Perry Mason

It warms my heart to hear that Sonia Sotomayor was such a fan of Perry Mason while growing up. (And indeed, it's very hard to imagine Calista Flockhart or James Spader inspiring a young person to go into law, as Raymond Burr did for Sotomayor.) I was a huge fan myself, especially during grad school, so much so that I was often late for my noon class in trying to catch the last minutes of episodes that started on WTBS at 11:05 a.m. There was just something about the tone and mood of the show - the relentless pursuit of justice for the wrongly accused, the unapologetic sanctimony, the dark suits and Thunderbirds and swanky cocktail lounges, the endless befuddlement of authority as embodied by District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Even the utter implausibility of the latter factor - Burger losing every case to Mason, who always extracted a courtroom confession from an unwitting witness - never dampened my ardor for the show. Glad to see I'm not alone.