The Rockford Files South by Southeast (1974–1980) Online

A terrific episode that plays more like a movie than a regular episode of the series. Jim Rockford is mistaken for someone else and sent by the government to an undisclosed location on a secret mission. Garner is as usual terrific playing a man trapped and frustrated by circumstance. Once he arrives (in the middle of nowhere), he learns of the mission and meets the lovely Christine Van Deerlin (Soap veteran Dorrie Kavanaugh), a woman who is surrounded by trouble. As much as I love Jim's friends and usual surroundings, its great to see him on his own, out of the usual surroundings in an episode that involves action, a lot of mystery, some comedy and even a bit of romance.

This segment started out well, especially the scenes when Rockford is mistaken for a federal agent and is driven place to place to meet a supervisor who's never the right one, and then he ends up on a plane to another country to find an heiress, although I can't quite recall the reasoning behind it. It appears that she's unhappy and held against her will, and that she knew the agent that Rockford supposedly is mistaken for. Right off the bat, I felt a lack of chemistry between Jim and Dorrie Kavanaugh's character Christine, and I felt the longer they hung together, the more clichéd their relationship became; boy meets girl, girl despises boy, girl feels sorry for boy, boy charms girl, girl likes boy, and so on. I usually dislike episodes when Jim falls for the girl, even though this woman is married; why does he need to hold her hand at the restaurant, and what did he expect to happen? There's another moment that I'm left scratching my head; Jim discovers the husband has been giving her arsenic, not pain killers, for her headache. My problem is that the husband leaves the poison out in the open for anyone to see, and voila, Jim discovers it. Is she too dumb to see what he's giving her, or is the husband too dumb not to hide the arsenic? There's no Rocky, Angel, or Dennis to add to the disappointment. The final moments have Christine wanting to meet Rocky and Jim's cat(did you know he had one?)and go back home with him, but Jim the cowboy turns her down, but proceeds to give her a big kiss to end the show. I'll make sure to watch something else the next time this show rounds the corner again, and I recommend you do the same also.