Two Hundred A Day - Episode 102: Beamer's Last Case

Episode Date: April 24, 2022

Nathan and Eppy return to Paradise Cove in S4E1 Beamer's Last Case. Jim returns from a shortened vacation to find that someone has stolen his identity - and not only that, but wrecked his car and gotten him into trouble with some serious people! Once Jim tracks down the culprit, a mechanic named Freddie Beamer, the rest of the episode is a quick-thinking quest to keep both Beamer and Jim from getting shot as a result of Beamer's mistakes. Plus, it features Jim's sometimes-cat Valentino! We found this a delightful romp to kick off the fourth season of the show. 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) * Jordan Bockelman (https://twitter.com/jordanbockelman) * 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

Jimmy, this is Angel. Listen, I got this new pad right over by the Hollywood Streetland. Some friends are coming. Why are you a record player? Welcome to 200 Today, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidio Rep Shaw. And here we are to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files. How do we do this yeah well you you picked the episode this week so uh i did indeed uh we are going to be talking about season four episode one beamer's last case i did pick this one um in response to some of our last round of answering machine feedback.

To recap, back in our episode 92, South by Southeast, Jim references his cat. And at that time, we talked about how we don't think he actually has a cat. It was just kind of part of this conversational back and forth. And then in our last round of answering answering machine feedback it was brought to our attention that there is canonically a cat named valentino that jim yes jim has and i don't remember exactly but through two different directions uh we found and also that listener um came back with with a little more about how this was specifically from this episode that is established so i was like well since we've been talking about jim's cat valentino let's go ahead and watch that episode

so that is what brings us to beamer's last case and uh if i'm not mistaking this is this will also be a wrap on valentino i i think so i i think this is a, this is a one, one episode. This, this is a guest star appearance, a one timer. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah,

this is, but this is also, I think in its own right, it is an interesting episode. It's kicking off season four, which is kind of considered the most well considered, which is the Emmy award winning season for the show as a dramatic series uh garner had won an emmy for dramatic lead in i think the second season i forget exactly um but this is where the rockford

files got its first dramatic show emmy whatever the title of that is the the episode submitted for consideration is considered to be i don't know if it's like, I don't know. This is just, this is from Ed Robertson's book, but, uh, that episode was, um, quickie Nirvana is right. The one that was submitted for consideration that won them the award,

which is later in the season. Um, but this is actually also a award nominated episode as I will, as I discovered. Oh, uh, but yeah, but this season is like,

we're, we're, we're in the David chase chase era he's come on to the show you know a couple you know the season before i believe um but this is a really hitting all cylinders season creatively even though audience wise it was kind of like a median season i mean the most popular season of the show was was the first season and then it kind of went down a little bit and then rebounded a little bit and then kind of was a a staple friday night show but it was never as popular as it was in that first season just in terms of ratings but yeah so this is what we would have tuned in tuned into on september 16th 1977 to see the new season of of rockford this episode is directed by steven

cannell um one of only three episodes that he directed we've done white on white and nearly perfect and one of our lost episodes uh paradise cove so i'm not counting this as a wrap on him as a director because we still have to redo Paradise Cove. Yeah, yeah. He directed this one and he did the teleplay for it. But the credited story goes to two writers, Booker Bradshaw and Calvin Kelly, which honestly sound like 2010's WWE wrestler names. Yeah, it's just like the same thing these are these are two guys in nxt that would have two names and then when they got to the main roster you would they would just be they would just be down to one yeah anyhow um booker bradshaw

was an actor and a writer um he was on a couple episodes of original series Star Trek, among others. And he wrote the Columbo episode Playback, which concerns it kind of an inventor who's in love with his own gadgets, which is probably not a great episode of Columbo. But I find it very charming. Like it's one of my personal faves, though it's i think uh uh objectively probably not one of the great episodes i think i i think i've seen that one recently it's the one where they have like the clap activated doors and um his wife is a wheelchair he has a digital watch and they spend a lot of time explaining how what a digital digital watch is. That's great. It shows the numbers. It just shows the numbers.

Anyway, uh, he also wrote for, um, the Richard Pryor show. Oh, good. And,

and it had lots of like one-off acting gigs, uh, kind of throughout the seventies and eighties. Calvin Kelly, I could find absolutely nothing about online other than his IMDb credits, which are, uh, 12 different shows. Most of them are one episode

one-offs but one of his writing credits is for the 65 episodes of the dennis the menace 80s cartoon all right so this is a person who shopped around a bit and then found a home i wonder how that crediting works because i took a look and like most of the writers are credited on all of the episodes. So I wonder if it's like a writer's room situation or if like animation credits people differently or what, but could, could be an IMDB issue too.

Cause there's a, there's a series that M and I watched called Prospo from the eighties. And there was a character in the first season who just kind of did a lot of characters in the first season who were around and you think that they're going to be important later on. And they just kind of disappear. And I went to check their credits

to see how many episodes they were in. And it was like 50 episodes, not all of the episodes, but the majority of the episodes. And they clearly weren't. They just IMDb, you know. I think IMDb's a little lax when it comes to, like, smaller name things. Although, I mean, Dennis the Menace has got some star power, right? Like, that's Dennis the Menace.

He's the Menace. I don't know. You can take a look at the listing and tell me what you think if you need to take a break while I'm talking. No, but this is exactly the thing I'm talking about there are 78 episodes of dennis the menace and he's credit for 65 but probably only did a few you know like yeah there's something weird going on in the background there yeah because if you look at the writer like if you look at the list of writers there's like 12 of them that specifically say 65 episodes and then the next three say like five episodes and i'm like i don't i don't know what happened yeah anyway so if you're

a dennis the menace expert let us know what the deal is with calvin kelly so yeah so story by those two um teleplay by cannell we have some great cannellisms in uh in the dialogue which I'm sure comes straight from his brain. I mentioned earlier that this is also an award-nominated show. So this episode was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Television Episodic Drama. So this episode and Quickie Nirvana were both nominated and in the running, I guess. But the winning episode for this year was an episode of police story the way that is displayed at least on wikipedia is like i guess all the nominees and it's like four or five episodes of various shows and then one of them won so uh the rockford

files had five nominations in this category throughout its run but did not actually win any of these writersriters Guild of America awards. However, fun trivia that I found from going down this rabbit hole was that Stephen Cannell did win one of these awards, the Episodic Drama Writers Guild of America award for television for the show that he did after the Rockford Files. This had never come across my, my, my, my transom. Are you familiar with the next show that cannell and i think one and like a lot of the rockford files people moved on to after rockford was over i don't think i am i'm looking them up right now to see if uh i had never seen this um or or heard of this so it's a

it's a show called 10 speed and brown Shoe. What? Okay, all right. It only ran for the one season. It got this Writer's Guild Award for the pilot. It was in 1980. It's a follow-up to The Rockford Files. It's a buddy PI drama starring Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum. Okay, come on. Come on.

Why don't we have this? How has this never come up before? A con man and an accountant wannabe. Not an accountant, but somebody who aspires to be an accountant. Oh, no. Wait, sorry. I might be misreading how this sentence works. The sentence is, a con man and an accountant wannabe private eye team up to fight crime.

The accountant wannabe is hyphenated. So it seems like that's the thing. I don't know. But it's on Pluto TV. So, I mean, what are you doing right now? So now we have our second spinoff. Yeah. So we have the Richie Brockleman show and now 10 speed and brown

shoe i mean this is i believe beverine is 10 speed and jeff goldblum is brown shoe i think or is it the other way around well but beverine is definitely 10 speed okay uh he's the con man jeff goldblum's character is lionel whitney which i'm assuming gets called brown shoe at some point and then that's their... Together they fight crime. There is a height difference between those two. And also Jeff Goldblum in 1980 is a

fresh-faced moppet-headed youth. Yeah. It's good. So these are the kinds of things you learn from looking up some of this stuff. Good times. That's right.

Cannell did some unsub. That's a whole nother thing. Anyways. Yeah. Well, this is like the first show under like Stephen Cannell Productions. Once he formed his own production studio, that was basically post-Rockford because Rockford was a Cherokee production. Anyway, this is all stuff you can read in a book. What we're here to do is to talk about the preview montage for Beamer's last.

Right. OK, so you have to bear with me because it's been a week since I've seen the preview montage. Oh, OK. So we start off with someone on the phone telling an officer to get down there before this guy kills someone. And I mean, you're not given much time to think about it. But my initial thought was that there's gunplay involved. But instead, what you see is the firebird just slamming into bales of hay over and over again. So I'm like, all right, I want to know what brings this on. We get a good euphemism here with banking representatives in a threat that sounds a lot like loan shark. Then we get some guy saying that his name's not Jim Rockford or Mr. Rockford.

It's Jimbo. Like I told you, Jimbo. And then finally, a very, very iconic or maybe not iconic, but just a very clear illustration of Jim's sense of self-preservation. clear illustration of Jim's sense of self-preservation where the same guy is saying, Beamer, as we'll find out, is saying, I'm not the kind of guy you can blow away with a threat.

You understand? And Jim's like, well, I am. Yeah. I think you hit all the, all the points that I had noted as well. 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 whatyou'rereading.com.

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and of course, Richard Haddam, at Richard Haddam. We follow them too, at 200pod. If you're interested in keeping us going for as little as $1 an episode, check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. Well, we start our episode with a dramatic, uh, with a dramatic shot of a burned out taxi.

The camera starts on the badge and then kind of swoops out and pans and we get, um, some suspenseful music over this little pan of multipleops out and pans and we get some suspenseful music over this little pan of multiple burned out cars. I don't want to specifically call it the music because we recently said that we're

going to pay more attention to this music and this music is good. This is almost spooky Halloween music. There are a lot of elements of this episode in addition to This is almost spooky Halloween music. There are a lot of elements of this episode, in addition to the script, that are like, like, we're putting a lot into this because it's the first episode of our season. And I feel like the music has a lot of that. And some of the camera work and editing is very, I wouldn't say experimental, but it's like a little more elaborate than your average

episode. One sequence in particular which we'll get to. But yeah good spooky music. Suspenseful music over this as we discover the slacks of a goon and come up to meet Manny. So we have a couple

returning guest stars. Here we have a couple returning guest stars. Here we're going to quickly get Robert Loggia or Loggia? Yeah. As Manny. He's definitely that guy. Yeah. So this is

going to be our wrap on Robert Loggia. He was in drought at indian head river and then this episode and then rosendahl and gilda stern are dead which i think is probably where i remember him from but i think he's also like the main mobster in indian head river that's the one where um or angel gets caught up in a scam to buy land. Yeah. Like that doesn't exist or whatever. Anyway, yes, he's a great that guy.

And he does a good that guy job in this episode. Yeah, he's got 233 credits in IMDb. So he's been, you've seen him. If you've seen Big, you've seen him. If you've seen him, you've seen him. Yeah, he's great. And we see him see the firebird tearing out of the garage he makes a phone call so because we've had uh multiple episodes kind of recently where like

the dramatic tension is from knowing hearing part of a backstory and waiting to hear the rest like that was in um the gang at don's drive-in and this is the opposite of that this after this scene i was like okay so this episode isn't really about this mystery um this is this is almost a as you know uh i don't know what the reference is but like as you know paul or like whatever like we get more details than i would have expected in this um exchange so manny makes a phone call he is going to talk to uh this this as we learn later mobster that's pretty clear from this that he's that they're all mobbed up uh phil they may have trouble that pi they hired rockford could have overheard something phil isn't happy about this. He has 200 grand

tied up in taxis and Manny's cousin Floyd is holding out on him by not signing a contract. And so if all the independent operators, um, you know, don't fall in line, then this whole scheme is going to collapse and Manny's going to be in trouble for it. Manny says he'll take care of it. And as we see another burned out cab towed into the garage phil says uh you know you'd better or we're gonna flash fry more than a couple of taxi cabs this is uh i love i love mob well we're not sure if it's the mob but like yeah it's pretty mobbish rockford mobbishbish, get rich quick schemes. Like they always feel like there's like a bunch of bureaucracy involved. Yeah.

It's like, I need him to sign a contract. Yeah, exactly. We then there's a slow-mo freeze frame montage of the firebird bursting through hay bales and sending people running away screaming as the credits come up over the uh windshield we see beamer's last case right on top of the firebird where we very specifically cannot see the driver um and here's the thing i don't know if this will pan out in reality at all but like clearly thought, what we've seen already in the preview montage that somebody's pretending to be Jim. So I'm like,

this isn't Jim. This has got to be someone else. Right. So I tried very close. Like I tried to see if I could see who the driver was. And I do think that they had someone other than James Gardner driving that car. But I think it also was not Beamer.

No, no, no. Yeah, they had a stunt driver. But it's interesting that they chose a stunt driver instead of just not. Because James Gardner would do the stunts, right? Like that's famously he does his own driving stunts. So either great attention to detail, but also

maybe good on you for giving Jim a break. Right, right. Exactly. Did his body a break for this one, but yeah. Uh, this, this scene ends with the,

the guy in the phone booth from the preview montage calling in the, you know, this, this, uh, this, this dangerous situation, the wild firebird.

And he does include the plate number, uh, right before he scampers out of the phone booth as the firebird comes crashing through the phone booth clearly not jim um there was a just it's not over you like it's just using this sequence and it's mostly so that we get all the credits during this sequence but like the slow-mo here is really funny yeah like there was one shot where there's like two people running away from a set of cones as a firebird is like swallowing towards them in super slow-mo and it made me laugh i just yeah i just

started chuckling it was just it was very funny we cut to a point of view from underneath jim's trailer where we see a cat yay we know valentino has made an appearance past the cat we watch a very fancy uh porsche i only know that because it says carrera on the side and i'm pretty sure that's a porsche um pull up and a woman gets out to see mr rockford this is monica steel. She has engaged quote Mr. Rockford for some kind of investigation and is not satisfied with his work. We can hear through the door a voice that is not

Jim's. You know, saying, you know, hold on a moment and if there was any question from maybe if you sat down after the preview montage or something, I think it's settled as soon as you hear the voice that like this is not going to be jim um we have a nice moment where she says hi to the cat and then we get who we can assume from the title uh to be beamer uh open the door with those big black glasses wrapped in the front with the tape uh taped together in the front the other

reason we know it's beamer is because we've seen Nice Guys Finish Dead, which is the PI assemble second Lance White episode that Beamer also appears in. It's the same actor and everything. That is in the fifth season, I think, unless it's

in the sixth. It's way down the road. Later. But we have seen this character before. Yeah. This is our rap on the character, but it's not the show's rap's way down the road. Later. But we have seen this character before. Yeah. This is our rap on the character, but it's not the show's rap on the character. Right, right. I just want to quick comment on Monica Steele's name. Perfect, perfect. She exists in a different kind of drama than the Rockford Files.

That's fun. And she even says that in a lighter scene, I think. Yeah, this is a textual interpretation. Yeah, yeah. Well, to differentiate, I'm basically just going to call him Beamer, but, you know, until otherwise, he is

still impersonating Jim, and everyone is calling him Jim and Mr. Rockford. We can call him Jimbo. He prefers Jimbo. He prefers Jimbo. Lots of patters. He, like We can call him Jimbo. He prefers Jimbo. He prefers Jimbo. Lots of patters. He asks him about the cat. Can you leave your cat locked up inside? He stays in the closet,

likes to sleep in my shoes. He's a crazy cat. Bogey head cat, you know that? No. Mind if I drive your car? No. No, of course not, Mr. Rockford. Hey, hey, hey.

Jim a Jimbo like I told you. And then he burns rubber in her car on the way out of the of the cove one detail that i really liked he's putting on a coat and he's clearly putting on jim's coat like this um checkered it's not checkered plaid plaid thank you like this plaid coat but like just like brown on brown plaid like just you know fairly the mid-70s plaid not the early 70s yeah yeah but he's clearly putting on jim's coat and it doesn't really fit and he doesn't like brown on brown plaid, like just, you know, fairly the mid seventies plaid, not the early seventies. Yeah. But he's clearly putting on Jim's coat and it doesn't really fit and he

doesn't get the collar down. Right. So as he walks away and the camera is still behind him, we see that the collar is still flapped up at the back. It's, it's a great moment. Cause it's just like, you can't even put the guy's clothes on correctly.

So we go from that to some stock footage of a plane and then voiceover over a long shot of Rocky's truck as Jim is saying that it's always nice to take a vacation, but it's better to get home. And now we get into the first real drama, which is Rocky wants to know why he cut his vacation 10 days short. He's got his sunk his teeth into into something here which is the the case of jimbo's short short vacation he does mention that he fed old valentino all right and uh he he picked up he picked up the firebird like he was supposed to but he just doesn't see how jim ran out of 1500 in just a week and a half they figured out all the expenses ahead of time and jim keeps trying to change the subject but then as we cut to them coming up to the trailer rocky's just laying out all of the itemized expenses like your hotel was 50 a day and you're going to take the fishing

thing and that was 200 like blah blah i just want to just marvel at like the amount of money here fifteen hundred dollars is just like i mean our shorthand is to multiply it by five for inflation so we're talking we're talking about seven to eight thousand dollars and that yeah that's a lot this represents a big either a a big savings to take a vacation or maybe he had some windfall right yeah yeah i mean which is the thing that happens with jim from time to time but you get from the you know from from rocky laying out all the stuff is like we talked about this like this was this was planned so that you could spend all the money it sounds like he's he's been gone for a week and a half and he shut and he cut it short by 10 days. So this is like a three-week vacation.

This is a pretty big deal. There's an unspoken thing going on here that I'm going to read into it that I don't think exists textually but exists amongst these characters here is that like for jim to go on a vacation without his dad for that amount of money there had to have been a conversation ahead of time about that happening that uh rocky would not have let go um and would have been like you know do his little rocky guilt trips like i don't see how a fella could go not take his poor old dad on a you know that kind of thing um and i think that that also informs why rocky won't let go of it now uh and and we'll find out why the money very soon why the money disappeared but i think that that was jim's plan all along and the whole reason why they had the conversation ahead of time and planned his fishing trip and everything was just so that

rocky was involved in the vacation in some way right yeah yeah i think that's a good read well as they get to the trailer jim sees the uh as i capitalize it in my notes the totally trashed fire and it is a sad sight it's all dented up the the detailing on the sides is like ripped off and there's paint on it where it's been scraped it's uh it's a mess it's covered in dust it's it's legitimately heart-wrenching to see like jim's reaction to this is great and it feels very real uh especially after losing all that money right like trying to tally up how much uh fixing that car up is going to be is just yeah so apparently every so for every model year pontiac supplies supplied garner's company

cherokee productions with three cars for the season so there was always two on hand if one broke down um and he had a that model year for 74 75 76 and 77 and then he kept the 78 model for the last two seasons so that was from ed robertson's book um i wonder and this isn't in there anywhere uh if this is like the last season's firebird oh right yeah since they're gonna swap them out anyway or something we've seen i think it was season, where they completely obliterate a car. They blow one up between seasons. An earlier season exchange. I wonder if this is just becoming a tradition in the Rockford file.

I guess by season four, it is or it isn't. Yeah. Keep some older ones around for when they have to beat it up. Yeah. Yeah. yeah keep keep some older ones around for when they have to beat it up yeah yeah but like on the first episode of each season just doing something horrible to the i'll have to look through it and see yeah we'll see if that's a pattern yeah i don't remember so but yes but yeah jim is distraught of course and rocky doesn't know what happened he picked it up on tuesday parked it it was fine now it looks like this. They get inside the trailer, and then

Jim snaps his fingers. Angel! Yes, sir. Rocky, though, he thought Angel was visiting some farm for 30 days. I thought you said he was going to spend 30 days on somebody's farm. Yeah, that's right.

He doesn't get out for three more days. You know, it's funny how wrong you can be about a guy now you take on angel who would ever have figured him for going down on the farm riding horses milking the cow and feeding the chickens dad it's uh not that kind of farm we also heard we heard angel on the answering machine um other than that this is his only appearance in the episode but it is i i love how it's first of all it's what we would expect as viewers and then it's jim's first assumption and then they're like okay we have to have a reason why it can't be angel yeah yeah uh i also love that rocky is uh like naive about the farm suddenly he has a greater appreciation

for angel because he went out to work on a farm right right and jim's like it's not that kind of farm um jim puts on his answering machine and there's just a series of angry messages yeah and this is when i think he starts to realize there's something else going on so he hears from Monica Steele, wants to talk about his rates. He hears from Manny from the cab company. He hears from a cop about a driving complaint made against him. Then he hears from a lawyer representing the hotel that he was staying at and saying that he's going to be handling the situation where Jim left the casino owing over $600. And now Rocky knows what happened.

Yeah. Yeah. Rocky, of course, is, starts in on him. This is the last thing that Jim wants to talk about right now, but Rocky won't let it go.

And ends up saying that those guys are going to roll turf over them and plant a headstone. And Jim says, no, no, they don't do that anymore. Now they gun you down from a slow-moving Chevy. Yeah.

And then we get our second, and I think final, Valentino appearance. Yeah. Hey, Valentino. Hey, Valentino. He jumps into Jim's arms and gets a little snuggle. And we get to see Jim's part-time cat uh well at least valentino's more friendly than beth's cat right which we never see but here and uh yeah are afraid of uh there's in the the episode right up in um 30 years of the rockford files doesn't really have a lot in there

but it does it describes valentino as as like a trailer cat like the implication being like this the cat just hangs out like in the parking lot like it's not jim's cat necessarily but like a cat that will come hang out with jim sometimes which that seems like a fair yeah jim leaves out food for the cat the cat comes and hangs out with jim when cat wants to. That seems about right. On a personal note, we clearly have a cat like that in our neighborhood, but it always comes after ours. I only know this because every time it snows, and it snows and it's windy enough to get snow up on our front porch, our front porch is covered in cat foot. Oh, really? But we've never

seen a cat we've never seen a cat so it's either it's a ghost cat which is a possibility right um or it's just a cat that like late at night likes to hang out on our front porch when we're asleep there's these programs in chicago that are that are both about controlling pet population and controlling the rat prop like oh yeah um issues where feral cats will be like spayed or neutered and have and they'll they'll have a tag on them and then there's like families that will leave out like food and there's like shelter and stuff but they're not cats like your family cat they live on the streets and they hunt rats and they just have like a place to go to like hang out so they're

kind of safe um because usually feral cats you can't really rehome uh and so there's a couple of those in our neighborhood or at least there's one in our neighborhood where there's a couple of cats and so i've you know i'll see them like i recognize the cats they have like a little orange tag that they wear uh but um yeah sometimes you just have those neighborhood cats that's that seems like a i mean i don't i i don't know i know that that outdoor cats can be a very uh a huge issue for like bird populations and things like that but like you don't want to like be putting a bunch of poison out for rats or anything right having a natural predator like yeah i'm dipping my toes into something where i don't have any real so i'm gonna step back out and say valentino is adorable

right valentino is adorable i agree all right so now jim needs to figure out what the hell's going on yes his first step is the cab company to see manny um where he just kind of busts into the office and we get the first of what we can expect to see a lot of, of the person going, who are you? And Jim saying, I'm Jim Rockford. And then being surprised or aghast. Manny grabs a golf club and is kind of meaningfully fondling it for the rest of the scene until it comes into play again later so there's good banter this is all really playing on this whole confusion of

you know identity confusion and everything uh but the salient points here are that you know the rockford detective agency uh owes manny 400 because you know, did not render services paid for. Jim's like, look, I don't know who owes you $400, but it's not me. I've been on vacation. And then Manny is, this is great.

We're like, oh, I get it. It's a con game. Yeah, Mr. A comes in here with your ID, right? I hire you. He skins me for a cube of hundreds and he takes a powder. Then along you come.

Oh, Mr. B. You say, I'm the real guy. But I've been away on vacation. This Mr. A, he's been using my name. But I'm innocent. What am I supposed to say? It's okay? I mean, mistakes happen?

Is that what I'm supposed to say? Even though my insurance man is out there foaming at the mouth over a couple of medium-rare cabs? Nah, it's okay. I'm just gonna eat the 400. Because I've been playing jacks with Nah, it's okay. I'm just going to eat the 400. Because I've been playing jacks with a square ball all my life. I don't know from last Tuesday. Such a great line. That feels like a Stephen Cannell original.

I cannot stress enough how threatening his physical presence is. He's not like a giant dude or whatever he's just good at being intimidating and this is well and he uses this golf club to his advantage right yeah yeah so he hired rockford and then or he had his guy hire rock there's like his accountant or someone sitting on the couch basically for comic effect um it was like he had his guy hire rockford and then decided it was it was a bad idea tried to cancel guy never answered the phone to cancel charged him anyway i guess he paid up up front question mark never did anything and now he has another torched cab and so he wants his money back jim tries to get aggressive with him which is when he pulls up the golf club and he's like oh

you want some you want to come like you know come and get it. Yeah. And Jim's like, okay, you're a hostile guy. I'm going to leave. The switch up is great because Jim comes in very hot and very angry. And then when this guy just matches him note for note, that's when Jim's self-preservation kicks in. He's like, well, you know what? Actually, maybe this is a misunderstanding. Back at the trailer, Jim does not know why someone would want to take over his operation uh it's not like he makes any money uh and he specifically mentions he has like 15

finance accounts staring at 200 in his banking in his checking account this is a grim picture of jim's finances throughout this entire episode and now just consider that he went on a $1,500 vacation. Oh, 600. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's already starting off on the wrong foot.

And then as we see these expenses are going to start mounting. Yes. For some reason, I don't, maybe it's just because it's not done very often, but I felt like this is a, an interesting shot where usually when jim's at his desk we're behind jim looking at like and he's talking to someone we're like behind jim looking

kind of at the door and whoever he's talking to is like standing there or like at the fridge getting a you know getting a beer or something and then here rocky's sitting on the couch and we're on the kitchen side and we're looking over jim's shoulder at the couch and we're on the kitchen side and we're looking over jim's shoulder at the couch so we can see the whole bookshelf over the couch and like yeah i don't know and i mean jim's in the foreground we're right at the shoulder so there's something about it where i was like i don't remember seeing this shot before i'm sure it's i'm sure we have but for whatever reason in this context i was like huh i don't know it really gave a sense of like that side of the uh that that side of the trailer

because we usually see it in like one corner or the other corner and so seeing the whole side at once was kind of interesting it jumped out to me i thought it was nice so it's a paradise coves zillowow scroll through. I should take a screenshot and see if I pass it by our Twitter friend, Bockelman, not Brockleman, Jordan, who's assembling Jim's reading list. Oh, right. Yes. I feel like you could probably read a lot of the spines in this shot. So shout out to Jordan.

You might want to check that one out. Anyhow, yeah. So Jim's like, what's in it for this guy yes and then there's a knock at the door and it's a delivery guy who has a truck full of jim's stuff from scotland yard and we get a big run a big gag here of all this really over-the-top detective equipment that has been ordered in Jim's name. And as we end up learning, charged on Jim's charge card that is just being unloaded in front of his trailer. There's a whole list of them.

It's some good stuff, including the electronic carpet sensor, the battery-operated portable Saiyan sifter, the Noguchi XL 1500 forensic medicine console and chemistry shelf, and we start off with a running gag of an electronic olive. That's probably

a misprint. Get a good shot of Jim's address on the James Rockford 234 Ocean Boulevard, Paradise Cove, California, 92416. In case you wanted to write him a letter, send him a postcard, whatever. But it's contradicted later in the episode, which I think is interesting.

I think the road that they send some cops to, it's not Ocean Boulevard. It's like, when I get to it in my notes, I'll point it out, I think. Yeah.'s like when i get to it my notes i'll point it out i think yeah but yeah uh lots of it reminds me we saw an episode and i cannot for the life of me recall it where there's a detective it might be the the nuisance the attractive nuisance right where there's another pi who was really into techno gadgets but it wasn't comedic he just that was his way of doing things yeah jim kind of looked down on it this is all the opposite of how jim operates like he doesn't use any of this stuff he can't even send it back because it's already paid for and the dispatcher would just charge him storage for keeping it on the truck so uh we also get a good shot of the

of where they came from scot Yard Products, London, Illinois. Yeah, you know, I meant to look it up. I mean, as Rocky points out, there is a Dublin, Michigan. There is a London Mills, Illinois. Illinois is filled with more old world stuff, right? They got Cairo instead of Cairo. Anyways, so I just assumed that there was a london illinois um because yeah people didn't get original when it came to naming places they're looking through the boxes again this is mostly visual gags of these like giant machines

with these labels on them and the forensic medicine console and chemistry shelf was too big to bring into the trailer they'd have to enlarge the door like all this all this good stuff and this is where jim discovers that his charge card is gone and that's probably you know that's where it got it got charged to and then he finds out that it was not a misprint there was in fact an electronic olive which is like a little olive on like a martini stick with a, you know, with a little microphone in it. And so we get a good wry smile as he finds the electronic olive.

Jim's next step is to go to Monica Steele and he has his ID and everything out and ready. I think knowing what he's going to run into. This is nice. I feel like we're kind of in a space where if we had another scene of someone not believing jim it would be a little samey yeah but in this scene she quickly acknowledges like she's like okay i feel like there's a little bit of like oh things make more sense now like that guy yeah that guy was a con i mean jim's also a con but you know know what I mean? Yeah. But she gets very nervous. I told him things, confided things about me, about Ralph.

There's a lot packed in here. So some of this, I think, is just for expediency. But there's this kind of weird move where she goes into the house to go close the door to the pool so that like Ralph won't hear. But they're already outside the front door. So she could have just closed that door. Close the front door. It's so that Ralph will have a reason to come confront yeah jim right um so there's a couple things here first is we kind of get the story the little sub story of monica steel monica and ralph steel uh so she hired rockford because she was having an affair with her stepson's school basketball coach or something like that.

I think it was even like an assistant basketball coach or something. But yeah, yeah. Dave Morgan. Dave Morgan. Ralph found out he's an insanely jealous man, put this guy, Dave Morgan, in the hospital. And then he started to fool around, like, out of revenge. And so she wanted to get evidence of his fooling around, as she says, to get out of the soap opera somehow.

And I think you were saying she seems like she's from a different, like, kind of show. And, like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's from a soap opera. Jim asks about what his, you you know imposter looked like and her description is great average not attractive his clothes never seem to fit uh but he hangs out at the sand pebble bar restaurant as opposed to the sand dollar which is the restaurant on the pier right yes um this is when ralph Ralph comes to confront Jim.

He yells at Monica to get back in the house. And Jim has, he snaps right in, right? Like, we got Dave Morgan's name so that Jim here could be like, well, I'm the attorney for Dave Morgan. And I'm just asking some questions, blah, blah, blah. And Jim does ask some, like, questions that he would ask if this was his actual job like if he was a PI doing this kind of thing but he mostly just learns that Ralph has a very bad temper and doesn't see and does

indeed seem to be capable of just you know putting someone in a hospital is it ever revealed what Ralph does he leads an idyllic life he's got a like I mean obviously he's married to Monica Steele, which,

you know, as we all, uh, but he's, you know, got this house in a pool and he sits by the pool with a typewriter. And I'm, yeah,

this feels like a fantasy of what a writer's life is. I think so. And he has an amazing telephone, which we'll see in a later scene. Oh yeah. Well, Jim is bringing the in a later scene. Oh, yeah. Well, Jim is bringing the poor Firebird to his mechanic, Tony. We get some good world building here where Jim says that, you know, he can't get the insurance company to pay for this one. It's going to be on his own dime.

Can they do a payment plan like they did last Christmas? And Tony says that he went through bankruptcy last year and now he has a bank guy looking over his books all the time so he's going to need some kind of collateral uh something that floats yeah jim offers him an electronic olive which uh gets a bemused look but they say they can work something out uh tony offers him a ride back to his trailer and then calls for beamer and we get a dramatic straight down overhead shot of the front of a car and some feet and then the the caddy rolls out and it's our friend beamer with his glasses and the tape uh in his workman's overalls revealed at last to us the audience where this guy came from yes some things

are now very much falling into place uh but they all will fall into place in just a moment it's a it's a great setup right here's a guy who is familiar with rockford through this relationship but also has access to his car has access to his key and uh is is well positioned to take advantage of uh of the situation where rockford leaves town for a vacation and and we're about to get into it's very enjoyable i really like it but it's also the most infuriating bit about this whole story which is just how comfortable everyone is with this guy replacing Rockford. This guy can't see that he's done anything wrong. We'll get into it when we get into it.

But like, and how everyone else is like, well, I mean, he said he was you. As if that was all, you know, like there wasn't like a identity theft or anything like that wasn't a thing. Everyone seems to blame Jim for the fact that Beamer impersonated him. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, that's not how that should go. And yet that's how banks work. You're held responsible for somebody stealing your identity. Anyways, let's go on.

All right, let's take a little pause in the action here so that we can all sit back and catch our breaths. And Epi and I can let you know where you can find us elsewhere on the Internet. Because as it turns out, we do do other things than talk about the Rockford Files from time to time. Epi, where can our fine listeners find you and your work? You can find my work at www.worldswithoutmaster.com. That's world's plural, master, singular. Or at dig1000holes.com, with the thousand being numeral 1-0-0-0.

I like complex URLs. You can also find me on Twitter at Epidiah, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. Where can we find you, Nathan? The hub for all of my stuff from games to zines to podcasts is ndpdesign.com. I recently started a new

podcast called Appendix NDP, which is a solo show where I talk about various topics in games and publishing, so I will plug that for listeners of podcasts. You can also find me on twitter at nd paoletta p-a-o-l-e-t-t-a and on instagram at the same handle though i probably will only have pictures of my dog so you know that may be a plus now we return to the adventures of jimbo rockfish

on 200 a day in In terms of the narrative of this episode, this feels like a really necessary beat to me. So there's one version of this episode where the entire story is Jim trying to find out who this guy is and kind of chasing a ghost, right? And then the dramatic

confrontation is that brings everything together at the end. But that's not really how the pacing of the story has been it's been much more comedic and like yeah jim getting increasingly frustrated which i don't mind but also i don't necessarily want to watch for an entire episode so having the having the reveal of the impersonator be someone that jim does know he does not know that beamer impersonated him yet but we know right so now the the dramatic tension flips from is jim going to figure out what's going on to okay everything's in place for jim to figure out what's you know

what happened so how is it going to resolve which i find more more interesting um to watch um and we get the establishment of their relationship in this next scene where beamer is driving jim back to his trailer and it's uh pretty one one-sided i would say i think from jim's perspective this is a guy he kind of knows yeah beamer um asks him about the magazine detective digest have you read detective digest he's obsessed with the stories from this magazine it's real pi stuff and jim's kind of like yeah sure okay uh make sure to make this right like giving him the directions and beamer going like oh yeah i knew that like his his his automatic response to everything is, oh, yeah, I knew that. I'll do that. Yeah.

So Beamer is super into this detective magazine and these detective stories. He tells this whole story. And Jim kind of is noncommittal. And then he's like, what do you think about that, Jimbo? And Jim says, must be working in the auto repair business. And Beamer gives him a look like, ah, you get me. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's also important to establish here that like

beamer's into pi stuff and jim doesn't really care about beamer doesn't really know him or you know pay pay him much attention there's maybe like a little overtone of like jim rolling his eyes at the romanticism yeah of the pi stuff which is uh which is always like a very delicate line to walk when in reality your show relies on people being really into the fact that you're a PI. But it works. I like it. It's very good.

We have an ominous boot in the foreground as Beamer drops Jim off at his trailer. And this is Mr. ramirez uh the lawyer for the casino or the hotel whatever apparently so jim's like i have two weeks i'll get him the money and ramirez says that he bought the note so now jim is dealing with him directly uh two weeks is out of the question he wants his 600 by 5 today. And they have some extremely good banter here. This, again, almost feels like it's out of another show. Like this is out of the, I don't know, more noir, like hard-boiled detective show.

This is Jim in the Detective Digest that Beamer is all up about. My banking representatives will be by at five to cancel out the debt have the money representatives plural that's right oh i guess they travel in pairs because that way they have 20 fingers and 20 toes i don't ask them how they do the addition what counts is that comes out all right in the end he's also in the loan business so maybe he'll come back to take out a loan. 20% per week? It's a tough business.

People just don't understand our side of it. So this lawyer is also a loan shark. Yeah. Is what we're getting here. And at this hotel in, I forget where it was, Puerto Rico or something. I don't remember where he went. But whatever hotel that he went to apparently is has this less than savory connection uh back in los angeles and jim i think rightly casts some shade on the idea like i'm just supposed to take it on your word that you that i owe you and not the bank or sorry not the casino

like because you know here's a guy who shows up is like oh no i bought it so now you owe me the money there's no evidence of that yeah i think he does say like you know go ahead and call him and ask or something like i kind of imagine that jim does check that out yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah um we then go to a hoppin night spot uh where the phone's ringing and the bartender is calling for rockford beamer's in a booth with a girl he's glad handing everyone as he goes to the bar uh and uh you know this is clearly the whatever the sand pebble his hangout spot and look at he knows everyone and everyone knows him which is incredible that he apparently has set this up over the course of a week and a half right yeah he's an affable guy you i can imagine him just talking anyone's ear

off about things anything you could yeah he answers the phone and it is in fact we see that it is in fact rocky who frowns and hangs up it's such a good good moment there's no like nothing he says nothing but you just everything is expressed on rocky's face about this situation and you know what's coming next right like like because yeah and then we get a great expression of beamer's personality where he's right up on and then he continues to have a call like he does his side of a fake call so that the bartender keeps buying into his story right to like show off and he's like oh i'm talking to this girl and he's like winking and stuff like it's a whole it's a whole thing he finally hangs up he heads back to his booth and then a wild jim appears the real jim he grabs him sits him down in the booth confronts him

lists his grievances uh beamer's only real reaction is to get irate that his stuff finally came he's been waiting for it for a week uh but it didn't come until after jim got back and jim's like we're gonna go we're gonna go settle things now and he tries to hustle beamer out but they get stopped by the bartender and then a crew of his bar friends because they're all Rockford's friends. He's one of us and we're not going to let you take him or something like that. And he has this great like this guy has a gun. You think I would have let him handle me like this if he didn't have a gun? And so the guys all grab Jim's arms and Beamer takes a powder, runs out and the bartender grabs a shotgun. Yes. And that's a cue for Jim to completely change his tone.

Like, he's done this several times now, where he comes in very hot, and then the moment things look like they're going to turn violent against him, he's like, hold up, hold up, we can talk this out. We can figure this out. This also transitions to seeing Jimim use all of his all of his powers i think oh yeah yeah he he explains the situation he gives his wallet to the bartender

which as we know is always a dicey move jim handing over his wallet to like look at his ideas and stuff he tells him who beamer really is because the details about where he works and like all this stuff and so the bartender is the proxy for all of this um i think jim keeps calling him wyatt i assume like wyatt erp anyway so we see kind of the bartender kind of being like okay like that kind of makes sense yeah sure you might be right but he's run you know who's gonna pay for rockford's bar tab it's like i don't care um but he's already holding his wallet so the bartender tosses jim's wallet to the waitress becky baby to find his charge card and the jim's like okay fine earlier they said we're going to call the cops so he's like okay fine all right all right we wait for the cops suppose my story

checks out what happens then wyatt You get to take a fall for aggravated assault, assault and battery, attempted homicide, extortion, and illegal detention. And if I don't get my wallet back right now, you get to take half of the extortion, Brenda, baby. His appeal

to authority and his knowledge of, like, or his telegraphing his willingness to escalate to the next level yeah is what actually saves the day here and and like just the the legal mumbo jumbo like he just he knows exactly what what uh what charges will be will be dropped and or will be laid against him yeah yeah and he sounds serious enough that it's like even if none of this stuff like ends up being like like sticking what a what a pain in the ass for all these guys now to like go through this process because of this guy it's like okay it's easier just

to give him his wallet and just tell him to leave yes jim is heading back to his trailer uh in rocky's truck uh there's screeching tires. He dodges two cars that are peeling out of Paradise Cove. He hears shots. So there's kind of a little action-y sequence where there's one car that he dodges, and we hear shots, and then he pulls up towards his trailer and another car is pulling a U and getting

out of there. And so he runs inside, and Beamer is in his trailer with a bullet in his shoulder. He's holding his shoulder. We see blood bullet in his shoulder he's holding shoulder we see blood coming down and he's just saying it didn't come and jim's calling for an ambulance and asking asking beamer like who you know who shot you what happened the bulletproof vest it didn't come it would have helped of all the things he ordered apparently the bulletproof vest was the one that never made it yes i think this is the moment like my notes uh aren't very precise but i think this is the moment when uh somebody

whether it's jim calling in for the ambulance or we get like some radio chatter or something like that but somebody refers to the address as 29 cove road which is different from the 234 ocean boulevard so that's where does jim live is it 29 cove road or 234 ocean boulevard my pick from those just from having watched this show for so long is i think that cove road is the actual address right i think ocean boulevard might be like the road that cove road is off of or something. Basically, yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Because I feel like we hear both of those.

But I think that like 29 Cove Road is like the canonical address. So I wonder if Beamer like ordered it to like maybe there's like a business address or something for like the whole area. And then once they know who you're sending it to, they dispatch you or something. I don't know. We could do some, some digging to find out. Well, I,

uh, did not find an answer, but I did find 29 paradise. Cove Cove road, uh, is a actual mobile home. One bed, two baths,

1000 square feet, uh, last on the market in 2015 i think uh it sold for a little over half a million all right it so so yeah um yeah i think i i'm gonna go with your theory i mean there might be like a agency at at the um there's no reason to go into it. Housing management. Right, yeah. There's like a HOA or something. Well, again, in Paradise Cove,

we, the six season episode, we learn a lot more about the structure of the neighborhood. Yes. Because there is like an association, like a tennis association or something. Yeah, because he becomes like the neighborhood watchman for a while, like that yeah so anywho at our next stage in this episode we are going to the hospital um we get our a good scene with dennis uh our good friend dennis becker he's been questioning beamer for 20 minutes and he's not saying anything um you won't talk we we go in to confront him in his

in his hospital bed he's just has a whole spread of detective digest magazines and he's so excited to tell jim that he's he's called the editor and he has a guy coming in to talk to him for a story in the in the detective digest he says he'll take all the stuff back from from jim they'll work out the money uh but he's gonna stay in the business freddy beamer pi jim you know and becker by extension but this is mostly jim um wants to know who shot at him like jim is concerned so here we have a i mean this is a very fun scene we really get the unstoppable force immovable object situation where Jim will not stop asking questions and Beamer will not tell him anything. Jim has two concerns. One, if someone is trying to kill Beamer, he wants to help him not get killed.

And if someone wants to kill Jim Rockford for something that Beamer did, they could come after him and he doesn't want that either. He cycles through a number of approaches to try and get Beamer to tell him his client list, who maybe would have a reason to shoot him, etc. But Beamer, since now he's in the business and now he's a fellow PI. Jim, have you ever heard about a thing called client confidentiality not only does he have his own principles he wants to talk he wants to be able to talk to the detective digest with a clear conscience yes very important to him um so jim tries to be reasonable then he gets angry he's like you know were using my name, so now I'm on the hook for everything you did. And Beamer's like, well, if you're going to get angry, Jim, I'm just going to have to ask you to leave.

And so Jim has a last ditch. You know, it's against the law to do what you did. Like impersonation. Yeah, yeah. Identity theft. You know, using my cards, like all that stuff. And Jim says he's going to press charges. At least he'll keep you off the streets.

Beamer's final response is that he's retaining Sidney Perlman as his attorney. So what do you think about that? And Jim says, that amuses me. Out in the hallway, Jim is clearly irate. Becker is being, I think, extremely calm, like as a response to jim being so mad and he's flipping through the magazine where'd he get a name like sydney perlman detective digest strange cases for my file it's a weekly feature yeah yeah harrowing legal experiences by america's premier defense attorney he reads that stuff dennis he is 100 chucklehead

that's a good line we then go to jim breaking into beamer's apartment great next move he has this big these big wall calendar like graphs with notes on his he he has these two cases that we've seen he has this cab company thing and the steel you know case um so he has all this like paraphernalia of like it's not quite red yarn on a you know cork board but it's kind of in that zone um and he also has a tape recorder so jim starts listening to his taped notes and uh the two things from here are one he kind of hears some of the context about the cab company which matches up with what we saw from the very first scene but the way that beamer makes his notes it's like he's it's his rough draft for like a detective's story right like

he's kind of writing it in his head as he's talking uh and then jim is also talking back to the recorder giving telling him to do stuff like he describes a car. He's like, get his license plate number. And there's an update on the car. He's like, finally. And then he describes the top of the car.

He's like, Oh, if you're going to do this, at least do it. Right. Yeah. And, and all of the,

all of the updates follow that same florid, you know, detective pros. Yeah. It's all the, all that same florid detective prose. Yeah, it's all the purple prose one would expect. Yeah, yeah. We then have Jim giving Becker a call. It turns out that Beamer's out on bail. He does actually know this lawyer, Sidney Perlman, because the lawyer gets his car fixed at Tony's at the same place that Jim does. That's great. He's out on $300 bond and Jim groans.

And Dennis says, what? You got all your charge cards back, right? Jim's like, I think so. He doesn't have anything yet on the cases, but he's going to listen to all the stakeout tapes. But Dennis has a lead for him from the other side. The arson squad's been investigating these car fires apparently Phil Moreno and Manny Arcturus have some kind of a connection

Phil Golf Bag Moreno the same yep that's a mobster and this you know we remember that Manny talked to a guy named Phil in the first scene and also Manny was like threatening Jim with a golf club like it's all falling into place we end with a great well thanks a lot dennis you are welcome you imagine uh becoming a mobster right thinking to yourself

i'm gonna get myself a nickname right you think you're get a cool like like earlier we get uh pedro e ramirez e for executioner which i think is what rocky said about it yeah yeah you're expecting something along those lines and then you do something and then you get golf bag stuck to your name for like the rest of your life you just feel golf bag here's here's the thing. You can't give yourself a nickname. You know, that's totally washed, right? Like, you can't be that guy. So once you get a nickname, like, you can't reject it either. Yeah, exactly.

So, like, once you're Golf Bag, you're Golf Bag. You're Golf Bag, yeah. Once Golf Bag, always Golf Bag. And as we will see in the climax of our episode, there is in fact a bag of golf clubs in his car. Just a little detail. I looked for them and they were there. And when you think about it, what are all the terrible things you could do to a person with a golf bag and or the contents of a golf bag? Right.

Yeah. That's a pretty, that could be pretty horrendous. It could be a pretty, pretty rough, you know, origination for that name. Well, we go back to the other case, the Steele dossier, as I'm going to start calling it for this one scene until it's over. So Monica Steele is driving away from their palatial estate that apparently is the result of some kind of writing empire. As you know, the result of some kind of writing empire. And we follow the car to discover Beamer standing in the driveway to stop her because he wants to talk to her. I have some new stuff about the case or something like that.

And then his name, Ralph. Yeah, it's Ralph. Yeah, Ralph Steele. Ralph Steele does not flow the same way that Monica Steele does. No. Monica Steele is a good name. Ralph Steele is not a good name, in my opinion. Apologies to all the Ralph Steeles out there who may be listening. Should have been Dirk Steele.

That would have been a good one. That would have been good, yeah. Or like... Maximilian Steele. I mean, we're getting into, you know, Remington Steele territory, right? Oh, yeah, you're right. We want to approach that, but come back just a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

Scotland Steele. Yeah, there you go. Anywho, Ralph Steele sees that Monica is talking to a man and runs across the yard to confront them. This is Jack Kelly, Ralph Steeph steel who we saw um this is the last of his two appearances it's a wrap on jack yeah so this is beamer's last case we also saw him in the becker connection uh our episode 94 where he played kasagian the the main bad guy and we noted then that jack kelly was a was a maverick guy so we have the fun little moments where like he and and garner get to like have a bit of a of a thing which will be this scene as well um so ralph just

runs up and just punches beamer out, just takes him down. And then Jim rolls up and he runs into the fray and he pulls them apart and pulls Beamer back. And he tries to just take him, hustle him away, stop, you know, deescalate the whole situation. And this is where we get our great exchange from the preview montage. Yes. Both you guys are dead. I'm getting my gun. I'm going to finish both of you.

Come on, Freddy. Listen, mister, I've been shot at before. I'm not the kind of guy you can blow away with a threat you understand that i am excuse the intrusion we'll be on our way no harm done hey let's go freddie and so now beamer is mad that jim is interfering with his business by the way beamer has his arm in his sling like the arm that that got shot. So he's down an arm. He just got punched. And Jim says a guy like that would shoot both of them. Well, sometimes a PI has to take risks.

Not me. I make a habit of avoiding risks. That's why I still have a full set of teeth. Yeah, classic, classic Jim. Classic Jim. He wants to know how Beamer made bail. Beamer says that he charged it on his on his charge card and jim wants to see his wallet so they pull over and jim pulls beamer out of the car and insists on seeing

his wallet and keeps on pressing him until beamer finally gives it to him with a i was done with it anyway and it is indeed jim's final final charge card it's uh one of the things that i'm enjoying and again enjoying in a way that is also infuriating uh is the the way that beamer is unable to see that he is doing wrong yeah yeah right like he's he's not even making excuses so much as just just proceeding as if he's doing the right thing he's acting like jim is the problem here yeah yeah exactly why do you want me not to use your charge card like right like i'm solving the case here yeah we get a little bit of puncture like a little bit of getting to some some reality with with beamer where jim said jim asked him look what did i ever do to you right you know nothing i like you but spending his life under a car is you know not going well um not

making any money it's not doing anything he says something like uh spending his life under a car means it's going down the drain like motor oil and he saw an opening to make a move and so he took it and now he's living his dream like his dream is constructed from this detective digest magazine right yeah it's like and now i'm living my dream i have an honest to god bullet wound here uh and this is i think the iconic difference between jim and beamer where jim uh would never be excited about a bullet wound and all beamer has wanted is to get a bullet wound in the course of an investigation he says he has clients that need him they don't like him right now but they still need him um and an editor from the magazine coming out to ask him questions about one of his cases and jim's like about what and i think we and we get a moment where beamer acknowledges that he

doesn't actually know what's going on yes turn. Turn something up, but I just don't know what it is. Yeah. Jim asks him a couple questions and kind of confirms for himself and for us that the guy that he saw at the cab company on one of the stakeouts is this mobster, Phil Moreno. Once he has that piece kind of clear, he changes tack. All right, Beamer, let's you and I hook up on this one. This is genius here. This is so good. This is, yeah, because Jim. Let's you and I hook up on this one. This is genius here. This is so good.

This is, yeah, because Jim knows he's getting nowhere strong-arming Beamer. He's getting nowhere reasoning with Beamer. So his only real chance here is to deceive him. And it's great. Yeah, I love this setup here. I think it's funny because it's so obvious to us. Yeah. You almost expect Jim to think it's not going to work.

But Beamer, this is all Beamer's been waiting for. He's like, all I want to do is like be a real PI. Right. And so he doesn't have the self-awareness to think that Jim might be using this as a way to manipulate him, which is what it is. Jim has a job that's going to take him out of town, but it's critical. And I think Beamer literally says, this is all I ever wanted,

but they're going to, you know, the mobs involved, but they're going to crack this case and they get back in the car. And there's a line. Hey, hey, Jimbo,

when the job's tough, we're the men, right? And Jim kind of smiles and we cut to a big men sign on a bathroom it's a good cut good joke in the cut beamer's leaving um at first i thought they were at an airport but they're actually at a bus station because obviously i same thing and it's a great i it's not like i'm mis, but it's just classic Rockford vibes. Like, oh, I'm going to send you off.

I'm going to do it on a bus, though, because I can't afford an airplane right now. Jim is sending Beamer to Eureka. And Beamer's like, what does this have to do with our case here? And so Jim has this whole yarn about. Oh, it's so good. Who do you think owns all the olive groves up there? You heard of Big Jack Cristiani, the artichoke king of Northern California? Where you been, Freddie?

I thought you knew everything that was going on in this area. Yeah, yeah, sure, I've heard about that stuff. Phil Marino came out of that valley. Well, the mob's his own, most of them. Oh, sure you heard of Tombstone Tommy Rico. Yeah, Torpedo, right? No, Freddie. The Fed. So he's sending him to Eureka.

He wants Beamer to talk to Bill at the Texaco. He'll put him in touch with Tombstone Tommy and that he'll be able to fill him in about anything about cabs that connects the Eureka outfit to L.A. And he very specifically wants Beamer to stay in Eureka until I can join you. It's just going to be a couple days and then we're going to finish the case up there. And he waves goodbye to him as he gets on the bus specifically one of the things that jim does here is he he he i mean this is it's all leading questions and stuff whenever beamer asks

him like when beamer's like oh so you know oh so this and then rockford says no not that i'm talking about this like i know something you don't know but then when he says like you know or the outfit that did this this and that job you know right and beamer's like oh yeah yeah i know those yeah yeah jim gives beamer all the opportunities to show off that he knows something that he doesn't actually know while demonstrating that jim knows things over and above what beamer even pretends to know so that he still kind of has the upper hand it's yeah it's a good scene it's one of those scenes where it's like it's good anyone else doing these lines it probably wouldn't be as fun like it's a real yes it's real rockfordishness full yes kind of scene uh yeah it's it's basically he's giving beamer a chance to feel

like an equal but also retaining the authority in the situation right so that beamer can't actually set the terms for what's about to happen next and of course throughout all of it we know as audience members like there's no no way we know that it's all nonsense but also we know that like this guy is going to find a way to mess it up yes just find a way to mess it up as Roy Lee's he can and we will see that play out over our next couple of

scenes so here we have a kind of an intercut intercut scenes of Beamer on the bus talking to this poor woman who he sits next to who could not be less interested yes um and jim setting up you know setting up a sting basically so the beamer side is he is basically repeating all the things that jim told him with some additional embellishments um yeah so we get to hear it all again, which is very fun. This is,

this is where we get the gag about him swapping his glasses out. Right. You know, we've mentioned that he's got these thick frame glasses with tape to hold them together in the middle. And then when he sits down next to this woman and it's clear that he's trying to impress her, he switches from those to sunglasses with tape,

holding them together on the side. I think that's what it is it's something along those lines but yeah they're very good so yeah during these uh these intercut scenes jim is calling each of kind of the principles he calls manny he calls ralph steel and he calls ramirez each to tell them watch out for beamer he's out on bail he's pressing charges about the shooting he went to the DA so he might come around if he comes around call me because I can control him but he's flying off the handle right yeah everyone seems to be surprised that someone shot it you know shot him or whatever which I think is kind of par for the course two two fun details

one is that ramirez is on his car phone so we know he's very important yeah yeah um and he ends the conversation with get off my phone rockford i have business but the thing that really stood out to me was ralph steel's phone which is i don't know if it'd be an antique but like a like a two-piece like it has like the the separate earpiece that you hold to your ear and the separate mouthpiece but it's all painted like an american flag i don't know if you saw this but it is no yeah the entire body of it is either painted or or wrapped or something to be like an american flag it's i'll send you i'll send you a picture what is ralph steel's deal i don't know it is so funny

but yeah he's clearly setting up a a classic let's see who bites um situation right like i don't know which one of these guys was was the shooter. I think his theory at this point is that like someone was trying to actually kill Beamer. It's not that someone was trying to kill him and mistook Beamer for him. I had a pet theory based on the fact that I was watching the Rockford Files that somebody was actually trying to kill Rockford and actually accidentally shot Beamer. But I don't think that that was ever his theory going on yeah i mean in our next scene he kind of explains what his thoughts are to uh uh to becker that come through oh there it is yes yes okay what is up with that so what you're looking well can you describe describe to us what this phone looks like yeah hold on i lost it from okay so yeah

it's an old-timey phone okay so it's not legitimately an old-timey phone right it's clearly meant to look like an old-timey phone but it is a contemporary a contemporary manufacturer i would say yeah yeah of the rock from the rockford files yeah the base of it is star spangled as as you would expect blue with white stars the the stem of it red and white stripes and then uh the mouthpiece that you speak into is blue probably with a red facing it's a it's the other direction from us and he's got yeah he has to hold uh an earpiece to his his ear uh that has uh is also blue with uh red stars so yeah it yeah, it feels like a novelty phone that you would get for subscribing to

Stars and Stripes magazine or something like that. I don't know. It's wild. It's like, why is this? And he's sitting at the bar and we can see the pool behind him. So, okay. This is 77 77 77 okay so here we go here we go this is my theory okay uh because this is this is a tremendously 77 picture if this fits my theory because we've got in the foreground we've got some liquor bottles the the labels are turned away from us so we don't know exactly what they are. But they all look like they're probably brown liquors. There's a solid ashtray in the floor.

Like, that is a murder weapon ashtray. It's not giant, but it's, you know, ashtrays were solid. It's solid, yeah. You either got the tin one that was, you know, flimsy, or you had, like, a really solid one that wouldn't uh blow in the wind and whatnot and then of course in the background you see his pool and all that but i think what's going on here i think why he's got this phone this novelty phone it's the centennial right 76 was uh 100 years yeah uh the centennial and like And, like, that was a thing. That was a whole, whole thing.

There's also a chair in the background that, like, is either from the 70s or from Ikea. Right, right. Yeah. It's extremely good. And, yeah, it's Jack Kelly on the phone. He's just wearing a taupe sweater vest. Yeah. And his hair is just middle aged man hair

this could be a shot from any time from when color television began through to now and he would be dressed appropriately it's so weird that I can't see Bart Maverick in him but I know he's in him

I know he's that I can't see Bart Maverick in him, but I know he's in him. I know he's there, but like. Mace the Hare? I don't know. Anyway, this will go out on our Twitter. So if you want to see this shot, check out at 200 pod.

All right. So Jim has set up whatever's going on. Beamer is finishes off his, his monologue on the bus to this poor woman. Oh, a gun. Do I carry a gun? Of course I carry a gun. Trying to be all big-timey. But then he suddenly realizes,

wait, I don't have my stuff! He says, nice talking to you. And then he makes the bus driver pull over on the highway and gets off the bus because he clearly can't go to Eureka without his stuff. And he runs across the highway holding his arm bus because he clearly can't go to Eureka without his stuff. And he runs across the highway holding his arm because he took the sling off, but his arm is still clearly injured and starts trying to hitch a ride back to LA.

Okay. Jim is staking out Beamer's apartment building. He makes a call to Becker because he sees a car and we know from the description and he knows from the tapes that this is the gangster's car, a golf bags car. So of the people he called, it's Phil Moreno that's coming to finish off Beamer. Dennis asks why and Jim kind of Jim tells Dennis basically the story that we got from the very first scene. So we can just infer that that he figured we got from the very first scene. So we can just infer that, that he figured it out from the tapes or whatever about the, the cab,

like this cab scheme that was going on. Yeah. And then Beamer must've gotten in the middle somehow. And then we see Beamer staggering up to the building. This is a great little moment where Manny pops out of the car, grabs Beamer. We see that he's not only is he holding a gun, he also has little like rubber glove,

like clear rubber gloves on. Yes. He's wearing, he's in his murdering gloves, but I don't know why that struck me as so funny. They's already wearing them, but he's like grabbing Beamer and pushing him into the car. So it's good.

Jim tries to pursue, is blocked by a garbage truck, so he's a little delayed. Becker calls in that the chase is happening. And we have a bit of a car chase as Jim follows Moreno's car and then the cops follow all of them. At this point, I was kind of like, you know, just kind of like waiting to see what happens with Beamer. So I didn't note that this is a particularly interesting chase. Yeah, I don't have any notes on it either. I think most of our car budget went into trashing the Firebirds

at the beginning of the episode. Yeah, but mid-chase manny knocks out the back window with a shotgun and starts taking shots at a gym um following but is to no avail and they all get surrounded by the by the black and whites they're forced to stop i think there's like a barrier across like they have to go through a field and then there's like a barrier across a road and um they have to stop and then the cops uh block everyone off and pull everyone out of the car and as we so often assume justice will be served this was where i saw that there was a golf bag full of golf clubs

rattling around in the back seat as um moreno was trying to uh or not moreno um uh manny was trying to because moreno's driving but yeah where Manny's trying to shoot the shotgun. But yeah, golf clubs. It's the name. Jim pulls Beamer out of the car. Why couldn't you just stay in Eureka instead of coming back to eat a bullet? Beamer's like, he's panting. He's clearly probably has the adrenaline and everything.

He's clearly, probably has the adrenaline and everything. And all he wants is for Jim to fill him in about what happened before the guy from Detective Digest gets there. Yes. And it's like, okay, old buddy. And then there's just this great shot as Jim turns away from Beamer. Beamer's wiping the sweat off of his face while Jim is pinching the bridge of his nose. Like, oh. Yes.

So we get the two of them, like, in the same it's i think we freeze frame on that for a second it's it's very good and then we have our final scene back in the trailer jim rocky and beamer um beamer's is reclaiming all the equipment uh it's all there except for that vest never showed up but beamer apparently called uh scotland yard in london illinois got jim off the hook he's gonna handle paying for it he'll take all the equipment to use it he leaves the trailer rocky doesn't like jim hanging around with that guy and jim says he's not so bad once you know how to handle him i feel like this is a little insight into how jim and angel are friends right like just like like yeah after a while jim can warm together and then our our friend the lawyer

ramirez then makes an appearance with uh who i can only refer to as a gorilla because jim has not been able to pay him back the cash they're taking his appliances starting with the tv beamer comes back in he's aghast that someone's taking jim's television is this that guy ramirez you were telling me about i thought you said you're gonna flatten his arches beamer lay off can i help you with that pal huh hey jim guys like us don't have to stand for this kind of thing look beamer i told you i know all about you you know gotcha you bleed people right I don't know what it means, but it sounds really gross. It's a great line. I mean, I suspect it's just that he's scary, right? Like, but yeah, no, it's great.

It's great. Ramirez just kind of chuckles and then says to his gorilla ice this guy so he winds up and then he spins and as his fist approaches jim he shouts no i'm rockford it's a wonderful ending so we freeze frame as jim is punched by the gorilla across the face and his his arms fly out to the sides, freeze frame end of episode, happy beginning to season four. Uh,

it was good. It was good. So it was a fun episode. I really enjoyed the romp. good comedic moments. Uh, you know, the mystery is not a mystery to us

there's a mystery in there which is who is it that took a shot at Beamer but that doesn't happen till like almost halfway through the episode and I don't think anyone is invested in the answer to that it's kind of like any of them could have

been it's fine I guess because we saw the cab stuff in the first scene it's kind of like any of them could have been. It's fine. I guess because we saw the cab stuff in the first scene, it's kind of like, eh, it's probably who it is, right? Right. It's probably the first person you see. Because we had that screen time. Yeah. But the fun of the episode is, yeah, is really just kind of like watching them bounce off each other, seeing Jim get frustrated and then turn his frustration into something productive.

Once he realizes that Beamer like can't get, he can't warn Beamer off. So he has to, he has to subsume him into the, the story somehow. Um, I feel like it makes Jim really flex some creative muscles, which is fun to watch.

Um, bad for Jim's pocketbook. No, definitely. Like, uh, I, one of the things that I kind of love about this episode is that nothing happens to get Jim out of the debt he got himself into. Like there's nothing magical that sets everything to right. Jim just owes that money.

And he's probably out quite a bit of other money. Like, yeah, Beamer is covering the costs of all the random equipment and stuff. But Beamer charged so much on his cards. Right. And trashed his car. Trashed his car. Yeah. I think that this episode is just a big setback for Jim money-wise, which I like.

We'll see how he recovers yeah exactly unfortunately i don't think we get to see any more valentino i think this is his yeah done but it was nice to see jim have a have a uh cat buddy to hang out with when he when he wants um but yeah well uh i think we'll go ahead and leave it there it's a good i feel like it is a kind of, it is a fun welcome back to the show kind of episode where like you get a lot of what Jim's about, but also it kind of doesn't feel like it needs to tell you what Jim's about. Like, it's like, if you're watching this, it's the fourth season. You probably kind of know what you're getting yourself into. So like, yes, here's how we're going to have fun this year, which is kind of nice. yourself into so like yes here's how we're gonna have fun this year which is kind of nice that all said i think i'm ready to go run up some bar tabs on your charge card that i might what

so until next time when we talk about another episode of the rockford files