Two Hundred A Day - Episode 24: White on White and Nearly Perfect

Episode Date: December 24, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S5E4, White on White and Nearly Perfect. Tom Selleck guest stars as Lance White, a squeaky clean alternative vision of what a P.I. can be. Working together to investigate the kidnapping of a wealthy industrial magnates daughter, Lance White's charmed storybook life gives Rockford a lot to criticize - but figuring out the case hinges not on Lance's idealism but Rockford's pragmatism. Equal parts character study, deconstruction of the fictional P.I. tropes and truly hilarious writing, this is a real stand-out episode not just of The Rockford Files but of purely entertaining television. Do yourself a favor and track it down! Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto John Adamus, The Writer Next Door 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, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander and Chris! 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.

Hello, listeners. Just real quick before we get started, this episode will be dropping on Christmas Eve. And so I'm here with Epiclaus. Hello. Oh, just to wish everyone happy holidays and thank everyone yet again for making our our first year of 200 a day such a success, I think. Such a wonderful year. Yeah. Absolutely did not expect the year we just had. Specifically with the podcast.

Well, didn't expect most of the year either way. But yeah, we wanted to do the thing because it sounded like fun. And it turns out that enough of you are interested in the show that it's really, I think, kept my motivation up and made it really rewarding doing it. And we have made 24 episodes happen in 12 months, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. And have a happy holidays. Yeah. Whatever you celebrate. Hope it's amazing. Uh, if you don't celebrate the holidays, hope you have a great end of your year and beginning of 2018. How about that?

Sounds great. Yeah. And, uh, I look forward to watching more Rockford files. Oh yes. We'll continue, continue on with the show.

Uh, no real announcements. Just, uh, just wanted to say thank you and, um, you know, keep listening and,

we'll keep trying to do the best job we can talking about the Rockford Files. Excellent. Pacific View Lots, perpetual care by people who care at an unbelievably low price. Call Monteith and Snell, the full service mortuary. We won't rest easy until you rest easy. Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, the Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Ravishaw, Epidiah Ravishaw. And that's a joke you'll get later.

Once we get into our episode, there'll be lots of jokes and most of them are very good. Which joke-filled episode are we talking about today, Epi? We are talking about episode four of season five. Welcome to season five, white on white and nearly perfect. I have a question before we get into all the production stuff. Is this one of those hidden pilots? Not as such. As far as I could tell from looking at the production notes and history stuff,

this was not intended to be a spinoff from the beginning. Right. They did bring the Lance White character back for a second appearance. So just to get into it, the guest star for this episode is Tom Selleck, who then went on to be the iconic star of Magnum P.I., which aired two years after this episode. There's a lot of obvious parallels between this character, this show, and then Magnum P.I.

But apparently the original pilot for that, the character was much more serious. And Tom Selleck wanted to play Magnum more like James Rodgers. I would too. Right. To make him a little more likable and humorous. And had the leverage at that time, I guess, or multiple projects that he could have taken. And so they wanted him for that bad enough that they rewrote the Magnum PI pilot to make the character more like Rockford. Also, Magnum PI was executive produced by Chaz Floyd Johnson, who's one of the managing or executive producers

of the Rockford Files. We don't talk about him a lot because he's just a producer in the sense that he never seemed to write any scripts or direct anything but he's been a producer for this show basically its entire run and then he went on and was the executive producer for magnum so a lot of a lot of rockford dna the lance white character oh we can get into that later but there's also also a Maverick connection. Oh. Did it feel like a pilot? Because that was the other thing. I'm not sure if this felt necessarily like a pilot spinoff.

Not like Gabby and Gandhi, where Rockford was so in the background of that one. But the presence on the screen with Lance uh lance white played by tom selick just made me think that like and also obviously because i know that tom selick ends up being magnum pi right like that that's it makes sense that this may have been influential in that but it wasn't actually an attempt to to create it uh but it's, I mean, we talk on this podcast about how every character is a character. They don't waste opportunity to give us something interesting about every background character. And there's just enough to Lance White here. Although the story, as we'll get to it, kind of wraps up. It doesn't leave it open.

Right. That's true. This is an episode that we've seen recommended a number of times and also comes up when people are talking about the show as a memorable episode. So I don't think it's off base to think of this episode had some a little more to it. But mostly it was just that it was a real intentional thing. So this was written and directed by Stephen Cannell and season season five and i think we see this as we get into it and we look at more of the season five episodes i think this will bear out the show was so established at this point the first couple seasons had been in reruns it won uh it's emmy i think in season four it won the an emmy for primetime drama or whatever the stars were all getting emmy nominations all the time.

And so Canals felt like they had the room to do weirder stuff, more high concept episodes and stuff like that. And I think this episode has that to it. You know, it's good. So let's get right into it. Yeah, let's do it. Other than the mustachioed glory of Tom Selleckck what jumped out to you from our preview montage uh well right off the bat the humor of the episode is is right there where tom selleck's character is like you know what are they going to do kill us don't make me laugh and just like absolutely

foreshadowing that they're going to attempt to kill them but also as we'll see that this is uh sort of a a nice syncedote of the relationship between Lance White and James Rockford. Like one of them is grounded in reality and the other one reality just kind of moves around. We'll get into it, but that's good stuff. Yep. But yeah, lots of action. What stood out to you? I mostly noted that there's a bunch of good one liners.

Yeah. And that we end with Rockford punching someone, which is always nice to see. And clearly there's some kind of physical danger that our heroes are going to be in. We see a couple of people that will probably be the bad guys. It gets through the montage pretty quick and gives us right into what I would call the ironic frame for the episode. Yes.

In the sense of dramatic irony. Yeah. Not detached irony. 200 a day. In the sense of dramatic irony. Yeah. Not detached irony. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this episode, we say thank you to John Adamas, the writer next door. Find his go-to resources for storytellers and creatives who want to tell better stories at writernextdoor.com. Mike Gillis, a host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast, the McLaughlin Group for nerds, radiovsthem next door.com. Mike Gillis, a host of the radio versus the Martians podcast,

the McLaughlin group for nerds radio versus the Martians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday evening podcast, all stars, actual play podcast found at misdirected mark.com. Lowell Francis with his award winning gaming blog at age of Ravens dot blog spot.com. Shane Liebling,

Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, and chris and finally big thank yous to victor de santo and to richard haddam who you can find on twitter at richard haddam we've recently updated our patreon with new opportunities for sponsorship so check out patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. We start our episode with Joseph Rockford, Jim's father, Rocky, reading clearly a pulp detective novel

entitled My Gun is Deadly. And with Rocky's voice doing the voiceover of the story that he's reading and the overly purple prose, the most trope-tastic tendencies of, say, a Dashiell Hammett or a hard-boiled noir detective fiction. This is exquisite. So there's many things I'm going to say about this episode in how well it's crafted. Sometimes it's hard to see, because this is clearly an episode played for laughs, right? This is not particularly an issues episode.

so played for laughs, right? Like this is not particularly an issues episode. This isn't. It's almost farcical. Yeah. In moments. But I think a lot of times when that happens, it's easy to overlook just how well crafted something is. If it just keeps you laughing, it distracts you from it. This one underlying it, this isn't the whole bit underlying it, but like you said, like underlying it, there's this contrast between what this imagined world of the private detective is compared to the real life concerns of James Rockford. I mean, I know James Rockford is not a real person, but he has concerns that real life people have. Having his dad, Rocky, reading this with his voiceover, it's delicious. It's absolutely delicious at the beginning of this. You immediately want to see where this is going.

Yeah. Rocky, his reading is interrupted by the sound of tires outside. He looks at the clock and sees that it's 6.15 a.m., first note of time being tracked in this episode. Rockford is pulling up outside the trailer in a fancy car with a pretty woman driving it. And Rocky already having romantic notions of detective work running through his head. Who's the dame or something? I can't remember what it was either, but it was, yeah, it was very much in the, he was still in the narrator's voice, right? You know? Yeah. And it's so weird coming from Rocky. It's just so bizarre. And then

Rockford punctures that immediately by saying, that's no client. That's my bail bondsman secretary. He was out at a poker game that got busted because I will note Angel punched a cop apparently. And so he, uh, he had to get bonded out of the pokey overnight. He's in a bad mood, obviously exacerbated by going to the fridge to of the pokey overnight. He's in a bad mood, obviously, exacerbated by going to the fridge to grab some milk. Takes a big pull out of his carton of milk and then pulls a face because it's bad. Of course, the milk in his fridge, it's not good. There's a great bit about Rocky saying, oh, I thought that was bad. So that's why I put it in the front. So why didn't you throw it out? Nope, that wasn't

the logic. The logic was put it in front. Rockford's having such a bad day that he tells Rocky that he's always telling him he should get a straight job, drive a truck or something. And he's starting to think that that's something he should consider doing. However, Rocky also has a message for him from someone named Teasdale who wants to see him for a potential job. I think this is part of why I think this episode is so tightly written. I think we're both in agreement that this is an episode you don't have to have seen the Rockford Files before to enjoy, right? But there are things in this that if you have seen it before,

so one of them is just that Jim is at his wits end about his own lifestyle. And he's like, maybe I should go. And Rocky, who is always bugging him to stop being a private detective, has just started reading private detective fiction. And now he's like, but you got to stay in. It's wonderful. It's subtle, but it works. It works well here just to get things started. Yeah. To show us that that Rockford is at kind of the end of his rope with some stuff. He's not having a good day, but now he has to go and deal with this client, whatever this happens to be. Yeah. And his dad is encouraging.

But also, if you've been watching the show for a while, there's this joke of this is the one time that Rocky's like, no, no, go do detective stuff. The scene is bookended to me by rockford going into the fridge for another carton of milk opening a fresh one drinking it and then saying that one's okay but i can still taste the other one which i guess is a commentary on my entire life oh yeah and he has um he has this great thing where because again the the title of the book is my gun is Deadly by Dan Slade. And Rockford's like, his gun is deadly. And he opens up his cookie jar and says,

mine's in a cookie jar. There are a lot of good one-liners and quotable quotes in this one. I'm going to try to keep it to the choicest examples for me. But a lot of this episode is just like, watch it and enjoy the dialogue and enjoy the repartee. Yeah. But in addition to this being like a great one-liner, it's also one of several moments that we'll get where guns come into play and Rockford has, they're right in front of him and he doesn't have access to them. Right.

One of the things that this foreshadows is that throughout the episode, even though there is gunplay, Rockford never gets off a shot. Yeah, exactly. So we go to Rockford's appointment. He's at a fancy house and talks to a secretary who kind of gives him this weird cold shoulder because she is waiting for Lance White to arrive. Lance White, Tom Selleck, is going to be hard to draw a portrait in words of how this character works in this world. There's a certain charisma and presence that he has on the screen bouncing off of James Garner that seems to me to be an incredibly difficult thing to pull off. He is obnoxious, but also lovable. Right. We'll go through all the details about how he does these things, but I found myself rooting for him even

while I was firmly on Rockford's side of who is this guy? How does he get away with being this kind of person? Yeah. He's a little Dudley do right. Right. Like he's all about naively doing the right thing. And given that this is a Rockford Files episode, in the beginning, I am 97% suspicious of this guy. No one can be this forthright and naive in the world of Jim Rockford. And in many ways, actually, Dudley Do-Right is maybe a bad reference,

not only because I'm old and therefore the kids these days, but maybe the tick is a better. Oh, maybe. Yeah. The tick is a little a little more dumb, I think. Yeah. No, he's not dumb, but the tick in him. I mean, not to give anything away, but they're both invulnerable. Yeah.

Reality just kind of. They have this like reality distortion field around them, which the trick to me that I think is so that is in the casting, right? That is in Tom Selleck is that this character is insufferable, but also someone you invest in as someone you want to succeed, or at least I did, which was a little surprising. I was expecting him to just be insufferable. Right, right. And that starts off right at the beginning. So Jim was referred to this guy Teasdale. Yeah.

But Lance White, who was also a PI and has worked with Jim in the past, we'll get a little bit more about that later. They know each other. Lance White is a friend of the secretary, Angela. And so she called him and he's just there as a favor. Because again, as we learn later, she saved his life once and he owes her, as he says,

the big favor. Yes. And he reiterates four or five times over this first scene that he's just there as a friend. He won't take any money for the case. Yeah. He's just there as a friend.

And the big favor, just that phrasing, it brings it back to... The language of the noir detective. Yeah, and the fact that he's using it with Rockford as if it's their slang. As if it's natural language. Yeah, this is how PIs talk to each other. Yeah, I think you're right.

This is kind of a difficult thing to get across because one way when you describe it, I can imagine people thinking of it as him saying that and having that land like it would if it was done by Steve Carell. But that's not what's happening. When he's speaking, even though he's being naive and even though everything Rockford does points out how unsynced with reality he is, When he's speaking, you feel like, yeah, no, that's it. That's what people call that. That's the reality. It doesn't land like an awkward comedy. I think the key to this episode in terms of the writing and the performances is that there's actually no irony. Yes. No one is winking at the camera it is self-aware of what it's doing as a piece of fiction but part of that is not inviting the audience in to laugh along with anyone because

no one in the story is laughing at it yeah everyone in the story is taking it seriously and that's how that's why it works yeah yeah so lance white's just there as a friend uh and goes in with jim rockford to see Mr. Teasdale, who is obviously in ill health and hooked up to oxygen in a hospital bed. Veronica, his daughter, is missing. He thinks she was kidnapped and he wants her back. And he is prepared to pay $500 a day, which Lance turns down because he's just there as a friend. And it would be unethical to take his money since he already volunteered to do the work for free.

Jim Rockford, on the other hand, is more than happy to take that more than double his going rate, but he does not want police involved. Mr. Teasdale knows that she was seeing some guy named Blackwood and past that leaves it up to them to figure out where to go next. And past that leaves it up to them to figure out where to go next. Teasdale has a line about being a good judge of character and Lance is a good man or something like that. After he leaves and Rockford ends up saying, oh, yeah, he's perfect. It's his only flaw. Once they leave the house, they tease a little bit more of their history. Apparently they did some job where Lance was hired by three eight-year-old triplets kind of by accident that landed Rockford in jail for 90 days. But Lance, he says he was working

for them because he kind of took them in under his wing after the tragic death of their parents. As they go back and forth with this banter, we get this unfolding story of Lance being selfless and doing all these things for other people that just happened to have the outcome of Rockford taking the fall for, you know, however things went down. The whole point of this and what I got out of it was that this guy, Lance White, is just too good to be true. Yeah. And then we get the credits and music hitting, or as they get into their respective cars at the end of the scene in a nice like punchy all right yeah you know let's get to the good stuff transition so i'm trying to remember exactly

when this happens but we you know we mentioned that time is going to come up when we first see lance his wristwatch it's an analog wristwatch and it's got buzzer in it a ringer an alarm a really annoying buzzer and uh yeah it doesn't sound good at all. And that's going to be a reoccurring thing throughout the episode. Also, a lot of these interiors, the first shot is on a clock, which I only realized now after you mentioned how much time stuff there is. Yeah, like they'll transition on a clock. Yeah. We'll get more into the second half about the mysteries of time in this one, because I think it's important to point all this stuff out but i also think that i don't know what they're saying there's a visual motif that might not make it through to text of like what the episode's actually talking about

we'll see our credit sequence takes us to a blue van on the wharf where a couple goons clearly mob gorillas i would say from their dress and manner of speech are helping mr ziegler uh a very old uh man wearing black out of this uh van and onto this kind of derelict ship the main goon has definitely gooned before in the rockford files he's a serial gorilla he has a great accent like kind of this like Jersey-ish mob accent. But as the scene unfolds, so they bring this guy, Mr. Ziegler, onto this ship, tell him that they're by Long Beach. He talks about a deli that he used to know. That matzah is as big as a fist. Yeah. So we get all these cues about how he's Jewish. The two goons work for someone named Mr. Vincent, and they've been given instructions to take care of Mr. Ziegler, give him whatever he wants. There's some kind of deal

going down. That's why he's there. It's still mysterious to us. And after they leave him in his little quarters in this kind of derelict ship, they make a point of saying that he's spooky, but he bankrolls the whole operation coast to coast this is good so this guy the actor playing ziggler is great he is spooky like when you when you see him he he holds the scene but what really kind of pulls it together is how these two gorillas they just fall over themselves to try and make him comfortable. And it sells him as like, I don't know what his deal is yet. All I know is that he's dangerous. Yeah.

He's clearly a big deal. Yeah. We cut from there to Rockford chasing off a group of guys who are messing around with a big white, uh, not being car guys. I did not recognize the hood ornament on it, but, um, some friend of the show, however, is a car person. Yeah. Check out the 200 a day Rockford Files files. At least one of our patrons keeps very good track of the cars on the show and has put

some notes about production cars that show up in every episode, along with some other notes. So fill it in our gaps here. Yeah. Fill in our gaps by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash 200 a day. But anyway, Lance White's car is, of course, a white car. It's very big and fancy. And these four guys are like pulling off the hubcaps and stuff.

Rockford chases them off and then goes in. So this is Blackwood's Club. This is kind of the last known haunt of the man that the woman who disappeared was going around with. Lance is in there. He's on the phone concluding a suitably investigatory sounding conversation. He apologizes to Rockford for being there, but he has to get more involved because Angela, who he owes his life to, asked him to stay involved and he couldn't say no to her. So even though he's just there as a friend just to help out the family, now he's taking an active role in the case. He says that he made some discreet inquiries,

which is when the two of them get hustled into the back room by a couple of gorillas. So we're already seeing Lance White's approach being one that is completely alien to Jim Rockford's. There's that lovely beat there where Rockford's like, how discreet? That's when they show up. They're brought in to face this guy who has a badly lettered sign on his desk.

His name's Tuner Watson. Lance immediately starts accusing him of running a horse parlor. He pulls open a closet door and there's a bank of phones. Very dramatic, yeah. It's very dramatic and he's kind of reading him the riot act about like, you're breaking this law and you're breaking this law. Now, what are you doing in here? I'm a mind to call the cops. Rockford is trying to downplay it all.

Now you're just making unfounded accusations now. That's not why we're here, Lance. What we actually want to know is about this woman, Teasdale. There could be a reward in it for you. Just let us know what you know. We know that she was going around with this guy blackwood and this is his club there's a nice transition of the status play in this scene i think it goes from like lance being way too aggressive for what they actually want to jim using that as a bad cop to his good cop approach right like i'll talk him down just tell me this

other thing that we want to know that isn't as serious, which this guy does. He's like, word is they eloped. I don't know what kind of club it is, but it seems like it's a strip club of some sort, which I think would offend Lance's sensibilities. Yeah. And then Lance calls out the guy at the bar. Yeah. So after they learn that the two of them elope, Lance continues on. It's like you have a wanted felon at your bar, but he's wanted for bootlegging cassette tapes and crossing state lines. He's wanted for Napster.

Yeah. And this is where it transitions to Lance has pushed his hand too far and Jim can't do anything with it anymore. I'm sure you're mistaken. It's probably not his real cousin. Let's just leave. And I was just like, what? What are they going to do? Kill us?

There we go. And then this guy Watsonatson is like take him outside or something like that and then we get a nice in stereo pi's punching goons uh action scene this is a uh i mean we this is a classic moment here on 200 day it's the old uh sucker punch and run it's good it's good our Our heroes manage to escape these goons. However, when they run out to the front of the club, the four guys that Rockford chased away earlier are smashing up the firebird with a crowbar. And he has to jump into Lance's car in order to escape these guys chasing them with guns. And we get here a reflection of how Lance's reality works, right?

Because when Lance pulled in, he just left his car there. Rockford's the one who kept Lance's car safe at the expense of Rockford's car. He didn't know that he was doing it. So for Lance, he's making all the right choices because he's completely unaware of the prices that everyone else is paying so that he can make these choices. Yeah, they're on the road in his car and we get Lance doing a little monologue about his worldview. It just galls him. It just offends him that these people are running a horse parlor in plain sight.

Shopping at discount stores. He can't stand these people that are in the misery business that exploit others and profit off of it, which Rockford, of course, finds hopelessly naive. This scene shows us that there is some moral basis to Lance White's character. It's not a con. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it consciously, but yeah, I think that's a good call

where this is when you start to realize that he's not running a game and that he's not just some slick guy. He actually believes all this stuff. This is also where we get the first of a running gag where the glove compartment of Lance's car keeps banging into Rockford's knees. Yes. But in that glove compartment is a gun on like a big fuzzy. Yeah, it's two guns. i think it's a fur lined

yeah it is a fur lined glove compartment containing handguns this is one of these great the scene does all of this duty here like it's it's telling us where lance is coming from it's securing in our minds like we just said that lance is actually earnest about this. This isn't like a scam of any sort. It's also, once again, establishing how Rockford is skeptical of all of this. And then it's also setting up a joke that's going to happen, but playing to this theme of the guns, which I feel that goes all the way back to the book, My Gun is Deadly, that he's reading at the beginning. This is not Rockford's life. He stepped into a book. Exactly. So we get the shot of how Lance lives his life. And then we

get the chaser in the next scene where we go to Lance's office where he has a secretary, of course, because what PI doesn't have a secretary who tells him that there's a woman waiting for him. Her name is Belle LabBelle. Yes. And she wants to talk to him about the kidnapping. I don't want to keep reiterating this, but the path that Lance White leads in life has the sort of storybook fantasy. In this case, all the women who talk to him appear to be flirting with him, right? This is his secretary who couldn't be happier to see him and is just overjoyed by his presence.

So we go into the office where we meet Belle LeBelle, who's a dancer from that Blackwoods club. So this detail, it's not very important, but it's something that I think is really strong for it to be a Rockford Files episode. So this woman's name is Belle LaBelle, but she does point out that that's her stage name and that she's thinking of changing it because it's just too silly. Yeah. That detail does a lot for me because it lets her,

she starts off in Lance White's world. Yes. This woman, Belle LaBelle, who just shows up out of nowhere with the clue you need to continue on with solving the mystery. Yes. And she's mostly there, but unlike Lance, she is more of a Rockford character than a detective noir story character. It is a fake name and she is aware of that and she is looking to change it. Something that I thought was a strong choice in the writing. It's definitely in the category of characters from Rockford that just happen to have a thing about them that makes them interesting. But also, like you said, it's a great contrast between the two worlds because it is important in the scene that she does just hand over the clue and that Rockford's response to that. So she was dating this guy,

Blackwood, but then he dumped her for Veronica, the woman who's been kidnapped. And she heard that Lance was looking into it because she's friends with someone that the secretary Angelo is friends with that works at that same mansion. And she knows that Blackwood has this house in Lake Malibu. And she thinks that that's where the two of them went after they eloped. Rockford, of course, is skeptical because this doesn't just happen. You don't just have someone named Belle LaBelle show up and tell you what you need to know. But Lance and her go into this whole conversation about who they know and who they have in common. This is the first time the two of them have met, but they have friends in common from all these different parts of their

histories. As they go through all of this, Rockford is sitting on a couch in the background, rolling his eyes and eventually asks if there's an intermission so he can go get some more popcorn. This is also the scene where my stupid joke in the beginning comes to fruition. Throughout it, whenever Lance mentions a name, it's always last name, first name, last name. Every single person that's mentioned in this scene, he refers to them that way. I don't know if that's a James Bond joke or what, but I just enjoyed it very much. It's nice that it's kind of just in this scene. It would be a little insufferable if it was throughout the rest of the episode, but just in this scene, it works. After she leaves, Rockford goes into this whole thing about how like,

don't you think this is a trap? Again, this kind of stuff doesn't just happen. And he lays out his philosophy. Find out whose payroll they're on, who they're doing this for, what their angle is. You go in through the door sideways

and add an angle so they can never get a clear shot of you. You can see that this is just flying over Lance's head. You can see that this is just flying over lance's head you can see that he's thinking what kind of person thinks this way it would have been too much i think to have angel also in this episode but this is this is uh one of those times where on the spectrum between lance white and angel rockford is somewhere in the middle, his advice where he's like, you got to be fast and crooked and all these things. It sounds a little angel next to Lance white.

Yeah. Who literally is like, well, let's drive out to that house and see if you can see if they're there. There's a lot of stuff that began this episode that is setting up the oppositional philosophies of Lance and Rockford. And then from here on, it's a little more things that happen. Yeah, because I think,

again, another scene of this would probably be too much. But the writing of this episode is really good in terms of giving you enough to be like, yes, this is the information we're trying to get across to you as an audience member. Now we trust that you have it and can move on, which I appreciate. We go from here back to the ship where Mr. Vincent is talking to talking to Ziegler. Apparently he was going to kidnap Veronica, but then she vanished because he was waiting for Ziegler to get out there before he went for it. This is something that Ziegler sees as an abundance of caution, a disease of the he uses a great word that I didn't write down, but like of the

comfortable of like someone who can. Yeah. It has time. Yeah. He's implying that Mr. Vincent is too comfortable in his station. He talks about being a man without a country. And over the course of this conversation, we find out that he wants to go to Israel And he can't unless Vincent does something that involved kidnapping Veronica. Ziegler feels like he's going to die soon and he wants to die in Israel and force them to accept him. But because he put his trust in Mr. Vincent, now it's Vincent's responsibility. And if Vincent doesn't do it, then he's going to turn all of his hatred towards this man who, you know, would wish he was his enemy. It is extremely intense by the end of the scene. There are great catches of phrases here where he says, I'll use my last ounce of strength.

This reminded me of, so in the episode, The Four Pound Brick, there was the mom character who her dialogue and her delivery was felt to us like it was out of like a golden age hollywood film i feel like this has a lot of that in a slightly more natural way but and i think on purpose between ziegler and lance white we're getting dialogue and delivery that's out of more of a noir film, slightly heightened kind of dialogue, where it's not naturalistic. It's more of this stylized kind of speech pattern. We get with our hero, with Lance White and Rockford, we get Rockford's reaction to Lance White each time is a little bit exasperated. when we turn to here like you said like this is sort of the flip side of the lance white coin here's our villain of the piece who has these great menacing

lines and menacing moments and we have what every signifier is telling us is a uh mob boss vincent who is sweating he's he's in such of Ziegler. Just this old man standing here that like the way they sell him is so good. Yeah, we feels like it's from something else, but grounded in the reality of the fiction that we're dealing with by having the rest of the characters treat it as a real credible threat. And Vincent is very much a Rockford mob villain, right? So he's kind of the Rockford to Ziegler's white on the bad guy side. We go to Rockford and Lance driving to Lake Malibu. We get a couple more instances of the glove box gag where he keeps falling on Rockford's knees. And we also have lance's watch go off again

rockford's trying to figure out what what is the deal with lance right he's like what do you do for your free time yes he's like help people it's like yeah but when you're done you and angelo seem to get along well she seems attracted to you would you ever he's like oh i'm attracted to her but i could never do anything with her we're friends and he's just he's such a boy scout right like in a overly wholesome infuriating way but the deal with the watch it keeps on buzzing lance white he has it set to go off every 10 minutes because time is our most precious resource he wants wants to know exactly how it's passing. He wants to be reminded of it each time. This is a paralleled with our villain here who is running out of time and he just wants a place to die, right?

Like Lance is in the prime of his life and Rockford's discussion with him can maybe be read as a, you got to slow down and smell the flowers, right? Like you need to enjoy life while you have a chance. And maybe, I feel like I'm coming to a conclusion about what they're doing with time. I'm not sure yet, but it feels like it's a critique of what's going on with Lance, where he says he values time. That's why he sets these alarms,

but he's specifically not valuing his time. He's just pushing ahead and not making use of the time that he has. To do things that aren't goal oriented. There's several instances throughout the episode where Rockford attempts to ask him about this alarm. And because the alarm is reminding White that time is passing, White kind of dodges. He doesn't knowingly dodge, but he dodges the questions like he just changes the subject, which I think is an interesting thing, because that is how a con is run. If anybody takes any moment to think about what's happening, you want to move them on to the next bit. And at the end, maybe it was a con all along.

I don't actually think that, but we'll see how it comes out. But yeah, so, uh, the two of them pull up to this house, uh, just in time to see two guys in stocking masks, hustling a woman, presumably Veronica into a car and taking off Lance chases them on foot. There are some gunshots. Uh, Rockford goes to get the gun out of the glove compartment where it's been hitting his knees all all episode but now he can't get it open the irony lance is chasing them disappears into the trees on foot uh rockford gives up on the glove compartment and tries to chase them in the car but then loses them we come back to the house where lance is just sitting there he has his blood on his shoulder.

Rockford says, don't say it. And he says, just a flesh wound. There's a man face down on the deck. This is Blackwood. He is he is dead. And Lance called the police. And so they're waiting for the police to arrive. We get a little bit of a meditation on death here where Lance hates that anyone dies, even if they were in at the end of the day.

Was he really so bad? Like that kind of thing. Rockford's like, I mean, except for, you know, selling all the cocaine and pushing it in schools. But once you take all that away, yeah, he was a good guy. And Rockford is perturbed that he called from the scene of the crime. And now they're gonna have to deal with the cops. Cops don't like PIs poking around in cases. This is going to be really tough, but just let him handle it. Because Rockford knows how to deal with the cops. Cops don't like PIs poking around in cases. This is going to be really tough, but just let him handle it because Rockford knows how to deal with the police. Yeah. And specifically called from a phone that could have fingerprints on it.

We hear sirens and then the cops arrive and we get probably my favorite shot of the episode where the camera follows Rockford as he looks through a doorway and then he just goes, oh boy, bad break and turns around. And then we see Lieutenant Chapman walk in. What follows? Okay, so again, this is a moment where you can absolutely appreciate what's happening in here without having watched the Rockford Files before. But if you're a fan, this scene is so full of just wonderful, wonderful moments.

So the joke here is that Rockford is all set for this to be one of his typical confrontational battles with Chapman. Yeah. But Chapman or Doug and Lance or Lancer are good buddies. They shake hands. They obviously respect and like each other. And then even later when Becker shows up, he gets really excited and runs over to shake Lancer's hand and say, hi, doesn't see Jim.

And then when Jim is like, Hey Dennis, he's like, Oh, hi, clearly not very special to see Jim Rockford. That bit, the dreamy eyes that Becker gives Lance Lancer.

Yes. That Dennis gives Lancer. I mean, the Chapman thing is great, and that's a bit of I don't want to say it's an obvious status play here, but if you're going to do it, that's the first one that'll occur to you. It's the

sucker punch of Dennis showing up. We already get Chapman in the scene we get a little bit of chapman there's there's no need for dennis and then dennis shows up doesn't care about rockford at all it's just all excited that he gets to see lancer again yeah it's really good so there's actually not much uh story-wise like this is all about yeah showcasing what might have been right for rockford like if he was a different person, this is the kind of relationship he could have with the police,

but he's not. Lance gets to have this relationship because he's a good, not a good person, but because he's this personality. Everything that Rockford gets his chops busted over are just completely forgiven or even like, no, that's good. It's good that you did that or welcomed yeah it's good stuff it's a lot of good jokes uh at rockford's expense for the most part we do end the scene with uh leaving the house and rockford telling telling lance that uh he's

quitting yeah it's like i'm quitting this case just take me there so I can quit. Then I'll get a cab. So they go back to Teasdale's so that Rockford can quit. But dramatic twist. Angela and a man who we learn is named Mr. Davies are waiting outside. Mr. Teasdale is dead. Yeah. He received a ransom demand and he was so shocked and perturbed that he just died right there. Mr. Davies is the executive vice president something something of his business. And he's there to say that the board of directors will be taking over the negotiations for her release.

He has a $500 check for Jim Rockford. He just needs a receipt and that they don't need either of their services anymore. The company has it from here. So he essentially fires both of them. This is a strange thing, right? And I think Jim's like, wait a second, what are you talking about? And Lance says that he can't be fired because he wasn't hired. He's just there as a friend, as we know. Again, in a nice show of restraint, he doesn't say that, but that's clearly the subtext. This is a great moment because now they've gone and offended both of their sensibilities. Right. In one fell swoop. Yeah. I mean, we talk about it, how you have Rockford usually rejecting a case until somebody says, well, you can't do it. And then he's like, well, now I got to. But what's happening here is you have Lance, who's very, all right, put it in D&D terms, if I will.

Lance is the paladin, right? He's wandering through life, lawful good, telling the world this is how it should be. And I have a sword to make it so. Right. Right down to the fact that paladins have like extra protections for being charismatic in the current division it just fits it just fits really well rockford is uh probably the rogue right and what happened here is lance is like there's something that she's been abducted we need to save her blah blah blah and rockford definitely is down for that. But then it's the added twist that he's been played and that the corporate overlords are now in charge.

That gets Rockford. And he's like, whoa, that's not right. And this is when it's when Rockford suddenly is like, yeah, I'm on a crusade now, too. Yeah. His point is that, well, this board director has no emotional stake in her well-being, they're the ones who are going to be negotiating for her now. So we also get to see a bit of like his rising to the occasion to protect a vulnerable person. Yeah.

And then Lance, of course, wants to do what is good and right. And it's not right to just abandon her. So the two of them have a private conversation. Lance spells out the hard, boring, dirty footwork that they can do but it'll get results to like go through the police files of every single van that he because he saw the van drive away and all this stuff and rockford is like we're thinking about this the wrong way don't you think it's weird that teesdale just pops off and dies it's not like he works in a low stress industry. Like he's been running this, this national company his entire life. He's

no stranger to pressure. What if the death is a fake in order to bounce the negotiation to the board and, you know, buy him some time. That means he knows something we don't. And maybe, uh, we can find it out by staking out his place and seeing what happens. And Lance thinks that it's a really sharp idea. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is an interesting twist for Lance here. Because I think the obvious way to go would have been to have Lance reject it as being cynical, too cynical. But instead, they play Lance's naivete as wide-eyed excitement.

Because he says something like, boy, I love this business. That's a great twist. They make a great twist in a book. So obviously, it's true. Let's do it. Now they're going to be on the same page. And from a sort of craft point of view, we need to reconcile their two different approaches in a way that makes them both agree with every step. Yeah. So this whole episode, Lance has been very nice to Jim, right? Like he's complimentary of him. He treats him with respect, even when Jim is kind of telling him like, you're a naive fool. Yeah. Jim is a, well, actually all the time and he's not annoying at it because you think he's right but he is doing that and this scene shows why lance genuinely has some kind of respect for rockford yeah he is smart he's not a dumb guy

and when given the choice between thankless slogging work that might get them one step further down the road and a dramatic potential masterstroke that could get them right to the end, he'll go with Jim's instincts on this one. It's a little humanizing. And again, it's sold by Tom Selleck. It doesn't feel like a narrative convenience. It feels like the character genuinely is willing to give this a shot. And then he can always do the boring thing if it doesn't pan out. So it kind of is consistent with his character. So, yeah, the two of them stake out the Teasdale place. They see a car that's marked canine something. Right. Going in and then coming out. And they couldn't be dropping off guard dogs because they leave the gates open.

So that seems suspicious. They follow the car. And again, we see Lance get really excited. It's the big push. The what? The big push. Because Lance, it all plays out like in a detective novel. So they follow this car to a quiet side street. Lance gets out of his car for a closer look. And then we go with the camera into this waiting vehicle. Mr. Davies, the vice president, did leave the compound in that car. He's come to see Mr. Victor, who wants the paperwork because this ship, the Star of David, is sailing soon. And whatever is happening, it needs to happen before it sails. Davies says that it's not up to them anymore. It's up to the Israeli ambassador. And he has to rise through it sails. Davies says that it's not up to them anymore. It's up to the Israeli

ambassador and he has to rise through the Israeli parliament and that's going to take time. So Ziegler is just going to have to wait for that to happen. It's out of his hands. We see Victor being very not happy with this news and he kind of threatens Davies, threatens him with a gun and also threatens to like shoot him or abduct him. Davies plays it very cool. Yeah. Bold move here. Concluding with if you keep abducting the people who are sent to negotiate with you, you're not going to have anyone to negotiate with. Yeah. And then he leaves. So yeah. So we get a little more development about whatever this plot is. Ziegler wants to get to Israel. The company has something to do with making that happen, but now they're trying to disclaim the responsibility in the wake of Teasdale's death. But there's still kind of a question, at least when I was

watching, I was like, so is this the mystery or is this the cover to the mystery? Like I was kind of waiting to see where it was going still. Yeah. It's not evident at this point, I think, why this company has any pull. Right. This story feels a little loose at the moment like that that'll get cemented a little bit later or maybe at the end i can't remember davies leaves uh and we see lance crouching in the bushes but as he turns to watch davies the goons from the car see him jump out and grab lance white he says that he's there there alone and they hustle him into their car. Rockford, I think, realizes that something's happening after Lance ditched him. So he goes to hide in another car, which happens to be open. The goons see Lance's car, see that there's no one

else in it. So he's alone. They leave. Rockford goes to hotwire the car he's in, but then discovers in a stroke of Lance White-ish luck, if you will, that the keys are in the visor. He seems just as exasperated by this, by the way. Like, it's just very like, of course. Of course, it's going to happen just like a movie. And there's going to be keys in the thing. He follows them to see that they pull up by the ship on the docks that we've seen that

Ziegler's in. And then we cut to rockford at the teesdale mansion confronting davies and angela well he's confronting them and we start the scene with davies saying mr teesdale's dead uh but rockford turns to angela and we get to see rockford do a rock do rockford things where he uses the lever that he knows is there he knows that angela has some kind of feelings for lance so he tells angela that lance is in trouble i know where he uses the lever that he knows is there. He knows that Angela has some kind of feelings for Lance. So he tells Angela that Lance is in trouble. I know where he is, but he's in danger.

You need to tell me what's going on. She says, tell him, Brad. Of course, the guy's name is Brad. Brad still doesn't want to tell him, but now we know, of course, something's going on. Rockford's like, well, I'm just going to have to go to the police with all this stuff. And that is when a very alive Mr. Teasdale reappears in full evening robe splendor.

This is some fashion goals here for me. Between this and the stuff at the end. I would pay good money to have that outfit and then the library that they retire to, to have this discussion and just spend like a month there. Yep. Just sit there. Sit there with glasses of port and beautiful books. All right. We get the real story. Teasdale takes Rockford back to his little, his library lounge, sitting in his wonderful evening wear. His company has manufactured and is going to be shipping a set of missiles to Israel as part of some government deal. Teasdale asks if Rockford knows Mr. Ziegler, and he does as a, quote, banker for the underworld.

Well, apparently he wants to die in Palestine, but Israel won't let him into the country because he's a mobster. So Ziegler kidnapped Veronica in order to get Teasdale to get Israel to allow him into the country because he's a mobster. So Ziegler kidnapped Veronica in order to get Teasdale to get Israel to allow him into the country. But as it turns out, they'd rather lose the missiles than let this gangster in into Israel. So sure enough, Teasdale faked his death to buy time to deal with the situation. And at the end of the day, he says it's unfortunate, but his daughter's life is not enough leverage to get him to do the thing

that Ziegler wants him to do. Rockford thinks he knows where she is, probably on the same ship that they took Lance to, and says, why don't we just call the police? And he still doesn't want police involved because this is an international arrangement. The State Department's going to get involved

and this could shift the balance of power in the Middle East. Stakes. Big stakes. But he does offer Rockford a bonus of $2,000 to help resolve the situation. Yes. Rockford gets a thoughtful look on his face and then asks, so do you really have guard dogs? We cut to Rockford, Davies, and Teasdale in the front of a car with barking dogs behind them, behind like a guard screen. Teasdale starts choking and needs oxygen. So they have a portable oxygen tank with them.

And Rockford has a good one-liner about how they're going to be able to walk right in because they're going to be laughing too hard to stop them or something like that. The role players in our audience will recognize this as every plan they've ever come up with. In my notes, I was just like RPG plan. The moment he said, do you really have guard dogs? I was like, yeah, okay. Whatever this is, it's ridiculous. So the joke here to me is that it goes from this very serious, like here are the big stakes. Here's the implications of all this stuff that's going on. Cut to three fish out of water, stuffed in the front seat with a bunch of barking dogs. Like this is the plan. This is not going to work.

Yeah. Cut from there to Lance White and Mr. Ziegler on the ship having a morality off. Lance has a bunch of choice words, including the fact that crime doesn't pay. And he should know that by now at his age. And he just gets amazing side eye from all the goons that are in there. You're literally talking to an old man who who's like looking forward to his death who's made his entire living off of crime he does he does not think that crime doesn't yeah yeah right but uh other than giving us a good you know a little humor moment of seeing lance directly in the face of the thing that he hates just not giving a crap about his morality uh he and Veronica, who we see for the first time in full face,

get taken down to a storeroom or something and locked in. So now we go to our exciting, action packed finale. Jim Rockford goes on board this... This boat's just tied up to the pier. So he just walks up. He looks through some windows,

avoids the goons that he sees, makes his way to where Lance and Veronica are locked up. So he's holding his gun. Yeah. He sees a guard, like he sees a goon that's in his way, that's outside the door. He very carefully puts the gun away so that he doesn't make any noise. Very carefully prepares to take him out with one big punch, which he does. He strikes from surprise.

This is his fulfilling the preview montage. Yes. Rockford punch. But either his gun or the goons gun drops to the deck and goes off when it hits the ground, alerting everyone to his presence anyway. This is now the second time that Rockford has been in the presence of a firearm that he has not actually shot. Yes. He frees the two of them. They start trying to get off the ship avoiding the goons

outside davis releases the guard dogs and tells them to go get him these dogs run in front of the car run past the gangplank he goes no up there and then we hear bark bark bark splash splash splash as the dogs just go and run and jump into the water. I laughed. Yeah. I don't often just like sit there laughing out loud, but this moment was so perfectly timed. The comic timing was so great. I just burst out laughing.

And this is part of a, like an escalation of comedic proportions that I think is essential to this ending, right? Because we're about to get like sort of the cherry on top in a moment here. But from Rockford asking, do you really have guard dogs? Every single bit's been funny and just one step beyond the credibility of the previous step. They're inching their way towards what's about to happen here, which I think is great, is brilliant. inching their way towards what's about to happen here, which I think is great. It's brilliant. Yeah. So I'm laughing when I'm able to pay attention to the screen again.

Our heroes are sneaking around. One of the goons sees them and reaches out and takes a shot at them. Lance takes one, possibly two shots. Then the camera and sound tell us that it ricochets off of a couple of surfaces and then it hits the goon in the leg, and he falls over yelling, my leg, my leg, which reminded me of your bit about being shot in the leg being an incapacitating maneuver in TV shows. It's really easy to kill a person by accident

by shooting them in the leg. There's very important arteries you could just bleed out in seconds. It's not a safe thing to do to a human being. But in this case, it wasn't even intentional. It was a result of this ricocheting bullet, right? Exactly. And in addition to that, it has destabilized a pile of like oil barrels

that were up over the main cabin. And those all fall on the other goon, leaving Ziegler just standing there completely exposed and you know with no protection Rockford puts the button on this by saying I never even fired a shot Lance White's single bullet incapacitated both goons and saved the day yep good old Lance oh man so third time's a charm for Rockford. Not even, not even being able to get a shot off. Yeah. So the day is saved and then we cut to voiceover over glasses of champagne at a wedding. Yes. Apparently the high intensity action of Lance White saving Veronica means

that they fell in love and now they're getting married. The camera work here is designed to keep you in suspense about who's getting married. But there's no suspense. This doesn't end with Rockford getting married. Early camera work here is focused on a cork that had come out of a champagne bottle and landed in a pool that the guy picks up and you kind of follow that around a little bit, which is following just the I never got a shot off. I don't know if there's the always a bridesmaid, never a bride thing going on here, but if there was, this is a great way to kind of just paint that all for, you know, I never got a shot off, never opened a bottle of champagne at my wedding,

you know, that kind of thing. We have amazing wedding attire like these striped high collared dress shirts underneath like tail coats almost it's this is 78 yeah it's good uh mr teasdale calls rockford over to talk to him he says that it seems a little unfair that uh lance ends up with the girl and everything else i I'm going to give him my company. Teasdale is aware and makes sure Rockford knows. He's like, it seems a little unfair because you're the one who was actually in danger the whole time. Yeah, you're the one who did all the work. So you should get something.

And then Rockford, being a polite man, says that, oh, that's not necessary. And Teasdale's like, oh, OK, well, I just thought I'd offer. Yeah, that was it. The one time that Rockford decides to like be slightly circumspect or nice, it, you know, ends poorly for him. So this is the question. Do you think he got the $2,000? He definitely got the 500. He says you should get something in addition to your bonus okay all right so we're gonna count that and then this is followed up with teesdale going up to the to the bar making a public announcement now that there's someone to provide stability for his daughter he's

going to turn the company over to lance lance white is the new president of teesdale international whatever the company is called exit Exit Teasdale. We have a toast to the new Mrs. Lance White. I will note that Veronica doesn't have a single line, I think, in the whole thing. She appears and then is just in these scenes. I feel like it must be intentional. Yeah. But it's kind of an interesting little commentary, I guess.

So Brad, now that Teasdale is no longer president, now he has to go work for Lance. And so our finale here is that Lance tells Brad, you know what? I don't want to charge Israel for those missiles. They're a small country surrounded by enemies. They're an underdog. My sense of fair play won't allow me to take their money. And so Brad very respectfully tries to explain how that's a bad idea. And Lance is like, no, here's all the reasons why I want to do it. And it's like, well, if we do that, then our stockholders will sue us and then our assets will be frozen and the company will be destroyed within three days.

Yeah. And then Rockford's there to say, no, no, don't worry about it, Brad. Things are going to work out. They always do. Freeze frame on Lance's watch as it buzzes. He has that 10 minute alarm going at his wedding. I love Lance.

I've enjoyed him this whole time, but that is like the one bit where I was like, oh, yeah. And so we end the episode with lance maybe finally coming to earth right with this uh explanation of how the business works end of episode there's there's one line in that last when uh teasdale asked rockford what he thinks of it or something something about lance and rockford says when they were passing out raincoats he got a beauty.

That is just a great line to describe the privilege that it is to be Lance White. Yeah. Oh, man. This is a good episode. Yeah. Let's talk money. Again, in an element that I think has to be intentional. This is one of the few episodes where Jim Rockford makes some money.

He pulls in the $500 check and the $2,000 bonus, as we just discussed. He is out $200 for bail, thanks to Angel. Right. Punching a cop at an illegal... Presumably the cop was also gambling there. And we don't know how much he's out for the Firebird repairs, but clearly the Firebird needs some help

after the hoodlums assaulted it so and he and we know from the very beginning that he was at he was at the the poker game in the first place because he was out of money so it does look like he probably made enough to cover his bills well he probably yeah has returned to parody right like he's probably able to get to continue living the lifestyle to which he is accustomed from this case. Maybe get a new carton of milk. Hopefully. Yeah, but he doesn't get the girl. So the whole thing with getting the girl is that it's like a storybook romantic thing, right?

But it doesn't have any connection to what's actually happened in the episode. Yeah. There are no emotional stakes of Rockford maybe getting the girl or not. It's purely a in the detective novel that Lance White lives in. Yes. It ends on an up note because the hero gets the girl. That that is part of the send up of the episode. Yeah, I think that is absolutely.

Yeah, the way this, this whole thing is, is supposed to play out is that the happy ending, it's all about Lance. Like Rockford is our main character in this story, but Rockford is not in a Rockford story. He's in a Lance White story. Would you like to see more Lance White stories? Well, I know there's at least one more. We'll get to it. Um, there is one more lance white episode uh nice guys finish dead is the other one and that is season six episode seven so almost the end of the series yeah definitely would like to see another lance in the rockford files i don't know if i would watch lance white pi i think it only it works in the rockford files because it's part of the critique of this kind of story that the entire series is, right?

Like the entire conception of the Rockford Files is a series about a P.I. who doesn't behave like you expect a P.I. to behave. And then he becomes his own, you know, and that becomes his own genre from there. So this isn't the first time that we encounter other P.I.s. I mean, obviously, we on our show have done the Gabby and Gandy episode, but there's, there's Richie Brockleman. That's the young guy. There's the young guy.

And then there's the other guy who's like, there's also the guy who, who pretends to be a P. Yeah. Like steals Rockford's identity. Yeah. I think it might be kind of interesting to do one of those next. Oh yeah. And see some other conceptions. Well, stay tuned identity. Yeah. I think it might be kind of interesting to do one of those next. Oh yeah.

And see some other conceptions. We'll stay tuned listeners and we'll, we'll, we'll see if we can make that happen. Maybe we can do a retrospective on other PIs in the Rockford files. Yeah. So like we said, there's,

this is a super fun episode. It's really good. You should watch it. Yeah. You can watch it without being a Rockford Files file. I don't familiar with it, right? Because for us, Jim's our hero. He's a little beleaguered. I assume it wouldn't be that much different for somebody who hasn't been involved, but I could see someone going, yeah, but Lance was a good guy the whole time. Who's this? Who's the sardonic cynical guy that we have to follow through this

whole thing? Interesting question. Oh, a lot of fun. Really enjoyed this episode. Yeah, for sure. A pure example of good guest casting and laugh out loud, worthy humor wrapped in a Rockford Files checkered coat. So A plus from me. yes um and a lot of elements themes motifs and callbacks sewn throughout the episode which um you picked up on more of them than i did i think so perhaps when we come back for our second half you can take us down the road of all the storytelling elements that popped out to you from this episode sounds like a plan we're gonna take an intermission so rockford can get his popcorn. While we have you here,

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200 a Day. We just went over the episode White on White and... Nearly perfect. I mentioned how they started getting more high concept and doing weirder things in this season. They definitely decided to go with weirder and longer titles

as the series goes on, which I appreciate as someone who likes long, weird titles. I believe in my heart of hearts, the greatest title for anything ever is If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which is an Italo Covino book, because it's an incomplete clause and you just have to pick up the book. If on a winter's night, it's Traveler. What? What happens next? But there's neither here nor there. Although we could talk about titles because this is the part of the show where we talk about the craft. Where we can take the lessons that we've learned from the episode we just saw and apply them to our fiction.

Whether it's something we're writing or performing or role playing or just daydreaming about, which is fun and should not be minimized. I just like the nearly. Yeah, no, because there's lines in in the episode about how Lance is so perfect, but that's his only flaw. And this whole thesis statement about perfection being something that is not attainable in the world of Jim Rockford. Nobody's perfect. Yeah. Perfection as a concept is flawed. And there's a virtue to making do with what you have.

So even within that framework, Lance White is nearly perfect. Yeah. And I think like also the beginning part of that title, as long as we're going off on the title here, the white on white part, presumably is Lance White's take on Lance White is what that's saying. I'm not entirely sure. It's a hard one to read. tremendously playful, not just in the fact that it's very comedic, but like where a lot of that comedy comes from is the playing with the craft of the fiction and playing with different themes and playing with tropes. Almost everything I'm going to say about this is going to be about playing with things and just experimenting and seeing what happens. I feel very comfortable saying that that's probably how this episode came about, that they were just playing around with things. Now, I don't know for certain, but for the sake of what I'm about to say, we're going to pretend it's true. And the first bit is they're playing

with time. Early on, I said, I noticed something was happening, but I can't figure out what it is. And I'm now in the process of doing this podcast here have developed a little bit of a thesis they're not playing with time in terms of like structurally right like the episode itself is it's very straightforward yeah it's very straightforward and linear we're watching events essentially in real time you know chopped up for tv but it's not like flashbacks or interweaving timelines or anything like that but the motif of time is being used to different ends throughout the episode and specifically clocks and watches and i think that that's actually kind of important and uh i think what you said is very important too because it's not time it's our measurement of the passing of time a kind of aha moment during the recording

of the cotton podcast here was that ziegler has a very real time concern he knows he's about to die and he's not the only one at the end there uh we get a bit about teesdale teesdale is also near his deathbed and is worried about a legacy that he's handing. He's more than happy to hand over to Lance White. So for them, time is a bit of a specter that hangs over them. So what is going on with Lance White in time, right? He's younger. He absolutely has everything he could possibly want. The world will bend over backwards to offer up everything he needs.

Right. But he's got this moralistic uh i think of it almost as a like a protestant value like this kind of puritan relationship with not wasting things and time is one of them he doesn't like the waste of life like he doesn't like murder even if it's a bad person who he will moralize against their behavior. And he has his 10 minute, he lives his whole life by Pomodoro, right? Which is this like time management productivity thing where you measure five or 10 minute chunks of time and you kind of track how many of them it takes you to do tasks. And then you can assess how productive you are by how many Pomodoros you've done. I think that technique and that name come after this episode, obviously,

but that idea of like, my watch buzzes every 10 minutes so that I know, okay, this is what I accomplished in the last 10 minutes. Now what am I going to do in the next 10 minutes is this very productivity-tinged concept,

to me, at least. It does a great job of displaying the character as being someone who has it all figured out, right? He lives a life where he is never in doubt about things. And he should be, which is the... Well, that's Jim's job, right? To show us where he falls down. So this is obviously contrasting with Jim Rockford's lifestyle, which is not particularly measured by time increments. He is very rarely looking at his watch. Yeah.

He enjoys leisure. He came in at what, 6.15 in the morning? Right. Which is one of the few times we see a clock in Jim's trailer. Whenever time needs to be measured, it's usually in context of something. Like I need to be here in an hour, right? If this doesn't happen by tomorrow morning, it's not, this is the precise time and this is how much time I'm going to track as I stake someone out or whatever.

It's 200 a day, not 50 an hour or whatever 25 an hour for an eight-hour workday i can do that so the the time the measuring of time is clearly a character affordance it's telling us something about the character uh was there more to it in this episode i wrote that one down because i wanted to get to the heart of it right uh like what's going on here there's lots of clocks uh but like you said there's not any playing with time and it's not even there's not even a um a countdown or anything like that yeah there's kind of a deadline because it's like this it all has happened before the ship sails or whatever but we're we're not given any feeling of that pressure at all and i don't think we're in right they're intending to i don't think that's a bit that they want us to concern ourselves with as the audience so i guess the way to take this then

and what we can learn from it for our own fiction one of the things that we can learn from it for our own fictions is just the organizing principle of taking these characters, these four characters specifically, Jim, Lance, Ziegler, and Teasdale, and focusing them all around this theme. How do they reflect this theme? That in and of itself is a good way to kind of understand what you're doing with these characters. It's a good way to set them up so that they can illustrate what the other is going to do. It's interesting because they all contrast. They're either reflections of each other or they're oppositional. Then if you do that, then you can do something like have Lance be obsessed with his watch to bring the audience in to that idea, right?

Because you could have set them all up with all of these different relationships to time. But if you didn't have the watch, you wouldn't have a reason for Jim and Lance to talk about it. Then it's just, oh, okay, so the bad guy has a time constraint. You know, like, that's all that there is to it. That's the lesson I'm gonna, I'm gonna use here. Like I said, it was, it definitely sunk into me. I just hadn't quite stitched together what was going on. Well, yeah. So I think the actionable thing there is like, here's a manifestation of the theme that gives the characters a reason to communicate to the audience, you know, why that theme is important and make it more of a character theme than just a recurring motif. Right. We like our recurring motifs.

Don't get me wrong. Yeah, we do. The watch specifically makes it a story element. Yeah. That matters for our understanding of the character. Because what I like about it, and you brought this up, you know, at the end of the review, is that the fact that he still has it doing that through his wedding. Yeah.

That's actually the worst thing about him. Yeah. Right. Like that's where you're like, oh, this, you know, he does have flaws. Right. Like he might be too wrapped up in his own moral sense to realize that this is really annoying. Yeah.

There's no way the new Mrs. White is going to live up to it. Right. Right. Or is going to be like, yeah, it's totally fine that you have this watch that buzzes every 10 minutes, every hour of every day. So that, again, punctures his perfection. Right. Or it's going to be like, yeah, it's totally fine that you have this watch that buzzes every 10 minutes, every hour of every day. So that again, punctures his perfection, right? Nearly perfect, not perfect. Yeah. So I don't know how much there is to really go into here, but the idea of this, of characters being perfect, I usually associate that with some kind of in gaming, we refer to the gm pc or sometimes people you know

it's like authorial self-insertion yeah here comes this character whose entire purpose is to be perfect in some way because they're the author's self-actualization and how that's usually viewed as a pretty bad thing like yeah it'sneyed. It kind of makes it hard to engage with the story. It makes you feel like you're not like the reader isn't really being respected or the players aren't really being respected for what they're bringing to the narrative. This episode takes a character and says, this is a perfect person, but then surrounds them with a context where that is clearly not the case. Yeah. He's only perfect in a certain way. And that is interesting as opposed to being some kind of omniscient observer who comes in and tells

Jim all the things that Jim needs to know and then solves the case. Let's say that there is a phenomena where a body of fiction has existed long enough so that the original authors and creators of it have handed the reins over to the fans and the fans are now writing it. And the main character that was once an interesting, complex character is now just perfect, is right all the time and does all the right things or whatever. Fine. That's one type of perfect story that people do enjoy. I'm not so into that one. But there's the other one where you have a character that like you, I think you were saying at the end there, the character that appears perfect, but isn't quite perfect. And the story is a little bit about how in the beginning, how frustrating it is that they're perfect. And then it turns out they too can grow in some way. And in that story, quite often that character's perfection is more about

the anxiety of a point of view character that has to deal with it. The main character is dating someone and then you meet that person's ex and they just happen to be perfect in all these ways. And now you feel like you're the lowest of the low because you don't meet those expectations. And then something comes out and it's like, oh, it's because you're not like that or whatever. I'm really dismissive about all this and I really shouldn't be. Well, I think that the anxiety thing is helpful because in this episode, the thing that we see very obviously is that there's these two worldviews colliding and that for whatever reason, Lance lives in a world where his worldview works. And that's frustrating for Rockford. Yes.

But Rockford is the one who solves the case. Rockford is the one who has the idea, who has the insight about Teasdale not being dead. Rockford's the one who actually gets on the ship and frees them. Lance does things around the edges that bring the spotlight back to him. Yeah. But Rockford's the one, as is called out by Teasdale at the very end, Rockford's the one who is actually in real danger. There's no anxiety here that Rockford's having that Lance White is exposing, right?

It's not like Rockford wants to be Lance White in any way whatsoever. Except maybe when he sees how he deals with Chapman. Yeah, that may be it. That's the only time there's like jealousy there. Yeah. But what it's doing is showing, I'm not sure if there's a good like pithy phrase for it,

but like anxiety is one way into that. Another is showing some core character-ness. What are Rockford's core competencies, for lack of a better term, and how he still does those better than Lance, even though Lance is perfect in all these other ways. And that actually makes Jim more of a hero, to see him doing that in context with this character who's presented as this epitome of all these similar character traits.

Yeah, and just the incredulousness that he deals with the things that happen around. I mean, I keep thinking of the moment when he pulls the keys out of the visor on the car. That actually gets a little bit into like one of my other bullet points on my checklist here, which is luck. All right. So for Lance White to work and to be inside Lance White's world, there has to be coincidences. There has to be just lucky moments.

All of this stuff has to kind of come down the line. I mean, we talk about them happening in Rockford Files episodes, but quite often they stand out when they happen in Rockford Files episodes because it's not what it's about, right? Yeah, I use the phrase narrative convenience a lot to kind of call those out as like, here's a coincidence that seems to be coming from a place of tying the plot together more than out of a place of following the cause and effect of earlier events. So we get a lot of that to let Lance sort of just wade through an ocean of sharks and not get touched. The way that this episode does it is that it just

slowly ramps them up. Oh, yeah yeah so we start off with rockford being incredulous about them and i do think the key is one of those moments where like i think you said like this is it this is rockford entering lance white's world okay all right this is how this works yeah he's gone through the rabbit hole now yeah the wedding uh the whole ricocheting bullet thing all of that stuff is ridiculous but it's great because we're brought to that point by all these other things that happen. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, which is we can escalate. A lot of time we talk about dramatic escalation or stakes escalation where we go from something less serious to more serious. And this has like genre escalation. Yeah. We're primed for it by Rocky reading the crime novel.

And then every step of the way, we get a little bit more Lance White protagonist genre. If we went directly to the ricocheting bullet in scene two, that would be really weird. But because we ramp up to it and because it's funny and we're engaged with these characters, we obviously know that this is ridiculous, but we're engaged with the story, even when the weird genre things are happening. This happens all the time in fiction. We see this in sequels.

Classically, the Die Hard sequence of movies do this. It ramps it up to like epic proportions. The Fast and the Furious movies. Yeah. And doing it within an episode is really interesting. So I think that that is one thing to kind of think about it. I mean, there's certainly you can go the other route. You can turn Lance White around and have him be some other type of character and play this as deadly serious up into that freak ricochet at the end, and then have everyone go, what was that? And that would work fine.

You just have the characters acknowledge how weird it was. But this route, where Rockford keeps going, that's not how the world works. You can't trust in this stuff. People don't just walk into your office and give you a clue, and then it turns out to be a clue. You know, it just... By doing it

that way i think is a great way to kind of ramp yourself up to the this sort of big ending if that's what you're looking for there's value to the internal inside the story having a character be calling out the genre tropes as they're happening. Yeah. I feel that can be done very poorly, but this is an example of it working. And I think a lot of that is because Rockford stops doing it as the episode goes on. Once they kind of peak with the house in Malibu with the cops and everything, Rockford stops being so incredulous

about every little thing because narratively after they're fired but then they you know want to find out what actually happened as a character he is more invested then and he stops caring as much about trying to tell lance that he's doing it wrong yeah and so that character arc intersects with the that genre ramp in a really nice way where we're primed to see it and then when it happens it's exciting and. And then Rockford kind of, kind of calls back to it. It's like,

I never got off a shot at the end, which is calling out, you know, the fact that Lance is such a lucky shot, but yeah, it doesn't feel overbearing or weird. It's, it's,

it's part of the fabric of it. And that's, as we like to say, part of the craft, part of the writing of the episode, just being strong and, and, and working well.

Another thing I have on this list is that playing with the tropes right like we open with rocky reading the detective novel and then throughout we keep getting what jim sees as inaccuracies in detective fiction thrown in his face right i am often skeptical of things that are said to be critiques of their genre when they end up being just examples of the genre. That happens in horror all the time because they mention that horror movies exist within the realm of the horror movie that you're in. Obviously, they're critiquing horror films and they're just playing with the genre. Self-reference isn't necessarily critique. What happens is, getting on my high horse here, something within a genre reaches the attention of the crowd that doesn't think that they enjoy genre. And they're like, oh, clearly I enjoy it

because it lampoons or, and it's like, no, it's just a very capably done example of the genre. Pursuant to that, I know that you have recently been watching yourself some Maverick. Yes. I have yet to get on that particular horse, even though as I've been doing more reading about the Rockford Files, so much of it is premised on Maverick, but a PI. Yeah. Basically, the entire reason that it exists is because Roy Huggins was like, you know who would make a really good PI? Maverick, but a PI. Yeah. Basically, the entire reason that it exists is because Roy Huggins was like, you know who would make a really good PI?

Maverick. The character of Lance White was inspired by a character in Maverick named Waco Williams. Oh. I was wondering if you've encountered that character in your Maverick viewing. Not yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Well, yeah, because it's a similar relationship your maverick viewing not yet but i'm looking forward to it well yeah because it's a similar relationship where maverick is this kind of not an anti-hero but kind of like a counter genre western yeah and then this character waco williams was like the ur cowboy sheriff coming into town so in terms of deconstructing genre and reaching back and

seeing other examples the rockford files you, has its roots in Maverick. It's no surprise that this deconstruction of its own genre also has its roots in another deconstruction of its own genre. Maverick, I just started watching them. And yeah, it's got its fingerprints all over the Rockford Files. You can see very clearly. So I guess the bigger thesis here is that this deconstruction and this sort of is a way to play with the genre that

you're dealing with, right? Yeah, it doesn't have to be this like highfalutin master's thesis level exploration. Genre gives you all these tools and you can combine them in different ways. And one of the ways is to poke holes in some of it. And some of the tools are to like heighten some of it. And some are to play around and be silly and make some good jokes. What if we had Jim Rockford, but he's more like the detectives in the novels and he's a little too goody two-shoe. What if Jim Rockford had to deal with someone who thinks they're in the detective novel that Jim Rockford wouldn't read because it's too ridiculous?

Yeah. Okay. So there's cautionary tales in this. In particular, when this has been problems for me, when I'm sitting down at a gaming table and we're role playing. Yeah. And we're going to play in a genre. And then somebody is like, well, I'm going to create a character that critiques this genre. Often when people say they're going to do that, what they're doing is they are playing straight to the genre. Or someone takes it as permission to play a character that is going to undermine what's going on in the game. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. As much as I love this episode, I do think trying to bring this episode to a gaming table would be a very difficult thing because you have conflicting views of what the genre provides, right? Like how the reality of this story plays out. Lance White and Jim Rockford do not agree

about how this gets resolved. And ultimately we get Jim Rockford's story about how this is resolved. We don't get Lance White and Jim Rockford do not agree about how this gets resolved. And ultimately, we get Jim Rockford's story about how this is resolved. We don't get Lance White's. So in some Rockford episodes, you could cast them into a game with multiple player characters, right? Like someone's playing Rockford, someone's playing Angel, someone's playing the client who brings them in or whatever. In this one, I don't think Lance White is a player character.

Yeah. He's still there in order to drive a specific kind of story. Yeah. His character choices, by definition, are going to work because the entire narrative is shaping itself around him. There is a mode of play where that is what you're doing, right? Where your characters are self-definitional to the world that they're in. around him. There is a mode of play where that is what you're doing, right? Where like your characters are like self-definitional to the world that they're in. But in the world of the

Rockford Files, it would be very hard, I think, to make principled character decisions and have this story come out of them. You pitch it as you're going to play Dr. Watson, who makes sure that the crime gets solved. Here's your buddy Sherlock who runs around thinking he's solving it. Or even less on the nose is that here's Sherlock, he's going to run around and solve it. Your job is to keep him alive while that's happening. Yeah.

That might be kind of fun. And that's a considerable amount of what Rockford is doing in this episode. Right. But I do think that's something that you could use for your tabletop play from this that you went over earlier is this idea of escalating in this case it's kind of the humor but like escalating the amount of genre as you go like you start out with a low amount and you can bring in more and more whether that's as a a mechanical thing where you have some

kind of currency that you can spend to make genre things happen and you get more as the game goes on or if it's just the the sheer narrative framing of what's going on that could be really fun where you start off with like a starting point of a very mundane situation whether it's a you're revealing a magical world or you're you know or it's like a like a star trek situation where you're moving into like the holodeck. Thinking of, of, of turning up the genre dial slowly could be really fun for play. If there's one thing out of this episode that I'm going to try to play with next, that's probably it. The only other thing I have on this list is a status play. I think that there's two types of status play that take place in this episode that

i think it does it quite well and the first one is the sort of comedic one uh the prime example in this episode is when lieutenant chapman and becker show up at the crime scene and it's so good it's all about elevating lance i'm sorry elevating lancer and dropping uh rockford that's fun yeah uh and then the other one is just how well they sell uh ziggler yeah which is not the same thing that's not a comedic thing that is just people are fearful in his presence and both both how it works in this episode and then how you were talking about it when it first came up makes me think of what's honestly probably one of my absolute favorite parts of the original star Wars trilogy. The moment at the beginning of a return of the Jedi,

where the emperor comes to the second death star and Vader, who throughout the first two movies has been set up as the biggest, baddest, most evil guy in the galaxy shows deference to the emperor. And that transitions the entire weight of villainy in a way that was like kind of unimaginable at the end of the second movie. Taking someone who we know is bad news and then showing how they react to another person has so much power in a way that is just like really satisfying to see in this

episode and how it's handled very quickly, but effectively. And it's a one, two punch, right? Like first it's the two goons showing him so much reference and respect, even while not really understanding why. Yeah. That's good. It's a good moment where they're like, we'll get you anything you want. And then they leave the room and they're like what is this guy's deal like why are they've had it scared into them yeah the second punch is when we see victor who has all the coding of mob boss important guy sweating and being deferential and being terrified yeah of this old man yeah it's so good it's a great technique. I'm always a fan for pressure on the opposition. We don't get a whole lot of the bad guys in this one, but they feel like they're trapped between a couple of things.

Like they're trapped between Ziggler and, you know, the great moment when Brad steps out of the car. He's like, well, you're not going to shoot me. Cause if you shoot me, then you'll have to shoot the next guy. And whatever, it's got to stop somewhere. It might as well be me. Yeah. And we see that victor like through that conversation we see that victor is screwed yeah like nobody's gonna give ziggler what he wants that's a really

scary place to be and in a regular rock for files episode that would be all sorts of a mess right this was being played for as a more serious story. It would be terrifying to see what Ziegler would do once he realizes that he's not going to get what he wants, but he has this woman in his power that could be very dark. But I guess thankfully for us, this is a Lance White episode. And so it ends in a marriage. It ends in a marriage. Well, I don't think we're going to end this one on a marriage. But we may perhaps have joined Jim Rockford in making a little bit of money.

Yeah, I think this joins the pantheon of great episodes. Agreed. Absolutely agreed. So that's it for now. But you'll hear from us again when we talk about

another episode of The Rockford Files.