PILOT EPISODE - “Backlash of the Hunter”
Original air date: March 27, 1974
Director: Richard T. Heffron; Writers: John Thomas James (story); Stephen J. Cannell (teleplay)

The story in this pilot episode is a big mess – it's either confusing or just plain stupid. This is the show that is supposed to interest people in the series. These days, you can just go to Wikipedia to figure out the plot of a show … but not in 1974. Remember ... much of what you are reading here is not understood until the show, which is two parts, is over.

To unleash a huge pile of spoilers...

In June of 1973, Mildred Doyle (Nita Talbot) married William Elias. She was a "dancer" working on TV and variety shows; Elias was a multi-millionaire (estimated $10 million) who was 68 years old, 30 years older than Mildred. After a pre-wedding party in Los Angeles, the two of them headed to Las Vegas, intending to tie the knot. But after they got there, Elias suddenly died of a heart attack.

Mildred phoned Jerry Grimes, a gigolo-like boyfriend, played by the beefy and villainous William Smith, to let him know that the $10 million was going to slip through her (and their) fingers. Grimes told her to cover the body with a warm blanket and then, in a very short space of time, he found a "substitute" bridegroom. This man – who really didn't look that close to Elias at all, see picture – was Harry Butler (Bill Quinn), who had fallen on hard times after his wife died a couple of years before. Formerly an advertising account executive, Butler had turned into a down-and-out wino who could be found in places like "Saint Anne's Mission." Is a place like this where Grimes found him?

Grimes no doubt made a deal with Butler that if he stood in for the deceased Elias, he would financially benefit. Butler was brought to Las Vegas, obviously very quickly, and he was wed to Doyle, pretending he was Elias. Later, around the time of the show, Butler sobered up enough to realize he had been used, and wanted some money, or he was going to spill the beans. After he calls Doyle, the show begins with her phoning Grimes and telling him, "I think we're in trouble."

Somehow Grimes (or Mildred) manages to get in touch with Butler, despite the fact he doesn't seem to be living at a fixed address and suggests a meeting at the Pacific Palisades amusement park. Butler takes a bus there and goes under the pier where the park is located. Grimes, who has been following Butler, sneaks up behind him and strangles him. Grimes removes Butler's shoes and leaves him, shots of the tide suggesting that it will take Butler's body away from under the pier.

In due course, Butler's body is found by the cops, but his file is soon tossed in the "Unsolved - Inactive" filing cabinet, despite Dennis Becker's suspicions about the case, specifically that Butler's death was not connected with a mugging, because after he was found dead, he had a very expensive ring on his finger.

Later, Butler's daughter Sara (Lindsay Wagner), because she is suspicious about what happened to her father, turns up at Rockford's trailer because of his Yellow Pages ad saying that he only deals with closed cases. Much of what follows involves her trying to hire Rockford, despite the fact that she really can't afford him, and he is not particularly interested in taking her case.

The two of them go to visit Sara's brother Nick (Bill Mumy from Lost in Space), who works in a pharmacy. He delivers prescriptions to Mildred and she has taken an interest in him, offering to put him through medical school. Does this peculiar coincidence have anything to do with Mildred having found out that Nick's father Harry was the man who stood in for her husband? Nick has no love for his late father, who treated him badly, but, on the other hand, treated Sara like "a queen."

Rockford, strictly to satisfy his curiosity about the case, goes to Las Vegas, where he talks to Ruben Seelman (Michael Lerner), the coroner who performed the autopsy on Elias's body. Because there was a dispute regarding Elias's will, four other doctors were consulted and they all agreed with Seelman's conclusion that death was caused by a heart attack. There isn't any anything mentioned about how medical professionals like Seelman could have determined the time of Elias's death using typical methods having to do with lividity and so forth.

After Rockford leaves his office, Seelman phones Mildred and tells her that Rockford was snooping around. This information gets passed along to Grimes, who starts tailing Rockford in his huge red Cadillac convertible. This gets Rockford's attention.

Rockford goes to see Mildred, pretending to be the dean of admissions of a medical college where Nick will probably go to study. She sees through his bogus persona, however, saying he looks more like a "trucker," echoing something said by Rocky's father (Robert Donley) at the beginning of the show, and after Rockford leaves, Grimes tells her that this "dean" is really Rockford, who he has been tailing.

Rockford intentionally lets Grimes tail him to the Mayfair Music Hall, which features dancers, acrobats and shows with trained animals. Luring Grimes into the washroom, Rockford tells him, "You've gotta be one of the dumbest looking apes I ever saw." Rockford insults Grimes more, telling him that he is "queer," but when Grimes goes to attack Rockford, he slips on the floor on some soap Rockford dumped there from a dispenser (a MacGyver-like move on Rockford's part).

(This is where part one of the show ends; there is a 7:20 "previously on" plus titles at the beginning of the second part.)

Rockford enlists Sara to help him nab Grimes by dressing up "slinky" and luring Grimes, who has gone to Gazzarri's On The Strip (an actual nightclub of the era). She is worried that Grimes will try and rape her. After Grimes takes her to his apartment, Sara slips knockout drops in a drink he is having, after which she and Rockford snoop around his bedroom, where they find a picture of him with Mildred. There are some tense moments where it looks like Grimes will recover from his drug-induced stupor.

Afterwards, Grimes is furious about his humiliation by Rockford and makes plans to take care of him (maybe) with an acquaintance in Las Vegas named Morrie (Pat Renella). He wants Mildred to give him $20,000 to cover expenses, but she doesn't want "any more killing." Grimes just becomes more psychotic, brutalizing and almost strangling her. When Mildred gives in, Grimes says, "I almost killed the golden goose."

Rockford and Sara head to Las Vegas, after he has a brainstorm regarding the paperwork for Elias's wedding. He manages to get an employee of the Las Vegas city administrator's office (an acquaintance of his father) to look in a filing cabinet at 6 in the morning for a paper which provides details about which Vegas wedding chapel performed Elias's ceremony. However, Grimes and Morrie are already at the chapel, and they try to kidnap the minister, Reverend Danford Baker. Does Grimes anticipate that Rockford is coming to Vegas to talk to Baker? Rockford and Sara show up just as Grimes and Morris try and flee with the minister, who escapes from their car and is shot by Grimes.

What follows is an interminably dumb chase into the desert to some place literally in the middle of nowhere where there is a plane ready to take off (for where?). Was this all planned, expecting that Rockford would show up? Some of the music during this car chase is very bad. This is where Rockford finally tells Sara that he figured out everything about how her father was a stand-in at the wedding. The plane takes off and circles around and Grimes starts shooting at Rockford's car from the air with a machine gun (seriously). Eventually Rockford's car blows up, but Rockford shoots the plane, causing it to also explode after it crashes (both Grimes and Morrie escape first).

At this point, Both Rockford and Sara, plus Grimes and Morrie are in the desert, miles from nowhere, seemingly not too far away from each other. But in the next scene, the two thugs are on a highway, attempting to hitchhike back to town. A cement truck which Rockford and Sara have somehow commandeered (from where?) shows up. The two men are not looking closely at who is driving the truck (in fact, they are looking forward, away from it), because the driver is Sara. Rockford forces both of the men to go into truck's rotating mixing drum and after they are taken back to town, they are turned over to the local police.

Nothing is said about what happens to Grimes and Mildred or the case as a whole … the focus at the end of the show is on the fact that Rockford was using a gun. This could cause problems if Rockford was a parolee, but he was pardoned by the governor, so this condition should not apply.

I DON'T GET IT...

After finishing the above review of the Rockford pilot, I realized that I had glossed over something that bothered me – the fact that the "seed" (for want of a better word) which basically sets the entire ball rolling with Rockford investigating what happened to the father of Sara Butler (Lindsay Wagner) -- is very badly written.

When Sara tells Rockford that she is suspicious about her father's murder, he says it's unlikely he can solve the case if the police have given up on it. But she says,"I've just learned something that I think changes that ... I'd like you to meet my brother, he can tell you."

Rockford says they will talk to her brother Nick before he takes the case. Nick works in a pharmacy and says he doesn't want to discuss his father, who was "a drunk." (Sara slaps his face over this.) Nick says their father treated her like a "queen," whereas he had to carry his father's golf bags on Saturday and "take out the garbage."

When Sara threatens to take Rockford to "meet your Mrs. Elias," there is almost a confrontation with Rockford. Nick says he delivers things to this woman: "She got kind of interested in me. She heard about my mother dying and my father getting killed [from who?]. She found out I wanted to be a doctor [from who?] ... she's offered to put me through medical school."

Mrs. Elias orders her "pharmaceuticals" from the drugstore where Nick works and he delivers them to "her house in Bel Air." Sara finds this odd because her are "15 or 20 [drugstores] that are closer to her."

We find out soon enough that "Mrs. Elias," a former dancer known as Mildred Doyle, was involved with a complicated plot to have Sara's father stand in for her husband who died of a heart attack just as they were about to get married, so she can "inherit" a huge amount of money. Sara's father was murdered to keep him from spilling the beans about this plan, assuming Doyle told him about "the plan." The father's participation in all this (not to mention how he was selected to be the stand-in) is all questionable, because the father had turned into a wino, who probably couldn't put two and two together.

As Nick relates the story about getting his medical school education paid for, we can see wheels turning in Rockford's head, because there is something suspicious about this scenario.

Is anyone – meaning viewers of the show -- going to seriously think about all the behind-the-scenes connections that have to be made here? Was Doyle a gold-digger who planned all this with her beefy boyfriend Jerry Grimes (William Smith)? How did she know about Nick's existence, was his name reported in an obituary after his father was found dead, and how would Doyle then know that he worked in the pharmacy?

There are certain things about all this that are suspicious, but how could Sara have made a connection between Doyle, her offer to put her brother through medical school, and her father's death?

Seriously, this is BAD writing, and things just get worse as the show goes along.

I looked up the user reviews of this pilot on IMDb, and found some serious fawning over it:

On the other hand, there were some comments that echoed my own feelings on the pilot:

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