One of the fundamental problems Beth and Jim has is that Beth has never had to struggle. Most of her clients have, but she doesn’t have to work for every dime. Jim is from a working class background, not a privileged one, and he’s still better off than a lot of the people she helps. She wants him to take a lot of charity cases. She can afford to, but he’s got bills. She doesn’t really understand what she’s asking of him, and sometimes, it feels as though she’s not trying. It’s the only thing I don’t like about her.
Jim is taking Beth out to dinner. He thinks it’s a date. She wants him to meet a client of hers, Joseph DiMinna (Michael Ansara), who goes by “Joey Blue Eyes.” He’s a reformed hood who runs a restaurant. He had a deal with a partner who set things up so that he can’t buy out the partnership the way he thought he’d be able to. Among other things, the loan shark he borrowed $50,000 from beat up Paulette (Suzanne Charny), Joey’s daughter. His partner, Stryker (James Luisi), is firm that Joey shouldn’t have the opportunity to buy out the option.
This is another case where Beth is helping out an old school friend. She has a lot of those, and it’s one of the two ways Jim gets hauled into her business pretty regularly. The other is when people involve Beth herself in charity cases. She doesn’t fully understand, but she’s still a sucker for a hard-luck story. That’s kind of what happens here; she listens to Paulette’s hard-luck story and gets involved. It’s clear, incidentally, that Paulette wasn’t a law school friend, because she has some pretty heavy disdain for lawyers. Though after how screwed over her dad gets, who can blame her?
Jim’s pretty firm that he’s a coward, and it’s certainly true that he doesn’t really want to hurt anyone. More accurately, he doesn’t want to get hurt himself. Who can blame him? He gets hurt a lot on this show, and it’s no fun for him. If he can find a nonviolent way to deal with the situation, he absolutely will. He’s capable of taking care of himself, but he’s aware that there’s always someone tougher out there, and a lot of the time, what he’s doing is being smarter and getting the trick in before the other guy does.
So I’m aware that anyone we see on the sidewalk or what have you during a chase on this show is an extra or at the very least knows the show’s being filmed. But can you imagine being in a world where the show was real and being around for one of these chases? The car chasing Jim in this episode gets into an accident because of Jim’s driving, and imagine being the other driver in that accident and having to explain it to your insurance company. Angel’s unhappy enough about the whole thing, and at least he knows what’s going on. Though that may scare him more.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Car chase. Laundry mishap.