Rocky is a person. This might not be a surprising statement, but when it comes to TV shows, especially with adult main characters, it’s kind of rare to have a parent who’s their own fully-fledged character. James Garner was in his mid-forties at the time the show aired; Noah Beery, Jr., was in his early sixties. Rocky would’ve been young when Jim was born, but the math does check out. Often, he’d be someone who kind of walked through once in a while, but on this show, he has friends and a history and clearly loved his wife very much.
Rocky also has a friend in this episode. Kate Banning (Edith Atwater) was married to a trucker friend of Rocky’s. She has just buried her son, an LAPD rookie. The official verdict is that he died in a car accident; Kate is not satisfied with this. She knows her son was murdered. Rocky says Jim will work for free, knowing Jim won’t; he hires Jim behind Kate’s back. Jim finds evidence that Banning was dirty, and he doesn’t want to tell Kate. The cops aren’t thrilled with him about the whole thing, either.
Rocky, it turns out, is lying to Kate. He doesn’t want to admit that his son hadn’t followed in his footsteps. It kind of makes me wonder what he told people while Jim was in prison. Sure, Jim had been framed, and it’s strongly implied that it’s in part due to Rocky’s efforts that Jim was eventually freed and pardoned. But Rocky is ashamed of his son simply because Jim isn’t a trucker. This isn’t just hiding the truth. He actively told Kate that Jim was driving a truck.
No one shows the slightest surprise that there are dirty cops in the LAPD. It’s completely taken for granted. The only debate is whether or not Kate’s son was one of them. Jim knows people don’t want to acknowledge the possibility in their loved ones, and who can blame them? You’d have to be a pretty awful person yourself to fail to realize that the level of abuse of power involved in what’s going on here is awful. Still, someone’s son is involved in it. It’s just that Jim isn’t working for them.
Everyone acknowledges that the death of a cop is given greater weight by other police than the death of a non-police officer. (I don’t want to use the term “civilian,” because the beliefs of some of them to the contrary, cops aren’t soldiers.) A few people seem clear on the idea that it’s wrong but also agree that it’s going to happen anyway. That the cops have declared it an accident is given greater weight because of that knowledge, which everyone involved is using as a cover.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Car chase.
I don’t think anyone set out to make Rockford the anti-Dragnet, but given the times, and the entire private eye genre and maybe Roy Huggins’s noir roots, there would always be more of a willingness to see the world through jaundiced eyes instead of rose colored glasses.
Interesting thing about this one: the script was co-written by Leigh Brackett, who was one of the first women to receive acclaim as a science fiction novelist; and co-wrote the screenplay for The Big Sleep, worked for Howard Hawks on several John Wayne films, adapted The Long Goodbye for Altman, and wrote the first draft for The Empire Strikes Back. This was her only Rockford script.
I do love coming across Leigh Brackett scripts. She was so talented!