Two Hundred A Day - Episode 18: Just By Accident

Episode Date: September 24, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E21 Just By Accident. This episode keeps the action moving along as Rockford investigates the death of a friends son, a Demolition Derby driver, in a mysterious accident - unfortunately, the writing overall and the treatment of Rockford in particular doesn't meet our generally high expectations! We break down the missed opportunities in the second half, as this episode left us wanting better choices made on behalf of our friend Jim. During this episode we mention the phenomenon of Native Americans being hired as high-rise iron workers - we didn't have our facts 100% straight, what Nathan was trying to reference is actually specific to the Mohawks in New York City. Here's an article about "The Mohawks Who Build Manhattan" and a short Straight Dope article that seems to draw on the same sources. 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 Mike Gillis and the Radio vs. The Martians Podcast 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.

This is Thelma Sue Binkley. It's about the research I called you about. The family tree. Did you talk to your daddy? We maybe can. 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 Epi Dyer Ebershaw. And we are throwing back to another season one episode. Yeah. For consideration this week.

What are we looking at this time, Epi? We are looking at Just by Accident, which is, I believe, the 23rd episode? 22nd episode? 21st. That was close. You could tell it's an early episode because everyone's dressed like they're in the 70s. I picked this episode because I wanted to see some chasing action with some cars, and I could not remember if this had any, but I knew cars were involved. And I was in for a bit of a surprise, as we'll probably find out. Yeah, it may not have lived up to expectations in the car department, unfortunately.

We'll get into that later there is some exciting uh explosions and derby action however yeah so we weren't totally disappointed the preview montage uh makes sure you know that that's going to happen there's lots of vehicular onslaught going on in that yeah ending with the shot of jim rockford behind the wheel of a car as flames are coming up over the hood. Very dramatic. What I don't know, because I'm watching this montage and I'm not paying close attention to the type of car he's driving. I just know it's the same color as his car. So I assumed it was his car and I started to get all like heart palpitation, like, no, not the Firebird. As we've established, the Firebird is a very distinctive character and we feel very protective of it. So anytime the Firebird's in danger, it's like, oh no.

And the only other thing I want to point out about this preview montage is that there's this moment at the very beginning of it where he's talking to a woman. We're going to be introduced to this woman a little bit later. He's talking to her about a character and she says, you're talking like he's. And he goes, that's right to a woman. We're going to be introduced to this woman a little bit later. He's talking to her about a character. And she says, you're talking like he's... And he goes, that's right, he is. It is so cold in that preview montage to be like, yeah, he's dead. And I'm a little like, wow, what a dick. But then when we get to it, I don't want to say it's justified but yeah this episode

one of my takeaways is that thematically may not thematically but just uh in contrast to many rockford files episodes jim's kind of a jerk in this one yeah and maybe that's because of the uh the writing team not really knowing the character which i I'll get to in a second, or maybe that's just because there aren't any other supporting characters that we recognize. So I don't know. It's a little weird. I think we'll probably touch on it as we go through the episode. Yeah. To set the tone, I think this one doesn't necessarily measure up to some of our other favorite episodes overall.

So we'll kind of try and pick out why that is and, you know, the interesting reasons for that, as opposed to slam on it too hard. We do have a one-off writing team of Charles Saylor and Eric Calder credited for this episode. You know, just a little research on them. And not really surprising me after seeing this episode, not a far-ranging writing team. They had a couple TV episodes during the 70s that they did together. They both individually wrote a couple episodes, and they just kind of faded out. Eric Calder does some acting now. He's kind of an older character actor, or was in the 2000s at least.

But no Stephen Cannell, no Juanita Bartlett magic on this one. Though, fun trivia fact, this one is directed by Jerry London, who directed the very first episode we ever talked about, Tall Woman in Red Wagon. Oh, nice. And we also have a second appearance of a side character whose first appearance was

in Charlie Harris at Large. So this is wrapping in well with some of our 200 a Day alumni. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this episode, we have seven of them to thank. Thank you, Mike Gillis. Check out his pop culture discussion podcast, Radio vs. the Martians. It's the McLaughlin group for nerds, radiovsthemartians.com.

Thank you, Kevin Lovecraft. Find him playing RPGs on the Wednesday evening podcast All Stars. Visit misdirectedmark.com for that, as well as the other gaming podcasts in the Misdirected Mark Productions Network. Lowell Francis, check out his award-winning gaming blog, ageofravens.blogspot.com. Thank you to Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow, and Dale Norwood. 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 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 should we talk about those titles? Well, we'll go ahead and kick off the action with talking about those titles, which take place during the first scene of a demolition derby. Yes. I was going to say, we get off to a pretty exciting start because it's a demolition derby. So there are these, you know, trashed up, spray painted, broken cars, all smashing into

each other. But then the titles, whenever a title comes up, just by accident, James Garner, directed by Jerry London, all those, It freezes and the sound stops. Yeah. And at first I thought that there was a problem with my playback. Right. On the very first one. Yeah, the same thing.

So it's actually not that exciting. It kind of goes like. There's an unsettling edge in most of this episode that I don't think they lean into. It has mainly to do with one of these guys in the derby here. And we'll talk more about Dwayne as he evolves here in the story. But some things that he says and he does and how he acts are in line, I think, with this title sequence and some of the musical cues that the rest of the episode ignores.

And that that I think is to its detriment. Yeah. There's one, one moment in particular that, that stands out to me in that way that we'll get to later, but here we're introduced to him as one of the derby car drivers. So Dwayne, um, and then the other major one is Billy Joe Hartman. And it's presented to us in the, the announcer voice kind of calling the action that they have a rivalry and this is some kind of – they're basically in a duel. Like, all the other drivers aren't as good as they are. Through the course of these choppy credits, we see that Billy Joe ends up winning the derby by just smashing the crap out of Dwayne's car. Okay, so here's the thing.

When I was a kid, I never got to go to a demolition derby. But, you know, you would hear radio announcements for it. You know, in your head, it's something far more dramatic than it probably is. And this one fit what it probably was, which is this guy just backing into him again and again and again until he finally says, okay, I can't get my car started. Yeah.

Until the car is broken enough that it no longer runs. And, uh, I'm sure that that's exactly how it works. And that's exactly the kind of excitement. And it's the sort of thing where if you got into it, you would see nuance there and you would enjoy some parts to it that if you're just a casual observer, you were like, well, okay, I guess. The appeal is mostly

look at those cars smash together. Yeah. I think this, this episode does a pretty good job of keeping it to the narrative, right? Like we don't see a lot of extraneous derby. It's pretty much just to establish these two characters at the beginning. The two of them have a good sportsmanship handshake hug after the bout is over, for lack of a better term. As they're walking out of the arena, I guess. I'm just going to use the wrestling terms. The track. I am able to interpret all of this through wrestling, right? Because you have the announcer who says that they have this big rivalry but then they the guy who loses holds up the hand of the guy who wins and you're like oh obviously that was a masterpiece because that's what you do at the

end of a really good match if you have a rivalry you know you really got me this time yeah you begrudgingly say yes you're the champ exactly so if i use wrestling related terms it's because that's the the lens through which i view any any sport that happens inside a circle of benches right but yes as they're leaving they have a shady conversation billy joe says that he's starting a new career as as a racer getting to the the stock car Yeah. And so it's going to be the last time, whatever they're doing tonight, this mysterious errand is going to be the last time for him. Dwayne,

you can see in his face clearly is not okay with this, but it's kind of like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, we'll just get through tonight. Yeah.

There's a sinister note to Dwayne that gets more and more sinister as the episode goes along. And there's this character of Billy is really affable. You kind of feel like if you're going to do anything to Billy, you have to be a real dick, right? I want to be Billy's friend. He is clearly the baby face in this situation.

And Dwayne is the heel. Yes. So we cut to that night. Dwayne is driving a car to a deserted road in an incredible jacket. Yeah. Leather jacket with the little stripes and stuff. Oh, it's fantastic.

And we see him carefully cut a line that makes the fuel gauge read down to zero. Right. So he's up to some shenanigans. Billy Joe pulls up behind him in a different car. It's apparently his turn for whatever is about to happen. And he confirms with Dwayne that there's no gas a different car. It's apparently his turn for whatever is about to happen. And he confirms with Dwayne that there's no gas in the car. I was like, okay, so this is some kind of car crash fraud deal that they're doing. The two things we know about them is that they're

up to no good and they know how to crash cars. Right. Yeah. They kind of talk to each other in order to tell the audience that there needs to not be any gas in the car because it's supposed to go off the road and look like it got ran off the road. They'll be able to walk away if there's an empty gas tank. But of course, Dwayne has fixed it so that Billy Joe does not know that there's gas in the tank. And then Dwayne proceeds to ram Billy Joe off of the road prior to when he expected to be run off. The car goes down too hard, too fast, rolls over a couple times, and then explodes. There's a musical note in here. So the soundtrack has this very eerie thing going on

that then shifts into a harmonica when the action gets... I mean, I feel like this is a microcosm of one of the difficulties that this episode had was that i think they want duane to be more sinister so they you know you put the soundtrack in like that but then you cut it back into but they have to keep the signature harmonica yeah and it just doesn't it doesn't quite work you know you're unsettled for a moment and then you're like oh good it's a Rockford episode. Yeah, unlike probably the darkest one we've talked about, which was Sleight of Hand,

which really leans into being unsettling and dark, this one kind of is like, yeah, there's some stuff, but we all know that it's just a Rockford episode. So we're not going to go too far with it. After the explosion, we go to a nice looking house where Jim is being let in to see a woman who turns out to be Billy Joe's mother, Mrs. Louise Hartman. She's been trying to reach Rockford. He was off fishing with Rocky, which is the only reference to Rocky. We do not see him in the episode, but he is credited, I suppose, as he is mentioned in this conversation. Jim and Mrs. Hartman have this hug that clearly

shows that they know each other. Yeah. Jim is coming in as a friend already established. He's not just been called in cold for this case. Mrs. Hartman does not think that Billy Joe's death was an accident. Someone saw the explosion. They called the police. They, you know, did their investigation, concluded that it was an accident.

He just drove off the road. Case closed. She doesn't think it was an accident, not only because he's a professional driver and he wasn't drunk. He didn't have anything in his system because they did an autopsy. She's incredulous that he could have made that kind of error just driving. But she has received in the mail a life insurance benefit of $200,000 that she didn't know he had taken out. That's a million dollars. That's what that is. That's a million 2017 dollars. It's not a tiny amount. It's not. Yeah, it's pretty significant. And Jim illustrates that by wondering

how a demolition derby driver, I guess they're called drivers. I don't know why I was struggling for that word. If anyone out there is a race aficionado, we apologize for the slaughtering we're going to do of racing stuff. We are not well-versed in that. But if you want to give us any tips or clarify anything for us, let us know. Yeah. So yeah, Jim points out that it's not the amount of money that would make sense. Right. There is, as we'll find out, there is a class divide between Billy Joe and his fellow derby drivers because he's from this family and this is a wealthy family. We're inside a wealthy home.

Because he's from this family, and this is a wealthy family. We're inside a wealthy home. Right. In addition to the mysterious life insurance policy, it's not like they were close. He left six months ago. Yeah. For this very reason, basically. He wanted to make it on his own without leaning on his family.

So he kind of cut off contact and just peaced out. So she hasn't talked to her son in six months. Then he dies. Then out of the blue, she receives this $200,000 benefit that she didn't know existed. So she thinks something suspicious, obviously. She offers to hire Rockford at his normal rate, which he kind of downplays. He's like, no, no, no. And then she insists. Goddamn Rockfordford which we'll

come back to at the end but this is one of the things that i found most interesting about this episode was this relationship this rockford mrs hartman relationship that's kind of implying that they have a pretty close one they're good friends maybe they were together at some point yeah it's that's kind of implied at the very end she doesn't appear in any other episodes this is a pretty close one. They're good friends. Maybe they were together at some point. Yeah. That's kind of implied at the very end. She doesn't appear in any other episodes. This is a one-off character, but yeah, it's an interesting little wrinkle. Now that I'm thinking about it, this is important to pay off what happens with its car at the end, I guess. Yeah, I think so. One of the things about this relationship that I really dig is that it gets to be the twist on Rockford's refusing to do work. Right.

He's not turning down the job. He can't do that. It's a friend who's in need. So he turns down the money. Right. He turns down whatever he can. Yeah. She hands him an envelope of money and he just, as soon as her back is turned, sets it down on the desk and leaves it there.

So they go to Billy Joe's room, which is covered in racing posters, which are amazing. And I'll get to in a second. But the important thing here is that there are some magazines. He hasn't been receiving them since he left, but the subscription is still good. So Rockford does a quick little phone call to the magazine publisher claiming to be from the publisher's office and he needs to make sure that a good friend of his is receiving his magazines. So he's able to get Billy Joe's current address, which he apparently has very responsibly updated his address to continue receiving his magazine subscriptions, which is another point in favor

of Billy Joe not being a bad guy. This is a classic Rockford con saying that he's got pressure from authority and he's got a time pressure. The dual pincers of a Rockford con. Right. The call center operator who answers the phone ends up helping him out by just giving him the information he wants rather than make his day worse by making him wait. Also with the implied threat from authority. Yeah. You know, you don't want to be the one that I tell the editor didn't give me the information.

Right. Before we move on, I do want to mention something that was intriguing to me about these posters in this room. They're all promotional posters for racing and driving events and they're very cool uh they're very visually striking so i was like i wonder if these were real things so again racing aficionados you can laugh at laugh at us for our ignorance but uh turns out the usac midget championship is indeed a class of race uh midget cars is a thing i did not know this just tiny little cars they're just tiny little cars they're little four-cylinder cars nice that do not weigh very much and have very powerful engines nice so perhaps uh not the greatest term for them but it's what they've been called since the early 20th century and i guess that's just what the classification

is called uh still both of these are still happening today but yeah the so that championship circuit and also there's a rad poster for the suicide stock car figure eight yes figure eight racing is also a thing where there's a cross in the middle of the track so that you are watching on tenterhooks to see if the cars are going to crash into each other as as it looks to me on my internet research, it's often in the same kind of circuit as Derby, as Demolition Derby and other destructive kinds of car race things to get all the crashes and oohs and aahs in there. It is interesting to see that such track design exists outside of Mario Kart.

There's still one in Indianapolis. That's like the first one that was built. And then there's a bunch of them in different places across the country and the world. So there's some fun fringe racing topics. And also I just appreciated that the site decorators were like, let's find some

cool racing posters or make them and put them in this guy's room. Yeah. But back to our episode, Rockford goes to the apartment that he discovered from his magazine conversation. And the name on the bell is Jeannie Zimzik. Yeah. This is going to come back a couple of times. This was another weird note to me. There's a lot of strange racial humor in this one, like jokes based on people's ethnicities that I don't think have aged very well if they were even appropriate at the time.

But so this is a Polish last name. It's spelled S-Z-Y-M-C-Z-Y-K. And then there will be a number of, for lack of a better term, gags over people trying to pronounce this name. But it is Simczykic i believe is the actual correct pronunciation so he he rings the bell uh this young blonde woman answers his his entree to talking to her is asking her how to pronounce her name so gag one check she says simsic which is vaguely relevant to something later she says simsic and it's later revealed to be Zimzik or something.

Yeah, she pronounces it one way that's slightly not the way it's actually pronounced as we learn later. I mean, given how bad I am at pronouncing James Garner's name, I am not the expert for this one. Again, if we are butchering Polish, we apologize. We'll try to improve sorry droves anyway he asks her how to pronounce it they have a little a little laugh and then she tells him to get out she doesn't know this guy he shows her his picture she's like no i don't

know who that is good luck finding him and then shuts the door on the picture in a nice little moment tells him to get lost and slams the door. So Rockford then goes to the Atwater General Insurance Company, which is the insurance company who is providing that policy. Yeah, the $200,000 check. And here he's talking to Julian Crumb. K-R-U-M-B. I think it's K-U-R-B-M. Oh, you're right.

The B is silent. Yes, the B is silent. This b is silent this guy is my favorite uh side character in in this episode yeah oh he's good not only is he gregarious and actually funny like his physical comedy is very good he's always eating we don't see we don't see jim eat anything in this episode but uh julie uh as he says to be called but. But Julie's chowing down on a sandwich as Rockford comes into his office and then asks to see the insurance files for this claim. So while Julie is getting them, he gets some of his sandwich

on it and says, a little mayonnaise never hurt nothing. And we get a great James Garner eye roll. Yes. So he can't just give him the file because confidentiality, but he can tell him what's in it, which I guess is a thing. And sure enough, Billy Joe, he took out $100,000 policy like four months ago, but it has a double indemnity clause for accidents. So since this was an accident, there's your $200,000 payout. He paid his premium in advance, which is specified to be $2,708, which is a lot of money to pay in advance. Rockford, being a smart investigator, asks if there's a contingent beneficiary. So if his mom is no longer alive, who would it go to?

And sure enough, Jeannie Zimzik is the contingent beneficiary and then we get into another last name gag yeah where julie's like well it's actually not pronounced zimzik it's pronounced simzik that's a nor it's like smith where i'm from yeah those wacky eastern european last names waka waka Rockford goes back to Genie's. And this is where we get the little scene from the preview montage. He says again, are you sure you don't know this guy? She says no. He's like, well, then why are you a beneficiary of his life insurance policy?

Yeah. And she's like, Billy Joe, is he? That's right. He is. So in context, you thought that this was not as cold? Well, I mean, it is cold. It's just cold. But they've established an antagonistic relationship between him and her the first time they met, right?

She tells him to get lost and slams the door in his face. But the moment she shows emotion, he does warm to her and become comforting. she shows emotion he does warm to her and become like comforting and so i do think the delivery is a dick move but i also think that he might not be having it there's also the very next scene because she lets him in and he and she lets him go through uh billy joe's stuff and she goes in the room with him and that body language is the weirdest i've ever like it's very strange because i look for this now because of you he did the like arm hold yeah when he came in to like comfort her he's like holding on to her arm in that the rockford way that's like his possessive arm grab arm grab as opposed to his comforting arm grab yeah and then she like does

this weird standing in the middle of the room and pointing at things. It's very uncomfortable. And I don't know if it's character driven or if it's just the staging is weird. But yeah, she allows him in to look through his stuff. While he's looking through his stuff, he palms a checkbook

that was in the bottom of one of his drawers. And during this whole thing, they're talking, she's kind of giving him the story. But she's looking away from him while she's talking. Her body language is almost like they're in the same room and Rockford has to change his outfit. So she's giving him privacy.

Right. So she's looking the other direction and talking. And it's weird. Yeah, she's very uncomfortable. And you can read it a couple of ways. One is she's distraught because she just learned that her boyfriend, as we learn, who's been living with her, he left like a week ago. He's going to go bid on some racing motors or something. And she didn't expect him back yet.

And so this is the first she's heard that he died. So, you know, she's emotional. She's distraught, etc. As we learn in the next scene, maybe, though, it's just because she's uncomfortable and it's an act she says that billy joe asked her not to tell anyone that he was living there because of his family and his he didn't want to be part of the wealthy like kind of elite he wanted to live his own life and he's going to have problems with his mom and that's why he didn't register anything in his name and why she didn't tell anyone about him. Rockford kind of absorbs the information, palms that checkbook. We end on a final Simzik last name gag again, and then Rockford leaves.

Obviously, the gag is meant to let us know that Rockford is suspicious about her and her last name. Because she's pronouncing it differently than how the uh the insurance guy julie crumb how julie pronounced it and he has authenticity because he's from there or his family's from their quotes so yeah uh again like in the moment kind of like okay kind of an unnecessary bit yeah personally but i'm just kind of calling him out as we hit him it's an awkward set of clues from the get-go when he the first thing he does when she comes to the door the first time is say, how? And she's like, how what? And he's, how do you pronounce that name?

And that's not the Jim Rockford I know. The Jim Rockford I know is smooth. And that's like a 17-year-old boy who has sat outside that door for 20 minutes practicing how he's going to greet her. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. So every part of this clue train has been a little off and, you know. And it doesn't pay off in the end.

Yeah. Like, he doesn't need this clue in the end as we find out. He is on to something, but there's no truth to that. Like people with the same spelling pronounce their last names differently. Right. All over America. I mean, like if you're listening from someplace that isn't America, we will mess up any last name and then just pass it on for generations. That's a tradition here.

That's how we do. Yeah. So anyways. Yeah. generation. That's a tradition here. That's how we do. So anyways. Yeah, I think we don't need to go into this again, but we'll be hearing this name gag more. So just fair warning. Our next scene, though, is Jeannie on the phone. Clearly she is in on something. Says this private eye, Rockford, was here. He was asking questions about Billy Joe and she doesn't want, she wants out. She doesn't want to be part of this anymore. Whatever this is. She does say that the deal was 50 a night for however long it took. And it took three months. Yeah.

So kind of implying that she's, she was on some kind of assignment. Yeah. This feels a bit like prostitution. Yeah. She makes far less than Rockford at 50 a night. There's a huge wage gap there. Yeah. She's fed up with her name and all the Polish jokes, so there's a bit of self-awareness there, I guess.

And she wants that new ID. So Jeannie is now officially in on it, whatever it happens to be. Rockford has some calls to make, So he makes them from a gas station with a great display of tire bargains in the background. He's just calling to see what's up with Billy Joe's checking account. So he's calling, pretending that he has a check. He wants to make sure it's good before he cashes it. And not only is the $1, dollar check good that he claims to have Billy Joe's account as part of the executive depositors club,

which includes a bunch of like free checking and whatever, but more importantly to our story, a safety deposit box and also a special gift. And when Rockford asks, what's the gift she responds with, Oh, it's a toaster. And he says,

I already have a toaster. This connects back to a conversation that we had about toasters. As we're speaking right now, pretty sure it's in the Farnsworth Stratagem episode. We had a theory that Rockford only gets his appliances from signing up for things where he gets them as

a special gift. So I like that we have incorporated this bit where he already has a toaster, so he doesn't need the gift back into the rockford appliance canon more evidence to support our our fan theory here there's also a bit that goes on here with the gas station attendant where it's a full service station and the attendant goes to fill the car and rockford shouts out of the payphone, fill it up, Ethel. And the gas station attendant says, my name's not Ethel. And then Rockford goes, oh, right, gas station humor.

Right, yeah. A couple things about this. For anybody who's listening to this five years after we have actually recorded this, a payphone is... People didn't always have cell phones, and so they would have to use phones that were connected to the ground through a pole. Okay, so cars used to run on fossil fuels. Let's get back to the episode, shall we?

Yes. So this next scene, I will summarize briefly and then say why I think it's weird, and then I think we can move on. Yeah. Rockford goes to see Mrs. Hartman to tell her about this account and that there's a

safe deposit box but do they go to her house no no he goes to this construction site where apparently she owns a construction company or is the foreman yelling at she's yelling at a guy about his people but in another ethnic stereotype bit that has not aged well the guy uh is a native american they're the he's a seneca and they're known for being the the best high high steel workers which is a thing yeah the workers for big buildings construction like skyscrapers and stuff the the guys at the time who were willing to go up and go out on the girders and do the welding as it's being constructed were extremely highly paid it was very dangerous i believe that that was a thing that like yeah that native americans were for whatever reason kind of stereotypically good at that um however

in this uh gag i guess she's dressing him down for his guys being drunk and not being up to their capacity come Monday she pays them the most so she expects the most of them get your guys in line and then he leaves it's a cautionary tale to writers about uh what might happen when two gentlemen 40 years later try to talk about your episode it has not aged aged well. It's pretty tough. And again, it's not important to the story. It paints her in a really horrible light. I don't know if that's what they were doing. I don't think so. I think she's meant to be like, look at this woman. Not only is she like rich, she's rich because she owns this company or whatever, where she's like directly involved. Like, I think she's meant to look like a responsible.

This will tie into the weirdness at the very end too, I think. We'll get to that too. Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with anything else in the episode. It's just a bit and it is not good. This whole 45 second scene could have just been cut without losing anything of importance from this episode. Because we go from here just to opening the safety deposit box. Yep. The safety deposit box has $20,000 in cash, which the bank needs to keep.

And also an envelope with a return address of a different insurance agency than the one we've already seen. And four different driver's licenses with four different names that all have billy joe's picture on them yeah dun dun the plot thickens there's a little gag of like the woman from the bank needs to sign out everything that's a personal effect so she looks at them goes, what would he need four licenses for? Waka waka. I'll have more to say. I'm saving everything about the humor of the episode

for one chunk at the end, I think. It sounds good. There's really only one thing to say. I don't need to say it over and over. Except just pointing out these gags to reinforce what I'm going to say later. From here, Rockford finally goes to the police to talk to... No, no, not our friend Dennis Becker.

No. Sorry, Dennis fans. This is the reappearance of Sergeant, or Lieutenant as he's called later in the episode, Tom Garvey, who 200 A Day fans might remember from Charlie Harris at Larch. He was the detective that was coming down hard on Rockford. Which is the opposite of what he's about to do here. 100 was the detective that was coming down hard on Rockford. Which is the opposite of what he's about to do here. 100% the opposite. He seems to love Jim Rockford. Yeah. Rockford asks him to check out these driver license ID numbers, so he doesn't give him the licenses. He kind of

strings him along a little bit. He just says, check these names and numbers. You'll find something interesting. You should get photocopies of them also uh rockford is he would be the kind of guy you would send send to let me google that for you yes if you were a cop nowadays uh he often comes to the cops something fishy is going on and there's reason to involve the police but he's also using the police to do research that he needs to get done. And Tom plays into this so willingly, but he does have a great line here. There's a moment where I think Rockford said, do something for an old friend. And he's like, you haven't got an old friend.

I do like the idea that there are multiple people at the police that have a good relationship with Rockford. But after this, you know, it's Becker pretty much for the rest of the series. We never see this guy again. Poor Tom. That's right. He did okay. The actor was in tons of stuff.

He played lots of TV doctors. Oh. He was in the practice around this time. He was in ER in the 90s. He was on Baywatch in a recurring role as a trauma surgeon, according to IMDB. Good for Tom. We'll see how his investigation goes later. But now Rockford is continuing his end. He goes to the Springfield York Insurance Company, which is the one that had the return address of those

phony licenses. He says he's from another insurance broker, but he makes sure to drop his actual name of Rockford. And so when the secretary calls in to see if Mr. Springfield will see him, sure enough, he comes right out. But he does claim not to recognize any of the names, not to know why he would have their insurance company and his letterhead in his safety deposit box. Millions of those go out as bulk mail. It could have gotten it anywhere. Sorry, I can't help you. There's an interesting move that Rockford does here where he claims to be from the insurance company. And then the moment Springfield holds him to that, he's like, no, I'm a private investigator.

And it was a legitimate, you know, like, because an insurance company would employ a private investigator from time to time. So it was just interesting to me because I'd not seen him do that before. Yeah. It was kind of like the minimum of what he needed. Yeah. All he actually wanted to do was talk to Mr. Springfield. He didn't have a con to run on him.

He just needed something to get him in the door. As we know, however, rarely is someone going to be introduced halfway through the episode that is not the bad guy. So continuing on to the end of that conversation, Springfield goes back into his office. So continuing on to the end of that conversation, Springfield goes back into his office and Dwayne is there running down what sounds like another car crash insurance scam with a crew of ne'er-do-wells who all have, who are all checking in with their fake IDs that they have. And this crew, rather than being accomplished car drivers, I assume they're closer to the kind of crew that Rockford would have Angel put together for him. Yeah. One of the guys has already forgotten his fake name. Yeah. And so Dwayne's like, no, this is your name. You need to remember that. So we clearly see that there's an organized scam that is operating out of the Springfield York Insurance Company. And Mr. Springfield is in charge. He's like deeply involved. Yeah. They all leave.. Springfield is in charge. He's like... Deeply involved, yeah. They all leave and Springfield tells Dwayne that this PI Rockford is sniffing around the Billy Joe thing. He wants Dwayne to make sure Mr. Rockford has a very real accident.

Yes. And that, I believe, is in our preview montage as well. What's not in our preview montage is the slow zoom into Dwayne's face. Right. And with the weird music, like the music kind of changes. Yeah. I read that as him being uncomfortable with being told to kill Rockford. But I think my takeaway from Dwayne here is that they, that he is a burgeoning serial killer. The musical cues and the camera work around him alone all point to this. And there's a line

that he has a little bit later on that I think just seals the deal for me. But again, they don't really lean into it. So it just seems a little weird. There's no button on it. It's all kind of heavily implied, but then backed off in the last second which is why i was

a little confused and i'll explain why as we go through the next scene which is that uh rockford goes back to his trailer uh the only trailer appearance in this episode uh he doesn't even get inside before wayne comes out of the darkness and hits him in the head and throws him back into his own uh his own firebird and drives away go go up to a deserted road somewhere where Wayne arranges Rockford behind the wheel, puts it in neutral, and pushes the car off the edge of the road down the rocky slope. And we see it go over,

and then we hear it as it kind of crashes down things as we watch Wayne. Yeah. Wayne then calls Mr. Springfield to say that it's done and it was beautiful. Yeah, that's exactly it. Like, I think that that's the moment that we're supposed to go, uh-oh, a murderer is born. He's already killed and killed a good friend, but he's relishing it in a way that is, had

I been watching this episode for the first time and paying attention the way we do now for the podcast, I may have thought that this would end with him getting out of control. Yeah. That Springfield would be... Like the next target or something. But it kind of ends here. Yeah, I feel like that would be a more interesting episode, honestly. Yeah. Because for me, what's weird here...

So there's this moment and you're like wow this guy's really messed up yeah but then the next scene is we see rockford in the hospital he's not okay he's all banged up he has bandages and the doctor does make a point to say you were really lucky you should have died but also like a very judgy doctor yes like this burgeoning psychopath didn't go check. Right. Yeah. The episode kind of backs off him being all in on this character as a cold-blooded murdering psycho. And kind of is like, well, he pushed him off the thing and he assumed he was dead. And that's not going to create any problems for them down the road.

Car safety features have improved quite a bit over the past 40 years but i still wouldn't think that you would assume a car going over the edge meant that whoever was in the car was just straight up dead right because we don't see it explode like we did with the first one which is tv signifier for this person is dead with the even with the first one when i was watching that happen while i was watching him ram it this this part feeds more into the what is duane becoming he sends him over the edge and i remember thinking what if you don't kill him doing that yeah what's the what's plan b are you going to go up to your friend and make sure that he's dead up close rather than you know and it's not a very reliable way to kill a person. And that he would get it wrong this time. And, of course, he's also a derby driver, right?

He knows that cars get hit and people. So, anyways. That's the last real serious Wayne moment. But it's part of the kind of like, if this was a little more committed, it probably would have held together in a more interesting way for me. That said, we do have Rockford in the hospital with a head wound, which is, again, from Tall Woman in Red Wagon. He starts and ends with a head wound. So director Jerry London just likes these head wound episodes. He apparently has a bad hematoma, which is TV speak for a bad head injury,

but a hematoma is actually a really serious injury. But he's got a band-aid on it. Ugh, this doctor. This goddamn doctor. This is the most TV set of the whole Rockford Files. It's weird because it looks like he's in the morgue. Yeah, he looks like he's in the morgue, but there's a desk where the doctor's doing his work. Doing the work for a dead patient and not Rockford.

It does seem like we need, we just need a way for these guys to have this conversation. Yeah. Okay, so basically the information the doctor gives him is how bureaucracy works. Right. And this puts Rockford on the scent of going to the

Bureau of... Vital Statistics. So, I mean, we could just leave it at that, because that... Yeah. I mean, the doctor is kind of like a delightful don't-give-me-your-crap-buddy kind of guy. But then he takes his crap and lets him go. Like, you should stay for another day.

No, I want to leave. Okay, fine, here you go. Yeah. We just end with Mrs. Hartman comes in to check on Jim. Because she heard about it on the radio. Because she heard about about it on the radio which apparently no one else in this episode has which is fine the little narrative reason to get her there because now that he doesn't have a car he needs a ride so she gives him a ride to the mechanic uh to freddy to find out what's up with his car and uh as we might expect,

the poor Firebird has been totaled. It is not fit to drive. And we have a bit of kind of fun banter. Probably the most fun banter in this episode is between Rockford and Freddy. People will recognize the actor who played Freddy from his role in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

No, WKRP in Cincinnati. He's the station manager. Recognizable. Gordon Jump. It's going to take a while to fix up the Firebird. Rockford asks for a loaner. The only loaner on the lot. It's a Buick.

It's another bad joke on this. But it's the same color. It's the same color. It has a white roof. It's a two-tone. So it's gold on bottom and white on the top instead of being gold all over. But it has a similar

profile and is the same color, which leads to our final preview montage moment, which we'll get to. Rockford's like, oh yeah, I'll take that. So it's like that is a better car than he usually does because it's the loaner for his other customers. I have an accounting theory here okay freddy actually is okay with rockford doing what he did here because i think freddy

knows that he can sell more and more cars to rockford that's true he's got a really good line on on like a steady annual income from this one man. Yeah, Freddy casts some aspersions on whether Rockford's going to get the car back to him in one piece. Right. And Rockford says, Freddy, you know what kind of driver I am. Rockford goes back to talk to his good friend Tom at the police station,

who are moving very slowly and have provided the info for the driver's licenses, but not the pictures. Tom's like, well, I mean, they're all close in height and builds, but that's not weird. Rockford asks, well, what's this mean? And apparently all of them used birth certificates as their proof of ID to get their driver's licenses, which is a little weird. And Tom's kind of like, okay, why do you need to know that?

Rockford says, no reason. Also, you should check out Mr. Springfield. He's up to something. Okay, bye. Yep. And Tom's like, okay, Rockford, hearts and eyes. Yeah, he loves Rockford. He's like, whatever you say,

which kind of shows how good Dennis is as a character. How Dennis's ingrained put-outedness at being asked to do anything, even though they're friends. Yeah. Makes those scenes way more compelling than Tom's jocular. Oh, you wacky Rockford.

You're always asking me for stuff. Well, I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember if in the other episode we saw him in, does Rockford land a good case for him? I don't even know if it's intentional, but be well explained by saying Rockford is a payday, right? Like the same way that Freddie loves Rockford land a good case for him? I don't even know if it's intentional, but be well explained by saying, Rockford is a payday, right?

Like, the same way that Freddie loves Rockford. Well, if Rockford shows up, I'd get a good case. That's definitely possible. That's 100% us reading into it. I would have to listen to that episode or watch that episode again, but I can see that. But yeah, so he dumps some info on Tom, then goes off to the Bureau of Vital Statistics to look at the death books for 1945 to 1947. So what he's chasing down is this theory that seems very obvious, but I don't know if that's because it's a trope and thus I've heard it a lot.

Or I don't know if this idea was as obvious at the time as it seems now. But this idea of he's checking the names against children who died, you know, at a year old or whatever, because there's no cross-reference between the birth certificates and the death certificates. And so that's how you can get a legal government ID to make a false identity. I have some theories about this scene and the very next one when he's in the pay booth down the hall, the phone booth down the hall, and that there's a lot of research and legwork he has to get across. It's not a ton of information, right? The information is somebody has been looking at death certificates, like you said, and then ordering their birth certificates. you said and then ordering their birth certificates and then he needs to put that together with the insurance policy which he does in the next scene because he he calls our our good friend julie crumb so that's it i mean like we explained that in under 30 seconds but an info dump like that in

a television show particularly kind of a detective-y action show probably you can't just barf it up it will feel a little awkward. And you want to kind of see him do the legwork. So what they do here is they give him a bit of business with these two different women to have going on while all this is happening. And the first one I love. Well, actually, I love them both. I love them both.

But this woman that works the desk here, like she takes one look at Rockford, who is all bandaged up and just has decided this is a ne'er-do-well. I want nothing to do with him. Gives him a dismissive stare. He asks her information. She's obviously there to answer people's questions about documents. That's why she's there, yeah. She walks him over.

And then he's doing this research and we're seeing what he's writing down on paper. We're seeing what he's seeing in the book. We even hear some comment. I think he even says bingo. Yeah. And almost all of it is those two glaring at each other. It's kind of funny, but it's also twice as long as it has to be. Right.

While holding the same amount of like humor value as it does. Yeah. Because he does everything twice. And I think that's kind of to, like, make sure that we get it. He looks at a name, he looks at it in the book, he finds it, he cross-references it on his list, he says, bingo. Then he does it again with another name.

Then he explains the scam to her as he's leaving. She's great, because she's just like, like I think a burned-out civil servant would be. Yeah, there's lots of holes. Yeah, what do you want me to do? So, I mean,

basically like it has, it conveys information. There's great character things going on. There's a lot of fun interaction, but it does lack in pacing because like you said, it just goes over the information over and over. So it feels to me like the prototype of a good Rockford scene. Yeah.

It just needed like one round with whoever being like cut this out cut this out and like and then it would have been great and then the next scene goes ahead and does the exact same thing with a different woman he goes to a phone booth and he cuts off this woman who's all like dressed to the nines yeah she reaches it right before he does opens it and he slides in and says thanks like she's holding the door for him oh and she says you're a real gentleman right you jerk he responds with i don't play favorites i'm liberated which is the most jerkish like we've talked in other episodes how rockford has has what seems like a fundamental respect for women. Right. It's very masculine in the way that he evinces it.

And it's not, you know, he's not perfect as a character or I'm sure as a, as a person, as an actor, but like this is the most jerkish response to a woman that I can remember this undeserved in the whole series. This is another thing in this episode.

He deals with Jeannie really weirdly and very coldly in the whole series. This is another thing in this episode. He deals with Jeannie really weirdly and very coldly in the beginning. He kind of condescends to the woman in the last scene. So I have a weird theory here. Okay. That maybe the writers are a little misogynistic. Yeah. We're going to get a joke at the very end, and I'm going to put air quotes around that joke We're going to get a joke at the very end, and I'm going to put air quotes around that joke that I think kind of nails the thesis on this that we'll get to. Yeah, I think you're probably right. So what he does here is he calls Crum to check on these names about whether they have any insurance policies on these names. And apparently there's some kind of computerized bank of universal insurance policies that Julie Crum has access to. He's eating a bagel while this is happening, by the way.

While he's waiting for Crum to figure, you know, to get back to him, he's on hold, and this other woman, she needs the phone immediately because she has a bet that she wants to put on a horse. Right. He asks her what horse, gets all the information about this bet, and goes, oh, that's a pretty good bet. Once he gets the information, which is that, yes, all those names had policies with Springfield Insurance.

So sure enough, it's a big insurance scam going on. He hangs up. Then he calls his bookie, I guess, to make a $20 bet on this horse he just heard about. The whole time this woman's walking around the outside, giving him the stink eye, asking him when he's going to be done. He then calls Springfield's office, and the secretary gives him a fake runaround. He's not here, he's not going to be

back. Well, since you asked so nicely, he's going to be at the track today. And then we zoom out, and we see Springfield over our shoulder being like, yes, good job. Yeah, well done. So he's going to be at the racetrack. Rockford's like, okay, great. Hangs up.

And sure enough, it's too late for the woman to make her call. So she says, well, you know, I hope your bet pays off or whatever. And he thanks her for the tip and then leaves. The only thing I have to say about that is that it did the same thing the previous one did, where this woman and the whole betting thing, it was just because he had a series of phone calls to make. And I think they felt like they needed to not just have him on one phone and someone on the other phone. They felt like they needed to have something happening. Which is weird because so many episodes have dynamic phone calls in them.

Right. Like, it's something the show does well. Yeah. It's very weird. Also, this bet has nothing to do with anything. We don't hear about it. It doesn't pay off later. I have a big old question mark because if it does pay off, it's...

It's six to one. So... He made $120. Yeah. And if it didn't, he lost $20. Or he would have made $100, I guess. I don't know how betting works. Anyways, the point is... Yeah. And if it didn't, he lost 20 bucks. Or he would have made $100, I guess. I don't know how betting works. Anyways, the point is, it would be the only money he would have made this episode.

This woman's only there to give Rockford someone to be mean to. Right. Anyway, moving on. Mr. Springfield scolds Wayne for not killing Rockford, which apparently this is the first that Wayne's heard of it. Right. which apparently this is the first that wayne's heard of it right though springfield must have heard of it because he instructed his secretary to tell rockford a certain thing so maybe he heard it on the radio too question mark it could be yeah then they're like well we're gonna get him this time and my favorite part of this scene is the amazing tiki mug that springfield is drinking

whatever he's drinking out of. All right. Racetrack. Night. Yes. So I guess Rockford waited till night. Maybe it's far away from the city. Could be. Yeah. I mean, if you have a demolition derby,

people probably don't live next door to it because it's probably loud. So Rockford drives into the middle of the demolition derby area in his loner car. Dramatic music begins and we hear dramatic motor starts yeah and then duane and mr springfield both make their presence known in separate uh derby cars and start trying to run rockford down because he got out of his car then they start trying to run him down he runs back to his car, and then we get the exciting derby fight, which I kind of expected a little more, actually. It quickly just comes to the two bad guys just being on either end of Rockford's car

and just smashing into it over and over, crumpling it like a soda can. Until you see gas pouring out of one of them, and we all know what that means. Yep, we do get that nice shot through the windshield of Rockford as he looks horrified as flames start looking up over the hood of the car. Thankfully, we know it's not the Firebird. That was destroyed earlier. Yes. But he manages to bail out the side door and roll away as the car explodes, which kind

of takes out all of the cars. Yes. And then everyone's out of their cars. Dwayne takes a gun out. Yeah. Up, upgrading. Starts to take pot shots at Rockford. But, thankfully, someone thought ahead and Sergeant Tom

and the cops finally arrive. One of them wings Dwayne in the shoulder, it looks like, taking him out of the picture. And then they arrest Springfield and bring everyone in to justice. Yeah. Okay.

Next scene. Rockford asks Tom what took him so long because the cops are always just a little bit late. And Tom's like, well, ride with me and fill me in on everything. Because Rockford's like, I'll fill you in if you give me a ride because one of my attack service. Well, then I won't fill you in. Right. He's like, oh, okay.

I can't resist you, Rockford. Hard eyes, hard eyes. He says, but first we need to go to this address and pick up the woman, Julia. She was in on it. Also tying that up, I guess. I think there's a little bit about like you're always getting out of trouble. He says, well, you always win, don't you? And he's like, not always.

You think it's going to be the end. You think there's going to be a freeze frame there. There isn't. But no. Jim fills in Tom in the car, which is basically just information we've already seen that Springfield was running a big insurance scam, giving people fake identities. They would construct a car crash and then claim the insurance policies. And he explains the child who died in their first year don't have any other government identities so they're the cleanest for getting a driver's license that billy joe wanted to get out and so they must have killed him left unclear is how that all benefits springfield i guess but

whatever yeah and and why why genie yeah's definitely involved. She's paid to do something. Yeah. And she has a fake ID. Oh, yeah. This was the payoff for the last name thing. Hers was one of the names that was in those death books. Right. Yeah.

So like her ID is also fake, but it kind of doesn't matter. But yeah. So, you know, case wrapped up. All the bad guys have been captured. Insurance scam has been busted. And we go to Rockford's final scene with Mrs. Hartman. She thanks him and, you know, is giving her closure about her son and everything. And this is where she does the bit with the envelope of money.

Yeah. You must have lost this or left this last time. The maid found it. Here's the money I owe you. And then redirects the conversation. Like, how is she? She wasn't well. Yeah.

And then slyly drops it back on the table, not taking the money for the job in the end. God damn you, Jim. But wait, our final scene is back to Freddy to talk about these cars. Jim Rockford's yellow coat in this scene. I don't know if you remarked on it, but it is a standout piece of fashion. Yeah. So there's a bit of business about your car's wrecked. You wrecked my loaner. They kind of have some laughs. But then Freddie says that it's OK. You're you're you're all right. Turns out that the strangely dressed lady. Yeah. He says, this lady, at least I think she's a lady.

It was hard to tell by the way she was dressed. Something like that. Yeah. Paid for everything. Paid for your car and the loaner. You know, we're all square. Does Jim say or does Freddie say, that lady has style? Yeah, that lady has style.

And Jim says something like, she sure does. And then we end with the big freeze frame on the big smile, the big James Garner smile. End of episode. Yeah. I rewound, rewound. I skipped back to the last scene with her, Louise Hartman, and she was wearing a dress.

So in the construction scene, she's wearing like overalls and a hard hat. And I think that that's what that's supposed to be i think so but like it doesn't read at all like it's a really weird thing for him to go i think she was a lady i don't know by the way she was dressed she wore overalls poor freddy and his sensibilities like this plays into that theory that i have about the writers yeah my my theory i agree with you i think there's some just like casual misogyny and yeah jokes that you know are not great there's some casual racism in the jokes that aren't great and the jokes just aren't funny there's humor in the episode like there are moments that are constructed to be humorous but

the best episodes or at least one the best ones that are meant to be humorous but the best episodes or at least the best ones that are meant to be funny both have good jokes and good character interactions right there's a whole range of episodes where like the jokes are fine but it's the character interactions that really make them sing rocky is a funny character angel is a funny character yeah and then in this one he didn't have anyone to bounce off of that was actually that funny other than Julie, which is also played for ethnic humor.

Yep. I like those scenes because they were amusing kind of despite themselves to me, I guess. So yeah, I just think this team of writers,

just a bad sense of humor that hasn't aged. Yep. Just also plot-wise, like it just, it's kind of a, eh, plot. The villain wasn't particularly villainous

the interesting character is duane if he was played as darker would have made this a more interesting episode to me but he's kind of played in the end kind of as a buffoon one of the things that they don't have here i'm not going to say that this is the thing that every rockford episode has but again the ones that stand out to us often do, is that the villains have pressures. Yeah. These villains have a scheme. They certainly have a scheme, and there's maybe a hint that some of the people involved in the scheme are no longer want to be involved or are just not competent or whatever.

Yeah. But it's not like, I mean, to go back to uh chicken little is a little chicken it was that was filled with villains and thugs and right all of them had these little pressures and some of them were social pressures and some of them and they're just well motivated uh aside from just money and if they'd just done something like that if they just had duane start to go a little little nuts and or like ifwayne had like a relationship with one of the other characters that wasn't like, I'm employed by this man. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. This felt to me very much as the B team. Yeah. The writers were not regular writers and I think it showed. There weren't any of the regular extras. So Jim didn't have anyone to bounce off of. We had like the secondary cop character not

Dennis. The villains were kind of bush league. So we may have hit our first yeah you could skip this one of 200 a day. We could spend maybe we'll spend a portion of the second half running down directions this episode could have taken. You have a demolition derby driver. Yeah. There's this little bit on the inside the demolition derby, but they don't have like him chasing Rockford on the open road. Right. And like that's such a missed opportunity. Yeah. I think there are like half a dozen missed opportunities that could have just bumped it up.

Yeah. Obviously, some stuff is going to be great and some stuff is not going to be great. That's just the nature of the beast. While I think there are a lot of things that this makes us think about that are interesting and are able to be pulled out for our own purposes, which we'll talk about in the second half, if you're skimming through season one and you're starting to get to the end and this one comes up, you could safely skip it and not really lose anything of enormous value out of your Rockford Files experience.

Yes, I would agree. Shall we get to our second half then? Sure, we'll see you in the second half. 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 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.

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And with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We just recapped, just by accident, episode 21 of season one, which I think it's fair to say neither one of us thought was the best Rockford episode. The baseline is high. Yeah. I still enjoyed watching the episode. Exactly. Yeah. But I think as I said if you're binging the show

and they're starting to blur together you could skip this one without really losing any iconic Rockford moments that that you might wish you'd seen. brings to mind a statistical uh phenomenon this is a thing that like the curse of the Wheaties box or the curse of um Sports Illustrated where uh if somebody gets on the cover of Sports Illustrated or gets on the Wheatie box then their career kind of takes a nosedive and they're like what what is this what's happening are these cursed I've heard of the the Sports Illustrated cover thing. What's happening there is you don't get on the cover unless you're doing good. And when you do good in sports, that's often when you're peaking.

You know, people aren't super excited about this. Nobody who just happened to have a decent season. They're excited about somebody who's at the height of their career. And if you're at the height of your career, the next place to go is down. And that's why that tends to happen is that this is it. This is your lifetime achievement award. You're on the cover. So where that plays into what we were just saying is that so much of Rockford is at the peak that some of it has to go somewhere else. Otherwise there's no peak Otherwise, it's just the flat line. And also, because we're cherry picking episodes, we're not going in any kind of particular order. Yeah.

A lot of our decisions are driven by, I just saw this one and it's great. Let's talk about it. Or I remember this one being great. Let's talk about it. Right. And every so often we pick one a little more just straight up based on the two sentence synopsis. I see what you're saying. This one's my fault. I own it. No, I'm not assigning blame. I mean, I looked at the synopsis and said, I agree. I want to see this one that I don't really

remember, but I know involves race cars. Yeah. And turns out there are other episodes that involve race cars that are better than this one. Yeah. But we did talk a little bit about ways that this episode does rise to the occasion. Are there good things that can be learned from this episode, which we'll talk about now? Just because the episode disappointed us a little bit, that doesn't mean that we can't learn anything from it. Right. In fact, it might mean we can learn a little bit more because a lot of the time it's just us saying this was great. As always, this was also great. So in this case, maybe we can tease out a little bit more detail about how to do these things in a particular way that might be better for our goals.

So I had one particular thing that I wanted to talk about. I can bring that up now if we're ready for it. I'm ready. I can bring that up now if we're ready for it. I'm ready. I kind of went on in the first half about the two scenes, the back-to-back scenes, where he does research and then gets on the phone. And in both those scenes, he's playing against a woman who has nothing to do with the plot. It's two different women, but he has this sort of business going on with them

where they're giving each other funny looks or they're just playing out a gag while the other thing's going on. I mean, we talked in the first half about how, particularly the first one where he's going through the death certificates and figuring out the scam. He does it a few too many times. It's beaten a little to death there. few too many times it's beaten a little to death there right and while he's doing it he's having this interaction with this woman this uh disaffected uh bureaucrat who just doesn't want to be bothered and i think that that instinct to put that character there uh and to have something going on while he's doing this is good you don't want to just have somebody on screen reading a book. This is one way to make the research scene interesting.

Right. I mean, like in prose, you can kind of just say, Rockford did this research, this is what he learned. But that's information that may be interesting, but how do you make that something that's engaging to read and that brings you further into the story? Or in a game, this is something that comes up a lot, which is how do you handle research? You just do a die roll and move on? Or do you make it some kind of dynamic scene

that has a little bit of tension, even if the goal of the scene is to get everyone to have this information that they need for the next step. The spoonful of sugar that lets this medicine go down is this sour woman who just doesn't appreciate Rockford, who we have to add looks like he just got the kicked out of him, right? Like he shows up in bandages and as someone who has had injuries in the past and has had to go out in public with bandages on his head, I can tell you that's how people react. They don't want to be reminded of their own mortality by having a disheveled human being standing in front of them with a clear wound. So, yeah, I think that there's good to be had there.

to be had there this this is something you could do is by putting something else in the scene that the the characters the players can can interact with that is just fun it's a little bit of a gag it's something that they could do that's not just the information dump right so if you're doing it in a game you could be like here's your interaction this is what you learned yeah uh what both of these scenes like the tool by which both of these scenes achieve that is by putting a character in for Rockford to interact with. Right. And I think that's a pretty good takeaway, which sounds obvious when you say it,

but I think is, is one of those, if you don't think about it, maybe you won't think about it kind of things. Right. If Rockford has another person to interact with, then that research can be in the context of the interaction, not in the context of Rockford and the viewer. Right. Yeah. He's not struggling with the book. Exactly. Yeah. He's not flipping through pages and frantically trying to beat some deadline or something, which is another method to do this, right? Like if Rockford had to find this information, but someone's after him and he needs to find it before they break down the door, which is something that happens in other episodes. Yeah.

That's a different way to make this an interesting scene because we're waiting to see if Rockford can do it in time. And again, the information is both necessary to keep the plot moving and also kind of by the wayside of what the tension of the scene is. And it's kind of interesting to think about this in contrast with how it might otherwise be presented. Let's say we didn't add this woman, we didn't have someone for Rockford to play off of, then that scene may have been done in montage, right?

Right. You would just have him going through and then explaining to someone what he discovered or making it obvious in what's written in front of him. They had him do his notes and they did have this moment where he looked up Genie Simzik. And I mean, that's a great moment where he puts the book, almost puts the book back and is like, wait a minute, this ends in the Zs or the Ss. This is the S to Z. Let me just check that one.

I have a hunch. Let me see. Right. And then he gets it and he writes her name down so that the audience is like, oh, right, that's what he's learning. And I'm going to use this as a launching point because there's something interesting here. Because this, that's good and that's great. as a launching point because there's something interesting here because this that's good and that's great it would have been nice if the genie simsic storyline meant anything to the story right exactly at this point if he never found out anything about her it wouldn't matter like

presumably the cops would have figured it out but it doesn't you know like she was either a vector for offering clues about billy joe or like something to get in the way while he's trying to search out clues for Billy Joe. But they kept putting her in more without explaining. Maybe I'm too critical of this. I agree that it's, I think I mentioned how her story overall, but this particular clue about her name never pays off. And that's why, because it never, there's no reason for it to matter. We have all this business and all these kind of bad ethnic jokes about her name. And then we learn that she's in on the conspiracy, whatever the conspiracy is.

But then once we learn that fact, she's out of the episode. And it doesn't matter that she was in on the conspiracy. Fundamentally, I mean, there's a lot of things we could talk about. Like, definitely this whole episode could be tightened up a little bit. But I think fundamentally, and you hit upon it in the first half, is that the villains just aren't inspiring. Any one of these bits could be tied in in an interesting way, right? So let's say we have this episode before us. interesting way, right? So let's say we have this episode before us. Either we get to doctor it,

or maybe we're using it as a plot for a game that we're going to run or something like that. But let's talk about how we would fix this. Yes. So we're going to go ahead and fantasy book how this episode could have gone, I think, for our preferences. Now, fantasy book, that's WrestleFan terminology, right? Yes. And this actually is, I think, an important nuance to that phrase, which is we're going to take these characters as established. Yes. We're treating Jim Rockford like Jim Rockford as we know him from the rest of the show.

Right. But we are going to, as opposed to what the writers have done and put them into this set of plots, we're going to go ahead and fantasize how we would take the plot threads put before us and combine them without abandoning the character that we know so i'll just yeah put a button on that as you know booking is just the wrestling term for writing writing storylines yeah well there's three big opportunities that i would try to take advantage of if i was taking the premise of this episode and then kind of tooting it, right? One is that the insurance scam is not particularly interesting in and of itself.

It's the mechanism, right? It's what's happening, but the why of it is kind of vague to make money, question mark, which while a perfectly valid real world motivation is kind of simplistic for the Rockford Files or may not simplistic, but it's kind of not necessarily enough to keep everything in motion in the absence of another driving motivation and which there is said absence. So what's another motivation for Mr. Springfield to be making this insurance scam happen? Right, right. So that would be my first big question. Like, what are the pressures on Mr. Springfield that are motivating him to create the scam?

There's a little bit in this episode about it being a good scam. But Rockford figures it out, and they even have that line like, oh, you must be a genius, sarcastically delivered. And then he, in kind of a good, good Rockford moment, he's like, no, I don't think. Do you think? Yeah, that is a good moment. So it's okay if this villain is just motivated by greed. If we see that he's like, oh, this is a brilliant plot that nobody will catch.

If we see the greed also. We don't really see him being greedy. We just see that he's a corporate kind of guy and he drinks out of a tiki mug. If we saw him just being a cog in the insurance machine who figured this out and then is implementing it, I think that that would be more interesting. Because we don't even know if he just created a fake company. Right, yeah. Yeah, go on. I got my fantasy booking and maybe i'm leaning

towards it so let's hear yours and then i'll do mine i think the setup is good in terms of how rockford gets drawn in right like i don't think you need anything else there one classic rockford move is that it's a mob thing he's either in in with the mob or that he's being used as a you know as a cog you know because he owes someone money or whatever. Yeah. But I like the idea that he's not the boss, that he's a functionary that's figured this out. And maybe he's like, I'm going to go ahead and enrich myself just by taking advantage of all these loopholes. The second big opportunity here, and we talked about this a decent amount in the first half, is Dne and how yeah we kind of see him developing into

this fractured psychopath but then not really pushing him further that way would make him more villainous right if he was a cold-hearted killer and we see him turning into that because he ends up having to kill his friend that he was working with right and that's what pushes him over the edge that of course would require something some way that rockford gets out of being killed that's not duane just walks away and doesn't check that turns into a car chase where where rockford oh that would be horrible escapes but crashes the car in so escaping something like that i think would still be in keeping with with how the plot's progressing and we also see duane maybe like running other people off the road or like pulling out a gun but then there's cops and he has to leave like something that

makes him more villainous uh that i think also would be shifting the focus to to like duane being the real villain here and not springfield um right but like many episodes the boss could be kind of a minor character that just shows up at the end to provide justification for why Dwayne was after Rockford, right? And then finally, the most interesting thing that I think this episode could do is take Genie and have a dedicated Genie-Billy-Joe-Dwayne triangle. Yeah. At the heart of why Billy Joe gets murdered, why Jeannie lies to Rockford, and then maybe she, you know, tries to leave, but Dwayne won't let her leave. Right. So then there's a tension there, and then Rockford can do his Rockford thing where he starts being protective of someone in trouble with Jeannie, and that's why Dwayne's after him personally, and not just to cover the scam. That seems like a natural place for this kind of plot to resolve for me.

I'm all on board for all of that. And I will tell you why. I also think that this episode would be more interesting if it sort of had this Dwayne transformation going on in it. I think that one of the interesting things that can be done with that is to put pressure on Springfield. The two interesting things that can be done with that is to put pressure on Springfield. The two interesting things that can happen there at the end is you can have Dwayne be more bloodthirsty

than Springfield's prepared for. And then Springfield is afraid and might have to do something about Dwayne. And then you have a nice three-way entanglement at the end that can all take place in cars. Then we take the pressure off of having to have Springfield be at all interesting because he's then just the pressure for Dwayne, right? Like he could just be, like you said, like mobbed up or something. And we don't really even need to have him in any kind of sympathetic situation where we're trying to figure out why he's doing this. have him in any kind of sympathetic situation where we're trying to figure out why he's doing this and i agree with the genie thing because there's something about the character of billy

joe that still needs to be explained right because he leaves his wealthy family because he doesn't want to be a construction tycoon you know whatever he wants to race cars so he gets a job at the demolition derby because he doesn't have a name for himself that's what he you know the the show has defined that as the lowest rung of his ladder he has higher aspirations than the demolition derby but that doesn't explain why he gets embroiled in this insurance scam right if he If he wants money and he doesn't have like a scruple, he can get it from his family somehow. Why is it that chasing the dream of being a race car driver is worth this insurance scam? And I'm not saying that that's not possible. I'm not saying it's unrealistic.

I'm saying we need to know as the audience. We need that part of the story. And I think Genie's probably We need that part of the story. And I think Genie's probably vital to that part of the story. I think Dwayne and Genie get him on board because... They need another, like, driver who can pull off these scans without actually killing himself. Right, yeah. So that's how Genie gets involved. She's up to her eyeballs in all of it.

that's how genie gets involved she's up to her eyeballs in all of it and that's a perfect moment for like you said to have rockford come in and not necessarily just be like i'm gonna save you young woman although that is definitely rockford's thing yeah but to see him hold sympathy for somebody who wouldn't otherwise be worth having sympathy which is something that rockford does you know often it just plays to his character kind of. We both comment to how this episode he's kind of a dick throughout. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that I agree with you. I love your fantasy book.

I don't even think there's a whole lot of changes that have to happen in the episode to make that happen. And there's certainly places we can point out where you can find room to make that happen. Yeah, I think you take it as like this is a great technique for games in particular is like to take the premise take the elements as presented for like the first third to half of the episode they're all the same yeah your your scam whatever the actual details are one of the people in it is betrayed by another one and murdered but he left this money to his family and that's what brings in our heroes or whatever that's a good framework but then the follow-through of why are these characters oriented against each other in the way that they are this episode kind of hand waves a little more

than we're used to for the rockford files and a little more than you know i expect to see in this kind of story uh and leaves things in this unsatisfying manner. But you can take that first 20 minutes of setup. Here's a scenario, pregnant with tension, ready to explode in different directions, depending on what, you know, Rockford in this case does. I like that. The pregnant with tension, ready to explode. And it's got a nice future bureaucratic research scene that you can do

as you go through the old archives that aren't cross-referenced because that would be a monumental task before computers. I do like how that is, that is counterpointed by his call to the, to Julie who does have all of the insurance records in a computer that he can just cross-reference at a touch of a button. But the other thing that this made me think of was in that scene where he's writing things

down and looking through these books, that recalls to my mind how programs nowadays are trying to find ways to make text messages work. Because that's so much a part of how we communicate nowadays. because that's so much a part of how we communicate nowadays. How do we convey from the character's point of view what they're communicating if they're just looking at a tiny little screen and typing? I think the idea of how do you visualize either internal or very first-person specific experiences

is pretty relevant. In Sleight of Hand that we talked about they have a there's a great sequence in there that's following rockford as he's thinking about the case right right remember that and how part of its voiceover where he's replaying the conversation he's already had but it's kind of edited in that scene to highlight specific sentences and then we're seeing his facial expressions as he thinks about those things and then the camera shows us things that he's looking at like street signs and a bus stop bench so that as the audience we can kind of stick with him as he's putting together these clues

without doing dialogue or without having to write anything down yeah and that's difficult right like it is a it is a short scene and you probably don't want to do that too many times in an episode but uh in context it works really well and i think this is another version of that right we're going to have the camera show what he's writing and then have the camera show him saying bingo so that we know he found the thing that he wanted to find they didn't do it with this, but having somebody on the phone is really good for that because you can have them convey the information, but then they're isolated from the person they're talking to. So they can have facial expressions that reveal their inner thoughts about the things. And I mean, that's a thing that gets used commonly. I'm not

inventing something here. When you're playing a tabletop game, right? I often characterize tabletop role-playing games in my head in the more visual mediums, like televisions or movies or whatnot. But I think that if I were to do that scene from Sleight of Hand, where Rockford is thinking through things, I'm playing this character who's trying to solve this mystery. I would share my inner monologue or even just summarize what I'm thinking or what my theory is with the rest of the players like you could in a book or a short story or something like that. But it would be kind of interesting to say, all right, this is what I'm thinking.

Not say that out loud. Just figure out what your theory is and then find a way to visually describe it, you working through the theory before then dumping the theory on on your fellow players i think that could be a fun way to to play that out well and in a game what that can be interspersed with the mechanics right like you have some kind of you know stat that's about insight or something that's about that can my character put these two things together roll some dice right there's the result what what did that represent well that was me walking around and i'm replaying the conversation in my head and you see me look at the look at the park bench i think i've got it so in a game you're i think we're already

naturally have lots of opportunities to say what is this mechanical operation i'm doing what does that mean for my character right and usually that's expressed through what's my character doing? What action are they taking? But it can be what are they thinking or what are they feeling? One other element of this episode that I thought we should touch on because I think it's done well in this one. This one does a pretty strong job with very few minutes on screen of showing some kind of relationship between Jim and Mrs. Hartman and Billy Joe's mom. Yeah. That outside of the plot was kind of the most Rockford feeling to me. Yeah. Yeah. It comes in a couple ways and it's again, not a lot of screen time, but it's reinforced

well. Obviously just the way that they interact and they speak and their body language, they already know each other. But then without ever referencing why they know each other or what their relationship actually is or was. Right. The way that Mrs. Hartman offers to pay him and Rockford very gently says, no, that's not necessary. And then she insists. So he gives in, but then leaves the envelope behind. Right. There's so much you can assume about their background and their relationship. Yes. From that, that would be different if she insisted and he rejected her again.

Or he took it, but then gave it to Rocky to give back to her. Right. Or some other thing. It's wonderful in the context of what we know about Jim as well. Like, so we have by this point expectations about the episode. And one of those expectations is that nobody's going to pay him. Right. And here's somebody who's not only going to pay him, but it's going to hand him the money

up front. So that says something about her character. Then he rejects it. And I mean, we joked in the first part about how he's just got to reject some part of it. So that says something about her character. Then he rejects it. And I mean, we joked in the first part about how he's just got to reject some part of it. Like that's what he does. He can't reject the job, so he rejects the money. But we also know that he needs the money. So it says something that he doesn't take the money. And then like you said, it says something about how he doesn't take the money. And then when it comes up at the end of the episode, when she's

like, oh, you must have left this. And he just quickly redirects away from having to say no don't give it to me and then he leaves it on the table again you get the feeling that he really genuinely would feel wrong taking her money yeah they have the kind of friendship or relationship where he just wants to her cash but if she's willing to make this happen for him in a way where he's they're not handling actual money he's okay with that the act of handing cash back and forth is low class right but doing favors for one another even if it's expensive is higher class no i i think that that's a perfectly legit read i but there's also the level of like oh she won that round he's bringing his con man skills to play when he redirects her to drop it like that's a little bit of stage magic or you

know whatever that he's doing and he thinks he's. And then he shows up and he has lost that game. She one-upped him in a way where he now has to hand cash to her if he's going to pay her back for it. There's no social way for him to do it. He can't just walk up to her and hand it without it being then an insult. It's also really interesting to think about. Rockford has a job that people devalue because they don't think they should pay him for it. It's often they will bring up something about how his work wasn't exactly what they wanted because they have a vision of how, you know, private eye should work or whatever.

And here's a case where somebody is willing to give him what he's worth and he's refusing her. And I feel like that that's an interesting discussion about that relationship does rockford think he's scamming people when he's charging them 200 if he won't do it for a friend and there are friends that he does it for that he makes them pay he doesn't want rocky to pay him but then rocky insists and because it's his dad what can he do he can't say yeah that's a different way that he has of talking him down. Like, okay, we'll split it or I'll owe you or, you know, that kind of thing. The social cues that are negotiated as you started this whole discussion off,

they help define for the audience what that relationship is between these two people. If he had that discussion with Angel, we would be like, what's his deal with Angel? Like what's going on here? It doesn't make sense for this. So that would mean that his relationship with Angel had changed in some way. Well, I think that covers everything that I wanted to talk about from this episode just by accident. Do you have anything else to add? Unlike Jim, I will, I will accept the 200 a day from miss hartman thank you for joining us yes thank you uh thanks again for listening to 200 a day as always you can find us at 200 a day.fireside.fm for archives of all of our episodes we've referenced a lot of our

older ones in this discussion so if you want to to go back to some of our first couple attempts at this whole podcast thing, you can hear us talk about those on Twitter at 200pod. And of course, our Patreon at patreon.com slash 200 a day. And with that, I think we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.