Today, we spotlight a classic episode of The Rockford Files that served as a great showcase for Isaac Hayes.
This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.
This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.
All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great Black-centric TV episodes.
The Rockford Files, obviously, was a not a Black-centric show in general, but the classic Season 2 episode, “The Hammer of C Block,” from 1976, definitely is. Loosely based on Raymond Chandler’s classic murder mystery, Farewell, My Lovely, the episode guest-starred Isaac Hayes as Gandolph Fitch, a former prison mate of Jim Rockford (James Garner), who Jim owes $1500 from a prison gambling debt. “Gandy” is here to collect, but he’ll accept Rockford’s detective services to pay off the debt (he amusingly calls Jim “Rockfish”). Gandy wants to find the best friend of Gandy’s dead girlfriend, who pinned Gandy for her murder. He served twenty years, and he now wants answers (Rockford was exonerated and released from prison for the crime that HE was unfairly convicted for, but Gandy had to actually serve all of his time).
One of the fascinating things about the episode is that there is no sugarcoating the fact that Gandy was a bad dude back in the day, and abusive towards his girlfriend, and there’s no, like, “Oh, he’s not such a bad guy” stuff, it’s just a question of did he actually murder her or not, and if he didn’t, then how DID she die?
There is one moment that goes a bit too far by the episode’s writer, Gordon Dawson, where Rockford points out that the girlfriend always came back to Gandy. Who the hell cares about that, Jim? It’s irrelevant!
The great Lynn Hamilton plays Eunice, the friend of Gandy’s girlfriend who he is searching for (Eunice and Gandy’s girlfriend were both prostitutes back in the day). Eunice has since married a rich doctor and lives a prosperous life with her two adult children and she is deathly afraid of Fitch seeking revenge on her, thinking she was the one who killed the girlfriend.
She didn’t, but as we learn, what she DID do was A. adopt her friend’s two children that she had kept hidden from Fitch (both times when the girlfriend got pregnant, she would skip town, have the baby, leave them with her family, and then return to Fitch) and B. kept hidden that the girlfriend ultimately killed herself and framed Fitch for her murder.
It’s so dark, but it’s well-handled.
Hamilton is outstanding, and there’s strong support from Eunice’s adopted children, who each hate Gandy for killing their birth mother, but they don’t know that he is their father. James A. Watson Jr. plays the son, who is now a cop, and Annazette Chase plays the daughter, who is trying to avenge her mother’s murder.
The Rockford Files tended not to get THAT dark, but occasionally it did, and this is one of the better examples of a compelling, but dark, episode (other times, the dark episodes kind of drag you out of the show, to be frank).
Okay, if I’m going to have 322 more of these (and 14 more this month), I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!
