Rockford files

Inspired by the Astre/Vega thread.

Around Christmas my BIL bought the box set cheap. I remembered how much I used to love this show in reruns after school so I bought the set myself and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

It's is a pretty good show if you're  a car guy. I didn't recall that much of it is shot outdoors, mostly driving around southern California so lot's of really cool 60's and 70's iron in the background and up close. What really surprised me is the number of imports, and the large number of Vega's, though I did count the same one 6 times in one episode so there's likely some 'product placement' going on.

Definitely in my top 10 favorite shows of all time.

Via Netflix we watched every episode of Adam 12 and EMERGENCY.   Much of these had driving shots in LA.  I very much noticed how many Mustangs were on the road.  I also remember a shot going past a Pontiac Dealership and all-new Gen2 like '70 Trans Ams and Firebirds were lined up in the front row.  

Rockford's lawyer drove a 914

My sixth grade math teacher drove a 914!

Season 1 the blue Vega in the truck driving episode changes model years and damage a few times.

I loved watching them back in the day and they are still good entertainment. I was watching them all on Hulu but they suddenly vanished.

Love me some Rockford.

In reply to ddavidv :

Wow you're hard core. I think the blue one is the one I was talking about.

Not Rockford related, but old car/tv related- On the early This Old House episodes (1977ish) every government inspector, and most of the sales people, showed up in Chevettes.  And somebody on the tv crew drove a Pugeot 504 wagon.  It's parked in the background lots for the first few series.

I haven't done a Rockford turn for quite a while...

Also unrelated to Rockford- I own the box set of Rat Patrol.  I haven't watched yet out of fear that it will be a crushing disappointment, but someday I will invite a bunch of guys of a certain age over for a beer and Rat patrol afternoon.

There are a bunch of Rat Patrol episodes on Youtube.  I think it holds up pretty well, better than a lot of 1960s shows (go back and watch an episode of Man from U.N.C.L.E. , from today's viewpoint it was pretty amateurish.) 

Watching Rockford episodes back to back, it's funny to see just how formulaic the show was.

Now I've got the damn theme song running through my head.

ah.. back before the Pontiac Firebird became the Mullet mobile.

And yes, Vegas were EVERYWHERE!  Its what every dad bought their daughter to drive to college in the late '70's and early '80's.  Don't be fooled by the bodywork, they were horrific little cars.  My sister had one for a while, and I dated a girl with a Kammback.   Slow, slow, slow, doors that were bigger than the car and would droop after a year or so.  You had to lift them up to close the door.  But I degress...

I used to watch Rockford Files pretty much every week, and of course wanted a Firebird.  James Garner at one point at least drove race cars so he knew something about driving.  

James Garner had said that the show was not good to him, causing undo physical pain. 

Great TV series back in the day. In the nineties, Annie and I were in the parking lot in Malibu where the trailer was parked. The trailer wasn't there, and neither was he, but it was fun anyway.

rustybugkiller said:

James Garner had said that the show was not good to him, causing undo physical pain. 

I just saw where the studio shut the show down when one of his knee injuries kept him from work.  

I love the Rockford Files, I'm 35 so it's not something I grew up with, I was more in the Magnum P.I. rerun age. But after watching both shows all the way through on Netflix, Rockford Files is the better P.I. show for me. Magnum had it's generation, the Vietnam vets trying ti integrate back into society that most of it's more serious episodes were focused on, but for the most part the overall tone of the show was a sunny as the Hawaiian backdrop it was filmed in. Rockford was different, Jim never got paid, almost always landed in jail, and had to have a girlfriend that was a lawyer to be able to afford all those trips before a judge. He also tackled some major issues at the time that continue to be issues today, and even one episode that is scary in it's predictions of just exactly what happened/is happening with Facebook, personal data collection, and Cambridge Analytics.

The last episode of Season 4 "The House on Willis Ave." is about a private company collecting and storing massive amounts of private data from unknowing US citizens. A friend of Rockford and fellow P.I. gets murdered in his investigation of this data collection, and it comes to light that the company is selling this data to the highest bidder with no moral/legal obligations on what they do with that data. It's creepy how accurate this situation is with what's going on today. This warning at the end of the episode is still appropriate.

The other episode that is truly eye opening about our justice system is the Grand Jury episode. Rockford gets a call from a mob boss using an alias, and does some work for him. He later  gets called in to testify to a grand jury about his dealings with this mob boss, not knowing who they are talking about or that he had any dealings with him, because of the alias. After pleading the 5th incorrectly and getting thrown in jail, he appears again, this time pleading the 5th correctly, so the prosecutor gets his immunity revoked, and when Jim still won't testify he's thrown in jail again, and it's revealed that they can keep him there indefinitely with no charges as part of the grand jury. This is pretty chilling and I don't know that this has changed since then.

But back to the cars. Rockford Files is one of the main reasons I bought the AMC Hornet, after seeing all that malaise iron, I had to get me some.