Sound at the start of gentle and giant / MON 6-27-22 / Animal relative an astonished person may claim to be / PC shortcut for copy / Pageant whose hosts have included Bob Barker, Dick Clark and Steve Harvey

Constructor: Drew Schmenner

Relative difficulty: Slightly harder than the usual Monday (still Easy, relax)

THEME: SETTING SUN (31D: What glows in the west at the day's end ... or a hint to this puzzle's sequence of shaded [i.e. circled] squares)— letter string "SUN" appears in long Downs, near the top of the grid in the EAST and then descending with each subsequent themer, if you read the themers backward (i.e. right to left, or EAST to west).

Theme answers:

• SUNNI ISLAM (11D: Predominant religion of Indonesia and Pakistan)
• MISS UNIVERSE (9D: Pageant whose hosts have included Bob Barker, Dick Clark and Steve Harvey)
• GPS UNIT (26D: Dashboard-mounted navigator)
• MONKEY'S UNCLE (21D: Animal "relative" an astonished person may claim to be)
• SETTING SUN 

Word of the Day: "Perry MASON" (9A: "Perry ___" (classic legal drama)) —

Perry Mason is an American legal drama series originally broadcast on CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner. Many episodes are based on stories written by Gardner.

Perry Mason was Hollywood's first weekly one-hour series filmed for television, and remains one of the longest-running and most successful legal-themed television series. During its first season, it received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Dramatic Series, and it became one of the five most popular shows on television. Burr received two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and Barbara Hale received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Seriesfor her portrayal of Mason's confidential secretary Della Street. Perry Mason and Burr were honored as Favorite Series and Favorite Male Performer in the first two TV GuideAward readers' polls. In 1960, the series received the first Silver Gavel Award presented for television drama by the American Bar Association. (wikipedia)

This was very much not for me, despite a couple of really lovely longer answers (SUNNI ISLAM, MONKEY'S UNCLE). I mentally checked out very quickly, after having a boatload of tired crosswordesey short stuff thrown at me right off the bat. I finished the NW (OLDE DDAY ALPO make it stop!) and by the time I hit SOFT G over NEAP I was like "oh I guess it's like this, then." Tired. I felt tired. Fast. Now, things definitely got better, or at least more interesting, from there, but the theme type is ancient (I swear I've seen this exact theme before), and despite the whole "accuracy" of the EAST to west movement of the SETTING SUN, the whole thing felt bassackwards. Yeah, the direction is OK, but somehow the visual here doesn't convey a *feeling* of accuracy. It doesn't exactly nail the look of a sunset, which means that what it does, mostly, is seem like a puzzle that's been built backwards. And while a few of the themers are sweet, most of the fill is not. And CTRLC made me want to shut everything down. You've got mainly tired fill, and the one bit of "new" short fill ends up being "new" in this wholly unlikeable way. Just a bleecccch of consonants. I don't use PCs, so the "shortcut" didn't register with me at all. CTRL-ALT-DELETE, that is a coherent thing. CTRL + random letter = arbitrary and weird. Plus, doesn't the "C" stand for "copy" ... which is in the clue ... I thought you weren't supposed to do that. Anyway, I fear people will think keyboard shortcuts are Great ideas for "new" short fill, and I'd really like to post- and preemptively register my disagreement with this premise. Also, MISS UNIVERSE, that really killed the vibe. "Which dated objectifying sexist bullshit pageant that no longer has any cultural relevance are we dealing with today!?" How are these shows still real? I would've thought their association with a certain sexual assailant / former president would've put them all safely in the Past Tense, but here we are. A real vibe-killer. I tried "MISS AMERICA" in there but it didn't fit. I do like that the puzzle is *trying* to do something original, though. It's more ambitious than most Mondays, and I'll take that over your typical 3/4-baked chuckle/groanfest. 

Dull. https://t.co/55VeFPC9tm

— TediousSunsets (@TediousSunsets) June 21, 2022

"ONEI" was awkward (33A: "That's ___ hadn't heard!"), as was the clue on OUTS (69A: On the ___ (unfriendly)). I guess "we're on the OUTS" = "we're unfriendly (toward one another)"!?!?! but it's not a great substitution. I think of the phrase being longer, i.e. "I'm on the outs with her" or something like that. As usual, I was unsure of ILSA v. ELSA. I was somehow able to teach myself AXLE v. AXEL long ago, but haven't been able to do the same with ILSA v. ELSA, probably because lots of different people (and movie animals) have those names. ELSA is the movie lion and ILSA is the movie love interest, but ILSA just sounds* more lion-y to my ears, so the distinction never takes. I wanted to RUB the lotion ON, not IN (27A: Apply, as lotion). And then the entryway to the SE corner (ELVIS) ended up being unclued, or, rather, ended up being the second part of a cross-reference (so essentially unclued: 52D: See 64-Across) (64A: "___ Las Vegas" (1964 film starring 52-Down) (VIVA)). All these little things, plus CTRLC, made the puzzle move somewhat slower than it usually does. What else? Oh, if MISS UNIVERSE didn't bum you out, then maybe not being able to pay your bills on time will (5D: Charge for an overdue payment = LATE FEE). Somehow it's worse when it's clued in relation to not paying your bills on time than it would be if it were just, like, library fines (which my local library actually did away with during the pandemic and, I assume, in perpetuity, god bless them).