Two Hundred A Day - Episode 13: Our Second Discussion Special

Episode Date: July 16, 2017

To celebrate going to a two-episode-a-month format, Nathan and Eppy take on some listener questions and comments about the show so far! We consider questions about some of our favorite episodes, including The Farnsworth Strategem and Chicken Little Is A Little Chicken, and then tackle an existential question: what is a "typical" episode of The Rockford Files? 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 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.

Welcome to 200 a Day. As always, this is a podcast where we discuss the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. But today, we're having a listener Q&A special instead of going into a single episode. Yeah. I am Nathan Palletta. And I am Epidio Ravishaw. We're commemorating a big milestone for the show in which this month, July of 2017, we're going to a two episode a month format from our original one episode a month. Due in a large part to our patrons on patreon.com. Yeah, so our patrons are great. Not only are they financially supporting us, which is amazing because it allows

us to do things like invest in new and better recording equipment and also in hard copies of the show so that we can move out of the first three season kind of parameters that we set ourselves but we also get great feedback from our patrons and we get great feedback from many listeners but one benefit of the patreon is that that's kind of the locus of our interaction so when people send us comments there or or make responses to our posts and such that gets beamed directly into our eyeballs while uh other other comments and stuff might take us a little while to get to that said we have some great listener questions and uh comments on some of our favorite episodes that we've done over the last couple months so we're going to go ahead and consider some of them because each of them illuminates a

new dimension, I'd say, of one of our episodes that we've talked about. Exactly. Yeah, as you said, on patreon.com, you can leave us comments. There's also some great comments on our website. For those who haven't checked out the website, one of the features is that each episode has its own page and each page has a comment section. So we have gotten a couple comments through that system as well, which is great. From that website, we have a comment, a question about the Farnsworth strategy, which was our fourth episode. Love the pod and this episode. One plot hole bugs me. Why would Rockford allow Linda Evans to be in on the con knowing that she might be a double agent? I think this is a particularly good one. real estate group that's all mobbed up that has gotten dennis becker uh entangled in its clutches linda evans is the uh female protagonist of the episode or or female main female character and we start off thinking that she's a victim of the of the scam along with dennis but then it turns

out that she was kind of the roper she was the one roping people into it but part way through the episode jim figures out her game and she decides to throw in with his con instead of the original con that she was a part of. Throughout the episode, there are little hints that she's not who she says she is. We could probably come to some agreement to the moment when Jim finally decides that she is a con artist and is part of the whole scam. But I think he's suspicious of her from really early on. Right. There are a lot of little moments from, I think, maybe the second scene that they're in, in the police station where she mentions taking Spanish classes because she's going

to Brazil. And Jim's like, don't they speak Portuguese in Brazil? And they just kind of leave that hanging all the way through to the reveal where he hounds her about these details about her being her cover story of being a children's book author. And she eventually gives in and it's like, okay, fine. You know, that's not actually who I am and reveals that she was in on the scheme. So I have a theory. While this is definitely a con episode, this is an episode where we get to see Jim flexing his muscle memory about what it's like to be the shady person he was in the past

as opposed to the shady person he is today. Even though this is a con episode, I think this con in particular, the way Jim is structuring it is that he's creating enough flexibility for him to move as he starts to understand the reality of the situation, he can shift one way or the other. And so it's more of a, we're going to keep throwing things at it until we hit this point. In our episode, we talked a lot about the end and how it was kind of an open question about whether Jim intended to reveal himself as not an actual oil man at the end,

or whether that just became the best way for him to get out of the situation. Right. Because at the end of the episode, it becomes clear that the owners of the hotel that he's conning are all in on his con. They think they've struck oil. They think they hoard natural gas or what have you. But we know that these people are mobbed up. I mean, not just mobbed up. This is the mob.

And Jim wants out. He just completely lays it on the line. Listen, I'm running a con. You don't want a part of this. And they're like, you don't want a part of this and they're like i don't care and so the question is was this his play all along or uh is this jim dealing with the situation as it gets out of hand yeah i think this this episode he does a lot of it's very by the seat of his pants right so to get back to this question the episode gives us enough hints that he knows that Linda is not on the up and up.

Right. That my interpretation was that he had to keep her close because she was a resource that he had for the con. If he can figure out what's going on through her, he'll have more information than if he just distances her from his whole operation. And if his whole operation has these kind of multiple possible outcomes at the end, then her knowing what he's up to isn't necessarily going to kill his plan, right?

It's possible that this is a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? If he doesn't just throw her out and says, all right, you're welcome, you're part of the con now, he can keep an eye on her. And we know that he's somewhat adept at that. He's friends with Angel. If he does anything with Angel, he's got to keep an eye on him at some point.

And then the other part of it is the romance angle. Right, because the episode is written the way that it is. That's an undercurrent to their relationship that becomes very clear in that kind of confrontation scene because that's after, there's an implication that they've gotten together. Yes. And then he confronts her with,

I know that you're not who you say you are. And she gets mad at him because she knows that he's right. But then once she finally admits what the real story is, they both have a motivation to stay together because they're already attracted to each other. And then once she knows that Rockford knows everything, she sees more value in Rockford's plan than in the original plan. She thinks Rockford's going to win. It still plays into her kind of mercenary portrayal of her character. I think that's the best level to put that romance angle on.

that's the best level to put that romance angle on. It's, there's a certain quality to Rockford romances, not all of them, but like a number of them where they're not necessarily the plot drivers, right? With some very few exceptions, you're not going to have a moment where he is blindsided by a romance and his engagement in it is,

well, we're both here. Let's do this. And, and every do this. And for the most part, people are like, yeah, no, that makes sense. Let's do that. And then, well, the situation's changed, so we should stop doing that. It would be a mistake to read his decision being solely because he's got a thing for this woman. But I think it's worth mentioning that that probably colors his decision to some extent. Right. Knowing what we know about Jim Rockford, it makes sense that he both thinks that she's an asset that he can use for his plan and also sure wouldn't mind having her around. Yes. Right. Those can both work together.

And not only that, but as manipulative as that sounds, it's all on the up and up. There's no way she doesn't know that he doesn't fully trust her. I mean, she's an equal participant. Yeah, exactly. Like she knows that she's lying to him. She knows that he's working to find out all he can about the scheme. And also she's attracted to him.'s it's not like there's a manipulation there necessarily it's more just that how they end up colliding and then deciding

to stay together for the rest of the episode and be on the same side right i think it makes sense given what we know about both of them from the first half of the episode so i guess uh to declaratively address the question i think it's less of a plot hole in this instance and more of a calculated risk on Rockford's part that because the episode is written the way it is, ends up not having a downside. He ends up not getting bitten by it. This episode could have gone the other way where he kept her close and it was the wrong decision and she sold him out. And that would have been a Rockford Files episode. Right. Like that wouldn't have been out of scope. It just would have been a different one. Yeah. I think it's worth reiterating that Rockford is friends with Angel. He keeps shady folk near him. He'll complain about it. But when it comes down to it, in fact,

maybe that's a segue for this very next question. I think so, because the next one is very much about Angel. All right. So listener Sean, who has contributed a couple of great episode suggestions as well. Our next episode that's dropping at the end of this month, Pastoria Prime Pick is one of his suggestions. So thank you for that. But yes, listener Sean has a theory about Chicken Little is a little chicken, which is our big Angel centric episode. And in that one, we talked at length about some of these issues. And this is just this is a great complication to

what we already talked about. I'm going to say if you have not seen that episode, and you've not listened to our podcast of that episode, pause and then spend two and a half to three hours preparing yourself for what's about to come. All right. Yes, that's our episode 10. If you're going back in the archives, here's Sean's theory about Chicken Little as a little chicken. And it comes in two parts. There are a couple of things that bugged him about the episode. First, who killed Tom Little? And second, why does an experienced grifter like Angel need to have the shell game explained to him? To quickly recap, there's a grifter by the name of Tom Little who cons Angel into laundering money for him. They are then caught at the intersection of two crime bosses.

Tom Little is killed. Rockford is drawn in because Angel hid the laundered money in Rockford's Firebird. And then Rockford hatches a plan to play the two crime bosses off of each other. Plant incriminating evidence on one of them so that the other one leaves them alone. And then everyone gets off scot-free. That is the most succinct I think I can possibly describe. Having watched the episode, it doesn't matter how bad my day is. Just even hearing the slightest synopsis of that episode just brings such joy to my life i love that episode

but there is a question here of who killed tom little right so the assumption about tom little's death uh from the episode was that either sierra or for shet were behind it chester sierra is the urban horticulturalist mobster for shet is theloving mobster with his arm in a cast. So those are our two bad guys. They are rivals. They have rival territories. Little was working for Frechette for this laundering scheme and hadn't handed over the money yet. So why would Frechette kill him at that point? Sierra had the motive of Little running the con in his territory, but Sierra didn't know that Little was dead because he tells his goons to go find Little after he interrogates Jim and Angel, which we talked about in the episode.

That's when it hit me. And this is Sean. Yeah, we should not take credit for this. There are two faked deaths in this episode. Little comes up with the scam, gets Frechette to back his play, and cuts an Angel for two grand to launder the money. But then Little plans to fake his own death, up the clean money and leave town however angel attracts attention from sierra's mob as we see on screen tom little isn't happy but angel reassures him that rockford will figure out a way to get the car and the money back i love this theory i will say this until until sean brings it up it did not

even occur to me to worry about who had killed Tom Little. Right. Part of that is because we don't see Tom Little at all in the episode. He's not, he's a character told sort of in backstory, but we don't see him. And despite having seen the episode several times and talking about it on a podcast, it never occurred to me that nobody seems to know who Tom Little is. Right. Angel knows Tom Little is. Right. Angel knows who he is. Rockford sort of remembers Tom Little, but he doesn't. He remembers the name, but doesn't really remember him.

He remembers him as the guy when they did time together. He was the guy who threw spinach at the guards. And when Rockford goes to Tom Little's apartment, It's being ransacked by some of... Well, yeah, the guy who's in there. Yeah, not ransacked. Yeah, is one of Frechette's goons. Right. There's a guy in there that is one of Frechette's goons.

Rockford mistakes him for Tom Little. And the goon just runs with it. Just runs with it for a bit. We as audience kind of catch on pretty fast that he isn't. And then Rockford catches on just in time that he isn't. And from there on, just like Sean says, there's things that happen where Sierra, after he interrogates Jim and Angel, sends people to find Tom Little. Like Tom Little is deliberately obscured in all this. The way we know he's dead is that the police, that Dennis, tells us that Tom Little was found in the river.

But that could be a fake, you know, that could be a body or, you know, whatever. We don't see the body. There's just no information that we have that confirms that. Yeah, that is, it is a really well constructed character by absence in that way that we didn't really talk about. in that way that we didn't really talk about. I will say that I think the explanation that you can draw from what you see on screen is that Frechette did have Little killed because Little didn't give him the money when he said he would, because Angel has the money, right? So I think the reading between the lines of what we see on screen is that the guys in the room either had already killed Little or would go on to kill him and were waiting for Angel. Right. Because Angel's the one with the money. So I think

that's the textual implication that isn't ever spelled out by a dialogue or anything that we see on screen. However, there is enough doubt about that, that this theory is plausible, I think. And we'll get into why as we go through the second part of this idea this only gets better so again in our episode we talked a lot about how rockford demonstrates the shell game that he's going to use to pawn all these briefcases off on the different people and get away with the you know frame one of them and get away with the money and we talked about how it is very confusing And then that pays off in the final scene where the shell game goes wrong. Right.

So Sean says, remember how angel asked Rockford to explain the con to him twice. You think that even a small time grifter like angel would know how a shell game works, but he needed to know all the details so that he could convey them to Tom little. Now little shows up in the funeral in disguise, so that Frechette and Sierra won't recognize him,

and sits behind Rockford. And so he's the guy in the glasses who's like, hey, what are all these briefcases for? Which I think is a great concept. Because Rocky's in on the shell game, the switch has to happen between Rocky and Rockford, and that's where the stranger, who potentially is Little, is sitting.

He brings in a fourth briefcase, swaps it for the cash so that there's either empty briefcases or multiple counterfeit plates in play, and then manages to leave from there. I wonder if Angel got his two grand after all. Anyway, that's my crazy theory about the episode. Looking forward to the next one. Oh, God. Right so the the ending uh as we watch it is confusing and i think when we were doing our recap of it i think we were saying well of course it's confusing it's supposed to have gone wrong right like it's it's supposed to have been a bunch of busy work and then oops the the magician forgot to put the rabbit in the hat or whatever. Or someone made a double switch or someone messed up. Rocky's involved.

Why would Rocky? Rocky's involved. Why would we trust him to do it right? Yeah. Like there's a lot of factors. I like this because we always talk about how the side characters, the minor characters in episodes are great. So this guy in the whole final scene or final climax there he's the most standout guy

because he's like he has these glasses he has a speaking role we haven't seen him before we're not going to see him since so it's just kind of like a fun piece of color but that could be a you know a nod because no one knows what tom little looks like. Right. And also, like, it would be this wonderful echo of this motif where Angel's at his funeral in disguise. And Tom Little is supposedly dead as well. And like Sean says, it would fit in so well thematically to have both ghosts of the fake deaths in the same scene in disguise. You know, like, so I have what I feel is only one legitimate argument against this theory. I love this theory. And I think that when you look at the plot and the text and how all that the theory fits

in seamlessly and glues together little jagged edges that didn't quite seem right. I think thematically it works well. jagged edges that didn't quite seem right. I think thematically it works well. I think like the reoccurring of the fake deaths and all the different mirrorings that happened throughout the episode. We don't have one mob boss. We have two mob bosses. So it makes sense that we would have two fake deaths.

But that leads me to the only little quibble I have, which is that I cannot fully accept this theory into my heart because it wounds the smallest little human bit of Angel and Rockford's relationship, right? Yeah. This episode is such a beautiful episode about that relationship. Yeah, the emotional heart of the episode, right, is after Rockford discovers that the engraving plates, the forgery plates are in Angel's desk. And that, you know, he's being framed and he's got himself into way too much trouble. And he wants to, he's out of it.

He's not willing to put up with Angel's equivocating and balking and everything. And Angel runs after him and pursues him and begs him for help. And Jim turns to him and says, why would I do this for you or something like that? And Angel responds with, because you're my friend. Yes. That's the core of their relationship right there. And that's the final appeal that gets Rockford to come up with the crazy plan.

And we're not alone here. When we did this episode as one of our hashtag Rockford Watch Party, where we were on Twitter, and I discovered that when you go looking for Rockford GIFs in Twitter's GIF search, almost all of them come from either the opening credits or this episode. And so many of them are about this moment where Angel has to say, but we're friends. This is Angel at his nadir. We get that not only from the plot of the episode, but also the cinematography of the episode. Like the moment you just talked about was this great blocking where Rockford was halfway up the stairs and Angel was down at the bottom and at the very

pit of where he was, like literally rock bottom. And if Angel can go beneath that. Yeah. So this theory hinges on Angel lying to Rockford about what's happening with Tom Little and not only lying to him, but helping pull like actively scamming him. Sean points out that the whole gambit with the framing plates, with framing him with the engraving plates, is to keep Rockford involved. Because Rockford is the one who's going to be able to, he's the key to getting the money and turning this whole thing around.

Yeah. So then not only are you saying that Angel is lying to Rockford just about the scam, which he already lied to him a couple times, and then it's revealed deeper and deeper, but then actively pointing the wool over his eyes and being complicit at the end of this con that Angel knows is going to get Jimmy into trouble. Yeah.

He ends up with the plates by accident in the text of the show, but then if that was the plan all along, then Angel was in on that plan, right? He's in on that plan, and he gloats about it at the end. It's okay if Angel gloats about things if it's haphazard. If Angel's taking credit for things he's not responsible for, that's Angel. But if he's gloating about putting Rockford in jail, oof. Yeah.

But I can't reject the theory either. The theory is really good. And I think as you said, it ties up some of the loose threads in a way that's very satisfying. And I think this episode with just a couple little tweaks could have incorporated this idea in. You just need one scene of Angel making a phone call after Rockford explains the con. Yeah. Making a phone call and being like, hey, Jimmy has a plan. Yeah. Making a phone call and be like, hey, Jimmy has a plan. Yeah.

I'll see you at the church. Right, right. While that would have implicated Angel in the way that we both are feeling very strongly that we don't want him to be implicated. That's all the episode needs to bring this idea in as a plausible. Well, it is plausible. Yeah. But to bring it in as a textual nod. Maybe just something about like, we found someone in the river, we think it's Tom Little, as opposed to we found

Tom Little in the river, right? I'm talking about 30 seconds max of different added dialogue and one scene maybe, and this whole thing would slot directly into place. Well played, Sean. I'm going to officially refer to that as the Sean cut of the episode. We have the director's cut and we have the Sean cut. I will never be able to shake it. Now my soul is filled with doubt. Even if Tom Little didn't fake his death,

I could still now believe that Angel and that guy, if he's not Tom Little, we're in on it. Angel's like, okay, well well i know how to get this money and for some reason that seems even more plausible to me and that's horrible right like oh it's the seeds of doubt has been sown within my soul thank you sean thank you there's uh there's another angel episode where my personal theory is that that's where their relationship finally breaks down. It's after this one. We'll have to watch that one and see where that falls on this timeline.

Going from potentially very bad people to definitely very bad people. So listener Eli has a question about Dave from A Portrait of Elizabeth. To bring people up to date with that episode, Dave was played by John Saxon, who is a black belt at karate. And you don't have John Saxon on your show in the 70s if you don't want him to karate kick people. So Dave is also a black belt in karate. Well, we'll get into all the things that Dave is in a moment here,

but he is this mastermind behind a plan to steal a bunch of money from a company he used to work for and to lay the blame at rockford's door he does this through manipulating elizabeth and putting her kind of between the two of them and setting it up so that she can't help Rockford. He is one of my all-time favorite TV villains. He's the complete package. He's a Professor Moriarty, an indomitable foil for Rockford to throw paint against, which is exactly what he does. So A Portrait of Elizabeth was our episode 11, so you can check that out. And we spend a pretty good amount of time talking about the construction of the character of Dave and how in while in some ways, he's a bit cartoony and other ways, the way that he's presented throughout the episode,

the way that he builds and unfolds. We found him very, very compelling and very evil. Eli says that I have one problem with the Dave character in A Portrait for Elizabeth. Cold-blooded killers don't usually set up elaborate cons. Dave, as unlikely as it may be, is a former lawyer, corporate executive, painter, karate master con man, and don't forget playboy, and also commits multiple murders. You've got to pick a lane, and if you're willing to just shoot people to get money, you're probably not going to set up such an elaborate scam. I find it to be a lazy plot device

to simply have a character shoot the people who are in their way. Maybe he's supposed to be a sociopath who hoodwinked Beth, not just a con artist, but the episode presents him the other way around. That comment was edited for a little bit of clarity, so Eli, hopefully we didn't misrepresent your point here, which I take to be that there's a conflict here in the character between this criminal genius who spends the entire episode engineering situation after situation

to insulate him from the crime, from the financial crime, and then also implicate Rockford. He also, there's also a scene where he in total cold blood just shoots two men who are not even really in his way. It's just a way to hang more trouble on Rockford because he does it in Rockford's trailer with Rockford's gun. It's cleaning up some loose ends for him because they were part of the crime. But,

you know, is he a Moriarty mastermind moving chess pieces around on the board or is he this killer who just wants the money and is willing to kill whoever gets in his way it's it's important to characterize this moment where he does kill them as something that he set up it's not uh an accidental moment he's not doing it out of anger or fear or any spur-of-the-moment emotion. He's not trying to solve a problem that suddenly showed up. This is completely premeditated, planned to a T. The way that I saw it when I was watching the episode is that he's engineered the situation where Mickey Silver, silver i think is the the other guy's name sounds

right he's engineered the situation where he's having dinner with silver's ex-wife and and it is pretty much presented that he's he sleeps around he's sleeping with her so mickey comes to confront him gets mad at him they go to fight dave beats him up because he's a karate master surprise karate master right mickey is so incensed by this that he's like oh well i'm just gonna kill him i'm gonna wait and follow him i'm gonna murder him yeah dave knows this leads into rockford's trailer and is waiting there with rockford's gun so that he can uh frame rockford for this murder that he then kills Mickey and then also betrays the bodyguard who he'd paid off or something. It's not clear to let Mickey get killed, kills him as well.

The step-by-step nature of that doesn't make it seem out of place to me with someone who's already methodically setting up situations to his own gain. I do feel like he's presented as this sociopath who just doesn't care about whether people die, not this hot-blooded guy who doesn't have the capacity for making these plans, right? Right. I don't want to be a complete Rockford apologist here. Welcome to 200 A Day, where we are Rockford apologists, because we're doing an entire podcast about a show that we like. The premise of our podcast is that this show is amazing. There is a context in which I definitely agree with Eli here,

and that is the modern viewer looking back on this character, right? I think that a character, a villain that just has all of this stuff thrown together for no good reason is a common thing we see nowadays. But we need a bad guy, especially now that we did like a lot of superhero stuff out there. Oh, sure. Yeah. But I think that we get a lot of these sort of villains that are just, here's a list of evil things that this person can do.

Right. And there's no stitching of it together. So I feel like there's absolutely, when examining things, you want to take a look at this character who's the villain, who seems too good to be true, and try and figure out where that is. I totally agree that it is a lazy plot device for your bad guy to be like, oh, I'm being confronted by something in my way. I will shoot it, and now it's gone. Yeah. If it doesn't have any it and now it's gone. Yeah.

If it doesn't have any consequences, then it's very lazy, right? But in this case, I think that having Dave also be a murderer in service to his goal, which is to abscond with this money, makes him more evil. Yeah, yeah. What he's getting out of it does not seem to warrant callous murders, but he's willing to do it anyway. And it's part of his scheme. It's not because someone walks into his way or, you know, grabs him while he's, you know, running through an airport or something like that.

This is all part of the plan. My theory here for Dave is that he doesn't even need the money. I think he enjoys being in charge of this plot. He wants to create the crime of the century. Well, and then he wants to make it all happen and then walk away and then be like, ha ha ha. Right. Like I made it all happen. Some of the evidence for that are the scenes with him and Rockford and Beth where he effortlessly plays these status games with Rockford. He definitely just knows that he's getting under Rockford's skin, but plays it innocent

enough for Beth not to see that he knows that he's getting under Rockford's skin. And he's enjoying what he's doing to Rockford, not out of any maliciousness for Rockford, but that he's capable of doing this. Because you said before that it's lazy to have a villain just shoot something that's in their way. And I think that the counter here is that he doesn't just shoot them. He shoots them with Rockford's gun, which he doesn't have when he plans to shoot them. Yeah, that's what makes it villainous is that the context in which the murders happened. Yeah, I think my final kind of point about this is that I think there was an opportunity to make it even more part of his scheme. And that would be getting the situation

to where they shoot each other, right? Instead of him having to literally pull the trigger, right? Like that, that might be the final stage of sociopath Dave. Right. He pays the bodyguard to turn on Mickey and then puts Rockford's gun out where Mickey can get it so that they shoot each other or something like that. So, you know, that's one script revision away from being in that scene. So who knows whether that could have been. I would like to hear from Eli if he if he listens to this episode, if there's something. Yeah. Are we missing something in the episode that makes this dissonance more apparent or are we just being super Dave apologists? And would would Nathan's slight tweak, would that address the issue that that Eli is having? Yeah. But yeah, good, good question. Just yeah, I always think it's worth interrogating the things that Eli's having. But yeah, good question. I always think it's worth interrogating the things that we love, right? So it's taking a trope that can be

and is often used poorly. Is it used well in this episode? I think so, but maybe we're not giving it enough credit. But I think it's a good, I mean, it makes us talk about Dave more, and that's always fun. Because the villains are the most fun to talk about

all right so those were some great questions about our previous episodes but here's a piece of feedback that is a little more about the show as a whole and I think is really uh really a great question and a great existential question for us as we go forward this is from listener Diogo I hope I pronounced that right who says love Rockford and the podcast. Well, thank you. We love Rockford too. We think the podcast is pretty okay. I was listening to your backlog of episodes and I heard you guys musing in a previous discussion that someday you'd have to come up with an answer for what would constitute a regular episode of the Rockford Files. Now that some time has passed, have you come across any you'd recommend? It seems to me from what I've watched that Rockford is pretty unique in that you don't quite know what

you're going to get when you tune into any given episode. The closest I can compare it to is the TV show Taxi from the same era. That show would change its tone dramatically from the darkest drama to the broadest of comedy depending on which character was at the center of the story in a given week. Personally, I love that kind of storytelling freedom, but I can also understand that part of the appeal of TV to some people is the familiar tropes it provides, which only make shows like Rockford and Taxi grow in my estimation for daring to be different. Love the show and always enjoy listening to you both dissect the episodes. And he asks us to keep up the great work. And I say you keep up the great listening and the great question. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's a good

question. And thank you for that's a good question and uh thank thank you for the praise makes me blush what you can't see on a podcast so i'll start off by saying that i uh this makes me want to watch taxi i've seen a couple episodes like over the years but maybe i'll see if i can find it streaming somewhere because one of the things that i love about the rockford files obviously is how diverse it is while still maintaining a continuity of character, right? And that's something that I don't see as much in a lot of other TV, either on the diversity of the episodes

and or on the continuity of the character end, right? It's the marriage of those two that really makes it special. But yeah, do we have an answer of what is a regular or a standard or a baseline, perhaps, episode of The Rockford Files? I've been thinking about this question. Diago puts his finger right on this dilemma.

The show does have a delicious variety. It's drawing on a bunch of different sources, and it leans more heavily on this one this week and that one next week and whatnot. And I was perfectly willing because this is the easiest, laziest way to go is to say, yeah, you can't nail it down. Boom, we did it. earlier this week where I like to say that Rockford Files is like a show for when you're back home fizzing the family and nobody can decide on anything, right? So what is it that is guaranteed from Rockford Files that makes that a comfortable choice? Yeah, well, so I'll take this potentially in two places and we'll see what seems more productive. One way that a lot of shows do this is the familiar formula.

And this is what I think of as like the Columbo model. Right. Or now maybe like the Law and Order or CSI model. Not the same as Columbo to me, but the idea is similar, which is that no matter what the content of the episode is, you kind of know what you're going to get. You already know if you like it and you're going to be guaranteed, you know, whatever it is that you like. You're going to be guaranteed Peter Falk walking around doing the Columbo isms. You're going to be guaranteed the guys going out to track down the scumbags and then taking them into the court and law and order and then the twists and turns of the prosecution.

You can time the beats sometimes right so that you're like well i need to go up and and get something from the kitchen they're not going to have the twist yet yeah if i wait five more minutes then i can go do the laundry because that's when the little uh arc will peak or whatever and that's great that's very comforting and and reliable and the Rockford Files manages to achieve that level of comfort without having an episode formula. It's more that it has a character formula, I'd say. Right.

What are you guaranteed when you watch The Rockford Files? You're guaranteed James Garner doing his goddamn best. You're guaranteed good banter. Yeah. You're guaranteed interesting villains or interesting side characters someone on your tv that makes you go oh you know that's that's funny or that's neat or that's someone i didn't expect or that person's wearing a funny hat or like whatever someone visually interesting

and narratively part of the show in a fun way and i think you're you're guaranteed at least one probably more twists to where what you see at the beginning of the episode doesn't arc directly to what you see at the end of the episode right but then within that how many twists are there what other characters are there what is the relationship of jim rockford to these other characters what's the tone of the show those are all variables and that's what makes it more interesting as a series i think and i think that that plays right into the the quibble i had with um the sean cut what that would change about angel for me that would violate the formula of the show's characters for me and and right not horribly but enough to make me go well it doesn it doesn't quite, you know, I think you're absolutely

onto something. I think the sort of less than having plot formula, but having a character and relationship formula is more of what we can just feel like, oh yeah, absolutely. We can expect that to happen. So one great thing about the Rockford files is that it's so consistent that it's harder to talk about good examples and easier to talk about bad examples because there's most of it is good. And then some stuff stands out as being not as good. Right. Yeah. One of our recent recordings was about an episode called Just by Accident, which we didn't really love. I'm not sure if we said it this way in that episode.

You'll have to stay tuned to find out. But something we didn't really like was that Jim Rockford didn't really act like Jim Rockford in spots. There were some weird misogynistic almost lines and moments that didn't feel like the Jim that we know and love. There was some dialogue that just didn't really fit with our conception. It wasn't as charming. And then when we looked at the writers, it was a pair of writers that only did this one episode, didn't do a whole lot of other TV, and then kind of faded out. And you can kind of see this correlation.

There's a consistency of writers in the early seasons. It's mostly Stephen Cannell. And then in the later seasons, there's a lot of David Chase. There are others and you know Juanita Bartlett is involved in some of the writing and some of the production some of the story editing and there's a couple other names that come up over and over again and that staff knows Jim Rockford right and so they write episodes that feel like Rockford Files episodes and then some of the other episodes they can fall down in other ways too. But I think I've noticed that the ones

that I don't like as much are often one-offs with writers who weren't involved with the larger series. Yeah, and to sort of not address Diago's question about what constitutes a regular episode, I'm actually going to, again, attempt the lazy way here here but i'm going to do it as hard as difficult as possible this isn't a episode of 200 a day if we don't bring up role-playing games then i think it would be shame on us if we managed to make it all the way through without doing that but there's a group of gamers that i used the game with quite a bit uh the only reason why i don't anymore is that I moved away. It was, there was the whole point to the group

was to get together and try different games. So we'd play this role-playing game for two or three sessions and then this one for two or three or whatever. And we got into a nice ritual about getting ready for the next game. Let's get together and have something akin to a party for making characters or whatever.

And one of the things we did in the beginning was that we would have a viewing of like a movie or a television show or something that we felt played right into what we're about to play. So we were going to play the Ghostbusters role playing game. We could watch Ghostbusters, but we were all very intimately familiar with it. So we watched Frighteners, which we had not seen in a while. I wanted to run an Usagi Yojimbo game, so we watched Yojimbo, things like that. The problem was everyone watched it, and at the end of whatever we watched,

we said, yep, good, we're all on the same page, and none of us were on the same page. Each one of us took away something completely different from this common viewing and said, that's what this game is going to be about. The point is, is that we do this and we'd all bring something different to the table. And then we had to renegotiate through the game what it was actually about, which was not the most optimal process. We survived. We had a lot of fun.

But I think that if we were to come up with some, like a perfect Rockford Files episode, we would have a microcosm of that problem, right? Oh, yeah. Everyone would be taking something out of it that's their favorite thing. Yeah. I can recommend Chicken Little as a little chicken all day long. Go out in the street and shout it at people. And they watch it and they'd be like, that is great. And then if they watch Sleight of Hand, which is another one I can recommend all day long,

there's a number of people that would be like, you lied to me. You told me this was about blah, blah, blah. But now it's about this. I love that about the show. And I think Diago probably does as well. I think you're absolutely right about, it's not an issue, but just the reality of every audience member is going to have a different set of things that they like, that they prefer, that they, you know, get out of an episode. I mean, we have the experience where we watch an episode, don't really think much of it, watch it for the show, and then like it a lot more.

Yeah, we change our minds while we're talking about it. Right, because it's operating at multiple levels and fine at one and sometimes even better at a deeper one or sometimes falls apart at a deeper one, right? We've had that as well. So it shows also how much attention you're paying and all of that stuff. So, you know, I don't know if there's a single er Rockford that we can be like, this encapsulates everything that's great about the show.

But I do think that there is kind of a suite, a Venn diagram, if you will, of types of episode. Right. If one wanted to do a typology, you could. Who would do that, Nathan? Who would create a typology? you could who would do that nathan who would create a typology we are game designers so i don't know if you play a lot of games out there but people who do often like to categorize things into different kinds of types in order to talk about them ideally to talk about them with more clarity but sometimes that falls down but i do think that there are rough categories that you can

kind of assign you know or or type uh different episodes into so maybe in the name of actually answering this question we can run through yeah i think so i've taken my lazy way out now you show me how the work works oh boy i don't know about that. But I'll run through, I think, what I see as the rough kinds of episode, and maybe you can tell me if I'm missing something or if there's a particular one that jumps out at you. I'm going to go ahead and reference the episodes that we've talked about, both because I know we both know the episode and also because that means the new listener can go back and listen to that episode and tell us what you think so here are a non-exhaustive number of categories of rockford files episodes rockford gets a job this is the most maybe noirish

uh yeah because the rockford files is a twist on noir overall right like its roots are in the noir detective he's this run down down on his luck he's not an alcoholic but that's pretty much the only thing that he's not doing that isn't that's just because gandy keeps stealing his beer yeah yeah so rockford gets the job someone usually a woman not always but often comes to him with a problem and hires him to help and then from there who knows there's usually multiple explanations or someone else or the original story was false or whatever. There's a twist. But that's kind of the most basic one, I'd say.

In our discussion so far, I think our very first episode, Tall Woman in a Red Wagon, was very much this kind of story. Also, the Countess. They start differently, but they both kind of have this this aura to them where it's like rockford is hired to do a thing wacky hijinks in city another is the con and i think this is one that is the most fun and maybe one of the most unique in terms of detective shows i don't know if there's other shows that really run with this formula as much uh it could be my ignorance talking. But yeah, the episodes where Rockford organizes a con game, like whether it's to get himself out of trouble or because a client needs it or because one of his friends is in trouble.

The detective show that popped to my mind that does this is Scooby-Doo. It's not so much a con, but an elaborate trap. It's always an elaborate trap of some sort. An elaborate ruse. Yeah. So the Farnsworth Stratagem, which we talked about, is one of the big standouts of this. We also recorded an episode that will be coming out in a couple, next month, I believe. One in every port, which is an even more con.

Like, it's where we see Rockford get the team together. Right. an even more con like it's what where we see rockford get the team together right his team of con different people with different specialties to construct the scheme so these are like i reference the movie the sting a lot these are the sting style episodes where there's a crew that gets pulled together to run a job another is the rockford has a friend and the friend is in trouble right uh gear jammers chicken Little is a little chicken. And even Charlie Harris at large to depart from our core side side characters. Rockford has a preexisting relationship with someone.

They're in trouble and they need Rockford to get them out of the jam. The parallel to that, maybe more the mirror to that is Rockford's in trouble. It's not a job. He's not being hired to do something. It's because of his lifestyle or a relationship or something. He gets into a jam and then he has to get himself out. And that's a sleight of hand is kind of like that. Pastoria prime pick,

which is coming up at the end of this month is like that. Rockford through his wits and, and guile needs to spring some kind of trap or get out of some kind of sticky situation. And then there's the kind of episode that we haven't really talked about yet, which is the issue episode. The kind of episode where here's an issue in society. We're going to demonstrate it with our platform of the Rockford Files and make viewers aware of it in a way that maybe they weren't before. We haven't talked about these for a particular reason, and that is that Nathan and I are

trying to hone our skills because these are always kind of amazing episodes. And what they deal with is important. And some of them had real impact on society. And we want to do them justice. So we've been kind of avoiding them. But I think we should probably start looking towards doing some of them. Now that we have access to the whole series, I feel like there's only a couple of them.

But they are kind of sprinkled throughout the season. So we'll hone in on one or two of those. If you haven't seen couple of them, but they are kind of sprinkled throughout the season. So we'll hone in on one or two of those. If you haven't seen any of them, one of the examples, just so you kind of have an idea of what we're talking about, is from season three called So Help Me God. cycle where a grand jury can call a witness and then if they don't testify hold them in contempt which puts them in jail long enough to convene a new grand jury to call that witness again and if they still don't testify put them back in jail so jim gets called into a situation like this he doesn't want to incriminate himself because of reasons in the in the narrative of the episode he refuses to testify and not only do they spend screen time during the episode explaining how this process works and how you can basically be held in jail without being charged with a crime without

having gone through any kind of due process because of this grand jury thing but then at the end of the episode it shows this title card that's like here this is a real thing that happens right this is an issue in our justice system as a great a great episode, and we want to make sure that we kind of have our feet under us before tackling things that have some kind of impact on actual society. There's another one that's prescient about today's society. I'm trying to remember the title of that one, but it has to do with the information that's being collected about you. And in 1970s, sure, whatever.

But nowadays, the amount of information Google knows when you're peeing. So it has this wonderful resurgence on the internet when people discovered, wait a minute, rock profiles were talking about 2000 and blah. We did record an episode on the Oracleacle war cashmere suit which is an interesting it's not a full issue kind of thing right but it is an episode that has a position about psychics which is that they're it's a little bit of a hybrid between the issue episode and rockford gets himself in trouble right yeah a little, a little bit. But it's fun. It's a good episode if you want to.

Yeah, it's a little more lighthearted, but it's interesting because the show takes a clear position on this idea. Not just Rockford, but the actual episode is about not letting this guy get away with this psychic thing. It's a great one, so look forward to that, because that was a super fun episode. But yeah, so I guess those are five general categories that most of what we've seen so far tend to fall into.

There's hybrids and there's overlaps, obviously. Is there anything that I missed or that you wanted to call out? I think that that's a pretty comprehensive list based on my experiences with the Rockford Files. I think it'd be interesting going forward if we just sort of have that list on hand. And as we do episodes, try and decide if we can. Because first of all, it'll be hard to pigeonhole some episodes. There'll just be a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But it would be interesting if we come across one where we don't feel that it's comfortably

fit in any of those. Yeah. And I think like most things, the ones that stand out the most will probably be the ones that are least slotted into this or that kind of category. But yeah, we'll see as we go. And I would also encourage our listeners not to wait for us to watch an episode. No, go watch the Rockford Files. Yeah.

We'll get to it eventually. You'll want to watch them a couple times. All right. Well, do you have anything else to tell Diago about our feelings about episodes of the Rockford Files? That's a great question. And one that I think I'm going to keep pondering as we go along. Yeah, this one's definitely going to stick with us as we continue the show.

So thank you again for that. I feel like we're pretty much there. Do you have any other thoughts before we wrap up with a couple? We've got a couple tips and recommendations on Twitter that I wanted to shout out real quick, and then we'll wrap up with final little bits of news about the show.

Sure, let's go with the tips. They're often smarter than I am. If you don't happen to know, you can talk to us on Twitter. We're at 200pod, and that's where all the show stuff is. You can also find us individually on Twitter. We're easy to find. It's the internet. We've had a couple good show

recommendations through various venues, but we recently had a nice thread from at BillAnd88, Bill Anderson, I believe, who sent us some of his favorite episodes. news but we recently had a nice thread from at bill and 88 uh bill anderson i believe oh yeah who who sent us some of uh some of his favorite episodes uh and also clued us into how great david chase is i mean we know that he's a great writer from the episodes that we've seen but if you really pay attention his episodes are have a lot of little nooks and crannies yeah they reward you for paying attention and examining what's happening

right and also so david chase uh for those who don't know not only great writer for the rockford files from the third season on i think he has a couple in the third season uh also the creator of the sopranos so he has good good tv in that guy uh so here's some uh episode recommendations from bill anderson uh i'll go through them in season order. Some of these are on our docket to consider soon, and the rest will probably go on there, because my memories of all of these are that they're great. They're one from each season.

That's kind of nice, too. So from season one, episode 16, Counter Gambit, that's the one with the real necklace, fake necklace switch. Oh, yeah. That gets referenced in some of the episodes that we've done. Or at least one of the episodes we've done. From season two, episode 15, The No-Cut Contract.

People have asked us about this one. It's probably going to go on pretty, we're probably going to do it pretty soon. But The No-Cut Contract is one with Rob Reiner as the football player. Yeah, it's a good one. Season three, episode five, The Drought at Indian Head River is another great Angel episode, if I remember correctly. Season 4, Episode 12, Queen of Peru is a very comedic episode featuring a Midwestern family in an RV. Oh, yes. Season 5, Episode 8, The Empty Frame is the one where Angel's brother-in-law, Aaron, becomes chief of police.

Oh, yes. Yes. Season six, episode seven, nice guys finish dead. There's a PI convention and somebody shows up dead and it's another Tom Selleck episode. I love when Rockford has to work with other PIs. He is the worst co-worker. So there's a list. If you want a greatest hits. Those are all great episodes and we will be talking

about them on the show for sure. We have a viewing tip from atjovgreathead on Twitter, which is that the Rockford Files is available to stream or possibly just to watch when it airs on Xfinity Online if you're a Comcast subscriber. So

if your cable provider is Comcast, check out the Xfinity service and see if you can find some Rockford files on there. As always, the first three seasons are still streaming on Hulu. All of our viewing so far, you can go watch on Hulu. We are going to start going a little abroad of the first three seasons now that we both have the physical copies of the shows. Speaking of, there is a new Blu-ray set on Amazon that's currently around $70. It's the full six-season run. It does not have the TV movies.

We still need to track those down. There is still a DVD set available that's only about $30. So I don't know how long that's still going to be kicking around. But if you're looking to pick them up, that is a pretty good deal. And finally, just one show announcement we are now on stitcher so if you are a stitcher radio user then you can look us up on there as with all the other things rate and review that helps us oh yeah that's we have to say that we have to we're contractually obligated to ask you to rate review and subscribe as a podcast uh but seriously we did finally get enough um ratings on itunes that we have a an actual permanent five-star rating on there right now which is great so thank you everyone who left one

uh go ahead and drop a comment there if you have a chance there's three or four which are really nice be nice to have some that are a little more recent if you use stitcher or have friends who do you can tell them that we're there now uh so check it out there uh and as always the patreon patreon.com slash 200 a day is the absolute best way to both support us and also get the get the freshest news when all these things happen freshest news about a television show from the 70s exactly uh but yeah i think that's all uh all all all i have to say right now uh for now, about the Rockford Files. Yeah.

What do you think? Thank you for everyone's questions. I really just want to kind of say that I'm loving the process of dissecting Rockford Files. It's been both elucidating. It's helping me understand what it is I enjoy the most about the show. It's helping me understand what it is I enjoy the most about the show. It's been therapeutic. Like whenever I watch something that I don't care for, I have this vow not to complain about creative works on the internet.

And so then I bottle up that rage. And it's healthy to sit and talk about something you love with good friends. And I think that just having these comments and these questions and having everyone, even if we don't necessarily agree with analysis and theory from, I'm enjoying having to think through and figure out these episodes in these contexts. Yeah, it's really great. It's super fun. We're doing it because we want to do it, obviously. But the fact that there's enough of you listening, liking what we're doing and telling us what

you like and what you don't like and your thoughts on it, it makes it more of a self-sustaining thing. It's more fun because you're into it in addition to the fun that it is just to do it. So thank you all so much for that and with that i think we've uh we've we've earned our 200 for today yeah don't you worry we're done yammering and we'll be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files