Oh my ... maybe David Chase put together a multi-Emmy winning career later on, but after seeing this episode and some of his "Rockford Files" awards" I wouldn't award him anything better than a three-day-old dead fish. It is UNBELIEVABLY bad. There is no credibility in the plot and the dialog comes out of a ninth-grade playwriting class. The violence is pretty brutal too, uncharacteristic for the series. The acting is ... well-suited to the dialog, which means it's just plain bad (especially Ann Blyth and Carole Wells). Chase wrote this from a story by producer Paul Playdon, so he can share the so-called credit, but I would quietly leave this off my resume; if I were Chase -- which he probably has. Med Flory and Shelly Novack show a little spark as the kidnappers, and Joe Maross is OK as a pigheaded police lieutenant (the last few seconds provide the only real humor in the show as he and Mac literally wrestle for the ransom money), but in general, if you see the name David Chase on a "Switch" or "Rockford" credit you should just quietly select the next episode.
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