Great Redeemer writes: "...Jim establishes that (the guy following Jim from
the airport in TCIC) is a PI called Fishback ...whom we never see again.
"...TCIC boasts some of the finest incidental music in the entire
series-my favourite is the tune played when Jim drives to meet Jamison at
the Restaurant and then leaves and is followed by the Feds to the gas
station. Its a great piece."
Agreed on the music. Like it a lot. Find lots of such cases of incidental
music throughout TRF which IMO are excellent. Would no doubt be in
agreement with other musical choices of yours in other eps besides the one
you cite for TCIC.
Re gaffes in TCIC: In my view (and as long as we're cataloging them or
"piling on") TCIC seems to me to have more than its share of big and
little problems with continuity, obvious staging effects (or directorial
conveniences in scene structuring which though they might have "eased"
things in the shooting and/or editorial moment end up in the final product
striking us in the audience as laughably not-true-to-life), unexplained
appearances of characters and occurrences, and dopey acting by "extras" in
the background of the night-club and of the social-event settings...yet
IMO it's a terrific ep, highly entertaining, and one of my favorites (and
favourites, too) for lots of reasons already pointed out by others.
For example (just a tiny one out of many), I had to laugh at the hired
muscle--the huge guy with the beard--that sits in the chair in Rockford's
Newark motel room and glares at Rockford but won't say "Hi" while the
other, more suave heavy explains things (gives "sound advice") to
Rockford. That particular silent muscle stands out for me in a great,
funny gallery of hired muscle in TRF.
But as to the nitpics: The unusually notable continuity and other problems
in TCIC to me seem especially present early in that ep.
For what it's worth--probably little--here's some additional stuff to what
we've been citing recently in the present thread about TCIC along these
lines, some of this additional stuff really in the almost meaningless
nitpic category, and which we kicked around awhile back in the NG in a
short thread.
In the opening, when the 747 lands at LAX, there's a camera shot from an
airliner undercarriage where the wheels touch down on the tarmac. Then we
break again (actully we resume) to a panoramic side view (and hence a few
seconds later in the 747-landing sequence) of the presumably already
touched-down plane. But in this succeeding sideways-pan it still hasn't
quite touched down yet.
In the airport parking garage, Jim's Firebird is conveniently parked just
outside the elevator and the drivers-side window is down and the car is
unlocked though he's returned from a trip to New Jersey and you lock your
car in airport parking garages, don't you? Almost everyone does,
especially while away for days on coast-to-coast flights.
When Jim and the pursuing Fishback respectively pass the airport parking
garage pay station and its attendent in exiting the parking garage, they
each hand the attendent what looks like a piece of white paper and are
waved on through--there is no sense of the usual, i.e., waiting for the
attendant to punch-in the ticket, determine the charge, take what's often
not the exact payment amount from the driver, make change and hand that
change and a receipt stub (for the expense report)to the exiting driver.
When a few minutes later Fishback backs over the row of spikes at the
parking lot, the angle of Jim's Firebird as it explodes from its hiding
place across the street and bears in on a front-end "collision course" to
"force" Fishback to rapidly throw his gray Chevy into reverse gear isn't,
it doesn't appear to me, really on a collision line sufficiently to compel
Fishback to back-up ALL the way, more than a few feet, in fact--puncturing
all four tires on the spikes: when you look at the angles and speed it
seems at least that Fishback's backup is a little too obviously forced for
directorial purposes (not as it's supposed to be out of an audience
illusion that there is fear of collision), so as to get the full,
obviously planned scenic effect of blowing out all four tires. It's
relatively a pretty lengthy back-up distance, IMO.
Just a funny aside--that's Delgado, the already paying customer, trying to
look surprised and irritated in the old clunker in front of Jim that Jim
uses his Firebird to ram and push under the raised striped blocking gate
when Jim earlier in the sequence forces his way into the parking lot
without paying and to minimize delay in entering the lot.
PI Martin Fishback--as I recall he drives a drab, official-looking gray
chevy and this brand/color are later specifically called out as the easily
spotted telltale kind of car the feds are issued and drive when they
pursue Jim in TCIC. Jim, as I recall, at one point ALSO notes aloud that
Fishback (though not in this observation using the name "Fishback" though
he's referring to him) was pursuing Jim in a gray Chevy. Yet Fishback is a
PI, not a fed. That's strange and since Fishback's appearance isn't
explained, it makes you speculate briefly as to: was he, in his gray
Chevy, a "contract" guy for the feds. Doesn't make sense. Did Jamison hire
him to check on Jim. Doesn't make sense, at least not by anything Jamison
says explicitly, though Jamison does give the direct sense that he's
decided Jim is "reliable." How did he decide this? Yet Jim's going to the
trouble (in one of those classic funny scenes in which Rockford puts-on
bureaucrats to get normally witheld info) to talk the telephone woman into
ID'ing Fishback suggests (repeat, suggests [doesn't nail down]) to me that
the most plausible explanation here is that originally in the teleplay,
there was enough in the early scenes put in as written for Fishback to
figure in explicitly...to make sense as a character. My guess--only a
guess--is that this inexplicability about Fishback is a director/film
editor problem, maybe caused by (a) time constraints forcing some dubious
cutting and/or(b)not-so-hot directing.
Anyway, idle speculation, to say the least.
Finally, who in the hell is that 1970's-Hollywood-looking guy sitting at
the table at the party who tells Jamison's daughter (Sharon Gless) that
Rockford isn't a dubious corporate analyst but a detective? He and
Rockford, you get the sense from the way the guy casually acknowledges
Rockford, might even know one another. But this is left hanging. (This
sequence of identification--puncturing Jim's alias--is obviously necessary
to later plot development.) I dimly remember that in that earlier thread
in the NG on all this stuff, one poster discovered a novel or story that
TCIC may have been derived from in which the guy at the table is
identified and his prior relationship explained. Could be wrong here, but
seems this was the case.
Anyway, as Mike T says, who'd a thunk at the time we'd be doing
non-real-time analysis?
Love the ep, no matter the nitpicks. Too many good things in it not to.