User Reviews

**SPOILER** If you have a problem with booze, get this episode and find out how easy it can be to manipulate someone with alcohol. It would be real easy to just turn this episode over to a higher power, but I'm not gonna do it. There is NO sponsor worth his salt who would EVER meet an other alcoholic in a bar; especially one with less than five years in the program. UNLESS he had another friend of Bill's with him to help get the drunk out and sobered up. Nobody ever counts on anyone else making sense when they're soused. In this case, Peter Breck's character clearly had a bad sponsor. Also, when someone has the strong urge to drink, you call your sponsor BEFORE you take the first drink, not after. A smart, good sponsor is always gonna try to get another friend of Bill's to go along with him/her to pour the drunk back out of the upholstered sewer he/she is hiding from themself in.

The rest of the show is about greed, dishonesty, and the usual creepy rats that all gather to feast on the bones of Perry's client. Richard Erdman plays the chief rat in this episode, and as usual, his acting is impeccable; matter of fact, so is almost everyone's. Breck looks a little too good for someone just out of recovery from a hard fall, but, that's Hollywood. Della, of course, is beautiful. Perry uncoils the snakes and gets the bad guy; its a good episode. It just needed a disclaimer from someone that "This isn't the way it's done in A.A.".

Just about three years earlier from the release of this episode, Gayle Russell, a very beautiful actress drank herself to death alone in her apartment. She was a tragic, classic case of what booze, and no friends will do. Her Hollywood history is in IMDb, and Wikipedia. You can get her movies from Amazon and see what a fine actress she was, and how young it was that her life was wrecked and ended by this self-destructive addiction. End of preaching. Sorry if I bored anyone.

***SPOILERS*** It's when William Sherwood, Peter Beck, saw this Hot blond leaving the Benson Hotel bar that he realized that his wife Ruth, Janet Day, who supposedly was killed in an airplane crash outside Chicago a few years ago was in fact alive. Desperately trying to find out where she is Sherwood gives the woman's boyfriend Vince Kabet, Michael Ansara, his card and tells him to get her to get in touch with him as soon as possible. As it later turned out that the woman who calls herself Lynne Bowman is in fact Sillwell's "late" wife Ruth who actually wasn't on the plane that crashed with all on-board. She switched identities or tickets with this mysterious woman Edie Ross who died in her place. She also switched luggage with her that made all the difference to everyone now trying to get in touch with her.

In Edie's luggage was $200,000.00 in a Chicago bank robbery that took place just before the fatal plane took off! And it's Edie's accomplice who actually robbed the bank that's now on Ruth tail in finding when she hide the money! And as it turned out it's him who would end up murdering Ruth and having her estranged husband William Sherwood take the rap for it!

Perry Mason,Raymond Burr, taking up Sherwood's case has his work cut out in that Ruth's supposedly boyfriend Vnce Kabet wasn't exactly interested in her but the stolen money she supposedly had hidden. And being a bumbling Keystone Kop like investigator for a bonding company that he works for his messed up in all directions! Even to the point in having Ruth's killer almost get away with his crime Scot-free.

***SPOILERS*** It's Perry who soon realized that there was a connection to Ruth's murder and to the stolen $200,000.00. Ruth was found strangled in her car outside the "Red Reef" Bar & Grill where she was supposed to meet her husband William Sherwood and tell him what was really going on and how she got involved with it. But instead he ended up getting drunk and later being indited for her murder! Shocking final scene as Perry uncovers in court the person who really murdered Ruth Sherwood as he suddenly makes a brake for the exits and is subdued and apprehended by the court officers just as he got to the door.

The guy had been the person who robbed the Chicago bank and entrusted the late Edie Ross, his accomplice, with the $200,000.00 in stolen cash. It's when Ruth mistakenly got hold of the stolen money that he made a serious effort to befriend her grieving husband and through him get his hands on the money. In the end the only thing that he got his hands on were a pair of hand cuffs!

Antic Angel from 1964 is a keeper in the sense of a high rating resembling all episodes back on track of the Los Angeles based locations with the starring cast members beyond Perry, i.e. Della, Paul and Burger. By 1964, Ray Collins must have been too weak to appear due to the emphysema that ultimately took his life in 1965; CBS kept his name on the opening credits despite his absence. Guest stars can make the viewing either disdainful or pleasurable; the case is the latter by far.

Greed and corruption are centered with deception from the start of the story when a man thinks he saw his deceased wife get into a cab and later saw her dead in a car, opening the car's door only to hold her slumping body with blood dripping on his person. The deception was purposeful, not the murder. Money had been taken and the former wife was part of a scam with an accomplice. There are sufficient suspects Perry has to weed through before he receives the confession right in the courtroom for Burger to be startled.

The defendant does not make it necessarily easy for Perry throughout not remembering the facts because he was either intoxicated or just did not know all the details due to being distanced from the other suspects. There is the sister who despises the defendant, the investigator who originally planted the ex-wife seeking the whereabouts of purloined funds, other less details about the remaining suspects have to be extricated in court by Perry. Overall, the episode had all the intrigue from the start watching the characters play their parts in the deception. The wife never died on the plane she was to be purported on because she had switched seats with another woman before boarding her flight, then assuming the identity of another due to the agreement she had with her accomplice. Watch the entire show to see who pops up in court to admit to the murder and the defining epilogue in Mason's office.

This is the old business where two people swap tickets at an airport and one of them is killed. This brings the alcoholic jerk husband into the fray when he sees the person he thinks is dead. Well things do get complicated, don't they. I had no respect for the drunk but he didn't kill anyone.