The Real Easy Red Dog

I agree with the other poster about the average performance of Stephanie Powers, who teams up with Jim, mainly after Jim finds out that she conned him regarding a few cops on her trail. Now that's out of the way, I'm a fan of football(used to be), and was a big fan of the Los Angeles Rams in the late 70's, early 80's; when we first see Jim, he's watching a Rams game getting ready to snack, while calling a bookie about a bet on the 2nd half, when Christine knocks on the door. I think this episode may have "borrowed" the football angle and the "drowned in her own pool and made to look like she drowned elsewhere" idea from earlier Columbo episodes. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but perhaps some of the writers admire each other's works. In any event, I did enjoy this segment for the most part. A great quote is when Rockford mentions a "red dog" to Christine, and I wasn't even aware of it. It has to do with the defensive line sacking the unsuspecting quarterback, as she tried to do to him. You got to get up early in the morning to con Jim, a great con man himself. I read that James Garner was a big Oakland Raiders fan, and was allowed to roam the sidelines during games.

I admit that I didn't expect a baby racket being the main motive of the murders, but it ended the episode on a good note. I'm also a fan of Tom Atkins' character Diel, who loathes Rockford and even Christine, who helps Jim solve everything. I sometimes wish Jim didn't have to force a kiss with every actress at the end of many episodes like this one. There really was no reason to kiss her in the last scene.

Given the chemistry that guest star Stephanie Powers has with charming James Garner in this second-season episode, it kinda makes you wish that Garner's health had held up into the '80s, & that producers of this series hadn't screwed him out of the portion of its money that he so richly deserved (how many Emmy Awards does 1 guy have to win?!?). Imagine the show "Hart to Hart" starring a great actor like James Garner. Anyway, the plot of this one involves a supposed suicide, jumping off the Santa Monica pier, who actually was forcibly drowned in her own swimming pool and then her body dumped in the nearby ocean. For some reason, TV cops don't ask the coroners if fresh or salt water are in the drowning victims' lungs. It's almost as if they prefer a neat suicide to very messy homicides that they actually have to leave as open cases and seriously investigate. Well, I rate this installment as 8 out of 10 stars.

In this story Rockford gets hired with a phony story which in and of itself is no big deal. A lot of great detective novels have begun that way. But all Stefanie Powers wants is for the bad guys to follow him leaving her free to work thr vase as she is also a private eye.

The case Powers is on involves the 'accidental' drowning of a woman whom sister Sherry Jackson isn't particularly looking like she's doing any mourning for.

I have to say I wasn"t expecting the result in the end. Always the mark of a good mystery.

This episode definitely has the feel of a backdoor pilot for a show featuring private eye Tina Dusseau (Sefanie Powers). She has great chemistry with Garner, so it'skind of odd the character was never brought back at a later date, especially as Powers wasn't committed to any other series at the time (her next notable appearances are in a Buzz Aldrin television biopic and a cross-over episode connecting The Six Million Dollar Man to its spin-off show The Bionic Woman. In later seasons, The Rockford Files would feature a number of similar set-ups. The majority of which stalled on the launch pad.