Nathan and Eppy bid a bittersweet farewell to Rita with the final Rockford Files TV Move: If It Bleeds... It Leads (1999). This was a hard one! Rita's husband, schoolteacher Ernie (Hal Linden) is falsely accused of a series of child sexual assaults, and while Jim helps to clear his name, it's not enough to prevent a series of tragedies. While this one has wonderful performances and some great spots of the Rockfordishness we always love, the content and tone made it tough to say we "enjoyed" it. It did give us great closure on "Rita and Jim, their whole thing" but, unfortunately, was not the warm victory lap to bid farewell to our friends that we kinda wanted. Content Warnings: the plot is about a child rapist, scenes include child endangerment and there is a (relatively) graphic suicide.
We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon at ALL levels of support.
Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files!
We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons. In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons:
Thanks to: