A Televisual Feast

A decent long episode, benefitting greatly from Joseph Cotten’s amusing gust appearance. Unlike the pilot, which felt like an hour-long episode fattened up to fill the longer time slot, this episode actually does have the story to keep it going. There are a lot of characters in the episode and they–in addition to frequent car chases–fill it out.

The other big difference is with Jim’s level of interaction with his client (Cotten). While there is time spent, Cotten’s not a tag-along in the episode, so Jim gets to meet with other people. He’s also not checking in with the client every other scene. The result, as Jim meets with his client’s daughter (an unimpressive Sharon Gless) or the mob or the feds, is when he complains about how busy his days have been, it makes sense.

A fair amount of time is wasted, though, with Jim threatening to quit the PI business. Rocky gets in on that thread–I feel bad about even calling it a subplot–and while it’s nice to have Rocky around, the scenes are an absurd waste of time. Jim gets over the idea in a minute, but then it’s around for the next forty, just as filler. But at least it’s an attempt at different filler and, even with a cheap closer, the episode’s good.