Even Perry Mason's Producers Never Know Where The Twists And Turns Will Lead
If you watched the entirety of "Perry Mason" season 2 and couldn't quite figure out where it was all going in the moment, well, you're not the only one.
The HBO noir series flipped the script on us in surprising fashion this time around. In the first season, Matthew Rhys' eponymous detective-turned-lawyer had no choice but to get to the bottom of the gruesome killing of Emily Dodson's (Gayle Rankin) infant son in an attempt to clear her name ... though, in the end, he only managed to secure a Pyrrhic victory of a hung jury. In season 2, we learn relatively quickly that the two unfortunate clients who Perry has to defend this time around, the Gallardo brothers accused of murdering Los Angeles civil servant Brooks McCutcheon (Tommy Dewey) and subjected to a virulently racist public trial, actually were responsible for pulling the trigger. But the overarching conflict of the story required figuring out just how far the grander conspiracy extended into the upper echelon of LA society that was truly responsible.
In order to arrive at that conclusion, however, new showrunners Jack Amiel and Michael Begler and their writing team had to essentially discover the story as they wrote it, as opposed to approaching season 2 with a fully-formed plan right from the start. That's no different than countless shows that have gone on to become influential classics, like "Breaking Bad" or "Lost," but it goes to show just how intrinsic the writing process is to any production — something worth keeping in mind during this ongoing writers' strike and the misguided decision from some studios to forge ahead with the filming process anyway without writers on-set.
'The short answer is no, we don't know'
Who could've seen it coming that Perry would end up arrested and behind bars by the concluding moments of season 2, or that Brooks McCutcheon's death would ultimately come at the hands of wealthy socialite Camilla Nygaard (Hope Davis)? As it turns out, even the showrunner and producer himself couldn't have anticipated such a plot development right from the start. This information comes courtesy of Collider, which interviewed Michael Begler as season 2 was coming to a close. When asked whether he had completely envisioned all the "twists and turns" of the season leading up to the finale, he responded:
"The short answer is no, we don't know. We have a sense of where we want it to land and who we believe is the big bad. But in the course of writing, it's going to change because you're going to see things, things are gonna occur to you, and threads you pull aren't going to yield what you want them to. It's an ongoing process. That's just part of the production and the collaborative spirit that this took on."
This certainly lines up with how several established writers describe their own process with long-form storytelling, in which they more or less write themselves out of corners as they go. While there's certainly something to be said for attacking a series or movie with every detail ironed out ahead of time, the reality is that this rarely happens in practice the way fans tend to imagine. Writing is a fluid and ever-changing undertaking, which only further emphasizes just how important writers are to every level of storytelling — from conception to filming to post-production.
Both seasons of "Perry Mason" are currently available to stream on HBO Max.