The Countess of the title (played by Susan "Daughter of Lee" Strasberg) approaches Rockford for help with a blackmailer. She makes her first appearance wearing a suit, complete with a hat and fur stole, that Ingrid Bergman could have worn in Casablanca. She shuts down an overly friendly cab driver with a series of flat, condescending remarks. Her face wears an almost immobile expression of superiority. Two minutes into the show viewers are subconsciously channeling Rockford in their heads: Geez, lady. Come off it...
Back at the trailer, after an encounter with the blackmailer leaves her shaken, Rockford offers the Countess a slug of brandy in a paper cup.
TC: "You certainly reduce things to their lowest common denominator."
JR: "It's a plastic world. If you don't like it that way I can give it to you in a cheese glass."
The Countess refuses to help Rockford connect the dots about her blackmailer or what he has on her. She basically comes out and says that she can't reveal anything that to him that would allow him -- an obvious low-life -- to become a second blackmailer.
So when Rockford shows up for a party at the house she shares with her new, post-count husband, a down-to-earth oilman named Mike, he is already on high social alert. He quickly encounters a Margaret Dumont stand in who remarks on how tacky L.A. is becoming.
MD: "Did you meet the Countess in Europe?"
JR: "No, at Marine Land. I run the hot dog concession by the killer whale exhibit."
As the show progresses we learn that The Countess (as she is almost uniformly referred to) is one Deborah Ryder from Southern Illinois, who as a naive teenager had been roped into prostitution by the mob in Chicago. She skipped bail after being arrested and fled to Europe, where she met and married the Count. The man who had set her up back in Chicago, Carl Brego (Dick Gautier) met her by chance in L.A. and is now threatening to expose her past. After she comes clean to Rockford, the Countess seems to warm to him. When she suggests that he is not impressed by her title, he tells her that the only title that ever impressed him was that of a mob enforcer who had the word "hitman" printed on his business cards.
In an attempt to get Brego to leave the Countess alone, Rockford tracks him down and tells him to back off, claiming that he has the same information and wants to blackmail her himself. This is a bit surprising, as Rockford usually only plays the heavy with people who aren't very dangerous. When Brego is murdered by an unknown assailant during their brawl, Rockford assumes that he was set up for a frame by the Countess. In a subsequent confrontation on her tennis court he threatens to turn her over to the police, and thus expose what she had wanted to keep hidden.
TC: "You really did crawl out from under a rock."
JR: "Every time I get indicted for murder I seem to lose all my manners."
Once she convinces him that she didn't try to frame him, she seeks reassurance that he won't tell the police about her.
JR: "I'm never too sure just how much character I've got. In a pinch I start groping for alternatives. I'll probably sell you out before I take a rap for murder."
He concludes by telling her, "If I go down, you go down."
TC: "Chivalry is really dead, isn't it."
JR: "I know."
While the police are on their way to arrest Rockford he is picked up by a couple of syndicate goons outside his trailer. They believe that he really did murder Brego, and want to know why. At the typical abandoned warehouse, he is greeted by a very chipper mid-level gangster.
MLG: "How are you feeling, Mr. Rockford?"
JR: "To tell you the truth I'm scared to death."
The police disrupt the would-be hit and Rockford has to slug Dennis Becker to make his escape and track down the real killer. By now he has figured out that it is Mike, the Countess' new husband. Mike kidnaps Rockford at gunpoint and plans to kill him, but he makes the mistake of letting Rockford drive. In the ensuing crash Rockford is scuffed up and Mike is fatally injured.
The episode closes at the hospital, where the Countess is distraught over both Mike's actions and his death. She thought he was the real thing, but muses that the closer you get to anything the more plastic it becomes.
Rockford tries to cheer her up with this, which captures a nice strain of 1970s zeitgeist:
"We're all scared to death. I guess that's the penalty we pay for living in a world full of price tags that end in 99 cents and they sell mortuary plots on billboards by the freeway. What you do is, you keep laughing. They're gonna kiss your hand, honey, 'cause you are a countess. Stop worrying about it. You played a big practical joke. Just keep laughing."
This speech is unusual for Rockford in both its length and its tone of having things more or less figured out. Usually Rockford would be the first to admit that his vast collection of survival tips do not add up to a philosophy of life.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/13728/the-rockford-files-the-countess
