It almost doesn’t feel worth mentioning when Jim gets into a car chase or gets held at gunpoint. He’s not hurt; who cares? It’s just such a normal part of his life that it barely makes a dent in his day. Oh, I’m sure he’d disagree with that concept, but there it is. It’s also true that we only see the interesting bits of his life; that’s true of any character. Quite probably he’s got some down time between cases where he goes fishing with Rocky and frets about expenses and so forth, but we don’t see that. It’s not as interesting.
Jim’s old cellmate Charlie Harris (Tony Musante) is on the lam. His wife has been murdered, and he’s the obvious suspect. Charlie’s a high-class swindler, wooing welathy women and taking their money. He’d been with another woman on the night his wife was killed, but that’s not much of an alibi, especially since he’s trying to avoid bringing her into it. He tells Jim that he can give Jim thirty grand to get him out of the murder rap, and Jim goes looking for Linda Bannister (Diana Muldaur) in the hopes that she’ll get Charlie off the hook.
Jim canonically spent five years in prison. That’s a lot of time to meet people, and the show certainly does find them for him. And they all want a piece of him. It’s not terribly surprising. Jim’s not just established, albeit at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, he’s clean. So far as we know, his only criminal record is the crime for which he was pardoned. They can spend time around him without violating parole, as I understand things, because he’s not a criminal. He was innocent in the eyes of the system. He adds a veneer of respectability to whatever they’ve got going on.
What’s more surprising is that Jim trusts these guys to pay him. I can’t imagine why. They never do. Most of the time, they don’t have the money to pay him with, even when it looks like they ought to. Somehow, he’s always out many hours of his time, a lot of gas, and a lot of patience. Often, he’s been injured, sometimes severely, and sometimes he’s out property in some way—car damage, stolen items, or his trailer tossed. He’s even spent a night or two in jail. He ends up owing Beth money. Sometimes, it’s harder to show them the door than others, but sometimes, he barely seems to try.
There would be a lot less business for Jim if more people took his advice and stopped worrying what other people think. It’s certainly advice that Jim has taken. He doesn’t even really seem to worry over much about what Beth, Rocky, or Dennis think of him. What he cares about is who he sees when he looks in the mirror. A while back, he told a story about how little his actual pardon mattered to him over time, and I think his realization of that is when he stopped caring what other people thought of him.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Held at gunpoint. Car chase.