Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs

This is a very solid episode from the final season of this great show, and the most notable aspect is the appearance of Lauren Bacall, who portrays Kendall(who names their daughter Kendall?), and she happens to be best friends with a princess named Irene(Dana Wynter), as they were classmates in high school years ago. Their friendship is slightly odd, as Kendall travels everywhere with her friend and pretends to be rich, although she is broke. This episode also has all the players involved, including several scenes with Rocky, Jack Garner(James Garner's brother), Chapman, Dennis, and the weasel Angel, who's pleasantly surprised his buddy Jim is involved with the princess; she hired him to find out who's trying to kill Kendall. Rockford has to integrate himself with the rich, pretentious snobs to dig deeper into who's out to kill her, including dressing up at a silly costume party aboard a yacht; in another scene, the guy he chases stupidly jumps off a roof and gets himself killed, and another hood who threatened Rockford gets killed by wine poisoning. As much as I enjoyed this episode and most others, the ending here has to be one of the most unfulfilling in the entire series, as it becomes known that the princess is the one trying kill her friend Kendall, although the motive seems rather weak, and I can't even recall the reason, but I think it has something to do with their old school. It left a bad taste in my mouth, considering the rest of the episode was very good. There's something else that bothered me; the princess can have the hood Tommy Manette(Carmine Caridi)easily killed, but she can't have Kendall killed, even though she's around her all the time? Those details just don't seem plausible, and a better ending could've made this an excellent episode, rather than a good one, although I still recommend watching this.

As much as I liked seeing Lauren Bacall and Dana Wynter ( I was excited about those stars being on the episode I was ready to sit down and enjoy), I came away unimpressed with this 2-parter.

The first half held my attention easily, and yes, I did enjoy it. But the second half was just tedious......drab.....what happened to this episode in the second half?

And I'm sorry but Dana Wynter's meltdown at the end was just silly.

The two guest stars in this installment are Dana Wynter, as a genuine princess named Irene, and Lauren Bacall, as her broke best friend, Kendall ("Brain surgery isn't for everyone"). Chemistry is good between Jim Garner and Bacall. The Stuart Margolin character of Angel Martin, Joe Santos' character of Lt. Dennis Becker, James Luisi's Lt. Doug Chapman and Noah Beery's "Rocky" are all quite prominent in this sixth season, two-part episode. At first, everybody thinks that Princess Irene is the one being targeted, but the princess is convinced from the start that it is her BFF Bacall instead, and she's oh so right about that! The convoluted plot has several big holes in it, so I had to round up the rating to a 7 out of 10 for the presence of Dana Wynter & Lauren Bacall.

Picking up where the first part left off, the man who tried to kill Lauren Bacall is killed himself falling from a terrace quite accidentally. Accident it may be, but it doesn't stop Lt.Chapman from trying to pin a homicide on Jim Rockford. The influence of society lady and princess Dana Wynter frustrates him no end.

Through some Rockford type conning aided and abetted by Lauren Bacall, Garner learns the deceased was a connected guy to mobster Carmine Caridi. Garner gets a mob like warning, but later in he and Bacall find Caridi dead while shadowing him. In fact they see him die quite violently from a poison.

In the end we find out just who and why someone wants Lauren Bacall dead. It is a motive that is incredibly bizarre, but think about the famous Raymond Chandler novel Farewell My Lovely and why someone wants poor dumb Moose Malloy dead. Something along the same lines.

More than most you want to see Lauren Bacall come back as for more episodes. She and Wynter make some more indelible characters that The Rockford Files gave for its viewers.

Bacall's back and Rockford has got her! James Garner played detective Phillip Marlowe in "Marlowe" in the 1960's and Lauren Bacall played opposite Hunphrey Bogart who played Marlowe in "The Big Sleep". In addition, apparently Garner and Bacall had been seeing each other around this time (she also co-starred with Garner in Robert Altman's ill-fated "HealtH") so its no wonder they have a good amount of chemistry in this two parter.

Unfortunately, the story is a bit of a mess as Bacall plays Kendall Warren,the friend of a Princess (Dana Wynter from "Sink the Bismark")who appears to have had a attempt on her life. The resolution is pretty good, but in stretching the story out to fill two full episodes, it just kills the pace despite the chemistry between Bacall and Garner and the welcome presence of regulars like Angel, Dennis and Lt. Chapman. If they'd have boiled this down to one show or kept it tighter in a 90 minute episode, this would have been much better.

I'm only sorry Kendall never met Rockford's old lawyer Beth Davenport. The fur would have been flying!