Rest In Peace, Rockford

For those of you who haven't heard, James Garner, the actor who played (among MANY roles) Jim Rockford on the TV series, "The Rockford Files" died on July 19th. I could talk about Garner's career widely, but "The Rockford Files" is his performance I know best, as well, I just feel like talking about "The Rockford Files".

For those of you who are too young to remember "The Rockford Files", let me just give a sketch. "The Rockford Files" was a weekly episodic crime/action series that ran on NBC from late 1974 until about January of 1980. The show focused on ex-con, Jim Rockford (James Garner), a private investigator in Los Angeles. Episodes usually involved Jim getting hired by some desperate client who couldn't pay him but because he was a nice guy, he always helped them out. Jim's clients usually needed his help because they were being chased by some drug dealers, Mafiosi, white collar criminals, government spooks, the police, jealous lovers, and sometimes all of the above. Each week, Jim used his street smarts and PI skills to find, elude, confuse, entrap, and ultimately overcome the rogues gallery that troubled his clients.

Tough crime and investigation-oriented shows were  pretty popular in the 1970's. For instance, you had Columbo, McMillan, McCloud, Cannon, Streets of San Fransico, Baretta, and so on. And while all of those were good, solid shows in their own rights, The Rockford Files broke the mold. What all of the previously mentioned shows had in common is that their protagonist(s) was/were always law enforcement. There were always the good guys with the badge, following the television dogma established by shows like The Untouchables and later, Dragnet and Adam 12. Jim Rockford was no law enforcer. He was a wrongfully convicted ex con who often butted heads with the police and the FBI when chasing goons around LA's seedy underbelly. In fact, lawmen were often portrayed as misinformed, incompetent, and even antagonistic (bad) on The Rockford Files.

The Rockford Files wasn't a procedural. It was "Noir". Think of those movies from the 30's and 40's but in double-knit polyester. Every week, Jim was in the middle. He took-on cases not knowing if he would get paid, laid, arrested, or killed. And as much as Jim complained about the money, he did what was right. And I think that was James Garner's real gift to the character. Rockford was a sly, cynical smart-ass, but he was above all human and decent. And really, that's the greatest challenge ANY actor faces, especially in television. How to make this fiction seem real? Garner somehow did it. Week-after-week, that hackneyed gumshoe didn't seem so hackneyed. He was often neurotic, frustrated, cheap, and regularly got the shit-kicked-out of him. Rockford wasn't Sam Spade... he was the guy next door.