This one is the season finale for season three, and it is really good.
Directed by Stuart Margolin.
'Rockford, that's R O C K F O R D'.
We've got Beth, Dennis, Rocky, hey, grand slam!
All Jimbo had to do was call McGarret.
Shout out to the Taylor Swift fans in this one...
The unnamed speaker as a character is a cool trope that you don't see much of any more.
Rocky met someone on the plane.
The Martin Cove Goons have a new album coming out soon!
LA running backs, hard to trust them.
Gretchen Corbett is really really great in this one.
Too bad there's no Angel.
We do get Rocky and Jim and Beth and Dennis though.
We get Jon giving us a plane crash update. Probably his dream job.
The idea of harassment was a new one at the time, it's handled pretty well considering that.
'They've got a good ball club at San Quentin' and 'I don't just fish, I also watch football' are a couple of good Jimbo lines this week.
Another case of part 2 being better than part 1!
Lianne is not a good person.
Whereas we see that Lt. Chapman is, more or less.
Just like with TT freaking Flowers, part 2 is better than part 1. I swear, some of the 'previously on the Rockford Files' bit I missed because I was so annoyed by the Lianne character.
Jimbo is of course a good person, but we knew that already.
As Steve has pointed out a few times, someone died because of Lianne.
Biggest news this week is actual pop culture news.
Lianne is annoying. I hate her.
To quote my partner 'oh great another two parter with an annoying af character'.
She's really good at being annoying though. The 'she' in that sentence refers to Joyce Van Patten. One of the best ever Sopranos episodes, Pine Barrens, was directed by Tim Van Patten, Joyce's brother.
Speaking of the Sopranos, this one is a David Chase joint, and boy can you see his fingerprints. In a good way. Chase is a master at making you uncomfortably laugh, and sometimes just lol, but still be uneasy.
If Emergency (!) has taught Steve anything, it is that there are also firefighter groupies. It's probably true. I wonder if there are prof groupies? Well not for Steve and me anyway.
Again, I'm not sure this needed to be a two parter.
Lianne is ChatGPT.
We get a lot of Lt. Chapman in this one. I like Chapman better than Diel.
We'll be back next week for the exciting conclusion.
Hey, this one has one of our favourite Black Sheep actors, Charles Napier.
More importantly, it has friend of the show, Clyde Kusatsu, who of course was the spotlight artist this week. We both really love his work. (He's also a pretty great twitter follow if you are interested).
This one talks about the aftermath of Vietnam.
There are some 'Asian' tropes here as well.
Thins were pretty crazy as Saigon fell, I wonder how much stuff people got out with that wasn't really theirs.
Irene Ya-Ling Sun puts in a credible performance as well.
Hey, did Jim get paid this week?!
LJ!!!!! It's like seeing Dale in Mad Men.
We aren't taking about that thing that happened this week.
Sorry we've been away, things.
This is a backdoor pilot for a potential Gossett and Hayes show! I wonder how it would have gone.
Indeed, I wonder how it would have affected Gossett's career especially.
As it is a backdoor pilot, we don't get too much of Jim, or less than usual.
Punching Nazis, it's what you are supposed to do!
Watching Isaac Hayes beat up Nazis is extra fun.
I normally wouldn't use two screenshots for the post, but I needed to have one of all three of the guys, and one where Nazis are being beaten up.
'I read Downbeat' is perhaps one of the best lines in the series.
There's a LOT about race this week as you might guess. Enjoy Steve and I talking about it!
Jeff Andrews of 70s TV detectives now joins Oliver Rockside, Anthony Marco, Mike Cowgill and, of course, Carlos the Jackal as an official 'friend of the show'.
Also, what the hell is Jack Carter doing in this episode?
There's some really strong acting in this one from Joe Santos.
Dennis as a jerk is a twist, usually his jerkiness is driven by Jim, this time it's driven by Internal Affairs.
In fairness to Dennis, I'd be a jerk in this situation as well.
We have Angel in this one, I love a good Angel montage.
The show is confident enough in itself now that they can do an episode that doesn't focus as much on Jim and it really fills out the character of Dennis nicely. I really like this one.
Oh and thanks Jeff!
Went a little off the board for this week's title. George Loros shows up again, as a different guy this time. Again, the Sopranos really...
