Once again I find myself working my way through The Rockford Files thinking, “Gee, this is my intellectual comfort food, I should write a post about that.” And once again I discover, “Hey! I’ve already written that post.” And so I have.
That means that, to justify this post, I’ve got to cover new material, so I will. Here’s what I said in that previous post:
Garner is a handsome middle-aged man, six feet and perhaps an inch or two tall. He plays an easy going character, James Rockford, who is masculine without being macho. He can handle himself in a fight, which he frequently has to do, but he’s not a martial artist or a superhero. He’s competent, but vulnerable and takes his lumps. He likes sports, going to games, going fishing, often with his dad. He’s single, but is attractive to women, and kind. He’s had affairs in the past, and has one or three in the course of the show, he may even have been close to marriage.
Much of the appeal stems from the fact that he’s an interstitial character, if you will. He falls between the keys, lives in the cracks. While he makes a living, just barely, he’s not chained to a 9-to-5 job. He’s not been broken to harness.
I also noted that he doesn’t live within the confines of work mode. He’s not a slave to Homo economicus.
Moreover, he’s not married. His police buddy Lt. Becker is married, but Rockford himself is not. We do see Becker’s wife in a handful of episodes, but that’s all. She’s there as an adjunct to Rockford’s relationship with her husband. That’s all she could be in the show. So it doesn’t make sense to have her in too many episodes. She’d be in the way.
But why couldn’t Rockford himself be married? We know that he’s thought about, maybe even came close in the past. But married himself? How would that change the dynamic that makes the show work?
What if he’d married his attorney, Beth Davenport? It seems that they’d dated in the past and she pretty much confessed that she’d thought of him as a husband. Well, if they’d have gotten married, what kind of life would they have lived? I can’t imagine her living with him in that trailer; that’s not at all her style, not at all. Nor can I imagine him living her life style, with the elegant apartment. What of his PI business? Would he have taken it upscale to suit her clientele as a lawyer? I don’t think so.
Now, can I translate that paragraph into a statement about audience preference? That is, whoever finds Rockford appealing, male or female, finds him appealing as he is, an interstitial bachelor who likes women, dates them occasionally, and has longer term affairs, but that’s it. Whatever the basis of the show’s appeal, it’s incompatible with marriage as we currently conceive it.
Now, David Chase wrote and produced many episodes of The Rockford Files. But he’s best known as creator of and writer for The Sopranos. Marriage is central to that show, both Tony’s relationship to his wife and his two children, in addition to his many responsibilities as a gangster. What I’m suggesting is that, in a way, Tony Soprano is a Jim Rockford who’s married. Obviously, they’re very different types of people. Tony Soprano is overbearing, aggressive, and violent in a way that Jim Rockford his not. And if Jim Rockford is interstitial, then Tony Soprano is interstitial on steroids. And where Jim had is lawyer, Beth, Tony Soprano had his psychiatrist, Jennifer Malfi. That’s a very different kind of relationship – and I note that Rockford’s most substantial affair within the show was with a (blind) psychiatrist.
What interests me is that neither Rockford nor Soprano are “broken” to work mode. They make their living in (something like) play mode. I’m thinking something like: If you want to center a program around a Rockford-like character AND have him be married, you have to make him a gangster to do it. That is to say, our conventions about men, women, and marriage are such, that that’s what you have to do.
Do I believe that? Not quite. After all, I just made it up. It’s worth exploring with shows like Breaking Bad and Ozark, both about married couples (forced) to live on the wild side. The Hunting Wives? Sex/Life? Hmmmm....
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