Another detective character I quite like, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, talks a fair amount about how most PI work is extremely boring. Most of her cases, in fact, start the way Jim’s does here—a mundane job that goes unexpected places. It’s not a bad adventure tag, for all that. Strangely, it’s not one that Jim does very often. Usually, you know going in that it’s going to be an adventure. I mean, of course it’s going to be an adventure, because it’s an episode of a TV show, but you know what I mean.
Jim’s been hired by a deeply annoying guy from an insurance company (Mills Watson) to find the beneficiary of an insurance policy. Finding the decedent’s sister is as easy as looking in the phone book; she also has the letters the decedent received from her daughter. However, when Jim finds the daughter, Nancy Wade (Jesse Wells), it turns out there are people keeping their eye on her, and when Jim finds her, it sets off a chain of events that has the possibility to end poorly for them both.
So obviously, lesson one, read your contract. Get a lawyer. Make your lawyer read your contract. Seriously, don’t let this happen to you. Okay, so it probably won’t, but be careful. At bare minimum, note that there’s a fortune in Nancy’s bank account and she’s living in a dump. A lawyer would have let Nancy know whether she was getting a fair shake or not. She does not seem to have learned this lesson by the end, I’d note.
Nancy’s aunt (Virginia Gregg) is angry because Nancy gets the inheritance. By the sound of it, I’m not sure she’s wrong; it sounds as though she was the one who was supportive of Nancy’s mother during her final illness. Yes, you can leave your money to whoever you want to, but you can still understand her frustration. Especially since Nancy’s mother had severed all contact and never replied to the letters Nancy sent her. Clearly, she hadn’t accepted Nancy back into her life.
Apparently, Jim drives the VW to prove that James Garner could be just as adept at driving a small, less powerful car. Because I guess James Garner was doing his own stunt driving? Even if it isn’t true of James Garner, it’s definitely true of Jim. Dennis has been firm in the past that he’s just not going to keep up with Jim in a car chase, and nothing we’ve seen suggests to me that he’s wrong.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Knocked out. Punches someone and hurts his fist. Shot at. Car chase.
Garner was definitely good enough to do his own stunt driving, having learned to drive race cars for the movie Grand Prix and having stayed in the racing world part time.