Dark Highways

Spotting a trend is always asking for trouble. You think you see where the culture is going, or where it’s coming from, and then it darts into a different alley and leaves you in blood and tears.

However, the last few years seem to show that the creatives who can get mystery stories up on the big screen are telling stories about detectives working outside the law.

One of the most satisfying moments in the first episode of Poker Face — the Ryan Johnson mystery of the week show starring Natasha Lyonne as semi-superpowered Columbo — is when she reminds the villain that she is not a cop.

Meanwhile, much of the entire first season of Perry Mason had him acting as a private detective working for a defense attorney. Comic book fans will recognize this trope as Perry Mason Year One.

Supposedly detective fiction works like this: when the country is in a good mood and its institutions are trusted the popular detectives on tv, in the movies, and in books are cops. When the country’s cynicism is high, the government is not to be trusted, and the heroes (sorta) are private dicks like these two counterculture icons from the 1970s: Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes (Chinatown) and Elliot Gould playing Philip Marlowe as half a hippie in The Long Goodbye.

Charlie Cale is a fugitive, both from the law and from a criminal organization in the first season of Poker Face. The show doesn’t have a strong agenda though. Its mystery-of-the-week format allows it to go everywhere and anywhere required by that week’s story. The first season did give Cale a pal in an FBI agent who rises through the ranks thanks to his partnership with her and he manages to both befriend and help her without, essentially, deputizing her.

That she’s not a cop is one of the most vital parts of the show. It both forces the writers to invent new situations and people for Cale to encounter and it forces them to come to different methods of ‘justice’ for Cale to enforce on the murderers.

Please never forget that when they wanted to make Batman safe for children they made him a duly deputized law enforcement officer who worked for Chief Gordan in a — I’m gonna call it singular — partnership.

Cale’s friendliness with everyone is a key selling point of the show. Perry Mason, on the other hand, is a burned out and cynical World War 1 veteran who has nearly bottomed out by the time the show begins.

The show’s main villain? It’s the Los Angeles Police Department of the 1930s. Perry Mason also eschews mystery of the week in favor of one season long story.

Poker Face creator Ryna Johnson said when he tried to sell the show as a mystery of the week he got blank stares from most of the television (streaming?) executives he spoke with.

It’s amazing that an industry built almost entirely on telling one story in a 30- or 60-minute chunks now can’t even conceive of such a thing. Reality shows really will rot your brain I guess.

Anyway, Perry Mason has come back for a second season and it’s a solid slab of detective/lawyer/crime fiction. If the central mystery of the first season (the murder of a baby) was too much for you I can confirm that the show manages to rise above its shaky start.

Season Two has some connections to season one and it’s worth it to watch all of it, but if you start fresh in the second season I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

If nothing else it’s consistently one of the best looking shows on television. The second best? It’s Poker Face.