Episode 11: After making Santos’s Captain look bad one too many times, it looks like Rockford will have to move his trailer from the beach parking lot. A local small business owner lets him park in their unused loading dock in exchange for uncovering who’s vandalizing their business and others. This leads Rockford to a block-busting commercial real estate conspiracy. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 10: Rockford’s parent, retired after selling their rig to finance Rockford’s legal challenges, hangs out every afternoon in a local park with their longtime buddy, a chess hustler. When the player goes missing after beating an arrogant techbro in a casual game, Rockford must find his parent’s friend. Was the techbro using their company’s new AI system to cheat at chess? How did it lose? Rockford must enter the unfamiliar world of high-stakes AI/ML startups and demos.

#TheRockfordFiles

Episode 9: When the barista at LegalAid Love Interest’s favorite coffee place asks them to look into the legality of a huge medical bill their parent received, LALI visits the parent only to discover them dead via apparent suicide. Rockford & LALI then find themselves hot on the trail of a Rick-Scott-style Medicare fraud ring that may have made a killing. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 9: When the barista at LegalAid Love Interest’s favorite coffee place asks her to look into the legality of a huge medical bill their parent received, LALI visits the parent only to discover them dead via apparent suicide. Rockford & LALI then find themselves hot on the trail of a Rick-Scott-style Medicare fraud ring that may have made a killing. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 8: Rockford discovers the floating body of a sex worker on their morning beach walk-and-smoke. The cops almost immediately place them in the cold case file, even after their part-time coworkers at a local check-cashing place report them missing. Rockford is given a sim chip the coworkers found in their locker, which Angel discovers has the contact info for a local crypto-bruh. This leads Rockford to a crypto scam to fleece those locked out of the banking system. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 7: The frame of Rockford’s trailer cracks after the cops attempt to tow it. LegalAid Love Interest shows up with an injunction in the nick of time. The mechanic from eps 5-6 recommends a welder. While phoning the welder, an explosion rocks the industrial district, killing the welder and leveling their shop. This puts Rockford on the trail of a counterfeit oxy tank supplier, selling their goods via Amazon. Rockford has to solve the murder and get their trailer fixed. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 7: The frame of Rockford’s trailer cracks after the cops attempt to tow it. LegalAid Love Interest shows up with an injunction in the nick of time. The mechanic from eps 5-6 recommends a welder. Whole phoning the welder, an explosion rocks the industrial district, killing the welder and leveling their shop. This puts Rockford on the trail of a counterfeit oxy tank supplier, selling their goods via Amazon. Rockford has to solve the murder and get their trailer fixed. #TheRockfordFiles

Episodes 5-6: The local unhoused encampment is swept after complaints about a rash of catalytic converter thefts. No evidence of the thefts is found, but an unhoused muffler shop mechanic is arrested after cops confiscate their tools. The converter to Rockford's prized 1989 Merkur Scorpio is stolen, and they start an epic 2-part episode to uncover a converter theft ring run by cabal of muffler shop owners. #TheRockfordFiles

Episode 4: A would-be landlord and a county sheriff are illegally evicting tenants from multi unit properties in foreclosure, with the would-be landlord planning on bidding on them in auctions later and then gentrifying. They murder a housing rights activist who’s on the trail to uncovering the scheme. The activist’s colleague in Legal Aid becomes Rockford’s love interest after bringing them the case. They become a semi-regular.

#TheRockfordFiles

Episode 3: a boss abusing just-in-time scheduling uses the software to provide an alibi for their murder of a labor organizer. Angel must go undercover as a shift worker, because the boss knows Rockford via his parents’ trucking business (a single semi they drove in shifts, sleeping in the cab). #TheRockfordFiles

The phone is an older model with a cracked screen.

The other items on the nightstand change week-by-week, providing a hint of that week’s episode.

The condition of the hand changes, weekly, too. Nail polish? Nightclub stamps?

Sometimes another person’s hand makes them put the phone down.

#TheRockfordFiles

Angel is a soft-spoken, on-the-spectrum cybercriminal who Rockford “adopted” and protected when inside. They’re Rockford’s information investigator, just as Angel worked the newspaper’s morgue in the original.

Pilot episode involves a case of wage theft that becomes murder.

Second episode is a bike theft ring and chop shop that leads to…say it with me…murder.

I should just create an account and start tooting out spec episodes. #TheRockfordFiles

…but keep that fundamental premise and recruit a diverse writers room that can connect to that premise and what it means today. It could be the spiritual successor to #OrangeIsTheNewBlack, too.

I would watch it.

#TheRockfordFiles

Now that #Columbo has been, essentially, rebooted as #PokerFaceTVShow , it’s time to consider rebooting #TheRockfordFiles.

It could be relevant to today: pardoned/exonerated ex-con PI living quasi-legally in a trailer in a parking lot by the beach. A blue collar guy in a world that’s changed while he was inside.

You can change gender, change racial background, change the coastal location, change whatever else is needed to help the writers room connect their own experience to it… 1/2

@picofarad my favourite ever was "#TheRockfordFiles".