Two Hundred A Day - Episode 12: The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club

Episode Date: July 9, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S2E13 The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club. Jim goes to Bay City to investigate a crooked poker game, but quickly gets caught up with a rogue DA, his idealistic assistant Kate, and the mob. The only episode directed by James Garner, this one surprised us with subtleties as it delighted us with dynamic chases! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Pluto Moved On Podcasts and Video Lets Plays Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars And thank you to Shane Liebling and Dylan Winslow! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Hi Sonny, it's Rocky. I got the bill and I've been trying to figure out what everybody owes on LJ's birthday party. Tell me, did you have the pink lady? Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. Which captivating episode are we talking about today, Epi? Today we are talking about The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club, which is an extraordinary title. I like it. It's season three, episode, wait, season two, episode 13? Going by IMDB.

Yeah, I was going to say, I don't have to guess at these things. Right. Pick this episode. This is something that I chose because it was directed by the man himself, Mr. James Gardner. So maybe we could talk a little bit about his directorial style. Although, I will say that it wasn't as experimental as other Rockford files are sometimes. Yeah, James Gardner, not well known for his directing this is his only directing credit oh really yeah is this episode of the rockford files so kind of taken in that context it's you know a perfectly fine episode say probably more than fine in many ways but directorially it's not there's no no point where i went like that was a really weird decision, right?

Yeah. It was pretty competent throughout, I would say. There's a part, and we'll get into the foot chase near the end, which I don't know how much input the director has into where they go and what they do during a foot chase. But I particularly liked this foot chase and i enjoyed the idea that mr gardner was coming up with it on the fly you know which is an invented fiction but i would suspect that a lot of the directing input in this episode was probably more about giving the actors time to bounce off each other and kind of play around with with their i

don't know may their dialogue or their chemistry or something and less about like camera shots and and stuff like that there is one cool cut moment but we'll get to that when we get to that also an episode written by juanita bartlett uh creative force throughout most of the later run of the series. So I'm becoming quite a Juanita fan. I think that each of the episodes that we've done that she's written, I hold highly in my heart. Yeah, she, as I've mentioned it the first time we talked about her, I started noticing her name because it's on lots of episodes. So when you go back and kind of do a little research, she rapidly became kind of the main writer of the Rockford Files through the second

season or so, and then eventually started getting producing credits and such. So strong hands on the Rockford Files tiller for this episode. What did you like out of our preview montage? Yeah, so the preview montage is interesting. I was surprisingly short-sighted for a preview montage. It's a brilliant preview montage. I quite enjoyed it, but if you watch the episode you'll see every scene from that montage, I think, within the first 15 minutes of the episode or something like that. Yeah, there's one that pays off, I think, a little later. Many of them are scenes from the show that then are rapidly revealed to be false.

Right. It's a little bit of a gotcha set of scenes. We're investing a false goal into the preview montage as as current day bingers versus 1970s television watchers what we want out of the preview montage is not the same thing it hooks you so it does what it's supposed to do the thing that hooked me the most is the pulling up to the drive-through window and telling him to call the cops which is such a a brilliant Rockford move. It's so good. Yeah, we will definitely be talking about that. We see there's definitely some kind of scam happening. There's some kind of gambling happening. Angel is clearly going to be represented strongly in this episode.

And then we get right into it. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this month, we have six of them to thank. Thanks Kevin Lovecraft. Check him out on the Wednesday evening podcast All-Stars Actual Play podcast. Visit misdirectedmark.com to find that feed along with all the other gaming podcasts in the Misdirected Mark Productions Network. Thank you Lowell Francis. Check out his award-nominated gaming blog full of insights and historical analysis of role-playing games at ageofravens.blogspot.com.

Thanks Pluto Moved On. Visit plutomovedon.com to find a podcast about tabletop RPGs and video games as well as YouTube Let's Plays. Thank you to Shane Liebling and Dylan Winslow. And finally, a big thank you to Richard Haddam for his very generous support. Find him on Twitter, at Richard Haddam. If you want to get a shout-out for your podcast, blog, Twitter, or anything else you do, come visit patreon.com slash 200aday and see if you want to become our newest gumshoe.

The episode is titled The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club, and we start the episode with an establishing shot of the Bay City Boys Club. Well, before we go there, there's one last bit of thing we need to talk about, and that is, what's a pink lady?

I mean, it's a drink, isn't it? Yeah, it's a drink. I mean, I assumed it was a drink, but I think the joke here is that the pink lady is not a particularly manly drink, and no one wants to own up to it. It's also not a particularly manly drink, and no one wants to own up to it. It's also not a particularly vegan drink. This is gin, egg white, and four dashes of grenadine. Oh. Which sounds disgusting to me.

That doesn't sound very good to me. And I'm a gin man. I do enjoy my gin, but, uh, woof. I've never been a big egg cocktail person. I'm told that they can be very, very good, but it's just not for me. The message is also the only Rocky appearance in this episode. All right. Are we ready to get into this thing?

Yeah. In media res, like they do. Yes. In media res, we are at the Bay City Boys Club. The action of this episode occurs in Bay City, California. The Boys Club, which I guess is like a YMCA. Seems like it, yeah. Or something like that. boys club the action of this episode occurs in bay city uh california the boys club which i i guess is like a ymca seems like it yeah something like that at this location and we have this voiceover of men playing poker and then that rapidly cuts into the actual scene of of them

playing poker we start off with the camera directly on jim rockford uh as he's getting a drink he is playing this game of poker under an assumed name he is called mr keel by one of the other participants and they have a little bit of dialogue establishing that he is posing as a newspaper publisher the men in on this game are all uh supporters of the boys club and there's some kind of like wink wink nudge nudge language about getting investments and and that kind of thing i scratch your back you scratch mine they're they're all like uh movers and shakers in bay city so well i mean it's quite literally a boys club this is where the boys go. This is where the patriarchy meets. Yes. This is definitely the source of the patriarchy

in Bay City. While they're having their game, there's a couple of guys outside who are checking out the car that's pulled up outside. This is not Jim's usual Firebird. This is, again, a cover car. They check it out, look through the bills in the glove box,

and those all check out to being this guy Aaron Keel's stuff and address. Such good cover. I mean, that's what I wrote in my notes. It'll be revealed why it's good cover, but it seemed so utterly complete. Yeah. And Rockford has some attention to detail, but that's, to me, oh well done mr rockford well done it's over and above what we would expect because most of his his scams are pretty surface level right they're just get in get out kind of things if they searched his car they would find the little machine he uses to make the business card he used in the scam right like that so i also uh really appreciated the level of effort that was going into this cover identity that he has for himself but they pick out a home address and

they're like all right we're going to check this guy out so we immediately know that he's in this poker game undercover it's probably you know illegal there's definitely some goons involved who are checking out this uh new participant so things are shady we go back inside to the the remainder of the poker game where they really start playing in earnest and we see a lot of chips moving around underneath the title credits which actually play over this whole sequence so which is nice it was such a pleasant you know you just had that montage going and then the music was very smooth jazz version of uh the rockford files theme it was just it's a very pleasant opening credit once we have established that they've been playing for a while we focus on

what i refer to as angry guy in my notes uh with his tile pulled off and he's deep in the hole. He's $3,500 in the hole, and Rockford has taken, I think he said $600 of that money? Yeah, he says at least $600. And everyone is kind of giving him good nature, like, hey, you know, you're just getting the bad cards, you know, your luck's running cold, come back next week and win it back kind of stuff. So you get the sense that this is a bunch of guys that play a lot, right? Rockford does well. You get some winnings in this poker game and they invite him back for the next Thursday

for their next poker game. When he agrees to it, we get a classic James Gardner smile. There are a lot of good smiles in this one. But that one is one to frame. So whatever his scheme is, it seems to be working. He's gotten an invite back for the next Thursday game. Rockford leaves in his cover car, and he's immediately followed by a white car

that seems to be doing a pretty poor job of it. He notices pretty much immediately, and we see a pretty short sequence of Jim Rockford doing little maneuvers to make sure that he's being followed on purpose and it's not a coincidence. These are great. He's pulling over to the side of the road, stopping for a moment and then leaving again,

or coming up short in the middle of the road so that the car just almost rear-ends him. He's a little delighted by it. Yeah, it's a little bit like, who's this clown? Yeah. So when he decides to finally get this tail off of him, what does he do? Well, he pulls possibly one of the most classic Jim Rockford car maneuvers, memorable throughout the whole series, I would say.

Yeah. Where he pulls through a drive-thru window, which I think is pretty clearly a jack-in-the-box drive-thru. It might be a big boy. It's hard to tell because I saw a big boy sign, but I've actually never been to a jack-in-the-box, so I don't know. I might just be assuming that because it's California. I don't know.

It doesn't really matter. He pulls through this drive-thru window, and when the guy takes his order at the speaker box, his order is to call the cops because I'm being followed. He lists the make and the color of the car with the California plates. The guy at the drive-thru is probably a little stunned to get this request to begin with and not ready to process the information that Rockford is dumping on him. But yeah, he just very straightforwardly, but insistently repeats that he's being followed,

call the police until the guy's like, uh, okay, if that's what you want. And that is when he adds a, uh, a taco and a bag of fries. Got priorities.

I mean, what else is he going to get? Yet another plank in my food platform here. Yet another spot where, when given the chance, Jim Rockford orders tacos and a bag of fries, which he does indeed pick up at the pickup window. And I thought this was a nice touch. He asked him to call the police. They're kind of like,

uh, okay. If, if you say so, he leaves. And when he leaves the white car followed him through the drive-through and then follows him on the road. And,

and we see the kids are like teenagers, you know, watch it happen, like see them follow it with their eyes. And then the kid picks up the phone, the attention to detail. that shot, again, is just part of the overall realistic feeling of the show. It was a nice touch to have two people in the drive-thru window.

It's probably how it works, but there wasn't even dialogue between the two people, but just to have them exchange meaningful looks. I used to have crap jobs, and I can imagine working late at night at a crap job and suddenly somebody coming to my drive-thru window and saying, yeah, call the cops. And then the guy says, I can't remember what phrase he used, but he's like, are you putting one over on me? So yeah, it was kind of a good way to establish not only that people wouldn't just accept that, but you give them a situation where they can, in fact, accept it. And sure enough, a cop car shows up, pulls over the white car.

Rockford pulls ahead away from the scene and then doubles back to see who was following him. The cops have stopped. A woman was in the car driving and following him. We just kind of see them ask her for her ID. She produces it. We see the end of this exchange from Rockford's vantage point as he's pulled up behind them.

He nervously eats his taco as he watches them talk to this woman. They leave her alone. They give her her ID back and she pulls away. And we have a little moment where one of the cops like apologizes to her or something yeah after she leaves he says i didn't know it was a lady again it's a nice little moment because he apologizes to her and i've seen this episode before so like i might be reading this into it a little bit but the first question is like oh is she someone he's like, we shouldn't have pulled this person over.

Right. And that's not being revealed to us yet. Or is it because she was a woman, so he's like, you know, I feel like a jerk. Yeah. You know, she wasn't

actually doing anything. That little moment of questioning is nice because it can be read both ways in this little scene. Now that Rockford has turned the tables on his pursuer,

he apparently follows her and we cut to him sitting down next to her at a diner counter as she's ordering a coffee and presumably trying to figure out what her next move is. This is one of those moments where nobody's ready to trust anyone yet, but Rockford's ready to put on the charm. So, you know, he sits down next to her, and they have a lovely exchange where neither one of them wants to admit who they are and they don't. Right. They have a little bit of verbal

sparring about why was she following him and why did he follow her? And they're kind of at detente. Neither of them knows what the other one is up to and neither of them is willing to admit what they're up to. And they're kind of on even footing because they both followed each other. willing to admit what they're up to. And they're kind of on even footing because they've both followed each other. Rockford offers to come clean and to swap IDs. She very smoothly is like, whatever, that doesn't really matter. I'll just tell you who I am. My name's Kate Flanders. Jim says that he's Aaron Keel. So he's keeping up his cover from the poker game. Jim has the advantage of a deeper cover here. Kate says that she's the stepdaughter of one of the players in that game, Paul Flanders. He's been drawing out a bunch of

money and she's trying to figure out if he's gambling it away because it's actually her mom's money and her mom will never say boo, but she's concerned. A couple things here. First, a casting note. This woman, Kate Flanders, she's played by Blair Brown. Now, I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but there are certain shows that I recognize. She was in lots of TV shows and TV movies and stuff during this time and through the 80s and 90s. But recently, she's been in things that people may be familiar with, including Orange is the New Black. Ah. She was in Fringe and Limitless.

So her career is an interesting, just looking through what she was in, it's an interesting little, interesting progression of roles. And I think she's pretty strong in this episode. I mean, like one of the fun things about watching Rockford File episodes are finding actors, big and small, people that you immediately recognize who they are and they have this tiny bit part in the rock for files because they haven't made it at all yet or the that person person right like oh i know that person i've seen that person in a thousand things she's very good in this episode as uh who we currently know as kate flanders yes foreshadowing there and this

is where we get this i think think the only one in this episode, but this interesting smash cut where she ends the conversation with, doesn't it bother you if my mother's being cheated? Immediately we go to Jim saying, nobody's being cheated. And we cut to a different location next day. So that smash between being cheated, nobody's being cheated. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, it's strong. Yeah. It leaves a bunch of questions about what her deal is and what Jim took away from their conversation.

Right. That we'll find out about more later. But as an audience member, there's a lot of open questions throughout the first half of this episode, and that's one of them. So in this new scene, Jim's in the office of the person that has hired him to investigate. Mr. Phelps. Yeah, Mr. Phelps,

who may not be his real name either, as we'll again find out. But I think the most striking thing about this scene here is how similar their outfits are and how much better James wears his. He's got the gray suit with the pink shirt on and the gray suit's got these little pink stripes and it's, it's great.

You need to see it. It's, it's classic Rockford fashion. Uh, and then this other guy is wearing sort of like a blue, a gray blue shirt, uh, suit with red and white stripes that look pink on the television.

And, uh, James just, just completely outclasses him in that framed scene there. He claims that he is a car dealer, so that might go towards part of the editorial choices here. Oh yeah, that's actually kind of important. I'm discovering that now in my brain, that Rockford fashion is nothing to laugh at.

They pay close attention to detail. Jim is reporting back to Mr. Phelps, who hired him to infiltrate this game to find out if it was crooked. And he's saying he was there for the one night, and as far as he could tell, he didn't see any card counting. They used fresh decks. There was no coded messaging that he could tell, and he thinks it's clean.

This is Jim showing his chops as a criminal. He knows how to cheat a game, and they're not pulling any of the tricks that he could tell and he thinks it's clean this is jim showing his chops as a criminal he knows how to cheat a game and they're not doing any they're not pulling any of the tricks that he knows and there's a good money moment here too he's made uh nine hundred and fifty dollars profit in the game that's what he told him right i'm assuming it's true uh because it doesn't seem like this is an episode where jim is trying to rip off his client because he pays him back. Here's your $5,000 stake plus $950 profit. And I think the reason why he's not holding back on it or why I am convinced he's not holding back on it is because this guy is paying Jim. Like he's just paying Jim what Jim wants.

He pays him $ you know, this is for that night and here's up front for the next night already. So yeah, Mr. Phelps wants him to go back the next Thursday and pays him in advance to, to get them to do it. I had that thought too, whether Rockford was keeping any back. And I mean, he could have like actually made a thousand kept 50 and told him nine 50, but I feel like the audience would have gotten a tell if that was what he was doing. And the way that this whole conversation is framed is very straightforward. Yeah.

There's a little bit of exposition here. It sets up stuff later. So he hired Rockford because he thinks that that game is fixed, but he doesn't want to blow the whistle with the cops because these are Bay Bay city's leading citizens. He has to sell cars to these guys and they could make his life very difficult. game is fixed but he doesn't want to blow the whistle with the cops because these are bay bay city's leading citizens he has to sell cars to these guys and they could make his life very difficult so he needs proof that there's cheating before he calls the cops right because presumably he's lost money on this game is kind of implied jim says my professional opinion is that the game

isn't fixed yeah you can pay me to keep looking. I just don't want you to not pay me because you don't like that. My answer doesn't change. Right. From here, we cut to Rockford tracking down his good friend, Angel Martin, in the basement of a newspaper publisher. This is where we find out about this cover.

It turns out that Angel has a brother-in-law named Aaron Keel, who's out of the country and so he provided um access to aaron's car he presumably has some kind of of make work job with his brother-in-law yeah yeah i don't think it's this episode that establishes it but i think it is established that that the brother-in-law has hired angel to work at his newspaper because angel's sister insists on it yeah throughout the the series we get a little bit about angel's family and what uh what a parasite he is yeah to everyone he knows this is why rockford's cover is so so good it's just somebody else's life he just picked up somebody else's life and used it for a night. Yeah. So he's, you know, returning the car and then telling him he's going to need it again

the next week. And they go through this whole little routine. So this is one of those, like, you really have to just watch the scene just to like see the banter and like the chemistry between Jim Rockford and Angel Martin in the show. They are friends. friends yeah and despite this angel is still always shaking jim down for money and jim is always coming to angel for favors that have to do with these kind of underworld or or nefarious things so the rest of this scene is basically this whole little routine about how much he gave angel to pay the garage guy and how much angel kept angels like no you need to give me more money because the garage guy took all that money. And it's all this like, I know how you think.

So this is why I'm not going to give you what you want. The long and the short of it is that Rockford is out 35 bucks here. We're not sure who ended up with that money. Probably Angel. Do you think that goes onto his expenses since he's getting actually paid? So I have this wonderful internal debate about this, which we might get to. So the question is, who does he bill for those expenses?

Right now, he's being hired by, air quotes, Phelps. Presumably, those are expenses for Phelps to handle. And we don't see him tell phelps that he owes him in addition to his regular fee this much phelps says here's for tonight and here's in advance they don't mention the actual amount of money but presumably 200 a day he got 400 at that moment so he would bill him later for whatever angel is bilking him out of. But, dun-dun-dun. From here, we go to Rockford getting woken up by Angel slamming on his trailer, demanding to be let in.

Everything up to now in this episode has been very like, okay, seems like a normal day for Jim. And this is where it takes a turn into, uh-oh, things are going to start happening. Angel's knocking on his trailer. Jim goes to let him in, and he's shoved in by these two gorillas that have used him as this initial gambit to get into the trailer. And as audience, we recognize them as the guys that went through his car or went through

Angel's brother-in-law's car when they thought it was Rockford's. Yes. They announced themselves as the Bay City Boys Club Grievance Committee. And these, I just want to note, without going into the actors' biographies, these two guys are so well cast as these gorillas, but they're not just goons. Or at least the one who does most of the talking isn't. Yeah. The other one, who's actually like older and less put together is the one who's a little more of the muscle and then the guy who talks is in like a really well tailored suit he's snide but not over the top you know he's sarcastic and you can kind of see that he's probably actually really

funny but in this circumstance he's not joking around uh just good casting of these these gorillas they check up on everyone new to the game, is the backstory here. So they're checking up on Aaron Keel, which led them to Angel Martin. They leaned on Angel. You don't have to lean too hard on Angel. Angel claims that they leaned on him. They probably just had to talk to him and threaten him. He had a great line where he's like, they were rude.

They're not as polite as they are now. So they've discovered that Aaron was out of the country because when they actually checked up on his actual home address, he's not there. So through Angel, they come to Jim. It's very simple. They just want to know who he's working for and why he's messing around with their poker game. When Rockford says that he cannot reveal his client, there's confidentiality involved. That's when the gun comes out. Things escalate pretty quickly. Guys break in, gun comes out. In the presence of physical violence, of course, Jim Rockford lies with a different cover story just so smoothly. And he just uses the story that he heard from Kate Flanders the night before, claiming that he's working for Mrs. Flanders and her husband is losing all this money and she wants to know where it's going.

There's a great little pause while the talking guy I don't think we ever get these guys' names. No. But the one who's doing the talking kind of turns around and starts heading towards the door and then turns back around.

Jim is like, what, is there a problem with that? And the guy's like, yeah, the problem is that there's no Mrs. Flanders. Jim has talked himself into a hole because it turns out that Paul Flanders, who is a real person in the game, is a bachelor, has no wife, has no children. This is the guy who's lost the money early on, the angry guy. And Jim specifically says, oh, and so no daughter then.

Because Jim is like, wait a minute, hold up. Something doesn't add up on my end. Yeah. So this is where Jim now is like, wait a second. She totally lied to me. Yeah. So now we really are back to square one with what is going on with Kate Flanders. The guys are like, all right, put your clothes on.

We're going for a ride. The guy with the gun takes Jim into his little bedroom end of the trailer to get dressed. And we have this whole little sequence where Angel is trying to talk his way out of it, basically. Yeah, he's like, I'm just an innocent bystander. And this is one of the things that's in the preview montage. And the guy has this great quote about those are the ones that usually get shot. So Angel tries to scam his way out of it. Nothing doing.

The other gorilla is coming back with Jim, who, always aware of his environment, this Jim Rockford, uses the freezer door to suddenly smash it into the guy's face and grab the gun. And he yells for Angel to get him. Get him, Angel. Get him, Angel. There's a brief scuffle between everyone. Rockford gets the gun. They kind of shove the guys out of the door.

And instead of trying to come back in, the gorillas peel away in their car. So there's a couple of things here that I think are exquisite. The first is Angel. Get him, Angel. And Angel clearly is running for the door. He's not getting him. He's trying to get out. And the guy just gets in Angel's way. So from Rockford's point of view, Angel stepped up. But the other thing is that these gorillas, they know that Rockford has gotten the upper hand and there's no reason for them to be there anymore. That they do run off, that they don't stick around to fight to the death or lay siege to Rockford's trailer or whatever the hell the plan would have been. I can't remember, does Rockford get the gun from the guy?

I think he does. Because the guy's holding the gun and then he kind of traps his arm over the freezer door and gets it out of his hand. I think that's why they leave, right? Because now, like, Rockford has the gun. There's no reason. Just... Right.

We know where this guy lives. We're out of here. One of the beautiful moments of Rockford fight choreography. It looks so sloppy and yet it's so beautiful in what comes out of it. Rockford congratulates Angel on stepping up. Angel looks terrified. Clearly a mistake on his part, but it worked out in his favor this time. So now Rockford is driving with Angel back to Bay City.

Angel wants him to take him home, but he's like, no, I just have a quick business conversation to have and then I'll drop you off. The whole conversation here is Angel, what are you getting me into, Jimmy? Like you just asked me for a favor, but now there's guys with guns. Like you need to get me out of this, all this stuff. And Rockford just coming back with all the things that Angel has done to him and just the back and forth about how they both use each other for help and then to try and get out of trouble but what i wanted to highlight is that part of it ends on another great garner smile it's just so like can you believe this guy like yeah angels cracking him

up a little bit uh and whether that's angels cracking up jim or stewart margolin who's the actor who plays angel cracking cracking up James Garner. You really get the sense that there's a real camaraderie between the two characters. They pull up to the fancy house that Mr. Phelps inhabits, go up to the door, no one's answering it. And then the landscaper with a Irish accent, I think. Yeah, I kept kind of waiting for it to disappear. Like waiting for the guy to reveal that this is not his real accent. But maybe it was his real accent and it was just out of nowhere.

This landscaper comes up. He has this weird Irish-y accent that may or may not have been a put on. He's asking if they want to buy the place. And this is, you know, as audience, we're like, oh, this was a scam. And reveal that, no, he's here to see Phelps. Well, Phelps is dead. You'll find him at the, whatever, the Our Lady of Grace Cemetery or whatever.

Yeah, Garden of Eternal Rest or something. Something like that. Something horrible. Jim is surprised. He's like, I was just talking to him a few hours ago. And the landscaper says that Phelps has been dead for two months. And on the word dead, Angel just runs away. He just turns and strides away.

There's just something beautiful about the way this man will put his head down and just get going like i'm walking but i'm walking fast both trying not to look like he's trying to get away from something and trying to get away from it as swiftly as possible yeah i don't know where i'm going but i'm not staying here yeah so rockford has been assaulted. He's been scammed. He's been lied to at least twice. So he being a good citizen, he goes to the Bay City Police Department to file a complaint. And this this is kind of a reoccurring tactic of Rockford's when he's out of town. Like oftentimes, if he's out of town, he will go to the cops to let them know

that he's in the area and that he's been doing something. I guess that's good PI work, or maybe it's even something he legally has to do as a private investigator. I can't remember, but... There are a number of episodes where he gets hassled by the cops because cops just don't like PIs, right? Yeah. So he usually at least tries to start by being on the up and up. I want to be on the record. Like he specifically wants this written down so that they know that he was there. Unfortunately, the police officer that he's talking to isn't really willing to give him the time of day. Even if I believe your story, what do you want me to do?

Fill out a bunch of John Doe complaints? Because Rockford doesn't know who any of these people actually are. And that's when he says, yes, I do. Because then I'll be on the record. Part of the story is about, I was hired to go into this poker game where there's gambling going on. So the cop says, even if I did that, I could bring you up on gambling charges. Gambling for money is against the law, except for it's legal.

Great line. But he basically won't do anything. So Rockford says, well, fine, if you won't take me seriously, I'll go to the DA. And the guy's like, oh, I'm shaking in my boots. Which Rockford responds, I'm going to the DA. And sure enough, that's where he goes. The going to the DA escalation, does that seem a little weird to you? Yeah, here's where the plot is hooked around.

It's not quite a coincidence, but almost. He's about to discover some things by going to the DA, and it's not normally within his character to do that. Right. It takes that escalation plus, I mean, what we're about to see to kind of unfold the mystery so we can get back to Rockford trying to solve the problem. Yeah, I felt sort of the same way when I was watching it. Because it had been a while since I'd seen it. Because I couldn't quite remember who was who. Yeah. But when he went to the DA, I was like, oh, that's right.

And it is a little weird. I think this episode kind of stands out a little bit against the backdrop of other Rockford episodes. Because there are little bits like that. Like, there's no reason for him to bring Angel to this guy's house except to have that wonderful scene where Angel power walks away. It stands out a little bit to me because I'm always willing to be like, because of their relationship, they do this thing, right?

Because they always give each other crap and it's more convenient for Rockford to do this first, then drop him off. Yeah, that's fine. But in this case, it's more, for Rockford to do this first, then drop him off. Yeah, that's fine. But in this case, it's more, this is a narrative convenience. He goes to the DA because it's really the easiest way to get us to the next point of the story. And that's fine. Like, it's not a horrible, glaring thing. It only stands out because it's so rarely needed.

So that said, he goes to the DA. We, even though he has to wait for his appointment a little bit, but we quickly get to the part where he's, uh, storming up to the DA's office, uh, cause he only needs 10 minutes. The DA comes out of his office and what do you know? It is Mr. Phelps, whose name is not in fact Phelps. He is deputy district attorney burton kimball so kimball who's wearing a much more professional suit yes he is dressed to the nines i mean it's all kind of brown and tan because it's 70s but it's much better dressed than he was before which is why i had the epiphany earlier i was like oh that's right they go back into his office and there's kind of two halves to this scene the first half is we kind of get the story or at least the first

layer of the story which is that an informant came to the da about this rigged game but kimball is a political realist he knows he can't just send cops in into the uh the patriarchy right and uh bust up the game there'll be there'll be consequences so he needs to make sure there's proof and he doesn't want to go through the cops because he's worried that the cops would be in on it that they've bought protection or something because of all this money flying around jim does not like this he doesn't like being lied to especially by clients in contrast with his next client, essentially, this guy is not very personable, nor does he play to Jim's other weak points. So he's like, no, I'm not interested. I quit. I want no part of your weird scheme that you're

doing. And he tries to buffalo. Like, I think that's, that's really why this kind of comes to a head is that his reaction to Jim wanting to quit is to threaten Jim. Right. And that's not a good way to get Jim to do something. So that's the second half is this gambit where Kimball calls the L.A. police chief and threatens to have Rockford's P.I. license pulled. But Jim Rockford, always knowing his rights, comes back with, you can do that, but then I'll appeal. Then there'll have to be a hearing.

All the details of the case I was working on will come out. And unless you're squeaky clean on this, you don't want that. And sure enough, Kimball does not want that. Hangs up the phone. Rockford basically is like, all right, well, I'm done with you now. And peace is out. There's a great line that Rockford has here Kimball is I think he's about to threaten him with something else and Rockford just says don't don't lean don't hassle and don't threaten I happen to be in a very bad mood it's great it's a very I know every angle you're about

to take it's not gonna work work. Let's end this. Another little subtlety about the scene that I really liked was at the very beginning, Kimball, you know, gets behind his desk and then he tells Rockford to sit down. I'll tell you what's going on. He's like, sit down. He makes his power play, right? Like I want you to sit and then we'll talk. So Rockford finally does sit, but he sits in the other chair, not the one that Kimball was pointing at. There's so much body language around how James Garner sat and moved around in that moment. It just seemed to be a really nice little pointer to how the scene was going to go, which is a lot of bluster. But then it's Rockford's decision about where to go at the end.

There's a callback to that in a scene that's coming up in a moment. Yeah, that's good stuff. So maybe here is where we kind of see the cool part of James Garner directing himself, because that's both an actor decision and potentially a director, a directorially decided thing. So in that moment, he's kind of allowed to do whatever he wants right and it's a really great part of the scene we actually cut with jim still in the office out to miss doyle waiting to talk to the district attorney who is who we know as kate flanders yes quote unquote kate flanders is coming in to see kimball when Rockford comes out of the office.

They almost pass each other in the hall, but then she looks up and sees that he's looking at her. We start off this entire episode with Rockford in kind of top form. He's enjoying himself. He gets to gamble with somebody else's money. He's being followed, but he knows he's being followed. And it turns out it's not that big of a threat or anything like that. When Angel shows up at his door from that point on, every bit of this story gets worse and worse for him,

and you can see him become more and more frustrated and just dog-tired with the world. And I love that. It's just this great arc. Even though he lies as part of his job, he hates being lied to. When he gets scammed, he gets it. He understands, even if he's like frustrated or angry. Yeah. When someone runs a con on him, he's like, oh, well, they got me, usually.

But when someone just flat out lies to him, to his face face that's when he gets really mad about it so he is not willing to give her the time of day she follows him out of this office uh this office building they're basically both mad at each other for lying right so she's like i needed to know what you were doing i was lying because i was investigating a case. Yeah, you were lying to me. He's not willing to give up the moral high ground here, even though, again, they're on exactly the same moral footing to the audience's eyes, or at least to my eyes. She definitely feels that she's clean, that her department is clean, that her city is clean. And these are important things to her. And Jim kind of, none of it is like what you think it is. So she tells him that, you know, she's also a DA. She's in the

DA's office. And she is investigating Flanders because he's in charge of a labor union pension fund. And she got a tip that he's been dipping into it. So that's the second story from her. And she got a tip that he's been dipping into it. So that's the second story from her. Jim doesn't believe this story either. He flat out says, I don't believe you. And he just keeps badgering her with all these questions about the union. Yeah.

So what's the union? What's the address? What floor is it on? What's the guy's secretary's name? What's the name of his secretary? Yeah. And she shuts down a little bit in the face of that, but then just comes back with like, look, I just really need your help on on this and that's how you get jim you got a pretty face you just ask nicely he may want to resist but he's he can't well this is the first step of the the resolve crumbling even though she says i need your help on this he still yeah leaves he's still like i'm done with this the

whole situation but then in our next scene kate doyle comes to his trailer comes to his territory she knocks he he lets her in eventually he's like i'm busy as he's all lying on a chair just like staring into nothingness he's not even watching tv or he's just literally sitting around she comes in but she knowing what is going to be her best chance. She comes in casual. Her hair was up at work. She comes in, her hair is down. She's in more casual clothes. She's very friendly, very apologetic. And this is where she talks about

how proud she is of the law and of her office and how it's a clean office. And that's why she cares so much about this. I don't know. There's a little bit of maybe unnecessary exposition about like her dad read the law and was never a lawyer and she was and again this stuff stands out only in so

much is that it rarely stands out almost always if somebody's saying something with exposition in it they're also delivering something else to you as the audience in a Rockford Files episode. It's not even plot exposition. It's just about her character. Yeah. And it's fine. It's perfect. Like, I want to know about her character so that it doesn't trouble me.

It's just, it's not in character for the show. It's a little bit of telegraphing to us, I think, as the audience that like, this is the real story that she's about to tell us. She's going to be a goody-goody two-shoe and we need to know that she really is and not pretending to be one so what's really going on with her is that she thinks that burt kimball her supervisor essentially her boss basically she thinks he's going crooked the department's clean but he's been prosecuting these cases basically not prosecuting them as hard as she thinks he could and letting guys off that she thinks should be in jail.

They kind of talk back and forth and theorize that if he's been playing in this poker game and he's in deep, then maybe other people in the game are using that as leverage to get these cases thrown out or, or to get them not to litigate. This is where she kind of draws him in through both proposing an interesting case, I think. Right. This is a more compelling reason for him to be involved. And also, again, just being friendly and listening to his expertise.

She says, there's never been any organized crime in Bay City, to which he responds, looks like there is now. This is also the scene that's the callback to the chair. When she first comes in, he first rebuffs her, and then she says that, you know, at least give me my five minutes. And he's sitting on the couch, and he says, well, take a seat. She has to go and grab a seat almost off camera and drag it over in order to sit down and have a talk with him. And it's the same power move, but in reverse here. She also, this is where she starts this little weird physical tick of grabbing his wrist to look at his watch for what time it is. But that also, I think, starts creating some physical intimacy between them that we will see unfold a little bit over the rest of

the episode and then a very clear hint at the very end and so rockford finally in the face of the interesting case getting the actual truth from someone and asking nicely says that he'll help her out so at this point he's not working for anyone it will because those goons are after him still so he has a little bit of skin in the game in that way yeah but yeah he's not officially employed by anyone for from here on out so she calls to make a emergency appointment she's going to confront kimball with this theory she wants rockford there just to back her up and give more details and see if she can get the truth from Kimball. They go back to the Bay City DA's office and wait for him in the garage.

If he wants to leave, he's going to have to go to his car. So we'll just wait by his car. Some flirty bits in this little sequence as they walk over towards Kimball's parking spot. Yeah. So we see that their physical attraction is starting to heat up. They see that there's a car in the spot. They look in the window and Burt Kimball is dead in the front seat. This is another one of those moments where you can feel like Rockford can go either way.

Oh, okay. Somebody's dead. I should go. Or it means, okay, we need to stop this. We need to... And here's where he lays out the stakes for him. They got Kimball. They know that Kimball hired me.

Yeah. So now they're going to come after me. At this point, they're kind of operating on the presumption that is borne out by the rest of the episode. That there's some kind of organized crime coalescing, right, around this poker game. She's like, we have to go to the cops. We have to file a report. He's like, let someone else find him. Because if we do that, then we're both targets.

And he doesn't want her to be a target. Yeah. So where do they go? To Angel's hideout, which is apparently in like a semi-derelict church or something like that. It's a weird building. There are two framing things between these two scenes that i really liked in the parking garage they kind of finalize have their final little flirty moment with the camera over the hood of kimball's car and then the camera just pans down as they look

to reveal yes the dead man and then when they're coming into this building, the camera's behind the glass, is inside the entryway behind glass, watching them come up the steps. And their audio is muffled as if the microphone is also behind the glass. I remember thinking the same thing too, because I don't have the best hearing in the world. So when audio goes muffled,

I think for a moment, oh, is this it? Is this where I stop hearing things? So it definitely stood out to me. And I thought that was a really great, it kind of put us in the scene almost like as a voyeur of some sort. In this moment, it does seem intentional. Because also what they're saying is a little not important. Yeah.

Anyway, they come in. They come into the room that Angel's hanging out in which is like a fully furnished little studio apartment angel's not happy to see them no well because angel knows that those goons were after jim so now if jim's coming he's like were you followed and he's like spying around and stuff uh this is another scene where to really appreciate it you really have to watch it so much of the joy of this scene is watching angel scuttle around in the background so the actual content here is that they kind of go off on another theorizing binge to tell us what is going on essentially right they theorize that george wells who founded the club

or built the club or something like that he started the club and he started the poker game so he's probably the the mastermind organizing crime in bay city and the poker game is designed to get blackmail ability on these other leading uh leading men yeah rockford kind of goes down the list of what each person can provide the da can fix cases there's a banker for like money stuff money laundering there's a theater chain owner which will be good for showing pornography which i guess is a organized crime thing in the in the mid 70s before the internet i don't know that was one that i was having a little trouble visualizing because, I mean, they're a porn theater. There were porn theaters, right?

Like, that was famously, that's what 42nd Street was before Disney took over in New York. But do you have, like, late-night illegal porn viewing? How do you operate underneath the law? Maybe they did. I don't know. This is a thing that I was too young back then to know what this was. How about if anyone's a, uh, organized crime historian out there and wants to let us know what the role of

porno theaters and organized crime in the seventies was leave a comment on our website for this episode and, uh, let us know. And of course we get the call back to this, this guy Flanders with the pension fund, which apparently is a real thing. That wasn't just something she made up but the union pension fund would provide capital for all of these criminal

enterprises one of the joys of this scene is just seeing what Angel's doing in the background but the not so subtle shift that Angel makes when he realizes that she's the DA well and Jim I think deliberately leaves that towards the middle of the conversation, right? Like he doesn't come in and be like, this is Kate Doyle. She's a DA. He doesn't introduce them until they start talking about this stuff. And Angel says like, oh, you got involved with the mob and now you're getting involved with the law. I want nothing to do with this. And he's like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't introduce you. This is Kate Doyle. She's a district attorney.

And he immediately won 80s with his behavior. So good. It's one of the reasons why I love Angel as a character. I mean, as a human being, I would not. I would not be friends with Angel. No, but as a character, he's wonderful. He's so he offers her cream and sugar and wants Jim to get off her back as soon as he knows that she's part of the law. And we round this out with Jim has a theory about how the game is getting fixed.

Right. There's been this interesting kind of counterplot about whether this game is fixed or not. It's like we got Tipu as a fixed, but he played in it and it wasn't fixed. But this person says it's fixed, but then that was a lie. Or I think he just has a theory at this point, right? He just says, I have an idea of how they're doing it. The upcoming scene where he first investigates this is a great scene and I love it, but this is another one of these moments in this episode where I don't think the evidence that they acquired, maybe you can prove me wrong,

but I don't think the evidence that they acquire there would in fact exist they're about to find out that their electric bill has gone up to jim this is proving that they're taping yeah the the the game but like i don't think a video camera would cost that much more money than just having the lights on till four in the morning which is what they would do anyways so it's a little weird it's a little weird do anyways. So it's a little weird. It's a little weird. It's, I think it's a little less about proving the case and a little more about

giving enough justification to move on. Right. Yeah. So they go to the, like the civil engineering department, uh, in Bay city to look through the plans for the building. He does see that they put in a new power box and he smiles. It's like, yeah,

got them now. So then they go to the power company. While this may not result in particularly compelling evidence, the scene is great. Yeah, it's a great scene. Jim has this story in order to get these records that uses Kate's real position as a DA as leverage, but doesn't actually use any of her power as DA, right? He's complained to the DA because he lives next to the boys club and his power bills are going up and he thinks they're stealing his power. You know, they're denying it. So he went to the DA to file a complaint. This is the DA, right? And she kind of nods and just keeps looking at him because

she does not endorse this bending of the truth right but neither does she protest right so let me see the records and the the woman working there it's like i can't just show those to you how long does it take to get a court order i don't care i'll wait go make it happen right and the woman sighs and it's like fine because she doesn't want to deal with the paperwork, essentially, was my read. So they look at the records and the boys club is using three times the power that they used a year ago, which, as you say, for a couple of video cameras and maybe some recording equipment seems like a large thing. It's not really explained. And neither is it something that I questioned in that moment, though now that you brought it up, that does seem ridiculous. Tapper to the scene is kind of,

this is a little money moment here that's nice. Each character has a full life that has nothing to do with Rockford. Everybody you encounter has their own little story that's just kind of brushing up against Rockford. And this woman behind the counter, her story is, I need to get out of here in time to get my bus so I can get home. And Rockford keeps her there, so she just complains about it at the end. And he goes, well, here, take a cab.

And he hands her some money. And there's a couple lovely things about this. Number one, that's chivalrous. That's James Gardner, Jim Rockford style chivalry, right? Right. Number two, I get to go, ooh, how much is he giving her? It's two bills. I presume probably closer to a one and a five or two fives. So let's say $10. The other thing that it had me think of, I think at this point he has been hired by Kate.

Yeah. So this is probably going on this expense account. And I know that our podcasters are sitting on the edge of the seats wondering, okay, but before you said there was something on the expense account. And I'm like, yes, but that man died. Who is he going to bill for the $35 he gave Angel? It might just be gone forever. I don't know if she's... No, she does hire him. You're right, because she says that she's authorized to

make a financial commitment when she talks to him at his trailer. So yeah, you're right. He is working for her. So when we tally it all up at the end, I'm holding to that. Alright, Rockford thinks based on this evidence that they're using closed circuit cameras.

So he's going to break in to find a camera because if she issues a search warrant and there aren't cameras then that's that doesn't solve anything he'll still be on the chopping block they need something that's actually going to put these guys behind bars that's the kind of thoroughness you come to rockford for he wants to make sure it's done and done right kate wants to go with him. He obviously does not think that that's appropriate. However, she says that if he goes without her, she is going to call in Bay City's finest to stake him out and then arrest him for breaking and entering. And that's when he goes, oh, you're learning. So even though this is a legal action, she wants to be part of it.

Yes. And I think this is whatever her feelings for Jim are maybe overcoming her good sense a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Because there's no real good reason for her to go along. When they leave Kimball's body without reporting it, from that point on, she's in trouble. That's true. She's in the quasi-legal state that is Jim Rockford's life. At least once, he kind of comes back at her with, like, well, we're both in this. You've got some skin in this game, too. Because we get to the

door, and Jim pulls out his lockpick set. and she says, those are illegal. And he goes, yeah, so is what we're doing. What part of this has not sunk in yet? But she sucks it up and carries through. So he picks the lock. They go into the office where the game is at. They start looking for cameras, and he determines that they have hidden tiny cameras in the fire sprinkler head yes over the table

this is the fire safety portion of the show the working fire sprinkler has been replaced with a camera he theorizes that there's a magnification lens in there sure things that's what lenses do yeah you know there's the cables are running through the ceiling to some remote location and we get a little bit of explanatory dialogue where it's like well but if someone's watching how does the person know what everyone else has and he says whoever's running the game is probably wired to receive some kind of coded electric signal it's been used before to great effect this is is when the actual boys club shows up outside, right? This is the grievance committee and their boss.

There's three of them, right? There's three of them, yes. The grievance committee and I presume that this is Wells? Yeah. George Wells is the other guy. He was in the game in the first scene. I don't remember if we got his name and then this is the first time we've seen him since then. But he's the boss.

They have a little bit of dialogue which explains that they're here to remove the cameras, because they feel the heat. Of course, just as they're about to walk into the boys' club, that's when Rockford and Kate are leaving the boys' club. They see them

on the steps and turn around and run back into the building and this is when we get our grand finale foot chase through the boys club if you grew up on the old scooby-doo like i did where they would go running down a hallway through one door and out a completely inexplicable other door this chase has thosemarks, but every bit of it is explained. And this is the thing that I kind of love about this chase is that it's one misdirect after another the whole way through. Yeah, unlike the earlier scuffle, this is not a fight.

There's a couple gunshots, but this is not Rockford fighting off goons until the police arrive. This is Rockford and Kate evading these guys who have guns as long as they can until someone arrives. Because the first thing that Rockford does is they run down this hall away from these guys with guns, and then he pauses and he pulls a fire alarm handle, and then the chase goes on. Here's another weird thing about alarm handle. And then the chase goes on. Here's another weird thing about this episode. The alarm doesn't go off. Later on, we'll find out that it works.

But, like, I understand banks having silent alarms if they're being robbed. But you don't ever want a silent fire alarm. That's not a useful device. Yeah, I wondered about that and then i immediately forgot it right because the real reason right the useful reason is because it'd be really annoying to have an alarm go off during this like six minute chase sequence so what i was trying to figure out when he pulled that alarm was was he expecting an alarm and was like damn it it didn it didn't work. Or was he like, okay, hopefully the fire department are on their way. So that left me a little bit like, I'm not sure exactly what happened.

But that doesn't harm this chase at all. Like you said, it's all little pieces of misdirection to just keep these guys away long enough. There's a great funky groove soundtrack. Yes. The very funk interpretation of the Rockford theme. It's not quite comedic. No, no. Their lives are in danger and they don't give up on that. But it's very upbeat and very like, all right, we're going to see the resolution of this, you know? Yeah. And yeah, there's just so many good bits. They do some closing a door,

but going through a different door. so the guys chasing them go through the door they see closed. They throw a medicine ball or a basketball or something down the stairs, and they chase that. Probably the standout moment is when he grabs a fire extinguisher and sprays it all over the floor, so that the guys start slipping, and they have

to slowly pull themselves along the wall with their feet sliding through the fire extinguisher stuff. He through the fire extinguisher stuff? He pulls the fire extinguisher, and I think to myself, is he going to try and fight them with it? I've been trained by television to believe that this is a weapon. But no, he does the Rockford thing. He sprays it on the ground, and it makes this slippery thing.

And two great things happen. Number one, just watching them try and navigate that hallway is great. Yeah. And then the next time they go through a hallway like that, they're all like holding. Sorry, I'm miming on this podcast. But I guess watch it. You'll see what I'm talking about. It's a really well constructed sequence.

Not only do we get these little set pieces of like, here's this thing that misdirects that jim and kate get to the next level of stairs that they're trying to get to it's also clear throughout who has the advantage and who is close yeah so you can kind of feel when the grievance committee gets close to them and then feel when they're gaining a little ground so for all that we kind of called james garner's direction workman like at the beginning of the episode or for all that i called uh i'm backing down on that this is this is well done i can only assume that he put this scene together and it's great the long and short of it however is that they do evade the grievance committee and finally in a big dramatic finale run out those same front doors that they do evade the grievance committee and finally, in a big dramatic finale, run out those same front doors that they tried to run out the first time. There's a police car,

there's fire trucks. Jim runs right over to the cop who's in front and says, officer, there's three men with guns who are about to come out that door. Arrest them. And sure enough, that's what happens. So good. So clean. It's great. Narratively, the purpose of not being an alarm is so that those guys actually chase them and they don't just run away. Yeah, because we've established that they're smart and they'll run away if necessary. Right. Our heroes win the day and then we get to our little final epilogue scene. Turns out that Kate gets to prosecute this one because she was so involved. So she's very excited about that.

They have them cold on murder and a dozen other felonies. So sounds like they're able to get a lot of evidence from these tapes or whatever. Jim does ask, do we know exactly why they killed Kimball? And she says, you know, he was being blackmailed like the rest of them, but he was starting to unravel and they thought he was going to blow the whole thing. So that's why they they killed him. They end their their last little interaction here is quite romantic. Like when she first sees him at this last scene, she gives him a little peck on the cheek, right? So that's a physical escalation.

But there's this moment, I can't remember the dialogue, but almost at the very end where she has regrets about compromising her morals to make this happen. I think she kind of teases Rockford a little bit. Right. You committed all these crimes. I could bring you up on charges. And he responds like, oh, but you're forgetting one thing.

I had an accomplice. Yes. And there's this thing where they say, we're going to have to have a talk about that. And Rockford says, a long, long talk. And they smile and look at each other with hearts in their eyes. Yes. And we freeze on their smiley, flirty faces. So that was a very nice little bit of Rockford euphemism there.

Yeah, I feel like Jim comes out really good in this episode. Yeah, I feel like Jim comes out really good in this episode. Okay, so money-wise, including the variables that I suggested before, for instance, that he spent $10 for the cab, but then also was able to expense her for it. I think he comes out somewhere between $765 to $800 up, depending on the $35 that he gave Angel. He came out strong on the lady friend department. Yeah. And his car didn't even get smashed up. All together, this is just a fun sort of cheery episode, despite the fact that there's a murder in the middle of it. It's a good one for Jim and Angel.

despite the fact that there's a murder in the middle of it. It's a good one for Jim and Angel. And it's, I think, just a good one to see sort of Jim's tradecraft. Also, I have to say, I think that the whole bit about being followed in the car was quite well done. Like I said, I didn't remember the episode that well. And it took me a while before I realized, oh, that's right. It's not the grievance committee that's following him. It's a nice reveal when Kate comes out and you're like, oh, there's another party involved with the story. He gets to have his victory taco.

You know, all I need food-wise is there. Other than that, there's not much food in this episode. Because it is kind of a light-hearted tone throughout the episode do you think that's also because it was a garner directed thing it feels a little bit like he's having fun with it like we just said i'm kind of going back on what i said i'm having a lot of podcast moments in this podcast like me too because i think i've kind of come around i'm appreciating it more now, having talked about some of the subtleties, than I think I did when I just watched it.

Is that weakness? Should I have known this going into it? But I'm really happy this discussion has actually changed how I viewed this episode. I didn't actually have a bad opinion of the episode, but I had, I would say, a somewhat frivolous opinion of the episode. Yeah.

So the music in it is great. I mean, it's Rockford. It's going to be great. It's going to have this sort of reoccurring Rockford theme done different ways. But that part was so enjoyable that you kind of fell into the zone of like, yeah, this is just pleasant to watch, right? The opening credits where they played the music over them playing gambling, right? That was just fun to watch. Then the music cuts in during that, I'm going to call it a car chase. And then the music during the chase at the end, all of it made it, yeah, I could sit and watch this all day.

You know, it kind of invites you to not pay close attention. Yeah, I've definitely just kind of watched this episode and i don't really remember liking it that much like kind of like oh yeah that was fine but sitting down and really watching it for the podcast yeah a lot of those things about the music about some of the subtleties of the uh kind of like the chair stuff and the body language and the, and the chemistry between Jim and Angel, all that comes out stronger when you're like really watching it. Right. It has some narrative conveniences that aren't in other episodes,

right? Like going to DA is a little weird. The three times as much power is kind of a weird explanation. It's a little bit of a rough edge that you can get over. No problem. It doesn't stop you. It doesn't ruin anything. You rough edge that you can get over. No problem. It doesn't stop you. It doesn't ruin anything. You only notice it because it doesn't happen elsewhere.

Yeah. So great episode. Definitely recommended as I think all of them that we recommend, though, probably more of a later in your viewing career. Cause I think there are a lot of things that are like, Oh, because I already know who angel is.

Right. It's really fun. Yeah, when you're ready to have fun with Angel, not when you're ready to be introduced to Angel. Well, I think that's most of what we have to say for the girl in the Bay City Boys Club. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll poke at some specific elements that are useful for your own narrative explorations. While we have you here, there's three ways you can support us. First, rate and review on iTunes or whatever service you use for podcasts.

Second, you can support us directly for as little as $1 an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. If you want to help us shape the direction of 200 a day, the Patreon is the best place to go. And finally, both of us have other projects going on pretty much all the time. Epi, what are you excited about right now? I'm excited about swords and sorcery, the type of swords and sorcery you find at worldswithoutmaster.com. And my new project, codename Lincoln Green, Robin Hood role-playing game. You can find all you need to know about that at digathousandholes.com. I'm excited about your stuff as well oh that's so nice as always you can check out my catalog of fiction and role-playing games at ndpdesign.com including

the worldwide wrestling role-playing game if you want to see my newest stuff check out the play test page that's where i have free downloads of all my fun new projects thanks yet again for listening as always we deeply appreciate your support. And with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 Today. We had just talked about the girl in the Bay City Boys Club. And we're about to talk about some of the fiction lessons, some of the narrative lessons that we picked up while watching this episode that has clearly taught us a lot in the watching and the talking. My initial reaction was actually that this is going to be a little harder for me to pull stuff out of because so much of what I like about it is on the Rockford Files-specific character end. So I'm coming to this half at a little bit of a disadvantage, I think.

But what do you have to throw at me? First off, we were just talking about how it's such a smooth watch. Sometimes it's hard to analyze something that goes down that smooth, right? You're just like, oh, that was pleasant. And then that was it. And I think that that's what this episode did when I first watched it. Then as we talked about it, it kind of things blossomed. But one of the things, his use of misdirection particularly in that early car

chase and then later in the the running around the boys club itself the foot chase the way that they let us in on his misdirection every single time you know i made the joke about scooby-doo and uh going between the doors but really this is there's this moment where they have this shot in the chase, during the chase. They have a shot inside a gymnasium. Rockford and Kate run along the gymnasium floor. One of the bad guys, one of the grievance club, comes out in the room above the gymnasium,

which has this big open window. Yeah, it's like a viewing gallery kind of yeah one of them's up there and the other one the other two are down and they're both running across and it's a great shot and then later we get the same shot uh with rockford and kate up on the top and the whole group coming along and that was the part that feels very scooby-doo it's the exact same shot with people but in between those we see all that Rockford does to make that happen. Right. It's not that he's particularly trying to set up a good shot, but it's just that we see how it gets to there.

They're not just running around chaotically. We see him prop open a door so that it closes after they go through another door. And that sends the griev you know that sends the grievance committee downstairs instead of upstairs right we see that connective tissue and then that's what makes it such a fun scene because i think unlike a lot of chase scenes and a lot of action scenes at least to me where you're just waiting for it to get to the end to find out what happens i mean there are things to enjoy in those kinds of scenes, but for a lot of my preferences,

if there's not things happening inside the action that are about something, my eyes kind of glaze over and I'm kind of waiting to see what the resolution is. And in this, I'm actually watching because I want to see, oh, what is he going to do next? What's the next gambit? I think that there's two ways we can take this lesson. One, if you're putting fiction together, I think if you're writing something or what have you,

there's maybe a temptation to not spoil the wonder of what's happening and not show people how something happens. And you have to kind of get over that. People want to know, and it's often just perfectly fine to show it. It's a little bit of showing your work, right? Yeah. One way to do that scene, it wouldn't happen in the Rockford Files, right? But I think one way to do that scene is we see the grievance committee running after them.

We hear gunshots and bangs and thumps then we see rockford and kate come running out the front and the cops and the police are there like that gets us from a to b in a similar way and maybe in some situations we don't care about what happened in there so that's fine but in this situation because part of the episode is kind of celebratory about like what a crafty guy Rockford is. Right. Yeah. Seeing those moments make us appreciate his capabilities, even though in the context of the story, there's no real meat there. Right. It's just this is what happens at the end. Right.

It doesn't feel like padding in the show. I think what I was kind of getting at was you may be tempted to just show the grievance committee running downstairs following what they thought were footsteps and then maybe later reveal that it was a ball that Rockford dropped down the stairs or, you know, and that's fine, whatever. But I really enjoyed the fact that because we're in it to watch Rockford work. We're not in it to watch these people get tripped. We want to see the work done and not just be as misdirected as they are. And the same thing happens with the business in the car pulling over to the side and then pulling out.

And we just clearly see his expressions as he's like, okay, now I know that about this person. Now I know they're actually following me. We see the specific steps that he takes to determine what the problem is and then take care of it. So it doesn't feel like the show is just handing us, here's the problem, and then handing us, here's the solution. It feels like we're actually seeing the decision-making process, which I think brings us more into being on his side yeah the other thing about the foot chase that's valuable to think about is how it's a conflict it's a fight of a kind with different stakes and different amounts of power on each side and that shapes the conflict jim and kate want to not be shot or killed right like? Like not be harmed by the grievance

committee. As you do. And that's kind of a negative goal, right? Like they want to not have a thing happen, but they also want the grievance committee to be arrested. This is the golden opportunity. They have guns in their hands, right? They don't have weapons, but they do have a little bit of surprise on their side. The grievance committee wants to kill them and make their investigation go away. They have numbers on their side, they have weapons, and they have potentially a greater knowledge of the area, one would assume. So the fight, for lack of a better term, as it plays out, is like seeing Jim for the most part. It's mostly Jim. He kind of just guides Kate through the entire thing, which is not the greatest, I think,

for if you have multiple protagonists, but for the sake of shooting this sequence, that's what happens. You see him kind of trying to turn the tables and take away their advantages to stay out of their hands, to minimize their ability to use their guns, and to introduce these surprises

to shock them out of thinking they know the lay of the land. Keep them moving and not quite paying attention to what's really happening. Because it would be really dumb of him for him to start trying to punch them, right? Right. It's not a fight he can win. So that's an approach to building that kind of conflict between sides that are on different levels.

What are the things that the quote-unquote weaker or more defensive side can take advantage of to overcome the advantages of the stronger side? And then the other thing about this that I liked from a role-playing point of view is that each one of these misdirects and tricks and whatnot, they work. They just work. The drama is not in whether or not they'll fall for it. It's more in can he keep this up long enough to get them out the front door if there were a couple more in there maybe then it would be like are they gonna fall for it again but they're just enough it was just a tiny little handful of these little things

to keep them off balance enough for him to get out and i really appreciate that because i find that it's not terribly satisfying in a game to come up with like a plan like that and then just have it be like oh yeah but that's not not a thing i failed the role so my fire extinguisher is out of juice or something yeah in at the table terms the conflict is less about can jim rockford do each of these things he's trying to do? Right. It's more about, can he run out the clock? Can he get them to stay long enough that the forces of law and order arrive, but not give them enough time to catch him? Right.

If I were running this in a game, that would be what I would try to lay this out as for the players. If you guys win, then you walk the tightrope and you get them out at the right time. If you lose, maybe then, you know, you walk the tightrope and you get them out at the right time. If you lose, maybe depending on the details, either they catch up to you before you can get them out the door or you string along too long and they escape out a different way. They get out before the forces of law and order can catch them. The idea of misdirection is strong in this episode in a way that a lot of our other episodes that we've reviewed, we've made the point, you've made the point in particular, about how people don't lie to each other as much. It's more like you know if someone is lying, but it's more about I'm not ready to tell you the truth yet or there's a reason I can't tell you, that kind of thing. While in this episode, there's a lot of lying. you that kind of thing well in this episode there's a lot of lying yeah each person who tells a lie has another lie ready to go underneath the first one i think it's a tricky thing to do because

it's easy to get lost in what is going on and i think when you watch this episode casually part of that kind of like oh that was nice to the casual watch is because there's so many different layers of lies you're kind of like, oh, stuff is going on. I don't really remember who's who and what's going on in this moment. Right. Unless you pay the, the attention of someone actually watching a show as opposed to the attention of sitting on your phone while a show is on in the background.

Yeah. But it's a really interesting opportunity because each of the lies isn't just a complete fabrication for its own sake. Each of them has a goal. Kate Doyle, her first lie isn't just about complete fabrication for its own sake each of them has a goal kate doyle her first lie isn't just about who she is though it is but it's also about trying to get some information out of this guy who she doesn't really know what his deal is to kind of confirm or deny about whether the game is rigged like in that first scene when they're in the cafe that's what

she actually wants to know like is there gambling going on which she's pretty sure there is and is the game rigged which she probably thinks it is and jim is kind of unwilling to give her any information there then when that lie stripped away her next one which is about the labor organizer who's skimming into the money that part of it isn't a lie but her reason for wanting to know more about the game isn't about him it's about her boss right it cuts closer to the truth yeah so once that one gets stripped away then finally we connect the dots of why she's interested in the first place why she still wants his help and what she actually wants to get out of the situation so each layer of it reveals part of her agenda it's not just a lie for its own sake to get someone off your back

or to send them down the wrong path. Right. I think that's something that's easy to do, right? Where you just make something up for the sake of making it up because you don't want to reveal the truth yet. But if the fabrication has its own goal, then it's still interesting to engage with, right?

It resonates enough that it doesn't just disappear as background noise. It would be easy to just be like, oh, there was a lie and there was a lie and there was a lie and here's the truth. Or even, I can't remember what the truth is. I don't care. We know who the bad guys are. That's all we need to know. Yeah. I think that's what happens once you get too many falsehoods is you just stop caring about what is what and you're just waiting for that. All right, just tell me who the bad guy is. Yeah, no, I think that's great. And it's not a super easy thing to do. I think it's easier just to come up with a lie than it is to come up with a lie that is useful to the audience. Right. How I would go about it, if I was to try and construct this kind of

sequence of stories for a character, try to be really intentional about like, what is the goal of this story? Story like, what is the goal of this story? Story A, what is the goal of telling this story? Story B, what's the goal of telling this story? And then once those lies are penetrated, there's still a reason why it was told. And that gives continuity to the whole character, I think. But yeah, definitely tricky.

And I think testament to this episode is that the progression through those, if you're paying attention to the episode, doesn't become muddy. It does stay relatively clear about what's going on. They also serve as a way of worsening Rockford's mood, which is wonderful. Part of the art of this episode is that Rockford doesn't really assume any other identities other than that first one, which is one that he steps into not one that he constructs so once it's gone it's just gone and yeah we don't care about it anymore but there's also when he first the grievance committee this one is the greatest

one because he tells the lie that is based entirely on someone else's lie and when when the person who knows the truth to the matter is like wait a minute that's not true and it reveals something to him and that's a that's a lovely little domino effect that gets set up and knocked down yeah absolutely and i guess my my point is once we're past that point yeah if he was also telling fabrications then the plot would get totally muddy right kate has her set of fabrications kimball has his set of fabrications. Kimball has his set of fabrications. That's enough. We don't also need Rockford to be making stuff up on top of all of that or it would just be too much. Yeah. So the other thing that I had to talk about here, and this could have gone into almost any episode that we do, and this has to do with his trailer. So his

trailer is his home. It's his office. If you are aficionados of the show, it's already calling up an image to you. You can almost think of it as being like four rooms. Three of the four of them are all the same room, where the sofa is and the coffee table and the TV. And then you have where his desk is. And we get that panning shot during the opening credits every time. And then the desk is right next get that panning shot during the opening credits every time and then the desk is right next to his kitchen then on the other side of the kitchen is his bedroom and presumably his

bathroom i don't know if we ever see his bathroom people on television don't poop so it doesn't matter but anyways it's tiny it's small it's cramped it's not like it's a sty but it's not tidy it's definitely worn like nothing's new everything's but it's not tidy. It's definitely worn. Like nothing's new. Everything's kind of used. Even used for the 70s, you know, that kind of thing. And we know that he's got a gun in the cookie jar. That's maybe not evident in every episode, but that is a thing. But what I like about it and why I kind of want to bring it up now,

but could bring it up anytime, is that it's his home base. You know, we were just talking about the grievance committee having home field advantage with the boys club this is the same thing like rockford you would expect because of its size and how often the gorillas show up at his door that it would it would just leave him vulnerable all the time and it does to some extent but he always has something up his sleeve there which is this in this scene in this one he goes one way and as he's coming back he opens that fridge door on him and wrestles the gun away from him that way i love the character of this place it's it's not gorgeous it's not beautiful it's just a place that rockford owns in every sense of the word. It feels very much like an extension of his character.

Yeah, he has lots of little things that he can use to his advantage in there. There's an episode where he has like a hidden bottle of champagne that he pops the cork out into someone's eye in order to get a gun away from him. You know, so there's all these little tiny things that he kind of keeps up his sleeve. And you feel like he has complete knowledge over the space.

And this is a trope that is, as sci-fi fans, we're comfortable with. Doctor Who and his TARDIS and Firefly and Serenity, their ship. The Millennium Falcon. You know, like, they just make these great little, like, spots. Like, just very comfortable. One game in particular that does something with this idea is primetime adventures which is a game about making television shows in that when you make a character you come up with their personal set and that's something that for jim rockford the personal set would be his trailer right and that's something

that as a player you can use that basically to refresh a thing that you've used skill or an attribute or whatever they're called during the rest of the game and the way that it's explained in that game is really nice as a viewer what physical visual location do we associate with this character as their home right and doesn't have to be their house right in this case it is but it's also like uh star trek next generation dr crusher and the med bay or sick bay so the point is in the context of the rockford files it's nice as a repeat viewer because when we're in rockford's trailer even when he's being hassled or being beat up or whatever you kind of have this sense of like you're back

at home base and then you're going to go out into the world and do a thing but like this is kind of have this sense of like you're back at home base and then you're going to go out into the world and do a thing but like this is kind of the reset center of of what's happening it's great because you've got these moments where they come to his door to drag him out and sometimes it doesn't work uh and sometimes it does but you also have these moments where he's there with rocky they're just wonderful character moments of them sitting, or like we did recently with Gandhi, where Gandhi is sitting in there drinking his beer at 8.30 in the morning after eating

all his ham. It's great for us as viewers but also as a narrative element the idea of having a home base is, I think, useful for games in terms of creating a more holistic sense of who this character is, but also for having, you know, just somewhere to go as a default, right? Like we don't know what to do.

So we're going to go to this place because that's our place that we inhabit. One of the ways that that comes out is like, I can map it out. If you, if you gave me a piece of paper and a pencil and you say, I want to see what Rockford's trailer looks like, I can draw you a map of Rockford. I won't get it exactly correct, but you know, and I wouldn't be able to do that with, say, the Bay City Boys Club, which I spent a lot of time in today. You know, not all sets are going to be like that, but I feel like it's good to have that kind of home base one point of comparison maybe is that while jim's is his trailer dennis becker's is his desk at police headquarters yeah yeah that's where

we see him that's where he takes his calls we he does lots of other stuff we see him in his house we see him driving around in police cars we see him in in jim's trailer but jim was the better side of that deal but yeah that's true but like where would you assume that dennis becker is during an episode of the rodford files at his desk and i think that's a powerful way to situate characters to each other also like where would this character be yeah in fact we just saw in this episode at least one of angel's hideouts like i don't know if i can recall that place again but i can definitely recall where Angel works at the newspaper. I know we've seen that a few times.

That basement dungeon. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Well, I think that about covers what I had to say about this episode. Do you have anything else, Epi? No, I think we've earned our 200 a day, as did Rockford, which is rare. Yeah, congratulations to Jim Rockford for making some money on this particular job. And we thank you for listening.

We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for all of your attention. And we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.