The Dark and Bloody Ground

“The Dark And Bloody Ground”

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Up to now, Rockford’s dealings with the upper classes have kept him at some distance from them. The bluebloods are either the targets of his investigations or clients that Rockford mistrusts. But this time around the big money is not only on the antagonists’ side. Meet Beth Davenport, high powered lawyer and heir to a family fortune. She’s Rockford’s friend, nudzh, and lawyer. (A dialog exchange also implies a past romance.) With Beth’s arrival, class relations on The Rockford Files take some fascinating new turns.

Somewhat like Jim Rockford, Beth Davenport collects indigent clients and lost causes. Of course, with her money, she can afford such indulgences. Jim can’t, and the friction between them on the subject of finance is almost as important to the story as the main plot, which concerns an indigent woman charged with the murder of her hippie-poet husband. Beth wants Rockford to donate his services because she’s donating hers. Rockford refuses. Beth promises to pay Rockford if he can prove her client innocent. Rockford agrees to listen to her story. Beth turns that into a promise of aid. Rockford puts expenses on the bill; Beth argues until he takes them off.

What strikes me in watching this episode is that there isn’t the sexual tension between Rockford and Beth familiar to viewers of Moonlighting or Northern Exposure. The two characters banter, and it’s often funny, but it’s the banter of two people who are far too comfortable with each other to get that frission going. Also, not only does the viewer get a sense that Beth’s and Rockford’s lifestyles differ too much to allow a successful coupling, but it seems like Beth and Rockford also sense that. After Beth runs down one of the people Rockford’s investigating as “new money”, Rockford asks if Beth’s ashamed to be seen with him because he doesn’t even have “old money”.

Of course, Rockford isn’t the only example of social mobility here. His client’s hippie-poet husband turns out to have been a bit of climber himself. He wrote the titular book a long time ago, faked his death so that he could abandon his wife, then returned to collect his money from his ex when his Dark and Bloody Ground became fodder for a big budget Hollywood spectacular. The ex decided not to share and so we learn once again how damaging social climbing can be to a person’s health. The episode implies he’d have been a lot better off staying in Arizona “listening to the desert” and living, more or less, like Jim Rockford. But, greed, like fear, eats the soul.

Rockford works all this out by, once again, employing a ruse to mix with high society, and using a touch of deft logic to trick them into saying more than they intend. Soon, the malefactors are caught, an innocent woman is freed, and Rockford...doesn’t get paid, even for the expense of a toothbrush.

Notes:

--The car vs. truck chase in this episode plays an awful lot like Duel, except that Rockford’s a better driver than David Mann, and that the director of “The Dark and Bloody Ground” chose to show the truck driver’s face. The chase is well done, with a good ending, and it’s integral to the plot, but it disappointed me that it gestured so strongly toward an iconic movie car chase. Thankfully, Rockford never finds cause to pursue an L train in his Firebird.

--I love the bit where Rockford, having received Beth’s self serving advice, heads to a pay phone to call another attorney for a second legal opinion.

--I liked the way that Rocky’s analysis of the truck chase muddied the issue of whether the truck driver meant to kill Rockford or just scare him. Rocky was assuming the driver was a professional, while Rockford allowed for the possibility that the driver was an amateur. Rockford was right, but Rocky’s authority on trucking made me think about the incident more than I otherwise would have.