Two Hundred A Day - Episode 100: Episode 100 Spectacular

Episode Date: March 27, 2022

It's our 100th episode of Two Hundred a Day! To celebrate this milestone, we draft our picks for recommended episodes of our own show. If you've joined us recently, these are some of our most fun, interesting and memorable episodes. Thanks so much for listening! Our Recommended Episode List: * Ep 6: Just Another Polish Wedding * Ep 21: Hotel of Fear * Ep 30: The Big Goodbye (20 a Day) * Ep 32: So Help Me God (w/guest Jess Banks) * Ep 45: The Trees, The Bees and T.T. Flowers (2-parter) * Ep 54: Interview with Gigi Garner * Ep 60: Godfather Knows Best (Live, 90s Movie, w/guest Emily Care Boss) * Ep 79: Never Send a Boy King to do a Man’s Job * Ep 89: Caledonia, It’s Worth a Fortune! * Ep 96: Roundabout While you're here, make sure to check out Gigi Garner's James Garner Animal Rescue Fund : https://www.jgarf.org We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Michael Zalisco * Dael Norwood's historical research (https://daelnorwood.com/) * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Jay Thompson, Matthew Lee, Kip Holley, Dave P, and Dave Otterson! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Is it time for our... Yes, now I'm recording for our episode 100 spectacular. Yeah! Blah blah! Blah blah blah! Blah blah blah! Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files.

I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epi Dyer Ravish. And we have a special episode for you today. Yes. Epi, why are we recording this special? Well, this is our centennial. We've been doing this for 100 years now. One episode per year.

So, or at least, you know, at times it feels like that. No, it's been a joy, an absolute joy. But we are on our 100th episode so what we're doing now is we're just recording a little annex a little a little bonus material so we're um yeah yeah because we are pattern enjoying humans you know the number 100 feels very special it marks a lot of work that has gone into the show. But because of the nature of the show, there's not a regular, like when we did the season two draft,

that's like talking about the season. And when we did Malibu madness, that was kind of like when we were about halfway through the show. Like we kind of, we'd watched roughly half the episodes at that point. But just like our episode a hundred doesn't really sync up with anything in particular about the run of the Rockford files. Right.

Exactly. But what a hundred episodes of 200 a day does give us is a hundred episodes of 200 a day. Yes. So, uh, in order to kind of, uh, in order to do something a little fun to mark the occasion um we are going to do a informal first i guess technically because this you know we have not had the 100th episode to review yet first 99 episodes of 200 a day draft um in which we are selecting our favorite or what we consider to be our standout episodes of our show. Yes.

And my, my, my thought with, with this idea was, was kind of to create a recommended listening list for someone who's coming in new. Yeah. If you come in a hundred episodes late,

you don't want to sit through all a hundred episodes. I mean, maybe, maybe you do. I mean, maybe you do when you have the, but if you don't have the time, right.

Um, we'll get you up to date. We'll get you, we'll get you do. I mean, maybe you do. But if you don't have the time, right? We'll get you up to date. We'll get you going. We'll get you all the continuity you need to know. Right. Our very continuity-heavy show. Yeah. And so the draft is just a fun way to kind of talk about a thing.

This, again, is stolen slash adapted from a pop culture nerd media show called The Incomparable. And we did this format for our episode where we finished season two and selected our top episodes of that season. So it just means we both have a list of episodes that we've independently made of our standouts. I don't know. I found as I was making the list that I had to kind of figure out what I meant by favorite episodes of our standouts. I don't know. I, I found as I was making a list that I had to kind of figure out what I meant by favorite episodes of our own show. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about that for just a moment. Um, because I too created rules so that I could do it. Right. Right. Yeah. Uh, um, so what, what was your criteria? What did you, how did you approach approach this so my first picks were very closely aligned

with just favorite episodes of the rockford files right like yes my my sense of like oh i remember this being a fun episode was like because it was a fun episode of the rockford files to to watch and talk about and so i recognized that i decided that that was a fine reason to pick episodes, but that I also should, you know, think about, I guess. So for me, I kind of had to reflect a little bit in like, what do I remember about recording this episode? Or first of all, which of these do I actually have some kind of particular memory of recording which is the first good first filter um and then you know why is that the case and a lot of the time it's because it's a good episode of the rockford files but there's a couple cases where it was also either i felt like we just had like i really like we had a fun time talking about it or there was something about the content that i

felt stood out uh from from your average episode. It was not a strict metric. It was very much a feels metric. So that's where I landed. What about you? Well, I mean, I think that there's arguably the better Rockford Files episodes make the better 200 a day episodes, if only because we're enjoying ourselves so much right like it not that we never not enjoy ourselves on this show but like uh like really standout episodes i think bring our

energy way up and so i feel like you know you have a good time for that yeah what i did to make sure i didn't wallow in any particular spot is I used a artificial constraint made from our website, which is we have nine pages of episodes, the first page of which is only like two episodes long, which leaves eight pages left. And I just chose an episode on each one of those pages so that I didn't like didn't get stuck in the early episodes or the recent ones or, you know, I tried to kind of spread it out that way. And so mine also sort of follow, uh, the chronology of the show a little bit. Um, so there'll be in order.

I'll yeah. Start from early and then move unless you want me to rank them. So I did a similar thing where i i started started on the episode list on the website and and went but after i made my kind of rough list of from doing that i then sorted a top like i just went for a top 10 because i was like we'll need i'll need more than five i will do ten yeah so i i did sort mine um but okay you don't you don't have to like we're just going to go back and forth you you also don't need to go down your list you can pick as we go yeah i can pick and choose yeah as we go yeah all right uh let me well that's not gonna work okay we're all good you're good i'm good i'm ready and so yeah how

this works is uh one of us will go first i'm trying to remember who went first last time did i go first last time uh you might have or i might have i don't have a 50 50 chance right one of us will go first to pick from our list and then if that episode you know and then the other person we can talk about it. Cause I think we'll have a couple of titles on both of our lists. Um, but then on my turn, I will have to pick a different episode and then we'll go back and then

you'll have to pick a different one, um, from the first two. So we will end up with a list of 10 episodes, 10 unique episodes, um, in a rough priority order based on our order that we picked them. So strategically, I actually do want to go with episodes I want to make sure I get in.

Yes. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. Because we're only going to end up with 10 at the end. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Because if it's something you want in, but you pick something else and I never pick it, it will never go on the list. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's good. That's good. All right. That's good. That's good.

All right. That does help. So you want me to go first? Yeah, I think you should go ahead and go first. I think I went first last time. Did you know that we are a 100% listener supported show? Our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day keep us in the podcast business and in return receive exclusive episode previews as well as plus expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about media we're enjoying and the things going on

in our lives. We extend special thanks to our Gumshoe patrons supporting this episode. Dale Norwood wrote a book, Trading Freedom, How Trade with China Defined Early America. It's about fast ships, cheap drugs, and American political economy. Published by the University of Chicago Press, find it wherever good books are sold chuck from what you're reading.com paul townend who recommends fruit loops serial killers of color at fruitloopspod.com shane liebling check out roll for your dot party for all of your online dice rolling needs jay adan showcasing his amazing miniature painting skills at jayadan.com. Dave P., Dave Otterson, Kip Hawley, Matthew Lee, and Jay Thompson. And finally, a very special thanks to our Detective Level patrons for their generous support.

Michael Zalisco, Eric Antenor, at Antenor on Twitter, Brian Pereira, at Thermaware, Bill Anderson, at Bill bill and 88 and of course richard haddam at richard haddam we follow them too at 200 pod if you're interested in keeping us going for as little as one dollar an episode check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you all right well um i'm going to go for number three on my list here. And by number three, I mean the third oldest one. And I'm just going to get this one out of the way right now.

Episode 30, The Big Goodbye. I think it's a worthy addition here. So this one, if you are new to the show, spoilers. Just spoilers. Every April Fool's Day, we put out an episode not about the Rockford Files, but about Star Trek holodecks, as you would. Like, that makes sense. This one seems like the inspiration for it,

because this one is about the big goodbye, which is, I don't remember what season of Star Trek that is. It's early first season of Star Trek next generation. Um, it's the first big holodeck episode. It's the first episode that has anything to do with holodecks. No,

sorry, not anything to do. Other episodes sort of had a holodeck to show you that they had a hol The holodeck was introduced like the holodeck existed in like the first episode. But this was I think when we did this, we discovered that this was kind of, yeah, the first we're going to set an entire plot on the holodeck. Yeah. To the point where like the voiceover has to explain to you what a holodeck is. to you what a holodeck is but more to the point it's about dixon hill who is a uh i guess a a 1920s private eye fictional private eye that uh the captain picard plays in his holodeck hollow novel um who charges 20 a day right and so the the name of our our uh podcast, we've called them $20 a day.

And it was a lot of fun. We had some technical issues with it. So there's some audio issues with that particular episode. But it's, you know, if you're familiar with Star Trek The Next Generation, I wouldn't say like that's the first 200 a day episode you need to check out but i would also say check it out definitely enjoy yourself from time to time season one episode 11 of next generation so all right yeah um yeah this one was also on my list um oh good it was on your list yeah one reason we started doing them was the 20 a day thing and i think another was because we just mentioned star trek a lot especially in yeah there were some phases of the show where for

whatever reason i just felt like it came up i don't know i don't remember the exact genesis of the idea other than wouldn't this be a funny thing and so we did it for our april 1st episode in 2018 and i've kept up that tradition since it's it's fun because i feel like i always look forward to the 20 a day recording like i don't want to do a full star trek podcast like there's enough of those and i don't have anything particularly interesting to say about yeah but uh picking not only holodeck, but also generally holodeck episodes that have some kind of resonance with the themes of the Rockford Files is kind of the challenge, which actually starts to drop off fairly rapidly. So it's good that we only do one a year. Yeah, good pick.

Well, thank you. He needs to make a snap decision as a captain of a starship would have to, right? In that case, the sort of mathematics that he has to face are, well, I do know to some extent that my world exists, although we know that his world doesn't. Right. I'm getting into Borges again. But anyway. But I know to some extent my world exists, at least to a greater extent than McNary's world does, or with a greater amount of certainty. Right.

And that my world is in peril if I don't do something right now. He's making the decision that he can make, which is, you're not real, so I can safely walk away. For my first pick, I am going to go with a standout episode, mostly for the fact that it exists at all. Episode 54, our interview with Gigi Garner. Oh, yes. I didn't actually pick that one. I'm glad you did. I don't remember exactly how this came about.

I believe we had like a random Twitter exchange with her. And then. Yeah. You followed up. I think she was actively looking for like some press stuff at the time. She wanted to promote the, um, uh,

Garf, Jay Garf, Jay Garf. Yes. James Gardner animal rescue fund, which is a great thing to promote. Uh, I guess we should totally throw this in our show notes.

Right. Right. Uh, this time yeah she yeah she she runs this animal rescue fund uh that in the you know in the name of james carter um noted animal lover and so for whatever reason she was like willing uh and able to come on our show for about i don't know i think we had about an hour we had like 50 50 minutes or so uh to chat and it's it was fun both just because we're you know rockford files nerds and so it was kind of like fun to get to hear her memories and some of her stories um

about her dad and about the show because she was on set as a kid so she had some like some memories and like you know the various cars that they got to drive around and stuff um and you know she's also promoting her her her fund so like we talked about animals which is i'm also pro uh yeah it was a fun thing to do i think it's a fun listen um the the episode is like is the interview and then a little bit of q a where we answer some listener questions afterwards uh but um this i guess it also kind of stands out to me as kind of establishing for me that for whatever reason and i don't know how or why our show has grown outside of where i originally thought it would does that make sense right yeah i will probably talk about this a little bit with my next pick too but like our original conception

of what our audience would be has uh was wrong not not entirely there's overlap but like it um we we pretty much thought we were, we would have a bunch of indie tabletop role players who care about what we say and maybe might care about the Rockford files. Uh, but yeah. Yeah. So I guess recommended as a, I don't know where else you're going to hear us talk to Gigi Garner, but right.

But this episode is, is where you can hear that. And I thought it was a fun conversation and wanted to call it out. You know, my dad drove, like, in the Rocker Files, there was a truck that was supposedly his dad, Rocky's. Yeah. And it was a maroon and silver truck. That was actually my dad's truck. Oh, really?

And he would drive that back and forth. So he owned the truck. That was actually my dad's truck. Oh, really? And he would drive that back and forth. So he owned the truck. That was his own personal car. It does seem like they take better care of that truck than they do the Firebird. It's always pretty clean. It's never getting blown up. Yeah. It was my dad's car.

It was his personal car. So, yeah, they're going to take really good care of it. So that's how it got of it so that's how it got there and that's how it got to be rocky's car back to you all right so um for this one i i'm trying to decide which of these two to do i'm gonna leave one of them because i think you might have chosen that so i'm gonna go for uh i'm gonna go for episode 21, Hotel of Fear, which is a later Rockford Files episode, I think. Might be one of the earliest times when we jump out of the first three seasons. Yeah, I think it's in season four, maybe.

Yeah, season four, episode 11. Or sorry, episode 10. So when we started our show, only three seasons of rockford files were available free streaming somewhere i think it was on hulu or something like that so we we kept to those three seasons just to make it easy on people to uh enjoy uh all right so i chose this one uh because well first of all uh it was clearly a fun one. We clearly enjoyed the episode. Absolutely. You know, and lots of good comedic moments, lots of good running gags in it.

I'm an angel fan and I got to feature an angel episode. Yeah. As a very angel riffing angel episode. Yes, I remember it. Well, I did not. This one actually was not on my list it is uh so i think it's solid but also it's i think it's a nice touchstone for um where we once were there's things in it that we don't do anymore we used to break our episodes up into like two sections the first one was the review of the rockford files and the second one was the lessons we learned from that rockford files that we can incorporate in whatever creative exercise

we're doing but almost invariably that creative exercise is role-playing game design or playing because that's a thing that we share and uh and we thought our audience would would share with us now we've since moved away from that for a number of reasons. It wasn't a bad idea. It's just we ran out of lessons to learn. We learned a lot of lessons from the Rockford Files. Right. So question for you, because I actually, I didn't really have a chance to really listen

through these. So I was mostly going off of vibes. Do you, so this one, we still were doing the two half yeah format yeah i i was like i should find the one where we stopped doing that but i didn't have the bandwidth to find it oh you did okay yeah uh in fact if you want to know let me see i'm gonna go down my list here well i guess i just want to know the episode number so that i can because i think in the past i've said like after some episodes we ran out of lessons, but I, I, I think it's episode 42. I did.

Obviously I did not listen to all 99 episodes of our, of our podcast to do this, but I think it's episode 42. That's actually longer than I thought. Yeah, no, that's what I was, I was thinking. Also, I swear in, uh, episode uh episode 21 um did i beep it out that's the thing that i've been yeah it was beeped out okay yeah but like um i would beep out swears because we keep we keep a uh uh all like a you can flag the podcast as um right uh i'm forgetting the term now but as having swears or not and all ages yeah i i wanted

to keep it all ages so i was i would be back your swears and mine but i generally would just edit mine out well i thought it was funnier to beep yours out so i have since i think gotten better at that and avoided swearing in general um so this is a uh a look back like like when you you look back at yourself, uh, pictures of yourself in the seventies and you're smoking, right? Like,

so look back on bad habits. Uh, but yeah, it's a very fun episode. It's, uh, enjoyable. It's an early episode.

So you can kind of see how we're like, where we started with the show. Um, and if you're going to watch the show before you listen to the episode, hotel of fear is just a romp you just it's so so fun so yeah that's why i included this one great yeah not on my list so i did think about it but it didn't make it on over some of my other ones yeah i love angel's argument here he's like what because somebody used it no one else can he makes a great argument um

against the notion of copyright. Right. Which is what? So some people confuse mine for this other guy's and then they buy mine instead. What's the harm in that? Exactly. I have some personal experience with that, actually. You sure do.

But the other bit in this scene that I really want to focus on is the physical bit between Rockford and Angel. I feel like over the course of this entire series of podcasts that we're doing, we're going to eventually come down to a thesis for Rockford's self-preservation versus Angel's self-preservation. They both have a very highly tuned sense of self-preservation. Angel's causes him to do wrong things, And Rockford causes him to do the smart thing. What I'm coming down to here is that there's this moment where as Angel's talking,

he wanders to the window and Rockford just takes him by the arm and pulls him away from the window. Clearly, like, don't be an idiot. Don't get yourself shot right now. Okay. Well then, huh. I'm just looking at my list and thinking where i want to go all right um so for my next pick i'm going to say that i would recommend our episode 45 the trees the bees and tt flowers ah good good pick a two-parter um and i think this is the first two-parter that we did as one episode i think before this we had done some two-parters as two consecutive 200 a day episodes which i i think has there there are merits to both approaches but i think for this one we were like let's try doing it as one so it's one longer episode it's like two two hours of change um and i think that

was a successful experiment i don't know i i feel like the two-parters we usually you know are are usually one consecutive story so yeah doing them talking about them as one piece even though it is a long recording for us i think we really get to we really get to get into kind of the nuances of the story um as conceived and in this one in particular i just remember really liking this episode um and really liking how much rocky we got in it so this is one where tt flowers is rocky's friend and he's like committed kind of against his will as part of this like a land swindle or something like that so we get to see rocky we get to see jim's relationship with rocky's friends which is always interesting and we get that great action sequence of breaking out of the hospital yeah um it was a lot of fun and had

a lot of to recommend it um and so in order to showcase a two-parter i felt like it would be the top of my list i you know i was thinking about the two-parters too as i was going through them because obviously early ones we split up into two and uh i'm not actually sure how many i know specifically gear jammers yeah and i think that's fine gear jammers in particular uh feels like two different episodes that are connected yeah it doesn't feel like one long episode um but yeah and i, like the the episode of flowers, P.T. flowers, P.T. flowers, T.T. flowers, the bees, the trees and T.T. flowers. Yes, it's a beautiful it's a great episode. And I think we had a lot of fun doing it. Like I, you know, remember recording it, which is not the case for a lot of these.

Yeah, I think you're right. We did. Yeah. Gear Jammers was our first two par're right we did yeah gear jammers was our first two-parter that we did in two parts and that worked for that and then i think there might be one other two-parter that we did as two parts i wouldn't doubt it um we did profit and loss as one episode which also is a good like one long episode no i think after that we just started doing them as two-parters or as one episode rather yeah so i guess it was our experiment that we found successful enough to just stick with that

format for the rest of the show but it makes sense from like that's what dr chris would do like he would he would definitely have everything locked down and he can only go out those front doors because he he's fooled the front door guard he's still there with the keys into thinking that he's this undertaker right yeah it's all part of the same the same scheme uh yeah i just wanted to shout out how well directed this sequence is because there's a lot going on there are a lot of people in a lot of places and at no point did i feel like i was lost in the action yeah it's always very clear where jim is where chris is what stage of panic the residents are at how far away the cops are all that stuff is all spatially um distinct uh and and paced so that you know

when people are aware and how they just miss each other and all that stuff i feel like that's a very skillful uh thing yeah and and that they do include all those elements right like that they that they didn't simplify it that it was like no it is going to have all these little details and we're going to make it work uh yeah no it's great it's uh probably one of the reasons why this episode is so memorable all right so back to you all right um so we've done now we've done a uh a joke episode a uh a special episode where we just interviewed uh gg gardner uh we've done a regular episode and a two-parter what i'm saying is we're going to cover all the spectrum of episodes that we have. Because what I'm going to suggest now is episode 60, which is representative of our live episodes.

Insofar as it's our only live episode. So this one, we're talking about having memories having recorded episodes. This one is easy to have memories for. Because what happened was Nathan was passing through town. having memories having recorded episodes this one is is easy to have memories for because what happened was uh nathan was passing through town uh we we live um in two different parts of the country so it doesn't happen that often but he was passing through town and uh well i should say you and henry were passing through town Yep. And stopped by for the night, and we watched one of the made-for-TV movies from the 90s,

Godfather Knows Best, and it was me, you, and Emily, my wife. And that was an absolute delight. So we took that format from this other podcast called The Laser Discotheque, which I had been on a few years back. called The Laser Discotheque, which I had been on a few years back. What the Laser Discotheque people do is they purchased or inherited a massive library of laser discs because they were like a blink of the eye in when it came to technology that uh that we used to record and watch videos on there were these giant discs much like cdvds or cds or whatever if you can remember those um the file format wasn't as compact so i think you probably

got better quality out of them. I'm not sure. But more importantly, partway through a movie, you would have to flip the disc over, like you would have to do with an old-timey record. You had a natural intermission. Yeah, you had a natural intermission and then take a break and record part of their podcast and then come back and watch or then watch the rest of it and then record the second half of their podcast. So you would get these sort of middle impressions or whatever. What we did, not to explain an entirely different podcast for the rest of this episode, but what we did is we took every commercial break we found and we stopped and just sat down and talked about what we saw and enjoyed the show that far. And we just kind of, you got to enjoy the show with us. And I cannot remember. And I don't know, because I obviously didn't listen to the whole thing when I was reviewing these. Do we tell people, I think we might've told people when the next break was.

So if people wanted to watch along and yeah yeah we said like all right we just broke it like 20 minutes or whatever and yeah yeah so you can kind of enjoy it in that fashion if you if you really really want to and also we had a little bit to drink right yeah no that was definitely a fun one uh i it was on my list as well ah so good job there it was just a fun time and unlike any of our other episodes and having em on is a joy of course um so yeah it's uh nice to to have her involved and yeah and so i remember it being fun to do and then i think it's also a like it's also a fun movie i think so far we've been pretty happy with the movies like they're pretty solid um with a little bit of ups and downs uh and this one had like i think this one we just it just this one had

lots of real rockfordy stuff in it this one is the one specifically where Dennis' son, which is Jim's godson, is in trouble. Right, and so the pun is on Godfather as Jim, but also there's mob stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It might have been directed by Angel, or Stuart Marklin, the real person. I can't remember. by angel uh or stewart the real person i can't remember i remember he directed one of the regular episodes uh but and then i think he did some of the movies i could imdb this stuff no he did not

uh direct this one okay it was written by david chase ah he, the, the next one we did after that, um, friends and foul play, which is the latest movie that we've done. But, um, yeah, uh, hopefully it's fun to listen to. Not, not just if you were there, you know, and it is a live recording in the sense of we're all recording onto one mic. So, you know, it has a different sound to it uh but different feel it's a different feel but yeah i think it's a i think it's a fun one for sure oh and also he wants his 200 bucks to pay the pay the parking bill he doesn't care who it's from but it's going

to be from one of them that was actually kind of heart-rending because jim is getting to the end of his rope it's putting pressure on his relationship with Dennis. Right. Which, you know, aside from his relationship with Rocky, who's now passed away, is his closest friend. Yeah. And the fact that all of these shenanigans with his godson are putting this wedge between him and his closest friends. Yeah. So to the point where he's just asking them for money.

There's a moment where Dennis says, I can pay you if you want to help. Actually, does that happen later? That's a little bit later, but yeah, that's fine. That's one of the threads here. It's like the bond between Dennis and Jim and being tested. All right. So I think for my next pick, I'm going to go to what I think might be one of our more popular episodes by downloads, which is really the only way we have to assess these things,

which is our episode 79, Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job. Nice. So this is the second Richie Brockleman episode. Mm-hmm. brockleman episode is one of the possibly the most big store con episodes of the show um i think our touch point before this one was um two in every port or one in every one in every port um which has a similar big store con plot but this one is both even more over the top as a construction like as a premise um and also has higher emotional stakes because we had because it's a so this is the one where richie brockleman who wants to be a private eye uh gets jim involved in a plot to get his father's uh fact like printing factory back or something like that

yeah and it involves from a you know from from this like very um you know moral moral less entrepreneur business guy um who's also kind of mobbed up though he's not really mobbed up he just he he employs goons for sure um right anyway the they hatch a plot to get him to basically to get enough money out of him to pay to buy back richie's dad's concern by making him think he falls under a month he's fallen under a mummy's curse um and taking advantage of his uh kind of hypochondria about like illness and sickness and stuff so it's it's wild like the when you kind of zoom out and think about it as like a story it's wild but the uh the the episode itself is like beautifully constructed full of great rockfordishness bits and i think we'd done the earlier richie brockleman one a little i think we maybe did them back to back for our show but for whatever reason i think we just we had had people asking us about it for a while and we like

when we finally got around to it it just seemed to have a good response it's a great episode and i remember really enjoying teasing out all the nods to like the sting and other con game influences like we kind of could track those a little bit um and it was just uh yeah it's a fun one definitely a high recommend just as an episode of the rockford files to watch but i think we had fun doing it and it was a good episode of our show because of it yeah i i would agree i um we did do them back to back uh because 78 was on my list and i i won't recommend it now because i i think it's i think we just need one richie brockleman up there um the only thing that that tipped 78 over on on my list uh is just all the computers yeah and i just love old timey computers um but yeah it's yeah it was an absolute

joy to record and watch um yeah like there are times i don't want to like it's so hard to say oh these are great episodes of the of the rockford files uh because it feels like you're lessening other episodes and i don't want to give that impression the rockford files is a really solid show throughout i mean that we certainly haven't uncovered a few that weren't our favorites or we just weren't in the mood for them at the time we watched them or whatever but like for the most part we just enjoy it and look forward to to watching each one of them that said there are some where it is just it's just it's just such a delight to watch and uh that was definitely one of the uh the episodes there's some of them that just that just hit different yeah yeah this is definitely one of those and then in this case the con is a

big store con because it involves all these specialties but they don't there's not really a location other than the office i guess yeah there's there's the office and then they make use of other locations one of the reoccurring themes in this is their inability to hold the fictional world indefinitely right like they can present moments to make it seem like this is definitely a thing under their control but then they don't have that yeah so so they set up this big store con right and jim lays it out he's like you can't come to him with an offer this is a guy who is used to getting offers and turning them down all the time. Right.

You have to present him with something that he might want. And you have to come at him at a crazy angle. Like anything that's in his normal kind of spheres of influence, he already can handle. He knows how to do and he'll find out that it's a con. Back to you. All right. Back to me. So far we got, what, six of them?

Yep. So we have two more picks each all right now i gotta be careful because now i've left uh ones that aren't all right i'm gonna i'm gonna shoot for a high quality one here i i think it might be on your list i don't know uh we'll find out i'm gonna go way back we're gonna go to episode six just another polish wedding now i'm gonna say a couple things about this number one i did not realize that this was episode six i know right of our show this one echoes through time it's probably our most most reference was that what you're gonna say yeah i was gonna say it's

either our most reference maybe um chicken little as little chicken might be tied yeah but this one might be more reference just because we ended up doing the whole gandy suite yeah so we talked about it probably in all of those episodes my first note on this is we were so young. All right. So again, this goes back to the early part where we split it into two halves. So we have a review in the first half and the second half lessons you can learn from the show, but more,

I think the, I don't want to like say anything about the, the beating up the bar full of Nazis. It's just, it stands the test of time it is perfect television that is perfect television um and yeah so this is an odd rock for files episode in like we've talked we talk about this ad nauseum in the actual podcast but this is a backdoor pilot or at least we suspected it was uh i can't remember uh for the gabby and gandy show and rockford himself is not in it that much but when he is in it it's it's he's just kind of doing the legwork that they don't normally show rockford doing to get a job done or i shouldn't say they

don't normally do it because actually rockford is pretty good at at doing like here's the boring stuff that a that a guy has to do in order to be a private eye but um but that's all almost all of rockford's stuff in it he's he's there he's some wonderful stuff going on with gandier and uh in the beginning where candy's eating his ham and drinking his beer at eight in the morning or something like that and then um and then rockford goes off and investigates the case the rockford way and gabby and gandy go off and investigate the case in uh the gabby and gandy way which is very different in the only way they can yeah um and it is i'm wondering now who wrote that one was that cannel yep that's a cannel script now so why i said that why i thought oh why is this uh is this a cannel i just was

talking to nathan about this um and this will probably come up in a plus expenses in the near future but i have watched now half roughly half of the run of 10 speed and brown shoe which is a steven j cannell show that came after the rockford files and uh a considerable amount of of the dna for that show is in this episode of just another polish wedding there's a very uh ben varine plays a very Gabby style character in it. And then the heavy in that show is not a heavy at all. It's Jeff Goldblum. So, but yeah, so it's very funny.

And we clearly had a lot of fun with it, recording it. And like I said, early on, it's episode six. Again, I didn't do like a complete survey of our shows, but I would comfortably say that episode six probably i didn't do like a complete survey of our shows but i i would comfortably say that episode six probably is where we we probably have found our footing with the early way we did our show and so we're we're pretty good with it at that point uh so i think it's a comfortable episode to just kind of see how we were before we became the grumpy old men we are today that's right yeah i do specifically remember that we talked about the uh one of the standout things from that was was how the bar

fight with the nazis was a great um set piece and so we talked about like using set pieces as yes the lessons we learned um yeah it was on my list as well well it was on my extended list i should say um but yeah i think of all the gandy episodes it's probably my favorite one it's not it's not the bummer that is the first episode that gandy's in and then the the other the yeah i believe it's the third episode is the one with um dion warwick so like it has a whole different vibe and i want to i want to like qualify what in case you you have been following along with us when i say the bummer that was the first gandhi the first episode with gandhi in it is a really good episode the bummer is that the character of gandhi in that episode uh is is very flawed, is very flawed. And it's, that makes for great,

a great episode, but it makes for a hard return character to enjoy the way that we're meant to enjoy him later on. Right. Yeah. We kind of, he kind of gets, gets like retconned essentially, uh,

to be a more fun kind of guy. Less problematic character, if you will. Yeah. Man, there's so much to like in this episode yeah again we like most of the episodes but this one the story the the plot the mystery is kind of by the by it's really more about enjoying these characters uh watching them punch nazis see what it is that brings them together. They're not in a lot of other episodes. There's only two or three with each of these characters, unlike, say, Rocky and Angel and Beth that are in many, many episodes.

So it's kind of nice to get the concentrated. This episode is kind of about them because we don't really see them very much. Gandalf is definitely one of my favorite fictional Gandalfs. Maybe my favorite. I don't know. Definitely in the top three. Yeah. Yeah.

No, this episode was, uh, like I said in the beginning, uh, it has kind of a romp feel to it and, and it's really enjoyable. Well,

it is my turn to make sure I get some on that. I want to be on in case you don't pick them. Yeah. So I'm going to go with episode 32. So help me God with our special guest jess banks on that one well done yeah so this one i think we held off on doing this one for a while this was uh kind of our iconic social issue episode of which there are you know multiple sprinkled throughout the run of the series. But this is the one where Jim is compelled to appear before a grand jury and he doesn't want to testify. And so because of the laws around how grand juries work, that means he's he can be sent to jail.

And even though he has a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, jail and even though he has a you know fifth amendment right against self-incrimination he can still be uh uh punished essentially for invoking that right in this specific circumstance and there's this kind of um uh i forget his name the uh the lawyer um who's the the voice of kit yeah which is what you say every time he comes up he's been in the show a couple times um he's also is he the guy from boy meets world yeah yeah the the teacher from yeah yeah william daniels yeah so uh william daniels as the uh kind of amoral attorney who's mostly aiming for promotion over anything else um is a great foil for them and so like it was an episode that we kind of like held off on doing because we kind of wanted to feel like we were comfortable with the show and things had lined up where so um jess banks is uh kind of a you know a friend

through gaming stuff um but also uh has worked in social services and doing kind of social justice, um, work with like local justice systems. Um, and so she was able to kind of give us some real life perspective on the difficulties of, of, of,

of getting something changed, getting something changed in the system. But yeah, but also just like kind of the, the, the reality of how hard it is to um get get things that you're supposed to be able to get like you know your constitutional rights um how those um there is a very real outgrowth of this issue that still affects us today so she was able to give us some context for that. And also was, it was fun to talk to her because she hasn't watched the show.

Like I think pretty much at all. I think she watched this episode like for us. And so she was, it was fun to have like kind of the fresh perspective and, and the, the questions to answer about like the characters and, you know, the structure of the show and everything.

But yeah, I think it's an important episode of the rockford files and i feel like we did a pretty good job with it so i guess that's why it goes on my on my list as a standout um a lot of the people who would be a grand jurist would be just subject to some of the same expectations about uh like that character assassination piece and the respect for law enforcement and and everything the same expectations about like that character assassination piece and the respect for law enforcement and, and everything, the same dynamics that are, you know, work against Jim and his, his prison record are also, you know, threaded through how grand juries are being used right now in those particular cases. It's one of the areas in which much better minds than I are, are trying to apply a little

more logic and a little less arbitrariness to that part of the process. So. Well, still relevant today, this, this episode of television from 1976. That's not a small thing, honestly. Yeah. I think that's one thing that we've really discovered about the show is not just that some of the narrative stuff is evergreen, but that a lot of the actual drama of what's in the episode is still relevant to things that are happening. Even if the details are different. Well,

now we're down to the last two and uh i have painted myself into a corner i know so what i have left uh i don't have super justification for uh like for instance i didn't pick the same richie brockleman you did but i picked a different one and there's no reason to do two richie brockleman on this list no compelling reason i should say uh all right all right i'm down to two here i'm just trying to decide let me let me just tell you the three okay i have that aren't that richie brock on my one i won't i'll advocate for one of them but i just don't know what okay one of them is episode 42 the big cheese the main reason why that's on the list is that's the first one of our new format that's the first one where we but i don't that doesn't

seem like that big enough of a because our new format is more like the first half of our or the first three-fourths of our previous format with information stuck in it so that's okay we're throwing that out uh so now we're down to two uh which is episode 72 dwarf and helium hat which i will admit uh i was like i cannot remember why that episode is called that i don't think i can ever remember why that episode is called that it is a wild wild episode uh but i think significantly there's a lot of stuff with jim and a ninja dog um in it that's great um and then the other one i have is maybe i'll go with this one this is the one i'll do sorry i i it's all right you can sneak it you're sneaking in honorable mentions sneak it in yeah honorable mentions so uh my final addition to this is episode 89 so this is the most

recent of all the ones i did uh only uh 10 episodes out right now. And this is Caledonia. It's worth a fortune. And I remember this not just because it's only 10 episodes out. I honestly probably can't remember most of the ones that are 10 episodes out. This one is the regular season

one directed by Stuart Margolin. So that's fun. And this one is whereim gets sort of swept up in a dying man's con against his ex or his current wife i can't remember what their relationship is they're still married but he's yeah but he's dying yeah yeah so he's dying and he says uh it's in caledonia it's worth a fortune and there's basically there's a bunch of people who think that we're involved in like a a i think a robbery uh and they're wondering where the money is they think it's rare and it's like a cache of rare stamps that are worth yes a bunch of that's what it is yes so rockford that it's a cash or rare stamp um and basically not to spoil

it but basically it's a setup by this dying guy to get his wife and the man that he's that that she was cheating on him with uh who was also his partner to hate each other because they go searching for this money and they just are like too greedy and he gets revenge. But he also just accidentally gets revenge against the sheriff who brings him in because that sheriff is now obsessed with the money. The whole thing is just it's a very fun show. And I think we have a lot of fun recording it. And I wanted to include something more recent on our list because I think a lot of times when you look back you you go you go back to the classics like i don't know if this one's going to to end up like um uh just another polish wedding or chicken little's little chicken you know the the episodes that we keep going back to or anything like that but uh yeah

it was a lot of fun and i enjoyed myself yeah great i think that's that one i think i'm glad you picked it because now that you're talking about i'm like yeah you're right this is one that was super fun and i did not have it on my list so good job good there here are a bunch of people in desperate situations with a uh promised wad of cash right. And that's what you need Rockford for, is to help you not untangle the mystery, but untangle the relationships, or to protect you from... Yeah, it's kind of an interesting cast on the clash of motivations.

I feel like this is something maybe we haven't talked about in a little while, but one of the strengths of the show is so often you get these characters that are motivated by things such that they're going to come into conflict because of what they want and what they're willing to do to get it and not because they don't know things right right it's not a it's not a show that relies a lot on like if only they had heard that phone call or like if only they talked they could have solved this whole thing right yeah um it's much more about the motivations and how you solve the conflict and in this case you do have two characters who could

solve this just by talking but they are not willing to do so they have a specific motivation not to share the information with each other and they need rockford to bridge that gap and so that's in that way it's a very uh it kind of stands out as kind of a really slick take on the if they'd only talked problem yeah yeah exactly um yeah i kind of also was thinking about doing a more recent one and so uh in a similar similar vein of throwing out a couple possibilities yeah go for it some that i had include um uh episode 20 quickie nirvana um which oh yeah i think is still one of my favorite episodes of the show. Uh, and I think gave us a good opportunity to really talk about Jim's like

moral, like his moral and ethical sense. It gives us like a lot of grist for that, for that mill and it's something we come back to a lot. Yeah. It's another touchstone. I, I recommend it mostly because it's a good episode of the Rockford Files.

I don't know. I would have to listen to it again to see if we really did a great job with it. Kind of for the same reason as just another Polish wedding. I also had episode four, the Farnsworth Stratagem on here because it's another foundational. I can't believe we did that one so early episode uh yeah right that one i feel like would really benefit so at a certain point again i'm not quite sure when but at a certain point uh when kind of i had more more tools available to me and was able to spend a little more time um is when i started um cutting in the audio clips from episodes like our first.

Again, I would have to go back and check. I know by the Queen of Peru, I was doing it, which I think is in the 40s. Anyway, I feel like some of those first episodes would really benefit from having some of the show clips dropped in to cover the dialogue that we badly summarize, because that's what happens is we have our notes and we're talking about a thing and then we either misquote or we try to go through a conversation and it's really really muddled because we're summarizing it worse than the conversation actually is and that's usually when i'll just put in a clip because that's all we're

trying to get across and it's more fun to listen to so i think the farnsworth stratagem probably would benefit from having that um treatment to it uh so that's why it's on my extended list but what i'm going to put on our list for my last pick number 10 is episode 96 roundabout oh all right yeah it's one that stands out to me recently because I felt so like I felt so delightfully surprised by it. You know, it's the Jesse Wells episode where or Jim is is is chasing her to Reno and then Vegas. No, that's the Dexter. Why does he go to Vegas? Oh, no, that is the Jesse Wells one. The Dexter crisis is a different person. OK, but he go to vega oh no that is the jesse wells one the dexter crisis is a different person okay but he goes to vegas i we did two in a row i think that when he went to vegas crisis

is he goes to vegas and then they go to reno and it's the two women yeah and then yeah and then roundabout is a jesse wells episode where he goes to vegas and she's a singer yes and he's he's he has an insurance check for her and then you know there are events and she's involved with the mob and blah blah blah and they and he ends up in this extended foot chase through hoover dam as the climax of the episode it was fun to talk about because it was part of kind of a thematic set of episodes so there was a lot of like compare contrast we got to do and then the episode itself had just so many fun little things in it that I just really enjoyed doing it. It had the clown, like the Caesar or the circus circus clown serving hot dogs.

And yeah, and the foot chase and just like all kinds of good, stuff that uh i really enjoyed so i think like you said it was easy it was a little easier to go back because we didn't because because i didn't want to have a total recency bias which means that i didn't have any recent ones so yeah exactly you know so i looked at the last like couple 10 and i was like oh yeah roundabout this one's great for our recent work i think it stands out. I almost chose Roundabout as well. So I think it's a very good choice. And then we see them both getting more and more tired. They go down another tunnel.

It's good comic pacing, right? It's happening, and you're like, okay, where is this going? And then it repeats, and you're like, is this what this is? And then it keeps going. It's like, okay, this is actually funny. Yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, this is actually funny. Yeah. Yeah. It has the right length.

The, the capture at the end is because it's just, uh, Robertson coming out of the dam and then Jim coming out and just saying, gotcha. Yeah. They're both gasping for breath, swaying on their feet.

Yeah. Robertson, like they, they come out of the like doorway or whatever and there's a little landing and there's more steps and robertson stops like i can't go down any more steps and just reaches out just gently touches him on the arm and does the gotcha and they both sit down next to each other on the top step the camera's pointing at them and then it pans up so we see the entire height of the dam all the way up to the top where they started it's so funny it's so good i i really

enjoyed this episode but the that chase and the hot dog clown like both of those really ramps up at the end huh yeah they're they're worth the price of admission, like no matter what. So that's 100 years of the podcast. 100 years of the podcast. All right. So I think here's our official, unofficial 10 recommended 200 a day episodes to get a sense of the full spectrum of our show. How about that? Yes. I'll go in episode order because then it's just like

if you just wanted to download these ones here's right the order that'll be easier yeah um so episode six just another polish wedding episode 21 hotel of fear episode 30 the big goodbye or Episode 30, The Big Goodbye, or aka 20 a day, episode one. Yes. Episode 32, So Help Me God. Episode 45, The Trees, the Bees, and T.T. Flowers. Episode 54, The Interview with G.G. Garner. Episode 60, Godfather Knows Best. Episode 79, Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job

Episode 89 Caledonia, It's Worth a Fortune and Episode 96, Roundabout Yay! Happy 100 episodes, Epi Happy 100 episodes I didn't have faith that we'd make it this far I shouldn't say that

What I meant is in the beginning I think we were both like we'll just do this as long as we as we want to uh and didn't realize that we would be in like we're looking at the other end of the slope now we're we're literally thinking about like well eventually we're gonna run out of rockford files episodes so i feel felt like this would be a good time to uh touch base with you and our audience about where we are at with the season so i in fact can tell you what

our downslope looks like all right so this is just going by how they're listed on imdb basically um so you know depending on your source sometimes two-parters are listed as one or whatever but this is just as each individual episode listing has come into our uh 200 a day rockford files files database each individual episode plus the movies is a total of 128 episodes we have watched 87 of them and so we have 41 left to do. Wow. Yeah. So what's that? We're at the two thirds mark. Two thirds. Yeah. Yeah.

We have three movies left. We have the pilot and the last episode left, which I still want to do last. And then we've watched all of season two and our remaining episodes. We have eight episodes in season one, seven in season three, six in season four, eight in season five and seven in season six. Wow. Yeah. Like you feel your own mortality. And considering our general pace of slightly of averaging slightly less than two episodes per month between sometimes only doing one and sometimes you know and taking a

month off each year that means we have at least two more calendar years of yeah show unless we choose to accelerate it by some amount which i don't see any need to do unless we get to a point where like let's just get this done um but, but as of this recording, I think you, you dear listener can anticipate hearing us talk about the Rockford files through at least 20, the end of 2024. Mm. Hmm.

In that far future, fun future 2024. If, if we all make it that far. Yeah. All right. So the pilot of the Rockford files was in March, 1974.

So. All right. If we can, if we end up ending in 2024, we may be able to make an even 50 years. We may be able to wrap up somewhere around 50 years of the Rockford Files existing. Well, I mean, so that would be a reason for a little bit of an acceleration right because you we're thinking the end of 2024 i think it's unrealistic that we would hit march but i think it's possible that we could kind of yeah we'll see we'll see where we're at how about this well i was gonna say we at least last long enough for the 50th anniversary yeah so that that's all we need yeah we'll check in towards the end of 2023 and see what our what our list

looks like see how much we have to do oh boy all right well thank you to all of our listeners we hope you've enjoyed the last uh 99 episodes of 200 a day and uh we'll stick with us for the next uh probably slightly more than 41 because we do these you know extras and whatnot so i don't know maybe maybe we'll make it to an even 150 yeah yeah maybe we'll do that all right and. And thank you, Epi, for being, I don't know. I was going to say the angel to my gym, but I don't know if that's insulting. No, it's not. I would dearly love to be the angel to your gym. If anything, you're the Rocky to my gym.

Well, thank you. You honor me. I mean that as a compliment. Thank you for being the gym to my angel okay there we go thank you for listening to our show for these 100 episodes but we will be

back next time with another episode of the Rockford Files of Star Trek The Next Generation Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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