Profit and Loss, Part 1: Profit

A man comes to see Rockford, but he's very cagey...refusing to even tell Rockford who he is. All he says is that he wants to hire him as some sort of 'go between'. But before he can finish, thugs arrive and knock out Jim and kidnapp the prospective client.

Rockford reports the assault and kidnapping to the police but when the police find the kidnapped man, he says he has no idea who Rockford is and never saw him. Now the police are threatening to arrest Rockford for filing a false report.

Obviously SOMETHING is going on and it appears as if a company, Fiscal Dynamics, is doing SOMETHING illegal. And by the time the first part of this show is over, Rockford's been threatened by the head of Fiscal Dynamics...and it's obvious a lot of nasty people are looking to squash Rockford if he continues looking into the company.

This is a very exciting episode and unlike the previous two-parter, this one never loses momentum. Well worth seeing and one that leaves you wanting to see more.

An officer of Ned Beatty's company Fiscal Dynamics comes to the Rockford Trailer and is looking to hire James Garner. But Garner can't get any information out of him, not even his real name. But John Carter has good reason to be scared and Garner sees that well enough when two thugs come into his trailer, knock him out and spirit Carter away.

Others might forget and certainly Garner has no reason to pursue this case, but getting beat up by a pair of thugs will tend to set some people off. He finds out about Fiscal Dynamics and its president Ned Beatty a most paranoid individual.

But he gains another client in Sharon Spelman and there's a murder of a man who owned a printing shop Val Bisoglio that Spelman swears is connected to the goings on at Beatty's company. Her own husband was killed in an automobile crash that she says was suspicious.

The two part story leaves off with a tentative alliance with Spelman and Garner.

This was the first "two-parter" of the great series, and while it was a very solid entry, I did detect some flaws that prevented it from becoming a terrific segment. This was still an episode I'd recommend, and while I don't particularly like many episodes from the first season, I'd have no trouble recommending this one. There were many familiar faces which included Michael Lerner, Val Bisoglio, Ned Beatty, a mediocre Sharon Spelman, and the first appearance of Rocky's friend L.J., played by Al Stevenson; Beth and Dennis had a scene or two, and there was several scenes with Rocky, which is always good. There was also several great shots of the Firebird, the beach, the trailer, and even the rare shot of Rockford with his fishing gear. Even more rare is the introduction of part 2 with narration by James Garner himself, which I didn't really expect. There were some aspects that didn't hold up for me, especially how/why Mr. and Mrs. Morris were absent for the entire latter segment, considering they were the ones who asked for Rockford's help in the first place. I also thought Rockford and Doris were acting way too cool when the police were chasing them after a building's alarm went off, and I found it odd that Doris kisses Rocky in the jail at the end of the episode, as she didn't even meet him until then. Don't let my negative comments outweigh what was otherwise a very good episode, with solid writing also.

If the investors in Enron and Madoff Securities had seen this episode of the Rockford Files, and remembered it, they could have saved themselves a lot of money before those two enterprises folded and took their money with them. This episode, thought up by Roy Huggins and written up by Stephen Cannell, used a lot of the themes of Wall Street swindling before they became all too familiar to the general public. Detective Rockford finds himself coming and going between insiders and outsiders involved in corporate skullduggery that doesn't really interest him, but threatens to land him in jail and bankruptcy court. Great performances by Ned Beatty, Michael Lerner, and Sharon Spelman, all of whom were called back for encores on the Garner show.

This is a very-good first part of a solid 2-part show. As far as being entertaining and fast-moving this is a definite winner. The tale itself is sinister and frighteningly-creepy. The various players in this strange story are obviously very-serious and very dangerous. Exactly what is really going-on here is hard to tell,as the details are rather murky indeed. This first-half here is a great introduction and set-up of the whole-story,and the complete story we eventually do get-to see is an awful-lot to digest.

At the time this episode was made,the events depicted in this episode would have been considered rather far-fetched and unlikely. Today,everyone pretty-much knows and accepts that this type of stuff really-is going-on all of the time. This tale here is another 'one of many' examples of the Rockford Files tv series being way-ahead of it's time when it comes to social and criminal matters.

I enjoyed watching both halves of this rather engaging tale!

I say 8/10,this is a great,earlier 2-part episode!