Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the Devious Delinquent (1963) User Reviews

Just Plain Dumb Delinquent

[jersey-16 · 6/10 · 9 February 2013]

Tim Balfour has everything a young man could want. He lives in his grandfather's mansion, (a grandfather who still feels guilty for driving his son/Tim's father away years ago,) has nice clothes, a great car, a housekeeper who dotes after him. What more could he want? Much more apparently as he gets involved with a botched robbery this opens him up to extortion and/or blackmail. Rather than show some gumption, he comes up with creative lies to encourage the others to help him out. His continued excuses, reliance on the others' guilt, and just plain dumb actions make him one of the least sympathetic 'defendants' in the series.

When he is accused of murder one almost hopes he is guilty or that Perry Mason will lose a case for a change as this young man is not worth saving and should end up in jail, if only to protect viewers from ever having to list to him again. This episode is more uncomfortable than it is entertaining. The one redeeming part is the excellent performance by Virginia Christine as housekeeper Edith Summers.

Carefully arranged jackpot

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 21 February 2014]

Good thing for Johnny Washbrook that grandfather Otto Kruger has Perry Mason on retainer at his business. Other wise the jackpot that was carefully arranged for Washbrook to get himself into would have wound him up in jail for a murder he didn't commit.

Washbrook lives with his grandfather, his parents having been killed in Italy. His father had been long alienated from Kruger and Washbrook is also not on good terms with uncle and presumed heir David Lewis. The only one who shows him any kindness is housekeeper Virginia Christine.

Washbrook is something of a delinquent hanging around with a pair of cheap young hoodlums in David Winters and David Clegg. Some incidents have mushroomed into a possible hit and run, but later it's Lewis found shot in the back with a weapon from Kruger's gun collection that was left at the scene. Of course with Washbrook's fingerprints all over the weapon.

This Mason story had an interesting plot. I will say that the murderer did not have just framing Washbrook. Indeed this is a plot that started years ago and has as long range goals as Richard III had.

Rebel without a clue

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 17 March 2024]

Tim Balfour has returned to America from Italy after his parents died in an auto accident there. His grandfather (Otto Kruger) is bedridden from the aftermath of a heart attack. His uncle doesn't like or trust young Tim because of his slacker ways and his equally slacker friends.

Up to the present, the sum total of Tim's offences consists of him having a couple of moving violations and being chronically absentee from his skate job at the family business. But one night his delinquent buddies decide to rob a store and Tim, although he protests, winds up being the driver of the getaway car. He is told by one of his two associates that he'll need to get money so that "Chick" and his friend can hide out or else they'll say he was the ringleader in the robbery. The price rises to two thousand dollars. Tim can't go to a relative, so he asks the Balfour housekeeper for the money, lies about the severity of the trouble he is in, and even lets her steal the money from his grandfather for him. But Tim and Chick get into an argument when he goes to give the money to Chick, and Tim shoots at Chick and drives away leaving behind his gun. Later, Chick is found dead, shot to death as Tim feared, but shot in the back, while Tim shot when Chick was facing him. Tim is arrested for murder and Balfour company attorney Perry Mason is on the case.

Complicating factors include Tim's grandfather wanting to give TIm a piece of his company in his will and TIm's uncle vowing he'll do anything to stop it. Also, where did that pesky accomplice of Chick's go to? He seems to disappear in thin air after he robs the store.

Lots of people seem to really hate hate hate the defendant in this case. I admit it's hard to feel sorry for him when he is so sorry for himself, and that Johnny Washbrook's performance as Tim Balfour is hardly subtle, but then it's not hammy either. I looked up Mr. Washbrook's acting credits, and it looks like he was primarily a child actor who aged out of such parts by age 20, the year after this episode.

Also note that Billy Benedict is playing a drunk old man who may or may not have been run over by Tim. Benedict has acting credits that go back to the 1930s and was in the Monogram Bowery Boys films. He is only 46 when he made this, but looks much older.

Once a Teenager

[darbski · 9/10 · 29 December 2017]

***SPOILERS*** Yeah. I gotta admit, it was painful to watch, I also thought to myself that Tim should get the gas - just on general principles. Then, I stepped back a bit, and reviewed my own life, and guess what? There were several similarities. Mainly being a teenager who had more time and money than he should have, and little direct parental guidance. Those factors alone will almost always lead to bad friends, and bad choices. Not THIS bad, of course, but that part was just dumb luck. The amazing part is that I lived to have a life after it all. This kid had one more element thrown in for good (or bad), measure; a family enemy. The housekeeper was truly evil, and yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, but there are those who plot and scheme against others in life. I've encountered those, too. So, this story is more than a little believable to me. The only weak point is the breakdown of the killer in the end. Someone that cagey, and deceptive is usually not encumbered by a conscience, and, therefore has no guilt to play on. That's my only problem with the story. Of course, maybe the unraveling of a beautifully laid plan did it. No guilt, just loss. Not enough Della in this one, and I liked Paul's exasperation with Tim. No shortage of people who didn't like each other, and that could be explained by the same token as the Kid's problem. I'm no psychologist, but it was truly a counselor's dream date to try and figure out the crackpot dynamic left by the guilty party.

Just OK

[kfo9494 · 4/10 · 5 October 2011]

Friends of different feathers should not flock together. Well that is not actually correct but could be a quote from this episode.

This show involves a young man, named Tim, that is out with so-called friends for a good time. When his friends commit a crime Tim begins to tell lies to cover up the fact that he was present at a crime scene. And as with any lie- it comes back with grave consequence.

After one of his friends bribe him for shut-up money it begins to go terribly wrong. Enter Perry in hopes of saving this young man from a long prison sentence.

Episode is not one of the best in the series. The acting by all the main and guest actors were good. The only exception was Johnny Westbrook, that played Tim the main character, his acting was lacking, childish and unbelievable. (Spoiler Alert Ahead)

When Tim, thinking he shot and killed his friend, hears the news that his friend was actually shot in the back - says with a stunned goofy look "What kind of person you think I am?". He is a person that will shoot a friend in the chest but draws the line in shooting a friend in the back. Bad writing and poor acting.

And in one small scene there is this one drunk guy being lead across the floor of a spa (do not ask just watch). The person that played the drunk looks more like a 'wacky waving inflatable arm tube man' that a real person.

Overall this is presentable episode. No where near the top but then again not at the bottom.

Characters Seem Off

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 8 February 2022]

It's interesting how poor these episodes are when a "delinquent" is a character. First of all these guy look like they are in their thirties. The accused has done nothing to gain our sympathy. He has opportunities to get out of his situation but lets an extortionist call the tune. I thought I recognized the drunk. Speaking of delinquents--that guy was "Whitey" in many of the Bowery Boys features.

One of those defendants you wish Perry hadn't successfully defended

[Dick24 · 3/10 · 9 June 2009]

Two things about this episode made me mark it down as a "3".

First and foremost was the annoying performance of John Washbrook as the defendant Tim Balfour. How this young man was chosen to appear on the show escapes me. His whiny voice had me hoping he had really committed the murder and would be sentenced to the gas chamber. He wasn't helped by a character who was written doing and saying so many stupid things.

Secondly the way the actual murderer is revealed and that murderer's motives are beneath the usual quality of this series. If you're like me you will be left very unsatisfied with the guilty party who comes out of left field and has questionable reasons at best for his or her actions.

He doesn't know what he's saying he's crazy! Please somebody help me!

[sol1218 · 5/10 · 9 February 2013]

****SPOILERS**** Bizarre Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, episode that has young and a bit spoiled heir to the Balfour Family fortune simple minded and foolish Timothy Balford the Third, Johnny Washbrook, get himself involved in a murder that if he used his head he could have easily have avoided. That's after him stupidly trying to pay off his blackmailing "friend" Chick Montana, David Winters,to keep quite about a hit and run that he supposedly was responsible for. The entire thing, the hit & run,is ridicules from start to finish in that Thmothy never hit the person, William Billy Benedict, in the first place and even Benedict, who seems to be in a catatonic state in every scene that he's in, never accused him of it! Yet the somewhat not on the ball Timothy pays off Montana with $2,000.00 that the care-lady Edith Summer, Virgina Christine,of the Balfour Estate stole out of his grandfather Timothy Balfour Sr, Otto Kruger, bedroom! Edith loves young Timothy so much that she's willing to break the law to save his neck in risking jail for doing it.

It's when Timothy insisted to take Benidict to a local health clinic to see exactly what's wrong with him a fight broke between him and Chick with Chick ending up being shot to death by what seemed like Timothy's gun. But as it's soon found out Chick was shot in the back not chest as Timothy thought he shot him so he obviously was murdered after Timothy had left the scene. Also it was later discovered by Perry Mason that Timothy's gun only had blanks in it making it impossible for him to have killed Chick or anyone else for that matter! But Timothy will together with his lawyer Perry Mason have to tell that to the judge in him being indited for Chick Montana's murder.

***SPOILERS*** Off the wall final with Perry winning his case, outside the court room, in reviling who's behind trying to get young Timothy Balfour strapped into the San Quentin gas chamber that has to do with knocking him of of his grandpa Timothy Senior's will. But how this was to be done and who was behind it is so mind boggling that it made you wonder in the writers of this Perry Mason episode were either high on drugs or were so intent on ending it in them not caring if the ending made any sense at all!

If I'd been there I'd have shot him myself

[jsrtheta · 1/10 · 6 July 2022]

Anyone who grew up in the '50s and '60s (and watched TV, which was everyone) remembers those episodes in almost every series when the subject was juvenile delinquency. It was a hot topic for writers who obviously never spent any time with actual teenagers. Black leather jackets, switchblade knives, "go-go music" and "goofballs" figured prominently in cookie-cutter plots wherein we were taught that the kids were all right, just confused by this kooky world run by squares.

Perry Mason was not immune. This episode was one of these efforts, and easily the worst, which is no mean feat. Since this is Perry Mason, our young, mixed-up youth is not a street urchin, but the heir apparent of a dying Otto Kruger, who phones this one in from bed. And this tortured young man is more than enough reason to burn the name "Johnny Washbrook" into your memory because you never want to be subjected to this guy again.

Johnny takes but a few seconds to impress his sense of grievance and self-pity on any sentient being in the vicinity, while whining, wailing, and pouting in an astonishingly irritating howl of self-indulgence. It is a performance devoid of nuance or variation, one that will make you wish fervently that someone, anyone in this play will grab that gun off the wall and shoot this nimrod dead just to stop our agony.

Further cheapening the proceedings is the resolution of just who killed our cardboard cutout victim (who was nowhere near as obnoxious as Mr. Washbrook). I half thought they chose the killer by putting the names of all the characters in a hat and then drawing one to be "it".

I love Perry Mason, but all of our heroes in life let us down from time to time, and the same is true of shows. Maybe take a walk instead, or reacquaint yourself with your cat. Maybe a nice nap.

Stupid defendant

[barbjryan · 3/10 · 28 February 2021]

I don't think I ever cared less about a defendant than in this one. I was totally on the Uncle's side. That kid deserved everything he got and more.

As for "Timmy", I think this is what shows in the 50's to 60's thought young adults (he's out of high school, right?) sound like. That weird little kid talk.

Apparently, the ending even surprised the writer(s)

[coolplanter · 3/10 · 15 February 2021]

Usually, there is the final scene of the episode where Paul, Della, & Perry discuss the motive--and resolve all the viewers' questions, I guess there wasn't time for this. Otto Kruger is the grandfather, the ONLY character that shares a believable motivation for his grandson--but if you know this, I think you can enjoy the remainder of the characters. I might have given this episode a lower rating, but I have not viewed any with a lower rating. Difficult to follow--and no, it's not challenging--it's one where Hamilton Burger is left with the most interesting motive in the episode. When you're producing 28 episodes a season, at least one has to be filmed in "the mansion set." Blame it on MeTV editing, but it just doesn't work for me.