Perry Mason (TV series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Awesome Music
  • The CSI Effect: Real-life defense attorneys started to notice a "Perry Mason Syndrome" with juries becoming hesitant to acquit a defendant without a confession from someone else on the stand (the standard is, of course, reasonable doubt). Some prosecutors similarly noticed a hesitance to convict without a confession on the stand.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Our heroes.
  • Invincible Hero: Perry Mason. Legend has it that the TV writers wanted to do at least one episode where Perry lost, but Erle Stanley Gardner shot them down. Rescuing a client from the electric chair at the last possible moment was as close as it got.
    • Perry actually lost 3 cases in the Raymond Burr series:
      • Episode 1.38, "The Case of the Terrified Typist" - the one most people who think "Perry only lost once" think of: the big case of the episode ends in Burger's favor. Too bad they were trying an imposter, invalidating the entire trial.
      • Episode 6.28, "The Case of the Witless Witness" - this is the easiest to forget, because it's not the main case of the episode, but one which he loses at the beginning. And this was an appellate court so Mason lost the original case too.
      • Episode 7.04, "The Case of the Deadly Verdict" - another where the episode starts with Perry losing, this time because his client lied to him. He spends the rest of the episode setting things right.
  • Lawful Good: The main characters.
  • Moral Dissonance: Sometimes occurred when a novel was adapted into an episode without accounting for the moral differences between the television characters and their literary counterparts.
  • Only the Creator Does It Right: Some fans apply this to any revival done after Erle Stanley Gardner died in 1970.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Perry clearly oversteps the boundaries of ethical behavior on occasion, but he's neither remorseful nor held accountable. When his opponents bring it up they're portrayed as being petty or malicious.
  • The Scrappy: David Gideon, an eager young law student brought in to assist Perry. He doesn't last.
  • To Be Lawful or Good: Perry sometimes comes up against such a choice, though he barely hesitates (if at all) before choosing "good."
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