The Dark & Bloody Ground

By 1974, many Americans, especially those in what Nixon called "the silent majority" were getting pretty leery of well-heeled do-gooders. Think Bill Ayers, whose father Thomas Ayers was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (and chairman of the board of my alma mater, Northwestern University). Think Jane Fonda. Think Leonard Bernstein, who famously hosted a cocktail party for members of the Black Panthers.

Was Beth Davenport, Rockford's lawyer and erstwhile flame, the writers' stand-in for radical chic? In "The Dark & Bloody Ground" her character was not attractive. Cute, but not attractive.  She was portrayed as privileged, manipulative, and willing to cheat her hard-working friend on behalf of her pet cause -- in this case an impoverished, friendless woman accused of murdering her husband. So a rich do-gooder stiffs a working man out of his hard earned wages to help the poor. I wonder if Governor Reagan was a fan of the show?

Beth's role in the episode was to serve as both a comic and a dramatic foil for Rockford, and it played well. When she approaches Rockford, who is fishing on the beach and makes her wade into the surf in her suit to make her pitch, she mentions that she is donating her representation. Rockford responds that she can afford to because she "picked the right grandfather." He is not so fortunate. ("I don't take charity cases. They're not part of my survival kit.") When Beth protests that her client is innocent, he clearly regards her as naive. ("I spent five years in prison. While I was there I never met anybody who wasn't innocent.")

The plot must go on, of course, and Rockford is sucked into the case. This confirms a pattern established in the pilot and repeated throughout the series. Rockford is initially skeptical about his clients and their cases. He is sympathetic, up to a point, but realistic about his own interests. He sidles into things reluctantly, and often against his better judgment. And he often only really gets interested in a case after someone beats him up or tries to kill him. (In this episode, a society party-planner named Eliot tries to run him off the road in a Mack truck.) This pattern fits pretty comfortably with a popular perception Americans have of themselves and their country. (Apropos of nothing, a 50-year old viewer of "The Dark & Bloody Ground" would have been 15 or 16 years old on December 7, 1941.) 

Beth's lack of concern over his interests sets up a classic Rockford tirade, as they quibble over his expenses. 

BD:  "You're angry!"
JR:   "Why would I be angry? You hired me to do a job. I almost get killed in the process. The highway patrol are looking for some fun-loving kid. My father wants an autographed picture of the truck, and you're so torn up you're arguing over a tube of toothpaste!  (Door slams.)

Rockford strikes a blow for the working class when he pins the murder on Eliot, who Beth seems to know (or know of) from traveling in the same social circles. ("Old money would never marry Eliot.")

BD:  "He's not the type..." (to commit murder).
JR:   "Because he went to the right schools?  He's the type."

As the series continued, Beth became less the caricature of a precocious limousine liberal, and more of the tough, independent career woman. There were no further references to old money or lost causes. Beth might have been an interesting "frenemy" (ala Angel Martin), but her character evolved into more of a clear-eyed Rockford defender, instead. The later Beth would never have tried to cheat Rockford out of his expenses for car repair by arguing that he was negligent for not locking the hood of his car:

JR:   "There's no lock on the hood."
BD:  "You should have one installed. This must happen all the time in your line of work."

In addition to the class warfare, there is a very brief "Okie from Muskogee" moment that sets the cultural tone of the show. The murdered husband had been a writer, and when Rockford interviews the accused in jail she says he had been out "listening to the country." Rockford offers her a subtle but expressive look that in a fraction of a second tells us exactly how he feels about someone who would describe bumming around as "listening to the country." 
 
"The Dark & Bloody Ground" also marks Rocky's first pitch for Jim to consider a career in truck driving, which he considers a safer and more respectable line of work. Jim, of course, has heard it all before and pays no attention. Rocky's bewildered reply tells us a great deal about what we'll see over the rest of the first season and the life of the series:  "For a man who doesn't like getting stomped on, you're in the wrong line of work."

The Kirkoff Case

Rockford plays well off of creeps. In the first episode of TRF he is hired by actor James Woods (who runs neck-and-neck in the Late 20th Century Creepstakes with Christopher Walken) in the role of Larry Kirkoff, a rich twenty-something who probably murdered his parents.The great thing about Rockford and creeps is that his reactions to them are based more on distaste than moral indignation. He is willing to work for Kirkoff to try to prove his innocence, despite the fact that everyone (including Rockford, more or less) believes that he's guilty. When he tells a red-herring heavy at the beginning of the show that he's working for Kirkoff, the man is genuinely outraged. ("You must be hard up for money!").

We viewers gets the vicarious pleasure of watching Rockford channel our contempt for Kirkoff, as well as the more subtle and illicit thrill of resenting Kirkoff's contempt for Rockford (and us). Rockford is willing to take Kirkoff's money, but he's not going to let that affect his demeanor toward the guy. For Rockford, this is pretty close to the definition of integrity.


The lure of a $20,000 payday ($87,000 in 2009 dollars) keeps Rockford on the case even after he makes a half-hearted attempt to quit.

LK:  "No one can be in a racket like yours without being influenced by money."
JR:   "Not me."
LK:  "Especially you."
JR:   -- ambiguous silence --

Julie Sommars plays the female lead, Tawnia Baker, and their relationship dashes through multiple stages, beginning with a bit of screwball flirtation.



TB:  "What do you do when you're not chasing cowboys?"
JR:   "I sell greeting cards."
TB:  "Is there much money in that?"
JR:   "Christmas and Easter aren't too bad, but Mother's Day just sort of lays there."
TB:  "Sign of the times."

She drugs him, turns feral when he disrupts her gold digging, and they eventually reach a truce over hamburgers at a drive in, after mutually abandoning an expensive restaurant. By the end of the show she almost becomes a client. The sexual tension is muted as they fly through these role changes. While Rockford does not do a lot of old-school elbow guiding, he does drive her car when they go out. (For the record, Sommars was 32 when the show was shot.)

Rockford also glides through four non-Rockford identities in a mere 49 minutes:  messenger, old friend from Chicago, importuning insurance salesman, and corporate executive from Kirkoff Industries. The virtuosity with which he slides into and out of these improvised, throwaway roles is a hallmark of the Rockford modus operandi and one of the principal pleasures of the show.

Physically, Rockford is on the wrong end of the vast majority of the violence in this episode.

TB:  "You've been fighting!"
JR:  "No, the other guys did the fighting. I just stood there and took it."

He is drugged, held at gunpoint, kidnapped, severely beaten (he loses, then finds, a tooth), has his headlights kicked in, and is literally beaten to the punch by a union thug he tries to nail with a cheap shot. ("You've seen that before."  "Yeah, a couple of times.") As usual, the police are of little help, despite Becker's conditional sympathy. ("You're not exactly Princess Margaret in this department. Every time you come in here with a bloody nose morale goes up by ten points.")

He is initially glib in the face of the worst of these threats ("Does your mother know what you do for a living?"), but quickly changes his tune. In the wake of the tooth-loosening beating we get another glimpse into the humanity of the Rockford character, as imagined by TRF's writers. The chief thug croaks "I'm gonna give you some advice." This line must have been used in dozens of crime dramas prior to 1974, in film and on TV.  Rockford's response to this cliche? "I could use some advice, believe me." At that point he sounds nothing but sincere. The only other detective I can imagine saying that is Nick Charles, though Nick never really got his martinis jostled, and would probably have redirected the line to into an arch reference to his difficulties managing his strong-willed wife.     


Rockford proves that Kirkoff did not kill his mother, but still believes he killed his father. In the end, Kirkoff earns a bit of sympathy by confessing to that crime. His real motivation in hiring Rockford was to uncover the partial truth, so he could then be free to reveal the rest --a nice twist of character to end the first show.