The Case of the Deadly Toy

Mala Powers is the Perry Mason client in this episode. She's the wife of Dennis Patrick, a spoiled rich man who is cruel and vicious, definitely one of the nastier victims in a Perry Mason story. They have a young son David Brady who is the object of a custody battle between grandfather Paul Cavanaugh and Powers and a some other interested parties. That is the key to the whole problem.

Powers maybe charged, but the major alternative is that young Brady killed his own father with a gun that his babysitter Kathryn Card rather unbelievably allowed him to play with and keep under his pillow. A solution from left field was found for this story.

I don't think any reader of this review will buy allowing a young adolescent to play with a loaded gun and keep under his pillow.

Interesting episode but has a major weakness....why didn't the guy who was seriously assaulted sue the guy who put him in the hospital???? He was held and punched with brass knuckles that gave him a broken jaw in a restaurant with many witnesses for no reason other than being with the guy's former lover. Makes no sense. Even back then such a law suit would be an easy win for bucko bucks or just to get even with the ahole. He could also have sued the guy who held him while he was assaulted in front of many witnesses. Still enjoyed the episode but it was a bit spoiled by this nonsensical part of the script. Therefore, the somewhat lower score than usual for this great series.

This is a dark episode of Perry Mason. It is lost in confused storytelling. The fault lies with the direction. No wonder people got muddled with who is who.

The darkness is a little boy might have shot dead his own father. All because he was allowed to play with real guns.

Now he is a pawn in a custody battle, because his wealthy grandfather wants him. Never mind the psychological trauma he is going through.

Granddad Horace Selkirk knows his son Martin was no good. The viewer saw in the opening scenes that Martin and his goons beat up a man in a restaurant. He was the present boyfriend of his former girlfriend, Claire Allison. No one at the restaurant stepped in to help the boyfriend.

Perry Mason gets involved when Claire gets charged for Martin Selkirk's murder. The ex wife of Martin Lorraine Jennings has married again but the son might have been taken to Mexico.

It all gets resolved but I was left unsatisfied. It was up the creek rather than up Pompeii. There is a clue there!

There is another review posted here with a lot of erroneous information, and I want to correct it.

First, Perry's client, Claire Alison, was NOT the estranged wife of the victim. She was his former girlfriend, who had dumped him earlier.

Second, the little boy David is NOT Claire's son. He is the son of the victim and the victim's former wife, Loraine Jenkins.

I do not believe that this was one of the stronger episodes. The plot was too convoluted, left a lot of things unexplained, and did not contain anything memorable. And the solution seems to come out of thin air and does not provide any real reason for the murder happening when and how it did.

Still, it is Perry Mason, and Perry Mason on an off night is still better than about 90% of everything else that has aired on TV on a good night.

There are quite a lot of problems in this episode. First, all the child actors are horrible. You can see them looking off camera, not paying attention, and generally being awful. Plenty of child actors can actually act and focus on what's happening in the scene. Maybe these kids were too young.

The major problem in the episode are several plot holes that are never filled in. The parents not knowing that their son wasn't in Mexico is beyond ridiculous. They had to have known the grandfather wanted him and they certainly knew he had just supposedly shot his father. Your son has just gone through a traumatic experience and you send him away with some strange woman and then don't even track him to make sure he got there? Couldn't one of them taken him themselves or at least traveled with him to ensure he got there? The script gave us some lame story about how the grandfather was going to send a wire saying he had arrived safely. It didn't fit with what we know about David's mother and stepfather.

The other glaring plot hole was when the Beverly Hillbillies lady claims everyone was telling David the shooting was all a bad dream. She hoped some day he would believe it. Unless his father was planning on coming back from the dead, why would any of them think this was even possible? I realize he's a young kid, but lying to him about his father isn't going to help him get through it. Particularly since he'll never see him again. A very lame plot point that made little sense.

This episode moves the kid around like a chess piece. "Come on David. Come with me David." The kid seemed totally unconcerned that he was with a strange lady instead of his mother. Considering he had witnessed a lot of emotional scenes with his father, it seems unrealistic that a 5-yr old wouldn't be crying for his mother. He seems willing to go along with anyone who wants him so long as they watch him wiggle his ears.

Considering a murder case generally takes months to prepare, how was it that Dick Benedict's jaw was still wired shut all that time? The actor kept rubbing his jaw while testifying as though he was still in pain. Very unlikely for an injury that had to have been several months old by that point.

The way that restaurant punching scene happened was so ham handed and poorly directed. First of all, Selkirk was sitting within clear view of Claire. How could she not have seen him? He had to knock her boyfriend out before she noticed him. And even that scene was ridiculous. Claire's boyfriend was tripped and then allowed another man to hold him while a second man punched him. No man would allow himself to be manhandled like that. I realize he fell on the floor, but he hadn' t hit his head so there was no reason he should have stood still to have his jaw broken. Again, very ham handed. That's a directing issue.