It’s unfair, in a way.
I’ve watched two and a half seasons of The Rockford Files so far, and as I start this series of episode reviews I’m already suspicious that none of them will live up to “Backlash of the Hunter”, the pilot.
At times it seemed more that I was watching a theatrical release, Chandler rebooted for a then-modern age, James Garner’s second kick at the can. It doesn’t hold that feeling all the way through – by the end it has definitely settled into a comfortable television pace and mode – but the strength with which it jumps out of the gate is a little surprising.
That doesn’t mean I don’t care for the show overall, obviously. I would hardly set myself the quest of reviewing 130 stories if I didn’t find a lot to like in the first quarter. But it’s a gamble, I admit. At this point I have no idea how well the last four seasons are likely to stand up.
That’s a pretty cynical way to start. Rockford might sympathize. But I’ll start again.
If “Backlash of the Hunter” had not surprised me in such a positive way, I might not have had the nerve to try my hand at an undertaking of this size. Luckily, it did.
I won’t get into the history of the production in depth – for now. Suffice to say since this is a pilot, it needs to do two things well. It has to tell a story that the network executives believe will be compelling enough to the public that sponsors will be attracted to the show. And it has to establish a world that viewers will recognize and feel familiar in the next time they show up.
Rockford had a seasoned production team, so the mechanics of dropping character seeds and establishing its own version of genre structure are handled as competently as one hopes for. (I originally wrote “as competently as one expects” before realizing the phrase belongs to a generous corner of my mind which long ago died of starvation. As a contemporary consumer of entertainment, what I hope for and what I expect are increasingly on two separate lists.)
This pilot was clearly constructed with ambition. They wanted to make something better than Just Another Detective Show, and the effort largely succeeded. There are some mechanical television conventions left intact in the storytelling, but it doesn’t hinder the impact of seeing a much better episode of television than I, as a sympathetic viewer with a sentimental attachment to the franchise, expected to see.
The cold-opening scene was a great surprise. The now-familiar theme music starts up immediately, but there are no credits, just a long, high view of the city that gradually focuses in on a bus moving through the traffic. The man on the bus is about to become the center of a mystery, and the way it takes place was much more violently creepy than I expected to see in a program with the reputation of being an audience favorite of the 1970s – while the gruesome details remain offscreen, they couldn’t have compared to the close-up introduction of our villain. The confident pacing and suspense-building may not fully be Hitchcock quality, but it was certainly reminiscent.
We’re quickly shuttled to the Case. There’s a standard set-up for detective mysteries that Rockford follows far more often than not – an attractive woman, usually with secrets, comes to hire the hero. And remaining faithful to the source genre, this hero has plenty of anti- in him. He’s not well-to-do, and his father Rocky chides him for not taking on a less chaotic career. (A nice joke about this comes later when another figure in the mystery tells him he looks not like the academic official he’s pretending to be, but “a truck driver in a suit”. Truck driving is Rocky’s trade, and if he had his way it would be his son’s too.)
The client’s father – who we saw in the opening – is certainly murdered, but the police have little to go on and have closed the file. Rockford doesn’t see a future to the investigation and tries to stay unhired. This is going to happen a lot, and there are a few standard ways that he gets pulled in to a case he initially was inclined to reject – a love or lust connection with the client, aggression against him by the miscreants to want to warn him off (but inevitably only rile him up), some sort of con played upon him, the need to pay off a debt or favor, etc. This episode settles for a combination of the first two.
Lindsay Wagner – aka “the Bionic Woman”, the following year – is game in the role; although her character loses her mystery quickly, she’s good enough as a partner to Rockford that she never devolves into an anchor he has to drag around. The lead heavy is played with intense psychosexual freakiness by hey, it’s that guy actor William Smith. Seriously hot Nita Talbot plays the mysterious Lady Benefactor of Lindsay Wagner’s brother, whose scheming years before set everything in motion. (Danger, Will Robinson! Can’t you just will yourself into medical school?)
Joe Santos shows up early as Jim’s permanently beleaguered police buddy Dennis Becker, as does Stuart Margolin, Jim’s ex-con friend from his years in the joint on a bad rap (and easily the most infuriating person in Los Angeles by season three).
The hook to the mystery is a clever enough one, and I won’t discuss it, mostly because what the mystery actually is doesn’t get clearly defined for much of the story’s running time. By the time Rockford figures out what question he’s actually trying to answer, the answer itself naturally follows.
The episode does a lot of heavy lifting that is evident only in retrospect. Jim’s character is almost fully established in this story (though of course there will be bits and pieces added later along in the series), and the need to build these character points is woven into the plot pretty effectively.
We learn that Jim Rockford has a no-nonsense, even gruff demeanor. We learn that he wears this mask to protect himself and his clients, and got to this point the hard way. We learn he has a close friendship with his father, despite their constant squabbling.
When Creepy McStrangleson follows Jim into a bar, we learn that Rockford’s a tricky strategist who can think on his feet. He’s resourceful in a fight and can punch above his weight. In the first of the chase sequences that would become a signature of the series – performed mostly by James Garner himself – we learn that Rockford is a highly-skilled driver. And don’t try to tail him because: 1) he knows you’re there, 2) he knows how to get rid of you, and 3) then he’ll be following you and you won’t even know it.
Maybe most importantly, given how Rockford ends up solving most of his problems, we learn that he’s essentially a con man in a straight job. He knows his strongest skill set, and plays to it whenever he needs to pull out the biggest guns. That becomes a central part of his character in later episodes, which occasionally even grant him excuses to pull a long con out of his bag of tricks when there’s technically no case or client. It also mirrors Jim’s wink to Angel as he maintains his innocence in the bank job for which he was imprisoned – he was pardoned, yes, but… (Jim asserts his innocence more directly on other occasions, but so far I don’t think there’s been any real confirmation that it wasn’t a fair cop he managed to eventually talk his way out of.)
Anyway, this is a television detective show, so there’s some more lying, and some violence, and some chases, and they’re all handled well enough to hold up a few decades later. There’s some kissing and some good jokes, and James Garner is so comfortable and confident in this role that it’s simply impossible to imagine it existing without him. (Though others may have more imagination than I.)
And as we close, we meet another theme that we’re going to visit again and again. Jim Rockford almost always solves the case and saves the day, and often wins the girl. But chances are, he’ll also get stiffed on the tab, end up in jail, or somehow land back on square one of whatever personal problem was accompanying him throughout the adventure – reliably pulling the rug out from under Rockford’s feet makes sure he’ll still be in that ratty trailer next week, hiding from creditors, dodging dodgy characters from his past, scrambling to keep his head above water.
Witness statement: Sometimes the chase scenes get a bit much, and bringing in the Vegas partner for Creepy didn’t really go anywhere and maybe could have been dispensed with.
Charge: First-Degree Murder
NOTES
- Even Dennis Becker gets his backstory and primary theme established right off the bat: “a motivated and competent officer working under difficult bosses”, later adding: “who plays by the book and has a love-hate thing going with his friend Jim”.
- Ding! First of many appearances of Jim’s phone-book ad. (Phone books were a thing that used to exist, kids. Like phone booths.)
- (And answering machines too, but we’ll get to that later.)
- Lindsay Wagner was lucky in this respect: when she reappeared later in the series, she got to play the same role as bikini mogul Susan Butler.
- Technically, this 90-tv-minute episode is titled “The Rockford Files”. “Backlash of the Hunter” was the title of the re-edited two-part version used for syndication.
- Noah Beery had not yet come on as Rocky, but owned the role from the next episode onward.
- Ding! Two hundred dollars a day plus expenses. Are you sure you can afford him?
- Jim’s first appearance in a dodgy cloakroom tie for a restaurant he wasn’t formal enough to walk into. It’s hard to see how the ambience is improved.
- Jim Rockford is also Carter Simpson, Dean of Admissions. It’s a neat trick to allow Garner some comedic range, and playing dress-up during an investigation will be a staple of Rockford’s in the future, often happening multiple times in a single episode. Each identity has a line of carefully-researched bullshit that goes with it, and it usually works unless the plot needs it not to.
- During a chase, Rockford comes out of the chute the wrong way. For anyone else it would be a chase-ender, but he pulls a slick 270° and doesn't break a sweat. This will eventually turn into his famed "J-turn" in later episodes.
- Too bad about that weird rectangular thing on Creepy's lower back when he's taking a dead man's shoes. I'm sure it can't be a mic-pack. Must be some kind of freaky murder-boner.
- It’s established here, and recurs frequently, that when Rockford’s running a con or a scheme, he is willing to drag his clients into the game when needed. (Also, on a more practical level, it provides a little more screen time for guest stars.)
- There are some surprisingly (and refreshingly) dark emotional tones in the pilot episode, and this shows up again from time to time in the first three seasons, at least. Maybe it was an attempt to reach for some “serious drama” cred to balance out the car chases, but it works.
- Ding! Jim keeps his gat in the coffee can.
