Two Hundred A Day - Episode 27: Feeding Frenzy

Episode Date: February 11, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S3E4 Feeding Frenzy. Jim's ex-girlfriend's father has been sitting on a literal pile of money that he accidentally stole, and now he wants Jim's help giving it back without repercussions. However, he's not alone in knowing about the score, and now all the sharks are circling in order to get that half million dollars for themselves! A suggestion from one of our Patreon backers, this episode has a great pace, snappy dialogue and features one of the greatest set-piece hostage exchanges in Rockford Files history - but there are some unclear thematic elements that, while they don't take away from the story, do make it a bit of an incoherent viewing experience. That said, this one is an atypical and well-worth-seeing episode! 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 This episode also includes: "Super Circus" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 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.

Hi, this is the Happy Pet Clinic. Your father gave us this number when he left town. The Calico Stray had six kittens. Please come get them. Today. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epi Dyer Ravishaw. Our episode coming your way today is quite the frenzy. What are we talking about today, Epi? We are talking about Season 3, Episode 4. The title is Feeding Frenzy, which I am going to freely admit that not until this very moment do I understand what the title is about. Maybe we'll talk about that when it becomes more obvious in the show. But I just had that moment, you know, when you suddenly realize that the Beatles,

it's a pun. Well, so we're doing this episode at the suggestion of one of our gumshoes over on Patreon. So thanks to Victor DeSanto for calling this out as one that we might want to take a look at. That's a good call. Yeah. He mentions that it kind of has a different sensibility to it than a lot of Rockford episodes, especially in the first couple of seasons. It's my editorial.

I think it kind of stands out amongst other season two, season three episodes. And we'll go into that as we talk about it. But yeah, he brought it to our attention and I'm glad he did. So thank you, Victor. And if you want to have the inside line to telling us what to do,

check out the Patreon at patreon.com slash 200 a day. And I would urge you to do it sooner rather than later. We've done the math. We only have four and a half years left of this podcast. You want to get in before that's over. Exactly. Well, speaking of numbers, this is a good number and money episode.

So I hope you have your calculator at your fingertips there, Epi. I do. I do. I do. Always. Feeding Frenzy. This one is another, another episode directed by Russ Mayberry.

We're getting through most of his filmography here on the Rockford Files. This is the fifth of his episodes that we're talking about. Wow. Including a couple that I think we both really like. The Oracle Wears a Cashmere Suit and Hotel of Fear. So you can go back in our archives to find those but yeah maybe he'll be the first uh rockford files director that will do the full the full body of work we only have two more to go right yeah there's a lot of like good not showy

camera work in this um and then also some fun like very dramatic framing yeah uh which i like i think is kind of a bit of a signature of his at this point um and it was written by a duo uh lester burke and donald gold who wrote a couple other episodes including the final episode of the rockford files that ever aired was written by them and i'd say unlike the other duo of writers that we've talked about before in our just by accident episode uh they seem to have their finger on the pulse of of good rockford adventure yeah and i don't know if you looked into their credits at all but lester burke was the uh unit production manager on the show apparently i think for the whole run of it so he he knew what he was talking about uh he was also

an assistant director on the tv movies in the 90s. Oh, he's got a lot of Airwolf credits too. Yeah, both of these guys have tons of production credits between production management, some directing, some producing. Donald Gold was an assistant director on Miami Vice for a little while and produced the Diagnosis Murder show. Lots of credits, lots of work. Yeah. But this does have a bit of a atypical nature to it from other rockford scripts i'd say so it's a nice change of pace but yeah so with that i don't know demographic info in mind let's get into our preview montage all right well so we see the preview montage and it lets us know that we're in for a kidnapping. Then there'll be threats and then there'll be cop threats. And I like that.

I like when there's both types of threats. And then finally, it ends with a lovely scene between James Garner and, I'm not going to be able to pronounce this guy's name, right? George Weiner? W-Y-N. I'm going to go with Weiner that we'll talk about when we get to.

But letting us know that there's humor involved in all of this kidnapping and threat. We also get a nod towards the fact that this episode will center on some question of $500,000. Half a mil. 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, radiovsthemartians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday evening podcast all-stars actual play podcast, found at misdirectedmark.com. Lowell Francis with his award-winning gaming blog at ageofravens.blogspot.com. Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, and Chris. And finally, big thank yous to Victor DeSanto 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. All right, so we get started with some lovely piano music over a beautiful night scene as Rockford and a woman who we quickly learn is an old girlfriend of his named Sandy are having dinner at a beachside restaurant of some kind.

Sandy is played by Susan Howard, who was on Dallas for a while around this time. One of our featured roles of someone who the audience probably would have recognized. Right. Yeah. Though she doesn't really have a whole lot to do in this episode, unfortunately, other than be kidnapped. A couple times. Spoiler.

I do like their back and forth here. This is sort of in that genre of bittersweet past romance, right? As they go back and forth, their relationship obviously was a contentious one. They burned like a house on fire, as it were. And they're having this sort of back and forth about it until Rockford is like, okay, yeah, but why? Why am I here? What do you want from me?

He knows that she's not going to call him up just for old time's sake. And it turns out that her father, who is a friend of rockford's who sells bait on the pier as we come to learn but her father's in some kind of trouble and needs needs jim's help and so she made the overture to get him involved she says that she wants to go somewhere more private to talk about it and they leave which makes me assume that they've already eaten uh We do not get to see them eat on camera. So we don't get to see what Rockford ate at this fancy restaurant. But he tries to pay the bill.

They're charged for something. And there's a back and forth about who gets to pay the bill there. She doesn't want to put up with his macho routine trying to pay for the bill, even though she invited him out for it. trying to pay for the bill, even though she invited him out for it. As they leave the restaurant, in the first of these kind of subtle but very effective camera work moments that I mentioned earlier, the camera pans to follow them as they leave and then focuses on a pair of guys in another booth who are clearly watching them, keeping tabs on them. I noted them down as the relaxed mustache guy and the nervous denim guy.

The relaxed mustache guy. He's denim guy the relaxed mustache guy he's the one in the pink shirt right like the really really pink shirt the guy who looks like he he might have a side gig as a village person perhaps yeah yeah that mustache there's plenty of menace in what's going on with these two though like the relaxed mustache guy is, they're negotiating to get him hired to do something clearly dangerous and illegal involving Sandy, right? Because they're focusing on her. Yeah, and he, the mustache guy, holds out for 500 bucks. He was first offered two yards. Two yards.

And so the denim guy is clearly desperate. He's nervous and something is going on. Yeah, that's the other bit that really adds to the menace of this situation is that this guy, you wouldn't trust this guy with anything with how he's behaving. Whatever is putting pressure on him has got his nerves shot. We get the intro credits over a nice pan pan of the the beach area near where rockford lives um and we kind of end that at the pier it's the next day sandy is talking to her dad charlie charlie is played by eddie firestone who has been in two episodes that we've talked about before but i think in such minor roles that i do not remember who he was in them he was in

charlie harris at large and two into 556 won't go i think he's the guy that he goes up to rockford goes up to the house and oh you're right he talked that he's like the undertaker guy yeah with the kids who stole his limo yeah just full of personality. Yeah. We definitely talked about him in that episode because that was a great side character bit. Yeah, he's just got a face for it. Yeah, he plays a character named Haynes in Charlie Harris at Large. I do not remember who. Yeah, I don't remember that one. Anyway, he is basically the non-Rockford protagonist in this one. So it's nice to see him kind of sink his teeth into into a bit of a role i feel like and we'll probably get into this as we go on um his arc and his part in this episode is at odds with everything else

that's in this episode yeah he's having like a really dramatic arc and he's having a really tragic sort of you know not to give away too, but why are you listening to us if you don't want to give it away? The tone around him is going to be separate from the tone around everyone else. We'll get into it, but I think it's interesting watching what's going on with him. Well, we'll talk about this more in depth later, but I feel like his character here is also pretty different from most Rockford Files characters because it's essentially it's essentially a study in a weak person yeah and we don't have too many of those um especially not

ones that aren't played for comedy as well because even when he's in scenes that have some humor to them he's not very funny like he's not a humorous yeah he's part of he's not the humor exactly yeah yeah um but sandy has told rockford that charlie's in trouble uh and he goes into how there was a he made a bad mistake three years ago but now the statute of limitations has run out and that's why he's coming to rockford he doesn't know if that's the right thing to do and she says well since he was in prison he knows about these kinds of things so we know that this between the statute of limitations and the prison uh reference you know this is clearly some kind of illegal activity has happened i'm just like imagining this from sandy's point of view where charlie her dad gets into the kind of trouble where she has to

go to her ex-con ex-boyfriend to resolve it. We still don't know the trouble yet as the audience members. But I'm already trying to like suss it out. I mean I vaguely recall this episode from before. I don't remember the plot itself. But I remember certain elements of it. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But just what kind of trouble this guy is up to or has been up to.

And that it would put her in that kind of uncomfortable situation not that jim makes the situation uncomfortable at all jim is in fact the perfect person to go to for this but on paper just i would hate to do that like i would hate to be like in a situation where one of my parents is like i need you to talk to an ex for any reason yeah for any reason. It creates a big dramatic question right at the beginning of the episode. Like, from the very beginning, we're waiting to find out what this thing is. Rockford arrives to talk to Charlie.

Sandy peaces out. She did what she was there to do, so she leaves. Charlie's clearly very nervous, and he needs to show Rockford something to explain all of this. He kind of, he says something about how he hates to drag a friend into this. And Rockford has a great quote. It's very essential to the Rockford character. We're friends. If you need some help, I'd be glad to help.

Rockford is a good friend. That's part of who he is. So this is a great statement. And it's verifiably untrue about Rockford. Because if Angel came to him with the exact same problem. I feel like there's an asterisk on friends with Angel. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. Like that's different from being a friend with anyone else. Right, right. We get a nice cut to seeing Charlie opening a safety deposit box that is full of cat. And this is where we get the line from the preview montage of it's a little over $500,000. Rockford's palms are sweating because that amount of money makes him nervous. If they're itching, that means money's coming to him. But if they're sweating, that means he's scared to death. I do love his appreciation for this. And it comes up a couple times in the episode where he's like, this isn't something to just throw around this isn't just a pressure to hook on your

your characters here this is this is a terrifying amount of money to have exist in your possession because of the danger it attracts which we'll see uh charlie says that he stole the money three years ago and he's just been he's been nervous about it ever since. And then we transition to the fuller explanation as the two of them put it back and go walk around in a park to chat about all this stolen money. So Charlie worked for an oil company called Sewell in some kind of senior position. There was a lot of pressure and he was starting to break up. His marriage was dissolving. He was having all kinds of trouble.

He was drinking and he knew that there was money left around in the office to pay out like oil leases or something. So he just knew there was cash around and kind of thought like, oh, maybe I should steal some of it. Apparently, he got drunk one night at work, got so drunk that he passed out in the storeroom and got locked in, woke up, found a safe box and decided to steal it because he was so drunk. He couldn't open it, so he just stole the entire thing. And apparently once he figured out how to get it open and sobered up and realized that it was full of $500,000 of his employer's money, he knew if he tried to return it then he'd be arrested

so he put it in the safety deposit box quit his job and started a new life selling bait on the pier but now the statute of limitations on that kind of robbery is three years it's going to run out at midnight it's running or just ran out something like that and he wants to give it back because he just doesn't want it like he's like just the thought of it makes him so nervous and so sick. Yeah. He just wants to preserve his life as it is now and just give it back. But he doesn't want to give it back in person because he doesn't want there to be press and he doesn't want to have any kind of like he just wants his life to continue how it is just with this money not in it anymore. Yeah, exactly.

And you can really empathize with him. Yeah, exactly. And you can really empathize with him. I mean, I've never stolen half a million dollars, which I mean, again, we got to talk about the exchange rate here. That's a couple million dollars. Yeah, it's almost two and a half million. Yeah, something like that. So I've never stolen that much. But I can imagine wanting to make good on something bad, but also like to put it behind you, but not to like make it present again. Yeah. Like I have the means to pay the debt. Let's just pay it and just walk away from it. We start to see this picture of Charlie as like, he he's someone who's, who's done some things he's not proud of and he wants to make them right, but he's not strong enough in himself to just suck it up and do it yeah this is kind of the refrain that we're going to get throughout the episode he's hung up on these things that he

doesn't like about himself but he's not able to push through and make them right without help from someone else and that's why jim's there uh jim says that he'll think about it he because that is after all a whole lot of money yeah he has he has a great line about it. Because that is, after all, a whole lot of money. Yeah, he has a great line about it too, like where he's like, I like to feel around the edges before I sign. Like, maybe when we're done with this, we should just put together a book of Jim Rockford's advice for life. Because there's a lot of things he says where it's just like, yeah, you should be more like that. That is good general advice. Yes. The camera kind of pans away from them as they walk through this park to see a guy in a suit in a car watching them.

He then goes to a payphone and makes a call to someone who, once we see him on the other end of the line, his name's Grady. And he has great sideburns. Yes. They have a bit of conversation that implies heavily that grady just got out of prison maybe or got out of some kind of thing he was stuck in but now this ultimate score has come around and they need to meet in half an hour neither of these guys are the same as the first two guys i have in my notes here so many goons there's a a lot of goons. Yeah, we're starting to pile them up. So we cut from here to a dark alley where our guy who was wearing denim earlier, we quickly learned that his name is Mickey.

He's stumbling through this alley and he gets jumped by two new guys. Yes. In mob suits. Yeah, yeah. They're dressed in the way that codes them as mafia. dressed in the way that codes them as mafia and these two goons make short work of him pin him down and start giving him the what for because he's overdue on some kind of debt and he has two days to make it right and he's and he starts stammering he has a big score coming in he has a big thing coming in he made an investment and it's due to mature yes and so these goons are

like well all right you can explain this big score to Lucy. And they throw him in the back of a car with the dramatic backlit silhouette of a smaller man, clearly the boss, in the backseat. Cut to Rockford handing a $100 bill over to someone. This episode has a good pace to it where it just like really moves right along. There's a lot that it packs in. The tangled web of plot lines that are going on i shouldn't say plot lines i should say plots you have charlie trying to get something done you got rockford trying to help charlie that's fine you've got our nervous guy in denim uh who who's got an angle and then uh you've got the the goons that we just met just before this scene we don't know what their deal is but they're angle and then uh you've got the the goons that we just met just before this scene we don't

know what their deal is but they're following and then these goons with lucy it's just the the whole mess of it going on right now there are already three groups of goons yeah we're like barely into the episode rockford is in the office of a uh a lawyer for sewell, Steinberg, who is played by a guy that we both were like, oh, that's a guy we've seen in lots of stuff. Yeah. George Weiner. Yes. Most notably from Spaceballs.

He's in a couple other episodes of The Rockford Files as well as a million things through the 80s and 90s. And I think he's still acting. He's still working. He's still working. He's still in TV shows. Anyway, this is a great comedic scene, even as it advances the plot. Rockford plays this angle.

It's not really a con. He's not really lying. He's being elusive. Because he doesn't want to give this company anything that's going to bounce back on him any more than possible. So he keeps on mentioning like things like uh repentance and he's just an angel coming down yeah he's the bright light in sewell's next quarterly statement

and he he has steinberg check the serial number on this hundred dollar bill and of course he has all the paperwork right at hand which is very convenient but he has the money and he wants a safe way to return it without any authorities or press and so this whole time the lawyer's like oh i should go get the like director and he should really talk to you yeah yeah rockford how about you do this thing i want you to do first like what are you scared of me you think i'm a criminal good banter this scene yeah this scene is great because like watching steinberg get more and more affable the more nervous he gets like he really wants he wants to be jim's friend he's trying to keep everything calm by keeping jim calm but you could tell that he's not he's getting more and more nervous the more friendlier

he gets with jim and jim is trying to calm down by getting friendly with him so it's this uh echo chamber yeah it's good jim ends with some more comments about like down at the not at the monastery but like down at the um there's the parish he clearly indicates the mission yeah at the mission so he he ends his spiel with saying like down at the mission this this and the other and you see the the pieces fall into place for Steinberg. He's like, you're a priest. Yes. So it's kind of a broad comedy, right? It's very like, waka, waka, waka.

But it works because they're both good. Yeah. Yeah, they're both good. And they have good chemistry. I want to talk just a teeny bit about the structure here. Because it's certainly something that he's seeding for. As you were saying, his language is very like... Like messianic kind of yeah yeah but is he like because he comes in he's not running a con in the beginning and

then at the end realizes he needs to button it up with a con weinberg needs something to be like oh that's what that guy's deal is yeah so like that's the thing like i wonder about this scene if if rockford not james gardner but rockford decided to play it as uh a priest trying to be, that's the thing. Like, I wonder about this scene if, if Rockford, not James Gardner, but Rockford decided to play it as a priest trying to be coy at from the very beginning. Or if by the end of this conversation, he's like, I just need, I need a con to get me out of here. I'm just gonna make this guy think I'm a priest and then we'll be done with it. I think it's fun either way. But like when I first saw it, that was the second way was the way i read it and i was like huh i kind of feel that way also because i feel like at the beginning of the scene he's being ironic he's being dry and and kind of sarcastic yeah like my read of it was kind of like obviously he's not going to tell the he's not going to say who he really is right so he's just going to use this thing just to keep the other guy off balance and then maybe he's just like okay i have to give him something or maybe it's all it was all just play the scene for laughs james you know the other like important thing that happened in this scene here is when and i i felt my stomach go out when when he was like oh the

statute of limitations is up and you see max checkup paper as if he had that written down somewhere yeah you you know when rogford says the statue of limitations ended yesterday somebody has to have done the math wrong yeah don't cut it that razor thin right like give it at least one more week just just one more week we'll get into this and there's a there's a scene about this and that's where i wanted to bring this up again but they're talking about the statue of limitations very specifically through the whole first half of the episode. Like, I feel like in this scene that Steinberg figures that out

in the middle of the conversation and doesn't want to let on. And it just makes him more of that nervous giddy that he's got going there, which is good. I think that makes sense given the rest of the episode. Well, we cut from there to rockford going going back to the bailock house back to uh charlie's house these beachside properties uh deep cut this is apparently the same house that was used as rocky's house in sleight of hand remember how

we talked about like what was what up with that house? Yeah. Okay. Same set. Anyway, Rockford knocks on the door and the door is opened, apparently, by a goon in a Halloween mask. Yes. Which is like a big ghoulish rubbery mask, which is a great piece of visual comedy. Yeah. Rockford immediately shoves him and starts trying to overpower him as he also has a gun in his hand. But there are three of these goons in Halloween masks. They overpower Rockford. They hustle Sandy out of the house and into a car.

And then there's a bit of a shootout back and forth. Rockford manages to shoot the hubcap off of the car with the dropped gun. Yeah. But one of them shoots his firebird right in the hood. And that apparently did something to the engine because when he jumps in his car, it will not start. Yeah. Nice shootout at a lovely location.

You got goons in masks so that we as audience members don't know which set of three goons. They are wearing suits, though. So, yeah, it's not like a huge mystery. This gets solved pretty quickly. But I do. I did like that. No, no. You don't get to know yet what's going

on that's a good call i didn't think about that uh then rockford and charlie uh are hanging out with rocky apparently rocky is now involved yeah probably he needs a car right yeah it's funny rocky's in this episode he's in this scene and in another scene there's never really a reason given for him to be there yeah and he doesn't really do anything presumably he knows charlie well as sort of emotional support you might call rocky over because sandy just got kidnapped right like charlie as we'll find out charlie's not particularly good with stress right and and jim probably thinks he's gonna have to move around and so he wants to leave someone yeah charlie so but anyway uh rockford is saying that they need to call the cops but charlie is very insistent that he doesn't want the cops

involved he just wants to make the trade someone must know about him and the money they've been waiting for the statute of limitations to run out just like he has and now that it has they grabbed sandy to yeah extort the money from him Rockford keeps pushing him to call the cops, but Charlie is hung up on, he made the mistake, so he needs to make it right. He doesn't want to put her in any more danger, and he's able to fix this, because if they want the money, he has the money.

They can just do it, and he doesn't want it anyway, right? Like, he wants to get rid of the money anyway. He just needs Jim's help to make it right. And so Rockford does kind of give in to this appeal. I'll keep helping you. Yeah. Now, especially now that someone's in danger, right? Like he's not going to just walk away.

And Charlie is really adamant that the police don't get involved. Yeah. So there's a thing in this scene. I, at this point, I'm starting to wonder, because i'm more suspicious than jim if jim's being played in some yeah me too i felt like it was weird how adamant charlie was about not getting the police involved right i didn't know where i knew susan howard from like but when i saw her i was like oh i recognize her this is a she's a big star at the time. So using that sort of audience meta knowledge, I thought, hmm, maybe they're faking a kidnapping to make it look like they got rid of the money. And then they'll have, you know, I couldn't.

Rockford's pinned with the crime and they get the money or something. Yeah, something like along those lines has happened to Rockford a couple of times. I also thought that it was weird how adamant he was about no police, but other than his kind of like character motivation, there isn't really, they don't come back to this. There's not really a reason. Um, I think it's just to reinforce how guilty he feels and how he doesn't want to make it more complicated than it has to be. Yeah. And I think this goes along with what I was saying before about him being kind of in a

different tone with the rest of it. Yeah. This is a horrible moment for him. His daughter's been kidnapped because of something that he did three years ago. He is responsible. And again, he just wants to get rid of it and go back to the life that he had. He's trying to just keep it together. Rockford insists on doing the negotiations, which is smart.

And we have this great sequence where they wait for the phone call. They get it. It is, in fact, our mob boss guy, Lucy, on the other end. But Rockford, because he knows that they don't have any of the power here, immediately makes it seem like he's the one in charge. Yes. He takes command as soon as he's on the phone, which is a really great piece of Rockford judo,

like turning the whole situation to be called on his terms instead of Lucy's terms. It's a fun status drop thing that's going on here, right? Like Lucy calls and he's a mob boss calling uh with a hostage and rockford makes him feel like he's the one who's not holding any cards right uh it's a good bluff and it pays off he he acts like he doesn't really care about her but he has an interest in the money he makes it sound like they care more about getting the money than he cares about getting sandy and lucy believes him um i also like this because the back and forth uh camera wise all the shots of lucy are this like

upshot of him he looks very serious but then he gets more and more agitated as rockford keeps hanging up on him and like waiting for him to call back and stuff. And he starts to look more and more ridiculous over the course of the conversation. It's really good. So Rockford negotiates a deal to make one of the most memorable hostage handoffs in Rockford files or possibly all of television history. We're going to spend a good amount of time on this next scene, yeah. The exchange at the ice rink. So Rockford picks a skating rink to do the handoff.

There's lots of people there. And as he explains to Charlie, you know, no one's going to bring skates. You're going to have to walk out in your straight shoes on the ice, which means no sudden movements. It's just going to keep everyone at the lowest key possible. Charlie wants to make the actual exchange. and this is kind of his character statement. He has to prove it to himself that he can fix his own mistakes. As they're waiting for the goons to arrive, there's another note about Rockford's sweaty palms. He starts wiping his hands off with a handkerchief. Yeah, yeah. they've got half a mil just sitting there.

Then we get into the actual exchange. What I love about this, there are lots of things that are great about this scene, but the carnival music in the background the whole time, because that's like the skating. Yeah, it's diegetic, right? Like it's the skate rink music. So it's a great counterpoint, right,

to the seriousness of the scene. Not only do we get to hear that as we watch all these very serious men do this all this very serious stuff, we also get a mob accountant with a calculator. This mob accountant is played by Jack Gardner, Jim's older brother. So that's a fun bit.

He's in many episodes of the Rockford Files in lots of tiny roles. But more importantly, this calculator, I am fairly confident it is a TI-1250. This is a Texas Instrument calculator. It's got a red LED screen, which is nice. Doesn't have many features. It's kind of a cheap calculator. At the time, there are many calculators out there with more features that an accountant would likely have.

Do you feel like this might be his travel calculator? Because he's just doing simple arithmetic. I've invested a lot of time in thinking about this calculator. To be clear, the purpose of the calculator is that he comes over, looks at the money, checks to make sure that it's all money and not newspaper or whatever, and then presumably uses the calculator to verify the amount based on the stacks of bills that are in the briefcase. If that's all you're using it for, perfectly fine. or whatever, and then presumably uses the calculator to verify the amount based on the stacks of bills that are in the briefcase. If that's all you're using it for, perfectly fine.

It's got the features that you want, the plus, the minus, the times, the divide. It even has like a memory function. So that's great. It is new. It came out, I think, the year before. The thing about it is it only has eight digits, right? So if he's doing math with, there are six digits in the amount of money if you don't count the cents places. If you do count the cents places, he's halfway to the limit of his calculator.

Are you saying that this calculator cannot be used to calculate in excess of a million dollars well if you include the the pennies and dimes then yes okay but the thing is is that there are calculators at that time that are out that an accountant would have that would do far fancier calculations than this would and they would fit in the pocket. All right. So my rule of thumb is, if you're going to buy a calculator, you should spend at least a day's wage on this calculator. And this one at the time probably cost him about $25. I'm just saying, I don't think he's a particularly good accountant or he just works with pretty bad tools is what I'm saying. I mean, I am impressed that they're like, well, this is enough money that we should, we should do some math and make sure we're getting what we're promised.

No, and it's actually a handsome looking calculator that like I like the red display and also the that era of Texas instrument feels very Rockford-y. Like they have the same like it fits in with Rockford's color scheme with his clothing and his car and silver and bronze and all that. So, yeah, I think visually it was a good choice. But I would have gone with an HP calculator, honestly. Noted. Well, once the dramatic peak of seeing the calculator come out has occurred, he does, in fact, verify the amount of money. They bring out Sandy from the back.

And this is all just visual action. We get the two sides slowly walking out onto the ice while the skaters so with the background music we also have the sound of the skates on the ice right and then as the two groups walk out to the center and all the people there who are skating for pleasure realize that something's going on those sounds gradually disappear until at the moment that they do the exchange uh charlie hands over the money the goons let her walk over to him there are no skate sounds and it's just the music and everyone's watching them they're in a circle of civilians on ice skates and then as the two groups break from each other and walk back to the other two sides people start gradually skating again and then it comes back to like the pre exchange noise level.

Oh, it's so good. I love this scene. First of all, it's a classic Rockford setup. Like it's something that Rockford would think through. Like he describes in the beginning, you're not going to have sudden movements on ice. It's a public spot. But the other thing I love is just,

you know, every single one of those skaters went home and told the story about how they saw a public spot. But the other thing I love is just, you know, every single one of those skaters went home and told the story about how they saw a hostage exchange. Like nobody there doesn't think that that was a hostage exchange. Yeah, it was very clear. Yeah, it was just very, very well done and really eerie watching them kind of one by one slow down to a stop and just watch what happened it was well played there are a lot of reasons to watch this episode but like that scene is worth watching just if you want to see a good tv scene again i've seen almost all the rockford files before but i have like a i

have a poor memory and you know can't remember uh but nathan you posted an image of the open briefcase with the calculator online because he knew that i would dig the calculator and it wasn't that i recognized the calculator it's that that image set off the rink image in my head like oh really i saw that i i was like why do i think he's in an ice skating rink? Like, what's going on in my head here? And then I remembered that scene and I was like, it's that episode. And it's not even, it's that episode. It's that scene. That's the part that really sticks with me. It was such a good scene.

We could have ended the episode there and I would have been happy. Dramatic tension is resolved. We have a great scene. But we're not even, we're barely to the halfway point. There's a lot more to go. We do have a quick coda to that. They're in the car. Apparently he got the firebird fixed by now.

Sandy's okay. And she's proud of her dad. Everyone is proud of Charlie. He did it. He sucked it up. He made it right. Well done, Charlie.

Rockford takes them to a motel, presumably to lay low while he gets the rest of the money handled because he has to go talk to Sewell. Well, he has to go tell them, like, not returning that money anymore. Right. They just gave the money he was going to return to the mob. And as he leaves the motel parking lot, we have another pan over to see the guy, Grady, who we saw receive the telephone call earlier. He's watching the hotel from a car across the street. With both of his sideburns. So whatever happened with those goons, this goon situation

over here is still in play. Rockford rolls back up to the pier. He doesn't even get to his trailer. His trailer is not even in this episode, actually. Yeah. As he gets out of his car, he's immediately arrested by two police officers they they put him in handcuffs get him in the car he's getting arrested on a charge of accessory after the fact and they also find his unregistered firearm in his uh in his waistband there's a great back and forth here like when the cop shows he just has no respect for these cops like no not at all. It's kind of like, oh, I'm being arrested again.

Now what? Yeah. He's like, put your hands up. He's like, why? Are we going to play patty cake? And then when he's being put in the car, one of the cops compliments the other. Jim's like, I thought it was a little sloppy. There's a lot of good Rockford one-liners in this scene.

And he mentions that, you know, Sergeant Becker, he's down at the station and they're like, oh, well, then he can sign your arrest paper. And sure enough, we go to Rockford and Becker at the police station. All that Becker knows is that this is about the Sewell robbery. Rockford's like, even if I knew anything about that, the statute of limitations ran out. So what do they have on me becker's like i don't know i'm not in charge but he's he's a little steamed because he's always dealing with rockford getting arrested and he has a line which i think is a wonderful encapsulation of the becker rockford relationship once a month i'm locked up in a room with you with the tape running it's really starting to put a strain on our friendship yeah oh that's good stuff this transitions transitions to our next big reveal where Lieutenant Hall appears. Lieutenant Hall is not from this district. He's from some other district. He does not appear in any other episodes, which makes sense given how this one ends up. But he is a police lieutenant. He clearly has a bad attitude.

He dismisses Becker. And yeah, he's like, we have you cold for accessory to a burglary after the fact rofford makes a clear appeal that that makes no sense not only can they not tie him to the crime or the person who did it the statute of limitations on that ran out at midnight lieutenant hall says that whoever's watching your clock needs to check his math or something i don't know who you have on your payroll but your timekeeper you need a new timekeeper or something along those lines he's like this is a mistake that lots of criminals make they start the clock when they commit the crime but the state starts the clock when the report is filed and that didn't happen for another day or whatever the statute of limitations has not yet run out dun dun dun oh it's so good it's a nice reveal because it's like resolving that yeah question

and jim you can see on jim's face so hall threatens legal harassment basically even if he can slide out of those charges he's going to find other things to charge him with including for breathing my air rockford wants to know why he has such a beef with him and he says that he's seen his sheet and he keeps sliding out of charges. He keeps on having them dropped. Who does he know? Who does he have a handle on? Right.

You know, is it Becker? This, of course, puts Rockford's back up. He fires back that if any of his constitutional rights are trampled, he's going to feed Hall his back. Hall has him taken out to be to be booked in the in the lockup upstairs or whatever. So, like I said, I like the reveal of the statuteup upstairs or whatever so like i said i like the reveal of the statute of limitations because that's kind of a fun like okay so that's why that was such a big deal however in other episodes we've had a lot of really complimentary things to say about jim rockford and his knowledge of the law yeah i was using it to his advantage

while i understand how this is the central conceit of this episode and that's fine i was a little bit of like don't you think jim would be up on how statues of limitations work to form this would be something that jim would have to tell angel yeah when angel's in the middle of thinking he's he cut off scott free and then jim would be like no angel it's when they file the report you know like it just feels like the kind of little nuance a mistake that a criminal would make that jim is just clever enough to not yeah that's it doesn't like ruin the episode or anything but it did kind of make me go like really so here's here's my read that might resolve that though is that

charlie clearly doesn't know that that's how the law works, which makes sense because Charlie's not really a criminal. Right. And so does Jim trust that Charlie knows what he's talking about enough that he didn't pin him down about exactly what the timeline was? Right. Charlie has been nervous about this. Clearly, he must know exactly when he can give it back. Yeah. yeah uh so whatever he's telling me must be true and he doesn't check it out himself i'll go with that so there's no textual support for that that's my interpretation to make it cohesive with jim rockford attorney at law that's in my head but yeah after the after the other officers take jim, Lieutenant Hall makes a radio call to, as it turns out, Grady, who is still waiting across from the hotel, and says, take her down. And sure enough, he puts on a ski mask, goes over to the hotel, feeds her a line of bull about being the manager, grabs her, and takes her back out to the car.

The ski mask is when all of it suddenly doesn't feel like official cop business, right? Yeah. Because presumably they're after the thieves or the thief and she could be involved in it. Another accessory after the fact or anything like that. It all feels very on the up and up. And then he puts on a ski mask and you're like, what the ever living. Yeah. Because that was like a call from the police station.

Yeah. On an official radio to like a code, like an agent in the field. But then clearly he's not a cop. Right. Our next scene is another short but very sweet piece where Beth Davenport, Jim's attorney, has sprung him of the two felony counts and is walking out with him out of the police station. Rockford wants to take her car because he's going to need to be mobile. She has this delightful little orange Porsche, which is fantastic. But she needs to get to court, so they both call for a cab.

So Beth looks him in the eye and says, Give me $10. Yes. He makes a joke about that's all she wants for springing him on two felony counts. Yeah. And she's like, no, that's for the cab. I always seem to do the legal work for free. And he seems a little abashed.

Yeah. I mean, like, this is great. He's got a very genuine regret for not being up on his legal bills here. I mean, not so much that he'll pay them, but. He does seem ashamed of not paying yes this is also where i realized that he is not going to get paid any money during this episode yeah exactly and there's another thing about this scene well there's a couple things about this scene that i like one is that i've been waiting for it since the credits whatever i know beth's in this one yeah like yeah uh but also in the

very previous scene before um lieutenant hall started throwing all the charges at him you keep slipping out of you know charges dropped you know like blah blah i just see a bunch of charges dropped all over your sheet yeah and he thought it was becker but this this is why. It's not Dennis. It's Beth. Beth is the reason why she's his secret weapon. Sure enough, he redlines her convertible on the way out of the parking lot. Bye, Beth. It was nice to see you. See you next

episode. Yep. He goes back to Charlie's, but Charlie has crawled back into the bottle. He is drunk. Drunk in despair. I think after the high of finally making something happen, the low of having his daughter kidnapped again has just sent him spiraling. Rockford has no patience for this.

He shoves him into the shower, turns it on to sober him up. It's almost harrowing how he's begging Rockford not to do this, right? Like, he just doesn't want to face reality. Yeah. He just wants to wallow in the fact that he's messed up again, even though it's not really his fault. I mean, in the large scale it is because none of this would be happening if he hadn't stolen the money. But in terms of assigning agency, like of all the things that

have happened in this episode, this was actually the least his fault. Right. But he is, his tone for this episode is so tragic and so pathetic in the, the sense that like he is, he is a character without like, there's no hope for him right now. It's not at odds with the,

with the rest of the, the tone of the show, but it just is highlights it by how how more serious and tragic it is underlying it yeah and we go from like a comedic scene with beth yeah to this very dramatic scene where charlie is is at the bottom of his particular well and he keeps on saying he says uh you know leave me alone get away from me what gives you the right yeah what gives you the right to be involved? And that gets Rockford heated, I think.

And it's like, you invited me into this. That's what gives me the right. And now that I'm into this, I want to get Sandy back. Yeah. He's kind of like, this isn't about you. Right. Another character thing with Rockford Wright is like, even when he makes bad choices, he owns them. Right.

And he's very big on personal responsibility. when he makes bad choices he owns them right and he's very big on personal responsibility we talked about um quickie nirvana which is an episode with a character that's not as pathetic i think actually as charlie but has a similar arc of of being kind of neurotic and not claiming responsibility yeah not facing the world as it is right and that that episode is much more about that idea than this one is but we see that in this scene where Rockford's like, you brought me into this. Now I have a responsibility and you need to get your together as part of that. Yeah. We get to Rocky comes back over. Rockford is giving him instructions. And I think this is like, I'm going to need someone to keep an eye on Charlie. Yeah, yeah. No, Charlie's in no condition.

So he's telling Rocky to, you know, wait for the phone call, agree to whatever they say. I'm going to work on it from the other end. I'm going to get Becker on it. You know, we'll figure this out. They go outside the house and Rockford sees a guy in a car, like hanging out the window, reading a newspaper. I think he's talking to Rocky at the moment, right? And he's like, can you believe this guy?

Yeah. A newspaper. newspaper like come on and so we go again from this very dramatic scene into this another kind of comedic bit yeah where he goes down asks nicely what the guy's doing the guy tries to push him off and so he he finally just grabs the guy's hand into like a knuckle lock and like pulls him up out of the car and this guy is too much of a sad sack to do anything about it turns out that he's a he's a he's a general low life by the name of johnny living livingston and rockford's like all right well we're gonna go down to the station you're gonna tell me why you're hanging around he says rocky i think the word about the money's getting out and it's going to be pulling out all kinds of as he he says, lowlifes with dorsal fins. Yes. This is as close as we come to actually seeing the title of the episode, right?

Like, this is a clear indication that the sharks are now in a feeding frenzy around this half a mil that's out there that people know exists and that's in circulation. People know exists and they know that it's essentially free right like because of the statute of limitations like they know they can end up with it without falling afoul of the law you're gonna steal it from someone who can't what are they gonna do they're not gonna call the cops um so we have this this kind of fun sequence where rockford gets gets this guy johnny uh into the convertible uses the gun that he had with him to keep him covered, and then just kind of questions him sardonically as they drive down to the station. Johnny apparently heard some guys talking.

One of them was Mickey, who we know as the denim guy, the nervous denim guy. He knew that Mickey was in deep with some loan shark, but he doesn't know who, and that he hung around some bar, the green duck on 7th. This was mentioned earlier also, when Lucy's goons are messing with him and he's right they make they mention the green duck i kept on waiting for that to pay off but i mean i appreciate the consistency but it's not like they end up going there or anything rockford drops johnny with becker um becker's mad that rockford didn't bring him in on this case earlier. Now that there's been a, you know, another kidnapping and everything. Yeah.

And as Rockford kind of defends himself, um, he's like, well, you didn't tell me about Hall. And that's when we learned that Hall is from a different division, but lieutenants can sniff around anything they want. So there's nothing Becker can do about it. And our suspicions about Hall are already up because of the ski mask, right? Like, yeah. So now it's like okay something's

going on rockford's basically like all right well i'll tell you what's going on let me get you a cup of coffee so they go to a a coffee machine somewhere like a gas station or something it's one of my favorite jokes of the episodes actually it's just like let me buy you a cup of coffee and i got my notepad out i'm like okay are they going to tell me buy you a cup of coffee. And I got my notepad out. I'm like, okay, are they going to tell me how much that cup of coffee costs? Oh, it's a quarter, if that. And it's no better than the coffee at the station because it's like the same kind of machine. So here's where we get our plot threads start to come together as Rockford and Dennis talk. So they're talking about this guy, Mickey.

Rockford tells him what's been going on so far, basically. Dennis says that the shark that he was into was Lucy Carbone. There's our Lucy connection, but that Mickey's dead. You know, apparently they disposed of him once they heard about this big score. And then Dennis goes into, it turns out that at the time of the heist or the heist at the time of

Charlie's drunken stealing quote unquote heist, Mickey was an investigator with the insurance company. time of Charlie's drunken stealing. Quote unquote heist. Mickey was an investigator with the insurance company. So he must have found out about who did it and then decided to sit on it until the statute of limitations was up. In the meantime, he got into money trouble. He got into hock to Carbone, told him about it to get out from under it. Now he's dead and Carbone has the money. So then the question is, so who kidnapped her the second time?

Rockford's theory is that Lieutenant Hall must have been an investigator from the police side on that robbery. How would some sad sack insurance guy know all the details? He must have had some connection to the police investigation. And so now they must be working together. Becker will not hear that kind of talk. He refuses to hear that a police officer could be corrupt in this manner. And he storms off. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Shut up, Jim. In what I can only assume is an echo of their childhood. Right? Like, just see them as kids having some sort of argument and him going, shut up, Jim. Well, I appreciate that we're still like moving forward with the story this is also where we start to get into like convenient narrative right territory so we've got 15 minutes 10 minutes left like let's wrap this up yeah i kind of feel like we've seen all the

really interesting things and now we kind of go through the the resolution of of this situation we do get a quick scene of becker looking through some files and then he leaves, you know, gets into his car and then Rockford gets in. He's like, so, was I right? It turns out that no, Hall was not on that beat. It was a detective Northcourt and someone else who has since died

in a shootout. Rockford wants to know if they know each other. Dennis is like, of course they don't know each other. But Rockford knows that Dennis is going to go check it out. Yeah. And the two of them go to check out whether they know each other dennis is like of course they don't know each other but rockford knows that dennis is going to go check it out yeah and the two of them go to check out whether they know each other uh again i noted some good banter in this like just the way that they talk with each other is very fun yeah so good so the two of them go to somewhere they're on the street they're just watching a a building and they see hall and who we know as Grady, who must be Northcourt. I think they mentioned his name, but I missed it. But we see Hall and Grady get out of a building and get into

a car together. So clearly they know each other. And then Rockford and Dennis follow them in that car. They go to an isolated shack out in the hills somewhere. As they leave the car, Hall says, just do what he says and it'll all go down clean. Grady is nervous. They go into this shack. Dennis and Rockford arrive. They creep up on it. Rockford asks for

Dennis's backup piece, which he says he doesn't have. But Rockford knows that he keeps it strapped to his shin. The highlight of this whole ending sequence is just Rockford

busting Becker's chops about yeah yeah police stuff but yeah they're creeping up on this uh shack uh hall and grady come out of it with sandy all gagged and tied up hustling her to the car uh dennis yells that they're making a break for it and then everyone starts shooting at each other. Sandy runs away out of the field of fire. The two guys get in the car and start speeding away. But Rockford manages to jump out directly in front of it and shoot a shot through the windshield, which sends them spinning off the road down into a ditch. And then Becker is able to collar them while Rockford goes to find Sandy. While a fine resolution to saving Sandy from being kidnapped felt a little weird of Dennis being like, let's just start shooting.

The gun battle here is I mean, both of the gun battles we had in this episode have Sandy in the backdrop. Yeah. Sandy. People care enough about her to not want her kidnapped, but not so much that they would. That they're not going to shoot in her direction. Yeah, exactly. There's a little weirdness here. And I think it's particularly weird because it's Rockford files where he is generally speaking, suspicious of guns and gun play.

Right. He has usually has much more respect for the damage that can be done just having a gun around. So it is a little different than what you would expect from Rockford Files. It's the most generic part of the episode. It's like, and then there was a shootout and then the good guys won. Yeah, exactly. And even how they win. I do like that the car goes over the edge.

It doesn't blow up or anything like that. They're stunned. And the two of them run down on them. And I love that. That choreography is great. Because that feels, again, real in a way that a lot of Rockford fights do. Where it's like something's happened that's given you your moment. Take it and take control of the situation.

And once you have control of the situation then we're good yeah but um the idea that there was going to just we're just going to start shooting becker's gonna yell they're getting away to alert them start shooting yeah it's a little like that's not how becker behaves in these situations in other episodes right and it could very easily have just been written as get your hands up or freeze or anything an attempt to make the situation better before it gets worse and then this was it feels a little bit like this is this is how we're going to end this situation um but it's not quite the end of the episode uh yeah oh just to tie up a plot thing or as dennis is arresting hall and grady he says like i'll call in the warrant on carbone so i guess that implying that and that will you know we'll be able to get them on their kidnapping yeah yeah we'll roll up all the bad guys together we'll leave

that to the cops yeah so they do have there is a line about that to resolve that question and then we go to sandy and rockford walking on the pier uh it has been two weeks her dad has been he's he's basically depressed still yeah he's feeling real low he hasn't been behaving like himself hasn't been drinking uh but she's afraid that he can't basically that he can't handle another shock. Yeah. Rockford is like, well, these things take a while to get over. Give him a couple months, which is very aware of how people actually get through trauma. Yeah. One of them makes a point about how he made one stupid mistake, but now he's paid for it.

And he just needs to come to terms with how everything went down and move on. Which is when we cut to a knock on the door of Charlie's place where an IRS agent is verifying his identity because he needs to know that even though that money was stolen, he is still required to pay income taxes on it. And if he's taxed at the maximum rate, which he will be he owes 250 000 and then the camera cuts to charlie just kind of stumbling down the beach with a voiceover from the irs agent going do you understand do you understand and then he lets out an anguished cry like screams at the heavens freeze frame yep end of episode we are we are not only treated to this this anguish this tragedy here but we are denied james gardner's smile so here's this guy's ending it's a horrible ending it's the joke that we keep telling in rockford files which is that nothing you do is going to pay off right like? Like you're just going to lose money. That is what keeps happening to Jim.

Jim is out $10.50 for the cab and coffee alone, not to mention the money he owes Beth. Well, and fixing the Firebird. Yeah, right? The Firebird got shot. Oh, man. So, you know, for helping out a friend, Jim's lost that. But this guy, this is it for him. So, you know, for helping out a friend, Jim's lost that.

But this guy, this is it for him. Like, there's no way he's going to ever pay off a quarter of a million dollars in back taxes. Again, because they chose to end on him rather than any other character, we get this very heavy note. Do you think this was supposed to be humorous? I don't think so. I think that is supposed to be a little gut punchy, right? I think the scene before it is supposed to say, we feel like, oh, good. Finally, all the danger and trouble is gone. We've come back to our status quo.

Everyone is okay. And then, no, just no. You don't recover from this. It's a really grim ethical statement, I guess. Yeah. He stole the money, which was bad, and he knew that it was bad and he shouldn't have done it. It kind of ruined his life that he did it. So he wanted to return it to make things right.

And because he tried to do the right thing, now his life is completely ruined. His attempt at restitution was not enough. Yeah. Right? His attempt at restitution was not enough. Yeah. Right. The original sin of the burglary was too much for him to ever make up, which is really awful.

Where does this sit in the timeline of very special Rockford Files episodes? Do we have them by now? You mean like the social issue kind of episodes? Yeah. Let me reference the 200 a day Rockford Files files and see where we're at. So we're talking about episodes where there's some kind of social issue or moral issue kind of edge to them. Something that is intended to point out an ill in society and hopefully get people to address it, which in fact has happened with the Rockford Files.

The one that we have not yet reviewed, but that we kind of point out as, like, the Ur social issue episode is... Is that So Help Me God? Yeah. Oh, that's coming up in three episodes from here. So this is just before it. So they could be starting to... They're flexing those muscles, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's So Help Me God, which is season three, episode seven, which is the one where, where Rockford gets called in for contempt of court. Yeah. Yeah. So this is only a couple episodes before that. It is not written by like, there's no really any,

any production credit, like connection other than one of your Bartlett was this, uh, story supervisor or whatever. And then she, and then she wrote So Help Me God. I mean, and then some of them that we have felt that edge with, like Pastoria Prime pick was in season two. The Oracle War Cashmere suit has a little bit of that.

That's earlier in this season. So, I mean, like, I think it's a little bit of that. I think that I don't know the actual stance that they're taking. the actual stance that they're taking. Like, it's not clear whether they're saying that very blanketly crime doesn't pay, or if they're saying criminals shouldn't try and make amends because nothing good will come of it. Or if they're saying that like this IRS situation would prevent people from, you know, making amends. Oh, that's a question. I mean, I don't think it's presented with as much focus as like, let us tell you, viewer, about why this happened. Right.

Because that is a thing. I think we both looked into it to be like, so is that actually a thing that happens? And it in fact is. You are, by the tax code, you are supposed to report income even if it's illegally gained and if you don't it's tax fraud as we and that's how famously al capone what he was actually indicted for was doing just that not reporting illegal income and and like the amount of money this agent quote is maybe even smaller than what he would actually be charged. I looked up the tax rate at half a million. And in the 1973, we're assuming because it was three years before, and this came out in 76, you know, whatever. And I think it was nearer to 70%. So that alone would have been a massive chunk of that, you know, it'd be 350,000.

And then you would have interest on the back payment and fees and all these other things. But that said, I will say that, I mean, I don't know about this particular situation. I don't know about illegally gotten gains. But I do know that if you end up with like some money that you owe the IRS, that you didn't get to them for whatever reason, you can go to an accountant, talk to them about it. And they will, there's a number of ways to make that a far less brutal moment than what it was for this guy, right? Like you can reduce the amount by bringing up, you know, the circumstances around what happened and, you know, all that. Not that you can talk your way by bringing up, you know, the circumstances around what happened and, you know, all that. Not that you can talk your way out of it, but most people don't know.

They're going to assume the worst case scenario when if you spent some time working with a professional, I feel like I'm going into a PSA here, but I'm just saying, if it turns out that you owe back taxes, talk to an accountant and find out exactly what you owe because you can probably reduce that yeah so maybe we'll talk more about him as a tragic figure in our second half yeah but yeah this is uh definitely a an interesting episode i liked the first half of it more than the second half yeah i can see that like i felt like all the stuff set up in the first half was really really fun and neat and some of the set pieces are great and the ice rink scene is yeah a pure joy um yeah chef kiss emoji yeah and then like it's exciting

to see the different groups of goons and the different criminal interests all kind of intersecting but then they didn't really intersect yeah we see one and then it goes away then we see a new one and the new one was not as interesting to me as the potential that the two of them would intersect yeah because the title is feeding frenzy and certainly that played into what happened right but it doesn't yeah it doesn't end with a feeding frenzy it's just you deal with each set of criminals one at a time it's a it's piecemeal um i'm not to complain that the title promised us one thing or something else but like i wouldn't say the second half i would say like the second quarter or the

second third like just how they wrapped it all up maybe yeah the the resolution was not as interesting as the tension yeah which isn't out of like a lot of rockford files kind of the last scene or last two scenes kind of wrap everything up but this one that wrapping up was of things that were less interesting to me than the first things that were wrapped up and that had happened 10 minutes before so yeah not a complaint definitely an interesting episode and worth watching it is a weird bummer yeah the end is there's a bit that we i have in my notes that we forgot to talk about i'm just going to mention it here uh becker's smile after lieutenant hall chases him out of the office it is unsettling he gets dressed down in front of rockford by this guy that is his superior but he doesn't actually have a relationship with so yeah oh it's it's weird it's i love it i was just like he just

puts on this like, whatever you say. I do like how much we get to see a Becker in this one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks again to Victor for sending us the recommendation. I hope you enjoyed our thoughts on it. And we will come back with some more thoughts spinning out of this episode about how to use lessons from it for your own narratives after our break. While we have you here, there's three ways you can support us.

First, rate and review on iTunes or whatever service you use for podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as $1 an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. If you want to help us shape the direction of 200 a day, the Patreon is the best place to go. And finally, both of us have other projects going on pretty much all the time. Epi, what are you excited about right now? I'm excited about swords and sorcery, the type of swords and sorcery you find at worldswithoutmaster.com. And my new project, codename Lincoln Green, Robin Hood role-playing game. You can find all you need to know about that at digathousandholes.com. I'm excited about your stuff as well. Oh, that's so

nice. As always, you can check out my catalog of fiction and role-playing games at ndp thousand holes.com i'm excited about your stuff as well oh that's so nice as always you can check out my catalog of fiction and role-playing games at ndpdesign.com including the worldwide wrestling role-playing game if you want to see my newest stuff check out the play test page that's where i have free downloads of all my fun new projects thanks yet again for listening as always we deeply appreciate your support. And with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. In the beginning, what you just listened to, we talked about Season 3, Episode 4, The Feeding Frenzy. And now is the time in the show when we talk about the lessons that we've learned from watching this wonderful episode of The Rockford Files and how we may apply those lessons to the fiction that we're creating, either at the table or typing onto blank sheets of paper or drawing or producing

hit detective TV shows. Whatever your thing is. Whatever your deal is. Yeah. What would you like to talk about first? I feel like I have a large, a large scale thing and a, and a character thing. out first i feel like i have a large a large scale thing and a and a character thing i got kind of a tiny thing that is really kind of let me let me go first longtime listener of the show sam anderson uh also someone i happen to know runs a mold bay edition dnd game at a local coffee shop uh in his town and uh it's like an open table anyone Anyone can show up and play, which is kind of neat. He was telling me about the random table. This will all tie into this episode, by the way. I know this sounds really... My breath is baited. Yes. So he's trying to play it as by the book as possible just to, you know, have fun with all the different nuances and the random tables and

whatever. And I don't recall the exact story about what happened. They went into the dungeon. They had an encounter with, I'm going to say, orcs. They had kind of a blowout fight. It was a random encounter. He looked at the treasure table for the orcs. If you're not familiar with treasure tables because you're not listening to us because you are a role player, but you're listening to us

because you happen to enjoy the Rockford Files. First of all, thank you. Second of all, it's a series of, you know, charts that you would roll your dice and check and to see what kind of goodies the monsters had on them. So he rolls on the treasure table and the way it's structured is that first we're going to roll for how many copper pieces you get. And it's none. It's no gold. It's no silver. It's, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then randomly rolled five gems worth a thousand gold pieces a piece. And there's six players. And they're like, yay, we're rich. And he's like, what are you going to do with that?

There's no town. It's like you can't walk into the local blacksmith and say, please give me change for my thousand gold pieces. What's great about that is that this reward, these five gems worth a thousand gold pieces each, I think directly relates to the half a million dollars, right, that Charlie got, right? It's not a fungible, I think is the term. Yeah. Like it's not exchangeable for like, it is in a unit that is not possible to actually cash. Exactly. And so the lesson here is that that can then be the story. You know, we all kind of have this like, what if you won the lottery, right?

But when you look into actual stories of people who won the lottery, overwhelmingly their lives are worse. They're just ruined by the money that they get because they don't know how to handle it. are worse. They're just ruined by the money that they get because they don't know how to handle it. They get into weird debts with the IRS because they don't pay attention to just like our friend Charlie Balock did here. But more importantly, in a story like the Rockford Files here or in a D&D story where if the word gets out that you have this, nobody's thinking, we don't know what to do with that money because everyone thinks they have something that could use half a million dollars right right what what makes it complicated and narratively full is some people can use the money and others can't right so in

this situation in in the episode we just watched charlie can't use the money because he knows uh he knows it's sequential he knows that if he spends it that someone's going to notice yeah and he knows that if he's caught with it then he's going to be in trouble so he can't spend it the criminals who know that he has it could spend it or launder it or whatever but they know it's still hot until the statute of limitations run out yeah and then it turns into the situation of now the people who are already engaged with the legal activity are the only people who can use that money right so it's like i don't know if there's some kind of like dragon economy uh where they only use

gyms because gold melts because they're all too hot right something like that like now the dragons are coming after you because you have the valuable gyms but you can't spend them at the tavern for your room and board. So I like that idea of not only how do you make this reward something that's not just cash and it's not just a dollar amount, but also how do you make it something that the dangerous that has a danger attached to it, but the value of it is such they can't just give it back or just leave it. I'm reminded of if you're familiar with the film Way of the Gun. I've seen it, but I don't remember. I don't remember it. There's a scene in it when our protagonists ask for, I don't remember how much money.

It was probably a million or two million dollars in cash in $100 bills or whatever. And the person that, the criminal that they're blackmailing for it or whatever, I'm really murdering the story here. But is on the phone with him and says, do you know how much that amount of money weighs? That becomes an important part for the rest of the film is that it's just these giant heavy bags full of money.

It's also a thing that happens in a big point in Breaking Bad where he's a victim of his own success. He just has all of this illegal money, and it's more than he can put anywhere or hide anywhere. And it's just like, you just physically have too much money. Yeah, there's a great scene in the Peter Falk film,

The Brink's Job, which I recently got to see in a theater, which is pretty cool, where, so this is a semi-dramatization of one of the most famous robberies in u.s history where this basically a group of dedicated amateurs uh robbed a brink security the people who do like armored cars and stuff they robbed a brinks facility like the the vault at a brinks in um in boston in the 60s maybe i'd have to look at the um but anyway uh so this is a thing that happened and then there's a movie that was made about it that's slightly dramatized but roughly

what happened and it stars Peter Falk as like the main the main uh ne'er-do-well but there's a scene where they've done this job they just stole all these duffel bags full of cash and then two guys are trying to count it but one of them's better with numbers than the other one so one of them keeps losing track and they uh flush some of it down the toilet because either because it was sequential i think because it was sequential and so he knew that they couldn't spend it yeah so like there was some portion of the money that someone had to assess and say, this is safe money for us to just take. And then this is, this is dangerous money that we can't wander. So we're just going to flush it down the toilet because it's too dangerous to keep. Changing your point of view on what money means is an

interesting thing to do. Yeah. And I think that that's, that's basically, it is just this different ways to approach the problem of money, treating having money as being a problem, uh, as much as not having money. Cause it's pretty standard for the Rockford files for him not having money being a problem. But then also, I guess it is pretty standard for someone having hot money or something like

that. This episode is good because it's focused on that as the central tension of the episode. So this is a nice example of how do you take a big sum of money and make it a complicated thing. It's not so much that you want to sit there and find a way to make a reward the opposite. What you want to do is just take a moment and realistically think through what that cash is going to mean to your character. What are the implications? Yeah, not just what dreams can you fulfill, but who else probably wants that money? Where are you going to keep it?

How are you going to carry it? Where are you going to find an ice rink to trade that money for a hostage? Think these things through um one thing that i would add to that is that which of those questions gives you a place to put an antagonist yeah is it the how are you going to spend it is it the where are you going to store it is it the how are you going to carry it any of those questions is a vector to bring in an antagonist you know for whatever their reasons are. And what I thought this episode did a good job of was giving us so many different antagonists. Yes.

That had a nice like, huh, what is their deal question to them? We talked a little bit about how I think it did end up not resolving in as complicated a manner as I would like. Yeah. I feel like those threads could have been intertwined more, but the setup of all these different sets of goons was really exciting and really interesting to see it unfold. At least I thought so. Each time you saw a new set of goons, you're like, what is going on?

And that's fun too. The vector for how the information got out was a little, yeah, Mickey has to be the one that's the reason why everyone knows about this but you don't find that out right away and that's kind of fun too well and it created a nice question of not only a who are these different groups but also a what side is he on kind of question for the lieutenant character which which was an interesting question in the middle of the

episode we see him we see that he clearly knows something and then we see that he's he has this this ally who is not an officer and then in my head i'm kind of going to like so are these two groups going to have a conflict i i like that in rockford files episodes there's a couple episodes where that happens where there are multiple groups of criminals or bad guys or whatever and their conflict ends up creating the opportunity for rockford to do whatever he needs to do sometimes they're urban gardeners and other times they like the horses so yes the best example here would be chicken little is a little chicken one of our favorite episodes please go listen to that that if you haven't listened to our episode about it. But yeah, here's how I was expecting that here.

I'm like, when do we get to see these guys run into each other? Oh, like a dirty cop and some mob guys. Like there's an interesting thing. And it turns out that they were just kind of ships in the night. But it's an interesting model. And I think it's a valuable model for keeping things more complicated than just here are our protagonists, here's our antagonist, now they have conflict. Sometimes their motivations are driving them into each other. And sometimes it's the goal, right? And in this case, it's very much the goal.

Everyone wants this money. One way to have started this story, if you weren't doing just Rockford files, if you were just saying, I've got this story, I want to tell this story, right? One way is to start three years ago with charlie stealing the money yeah although that would just be drunk charlie locked in a we would not have had as much sympathy for him if we started then but if you like if you think about it and you're like i you know i want to do a story about a heist that goes wrong you don't have to start in the middle of the heist or as they're planning the heist. You can do it weeks after the heist. Yeah, this heist goes wrong after three years.

It goes so well and so right when he's locked in drunk that he has to ruin it three years later. Yeah, I kind of like how it's not really a heist. We talked about that a little bit, but it was just kind of an accident. And that brings me to the other thing that i thought was interesting to talk about which is the character the tragic figure of charlie and how we're kind of getting given a moral lesson or at least an ethical lesson about him like because he made this mistake he tried to make it right but then he just is not capable of doing yeah and then it turns out way worse for him specifically like there's no fallout for anyone else it's just him which is raw it's really interesting i i mean like i kind of harp on it during the first part but i love how it it sets itself apart from what else is going on in the episode right because like you

said nobody else Not nobody else. Mickey. Mickey I guess is the other character that has this problem. Well he ends up getting killed for it. Yeah. So. But his problem is. He's the same problem.

Right. He's an addict. Just like you know. Charlie's an alcoholic. Mickey is a gambling addict. So they both have these very tragic stories in the middle of all this, but everyone else is kind of free from it and can have their, I'm saying everyone else, but obviously every single one of our goons ends up in jail, even the cops.

But that's kind of the standard, like you are punished for your transgressions against society. Like that doesn't stand out as much. So like I was going to say, you not only feel for charlie but you feel charlie's isolation because nobody else is engaged in that tragedy the way he is you know what i'm saying i can't decide if it makes the episode stronger or weaker as a rockford files episode that charlie is such this separated thematic character uh to contrast it again with um with quickie nirvana in that the character who's kind of similar sky she is so much more intertwined with rockford yeah uh thematically she's more of a foil to rockford almost um a lot of her qualities are the opposite of rockford's

qualities and then they and then they have these conversations that highlight those contrasts yeah in this episode Charlie and Rockford we know they are friends because it's presented to us as such but they don't really other other than the the the scene where he's drunk and and Rockford sobers him out they don't really have those same kinds of conversations that highlight their differences we just get to see Rockford being the like, I'm going to help you whether you want it or not guy. Charlie could still be played in different ways or be a different character without changing what happens in that episode. While in Quickie Nirvana, I think if Skye was a different character, the plot would have had to have been different to accommodate a different set of character choices. Absolutely. It's, it's, um, hmm. But it does make this episode super interesting and memorable to have that character that's

so pathetic in a way that so few Rockford Files characters are. I think it's absolutely a worthwhile experiment. And if you have an, a television show that goes on for six seasons, you have room enough to do that kind of experimentation but i agree with you i think quickie nirvana is better crafted for that type of story so charlie needs rockford to shove him along right and that's almost the same thing with what goes on in quickie nirvana except that she kind of needs rockford not necessarily to shove her along. She also needs Rockford's empathy. Yeah.

In a way that Charlie doesn't or Charlie kind of rejects it. Because she's all alone and Charlie has a support system, right? Like his major pillar in his support system keeps getting kidnapped. Which is causing his crisis. Yeah. So we only get Rockford shoving him along for a little bit because we have, I think just because we have more of the rest of the Rockford cast, right? Yeah, that's true. When Dennis comes in, it's great Rockford Dennis stuff, but then there's no need for him to shove Charlie along.

Well, because after that, that's the other thing is it's like Charlie's active, you know, through the handoff. Yeah. And he's like, I did it. And everyone's proud of him. And that's all he had in him. And then once his daughter's kidnapped again, he falls off the wagon and then he's basically out of the episode. Yeah. And he's like, I did it. And everyone's proud of him. And that's all he had in him. And then once his daughter's kidnapped again, he falls off the wagon. And then he's basically out of the episode. Yeah.

You know, then it's all Rockford being like, okay, I can't depend on you. I need to do everything myself. Yeah. The stakes are too high to make sure I get you involved. So he like has this moment of catharsis and then it's ripped away from him. And he's even worse than it was before. Yeah. Oof.

Yeah. So that is interesting. Yeah. Like I said, I think it's a worthwhile experiment him. And he's even worse than it was before. Nirvana is about that being part of the meta story, if you will, of that episode. Part of the intention was to highlight that kind of person. This one is more like, here's a character that is very tragic. Here's a situation that is going to unfold on top of Rockford. So I guess maybe a productive question for us is like, is that something that you can treat in your narratives? Or like, how would you want to treat that kind of character right is this a more appropriate character to be the focus of the narrative because rockford's the protagonist in this one like for sure would this be a stronger piece if it wasn't a rockford files episode if it was like a piece about charlie specifically there's a thing that comes up in

like writers workshops and things like that where if you're writing a story and you've got a story to tell, and the story you want to tell is that you've got Jim Rockford, who has a friend who's in trouble because his friend stole money in the past. And now a bunch of people are all swarming around this money because it's about to be free money. So you're writing that story. And then in the process of writing that story, you make a character that stands out a bit in the case of charlie here like this this sort of

pathetic i keep using the term pathetic and i don't necessarily want to this tragic figure that is true and then in you could bring it to a workshop and people read it and they're like charlie's such a good character you should make it all about him but that's not the story you were trying to tell right yeah yeah so the the question then becomes, and this is a deeply personal question and deals with all the different circumstances around why you were creating this fiction in the first place. Do you abandon the thing you were doing before and rearrange it around this character or dial the character back so that people don't think of it? You know what I mean? It seems against what you would want to do. You'd want all the characters to be this good.

And we often praise the Rockford Files for having these. We were just talking about Eddie Firestone in a previous episode being a character that we vividly remember because of how well that character was written. And I don't know. I think you present the problem. I don't know if it's even a problem, but I think the rough edge that we're noticing here is that we have two compelling characters that don't thematically work in the same way in the same story, at least for me. I still hesitate to say that it is bad. I don't think this was a bad episode, but it does mean that my analysis of the episode revolves around this character and

not the narrative necessarily. Yeah, I think looking at it that way, my answer would be to find a way to play those two different themes against each other a little more strongly, which again is what happened in Quickie Nirvana. It doesn't have to be the central point of the episode, but you want the audience to feel like it's intentional and that you crafted it. And that's the thing that I feel like it's a little difficult to talk about, but just conveying the, I meant to do that in what you're doing when you're writing something or creating something like this. I mean, that's a lot of the craft that we talk about is when it's just something you have to learn by doing, of doing things on purpose instead of by accident. Yeah.

I'm not going to mention any names, but I recently watched a rather popular detective series that I enjoyed, but it just seemed accidental. As I watched it, I was like, clearly somebody knew what they were doing, but I think that it wasn't the people in charge. It turned out very interesting without a steady hand on the steering wheel. So I'm not saying that you absolutely need to let people know that you know what you're doing and that you're crafting it well, because obviously you can create good things without doing that but if you're gonna have somebody have a podcast about it yeah yeah it's a weird it's kind of a weird thing to talk about because it's like i don't know it's not really something you can give advice about it's kind of a trial and error thing at least for me and my own creative work there's stuff that happened i'm like

oh i didn't mean for that to happen but i will capitalize on the fact that it happened going forward yeah and learn to do that on on purpose yeah and it is it is just the last third or quarter you know the last act that yeah the last act and then the last scene yeah really punch it into this kind of question mark territory for me. Because we don't have Charlie between the shower and the IRS agent. I don't utter that sentence at any other point in my life, but we don't have Charlie between the shower and the IRS agent. And that may be fundamentally the only problem we have here. Sure, yeah.

If we just had one more bit of Charlie in there, If we just had one more bit of Charlie in there, that may have just been the glue to stick the ending together with the beginning part. It feels a little bit like they had to rush it to production. Yeah. You know, had the first two thirds of it kind of nailed. And then like, well, we're shooting tomorrow. So I mean, I've not actually done a television show, but I've done that with my own fiction. And yeah, it just isn't like, but I've done that with my own fiction. Yeah. It's just like, oh, God, we're just getting here.

I feel like we're being kind of negative about it, which again feels weird because it's a good episode and I enjoyed watching it. It does just present this big question that I think is a hard to solve question in a way that other episodes we've seen haven't had this kind of issue. We're being critical, but I think it's in in a good way i hope so we don't need to help make rockford files anybody we're using the rockford files to help make us better uh i feel like it comes back to the thing that i said about it just it's a worthy experiment like i think that it was just a really neat thing to do absolutely and i like the character there's a just one step missing or just a little bit of a stumble and that's it. But you gotta try new things. And that is

one thing we really do love about the show is that so many of the episodes try something. Like it is formulaic, but it's also within the formula. There's lots of interesting digressions. And you end up with carnival music playing while a bunch of ice skaters.

This might have the greatest single scene in the Rockford Files. In the dead center of it. Like that's right at the halfway mark, basically. Let's end on a high note and just say again how everything about that scene, from how it's framed, how it works in the narrative, how everyone in it behaves. Yes. How it's shot, how the music music works the fact that it's over it has a commercial break in the middle yeah but leading up to the commercial break it's just

jim and charlie yeah and they're talking about the money and stuff and jim sweaty hands and then when we come back from the commercial break is when the goons show up so even in the same continuous narrative scene it's like broken up really smartly. So there's kind of a first half and a second half. It's great. It is a wonderful scene of the Rockford Files. So good. So beautiful.

Enjoy that when you watch it and steal that idea for your own stuff because you're not going to top it. Yeah. Just steal it. Good stuff. So that's my high note to end on. Do you have anything else to add to our discussion of feeding frenzy? I've got nothing else to add. I think we may have learned our lessons here. I feel like I've learned something. So yeah, thanks again to our patron for suggesting it.

You can check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to join the cohort of our wonderful supporters over there. Just a dollar an episode. uh speaking of dollars per something i think we have earned our 200 for today so uh we will see you next time when we talk about another episode of the rockford files