CW: James Woods, noted terrible person
When you’re Jim, you can’t afford to be too choosy about your clients. After all, it’s established early that he doesn’t have a ton of money—this episode is the first with the answering machine gag, and it’s “Norma from the market” asking about a recently bounced check. So the client may be a sleaze who possibly murdered his own parents, but also he’s offering Jim $20,000 if he can prove someone else did it. Jim knows what the chances are that he’s never going to collect, because seriously, he knows what the chances are that the guy did it himself. But if he’s wrong, twenty grand will indeed buy a lot of groceries.
The client is Larry Kirkoff (James Woods). “Everyone knows” he killed his parents. He insists he didn’t and hires Jim, of all people, to find the real killer so everyone will be proven wrong. Jim thinks he’s probably guilty, too, but you know, he can’t afford to lose the cash. Jim finds out that the late Mrs. Kirkoff was fooling around with Travis Buckman (Roger Davis), and the late Mr. Kirkoff was fooling around with Tawnia Baker (Julie Sommars). Tawnia bluntly and openly wants to marry a rich man, but she also says she would’ve married Kirkoff if he lost every cent. There are also union ties that prove to be mob ties, and Jim runs afoul of guys working for Al Dancer (Abe Vigoda).
It is pretty solid casting. James Woods is a terrible human being—a deeply terrible human being. Still, that may mean he’s even better at this kind of role. Larry Kirkoff doesn’t really care that Jim thinks he’s guilty. That isn’t important. What’s important is that he knows that Jim can’t afford not to work for him. Because he hasn’t actually been convicted of the murder, Larry is able to inherit all of his parents’ estates. He is extremely wealthy. That twenty grand works out to somewhat over a hundred grand today; of course Jim couldn’t back out on it.
Jim gets beat up a lot. Here, two guys are holding him while two others punch him, but it’s clear that most of what he relies on is getting in the first shot. That wouldn’t work with being heavily outnumbered, but it sure lets him get one in on Travis. This is the kind of character Garner played particularly well—ones who were competent enough but who didn’t want to have to rely on that if they didn’t have to. Honestly, it feels like half the reason Jim didn’t make his father happy and become a truck driver is that there are fewer ways to dodge the work.
Honestly, one of the ways we know we shouldn’t like Larry is that he hired Jim. This is because he could definitely afford an agency and is much more likely to do so. Unlike the last client, Larry isn’t likely to have been referred by Dennis Becker. It feels as though Larry must have gone looking for a low-income private investigator who could be pushed around. He found one, just like he knew he would.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Jim is drugged and then held at gunpoint. He then punches the guy and gets his gun. Jim is dragged off and beaten by four thugs, one of whom leaves him $200 to prove it’s not personal and then kicks out his headlights. He gets beat up and hauled in front of Abe Vigoda.
By this point Abe Vigoda had been in The Godfather and firmly established as a go to actor for playing mobsters, though he would soon flip the script on Barney Miller.
Two signatures of the show start here: mobsters with last names that end in -ette, and goons. On the podcast I mentioned last time, the thug are always referred to as “goons, hired goons” a la The Simpsons.
A common element that will get discussed possibly more here than other places is the frequent Pasadena references. Which also explains the frequent Armenian characters, as those who know know.