I loved this episode when I saw it first-run in high school, and it holds up very well. Much of this is due to Valerie Curtin's great performance, and of course, as always, James Garner's.
Until I dropped in here I was unaware than Jim Rockford is one of those characters rightwingers have since claimed as their own. (Along with Hank Hill, Andy Taylor, and a few other apolitical classics from pre-2016 America.) So it just needs pointing out that Jim was not in any sense rightwing, nor did he espouse conservative values. All the reviewers here crowing about how he "rips into hippies" in this episode apparently turned the show off before the last scene, where our girl joins yet another in her long series of cults -- Evangelical Christianity.
And that's entirely consistent with Jim's values. He's a perennial sceptic who has a sharp professional nose for a con. That's all that's happening here. Nobody in 1977 said, "Woo-hoo! The Rockford Files just owned New Agers!" when this show aired. That was just an over-marketed fad in the 70s, as Evangelicalism would be in the 80s and Q is as I write this, and Jim's reflexive tendency is to reject dippy shallow self-glorifying movements like those. (Now that I think of it, the fact that Jane finally ends up in fundamentalist Christianity was scarily prescient, since that would in fact be The New Hip Thing in just 3 years. Seems like the writers must've done some research into developing trends when they wrote it.)
So there you go. It would be sad if well-meaning potential viewers were scared off by the ranting Right here. The guy in this episode is the same Rockford we know and love. He's not out to get anybody, not out to expose whole demographics as stupid or inferior, not trying to do anything but rescue (yet another) friend in need. One whose final line - as a Christian - is the funniest in a very funny show.
Watch it with no axe or grindstone, and you'll enjoy it.
Until I dropped in here I was unaware than Jim Rockford is one of those characters rightwingers have since claimed as their own. (Along with Hank Hill, Andy Taylor, and a few other apolitical classics from pre-2016 America.) So it just needs pointing out that Jim was not in any sense rightwing, nor did he espouse conservative values. All the reviewers here crowing about how he "rips into hippies" in this episode apparently turned the show off before the last scene, where our girl joins yet another in her long series of cults -- Evangelical Christianity.
And that's entirely consistent with Jim's values. He's a perennial sceptic who has a sharp professional nose for a con. That's all that's happening here. Nobody in 1977 said, "Woo-hoo! The Rockford Files just owned New Agers!" when this show aired. That was just an over-marketed fad in the 70s, as Evangelicalism would be in the 80s and Q is as I write this, and Jim's reflexive tendency is to reject dippy shallow self-glorifying movements like those. (Now that I think of it, the fact that Jane finally ends up in fundamentalist Christianity was scarily prescient, since that would in fact be The New Hip Thing in just 3 years. Seems like the writers must've done some research into developing trends when they wrote it.)
So there you go. It would be sad if well-meaning potential viewers were scared off by the ranting Right here. The guy in this episode is the same Rockford we know and love. He's not out to get anybody, not out to expose whole demographics as stupid or inferior, not trying to do anything but rescue (yet another) friend in need. One whose final line - as a Christian - is the funniest in a very funny show.
Watch it with no axe or grindstone, and you'll enjoy it.
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