“Caledonia, It’s Worth A Fortune"

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Sorry I was away so long. The reasons for my absence were compelling, to me, but they don’t make for fascinating reading. So mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and we’ll move on.

After several episodes that were twisty and, to a greater or lesser degree, dark, we come upon “Caledonia, It’s Worth A Fortune”, a tale devoid of twist and so light that it hovers in midair. While the episode makes for a painless hour of television, with a few amusing lines here and there, it’s one of the less memorable entries in The Rockford Files’s first season.

(Parenthetically, and to pad a short review, one of the more selfish reasons I’m dreading the Rockford Files remake is that I’m going to have to start calling my preferred version of the show The Rockford Files: The Original Series, which takes so much longer to type. And no, calling it TRF:TOS doesn’t make me any happier.

Though what I’m really dreading is the day I have to type My Mother The Car:TOS. I hear they’ve attached Josh Hartnett.)

Jolene Hyland has a problem. Her husband, in prison and in need of a life-saving operation, just told her that something he buried in the town of Caldeonia is “worth a fortune”. So she hires Rockford, who comes in for a percentage of the recovery, to help her search the town and find the loot. Of course, this being a somewhat more sober version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Rockford and Jolene can’t be the only contenders for the cash. There’s Leonard Blair, Jolene’s ex-lover and her ex-husband’s partner in the theft. There are two bruisers whose names don’t count for much. They’re mean, violent, and stupid. That’s all we need to know. Finally, there’s the local constabulary who, like all local constabularies, wants Rockford out of town, though it seems that his reasons have little to do with keeping law and order.

Get the players to their marks. Ready, set, go, for an hour whose plot depends mainly on Rockford and Leonard jerking each other around. See, Leonard knows the directions to the treasure from a starting point. Rockford, through Jolene, knows the starting point. Because nobody trusts anybody, they take forever to work out a structure that allows all of them to go after the money, which is strange. You’d think Leonard would want to wrap this up quickly, what with the two prognathous jawed thugs appearing at intervals to kidnap and beat the shit out of him, but greed does funny things to people, which I suppose is the episode’s point.

Of course, in the end, there is no money. There’s just a note from Jolene’s husband, who set the whole thing up as a way of turning Leonard and Jolene against each other and having a good laugh at their expense. That Jolene would have used her share of the money to save the miserable convict’s life doesn’t enter into his thinking, which gives the episode a mild dose of irony. And Rockford finds a way to lose on the deal as well. The sheriff shows up and, disappointed that there’s no loot for him to steal (I mean, um, confiscate as evidence), charges Rockford with trespassing and burglary for digging up the note on private property.

As I said, this is one of The Rockford Files’s less inspired segments. There are some fun bits. I like the scene with the motel manager, where Garner does an expert imitation of a loudmouthed out-of-town jerk to wheedle out some information. And the scene in the barn where Rockford frees Leonard from the clutches of the thugs is well staged and exciting (and a break from the episode’s aforementioned around-jerking). Those aside, the characters are flat and the ending is predictable. It’s a rare caper comedy that ends with anyone actually getting the cash, but if a story’s not going to twist the end, I’d appreciate at least some bends in the middle.

Next time (in a week, friends, I swear) we go from one less inspired hour to two of The Rockford Files’s finest hours. Yes, true believers, I’m talking about the first season’s brilliant two-parter, “Profit and Loss” , featuring Ned Beatty (Deliverance, Nashville, Network).