‘Perry Mason’ Episode 1 Recap: Like a Doll’s Eyes
[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Perry Mason, Season 1, Episode 1, "Chapter 1"]
There's a good chance you found your way here because HBO's prequel series Perry Mason just debuted on the premium channel, and you have questions. Rest assured that we do, too. But as far as the premiere episode "Chapter 1" is concerned, we can at least provide some answers. So whether you need a rundown of the major characters, the actors who play them, and their part to play in the story so far, or if you just want to know what is up with that baby, you're in the right place.
Perry Mason, the new prequel series from Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones, takes viewers back to early 1930s Los Angeles. Based on characters created by author Erle Stanley Gardner, the series follows the origins of American fiction's most legendary criminal defense lawyer. But when the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason's relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and, just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.
Image via HBO
When we meet Mason (Matthew Rhys), he's not a polished attorney, but rather a low-rent private investigator who is living check-to-check, haunted by his WWI experiences in France and suffering the effects of a broken marriage. His only friend in the world appears to be Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) who is hired by Mason as an extra set of eyes on his various investigations. But that's not where this story starts.
Perry Mason kicks off with a high-stakes ransom case: The Dodsons — Matthew (Nate Corddry) and Emily (Gayle Rankin) — find themselves the victims of kidnappers who have taken their one-year-old baby Charlie hostage. Despite Matthew being a grocery store owner of modest means, with Emily as a stay-at-home mother, they're able to put together the $100,000 ransom in exchange for Charlie's safe return. Except that when they rush to the streetcar where baby Charlie has been left, they find him quite dead… with his eyes stitched open to appear, from a distance, as if he's alive. And that's where Perry Mason truly starts.
We get a great shot of LA icon Ptomaine Tommy's restaurant, likely putting us in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood (where you can pay 40 cents for 2 coffees and toast in 1931). Mason meets up with Pete, who's busy reading a pulpy serial in the newspaper. They're trailing a rather large movie star, Chubby Carmichael (Bobby Gutierrez), on the orders of a movie studio boss. Chubby's only transgression appears to be popping into a theater to watch one of his own movies, but Mason and Strickland, tailing him in Mason's family dairy truck, soon track him to a house filled with ill repute.
Image via HBO
Turns out Chubby is into getting completely naked, covering a woman in food, and eating it off of her. This is HBO, after all. (Or perhaps he reserves this particular treatment for his co-star and up-and-coming Hollywood starlet, billed simply as "Red.") What kind of food? As Mason puts it later: "Pumpkin pie, I understand." Mason snaps a few covert pictures but it's not long before a naked, long-donged Chubby gets wise and chases after him down the street. Later, Mason tries to extort the studio boss for more money than they agreed upon since now he also has lewd pictures of their up-and-coming actress, too. However, the man who hired him will have to run the request up the chain to his much more powerful employer.
We soon get to pay a visit to Mason's family home, an old dairy farm that's been split in two by an airplane runway. He's forced to recite a password (in Spanish) to the gate guard who blocks his way, a recurring gag between the two. Once he's home, the increasingly disheveled Mason is visited by Elias Birchard "E.B." Jonathan (John Lithgow). E.B. is a struggling attorney and a semi-regular employer of Mason who offers the opportunity of a lifetime to the Private Eye, but it remains to be seen if he'll take it (and if he'll wear a nice suit and a tie without an egg stain on it).
The next day, Mason heads into town for a court appointment and also to check in on E.B.'s opportunity, after a brief stopover at the city morgue. Mason chats with Virgil Sheets (Jefferson Mays), a morgue attendant who is envious of the life of a private detective and, as such, regularly gives Mason access to bodies (and their personal effects, like a new tie). Stowed in Virgil's cold storage shelves is a closeted cross-dressing man who drowned while wearing women's underwear, and, of course, dead baby Charlie.
Image via HBO
Decked out in a new tie, Mason takes the stand in a court case, in which an attorney brings up his "blue ticket" discharge from the military and his prior charges of assault in other cases; this is about all we get of Mason in a courtroom this episode. Soon after, he joins Della Street (Juliet Rylance), E.B. Jonathan's creative and driven legal secretary; together they head out to meet with E.B. and the man who hired him, Mr. Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick). A major player in a variety of Southern California industries, he is a member of the same Pentecostal church as the Dodson family and hires E.B. Jonathan and Mason to run a parallel investigation to the LAPD's own look into the kidnapping and murder case.
After their meeting with Baggerly, the trio heads to the Dodsons where the LAPD detectives are interrogating Matthew. Mason leaves the representation of their clients to E.B. and Della while he explores the rest of the house, taking covert pictures, and gathering intel from Emily Dodson. Back at the offices of E.B. Jonathan & Associates, the trio breaks down what they know about the case so far. But Mason has more important plans on his mind.
We next meet Lupe Gibbs (Veronica Falcón), a pilot and hard-drinking owner of a speakeasy who engages in a marathon sex session with Mason in his brother's bed in his family home. They enjoy some Mezcal together. Lupe makes him an offer to buy the property, and it's not the first time she's done so. Mason declines, and she declines to stay the night.
The next day, Mason roams the city and continues his investigation, talking to local cops and people on the street, taking pictures all the while. He learns that the Dodsons waited in a nearby hotel room on the orders of the kidnappers, so he breaks into it to find evidence, only to find Detective Ennis (Andrew Howard) and Detective Holcomb (Eric Lange) there instead. They rough him up a little bit, but part amicably enough, each sharing a little information with the other. Mason's investigation continues back at the morgue as he pays Virgil (and the local corrupt cop in the facility) for access to Charlie's body; he keeps a piece of the thread that was used to sew the baby's eyes shut as evidence.
Image via HBO
It's now New Year's Eve, and Mason and Strickland are attending a Hollywood party in part so that Mason can get his payout from the studio boss. We learn here that he's thinking about the holiday that he could have been spending with his young son Theodore "Teddy", who currently lives with his mother after her separation from Mason. While the party rolls on, Mason hands over his photos to the studio boss, who admits to once being a sort of bandit. However, instead of the promised $600, Mason only gets $1, along with a burning gun barrel to his chest for his trouble… Strickland is perhaps even more upset than Mason at this turn of events, as his partner clearly overplayed his hand and underplayed his toughness, robbing them both of a significant payday.
Meanwhile, at an undisclosed meet-up room, a trio of criminals wait for their own promised payout. Among them is the tall, fedora-wearing man with a mustache whose likeness has been displayed on the front page of all local newspapers as a serial child killer. Before long, Detective Ennis shows up with the briefcase full of the ransom money. However, the briefcase is empty, which Ennis uses to distract the trio long enough to shoot all of them. But while Ennis is brutally crushing the throat of the fedora-wearing man with his boot, another injured criminal escapes to the roof. Ennis follows him, only to watch the man attempt to jump to the next building over, miss the ledge, and fall to his death on the steps far below…
Image via HBO
Back at Mason's home, he's feeling sorry for himself, and Lupe isn't into it, so she leaves him to wallow in his misery. He drunkenly destroys the toy fire truck he bought for Teddy before sinking to the floor to look over the evidence gathered in order to solve the case of baby Charlie's kidnapping and murder.
Drunk Perry Mason: "There's a Black Angel out there … with long fingers…"
Roll credits.
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