“Find Me If You Can”

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Before I get started on this one, I want to comment on some news relevant to Rockford Files viewers. It appears that David Shore, who plans to produce a reboot of The Rockford Files for NBC, plans to cast Dermot Mulroney as the private investigator. I met this news with--well, to be honest my dominant mood was a seething indifference--mild surprise. At first I wondered if someone had mistaken, as often happens, Dermot Mulroney for Dylan McDermott, who successfully played a somewhat Rockford-like character--the often-hassled-by-creditors litigator Bobby Donnell--on The Practice. But no, it’s Dermot Mulroney, an actor I remember most as a cop who took a bullet in the 1995 thriller Copycat, and as the boring architect Winona Ryder was engaged to in How To Make An American Quilt. I know he’s been in other movies, but whenever I see an entry in his credit list, I struggle to recall exactly who he played. This indicates either a chameleon-like ability to fit into a role, or a crippling case of Josh Hartnett Disease, defined in medical dictionaries as a disease that induces audiences to look to any part of the screen not inhabited by the actor’s face or form.

If it is the latter, it doesn’t augur well for the success of a future Rockford Files series. Successfully replacing a charismatic lead actor generally requires finding another actor with similar charm: Chris Pine for William Shatner, Mel Gibson (whatever you may think of his views) for James Garner. Maybe Shore thinks he’s found that in Mulroney, but I think the evidence of Mulroney’s career so far is against him.

That dealt with, on to “Find Me If You Can”, which opens with a clever hook. A woman (Joan Van Ark) drops by Rockford’s trailer with an unusual job offer: she wants Rockford to find her. Rockford, even though he once again is having trouble with the bank, is leery of the gig, thinking of it as a joke at first before wondering just what he might be getting himself into. But she hands him a hunk of cash, and it’s green, so he takes the job and offers her a drink. Rockford uses the drink glass to get her fingerprints, and with it her real name, Barbara Kelbaker. Once he contacts her again, he says he’s done with the job if she doesn’t explain what’s going on. Barbara refuses, but her apparent desperation arouses enough sympathy in Rockford that he presses on, until his investigation takes him to Denver, where lie the offices of Ralph Correll (Paul Michael Glaser), a man who overcame the name of Ralph to rise to the top of organized crime in Denver.

What follows is a series of tense encounters between Correll and Rockford. At first, it’s a little hard to swallow Correll as a mob boss. He’s a short man who dresses like a dandy, but Paul Michael Glaser convinces us quickly that Correll has no conscience under his $5,000 suits. Correll’s cold to the point of being reptilian, and it’s easy to imagine him killing over nothing. He also makes an excellent foil for Rockford. He’s smart, and he, like Rockford, knows how to pull tricks to get what he wants. Unfortunately for Correll, Rockford has one more card to play than he does. I love his reaction to losing: “You keep yourself covered too. Nice.” A pro to the end, that Ralph Carrell.

Paul Michael Glaser, like Lindsay Wagner, went on to a hit series shortly after his Rockford Files appearance, starring as the Starsky half of Starsky and Hutch. This explains why, despite his strong performance in this episode, he never appeared again on The Rockford Files.

Joan Van Ark does strong work here as well, though I’d have to say I preferred her later contributions to the series. Like Shelley Duvall in The Shining, she’s stuck being frightened out of her wits for much of the episode, which is perfectly justified, given her character’s predicament, but her future parts would allow her greater range.

Of note also is the development of the relationship between Rockford and Sergeant Becker. Note how Becker toys with Rockford, telling him he’s got information but holding it back, partly so that he can demonstrate to Rockford just how hard it was to gather said information, but also so that he can mess with Rockford’s mind a little before extracting a pair of Lakers tickets from him. Up to now Rockford’s gotten a bit more than he’s given in his relationship with Becker. Seeing that situation reversed is one of this episode’s small pleasures.