The most common way for Jim to end up dealing with the upper classes is for a woman of his past to have married well. These women are usually seen as practical. They may not necessarily marry for money, but once they’ve married a wealthy man, they’re generally aware of the transactional nature when a poor woman marries a rich man, even for love. They’re dealing with expectations, and it doesn’t matter what the reality of their lives turns out to be. In general, they aren’t even shown to be bad, whether they married for money or not. They’re just living their lives, and sometimes, that means they need a private investigator. Who better than Jim?
In this case, it’s Janet Carr (Corinne Camacho). She loved her husband until he had affair after affair, and it killed the marriage. She sends Jim to find her husband, and he does—murdered in a hotel room in Bay City. Only when Jim sends the cops to the hotel, without revealing that he’s been there, they report back that it’s a suicide, and all the obvious signs of murder have been cleared away. Now, Jim has to find the killer while simultaneously avoiding the Bay City police, who have it in for him.
It doesn’t help that it’s because the chief announced that Jim thought the cops had contaminated the scene, which he never says. Obviously he thinks someone has, because a gun that was fifteen feet away and under drapes is now in the victim’s hand. But he never claimed the cops did it; there are other choices, here. Still, it’s a pretty good indictment of the system, because the chief says he trusts and respects the officers and doesn’t see the point to an investigation of the death, because it’ll all come to the same thing. That’s a system just begging to be abused.
One of the recurring high points of this series is Jim’s relationship with Rocky (now Noah Beery, Jr.). Rocky loves his son but doesn’t understand him. He half-flirts with many of Jim’s female clients—though not this time, probably because that would be weird. Rocky wants Jim to quit and become a truck driver, even when Jim’s actual job is more helpful to Rocky and/or his friends. Part of it is that he worries about his son’s safety, and that’s reasonable. But part of it is that he just doesn’t respect private investigation as a job.
Southern California for the Tourist: Bay City is fictional; it’s what Raymond Chandler used to call Santa Monica. Though Santa Monica is also explicitly mentioned in the show. On the other hand, it’s also explicitly said that Janet Carr lives in Pasadena, and that’s a real place. They even mention an all-night drugstore on Orange Grove, and that’s a real street. I’m reasonably sure I can guess where in Pasadena she lives; there’s a stretch of Orange Grove where the Rose Parade starts that’s been known for well over a century as Millionaire’s Row. Seems likely that’s where someone as rich as the Carrs would be.
Take Care of Rockford Files: The cops explicitly threaten to kill Jim in any routine traffic stop, which they assure him will happen.
I wouldn’t say that Jim Rockford is Chandlereque for the most part, but Garner starred in Marlowe, an off kilter adaptation that was in many ways a proof of concept for Rockford (and also teamed Garner with Rita Moreno, which would lead to her coming to the show a decade later). The use of Bay City not just an homage to Chandler but a shout-out to the movie.
Guests include Mills Watson, who appeared in everything, most famously as a racist who is scared of the wrong kind of blood on MASH and as Sheriff Lobo’s sidekick on NBC’s answer to Dukes of Hazzard.