The “Perry Mason” season 2 court case revolves around two brothers, Mateo (Peter Mendoza) and Rafael (Fabrizio Guido) Gallardo, who are arrested and charged with murdering Brooks McCutcheon. But as Mason and all of us recorded early on, there’s a lot more to this business tycoon’s death than meets the eye. A lot of this has to do with his father, Lydell, who throughout the season seems to be hiding a deeply sinister side and potentially having something to do with paying the Gallardos to kill his own son.
In episodes 6 and 7, the full extent of Lydell’s illegal oil smuggling scheme is revealed, along with how Brooks’ own illicit activities indirectly threatened that scheme. For a time, it seems that Lydell may have sent his own flesh and blood to pay for his murder. But by the end of episode 7, it’s heavily suggested that the real culprit is Hope Davis’ Camilla Nygaard, a former business associate of Lydell’s who ordered the hit on Brooks before she could screw up the oil smuggling operation.
It’s a narrative full of twists and turns, made even more effective by flashback sequences that show the difficult relationship between Brooks and his father. /Film’s Vanessa Armstrong spoke with Paul Raci, who explained how many of those scenes were actually added midway through the season’s shooting. He explained:
“The first scene where you see me, in episode 1, when I’m talking to my son, when I call him to the spa, was not filmed or written until about halfway through shooting, when the showrunners realized that They couldn’t get enough between Lydell and Brooks, their son. So they actually wrote a few more scenes for us in the middle of filming.”
