User Reviews

A terrific episode as the series really hits its stride. James Hampton from "F-Troop" shows up as Aaron Ironwood an old childhood buddy of Jim's who the Rockfords took in as a boy. He's since gone on to become a wildly popular motivation speaker with his own plane and a fortune.

He comes to Jim asking for a favor to get himself out of an embarrassing situation. People are trying to force him to sell his empire, he wants to turn it over to Jim so they can't get it. What he doesn't tell Rockford is that the people after his empire are members of organized crime. Obviously, he shares Rockford's ability to run a con.

Garner and Beery show a great deal of chemistry here as they remember Aaron growing up; the relationship between Rockford and Ironwood also works pretty well. It's surprising in retrospect the Aaron Ironwood character never came back again. Maybe the producers felt Jim had enough old buddies getting him in trouble not to ask Hampton back. He's never mentioned or referred to before this episode or after.

There's a nice running gag about Garner's pronounced limp in this episode and a chase scene where Jim uses his driving skill in a volkwagon delivery bug to beat out a powerful sedan.

A little bit of trivia: Dennis, who was a police lieutenant early in season one and later in the series would sweat out taking the lieutenant's test, also gets the results of his lieutenant's test in this episode. He's fifth on the list.

Not bad but not a classic either! This episode has some great character development of Jimmy and Aaron a childhood friend. Both are slick and back home boys. Well Jimmy gets roped into a scam involving the mob again. Great mob characters, some humor with a pizza truck and a car chase with some mobsters. Not a classic Rockford Files like the Oil rig episode but entertaining. Well written, directed and acted. A bit formulated but still delivers. 7 stars.

This episode starts out with a long setup for Jim and Rocky having to come meet the foster child Aaron, who Rocky once took in as a kid and is now a huge success and a multimillionaire, in a beat-up old VW decked out with grungy pizza signs and ads. Aaron comes out of his private jet to meet them and thinks the VW is just wonderful: "So, Jim, you're in the pizza business?" He has his people follow them in the limo but he hops aboard the battered old car quite happily because his family is in it.

That makes you really love Aaron, and appreciate his brains, too, since we find out right after this that he knows darn well Jim is a PI. This affection we have for Aaron holds throughout the show, even though in some respects he is (to put it mildly) a manipulative skunk and a fraud.

It's that appeal and the problems his illegal activities cause, as well the "good ole boy" interaction between him and Rockford (Garner lets his Oklahoma twang really show here) that makes this one of the best of the "Rockford Files" episodes ever. You really *believe* these two men grew up together...that's not easy to do with a one-hour weekly show and a whole new character.

I really enjoy the way James Hampton presents Aaron Ironwood -- the whole Southern combination of expensive lifestyle and down-home casual friendliness is there (he knows the private jet he came in on cost $2 million and yet the VW, with its trashy decoration, delights him), as well as the whole business with the sales pitch.

At the very end, where he's pacing the cell while Jim is keeping everything locked down inside himself, it could easily have gotten very dark...until Aaron decided to make the best of it. You can forgive him all the other stuff, because he really believes it himself: "Dare To Be Free!" And if anyone can pull that off, it will be him. He's a very likable character.

It would have been nice to see Garner and Hampton interact again during the series, but maybe they couldn't have done it as well since we already knew Ironwood was a slicker. Now, in another movie, if Garner was playing a grifter, too, that might have worked out, but it just didn't fit "Rockford."