Original Airdate: November 4, 1977
Written by: James Crocker
Directed by: William Wiard
Jim and Rocky attend a variety show taping featuring Kenny Bell (Chuck McCann), a standup comic who wants to hire Jim. Rocky likes him, but Jim is there under protest. Also in the lineup is Bell’s former partner Lee Russo (Robert Quarry). Bell hits the stage with an exact replica of the act that Russo had been rehearsing in his dressing room. Russo explodes in rage and pledges to end Bell’s career. Russo and his friend Paul Silvan (Jason Evers) discusses the event with him later. Apparently Bell stole the jokes by placing a bug in Russo’s dressing room, a fact that causes Silvan a great deal of consternation.
Bell goes to the Rockfords in desperation. Someone has stolen his “funny box”, a file of jokes some comedians use to build their act. He claims that he needs to fly to Las Vegas to cover for an ailing Don Rickles, and wants to hire Jim to meet the thieves and exchange $10 thousand for the file. Jim agrees in exchange for a $2 thousand fee. When he gets to the meeting place, though, he finds Lee Russo dead in his car. The police arrive immediately.
Lt. Diel (Tom Atkins) is dubious of Jim’s story. Jim, suspecting that Bell’s Vegas story was bogus, calls him at home to come to the station and back him up. Bell denies everything, though, leaving Jim in lockup overnight. He’s sprung the next morning when it turns out that the bullet that killed Russo doesn’t match Jim’s gun. While Beth, picking Jim up from the station, advises him not to do anything rash, he goes after Kenny Bell. Bell’s gun, the theft of which he hadn’t noticed in the absence of his funny box, is actually the murder weapon. Jim deduces that someone wanted to kill both Bell and Russo and make it look like a Mutual Kill.
As to why, Bell did indeed tape Russo with his shady friend Silvan. Jim suspects there’s more to the story. He tracks down Russo’s glamorous girlfriend Lori Thompson (Meredith MacRae), who tells him that their relationship wasn’t about sex and that he and Silvan were inseparable. Jim comes to the conclusion that Russo and Silvan were lovers. By this time Silvan’s father (Gilbert Green) has received a copy of the tape from Kenny’s bug, which confirms the same for him. Angry and unaccepting of his son’s nature, he orders Paul to clean up the problem. As this means killing Bell and both Rockfords, Jim is now in a race for his life with the Silvan camp.
Tropes present in this episode:
- Actually Pretty Funny: While Jim doesn’t like Kenny Bell and doesn’t want to be at the show where he’s performing, he does laugh at some of the jokes (which aren’t actually Bell’s).
- Awful Wedded Life: The jokes Russo is working on and that Bell steals are fairly standard marriage/wife material. In actuality Bell is in a bad marriage, but his long-suffering wife isn’t the problem.
- Blackmail Backfire: Bell thinks he can bargain for his life by going to the elder Silvan and trying to sell him the tape. He is very much mistaken.
- Breakup Breakout: In-Universe. Russo’s career since he and Bell broke up their act is said to be much more successful.
- Broken Pedestal: Rocky initially likes Kenny a lot, but sees a different side of him after getting stiffed a couple of times on a restaurant bill.
- Bury Your Gays: Neither Lee Russo nor Paul Silvan survive the episode.
- Gayngster: Paul Silvan has been romantically involved with men since he was a teenager. Likely one of the first unambiguous examples in US TV history.
- Hate Sink: Kenny Bell is a serial liar and coward, treats his wife like a slave, and lets Jim stay in jail because it’s more convenient for him. On top of that, he’s entirely guilty of what Lee Russo accused him of. He does get some karmic comeuppance in the end, when Jim decides to keep his fee from the $10,000 payoff and give the rest to Mrs. Bell. After all, what funny box?
- Offing the Offspring: The elder Silvan sends Paul off to retrieve the tape and kill all the witnesses. Plan B, which he winds up using, is to have Paul’s driver shoot him in the head, rendering the whole thing moot.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Kenny Bell is a joke thief, which turns out to be the tip of the iceberg of what gets him in trouble.
