Perry Mason Season 2 Episode 7
After he’s subpoenaed, Holcomb offers Perry an olive branch. Meanwhile, Della continues to foster her relationships with Camilla and Anita, giving her the confidence to question her first witness – and push the verdict in the Gallardos’ favor.
Season 2, Episode 7
I can’t remember the last time I shouted at the screen as much as I did during this episode of “Perry Mason.” I’m not kidding: I was hooting and hollering for what seemed like half the duration of this week’s installment. It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped in the end, of course. But in the meantime? What a rush!
The rush came primarily from the episode’s centerpiece scene, in which Della Street takes over the cross-examination of a prosecution witness from Perry midstream. The witness in question is Councilman Taylor, the brother of the murder victim Brooks McCutcheon’s incapacitated mistress Noreen. Della knows where Perry’s line of questioning is headed: directly to the fact that Brooks enjoyed strangling his lovers with his monogrammed belt.
Della presents her proposed takeover as a way to better handle the “sensitive nature” of the subject matter. But by the end of her questioning, by which time she has wrapped the belt around her own neck in full view of the jurors, it is apparent her real motives were much less high-minded. She didn’t just want to explain to the jury that Brooks got off on choking beautiful women — she wanted to show them what a beautiful woman being strangled looks like. The resulting display is a slam dunk for the defense.
And it all stems from another surprising step into the spotlight. Rather than continue to battle against Perry and his team, our crooked old friend Detective Holcomb decides to volunteer for that team instead. (To be fair, it’s either that or be forced to testify about his role in Brooks’s shady dealings and lose his job and pension.)
Holcomb, as we’ve seen, can’t figure out how Brooks’s grift operated, so he turns to Perry, whose deductive mind he recognizes as superior to his own, for help. In return, he hands over Noreen’s medical file from the San Haven rest home and brings Perry to a dumping ground on the shore where McCutcheon produce can be found discarded and soaked with oil. The import of the latter is still unclear, but the info contained in the former very nearly wins Perry the case.
Perry Mason
Season Number: 2
Episode Number: 7
Episode Title:
Air Date: Apr, 2023
Language: English
Subtitle Language: English