Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've been watching Perry Mason the last couple of nights on TV.  The commercials are all about adult diapers, drugs and bathtubs you can step into, so they must figure the demographic is 80plus.  We mute the sound and read to avoid an unpleasant preview of attractions to come when we are enfeebled and incapacitated next year.  Perry is soothing, because in the space of thirty minutes the guilty are found out and punished, and the innocent vindicated.  Raymond Burr has a benign half smile that says he's going to get you in the most tasteful way possible.  When I watch, I always think of his most iconic role as the murderer in "Rear Window".  His bulk is reassuring here, but terrifying in the movie.  He and Della Street are strictly on the up and up.  Today there would be entanglements galore.  The mysteries are streamlined yet full of surprises, and my husband and I rarely get it right.  The motivations are the usual:  greed, lust, jealousy, anger, fear.  But in this artificial world, there is black and white, and in court, justice is serviced.  It might as well be Superman, this fantasy legal world, but it's a relaxing escape from true life.