Serious Business: Murder, He Did

The first murderer put away by Jessica Fletcher was “Preston Giles,” who ran the publishing house that printed Ms. Fletcher’s first book. Played by actor Arthur Hill, the character was the only “murderer” who would return to the show and then get subsequently murdered.

Serious Business: TV Cliche Week- “You’re always proven to be 100% right- but not this time!”

This Cliche is typically used on one hour crime shows that center around a private detective helping the police department, but it has also been used on medical dramas.

The lead character, often depicted as being eccentric, is always doubted by everyone despite always being right. In House, Gregory House was a miserable crank who took on the most complicated cases. While he is almost always right in the end, he is surrounded by colleagues and assistants who doubt him at every turn. In the end, he is always shown to be right about the patient of the week’s disease, yet the show reboots the next week, with the same doubters questioning his diagnoses until he is again proven to be correct.

Serious Business: Perry Mason’s Inside Joke

The classic courtroom drama Perry Mason inspired generations of people to become lawyers and was the very first one hour drama filmed specifically for television. The show’s guest stars, most of whom were unknown at the time of their appearance on the show, would become a Who’s Who of Hollywood’s biggest names. From 1957 until 1966 the show saw many changes in the television landscape. One such change would inspire Perry Mason’s final words on the show’s last episode.

In the 1950’s, most television programming was seen as being disposable. After all, who would want to watch something they’d already seen? In the early years of television, most programming was never saved for posterity. If a show was lucky, maybe a kinescope was made as an afterthought. For the most part, however, much of television’s early shows were lost to the ages. Even though Perry Mason episodes were always filmed on filmstock and carefully stored away, CBS didn’t really think that the episodes had much of a future. That would change in the 1960’s, as television producers saw that there was big profit to be made by airing reruns. That’s why Perry Mason’s last spoken line was this:

“Now, it seems to me the place to start is at the beginning.”

The writers knew that when Perry Mason reruns would air on television, the first episode would run after the last one in the syndication cycle. Viewers would hear Perry talk about starting at the beginning then see the first episode the next day. A clever injoke that many people might not have even noticed.

Serious Business: Perry Mason and the Skipper

Before he was the skipper on Gilligan’s Island, Alan Hale, Jr. played two different characters on Perry Mason. His first character is actually the real killer who is badgered into confessing by Perry Mason himself.

In his second role on Perry Mason, Alan is the victim. A rare set of Perry Mason roles in which an actor played both a killer and a victim.

Serious Business

Serious Business: NCIS and the Back Door Pilot

In 2002, the CBS television show Jag was long in the tooth. The show, which CBS resurrected in the mid-1990’s after NBC had canceled it, was looking old fashioned compared to the science based procedurals that surrounded it on the schedule. CBS asked Jag creator Donald Bellisario to meld Jag with CSI. He decided to accommodate this request with the 2003 back door pilot Ice Queen.

A back door pilot is a way to slyly use an existing television show to launch a new one. Typically this involves introducing the new characters and premise on an existing show in a way that will encourage viewers to want to watch the new potential program. The back door pilot for NCIS, however did none of these things. In fact, it almost seemed as though Mr. Bellisario wanted the show to fail.

Instead of introducing the new characters in a positive light, Bellisario chose to have them accuse a beloved Jag character of murder. Loyal viewers of Jag had seen Harmon Rabb fight for truth and justice for seven seasons. They knew nothing about any of these NCIS characters who come off as complete jerks throughout the entire episode. In fact, the NCIS team acts like the sort of investigators who would be the arrogant outsiders who get everything wrong on a regular crime show and get schooled by the familiar investigators. Looking back, it’s amazing that the show got picked up, much less become the monster hit that would eclipse Jag.

The show tries to mitigate this somewhat by having Harmon Rabb forgive NCIS because they were only doing their jobs, but the Jag viewers would still leave the episode with a negative view of NCIS. CBS would still pickup the show with minor changes. In the end, NCIS would fully eclipse its older sibling.

“Serious Business”: Crazy Dallas Merchandise

Serious Business: “Quincy”

Serious Business: Who Shot J.R.?

It was the question that permeated pop culture during the summer of 1980- “Who Shot J.R.?” Referring to the shooting of J.R. Ewing, the villainous lead of the blockbuster drama Dallas, the storyline that would captivate the world was actually created to deal with a contract dispute with the character’s portrayer- Larry Hagman.

Originally hired as a supporting player, Larry’s character had turned into the centerpiece of the show and Hagman wanted his salary to reflect his importance to the show. CBS initially balked at his demands and ordered a cliffhanger in which JR Ewing would be shot, his survival in doubt. As the negotiations continued, the important question wasn’t really who shot the character, but whether he would survive. CBS eventually came to terms with Hagman while the storyline became a phenomenon. A writer’s strike further delayed the reveal of the assassin until November 23, 1980, when a then record audience of over 80 million viewers turned in to find out that Kristin Shepard, J.R’s mistress, had shot him. It almost seemed anti-climactic.

“Serious Business”: Perry’s Final Case

“Serious Business” here at Temporary Layoffs will focus on the world of TV dramas very other Tuesday!

Perry Mason had been a reliable part of the CBS schedule for nine seasons and still brought in large audiences. The network, however, had felt that the show had run its course and decided to pull the plug in 1966. The final episode was designed to be a bigger than usual sendoff, featuring a special cast that included famed American Bandstand host Dick Clark and even the show’s creator Earle Stanley Gardner.

The show cleverly ended with Perry speaking these final words: 

“Now it seems to me the place to start is at 

the beginning.”

Since the show’s producers knew that Perry Mason would live forever in syndication, the next episode that future viewers would see would be the show’s first episode. A fitting end to a legendary show.