Two Hundred A Day - Episode 103: Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs

Episode Date: May 15, 2022

Nathan and Eppy take on a stand-out double-length episode in S2E6 Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs. Lauren Bacall guest stars as a Kendall, a woman mysteriously marked for death. After a chance encounter at a restaurant, her friend and patron Princess Irene Rachevsky hires Jim to find out who's trying to kill Kendall. The investigation leads from yacht parties to hotel rooftops to organized crime and back, all while we get to enjoy Garner and Bacall's on-screen chemistry. One of the more memorable late-season episodes, this one gave us a lot to enjoy and discuss! 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) * Greggy, 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

This is Betty Fresnel. I don't know who to call, but I can't reach my foodaholics partner. I'm at Vito's on my second pizza with sausage and mushroom. Jim, come and get me. 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 Ravishaw. And we're back again with a big one. Epi, this was your pick. What episode are we talking about this time?

We are going to talk about Lions, Tigers, Monkeys, and Dogs. That's the title of a single episode. It's not four separate episodes. I chose this one because Lauren Bacall's in it. I mean, we've talked previously.

We've done 100 episodes. We're on the other half of the Rockford Files Hill. We're going to start running out of reasons to choose episodes other than we haven't done that episode yet, which doesn't mean that these are bad episodes or anything like that. It's just it's hard to come up with a reason for an episode right yeah so so who's in it is as good as any yeah this is one that i definitely have kind of been pushing on like when i've been making a pick been like for the combination of i remember really liking it so i wanted to be like ready to do it. And also it is a two hour episode.

That's the fortunate thing is that I am a bit of a dummy head and didn't pay attention to the length of the episode when I suggested it. And so you were like, Hey, that's a, I'm comfortable doing that. It's a two hour. I don't think I would have picked it if it was a two hour one,

but because I did pick it, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. The fact that you picked it made me go, okay, I'm ready. Yeah. So it, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. The fact that you picked it made me go, okay, I'm ready.

Yeah, so it's a double episode. So it aired in a two-hour slot. The runtime is like an hour 36 or something like that. Yeah. And then, so it's one of those episodes where it's conceived of and shot as a single episode. It originally aired as a two-hour episode, and then it was subsequently split into two episodes for syndication um so it is one of those where the imdb entry is a single entry

but depending on where you are looking it the the length of the sixth season has different numbers of episodes in it depending on whether so this is season six episode episode two. Sometimes it is episode two and three if it's tracking the syndicated version. I honestly, maybe you noticed it, but I could not really tell where the divide would be. So I guessed based on the runtime. I had a hard time finding just like a source of the information. So what I ended up doing was looking at the, um, IMDb TV episodes because those are the syndicated version. So I scrubbed to the end to see where the episode break was.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's not in like a weird place, but it did slightly surprise me where it was. So maybe I'll, I'll call it out when we get to it and you can tell me what you think. Yeah.

I definitely have, have a positive memory of this one. I remember thinking that Lauren Bacall was just fantastic yeah i didn't remember the story really uh and i had a strong memory of the first scene and the last scene but i did not really remember much of what was in the middle so it was so it was fun to sit down and watch kind of re-experience it yeah yeah i actually did not have a strong memory of this one which which was also weird but um i really enjoyed it uh i mean we'll get into it obviously um there are some parts of it where i'm like i actually don't know what what this is or what's happening uh and maybe we can work that out together yeah when i say i

remember the first and last scene i remember the visuals but i i didn't remember the like plot like i didn't remember the resolution that's in the last scene but i remember but the visual of it was very strong in my memory for some reason so this is a long one um with a pretty pretty good amount of stuff to chew on i think so we'll keep the prelims pretty brief. This is directed by William Ward. We still have about eight of his 26 episodes to go. So maybe that could be one organizing principle. Maybe we'll finish out the,

the ward episodes. Yeah. This one is written by juanita bartlett which is always a pleasure um and i think has a good strong feel to it of a like of a bartlett episode seeing her that she had written it was the other thing that put me over the top to recommending this one like i was like oh uh lauren bacall that'll be fun i'd like to see lauren bacall in the rock group files and then i, oh, Juanita Bartlett wrote it. Okay, yeah, I'm in. Not that I needed

arm twisting, but... But, like, that's a good sign. Yeah. Yeah. There's, I think we've, we probably mentioned that, I just think it's a theme. Like, I think, I just think it's a strong theme in the episodes she's written. Her episodes tend to have these well-drawn female characters. Yeah. Right? And this

is a good example of that um so obviously you know lindy at bartlett we've talked about her before she was a big part of the show um coming up from being in a you know essentially an assistant um to to garner to uh assistant producing producing writing you know all the all the greats huge influence but for whatever reason i was like oh how many of these have we done because she has like 30 writing credits or something yeah and they're split between teleplay credits writing credits and a couple story buys yeah but i was just looking at her writing credits not the teleplays uh and we still have like five or six of those to go oh but um which is exciting but i was like wow this is really like a greatest hits

list oh yeah so let me i'm not going to read all of them but just the ones that i noted from ones that we talk about all the time her episodes include but are not limited to counter gambit the farnsworth stratagem so help me god hotel of fear the paper palace Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job. So like, yeah, great episodes and also a lot of the con game episodes. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So I don't really have more about that. I just noted it on this pass and I was like, these are, yeah.

At some point, maybe we'll do an assessment of like the writing. Just like, I don't know. What is the body of work of we'll do our star-studded juanita bartlett spectacular yeah something like that but like that's a it is a strong list uh and that's leaving off a couple that i was like yeah that was also a good episode but you too can go to imdb and look at her credits but yeah uh so i was i was feeling good going into this one so because we were watching the unsyndicated version we only get the one answering machine message oh yeah so yeah there would have been two huh and we also only get the

one preview montage right uh so when i checked the syndicated one, there is a different, you know, there is another answering machine message for the second episode. And they also, I don't remember if it's totally different, but I think they essentially replay the preview montage, but they just don't include a couple of the things that only happen in the first one. Yeah, I was trying to think of what happened and whether it be in one or the other. Yeah, I was trying to think of what happened and whether it be in one or the other. Yeah, I don't I don't remember. It might be exactly the same. But again, for syndication, the at the end of the first half, there's a James Garner voiceover next time on the Rockford Files. And then at the beginning of the second half, there's a preview montage, the credits and then another montage of the events of the first.

another montage of the events of the first half so i just say that all here just to not say it again later but also we just have i don't think there's any distinctive difference in what they choose to highlight with the preview montage in syndication but yeah here we have a pretty compelling set of brief very brief scenes in our montage i mean like it's largely highlighting that you were going to get some good back and forth banter between jim and kendall uh who's um lauren mccall's character and uh the uh like good snappy banter going back and forth um i think the one thing that i pointed out uh was this moment where Jim's like, I'm middle America, which I feel like is going to sort of point at our class issues that are going to be involved in what's going on here.

And then just a classic way to end a preview montage. I don't know why it stood out on this one, because I think they've done this with almost all of them. It's just with the squealing of tires and an orchestra hit. So you just like, you get the momentum, right? Like they're shoving you into the episode at the very end. After the phrase, I think someone's trying to kill her. Right, yes.

Yeah, the class issues in this one are really pretty interesting. Yeah. I think, you know, we'll probably talk about that as it comes up, but it's of a mode and yet distinct from other class dynamics that jim and a love interest have had in the past 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, Paul Townend, who recommends Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color, at fruitloopspod.com, Shane Liebling, check out Roll4Your.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 Greggy.

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 Thermoware, Bill Anderson, at Billand88, Again, because this is a longer one, Check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. Again, because this is a longer one, I'll try to hit the high points as we go. And then please call out anything that you want to talk about in more detail, because we could spend all day with the great dialogue. This one's an eminently quotable not quotable necessarily like quippy but like there's a lot like i i transcribed a lot of back and forth dialogue in my notes and watch the episode that will be something we'll need to uh keep an eye on as we go

however the beginning of the episode oh yeah is both super fun and also and also really establishing a lot of the baseline. We get a high-class version of the theme, which I think is very important. Yeah, we get the orchestral version of the score, is how I noted it. And an animated title sequence, which

is possibly the only time it's in the show. I don't remember it happening in other episodes we've seen. I made a note of it and also it's going to bring up one of my underlying questions about this entire thing, which maybe we can put to rest. I don't know. We'll find out. This is all of a piece with

framing Lauren Bacall as the star of this episode. Right? Because the animated titles, the animated titles, the orchestral score, this is all very Golden Age of Hollywood-esque interpretation of the standard Rockford Files intro. And specifically the animation of the titles is that we have individual words appear on the screen

with specific people and then kind of jiggle and fly up to the top to where they start to where they finally spell out the the title so we start with lions and there's kind of like an older distinguished man and his group getting out of like a very expensive but like tasteful you know car this is all the valet area in front of this fancy restaurant yeah and then we have tigers and there's kind of just like a slick looking but basically like middle-aged normal guy and his group or his his date or whatever yeah and then monkeys and it's an open top uh like convertible with a guy with his tie askew and his date and they're laughing and they jump out over

the side and clearly of a more raucous kind of variety and then of course we get and dogs as the firebird drives up and jim gets out we have our full title spelled out for us with the you know visual of exactly how this is all going to apply to the, to the scene as we go forward. So, so my question that comes out of this, uh, later on,

we're going to get the inside scoop on what lions, monkeys, and dogs are. I just don't know what tigers are. So there's a reference of a specific person who's a tiger in that conversation. Is there? Okay.

I must have missed it then. Yeah. All right. Well, when we get to it as we say here um 200 today i mean i think it's pretty like my read just from how it's framed with the credits is like old money old money new money celebrity yeah everyone else yeah or like old money like professional like rich but not famous yeah and then just famous and probably rich and then not rich or famous yeah uh that that was my take again solely from the opening credits like

well from the opening credits and then when we get the distinction later exactly yeah um so jim's on a date i don't remember if we get her name i don don't know. Let me check IMDb real quick. Which is a shame. So Jim's on a date. His date is excited to like celebrity spot at this very fancy restaurant. The gag throughout the first, and by gag, I guess I mean drama,

throughout the first part of this scene is that Jim has made a reservation and the maitre d' at the restaurant is bending over backwards for everyone else but Jim, well he's still going to have to wait. He tells them to wait in the bar for 20 minutes before their table's ready. This is after the monkey from

our credits has kind of bowled his way in and been like, oh so sorry but me and he doesn't even know his date's name. Yeah. You know, we just decided we'd swing by you can hook us up right my kind of thing and the maitre d of course ushers them to a table um jim is just trying to make things right he says i see you have tables well yes but i have reservations yeah and

one of them is mine yes and that is when the party of um princess irene rochefsky uh which includes kendall uh kendall warren uh lauren bacall princess irene is played by dana winter who is low-key also excellent in this episode yeah we'll talk about her a little more later and they have a whole party with them um but they appear they also don't have a reservation um the maitre d's like i'll seat you myself and jim intervenes again and i like how he very specifically says i'm not trying to ruin your night yeah however i do have a reservation and i was for eight o'clock and if i wanted to sit the bar for 20 minutes i would have shown up 20 minutes ago yeah like his his handling of this is really good and And I think puts him in this.

Well, they're very careful to have Jim's date. Like, do you know who this man is? He's a famous private eye. Right, right. Yeah, you may not know him, but he's a prominent private investigator. Yeah, and this interaction is going to put him in the middle of everything that's going to happen next, which is great. Yeah.

The princess says she wouldn't feel comfortable waiting for a table while Mr. Rockford has to wait or wouldn't feel comfortable getting a table while Mr. Rockford has to wait. And so the maitre d' takes that as intended. That is servicing us, seating this man. So he does seat Rockford and his date at the table next to the kitchen. Yes. Where the door from the kitchen hits Jim's chair every

time it opens. It's a good ongoing gag. I really enjoyed that. It's a good gag and it's also like, on the one hand, just move your chair to the other side of the table. But on the other hand, Jim's like, I was sat here. I'm already grumpy about it and I'm just going to let this be a thing

for me to be mad about like i'm gonna endure this indignity because i'm already mad whatever else transpires here we have our deepest sympathies for jim's date yes this is not gonna go well i know she yeah she's a trooper jim wants to send a thank you bottle of wine to the princess's table the princess drinks only chateau petris the 67 well that's fine but uh shall we have something from the fernando vineyards light full-bodied good nose on it huh the princess drinks only chateau petris it'll be a nice of pace. And then we cut from there to seeing the unopened bottle of wine that Jim sent to them while they're drinking the expensive wine. And so Jim's sore about that. He's having coffee with his date.

His date is saying that the food was so great. And like this restaurant actually lived up to expectations and you expect things not to be as good as they sound. But this was wonderful. And Jim's just grumbling. She specifically says, like, I'm having a really good time. Let it go. Just enjoy this. things not to be as good as they sound but this was wonderful and jim's just grumbling she specifically says like i'm having a really good time let it go just enjoy this this is this is really fun and then jim gets hit by the door again yeah and says we're not here we're in the kitchen yeah you can see one of the things i really like about this scene is that you can see that

jim can tell when he's wrong about something and you can see him pulling around to her side on it just as the door hits him like i don't know if like i'm reading too much into what's happening here but it feels very much like the timing on this is is magnificent i think uh like we're all expecting that door to hit him there's no surprise that the door hits him it's the fact that you you can see him be like, yeah, I've been kind of an ass. Let me relax and enjoy this. And then the door hits him. And then, yeah, it's great.

We get the rest of our credits overseeing some cars driving back to this hotel where the princess is staying. And we get a shot of what I note as a suspiciously goon looking guy chain smoking while he drives and then while he's clearly waiting.

We have some voiceover of Kendall and the princess kind of sniping at each other about like whether she should have left the hotel, whether she should have gone to dinner. We get the sense that they have this kind of contentious relationship for whatever reason though they also clearly spend time together we will find out like we know that we will find out more about all of these people because that's the show we're watching we recognize lauren we yes we definitely recognize lauren bacall you know star of of stage and screen um actually i don't know if she was on stage but star of screen uh i don't yeah i don't know i don't know what you say she's an iconic iconic mid-century movie star and there's this

this thing cutting with the guy with the cigarette right that's going on with this that creates uh attention in the scene there's a thing we'll talk Well, okay. I don't think he finishes his cigarettes as he's smoking them. So there's this sort of nervous energy going on. And I read something into that that we'll talk about a little later. But all of that kind of makes this argument and hurt. Like she opens the door and it feels dangerous. I was thinking about this actually kind of mostly in terms of the last scene, but I think it applies to a lot of it. This is a heavy vibes episode.

There's a lot of vibe built up to all these little choices and all these little ways that things are staged and all the acting and, you know, everything. Between the voiceover of them sniping, the shots of this goon and his nervous smoking it feels like something is about to happen um and what in fact does happen is that kendall so she's going to take the wine that they that jim sent to their table and they never drank she's going to take it and then the the princess is like irene kendall calls her reeney i think yeah i've never heard that version of irene but it works whatever and i think we'll kind of go back and forth with princess or irene depending on the context um i mean rock me would call her princess but she um she won't let kendall take the wine because

it was sent to me uh yeah so it's another little thing where they're kind of facing off and kendall is the one like irene left the wine in the restaurant kendall's the one who picked it up on the way out yeah yeah so she gets out and then as she gets out of the car in front of the hotel this other car shoots from out of nowhere and like tries to run her down and she dives out of the way and it's very chaotic and there's yelling and people run over to her and she's okay she She was not hit. She just broke the heel of her shoe. I just forgot there were so many jackass drivers in California. So this is, uh,

this didn't actually click in my head until much later in the episode, but, uh, there's a little bit going on here that she has returned to California from living life large elsewhere and has looked down on California a little bit. And that shows up a couple of times, um, but mainly at the end. And, uh, it, it, it didn't strike me as I was watching it until, uh, after the whole episode was over and I was like, Oh, that's something that's, that's being told to us. Yeah, for sure. So we crossfade to jim's trailer this is an excellent food episode oh yeah

mostly in context of jim and his poor stomach yes what we specifically come to is rocky is cutting out steak and chicken teriyaki coupons out of the newspaper but jim's not really interested uh the food at that restaurant had sauce with everything even the coffee was too rich for him i think this is the first bit where we see him uh drinking uh like taking the alka-seltzer right yeah so there's two things about this that one we're gonna watch the alka-seltzer uh mount. Yeah, escalate. So he just takes one this time, but we're gonna do the one, two, three. And then the other is

that he's got a gallon jug of water, and I don't know what's happening there. Like, is Jim's tap water not work? Or is this a thing that in the 70s, people would get distilled water if their stomach wasn't doing well or anything like that i don't know but i he does it each time and so it kind

of stands out to me a little bit that's his special upset tummy water yeah that's what i was wondering is like um i mean like i can kind of understand if you're getting an upset tummy and you might think like who knows about the water i'm getting from the tap here that's coming out of the parking lot near the beach that you know yeah i've never thought about it before but does he just have to like hook up a garden hose to the trailer to get like where does i mean obviously trailers have to look up for like plumbing and stuff, but yeah, I wonder. Well, Jim, he is off for it for a gig. He doesn't know how long it's going to take.

And he drops that princess for Chesky has a job for him. And Rocky is so impressed. Yeah. Oh man. Yes. So we're going to get a lot of Rocky being extremely overawed at the idea of Jim working for a princess. And then we have a wonderful gag here where Jim goes to, you know, he's going to leave. He opens the door, an angel standing right there in the doorway in his leather jacket coming right in.

He goes directly to the fridge as Jim goes, come in. Want a beer? And he goes like, oh, you gotim goes oh come in want a beer and he goes like oh you got something else as he's opening jim's beer but angel's seeing jimmy because he has a tip on a race he has some someone he knows is working working at the track or something he's saying it's a sure thing there is such a thing as protocol sonny now that lady ain't about to stand around cooling their heels while you're wasting time making a bunch of sucker bets sucker bets would i bring you a sucker bet you'd bring me a dead rat in your teeth if you thought there was 20 bucks in it for you now get out of my way i'm leaving i am late now promptness is the courtesy of kings so we're getting the the first uh bit of

this subplot of angel and his and his involving ponies, which we'll come back. Yes. And in service of that, Jim is stepping out the door. Rocky is almost irate that Jim is making this princess wait. Like, what is Jim's problem? Right. And so Jim says, she's just another princess. And then Angel is like, princess? Yes.

He is extremely interested. But Jim leaves before he can get more information. But Angel does try to pump Rocky for some information. And Rocky's like, you better not think about it, Angel. I love this scene because of the three different ways they each react to the fact that she's a princess right like rocky knows nothing about the situation and is over the moon that his son knows a princess jim couldn't care one way or the other it's a client like it's just a client uh and angel clearly uh dollar signs yeah his eyes yeah his wheels are immediately turning

yeah i also really love uh angel's familiarity with rocky in this scene and like he just is unaware that rocky does not like him we we low-key get some good Angel and Rocky without Jim, and also Angel and Dennis without Jim in this one, which is fun. We have accordion back in the soundtrack. By back, I mean accordion in the soundtrack. Specifically kind of like a, we're going to Paris kind of sound as Jim goes to this fancy hotel to see Princess Irene, Princess Rachevsky. And she immediately, I think, solves whatever lingering problems he might have with her, right? Yeah. You know, she invites him in.

She immediately says that she neglected to thank him for the wine and she's like will you share it with me and this i like this is kind of subtle i think but he says well the maitre d told me that you only drink the you know whatever the expensive wine and she says huh well he would say that it's the most expensive one on the menu but she doesn't say yes i only drink like yeah i think she also that is also pretty much what she drinks but she doesn't say yes i only drink like yeah i think she also that is also pretty much what she drinks but she is willing to open this wine and she pours one for jim it's nice there's a thing we're getting here uh with this and the earlier scene with kendall and and this will evolve as the as the episode goes these two women despite what we expect of them from their outward

class signifiers uh these two women know the value of a dollar, uh, which is weird and not like, like this is the most bizarre thing, but, um, it, it both endears them to Jim,

uh, but also is, is a hint at what's to come. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that.

So now that Jim is at his ease, she lays out her problem, uh, which she has a suspicion point i hadn't thought about that so now that jim is at his ease she lays out her problem uh which she has a suspicion and she can't go to the police on just a suspicion but she thinks that someone is trying to kill her friend kendall kendall warren is a very special friend who will stand up to her when she needs to but when the fighting is over their relationship is still you know just as strong as ever yeah I think Jim says something like, well, that's, you know, that's vanishingly rare. Kendall feels like she's been being watched. She was this almost written down by this car. And that seems very deliberate.

Jim asks if she has any enemies, none that that Irene knows of. But she does want Jim just to look into it and see what he can find out. Obviously, knowing that he's a private investigator because of their encounter the previous evening. he knows of but she does want jim just to look into it and see what he can find out obviously knowing that he's a private investigator because of their encounter the previous evening and he can start this afternoon at a party thrown by blake sternlight does he have a relationship with kendall oh he doesn't have relationships he has parties and we go to a fancy masquerade party on a boat. We, again, get ominous vibes right from the beginning as we see the, like, binocular cut in of someone spying. And then we see that it is our chain smoker in a car on, like, in a parking lot far away watching the arriving cars.

And again, I don't think he's finishing these cigarettes. He's fiddling with them in the ashtray there's a he has a nervous energy about him um and i will i will elaborate on that later jim so jim attends with princess irene and her her bow um his name is freddy i believe freddy danzig fred Danzig, which is he is the least Danzig. Yeah. Like if you wanted someone the opposite of Danzig and then named him Freddie that would be this guy. He doesn't really have a whole lot to do

with anything until kind of the end of the episode, but he he's in orbit. So they're all in costume and Jim specifically is in a like graduation cap and gown. Okay. Yeah. Seems about right.

We cut back to our goon who pulls a switchblade from under the floor mat of his car. And then as he gets out of the car, we see he's wearing like a brown like monk robe. He's going as a Jedi. Yes. We got a couple just glimpses of his face i think in the first little montage um from here on we just have the ominous shots of his bike kind of body as he's moving through the the crowd on the boat uh kendall is talking to the their host uh bl, and a man named Gus Fairfield. And we get a little bit of background

from Jim and Princess Irene talking. She specifically says that Gus is a very appropriate Marquis de Sade in this costume. And that she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. We get part of Kendall and Gus's conversation

from just the camera giving it to us a little bit and then we see jim kind of moving in the background um where they're kind of bantering and then gus mentions uh a lawsuit that the princess has filed against him and kendall's like i'm not going to discuss that yeah. Jim appears with champagne, offers her a glass. She says no thanks. She wants to go get some air. And so she leaves and Jim is standing there awkwardly holding these two glasses of wine where he clearly had kind of a plan. During this whole time, we're getting running commentary from Blake about all the guests' costumes.

Some criticism, some celebration, whatever he's he's robin hood um he's upset that uh gus hasn't mentioned it right even after he had already told gus that his costume was good like come on and it's not just that it's you know it's not just his costume it's part of a you know a theme he says baby is here as friar tuck see there he is and then he points and we see the friar robe and then the person looks kind of out of their hood he's like oh that's not baby and that's our goon um this is about when jim hands them each a glass of wine that he's just been holding there you know they kind of are like we don't know who you are thanks like you must be one of the staff or something it's one of the dogs yeah uh and he uh follows our our friar um upstairs

to the main deck of this boat we slide into another ominous set of shots like we've been going from these very standard people are talking shots into these, you know, up from below, not seeing anyone's faces, uh, shots as Jim follows this, this man and he's moving towards Kendall. She's standing at the rail, looking out over the water. And then we see him palm this knife. This is all with the diegetic party music and then jim sees the knife and tackles him and yells you know yells out kendall and takes him down to the to the deck before he can do anything a couple other guests come over to help but he struggles free and runs and then jumps overboard to escape from being detained he doesn't uh you don't witness him jumping overboard you witness jim because

there's this moment during this whole thing where i'm like this is more brazen than i expected at all like this broad daylight just stabbing on a boat full of people like sure you're in costume but like what's your plan yeah what's your plan and then like uh jim at some point chasing him comes up to a railing and there's you know the the gurgling water beneath where it's clear that he's jumped down i think we heard the splash like we heard a splash we heard someone go like someone went overboard yeah yeah yeah but it's very like like what is going on here like because the first attempt could have just been a hit and run but this is murder this this isn't an accident i think that's

giving like a good that's it's setting up this really strong dissonance like i think we as audience were like clearly this is the murder like he was going, that was the plan. In our next scene, the princess is upset. Um, Kendall is upset that Jim told Irene. Yes. That someone tried to kill her. And he's like,

oh, the police are going to want to question everyone anyway. Blake is there. And he goes, oh, great. There goes my party. Yeah.

All right, Blake, give it a rest. But Kendall says that, uh that uh oh he wasn't after my life he was after this and she has this giant pin that's covered in diamonds and it's like it's worth 75 it was worth what 75 or 80 000 10 years ago i guess so the dissonance that i'm talking about is i think we see that for some reason kendall is very invested in not believing that someone is trying to kill her yes exactly and jim is obviously jim is on board now like completely like yeah and jim's

like i saw that that was attempted murder like you don't pull a switchblade on someone to like steal a pin yeah gus appears he asks what's going on irene doesn't want anyone to talk to him if anything appears in that paper of yours i'll know the source and he he mentions uh his first amendment rights and how you know they i guess in europe they you know you don't care about such things and she says that he has a very odd interpretation of First Amendment rights. Everyone kind of leaves. Princess is still upset. Blake and Gus are going back into the party, and it leaves Kendall and Jim alone,

and she finally has an opportunity to thank him. So I went back and noted where this was because of the next scene, but in the background, hear blake go hey everyone gus has a great new restaurant to show us yeah i remember that one of the the reasons why that stuck in my head is that like i i had a job where i had a boss who was a millionaire filthy rich just a filthy rich person must be nice yeah exactly uh and part of this wasn't my part of the job but part of this company that he owned or he and his wife owned was a sign company they did billboards and whatnot and he wanted to go to lunch and he was like hey guys to the crew like let's go let's go grab some lunch

and he gets in a sign truck with like this giant ladder on the back of it and backed it out onto a busy highway and it just like a another semi going by just clips it and he just keeps like the corrugated side of the semi hitting this ladder making this noise as it's just crumbling and just deteriorating so there's an accident right like this nobody's hurt or anything like that the semi pulls over to the side of the book my boss jumps out of the truck gets in his car and just goes to the restaurant rich people don't understand anything they just don't they just don't understand so when that line came out i was like yeah no these are rich people they don't an attempted murder you have to stick you can't just go uh but everyone's going out to eat.

Yeah. Kendall can't face going back to the party. And so Jim asks if she'd be interested in a green corn tamale and refrieds with a Mexican beer. Jimbo with the people's diet. I love it. Strictly paper napkins, of course. Yes. I love it. isn't as detached as the rest of these Richie Riches. She is the one who, when they left the restaurant before, went back and grabbed the wine and nodded to Jim.

Right, right. Thank you. So there's a thing going on here that, again, I think it's a class thing. And this seems to fulfill it. And she, this is, I mean, we're not going to go through all of it, but what a wonderful, flirty moment. This is a wonderful idea. Do you often have wonderful ideas? All the time.

It's just great. Yeah. Yeah, this is probably a good time to talk about them. So the next the next scene is driving the Firebird and we get a little more of her story. driving the firebird and we get a little more of her story she was originally from the area the simi valley i think but she doesn't recognize the place everything has changed there's no landmarks and and you know jim is like oh i didn't know you were from you know you're from from out here and so they have some banter it's kind of flirty she used to go to this one place it started with l something and he's like they all start with l something uh but it had a chili relleno that would take the top of your head off and he makes

some mention of like well you know oh you like spicy well hopefully this place is spicy enough for you or something and she asked him why he keeps half apologizing for where they're going and that kind of hits him yeah you know i guess i might be a little intimidated and she says oh by me and then she laughs and laughs uh so i think this is kind of giving us that jim's read was right on kind of her personality and what she might be interested in uh and it also gives us our first real look at the james garner lauren bacall chemistry which is just exquisite yeah no this is good stuff yeah i guess there was a rumor at the time that they were dating oh really apparently i believe the room i i can believe that there would be a rumor yeah i guess there was like a

brief there was a brief period of time where james garner and his wife separated and then they got back together and it was like around this time and he had done a movie I forget if it was a tv movie or a movie movie with Lauren Bacall that also came out this year and then they also did this episode so I guess there was some rumor that they were yeah seeing each other but they both uh denied that that was the case um though Garner did has said in interviews that like she's wonderful to work with they've had so much fun together like all that stuff um but yeah they they're super fun to watch and i think lauren mccall in particular just seems so natural and it's not like i have a

lot to compare her to especially at this period because you know you think of kind of like stuff with like humphrey bogart and stuff like you know like yeah yeah the older stuff older stuff um because she's a little older here she's older than garner by a couple years um and i think that is i wouldn't say played up but it's not played down yeah um it's again very natural uh just her presentation in the in this show and yeah she i mean i guess this is a good actor but like she doesn't seem like she's acting yeah yeah it's a very natural thing going on here okay like i my note on this is a little bit later on but this this is where i start to wonder this is the romantic comedy where eventually he's got to reveal to her that he's been hired to hang out with her

right like uh and then and then she's upset with him or whatever and we actually do get those beats where eventually he's got to reveal to her that he's been hired to hang out with her. Right. Like, uh, and then, and then she's upset with him or whatever. And we actually do get those beats, but they're not, they're not the point of the story. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, this chemistry is worth the tick, the price of admission to this episode alone. So yes. Yeah. And in addition, there are a lot of very strong points to the episode. Yeah,

yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The next bit here is that they're going to this place the uh speaking of other strong points other strong points the bah cantina jim says it was kind of a chance find when he was in this area on like a repo job um it's kind of off the beaten track whatever whatever as he's saying this i think

we're seeing that there's a lot of people at this restaurant and i'm like oh okay and then they go in and jim sees the i guess the owner max and goes up as like hey max and max is surprised to see him you know glad to see him but oh no they don't have a reservation so he can't sit them it's like what do you mean just give us a table and send out a waitress. I think it'll all fall into place. But Jim does not realize that this has become an it spot behind his back. Yeah. And then Gus and the whole party from the boat, they come roaring in as this was the new restaurant that Gus had to show

everyone. Yeah. And we get a great little bit of voiceover as everyone's coming in where someone's like, it's not dreary at all i thought was funny gus only discovered this place three weeks ago uh and invites kendall and jim to join their parties if they don't have a reservation but he can strongly recommend the green corn tamales yes and then we have a wonderful establishing down shot of the plate with

the beans on one side the rice on the other the tamale smothered in sauce in the middle magnifique or magnifico i suppose i should say yeah jim of course is grumpy um this was his thing and it's been taken away right uh but what what he says when called out by Kendall is that he can't relate to these people. Like he's at the table with them. But like, what is he supposed to talk to these people about? He feels ridiculous, kind of just in their company. And Kendall asks him, like, including, you know, do you feel ridiculous with the princess? Kendall says that, again again they have a special relationship

they're good friends irene has seen kendall through two bad marriages a case of shingles and more mistakes than she cares to remember we do see jim taking bites of his tamale during this scene so you know it's good and this is also where we get to the stuff of the middle america stuff from the preview montage why is it that middle america can't quite deal with titles i'm middle america stars and stripes forever all right maybe titles seem well i don't want to say phony but they seem a little old world to me i don't think so i think they impress you oh brother there's a story about one of the guys at the table who's a something baron, something, something, something. And then Kendall reveals that while that's all true, he bought his title.

And Jim's like, what? Like $200,000 or something. But that seems to legitimately make Jim feel better. He's just a regular guy with money. And somehow that's qualitatively different from someone who has a hereditary title. Yeah. Some sort of birthright thing or,

or what have you through this, this conversation. We also learned that this lawsuit deal is that Gus libeled Irene in his paper. And so she's suing him for everything he's got. And it's pretty, pretty serious case. And Gus has been trying to get

kendall to like spill to him about it and she's not gonna do it but that doesn't mean that they can't take him up on his offer to sit down and eat because otherwise they wouldn't have gotten that table it's like class interest wins out over the personal um the personal difficulties uh jim does do he does take bites of tamale, but I noticed that he does a lot of pushing food around his plate while this is happening. Again, we've got this fun thing happening where each time

he goes to a restaurant, he's clearly uncomfortable in the situation. They have the reservation gag each time. The first time he made a reservation, it didn't matter. The second time, he should have made a reservation, he should have known better. And yeah,

I really enjoyed that. And, and yeah, we get a lot of good, good stuff about the different worlds here. Like what, what, what it's the world that Kendall's coming from.

Jim doesn't quite understand yet, but he's learning. And he has a knee jerk, knee jerk response to be like both dismissive and uh i don't know contemptuous a little bit yeah yeah in the way that i think we would come to expect in the kind of like middle class i work for a living yeah kind of attitude and there's that lovely and i'm not entirely sure what's meant by this but when she's like middle america because you think i'm middle america and i'm not entirely sure what's meant by this, but when she's like middle American,

he goes, you think I'm middle America. And I don't know like what their two definitions of it are. Uh, that's, that's causing this. I think that's interesting because it's, I mean,

I think you're right that they're not quite talking about the same thing. Yeah. And so this is just me reading into it from the characters as established. But I think when Kendall says middle America, she means middle class. Yeah. jim says middle america he means like someone from the midwest yeah i think that might be what's up and i think those are slightly different things he's like yeah i'm not i'm not middle america like i'm a self-employed detective in california that is not middle america i live in malibu right right yeah but she but i think she's saying like this is that's a very middle class reaction for an american or rather

a an american who is middle class i expect that reaction from you like of this knee-jerk like like uncomfortable you're uncomfortable because you're saying well you're not better than me but you kind of feel like they're better than you yeah so one of the things that it it does is it shows uh that kendall's experience well i mean again it reminds us that she's not she's not lived here for a long time she's been elsewhere from a distance all americans are middle you know what I mean? It's the, you know. We cap this off with an exchange where Jim's dropping her off at the hotel. She asks him if he wants to come up for a nightcap. Not tonight, but asks if she

would like to do this again sometime or would you be willing to get dinner again with me sometime or something like that. And she says, willing? I insist. Yeah, second date I insist. Yeah. Second date. Nothing but trouble. Back at the trailer,

Rocky's sleeping on the couch, but he says he just dropped off because the phone's been ringing off the hook because the princess has been calling. So Jim had mentioned sometime in the last couple scenes that the tamales were not as good as they used to be. Yeah. And so as rocky is telling him about the phone jim is dropping two alka-seltzers in his cup with his

distilled water the princess wants jim to call him call her back right away no matter how late and so rock rocky while waiting for jim to soothe stomach, also wants to know what the princess is like. Uh, did she have on anything special? What do you mean special? Well, you know, something special. Something that, well... Like a crown. This is probably one of the most adorable things that Rocky's ever done,

where he's fishing to hear about the princess's crown. This is all he really wants to know, is he wants to find out about her tiara, crown, or whatever, and he is... Giddy as a proverbial schoolboy. Oh, that's great. Is she wearing anything special? What do you mean special?

You know know like special special yeah like like a crown um jim does call her uh she's sure it wasn't a robbery she wants to know that jim is trying to find the man that attacked kendall and i did note that you in the scene, she is framed as just looking awful. Like she looks exhausted. Yeah. She looks like she's been up all night and is very worried. All right.

Our next day, Kendall is bringing a picnic basket to Jim's. There's there's a lot here. Yeah. So the beats are he Jim is stepping out with his fishing pole. Kendall's driving up an extremely fancy car with her big picnic basket. He is happy to see her, but it's kind of a bad time because he has plans. They doesn't know how long they're going to take. And he just finished a big breakfast.

So he's not ready for lunch. And she's like, well, we'll leave it in the fridge. And that's when Rocky yells out, you want any more flapjacks because he has more batter and they just had a big pancake breakfast um kendall loves to hear it uh she's very interested in flapjacks hasn't heard them called that called that since like she was you know like a girl or whatever and rocky is more than happy to to cook her up a short stack so jim comes back into the trailer and he and kendall kind of talk around rocky while he's making pancakes which is fantastic um he comes around to saying well you can't make plans because he's gonna be working trying to track down the as he says bozo from the boat she's in an interesting spot where i think she's kind of like she

apologizes for like pressing him on what he's doing. Cause like, okay, well that's not in my business that you're working, but she also is kind of like, but it is my business. Cause this guy did assault me. Yeah.

Um, but she does thank him for what he's doing and then asks him what he's going to do to, to possibly find this guy. And Jim has a great plan which is check out all the costume rental places because he had to get that monk's costume from somewhere as he's explaining he's taking an oreo out of the cookie jar and he uh yes takes a a bite into it as she offers to help him cut a few corners and they both smile. The Oreo, there's something about that

because he just talked about the big breakfast he had. You know what? Hoomps amongst us. Right, yeah. Hasn't just taken an Oreo from the cookie jar after a big breakfast. A little dessert Oreo. After your flapjacks.

I also like how, yes, he was planning to go and work and do this thing, but he was going fishing first. Yeah. Right. So that part of his day he does have to to not do. But then they Jim and Kendall run a con. Jim and Kendall run a con. Jim is at a costume rental place and is talking to the guy complaining about how nobody wants to do costume parties anymore. It used to be that that was their stock in trade, but now it's all Halloween and the rest of the year is just supplying movie studios.

Jim's kind of encouraging him on complaining. He's kind of implying that he's on on top of the party trends from europe yeah like they're really big in london and you know we're throwing a party for you know someone someone and he's interested in renting costumes and the guys we get the kind of logistical information that the company does like arranges the costumes so that there won't be duplicates like renting the costumes is like a full service like right everyone that goes to the party is going to get a costume from them right so you can make sure you're there's no two abraham lincoln's or whatever right right yeah i think this yeah specifically says like they need someone to do it or else

everyone is henry the eighth which is weird poll but okay kendall then storms in scolding our costumer oh yeah duplications at her party so she's the one who booked him to do the party on the boat like yeah legit so she is now dressing him down for allowing two monks or two friars to be at the party. You know, he says he only rented the one robe. It's on the books. She says, oh, wait, you wouldn't take a couple bucks to have a costume off the books just to ruin, you know, just ruin Blake's party,

which is the kind of extremely petty thing that kind of does make sense. But he says he's not the only rag seller in town. And she has a great, well, I'll remember that and looks at Jim and you should too. And he's kind of only rag seller in town. And she has a great, well, I'll remember that, and looks at Jim. And you should, too. And he's kind of like, you got a point. So this guy, not wanting to lose his potential customer, gets on the horn and starts calling the other costume shops.

And he'll find out who rented that second robe. This is wonderful. My notes here are like, wow, Kendall's really putting it. Was this the plan? And I was like, oh, this is wonderful. Um, my notes here are like, wow, Kendall's really putting it. Was this the plan? And I was like, Oh, this is the plan there. Yeah.

Yeah. They are 100%. Um, working together on this con. Yeah. And it, and it, and it executes to a T as we cut to Jim and Kendall walking out of a

warehouse with a name written down on a piece of paper. Uh, it's Richard, uh, something. I think I wrote it down later. It's not super important no but she doesn't recognize the name and she says that uh she'll make it up to her her costume guy

um by insisting that the next party that she's that he's going to be doing for her be a costume party yeah so he'll get hired to do another gig so jim is a little confused uh he basically thought she was just another rich person right but she's like so you're a professional party giver like what's going on and she says that no she's a professional survivor and we get her a bit of her situation i guess which is as she explains it she says that she's she's broke and she probably always will be but uh like irene will put her up in the hotel and he's like well you drove that nice car he's like well this friend lets me lets me borrow the car and yeah this friend flies me on the you know on first class and you know etc etc she so she's she's working favors for everything and he's like survivor huh

and she specifically says that surviving doesn't doesn't mean you have to be down in a fourth floor walk-up so we get a little bit more of a picture of her where again with it's an interesting lens on the class difference she she's running i don don't know, it's not running a con, but she's got a hustle. She's got a hustle, but it's kind of a, she's not rich in terms of money. Like she doesn't have money, right? She says she's broke.

But she operates at a very high level in a cashless economy. Yes. Yeah, she's rich in that that's the class that she wanders around in. At a very high level in a cashless economy. Yes. Right? Yeah. She's rich in that that's the class that she wanders around in, and everyone else just pays her way, and that works for her. Yeah. And we get some more little details about this. We never get some kind of sorted bullet point list, but she helps everyone do things. She does things for people. She enables them to do the thing they want so that they don't have to worry about it yeah and in return they hook her up

but it's like not an official thing she doesn't work for anyone uh and the fact that she knows all these different people is what makes her valuable to everyone else. So she gets to see it all. She gets to live the lifestyle, but she kind of doesn't have the, I guess the downside of having to do anything with that money. Like she doesn't, she's not responsible for anything either. Yeah.

So that's kind of the hustle. So Jim is trying to track down this guy, Richard, who rented the robe. He goes to a bar where he manages to talk to a woman who looks like she's she's doing some bookkeeping um and he claims that he's from the costume company and he just wants to find out when they're going to get their specific robe back yeah yeah and so she says that yeah richie uh yeah she he had that for some lodge thing um and he came home

and soaking wet And then she's like, but it was just water It didn't shrink or anything But Jim was just looking for the confirmation Yeah, yeah It's really academic now I mean, we have a customer for the robe It's our only genuine cappuccino

I thought maybe if he was through with it I'd pick it up But hey, I'll give Mr. Robinson Or one of the dupes Maybe a Franciscan. Yeah, I mean, who's going to know the difference? Thank you for your time. Sure.

It's a Rockford goodbye. Yeah. Once he gets the information, he's like, oh, no, actually, I didn't. Don't worry about it. Yeah, don't worry about another thing. Just forget I was here. Yeah. He then goes to a hotel to join the California Brotherhood of Bartenders Mixing Contest.

We see our chain-smoking goon up in front doing some kind of mixology demo for these very bored-looking bartenders. And there's some great drama here because we see him see Jim. And Jim just stares him down. and we see him immediately start getting nervous. Yeah. And then he kind of stumbles in the explanation he's giving. And then he just bolts for the back door. So we have a bit of a foot chase up to the roof. And I don't really know what I expected here.

My notes are full of obscenities. I was shocked by what happened. But I think this is actually in the, is this the preview montage? It might be. I don't know. I might be mixing it up because it might be in the syndicated second one.

Oh, okay. Like, so I might be, cause I just looked at that. So I might be mixing it up. But anyway, he chases him up to the roof and there's this very dramatic standoff. There's a roofer up there doing work there's like buckets and you know stuff including a rope that's hanging off the edge of the roof Richard turns around and yells at Jim not to come any closer and he's backing towards the edge of the roof and Jim

puts his hands up he's like okay I'm not coming any closer, which is important. And then the roofer yells like, hey, no, that's not. And then we see Richard grab this rope that's going over a pulley off the edge of the roof, but it's not tied to anything. And it just goes, shoom. That's it, yep. And he just drops out of sight. And then we have the upshot of the body falling from the roof. And then we cut back and and we see the the empty pulley spinning

uh as the rope is pulled all the way through it and uh yikes i don't know what i was expecting but i was not not expecting uh uh straight up death at this point you know it is uh it's quite the escalation we go to to Jim on the phone. Well, he's trying to call the princess. She's not answering. He is dropping three Alka-Seltzers into his cup this time. Things are getting serious. Yeah, he's telling Rocky that he didn't hang around to find out what the police think.

The roofer called it in. He didn't want to stay around for Chapman to get on his case. And there's a knock on the door. Two guys with badges. Rocky says that there's no reason to arrest Jim. Dad, did it ever occur to you that they're not arresting me and then we cut to jim walking out onto a lineup yes so very dramatic scene you know we're coming back with a little humor to to balance it out yeah but uh yeah so pretty serious 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 worlds, plural, master, singular. Or at dig1000holes.com, with the thousand being numeral 1000. 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 NDPaoletta, 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 lieutenant chapman is going to be a big part of the story going forward yes and he is with um the roofer the roofer is picking out jim for the lineup so we have we have a lot of chap which is good are we are we fully into episode two now is that what's um according to where the syndication the scene before the syndication cut we are not yet at the end of the first episode wow okay all right i wonder if it got trimmed yeah it would have to have i would think or something because i think we're a good chunk of the way there i think well we'll find out yeah so chapman of course is busting jim um he has a witness on the roof uh putting jim on the roof when the death occurred and his signature is on the hotel register there's a running bit

where becker keeps wanting chapman to read the guy's statement the roofer's yeah but chapman has heard enough and tells him to you know cut him loose uh etc then we have a great billings appearance where yes billings not wearing a jacket he looks kind of harried he's like no jacket he has his tie kind of loose and he's telling chapman they've been missing calls uh there's a call from from princess rochefsky And Chapman's like, uh-huh. What, did she call on a princess phone? But also a call from the British attache and someone from the State Department. And that's when Chapman yells for Becker. They go out into the hall to find him.

The roofer's signing the statement. And he tells the roofing guy to go through it again. And they go through the sequence of events until the phrase, Rockford was nowhere near the man when he fell yes and apparently chapman missed this detail this entire time um in his yen for for getting jim for something um in a previous scene uh i think before jim got arrested he mentioned you know he doesn't want to deal with chapman and it's like i'm i'm bored with something something about chapman and then here you're going to give

me the client confidentiality two-step i'm bored with that jim's like oh you too we then have a captain of some description uh come down to see them with the princess and kendall and uh he basically is like well everything's been sorted out you know kind of at this higher level yeah but chapman isn't done with jim rockford. The captain pulls Chapman out into the hallway to talk to him privately, which is great where he's like, look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. This is your case.

Yeah. Uh, and I'm going to leave you to navigate the white waters all by yourself. But I do want you to know that the chief is going to be calling you. And so, you know, you'll want to be ready to talk to him. Becker also wants the captain to read the statement he leaves because he doesn't need to uh

chapman pulls everyone into his office to talk talk it out but the important thing here is i'm sorry you had to find out that way so am i well i couldn't tell you i was working for irene this is one of the conditions of employment obviously you're very scrupulous in your work. If it's what I do, there's no point in being sore about it. I just wish you'd leveled with me, that's all. I thought we'd come at least that far in our relationship, whatever that is. The whole scene is great.

I love the different pressures on Chapman and watching Chapman, watching it start to dawn on, because Chapman's eating up the fact that he's got Rockford on a murder charge right like he's he's got him yeah and then watching that slip out from underneath them it's just and then there's this whole bit where rockford is standing right next to the guy giving testimony about rockford that felt like wow that's not good like they shouldn't be doing that wasn't it just that becker was reading the statement though yeah but no but the guy was there yeah yeah yeah yeah and

he was like yeah no this guy didn't do anything and it was just like yeah yeah it's good um so uh you know we kind of skip over whatever chapman has to to say to everyone and we go to the parking garage uh kendall wants to take irene back to the hotel irene's like you you need to get some rest you've been through a thing and they start fighting about being able to take care of themselves we see a little bit of how they like can butt heads right but kendall says it's it's over i don't know why he wanted to do anything but you know this guy's dead now yeah what can he do but jim isn sure. What was he doing going after her in the first place? Was he hired, perhaps by someone she knew? That's the only thing that makes sense to Jim.

They're going to have to keep an eye on the obits. I'm afraid to ask who we're going to be looking for. We then cut to Rocky's house, where Jim is at the table looking through the obituaries. Yeah. As he wants to attend Richie's funeral if he can find it. We then have a fantastic angel appearance where he rolls in

with his enormous lapels, silk cravat. I call it a captain's jacket. I don't know if that's really the term, but it's like the three buttons with the anchors on the sleeves. Lord Evelyn Martin

at your service, sir. Lord Evelyn Martin, at your service, sir. Lord Evelyn. I thought of making myself a dupe, but I figured they'd be pushing it. Just a little. Dad, I'm gonna go by the hotel and pick up the Kindle. I'll check in with you later. What is it with you, man? Every time I show up, you start rushing off somewhere.

Kind of makes you think, doesn't it? But Angel, of course, has a scam. Jim says no before even hearing it. But Angel's like, look, I just want you to make an introduction. I just want you to introduce me to the princess. There'll be 20% of at least $200,000. And there's a lovely con man, con game sentence here. Now we both know you can't make a thin dime dealing with what people need.

You got to give them what they want. Oh, so good. There's another line. I mean, Angel has a lot of beautiful lines in this one, but I love the... I come up with a lot of scams in my name, right? But I give you my word, none of them touch this one. As if Jim's concern was that it wasn't a good scam right right right against his better judgment jim's like okay what what what do you have in mind

he has something that involves selling them ponies yeah and jim's just like goodbye angel and he leaves and angel turns to rocky and says, that is a man with no imagination. And according to my brief look, this is the end of the first syndicated episode. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Which I guess, which is good because it means this next one starts out pretty strong. But I would have assumed it was before this.

Like, I would have assumed it was either right after the guy falls off the roof or maybe after i thought we got at least that far in our relationship but no it's apparently here so jim and kendall go to the funeral and my first note is a lot of flowers not many guests and he's like not not well attended But what's with all the flowers? Looks like a gangster's funeral. There's nobody Kendall recognizes. But Jim palms one of the note cards off of the flower arrangements. And it says, so long, pal, with the name of the flower shop.

And yeah, he's like, this seems like the mob. Yeah. We go to Giuliano's Flowers. And we get the second duo con so good which is another very good one kendall's sister called from london to make an order for a very distinctive arrangement it was supposed to go to their cousin bob but went to someone named richard sutterling a total stranger and so this guy at juliano's does have that order and jim's like let me see that yeah they have banter where to establish that you know this sister has a very particular taste and blah blah blah blah um so it's all good stuff uh so he grabs the order slip and he sees that it was paid for by

tommy manette oh i'm manette Manette. Well, we know what that means. Yes. We then have one of, I think, one of our good, memorable, tiny characters who's only here for a minute, but like the older guy with the facial hair. Who comes back and grabs the slip back out of Jim's hand. And it's like, our clients are like, our orders are confidential and our clients are confidential. They leave and he scolds the younger guy you told him Mr. Mineta all those flowers it was it was stupid that's what it was stupid and then he goes over and he sees the firebird out the window and he takes Jim's license plate as they leave yeah and then makes a phone call but there's something about this guy with his like look. Yeah. I was just like, yeah, this is this is a wonderful television face.

Like just a memorable, memorable guy. There's a thing about it. Like if we're to take the younger guy's word at it, the younger guy is the manager of the shop. Right. Right. So this guy is clearly maybe his dad that is still hanging around the shop or, you know. Sure. He's the manager, but that doesn't mean he's in charge. Right if it's like a mobbed up you know situation exactly jim and kendall are in

the car this is taking some weird turns and jim explains that minette he's a mob guy it was a mobster's funeral um so this is getting real weird this this guy has something to do with a garment union but he's also into movies and discos and restaurants. Maybe someone you would know from like that angle. And Kendall says that she doesn't meet many monkeys. This is where we get the explanation. Yes. So Henri, the maitre d' from the restaurant in the first scene, divides his clients into categories.

Lions, tigers, monkeys, and dogs. But yeah, part of the dialogue here is i think she says that royalty and most presidents are lions in making president doesn't automatically qualify oh no jack kennedy was a lion truman was a tiger oh was he ever and rock stars actors sports figures people who tend to amuse by their presence. They're monkeys. Manette's not that amusing. But he's not a dog. Dogs are.

I know who the dogs are. A little Truman diss, I don't know. She asks what he's going to do about Manette, and Jim says that he's going to try to avoid him. A classic Jim tactic that won't work. Back at the trailer. rocky's going through leftovers in the fridge jim tells him to help himself he's not very hungry he's been off his off his schedule and there's a great jim rocky bit here yeah rocky's like well i'm starting to think you don't

even want to eat dinner with me jim says i just told you my refrigerator is your refrigerator just have whatever you want like and it's very like sincere like it's not that i don't want to eat with you i just don't want to eat yeah there's a lot of leftovers have whatever you want it's there's it's just one of those little moments that the two of them have that's like so endearing and there's a bit here where rocky makes it clear that he knows what a gigolo is uh that i don't know that was just shocking to me yeah it's good yeah because jim's going through a list of like the inner circle like the people who irene and uh kendall like know he's going through names and he's he he mentions someone he's like oh well that you know that he's a walker yeah like a walker oh walker just someone to walk around with you you know just to like make things legit and to like do things for you so you don't have

to do them yourself i think that's when rocky's like oh like a gigolo yeah no dad a walker yeah they talk about freddie danzig a little bit um gets around he could have met minette but he owns a flower shop that's like his character trait he's a florist so why would minette order from juliano's instead of this guy if they're yeah if they're in together and there's another bit of the like really endearing moment where jim jim says that oh yeah and then there's a princess you know what am i gonna tell her dad? Dad, I've been working for her and taking her money. I'm sure you're not doing a very good job. Well, you've been doing the very best you could.

Spoken like a relative. That is when Jim gets a phone call from Tommy Minnette himself. He wants to have a conversation to sort out why Jim is looking to his personal affairs. Jim, I guess, tries to come back at him a little bit. He's like, look, cards on the table. This is me being nice. I could have sent some guys. Yeah.

Meet me at 45 minutes in this place. Jim shows up with a friend of his, Charlie. Yeah. Who's a big guy who's limping. Denies that he's limping. So I look this up. Because he's been in another episode. But i don't think it's charlie um oh no he has been no he was yeah he was in so yeah this this was brought up in some i think on a trivia or in the book or something but so there's a season five

episode where jim does a job for and then ends up dating a psychologist like i think she's blind um and uh she has a stalker and he's like um black mirror i don't think we've done it yeah maybe we should put it on our list then but this character charlie jim hires him as a bodyguard and he gets busted up and so now here he's saying that he appreciates all the jobs that jim gives him it's not his fault that charlie got busted up last time right he was in the hospital for four months what i did because i missed i missed that he was in another like i checked and wherever i checked only had this rockford files episode listed imdb's a mess but then i saw that the actor had been in many episodes of maverick yeah so i was like oh clearly they there's something here like maybe this is a reference that

but it is actually a reference to an old episode well maybe maybe we should do black mirror next yeah and there's actually a third one that he's in that i don't think it's the same character no we also have not done so We could do all three of those. Yeah. Interesting. A little rap on Leo Gordon. Leo Gordon or Leo V. Gordon. Oh, he was in Big Top Peewee. I mean, he's got a look.

Oh, yeah. No, he's a guy. I mean, he's a real... I mean, he was in a bunch of B-movies and stuff, too. Anywho. Yeah, so here he's clearly older than Jim. He's bald bald he's walking with a limp and this is the guy that jim calls for backup so we go inside where minette is on the phone so he's always on the phone so we see him calling he calls someone helen and tells her where he is and what his extension is so that if he gets any calls they can get patched through um he sees jim with his

buddy charlie says he's a disappointment. What are you, the nervous type? Jim says, jumpy as a cat. But he wanted a private meeting, so he snaps his fingers and goons just appear from nowhere. One of them chops Charlie in the back of the neck and he collapses and two of them grab Jim and then they shove his arms down on either side of a sewing machine needle like a table sewing

machine uh he doesn't want anyone poking around in his business uh he kind of recaps like i send flowers to a friend now this pi is poking around blah blah blah yeah so this is basically his only warning uh this stops now he says it stops dead or you'll deal them out on a more permanent basis and that's when they sew Jim's cuffs together through the sewing machine to punctuate these threats and then they all leave and Jim's kind of stuck around it because

his sleeves are now stitched around a central point that he cannot get out of. So he calls for Charlie and Charlie kind of groans and goes, I got you covered. This is a good, well, a good threatening scene. It's good Rockford mafia.

The sewing together of the sleeves is extremely good. Yeah. Very Rockford-y. We go straight to the police station where Jim has made a complaint because if there's one thing that Jim's going to do, it's tell the cops that the mob tried to threaten him.

Yeah. He does say, uh, Chapman does ask him what you consider a sewing machine to be a deadly weapon. But they mentioned that he says that whatever they hit Charlie with definitely wasn't meant to be a love, a love tap. Um, so Kendall's there and Jim's play is kind of make this complaint, get Minette down there, and then Kendall can see if she recognizes him. He brings his attorney, of course. And while they come in and they're having some business with Chapman, Jim looks at Kendall and Kendall's like, no, doesn't recognize this guy.

Before anything else, Minette needs to make a phone call. And he uses Chapman's phone and he calls you know whoever and leaves chapman's number and extension in order to call him back he denies everything of course uh jim shows him his sleeves where they've been cut apart where they were stitched so they're just big floppy you know ruined sleeves faulty workmanship i do a little work for one of the garment unions everyone takes me for a close maiden lieutenant if there isn't anything else minette gets a phone call on chapman's phone kendall has a moment where this captain is like passing by and she comes out and and asks how everything's going and she says that things are not moving along well

yeah she puts the pressure on. Yeah, and Minette and the lawyer leave. I mean, there's nothing they can do. Like, I have six guys who will tell you where I was at that time, and it wasn't there, you know. So they leave. Chapman reassures them that he's not dropping the case. Once he gets Charlie's statement,

but then Jim reveals that poor Charlie is in a coma at the hospital. We go to Minette on the phone in the lobby. He's explaining to someone like, yeah, they hauled me down here. Nothing's going on. You're clean and I'm going to keep it that way. And I was kind of expecting Jim to like overhear this or something, but this is just for us. Yeah, there's a couple of moments in this episode that that act like that that we keep expecting i keep expecting them to be textual clues for jim but they're actually just letting the audience in on something that

jim doesn't know about yet or hasn't seen yeah this fits right in with that thing that i love is whenever uh the villains of the piece have clear pressures on them as well um there's someone putting pressure on the net right don't yeah so i think we are getting the picture of so this guy minette probably hired richie but minette is doing it for on behalf of someone else yeah so now the next level of the mystery is like okay so who's who's the boss yeah now where is this all coming from um in the parking garage uh kendall and jim have a conversation where she tells she says he should get out of town and she offers she's like my friends have this like casa somewhere like the french riviera or something so they can put jim up uh they'll do it as a favor and you know do you have someone who

works at the travel agency to get you tickets she's like no travel agency is only good for vip lounge and uh and first class upgrades or something what they do is they use a courier service for tickets so right you are a courier and you get a first class round trip ticket to deliver a small package or a letter it's legitimate business for these rich people but you know you get to travel in style and jim has this moment where he goes you really don't need money do you yeah uh reinforcing kind of what i was talking about earlier where it's sure she's broke but she's operating in a different economy yeah yeah um he almost wishes he could

take her up on it but you know maybe kendall should should get out of town um she's she's still not out of whatever the situation is but he's starting to like having her around and they have big smiles then they see minette leaving and jim's like uh maybe if i follow him i can you know knock something loose tells kendall to take a cab she likes being around, so they better get going or they're going to lose him. They follow him to a big old nice house, and then there's time to wait until something happens. We have more wonderful banter. Yeah, it's good stuff. You do a lot of this new work?

Oh, yeah. Surveillance, looking through old newspaper clippings, the Hall of Records, making sure my trench coat's clean sounds exciting what do you do with your time well you don't think i'm gonna lay it all out there for your disapproval he has he's under some misapprehension that she like is just working this kind of gig because it's you know how how she can get by or whatever but she says that she likes her friends and she likes her lifestyle even if that's not what jim wants to hear right jim wants to hear that she's like taking advantage of them right like yeah using them for her own ends and she's like no this is my life i like it yeah and she says that he might like it too and he agrees that he might but then he wants to get out of the car and go for a closer look at the house and kendall of course insists on

coming along and they go up and they spy through some windows and we see Minette in his dressing gown on the phone. This guy's always on the phone. Always on the phone. And he pours himself some wine and then he gasps and starts choking. He falls down and scrabbles for the door and Jim runs over, but it's locked and he can't open it.

And then he finally punches out a pane of glass to open the door, but it is too late. This is close to a running gag in this episode where when Jim gets close to someone, they're just going to keel over. They're just going to die. Chapman is in a bad mood. He spent two hours with the coroner. And no, he does not want any of Becker's coffee. I do think it's funny so Jim and Kendall are with Becker at the station he's you know keeping

their spirits up by offering them coffee and he knows how Chapman takes it he's like black with two sugars so now we get amazing Chapman and Jim banter watch this expression this is where Chapman puts two and two together and comes up with bubcus jim stay out of this pecker what's the matter with you two

stay out of this kindle now you stop trying to beef me with everything that comes across your desk i came in here to report a crime i didn't commit one that's under investigation wait a minute you two obviously have a relationship that's fraught with emotion at any other time i might find it fascinating but tonight i saw a man die and that's fraught with emotion. At any other time, I might find it fascinating. But tonight I saw a man die, and that's what I want to hear about now. Chapman wants to keep it confidential, but she'll tell the princess, who will tell the governor. And Chapman's like, fine. And he just gives up the details of the poison, which is that it's this substance used in silver plating jewelry.

And it was in the bottle of fancy. I think it's the same wine that she that the princess drinks. Yeah. Like it was in this bottle of fancy wine. Chapman leaves and Becker does a classic telling Jim not to piss off Chapman. But specifically for one thing, you're turning up too many stiffs. It's a great line.

I agree. Yes. This is a very, watch the episode. It's a great scene because I agree. Yes. This is a very, watch the episode. It's a great scene because Kendall's exactly right. Everything in this scene with Chapman and Jim is just the fact that they, they hate each other. They just hate each other. They just can't stand getting thrown into each other's orbit again and again. And they're completely ignoring the facts of the case in order to,

to snipe. They are now the hotel with princess irene uh and they're talking through everything and they just don't see any connection between the mobsters and kendall jim asks who they might know in the garment industry who deals with clothes designers models photographers magazines and start naming magazines and jim snaps on one name fashion forecast that's the newspaper that Gus publishes. I was like, remember Gus? They don't know what the motive might be.

Let's put that aside for now because Gus's beef should be with Irene because Irene is suing his paper. garment union mob guy through the fashion industry asks him to deal with kendall for some reason and then killed him after he got involved with the police so that he wouldn't get outed um still need to find out more uh but what are they going to do about kendall in the meantime uh the princess wants to hire bodyguards and i might have missed a detail here but i think they're gonna hire bodyguards anyway but then jim is also gonna hide her at rocky's yeah so the the bodyguards are kind of a misdirect um over at rocky's he's cleaning out the spare room for her and she apologizes but jim says that he's been trying to get rocky to clear that room out for a year yeah at some point it's mentioned that the lawsuit is for 35 million dollars that floored me yeah it's huge it's enormous yeah i think it's in this scene because

so first there's a there's a nice bit kind of showing the other side of kendall's lifestyle where she says oh it must be nice to have a home base yes like jim can always come to rocky's if he needs to and that there's something cozy about junk like she doesn't have any like she gets rid of everything every time she moves so but there's nothing cozy about junk and he says well he has a garage for her yeah and he asked about the lawsuit and kendall says it's really solid it was a definitely liable like gus just did not do a fact check before publishing the story and he's gonna lose this suit and it's 35 million dollars yeah so why isn't he trying to kill the princess uh who knows great flirting banter um that kind of is talking about how like rocky is a real good with like you know

warm milk before bedtime you know taking care of people and stuff yeah telling you everything's gonna be all right uh kendall asks jim everything's going to be all right. Kendall asks Jim if everything is going to be all right. And he assures you, assures her, yes, everything's going to be all right. And they lean in for a kiss, which is broken up by Rocky coming out of the room and offering them warm milk. She goes to bed, but Jim follows her and they do indeed sneak in a kiss as she goes into the spare room. Rocky tells Jim that she's an awful nice lady. Kind of reminds Jim of the girl who married dear old dad. Yes.

As Jim says. Rocky's like, they're not, they don't have the same style and they don't look the same, but they kind of have the same quality. Yeah. And Jim's like, no, they don't. Yeah. I know what you're trying to do. You would have had me married 18 times by now.

The old shoes and rice routine, which is a great way to put it. We then have another seriously ominous sequence. It's it's the morning. It's still dark. We see a pair of shiny shoes coming out of a car and then a backlit goon poking around the windows and we're cutting inside and we see that kendall's asleep in the bed jim's asleep in a chair and the the lighting in this i think is really perfect yeah because it's like we see that it's clearly someone nefarious so there's something about it where we kind of see that they're wearing a black jacket and i was like

is this going to be a gag or it's angel because angel was wearing a black jacket yeah his first appearance i was like is this going to be some weird gag or it's angel but then we have a close-up of their hands on the window and it's clearly not angel's hands i was like okay no this is really a goon yeah this is this is a bit ominous yeah and then he finds the right window and he opens it and he comes in sometimes sometimes in these shows like someone's in shadow but like we know who it is or they're in shadow so that the person in the scene doesn't know who it is but the audience knows who it is and in this case he's lit so that we literally cannot see who this person is

and then as he comes further into the room we see that he's bald yes that i think the timing is exactly right at least for me because i'm'm like, wait, is this Gus? Because there's been two bald men in this episode, Charlie and Gus. And Charlie is taller than this guy in a coma. Yes. That's when he moves more into the light. We see it is Gus and he grabs a pillow. And then Kendall wakes up just in time to let out a short scream before he shoves it over her face. And this is where we get what I consider one of the top 10 greatest stunts of all time,

which is a man of Jim Rockford's age who fell asleep in an easy chair, jumping straight up. I witnessed that happen. And I couldn't do that to save my own life, let alone someone else's. Spry as a chicken, is a spring chicken. Pops up, runs into the room, gives Gus a good punch across the face. Pulls the pillow off of Kendall. Asks him why, and he says, he didn't want to, but she forced him.

She said if he killed Kendall, she'll drop the suit. Yeah. Dun, dun, dun. This is the part where this episode, at this point, takes a little bit of a weird jag, right? Like, we're going to start to get more and more of just seeing what Irene is doing and where she's going. And, like, from this point on, I'm like'm like oh okay so it's irene yeah and i'm not even really thinking well then why did she hire jim like what's what's going on because it just gets a little weirder and weirder as it goes i was thinking about um again i was thinking about

this in the final scene mostly but i agree that there's a turn here and it really part of it is spinning out the plot or the rest of the plot such as it is but part of it is a real pivot from a mystery episode to a character portrait episode and it really goes from plot to vibes yeah yeah yeah no exactly i think i've said that a lot for this episode but it feels it feels like that because from here on, if we continue really thinking about the plot events and the motivations, it gets more and more tenuous, I think. But the vibe is strong. So it didn't lose me.

Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. Maybe we'll go through it and then maybe we'll talk about what those differences are. But we're pretty deep into our final act here. Before we get to the real ending, we do have the payoff for the Angel subplot. Oh, yes, yes. So this is a scene that starts off with Dennis and Angel. And we're just watching them, which, again, is unusual and kind of fun.

Where Angel has been pulled in and he told the booking clerk that he's friends with dennis and so dennis got so he pulled a rockford and so dennis got hauled down on his night off and then jim comes in because dennis wants to know if jim can shed any light on why angel has eight shetland ponies in a residential garage uh in angel's defense it's a three-car garage and he left the lights on for them yes uh he wants jim to tell dennis that his princess got angel into this dennis he's like i'm here on a murder investigation i don't have time for this uh you got yourself into this angel you always do and he leaves this is robbery homicide let's move it down to bunco bunco why because i'm unfamiliar with your zoning laws because besides finding the eight ponies we

found a forged british passport and a letter of recommendation from queen elizabeth let's go duke it's good it is really good it's extremely funny and so beside the point all right so we now have a scene where princess irene and uh her man freddy arrive they tell kendall they're just glad that she's all right and she wants to talk to gus herself so chapman obliges gus says that irene called all the shots told him where to find kendall that's how he knew to go to rocky's house she told him that if he killed kendall she would drop the lawsuit and then she denies it of course uh she's like you're just trying to smear me again uh and he's like you must have planned for this either way whether it worked or not which you know he's right

yeah um they you know finish the conversation and j Jim kind of catches up to Kendall in the hallway. And she's like, oh, at last he speaks. So I guess he's been pretty, pretty quiet. She's not happy that he ran to Chapman immediately with all of this. And he's like, you haven't considered that he could be telling the truth and Irene could be lying. Yeah. He tried to kill you but she will not consider the possibility there was a moment in here where i was i was wondering like because

because kendall seems to be on irene's side right yeah and i was like is this is she acting so that they can kind of deal with it later well so they can like get irene like make irene think that they don't suspect her in order to trap her or something yeah like is she like is she playing it cool but she actually does not think that irene would do this and thinks that gus is just lying about everything but kendall because jim won't let it go thanks for everything it's all over adios and he says adios we then go to freddy and irene and i think this yeah this is the first time where we see her without jim it around right so they're driving around he says like you don't like to be out at night let's go back to the hotel but she wants him to drive uh and she's saying that everything's changed so much she doesn't recognize anything and now we're like and that's echoing how kendall

described you know being back in la after all these years or whatever she's she steers freddie towards uh a field where we have headlights on the uh um i forget how they pronounce it but that is simi valley simi valley i think that might be yeah. There's headlights on the Simi Valley High School sign on this football field. And they drive onto the stadium field and she slowly walks out. And we have marching band music coming up. So we're now in her psychoscape. Yeah, you can hear a crowd and it's very internal. You can hear a crowd and it's very internal.

It is meant for us to know that she is hearing this echoing over time. Freddie wants to go home and she and Irene asks if he loves her. And he has this great like, sure, I do. Yeah. And then there's a beat. He's like, I mean, of course I love you. Right. Like, yeah, sure.

OK, let's go. And he's like, oh, this is something else is going on here. Yeah. Yeah. She starts talking about someone named Alex who never disappointed her from birth. He knew what he was supposed to do. And now that he's gone, she has Freddie. I don't remember if this was this character was mentioned earlier. Like I my note, who is Alex?

Yeah, maybe in the barest of passing of like, Freddy's her new beau after Alex or something. But yeah, I think this might be totally fresh. But she says that Alex would do anything for her. And then she asks Freddy to kill Kendall. And Freddy's like, come on, I'm a florist. Alex would have killed her. Is it because you don't love me enough?

Do you know how much money I have? What do you think? I've thought about it. Money can buy freedom. It can buy innocence. It can buy anything you want. Don't tell me it's not going to buy me this. Irene then calls Kendall from Payphone at the field,

and she plays up her being alone and afraid. She's out in the dark. She wanted to see the place where it all started. You and me, you turned to me at halftime and said i hate football but now it's so dark and and i'm scared and kendall says like she's like oh she knows exactly where she is right and she's like you stay there i'm on my way she arrives irene is up in the stands we see freddie cocking a gun and then we have this kind of, not confrontation even. always reminding me always threatening to tell that isn't true reanie i never threatened to tell anyone indirectly i think the interesting thing here is that well so there's two beats one

is she says that uh i'm not drunk and kendall says i didn't say you were and irene's like you implied by your tone and then a couple lines later she says you would never let me get away from this place not really yeah i never threatened that i would never do that and she says well indirectly it's an indirect threat and she's not going to live with that threat any longer freddy has the gun he levels it and then jim jumps out with his own gun don't do it freddy uh and freddy of course not actually wanting to do it i think yeah right like is more than happy to be interrupted then jim just punches him out anyway which is my note is this is an unnecessary punch but that's fine um he runs to kendall he tells her see it wasn't over and then

the marching band music comes up again as irene comes down the stairs and says that i knew you'd destroy me kendall i knew it from the start and she walks out to the center of the field with his voiceover i am not irene pinchuk from simi valley i won't have them all laughing at me i am a princess yeah so it is unclear to me exactly what's going on here unless the whole business all of it from top to bottom is a con that kendall and as Kendall, again, know the value of a dollar. They know sort of the working class concerns that Jim would have. Right. And, you know, maybe this is just a thing that will always be in the air is why Jim was hired, except to maybe completely exonerate her because she wouldn't look guilty if she hired the person to protect her friend. Yeah.

Well, let's. Yeah. I mean, these are going to be open questions. Right. They're open questions. I think, yeah, let's talk about Irene for a second and then finish up because there's like a couple of wrap up scenes and then maybe talk about like kind of the plot stuff. So my read is that, yes, it is a con in the sense that not in the sense that there's a big payoff at the end and we all and we go off back to our real lives. The con is changing. Irene changed herself into this new person.

And I think the fact that we are told earlier in the episode that you can buy titles, I think also feeds into that. She is a princess. Yeah. But the implication here is that she bought that somehow. She is whatever Irene

Pinchuk from Simi valley by birth but she has they made a plan to get out and however that ended up working out she became a princess and kendall became kendall like yeah whether that was a plan from the beginning whether they both were aiming for one thing or the other like who knows, and then I guess kind of getting the portrait of like, and yet I, I'm now speculating based entirely on my read of these characters, which is, I think what I was saying earlier about how Kendall doesn't need money,

but she also, and she also doesn't have responsibilities. Somehow that has made her more free than Irene, who is, who is a princess and is fetid and lauded and pampered and taken care of, but she doesn't feel like she's free. Yeah. And I think that's the root of her turning.

I don't know the resentment that turns her on Kendall. Like, like what will make me free is taking away the one person who can destroy me. Right. Right. And of course it is, you know,

the seat of her own undoing. It's very poetic, dramatic, et cetera. There's a little, on the one hand, it's like, I kind of would have liked to see a little bit more from Irene maybe

earlier. So that this made a little more sense, like I guess character continuity wise. But on the other hand, the fact that it just shifts at the end is kind of a strength of the episode. I like it. It's a nice eerie. To be fair, I've been watching like a lot of Agatha Christie things where this stuff that comes out of the blue is part of the mystery and it's fine. So I'm a nerd to it or whatever.

But I do kind of like it. I like that it shifts just to vibes. It's perfectly fine that it does that for me. So the last couple scenes here... Speaking of vibes. Jim is looking for a pin that Kendall can't

find at Rocky's. rocky i think again in something that we've seen many times anytime you lose something you come looking for it here and tear apart my cushions or tear about my couch uh which is 100 something that jim does usually it's his wallet or his keys but in this case it's uh kendall's pin it was a present from irene and rocky says well he wouldn't want it but i think we all see this from having watched the episode, but like, I think it was a big part of her life, right?

It's not like she can just abandon everything about her. Yeah. Um, Rocky doesn't understand, uh, of course. And Jim says that Irene hated her past and wanted to kill it, which is like,

yes, it still doesn't clarify anything. it gets us part of the way there yeah and he's gonna go see kendall she's trying to see irene at the hospital and rocky's like well afterwards maybe we can go to dinner just family you never give up do you dad then we end with jim and kendall uh at the trailer irene wouldn't see her uh you know refusing to see her kind of the tone of like I tried but things are probably over her courier service friend could get her on a plane to Paris on Saturday

and Jim says she should give California a chance she might like it and then Rocky rolls up honking and waving out the window and tells him not to wander off too far he's cooking up flapjacks nothing fancy strictly family and we have a great not to wander off too far. He's cooking up flapjacks. Nothing fancy, strictly family.

And we have a great freeze frame on Jim and Kendall smiling as she kind of leans into his shoulder. And just a lovely visual of James Garner and Lauren Bacall being great. Yeah. And that's the end of the episode. And also, uh, having personally enjoyed flapjacks for dinner recently recommend

the hell of an episode. Yeah. What I said back at the beginning of like, I remember the first and last scene. Like I remembered the restaurant and the, how Jim was being passed over for the reservation and all that stuff. And then I remembered the football field, like the football field in the dark.

And I'm like, that's, that's the climax, but I football field in the dark. And I'm like, that's that's the climax. But I didn't remember what happened. Yeah. And there's not much in between between those two scenes to show you the connective tissues. Right. Right. Yeah. There's connective tissues in the episode itself.

But if you just have those two scenes there, it's a little bit like you might be asking yourself how i got here right right yeah so yeah and there's so i think there are some i think there's some criticisms of this episode and you see them in like the user the ndb reviews and stuff of kind of like the ending kind of comes out of nowhere i didn't feel at any point like there was padding but it also could have been a single episode i think longer episodes are surprisingly more susceptible to endings coming out of nowhere if the episode's going well there's a certain comfort zone you get in where you're like well this could just keep going and going and going right where uh shorter episodes when the ending comes out of nowhere you're like well they only have 45 minutes to tell this whole story right right right yeah uh but yeah it does kind of come out like the it's sort of the moment of um gus's confession

in the bedroom and it's just like lays it all out and then we have to all of us have to come to terms with it uh pretty quickly but i think like we hit the things you need to do to show that those characters either are or aren't going to come to terms with the reality of the situation yeah yeah yeah i think the the the character like the character through lines are very clear you do have to kind of backfill based on the ending for irene yeah um but like it's not like she's ever presented as being particularly stable right like they're always talking about how she you know she's she doesn't like to be at at night she doesn't like to leave the hotel she doesn't like to have people around her. Right. Like she's kind of presented as kind of nervous, you know, possibly like agoraphobic. Yeah.

I don't know if that's the right one person. So the fact that she has been losing some kind of grasp on, I don't know, sanity or her ability to separate the past from the present. Like that's not a huge leap once we know the end yeah and you can you can infer from there that part of this is that um again it's not necessarily a con but the way that uh kendall and irene have been living pivots on Irene being a princess. Right. Yeah. So there's a pressure there that Kendall probably has no idea about or if she has no direct experience with. Yeah. Like it's just a pressure on her friend.

Yeah. And she's a little blinded by the like, she's very invested in the fact that no matter what, the two of them are in it together yeah right like she has a special relationship with irene yeah because of their origin and she's like that this means we can never be broken apart we're always going to be together in this but irene sees the special relationship as this is the only person who can hurt me because you're the only person close enough yeah and like that's a pretty compelling dichotomy there's a line where jim says like they they kind of try to lampshade a little bit where it's like it's around when he says he hated she hated her past and wanted to kill it

but it's like friends kill friends husbands kill wives like it happens every day you know like people who are close kill each other and sometimes there's not a good reason. And he's not wrong, but it's almost too real for TV. Because it's TV, we want there to be some kind of character or plot logic, some motive. We always talk about motive and motivation. And in this case, because we learned the motive, or not even the motive but i think the motivation so late it that's part of the kind of like oh that's what's going on so it's pretty complete like i think there's a lot of layers to it like it's not just like oh we just had to salt we just

had to finish this episode like i think it's on purpose i think it's totally intentional how it's laid out um it's just kind of playing with some playing with how those relationships have been established and i think there's um you know we talked about how you know lauren bacall is just like effortless in this and it's so fun watching her and garner and everything but there is a bit of a low-key mvp award to dana winter for oh i mean yeah yeah for her load-bearing role yes in in it because so so lauren mccall is like an actual golden age to hollywood actress right and dana winter is more of like a b-movie person she was in the the 58 body snatchers like she's like the lead in that you know and she's in a bunch of tv and stuff but in this episode she's kind of playing a character from a golden age movie like even

with like the accent and everything pronouncing the h and what what and she also seems fairly effortless i think in that and we learned that it is all an act because she is from california like she's, she does a, she does a good job. And I think that should be recognized as well. The other, like,

I think pivotal thing that doesn't quite catch because there's a red herring going on with it. Um, when Jim and Kendall go out to eat at, uh, the Baja cantina and then spend the day together, she's been calling and talking to Rocky. And then like we,

she's very, very nervous, a lot of nervous energy around this whole thing, which fits with the fact that she wants to be on top of Jim's investigation. Right. So that she's not found guilty or he's found something pointing to her. Right. When she leaves Irene andne and jim at the

party the murderer has been chased off uh and so you know yeah it's good yeah i think it's it's well put together it's a thinker it's definitely um i think this episode in some respects fits a little better in first season uh in that the first season you got a little bit more of the um uh a little less of a formula yet to work on sure yeah certainly it actually does fit at the sixth season because of all the great stuff with the different characters rocky and angel whatnot so the first season there was a little bit more like, this is a PI show. We're going to do mysteries. I think.

Yeah. And there's like a mystery in this one that a lot of the later season ones kind of don't really bother like with like a mystery in that way. Um, I kind of see that for sure. I don't know if there's some kind of like plot stuff, like how is it so easy to like kill Manette? Yeah.

There's things that are out out in the open there's a couple things that are kind of like i do think like i like i love angel and i think stewart margland's really chewing the scenery for all he can in his appearances here but also the that subplot's kind of yeah i'm not sure how much it adds but that that is all all kind of secondary to like the real this is just a real fun one to watch that also is surprising yeah i agree with that so there's quibbles and and whatnot but uh you know we always say that we like the characters and this is good characters and a good story and it's just uh it's good television yeah what else do you want? What else do you want? Well, I suppose the only other thing that we would want

is to watch another episode of the Rockford Files sometime. So, with that, we will jump off the boat of this very long episode, though I think totally worth the watch if you have 96 minutes to watch the

unsyndicated version. And, yeah, maybe go get some some fancy food maybe drink some alka-seltzer yes but we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the rocker house all right