Two Hundred A Day - Episode 16: The Oracle Wore a Cashmere Suit

Episode Date: August 27, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S3E2 The Oracle Wore a Cashmere Suit. A self-proclaimed psychic is assisting the police with a missing persons case, and takes a keen interest in what Jim has to do with it. A wonderful performance from Robert Webber as "psychic" Roman Clementi adds to a fast-paced story of mystery, mixed motives and murder. It's a great episode! 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.

Teddy's Treehouse, you've won our free landscaping services for one full year. We'll mow your lawn, top your trees, mulch, seed, fertilize, and feed. Isn't that wonderful? Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidae Ravishaw. And I'm very excited to be with you here today to talk about this particular episode, which is... The Oracle Wore a Kashmir Suit.

This is, I think, the second episode of Season 3? Yes. Our friend Jim Rockford gets embroiled in a psychic scam. I like this episode a lot. It's weird. scam. I like this episode a lot. It's weird. I have a certain amount of anxiety and stress about fiction in which a fake psychic might get away with being believed. So this is a fun episode for me. And this is a good one for all the skeptics out there. I guess I will say at the top that both the episode and I imagine our conversation about it are going to come down

pretty heavily on the side of this psychic stuff is bunk. Right. So if that's going to be a problem for you, dear listener, we think of ourselves as evidence-based realists in this regard. And you probably wouldn't want to watch this episode. But if you're not too invested in the idea of psychic phenomena being a motive force for crime solving, then this episode has a lot for you. Yeah. This one was written by David Chase, new writer for us on the show so far. This is the first episode he wrote of the Rockford Files, but he went on to have quite the career. I mean, among other things, he's writing for other shows as well, but he ended up writing 18 episodes

over the course of the series, plus two of the 90s movies. He also produced over the course of the show and became, I believe, the executive producer of the 90s movies, or some of them. And also his probably more contemporary claim to fame is that he is the guy who came up with The Sopranos

and was the executive producer for that show. This episode overall has a lot of good credits in it. So David Chase is the writer, directed by Russ Mayberry, who is one of our favorite directors so far, I think. He directed The Countess and Charlie Harris at large. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. And we enjoyed a lot of the semi-experimental kind of choices in those. This one, less so, except for one scene that I want to talk about.

But this episode has really good flow to it, which I think we can attribute at least partly to Russ. The main foil for Jim Rockford in this one is played by Robert Weber, who shows up in everything. If you watch any shows from this period, you recognize this guy. This is one of his five appearances in the Rockford Files, Watch any shows from this period. You recognize this guy. This is one of his five appearances in the Rockford Files, including a very memorable episode where he plays a senator who gets into some trouble, which we haven't covered yet, but hopefully we will down the line.

And we'll have a couple other little credits to call out as we go through the episode. But strong cast and crew this time around. Well, I suppose we should start with the preview montage. It's a good mix of the particular episode that we're going to see. I mean, I'm not going to say that any of them aren't, but we get a good joke about Chlamydia, which we will soon find out is a play on our psychic's name. We get a nice tumble. It's a little chaotic in a good way. I thought somebody's shoe had been yanked off or something because I couldn't quite make out. And then finally ends with this moment where we think, oh no, is Rockford going to get run over?

Yeah, we definitely see some threats to Rockford's physical well-being in the preview montage. Also the fact that there will be some question of some $80,000 coming up. Before we get into any of that, though, I want to talk about a little theory I have about the answering machine message. Okay. Which you've heard at the top of this particular episode. Rockford has won free landscaping for a year. This is, I think, a quintessential Rockford file joke where he gets something that he cannot use. They're not going to come landscape the asphalt around his trailer?

Yeah, exactly. But I did spend a moment thinking about it because I did think that this was this gorgeous moment of Rockford Files humor. I was like, how did he win that? How did he get into the running? And I envision, you know, like they would often have these win a free dinner or win a free something if you put your business card in something. Yeah. This is my theory. win a free something if you put your business card in something yeah this is my theory under some false guys he was at a landscapers uh under a false guys to investigate something and drop a business card in there would he use his actual phone number and a fake business card so here's

my my counter theory yeah based entirely on on what you've just said rocky stuffed one of those with multiple cards because Rocky's the one who wants the landscaping. Yes. And that ties into his appearance later in the episode. This is why we have this podcast, is to answer questions like these. Oh, that's good.

That's good. All right, so we'll assume, we'll go ahead and add that to the headcanon for this episode. Yeah. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this episode, we have five

of them to thank. Thank you, Kevin Lovecraft. You can find him on the Wednesday evening podcast All Stars Actual Play podcast. Visit misdirectedmark.com to find that feed, along with other gaming podcasts in the Misdirected Mark Productions Network. Thank you, Lowell Francis. Check out his

award-nominated blog full of insights and historical analysis of role-playing games at ageofravens.blogspot.com. 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, or anything else you do, check out patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe so speaking of landscaping um we start off on the beach outside jim's trailer uh where there's a big to-do bunch of machine noise waking up our good friend jim rockford he clearly does not get up this early in his normal daily routine. And he confronts who we soon learn is our psychic, Roman Clementi, played by Robert Weber. Clementi and some representatives of the police are there because they're investigating a set of disappearances.

And they brought him in to help them with the case because they don't have any leads. He's had some psychic vibrations. He has the pictures of the disappeared people and they're talking to him. He's getting impressions from them. These vibrations have led them to the beach outside Rockford's trailer. He's sure that Rockford has something to do with this. As part of this little intro scene, he handles a piece of clothing that they've dug up. Some ways that this episode handles race and representation of race has not aged very well, I'd say. This is one of those moments where he handles this and says that this piece of clothing didn't belong to a Caucasian, possibly a Negro or Oriental. Your lab could prove me wrong. So

that's just to say that this is some of the tone of the episode set early. He's kind of a faux intellectual. Right. These are not the ways that we refer to people today. Right. But at the time, I think might be coded a little bit as an academic way of referring to someone. The specific thing here is that he's giving them information that the lab probably couldn't tell you. Right. He's like, your lab could prove me wrong. There's no way that the lab is going to be able to tell the ethnicity of someone who wore

a piece of clothing, right? That has been buried in sand for who knows how long. So this case is a missing persons case. Rick Richards and Allison Curry have disappeared. He's sure that they'll be found near a body of water and that Allison Curry has contact lenses or will be missing a contact lens once they're found. So he has this whole patter about all this stuff and Rockford standing there in his bathrobe is just smirking and rolling his eyes through the entire interaction. It's nearly 6 a.m. as Rockford points out and he's been woken up. He's pulled from his sleep and this reminds me of the episode we saw where Rockford just couldn't sleep. Charlie Harris at large. The way the scene opens with Rockford in bed, too peaceful not to disturb him. Even if they were there for legitimate reasons,

he was going to be angry and upset with them. The psychic just is like a bit too far and we get a lot of amazing facial expressions out of James Gardner here. Yeah, we're going to be seeing throughout this whole episode amazing facial expressions and body language from pretty much everyone in it. We'll call out particularly great examples, but it is a case of like there's a lot of joy in watching this episode for the portrayals in addition to finding out the story. In particular here, Rockford just full on smirks when Clemente says, you've probably heard of me. They have an awkward handshake. Clemente says that he'll try to keep the noise down and Rockford storms back off to his trailer where his dad,

Rocky, appears in his truck. There was an early bird special on a rototiller, in his truck. There was an early bird special on a rototiller, maybe tying back to our landscaping theory. He has a truck bed that he wants to put together for his garden, so he wants to come over and find his special plumb bob that was awarded to him

from the Masonic Lodge, and he's lost it. Rockford, of course, knows that Rocky just wants to get Rockford to help him with the manual labor for this truck bed. Rockford explains that he was woken up by that guy and he points out Clemente. Rocky, I think in a moment that shows exactly how this episode wants Clemente to be positioned. Rocky says, I've seen that guy on Carson. He's stuffed fuller of beans than a cheap burrito.

That's such a good line. And I will say this. I like a lot of beans in my burrito. So I don't know if that was a dig on cheap burritos or just the fact that burritos have a lot of beans. I don't know. But the Carson deal, it's one of my favorite bits how Rocky's interpretation of this guy is based entirely on the fact that he was on Carson. Right. But he knows that he's some kind of shyster.

Yeah, yeah. He knows that there's something wrong with him, but he was on Carson. So what are you going to do, right? The fact that even Rocky knows that this guy is full of it is important for how the rest of the episode treats his psychic powers, right? Yeah. Pretty early on, we are in the position of how is Rockford going to prove this guy wrong as opposed to does this guy actually have some kind of right ability as audience we're not going to be mystified right by anything he does so this isn't just a coincidence uh Rockford has a bad feeling because he was uh surveilling these two

people that disappeared so this is the the tie-in happens to get us get the the plot moving he has a surveillance job followed them for a couple of days. They disappeared. He couldn't pick them back up. And now Clementi's on his beach looking for them. He doesn't believe in coincidences like this. And then there's a knock on the door and our good friend Sergeant Becker, Dennis, comes in with Clementi looking a little like he's not 100% happy with what he's doing, which

is a really good facial expression that he has a lot of the time. Oh, so good. He has to ask Jim what he knows about this disappearance because Clemente says that he knows that Rockford knows something. Just before that happened, was Rockford... He was going to go investigate it somehow. Yeah, he said he was going to go sniff around and then before he could actually go anywhere, they knocked at his door.

There's going to become in this episode a reoccurring motif where Clementi just beats Rockford to the cops. Yeah. And that's how he sort of solidifies his arguments. He gets to present them before Rockford can tell them what's actually happening. can tell them what's actually happening. A line at the end of this conversation is Dennis asks Rockford, how did he know that you were on this case? Because only me and you knew that. Right. Yes. So we have the first indication that there's some layers of subterfuge going on. And the answer to that question doesn't show up until really near the end. Yeah. And I get irrationally upset with not with the answer itself, but the thing behind the end. Yeah. And I get irrationally upset with,

not with the answer itself, but the thing behind the answer. For some reason, I'm just like, that is the villain of this episode. Oh, we'll get into that when we get there. Cut to police headquarters in one of our familiar interview rooms. Rockford is giving his statement.

Beth is there with him, his lawyer and friend, sometime more than friend. She has a small but important role in this episode. We are also in the presence of Lieutenant Deal. Oh, is it Deal? I think it's Chapman. Oh, you're right. It is Chapman. Does Deal come later or is it Chapman the whole time? No, it's Chapman the whole time. So let's talk about Deal and Chapman for a second, if we can. Okay.

I do have trouble keeping those two apart, but I feel maybe i'm wrong but i feel like chapman is slightly more sympathetic to rockford than deal is deal definitely doesn't doesn't care for rockford but i can't remember if chapman out and out hates rockford generally the stories where there's chapman are ones where rockford is incidental to another crime while the stories with deal are more where Rockford is incidental to another crime, while the stories with Deal are more where Rockford is in up to his neck, and part of it is also keeping Deal off his back. That is my sense. I'd have to chart it out to really see if that's really the division.

But the two actors are pretty similar looking, I think, is part of what my confusion comes from sometimes. My notes specifically say Deal, and then I cross it out in Chapman. And I was like... It is Chapman. So we're there with Jim, Beth, Becker, Lieutenant Chapman, and Clemente. Rockford is giving his statement that he was following Rick Richards. Yeah, he works for a record company in some capacity.

And they suspected him of skimming money. They employed Jim to follow him to find out get some proof about this rockford saw him and uh the woman allison curry together he followed them together and then they disappeared overnight essentially when he heard that that this disappearance was being investigated he told dennis about it because he wasn't going to be involved in an open police case. Right. The story was totally fine two days ago.

But now this guy, Clemente, is coming in and they're getting suspicious all over again. And he doesn't see why he has to be brought into it again. Beth doesn't want Clemente there as he's not a law enforcement official. And Chapman then explains that he wants him there. He's been very helpful in other cases, including a murder case in Chicago. Oh, Chicago. I do like how, and this is the thing I've always liked about Beth,

is that when it comes to the law, she is no nonsense. You want her on your side. There's no reason why Clemente should be in the room, and the person out of that group that you want objecting to that is Beth. And if Beth wasn't there, then Rockford would object to it. But then the setup is Rockford versus Clemente.

So, you know, he can't have credibility. So you have the character of Beth present that. Yeah. And Clemente steps out. Yeah. He knows how this game is played, I think. So before anyone can get really mad at him, he's just like, okay, I'll step out. But I know that Rockford knows something

about this. Chapman wants Rockford to go through everything again. Rockford says, you know, I already took a couple hours to go through everything once. I'm not going to do it again. Beth comes in with the, unless you're going to file the proper paperwork, which they are not willing to do at the current time. As they leave the station, Dennis is very apologetic and wants Jim to know that he doesn't really believe in this mumbo jumbo. But, you know, they brought the guy in. Rockford's like, I understand. And then as they are actually exiting, Clemente is on Dennis's phone yelling at a publisher or something about some kind of timeline getting messed up or something like that, giving us our first look into what I think, at least I'd assumed since the mention of being on Donnie Carson, that this guy turns everything into a publicity event, into a publicity stunt.

I mean, the way he comports himself, he definitely feels like he has an air about him that he's trying to project. But this is definitely the hard evidence that he's going to try and make money off of the publicity he makes out of this case. Beth offers to buy lunch for Rockford, which is great. But Rockford can which is great, but Rockford can't take her up on it. He's already running late because they've wasted so much of his time and he has a gig. He's trying to track someone down who disappeared in Topanga. So both

of us are frustrated by this because there's no exchange of money. And there's no lunch. We have a brief sequence where Rockford goes to Topanga trying to track down this missing person. There's a little questioning montage. But the important thing here is that when he gets back in his car to leave, he sits on his sunglasses. Yes. I remember the first time that I saw this episode going, why would Rockford sit on his sunglasses? He would never forget that he left his sunglasses on the seat. I had this

visceral reaction to like, something is wrong. Jim Rockford does not sit on his own sunglasses in his own car. I can't remember if there's like a musical sting. Yeah, I think that there is one. Yeah, it definitely is. It's something that can roll off as just a Rockford's having a bad day. And this is just how bad it's getting. And it works on that level, but then it turns out it has significance later. So my initial reaction was right. Trust your instincts.

Rockford returns to his client who hired him to find her brother, but he doesn't think that her brother was ever into Panga. She's very chill. She's like, oh, well, thank you for trying. But she does pay him. he gives her a bill she counts out some some cash as she does so she says that she didn't know she was hiring someone with such notoriety and shows him a newspaper headline that calls him out as a quote unwilling informant in yes this Clemente's psychic investigation so as frustrated as you

were with the glasses I was frustrated with this payment because Rockford doesn't get paid so this is another moment where we're off kilter a little bit because what should happen according to our internal instincts about these means in a Rockford file is that the fact that he doesn't produce her brother means that she's going to find some way to pay him less than what he is billing her for. Right. And yet she just pays him.

And you go, what's going on? Also, for the record, I'm going to assume he did a day's worth of work there and he got $200. No money was mentioned, but I got to hold on to every scrap I can here. And again, like the glasses, initial reaction ends up being confirmed later. Yeah. As we will see. Well, after that hard and semi-frustrating day's work, even though he did get paid,

Rockford returns to his trailer where he immediately gets jumped by three guys waiting for him inside the trailer. Yes. So he gets jumped. He gets kind of knocked out, and then the camera is at his perspective as he comes to, staring directly into the cast on the leg of one of his assailants. This brings me to Chicken Little is a Little Chicken,

where the second mob boss, his arm's in a cast. It's such a great detail, and it was, I don't know, maybe I missed it, but I don't think it's such a great detail and it was i don't know maybe i missed it but i don't think it's actually necessary to the story at all it just makes you pay attention to that character here's a guy who's come with his friends to jump rockford even though his leg is in a cast that's a great detail but i will say that i think he ends up with more memorable details than he needs right okay yeah but at the least, it is a great visual moment where Rockford wakes up from getting jumped

and sees a cast in front of his face. Yeah. It's good. This guy is obviously Latino. He kind of speaks like a mix of Spanish, Spanglish, and semi-accented English. He's extremely wet. I think he's meant to be perspiring.

Yeah, yeah, I think he's got the DTs or something. He's going through withdrawal. Yeah. And he has this like shark tooth earring that is extremely noticeable. So this is another kind of element in this particular episode that I feel like maybe hasn't aged super well. Because I think there's a lot of racialized visualization on this character that isn't on other characters. Here is the druggie Mexican guy. He's threatening Rockford in Spanish when he can speak perfectly fine English and there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume Rockford would understand Spanish. They just want to establish that he's Hispanic.

It's a little weird. Now, this isn't the guy with the broken leg, though. No, it's the same guy. No, he has the broken leg and the earring. All right, yeah, no, this guy has too many details. Because he's sitting down. He starts doing the drumming also. In my head, I split him into two different characters.

I don't know. Maybe we're having a Berenstain moment. So you'll have to go watch the episode for yourself and tell us how many characters are in this scene. But the actor, Pepe Serna, was all over the place at this time. He's in tons of stuff in the 70s through today. But he had a pretty major role in Scarface. I haven't seen Scarface in a long time. But he was the character that I think was like a buddy with the main guy, with Scarface, and got chopped up by the chainsaw. If you're like me and you remember Red Dawn, I think he's the dad that screams,

Avenge me. I know he's in Red Dawn. I just can't remember if he is the dad who's... He's in Buckaroo Bonsai. I think he's one of the crew. Like, I think he's one of the band. He's in a lot of interesting things um he's also a fine artist and uh has received a number of awards for being a hispanic actor and artist over over the years and stuff so pepe serna doing a great job a little

over racialized in this episode for my taste but uh he definitely inhabits the role i'll give him that yeah so these guys they're roughing up Rockford because they want their 80 grand. They saw Clemente on TV saying that Rockford knew something about the disappearance. And these guys had given Rick, the guy who disappeared, $80,000 to score them coke. And now he's gone. The police haven't recovered the money. So someone has their money or their cocaine and they want it. Rockford obviously is denying that he knows anything about ADGs, which is true as far

as we know. We learned the character's name is Ray, Ray Ochoa. That's when Ray starts like drumming on the table. And the other two guys who are blonde and yeah just look like california surfers when the guy starts wrapping a chain around his wrist the shark tooth earring i think that the in uh hints of what will become point break like they're surf villains this is a great scene for rockford under pressure he's in a chokehold the whole time and he's still mouthing off to him in in just classic it's a fun scene to watch rockford

manages to find his opening and gives one a sucker kick he kicks one of the guys on the instep which sends all four of them brawling outside of the trailer to where a beach patrol car is patrolling and sees them and announces like hey who's over's over there? So the, the goons yell and their escape car drives up. We see Ray come out hobbling on the one leg here. So I think that's what pulls it together for me. And they, uh, drive off after giving Rockford a couple of good gut sinkers as he refers to

them. Oh, such good language. I really liked the way he cleared the room in this, in this fight. Cause it's not, he's not Steven Seagal. It's not choreographed, but it's practiced. He's a brawler.

And he was probably spending that whole time figuring out how he's going to create the smallest opening for him to tumble out. Like, get out of the room, figure out what's going to happen next when that happens. He doesn't knock everyone unconscious and walk out John Wick styleick style yeah he takes a small advantage that he can find and then just keep pushing it until something happens yeah he's just lucky that someone was there though yeah so he scares them off and we cut to short scene in beth's apartment one of our favorite locations yes he's obviously told her what happened and she clarifies for us as the audience, now you have to go to the cops because now you know something that they don't. Because the cops don't know anything about this money.

It hasn't come up before. So she wants him to tell Dennis. This is very important for the narrative of the episode. Rockford knows something about the case first. Yes. All right, next scene. Rockford and Beth have gone down to the police station to tell Dennis about this. But before Rockford can tell Dennis, Dennis tells Rockford, hold on.

We're super busy. I'm slammed. Clemente woke up with new knowledge about the case. He says there's hard drugs involved. And there's a moment where Beth and Rockford just like look at each other like, how did he know? And Rockford just like look at each other like, how did he know? And then Clementi is giving a press conference down the hall where he's saying, I see 80 or maybe $85,000. I'm sure that that's relevant to this case.

Dennis also says that they followed up on his insight and that Rick Richards' secretary ID'd some known drug runners coming and talking to him, you know, just as part of his work calendar. And so this idea seems credible. Once the two of them are back looking at each other, Beth's like, how could he possibly know about this? Because this is the first of what you were talking about, where Clemente comes and publicly says, here are these things about the case that Rockford learned. Yes. I really enjoy the half-hearted attempt to explain what's happening, right? Because they're lost as to why he does, but they're not ready to give up and admit that he has ESP. So they're like, it's a lucky guess. They almost go with that theory. They're like, well, it's a hunch and ESP. Those are kind of the same thing, right? Yeah. Beth even says, ESP, those are kind of the same thing,

right? You know, and... Yeah, Beth even says you can have a psychic who's not a fraud, right? Right, yeah. That's possible, right? Clementi ends this press conference saying that they've recovered a car, found bloody, and that he's going to stay with it, sleep in it, learn whatever he can from the psychic impressions of

the car that the victims were probably killed in. And I believe this is where we get the first mention of Los Tunas Road. Rockford has been wrong-footed, but he wants to figure out what's going on. So he goes to the record company, but we start with super loud blasting music in this record producer's office with this guy who we shortly learn is Barry Silverstein giving this patter to a woman who appears to be a secretary or assistant or something about what they're listening to. He calls Fleetwood

Mac a garage band as part of it. Rockford comes in, they cut the music. He wants to talk to whoever hired him who's out of town, which is why he's now coming to Barry. Barry is a good character. Yeah. I love Barry. Lots of good mannerisms, very distinctive style. But one of the things I like about this particular scene and how it plays out is the beginning, Barry is kind of shoving Rockford off. Like he's like, oh, he's not here. Oh, you're that cat. Yeah. He uses lots of, I'm a cool record producer guy 70s lingo and during the discussion rockford lets on that he's figuring out why they hired rockford right they their purpose for hiring rockford was to catch this guy embezzling because they can't fire him for the fact that he's out of control

with the drugs that they're all using to, as he says, dope is the lubricant, right? Like they bribe people with drugs. They pay musicians in drugs. It's yeah. I noted that line. It's great. Unfortunately, dope is the lubricant that keeps the great wheels turning. Yes. So what I like about this is that you can see as Rockford lets on that he knows what's happening as they talk back and forth he's knowledgeable uh he mentions payola which is uh i this is the thing that i had to look up but this is the idea that you would pay disc jockeys under the table to play your music right like it was a bit of a scandal where everyone's being bribed in the music industry to make hits

happen so that's a specific thing because i was i just thought it was like the general term of like oh payola just like paying people off but does that come from this it's specific to the music industry you can look it up on wikipedia and find an entire entry on it but it's an actual um actual investigations they actually had congressional investigations into this because it's an actual um actual investigations they actually had congressional investigations into this because it's they were trying to influence a market right it you know despite the fact that it's just rock and roll it's a lot of money and if any other industry behaved that way we would be up in arms so you have payola but they're doing their payola with

drugs with cocaine and dope and whatnot. Right. So Rick was in over his head with that. They wanted to fire him. They couldn't do it for the real reason. So they brought Rockford in to discover just cause. The thing that I wanted to make note of was that this character, Barry here, as he realizes that Rockford's hip to it, he warms to Rockford.

It's really kind of neat to watch as the scene progresses he starts off as keeping rockford at a distance but by the end he treats rockford as like oh yeah no we're on the same page here well i have a theory here is that he wants to get rockford on his side a little bit for reasons that we'll discover later but where this turns to helping rockford is that he wants to id the guys who beat him up. And he says, one of them was quite the drummer and I got to start somewhere. Yeah. So he describes the guy with the earring and Barry's like, oh yeah, Ray Ochoa. You know, he's in this really crappy band that we couldn't sell their records, but he gives them, he says, find the, like the musicians finding service or something like that. So it does give him a lead to finding him and also mentions on his way out

to his doctor's appointment, which is actually an important detail. Important, yes. Ray wrote a love song about Alison Curry, you know, obsessed with her. Just some gopher that we had employed here. But he basically wishes Rockford good luck and they end with a cool 70s handshake.

Also important. And then he says, shine on. Yeah. Rockford leaves the record studio in his car, notices he's being followed, and in a very basic maneuver, turns the tables and starts following the car that was following him. Up into the hills,

he takes up a position to see the house where that car ends up pulling into. And after a little bit of waiting, sees Clemente and the woman who hired him to go find her brother get out of a car together and then go into the house. What? What? No wonder she paid him. It was all a scam. So we've seen this dramatic Clemente's running some kind of scam. Who could have imagined it?

What's fun about this is not that he's running some kind of scam. It's the depth to which he's running it. He's not Angel, where Angel would just keep changing his story up to get the best thing going. This guy is doing a lot of work to look like he does and, and this throwing around, you know, enough money, presumably a good amount of money. Yeah.

Yeah. We cut to Rockford helping Rocky change a light bulb. They're on both sides of a ladder. This might be my favorite making the subtext, the text scene of all the episodes we've talked about so far, getting back to our director. This seemed similar to me of some scenes from those other episodes where yeah it's a very dramatic angle for the shot and there's a very stark light darkness kind of contrast to it yeah rockford is telling rocky and us as the audience clementi has has had

him followed and has been learning these things as he's been learning them so he thinks that they wanted him away from the trailer and away from his car in order to plant bugs so they're on this ladder rocky's reaching up and replacing a light bulb and screwing it into the socket and rockford's laying out like they wanted me away from my trailer they sent me up to topanga for no reason he literally says come to think of it and that's when rocky turns in the light and it turns on so just the light bulb literally goes on over rockford's head oh it's so silly and yet so satisfying yeah it's just it's cheesy and i love it it's one of those things where you you lay the groundwork and the audience

knows that it's coming or they can see it coming if they're paying attention and it's satisfying when when it does because you're just like if it hadn't happened i wouldn't have noticed they would have just been talking on a ladder yeah but since it happened it made it obvious and satisfying but yeah so rockford come to think of it climbs down the ladder goes and checks his car and sure enough finds a bug that was set in his car and so that's why his glasses were not where they usually are because the guy put the bug in his car moved them and then forgot to move them back. So you mentioned subtext. I want to talk a little bit about the subtext of this here.

I mean, it's easy to read in the way he's reaching up underneath the dash of his car, moving the steering wheel so he can do it. I thought of this as an extension of his body. This is somebody looking for lumps, right? This is, this is, he's up in the nether regions trying to find evidence of a cancer. I don't know. I like the fact that he would know that there's a bug there, that he would find something and be like, that doesn't belong under the dash of my car. Because I would not be able to do that. Yeah, he just finds it by feel and just pulls out this box with all these wires coming out. Yeah, these aren't, you know, Mission Impossible little tiny devices.

Like these are what the actual thing would have been, which is like a big clunky box full of electronics. It's good. And now we have kind of definitive proof that Clemente is, as he says, using him as a stalking horse. Yes. Oh, that's another one. He says what the politicians call a stalking horse. That is when somebody underneath the politician goes and sort of puts forth policy before the politician does to kind of test the waters. My favorite example in recent times of this is, I feel, I mean, I got no evidence here, but is Joe Biden saying, well, of course, same-sex marriage is okay. And all of the nation suddenly going,

yes, of course it is. Even though when Obama was running for election there, he was really, you know, hedging about all of that. And then Biden just said, yeah, of course. Biden, in his position of vice president, is able to do that. And then if all of America was like, no, then the administration could have pulled back and said, Biden doesn't speak for us. That's the sort of situation that Rockford's referring to here. Right, yeah. He's being used to test the waters, to poke around.

Yeah. And then Clementi's reaping the benefits without having to put himself into danger. And also making it look like he's psychic, right? Like he's just coming up with all these brilliant insights through the power of psychic vibrations. So Rockford wants to talk to Clementi about this. He tracks him down at a garage where we have a little voiceover inventory of the investigation of this car that was found at Las Tunas Road.

The fingerprints are all of the two people who disappeared. The jack and the wrench, the tire iron, are missing. But the spare tire is still there. So it wasn't changed. Those pieces are just gone. But this scene has a lot going on. Yes. I'll go through it quick and then we can go into what you find the most interesting.

Rockford comes in. He's very snarky. He wants to talk to Clemente alone. There's this minor character who's doing the actual investigation. So this character is played by James Hong. Yes. Listeners may know from Big Trouble in Little China, among other things. Long and illustrious career, including being a filmmaker in his own rights. But yeah, Lo Pan, the villain from Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah, so he's this kind of CSI style guy. He has this line where he says, we're just doing this big job for Interpol and we're all exhausted and doing the best we can. I think the implication here, it's not really stated, but my read was that this is a crew

of people that Clemente pays to look like they're investigating something. Right. You know, that's a good question because, yeah. Because he gets miffed. And when Rockford starts giving him crap, he gets miffed and he's like, I'll bill you for our time and stalks off with his clipboard. There's two ways I think you can read that. One, as you say, is that this is possibly more theatrics or it could be that they're just freelance forensics experts, you know, and that they're not particularly good.

Right. He's just saving money by whoever he's hiring. He's clearly not a professional who's going to be giving a bunch of evidence that we're going to need to know later uh he's kind of here just to be a foil for for rockford to bounce off of here because rockford observes that there's these big scratches on the bumper looks like something was pried off something heavy probably something heavier than a bicycle rack maybe a motorcycle rack and then he makes some other plausible explanations for things about the car that make our investigator look like a doofus.

Rockford pulls Clemente aside and is like, we're going to talk. Now I know that you're a fraud. Right. I figured out that you hired this PI, Roland Foote, to follow me, and that's how you know where I've been going and when I'm away from my trailer. I found the bug in my car.

There's bugs in my trailer. I think that you have an informant at the police department, which is how you keep knowing about internal police department things. And then you're telling the media about me to get the criminals on my case so that you can swoop in, go on the lecture circuit about the successful case that you've solved. And I'm the one who, I think he says, and then I need a plumber to feed me my lunch. Clemente denies everything, says that Rockford, he's a disbeliever. That's why he isn't seeing the benefits of what Clemente does. Rockford is extremely angry. He does do the lifting his fist thing. And he basically threatens Clemente. He's like, you're going to come with me now to figure this out. And that's the end of the scene. But yeah, packed into that are a lot of kind of little things. Right. Okay. So I got two favorite bits to the scene. One of them is that

I just did absolute appreciation for how difficult these sorts of scenes are where one character is absolutely in the right and is forcibly and directly confronting the other character with their falsehoods and the other character is not breaking underneath it he's he's maintaining that he's a psychic he's not backpedaling as swiftly as say angel would well he doesn't really backpedal right right he he has an answer for everything. And it's very smooth and it's well done. And he doesn't seem flustered by the fact that... I mean, he does seem flustered. He doesn't seem as flustered as perhaps you would hope as Rockford.

He's ready to deal with this probably because he has dealt with this. You get the feeling that he has a set of contingencies for when someone comes in to kind of bust his operation. Yeah, he maintains kind of an aloof authority in the situation that would otherwise be hard to do. And because he does it, even though there's no other audience except for us, you feel, at least I did, this sort of desperate grind where Rockford's like, you're not going to win him through truth and logic. Right. You're not going to, and that's great.

I think that that's a well done scene and it's a hard scene to do. And I think they did that really well. And then the other thing that I, so, I mean, I've mentioned this a few times in the past. It's the Swell Spoon, which is from Red Harvest, which inspired a bunch of things that we know, like Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars and all that. A noir detective or a Ronin or a cowboy or Conan, you know, whatever you have, walks into a situation, throws their weight around and makes themselves known to see what comes out of it. That's something that Rockford has done. He occasionally will do do that like using this sort of yourself as bait I love that Clemente's way of doing this is just using yeah it's a throw him out when he

doesn't want to be put into the the spotlight it is such a trope in the genre to just go and just stir things up and see what happens and then solve the problem based on how people react to it that I just love that he's he keeps maintains his distance by having rockford do that dirty work without rockford knowing it and he's obviously practiced at it you get the feeling that he's he's left a bunch of burned pis behind him yes on his road to fame well from this the end of the scene we cut to ray ochchoa slamming Clemente up against a wall and yelling at him about how he wants his money. Such a good cut. He's going crazy about this money. Rockford brings Clemente to the gang to tell them that he's a fraud and that Rockford doesn't know anything about the money.

Ray, who still seems to be going through some kind of withdrawal. Even more so, I would say. He's very twitchy and wet. He calls Clemente, you piece of chicken. Rockford does manage to break through to him with logic, though. He says, look, if I had $80,000 or that much cocaine, why would I be here now trying to get you off my back? Right. Ray sees the logic, but then Ray wants the cash and Clementi's flash watch because he wants to get something out of it. Clementi is a consummate coward here. He does ask if he can keep some cash for emergencies.

Rockford just kind of watches while Ray takes all of his money. Rockford does ask Ray about Alison Curry, and we get another element to the mystery. Alison wasn't just his girl, that she was everybody's girl at the record studio. And that Barry Silverstein went crazy when she left him

and ended up going out with Rick. So we get an element of Barry wasn't totally straight with Rockford earlier. Right. I do have one question. When he asks for money for emergencies, my assumption at that point was that he didn't get it. That Ray threw his wallet back at him and that was it.

But I think maybe he did give him a little money for emergencies, which we'll see in a little bit. So from here, we cut to Rockford and Clementi in rocky's truck there he's driving rocky's truck around yeah maybe just because he's pretty sure there's no bug in it yeah i think that probably is the case and he says that we're going to go to the police and you're going to tell them everything that you just told those guys clementi's like okay fine fine he kind of has this air of okay you win but he says just tell me one thing as this all comes to a close. Do you really think those gouges on the back of the bumper are significant? And Rockford gives him this, like, I'm not telling you smile, which is great.

I'm not going to give you anything. But then they stop at a stoplight and Clemente dips out of the truck, runs across the road, evades traffic, and evades Rockford, who has also tried to run after him. evades traffic and evades Rockford, who has also tried to run after him, and then manages to duck behind some other cars and get into a cab and directs the cab to follow Rockford. So he does have some subterfuge skills, this Clemente. It's not just a little con that he's doing here. He's practiced. Rockford goes ahead, now that Clemente's not with him anymore, apparently decides to go ahead and try and suss out some of the actual mystery. This is an interesting episode structurally because we have two concurrent mysteries. We have what happened to Rick and Allison. They disappeared, and we all assume that they've been murdered, but we don't actually know.

So there's that mystery, which is what the police are actually investigating. And then we have the mystery of how is Clementi keeping ahead of Rockford? So we're kind of well on our way to solving that mystery. We kind of have figured out his methods and now it's a matter of executing on turning the tables on him somehow. As Rockford viewers, we imagine that's where that's going. Or at least I do. Yeah. But the mystery of what happened to the disappeared people is still outstanding. So Rockford goes to, I guess, the scene of the crime, Lost Tunis Road, where this car was found. He starts snooting around. Clementi's cab follows him up there and then he gets out, presumably paying him with the emergency

money. I had this moment where I was like, what is he paying him with? Oh, that's funny. Did Ray actually give him a couple extra bucks just i wouldn't put it past him to have money hidden somewhere that's not in his wallet yeah so there's a there's a big sign that says soft shoulder which is relevant um and he and there's all this sand on the side of the of the shoulder he finds the jack and the lug wrench in the sand he then kind of starts going down the slope He finds a motorcycle in the woods and keeps sliding down the slope in further investigation. Clemente is following him. He hears Clemente, hides behind a tree, and then lights him up with his flashlight.

There's great tension in here. Yeah, I'm going through this quick, but this whole scene is filmed in a way that is a willy-won't-he, who's following who kind of yeah yeah and i think it's good it's really good but they do come together with uh where rockford discovers him they have a little bit of banter and uh i think clemente says something like oh you scared me and rockford looks at him and clemente responds with what are you looking me spooky for you think you're dealing with a kid good lines he's like that's amazing you You found all this just from those scratches on the bumper? He seems genuinely impressed with Rockford's investigative skill.

There's hints of that, I think, throughout the episode, that he has picked Rockford as a fall guy, and Rockford foils him from time to time, and you could see his respect for him kind of grow. And it's also helpful that that respect for him may be able to sweeten Rockford's disposition towards him, and he might be able to get some information out of him. So there's this, it's kind of a nice complex character growth, not character, relationship growth. There's kind of a juicy question of how much is he playing Rockford and how much is he

genuinely like respectful of his skills and his, you skills and what he brings to the table. That said, sure enough, we see two sets of feet sticking out of the bushes. They have found the bodies of these two poor people who were murdered, and they turn to go back up the slope. And this is kind of a weird moment. Clemente is climbing, then he falls, and he just rolls back down the slope. Rockford goes and looks at him, and then just turns around and leaves and just leaves him there. This is kind of important for an element of the plot.

But in the moment, it's a little bit like Rockford is just like, screw this guy. Honestly, I would. But it's a thing that happens. Well, we'll get into it. We cut to daylight. A bunch of cops are up on the street and someone's saying, thanks, Jim. You broke the case rockford is getting some kind of kudos for uh for actually helping out there's a bunch of banter through this scene so this is very much a very fun to watch kind of thing so jim's there

clemente's there with like an ice pack on his head like because he hit his head or whatever becker and chapman are there when rockford's like so where's this body of water that you said they were going to be by yeah this was something from the first scene clementi originally was like i know that they're going to be found by a body of water and this is a trope of psychic claims it's going to happen on a day that ends in y kind of thing like any populated area is going to be near a body of water of some kind so anyway he points to a water tank it's like that's the body of water and they have this whole go around of like that's not a body of water what would you define as how much water do you need yeah how many gallons would you say a body of water is and it's fun that like even chapman gets into it i

would say about more than 50 000 chapman also warns everyone about how there's a bunch of poison oak and everyone's like ah ah, poison oak. Yes. Rockford points out that the body of water prediction is one that can't go wrong. And that's when Clemente turns and starts accusing Rockford of all these things. He does this very skillful fact judo to start casting aspersions on Rockford because Rockford started calling him a fraud. Probably not fact judo. It's probably fact Aikido.

Ah, that's true. He does mention that he is a master of Aikido earlier in the episode. So yeah, he says he was following Rockford. He saw him go straight to the bodies without even searching. He has poison oak on his neck. Rockford has been scratching his neck. He has a red inflamed area. He certainly didn't pick that up overnight. Where did that come from? This is great because the diagnosis of it is from Becker. I love Becker's physicality. He reaches out and just doesn't grab. He touches Rockford's neck. Just think about that for a moment. First of all, it's poison oak. It's just great that he's comfortable doing that. I mean, I've mentioned in previous episodes, there's something about Becker and touching people's

necks. It's just another one of those moments. Yep, there's something about Becker and touching people's necks. It's just another one of those moments. Yep, that's Poison Oak. I know Poison Oak when I touch it on a man's neck. So now Clemente's saying that Rockford, I knew he was involved with this in some way. He's the one who hid the bodies in the first place. And that's when Rockford's like, this guy's a fraud. He confessed, like, in front of Ray Ochoa.

He lives at this thing. And Clemente comes back with, well, of course I've confessed. He had confessed he had a knife they were threatening me i would have said anything like anyone would have and it comes down to chapman asking rockford did you take him there against his will and there's just this long pause because he did yep one of the few times where rockford just caught straight out with a note you're right i did take him there against his will, therefore what he's saying is valid from that point of view. Rockford's like, I'm going to go home and get some rest, and Chapman says, nope, you're going to come downtown. And Clemente just has this f***ing grin on his face in the background,

like right at the end of the scene. He just has this big, like, yeah, got him, facial expression. They go downtown, but there is not enough evidence to book Rockford on suspicion of murder. Becker comes in at the end of the scene with the coroner's report that they have been dead about two weeks, and that sure enough, there is a contact missing from Allison. So good. The left one. So this is the next moment of like, maybe there is something to this Clementi guy.

What I love about it is just how frustratingly small of a thread people are holding on to to make the psychic work. It's not like we as the audience are like, well, maybe, but it's more like, oh, god damn it. Because we as the audience, we know. We just know. It's not hidden from us. Like the people in the scene are like, well, that's weird. Hmm, that contact. He mentioned it. So Rockford's going around with beth trying to figure out where he's been where he could possibly have gotten poison oak because he thinks maybe it was when he shook clementi's hand but clementi doesn't have it right and he hasn't there's only one spot where he's even been around like nature in the last month and there's no poison oak there there's a great

rockford beth moment here where you know she points out that you need to have physical contact with it she's like well have you been in physical contact with anyone? The implication that Rockford picks up is that she's wondering if he slept with someone who has poison oak. But she's like, I'm not looking for salacious details. I just want to know... Like maybe you borrowed someone's clothes or shook someone's hand. Yeah, exactly.

Beth is like, no, we're trying to solve this. We're trying to keep you out of prison. But talking about the handshake reminds him of... he's like, who have I shook hands with? Then he remembers about the doctor. Yeah. He connects these dots like, oh, the other person I've shook hands with is Silverstein. He has a little bit of patter about it and ends with shine on. So we cut to the parking garage or basement of a club or something.

Rockford is waiting for Barry to come out. He's tracked him down from breaking into his office and looking at his social calendar. Barry is apparently late for Yoko's birthday party. Barry gets into his car, which is this little yellow dick mobile. And Rockford leans into the window and kind of lays out this. So the doctor that you went to, I know he's a dermatologist. Those bodies were found in a patch of poison oak you know you're the only person whose hand i've shook who went to a dermatologist like that kind of thing barry's like no i don't know what you're talking about what's all this patter and then he hits the gas and shoots away from rockford and then starts trying

to run him down yes in this parking garage you kind of see the pressure build on his face it's a pretty good good moment where you kind of see him start panicking with all these details that Rockford keeps building up. He tries to run him down. Rockford gets a little bit sideswiped. He rolls away from the car, and then he finds a big empty glass jug in a dumpster and throws it into the windshield of Barry's car, which sends him crashing into another car. Very dramatic. Yeah, it was a brutal crash. This is in an era where, I mean, I don't remember specifically Barry's wearing a seatbelt, but a lot of people just didn't. Had a moment of like,

did Rockford just kill a man? But he did not. Barry's dazed, I think. And now that he's panicked and then had this suddenly happen to him, basically confesses to rockford he starts kind of crying and he says that he didn't want to kill them he ruined her i didn't want to kill them yeah and rockford uh in that weird rockford like well now that we know what happened i can kind of see your angle yeah which is something we haven't seen since some of our earlier episodes i think like in the countess he kind of does this no one ever wants to kill them. This is good stuff with Rockford because it's, he was in prison for a while. He's got lots of shady friends and whatnot. And so he, yeah, like you said, like once, once we've hit the heart of it and we got

the answer, then he can be sympathetic. And it's almost like, you know, pulling a tooth, right? Like you got to do the tooth pulling and then afterwards you can be like, I know, I know it hurts. Let's get you some ice cream. This is the last thing you want after a tooth is pulled. So that's a bad example. But now we have a confession to this

murder and we go into the first of our two endings for this episode. Yes. Which is delivered by the device of Rockford, Rocky, and Beth are in Rockford's trailer, watching the TV where Chapman is giving a statement about it and he lays out the whole thing. Chapman, very uncomfortable in front of the camera.

It's very good. And it's not only uncomfortable in front of the camera, but also uncomfortable with a case that I think he didn't see going this way. Yeah, they have no part in solving it. So the basic facts that they lay out from the confession, Barry was, was jealous of them. He got drunk. He called them to pick him up. They did. They had a drunken altercation. It escalated.

He beat them to death with a golf club, which is a horrible detail. And, and the rest we know. And then there's a followup press conference with Clementi where he takes minimal credit for helping. Yeah. Rocky is scandalized that they don't even say anything about Jim,

but Jim is just happy to have it all behind him. As long as they're out of my life is the line. It feels like a Rockford Files ending because it's the family gathered in the trailer to just watch a slight recap and the end. And then we get like a little button line or something we even get the joke about uh the visual joke where rocky gets a beer and walks by and just clearly rockford thinks he has earned that beer and it was coming to him and it does not uh but but we're not quite at the end because rockford still wants to know what happened to that eighty thousand dollars

that hasn't come up no one knows where it is and he thinks that clementi knows something about it so we cut to rockford talking to dennis about this eighty thousand dollars i guess it's implied like whether anything silverstein said has anything to do with the money right and he says that barry said that he saw a safe deposit box key on Richard's neck. He thinks he saw, but it wasn't there on the bodies. So Rockford thinks that Clemente took it. This is where he lays out, also, this is how the contact thing happened,

because Clemente was alone with the bodies when Rockford left him at the bottom of that hill. Yes. He fakes his own fainting spell to doctor the scene as much as he can. And probably took the safe deposit box key. So he thinks that Clemente took it, and Dennis is kind of like, look, it's all over, just leave it alone. And he says, you think that that guy's going to leave $80,000 tax-free just sitting around? I want to nail this suede shoe hustler.

But he's giving a TV interview or something. So they're off to beard the lion in his den if you will and that's when we get to the real villain of this piece oh casey patterson this whole discussion takes place inside the police department and as soon as they leave the scene uh a woman who's working there sitting at a desk picks up a phone. And from the moment she picks up the phone. It was her. It was her all along. Oh! And she calls the TV station and says that, you know, tell Clemente that Casey Patterson from the police department is calling for him. He'll want to hear from me.

And I'm like, oh! She's been the mole all along. Not someone recognized from other episodes, I think, just for this story. Yeah. All along. Not someone I recognize from other episodes, I think, just for this story. Yeah. All right. Rockford and Dennis going into the back of a TV studio as Clemente is on live TV making some final predictions about this case now that it's all been wrapped up and the culprit has been found. Yes. He sees a safe deposit box.

No, no, it's a shoebox. No, it's a safety deposit box. It has all this patter. But before he can be confronted with the fact that he knows where this safety deposit box is by the police yet again one step ahead of rockford and he says on live tv the branch the number and he thinks the money's going to be in that box rockford just stone-faced applauds the audacity of this man this is ending two and a half this is like lord of the rings actually this is ending two it could just end on that yeah because it's the slow clap and it's a focus on his face it's classic

again classic rockford files ending but we're not done no my friends three months later yes one of the few times that we have a big time jump in a rockford episode yeah this is more of an epilogue than anything else but yeah it's three months later. Rockford and Beth are going into a press reception and signing for Roman Clementi's new book, Crime and the Third Eye, a psychic's notebook. Yes. Rockford cuts the line and hands Clementi not something to be signed, but rather an injunction to stop selling the book.

As Clementi never asked permission to include jim rockford's name in his book they have back and forth where clementi facing an actual legal thing that he can't bull his way out of yeah no but you come off great i give you all the credit you came up with all the things and robert's like my business depends on anonymity you publish my name no one wants to hire me and he's like do you know what this is going to do to me? 250,000 copies have already been published. We have to recall them all. Yeah.

And he ends with the great line. Hey, you're the psychic. I would have thought you'd have seen this coming, Swami. I would like to point out, as much as I oppose the villain in this episode, when he said 250,000 have already been published the publisher in me oh yeah so what what's great about this i think is that rockford gets nothing out of this this is a purely vindictive ending this is just getting his own back yeah and it's i don't want to say a rarity uh those sorts of endings are delicious gems the fact that not every episode ends that way

makes these feel good because clementi gets his comeuppance right he's he's treated rockford shabbily he's gotten him into trouble that he didn't want and at the end of the day and he's a fraud and rockford for all the cons that he pulls he's not a fraudster we've talked about this uh in other episodes in more detail, but he has a line between lying to a criminal in order to pursue an investigation and defrauding an innocent person or a person who doesn't deserve it. So he's finally, he's able to turn the tables on Clemente in an extremely satisfying way. And we end the episode with the big Garner smile. So good. Yeah, that's the end of the episode.

Fun episode. Like I said at the onset, I have a particular anxiety about this sort of fiction for fear that the psychic will get away with it. I'd seen this episode long ago, but I couldn't remember how it ended or whatever. And it's perfectly within the realm of the Rockford files for him to have gotten away with it.

Like Rockford being the only one who knows how he did it, but for some reason he can't prove it or something like that. But it's a very satisfying ending. It was a nice roller coaster in that realm for me. Lots of good small moments with characters. They had a pretty full cast of regulars that weren't clogging up the episode, right? Like, it was largely Rockford and Clemente, but you would get enough of Becker and Rocky. Like, every time Rocky, Beth, and Becker were on screen, they'd just nail those characters and their relationship with Rockford well.

And Chapman. Yeah, I really enjoyed this episode. Super fun. Very enjoyable to watch for the interaction between Robert Webber, the guy who played Clemente, and James Garner. They have great chemistry. They do this in a number of episodes. Weber is usually the bad guy in the Rockford season. So we can look forward to seeing more of him.

He's got a great face for a bad guy. Good episode. I love the two mysteries and how they move at different rates that keeps the pace of it very snappy and you don't get bogged down in one the only kind of disservice i think it does is that it took me two watchings to kind of figure out everything happening with the car and also to be like wouldn't the police have found these things because they found the car and all the stuff is just there yeah yeah so i think the implication is that because clemente's on it the police are not investigating the same

way they would yeah he's leading them astray without them uh knowing it he's not doing it deliberately he just he's being flashy and so that's kind of implied but never really spelled out the the joy of the episode keeps you moving along to where that doesn't really seem to stick out but on the second viewing i was like i could use one line just to telegraph that uh to firm up that little bit but overall super fun uh nice to see rockford in a con game that's not a con game right like clemente's a con artist but he's not running a game that can be broken or sprung kind of the same way. Right. Shockingly, another recommendation for viewing this lock for files. It's a little surprising from us. Cool.

So I think there's a lot of fun little things to maybe dive into about the structural stuff and also some of the historical stuff about this episode. So we will take our break and then we'll come back and go into all of that fun stuff. See you then. 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 one dollar 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, 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 World Wide Wrestling role-playing game. If you want to see my newest stuff, check out the playtest 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 just got done talking about

the Oracle War at Kashmir suit, which you know because you just listened to us talk about it. And now we're going to talk a little bit about the lessons that we learned from it. This may be a slight departure from our usual format. We're going to talk a little bit about some historical lessons here, right? Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about some historical lessons here, right? Yeah.

We'll talk a little bit about how to work it into your fiction and narrative as you play at the table or as you write your great American novel. Apologies, your great novel. Your great novel, regardless of nationality. Yeah. This episode had some things that just made me go like, huh, how does that actually work? Because Rockford Files does such a good job at having this grounded in lived reality feel that when things are a little more fantastic, it makes me wonder like,

does this have precedent in things that were actually happening? And like we talked about in the first Gear Jammers episode, how they'll use things going on at the time as character seeds and character motivations sometimes. So I was wondering about this trope of the psychic investigator, which is a fictional thing.

There's plenty of stories and TV shows and stuff like that. But the question of like, is this a thing that law enforcement would actually be doing at the time? Or is there any historical precedent? And I wasn't able to get super deep into it, but it appears that, no, this is not a thing that the cops do, which is reassuring. Which is good. I mean, well, go on. Tell me what you got here.

Yeah. So specifically, I was wondering if there was a specific case that this might have been referencing, but as far as I could tell, this is just something that's kind of in the air, But as far as I could tell, this is just something that's kind of in the air, especially in the 70s. There were a couple of high profile psychics or self-professed psychics, including Gene Dixon, who ended up being like the astrologer to Nancy Reagan later in life. And yeah, she had some pretty high profile predictions, including that that a president would be assassinated in the year that jfk was assassinated so she was active during this time ingo swan was a psychic who sold himself to not literally but but operated in relation with like the cia and fbi and was part of these experiments to try and verify whether psychic phenomena was really able to be used and

weaponized um he apparently had a number of here's a thing i can do with my psychic powers during the 70s between 72 and 79 a more modern touch point would be a woman named sylvia brown who has some pop culture i think relevance or knowledge i didn't really know about her until i did the research but it seems like especially in the 90 90s, she was a big deal. I think she's probably the root of my anxiety about these sorts of stories. So that's interesting. Yeah. So my question for you is, how did you encounter Sylvia Brown? Because I really didn't know about her until I did some of this research. When you started on this, I typed her name into it to find out, because I remember her, but I don't remember when in my life I remember her. And I don't know how

law enforcement treated her, but certainly media enjoyed the angle of having a psychic. And she was involved in cases that had to do with people who had disappeared. And she would say things like they had died when they did not. It was really frustrating to see either families fall for it or just the general public or the media just give her more attention than what is deserved when somebody's life is on the line, when it's important that we pay attention to what's happening and not get distracted by this. And that it's clearly a publicity money-making stunt for the psychic, right? Like this is using somebody's misery to give yourself a leg up. Yeah. One of her highest profile things did literally involve the body of water thing.

Yeah. That's just such a basic bedrock idea of this kind of scam. Ironically, Rockford files are very prophetic. But yeah, so the official line, as far as I can tell, it varies slightly, but law enforcement doesn't hire psychics. Anyone can make a statement. And that's usually what the sleight of hand is in reporting on these things, is that someone who says, I have psychic powers. I know what's happening in this. I have made a statement to the police to this effect. They'll take any statement, but that doesn't mean you actually know anything about the case or that you're working

with the police. Yeah. Like, are they even taking it serious in any way? That's kind of the media trick, I guess, is in covering these kinds of things. So as it turns out, this does not seem to be rooted in any specific incident or detective or case or psychic. But I think this idea of high profile people claiming to have some kind of ability to tap into the psyche and powers, you know, beyond the ken of mortal man, like it's just part of our culture. And during that era, I think it really was a part of the culture too that i mean it ebbs and flows and around that time it definitely was a a moment where there was attempts to legitimize you know you get the term pseudoscience where they try and say this is this is a scientific pursuit of some form or another ingo swan's

thing was he would i can i will disrupt the magnetic field of this electromagnet with the power of my mind. See, it's science like that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I think that occasionally that sort of stuff Rockford bumps up against, which is interesting. Like there'll be episodes where he'll,

somebody will just talk about their chakras and he'll kind of roll his eyes at it. His job is to be skeptical of everything, including this sort of stuff, but also obviously skeptical of money deal that's too good to be true or, you know. So in this story, it's used to good effect to have the charlatan who is using this claim

to gather fame for themselves. But I think there's also an interesting angle you could take, because I think some of the implication in reading about some of these other self-professed psychics, and I'm sure this is true, is that if someone really believes in what they're doing, how does that change the nature of the story? Because this would be a different kind of episode, and I think the character would be much more sympathetic if they truly believed in what they were doing and what they could do.

There's an interesting challenge in that. All right. So we have Clemente, who is a competent con man and a competent detective. I mean, he has a comment about how he and Rockford would have made a great team. And he's not lying. They would have been amazing together. So when you're doing a story like this, you want to decide who's in on it. In this story, Rockford knows the truth. Rockford's friends suspect the truth. Clementi knows the truth. And the audience knows the truth.

If you change it so that Clementi believes it, he's a believer, then I think the interesting decision to make there is whether you want the audience to know the truth. Because we talked about how this episode could have gone, instead of the tension being about Rockford finding the evidence to prove to everyone else, it's being, is he psychic or not? And that would be a different kind of story. There were a couple of those little details to keep the characters guessing. About like, how did he know that?

Maybe he does have some kind of ability that to the audience were clearly red herrings or were clearly yeah gonna be proved wrong but those could be audience questions instead of character questions right i have a personal disposition against those kinds of stories partly because i think that very often the evidence that they are a psychic gets really tortured. The way it's presented gets really tortured if you're trying to keep the audience in the dark. You don't have to have a psychic involved to do this. But what I'm saying is, where you want to misdirect the audience, you end up having a bunch of characters and people behave in a way to make it seem like something

is true that you'll later reveal isn't. But then once you reveal it isn't, them behaving that way makes no sense whatsoever. We've talked in a previous episode about how the Rockford Files is pretty good at this, usually, where once you learn the truth, it doesn't change how the characters would have acted because they have a different motivation. Exactly. And I think with this kind of story, that danger is really present. Because in this kind of story, you can't just change that and have the rest of it remain the same, right? Like if Clemente really believes in what he's doing, then why is he hiring a private investigator? There needs to be a different reason for that. Why is that mole person in the police giving him information? That has to be different so it requires

restructuring the whole uh the whole pyramid i guess like how is he getting the information if he believes in in what he knows but rockford is still the source of it then that means is there another person that is that's playing both of them right and what's their motivation or how do you solve that question right but this episode comes down heavily enough on the side of this guy is a con man that yeah that makes it easier to sort out the motivations and they telegraph it right from the beginning yeah which is easy it's the rockford files so you know we were there through rockford for most of it his attitude towards them is going to be the audience's attitude towards um in terms of constructing a game scenario with this in it i think it's an interesting question also because you can

approach it from the direction that this episode does which is your protagonists get bound up into someone who claims that they have these powers yeah and they're being used how do they make that work how do they turn the tables or how do they find out the truth you could also go from the angle of the so-called psychic being the protagonist right like that could be a fun game of like how do you keep this con rolling for whatever the character motivations are um it can be for good reasons or bad reasons but how do you make everyone think that you have powers or you know things that other people don't know and And then it gets complicated in a world, say, where some people do and some people don't. What happens if people claim that they do, but they don't, and vice versa?

I had an experience with that years ago, 2000, 2001, 2002, when we were originally running Dread at conventions. I was at Gen Con, we played that a Victorian setting and one of the characters was the Psychic to the Queen and the first question on their questionnaire was aside from yourself who else knows you're a fraud Fortunately this player was really into it and I was running the game. I was the host of the game They wanted to take me aside Just to tell me that they were going to make a prediction and they wanted it to look to the other players as if i was telling them secret information and then they come back to the table and they would pull a block in dread you pull

blocks from a jenga tower in order to to succeed at things so she would pull a block from the jenga tower to imply to her other players that she succeeded at predicting the future. And then would make something up. And, oh, they ate that up. It's a trick you can't do twice. You have now ruined this for everyone. Yeah, well, everyone listening to this particular podcast. Right, right.

But if you have friends and you want to run dread for them, don't let them listen to this episode until you've done that trick. And then that's fun because we're actually doing the sleight of hand, which is difficult sometimes to do at the table. The other way to do it is to say that you're doing it.

Right. And letting us play to that happening. Play with that dramatic irony that your information is wrong, but I'm going to play the detective who thinks it's correct and just goes on those hunches. So, what else about this episode jumped out to you?

Something about the clues, I believe. Yeah. So, there are specific moments in the episode that we talked about, the getting into his car, he breaks the glasses, and there's stuff done during that to make it really obvious that he broke his glasses. Like the foley, the sound effects from when he sits on the glasses is something shattering. And these are just bent up.

And he picks them up and they're completely flat. Yeah. The actual glasses aren't actually broken, but they're completely flattened. Okay, so there's a balance here with clues. And this is the case with any sort of narrative, whether you're playing at the table or you're doing a show or a book or whatever. How obvious do you make your clues, right? You want them to stand out so that people remember them

when they're important again later on. But you don't necessarily, you may, but you don't necessarily want to say, hello, there's a clue right here. Pay attention. And what you really want to do, you want people to realize something's off, think it might be a clue, and then feel vindicated when it turns out to be a clue. Which is what we just did in this episode. Yeah, so that's what this episode does well.

as well and we talked about it with the glasses and also with when he gets paid uh for a case how these stand out because they're they don't feel like a normal rockford moment yeah and then the episode pays off by telling us no you were right that wasn't a real rockford moment so those moments i feel like are first of all those rely for us the way that we are appreciating them right now does rely on us watching a lot of the rockford files yeah they work as part of the narrative but if this was the first episode of the rockford files you ever watched they probably wouldn't stand out to you in the way that they stood out to us there would just be moments so i feel like this particular technique is easier to execute uh when you have established a baseline and then you're able to start making variations on it to create the here's a clue here's a here's a nod to something that happened that's out of the ordinary you get a

backdrop that you can stand out against i think in games we usually want to err on the side of pointing things out yeah over subtlety i've definitely had this experience where it's like i'm gonna lay out these clues for this mystery. No one seems to understand that they're clues. Why aren't you people picking up on the fact that these are clues? Games have gotten better, I think, about systematizing that with the far end of that spectrum being like the gumshoe

system that Pelgrane does where when you spend points to get clues whatever you get is a clue. It's defined by the fact that you're looking for it. There are other techniques in play I think to nudge that realization without uh going all the way to that end of the spectrum it's one of these things where the best practices is not whether or not you do something it's being aware that you're doing it and working towards okay so imagine this episode where he gets roughed up comes comes home to his trailer, and

they jump him, right? And then Ray is drumming on the table, and then suddenly, freeze frame, the words, clue number one comes up. And then we move on, and we get to when he sits on his glasses, and he pulls them out, freeze frame, clue number two. It would definitely be a different style than how rockford files you know work but if you played to that style you could still have an audience that's like okay that's a clue i don't get how or why and i'm gonna find out and that's interesting and that's an exciting dramatic moment even like going to like when she pays him just without trying and

they freeze frame clue number three you may even go go, wait a minute, why is she paying him? I bet you she's working. If you get a few of them, but not all of them, it's a complex enough picture. We've got two mysteries to solve here. And we're, you know, right. So it's perfectly functional to err on the side of being obvious with it. As long as you pay attention to what you're doing and know the purpose of the clue in your narrative right like if the purpose of the clue is to sit in the back of the the audience's mind and suddenly jump forward when it makes sense and think oh i should have noticed that then that's one thing or if it's to be like all of this will make sense just know this and then know this and you try and piece it together as you go along that's fun too

i think maybe a valuable thought experiment also is what happens if you reverse the order of the cause of the clue and then the clue happening this episode could have been filmed in such a way where you see the pi go into rockford's car right and put the bug in and leave his glasses on the seat. And then in the next scene, Rockford sits on the glasses and he holds them up. That doesn't change the narrative. The events still happen, but it does change the relationship between the audience and the show. I think we harp on this a lot, but it's because rockford files makes a different

choice with almost every episode that we watch yeah about how much information do we know does rockford know and do you know the villains or whoever the causal agents know some episodes we see everything and rockford needs to figure it out and we're watching him run around and figure it out and that's the joy of the show right uh and then in this one we're with rockford every step of the way as he figures it out so we're sharing in his discovery and that's the joy of the show so what i'm getting to here is how does your narrative hold up if we see what happens and then the clue is revealed yeah if that still holds up then that's good right like that's you yeah you. Yeah, you've covered your bases. If your audience is more on top of it than you expect, you're not running into problems. And if your

audience isn't as on top of it as you hope, you're not going to run into problems. Yeah, if the big payoff for the narrative is spoiled by someone figuring out all the clues ahead of time. I mean, I guess in like detective fiction, right? Like that is kind of a genre where the writer and the audience are actually kind of sparring about kind of Agatha Christie tradition of the author is putting in clues, but part of the joy of reading it is trying to figure out the solution before you get to the end of the book. That I'm not really, I don't have a lot of authority to talk about because when I read those, I don't try to figure them out. I just enjoy the story as I read it. Yeah. I will say that there is a phenomenon where people who enjoy that sort of detective fiction will read the last few pages before they

start so that they know that it's going to a satisfying place or that they can pay attention to what's happening. I'm not saying that that's common practice. But it's not an uncommon practice. And I think that that's interesting. That gets into some fun bits where people can engage with the product. The narrative product that you've created in a way that you may not have anticipated. For instance, it's entirely likely that when they made the Rockford Files. They didn't expect two such as us to do a podcast that picked apart each episode with the detail that we're doing it,

but it holds up. I guess a lot of what we talk about in this segment is trying to get at the roots of why does it hold up in the way that it does. And in this episode, I think there's two main elements. One is that the episode is very clear about the

character of Clemente. It's a very consistent character that they know what his deal is, and there's no mystery around will he, won't he, is he, isn't he. The mystery is between Clemente, who's a solid character, and Rockford, who's a solid character. And then the other is that the causal chain of when you learn a clue, when the clue is revealed to be relevant, and how that act influenced the story is well thought out and tracks with all the character motivations and has its own internal coherency. So when you discover those things, they make sense and they feel correct. And those are two things that the Rockford Files really well it's having these solid characters you feel like they are driving the story because they're acting like themselves and it stands out to us when a character shows up that's like this character is just here to be part of this story yeah the the few moments where that happens so

i guess those are the two strong elements in this one that we're kind of picking at. In fact, it stands out so much that like the fact that Ray started drumming before they tried to beat up Rockford. I was like, oh, that's just the thing that this guy did. I didn't feel like that was at odds with how Rockford, I was like, this is a character who enjoys drumming just before they beat the shit out of some guy. And then it's revealed later that he's a drummer and he's a musician. And it's like, oh, that actually also makes sense with this character. Those are some of the strong things from this episode. Do you have anything else?

Do we want to talk a little bit about the stalking horse? Oh, sure. And I will say that my extensive knowledge of this comes entirely from Wikipedia. But apparently where this comes from is when hunting wild birds, the hunters discover that the birds, when they're scared off by humans approaching them, are less scared by animals. So they would hide behind horses so that they could stalk up on these birds and then hunt them that way. So that plays out into the metaphor of this political usage where you sneak it before the public in a way that isn't going to scare them off right away to see if it's going to work. In a way that has fewer consequences if it fails. If this was the Clementi files, that would be the theme of this particular episode, right?

Like that would be the con that Clementi is running to solve this particular crime. By the way, I probably would watch a few episodes of the Clementi files. He's an engaging character. Yeah. I would watch more of him. Unfortunately, this character does not recur in the Rockford Files. But I think that this is an interesting trope to use. I'm trying to think about it in distinction to something like a Patsy. Yeah. Where you just want someone to take the fall for something. I like this as an idea for, you know, modeling an interaction. Rockford is being used not just, as you say, to take a fall, but because he has some kind of skill

or some kind of ability that Clementi doesn't. Again, if this were the Clementi files and that's what this episode was about, then the twist would be that Rockford isn't a dope. He can play like that, right? Like the twist would be that Rockford cottons to it quickly. I just imagine, from Clemente's point of view, when Rockford shows up at his garage, that's when it all starts falling apart. That's when you start panicking and you're like, oh no, how did he find this?

It's great. It's a strong dynamic to bring together two characters or two groups of characters, because this could definitely be done in a strong dynamic to bring together two characters or two groups of characters because this could definitely be done in like a party situation right in a game where someone's using the group as a stalking horse or something like that but i think one of the key things for the purpose of of narrative impact is that the two groups or the two individuals have differing skill sets yeah you don't want to send the person who's basically the same as you out because what's the point? Then it's more of a fall guy situation, you would imagine, or a frame or something like that.

An interesting take on this would be if you had a PI that was working with Clementi, who was agreeing to be the stalking horse, somebody that would go out and do the PI work and get into trouble. Actually, you know what? Now that blah, blah, blah-ing about it here, it occurred to me that that's the plot. In some ways, that's the plot of Remington Steele. The premise there is that she's a detective, but in the 80s, as a woman, she's not getting any jobs. So she invents a detective name, the manly name of Remington Steele.

And at first, it's just an actor playing the role. And so she goes out and does all the hard work while he attracts all the attention. But what's interesting here, right, is that in that case, I haven't watched that show a lot. I just kind of know about it. But it's a consensual relationship, like they're in it together what makes clementi a villain here is that he doesn't tell rockford what he's doing yeah like if he'd come to rockford buttered him up or something i mean rockford probably still wouldn't have done it because he's rockford but that's a different story right where he comes to him and says you're already involved with this

case i'll work this angle you work this angle We'll split the money or something like that, right? Then it brings him into the con game and he becomes part of it. But what makes Clemente a villain here is that he takes advantage of his skills. And so that's what makes it really dynamic and the reason why they have a conflict. Do you have anything else to add? One other little piece of research I did was into this idea of serving an injunction for using rockford's name in his book because that again feels a little bit like a tv thing and i was wondering as a publisher and someone you know with a vested interest in ip and copyright law i wanted to know what the deal was so i just did a little bit of research i'm not a lawyer

in in the u.s it is a statelevel thing where generally private citizens have what's called a right of publicity. The use of your name or likeness or voice or stuff like that for an exploitative purpose without your consent is grounds for a lawsuit or trying to get this kind of thing stopped. You also have the right to privacy, which interacts with the right of publicity in certain ways. But yeah, this is totally a thing that could happen, especially because Rockford makes the point of you are damaging my business because my business relies on anonymity. You can kind of see the argument of use my name, it's exploiting my business, and it's making it difficult for me to live my life and i did not give my consent uh in my bookkeeping for rockford i have a big question mark there because i would assume but it was not stated in the episode at all the injunction would be accompanied with a lawsuit with damages like he would like to recover money that he says he would have lost because of the publicity that this i could have made this much money, but your book drove customers away.

It's not specified. Also, I think the mere fact that he's stiffed Clementi about the one thing he cares about, which is his book, I think is probably enough for him. So psychics being hired to help out on cases, not true. Getting an injunction to stop someone from selling a book that has your name in it when you did not give them permission to do so, that's a thing. Well, well done. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. However,

there you go. Close the book on that one. I think we earned our 200 for the day. I would agree with you. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the podcast. And we will see you next time when we talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.