Two Hundred A Day - Episode 2: The Countess

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E3: The Countess. Recommended for a first-time Rockford watcher! 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 dining audio clip Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday 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.

Hey Rockford, very funny. I ain't laughing. You're gonna get yours. Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. Which episode are we talking about today, Epi? It looks like we're talking about The Countess. It comes in the first season. It is, I believe, written by one of the creators, is that correct?

Yes, it is written by the creators, the two, the pair, Roy Huggins and Stephen Cannell, and directed by Russ Mayberry, who was a TV director of many of this era of TV shows, including a bunch of Kojak and In the Heat of the Night episodes. And this is the first of seven episodes that he would direct over the course of the series so yeah this is our third episode so we see a lot of recurring characters introduced for the first time in this episode which makes it uh particularly delightful i think yes and the plot of the episode centers around as indicated by the title the countess a woman who we meet uh we see in the intro set of scenes uh and then we we see pretty much as soon as we start the episode

but a lot of the details about why characters do what they do in this episode is all bound up in her backstory and since that's kind of dribbled out to us over a course of many scenes, I think it'll probably be best. Yeah, she's deliberately keeping it hidden from Rockford and therefore from the audience. We don't get a whole lot of dramatic irony in this one. Rockford is our through guy on this one. But for the sake of this conversation, I think I'll go ahead and kind of summarize what her deal is so we can just kind of refer to it instead of having to ask everyone listening to remember each of these details as they go along. Because I think it's a lot easier to do when you're watching the show and it's also visually giving you material as opposed to us trying to summarize in each moment. So this is like a 40 years too late spoiler warning for people.

Right. So the Countess is a woman who is being blackmailed. And that's why Rockford is on the case. He's hired by her to try and stop or discover this blackmail situation. She's being blackmailed because she was involved with the mob at some point when she lived in Chicago. She started working at a store that was a front for the mob. She was arrested for being involved with something. And rather than go to jail, she fled to Europe. Now, when she fled to Europe, she met and fell in love with and married a count which is why

she is now the countess yes however this count died leaving her with her title and an estate one presumes but but no more husband she came back to the united states and met her current husband whose name is mike and and married him then the countess and Mike move to L.A. and she's in this society atmosphere and she runs into a man named Carl who knew her from the mob days and has copies of the documents about how she was arrested and was supposed to go to prison.

Yeah, like a rap sheet and whatnot. Right. I think that they're a little vague about exactly all that he has because I think there's hints that it's something more troubling than just a criminal past but we don't really get the answer to that right and also it's a little unclear about like why exactly she's supposed to go to jail like there's not a specific crime really mentioned it's just that she was involved with the you know the syndicate or however they refer to it. Once Carl realizes that she's this woman that he knew back in the Chicago days,

he starts blackmailing her because he knows that she doesn't want her current husband to know anything about her criminal past. She doesn't want to hurt him by having this youthful indiscretion revealed. So that's the deal with the countess and we'll we'll mention when we learn each of these things but that's all kind of dribbled out over multiple scenes in the beginning of the or the first half of the episode so that information is all to come uh but we start start our episode with some great shots of a beachside fistfight between Rockford and someone who we will meet shortly. We see the Countess.

We see some police cars. Rockford under police scrutiny. And I believe we freeze frame of a car going off a cliff to start our taste of the episode. Tantalizing hint of a car chase, perhaps cliff to start our little taste of the episode tantalizing hint of a car chase perhaps maybe find out maybe our whole first sequence of the episode is all conducted essentially through a camera lens yeah well i mean not the whole thing but uh rockford's out there uh in the grasses and the tall grasses on a dune, setting up an old, well, probably high-tech video camera. It looks hilariously large and clunky to us now, but it was probably state-of-the-art detective equipment at the time.

As we'll soon find out, this blackmailer guesses that Rockford's there, but he says, you probably got somebody there with one of those high-speed cameras, right? And so whenever we get these framing shots that are kind of beautifully framed, because Rockford has the soul of a director of photography, and we see the Countess coming up in a cab so she's taking a cab to this uh clandestine rendezvous uh essentially and there's some chatter between her and the cab driver who i don't know his name but i know he's a scorpio with pisces ascending yeah it's it's good uh because this immediately tells us some some stuff about the countess right she's She's dressed very well. She has this beautiful hat. And this cab driver is basically hitting on her in this thing. And she

brushes him off as if she's used to this and doesn't need to pay much attention to getting this kind of guy to leave her alone. He drops her off basically on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He definitely finds that odd. But it just

doesn't you know he's that's what he's paid to do he's what he's gonna do and then another car pulls up a man gets out of the car and we kind of cut back and forth between rockford viewing them through the camera and then their actual discussion yeah talking to each other we shortly learned that this is carl they're there to make some kind of exchange uh that is still kept a little unclear from the audience at this point carl definitely seems to have the upper hand here he's kind of giving her uh giving her some attitude she just wants to kind of end this whatever this happens to be this is where we first hear the line of of like oh you you're living this great life or something like that. Not like in Chicago. Right.

We know they have the past there. Carl's savvy, right? Like he notes right away that she has, he grabs her purse, right? And pulls out the giant tape recorder and the giant tape, again, probably top of the line at the time, uh awkward and clunky in our eyes but like immediately knows that he's she's trying to uh catch him in the act this is when he mentions that he thinks that she's probably got a man on the hill who's videotaping them right he's too smart to do anything that could be recorded right he doesn't say anything before that he finds the tape recorder and he makes her get in the car to go somewhere else to make whatever this exchange is so that if there

is someone recording them no he won't rockford will not be able to follow yeah and we uh end the scene with the the freeze frame through his camera in a little delightful moment. And then that cuts to the Countess and Rockford reviewing the tape that he did manage to take in his trailer. It's a little implied that he kind of, she hired him to like do that without telling him why. Yeah, we don't quite get the specifics of the contract. I know because I was desperately trying to work out how much money Rockford has on the line here. Right. But we get no specifics of the contract, but she's cagey.

She doesn't want him to know why she's being blackmailed because she's afraid of being blackmailed again by Rockford. She doesn't fully trust Rockford, even though, as we'll find out, that they have some history. There's an interesting contrast between these two characters, because they're both fairly honest with each other. They know each other from way back, apparently. Or, that's the impression that I got. I think they mentioned that he knew her before she was a countess at some point in the show. But she'll tell him that she doesn't trust him. So they're honest with each other, but they don't trust each other either.

So there's this great tension there. Through this whole kind of first act of the episode, there are these moments that are basically, I'm not going to lie to you, but I'm not going to tell you anything else. Rockford keeps hitting these walls with what's going on. They also have an interesting contrast because of the class contrast, right? She's obviously rich, well-dressed, countess, they're in his trailer. He pours her a drink into a paper cup, which is a delightful moment, and comes back at the end. We'll get to that uh we

should point out that by paper cup we mean like the little cup you get ketchup in at a fast food restaurant like it's not this isn't like a dixie cup where it's nothing that fancy it's like the tiny cup that you pull out of the water cooler when it has like the little crinkly ones that kind of are still dissolving while you pour your water in them that's what he has and he he pours her uh some kind of of drink i actually shot a bourbon or something into that yeah to calm her nerves and and like when i saw it like began thinking, I don't have those in my house. I'm not high society at all. But I was thinking, why would he even have those?

And then I realized that he lives near a restaurant. He probably just takes them. Yeah, just kind of takes them off the whatever, maybe they have a bar on the beach or something like that. Maybe it's what the salsa comes in at the taco stand taco stand which we'll get to in a different episode yes so after we kind of have the conversation with no real resolution except that rockford says that he he wants her to trust him because he wants to help her right yeah that's kind of where we end uh and then we cut from there directly to a fancy party this episode has a lot of very aggressive cuts between scenes and then just lets you figure out from the context why we moved from one to the other which

is is nice it's very it's kind of it keeps it keeps it feeling moving like it's moving forward right the whole the whole episode i think we're at the fancy party rogford's walking around meeting the uh countess's social circle. And this is where, at least as the audience, we learned that she didn't used to be a countess through a conversation that he has with someone. Rockford takes an hors d'oeuvre off of a passing tray,

but we don't see him eat it. He just kind of moves his hand out of the frame and never see it again. I think it's a deviled egg, right? I don't remember. Maybe I'm wrong. Cause I remember thinking that's not fancy, but maybe those were fancy in the seventies. never see it again i think it's a deviled egg right i don't remember i'm wrong uh because i remember thinking that's not fancy but maybe those were fancy in the 70s or maybe i misread i don't

understand i didn't quite see what it was yeah you just wished it was deviled egg that would be fancy however we do have a bit of of humorous business where uh someone is asking him how he knows the countess. Uh, yes. And he says that he met her at, I forget exactly where, but like at the,

at the water park or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Near, near the whale exhibit. Right. He said, I run the hot dog concession. The countess loves my foot longs and goes on to detail how he makes them just right with

chili and, and everything. Yeah. Uh, horrifying this person that he's talking to. The secret is the cling wrap. He pre-cooks them and wraps them in cling wrap so they don't get tough.

Which I really hope is a little coded bit about how he likes his hot dogs. Right. You know, perfectly steamed in cling wrap. I don't think that I run the hot dog concession and the countess loves my footlongs is supposed to be innuendo, actually. i think it's just supposed to be a joke but yeah to the modern ear it's impossible not to hear it otherwise there's a lot of like lingo that ends up in

rockford that i think gets a bit like later on we'll get uh into a couple things that people say to him that i'm like, phew, all right. What I love about this is this is a class collision here, right? This older lady is being snooty and thinks that he's compatriot of hers, and then he just reveals himself to be so low class that he wraps his hot dogs in cellophane. And I love it. I mean, it's a great rock for a moment he loves to tweak people's noses about being snooty right like that's something that

he goes he'll go out of his way to do in social situations like this but also if he's like talking to a client who's really rich and he doesn't like their attitude he'll right give them crap about it because it's kind of part of his independence independence is about not caring what people think about him because of money. He doesn't have a lot of it and he doesn't think it's right for people to look down on other people just because they have money.

Right. We get a good juxtaposition of this with his immediately following this when he starts interacting with Mike Ryder who is the Countess's current husband who is also wealthy but from a more salt-of-the-earth kind of background. So him and Rockford get along. There's none of this interaction where Rockford has to take him down a peg

because he's already kind of standing on that bottom rung with him. Yeah, it's a very kind of american working class solidarity kind of thing where it's like yeah if you're rich but you got there through being working class then we have a stronger bond than like two people do just for being rich again that's a little bit of subtext in their in their interaction but it's in a lot of rockford episodes Also when he plays a rich person, like when he's putting on a, an act as like a, the Oklahoma oil man, which is a common one. Um, he's always super folksy and very plays it as like a buffoon who is rich despite himself kind of, kind of thing. So that conversation with Mike Ryder meeting him and and their interaction is kind of wrapped up in this conversation that he ends up having with the Countess inside the house.

Where she lays out enough of the facts about why she's being blackmailed and why that he kind of comes around to feeling comfortable helping her. Because Rockford doesn't like to be in the dark. He doesn't feel like he can do his job if he doesn't have all the information. So once she kind of realizes that he wants to be on her side and reveals how she became a countess and why she's married to Mike and why she's being blackmailed by this guy Carl, he comes around and is like, okay, I will do what I can to help you out. This is also good for us as an audience because we're seeing a little bit about

why she would turn to someone like Rockford for help, right? She's got this history that makes it a little difficult for her to go to the authorities, not to mention that she's being blackmailed and the whole point, the whole reason why blackmail works is that you don't want to go to the authorities about it, And the whole point, the whole reason why Blackmail works is that you don't want to go to the authorities about it. But it just, it gives it this sort of, this need for this extra legal help that Rockford can offer. And then, of course, it gives us a sense of her isolation from the rest of the society that she's kind of wrapped around in right now. And why there's this need for the character of Rockford to be involved in her life for any reason.

And this is where we learn kind of the key info about, specifically, she doesn't want to make her husband think less of her. Like, that's the real kind of core reason of why she's not willing to go to the authorities and why she doesn't want this information to come out. And she's got this great way of, I don't know if rationalizing is the right way to determine this but she's she puts it down like she's doing her husband a favor right it's so important to him that i'm a countess i don't want to ruin that for him it would be devastating to him not not it would be devastating to her but it seems to come from a place of her genuinely caring about him yeah and being uh cognizant of what their relationship means to him not out of a place

of her being like dominated or browbeaten or anything like that um she's very much the protagonist making that choice yeah which is it's interesting i like it yeah i think it's it makes her a more interesting character and it makes for a more complex set of realizations as the episode goes on. Before we move on, there's another moment in this scene that I want to talk about, if I may. Please, you may. This observation that Rockford is not impressed by titles. And so he tells this story about this mafia button man who had these business cards printed up that said

independent contractor and then his name and then under that hitman and Rockford said something like that is the only title I've been impressed by and there's a couple things about this that are great number one Rockford and business cards he uses titles on business cards to impress people all the time like that's a thing that he does to get you know get his scams over on people but the other thing is that he's saying that as a declaration of fear right like he was impressed by this title because he was afraid of this guy that was what was happening it wasn't I totally respect this hitman core to Rockford we talked about this elsewhere, but his healthy fear of the criminal element,

he doesn't let that control him, but it definitely guides him. And he's constantly laying that out for other people. Anyone who's confident enough in being a hitman to put it on their business card is not someone that Rockford wants to mess with. Exactly. He's like, no, that's it. Yeah. So.

No, that is a great moment. From there, we go to a beachside condo where Rockford has tracked down this guy, Carl. Carl Brago is the name that we start hearing. So Carl Brago, the blackmailer, who's hanging out with a woman named Leah, and they're just relaxing on the beach. Rockford comes in and has a message from the Countess. Carl's like, okay, I'll hear you out. They go down, they walk down the beach so that Leah doesn't overhear their conversation. And here we see a classic Rockford move,

which is to claim that he's doing what the person is doing in order to get that person to do something back off or or react in some way so he's basically like i'm muscling in on your action you know i want to shake her down more than you do so you should back off and everything will be cool i want to take a moment to point out if you're going back to watch this episode, you should pay attention to Carl's fashion. Oh, yes. Because Carl's fashion is amazing. I am jealous of those high-waisted pants that he's wearing. He is wearing powder blue pants, no shirt, and this big gold medallion necklace.

But the waist on those pants, you're not going to see his navel. It comes up to his rib rib cage or something like that. And I'm, oh God, I'm jealous. I was mentally picturing the unbuttoned shirt with the really long, narrow lapels. Except that then, as you mentioned it, you're right. He wasn't wearing a shirt. Just his overall look was such that I could imagine the shirt that he was wearing before he took it off to go to the beach. Right.

But keep his high-waisted powder blue pants. So good. It's such a great look for him. It is a beautiful, I mean, it is of its time, right? Like there's a lot of really great, glorious early 70s fashion across all of these characters. The hats that women wear in these episodes, for example, is an interesting series of choices. But yeah, he's clearly a scumbag, but he's also, he's making fashionable choices for him. He is a hundred percent wearing what a rich scumbag would wear. It's great. So yeah, they have this kind of guarded conversation where Rockford, he basically

says that he has a more compelling claim to blackmail the countess i don't like getting bumped into curbs though he doesn't want to have a uh if you will a collision course with uh with carl over this and carl is kind of like okay sure whatever you say but as we know from a conversation in the previous scene actually that rockford had with mike rider uh carl is a known sucker puncher he has this move where you kick a guy in the previous scene actually that Rockford had with Mike Ryder uh Carl is a known sucker puncher he has this move where you kick a guy in the kneecap in order to take him out before they know that they're fighting and Rockford is on the watch for it so Carl is very accommodating with like yeah sure whatever you say I was just doing it to get a kick out of it man like that kind of

thing yeah and then he tries to take Rockford down with the kneecap kick which he was waiting for reaches out to shake his hand and you know and i know because we we were there for rockford when he heard this information i was on the edge of my beanbag waiting for that moment for when the handshake would come to see what rockford was going to do you know we'll see a little bit he's going to hold himself in a fight but like his main thing is fighting smart you know like if he got if he has information over his opponent that's where he has the better chance of uh surviving he's not gonna put his fists up and just duke it out he prefers surprise and uh misdirection over just straight up slugging it out. That said, once he counters the kneecap kick,

the two of them literally put up their dukes and circle around each other on the beach throwing guarded punches. The choreography here is magnificent. My note is just, they punch on the beach. It is not a fight scene, right? It's not an exciting, dynamic, let us find out the character of these combatants through their conflict thing. It's two guys, you know, who are suddenly punching each other on the beach, but neither of them really wants to...

They kind of have, like, face to save, and there's no real clear out for either of them other than running away, right? At some point, doesn carl tell rockford to shimmy up a rope something like that something like that another go climb a rope yeah or something that it's a great or i don't like it when guys shimmy up my rope something like that yeah something like that yeah it's around when rockford says he doesn't like getting bumped into curbs yeah so yeah we we see them uh starting to duke it out we're not really sure where this is going and then suddenly from out of nowhere a shot rings out carl goes down he's been shot and we uh see over a sand dune an old couple out for a walk who sees him get shot and go down

and then rogford looks up and sees a figure on a on kind of a bluff moving away yeah this whole this whole time someone has been hanging out with a gun waiting waiting for a shot at this point we don't know whether that was supposed to hit carl or not right yeah i want to interject here carl's last words because they're amazing so again the powder blue pants up to, you know, up to his rib cage, nice gold medallion. None of that has come off in the fight. He's down on one knee.

He's been, I think we'll find out shot in the back. He's about to just collapse and he looks up at Rockford and he just says, how about that? Yeah. Beautiful. It's great. He had no reason to think that this is where this was going to go.

Right. Yeah. Just how about that? A little, little surprised by it little like huh yeah who'd have thought and that was it so we're less than a third through the episode the blackmailer is dead and rockford dashes off in pursuit of of the shooter so as an audience member you know we're kind of like you know like where did that come from who's that where is this going to go now because obviously this is just setting off the next chain of events this isn't the resolution of the of the story so far rockford runs to his sweet ride and pursues pursues this white convertible down the uh beachside highway it's a porsche is it yeah i think i think that's... I'm pretty sure it is. It's definitely a small convertible, fancy car of some kind. Yeah, I think we've both admitted that we don't know cars.

We are not car people. But this was clearly an expensive car. Let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah. But then it has a pretty big lead. So this isn't really a car chase. It's more just a scene showing that Rockford can't really catch up with the convertible. The roads are long and they're a little windy, but they're not.

Like, I guess a key to a Rockford car chase is something to do. Right. And the only thing to do here is to have your foot on the gas in the straightaway and be careful on the turns. Like, there's no tactical options or anything. So this is actually resolved by a motorcycle cop pulls out following Rockford because he's speeding, obviously, and ends up pulling him over. And that's kind of when he admits that he gives up the chase. You know, it's clear that he's not going to catch this convertible. The cop pulls him over. He gets out and, you know, tries to tell him, like, you know, a man got shot.

I was following the shooter. You need to follow that car. And the cop, who I will note is wearing a bow tie. Yes. Which I don't know if that's a standard issue. And it's like a light purple, too, isn't it? Like almost lavender. It's a little darker than lavender.

Like did someone have to get called out of central casting? Like they couldn't find the cop for that scene or something and still wearing a waiter uniform? I don't know. It was really funny. Yeah, I wish that was standard issue, though. Anyway, this bowtie-wearing cop calls in for backup on a code, a 187 or whatever, and Rockford realizes that they're bringing him in for this crime. Yeah, and Rockford knows what the the call number for the murderer is right like he he knows enough about cop stuff that he's right he knows

he's being pulled in for yeah i think he even says like you think i shot him it was i was following the guy who shot him but our bowtie wearing cop is having none of it and so we go downtown to our first confrontation um in the run of the series with lieutenant deal i gotta say that the very last well maybe not the very little bit like when rockford's talking to the the motorcycle cop the motorcycle cop tells him well my lieutenant's coming you could tell it to him or something like that and i thought oh lieutenant will this be it is well and then yes lieutenant deal does not like rockford rockford uh is always messing with police procedures usually through his friendship with uh sergeant becker who we

will meet in a little bit this is deal's first appearance in the series right yes i believe so and i it feels like this is the first time deal meets rockford i'm not it's not entirely evident if that's the case but it just sort of feels like it and so as characters this is near the beginning of their generation right yeah and i think we see this with their other recurring characters that we'll meet in the next couple scenes how their interactions with jim rockford now are a little different than they're going to be a season from now or two seasons from now when all the actors have a chance to like settle in and they have more like writers that care about the characters right now they're kind of in boxes still a little bit they're what the story they're what the story needs yeah that's a great way to put it so lieutenant deal is uh coming down on

rockford with all this circumstantial evidence basically to to put him at the scene of the crime or he is at the scene of the crime but to make him the shooter yeah the old couple are witnesses saw them fighting on the beach they go back and forth about technicalities about whether he was shot with a pistol or a rifle and like the caliber could have come from either of them so like he could have pulled a pistol and you could have shot him with it rock was like well i don't have a pistol and there's not one at the scene so that you can't keep me on that there's a there's a bunch of back and forth that kind of establishes that lieutenant deal would love to just be like you did it you're going to jail like i have the evidence and rockford is too smart for that and he is going to call his lawyer he asked for his

lawyer and that kind of gets deal to back off two things about this scene that i thought were were interesting one is that he does make up a reason why he was there even though he's he's they're they're trying to pin a murder on him he's still not going to give up his client in this moment so he he manufactures the the reason why he was meeting brago and then also back to our great phrases dictionary somewhere in here lieutenant Lieutenant Deal says, I didn't come down with yesterday's rain. Another good one is Deal accuses Rockford of being a yard bird lawyer because Rockford's been in prison.

So he's just basically saying, you prisoners who think you're lawyers, you cons that think you're lawyers. It was good stuff. Which is kind of a fair assessment for Rockford. He does do lots of things because of his knowledge of the law. So this is where we get the first appearance of Beth, his lawyer. Yes.

And friend, and who appears in many episodes, especially over the first couple seasons. But I believe this is her first appearance. I believe she's a little late because of another case or something like that she's reading the rockford's arrest report i think on the way to meeting them like when she bumps into them she basically faces down lieutenant deal about so yeah about him not having standing basically to arrest her client based on on the evidence it's pretty cool because she this is is, again, a pretty short scene. It's only a couple minutes. It's mostly just dialogue.

But we learned that, so Beth doesn't put up with, like, sexist s**t, for lack of a better term. Like, I think Deal tries to, like, honey her or something like that or sweetheart or something like that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And she's just like, you do not call me sweetheart. I'm a lawyer. Call me counselor or something like that oh and she's just like you do not call me sweetheart i'm a lawyer call me counselor or something like that like which is great and she gets deal off of rockford's back by basically pushing him and saying like well you can do this but you're going to have

to make this evidence stick and if you don't then you're going to be in trouble with your boss right this is a whole thing she's, I know how the police work. And if you think this circumstantial stuff isn't going to backfire on you, you know, that's your risk to take basically. And he's not willing to take it. So someone like Rockford needs, needs a lawyer as good as Beth. It's a great establishing moment for her because it just shows that she,

she knows what she's doing and why in particular, uh, she'd be, uh, good for Rockford, right? Like, if they had gone some other way and given him, like, a bumbling lawyer or something like that, then I don't think he'd be as free to do the stuff he does. But we have this little bit of a shark here in this lawyer. Then we establish almost right away that Rockford doesn't quite, he's not as,

I want to be careful about how I say this because he definitely because we go outside the police station and she's parked in a no parking zone right in front of the police station she's like oh don't worry about that they don't put out tickets right in front of the police station and he's like why are you my lawyer like immediately there's a a thing there where he doesn't he's not as confident in her as as i think should be right i think he's a little hesitant to admit that he needs a lawyer right because he's so self-sufficient about everything but he also knows how the law works so he knows when he needs to call her and so there's a little bit of like either be perfect

or like don't make me face the fact that like you are also a flawed person right over the course of the show their relationship gets a lot more complex i'd say in this episode she's very businesslike uh has kind of a sense of humor but doesn't necessarily show uh the warmth with jim rockford that i associate with the relationship from other episodes and so that's a little bit of what I mean about this being, as you said, like she's there because the episode needs her to be there in the way that she is. And she develops over time. She does ask him if he did kill Carl in the tradition of like, so am I defending you as a guilty person or not?

Kind of a lawyerly moment. And he's like, no, of course I didn't kill him. And I think Rockford in that moment is he feigns offense or not kind of a lawyerly moment uh and he's like no of course i didn't kill him and i think rockford in that moment is he's he feigns offense or maybe he is offended but it's not that she thinks he might be guilty but it's that she would defend somebody who was right there's a lot of hair splitting in like yeah yeah wait what exactly it is that causes the uh tension here but yeah so she gets some good keeps him from from getting booked for now rockford heads back to his trailer and it's obviously been been tossed someone's gone through all his stuff he pulls out a couple

desk drawers and then realizes that someone has erased the tape that he made of the countess uh and her meeting carl in our opening scene so the plot thickens right carl's been shot now someone's erased this tape now what so he goes back to see her obviously suspicious of her like that's kind of the one logical leap right is that she decided to take matters into her own hands has killed carl and erased the evidence right so he interrupts her her tennis lesson and when she tries to brush him off he he just very loudly so that the uh tennis instructor or or her her tennis partner can hear be like so do you want to talk about like carl brago's murder now or i can wait right Kind of forces her hand. And the tennis instructor is played by... Is it James Cromwell?

Yes. I recognize him from Star Trek appearances. Yes, yes. I mean, this is one of the gems of watching Rockford Files now. You'll occasionally get older actors who are known to the generation when Rockford Files airs and then you'll get a bunch of young actors or younger actors who are just about to make their stuff and you're like wait I know that guy I did not make that connection because I don't recognize faces as much but

but yeah that's great he kind of he kind of lets them have their conversation this is an interesting tactical conversation from Rockford that I really like because it keeps us guessing a little bit about where he's going. And then we realize it before she does, just because we saw the previous scene. So I think it's a really effective weaving together of the elements of the story so far so that we're still invested in finding out.

But we also have the little like delight of knowing, knowing the trick before the characters do jim accuses the countess of setting him up in order to take the fall for carl's murder uh and she denies it and he acts and this is one of james garner's great strengths is like acting like he's acting or yes or acting such that we're not sure if the character is acting or not. So it's a time when, where is Jim Rockford going with this? Is he putting on a front,

or does he really think this moment? And it's all conveyed just through the conversation and body language and everything. It's, I don't know, it's something that James Garner does to great effect throughout the series. He maneuvers it so that he gets, her reactions to the things he's saying convinces him that she is not responsible. She denies it. He says that, well, if this is all about money, you're rich. I still have the tape, so I still have a connection to you.

So that's when, as the audience, we're like, okay, that's where he's going with this. Because we just saw that it was deleted. I'll sell you the tape for $100,000 and take the fall. $100,000 is worth it to go to jail for however many years or something like that. Yeah, I'm trying to remember exactly how it went down. I just know that the gist of it was her reaction. I forget if she says that she will buy the tapes i think she she might yeah um i think i was i was in a haze of like oh that's such a cool little strategic moment that i forgot the actual to write down the actual

plot moment there but basically he offers to sell her the tape the tapes for 100 grand she's basically like okay i'll i'll do that or i'll get the tapes for a hundred grand. She's basically like, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll do that. Or I'll get the tapes from you some other way or something. Thus proving to him that she doesn't know that the tapes were erased. Erased. Yes. That is what confirms for him that she was not the one who murdered Carl. That explanation is probably longer than just watching the scene and just watching it play out.

Right. Like that's part of the, the economy of the economy of the dialogue in this scene is just really sharp. It just lays out so well. It's really nice. And my other note from here is that he does say it somewhere in here that he's not working for her anymore. Now he's working for free. Right. her anymore and now he's working for free right and and he also has this moment where he tells her that uh he doesn't know what he's going to do like when he gets cornered like this he may just

throw her under the bus i don't remember his exact words for it but it was like he he's very forthcoming about that he he says uh well we're in a situation where i'm accused of murder right like so if if it's going to get me out of that i will turn you right and uh it was kind of an interesting uh moment of honesty again between these two characters that don't quite trust each other but are fairly honest with each other once he's convinced that she didn't actually set him up though, he, they kind of talk out the situation a little bit and kind of admits that he's stuck.

He thought it was her, but since it's not her, he doesn't know where to go next to figure out like who wanted him dead. Why did they kill him in that, in that manner? And so that's kind of our, our midpoint of the, of the episode I think is,

is the moment that the Rockford indecision moment where he's kind of like, you know, what I thought was happening isn't what's happening. I now need to retrace my steps basically and figure out what I missed. Right. So he heads back to Carl's condo, which has been police taped off to poke around and hopefully find something, find some, some clues. One would imagine he breaks into the, the back door with a hand weight. That's just sitting around outside, which it's just, it's great.

If you're on the beach, keep your weights outside. It's not like it's a security door. It's just like a access door. And he finds an address book and flips through and the camera directs us to Leah Richards phone phone number, reminding us of the woman Leah that we saw Carl with the first time that Rockford came out here. So he has a lead where we know, because he knows, that that woman was there.

He has her phone number. He tries to call it. There's no answer. And then he hangs up and heads back to his trailer, There's no answer. And then he hangs up and heads back to his trailer where he then calls his good friend, Sergeant Dennis Becker down at LAPD. Oh, yeah. So good. This is when the episode starts picking up. It starts all the elements start kind of lining up for us to see what's going on.

When Rockford calls Dennis, you know, he has this idea of I have a lead and i think this this woman will be able to confirm that i did not shoot carl right like that's basically what he's what he's going for but he needs to find her so he's calling his friend at the police station can you do me a favor and give me info on this woman so i can find her to clear my name of course when becker picks up the phone in the background we see Lieutenant Deal talking to Leah. Right. Who has come in on her own, basically, and is fingering Rockford for the murder. Is telling a lie to put him in the hot seat.

And Dennis is on the phone and he's like, oh, hey, Rockford. How you doing? Just saying Rockford's name as loud as he can so his lieutenant can hear. And then he covers the phone and they have a brief, a quick little strategy session about how long it's going to take

the plainclothes cops out to his place to arrest him. And Deal says he needs 25 minutes. So Becker now is keeping Rockford on the phone to stall him to serve this, to get him arrested, basically. This is an interesting moment because I wasn't sure if Becker was trying to keep him on the phone but just bad at it. Right. Or if he's trying to keep him on the phone for deal's sake but trying to give Rockford the message that he's keeping him on the phone

because he's friends with Rockford it could be coded signaling he keeps getting things wrong and it's hard to tell if he's getting them wrong because he just doesn't know what to say and he's just making things up or if he's deliberately trying to somehow let Rockford know by mentioning fishing yellowtail when they're out of season. Right. Getting oysters at the pier or something and not clams. I think the intention has to be that he's trying to tip Jim off, right? It's not telegraphed very well in this particular conversation. One of the things that, I mean, I love the relationship between Rockford and Becker. It is so delightfully antagonistic, but yet at the same time, yeah, like you get the feeling that it's antagonistic because Becker has a job to do and Rockford makes that job hard. So Becker does whatever he can to make sure the job gets done, but will look out for his buddy as long as it doesn't involve actually breaking the law.

Yeah, he doesn't really want Jim to go down necessarily, even though he says that he does. And this is the tension of their relationship for the entire series. In this case, I think he's a little moreusque with jim than he probably is later in in the season yeah this is where early early becker where they're a little more antagonistic and a little less because of other reasons uh so that said rockford picks up on it eventually you know it's like oh come on dennis dennis i thought we were friends and hangs up the phone yes he knows that the cops are coming to pick him up. He walks out of his trailer directly into two goons with guns who grab him and put them into their own car.

Two things here. Well, three things here. First, Rockford at first assumes that they are the Plain Coast cops that have come to pick him up. And then when he learns that they are not, he is not very happy about it. Second, that pickup is seen by the actual cops who were coming to pick him up like out on the street right yeah who then pull yui and follow this car the the pace you know is now accelerating as all these pieces fall into place they call in for backup and instruction which i i love like just what are we supposed to do not sure point and my

third point was that those plainclothes cops have amazing mustaches amazing 70s mustaches so these these guys who are pretty obviously mafia types take rockford to uh to a big empty warehouse where they bring him into a room to talk to an older man who wants to know why rockford killed carl brago his cousin so now we're getting into yes mob family stuff rockford always willing to use an opportunity throws out a line about how this this was a mob hit it wasn't me and the guy breaks down no no this is how it happens when the mob orders a hit, which is a delightful piece of TV mob logic. A little walkthrough through the bureaucracy of organized crime. It's enough to make it sound boring, but I love it.

It's just this, like, I had to talk to this person. He's being micromanaged the whole time and uh one of the things that i love about this show is that i mean whether it's explicitly made or not every character has some sort of pressure on them right there there's no unmotivated character and here this guy is motivated for revenge for his cousin but but also he's a much younger cousin. Yeah, apparently. This guy's fairly old, yeah. But also he's got this sort of organized crime, the weight of this organized crime structure on his shoulders, right?

So something has to be done here. We're not sure what. And he just wants to get his job done uh and maybe get vengeance but i love that it's almost like bureaucratic vengeance it's kind of like look if someone killed him then i have to kill them because that's how it works so i just need to know right you know and so rockford throws out a new story uh so this is now his third story about why he was there that he was hired by another goon another mafia uh name and he names a guy who's obviously like a known operative of some kind yeah rockford just might know that he was in europe at that time right like it's it's feasible that rockford

picked somebody that he knew that they couldn't check with right away right because he kind of keeps his hand in with like the underworld news essentially he's always throwing out little little tidbits about knowing who these names are and what they're up to and stuff like that so the I don't think he's ever named but builder guy uh tells some of his flunkies to go check out the story and then they'll go from there but before it can checked out, the cops crashed the place because they were being followed after all. And apparently that amount of time was enough for backup to show up and for a deal deal and Becker to decide what to do. So in the nick of time, Jim Rockford is saved by the police.

There is one great, just the timing of it is so great. Like they bust in, they shout freeze. The mafia guys drop their guns and stuff there's a beat and then rockford punches the guy who punched him earlier he like got slapped around a little bit so he just like punches the guy in the face and puts up his hands the old guy first goes to run and rockford trips him and the old guy is running for a door

that we as the audience can see that's in the sort of the background of the shot rockford trips him right away when the cops come in and then there's that yeah that wonderful beat where the cops clearly have control of the situation everyone knows it and then just blatantly rock and punches the guy he's just upset it's just a straight up uh revenge punch just so you punch me i can get to punch you. And then Rockford, it seems like this throwaway thing, but he says that he just describes what we just saw to Dennis and the other cops. He says, I think the old guy just got confused and went running for that closet,

pointing to that door in the background. This is a moment where Rockford is thinking on his feet in a way that, like, hasn't quite caught up with yet we don't know why i assume that was a closet why why this guy didn't seem like he was confused what are you playing at here so and what he's playing at is is getting the other cops out of the room so he can talk to dennis alone becker's in charge he brought these cops they've arrested these mafia guys they can get them for kidnapping because they witnessed them take jim rockford against his will so they have a reason to actually bring these guys in right and rockford asks dennis for time he's like i'm gonna have to bring you in too in fact he says uh he's like i have to bring you in for this murder charge that

we we have a witness jim says i didn't do it she's setting me up and dennis becker says i don't believe you did but i'm a cop i gotta bring you in he's gotta do his job rockford asked for time becker says no so that's that's when jim sucker punches dennis and then runs away dives into uh into a car one of the the mob guys cars i was still in the... He specifically runs for that door that he told them was a closet. Like, Rockford wouldn't know for sure but probably assumed that that was an

escape route and was like trying to keep the cops off of that. Away from going over there because that's his way out. If he needs to go, he needs to go he needs to go and of course it's an escape route it's it's a door with a car just waiting so he dives into this car so he punches becker right in the stomach it's not nice at all and then he runs over dives into this car uh executes some precision driving to uh shoot out of the out of the warehouse. I would be so terrified.

It's an old car. These were the size of boats, and it's in this alleyway that's got a couple inches of clearance on either side. Oh, yeah, the windows are barely clearing the thing. As we know, James Garner did most of the driving as practical driving. Even at a low speed, that's a great little piece of like, you have to keep this car exactly square. I mean, it could have been on a track or something for all I know,

but it's just a cool moment. And it shows that he's just so effortlessly good at driving. Like it does as part of his character, which is great. He gets away from, from, from some cops who are following him with a couple, a couple precision moves to get out of this area. and then we cut back to the countess's house that we saw the party at earlier and rockford has been putting the pieces together in his mind basically and has come back to confront her one more time with what is going on because he knows it wasn't the mob because the mob thought it was him. If it was a mob hit,

they wouldn't have cared about him, or they would have just killed him as a witness, right? Since they thought it was him, it obviously can't be them. He's convinced it's not her, because of that tape conversation earlier. So that leaves only one person. It has to be her husband.

Dun, dun, dun. Why would Mike Ryder want to kill this man, you ask? Well, obviously, his motive was to protect the Countess. Right. Because he didn't want her to go to jail, obviously, and didn't want this to come out because he wanted to protect her, not necessarily because he wanted to protect himself. Which, again, gets back to the nature of their relationship, which actually seems like a very positive one. Like, they're both concerned about each other's welfare and they don't want each other to be hurt all things considered except that he's a murderer like

that's yeah yeah and so mike appears in the the the big reveal at the end of the scene with the gun and kind of confirms you know that he did it for her to protect her but now there's one more witness and if jim goes to the police then that's going to ruin both of them so obviously now mike has to kill rockford in order to make everything right i i know i've seen this episode before but it was probably a while ago because i watched these roughly in order the first time so it's probably when i was first watching the show yeah i think all the way through when he's talking with the old the old mob guy i still couldn't quite remember slash i wasn't quite sure where it was going like who the murderer was i think i had in

the back of my mind that it could have been uh that it was uh mike i mean we're watching these episodes somewhere between a week and 20 minutes before we actually talk about him. So I probably watched this like two years ago most recently. And I think partly because of the actor who played Mike and the way he looked. I was like, he's going to have a big role here. And we haven't seen him in a while. Like you get that way with detective shows sometimes where you're like, oh, but this was telegraphed. Even if you don't recognize the you're, you're like, Oh, but this was telegraph person. Even if you don't recognize.

Yeah. Even if you don't recognize the actor, you could be like that person can act. I bet you their role is better. I, I, I bring it up because I think there's enough going on in this episode. We're just watching it as a show. There wasn't a necessary ending up until you found out the ending.

Right. Like it would have made as much narrative sense to me if like it was the countess and she had done some kind of elaborate double blind to keep Rockford on her side. Like that could have been. Right. Yeah. A compelling. Pulled someone else from out of her past. Because that happens sometimes with these where the identity of whoever did the crime is like they just show up at the very end

i just bring that up because i think it was a a strength of this episode where there was still yeah it's a good who done it and there were still a couple resolutions that would have followed from what had been established in the episode so far that said it's the it's the husband and he's going to take take rockford for a drive makingford drive, which they always think is smart, but never is. As we'll find out, there's a, a good negotiation on the way to the car where Rockford explains that he

doesn't want to do time, but it's better than forever. So he will take the, he, again, he's like, I'm going, I will admit to the crime.

I'll probably get 10 years with good behavior. Just drop $100,000 in my bank account. $10,000 a year? Yeah. Set me up for life and I'll be done. Which is, again, this is like the only monetary amount that we get in this entire episode for what's actually on the line. And it's pretty steep. I mean, like $100,000, that's half a million roughly,

uh, in modern dollars, a little more, but it's for him taking the rap for a murder charge. Yeah. It's a pretty serious commitment. And, uh,

of course Mike does not go for it. He, he doesn't believe that Rockford's not going to end up selling him out in the end. Blackmailing him or something. Yeah. Uh, so he makes rockford

drive and they they go off in this uh in the car to whatever location mike has selected for this this execution to occur which is when rockford pulls one of his delightful stratagems which is he just starts speeding puts puts pedal to the metal and is uh driving the car pushing the car as hard as it'll go mike is like you know if you don't slow down, if you don't do what I say, I'm going to shoot you. And he's like, if you shoot me, we both die. So I'm going down for murder anyway. Yeah. One of his strategies is to make the other person complicit with whatever he's doing.

That will get them both in trouble, right? It's the game of chicken that he likes to play. In this case, it's pretty literal because they're in a speeding car i think they they show the speedometer to like you know show us how dangerous this is it's up like 70 80 miles an hour or something like that pretty fast and and it's good because he he often like when people take everything away from him you know they they they put him in the hardest spot he'll let them know he's like well what do you have to negotiate with right like there's you're you're threatening to kill me so anything short of me dying is a win for me and that's right basically what happens because mike calls him

on it and shoots him while he's driving uh as it turns out shoots him in the arm yeah blank i mean that must have been a pretty small caliber weapon because he still has a shoulder left. But TV bullets. And like six more seasons. This is when we see the car spin out and go over the edge of the cliff that we saw in the beginning intro set of scenes. Car crashes down, rolls over a couple times we cut to the next scene our kind of final sequence where rockford's all bandaged up and we learned that he he survived with with bruises and injuries and obviously a gunshot wound in his arm but he survived they're basically in the police station he's giving kind

of you know they're taking his final statement essentially on everything yeah technically because becker never served him with the warrant for arrest, they can't charge him with avoiding arrest. And this is something Becker offers. It's important that this comes from, because Deal is ready to throw the book at him for anything he can throw at him. He knows that he can't get him for murder, but he's like, you're resisting arrest.

We can get you for that. And Becker says, well, he can get off on a technicality. Technically, we never served. So Becker looking out for his buddy Jim, even though he got socked in the gut. And he specifically says that he, I'm trying to remember how he words it, but he does say that he owes him a sucker punch, which you can't give to him if he's in prison. Right, exactly.

Or a gut punch or something like that. I appreciate Sergeant Dennis Becker taking a stand against police brutality against prisoners. I think that's a strong move on that character's part. So good job there. So Rockford is off criminal charges. He's the truth has come out. Everyone knows what happened. He's not going to be arrested.

He's leaving this the room where they had that conversation and finds out kind of in passing that mike is dying in the hospital of internal injuries suffered in the crash so we get a little closure on on what happens with him and that is when we have our final scene with the countess talking to Rockford as he's coming out with all his bandages and everything. They share the news, you know, he's sorry for her. And they have this really interesting conversation to close out the episode. It could just end here, right? Like that could, he could, you know, be like, I'm sorry for that.

Maybe comfort her or something. And that could just be the end of the episode. Because like the plot is resolved we know what happened but the countess gets you know kind of sad and talks about how she guesses in the end everything is plastic like the cup you know like the little plastic cup that he gave her yeah way back in the beginning in the end mike was just as fake as all the other fake people that she thought he wasn't like right she kind of takes it on herself because she said that he got a plastic he wanted a countess and he got a plastic count countess um i think the scene can be read a couple different ways and i think one of

them involves her both her and rockford having tremendous empathy for this guy who was murdered once and has attempted to murder Rockford. And is now dying because of it. Yeah, but she sort of takes the guilt on herself in this. But in any case, it's a bunch of mixed emotions that she's feeling, all of which are sad. And I don't even remember what the exact line is with so she uh when she's saying that things are plastic they use that word a couple times i think it's a little of the time the way that she's using it where it's kind of using it to mean like fake manufactured not you know not real yeah so yeah she's kind of like he

got a plastic countess, like, cause I'm not really a countess. I'm really this girl from Chicago, right? Like that's kind of that, but also he ended up not being a great guy. He murdered someone, right? Like those are both, those are both in there. And so Jim kind of comes back

with this very philosophical little soliloquy about she's not wrong. It's like she's essentially correct in having this be a problem. And people are all fake, right? People are all pretending to be someone they're not for each other. He talks about it's what we get for living in a society where everything ends in 99 cents and there's billboards for funeral homes or something like that. Like life is cheap and everyone's trying to sell you something, you know,

kind of thing. Like he starts it all off by just saying, we're all scared. Everyone is scared to death, which is, yeah. Yeah. Pretty,

pretty profound. Everyone is scared to death and everyone just wants something to believe is real. She wanted to believe he was real. She wanted to believe he was real. He wanted to believe she was real. Everyone wants that in their life, but you're just playing a big practical joke because you know that it's not real. And so you have to just keep laughing.

And that's so good. It's so wonderfully optimistic and cynical at the same time. Like it's we're, we're screwed. So at least enjoy that joke enjoy the the humor that can be found in the fact that uh that we're not going to be able to pull this off the absurdity yeah the fact that everything is so absurd accepting that is what frees you from it a little bit it's really interesting because this is really close to the beginning of the series um there was the pilot which is a two-part episode and then the first broadcast

whatever the first regular episode and then this is the third episode of the whole thing and it's almost a little bit of like a mission statement or a little bit of statement of philosophy for the character for the entire rest of the series yeah and it really plays on a lot of the things i think we've said about about the character of rockford where he is able to acknowledge so many different kinds of people and so many different pressures that are upon him but he doesn't let them master him he does have some kind of fundamental ethical principles that he thinks are important to maintain like not selling out his clients and stuff like that but he's willing to do anything else right pretend to be other people right pull cons tell people who are innocent lies all kinds of stuff and it's kind of like what else is he

going to do right like it's all a big practical joke but also like people want to believe that he's real when he walks in with these with these characters or walks in with these lies people essentially want to believe that he's not lying and that's what makes him able to do what he does is that reading too much into it no i think that's great uh like you know before when we were talking about her bringing up the fact that he's not impressed by titles uh and then the fact that that that is the fundamentally how he maintains control of these various cons that he runs throughout an investigation is by presenting them with his title first. You know, like he's an insurance investigator or he works at a funeral home or, you know, like something that somebody, if not impressed with,

would think that, you know, is supposed to be there. And it fits in with this whole like thin veneer of what holds society together. And it's interesting because so he stands as a sort of buffer between what we'll call civilized society and then the rest because he can see through that. But then he's got a set of priorities that we can trust. I think a lot of times these shows come down to people just having different sets of priorities and those putting them at such odds with each other that occasionally they kill each other. So that makes his character comforting to us because it's like, well, I agree with his priorities. And he's also able to freely move in this realm where he sees through all that.

Because if you spend too much time seeing through all that, you can become like she does, morose and cynical. And, you know. Yeah, it's that combination of optimism and cynicism that is so compelling and and being optimistic when it's appropriate and being cynical when it's appropriate and like knowing when to be yeah uh that makes that makes rockford so interesting anything else did did rockford make any money this episode? No, he did not. Well, he may have made some money before the episode, right? Uh,

when he, or at the very beginning where he's taping her, uh, he's obviously on her dime while that's happening, but there was no discussion of that. So we don't know for sure. Um, and more likely what happened is he paid for all that equipment and he got

stiff with the bill. If it follows true to form. Yeah, it's not explicit. Though he does have the line about how he's not working for her anymore. Now he's working for himself. And that occurs after the whole confrontation on the beach. So there's probably two good days worth of work in there. So we can say about $400 maybe.

Plus expenses if he can get her to pay for the injuries. Pay for the gunshot wound injury inflicted by her husband. Yeah, it's not actually addressed in this episode, so I guess we could think that this is one of the rare paying gigs that he ended up getting. Yeah.

Again, he doesn't eat his hors d'oeuvre and he has this nice little line about uh about hot dogs but other than that no no meals in this episode for rockford he's too busy running around and no uh getting shot and avoiding yes he's too busy avoiding prison sentences to eat anything else about this episode uh good one uh that was uh it was it was a great one to revisit. I think the performances are strong. Yeah. And it's not as experimental in its filming style as some of the other ones that we've looked at most recently. And the music, you know, like I think we've commented on the other ones that both in, you know, directorial choices, but also in musical choices. And like this one doesn't quite quite it doesn't stand out there but the acting and the writing definitely yeah that that sense of after the halfway point in the

episode where all the the pieces start falling together and the string of of when things happen and why all make narrative sense even though they're they're convenient right like the cops pulling up to see him getting abducted by the the mob and that kind of stuff it all just falls together so smoothly that you're like on board and ready ready to see where it's all going uh yeah good one good good foundational episode i think if you haven't seen a lot of the show this wouldn't be a bad one to to watch yeah and and that statement at the end that kind of that kind of philosophical soliloquy at the end is uh it's a little abrupt

like it's a tonally it's very like and now here is this meditation on the nature of modern life right but uh but it's not completely out of place and it's really worth worth seeing on the screen so uh yeah definitely recommended yeah for sure all right so that's what we think of the countess and we'll be back in our second half with some thoughts on the narrative elements. While we have you here, if you like the podcast, there's three ways to support us. First, rate and review on iTunes or whatever you use to listen to podcasts.

Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. This enables us to do things like upgrade our audio, and if we get enough support, release shows more often, so it'll be more Rockford for you. And third, both of both of us have other projects epi what do you have going on right now you can check out my sword and sorcery fiction and the sword and sorcery fiction of other people along with games and comics at worlds without master.com so nathan what do you have going on

well i'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings, including the Worldwide Wrestling World Playing Game, at ndpdesign.com. Or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta. Thanks for listening. And now, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We've discussed the episode Countess, and now we're going to talk a little bit about thoughts that that episode inspired in us as they relate to writing fiction or playing in games that involve fiction.

I only had a couple things. Again, the overall pacing of the plot and how it kind of all fell together towards the end, I think was really strong. So it's in the bell curve of our general feeling about Rockford, which is that like there's nothing unnecessary and it all kind of has a tight relationship to itself. Oh, sorry. We can just keep saying the same good things about each episode. But this one, the one particular thing that jumped out in my mind from this episode was how the backstory of the Countess was very important, but also not focused on to the exclusion of the actual story that was being told. Yeah. yeah details about why she's being blackmailed and why this guy knows her and why she's a countess and why she's married to this guy and the fact that she's in chicago why that mattered and

all those details are essentially given to us in exposition over the course of kind of two scenes kind of two and a half scenes um yeah and watching the tv show that's helpful because we are kind of learning it as Rockford is learning it. So we understand Rockford's reactions to what she wants him to do. But in another context, that exposition, it feels to me kind of like character backstory, right? Like this is why this character is the way she is. But the story is picking up at a later point. So how do you transmit that information in a way that isn't and now this entire chapter is about her backstory or this entire session is

about uh this npc's backstory or something like that you get the impression after watching the episode because like when you start the episode it's a little bit media res right like rockford is doing something he's setting up this camera and you're not sure why and after you're done with the episode say you're going to go uh chat with a friend of yours over a podcast about the episode and you end up thinking about it more than some weird fringe situation like that yeah yeah you end up looking back at the very beginning and thinking about what Rockford was hired to do right he probably was just somebody that she could vaguely trust for discretion that would run this videotape right like he she she may have told him that she was being blackmailed

but I think I don't think that he had any other part of that mystery. I think even that she tells him in the first conversation we see them. Yeah. So in the beginning, he's hired to do the simplest of tasks. Well, no, wait. Apologies to cameramen and women everywhere. I don't mean that necessarily. But he's not hired for his full skills. And this happens, I think, kind of often in rockford where he's hired

somebody mistakenly thinks that they should hire him to do the muscle or something else and not play to his skill set but so he gets hired to do this and then we get this backstory that both motivates the action of the story but takes the character of the countess and restricts her in a way that makes it necessary for rockford to be involved uh which i like and just it does this sort of double duty here that plays out really well yeah i think the the revelation of the details can be played out like it is here where you're kind of starting it with zero knowledge and then there's a series of conversations that reveal more and more uh or you could think about it like what if like if you were playing this as a game the game might actually start with the scene where

rockford goes to visit carl on the beach right like Like that whole lead up could be what, you know, we have established as the backstory relationship of these two characters or something like that. Like all that information can be delivered in multiple ways, I guess, is where I'm going with that. And like, what's the most effective way to deliver it? In some episodes of Rockford, like that entire, all of those revelations

would be paced out. This mob involvement from her days in Chicago is actually part of the reveal at the end, right? And like that explains all the things that have been happening to and around Rockford for the entire episode. And this one, on the other hand, it's not important to the plot necessarily.

It's just important so that we know the, as you say, the box in which she's going to be moving. And then how that spins out to affect what Rockford is doing. I guess the thing about it that would be really refreshing to me if I were, say, playing a game. And I was on the player side of the table and being presented with this conundrum. Where I don't know why she's having this interaction with this person. Uh, and then she reveals that she's being blackmailed. Uh, and then she won't tell me anymore. But the, I guess the part that's great about that is that in the Rockford episode, she

says why she won't tell anymore. She just says, well, I don't want you blackmailing me and rockford is like that's fair he's not going to attempt to convince her that he he won't because if you're already being blackmailed and you're afraid of being blackmailed you know there's no charm check in the world it's kind of like the stakes of those interactions are pretty clear right like i'm willing to go this far but no farther so that means this conversation is about so how much i'm willing to tell you now it's not about will i tell you everything that you will ever want to know right and then you get in the next one right the rest of the story or at least as much of it as

you're going to get and between the, stuff has happened to change the situation so that it makes more sense to reveal more of it. It changes what we know about her and what she knows about what's going on. Having a character that is both playing their cards close to their chest, not revealing a lot of information, but also being very forthwith about the fact that they're not revealing a lot of information is kind of important because it lets people playing the game know they're on the right track and also know that they're not going to get to the end just kind of plowing through this also as an audience whether

you're watching it or reading something if you're reading like prose fiction it kind of tells you that you're not expected to try and figure this out yourself necessarily right like it's it's kind of like now you're on the same page with this story about there's information that you don't know and now part of the dramatic tension is when will i learn that piece of information um and then you can combine that with when the protagonist is learning the information to create drama and tension in that way. The other thought that I had out of this was just the value of character central to the story and then killing them off. It's the sudden yet inevitable, right?

Because I was, again, I vaguely remember the episode, but not really. So when Carl is shot, it suddenly reframes the entire story. And it goes from a story about how is Rockford going to keep this creep from blackmailing or turn the tables on this guy to keep him from blackmailing the Countess to, first of all, what just happened, obviously. But it means that the story isn't about Carl, actually. the story is about the countess really and um and her husband yeah uh and it's just executed so no no pun intended um but just executed so suddenly and cleanly i guess in the episode um that just made that so so such a compelling moment and it it takes this uh

you know we we start with this mystery that's maybe not a vital concern to rockford it's a job right like i mean he's takes some pride in his work so i'm not gonna denigrate him there but like he's helping her out trying to stop this blackmailing thing and as far as he knows probably his best place just to go down there and convince this guy to stop blackmailing her uh by pretending to be a gorilla of some sort and uh and then restructures the mystery so that now it's about keeping rockford out of jail. It's a great shift from I'm doing my job to, oh, my God. It makes it personal all of a sudden. It makes the stakes for Rockford go from being economic ones, essentially,

and kind of ethical ones to being very, very personal ones of his own relationship to the inside of a jail cell. personal ones of his own relationship to the inside of a jail cell. So, yeah. So all of that reframing happens over the course of, like, that scene and a half, essentially, from when Carl is shot to when Beth basically gets him off without being charged. The entire story refocuses.

So then we revisit the mystery. Like, the Countess reveals only so much and then says she doesn't trust Rockford to know more. And Rockford's like, oh, okay. And then now Rockford, his freedom's on the line and he has a plan or a scheme to get more information because he needs to know more to figure out what's going on here. And they're both on either side of that

moment but yeah i really like that that technique the idea of that technique i mean it depends on the details obviously but that idea of you think the story is about this issue or about this person but then you can they they are murdered or they disappear or they go to the cops, right? Like they take some action that seems like it would just end the story, but it reframes it because it reveals, you know, whoever the actual actor is or whatever the other influences are on the story. And it kind of hits you if you, you know, are used to binge watching or dealing with fiction of this matter, and you're just kind of going along, you're like, okay, yeah, all right, all right.

And then, oh, okay, the future that I had plotted out for this is thrown away now. And we're going to shift in a different direction. It doesn't happen very often in the Rockford film. So, you know, use sparingly. Well, and I think it like, it's a good thing to look at as a opportunity if you're playing a game and it's not a thing that you're

structuring into the game itself. You've ended up with this fist fight and, well, I mean, this episode in particular would have to be structured. The idea that, uh, due to unforeseen situation, like, you know, someone has really hot dice or, you know, the players come up with a cunning plan that you didn't anticipate. And so your, you know, your bad guy gets taken out in the middle of what you had planned to be a longer term story.

story that's an opportunity to see how how can you reframe the story away from it being about bringing that person to justice or whatever to what other interests and problems are there now that they're gone is going to reveal the next chapter yeah yeah the thing that i was looking at uh i think we kind of hit upon most of it, but the ending, Rockford speeding away with Mike Ryder pointing his gun at him, and then he shoots Rockford. I was thinking about this in the context of games, because violence in games, in the tabletop role-playing hobby,

violence sits at a fundamental spot. I'm pausing on it because any time you say something generalized about tabletop role-playing games immediately my brain starts thinking of counter examples so i'm like okay i don't want to say but like it definitely has a history of violence that is often portrayed in a in a singular fashion not to get too critical of it but i've thought of as number reducers right like um this gunshot is going to cost Rockford so many hit points. And, you know, so thinking about what actually is happening in that scene is this game of chicken, like you said, an almost literal game of chicken.

And then the guy calls him on it and so the question isn't what resources or what uh stats or what you know what hit points does rockford have left at the end of this it's who comes out on top and who comes out yeah at all at the end of this singular moment this the gunshot goes off the car goes careening off rockford may have been thrown clear the car i'm not like the filming of that little segment makes it a little unclear but they do have him rolling around on the ground before they take him to the hospital and it was the 70s when people thought being thrown clear of a car was the smart thing to have happen so it's an interesting look at a way to use it uhly without having to fall upon sort of a, either a tactical combat or just a drudge to the bottom of your head points.

The actual gunshot in that scene is, it serves a purpose, but it could be replaced by other things, right? Like it could be Mike reaching other things right like it could be mike reaching over and grabbing the wheel it could be right rockford uh letting go of the wheel for some reason right like there's a lot of individual actions that could fulfill the same purpose in this case it's you know dramatic is to for this man who's killed once to you know shoot rockford while he's in the drive, the speeding car. It has kind of a dramatic purpose in that way. And I guess,

and also for the audience, it gives us a moment of like, Oh no, now they're Rockford might be dead. But yeah, the actual question in that scene is one of who's, who's going to blink first, or it's not even who's going to blink first. Really.

It's kind of like we talked about to Rockford. There's no outcome worse than the one that has already been promised him, which is he's going to blink first, really. It's kind of like we talked about. To Rockford, there's no outcome worse than the one that has already been promised him, which is he is going to die, right? And he also has that streak of, well, if I'm going, you're going with me anyway. So, you know, the dramatic question is about Mike. What is he going to do?

How long is he going to let Rockford dictate the situation before abandoning the only control he has over it? I just picked up the game urban jungle which is an anthropomorphic noir fiction game uh from sanguine uh and i'm a longtime fan of sanguine's games uh i i just love seeing the evolution of their mechanics over the years in this one in particular it relates to this because it it has this uh in the text it talks about its combat and sort of the violence involved and it talks about that guns are loud so if you fire a gun somebody's going to hear it you're going to do it inside a city somebody's going to call the cops which is why in the fiction you have this situation that we see here

in the rockford episode where mike says he's got the drop on rockford he's got a gun but he's inside his house and he doesn't want to shoot rockford in front of his wife probably doesn't want to mess up his house so he's like we're going to go for a ride and that's such a trope that while watching it we don't think twice but the this rule book points out that like if you have a gun you want to take somebody to a place where no one's going to hear you so you use it to control them and then on the other end of that gun if you're rockford you're going to use that opportunity to find a way to escape or to uh get the answers that you need while you're working your way into a better opportunity. So they specifically spell that out in the book because, again, like if you're playing at the

table, you can fall into this pattern of if somebody's going to pull out a gun, it's like, well, okay, it's do or die right now. And what happens in this episode and what often happens in Rothfurt, it's not the first time he gets the gun pulled on him in the episode. That's right, and what often happens in Rockford. It's not the first time he gets the gun pulled on him in the episode. That's right. The organized crime goons pull the gun on him. And so each time he's like, all right, let's see where this is going to go.

And then the whole time he's figuring out how he's going to get out of it or looking for opportunities to exploit. Yeah, the dynamic there is and this happens over and over through rockford episodes uh but it sounds like it's mechanically spelled out in uh in in sanguine's game but i think it's usable for pretty much any any application which is like the person with the gun has the the, right, through the threat of force. They have the power right now, but they also have some reason to, like, take you to another place or to delay the use of that force, right? They're not going to be happy with the aftermath unless they've created the perfect situation for what they're about to do. Because, again, in Rockford, the cops always win.

So, like, the mob doesn't want the cops to come. So they're not going to shoot them where people can hear and call the cops, et cetera, et cetera. So Rockford always uses those pauses between when, when he knows he has being dealt the worst hand to figure out how to get the upper hand. And that's where the, the dynamic. Yes. There's dynamic tension there of, of him figuring out and using his environment to his advantage.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's all of my thoughts. Did you have anything else on this episode? No, I think we've, I'm looking over my notes here. And I think every single exclamation point I have here we hit upon. Yeah, no, it was a good episode. A lot of fun. I mean, I'm enjoying doing this obviously but

like i didn't every time i sit down to watch one with my notebook open i'm like oh that's right i'm doing this this is yeah for sure yeah i think with that we have certainly earned our 200 for today we hope you are enjoying these discussions as much as we are enjoying having them thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files