, I would now choose "Perjured Parrot" as a strong second.
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