The Rockford Files, Reopened

Originally posted: July 31, 2010

Perhaps I was reminded of my tweenage obsession by Temple Grandin's own love of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – on a recent flight I saw the excellent HBO film Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes. Or perhaps it was that after two weeks in Europe, I needed to revisit the hyper-American character of Jim Rockford, as played by James Garner in the 70's private-eye drama The Rockford Files. A random visit to Hulu reopened my interest in the show that dominated my 12 year-old mind back in the summer of '93.

Why was I so fascinated by this program? For starters, it is just drenched in hallmarks of the time, which in the early 90's was quite shockingly garish and out of style. Movies like Dazed and Confused hadn't come out to start the trend of romanticizing the 70's quite yet (true, it was released in 1993 but who saw that in the theaters?) So for me it was a nauseating journey through split-pea green shag carpeting, plaid polyester sportscoats with 10-inch lapels, and shiny rust-colored muscle cars. I admit, I liked the muscle cars, though. But Rockford, he had common sense, he had more taste than the LA socialites he was surrounded by, and he was a folksy fishing-loving guy who lived in a trailer on the beach in Malibu. He was great at being in, but not too absorbed by, his environment. I think my fascination with the show was due in part to watching him somehow live in late 1970's Los Angeles, hang out in condos with way too many giant houseplants, talk to scores of airheads with feathered hair and pants from Sears, all the while somehow not developing a severe dependence on narcotics.

But Rockford doesn't sit in his trailer smoking dope and listening to the Dead, whining about his sorry lot, even though he has bad credit and a criminal record (he claims) he doesn't deserve. Instead he puts on his uniform - a sensible sportscoat and an unbuttoned Oxford - and solves crimes at the behest of beautiful women, disenfranchised farmers, or even rich playboys suspected of murdering their parents. Sometimes Rockford gets paid, sometimes he ends up in jail, sometimes he gets to go fishing with his dad, and sometimes his metallic gold Firebird gets totaled in a giant explosion while soaring off a cliff. But he keeps leaving his trailer on new leads every episode.

Of course, Rockford's not perfect - he can be whiny, all his friends are usually just subordinates he uses to solve cases, and he can be a chauvinist asshole, too. And the show is always too neatly wrapped up at the end for my tastes. I also just saw the 1980 film The Upper Crust, a fantastic film noir set in Vienna that manages to avoid cliché and provide little in the way of answers. The Rockford Files seems like a kid's show in comparison. But Rockford is still cool in a way that Starsky and Hutch, Magnum, or even Erik Estrada's Frank Poncharello from CHiPs (my brother's favorite, on after Rockford back in 1993) can't touch. He's by far more intelligent than the rest of his peers, he's got a rugged outsider's perpective, and he's no slave to trendy fashion. He's his own man.

I tried to roughly approximate the Rockford vibe as a kid, but I lived in landlocked Ohio in my parents house, and couldn't drive, so I was going to a grocery store in a strip mall with my mom in her wood-paneled Buick station wagon while Jim was speeding down the 101 after baddies. A heaviness drifted over me as I felt tweenage misery and the trappings of awkwardly advancing years while Rockford waited for the next adventure to come knocking on his corrugated aluminum door. Eventually we ended up with some similarities - an anti-authoritarian streak that has given me a few speeding tickets and open-container violations, a little bit of debt, and just like Rockford slummed it up in a trailer while hob-nobbing with the upper class of LA, I lived in some dingy apartments in sketchy areas of New York while managing to find myself in high-class surroundings at wine or music industry events. Never got a 1974 Pontiac Firebird, I rode the bus and the subway, so in some ways maybe I'm like the emo, earth-friendly Jim Rockford?

Ben Folds makes mention of the Rockford Files, so maybe I'm not the only sensitive musician-type who digs the Rockford swagger:

And you think Rockford Files is cool

But there are some things that you would change

If it were up to you

So think about your masterpiece

Watch the Rockford Files

Call to see if Paul can score some weed

-from ”The Battle of Who Could Care Less” ©1997 Ben Folds

Speaking of music, the show's theme and background music is some of the best of the genre. I'm pretty sure Larry Carlton, guitarist and veteran of Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, and tons more records, contributes a lot to that. You really can't beat the theme song for perfectly summing up the anti-authoritarian twang, the cosmopolitan flash, and the rugged suavity that is Jim Rockford. And somehow all without a wah-wah pedal. Amazing.

Check the show out on Hulu at http://www.hulu.com/the-rockford-files, I just watched “The Trees, the Bees, and T.T. Flowers,” a two-parter that's a great place to start.