Two Hundred A Day - Episode 1: Tall Woman In Red Wagon

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Nathan and Epidiah introduce the podcast, talk about why they love The Rockford Files so much, and discuss S1E5 "Tall Woman In Red Wagon." Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the dining audio clip Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

It's Laurie at the trailer park. A space opened up. Do you want me to save it or the cop's going to let you stay where you are? Welcome to the pilot episode of a as-yet-unnamed Rockford Files podcast. My name is Nathan Paletta. I really enjoy the show, The Rockford Files. I want to start off by saying the reason that I even got into it in the first place is because of my good friend who started talking about what a great story structure was embedded in this old 70s detective show that I'd never heard of. So, Epi, can you introduce yourself and let us know why you love Rockford Files? All right. Well, I'm Epidio Ravishaw. And I'm trying to think back about when I first started watching them in the modern era. When I was a kid, Rockford Files was the thing we'd watch on television.

And to be clear, you're a little older than I am. Yeah. Maybe I should describe television first. When you only have access to somewhere between three and six channels and it's on when it's on, you don't get to decide when you want to watch something. What you saw for television, like what you made time for in your life was kind of an important decision, right? Like I have certainly binged Rockford now in the modern era. Right. Back when I was younger, it was just something that happened to be on.

I think it was a little bit later at night. My most distinct memories of it was being a little depressed when it was on. Because I think at that time, I would rather be watching Buck Rogers or something along those lines. And there's something about Rockford's life that I kind of latched onto as a kid. You know, the fact that he lives in this trailer that, uh, is always a struggle to make money. He's not really an aspirational figure as much. I think, especially if you're younger, like you're not really looking at him as like, Oh yeah, I want to be that guy living in this trailer and never having any, any money and getting into weird altercations. And so, um, I think at the time, uh, And so I think at the time,

well, I know at the time that my parents were experiencing some economic troubles and they were doing their best to try and protect us as kids from knowing what's happening with the family finances. So there's like this level of anxiety around money when I was a kid that certain parts of the Rockford Files bled into my own life. So as an adult, I was a kid that certain parts of the Rockford Files bled into, you know, my own life.

So as an adult, I was like, well, I remember the show, kind of, but I don't really know much about it. And it's sitting here on Netflix. Let me try it out. And goddamn, I love it. And in no small part because of this anxiety in his life that he... Now it's a very relatable anxiety, right. Where, you know,

he kind of is in a profession kind of because of his skillset, not necessarily because of any real goal. I think it's not steady work by any stretch. Right. And I think we can both relate to that. Uh, I mean, you're,

let's be honest. If you're listening to this, you probably know one or both of us from independent game design and publishing, where we've both lived lives that have a lot of economic uncertainty and the freelance bounce, you know, feast or famine kind of workflows for our lives. Yeah. So that part definitely drew me in right away. And as we'll discuss, we'll go over almost every aspect of it draws me in. Especially standing out against, Rockford was when I was a kid. But that was probably the comparison I was making. And I know I was an idiot as a kid, you know, like that's part of the appeal for me. So like I said, I started watching it because you were talking

about it because you'd started re watching it, binging on it. And specifically, you mentioned something at some point about how tightly written the show is and how the actual plots are like really great little pieces of narrative so for me watching it for the first time as an adult as someone who cares about tight writing and and good narratives i kind of latched onto that immediately because it uses it's a formulaic show right we kind of know the beats you know there's yeah the case shows up in one way or another there's some back and forth about the details or like who's responsible or the motive or whatever there's usually some kind of reveal rockford tries to get out of the case right rockford tries to get out of the case he gets sucked back into the case against his own

best judgment there's some kind of reveal that not all is as it seems and then you know using his powers of ingenuity and his con artistry um and sometimes with punching he manages to get to the bottom of it and resolve it in a way that not doesn't necessarily mean and this is something that i think is really interesting about the show and it kind of makes it able to run for as long as it did without getting stale, I think, is the shows usually resolve without, they're not necessarily happy endings. Like, it's not like, oh, the good guy gets what he wants at the end. Right. But they usually resolve with, like, whoever was at risk is saved or whoever was, you know, doing the bad stuff, you know, goes to jail or whatever.

But he doesn't really end up, like, making the money that he needs to, you know, to change his lifestyle. He's still in that in that world. So the world's in a better place, but Rockford is not right. Exactly. I mean, he's a good guy, right? He's an agent of justice in the world that he's in, but he never really seems to reap the rewards of it. Yeah. So the show's great. But what we wanted to do here was both talk about some individual episodes, do like a kind of a little recap and kind of dive into them and what we find interesting about them and the interesting twists and turns and the weird details that we both just like, even though they may not be very important to other people. You'll get to hear a lot about my unified food theory of television detectives,

so keep an ear out for that. I've taken on the role of rockford's bookkeeper right yes thankless task uh rockford's forensic accountant yes but uh in addition to just talking about the episodes we also wanted to kind of talk about the story structures that are in them and how they might be relevant for other kinds of storytelling whether it's like fiction or short stories or if you're facilitating or running um investigation or caper games i think there's a lot that you can learn from to make interesting setups for cons and uh whodunits that aren't simple a to b kind of stories so this is our pilot episode we'll kind of talk about this season one episode of Rockford and then do our little analysis bit and see how it goes from there. What do you say?

I'm excited. I threw it to you to start on anything important. I think a little bit later on, we'll hit some episodes that presage certain topics that are even in the news today. It is one episode that is all about owning your own information, which is for something in the 70s. To foreshadow a little bit, there are a couple episodes that are issue episodes, right? an ease yeah to foreshadow a little bit there are a couple episodes that are issue episodes right like where the entire episode is about an issue of the day and aren't necessarily the same kind of procedural uh investigation kind of thing for the most part those issue episodes are great yeah and i wanted to do them justice so i wanted to make sure we had some practice under our belt

before we got there for sure i totally agree uh there's also a little bit of overarching plot in terms of what happens to some of the other characters yeah like uh detective becker he like actually has a a meta plot over the seasons a little bit even though we don't see him in this episode this this episode is devoid of so many incidental characters i was a little disappointed in that like that when i made the decision his dad is mentioned but uh we don't see becker we don't see angel we don't see beth not that like if you haven't seen rockford yet and you're listening to this podcast for some reason we appreciate that yeah we definitely yes when you think about how shows are done nowadays you'll have like sort of an ensemble cast.

And so there's a certain expectation of, you know, there'd be like a B plot for some of the characters. And that isn't quite as well formed at this point. Or at least that doesn't happen in Rockford as I understand. Like, I feel like you get these characters and you do get stuff about them. But it's in a way that each episode is about the case that the episode's about. You kind of see this background stuff happening, but it's not, it doesn't even quite get a B plot. You know what I mean?

Sometimes it does, but like, and I like that. There's some things we'll probably talk about where the show's also at times very experimental, especially in its filming, but in how it tells a story. And I feel like we don't quite have room for that in our television a lot. Or maybe we're starting to make room, but it's always surprising now. Whereas with any Rockford episode, this one, I think, has some of that in the beginning. It uses time. It does like the time jump yeah more than other episodes do actually most episodes don't do this kind of yeah back and forth which we'll get into in a second just to

answer the question about like i chose this one almost at random i just wanted to make sure that it was from the first season it was written by uh the show creators so that it might be a snapshot of what they were expecting from the show and uh it wasn't a two-parter or anything particularly special. And one of the things after, I've never paid attention. I mean, you see the title of the episode come up and you're like, oh, that's okay. But I've never really paid that close attention to how they're entitled. This one is great because it's tall woman in a red wagon. We'd never see a red wagon.

And there is no scene i mean she's mentioned as being tall but there's no scene where we get to witness that she is tall the only time that we see her she's she's lying down or she's in a shot like a like a bust up shot yeah like without any uh anything to scale around her and And like an in general thing, one of the things I love about Rockford that you don't see that often anymore in television is that opening preview of the episode you're about to see this sort of dramatic irony where they let the audience in on certain moments. So as you're watching, you watch those and it gets you a little excited for the show.

This goes back to when people weren't making the decision to watch television. It was just what was on at the time. So they wanted to like hook you into staying at that channel, right? Right. They wanted you to see it and go, Ooh, I can't wait for that moment to happen.

But now in the era of binging, it takes on kind of a new meaning, or maybe this was something that they were meant to do with it in the era of binging, it takes on kind of a new meaning, or maybe this was something that they were meant to do with it in the first place. But as I watch these episodes, there are moments where I'm like, well, the case can't be going this way because this scene has to happen. Like, right. We have to witness this because that's in the preview. Because the previews aren't aren't cute, right? Like the previews are literally the scenes that you're going to see it's not something where it's like cutting room floor stuff or anything like that yeah yeah so as you were

saying we're gonna start off with tall woman in red wagon uh written by roy huggins and steven cannell who created the show directed by jerry london who imdb tells me is directed Hogan's Heroes, among other things. Yeah, so the central mystery of this one, this is a missing persons case, as many of the many Rockford episodes start as a missing persons case. But we start in a very interesting place, as we were saying with this foreshadowing. So we start the episode right off with James Rockford, Jim to, uh,

to everyone, all of his friends, uh, and enemies over time played by James Garner, of course. So to me, James Garner is Jim Rockford, but I feel like there's other shows that other people associate with him with

more depending on what scene. Right. But to me, they're interchangeable anyway so he is standing uh over an open grave as it is being exhumed him and a couple hired hired hands are pulling a coffin out of the ground at night i believe it's unclear certainly at this point it's unclear their relationship to him but i i believe by the time we're done it's still unclear if he's paid them or has somehow conned them right into grave robbing i mean they give him a little bit of lip

right so it's kind of implied to me that he's probably paid them uh this is a world where lots of people are just grifting and and paying each other off so you know maybe it's just a couple guys he's like i'll give you 20 bucks to help me do some digging and then through through his con man uh abilities now all of a sudden they're grave robbing he has a uh portable winch that he sets up it's very specialized yes which is good um he's i mean like he's a man who knows his tools. I mean, it's not like a MacGyver or Batman situation, but you get the feeling that he knows how to fix his Camaro, right? Right.

He's pretty self-reliant. He knows what's needed for the job. Yeah. They hoist up this coffin. He goes to open it, and then some mysterious goons run from out of the bushes and literally shoot him in the head yes but then they cut to some in the hospital bed montage so you see that he was just grazed or something yeah he's coming in and out of consciousness right we get his point of view as the doctors

are talking to him uh this part you know we took some notes here and I just wrote down Metallica's one video. Yeah, a little bit. I had this, or Johnny Got His Gun, which is the movie that that video samples from or whatever, but just definitely had this very hospital horror feel to it. Right, there's like the beeping, there's the coming in and out of consciousness and like the weird masked faces over him and stuff.

The guy calls for 500 cc's of adrenaline. I don't remember if this is in this part or when we come back to this later, but that seems like a lot to me. I'm no medical professional. Anyway, he's coming in and out of consciousness and he's saying this name, Charlotte. Yes. And we basically just cut straight from that to him talking to a woman in a room about Charlotte, about Charlotte. This whole sequence. Again, this is unusual for a Rockford episode. Right. They usually don't have these these kind of cold opens that leave you questioning. But yeah, you you're for for a little bit. It's kind of like, all right, where are we going? And then I think it becomes pretty clear that we're now flashing back yeah and as an audience member uh you cannot wait to find out how rockford gets

himself into a position where he's shot in the head while grave robbing right that's immediately my i'm like okay i want to know how we're going to get there let's see where we get yeah let's see how this how this works out so he is in a in a newspaper office talking to sandra who is kind of hiring him but also kind of a lot of this is implied i think just kind of by the conversation but you get the feeling that she called him probably and he came down to talk to her and then that's where we're like cutting into the right to the show to the plot you see a lot of this in most of the episodes where you see him get the phone call or you see him talk to like run into the person and have a conversation and then they hire him for whatever

reason so we're kind of cutting in after that that process it's like this is his client and we're establishing their relationship which is a little contentious yes uh part of it is this um she's young younger than him and uh she is eager to prove or at least eager to state that she can do the job herself she can find her friend she's a very capable person and she's a reporter and she has this kind of way of speaking where she's very declarative and like, this is how we do things. This is how I'm going to do it. And she's kind of played as a little naive, right?

Right. Like Rockford's kind of like, you don't really know what you're talking about. Yeah. And one of the things about the character of Rockford that I like is when he encounters this sort of situation, if people are in danger, he tries to warn them against it. But otherwise he lets them have enough you know rope to hang themselves right like he and he's not going to stick it to them it's not like haha it's like oh you learned a lesson there you know that kind of thing so in this case she's indicating uh that she's capable she's a reporter she's capable of doing this investigation she wants

to find her friend charlotte but she's a little worried about something because there's been a man hanging around and so he kind of wants protection yes so rockford is keyed into the fact that he's hired as muscle um as a gorilla that's a gorilla as he puts it one of the good uh rockford slang terms i think he he uses he calls lots of people gorillas when they're kind of hired muscle bruiser bouncer kind of types and there's a great line and i'm not going to remember exactly how it goes but she asks him if he has a gun and he says no i'm afraid of guns and gorillas he's very he has a well-developed sense of self-preservation yeah right i think this is kind of a theme of the show.

He's willing to put himself into danger when it's to really save someone. Like someone is in imminent danger. Or when he thinks it's going to get him further in the case. Later on, when we encounter Angel, there'll be a good contrast between Rockford's sense of self-preservation and Angel's, right? Because they both... Angel's cowardice. Yeah. And Rockford, he's self-preservation and Angel's, right? Because they both... Angel's cowardice. Yeah. And Rockford, he's very sensible about it.

And you're with him as the audience. Oh, yeah. Why isn't everyone else this sensible about their self-preservation? You know, like that's... And we see this later in the episode, too, where he's... And a lot of episodes play off of this. He has limits of what he's willing to do. Like if it has to do with the feds he doesn't want

any part of it right like he has very well defined this is where this stops because i know i'll get into more trouble than i can get out of even being the protagonist of this television show yeah like almost every third episode we get told uh that he doesn't get involved in active cases if the police treat it as an active case he shouldn't be involved in active cases. If the police treat it as an active case, he shouldn't be involved. And then he gets involved. So Sandra basically talks him into it in a scene where they go to the cafe across the street. Bringing up the first time that we get to see food in this episode. I have a thesis about Jim Rockford and food in this show.

There are some exceptions, but generally we almost never see him eat during an actual scene. When we do, it's almost always tacos, often from the place near where he lives on a trailer next to a beach, sometimes from other places. Or it's food that he's taking from someone else. It's someone else's food that he eats. There's a scene in another season one episode, I think, where he just takes the hot dog out of someone else's hand and eats it while he's talking from someone else it's someone else's food that he eats like there's a there's a scene in another season one episode i think where he just takes the hot dog out of someone else's hand and eats it while he's talking to them stuff like that and there's a corollary where when he does have food like if he goes out to dinner or someone buys him a meal something happens and he doesn't get to actually eat it i think it's something where it has to be intentional right or wouldn't

run so strongly through right all of the episodes and it's not a thing where nobody eats because other people do so it stands out to me and once i started paying attention to it i couldn't not pay attention to his home office i mean his home is a trailer and it's his home office so it's almost all one room which means that whenever he has somebody at his office, they're usually also in the kitchen. That comes up too. I think food is interesting in his relationships. Like often he's making something for his dad or his dad is making something for him. Or they're going to go fishing.

Yeah. They never get to go fishing, but they're going to go fishing. There's multiple episodes where he's coming home with a bag of groceries and some goons waylay him at the door and all of his groceries get ruined so it's very much like the guy can't catch a break but it's also like he he only interacts with food in like these kind of offhand casual manners and i think it's a part of the the character as he's built through the show so in this case uh she actually has him go order her a sandwich uh she gets a tuna

tuna on white black coffee and then we see her eat it while he just sits there nursing a cup of coffee and having this conversation some very specific reason no dill yeah like no dill uh she basically appeals to his better nature to help her look into it this part is a little bit of like he gets involved because the plot demands that he gets involved, I think. There's not like a really strong reason. He's kind of an interesting, reluctant hero. He will often not want to,

he'll try and talk someone out of hiring him. Right. You know, we just talked about how he never gets food. And my big thing is how much money he never makes right with all that happening he's also constantly trying to talk people out of hiring him and he does that a little bit in the beginning here he's like well you want a gorilla i'm not a gorilla you know but that that may just be him he's a little bit of pride hire me for my skills not for for this but he does tend to spend some part of the beginning of an episode trying to not do any work right and uh that's another bit that i definitely as an adult who's been a

freelancer i can identify with yeah there have been moments where i'm like well you don't want me to do your work but if you're going to pay me, then I will. Yeah. And I kind of I always enjoy those moments like and that's where the things that come up. In this case, he doesn't have any. This is not a legal thing. It's an actual missing case. So he he kind of has to go along with it.

He doesn't have a way out. She's already done some legwork, right? She kind of presses him a little bit with how she's already called all the hotels. And she found this like one or gas stations. work right she kind of oppresses him a little bit with how she's already called all the hotels and she found this like one or gas stations she found this one that said that charlotte met this woman matching this description it was like tall tall and blonde right it was or something like that i think so came through so she's already done some leg work and she just wants him to come with him and and he's like okay fine from there we we cut to a hotel. You know, it's kind of implied they followed up on the legwork and ended up at this hotel.

And I'm talking to some manager who basically is like, yep, yep, she was here. Oh, yeah, definitely here. Uh-huh. 100% here. Oh, yeah, she died. Yeah. There's kind of a weird extension of like, oh, yeah, she was definitely here. And you're kind of watching it and kind waiting for like the other shoe to drop like this is a weird way to recapitalize on this

information over and over uh oh yeah she died of a heart attack sandra does not believe it so the the relationship between sandra who's the the reporter and uh charlotte who's the missing person is still a little unclear at this point right she's a right they're friends she's her friend and she's worried about charlotte because she knows there's like a man hanging around giving her a hard time and it's weird that she hasn't shown up and i think it's a little bit later on where we find out that charlotte has invested a considerable amount of money yeah in the newspaper yeah that comes later she's hired as an intern and the newspaper is in financial trouble and she's like okay well here i think it's like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that like it's a it's a

large amount of money but so here uh so watching this we're still kind of like okay that's kind of weird okay she's dead obviously there's something weird that went on between this weirdo hotel manager and the fact that we're only like seven minutes into the episode sandra but she also says like she went jogging every day like it's not like she had a weak heart she's like i don't believe it like i literally do not believe that he's telling us the truth yeah and they have a little bit of a little bit of a bonding moment over like she's a little distraught but also angry and rockford gets her water and she doesn't want it because like what have you seen that in the movies or something it's like okay fine he drinks it and he's like, yeah, water doesn't help.

And he doesn't believe it either. This is right. That's off his signals. Yeah. And this is also that when he notices that they're they're being followed as they drive around. So this is all establishing the scene. Also, they start that he notices that this guy's been following them. And then he shows shows him to to her.

And she's like, oh, I don't recognize him. But maybe he's the guy's been following them. And then he shows him to her. And she's like, oh, I don't recognize him. But maybe he's the guy that was following Charlotte around. I wrote this down because this is a great moment where she says, let's lose him. And Rockford says, let's not. He's a lead. Yeah, I noted that, too, because he's also really. And this is all part of the narrative structure, right? Really smart about stringing people along or like letting people just follow him around until he's ready to

use them right and it's a nice little thing in the background of every scene of like when is when is he going to turn the tables on this guy because you know it's going to come come up eventually uh they talked to a couple more people um they talked to i guess like the hostess or bartender or something in the restaurant at hotel who gives him the name of the doctor dr kennelworth who happened to be there and pronounced that she was having a heart attack sandra's is suspicious of why he was there alone and out with his family he's asking all these questions and rockford's kind of like this isn't really that important let's just follow go to the next break room right yeah yeah she's coming right at the guy uh which is great and that clearly is at odds with rockford's style like you were just saying oftentimes we'll just let people think he doesn't

know as much as he knows so sandra is definitely on to something here she just wants to drill down and get the answer right and rockford is like well he doesn't want to show his hand i think is what's happening there at least that's what it feels like to show his hand, I think, is what's happening there. At least that's what it feels like to me. Yeah. And I think it's also contrasting, again, her like inexperience with his experience, which we see a number of moments through the episode. So they follow the lead. They go to Dr. Kenilworth. And this is where we get to see Rockford's first impersonation of the episode. One of his classics, which is a life insurance adjuster.

He's always posing as different kinds of insurance people to look at records. Right, yeah. Which, to me, is a little corny, but also it was the 70s. Maybe that made more sense in the 70s that someone would just walk in and be like, I'm investigating this claim. Show me all of your records. There's this thing that goes along with it., well, first of all, there's, nobody's got a cell phone.

They can't just, or a smartphone. They can't just look something up. So he can usually talk a good talk for enough to sound like he belongs in that position. And then oftentimes there's money on the line, right? Like, and that makes people think, oh, well, this is important. You know, we should, if they start to show any doubt, well, okay. I mean, most people want the blah, blah, blah. He has a very aw shucks kind of persona when he's doing the insurance con that usually seems to work.

Except when it doesn't, right? Every so often there's an episode where the con backfires, right? But in this one, it works out and he manages to get the records of this woman's death. She had a cardiac arrest, died, and they called her cousin and put her body on the 705. And so this is where we get, we kind of mentioned it a couple minutes ago but where we start to peel back kind of the first layer of the story and find out a little bit of what's underneath because once they leave the doctor's office and they have a kind of a little bit of a heart-to-heart sandra reveals that charlotte bought part of the news is an owner of

part of the newspaper that she works for and there's a couple other details like sandra her father actually is the publisher actually owns the whole thing and she technically works for her uncle who's like the editor but they were having financial difficulties and so this woman who they had hired as an intern six months ago was able to bail them out with this investment that they turned into stock so there's a whole little bit here where rockford's kind of like don't you think this would have been important to tell me earlier and as the audience were kind of left unclear about whether sandra is intentionally keeping things back for some reason and as a rockford viewer

like that is a totally common thing where the the client is hiding something from rockford and has to dig it out of them or whether she just innocently really does want to find Charlotte and this other detail is kind of incidental because she is acting out of the goodness of her heart. Or at least I was kind of left questioning where the

motive is going from there in a fruitful way like, oh, let's see what happens next. What did you think about that? I'm trying to remember now if this is the moment where we also find out that she disapproves of rockford impersonating people oh yeah it is because she's like that was despicable yeah she's disgusted by it oh she's disgusted i think it starts building here she's disgusted when he makes the fake card for the next one which is the next scene so maybe we'll do that real quick and then come back to the yeah because this big card is important.

Moment. I didn't realize when I chose this episode that I was choosing this episode. Is this the first time that we see the machine? I think so. I think so. Okay, because the machine is great. So Rockford has a portable,

tiny letterpress card printer, like a business card printer. So he has a little rack of tiny letterpress letters that he pulls out with a tweezer and puts into this machine. And then he has like ink and a knife and blank cards. And so he sits in his car and pulls out all the letters and sets the type. It's all in his glove box. And in case, in case you, again, in case you're watching this and you have not

seen Rockford Files and you're maybe imagining something a little steampunky, something a little gadgetry. Right. No. This is a miniature letterpress. This is 100% something that probably did exist, right? Yeah. This is 100% of the time. There's no wizardry.

Probably how they made a lot of business cards. So they made a lot of business cards. And I think it's probably even just like bolted to some plywood or something like there's nothing fancy or high tech about any of this. This is just something that he has. I mean, I don't think they zoom in close enough for you to really tell, but I'm pretty sure it's just a straight up practical effect where they probably actually literally set it and then had him make one on camera. set it and then had him make one on camera i'm making a uh pump handle uh movement because it has like a handle on the side it goes like chunk and then it comes out and he has a little printed business card that has to dry before he can use it yeah it's going for to dry and he usually takes it back right because he usually only makes one because it's just for the one con and he has a line actually i think while he's making it uh the whole secret of a good confidence game is uh

is the right props right yes i i think i wrote that one down too he says yeah at some point he says you waste a lot of time on people if you don't have the right props yeah that's the just yeah it's a great moment it's so good and this we don't hear anything about it in this episode but the backstory to the rockford character is that he was actually in prison for confidence games or something uh and was pardoned by the governor yes that's why he started became a pi because his his skill set was from his life of crime but he's kind of turned over this new leaf so in this episode yeah we get to see him go into full con con mode with his props and his different identities.

And they're little one-shot things. And that's the other thing. They're not too elaborate. They're just enough to get him the information that he needs for the next step. Right. So he makes his fake business card to be part of the funeral supply company, which is like, I don't even know if those exist, but that's not the point. He's very specific. It's Aaron with one A.

With two A's. Aaron with two A's. Two it's aaron with one a like with two a's aaron with two a's two a's yeah okay so he wants to come up with a very compelling business like he wants he takes the time to think it through like i think it'll be a funeral supply and i just love the sort of the detail there that he's he plans out these cons right like it's not like i mean he's pretty good on his feet but he actually is spending time thinking about what he's going to do next yeah and he usually uses his real name because that doesn't really matter right like by the time it would matter he already has information he needs and he can just split so it doesn't matter that they have his right name but it does matter that they know that he that they think that he works for a legitimate company so yeah so he makes his uh his fake

business card sandra is disgusted. They go into the train station and he poses as his funeral supply salesman and does a song and dance about how they sold the wrong, or they sold the casket to this person, but they sent the wrong one. They switched it with some other customer

and they're going to be really disappointed and they just need to track it down so they can make the exchange. I think he plays on the like, there isn't anyone who's expecting this casket. So no one will mind. And this other person really does mind. Yeah. Whole song and dance.

It's good because he also took the blame either on himself or on Sandra for having sold the wrong casket. Right. Yeah. Creating the situation where it's like, hey, buddy, if you could just help me out. Yeah. My job is on the line or somebody's job is on the line and this isn't really a big deal yeah yeah uh and so the the station manager or whoever basically is like well i don't have that information but you can talk to the conductor it's going to be the same guy he's going to be

on the 705 tonight so now we have like a time time horizon of when things are going to go down so i think it's after that conversation where where uh sandra or sandra is discussing with him for his his con but clearly impressed by it too i like that's the yeah like very like i can't believe you kind of stuff yeah so we know that we're we're waiting for for evening to come so they can move on with their next lead so we go to the next scene where they're driving around in Rockford's signature Pontiac Firebird. No matter how damaged it gets, it's always shiny and new in the next episode. Yeah. And they actually have a couple, there's a couple episodes where there's little bits about like how often he has to bring it to the shop or like how often he goes through tires and stuff like that.

I remember one season break where he had to get a new one. They use, yeah, they all use the same color, but apparently there were, you know, there was a different model at some point in the series. We're not really car guys. So I think that's a whole subgenre that someone could probably pay attention to is the cars that are in this because there's a lot of great 70s cars that happen in this show. But yeah, they're getting, they're in the car. They're still getting tailed by this mysterious stranger who's been tailing him the whole time so uh rockford loses his patience and at a comes to a stop and then just throws it into

reverse and rerant reverses into the the car again unlike most rockford episodes no car chase in this episode but this is you know this is almost a rockford car chase in this episode. But this is, you know, this is almost a Rockford car chase in, in character. Like, yeah. Cause Rockford car chases, they're fun to watch because they do this very, they take you for twists and turns that you don't expect.

They're a little story inside the story. Yeah. There's often, you know, a very accomplished car driving going on. And, and, um,

yeah, there, there are little stories within, within themselves and they, they're,'re little stories within within themselves and they they're they have this very like he does all the driving himself which apparently uh really messed up his body by the end of the the series like he a lot of jarring around and and whatnot the other part of it is that they're just he just makes really interesting decisions during right like it's not always who's the fastest or who can take the

quickest turn there are moments when he he just just does something completely out of the blue and this is like that moment right like this this is it's like that moment from any other car chase from any of the rockford files where he just decides to do something this is one of those things that was in the opening montage you're right or the opening montage i think if i remember right stopped like right before the camera shows the cars colliding yes so there's a little bit so in that montage there's the the question of like oh how does that turn out uh but there's not a lot of mystery he just straight up backs into this car like 40 miles an hour there's not a lot of It's actually part of like what's so brilliant about this is that this guy in the car, he

wants to know something about the guy in the car. At this point, he's decided to take the most direct route he can possibly take. Right. He's like, I know you're there. I'm just going to ram you. Gets out, pulls the guy out. The guy grabs for his gun. Right.

And he takes the gun away from him and then throws it away. Throws the gun. Which is another then throws it away, throws the gun, which is another wonderful Rockford type thing to do. Yeah. He doesn't like, I think he genuinely doesn't, or the character generally genuinely does not like guns. He has one hidden in his cookie jar,

which comes up in other episodes, not in this one, but he doesn't carry one on him. Generally. Uh, he tries to get them away from people. Part of his self, his self preservation is like nothing he's doing is important enough for him to get them away from people part of his self his self-preservation is

like nothing he's doing is important enough for him to get shot right right which is something that i that like i find very appealing right that his his heroism is very rooted in in a reality for me i can understand that point of view uh and respect that as a as an adult human myself right and it's it's actually tremendously refreshing in this day and age where there's a certain model that of the reluctant hero that you can look to rockford and say he abhors guns he'll only use them when he needs them i don't think he even ever shoots anyone i think it's almost always almost like always he'll shoot like to kind of keep people's heads down and stuff yeah yeah nowadays they'll have someone go through that lip service right

like they'll they'll say i don't like guns or whatever and then get to the point where they pull a gun out and shoot someone in cold blood he's reluctant and he doesn't want to use his gun and in this case when he is given a gun or when he takes a gun from someone, he just throws it away. Even if that would have been useful in maintaining the upper hand in the situation. He just doesn't want the danger of having it around. Modern day heroes would be reluctant. They would say they're reluctant and then use the gun. The modern hero or the modern reluctant good guy abhors violence until he has to use it and then like

revels in it right rockford has more of a character consistency about using violence yeah he tosses this one away and we find out that this guy is harry stoner irs agent which completely changes rockford's tenor because as mentioned he's like oh the the feds are involved yep and also he's very apologetic yeah he says that he's got to get his car checked out uh it's it's clearly a mechanical malfunction that uh caused his car to fly into reverse and slam into him but he'll get his insurance company to talk to him yeah so he's kind of doing doing this whole little like odd shucks patter, which you kind of see as being a very, oh, shit, I really don't want to get, you know, in trouble with these people. And so there's a little bit of like, wah, wah, wah.

Like it doesn't have that kind of soundtrack, but that's the feeling of that scene, which then we cut to another cafe across the street. We have a little establishing shot of the tow truck towing Stoner's car away, which I thought was pretty funny. And then they're basically comparing notes in the cafe in the diner. Stoner is eating

a plate of eggs. We don't see what Rockford's eating, if anything. He doesn't raise anything to his mouth. There's some coffee cups on the table. So, scene two of someone else is eating. Rockford's eating, if anything. He doesn't raise anything to his mouth. There's some coffee cups on the table. So, scene two of someone else is eating. Rockford does not have anything to eat. Stoner kind of gives them this

story about how this woman, Charlotte, was involved with a mob guy, basically. He died, and Rockford's like, oh, that guy died months ago right like rockford is plugged into the underground he knows those news events as they happen so joe joe baron died he had this money that disappeared you know and the irs is involved because they

don't think it was reported and so they're you know looking to recover it so that they can claim the taxes on it right right they were uh looking to collect it so that they can claim the taxes on it. Right. Right. They were looking to collect specifically $340,000 in estate tax from it. Right. It's $1.2 million that went missing. Right. Which is a lot of money. Yeah, $1.2 million in 1974, which is crazy. That's probably around $6 million nowadays.

So there's this $1.2 million fortune missing, theoretically, that Charlotte has. It's still a little unclear about whether she's complicit in this or what the deal is, why she would disappear. And so he was trying to track her down. And then once Rockford got on the case, I guess, you know, figured just to follow him around and see what what he dug up. So Rockford tells them about the train and the casket and they don't and they suspect that it's not really her or something. Some they suspect something is weird about the casket and the 705 train. So then we head back to the train station for this 705 train appointment and this is where we get to see rockford play another little a little con and and peel back the next layer for for us as the audience of what's going on in the story where he's gotten this information from this irs agent he then gets into the position where

where stoner's like playing the big shot and he's like i want to make sure my car is all set by the time i leave you better get it fixed so i'll go call my insurance right now goes over to his telephone booth and places a long distance call to joe baron jr who is the son of this dead gangster dun dun dun which i appreciate that you can place a long distance call to someone who apparently is like this major underworld figure and it'll just go through like, all right,

this is a great moment. Cause, um, this is one of those times where I love how tightly written this show is. It introduces a brand new character with a brand new concern to the whole thing. We don't know. We just learned about

the the mob influence and now we're we're seeing we're finding out how concerned they are about the money uh we're seeing how rockford deals with it how rockford up to now it looks like he believes this irs guy right but the phone call here is him testing to see if this guy is irs or possibly mobbed up himself right it's great because there's there's no exposition about this at all right it's it's purely through character action and dialogue where we see like rockford doesn't really believe this guy and wants to find out what's happening but he also doesn't really know what's going on so he needs to to create and in the conversation he kind of hedges a little bit he plays a little coy until he can find out whether the irs is actually

involved or not right and then he angle and then he already has a plan for getting in on the angle he's like cut me in for a percentage and i'll get you your money this becomes i think uh an important part of this particular episode is that um joron Jr. offers him $20,000 for finding the money. So far, he's got Sandra on his normal rate of $200 a day plus expenses. And I think in a moment we're going to find out that there's a discussion about that right and now joe baron jr is offering him like a hundred days worth of money to just turn the money in right uh so this is his second iron in the fire and he's going to get a couple more before we're done yeah so he accumulates he gets his second client essentially which again yeah not every episode but many episodes he ends up

playing different people off each other as his clients, quote unquote. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the actual conversation that we learned that a stoner is a fake identity. The IRS agent thing is a scam. He's another gangster basically. Yeah.

Uh, who Joe Baron, Joe Baron, I dropped the junior when my dad died, which I thought was a moment for someone that we see. And this is another thing in this series that I really like. Oh yeah. For someone that we see, and this is another thing in this series that I really like, for someone that we see so little of, so many of these little

side characters that are just little one-shot characters in different episodes are so fully realized with just a couple details. He calls him in Vegas, right? So, like, check. He has a flunky, check. Joe Barron, I dropped the junior when my dad died, check. Like, we start to get this portrait of this guy and this is all we see

of him in this episode like at all this is it and then rockford's like well i'm on the trail of the woman who took your dad you know who has your dad's money um i just need to know if the irs is involved basically and the guy's like no the irs isn't involved i'll give you twenty thousand dollars to bring back to me i think the thing that you just brought up is extraordinarily important, is that every character there are times in these episodes where you'll see the muscle for the bad guys.

The bad guys. Yeah, the criminals. You'll see the gorillas, as Rockford would put it, have these sort of incidental concerns or motivations that aren't central to the plot but they'll show up and they'll just be they'll just be goddamn human beings yeah they feel like they're in a living like a breathing world and a lot of that is between having these little concerns that

are ancillary to the plot but still yeah just add texture but also so many of them are these like great character actors who just have these great looks. In addition to all that stuff, there is so much packed into this little conversation. Joe Baron, here's part of the train announcement. Oh yeah.

And he had the call recorded, right? That was another thing. Like, you know, who's this guy? Oh, we don't know who he is.

Recorded the call. So he records the call, but here part of the train announcement. So then we have a little scene after this where he's like, where they're him and his goon are listening to the train announcement. And he's like, go find out where that train station is. So now he has an active interest.

He's sending people out and there is somewhere in California. Like they're not in LA. They're out in some other town in California. So he's like, go find where this is and, you know, track down this guy who is trying to find my money, basically. So now there's someone else in the chase.

Yes. So a lot happens there. We're now starting to get the full picture of, like, what's going on. The main question is still, like, where is this woman, Charlotte? What happened with her in this mysterious death? And also, what's up with her cousin? Because they mentioned that her cousin recovered her body. Stoner gets on the train, and then the two of them get on the train posing as employees of a mental hospital and they have a little con where they run

on like the conductor about did this guy stoner get on the train was he very concerned with the casket he has this uh he has this mental disorder where he is a megalomaniac and gets obsessed with things and we need to like calm him down again a fun little con we got to see glasses rockford in this one if i remember right oh yeah so he has these like thick frame glasses that he puts on for some personas so his medical doctor persona got to have the glasses fun little business between him and sandra where she gets to invent a word and he then has to recall it like that's the um just the fun bit where she, her eagerness to get involved in now in the con that she had earlier.

She's on board now with like this, this song and dance routine. And so she over complicates it for just enough to, to put Rockford in like a little bit of a precarious position, but they pull it off. They pull it off. Yeah. Yeah.

They set up a little trap. Basically stoner comes into this compartment to, uh, talk to Rockford, tries to bully him again. Rockford reveals that I know you're not an IRS. They kind of have a little tense standoff. He pulls his gun,

which he recovered earlier. Yeah. But there was kind of a double setup. Rockford maneuvers him into a position where he can hit him with the fold out bed, knocks him unconscious, and then they stuff Stoner into the roll-up bed, roll-away bed or whatever, and kind of get him out of the picture, essentially.

He gets rid of the gun again. I have that written in my notes. I'm trying to recall what exactly happened, but it's a very subtle thing. It's not a big thing, but I think it's just James Gard gardner saying well you know this guy had a gun now i have the gun i just want to show that i'm not going to keep the gun right he just puts it down or like puts it in a little bathroom or something

yeah things start to pick up here we get to the end of the line uh ashbrook which is where that the coffin was going they get out of the train they go over to a cab and we get a little, uh, passing the night, uh, moment, um, which I think would be easy to miss,

but because I was actually taking notes, I think they pass like the goons that Baron sent, uh, like there's these two guys and one of them's, I think that his like little psychic goon that was with him in Vegas, they get on the train while Rockford and, uh, Sandra get in the cab. Oh yeah. Yeah. I now yeah yeah it's i think you'd have to be paying attention to what that guy

actually looked like to like really see it but it's a nice little piece of business that's not like overblown but does establish that they made it out there that they found out where that train was going right and that they're still actively trying to hunt down this this guy who's looking for the money they then take on stoner's story of the irs agent to talk talk to the uh funeral director of wherever the casket was delivered so we finally got into the casket between their story and a 50 bribe because the cousin left explicit instructions to leave it closed, right? Right. But they bribe him 50 bucks, and that's Sandra's. She's the one who's like, because he's like,

well, I should probably see something from the court if this is a real tax case, because I did have instructions to leave it closed. And she's like, what about $50? And Rockford tries to walk it back, and he's like, no, no, no, that's fine. Give me the 50 bucks. They open the casket, and the plot thickens. The casket is empty and full of, well, empty of body, full of dirt,

full of bags of dirt. Which he cuts open to show that they're bags of dirt. Right, and not like bags of money, which I guess could be, or something else. This is kind of the end of our first act, I guess, right? Like, they've gotten, they've followed all their clues, they've opened the casket, it's empty, which we kind of were all anticipating at this point. I think I might've

missed a detail in here, but I think they, they have the address. They have an address, which is either her Charlotte's or her cousins, her cousins. Yeah. I'm not sure how they got that. There's a little bit of, I think at this point, this is also about two thirds of the way through the episode and things start happening real, real quick and a little less linearly, more narratively. As an audience member who's been watching it up to this point, we've opened the casket, but it was like with the funeral director during the daytime. It's not the casket that we saw in the opening scene yet. Yeah. So Rockford isn't robbing a grave yet and he hasn't been shot.

And you're a little bit like, we're almost done with this episode. What's the next round? What's going to happen next? So they have this address from the funeral director. They fly there because there's an establishing shot of a plane. Yes. They go to this address. It's a place that's been kind of worked over. There's stuff broken and they find an unconscious woman. They call the ambulance and they find out that it is in fact Charlotte who they've been looking for all the time. Charlotte on the ground. So we don't see how tall she is.

Exactly. And with brown hair. So, so far we've been told that she has like blonde hair. And then they mentioned like the cousin picked her up and she had red hair. So there's this like implication that she's been maybe using wigs or doing some kind of like costume changes to play this like fake death con. She's recovering in the hospital. They have a little scene of exposition where she kind of talks about, yeah, like I, you know, I was scared. That was my money. Like Joe promised me like, yes, I was involved with this monster.

He promised me that money. Like Joe promised me, like, yes, I was involved with this mobster. He promised me that money. So I took it. I didn't know it would be such a big deal. And these guys have been calling me. So that's why I faked my death so that they wouldn't, you know. But I guess it didn't work out. And now they have the money and I need to figure something else out. But Rockford is still suspicious.

Yeah, he doesn't believe they have the money. It's a little bit of a weird story. It's a little unclear who roughed up the place right like that's not really established to the audience it's it's entirely just from the visual and the exposition we're in a little bit of doubt about it too he tells sandra that he's suspicious right yeah i think so i'm trying to remember because i'm looking at my notes right now i know um this is kind of the most expositiony scene yeah in the episode he offers her a percentage of the recovery offers sandra a percentage of the recovery oh that's right yeah they talk to charlotte get this story

that he thinks is bogus then he talks to sandra and is like i think this is bogus but i think we can still find the money and sandra's like i don't want either like i don't believe you or i don't want part of it or something and he's like well if we find want, either like, I don't believe you or I don't want part of it or something. And he's like, well, if we find it and return it, then there'll be a recovery fee. Right. And I'll cut you in for a percentage or something like that. Yeah. And it's a little unclear, I think, about whether he's talking about

returning it to the mob guy or the IRS or whatever. Is this when they discuss how long he's been working for her? Yes. Because there's a discrepancy here. Right. She says that at the train station is when he stopped working for her. Right. Which, by my count, is two days ago.

Right. So he's been off the clock for two days. She thinks she's on for $200. Right. And he thinks he's got six hundred dollars out of her plus expenses which would include the train tickets the plane tickets right the cab rides and perhaps that fifty dollar bribe well i think he mentions like we'll put it on the expense account or something like the fifty dollar bribe, fixing his car, perhaps. Yeah. And she is totally like, no, no, no.

Did you tell me you were still working for me? Right. He's like, no. And it's a little unclear about whether he thinks it's almost as if he lets her off the hook. Yeah. At that point. He kind of is like, okay, fine. Like, oh, you got me.

Yeah. I guess I didn't literally say the words. I'm not working for you anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I didn't literally say the words. I'm not working for you anymore. Yeah. Yeah. They have that whole conversation. Rockford clearly still needs to get some money out of this. Right.

Yes. And so I think we cut from there. Like he's basically like, I think I know, like I know where that money is. And then we come from there to the opening scene where he's picking up the grave. He's got,

somehow has picked up a couple thugs. Yeah. He's willing to rob a grave right or rather it's almost uncertain whether they understood what they were doing was illegal because one of them it seems to dawn on him right he's like this is immoral maybe even illegal or something like that and rockford's like yeah it's called grave robbing yeah like what did you not understand? But it's basically a re, we see the opening scene again. They pull up the grave. He opens it.

We again, and I was looking for it this time. We again, don't see into the casket. We see the lid side as it opens. And then who we now know are the mobster goons run out of the darkness. Rockford hits one of them with a shovel. And then the other one shoots at him and wings him in the darkness. Rockford hits one of them with a shovel and the other one shoots at him and wings him in the head. And then we go back into the montage.

And kind of importantly, he falls into the grave. Yeah, he falls into the grave. And he's looking up at the moon at night. And it's a kind of wonderful, ominous scene, right? Like before we go into the hospital here, this has this moment of like finality for him but instead of being final right it's like two weeks of intensive care yeah he's

in intensive care for two weeks which probably really sucks he's in intensive care for two weeks he gets out and like the scene just like basically cuts to like the doctor telling him you're going to be here for at least two weeks cut he's He's walking out of the hospital. It's two weeks later. He has like a bandage on his head. He's going over to his car. And that guy Stoner slides in with his gun again. Yeah. And I was like, all right, where's the money?

We thought this was over, right? Like that was kind of a very final moment. And the episode is almost over. But there's still this little tying up the story here. Stoner wants the money. Rockford again is like's like look if i tell you where it is just give me a percentage i know where it is you don't know where it is 20 20 of the recovery yeah it's like give me 20 and i'll tell you where it is i don't have the energy to go deal with it i'll trust your word as a dedicated rockford uh watcher i'm like so he doesn't think this is, he's going to get this money, right?

Like, so the guy's like, okay, fine. I'll, I'll give you the 20%. Where is it? And he's like, the mortician took it. Yes. He split town. You know, I made some phone calls while I was in the, in the hospital recovering.

He split town and sold, you know, sold the mortuary and split. He must've found it in the casket before. May I tipped him off? I don't know. Which thinking back, that little story kind of makes sense with seeing the mortician and how easily bribed he was. Yeah, yeah, he was sketchy.

He was kind of a slimy character. He gets Stoner out of his car, who's apparently going to go look for the money. He meets back up with Sandra. Because he feeds her a line too, right? Right, and she's like, so where's the... Because Charlotte disappeared again. And he's like, well where's the... Because Charlotte disappeared again. Yes.

Right. And he's like, well, you know, maybe that makes sense. And she's like, no, I still want to find her. And he's like, maybe she doesn't want to be found. But he tells her that Joe Barron has the money that they found, that the goons found it, you know, in that at some point and they recovered it. And so now it's... She's probably back with with joe baron

right it tells her she's a treasure hunter like yeah you don't need to trouble yourself basically with that kind of person it's kind of his line he's fed both sandra and stoner what they need to hear to make rockford's life the easiest possible right to get them off his back basically yeah yeah um Which is great. He's exhausted. He's been in intensive care for a couple weeks. Right. He just wants to be done with this case.

Yeah. And then we do have this moment after that conversation. They have this little, it's not really romantic. It's more, I mean, it's a little bit, but. There's a line. I think this actually happened earlier because I think Charlotte was involved. So this is after they get Charlotte into the hospital. Oh, right, yeah.

And she just kind of mentions that Charlotte is the attractive big sister or whatever that she uses to attract eligible men. Right. And then she gets, like, the runoff or whatever. But I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, I forget exactly what the setup was. But then the line was like, you're eligible, aren't you? Yeah.

Rockford. And he says like, for anything but marriage. Yeah. Oh, my God. It is the best line. It is. This sort of casual sexuality to Rockford is very interesting because we do see romantic scenes with him and women. And he gets sort of entangled with them from time to time but it's so free loving throughout the whole thing to me

like it's a very of the time kind of attitude yeah yeah where no one gets too hung up on things except there's a couple there's there are a couple episodes where he's hung up on things except there's a couple there's there are a couple episodes where he's hung up on a woman and that's like part of the plot and there's somewhere his dad like wants him to get married right like that's kind of a thing that happens every once in a while but he has this kind of casual relationship with a side character beth who comes up in a lot of episodes who's also his lawyer um yes and uh and there's a couple other recurring like girlfriendy kind of very but it's a very off-screen kind of relationship yeah like he kissed there's a couple kisses every once in a while that's about it but that line itself is very much of like he says it and everyone

just is like okay yeah i i know the line. I know where we stand. And they get to decide whether they want to be involved in that or not. And then it's just left at that. I just enjoy that. They don't try to make hay of this situation. They don't try to make them look up to them and want to tame the wild man or anything like that. He just says, this is how it is. Yeah.

Either they're like, Oh, that's how I like it. Or, and occasionally you do have women that present that to him as well. Right. Like, well then that's the thing I think because he's not,

I mean, he's an attractive man, right? And he, he does have a certain charisma to him, a sexual to him. It's not really part of every single episode. So when it does become part of an episode,

you, you know, it's on purpose and it's like part of the story that like So when it does become part of an episode, you, you know, it's on purpose and it's like part of the story that like there's sexual tension. And yeah, again, as a viewer, I found that pretty refreshing because there's a lot of shows where it's

just like, here's the male hero and every woman who's involved has this weird sexual attraction and it's not part of the actual story. It's just presented at how things are. And I also appreciate that not being a running a recurring theme just being a intentional theme at times uh and that gets wrapped up in in this episode where at kind of at the at the end sandra is like well i i i really did grow on you didn't i uh because at the beginning she was like i'll grow like you might

think i'm forget what she says but she's basically like you might think i'm annoying now but like give me enough time and I'll grow on you. And then at the end of the episode, they close that loop. And she's like, I grew on you, didn't I? And then he kind of pauses and then he gives a really genuine smile. He's like, yeah, you really did. I'm saying that a little sarcastically, but he says it genuinely. It's a nice moment.

They kind of laugh and smile at each other. And then she leaves. It's great because I think that they like to end on a rockford smile yeah each episode and uh well he has such a great smile like james garner is such a great smile but then the very end of the episode is him leaning back in his chair and just going and i wish i knew what happened to all that money so this is another wonderful thing about this episode is that it's completely unresolved, right? It's,

it's, there's nothing that's been answered. Um, like, well, it's not that nothing's been answered, but the mystery, like the kind of mystery of who is Charlotte?

Why did she disappear? Has been answered. Yeah. But right. But the, the material question of like, what happened to that $1.2 million? Who has it? You know,

where did it go? That remains unresolved. I, like I said, i said i kind of tried to play the role of rockford's bookkeeper and kept track of the money uh the one there's the 1.2 million that's out there and that joe baron offers him 20 000 for it finds it right which is a little stingy but okay obviously he doesn't make that money.

There's certain percentages that he offers to cut people in on, but again. But nobody gets the money, so none of that. Yeah, it doesn't matter. So it comes down to his $200 a day plus expenses, and that comes down to an argument between him and Sandra about how many days he's been working with her. And they're not super explicit about the number of days. Near as I can tell, for certain, they both agree on that first day. So that's $200.

And if there were any expenses that first day, it was like a cup of coffee. Well, I think his car, though, right? Because he backs his car in before the train station scene. Yeah, wrecked car. I will put that down. Yeah, tuna sandwich, scrambled eggs for stoner, wrecked car. Two meals, yeah. And then, very conveniently, that's where she says it stops, followed by train tickets, plane tickets, cab ride, and a two-week stay in intensive care.

So, like, I don't know how much all of that actually adds up to in 1974 dollars. I did do a little research and found out that plane tickets were comparatively more expensive in 1974 than they are today. So, you can just imagine what a plane ticket would cost today. Because it flew to, like, Milwaukee or something? Yeah, it was crazy. So I'm just putting them down as just a loss, net loss for that whole thing. At one point, having a very clear potential of making $20,000 or the full $1.2 million if he managed to run off with it. Yeah, so that's the thing, right?

Like there's always the here's how much money is being dangled in front of him and then here's how much he actually makes my hand motions are the a very very large amount usually dangled in front of him but he makes usually not very large amount and that's a consistent theme where he's pursuing some kind of payoff or fortune or finder's fee and then for whatever machinations there are he doesn't actually get it in the end. Yeah. And two, he's not like greedy with this stuff. Yeah. Like he would totally take the 20,000 for the 1.2 million, right?

He would not be the kind of character that would invite the trouble into his life that 1.2 million would bring. He lives simply and he enjoys the life he has, which I think is sort of like exemplified with his relationship with his dad. Yeah. We didn't really get into the fishing, right? Like he enjoys going out into the country and fishing with his dad. Like they're definitely like a sort of simplicity to his life that he enjoys. And then he has a job that just does nothing but complicate that. Right.

In ways that he doesn't want to have happen the weird thing with his dad was that there was a moment where i think sandra offered him like a playboy magazine oh right yeah she mentions that he that that charlotte's tall and tall and blonde whatever and attractive oh no and she's like oh so he started paying attention once i said she was attractive and he says all the men in the world don't subscribe to Playboy. And then she says, do you? Yeah. And he's like, I borrow my father's copy when he's through with it. And that was so squeaky, especially because you meet his father and he is the nicest, most, when we get to episodes that have his dad, we'll talk about how amazing his dad is. I read that as like a ha-ha rejection, right?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I don't think that he was attempting to be creepy in that moment. I didn't really feel creepy. It was just... It was just a weird line in the context of the character of his father. Having met his dad through the show right when you

hear that you're like oh god i don't want to know yeah while we have you here if you like the podcast there's three ways to support us first rate and review on itunes or whatever you use to listen to podcasts second you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day this enables us to do things like upgrade our audio, and if we get enough support, release shows more often, so it'll be more Rockford for you. And third, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now? You can check out my Sword & Sorcery fiction

and the Sword & Sorcery fiction of other people, along with games and comics at worldswithoutmaster.com. So Nathan, what do you have going on? Well, I'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings, including the Worldwide Wrestling World Playing Game, at ndpdesign.com. Or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments

at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta. Thanks for listening. And now, back to the show. We're talking about this specifically as fodder for gaming, right? Or just fiction in general, but with an emphasis on gaming? Yeah, I think so. I think those are the two principles we want to keep in mind is like constructing a story with these elements and using these as game elements. Just like off the bat, one of the things that I find that i really enjoy about rockford uh and this episode

did a good job of illustrating it we were talking about how each character has its own thing right they feel like real characters outside of rockford they have actual concerns uh some of them are running scams this irs guy who's not irs harry, right? We know that he's pretending to be IRS. We don't really know what he's been doing up to this point when he's been lurking around Charlotte probably, Sandra definitely, and then Sandra with Rockford. Maybe deciding in the moment to pretend he's IRS when Rockford rams him. So these characters, they have these like outside influences that we don't know about but they act on them they're very real and like baron knows him right like knows who rockford's talking about like so they clearly have some kind of contentious relationship um there's a lot

implied by how characters react to other characters and there's a lot there are a lot of elements where where the show and this episode in particular is okay with not trying to explain every little thing that i think is really actually adds to that realism a little bit like uh like the doctor dr kennelworth um it's kind of implied that he's in on it right like he kind of has to be because yeah he's made some money he's made some money off of it but they don't ever really talk about why that is so, except that there is a point of exposition where Charlotte, they learn, was

originally from Chicago, and Dr. Kenilworth practiced in Chicago before wherever he was. So this is kind of implied, though, like, oh, so maybe she knows him from this older part of her life, and was able to talk him into this switcheroo. But that's all... The that far away world of Chicago.

Right. Exactly. Because everyone in Chicago knows each other. Let me tell you. Yeah. Uh, but just little things like that, where it lets the audience fill in details where it doesn't need to go into

exposition about how everyone exactly is connected to each other. And if there was not enough connective tissue, that would be frustrating because you wouldn't know what was going on but there's enough that you focus on the main connections and those carry the narrative and then the other stuff you can kind of let fall by the wayside if you're not really paying attention 100 uh there's things that are done in the name of expediency and keeping the story moving uh that are that are good choices i think in that way one thing that i thought was really neat to think about as a model for figuring out

this kind of set of relationships i guess is that the central character and this is kind of like a whodunit-y uh murder mystery-y kind of thing but like the central character is Charlotte. We all want to know what happened to Charlotte. She's a black hole. She's a void for most of the show. We only learn about her through learning about other characters' relationships to her. And that's

a pretty interesting and effective way to kind of preserve that mystery, I guess, without having to, I don't know, get too cute about it. Yeah, I think that one of the things I really appreciate about the Rockford files is that as I'm watching it, I'm not necessarily trying to solve the mystery as I'm trying to just take the moment by moment, is this character trustworthy?

I find that I don't come up with an overarching plot in my head as i'm watching it right i'm not like trying to figure out this or that but just like the irs guy there's the moment when rockford reveals that he doesn't trust the irs guy i'm like oh my god wait we don't trust the irs guy what does that mean it means that you think back and you go like what about that interaction earlier did i miss right there's a second layer there where each reveal gives you a new appreciation for earlier details um that i think is really strong too unlike uh uh whodunit you don't get clues like as audience we're not getting all the clues and if we were smart enough we would be able to figure it out like we're literally watching things as they are revealed where we did not have that information before.

And that's what keeps it moving forward, I think, visually and as a TV show. I was just thinking about it now as far as like we don't always just get Rockford's view, right? We are privy to some information that he is not privy to. Like we saw the Joe Barron send his goons after Rockford, right? Like, Joe Barron solved part of the mystery as to where Rockford might be. But for the most part, we generally just get his through line and get to piece things together with him, right? And in this case, also the exact same one that Sandra has. She's along for the ride with Rockford, even though in the beginning she definitely said,

I want to be in charge. And that is one thing Rockford, you know, he always ends up basically being in charge. Even if he has to kind of scoot his way into it a little bit. The flashback, right? So we start off with him in the graveyard and then we come back to him in the

graveyard. And in between that, the relationship between him and guns, we start off knowing he's going to get shot. Right, that's true. I didn't think about that. And then he says he's scared of guns, he's scared of gorillas, he's throwing the guns away every time he can.

We kind of see the fruition of his feeling about guns, right? Yeah, and just the playing with it that way. Like, this is where we're going to end up. We're going to end up with him in a hospital bed. Now it's time to kind of watch how it's going to go. Although we do technically know how he's going to end up in the hospital bed.

Right. Once the casket's introduced, like once we know that there's a casket involved, we kind of are ready to see how we get to you know get from that point to the to the intro point another thing and i think i've mentioned this a couple times but one thing i really love about the show is how is this feeling of of peeling back the layers of the mystery or the the con or the story learning who the new person who's involved and how that kind of changes the perspective and so constructing something like that? I think you probably have to work backwards, essentially. You couldn't write this story straight from A to B to C. If you're going to write something like this, you'd have to

kind of start with this idea of there's this woman who has this money and she's on the run. How do you make that a reveal? And then how do you complicate that reveal? Right? Because it's revealed and then it's complicated because she leaves again and the money's gone again. And we don't know where it went off to. One of the things that makes this not a confusing mess, right? Like that makes it palatable is that like everyone has, with the exception of Rockford, everyone has like one deception. Harry Stoner pretends to be the IRS.

I mean, Charlotte obviously has been changing, but like every time they run into someone, like you said earlier, that hotel manager who was like, oh yeah, she was here. She was totally here. Like you feel like he's gotten some money too. Right, exactly. Like he's so upfront with this information that clearly it has to be on purpose. So he's like, here's my lie.

Well, it's a great, it's a great example of how to give clues for lack of a better word of present. Like here's the next piece of information you need to know to get on with the story without having to have a bunch of obstruction. It's not that people don't want to tell Rockford what's happening is that they either want to tell him because it's

part of a larger con or they have no reason not to tell him. So he finds out. Harry Stoner presents himself as an IRS agent until it's clear that Rockford knows he's not. And then he just pulls a gun on Rockford after he's out of the hospital. Right. You know, it's all out on the table then. And we see the same thing when he talks to Joe Barron on the phone. They're playing cagey with one another. Right. They both want to get to the answer and they just want to see who's going to give the most. You should watch this whole episode.

But if you were going to pick five minutes of this episode to watch, the phone call in that telephone booth is probably the most packed five minutes of the whole episode with like establishing a new character adding the new motivation finding out something about the backstory uh giving the foreshadowing for the finale essentially because you know he gets shot because those goons get involved and that's all all established in like a tight five minutes of understandable dialogue right which while that's happening reveals the both rockford's character and joe barron's character right like that bit just carries so much weight with it and it does it so well that until i was making notes about it and realizing like how many notes i was making about those couple of minutes right i was like

wow there's a lot packed into this. All right. So, and that's about halfway through the episode, right? Like it's kind of right when you need the injection of, and here's what's going to carry us through the entire rest of the episode. And so smartly too,

because like, okay, you're going to need to reveal to the audience that Joe has recorded this conversation and is going to do something about so you need another character in the room to you're going to present joe as the boss by having that other character answer the phone and then bring it to so like it has this like every there's not a wasted second right every decision in that conveys information visuals the relationship of the the physical relationship of those two characters the audio of the train announcement and and rockford like looking concerned and covering

the bottom of the phone with his hand because he knows that that's something that they can use to find him right like it's all there it's great that that announcement is what gets him shot right like this is that sets off the chain of dominoes that put him in that hospital bed so when we say that like the writing and like the narrative is so tight it's like it's those moments where like almost every episode has that kind of feeling to it where you can identify a couple moments in the show where all the strings kind of pass through that moment and then go out to the rest of the story which which is just so great. And it's like we mentioned before, this is a tiny example of a car chase in a Rockford

episode. But the fact that he knows that he's being followed is information to be followed up on. Right. Is wonderful. There's so much like thinking specifically from the point of view of a role playing game, right? How many times

when you're sitting at the table and you're trying to do something sneaky or you realize that you have a tail or something like that in the game you're like let's make the role that gets me away depending on you know what system you're using like how can i get away and not be seen or you know how can i lose them or something like that? Yeah. Or something like that. When, what, what Rockford is, he's like,

well, they're following me. Let's just see where they go with this for Rockford. What he wants to do is he wants to make sure that he's safe and what he can learn from that situation. And, uh, he specifically says like,

it's a, it's a lead, right? Like she says, right. Shouldn't we lose him? And he's like, no,

that's a lead. And he chooses when to follow up on it so he's being the you know as as the protagonist right in this situation he's essentially picking his spot about when do i need the information that this is going that i know this guy is going to have because in the rhythm of episode that moment falls after they've fallen up on everything they can follow up on in in a game situation that's a powerful choice that you could make right of like i'm gonna let them follow me and use that to inform my character decisions for the next couple scenes right exactly and see how they react and now i know what information they know and then you can turn the tables or or whatever you're doing. From the point of view of somebody

who's running that game, right? Well, you want that person who's following to have an agenda, right? They're not just following them just to track their location or just to so that they know they're being watched, right? You want to have the ability for a character to

do that, to turn the tables on your person who's following them. And you want to resist the urge to necessarily just hand them the upper hand just because they're the ones who are giving away with following them, right? Like, you don't want to put in, say, okay, well, you're not going to stop them from following you, then they're going to be able to whatever corner you or, you know, you want to,

you want to be like, oh, okay, well then they'll just follow from a distance. They think that they're succeeding in following you. Right. So they're just going to keep doing that. You need the agenda for why are they following you?

Right. Like that's what needs to be on your mind, running that situation of what is the goal of this person following them? Because if the goal is to person following them because if the goal is to corner them and jump them then that's maybe a different seat right like that's a different interaction where you just want to frame something where they just get cornered and jumped because that's where you're going with it and that happens not in this episode but in other episodes uh of rockford there's the rockford files there's scenes where they're literally like a bunch of gorillas corner

Rockford and beat him up. Right. And they usually drop some piece of information in so doing or whatever, but those usually don't come as the result of being tailed. Right. Like those are a different agenda for those characters. They're quite often just waiting at his house, which is like the easiest thing. They're the moments you mentioned before with the grocery bag yeah right like he comes home with groceries or something and he realizes that the front door to his house is broken off you know and there's like a very basic logic that doesn't need to be explained he's literally in the phone book

if someone knows his name they can look up his phone number and where he lives and just wait for him there you definitely get the feeling that if Rockford were operating today, just Googling him would be like, you know, who is this asshole? He says he's a funeral director, but... Yeah, his business card shake might not work quite so well. Harry Stoner's plan is just to follow him to the money, right? Like, Harry Stoner's not going to harass him if he doesn't have to he's just gonna wait until rockford finds the money and then they just walk up because he has a gun right yeah just come up with his gun and be like give me the money or i'll

kill you like it's a very straightforward plan yeah but he has this whole run to run in the middle i'm with the irs yeah well because he can't right because he still wants rockford to be doing his dirty work essentially i mean i think that's a good kind of general game principle of make sure your characters have agendas and something they specifically want out of the other characters. Especially when it's something where there's, where it's going to be up to the protagonist to make the decision of when to interact, right? You need to have that kind of idea of why why is this person okay just letting rockford drive around right like what is their purpose and so doing and then you can fill in you know don the moment kind of like oh now i'll run this con on him to convince him to keep doing what he's doing or however that plays out to get slightly more um explicit with this that if you're

going to work with uh a mystery in the same style that Rockford Files does, there are characters at play who are trying to unravel the mystery as well. Like, a lot of times you can set up a mystery where everybody involved in the mystery is trying to keep it quiet. And so then your job is to go up to every individual and find out where they're lying. But that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that, uh, Harry Stoner,

Sandra Turkel, I think is her name and Joe Baron. They all want to find out what happened. They have different reasons for it, but they were all like moving in that direction. So you do have characters who are like, I was paid to lie about this. And so they're,

they're just sitting there saying, I'm going to lie. And if you figured out that I was lying, you need lying, you already know everything you need to know from me. There's nothing beyond that that you need to get from me. I'm the hotel manager. I lied about her dying. I'm the Kenilworth? Yeah, Dr. Kenilworth.

Oh, yeah. She died of a heart attack. Her cousin picked up the body. So those are like, I'm lying. Here's the lie I'm supposed to tell you. up the body so those those are like i'm lying here's the lie i'm supposed to tell you and the information that you're going to get out of me is not you're not going to get any more information out of me you're just by knowing that this is a lie that i'm supposed to point you in this direction of this interaction that's the important part and then you have the characters that are in motion

who are also trying to solve the same mystery. So they're doing things. And I think sometimes it's easy to forget to populate your game with those types of characters. Characters that are active so that when the players are like, what do we do next? Wait, there's this guy following me. Why don't we just interact with that? But there weren't a whole lot of other examples of that in this one. Also because of the format, right? It's pretty tight on this cast of characters but i think that idea of the division between kind of the active characters and kind of the may not even passive but kind of the incidental or kind of information

vector characters is yeah i think that's going to apply to most of these episodes these other characters got what they wanted whatever it was whether it was just the smile from charlotte or if it was actual money or whatever they got what they wanted right and it was, whether it was just the smile from Charlotte or if it was actual money or whatever, they got what they wanted and they're just making good on what they said they would do. And that's it. They don't, they probably don't even have a clue. Well, the doctor may actually, uh, there's a, there's a little bit of a hint that the doctor may know about what's going on further, but generally speaking, they don't have a clue and you're just supposed to,

uh, they have everyday concerns. The characters that are in motion and have an active agenda are Sandra, Charlotte, even though she's absent, but like she's still in motion with her own agenda of disappearing. Joe Baron, Jr.

And stoner. They're all moving to gain whatever the object is that they're trying to gain, right? Like Sandra's trying to find is that they're trying to gain, right? Like, Sander's trying to find Charlotte. Charlotte's trying to find safety. Joe Barron and Stoner are both trying to find the money. And so it's when you start contrasting,

and this, I think other episodes will do a better job of highlighting this, but when you start contrasting what everyone wants to gain is where you start to see Rockford start playing people off of each other and trying to advocate either for his client or for the innocent or for whoever stands most to lose out, right? He starts playing people against each other once he figures out what it is they actually are trying to get. Yeah, because they offered the opportunity, right?

Like, he can get out of Harry's way. And that's what he does at the end. He points Harry somewhere and says, that's where the does at the end he points harry somewhere and says that's that's where the money is and if harry comes back uh which could happen all he has to do is see rockford living in his trailer and be like well that's a guy who hasn't found the 1.2 million dollars i guess i was wrong so because they're they're in motion and they have something that they're trying to get at then as soon soon as the main characters or the player characters or whatever can figure that out, they can then

either point them where they want them to go or just get out of their way so that they're not in the flight path of the more dangerous characters. So they don't get shot while standing over an empty grave. Anything else to say about Tall Woman in Red Wagon?

We never see the Red Wagon We never see the red wagon. Which is exciting. Or that she's particularly tall, though we're told that she is. They do, there's the exposition where they say that she was driving around in a red station wagon. It's not as if the title isn't referenced in some way in the show. But it's just, it's kind of funny. It's a light touch. Yeah.

No, I think this is, I'm excited to do more. See what other patterns we can tease out of it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think overall, I'm pretty sure we're going to say that we like all of these episodes. But yeah, I definitely like this episode. It's not what I would consider a typical Rockford episode. Right. There's elements like we've discussed that we're definitely missing, like all the side characters.

A more traditional beginning. I think, yeah, they're trying to get their legs underneath right and this is about like a third of the way through the first season something like that yeah so yeah they're definitely throwing a couple different things at the wall like when you do binge this show like it's nice that different episodes have some different setups to them um it's not literally the same every single time uh because some of them there sometimes there'll be a stretch of like five or six that are very formulaic and it's kind of, they all kind of blend together. I do have a binge recommendation. If you come across a two part episode,

try to put a day between when you watch the first one and the next one, just to get that experience of the two part. I'm assuming I'm talking to a younger audience now uh two-part episodes when i was a kid that was something right like that was a lot of times now we do television that's supposed to you know follow a story arc for the whole season right but back then like a lot of these are episodic so when they do do it when they do do um when they do a two-part episode uh there is that like anticipation for the next week that you got to build up to or whatever and i think it's often fun to be like okay we're done

today we gotta want it for tomorrow your binge to end on the first part of a two-parter and then yeah start the next one on the second part. How about that? All right. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for doing this with me. Epi. Oh, it's my pleasure. We're,

we will try to do a couple more of these and fine tune the format and have some actual information about getting in touch with us. If you want to talk about the show or anything like that. Yeah. So stay, stay subscribed for more to come. But with that, I think we've, uh, we've earned our $200 a day plus expenses for this one. Yeah. So stay, stay subscribed for more to come. But with that, I think we've, we've earned our $200 a day plus expenses for this one. Yes. So does that mean we split it?

Are we each making a hundred dollars a day? Is that the plan? Yeah. There's no way. There's no way we each make 200. That's not a, that's not a Rockford type ending. All right. Well, we've made our, we've made our $200 for this day. So we'll see you next time when we talk about another episode of the Rockford files.