{"id":175805,"date":"2020-11-23T19:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T00:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/11\/23\/this-was-the-weirdest-bit-of-tv-ive-seen-in-a-long-time\/"},"modified":"2020-11-23T19:07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T00:07:00","slug":"this-was-the-weirdest-bit-of-tv-ive-seen-in-a-long-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/11\/23\/this-was-the-weirdest-bit-of-tv-ive-seen-in-a-long-time\/","title":{"rendered":"This Was the Weirdest Bit of TV I’ve Seen in a Long Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watch Perry Mason<\/i> reruns. The real show, not the Freddie Silverman semi-regular movies that resembled Matlock<\/i> more than the the original TV noir show that ran for more 9 seasons.<\/p>\n

In the original series there was only color episode, The Case of the Twice-Told Twist<\/a>, which was the only episode of the original series to be filmed in color.<\/p>\n

It was intended to be a dry run for a 10th<\/sup> season, which was to go full color, but it was canceled at the end of season 9.<\/p>\n

It was just \u2026\u2026\u2026 wrong.<\/p>\n

First, Perry Mason<\/i> is clearly a product of black and white TV, but second, the script just \u2026\u2026\u2026 off somehow.<\/p>\n

In going for color, they decided for a more frenetic direction, with William Hopper as Paul Drake chasing a potential witness down a Mexican street, and repeated split second car stripping that looked like they had come out of a heist movie.<\/p>\n

The full color version makes the episode more real, and some of the conventions of the show, smoking, drinking, and ethnic stereotyping, become far more jarring, as opposed to a relic of a bygone era. <\/p>\n

Finally, the episode was replete with references to Dickens, specifically Oliver Twist<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If you are a Perry Mason<\/i> fan, I’m not sure if I would recommend it unless you want to watch it stoned.<\/p>\n

I think that it would be good to watch stoned.<\/p>\n

All in all, it’s the second weirdest bit of TV I’ve seen this year, after the Presidential debates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watch Perry Mason reruns. The real show, not the Freddie Silverman semi-regular movies that resembled Matlock more than the the original TV noir show that ran for more 9 seasons. In the original series there was only color episode, The Case of the Twice-Told Twist, which was the only episode of the original series …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[415,389,407,614,421],"class_list":["post-175805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-entertainment","tag-history","tag-justice","tag-television","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}