In retrospect, my journey to the right might have begun when Rolling Stone published an interview with Fonda and she insisted that it include no photos of her, only of Third World women. Insufferable. As if anybody on earth would have been interested in her opinions if she had been anybody but Henry Fonda's daughter.

Nearly every Oliver Stone movie since his screenplay for "Midnight Express" has been based on a true story and has depended on this connection for its claim on our attention, but every single one has altered the facts with the aim of working the audience into a blind rage.

At one point this struck me as so bizarre that I asked a friend of Stone's whether he was a Satanist. She said, "No, he's just a playground bully."

My favorite episode is "Hotel of Fear." Angel witnesses a crime (while stealing soap samples from mailboxes at his rooming house). At the police lineup, he recognizes everybody -- not only the criminal but everybody else, because they're all cops who have rousted him at one time or other.
This episode also contains my favorite Angel-Jim exchange (after Angel panics on the witness stand and implicates Jim): "Jimmie, I’m sorry.” “You’re always sorry, Angel.” “But Jimmie, I was scared!” “You’re always scared, Angel.”

The actors were good, but don't undervalue the sharp writing. Stephen Cannell came up with the first Rockford script as a way of thumbing his nose at all the sentimental cliches of "Mannix" et al. At story meetings, his writers always mocked the device of having somebody pop up in the last scene to reveal all the crucial details that had been concealed from the audience -- they referred to this cliche character as "Irving the Explainer."
And then, toward the end of the series, they wrote an impossibly complicated episode (it gave Jim headaches) with an explainer at the end. And they titled it "Irving the Explainer."