User Reviews

This episode gets off to a great start: its late night in a graveyard and Jim is getting a coffin dug up with the help of a couple of mugs. Just as he gets the coffin open and discovers no one is inside, two gorillas in suits race up. Jim hits one with a shovel and the other one shoots Rockford in the head. Grazed by the bullet, he goes down and out.

The rest of the story is told in flashback as Jim is hired by Sandra Turkel (Sian Barbara Allen, one of the prettiest "plain" girls you'll ever see) a newspaper reporter who's out to find out why her friend Susan Dusky disappeared. Only she's intent on coming with Rockford on the hunt and is anxious to play Nancy Drew and show off her own detecting skills. Thus begins an enjoyable little tit for tat as the two try and one up the other in discoveries.

This is a complete character episode. The mystery is really secondary. While the chemistry between Allen and Garner is actually pretty good and they play well together (she turns out to be just as cheap as he is!), it seems a bit lacking when you put it all together. George Dicenzo helps as Harry Stoner, but his part still seems a bit underwritten and could have used a little more pizazz.

So while there are enjoyable parts thanks to Garner and Allen, this is probably one of the weaker episodes of season one.

This episode of The Rockford Files finds James Garner on a missing persons case. Missing is Susan Damante a woman about six feet tall who should have signed with the WBA. Instead she's gone missing and her friend Sian Barbara Allen has hired Rockford to find her.

This case gets a whole lot more complex as Damante has not told Allen a bit of truth about her background. She's the moll of a former mob boss and she cleaned out her late sugar daddy's safe of all kinds of cash and negotiable paper. So a lot of folks are interested in finding her including the family of the deceased boss and one George DiCenzo who is masquerading as a treasury man, but is playing a most lone hand here.

I'd like to rate this episode higher, but Sian Barbara Allen's character was most annoying. I was so hoping Garner would smack her and put her in her place, but he was as patient with her as he is with Angel when he's around.

This is one of the few episodes where Rockford gives up. Probably better to let the assorted parties fight it out over the stolen loot.

I thought it was a bit odd that Rockford would want to get in a fender bender just because he was annoyed by being followed. Not to mention that neither he nor Sandra Turkel (Sian Barbara Allen) were wearing their seat belts. I've noticed Jim tends not to wear his seat belt which given his driving habits seems extremely unsafe. At any rate I like this episode because it doesn't wrap up all nice and tidy, and the resolution still feels satisfactory to me. It's the characters that drive The Rockford Files series and the interaction between Rockford and the pushy Turkel makes for good conflict as Turkel is always stepping on Jim's toes. Early on Turkel claims Rockford will get to like her. After a frustrating case in which Rockford has taken a bullet to the head and he has given up finding the money (which is used in this story almost like a Hitchcockian McGuffin) there is a nice sweetness to the conclusion when he admits that he did grow to like Turkel over the course of the investigation. I also like how Rockford realizes it isn't worth it to keep chasing the after the money. And yet the puzzle solver side of his character is still bothered by its whereabouts.