Tall Woman in Red Wagon

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One of the things I like most about James Garner is his lack of vanity. He doesn’t mind playing characters who are greedy or baffled. It’s a nice contrast from most leading men on television from that era--let’s just use William Shatner as an example--who counted their lines and tried to make sure that their characters were always the ones who made the (always right) decision. In “Tall Woman in Red Wagon”, Jim Rockford is, at turns, greedy, cowardly, and baffled and it is this, combined with an imaginative plot and a cast of double and triple dealing supporting characters, that makes the episode work so well.

The episode opens with a stunt that is deeply unexpected and unrepeatable: someone shoots Jim Rockford in the head. It’s not a surprise that someone would want to shoot Jim Rockford. Over the last few episodes many have tried, but the combination of his shooting and his fall into the open grave that he’s apparently been robbing, makes it impossible not to watch the rest of the story, just to find out how our friend and humble PI managed to get himself into such a fix.

And oh, my is it a complicated fix, having to do with a woman who faked her own death in order to use her coffin to smuggle out several million dollars she stole from an Arizona crime boss. Rockford’s initially partnered with a newspaper reporter from a publication the titular tall woman had invested in. She’s perky and chatty, and Rockford finds her to be more than a bit of a pain, but the combination of the money, the attractive missing woman, and the humorless man who’s been trailing the reporter, draws Rockford’s interest.

The rest is too complicated to explain. Lies and shifting identities, from all quarters, abound, as Rockford traces the money along the rails to a cemetery and, after offering to split the cash with the reporter, tries to dig the ostensibly money-laden coffin up for himself.

Who shot him? It’s hard to say. The representative of the Arizona crime boss (at least that’s what he says he is), tries to kidnap Rockford after he leaves the hospital to force the money from him, which means he doesn’t have it, so we can scratch him and his employer from the list of suspects. The reporter may have sent the killers, or maybe Rockford was right and the Tall Woman faked her injuries, sent her boys to get the money, and arranged for Rockford to be shot. In the end, everyone’s chased everyone around, and no one, Rockford included, knows where the money went. It’s unusual for a detective story to end on such an indeterminate note, but part of the fun is that it throws us back to considering Rockford’s greed and what it got him.

Rockford’s desire for money, and need of it, has been a staple of the series, but seldom has he looked quite so greedy, chasing this cash around California as if he were a character in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This positions him outside the boundaries of the basically-virtuous-if-morally-complex detective protagonist. In the end, when he gets out of the hospital, the feeling is that he’s gotten his comeuppance, a sense that Rockford probably would agree with if asked. I believe him when he tells the professional criminal he’s been competing with that he no longer cares what happened to the money; and, when he’s home alone and asks the question “I wonder what really happened to that money” it seems more a matter of his wish for a straight answer to a confusing situation than of a desire to rush off again in search of treasure.

It could be argued that, for the abundance of plot in “Tall Woman in Red Wagon” the real movement of the story is a thematic one from sin to redemption. The episode highlights Jim Rockford’s greed, shows us just how much trouble it causes him, and then leaves him, and us, reflecting on the wages of his sin, which may not have been death, but which came awfully, awfully close. In “Tall Woman in Red Wagon” The Rockford Files steps outside the usual path of the crime drama and edges toward literature, and I appreciate that.

Notes:

--The supporting roles of this episode are particularly well cast. George DiCenzo, whom I knew from his role as Vincent Bulgiosi in Helter Skelter, and who played a lot of cops in TV shows over his four-decade career, was particularly good as the phony treasury agent, Harry Stoner.

--Another instance of Rockford looking bad: Rockford becomes frustrated with being tailed, lets his anger get the better of him, and, jamming his car in reverse, slams his car into Stoner’s. I don’t know that we ever see Rockford quite this hotheaded again, and if we’re being Catholic about it we’ll have to add Wrath to his Greed for this segment.