Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 75

The R ockfo rd F iles

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then makes a reference to his sexual orientation. Grimes moves quickly toward
Rockford with a tremendous karate kick, but he slips on the soap. Then Rockford
hits him in the face, knocking him cold. Rockford then opens his fist revealing a
roll of nickles,and shakes his hand as if he had hurt it. Rockford ties Jerry’s feet to
a toilet stall with his belt, goes through his pockets and when he comes do, Jerry
claims he was sucker-punched. Rockford asks him what he does for a living. “Noth
ing,” Jerry responds. Rockford: “Oh, there are all sorts of flavors of nothing, what’s
yours?” “I play the ponies.” Rockford: “You know what’s wrong with karate, Jerry?
It’s based on the ridiculous assumption that the other guy will fight fair.” As Ed
Robertson observed of this Charlie Brown private detective:
When he threw a punch, Jim Rockford (James Garner) was
more likely to hurt his own hand than his opponent. He rarely
carried a gun (he didn’t have a permit), and on those occasions
when he did, he was more likely to point the weapon than fire
it. Rockford hated trouble, wouldn’t hesitate to quit in the middle
of a case if things got too rough, and had no qualms about
telling you why (“You’re damned right I’m afraid!”). And he
never forgot the bottom line—he charged $200 a day (plus ex
penses!) for his services, although he usually found that his
clients stiffed him more often than paid him.2
And self-deprecation came easy to the character. When Rockford is hired
as a bodyguard for fonner New York City cop, Frank Falcone, who has became a
celebrity with his own TV show and a line of toys, an executive responds that Jim
would act like a steer to Falcone’s bull, to which another executive remarked,
“That is the worst analogy I ever heard.” NBC programming executives frequently
did not get the humor. Take for example this sequence from “The Kirkoff Case”
(written by Stephen J. Canned who also frequently directed). In the episode Rock
ford is t