SPOILERS AHEAD
"The Rockford Files" was one of the best shows on television. It fit easily into most 70s "drama" shows. In the late 1960s half-hour shows were sitcoms with no other purpose but to try to make people laugh, while hour-shows were deadpan dramas ("adult" westerns, private eyes, doctors, lawyers &c).
In the 1970s the lines got blurred. Sit-coms became bully pulpits where producers and writers set up political straw men easily taken apart in twenty-three minutes with commercials, just to show just how very, very correct they were about everything. Meanwhile, hour shows became less soap-operaish and grew a sense of humor: "Kolchak" and "Charlie's Angels", for instance, which gave birth to the new generations of 80s "dramadies" like "Remington Steele" and "Moonlighting" (and, at the tail end of the '80s, "Twin Peaks").
A very funny drama show, "The Rockford Files" was, if anything, the anti-"Mannix." Mannix was a tough PI with a heart: quick to use his fists or his gun, yet willing to work for a child who offered him eight dollars or a couple of old ladies who give him a ten. Things always fell into place for Mannix, who was perhaps spoofed by Lance White in Tom Selleck's appearances in "Rockford." Nothing ever went right for Rockford himself, who tried to put the bottom line over just helping people, yet who rarely ended up with money in his fist.
"The Rockford Files" was mostly entertainment, with James Garner pulling his laid-back shtick, with a grittier edge. "Maverick" with a Firebird rather than a horse. Even when Garner played Rockford as whiny, he was watchable.
"The Battle of Canoga Park" starts off with Rockford's stolen gun (which he keeps in a cookie jar so people won't find it) used in the commission of a murder. Investigating his own case because he can't trust the police to (they have him in the frame and they're not looking for anyone else), Rockford uncovers a passel of folks who are the stereotype of what he and most Hollywood types think are right-wing extremists.
They're extremeness? Well, for one thing, they support the Constitution. ("Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!") In fact, Rockford makes a tenuous connection between two people because both of them have "right-wing" bumper stickers. But the bumper stickers don't have the same message and don't resemble each other. Nevertheless, Rockford barrels on making vague connections that prove true in a way that makes Lance White look like a piker. (I am reminded of a "Mannix" episode where the Private Investigator solves the crime when he sees a truck with a trailer-hitch . . . maybe in LA, but if he lived in America's heartland where I do, where every other vehicle is a truck and they all have hitches, Mannix would have framed the wrong man!)
All the straw-men and -women Democrat Hollywood types wrestle with in their little shows are bundled together in this one. Anyone who says the support the Constitution, or speak well of America or the flag, is suspect. Their "Support the Constitution" is just a measly code word for supporting the Second Amendment--and nothing else.
It also makes this "Rockford" episode timely, for still today citizens who like to have guns in their home for protection from outside harm, or perhaps just because they like to shoot them as a hobby, are linked with the worst dregs of humanity. And like today, the extremists in this show are vaguely plotting . . . or perhaps not. What precisely is their point?
What the actual group in this show is trying to achieve is left vague. Are they a militia? Are they expecting an outside invasion, or a left-wing police state (most of them are) that will overthrow the Constitution and declare martial law where the only people who own firearms are the ones in charge (the latter makes the most sense in context, but it's never spelled out)? Or are they just a society of people who today be in the blogging pajamahideen--just harmless nuts, one of whom actually committed the serious felonies of theft and murder on his own (it's made clear he was working outside the others' approval)?
Since the days of Lincoln Democrats have feared and characterized in the worst way what they perceive as their enemies. During early Hollywood history the studio bosses were able to clamp down on this sort of thing because they wanted to have as large an audience as possible, so Democrat actors were contracted to do what they do best: act. Even so, the bosses in the thirties and forties were often Roosevelt supporters, so pro-Democrat stuff snuck in, as it did in some of Busby Berkeley's routines).
Now "The Rockford Files" takes aim at a nebulous force of (alleged) right-wingers who are the genuinely serious danger to the country and the Constitution they mendaciously allege to support because of . . . what? Standing up for their rights--isn't that what everyone does? But Hollywood is a great fiction factory and in their minds such people are to be feared, only this type ever wants to take up arms (though, is this show, it's apparently only to defend themselves; there's no sense they want to take over anything). And, of course, they're all a bunch of dunderheads, which fits the narrative.
It is clear they have illegal weapons. Dynamite. Hand grenades (Korean War issue). Automatic weapons (btw, automatic weapons, where the trigger is held down and shots fire, cannot be purchased legally in the U.S. and ordinary people, even Second Amendment supporters, don't have them, despite modern propaganda to that effect).
This whole episode is a muddle-headed mess. It has some funny lines, and the suspense of Rockford actually being accused (and nearly indicted) for murder carries the show. But overall, it makes no sense. For instance, in this episode part of Rockford's trailer is blown up by a hand grenade, but in the next episode it's good as new (well, old). Nice, quick repair work.
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