Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
08.00 The Rockford Files
01.00 Sledge Hammer
The Rockford Files. Episode 3. "The Dark and Bloody Ground" Husband & wife are new in town. He gets murdered. She goes to jail.
Pretty weak story. It doesn't matter. This is a really great episode for 3 other reasons:
1. There's a ten-minute sequence, near the start of this episode, where there is no dialogue at all. Rockford drives to Arizona to do some detective work on the murdered man and, while we see him walking in and out of various buildings and we see him talking to various people, we never hear a word of it. The story is in the visuals. Which is rare and cool. Then, out on the open road, our hero becomes the target of vengeful trucker who tries to run him off the road, in a very long and exciting Duel-like sequence.
All without dialogue. Nice.
2. This is the episode to introduce recurring character Beth Davenport, Rockford's lawyer-girlfriend, who is surely One of the Greatest TV Girlfriends of All-Time. Not only is she gorgeous and smart, she has the good sense to only appear in one third of the episodes!! We men do like our space, you know :)
Gretchen Corbett and James Garner have fantastic chemistry right from the get-go. And Rockford and Beth are very couple-esque in this episode. Sure, they fight constantly about Jim's fee but it's a good-natured battle and they are obviously romantically-linked. My favourite moment occurs when Beth hides come car keys down the insider of her top to stop Jim from driving to the police station. His response and her cute smile are simply adorable. Had this been a Hart To Hart style show, featuring them both as a couple every week, it would have been almost as good as The Rockford Files we know and love.
3. There's a lot of car chases in this episode. One with a truck, one with failing brakes and one (at the end) that's a old fashioned good-guy-chases-escaping-bad-guy type of car chase. Makes me nostalgic for the days when every primetime show had a car chase on a regular basis. Wonderful. During the brakes-have-failed sequence, Rockford's car goes over a mount of dirt (in the middle of roadworks) and... doesn't somersault through the air!! Remember this was before The A-Team changed The Laws Of Physics On TV. Back then cars driving over small piles of dirt kept going, after the bump, whereas cars hitting a similar sized obstacle after 1983 tended to flip up and fly through the air...
With it's style of storytelling, abundance of action and adorable leading lady this episode still manages to be an A+ despite a bland story.
Sledge Hammer. Episode 6. "To Sledge, with Love" High school.
One of the weaker episodes. There have been too many cop shows where the lead went undercover in a rough school, at some point. The Sledge Hammer treatment is a parody, of course, but it's a mild parody that actually looks and feels very much like the storylines it is trying to lampoon. At the end, when the bad kids learn their lesson, it's just not funny enough to make it work. Yes, the lesson they learn is an odd one (thanks to Sledge) but it's still a mawkish resolution.
As well as being a weak parody, this is an episode with very little Dori. Never good.
On the plus side, Sledge's one-liners are a treat. His view of the world continues to be hilarious, even in a sub-par episode.
Highlight? The Rockford Files (Beth)
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The Rockford Files, Sledge Hammer
