“In Pursuit of Carol Thorne”/”The Dexter Crisis”

“In Pursuit of Carol Thorne”/”The Dexter Crisis”

Click the titles to hear their respective answering machine gags.

Why a doubleheader this time around? The smaller part of the answer is that I missed a week and have an anal compulsive need to stay current--when it comes to blog posts anyway. I apologize for my absence, but I’m sure you reading several managed to find some sort of foul, depraved way to amuse yourselves while I was up to my nipples in distractions. The second reason is that “In Pursuit of Carol Thorne” and “The Dexter Crisis” fit together thematically, so the law of review economy kicks in.

Almost all detective shows rely for their effects on a kind of fluidity of identity. It must be so, because if identities in detective shows were fixed, all the characters’ motivations would be as clear as the blue summer sky, and there’d be no mystery for their viewers to solve. The Rockford Files has so far presented us with a plentitude of characters who wear false faces, but there are usually at least a few characters, Becker, Beth Davenport, to help us stay grounded. The two episodes we’re examining today eschew that comfort, spinning us, and Rockford, like tops for eight acts. Never have so many employed so many angles, to steal so much, from so few.

“In Pursuit of Carol Thorne” starts us off with the titular character leaving a women’s prison. She catches a bus. Rockford’s on it. He’s tailing her, as is another investigator. Thanks to some tricky moves involving Rocky, some pay phones, and a flat tire, Rockford manages to isolate Thorne so that he can engage her without distractions. He pretends to be a bookmaker; she pretends to be a runaway bride in search of a quickie Reno divorce. Rockford teaches her how to bet on horses, and a friendship of two false identities develops.

Soon, we find out that Rockford’s working for a sweet old couple who wanted Rockford to track her down so that she’ll lead them to their missing son, or at least, that’s who Rockford thinks they are. Once Rockford finishes reporting to this old couple, they reveal themselves to be two con artists. What they want from Carol Thorne isn’t hard to guess: easily folding little green rectangles. Soon Rockford is caught with Carol, the thieves, and the trusting dimwit who has the money they all heisted from Camp Pendleton.

Rockford manages to sort out the whole mess, and leave most of the thieves high and dry. I say most, because when Rockford returns home, Carol demands her cut of the finder’s fee Rockford and the dimwit got for the money. Rockford refuses to pay, until Carol points out that he still owes her for some bets he supposedly placed when he was posing as a bookmaker. She ends up with over half his take.

“In Pursuit of Carol Thorne” is a perfect follow-up to the much darker and more intense “Find Me if You Can”. While there are moments of tension--several guns are aimed--the tone of the proceedings is that of a lightly comic caper, heavy on wordplay and strategizing, light on the life and limb stuff. What’s most fun is watching Rockford pinball among all the tricksters, struggling mightily to catch up with them, must less to get ahead. The improvising he has to do, the tap dancing just to stay in the game, plays superbly here.

“The Dexter Crisis” starts out more conventionally: rich stuffed-shirt (Tim O’Connor) wants Rockford to find the young woman he’s been diddling. When Rockford gets started though, he takes a bit of a fall down the rabbit hole, and not just because he ends up once again in that land of hustlers and desperate shitheads: Nevada. He meets the young woman’s roommate (a pre-Lou Grant Linda Kelsey), and she seems like an idealistic law student. But she turns out to be something more mercenary. She’s helping her roommate rip off a quarter million dollars from the stuffed shirt--a sum of money the stuffed shirt had never mentioned missing. It turns out that the stuffed shirt’s been following Rockford the whole time, using him as a bird dog so that he could steal his money back. Rockford figures this out and negotiates a finder’s fee for the money’s return. He then recovers the cash, and the stuffed shirt refuses to pay.

In outline, “The Dexter Crisis” is much like “In Pursuit of Carol Thorne”. Both of Rockford’s clients are older people who say they’re after a missing person but are instead after the money that person took from them. Both segments are set in Nevada. Both have Rockford posing as a professional in the gaming world and taking time to show the ostensibly naive young woman the finer points of gambling. And in both no one seems to be around to show Rockford a straight angle. He’s on his own, with only his wits to help him resolve the crisis and work out who’s real and who isn’t.

This episode is chock full of brilliant touches. Because I have the benefit of knowing where Linda Kelsey’s career would take her, I have to say that, once her character turned mercenary, I found it delicious to find her playing against a type that she hadn’t even established yet. Tim O’Connor plays his usual tightly wound upper class prig, which contrasts well with Garner’s Rockford--watch how O’Connor’s character defends his office against Rockford’s cigarette ash, forcing his secretary to carry out Rockford’s leavings in her bare hands and barring him from using a valuable saucer as an ash tray.

Equally fun is the office of Rockford’s private detective rival for this episode, the fantastically named Kermit Higbee. Higbee, who looks like a chainsaw sculpture in shades, shares his office with a middle-aged madame who runs a cut-rate escort service. When Linda Kelsey’s character steps into that office and overhears the madame’s conversation with a john, the look on her face is priceless. Higbee himself serves mainly as the episode’s red herring. He seems dangerous, but in the end, he’s just following the stuffed-shirt’s girlfriend around so that he can report her movements to the stuffed-shirt’s wife. Rockford punches him out at one point, and in doing so learns what hitting a chainsaw sculpture can do to the bones in one’s hand.

Restoring all names and identities to their rightful owners is central to the resolution of a detective story. It’s part of what gives the genre its wish fulfillment quality. At this, Jim Rockford is very good. Another part of wish-fulfillment, of course, centers on getting paid. At that, in these episodes, he’s once again very bad.