Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 78

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Popular Culture Review

the quip, “I’m spontaneous. I don’t wait in alleys.” So much for moving down
those mean streets. On the other hand he will resort to every ruse, scam, fraud, and
outright lie to get the information that he needs. In the episode “Forced Retire
ment” Rockford's Oklahoma oilman alter-ego Jimmy Joe Meeker makes his first
appearance. Rockford will resort to this character throughout the rest of the series
usually as a cover for some con-game.
Jimmy Joe, who is described as being “smoother than oil on a blister”,
appears to be Garner’s sardonic homage to his Oklahoma roots (He was born James
Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma and had less than a happy childhood. His mother
died when he was five. He started work at age ten. At thirteen he was a janitor at
the University of Oklahoma. When he was sixteen he worked in the Texas oil
fields. When he was seventeen he was clearing trees for Bell Telephone). As played
by Garner, Jimmy Joe comes off as a comic example of neo-bubbaism at its best.
In another point of departure, Rockford is not completely a loner. The
typical hard-boiled American detective has no family, thus limiting his vulnerabil
ity, and he distrusts women’s sexual power over men. “I’d always been amused by
the fact that no character in private-eye history, that I could recall, ever had a
family,” recalls Stephen J. Cannell. “They were always such iconoclastic, lone
characters. It’s like the Greek gods never had families. So 1 thought, ‘I’m going to
give this guy a family. I’m going to give him a dad.”6 Thus was born “Rocky”, a
semi-retired truck driver who had no idea why his son wanted to be a P.I. and take
all those beatings.
In one episode written by Cannell (“The Four Pound Brick”) Rocky tells
a friend that his son “is really a truck driver who only does private investigation on
the side.” Later in the same episode, Rocky explains to Jim, “If I tell them my
son’s in trucking, right away they know what I’m talking about. But if I tell them
my kid’s in the private eye business—they just don’t understand.” In another epi
sode, Rockford introduces himself as a college Dean o f Admissions, to which a
woman responds, “You don’t look much like a Dean of Admissions”. “What do I
look like then?”, Rockford replies. “A truck driver in a suit”, she retorts. While
conforming to the detective ideal of not being married, and he is suspicious of
women should circumstances warrant, he does date and has a steady girlfriend in
Beth Davenport (played by actress Gretchen Corbett from 1974 to 1978 when she
was removed from the show because of financial considerations), a lawyer whom
he relies upon for pro bono rates as well as watching her cats when she is out of
town.
In an episode involving Lance White (Tom Selleck), a suave P.I. and la
dies man, who tells an infatuated beautiful woman that he has no time for a date,
Rockford interjects with, “I’m free on Friday!” Not exactly the comment made by
Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep that “Women make me sick.” By the way Selleck