Two Hundred A Day - Episode 17: There's One in Every Port

Episode Date: September 10, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S3E12 There's One in Every Port. Rockford thought he was helping out a friend, but it turns out he was conned! Now he has to assemble a crew, turn the mark and con his "old friend" Eddy in order to pay back the mob - before time runs out. This is a wonderful con game romp of an 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 Dael Norwood, 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.

Bummer! I call up with some good vibes and some positive energies and I talk to a robot? Forget you, man. Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. As always, I am Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidae Ravishaw. And this time we are grabbing a fantastic Jim Rockford con game by both hands. Oh yeah. And taking it down to the docks to shake it and see what falls out. In season three, episode 12, there's one in every port. Oh yeah. This is good. I've been hankering for a good old-fashioned

Rockford con and this one delivers. The last con con focused episode that we talked about was the farnsworth stratagem which is great but one one significant difference i think is that this one the con game is more initiated by jim for a specific reason and less to get some someone out of trouble like the farnsworth stratagem is about getting dennis out of trouble and this one's really Jim. I mean, he has to get himself out of trouble as we'll see, but it's much more his plan from the get-go. This is proactive Jim. This one is directed by Metta Rosenberg, the series producer, written by Stephen Cannell with Juanita Bartlett as a story consultant credit. So this is the core creative team that's really the heart of the Rockford Files and those three names. This episode is full of great, oh, I've seen that person in

moments. Yes. There's a bit of an ensemble cast and it's a bunch of great character actors and TV actors of the era. So we'll probably bring up some of their names as we go through the show. That said, Epi, what struck you about the preview montage? I was thinking as I was watching the preview montage that we're in season three now. If this had been out, like if we'd been watching this instead of online, but actually sitting on our plaid couches at home with pile plush carpet beneath our toes. But anyways, we would already know what to expect. Like the opening part of this preview montage

is set the stage for a con episode, right? Like it says, we're going to have Rockford pulling a confidence game. It sets that stage and then it shows us Angel and it gives us the line, the whole thing hinges on you, Angel. And we know that's trouble. Right, yeah. And it's weird because that's not actually where the trouble comes in, but it sets this up. It definitely, you're like, oh, I can't wait to see this complex con put together that Angel pulls apart because he gets distracted by whatever it is that's going to distract Angel.

Yeah, it definitely uses the expectation of the frequent watcher to pique your interest. But then I'd say almost subverts that part of Angel. Like, as we'll see, he is in this one, but he's actually not that key to the resolution of it. Like, he kind of does his job and actually doesn't do too much spoiling. Though he does have a pretty great role in terms of uh some of the slang that gets used yeah the rhythm of this episode is a little interesting too so we know that there's going to be a confidence game we can expect there to be a couple wheels within wheels and as it turns out the episode starts us with one confidence game and then transitions us to a different one so

yeah as we cover the episode there may be a a little bit more pausing and taking stock so that as you listen, we're keeping track of what's going on in a way that the episode actually treats a little more holistically, because as you're watching, a lot of it's being delivered by exposition and by seeing a character, but hearing a different name. So, you know, you know that they're playing a role or something like that. So we'll do our best, but hopefully we'll be able to get across the fun stuff without being too pedantic about who's doing what when because as always you should watch the episode just watch the episode yeah what are you doing here i mean we're glad you're here but this one in particular

will benefit from a watch what choices have you made in your life that led you to this moment all the good ones we're glad you're here. 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 anything else you do check out patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe so we go ahead and kick right off out of the the preview montage with our good friend jim rockford in a hospital with a a little present of candies coming to see his friend ed Eddie Marks, who's laid up with some kind of kidney problem. We learn pretty quick from their dialogue.

They're very, I mean, Jim's very warm, but also hesitant. He's being nice, but also his friend's sick, and he's worried. Yeah. But they make some reference to being in the joint together, eating that slop and C-block or whatever. They know each other from the criminal days. And he can't have any candy because it's a kidney problem, so he asks Rockford to eat

a piece of candy for him. One with nuts, if there's one in there. It's pathetic in the older sense of the word pathetic, right? Like, to instill empathy. Here's a man laid to his lowest, and just. I would equate it to like puppy dog eyes. Oh, I can't have candy. Will you just have one for me? And we could probably get into this, but the thickness of how it's laid on is perfect.

Because you sit there and you're like, well, we know that he's an old friend of Rockford's, which means he might be a con man. He's certainly an ex-con in the convict version of it. Already you start to get a little suspicious that he might be running something on Jim. But it's not hammy. It's not over the top. Yeah. It doesn't tip you into it. So you just sit there and you go, let's find out. Because it could be, here's an old friend who's being screwed over by something. Right.'s up to jim to try and help him that uh question i think is maybe not answered but the the gravity of the situation is driven home by

a camera shot to show you a piece of paper uh with a big stamp saying that his application for a dialysis machine has been denied big red application denied stamp over the paperwork. Which is what hospitals use. We see that. We see that. Jim sees that. Eddie kind of waves him off and is like, don't worry about it. I'll make it through. Are you seeing Christina, who we shortly learn is his daughter and is referred to as Christine for most of the episode. It takes me a while to figure out that she's his daughter, actually. She says that he's her dad at some point, I think. A little bit later on in the episode, she just refers to him as dad.

I think the early clue is that in an upcoming scene, she asks Rockford what he would do if Rocky was in this spot. So there's that. But I guess I wasn't expecting a daughter the way he was talking about her. Yeah, me neither.

So that when we see her, I didn't quite put that together until a little bit later. Also, the actors are not that different in age is part of it. Yeah. We'll get to that in a second as Rockford is getting breakfast with her. And then they reminisce about all the cons they used to run together, implying the three of them, that all three of them, they did some job in like St. Louis or something. And this is where we get a line that in the moment doesn't really stand out but does turn out to be thematically one of the little beating hearts of the episode yeah this is where they say that uh that jim would have been good at this he just goes soft on the mark he's too empathetic to be part of a uh a con game when we first encountered this, I wrote it down because it was, to me, in storytelling,

this is a moment where you're like, if you've never seen this show before, we've established that Jim is an old con man, and now we need to establish that you should like Jim. Even though James Gardner is playing him and there's no way you can't like him, we need to give you a reason. And it's also explaining why he's not a con man anymore, right? Why he's a PI and he doesn't keep doing this because he's soft on the mark. Yeah, we'll see that this becomes actually kind of an important part about what's going to happen.

So yeah, Rockford takes his leave and we cut to him having breakfast with Christine, who is played by Joan Van Ark in the third of her Rockford Files appearances. Her third and final. So she played this leading woman role in a variety of episodes. But this is the first time that we've seen her for the show. I am a little amazed at how often they can recycle actors into different roles on the Rockford Files.

And it doesn't catch me right like i don't think wait haven't i seen this person before um and she's great she has this great kind of wide-eyed innocence is the wrong word but this kind of wide-eyed upfrontness to her that plays off really well with uh with the jim rockford character so they're getting breakfast she's worried obviously and eddie specifically said that he wanted wanted Jim to keep an eye on his upfront money, his stake money. He has $10,000 to use as the stake for some, you know, a con game or whatever. money to buy a dialysis machine because he was and this is just a little line but i appreciated that it was in there to connect the reason why i was denied because he was in jail because he was convicted of a crime he can't be on medicaid and that's why he can't get on dialysis which i don't know if that's the case or still the case but that is the reason presented in the episode uh which is awful but anyway just to straight up buy a dialysis machine, they had $50,000 and she wants

Jim to find a high stakes poker game because he's lucky and has the skills to turn $10,000 into $50,000. So I got a question for you here. Yes. Thinking about Jim, the way Jim is, he's resistant to this in this scene and he takes some convincing from her. But my question is, I would suspect that Jim would be like, well, once you get the machine, you still have to pay for a nurse or somebody to operate the machine. You can't just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And eventually piece out what's happening, like pull it all apart by just questioning things. But he doesn't. And I'm wondering, was there a history between him and Christina? Yeah, I think it's implied by some of their body language and also the end of the episode. Yeah, if it is, it's really subtle. Yeah, I mean, I assumed that they had probably had some kind of relationship just based on the casting, to be perfectly honest.

Yeah. The way that that role is cast, it's often a Rockford love interest. But yeah, it's not made explicit. She does come across as very desperate, though. She says, if I need to wager this on a horse, I will. Wouldn't you do it if Rocky was the one who needed the machine? And that's what breaks through to Jim. And he would, right? Like if it was his dad, he would do anything to make him well. So we saw Jim eat a piece of candy in the last scene,

and he has a plate of poached eggs in this scene. Oh, that's right. That we do not see him actually eat. Doesn't he only eat half the piece of candy? Yeah, you see the other half of it in his fingers at the end of that scene. And then in this scene, he has eggs on his plate, and he holds his knife and fork, but the scene ends before he actually digs into his food. So he'll look for a game. I noted that there was a significant glance at the end of the scene. And I think that's, to me, the communication of like, we have something.

Right. Rockford heads back to his trailer to give a call to the aptly named Sharky to find out if there is a high stakes poker game in town. Turns out there is. And so Rockford's all set. Yep. End of episode. And everything turned out okay the card

game uh it's full of uh movie types and a mr gillette who is someone we will come to know better over the course of this episode blast gillette it took me a little while to realize that was his first name and that there wasn't another guy involved named blast that's a great name so these guys are all sitting around a card table and what looks like like a utility room or something like it's supposed to be a secret game yeah it's hidden there's like a spiral staircase in that room though isn't it's weird it looks like a almost like a gymnasium like the walls are like institutional gray but then yeah there's like a nice staircase and the uh card table's nice. Doesn't matter too much.

This is the only time we see it. They're playing a hand. There's a little bit of banter. And then all of a sudden, masked goons with guns kicking the door. Before we get to the goons, because that's great. I just want to mention about the banter. This is the thing we harp on all the time. But this is this great Rockford thing where every character is a character.

These guys have been in this game with each other without Rockford for a long time. So there's one guy who's making a sucking noise. And another guy tells him to either put him in a glass or just leave him out or something like that. He's having problems with his dentures. And this other guy knows it because they know each other. And he's like, stop it. You're annoying. It's just

great it's it's a throwaway thing but it just makes this moment these people real people maybe one of those down on his luck and he's getting pissed off about a mannerism that the other one has just a beautiful bit of craftsmanship in uh the episode a lot of the characters that we only see for a little bit for one scene essentially this episode, do have these little mannerisms. And you are right to highlight the good ones. This is just a fun episode to watch. It has a lot of just fun things going on all the time. But we do have the masked goons kicking the door.

The ski patrol. They get everyone up against the wall, take all the cash, because it's a cash game, right? So they get all the cash. There are drawers full of cash under the table they steal all of that they kind of know just where to go for it too i don't this is not a random thing this is they know what they're doing they clear the place out tell everyone to stay there for 10 minutes they're going to have someone with their gun on the door to make sure they don't get followed and then they peace out with the money uh they do test

this claim gillette sends someone to go he's's like, no, that's just a bluff. He opens the door and then there's gunfire and there's a bunch of bullet holes in the door. This being the Rockford Files, it doesn't kill the guy. It just scares him off. I thought they got him. I really did. I thought so too. I thought his body was just going to fall. And then he's like, nope, nope, nope. And Gillette is incensed, obviously Obviously it is implied earlier and then kind of made clear just through context that he's a mob guy or he's mobbed up in some way. Yeah.

And he thinks that Rockford was the, the pigeon that led them to the game. Cause everyone else has been there. The bird dog. Yeah. Everyone else has been there. They'd never had problems. They add Rockford and they get,

they get knocked over. So he wants Rockford to tell him everything he knows. Rockford doesn't know anything and utilizes the classic Jim Rockford shove and run technique to distract the guys with guns long enough to get out of there. I have twice in my notes here,

classic Rockford shove and run. And I don't think we've talked about that. It's such a good move. It is a good move. And I think it doesn't necessarily come up every episode, but it does come up multiple times in this episode where he's close enough to a door where he can just shove a guy into another guy while someone's talking. That distracts everyone long enough for him to just zoom. So it's not a punch. It's not grabbing a gun. He leaves his suit behind in this one. I think he picks his suit up

or he's got it as if he's going to wear his suit and that's what he uses to shove the guy and leaves it behind. Good stuff. So he gets out of there before Gillette can do anything to him and then heads back to the hospital. He knows something's up. Eddie's gone. The bed is empty, but there is a note. He opens up the note and reads, after all, you should have seen this one coming. Love, Eddie. Yeah. Good old Eddie. Good old Eddie. So Rockford has gotten conned in order to lead Eddie to this game. Right. I'm loving this pressure on Rockford, right? Like this isn't a, maybe I'll take the case, maybe I won't situation. This is a, well, I need to solve this. Right. The alternative is not, you know. This is a, well, I need to solve this. Right.

The alternative is not, you know. Yeah, there's no convincing to be done in this one. Yeah. And the pressure turns up to the next degree in the next scene where Sharky is waiting for Rockford in his trailer to shake him down for what's going on. There's a great little moment at the beginning where Sharky has the gun, but Rockford is able to just fake him out, slam his arm in the door and grab it.

And the Sharky's like, hey, you got my gun. I guess we'll talk now. has the gun, but Rockford is able to just fake him out, slam his arm in the door and grab it. And the shark is like, yeah, you got my gun. I guess we'll talk now. Once the gun is not in Sharky's hands, they have a really civilized conversation. I mean, not that it was uncivilized before, but I consider any conversation at the end of a gun slightly less civilized than the other kind. But it's almost as if Rockford wasn't really convinced that Sharky was going to use the gun anyways. So it's not like he's holding that against him or anything like that.

And also, I'd love to point out here that Rockford probably is more skilled at using his door on intruders than any uh fictional character that i can think of like any moment where there's somebody on the other side of that threshold that he needs to get rid of whether he's on the this side or that he knows exactly what to do he's he's a master of that weapon his trailer is an extension of himself yes so sharky sharky's getting blamed by blast gillette he wants his money back all the money that was stolen he wants it all back from sharky, Sharky's getting blamed by Blast Gillette. He wants his money back, all the money that was stolen. He wants it all back from Sharky. So Sharky is like, well, it's Rockford's fault.

I'll get it back from Rockford. Gillette is saying, if I don't get my money back, you're both dead. That's the stakes. Yep. They have a little bit of banter, which includes, so Rockford's like, I'll get the money back. Don't worry. And Sharky says, sure, because you get periodic cases of dumb. Yes.

But Rockford saw a map in Christine's car and noticed it was a rental car. And so thinks he can track them down. He got played by Eddie and Christine. But he thinks he can track them down and he'll get the money back. Don't worry about it. Keep Gillette off my back and I'll get him his money. And that's when we get to the opening credits of the episode. Yes.

So they just play the title of the episode and all the credits just play over pretty brief montage of Rockford obviously following up on his clues, finding them, and watching Eddie and Christine walking around a dock, a pier, going on a boat and talking to people. Some evidence of a stakeout.

He's got like a coffee mug in his car and things like that. Yeah. So this episode is pretty good at saying here's the stuff that's actually interesting to watch we'll just go from point a to point b and not worry about how we got there because like yeah we didn't need to see rockford following up on the map and questioning people and asking rental car counters about whether they saw a woman matching this description. That all just happens in the cut.

And then we get right to the important thing, which is he tracks them down and I was watching them on whatever their next move is. Yeah. It's not about him solving that mystery. Right. We know he can. So he does. This one doesn't even really have a much of a mystery other than like, what is the end

game? Right. Those are the only real mysteries. It's not like a like a murder mystery thing like the stakes aren't really about the mystery the stakes are about the situation and you know getting getting the money for whoever whoever can get it so after the credits roll and we see rockford on the stakeout we cut to the first scene of getting the team together i I am madly in love with this. The crew all sitting in... It's like a crummy hotel.

I don't know if it's a hotel room or one of their rooms. It doesn't matter. But we're panning across them and they're all actors that we recognize from elsewhere. And then there's Angel. Right. And Angel is lurking in the background reading a magazine while these other three guys are having banter to establish their characters for us. Yeah.

We know who Angel is. Yeah. Or even if we don't, we will know who Angel is very soon. He's perfect at that. And we saw him in the preview montage. Yeah. But the others, they just do such a great job of having the relationship between the brothers before you even find out that

they're brothers obviously one of them has some sort of dominant relationship over the other and is complaining to him about where he gets the starch in his collar and his cuffs but nowhere else the younger brother has not done the older brother's laundry right or got right done right or whatever and is getting a lecture for it and it's unclear whether that's because it needs to be right for the con or just because he likes it that way it could be either way if if angel wasn't even it wasn't in the room we wouldn't even really know that these were a bunch of ne'er-do-well con men right but because they're hanging out with angel voluntarily we assume that that's what this is so yeah so the characters we learn, there's the Lyman brothers, Judge and Adrian. Judge is the older one, Adrian's the younger one.

And then Kenny Hollywood, who is a germaphobe, neat freak kind of guy. Judge is played by a man named John Daner, who is, again, in all kinds of shows. But I recognize him from his multiple appearances on Columbo. Yes. He was in one of the weirder episodes uh where he's a old sea ship captain who uh who dies and was he murdered or was he not and then he was in a in a later episode as well but uh i enjoy any moment of rockford colombo crossover there's a bit of ship or boat related synergy

going on here because that's a that's a boat related episode and i recently like within the past week saw him in the movie the day of the dolphin which first of all highly recommend uh but also he spends quite a bit of time on a ship in that one as well so synergy but yeah so these these characters are established each has their own little set of mannerisms they're're all a little goofy. Yeah. And they're waiting around, waiting to hear from Jim. Yeah. And Angel's in charge. He's kind of gotten them together. At this point, I mean, it'll be a little bit more obvious when we get to the next scene, but I think at this point I can see Angel worried about this crew. Yeah. He starts

looking around as they keep poking each other and complaining. And you kind of see him sink behind the magazine like, oh no. But yeah, he gets the phone call. And so they go onto a ship that's pulled up to one of the piers. Pier something, slip 16. To meet with Jim. Because Jim Rockford is going to run a game. Yes. We learn after everyone gets on board and he greets everyone that Jim sent Angel out to get a crew.

And now that he has brought the crew to Jim, Jim is not particularly happy with the quality level of the guys that he's got. There's a couple of things I love about this. One is in dialogue with the Farnsworth stratagem where he does the same thing. Yeah. And he sends Angel and Rocky out to get Cruz and they get incompatible Cruz. But the other thing that I kind of love about this scene is that, I mean, it is partially Angel's fault, but Angel doesn't have anything to work with. Right.

Nobody will work with Rockford anymore. Yeah. So this is actually a really interesting kind of moment where angel's like well you asked me to get these other guys but they won't work with you because the last job went up in smoke or something like that and you need me to get people who the marks don't know and that limits my options because they're all con people like eddie and christine know the operators in in town so he has to get people that they won't know uh so he's kind of you know stuck with the bottom of the barrel and they still need one more and angel says well i have uh ray the rat

is coming in tomorrow i thought he was operating like a like a carnival sideshow uh yeah basically um however this becomes important later but rockford of gives in to his fate and is like, all right, well, this is what I got to work with. Game's on. From here, we transition to a really well-constructed sequence where we cut between two scenes, one of which is Eddie and Christine executing their next con game and Rockford explaining to the crew what that con game is and how they're going to try and flip it on them. This is what Rockford has discovered in his investigations. Right. This all happened in the cut, as I said earlier. Yeah. And it's a variation on the old Brooklyn Bridge game. Ah, yes, indeed. He says it's a variation on the old Brooklyn Bridge game. And what did he say? Like she's playing the blah, blah, blah.

And he's playing the, these roles have names. Yeah. That these con men should know. They just, it's part of their lingo. And it's great. You get this every so often in Rockford Files episodes where whenever he's with con men, they just start talking in their language with their jargon. And you're a little jealous that you haven't wasted a part of your

life doing that and learning this kind of stuff always reminds me i bring it up every time we talk about this kind of episode but always reminds me of the sting is kind of the yeah er con game movie that has the sensibility to it where there's like professional operators who have specialties it's like this person's a really good talker. This person's really good at playing a part. This person's really good at making the mark believe them for this purpose. This person's good at flipping a room to make it look like a different room for the duration of the con. Everyone has their different little specialties. And you feel like you could talk to a room full of them and you could be like, we're going to run a lady with

a lemon with a Mississippi twist. And they would know, oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, that's smart. I never thought of doing a Mississippi twist on the lady with a lemon, but let's do it. But then who's the hook? Oh, we'll need two hooks. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. So the Eddie and Christine part of this sequence is happening in a bar, which I assumed was at night until later the timeline syncs up and you realize that this is all happening in the morning of this day. But this restaurant seems like a nightclub. Yeah, it's very 70s. We'll put a restaurant in a basement kind of feel.

There's no windows. Yeah, it's very dark. Eddie and Christine are talking to a man named Mr. Sherman. So I'm going to kind of lay out what's happening. But the way that we see it in the episode is this intercut nature where Rockford is telling us, and then we're kind of seeing it unfold. Yeah. But Eddie and Christine got a line on this boat or a ship. Sorry. Yeah. Oh no, that's a great bit that they got going there. Yeah. The Golden Star, which is in this port that they're all located in at the moment. The man who owned the shipping line of which the Golden Star was part of its fleet recently

died. Eddie is posing as a slightly crooked manager from that company that got bought by a larger company. There's one legal loophole to where Christine, who's posing as the air-headed heir to the fortune, like family fortune, but has no interest in the business. She has the ability to sell this one boat out of the fleet. The character she's playing is, she's playing it as a distracted character who's worried about a lover in France that might be cheating on her the whole time, which is a great touch. She's like on the phone to France

and speaking in French and stuff, while the character that Eddie's playing is like, let's just make this deal real quick because it's kind of on the DL because I actually got fired off the board of directors by the new owner and I just want to make some money off of this and then move on. Mr. Sherman is the prospective buyer of this ship where he has his own business and he wants to buy a boat. Victor Sherman is his name, so he's the mark. Rockford realizes that they are using the money that they got from busting up the game to put up something in escrow for Sherman to prove that they're serious. And I don't really know what the actual business logic of this is, but this is the stated reasoning. Again, this comes back later.

$200,000 of actual money. And they want to sell this boat for $3 million. It's worth $30 million or more. Right, yeah. So a lot of numbers get thrown back and forth, and as we go through this, there's layers to the cons as well. So it's a little hard to piece together who has their eye on what amount at this point. that the whole reason why Rockford was set up was to to get the two hundred thousand dollars that that this man insists that they put up if he's going to sink his money into the the whole endeavor right yeah so they would end up you know with three million which whatever that profit would

be doesn't matter he's called away from the table for another phone call and we have a little two of them dropping the act and talking to establish that this is the big score and he's like no this is it if we get this then i'm done and christine feels bad about stinging jim that like that was what they had to do to get the seed money and he's like look we'll give it back once we get the big score we'll get out of here and we'll pay jim back and everything will be cool rockford his angle on this is that the actual owner of the Golden Star is this guy, Greenleaf, who owns the bigger company that bought the smaller company. He actually owns it and he's in Toronto for real business. So Jim Rockford is going to impersonate Mr. Greenleaf and make a counteroffer to turn the mark and get Victor to not give $3 million

to Eddie and Christine. I think the most important thing to know about Mr. Greenleaf is that he's an Oklahoma oil man. He's a Texas oil man. Oh, I thought he was an Oklahoma oil man. Usually Rockford goes for the Oklahomans, but he has to stretch a little bit to go for the Texas oil man in this one. Again, echoes of our favorite character from the Farnsworth strategy, Mr. Farnsworth. Because when they mentioned that he's an oil man, it's in a scene with Eddie and Christine trying to, you know, talking to their Mark. And they mentioned that Greenleaf is an oil man, I think. And then for the discerning

rockford watchers they're like oh well we know the role that rockford's going to play then the reason that victor sherman is called away is because angel has put in the phone call impersonating the secretary of mr greenleaf yes to tell him that greenleaf has heard about this prospective deal and wants to talk to him directly come to his his boat, the Greenleaf, later that afternoon to talk about it. Because here's the thing. There's a obscure maritime law that allows double registry of ships. In one country? Iberia.

So under Iberian law, you can have multiple ships registered under the same name. This is mentioned now and will come up again because it's going to start explaining some motivations later in the episode. But this is the hook to get Sherman to talk to Greenleaf is that because of this double registry thing, he might be able to make him an offer. Right. That's better than him paying $3 million for the boat. Or rather, the ship. Okay. The outline of the counter-con has been established.

Eddie and Christine trying to get Sherman to buy the boat that they don't actually own. Rockford's going to try to get Sherman to not buy the boat. We're not quite sure what the counter-offer is yet, but that's the contention at this moment in the episode. Yeah, and so from there we go into the games begin begin and Victor Sherman shows up at the Greenleaf. Angel puts on an accent and pretends to be a, not body man, but like a steward. Yeah. Pretends to be the steward attending Mr. Greenleaf. Angel's bad accents are so good. He obviously is putting on a voice, right? What's really good about this is that this person that Angel's playing could very well have a bad accent just to have their

job. Right. He's playing Greenleaf's Stuart, but he's a shady, shady person. Right. When he welcomes him onto the boat, he says that Greenleaf is on a phone call and they come around the corner and the speakerphone's on and this works in so many different angles. It's great. You get this thing with Rockford on the phone sounding like he's an actual businessman

dealing with big businessman problems. Yeah, there's like big stock problems. So Angel turns that off and you get the moment where Sherman, you know, is, do you listen in on the phone conversations often? And Angel's character is like, no, I don't. I was in the front of the boat. I didn't even know this was on. But he's clearly lying. Yeah, he's lying.

and the lie is reinforced by this accent that you know might just be that the actor stewart margoli can't do the accent but it's i think it just it just works it works really well because it feels like yeah i think it's intentional yeah yeah uh rockford appears wearing a blood pressure cuff uh because he's been having some blood pressure problems or at least greenleaf has been having uh some high blood pressure. He keeps insisting that Sherman call him Buck, and he wants to know why Sherman's rustling his ship. He knows that there's been an offer made, but he owns it as part of his fleet, and he doesn't want it to sell to Sherman.

So Greenleaf offers Sherman $200,000 to just drop it, just walk away. And he says, if you don't do that, then whatever you bid, I can bid higher. And while I go through all of that, I'll just buy the ship back that I already own outright. And we can have a big fight about it. Or I can give you $200,000 now to keep your hand in your pocket. He's also offered him a drink, which he's refused. But Rockford orders a tomato juice, no salt, because when you order a tomato juice, people would automatically think to put salt in it.

Well, he's watching his blood pressure. He can't just have salt in his tomato juice. It churned my stomach just a teeny bit. I mean, I assume the salt would have been applied like a margarita glass or something like that. I have no idea. I mean, it's part of the class divide that the, you know, the rich 70s businessmen had salt rims on all of their fruit juices. But that's how he gets Angel to duck into the other side of the boat and wait out this private conversation. Right. And then as part of this, he also notices, finger quotes, notices a bunch of disturbed papers. And he asks Sherman, hey, did you see my steward looking around here?

And Sherman's like, yeah, he was listening to your phone conversation. And so once he returns with the tomato juice, Greenleaf fires his steward on the spot. Yes. Tired of him poking around. And he's the reason that we're getting outbid on all those oil leases, and he doesn't want to see him around anymore. You sweaty-eyed little devil. This is obviously something he's wanted to say to Angel for a while.

So Sherman says he has to think about it. He has to think about this deal. Obviously, so as a viewer, obviously we know that this whole thing has been set up for Sherman's benefit, right? To see Angel, see him be shifty, see him be fired. So we're waiting to see how that plays out. But to end this conversation, Rockford says that he has until 10 a.m. tomorrow

to let him know. Gives him a good oil man threat. I don't want anyone else to hear about this. If you go seven miles out in the desert and whisper it to a jackrabbit. Yeah, I will bust the wheels off your wagon. And Sherman says, I'll remember that. Sure enough, as Sherman is leaving, he runs into Angel as the steward,

bringing his suitcase off of the boat. Angel talks him up to a $500 bribe to get him to tell him why Greenleaf really wants this boat. This is a fun little micro tension in the scene, right? This guy has pulled out his wallet to bribe Angel and Angel's eagle eyes have spotted more than the $100 he was originally offering. In a very Angel moment. Yeah. This isn't the character he's playing.

This is straight up Angel being like, 500. Counting the money in the guy's wallet, knowing precisely what he can get money in the guy's wallet knowing precisely what he can get out of the guy cash but what i love about this bit it's very true to angel the character but it also gives us this moment that plays back into the preview montage it all hinges on angel if you're a hardcore rockford viewer as many of our audience are, this could be the moment it all goes wrong. Right. Watching Angel suddenly get starry-eyed for a little more cash in a different story would

have sent them off on a completely different trajectory. And it's not for lack of trying. But Sherman very cleverly keeps it in his hand and doesn't give it to him until he gets the information, which is, remember that thing about the double registry the dual registry angel says that greenleaf has multiple ships under dual registry so he essentially has a ghost fleet of ships where he gets the money but he doesn't have to pay any taxes or do any paperwork for them because he has eight ships actually working but only four of them are registered because of this dual registry thing uh the Golden Star is one of them. And if it sells to an outsider, that will suddenly open up the books on this dual registry thing, which could lead to an investigation. And he doesn't want

that. You see Sherman gain respect for Greenleaf by hearing about this. Like, oh, wow, that's really good. Huh. And I think to the strength of Rockford's acting skills, right? At the end of this is when Angel tries to take the bribe. Sherman's driver and bodyguard, presumably, has come up and is a big muscly guy. So there's an intimidating presence there. He doesn't give the bribe. And he says, there's takers and there's losers in this world. Greenleaf's a taker.

I'm a taker. You're a loser. Yes. So here we are. Here's a mark. Here's somebody that Rockford's running a con on. It's been established that Rockford goes soft on them. And now we've established why there's no reason to go soft on this one. Yeah. He is not a good guy. No, he's shady as shady can be. And really up to this point uh you could read his demeanor is either shady or just suspicious of other people right but this is the point where we're like oh this guy this guy's an a**hole he deserves it yeah and i i guess i i misspoke because

rickford isn't even running the con on this guy but nonetheless he's part of it well he's turning the mark though right so like he is yeah he didn's turning the mark though, right? So like he is. He didn't choose him in the first place. Right. But now he is the mark. Yeah. So now Sherman understands the motivation of Greenleaf, which is part of the con. Like he needs to know why he wants that not to sell the ship. Okay.

We then go to our good friend, neat freak, Kenny Hollywood in a car testing out a little audio tape player doohickey. And he's waiting for Eddie to come out of a hotel. Comes out of his car all dressed very neatly. Comes up and claims to be an IRS special agent who wants Eddie to come with him to the federal building to aid in their investigations of something. Right. And he's worried that he's a suspect, but he establishes that he could just be a witness. And he calls in, like, picked up the suspect or whatever, and we see that the little audio thing is a recorder that says, Roger, in different inflections after everything that he says

to keep up the appearance of being some kind of agent. And I'll be honest with you, I want one. Roger, Roger, Roger, Roger. It would just be a lot of fun to just pick up a CB and just say what you're about to do next and have somebody go, Roger, affirmative. We get a great little visual bit where we see that the judge is hanging out outside of an elevator with a little sign on it that says out of order. So he's keeping people from going into it then when he sees kenny's car come out he takes the sticker off goes in and then he times it so he comes out of the elevator as if he was just coming down to meet them at the door before obviously eddie can talk to anyone who actually works there they go to the real federal building yes but they have

you know the two uh con men um are the only ones that eddie interacts with it is a a wonderful moment of just fast talk right like yeah he comes out says how come you didn't give him the visitor id badge uh you know never mind we're gonna we're gonna head out anyways Just enough action to go to keep Eddie from thinking. And that's really vital because Eddie is a con man. Right. They're trying to keep him off kilter long enough to drag him along on what's going on. And some of the tension here

is about, is Eddie going to figure out that these are other con men or not? Because he should know his own, right? Yeah, yeah. So, we'll see how that plays out. But the judge in his role as inspector or whatever, doesn't really matter, says we're pursuing this case. I want you to come around, come to this stakeout. You might be able to help us. So they take him to this room where our other the other one that the other brother, Adrian, is set up with listening equipment.

And they are listening in on the conversation. It's the next morning. So it's the conversation that Sherman is having with Rockford as Greenleaf at a cafe across the street. Right. So we are, again, cutting back and forth between these two little locations for this scene. Sherman comes right out of the gate with, I know about the dual registry thing. I know what you're doing with your ghost fleet. I know there's a lot more money in it than the $200,000. Right. I'm going to blackmail you. Basically. And so we go to the crew plus

Eddie listening in on this. And we hear Sherman saying that he wants $10 million in cash because he doesn't like paying his taxes. And Judge says, he sure doesn't. Judge's performance in here is, I think, meant to put the audience a little on edge. Yeah. I feel like the assumption here is that Judge isn't quite up to snuff for the task that's given to him. He's a little stiff. He's a little stiff. And when Eddie starts asking questions, Judge is like, I don't care about that. Right.

He doesn't actually answer them. He says, we're not interested in that. Yeah. Let's not talk about that. And Kenny actually has to come to the rescue and step in a little bit. And it's an interesting dynamic because the judge isn't acting as well as he should be. Right. Kenny's actually acting really well.

Like as a viewer, I buy him as a con man being an agent that other people would believe is an agent. And there's a reason for that. But he's still doing his germaphobe, dusting things and rubbing his hands with cleaning towels and stuff, which will lead to kind of the interesting thing at the end of the scene. But what they're setting up here with eddie is that their target is sherman for tax evasion the reason they have involved eddie is because they want to take the money he has in escrow for this deal he's supposed to do and mark the bills because once sherman gets the money the bills will go off to his various pursuits we'll be able to follow them and if they go into things that are avoiding taxes,

they'll have proof that he's avoiding taxes, blah, blah, blah. This is a very weird pitch. Yeah. So we have that. We have the judge being a little weird.

We have Kenny who is like doing this stuff with his hands and everything. And then we have Adrian say, here, take a look for yourself. So we see Eddie look through the telescope and see rockford right talking to sherman and then he turns he's like you know i think i've i heard about someone named something hollywood kind of a neat freak yes and here judge steps up yeah and offers uh an excuse with kind of a demeaning excuse that he picked up some rash while traveling uh which was probably

meant to get underneath kenny's skin because that's horrifying to kenny but kenny plays it cool and he's like yeah my my doctor said that if it's still here tomorrow i'm gonna have to get some steroids yeah he plays it very cool so all of that is this great transition from okay they're playing this con on ed to Eddie's going to see through this to, okay, Eddie's obviously meant to see through this, right? The scene transitions you to, oh, this has to be intentional that he sees Rockford and then picks up that he's getting played. Right. Yes. Or that they're turning his mark. mark so sure enough we go to the next scene so we're we leave the bribe kind of unresolved i think yeah i think we kind of move away from

the conversation after we hear that he wants 10 million dollars does rockford leave in a huff he might we might just go back into the listening post and not yeah not even because there's a couple loose end bits here that are okay that they're loose ends, right? Like the marking of the money, I don't think that comes back in as being important. Well, because that's just the story that's meant to be seen through. Right, yes. And I think that it's meant to point Eddie in a direction so Eddie thinks that the con is over there. Right.

So it doesn't have to lead to anything. It just has to inspire him to think about it leading somewhere other than where it's actually he's being directed to the mark of it still being uh sherman right but yeah uh we go to the next scene which is eddie and christine in a hotel room where eddie's like okay jim's trying to turn our mark around bam it has now been made explicit we all know what's happeningit is the catch word for this episode. And I want to, when we get into the second half, I'm going to talk a lot about that because I think it's important. Christine wants to drop it. She's like, this isn't fun anymore. You know, now it's getting too complicated. I already feel bad about Jim being involved. Like, let's just drop it and

walk away. But Eddie, the dual registry thing, which is part of the conversation he overheard, The dual registry thing, which is part of the conversation he overheard, is making him think, wait, that might be real. And if that's real, then that's an actual lever to get money out of Greenleaf. Right. The real Greenleaf, not out of Sherman. And he says, look, if this works out, we'll be out of here tomorrow. We'll be able to turn it around in a day. We'll be out of here tomorrow with our big score and it'll all be be said and done so eddie goes back down to the to the pier where he's going to go talk to the the captain the captain that he's already bribed

yes to find out about this dual registry thing but when he gets there the captain is talking to mr greenleaf not rock yes a different man who is incensed because the captain says well he gave me a bunch of money i think he well he gave me a bunch of money i think he says he gave me a thousand dollars or something like that to say that it was for sale and green leaf says well now everyone thinks it's for sale i've been getting calls right so i jetted down here because this ship is not for sale and now i have to solve your mess and you messed it up well now it's under scrutiny and if it under scrutiny, then he could get caught doing the horrible things that he's doing. Right, doing the dual registry thing, which he is actually doing.

Oh, no, the captain says that he was paid $2,000. Yes. So we need to get the Golden Star out of port as soon as possible. Eddie overhears all of this and you see the dollar signs in his eyes. His facial expressions are pretty good through this whole thing. So from there, we cut to Eddie and Greenleaf in a fancy office, presumably actual Greenleaf's office. And Eddie threatens to reveal the dual registry thing and essentially does the same thing to this Greenleaf that Mr. Sherman was doing to Rockford's Greenleaf,

where he says, I know what you're doing. Make me an offer so I don't blow up your scheme. Greenleaf offers $5 million in cash for him to get lost. And he's like, no, no, no, you can do better than that. So he offers to sell him stock at face value. So a dollar a stock, but then it's worth whatever it's listed at, which right now it's over $50 or something like that. And Eddie, who we know has $200,000 sitting in the bank, that's his stake money, says that he wants $200,000 worth of stock, which means $10 million of value. Greenleaf kind of flips. He's like, oh my God, that's way too much. Eddie holds firm. Greenleaf's like, I don't know where I'm going to get that much.

I need to get that much actual stock because it was back in the day where there were paper certificates that actually moved around. But he ends up giving in to Eddie's demand. Who knew? Yeah. They're going to get together again later that day or tomorrow or whatever it was, whatever the timeline was to make the transfer. We then have a scene where Eddie, that dick, Eddie not being a good friend to Rockford, I might add, calls Blast Gillette to give him the line on Rockford. I know where Rockford is. He's down at this pier. He has your money because he wants to get Rockford off his back. Oh, this is the low down dirtiest

move. I mean, there's no way to read into this move that he's just trying to get rockford off his back right because this is this is a death sentence that he's yeah calling in eddie might not actually care about anyone like that might be what's going on with eddie oh this whole kind of veneer of no jim like we'll get him back and we'll pay him back the money and we'll apologize and everything will be fine. All wise. Yes. He does not care about Jim. So sure enough, a couple goons are dispatched. They follow Rockford down to the Greenleaf, the ship that he's been operating out of.

He sees that it's been tossed and then they appear. So it's two goons with guns. They say his time's up. He has an appointment with the bomb of the river he says that he's going to have their money soon which as the viewer you're like oh so something still is going on yeah but they don't want to hear it they already have angel in their trunk and rockford with his second shove and dive of the episode manages to get the two of them off his back and dives over the side of the ship this This one, it's classic and I loved it, but there's this moment where they're about to walk him off and it felt like the goons were a little awkward about it.

Like, I don't know. It just felt like that he was about ready to go with them and they were like, I would have expected more of a fight and then shove. Right. And that's the moment that he was able to take advantage of. Yeah. That Wiley Rockford. He manages to use the pier to his advantage

and kind of swim around and get out of it behind their backs and get to his car before they can catch back up with him. He hears Angel pounding on the inside of the trunk of the other car and says that he'll be back for him. Yes. He's like, Angel, I'll come back and get you. I love it. It's great.

It's, again again just super fun a fun sequence to watch yeah and we do get a little line at the end where one of the guys is like let's just kill this guy angel who's in the trunk and the other one's like no the boss wants rockford first so we have a little bit of justification for why they didn't just toss him overboard all right and then from here we head into our final sequence eddie and greenleaf are meeting up again to make the payoff, the stock certificates for the $200,000. They have a little bit of banter, a little bit of one-upmanship, but Eddie feels like he has the upper hand. Though Greenleaf makes him sign a statement that he can't sell any of the stock without Greenleaf's permission.

The whole deal with the stock instead of cash is that if he gives him cash, Eddie can still go to the authorities and tank the company. Right. But if it's stock, if the story becomes public, then the company's assets get frozen and then he can't actually cash out. So it is something... It's feasible. Yeah.

It has some feasibility to it of why that counteroffer worked. Eddie gets his suitcase full of $200,000 cash from the bank where it was being held in escrow. They make the exchange. He pieces out. There's a great beat, and then a different door opens, and Rockford and the crew come in.

Yeah, the whole crew. Congratulate Ray the Rat for his outstanding performance. We get a good Kenny Hollywood diatribe on how filthy rats are, which is wonderful. I remember the first time I saw this episode that this twist got me. Yeah. When the second green leaf showed up, I was like, oh, so that's the reveal that the real guy's getting involved again. I didn't realize, I think until the stock certificate thing came up that I was like, oh, maybe this is part of it also.

And then I remembered that another guy had been telegraphed that there was going to be another guy in town for the con. That's another thing I want to talk about in the second half here is this twist. Because I think that there's a way in which this gets done poorly all the time. And why it works so well in this episode. It's extremely satisfying. It's like you see the crew together. They pulled it off. There's no sense of impending danger, right?

It's like we did it. And the judge even says that was a sweet con. Yeah, I do during this scene have a sense of impending danger, though, because I'm keeping track of Rockford's books. And I'm presuming that rockford is going to give the money back to blast right most of this money belongs to blast it's revealed in this scene that he paid the uh ship's captain uh fifteen hundred dollars to perpetuate his part of the con and i assume he owes all of these other people some money.

So there's the $10,000 stake. Right. And I think that that's really the money that Rockford earns out of this con. That's the money he can take away from Eddie and Christine. That seems right to me. And presumably he's got a crew of... He's got the brothers, Kenny Hollywood, Angel, and the Rat. So he has five plus himself. You know, not including himself, that's $2,000 a piece. I mean, he rented a boat. Right. And repainted it.

And he probably owes him... Anyways, the point is, I don't think Rockford comes out on top. Yeah, I'd agree with that. However, once they do get out of there and he goes down to his car, Christine is waiting for him in his car. Yes. She says that she had a hunch, but it wouldn't hurt Eddie to be taken down a peg, essentially. So she didn't tell him anything. They laugh and laugh.

Rockford offers to take her out to dinner. And I think this is where we see, like, they probably had something at some point. And maybe this is them reconnecting on that level asks her if if she likes halibut which is a callback to a joke that we skipped over earlier but uh angel was mad because kenny hollywood kept calling him a halibut yeah it's like why does he do that and rogford says well it's because it swims along the bottom of the river yeah so i make a joke Do you like halibut? Yeah, sure. All right. Well, we got to drop off some money and pick one of those up.

So that's the only closure we get that Angel's all right. Presumably he gets picked up on the way to dinner and is okay. And then we end the episode with a fun little scene where Eddie is sitting there with his stock certificates spread across the hotel bed. He has a cooler with the champagne in it. He's celebrating his success. He pours himself champagne, spills it all over the stock certificates, and sees the ink start to run as there are obvious forgeries.

And then we just end with him looking at the camera and going, Rockford. Rockford. Oh, it's a good, good episode. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to recap this episode. Not because I don't think the cons are too particularly convoluted. Right. You can follow them and they're capably filmed.

And I want to talk in the second half some of the tricks that they used to make it all make sense while you're watching it. But then to take that wonderfully crafted episode and translate it into a recap. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot left out, mostly because it's a very visual and character-driven episode. Yeah. Us talking about it isn't getting a lot of the nuances that make it just, I think as I said a couple times, just fun to watch. Yeah, yeah.

It's a great romp of an episode. Everyone has a juicy character that you want to see on the screen, right? Like, any time that Angel isn't on, I can't wait to see Angel back on. Any time Rockford's not on, I can't wait to see Rockford back on. And it's the same with the rest of the crew, and I want to see them all in action. I've said

this several times, but I would watch a TV series that was... Just this crew? Maybe with Christine at the helm instead of Rockford, right? of right this has a nice arc too where it's it it gives you a bunch of a bunch of reasons why rockford isn't up to this level of con and then when he achieves it it feels satisfying yeah like at the beginning there's a lot of like oh you're soft on the mark yes you don't run games anymore like that kind of thing no one will work with him because his last thing went up in flames and then when it all comes together beautifully at the end

it just like feels like you won you know it's like we did it and the being soft on the mark thing is it turns out to be an ironic moment right because at the end of the day the mark was actually eddie and he's the one who sold out rockford. And then he's the one who ends up with less than nothing. He's out everything. Plus it seems like Christine even doesn't want to hang out with him anymore. Eddie's flaw here is that he tries to prey on Rockford's sympathies. And in doing so, he earns Rockford's ire. And that's what eventually burns him. Good episode. And that's what eventually burns them. Good episode.

Yeah, super fun. Lighthearted. Unlike some of the more emotional episodes, you know, not a lot of deep analysis about the character interactions, but a lot on the surface that is just well-crafted, well put together, keeps moving right along. Super fun, con-game-centered episode that we've been wanting to do one of these for a while. So I'm glad that this one turned out to be a nice in that nice sweet spot yeah all right well it sounds like you

certainly have some things to say in our second half i have some we'll see i think we'll go ahead and take our break and then we will come back in our second half to talk about all the ways that this episode works and how to use those tips and tricks perhaps in your own fiction and games 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 $1 an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. If you want to help us shape the direction of 200 a day, the Patreon is the best place

to go. And finally, both of us have other projects going on pretty much all the time. Epi, what are you excited about right now? I'm excited about swords and sorcery, the type of swords and sorcery you find at worldswithoutmaster.com. And my new project, codename Lincoln Green, Robin Hood role-playing game. You can find all you need to know about that at digathousandholes.com. I'm excited about your stuff as well oh that's so nice as always you can check out my catalog of fiction and role-playing games at ndpdesign.com including the worldwide wrestling role-playing game if you want to see my newest stuff check out the play test page that's where i have free downloads of all my fun new projects thanks yet again for

listening as always we deeply appreciate your support. And with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We just got done talking about There's One in Every Port, episode 12 of season 3. Good episode. Very intricate, well-crafted con game episode. And I think for this second half, as we talk about some of the lessons learned in the episode that we can use in fiction and games and whatnot, I would like to talk about why this episode is well crafted.

Yeah, this one definitely has a great level of cause and effect, right? Yeah. Whenever there's a reveal, you understand where the reveal came from. So one of the things I want to talk about is when things are revealed before they're necessary, they're being obvious so much in this episode because it is going to be complex. They introduce you to things and then deliver on what those things are. To be clear, they, you mean like the writers? The writers, yes. The creators here. So we just talked about this, but we have Eddie in the hospital bed telling Jim it's too soft on the marks. And then that leads into Eddie preying on Jim's sympathies, right?

So they're just basically giving it to us. They're handing it out to us. to us. When they introduce the characters, each of the members of the crew, their introduction tells you exactly what you need to know about those characters and how the plot will hinge on them, right? You get that Kenny Hollywood, he's obsessive about being clean and cleanliness, and that comes up again and again. They just keep saying that so that when it happens, you're not like, well, where did that come from? Yeah. The expectations that you have while you watch the episode are appropriate, right? Right. And so the contrast to this, and one of the reasons why I think this really worked well

is Ray the Rat, the guy who comes in and plays Greenleaf after we've watched Rockford playing Greenleaf for a while. And they don't tell us that Ray the Rat, well, they tell us that there's another guy, Ray the Rat, and then they let that drop. It's the only thing they don't keep hitting us with. They don't keep coming back to this detail until they bring this other guy. He comes in and he plays it for a while. And that is the one moment where the audience is supposed to be misdirected. Basically, it's run like a con. They're letting you in on all of the information they want to let you in on.

So that they can have this one piece of information off to the side. But even then, you have to plant the seed ahead of time. You have to have this moment so you can go back and go, oh, that's the other guy. So it's not just out of the blue. That's what I was thinking about with the cause and effect. How when that's revealed, the cause was planted. It was just so early in the episode that it's easy to have forgotten it. Especially because there's so many other layers of things going on. i think what this episode does structurally with that is really interesting and

and very i don't know replicable maybe but it's a little subtle which is that the episode has essentially has three acts there's the setup there's everything that happens before the credits that gets jim into the in trouble and then needing to to recover this money or else he's going to get killed which is played with a very light touch through the rest of the episode you're reminded of it every couple scenes or so so you remember why rockford's doing this but it's not an overriding concern it's not a constant pressure they don't show up until the end of the episode it's a motivation it's not motivation. It's not a pressure in that way. Then the second act is turning the mark, taking Sherman and making him not go with Eddie and Christine.

And then the third act is about Eddie getting conned. But even though there's a sharp divide between those two things, But even though there's a sharp divide between those two things, like after the conversation with Rockford as Greenleaf and Sherman, Sherman's gone. We don't see him again for the rest of the episode. For all we know, he went to the police. Yeah, it transitions immediately to Eddie. But it doesn't feel like the focus of the episode has shifted, right? Right. of the episode has shifted, right? Like it's still a continuous thread of the narrative.

And the fact that as audience, we get surprised by the second Greenleaf, that carries the momentum of the whole third act, the whole end of the story. If we saw Rockford again doing another con that would not have that same kind of freshness to it or that same energy to it, I think, because there's that question that creates drama of, oh, now is Rockford in trouble?

Right. Because his whole con depends on Greenleaf not being involved. That whole middle part there, the con on Sherman, if you sit down and really map it out, the whole purpose of that is to put Sherman in that chair across from that hotel. In the same way that at the very beginning of the episode and i love how this echoes the whole purpose to getting rockford to go to that card game is to get the money to to put up front for the sherman con right eddie is running it's this like here's the setup con and then when we're done with that we could just leave that alone

let that whatever from the point of view of the characters right not from the point of view of the creators but like eddie's like okay i need this money this guy won't do it without this money this two hundred thousand dollars so i'm gonna run a con on rockford to get the two uh to get him to show the way to this game and then the the problems that that creates for Rockford don't matter to Eddie. Right. Eddie's done with that. In the same way that if we were to keep watching Sherman, he would probably have some kind of follow-up interaction to, like,

get this money that he was promised or whatever, and Greenlee's just gone. And then there's no boat and no money and no one to rat out to the authorities. So, like, you know, what is he going to do then? This episode isn't concerned with that. But that is, again, the the setup is over now we're on to the real game and you can imagine that what we're actually looking at are two cons that are run in two parts in a long string of cons that create demand for the next con as it goes along. Before this, Eddie needed money for whatever reason, and that's why he's running the con

on Sherman. And then Sherman says, I need, you know. Right. And then after this, maybe Sherman goes and actually does try and go to the police or attempts to contact Greenleaf again and gets the real Greenleaf, who then threatens him because the real Greenleaf has a lot more resources than Rockford does. And again, may very well be doing this double registration thing. We still don't know at the end of the episode whether that's a real thing that's happening or not. It's just, it's

the crux of each con as they go forward. Yeah. But like I said before, I think that one of the ways that this kind of complex structure plays out so understandably in front of our eyes as an audience is that the creators, the authors and the actors and everyone involved, they're not being stingy with the detail. explaining to his crew and therefore us how Eddie's con on Sherman is going down while it's going down. And we don't have Rockford explain his con to us while that's going down, but there are bits within that con. Okay, so like the whole deal with Angel. Angel's playing the steward of the boat and he leaves the phone on, the speaker phone on, and that's a little suspicious. But they make a note of it. They make Sherman suspicious of that.

Like Sherman says, do you do that often? Like that doesn't seem right. Yeah, they don't let that be just body language or just a glance. They have the dialogue so that we know that Sherman knows that that's a weird thing for the steward to be doing. And then the payoff for that is when Rockford, in the guise of Greenleaf, sits down at his desk. The first thing he does is he picks up a letter opener with a bent tip. And the desk drawer is ajar. So there's this sort of desire in writing mysteries. If you're sitting there and

you're just writing a piece of fiction, or maybe you're writing it for a game, to make the question whether or not the audience is going to be able to solve the mystery. And what's happening here is that you want the audience to key into it moments before Rockford tells you it, right? Right. So he picks up that letter opener, it's bent the doors and you think, oh, that's why they had that. They're making Angel out to be the fall guy here. And then Rockford says it. So they're not trying to trick you. They're trying to trick you into thinking you're being tricked and you're not. It's being laid out for you. Yeah. I think

I use the term telegraph a lot for this kind of stuff where it's not foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is usually, for me, I don't really understand the foreshadowing until the thing happens. And I'm like, oh, that was foreshadowing earlier. Yeah.

It's telegraphing. It's saying, if you pay attention to A, you'll see B. B's right there. It's just on the other side. So, you know, if you're paying attention, you can see it moments before it comes up right into your face. And that creates that sense of, oh, cool. You know, it creates that feeling of, you know, appreciating the cleverness, right, of what's going on and gives you the ability to say, okay,

I think I know where this is going. And then it's a very short loop before you can say, oh, that is where it's going. I'm so smart. I'm great. Or, oh, that's not where it's going. How interesting. Yeah. What an interesting diversion that that, you know, that this is taking. And so on top of that, then you have this moment with Ray the Rat, who plays Greenleaf, and that's the one where they don't telegraph it. They foreshadow it. Yeah, that one is foreshadowed but not telegraphed. And it's earned by the writers. They've earned it because they've given you so much of the other stuff.

And I guess I'm thinking about this in contrast with a lot of times I come across it where it isn't earned. It's just like, surprise, here's what was going on all along. Yeah, here's the twist. And that happens in TV, in movies, in books, when we play role-playing games. There's a Swedish term for it. The Jeep form term for it is the big lie. And that is when you get done playing this LARP where you've been like, you're doing a high school homecoming dance LARP. It's supposed to be like 16 candles or something like that. And then after the whole thing's done, everyone sits down like, yeah, we had fun.

We were playing. We were high school students, whatever. And then the people running the LARP say, this is what really happened. This person was a time traveler. And this person was carrying an alien plague. And they were trying to stop, you know. And so the big lie is you never engage with any of that part of the story. There's no reason for that to matter.

There's nothing going on there. Yeah. But now that's what the story was about. You're supposed to go, oh, oh, cool. That's what was going on. Yeah, exactly. So in this one, they earn it because they're saying they give you everything and then they give you that one clue. And that's perfectly fine because you've been kind of walked through the whole thing.

It's almost like a tutorial. Well, you're also, it's not just the one clue, though, because you're also waiting for the payoff in a way. Because there's the moment after the scene you know the scene where they're clearly intend eddie to see that rockford is running this game on him or to see that rockford's trying to turn his mark you're left with a moment where you're like okay that was intentional so what is rockford's plan what is the payoff of rockford letting eddie know that rockford is turning his mark right yeah and then question, you quickly move on because the reveal of the new Greenleaf

is the question mark of like, oh, this is going to ruin Rockford's plan. So maybe we just don't need to know where this was going. If you had just seen Chicken Little as a little chicken, you would be like, oh, Rockford's messed up again. Right, because that happens, yeah, where a new piece of information comes into play and Rockford's plan is ruined and he has to adapt.

That could be Greenleaf appearing. But as it turns out, that was the solution all along, right? Like that was the plan all along. There's just the productive drama for seven minutes, maybe, right? Like four or five minutes from when that's introduced to when it's resolved of the audience going oh where is this going we're almost done with the episode a new thing's been introduced and then it's resolved in a way that pays off those two pieces of setup the fact that there's another character coming in and the fact that we still don't know what rockford's ultimate

goal is with the right with the con game and you get you get enough time to toy with the possibilities in your head while it's happening, right? Like that's a fun bit. So I think one thing that I take from a lot of these episodes, but this one in particular, is that idea of having a short time between introducing the question and then answering it. If you're spending the entire episode wondering what Rockford's goal is, that starts interfering with your ability

to enjoy what's going on on the screen. If you're spending an entire game session wondering why is this person trying to do this thing to us or why is this person offering us this reward for this action or whatever, wondering about the motivation can detract from just engaging with the situation. But when it's presented, you're given enough time to realize that it's a little weird and

wonder where it's going. And then you find out that's a little more, at least to me, that's more dynamic. That's more productive tension than destructive tension. And a lot of the things that I enjoy. Yeah, I agree. A lot of the notes that I have here are things like be obvious, explain and move on. I feel like this episode is not shy about here's the question, there's the answer. Right.

Now we have the answer. What's next is really what you want to have move you along there. Yeah. The other major thing this leads me to thinking about is how the motivations are very clear. And we talk about this a lot about how characters all have very clear motivations in Rockford Files for the most part. But in this episode, the motivations are clear, but also extremely simple. There's a lot going on on the top.

The cons are going on. There's the turning the mark. There's new characters. Maybe what character are they playing? Are they part of it? Are they not? the top. The cons are going on. There's the turning the mark. There's new characters. Maybe what character are they playing? Are they part of it? Are they not? So since that's all going on, you know, in the action, the simple character motivations ground the episode and make it a lot easier to just watch it, right? It's basically about money. Everyone wants money for some reason, or they want to kill Rockford if he doesn't get the money. Those are very

simple. They're not deep commentaries on mankind or anything. They're not about the character histories. They're not about how the characters interact or what they represent or anything like that. But at the end of the day, every character that we meet can answer the question, why am I doing this right now? And that is hard to understate how helpful that is

to making it just work, to make you engage with it and lose yourself in it as opposed to question why things are happening. I'll go on a minor wrestling related tangent. Yes. This is something that drives many wrestling fan crazy, which is when you really like a wrestler, but you don't understand why they're doing things. Yeah. It's like, I want to like you. I want to know what's happening,

but I don't understand your motivation. And that doesn't mean your motivation needs to be, you know, Shakespearean. Right. Or out of a postmodern, you know, commentary on the human experience.

But like, is it because you want money? Is it because you're jealous of someone? Is it because this person wronged you? Like, just give me something. You're not getting the respect you think you deserve? Yeah, yeah. So at any given time, if I know why you're on the screen, you know, why are you taking the actions you're taking?

If I can answer that question, it's so much easier to just enjoy what you're doing as opposed to like, why are you even doing this in the first place? And in wrestling, I want to win the championship right right everyone should be able to say i'm a professional wrestler because i want to win the championship if you can't say that what is your character right so like in this episode why are you in this con because i'm getting paid and that's important you know i agree and i think that that kind of leads into uh the second thing i wanted to bring up which is you've got a motivation. Everyone's got a motivation. And then a lot of them have, how could I make this go wrong?

Right? Kenny Hollywood has his OCD, and there's a moment of tension with that. The Lyman Brothers fight, and there may be something that happens there, although that doesn't pay out as well as Kenny Hollywood. But we know the angel is overly motivated by money. Right. And there's that scene. There's one scene that we didn't talk about when we went through the recap, but I made a note of it here because this leads into that a little bit. explains Eddie's con to his crew, and then tells his crew what they're going to do, and looks to see if they're on board. Oh, right. And each of them accepts in a way that tells you how they might be a problem. And it's great. Kenny Hollywood says he'll do it because he said that we're going to have to paint the,

I think they have to paint the name on the boat, right? Yeah, they have to repaint the boat and paint a new name on it. Yeah. And Kenny Hollywood's like, well, paint gets under my fingernails and I can't get it out, so I'm not going to do that. I'm in for everything else, but not that. I could do paperwork, but not paint. The Lyman Brothers, you watch Adrian Lyman just turn to his brother and wait for his brother to say whether or not they're going to do it. Their dynamic, you know, it just describes how those two interact with each other.

Having that, just choosing a moment where you say, okay, I'm just going to have each one of them accept the job in a manner that perfectly describes what you need to know about these characters before they go forward is great. And that, I mean, that's something that I often think about using when i run swords without master i do the rogues phase and i say show me how blah blah blah and it's just as

easy that you could throw that in any game you can do that in your own picture where you just like show me how you accept the deal and you move on to the next character show me how you accept the deal in a game that's a lot of fun because you see the players search for ways that set their characters apart from the other characters so that they can accept this, do the exact same thing in their own way so that they, you know who this character is. Yeah. I think the,

the idea of here's the same question, let's all answer it uh for games is really powerful there's two ways that i like to do it to set up sessions when i run the mountain which one of my favorite games um i usually start with you're all arriving at the same spot at the bottom of mount fuji describe how your character arrives to the mount yeah and in that case that case, it's usually also introducing your character, right? What they look like and whatnot. You know, are they riding up on a horse? Are they on foot?

Are they dragging an enemy behind them? Are they sneaking? Do they suddenly appear out of nothing? You know, like, because I think of it as if it were a movie, right? Like, how do you first see the character? Again, how do we first see our crew in this episode we see them in motion talking showing off their character quirks before we learn their names or why they're there uh and then the other thing i do which i kind of stole from you from the rogues phase is when you start a game of masks of the mummy kings every character has

brought a piece of a key to enter this this forbidden tomb so what is the piece that you brought and how does it fit with the other ones yeah then everyone gets to narrate something that matches the direction of their character if they're sorceress or if they're you know mighty or if they're some kind of thief or whatever their deal is, usually they take that opportunity to narrate what they stole or what they discovered or what they, they wrested from, you know, some opponent. And then everyone starts the game with, okay, you're this one, you're this one, you're this one. We can play off of that. The classic movie example of that, that I can think of is the Seven Samurai. Yeah.

The first half of the film is just set pieces for the introduction of each of these and they have to do it they have seven goddamn samurai like that's a lot of people to keep in mind and uh yeah we had over seven con men in this game so i guess it's they're in different groups though so that's a great way to say here's this one and set an expectation for what role that one's going to play in the story right here's this one this is the one that's going to screw it up for you yeah here's this one this one's the one that's going to die tragically yeah because when you're writing a story you can kind of reverse engineer that right like i need a character that's going to do this. But instead of having a character whose only job is to do that, it's saying, okay, what kind of character is the one that's going to do X? Right.

What kind of character is going to be the one that has a tell, that tells Eddie that these are con men? Yeah, so you can work it both ways. You can have your character who has this feature, or you can create a character that naturally would have that feature, right? And then that's an organic kind of part of the world building. So that brings up an interesting question about this particular episode. Uh-huh. And that is, did Rockford change his con when he figured out what he had to work with? Oh, once he saw his crew?

That might be an open question for our audience. You'd think that he'd probably be waiting to figure out the details to see who he had to work with. Because he's going to be assigning people to certain roles, right? Yeah. And the core of it is really him and Angel in that first interaction. But all that business at the Treasury Department. Oh, right. Yeah. So good. That was capably done. interaction but that all that business at the uh treasury department oh right yeah so good like

that was capably done so you would have to have a crew that could at least do that part right right i wonder when the goons came after rockford if there was anything that had to change or if everything was already in motion and he just had to keep away from them long enough because he does say i'll have your money soon like I'll have your money this afternoon. And they're like, too late. Yeah, that's a good question. When I saw that, it felt to me like it was not something he was expecting. Yeah, but he took it in stride.

Once he heard Angel and knew that Angel was alive, then I guess that's the point where he's like, okay, well, we'll take care of it. Good thing we don't need Angel for any more of this con. Angel just missed out on the celebration that we have when we reveal who Ray the Rat is. Poor Angel. Poor Angel. He did well in this episode. Usually we're talking about how he's such a weasel, but this one he's very capable and straightforward and does the job.

he's very like capable and straightforward and does the job. Yeah. Like I said, uh, at the very beginning, the preview montage sets up the Rockford fan for an episode that Angel's going to mess up. It feels like it's this dramatic irony when he says that the whole thing hinges on you,

Angel. And you're like, okay, when will Rockford learn? But then it all, it all comes out. It all works out. Well, I think we've, uh, covered most of the highlights from my perspective.

Do you have anything else to add about there's one in every port? This is the thing that we've been saying, but I have lines with arrows all over the place on my notes. Like, you know, you write something down and then later on you write down where it pays off and you draw a line to that. And it's like a spider web. It's so well weaved. Nothing extraneous, again, in this one. Even the little kind of dangling threads are not really germane. They're more just curious.

More just like, huh, I wonder how Sherman feels about that. Right? Yeah. But it doesn't, it's not going to impact the plot. It's more just a curiosity because the world feels larger and feels lived in by all these characters. Yes. Feels to me like we've earned our $200 for this one. Yeah, we did.

And my assumption is Rockford lost much more than that. I mean, maybe he broke even. Maybe. It's the best he can hope for in this case, I think. Yeah. maybe it's the best he can hope for in this case i think yeah because it's never specified exactly how much money was taken from the the poker game just that it turned into a two hundred thousand dollar stake so yeah but i don't know i don't know yeah that's a dangling question as well but we do know that jim stays in his trailer and uh you know yeah isn't isn't going on any european

vacations anytime soon. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that'll do it for us for another episode of 200 a Day. Thanks again for hanging with us. Yeah, thank you. We look forward to talking about more Rockford Files. I mean, at least I do. Rockford?

Rockford. See you next time. See you.