The Rockford Files Episode 1

Pilot

My relationship with The Rockford Files can be broken down into two distinct phases. When I was a kid in the 1970s, The Rockford Files was still airing weekly on network TV, and my family watched it regularly. I can’t say that I understood the specifics of the stories. I was, after all, only a little kid, with no knowledge of the mafia, or grifting, or the particulars of running an insurance scam or fencing stolen art. But I liked Rockford because my parents liked him, because James Garner played him, and because Rockford’s lifestyle--a cool car and a trailer on the beach--looked so damned appealing.

Years later, when the DVDs came out, I revisited the show, happy to have a chance to see the old episodes uncut, but fearful that time had done to The Rockford Files what it had already done to so many artifacts of 1970s culture. To my relief, I discovered upon watching the series twenty years later that I’d actually grown closer to Rockford. Like him, I was self-employed, constantly in hock, and dealing with a dad who loved me but found my career choices baffling. Granted, I don’t have a trailer on the Malibu beaches--you’d have to be an executive at Paramount to afford one these days--but whenever Rockford gives a fake name to dodge his creditors or begs his bank not to bounce his check, I nod my head in recognition. In the age of Bush, which we’re still in despite 11 months of Obama, a Nixon-era show that showcases economic hardship, government malfeasance, and corporate fraud seems fresh and relevant.

So how’d it begin?

The Rockford Files’s pilot, like most pilots of the era, feels both familiar and off-center. The basic elements of the show, Rockford’s trailer, his cynicism leavened by humanism, his humor, his friendships with Sergeant Becker (Joe Santos) and Angel Martin (Stuart Margolin), and his nifty moves with his tan Firebird are all there. But we have a different, crustier Rocky and a tighter than usual relationship between Rockford and his client, Sarah Butler (Lindsay Wagner).

In broad outline, the pilot unfolds like those of most Rockford episodes. An old wino shuffles under Santa Monica Pier and sits in the sand. A second later, a musclebound ape wraps a belt around the old guy’s neck and strangles him to death, all the while whispering “It’s all right, just relax, yessss” in a style that 9/10 TV psychos recommend for maximum creepiness. Sgt. Becker is ordered to drop the case in the cold file, so he steers the victim’s daughter, Sarah Butler, to Rockford in hopes that Rockford’ll find something to crack the case. Though Sarah brags that she has enough money to hire ten private investigators, Rockford runs a credit check on her and discovers, surprise, that her credit is even worse than his. Rockford is inclined to drop the case, but offers to stay on it, for an hour at least, because he feels sorry for Sarah. She sends him to meet Mrs. Elias, who, shortly after the death of the ancient Mr. Elias, mysteriously offered to finance Sarah’s brother’s medical school tuition. What this has to do with the old wino’s death isn’t clear, but Rockford poses as a medical school dean to finagle some info out Mrs. Elias. He comes up empty. Rockford then goes to Vegas, where Mr. Elias died, checks with the Vegas coroner, and finds Mr. Elias succumbed to a natural, inevitable coronary shortly after his marriage to the Mrs. There seems to be no mystery to solve, until the musclebound ape, who tries to discretely tail Rockford in a cherry-red Cadillac convertible, confronts our hero in the bathroom of a sleazy bar. Rockford, having seen him the whole time, is naturally prepared...



It’s funny. If this big palooka hadn’t been tailing Rockford in his supergiant eyecatchermobile, Rockford wouldn’t have known that he was on to something. Many of Rockford’s cases would stay cold forever if his opponents would just relax and leave him alone. Instead, when they discover he’s investigating them, they try to tail him, stop him, run him off the road, kill him, ruin him financially, or wreck his reputation in the local media, which often gives Rockford both the motivation and the information he needs to crack the case. After Rockford flattens Mr. Universe, Rockford digs through his pockets, finds out his name from his driver’s license and, and, with Sarah’s assistance, gains access to his apartment and finds a picture of the ape with Mrs. Elias. It works out, after Mr. Elias died in the hours before his wedding to the current Mrs. Elias, Mr. Universe had the brainstorm of pulling Sarah’s father off skid row, dressing him up in a suit, and having him impersonate the gradually stiffening Mr. Elias so that Mrs. Elias could inherit $10 million from his estate. The murder of Sarah’s father was meant to preserve the secret.

In this episode, and indeed throughout the first season, a major theme of The Rockford Files is that a malefactor’s drive to conceal is, ironically, what often makes it possible to expose his crimes.This pattern of concealment attempts leading to capture is a perfect exemplar of the Nixon era, when Nixon’s attempts at covering up Watergate, silencing witness, and harassing perceived enemies had the effect of drastically increasing the amount of official interest in his role in the case.

Lindsay Wagner’s Sarah is a rarity among Rockford’s clients. Most of Rockford’s clients remain at some distance from the investigation. They may lie to Rockford and, in doing so, get Rockford into trouble. But in general they remain at a remove from his daily trials. Sarah inserts herself into the investigation at the beginning and at one point serves as Rockford’s operative, seducing Mr. Universe and slipping him a mickey so that Rockford can search his apartment without getting the crap beaten out of him. (In exchange, Rockford gives her a discount on his $200/day rates.) She sticks by Rockford’s side all the way up to the final chase into the Vegas desert, and the subsequent light aircraft vs. Rockford battle at the end. The centrality of her role explains why the producers cast Lindsay Wagner. Her charisma and wit allow her to hold the screen with Garner, and she gives her character enough depth of motivation that we see her as something more than simply Rockford’s love interest/dogsbody. It’s easy to wonder, given the amount of work that went into establishing her, if Sarah was meant to develop into a recurring character on the series. She would in fact appear again in the first season, but never afterwards. (This might have had something to do with Lindsay Wagner’s appearance in a 1975 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, which apparently gave her some sort of opportunity elsewhere in television...)

One person who does not appear in the rest of the series is the actor playing Joseph Rockford, Robert Donley. His version of Rocky is noticeably crustier and more disparaging of Rockford than that of series mainstay Noah Beery, Jr. Donley’s Rocky and Rockford also engage in a strange practice that doesn’t survive into the series: they make wagers that include “welching privileges”, which apparently means that the loser gets the winner drunk to pay off the debt. It’s hard to imagine Noah Beery, Jr.’s more straight-arrow and naive Rocky having that kind of relationship with Rockford. Indeed, my dad is neither a straight-arrow nor naive, and he’s never offered to get me drunk for any reason, which makes the whole “welching privileges” dynamic just seem weird and dysfunctional to me. I had a hard time liking Donley’s Rocky because of that, and an even harder time liking him when he conspired with one of his friends to shake Rockford down.

The ending of this pilot matters because it sets the tone for the rest of the show. Rockford manages to shoot down the light aircraft containing Mr. Universe and his henchman. Afterwards he captures both of them and turns them in to authorities. How is he rewarded? A key to the city? A big novelty check? A gratis repair of his damaged Firebird? No. He’s arrested and jailed for downing a light aircraft with an unregistered handgun. Sarah promises to bail Rockford out, but remember that she’s even broker than he is. The last shot we see of Rockford shows him pulling a slot machine the Vegas cops keep by the door to their Tombs. He loses, of course. The Rockford Files was many things, but as this last scene from the pilot made clear, a wish-fulfillment fantasy it wasn’t.

It was, however, how the 1970s felt. And the 2000s too.

Next week: “The Kirkoff Case” and “The Dark and Bloody Ground”

Notes:

Angel Martin makes his first appearance in this episode. The essence of his character survives to the rest of the series, with only a couple of minor modifications: his hair lengthens, and his taste in clothes suffers. According to Garner’s interview in the DVD set, NBC didn’t want Stuart Margolin, so he’s seen only a few times in the first season. The character’s popularity led NBC to reconsider, and Garner told them he wasn’t sure Margolin would be available because he was so much in demand elsewhere. Margolin, Garner said, ended up making a nice deal with the network.

This is the only episode of the series that lacks an answering machine gag. I missed it terribly.