Okay, Jim’s not always on the side of the angels. Sometimes, he’s on the side of recurring character Angel Martin. Now, I am absolutely going to have to write Stuart Margolin up for Celebrating the Living at some point1, because he turns out to have had a simply wild career—his first movie was Women of the Prehistoric Planet, and he directed the Quantum Leap episode “Dr. Ruth,” and even if he had done nothing else, those three things make him worthy of the schedule. And as Angel Martin, he’s one of those characters who is a perfect level of seasoning to the show. Unlike Dennis, he’s not a character I’d want to see a whole show of, but ye Gods the show wouldn’t be the same without him.
Jim has loaned Angel his car, the first of many bad decisions here. He goes to talk to a guy who allegedly owe Angel two grand. He brings a couple of people back to the trailer. Angel steals Rocky’s truck and drives off, pursued by the guys in Jim’s car. The guy who owed Angel the money turns up dead. Someone they went to prison with is very upset them for running a con in his area, which upsets Jim, because he had nothing to do with it. It turns out that Tom Little (Angelo Gnazzo) scammed $30,000 from the newspaper Angel’s brother-in-law owns that Angel’s sister got him a job at. Jim decides they need to fake Angel’s death.
The Angel-heavy episodes tend to be funnier. In this one, he among other things tells Jim that his brother-in-law may have the locker room at the paper bugged because “he’s some kind of weirdo.” He laments that Chester Sierra (Ray Danton) is trying to kill him, since they sang in the San Quentin choir together and practiced hymns together. Angel is cowardly and not terribly bright, and he can’t keep himself from trying to con people. Rocky hates him, and can you blame him?
It’s not surprising to discover that Angel deserted under fire in Korea, and I guess two years at Leavenworth is the sort of thing you’d get for that. I’m a little more surprised to discover that he did time in a federal prison beyond that. I can’t imagine what federal crime Angel possibly could have committed; I guess it might have involved tampering with the mails in some way. It just seems surprising to me that Angel would’ve done anything that would come to a federal prosecutor’s attention, because he definitely prefers laying low.
Southern California for Tourists: When Angel told Jim his car was in “the LA area,” I laughed out loud. Anyone who’s been to LA, much less lived in there for their entire formative years, knows how ridiculous a statement that is. Officially, we’re talking about “it’s somewhere in a roughly 2000 square mile area.” And that’s just the contiguous urban area; the whole geographic region is well over 30,000 square miles. Now, it’s not true that the LA River has no life in it, but apparently it is true that the last documented native fish species there was a rainbow trout caught in 1940.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Jim punches a guy (who doesn’t even flinch, but Jim hurts his hand) and gets his car stolen. Held at gunpoint and abducted. Beats up a couple guys to avoid being executed.
- I have done that since this article was initially written. https://www.mediamagpies.com/stuart-margolin/ ↩︎
This one has the rarest of things, a phone message that connects to something in the episode. Beth calls to remind Jim about catsitting for her, and sure enough he’s catsitting! (The first of, I think, three encounters between Jim and a cat.)
The thing with Angel I always wondered about is just exactly how his sister came to marry the publisher of what is essentially the LA Times. We never see Angel’s backstory beyond his criminal career and that he’s from Texas. Oh, and that his real first name is Evelyn. My inner fanfic writer has ideas.