Two Hundred A Day - Episode 3: Sleight Of Hand

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E15, Sleight of Hand. This episode stands out for being more personal to Jim Rockford and less of an "investigation of the week," and we talk about how this kind of departure-from-formula makes for a memorable episode. Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the dining audio clip Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Pauletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. Which episode of The Rockford Files are we talking about today, Epi? We're talking about Sleight of Hand. It's from the first season. of the Rockford Files are we talking about today, Eppie? We're talking about Sleight of Hand. It's from the first season. I do not recall offhand what episode number, but it's midway through it. Chose Sleight of Hand because

the first time I saw it, I was unaware that it was based on a novel by Howard Brown. But I was aware while watching it that it was not your standard Rockford Files episode. It felt, I don't want to say out of place, it stuck out. It stuck out in some

interesting ways. So I thought it'd be fun to talk about this one. Episode 15. Though note for Netflix watchers that the Netflix numbering is different because of the pilot being a two-episode, a two-parter. I finally figured out

why that was different, but yeah, sleight of hand. Yeah. I did not remember this one at all, actually. Uh, and then when it started, I kind of started remembering it,

but, uh, it definitely does have almost more of a noir sense to it than a lot of other Rockford files episodes. The Rockford files don't hesitate from hitting you hard with some heavy emotions but this one like from the get-go there's sadness pervading you know throughout all of it so yeah it's it's kind of a downer um that's fine like there's there's nothing wrong with that but uh i wasn't really expecting it until the episode kind of set me up to understand that it was going to be a little

less uh less of a happy ending than many other episodes you know previously when we talked about like my own personal memory of rockford files when i was a kid like the show depressed me and i'm now i'm wondering if this is an episode i had seen as a child or episodes along these lines where i was like why why would you watch why would you watch this sad man but now i know now i know why it is a joy to watch this sad man yeah it is more of a contrast the uh to the the uh quote unquote normal episode i guess than others at some point we'll need to decide on which episode we want people to to look at as a normal episode maybe someday we'll figure that out but uh this one not so much so we've talked before also a little bit about the experimental nature of some of the filming

yeah and I think this episode also capitalized on that um a little bit uh with the fair again with the the the way he used kind of the flashback sequence and some of the uh visual cutting back and forth to emphasize some of some of the emotional turmoil that i think we really see in rockford in this one in fact i mean maybe we should talk about that very first scene where he's walking on the beach before we get right into that i do want to to point out that the director of this episode, William Weird or Ward, not sure how to pronounce his last name. I noticed some of the directorial stuff. I looked at the director and then clicked through and he ended up directing a ton of

episodes through the rest of the series, including a bunch of two-parters and some of the more intense issues episodes. But this is the first one for him. So it's kind of interesting. Maybe we'll be able to notice some of his other things and see how he treats it as a recurring director in the show. That might be an interesting thing to keep track of as we go forward. Yeah, I think so.

But yeah, so we start off sleight of hand with a shot of Rockford in his general everyday suit, uh, sport coat wearing, wearing this open collar, uh, walking sadly down the beach. So this is the first thing that strikes me is that how well dressed he is for walking sadly down the beach, but this doesn't seem wrong. Rockford lives on the beach. Right. Um, before we go too deep into it, do we want to talk about, uh, the preview shots? Sure. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So the,

the preview shots that, that set up. So again, every episode kind of gives you a couple, uh, a couple scenes from the episode to come to hook you in so that you watch the full thing. Right. Yeah. And so just based on those, we know that this episode is going to be about, uh, Rockford has a girlfriend that's missing and he's having some kind of conflict with the police over trying to find her. And that there's going to be a car chase happening. And our last scene of the preview cuts before we see what happens with this car chase as the car is getting out of control. We also get Rockford on the phone, on two phones, two pay phones. Oh, right. Yeah.

To the fire department and the police at the same time. So it's already setting us up for kind of a more personal episode, I think, because it's very specifically about a woman that Rockford is seeing is missing. So when we get to sad Rockford on the beach, he's he's walking along the beach. And then there's these quick cuts of a woman in a bathing suit face down in the water. Yeah. And then it cuts back, like, just a couple frames, just maybe half a second, right? Almost subliminal. Yeah.

They're kind of delightfully violent. Like, the scenes themselves aren't graphic, but the fact that the cuts hit so fast and then disappear, as the audience, you see a sad Rockford, but then you're like, whoa, what was that? Yeah, and when it cuts back to his face, he frowns or grimaces. And so it's very clearly like some kind of recollection or flashback or maybe premonition that he's having. It reminds me of the situation that you're in where something recent, but not too recent, awful has happened in your life. And you're just trying to get to the point where you're not thinking about it all the time.

It's the game, right? The moment you think about the game, you lose the game. And so it just really felt to me like those moments he's walking along the beach maybe trying to forget what's going on maybe not like i don't think he's ruminating on this situation yeah i think he just keeps punching him in the gut because his brain won't stop thinking about it and the nature of the cuts is very like this is breaking into his mind yeah exactly like he's not analyzing, he's not planning.

He's kind of trying to get past this or figure something else out. So again, with that, and also the music is very, uh, kind of plaintive. Actually, I think it's pretty quiet through most of this scene.

I noticed in this episode, uh, there's a lot less underscoring. There are a lot more naturalistic, just environmental noise without, without scored music. Um um and then the music that it does have is um particularly interesting like the the they take discordant notes quite often yeah so rockford heads down the beach he's having these these flashbacks or whatever they are and

he ends up on a porch um where his, Rocky, comes out to talk to him. And he comes out holding a pot of coffee. We get to see a good amount of Rocky in this episode as kind of father and advisor. For the uninitiated, Rocky is Jim's dad. Rocky is Joseph Rockford. Everyone calls him Rocky. And then who we call Rockford is James Rockford. And everyone calls him Jim, except for some people call him Jimmy or Rockfish, as we'll get to eventually. But yeah, so so Rocky's his dad, played by Noah Berry or Berry. Yeah. Yes. And he's a great, kind old man with opinions. If he were an actor today that the internet would meme about today, they would show a picture of either him or Ernest Borgnine.

And then the whole internet would argue about which was which. So the relationship between Jim and Rocky is definitely an interesting one. It's reoccurring. Rocky's in lots of episodes. Sometimes they center around him. Sometimes he's more of a side charactercurring is in lots of uh rocky's in lots of episodes sometimes they center around him sometimes he's more of a side character like he is in this one but they definitely have this kind of loving but semi-contentious relationship where rocky is always worrying about rockford is always concerned about what he's getting into often for his physical

safety uh and is also always kind of giving him giving him lip about like how he's getting into, often for his physical safety, and is also always kind of giving him lip about, like, how he's not making enough money and how he should find another line of business and stuff like that. But here, in this particular scene, it's great because he immediately goes straight to the core of the matter. He comes out, Jim is clearly sad, and Rocky just addresses it right away. What's going on?

Well, he even says something about like, no, no, uh, banter or something. I forget exactly what he says, but he even calls out how it's like Rockford is too sad or distraught or

depressed or whatever to engage in their typical banter. Yeah. Uh, he just isn't feeling it, which is again, unusual. So, uh, rocky brings some coffee he refuses coffee and then kind of gives us a little exposition about what has brought jim to this state like what's what's bothering you and you couldn't control

what happened and some stuff like that i know you're you're worrying about it what if you tell me about it and maybe that'll help you remember or help me help you and that establishes the first frame narrative frame of the episode which is we have a flashback where rockford is telling his dad about what happened so yeah so we get a rockford voiceover which is not a common thing in the rockford files and it's because of this framing device where he's telling Rocky what happened under the assumption that he's already told Rocky what happened. Right. And he's just kind of reiterating it so he can kind of go over the facts

again, which is great. Rocky has a good instinct for this. And before we go right into that, I have an important question. Okay. Where are they? Yeah, I have no idea. Like this location doesn't match any of the typical like rockford locations because they're not in his trailer yeah they're on the beach they're on the

beach but it's a house yeah and it's kind of it's a nice place maybe a rental of some sort it doesn't appear to be like a restaurant because rocky's carrying yeah the coffee around himself and like pouring for them both and taking the dishes and stuff and there's no one else there it's established in other episodes that rocky lives in like a house kind of somewhere in malibu or something like he lives in inland a little bit uh while rockford obviously lives in a trailer on the beach and this is neither of those places so this sticks in my mind a bit because it could easily have been his trailer. No problem. Uh,

but it's not right. It would, there would have been no problem having Rocky step out of Rockford's trailer with coffee for him. Right. And them having that exact same scene there, you know, it's been a while since I watched the first episodes.

I don't know if there's a situation that they're addressing there or not like but anyways i don't know if it's gonna be a mystery for me yeah if it is it's it's pretty subtle because i don't recall any dialogue about it or anything like that so i wonder if it was just like on some location and that's just where they shot or if there's something that got cut out of the episode that would have explained it but yeah that that was a little weird but we get into this flashback and uh rockford has been dating this woman named karen for some some number of months i think later we learn it's she's been uh split up from her ex-husband for six months or something like that as people who have watched the show, we don't know her. This is something that's clearly happened either behind the scenes

or since the previous episode. She's a one-off character just for this episode. So he started dating this woman, Karen, who has a daughter, Julie. So Rockford, Karen, and Julie went up to San Francisco for a weekend. And Julie is,

I think they even said in the episode, like eight or ten years old, somewhere in there. She's pretty young. Yeah. So they went to San Francisco for the weekend. And we catch up with them as they're driving back down from San Francisco. And it's this very like human, warm kind of scene where Karen and Jim are just kind of like bantering a little bit. And she's kind of making fun of him a little bit for like not knowing anything about boats but they're not fighting they're not bickering it I

think I'm going to probably use the word realism a lot for this first half of this episode it's a very realistic um grounded kind of mature relationship that we're seeing in just a couple of minutes as they talk in this car and it it's a late night car drive, a long drive, and you definitely get that sense of the long haul, that they're tired and they're just going to push through until they get home. They talk a little bit about how she's falling asleep, and he's like, well, if you stop for coffee, then I'll be good to get us through the night.

And then we catch up with them as they pull up to her house uh karen's house karen and and the daughter are both asleep in the back of the car they pull up to the house uh rockford takes julie like she's still asleep uh so he picks her up to carry her in and put her to bed and basically in between the time that rockford picks up julie goes into the house, puts her into bed, and comes back downstairs, Karen is gone. So Karen goes into the house before him. Yeah, he sees her going to the house before him. She unlocks the door and walks into the house.

And then she's not there. So yeah, he comes down and starts calling her name and walking around. And again, there's no incidental music during this part. It's just the night sounds and the sounds of his footsteps and just walking around calling your name. And it gets apparent very quickly how weird and unusual this is and how he's getting increasingly worried. And then he sees her purse sitting there. Right. It's even weirder.

That is, I think, the moment he calls uh his friend sergeant becker yes so sergeant becker is a police sergeant with the lapd and personal on again off again friend of jim rockford he's a recurring character he comes up in lots of episodes he's one of the most endearing characters to me i think he's clearly a good man doing a hard job and he's always caught in between jim asking him for favors like to run license plates uh or like uh you know arrest people on suspicion without having evidence and stuff like that yeah some quasi-legal maneuvers and his responsibilities to, you know, enforce the law and be answerable to his superiors, none of whom like Jim Rockford.

Yeah. It's important, I think, maybe not particularly for this case, but it's important to know that Becker is a clean cop. He's a tired, grumpy old man. Well, he's not particularly old. He's the same age as Rockford. But he's clean.

He's trying to do right by the world. So in this he's he's still at the office at 2 30 a.m when uh jim calls and uh this is through tv sleight of hand jim is always able to just call him directly regardless of where he is in the building like you think there'd be a switchboard or something but there's that moment where uh he picks up the phone and he goes, what, at 2.30? He's specifically like, all right, put him through. But he's worried. He calls Dennis. Becker's first name is Dennis.

And kind of explains to her, I came home with my friend. She wasn't in front of me for more than 20 seconds and now she's gone. The police are called. And so they arrive on the scene he tells him to bring a matron right because that there's a young daughter here who may have to be taken to her father's i think that was the thing that really set off some bells for for uh becker like he uh that was just like a good moment to say this is how important this is because up to now Becker is used to Rockford

he wouldn't like lie to him to get him to do something I mean he would but he wouldn't like this one but this is Rockford letting him know that this is serious business right this isn't some kind of like I have this suspicion about this thing you guys better get over here which is kind of a typical call

to Sergeant Becker like something illegal is going to happen about this thing you guys had better get over here which is a kind of a typical call to to sergeant becker like like something illegal is going to happen i can't tell you how i know that but you should get over here uh jim is concerned about the daughter um and also and knows that like if there's going to be a bunch of stuff going on she's going to need somewhere to like go uh which would be her father's house also introducing um kind of slipping in the the idea that the parents are split up and that that's available somewhere just an incidental little detail so the cops arrive on the scene sergeant becker uh talks to jim uh he's very on edge very agitated as is having no patience

for kind of the typical banter again yeah um and we get a little bit of uh of dennis kind of being like look i have to ask you these questions like it's an investigation you know like how did you know her like all that kind of uh uh stuff a new wrinkle is introduced as some of the cops who are searching around find a dead man in the bushes near to the property. Using the classic TV, Sergeant, you should come over and see this. I can quickly describe to you what happened and then you'll want to go over, but instead, for the sake of the audience, we'll tell you that you should come over and we'll hold suspense for just a little bit longer. Let's get the camera over here to see this. Yeah. And at first, I think, also because i'm not super good at recognizing

people's faces and hair and stuff like that so it might have just been me but i think at first there's a little bit of like oh is that karen right because there's like a body in the bushes yeah it's a little hard to see what kind of body it is and then someone clarifies like this man is dead or something like that so becker starts asking jim more questions gets his backup more jim's like what do you think this is related somehow and he has a great line becker starts asking jim more questions gets his backup more jim's like what do you think this is related somehow and he has a great line becker has a great line of there's an old cop saying never believe in coincidence yeah which is also a very good uh saying for for putting together a story that needs to be told in a compressed amount of time yeah exactly no

coincidences everything has to do with everything else. So now that there's a dead body involved and Jim was there and there seems to be some kind of correlation, they bring him back to the station house where we get to meet Lieutenant Deal. Lieutenant Deal, who has less patience for Jim than Becker does.

Yeah, he seems to take it personally that this PI is always tapping the police department to do his dirty work, essentially, or to do his official work that he can't do because he's a private citizen. In this case, I believe this character has occurred before in the season, right? At least one more episode, one earlier episode, yeah.

He will occur again. He shows up, yeah. Yeah, he comes back later but i didn't really remember him um his name and then this was another little detail where something that this show does a lot and that i think this episode in particular does a lot which is instead of having exposition about who people are as soon as they're introduced you just see them for a little bit and then someone will say their name yeah yeah like at some point someone's like look lieutenant deal but it's halfway through the scene where he's just you know him and rockford are going at it

speaking of names up in this mess here is when uh we get becker calls uh rockford jimbo we're talking about you know i think he's the only one who calls him jimbo i think you're right it's great that's a nice little... I don't recall the history that Rockford and Becker have, but it seems to go back to even maybe childhood, right? Like, I think they go way back. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's ever...

if we ever learn why they're friends. Yeah. Something keeping Becker from locking Rockford up and never talking to him again. So in this scene, we see Lieutenant Deal kind of coming down hard on Rockford, asking him all these questions and basically reading him his rights, telling him that, you know, what he says can be used against him. And Rockford's like, well, why is that? Are you charging me with something?

And we see a little bit here about how Rockford knows the law. Like he knows what the legal status is, what the difference is between being questioned and being charged and being booked and like all those things. And he knows how to play those angles to like keep himself from perjuring himself or from being in some kind of legal entanglement. So he knows how to play the game. Right. So he knows how to play the game, right? And so Deal kind of backs off and is like, well, here's all the evidence as I see it. And kind of questions him a little more in a manner that gives the audience a little more information. First of all, that they talked to the girl, to the daughter, and that the daughter said that mommy didn't come home with us.

And Seraph was like, what are you talking about? That's crazy. Like, she was just asleep in the back. Like, you're going to listen to some nine-year-old kid over what I have to say. He's outraged. He's like, I'm just telling you what she said. It's evidence, you know? Yeah. And then also they kind of break down where and when they stopped on their drive from San Francisco.

Like, where they stopped for dinner and whether anyone saw them and stuff like that. Which establishes that there's a two-hour window between when they last stopped for coffee and when they got to the house that no one saw them. Structurally speaking in the story right now, this is kind of interesting because ostensibly we're getting this story as Jim is telling Rocky this story. Right. So this is Jim telling Rocky about the time he told the cops about what happened earlier in the story that he's already told Rocky about. Yes. And we're getting more information about it. And the whole structure of this episode will do that.

There'll be moments where it just kind of calls back to earlier stuff and things start like a tumbler and a lock. Like things start falling into place and then each time he goes over it something more important happens and also this is a very point of view episode like everything that we're all the information we were learning is what rockford actually knows at each point in time not which again is not always how these are structured and is interesting in terms of there is a little bit of an evolving uh mystery that the audience can start to put together could potentially put together before rockford does because there's some dramatic distance between when we realize something and when he realizes something and and there's another little bit in

this scene just at the beginning of this when he first comes to the police station, where in the background we get a clue. So here's another bit where is Rockford telling he's I mean, he's certainly not telling Rocky what the cops are talking about in the background when he first comes into the police station. Right. Like this is but the cops are talking about a fugitive. They're talking about a mob boss who they think might be in Mexico or be making a play for Mexico. And right now, in this moment, this is just background chatter at a police

station, but spoiler alert, it's going to become important. Yeah, and I remember kind of thinking, that seems like a weird detail. I mean, like, I bet it'll be important later but it is also establishing just a little bit of like the cops have a lot of things going on right like they're not always focused on what rockford's focused on so it kind of serves both

purposes in that moment they're not just here to deal with his stuff we also get another statement here about how rockford does not get involved in open cases yes like we're gonna investigate this he's like great you're like yeah like and going to investigate this. He's like, great. And I think Deal says something like, you know, we don't want you poking around and messing this up. And he's like, I don't get involved with open cases. Well, he specifically tells him to ask Becker. Ask Becker, you know, like, I don't get involved in open cases.

Yeah, he kind of throws Becker under the bus a little bit. Cut to him going back to the scene of the crime and wandering around the periphery while cops are there still this is another this is almost like a nested flashback because we again have voiceovers and he's kind of putting together details in his mind and as the audience we're getting this via voiceover yes so these voiceovers kind of highlight some of the key pieces of evidence so far about like the little girl said mommy didn't come home, and so you were alone for two hours, and a couple other things. Kind of showing that he's trying to work out some kind of plausible explanation for what happened.

And these aren't his voices. These are the audios from previous in the episode. Yeah, these are the previously recorded dialogue that we already heard yeah that's kind of getting represented to us yeah while he's doing this he he he's walking around he ends up sitting down on a bus stop bench yeah and then notices that it's a bus stop and then gets that look in his eye of like i have an idea um there's even like a music cue at that moment so they're like and and the camera actually zooms into show the bus stop over his shoulder after he walks out of the frame it's very like dear audience this is important and now rockford has an idea this is good because this um yeah this

this tells the audience why he's we're gonna see him next at the bus uh depot it's not so much uh like keep this in mind it's more like he's about to do something and there's no reason for him to just tell the air like there is i mean they technically do have a reason they could have him cut in with his voiceover to rocky and say it but they just decided to do it this way well it's one of the it's one of the many methods, I think, that TV in general, but in specific, this kind of show, uses to show continuity between why you go from A to B. Right. Yeah. And in this case, they're kind of, this scene is over.

We're showing you this visual of the bus stop sign so that when he shows up at the bus depot next scene, we know why. And, you know, this particular episode uses a bunch of those tools in different ways it uses the voiceover it uses the conversation it uses exposition and it uses these visual cues in different spots to pace out the thing so it's not all exposition it's not all voiceover which is good i think it makes it flow more realistically and evenly for me at least. So yeah, we pick up at the bus depot where he's obviously tracked down the driver of that particular bus.

He asks whether he picked up a woman the night before. And we learned that he did pick up some woman, but he can't positively ID the picture. At this point, people specifically this bus driver but a few other people will be cagey about he'll show him a picture of uh karen and they'll be like i don't know i she was a blonde right like that's the the which is response that he gets from people which is part like maybe that's a thing uh have they been like paid off or something or is it just a thing where like people don't really notice people

unless they have a reason to right um it's kind of an open question for a lot of these interactions yeah and this like we get this again wonderful thing about rockford files is that every character is a character and so this guy like i think this is the guy who tells him you should get it encased in plastic he shows him the picture yeah he says you get that case in plastic it's gonna wear out yeah like just like unsolicited that's clearly not rockford's concern right now right and and then also like he lays out this line like about how how many years it's been since he's paid attention to a woman like that yeah because he's kind of an older guy yeah yeah so this guy was very eager to get across the fact that he's he's a living breathing human being with his own concerns and his own life and his own opinions yeah he's not just an extra in some detective show i love that i love yeah he's great

and then he he does mention that uh the didn't have a purse, which he does remember because she had to fumble around for the fare in her pockets. Yes. Which is unusual, right, for a woman to come on and not have her purse just with the fare. This is another little sleight of hand where we see point A, which is him talking to the bus driver. And then we cut to point D, essentially, which is he's tracked whoever this woman is, whether it's Karen or, or not tractor to this hotel. And he mentions in passing that he basically figured out that she took two

cabs to get there. So we don't see him talking to the two cab drivers because it's not really that important, right? Like what's important is that we know that she went through all this trouble to get to this hotel in a way that hopefully she wouldn't be found is that the implication a bus to a cab to another cab to the hotel right and then the hotel uh the front desk guy uh is kind of a slimy weirdo who is very insistent about um people stay here because they want their privacy.

Right. And then Rockford's like, well, how much, you know, how much do I have to pay you, right, to, you know, not worry about that, essentially. And the guy doubles down. He's like, no, it's just I can't do that. And then we get to see angry Rockford. Oh, it's so good. Angry Rockford is a goddamn poet because he's like there's i wrote this line down he was

like i'm gonna come across his desk and climb your tree yeah the weird slang that he uses when he's really mad and serious about it is hokey but also terrifying oh my god it's so good like i mean i can't imagine delivering that line uh and and being able to pull off what James Gardner pulled off when he did it. I would have been like, oh, shit, no, don't climb my tree. Please don't climb my tree. And he does get physical with him. He grabs him by the tie. Yeah, he grabs him by the tie, and he explains that he's having a really bad day.

He's lost his girl, and he's just looking for an excuse to take it out on someone take it out on someone does this guy want to be that excuse and the guy's like okay fine he uh um he tries to bribe him before that right so yeah and uh one of the things that's like great about the character of rockford here is that he does go through everything he even says that he sympathizes with the guy he goes i actually think you're in the right. People deserve their privacy. Right now, I just can't deal with that. Like, that's not a thing that I can,

that's in the way of me finding, like, it's more important that I find this woman alive. You know, I wrote down in my notes, an apologetic gorilla. This isn't what he usually does. He doesn't usually shake people down. He doesn't usually get violent with people who have not demonstrated or implicated that they're about to get violent with him. And there's this amazing body language going on while he's got this guy by

the tie because the guy is trying to calm him down and giving him information. And while he's doing that, the guy is bringing his arm up. He's bringing his hand up to tap it on the the hand that rockford has him by the tie and rockford just moves subtly and the guy moves his hands away from rockford again like so there's this moment where he's like okay you can put your hand down and rockford i'm not done yeah i'm gonna hold on to you like there's nothing said there but it's just this great moment of physical acting where he's not choking he's just he has him under control right he doesn't want a literal leash you know he's got the tie there and it's it it really puts in your mind that rockford could fly off the handle like he could get really violent with this

guy he's not a small dude he often goes up against like larger thugs uh when he does but like every so often you're like wow that's right this man would be physically imposing so yeah he basically shakes him down and the guy finally gives up uh a room number room 304 rockford asks what name is on the room and the guy's like uh it's diane lewis so i think he and we are like okay so that's an alias alias, right? Yeah. He goes up to the room. It seems like a pretty nice place. It seems more like an apartment building than a hotel to me, but who knows? He goes to the room, knocks on the door.

This woman answers the door. It is not Karen. No. And he seems surprised, right? Because he and I think we were invested in this idea that for some reason, Karen peaced out. She had a double life or. Yeah, tried to lose him, right? And whatever.

So when he finds this, a different woman that he has successfully followed, he's a little confused. But then he asks if he can come in. I was watching this with my partner. And she was like, no, don't let a strange man in your door. Like, from her perspective, right? This guy knocks on the door, and he's like, can I come in? She's like, uh, sure. Yeah, so

there's this interesting thing about this whole scene, because he's a strange man who's just come to her door in the middle of the night. Or maybe even in the morning? I think it's the next day at this point. Because he also mentions that he hasn't slept in like 24 hours. Right, right, yes. Well, he looks like he hasn't slept in 24 hours,

and he looks disappointed to see you there, asks you by a name that you're, you know, asks for, you know, who you aren't, you know, and then asks to come in, and there's this thing where she lets him in and i had the same reaction i was like i mean i know rockford i would let him in like you know like there's he's rockford um the worst that's going to happen is that somebody's going to come in after him like that's yeah that's true but it's like a tv it's kind of like a tv thing right like there's no

view hole in the door so she has to it. And then when he asks if he can come in, she lets him in because otherwise like the plot is not going to continue. But there's the thing that happens there that I think they kind of do is there's like a flirt thing. Yeah, they get all weirdly flirtatious. And I think that that's, I mean, part of it

is just that maybe what's happening here is that she thinks that she's attracted to Rockford and who wouldn't be. But yeah, it's just weirdly flirtatious at that point, I think. I think it's also implying what we kind of get implied through the rest of the scene, which is that if she's not a professional, she may be in multiple relationships, right? professional she may be in multiple relationships right so you know using flirtatiousness as a way to diffuse the situation may just be part of her arsenal right like what is the safer path for her because that's part of what she does maybe but i'm i'm reading that in a little bit um yeah no but there's definitely there's definitely something there she kind of at the end of the scene uh

she like in kind of invites him back which which is a weird thing that lays that out. Anyway, so in the course of this scene, they talk. And basically, he's like, why did you, like, you took a bus in two cabs? Like, why did you take two cabs? Do you think someone was following you? And all this stuff. And then she finally, oh, he also checks out her coats. Because there's a specific coat that Carolyn was wearing wearing and that's what he's looking for.

Right. Because now he's thinking maybe there's some kind of switcheroo or something she put on her coat. All of these are more warning flags about how you shouldn't have this man in your apartment. Right. Yeah. So he doesn't find it. So her name is Diane. That's the name that we know her by in this show.

that we know her by in this show. So Diane tells her that she's having an affair with a man who lives in that area and the wife was coming back unexpectedly so she basically ran away to get out of the situation and went to the bus stop just in case someone was watching and she didn't want to be followed. So she's just nervous and it has nothing to do with this woman, Karen,

that he's looking for. He doesn't know who she is. It doesn't know anything about it. I think he might apologize. I forget exactly whether he does or not. Yeah. And that's when she's kind of weirdly like, well,

maybe you should come by sometime when you're not looking for another woman. Right. Yes. And there's a sound at the door. Another man is there and she's like, okay, now this is from weird to bad you need to get out of here and he's like just tell him i'm a cop this doesn't go over well this is this is

one of those great moments where in uh where one of rockford's plans to to swindle someone or just to lead them astray uh just lands on the wrong person like this guy's not gonna believe he's a cop it's just there's no way it just isn't gonna work it's this guy's not gonna believe he's a cop it's just there's no way it just isn't gonna work it's kind of like he's taken he's kind of flipping a coin right like yeah either it's a magic word and they're like oh you're a cop i don't want to be involved right yeah or they'll know how cops work and he won't be able to make it work which is what happens here because the guy's like oh yeah you're a cop show me your badge and he's like just let me go he's like look yeah he's like fine i'm here to read the meter yes and i just i just passed him and gets out of the gets out of the way so the scene like there's

a lot of dialogue in this scene um it kind of uh establishes he may have been going down a dead end it introduces these two characters diane and this man that uh is nameless thus far who it's kind of implied that like he's her boyfriend or you know yeah something like that like they they do already know each other he's a little mad that there's another man in her room but then rockford pieces out and uh we catch back up to the present. That's the end of the, the end of the, the, the tale that Rockford's been calling Rocky.

Yeah. And as here we have all but one piece of the puzzle, right? I feel like this is, this is, he hasn't put it all together yet, but it's all there. And that's,

this is a great moment to come back to Rocky. I think that this is. So we come back to Rocky and we, we like, like Rockford are a little stymied that seems like it was some kind of dead end there's probably something still there like we know how this show works there's nothing here that doesn't matter right but we don't know what it is though i think as rocky points out in a second there is that detail about the uh daughter being like mom mommy didn't come home with us yeah that is still floating out there and probably has something to do with what's going on

in short order uh rocky kind of takes what he has to say kind of helps him process it a little bit kind of commiserates with him and also this is where we learn that the flashback cuts that he was having earlier are not about this case he's right rockford mentions he's like remember when i had this case which i think is another an earlier episode in the season yeah where this woman was just like found dead on the beach like that's all i can think about is the image of this dead woman on the beach as the show brings you back to rocky and rockford on the beach it brought me back to the opening scene with him having these issues. And I was like,

that wasn't a flash forward. Like what's going on? Like, and this is where the show then explains those to us and says, this is him trying to shake an earlier case that he couldn't solve in time. He couldn't save someone's life. Like if I could have gotten there, if I could have figured it out faster, that woman wouldn't have died on that beach. Right. Yes.'t save someone's life. Yeah, like if I could have gotten there, if I could have figured out faster, that woman

wouldn't have died on that beach, right? Yes. And so he's thinking, I don't know where Karen is. If I don't get to her in time, she's going to end up like that. And that's what's been eating at him this entire, the rest of this day, because time-wise, we're like a couple hours past the end of the narrative that we've seen so far. Now we're in for some amazing Rocky. Oh, my God.

I'll tell you this, because I wrote this down because it was so perfect. I don't know if you want my help or not, but you're going to get it. I wrote it down, too. It's great. It's so Rocky. It's just like pretty sure that his son is underestimating him, but he's going to tell him how it is. It's just like no messing around, Jim.

Yeah, and it's great. And so Rocky brings up that this girl mentioned that her mother wasn't with him. Yeah, he's like, you said it yourself. Think about what you've said. And again, Jim's like, she was asleep in the back. She's just a kid. It's like, think asleep in the back she's just a kid it's like think about what she said uh when was the last time you saw karen before she went to sleep and

then he kind of goes through how they stopped at this place the buna vista in to get coffee uh he went in to pay for it or something when he came back she was asleep in the back of the car and then he goes oh yeah and here's where if you have this on netflix you get to go back and you can be like wait wait a minute and uh maybe maybe if you're uh attuned to this kind of stuff when you first saw it you might have thought wait why are they filming it this way why are we only seeing her in silhouette or from the back? You know, when she gets out of that car and goes into the house, we don't see her face. Nope. We see like the tan jacket. Yeah.

And we see her from the back. We barely even see her hair. We see like the very top of her head over the jacket collar, I think. Yeah. Because the jacket's got like a big furry collar. Yeah. So Rockford kind of puts two and two together here talks us through it as audience for those of us who may have only been paying a little bit of attention may if there was some kind of switcheroo

then that's where it had to have happened at the bunavista inn which means that this woman diane was lying to him and there's something else going on and that karen disappeared there and not at the house and we get another great bit of dialogue here which is the uh where jim says now i know why i come to you when i'm in trouble and they kind of talk over each other and rocky's like because i'm your pa and i'm smarter than you says once or twice a year you're right like that is oh so good it's good um so now we've caught up with uh the the linear time progression of the rest of the episode. And at first, maybe I missed an establishing shot or something.

I was like, wait, where did he go after that? But it turns out he went back to Diane's and he goes into her room and the doors open and he just walks in, kind of starts looking around and then sees her body on the ground next to the bed. This is a situation that Jim finds himself in often enough. He'll knock on a door. Nobody will answer. He'll push it open. And then up, there's the body. So he takes it in stride because this is something that he,

like if nobody's going to answer, then there's a dead body in there. Right. That's how it is. That's just how it is. So he starts searching the room. He finds a matchbook from the Buena Vista Inn in one of the pockets of one of her coats. Yes. So he's established some kind of connection

between Diane and this location. Once he's found that evidence, then he puts a handkerchief over his hand to call the police because he knows that if he leaves any fingerprints in a room with a dead body, they're going to blame him for it. But he calls Dennis. Yes. Good old Dennis

Becker. Good old Dennis Becker to say that a woman is dead in this room. Well, there's two things here. He talks to Dennis. Dennis is all mad. Dennis is always mad. But Dennis is all mad. He's like, we know about her. We caught up with her, you with her an hour after you did. You're burning all of our contacts.

It's like you're burning us on this one, Jim. He's like, don't get involved in open cases, huh? It's like you're burning our entire thing, which if I was a cop, I'd be mad about it too, right? Yeah. But then he's like, and therefore uh lieutenant deal put out a warrant for your arrest and i signed it yes there's this there's this wonderful delicious glee um with dennis here that that again like these guys are old friends that have this kind of back and forth thing but i definitely think dennis would love to put rockford not not for good, but just put him in the jail for the night.

It's a little bit of like a one-upsmanship kind of thing. Like, someday I'm going to get you. This happens, again, relatively frequently that there's a worn out for Jim Rockford's arrest in connection with a murder of some kind. Well, in particular, in this particular spot where I think Dennis figures it out by what Rockford says, that he has disturbed the evidence at the scene. Right. And he just, oh, he's so happy. He's so happy that Rockford did that. He's just like, we're going to get you.

There we go. Now we're talking. into the rest of the scene where the the the boyfriend uh that we saw earlier comes back yeah and comes into the into the into the room and starts searching it just like rockford had just searched it and and rockford kind of hides behind a door and lets him do it before uh finally kind of jumping out and surprising him and and confronting him so this confrontation is great because it's he hides like in a closet when he in. And it's a closet near the front door. So Rockford has plenty of opportunity to just slip out the front door and never be there. But you see that he's curious about what this guy is doing.

Because this guy comes in, sees the body, and doesn't react to it. It's not a thing to him. And he immediately goes into the other room and starts looking through all the same stuff that Rockford was looking through. So Rockford just follows him into that room and then just talks to him. This is one of my favorite things about Rockford is that he'll just at some point just be like, all right, let's talk. And then he has to sucker punch him. Well, the guy starts, we find out his name's Mike something. And Mike talks to him a little bit and then kind of clams up.

We kind of see the return of angry Rockford. Because he's like, you are the only connection that I have between this woman who's dead and Karen who I'm looking for. You have to tell me what the connection is. And he's like, you don't want to know. Just drop it. And he's like, I can't drop it. Yeah, sucker punches Mike and gets really intense with him and threatens him basically kind of starts choking him a little bit i forget maybe grabs his collar or something

and he threatens him with he's like look the cops are on their way uh you can explain to me or you can explain to them and that kind of puts the fear into this guy one of the tropes of the rockford files is that quote unquote the cops are this kind of unstoppable force, right? Like there's never really there, except for one or two episodes where it's about like, kind of some crooked cops kind of stuff. Right. Generally people who are criminals are scared of the cops and we'll do whatever they can to not get arrested. And that's just how it is. And, and there's a thing with Rockford himself who he's, he's willing to get arrested. Like he, he will put himself in these situations

and say, all right, let's get arrested together. He's been there. He's, you know, he's done time. He, he, uh, knows where he sits legally, even if it's in a shady zone. I think that's a lot of it where generally, right, like the calculus is whatever you're getting arrested for is worse than whatever I would be getting arrested for. Right. I know I'll get out soon or it won't actually go to a trial, but you'll go away for a long time because you're into whatever criminal underworld you're in. So let's do this together. Right.

Almost every time they're like, no. Let's figure a different way out. So Mike, under this duress, finally reveals that he works at the Buena Vista Inn as well. And so did Diane. And that there are some syndicate types that run the hotel. And that Karen was walking around when they made their pit stop. She saw something she wasn't supposed to see and that's all he knows. And then they

did some kind of switcheroo. Yeah, I think this is the narrative of what happened there. I think we kind of missed a little bit before I think he explained it to Rocky where he said that she got up to go to the bathroom and then the host or waiter or whatever came over to him and said that she was going to wait for him in the car.

Oh, right. Yeah. So there's this moment where she gets up. She goes out of his line of sight. He has no reason to suspect anything bad's happening. They're just having a cup of coffee late at night and then somebody from the uh the the restaurant tells rockford oh you're the the woman that was with you told me to tell you that she was feeling tired and she's just gonna go lay down in the back of the car and you can just when you're done paying the bill you

just head out she's not gonna come back right um so this is how this switch is made we don't know karen's fate yet but we do know that uh diane was swapped for her at this point right and now there's the positive idea of of some mafia involvement the syndicate involvement uh they then peace out of there uh the rockford gets out of there kind of leaves leaves Mike to whatever fate he can figure out from there. And we go to a transition scene where Jim is driving his car over to the Buena Vista Inn and has the radio on. He's following Mike at this point, right? Is he following Mike? I think he, because he gets there just after Mike does.

So I can't remember if he's actually following him or not. I feel like in this sequence, we, again, kind of speed up a little bit and kind of cut out some of the establishing stuff because it's more about, like, getting to the resolution. The radio is interesting because this is not a thing that happens often on the Rockford Files. But this, it's a news report that's cutting in after some national news and talking about these these murders in the neighborhood that karen lived in and then as like a news item uh you know police are still investigating and the next news item it references this this gangster vincent minette who was last who's suspected to have fled to mexico and is still in you know some kind of investigation trying to turn him up so this is the second time we've heard this name, Vincent Binet, in the episode.

The first time was the cops earlier in that side conversation that we mentioned. I feel like this is a little out of place with Rockford. Oftentimes, they won't. I shouldn't say oftentimes, they won't. Basically, they tend not to do this thing that happens on other television shows where media just happens to give us a clue.

Right. Right. Like this is a rare, rare case of this, I think. This is a little on the nose, right? Like it's a little out of place because it's a little like, hey, everyone, remember about this guy? Yeah. You know, which. But it's also like we've got 10 minutes left.

Let's get it going. Right. We get to the inn. We see Mike go have some banter with what I think we can only call a gorilla hanging out outside one of the rooms. And he lets him in. And then Rockford pretends to be drunk. This is kind of the only real con, like little con that he pulls in this episode. He pretends to be like a drunk

uh person staying at the inn who's wandered into the wrong area uh at first it's like oh is he gonna do some kind of weird talk his way into the room thing but i think in the end basically all it's doing is is letting rockford positively identify that this is an area that that like the bad guys are like this is where they're in this room. They bought the whole wing. They rented out the whole wing. Yeah, so this gorilla is like, go back to the lobby and they'll help you out, sir. And he's like, okay.

And he kind of wanders around the corner and then sneaks through the bushes to try and get a look through the windows. He doesn't really see anything through the windows, and this is when he goes to the bank of payphones, and we get to see from the intro sequence uh see him make his multiple emergency phone calls this is this is great because it's he's got no time to make the a serial phone call he has no time to to make one call hang up and make the other he's got

to make them in parallel so he picks both phones up and he puts a dime in each and like asks one operator for the emergency services and then puts that one on the side as he asks the other one for the cops. It's just this great like he's not messing around. He's going to get them all here exactly at the same time. Right. Yeah, it's a great piece of physical work where he's like moving the phones back and forth so that he's on one and then on the other. The emergency vehicles start coming in uh sirens blazing he's made up all of this right he's made up all this he's like there's a there's a car crash and a fire or something yeah and he's like there's a hold up hold up yeah for the cops so these fire trucks

come up with sirens blazing these cop cars come in sirens blazing and these men run out of the room that we've kind of seen established as like where the bad guys were yeah uh pile into a white a white car and take off and that's when becker and the lieutenant and lieutenant deal pull up in the parking lot next to rockford and he jumps in their car and he's like vincent minette is in that car yes we get a car chase without Rockford at the wheel. Which is a little frustrating. I know. That's fine. We'll get there

eventually. Yeah. So we have this car chase with, I think, is Becker driving? Yes, I think so. Yeah. And calling in the pursuit and we get a cool little scene of the highway patrol setting up a little barrier with flares yeah um and basically during this drive we get the exposition kind of revealing

the last piece of this which is that vincent minette this gangster that the police are after uh it was a false trail that he went to mexico he's been holed up in this hotel and uh karen must have seen him or something like that and that's why they pulled the switcheroo because they're trying to keep it all quiet there was a thing i think it was established in the radio in the previous scene that awkward radio moment where uh i think they specifically said on the radio that anyone would recognize vincent minnette everyone's looking for him so they i can't remember what they said but they made yeah sure we as the audience knew that karen would have if she saw him recognized him right yeah there's some bit of business earlier in the

episode about how uh it's essentially like america's most wanted kind of situation. World famous. So yeah, we get to see the last scene from our intro sequence where the car spins out to avoid crashing into the highway patrol. They, you know, pull everyone out and make the arrests. In classic style without gunning everyone down. This is one of the things that sets Rockford apart from some of the lesser cop television of today. Where in the Rockford files, if a gun comes out and somebody's shot, that's an important thing. It's not the release of, you know, the end of the episode. It's not the release of emotion at the end of the episode. Because we're going to get to some actual emotion. So these are arrests that are made these are yeah for me it all helps maintain this idea that they're in a a real world that has consequences

yeah right because it's like the consequences of just filling a car with bullet holes because you suspect that there's mobsters in there right are there's real world consequences that lead to cops not doing that yeah necessarily i mean you can talk about other situations with cops uh but and then like the consequences of like just getting out of the car quietly and being arrested and entering the legal system for like a mob boss they much prefer that than being shot by cops on the highway right like this idea that there's there's more to a situation than just like the audience vicarious participation and violence which i also appreciate about this show so this is the the action uh highlight of the episode and

then we cut from there to back on the beach we have now rockford has returned after all of these adventures um to to talk to rocky again we still have no resolution thus far on Karen. Right. There was also a little exposition about how Mike was probably a hitman. Yeah. And he killed Diane and maybe the guy, the neighbor. Right. So that's a little unclear about...

Like, why would he... Yeah. This episode, a little bit of the mystery falls apart if you start picking at the scabs a little bit. So Diane's killed the same way that the guy in the bushes is killed. Right. With a blow to the back of the head. So maybe that's this guy's signature.

But if he was there, why is he not part of all of the bus driver and the two cab drivers? Right. Like everyone who's telling Rockford this story. So the question is, why was the neighbor killed? There was maybe a sentence or something about the neighbor was walking by and saw Diane and would have known that it wasn't Karen because they're neighbors. Yeah, yeah. I think that was the motive. But it's a little buried and unclear.

Yeah. There's a couple moments in this episode that kind of fall along those lines where they're not nagging. They don't, like, trouble you. But you're a little bit like, oh, okay. And I have a theory about that, which maybe we'll loop back to that once we're done with this. So we kind of hear the rest of the explanation for what happened and then rocky tries to to make to make jim feel better he's like hey remember my buddy i forget his name i think he's referenced a lot i don't know if he actually appears in the show but he's like rocky has this friend yeah he's like hey he's

uh he offered the his like mountain place uh yeah he's not going to be there. We could go, let's go and go fishing. You know, let's take the week, go do some fishing, just hang out the two of us. And Rockford's kind of like, you know, I just got to sort things out. Maybe I'll come join you in a few days. You go find the good fishing holes up there and I'll come join you. And Rocky pushes a little bit and then kind of backs off and is like, okay, I get that you need a little time because in kind of the last,

pretty much the last sentence of the episode, Rocky's leaving. He's walking away and he's like, you shouldn't blame yourself for Karen's death. And then he leaves. I have in my notes Rockford tears. Yeah. This is an unusual moment.

Uh, we get to see him on the edge of crying. It's, it's, it's actually kind of a, kind of a good moment for James Gardner, you know, like the,

like good, good acting moment. But also like, yeah, it's all on his face. And yeah, this episode, like he,

like he, in the episode, but in this scene in particular where I just got to work some stuff out. And he kind of gives his dad a look. And his dad knows to kind of back off and just let him. Because it's not, it's not over the top. It's just, he's been using the case to, to keep himself from feeling the emotion. It's what it is, you know?

And so here's the moment where he gets to feel the emotion. And this is about to suck. This is what it's going to be. to feel the emotion and this is about to suck this is what is going to be at some point between the end of the car chase and now they found karen or you know they they they know for sure that she that she's dead and it's really sad the last little sequence of the episode is him replaying what they did together in san francisco in his head and we get a couple shots of them on a boat and like driving around and stuff like that and then yeah we end on his his face and we get a couple of shots of them on a boat and like driving around and stuff like that. And then,

yeah, we end on his, his face. And it's almost like a, a family because there's the daughter too, which is obviously gone to the ex-husband, but it's a little look at the life that could have been for Rockford. And like in a previous,

you know, previously we talked about that moment in tall woman with a red wagon where Wagon where he says he's eligible for everything but marriage. This is a moment where this will come up occasionally with the women in his life. But this is a moment where he kind of looks like he's in a married state, is happy, and it's clearly not going to happen. Yeah, it's kind of ripped away from him right on possibility yeah so it ends you know on a real down note it's real sad also i think part of is because as audience we don't learn about the fate of karen until the very end right yes so there's a little bit of hope through the whole thing like maybe she's

going to come out of this weird house that they're at, you know. But no, they – and I'm assuming this is probably from the novel it was adapted from. Right. But the conclusion carries out the emotional investment, the emotional weight of the earlier part of the episode. Yeah, and I think the novel part is kind of interesting because it is – the novel was written at least 20 years before this episode aired. So it wasn't, you know, wasn't written for Rockford. It was written for something else and adapted to Rockford. And I have not read it, so I can't really talk about how well it was adapted to it. But it definitely felt like an older noir played out.

And there are many nods to the noir in the rockford files uh that that work out really well but this one felt even more of a path i think there's a way that i mean the rockford files is not a fundamentally noir show right like it doesn't have the same kind of pessimism or the same kind of uh sense of decay that a lot of the classic noir yeah has is kind of central central to its identity but this particular episode definitely has the uh that sensibility to it and that idea of innocence ripped away at the end is is pretty strong i will say that i think some of the weird inconsistencies or some of the weird like plot connections um in this episode i would suspect are artifacts of being adapted from a longer text especially towards the end with kind

of trying to explain like the motives behind the the extra murders and stuff like that it is a little like i'm not sure how well that really connects without more connection that just isn't in the episode because it's an hour TV show and not a novel. Right, exactly. In that way, I think it maybe isn't quite as well framed all together as a whole piece as some other episodes. But I think the emotional impact of this episode is very strong. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of emotional impact, I'm going to talk about his books. This is a horrible, horrible episode for him economically. From the get-go, our answering machine message

at the beginning of this one is a previous client yelling at him, telling him that he won't pay to have Rockford's car repainted and he will deny that expense bill which is great uh so right off the bat that's money that rockford won't be getting back uh nobody hires him for anything during this episode yeah he's working for himself the whole time he's working for himself and the only amount of money we hear is that he offers the hotel clerk $20, right, as a bribe. But we do know that he bribed the bus driver and probably bribed the two cab drivers before him.

So he's probably out $60. We're going to guess somewhere in there. And again, like as we established earlier, a dollar in this point in time is roughly equivalent to five and change in our time. So we're talking three to four hundred dollars, not including how much it costs to repaint his car from whatever previous thing. So, yeah, he's out money, too, that he can cry about. Yeah. And with my food watch, not a good episode for that either. He's too busy to eat, right?

He's too consumed with trying to find out what happened to Karen to have any side conversations or talks over lunch or anything. The only thing is earlier in the episode when Rocky offers him coffee and he's like, no, I don't want coffee, which I think speaks to kind of his emotional state at that time. Coffee's what got him in trouble. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, because I stopped for coffee in the first place.

So the strong focus of this episode kind of steered it out of a lot of the general Rockford tropes that we appreciate about the longer run of the series. But again, that's not necessarily to this episode's detriment, but it does set it apart in a way. And a look into Rockford's financial past occurred. Early on, he was talking to, they're having the banter, the very beginning when he's talking to Karen about sailing. And he learned how to sail in the Army

when they snuck contraband radios out to the Navy guys. And he sold them the two-band radios for $17.99. And then the earplugs for $20. Because they're contraband radios. So they couldn't listen to them unless they had earplugs in. So they would sell them. And again, this is like, these are like. I mean, that's like $50, right?

Because he was in Korea? Yeah, right? Like, how much money was he making there? That was crazy. So that's exciting. So we know that at some point he had some scheme that was paying out for him during the war. Yeah, he was definitely running cons during his army days. Yeah. sleight of hand, we're going to take a break and then we will be back with some interesting narrative elements that we found in this episode to apply to your writing and games endeavors. While we have you here, if you like the podcast, there's three ways to support us. First, rate and review on iTunes or whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200

a day this enables us to do things like upgrade our audio and if we get enough support release shows more often so it'll be more rockford for you and third both of us have other projects epi what do you have going on right now you can check out my sword and sorcery fiction and the sword and sorcery fiction of other people along with games and comics at worlds without master.com so nathan what do you have going on well i'm always working on designing and publishing new fiction of other people, along with games and comics at worldswithoutmaster.com. So Nathan, what do you have going on? Well, I'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings, including the World Wide Wrestling role-playing game, at ndpdesign.com.

Or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta. Thanks for listening. And now, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a day. We've just done our synopsis, and now we're going to lay a little truth on you. Tell you a little bit about how to take the genius that is the Rockford Files and turn it into genius, either through your preferred writing implement or at your gaming table. So we were saying earlier about how this episode, we can see a lot of the bits and pieces that are due to it being an adaptation of a longer work. Yes. Right. And I think one of those is how the

point of view sticks with Rockford through the entire, pretty much, even though there's some flashbacks, we kind of see everything through his eyes and ears through the entire episode, except for a couple things that are, you know, because it's television, they can show us things that in a book would probably be described to us as his thinking process or something like that or his internal monologue. in any other sort of Rockford episode would have been just something we'd witness as the audience. We have to have Rockford present, so we throw him in the background as cops are talking or on the radio as he's driving his car, that kind of... Right. So as a technique of conveying information, right, like that is something that I know I've made kind of like a meta thing in running games of like, oh, you hear this thing. So obviously this is the important thing for you guys to know right now.

Right. But kind of conveying it through the fictional layer of on the radio, you hear this announcement and you all remember when you heard that name being said in the background at the police station earlier, it's kind of like the tabletop equivalent of the question mark over their head character in a video game where it's like, you need to talk to this person. We don't need to blast a bunch of extraneous information and wait for people to pick up on what's important.

To sift through it and find the... If there's a goal to get to in the game or in the narrative, you can just say, here's an important thing that you hear and let that be what spurs them on to action rather than waiting for someone to figure out what's the important thing of the 10 things that i've heard in the last hour i'm a big fan of physical cues at the table telling you that sort of thing so uh in swords they have the um there's

the thunder which is something ominous that's supposed to possibly become important in the story. And the whole point to that is that you pick up the dice when you, as the overplayers, you're telling people what's happening. You're giving them the background. You pick up the dice when something you say has the possibility of going wrong for them in the future. And it could be anything. has the possibility of going wrong for them in the future. And it could be anything. It could be like a little noise in the background.

Or in this particular episode, when he comes into the police station, the cops are talking about this mob boss. You pick up the dice and just be a visual cue to everyone at the table, just laying your cards down on the table. It's fun as a television audience to go back and try and pick up on what those clues are sometimes. But when you're sitting at the table, it's better that people get the clue than it is that they don't know it. And then they're like, why are we here? What is this about?

Why did you just introduce this? This has no bearing on what has happened before. Especially in something, in this case, where the identity of this fugitive, Vincent Manette, doesn't really matter to the episode, right? We don't even see him, do we? We see him in the

car. They identify which of the people in the car is Manette, I think. But yeah, we just barely. Yeah, so it's not the people in the car is that i think but yeah we just barely yeah so it's not really important in the sense that we need to know what this guy's name is or what his background is or what crime he committed uh he's a plot device right like the reason that he's important is because he's why karen died right so keeping the flow of information, right, of like, here's all the context for why Karen died is something you can do through doing the physical cues and, you know, showing like, here's an important thing.

It could be simple exposition at the end, or it could be, you know, a series of clues that you've already written down and that players are discovering as they play. But the thematic question uh like is basically what is rockford going to do in order to find out what happened to karen is kind of what i got out of this episode at least like it's not about because of the procedural nature we know that there's going to be some kind of resolution and we'll find out either way but as you're watching the question is kind of like what is he we see him get angry we see him use tactics that we haven't seen him use in other show in other episodes yeah so it's like what is

this guy willing to do when something so close to home happens to him i was just thinking about um the role of rocky in this one and and thinking about specifically bringing that to the table and playing that in the game there's something wonderful going on there. And then something in a game that's horrible. It's wonderful in the show. We loved it in the show. But in the game, I think it would be a little horrible. The wonderful part is just, well, there's two wonderful parts.

Number one, Rocky cares about Jim. And he wants to help Jim. And he wants to help in the best way, the best way that he can think of. And, and the wonderful thing that he does here is that he has Jim tell him the story all over again. And I think when you run an investigative game and you have a situation where either it's late in the session, or it's been a week or two since you last played, a session or it's been a week or two since you last played having an npc that you can just have the players barf the story back to can be helpful you know allows them to process the things that they're saying and are things that they've witnessed in ways that could possibly allow

them to piece together what's what's happened in in a fashion that they wouldn't if they just kind of stewed around with it or had arguments with amongst the other players about what and that's also an opportunity to use that uh in this case if like rocky's the npc right to use that npc to push back on details that maybe the players have forgotten that's still within the fictional frame but don't you remember this thing that you told me about right and then the players can either be like i can't actually remember or maybe if the players have forgotten you can kind of sleight of hand like oh remember this thing happened in two episodes or two sessions ago that's important you know keep that in mind and everyone can be like oh right and go forward from there and that's and that's where we fly dangerously close to the horrible thing that Rocky...

If Rocky were an NPC and then just gave the answer, right? Sure. I think that's the razor's edge, right? Like you can get so close to that and have so much fun and then you step over it and everyone's like, oh, thanks, Rocky. I mean, I think if you've played a lot of investigatory or clue-finding kind of games,

you've probably run into this situation where the players don't see the clear path forward. Right. Or as in running the game, the GM or whoever is sitting there going like, either do anything and it'll work out, right? Because you're playing the kind of game where, you know, no matter what happens, it'll move forward. you know, no matter what happens, it'll move forward. Or it's like, here are the one, two, or three options that should be clear from the evidence that for whatever reason, the players just aren't connecting. And so having that table state where people are all kind of looking at each other

and being like, we don't know what to do next. You could use something like a Rocky in this case to interject a reminder about, here's the thing that should lead you to the next thing i think uh in the case of a game it's particularly good to have uh that on the up and up that the players come come to the character and say okay we're at a loss what do you suggest you know or if if not their character's doing it the player's somehow indicating it either through the spending of some resource that's meant for that uh which there's several games that do things along those lines or or even

just hold up their hand and say please well there's in this case i think it's also it's kind of showing the benefit of having characters that are enmeshed in a world with relationships right maybe this particular case there's no reason to like go talk to your character's dad or something but maybe if you've established that you have some kind of positive relationship with them and you're at a loss and so in the game you're like i'm gonna go talk to my dad that's a venue to push the story along that maybe you wouldn't have if you were playing a game where the characters are all more just focused on each other and don't have external relationships into the people around them. So there's a thing in writing where you don't want dialogue to do just one thing, right?

We kind of talk about this a little bit in this episode because there are these moments where background dialogue simply just gives us another clue. And it stands out because generally speaking in rockford episodes uh the dialogue will push the plot along it will reveal stuff about the characters that you know that are happening it will change the emotional state of the characters it does all these different things right so like i said it's a little one note or on the nose when there's like the radio broadcast of like, here's an important clue that will connect to this later. Yeah. And so that's like kind of an important thing to keep in mind when you're writing.

I should say even more specifically when you're editing your writing, you know, when you're going over it and going, wow, this dialogue that they're having here, is it necessary? Like, what is it doing here other than just telling us to get to from point a to point b but um i think that it's also interesting to take that to the game table and think of rocky as this npc right and think of it as the player who's playing jim rockford has rocky listed on the character sheet and says all right i'm at a loss i'm gonna go talk to rocky it would be delightful if one, Rocky can then push you further into the story like he does here. He gives you the clue, moves you along,

but then two does something else like he does here in this story where he shows you your relationship and also shows you how important this case is to you because Rocky doesn't talk to you about all the cases this way. This sets sort of a... It lets us know what's at stake for Jim here. This is kind of an important situation here.

And I don't know how helpful it is to keep that in mind while you're actually playing because oftentimes telling you to keep a bunch of things in mind while you're actually playing is the worst advice. think during during a game I think often people do this pretty naturally yeah where they use the opportunity to interact with the character to also either hem it up or chew the scenery or have some banter or do some other stuff that in effect is

revealing more about their relationship but I think when you're writing especially going back like like you said, in the editing stage and seeing like, what is each piece of my writing doing? That's maybe something where it's like, I have this side character for this plot reason. Is there a way to act, to use this conversation to deepen the relationship?

Even if it's a throwaway character, as we see in Rockford Files, the throwaway characters that have these weird little idiosyncrasies and and these little moments are so memorable and make the world feel so much more alive like the bus driver which is like you want to get that picture laminated it'll last longer you know and he's kind of like a dirty old man a little bit um stuff like that one other thing that this episode in particular really made me think about is this technique for getting a game started that is really effective.

I'm going to talk about two terms here, which are called kickers and bangs. People who have been in the indie RPG world may be familiar with these terms. They're from a game called Sorcerer by Ron Edwards originally and have been reinterpreted and re reused in other forms since. But the basic ideas are, are this, that when you make your character for a game and you're going to get started with the plot,

you're going to start the first session or whatever. The kicker is the situation that puts the character into motion. Uh, in sorcerer, this is a player authored thing. So in this case uh if someone's playing jim rockford maybe they're looking at the character and saying like oh this guy's kind of a loner he kind of doesn't have all these great relationships with women necessarily

romantic he doesn't have long-term romantic relationships what if we start off with him having a long-term romantic relationship that's suddenly taken away from him, right? That's the kicker. That gets the plot going. That gets the story going. He's in a relationship with this woman, Karen, and she disappears. He needs to find out what happens. And then bangs are events introduced into the game that are thematically significant that drive it along and make it

necessary for the character to make a choice about how to go forward. And a lot of the time people will think about like kind of like a sequence of them or a number of them that you can kind of throw in whichever is most appropriate when the time come. Like prepared ahead of time. You'd have this prepared ahead of time or maybe develop them as the game progresses because you see where things are going right so in this case like the first one might be and there's a dead body in the bushes outside right now rock for us to make a choice does he you know does does he investigate that or does he stay focused on karen because that's what's important to him that's like a thematic choice right like if you're right this was a game that's a why where he could have gone into investigating why that guy died like maybe the case is more important to him but in

this case it's karen that's more important to him yeah um so these two ideas i think they're they're present in a lot of episodic writing right like you have a thing at the beginning that gets everything going and then you have uh events that happen that make the players or make the the character have to make an important choice about how to go forward but codifying those ideas is really it's really helpful for me because the idea of we need to get to the next stage of the game how do we get to there from where we are that's a bang that's like here's a here's a thing. Like, the woman is not the woman you thought she was.

The mob is involved, right? Like, these are things that make a splash, that make Rockford have to go into action from there. Yeah, like, another possible bang is the whole scene when he finally tracks the mystery woman that is pretending to be Karen the whole time down to her hotel room. And it's revealed that maybe not particularly revealed that she hasn't been Karen all along because that doesn't really get revealed until later. But it's just revealed that this goes much deeper than just finding out where she wandered off to that night. And again, the idea is that is thematically significant. So in that case, Rockford was sure that he was on the right track. And then when it's revealed that that's not what he thought it was, or he thinks it's not what he thought it was,

you see that he has to recalibrate his entire approach and see what happens to him when he's stymied. Because we don't see that very often either where he's just like hits a brick wall and doesn't know where to go from there and literally this is when he turns to uh rocky exactly this is this is where this is our state at the very beginning of the episode when he starts talking to rocky so yeah uh whether those are kind of inherited from the narrative that this was adapted from or kind of inserted by the script writers for this particular episode I think those ideas

the kickers and bangs but also the idea of having the place to go for the character to both deepen the relationship and also move the story along and have the ever-present details that are called out for us about what's important,

what's not, having the thunder, you know, as you say, be revealed. Those all have strong analogs in this episode and jumped out at us as useful pieces for putting together your own games and stories. The other bit is just sort of this interaction between uh rocky jim and also between jim and becker there's there's stuff to be found there too like just the little bits like they'll you can look at all of how these interactions occurred and see how um they just push the story along and that's perfectly fine whatever but it says with disinterest, but, but the, the fact that they also revel in the relationship between these characters, that,

that it's not just, it's incredibly loving what Rocky is doing in this episode. Like he's, I could imagine if I were in that case, not to, you know, I would be so, I could get frustrated with Jim.

Like he's being very mopey in the beginning and like, okay, well, I can't solve your problem. I'm not the private eye. So what are you doing here? You know? And then speaking of frustrated with Jim, there's Becker. Despite being incredibly frustrated, like he's so, the moment when he first gets that call,

he's so utterly exhausted by the idea that Jim would be calling. It's like, oh, I have to deal with you now? Like, I'm already here at 2.30 in the morning. Right. And he knows he's going to catch heat from above. He knows that, you know, Jim's going to put him in a tight spot. So, again, like, Becker's definitely there. He's a resource for him.

He's a way for Jim to kind of get the police to do something that's useful for him, not necessarily do exactly what he wants and not even to take his word for it, but at least to respect him enough that when he jumps in the car and says, you know, Vincent Manette is in the car in front of you, they just go for it. Right.

They just, you know, they're like, okay, it's possible. Yeah. He's, he still has some, some amount of, um, some amount of cred, of you they just go for it right they just you know they're like okay it's possible yeah he's he still has some some amount of um some amount of cred uh right and there's there's always a lot of like how much is becker really believing him about stuff and there's kind of a switch between

the stuff that he doesn't really believe him about and then the stuff was like okay i know you're serious about this right yeah um and and so so it exists there as a way to get the story forward, but it also exists as this relationship, and neither one gets lost in the juggle there. Do you have anything else to say about sleight of hand? I think we hit almost everything in my notes. I had a bunch of things where I just wrote the word music and put an exclamation

point yeah the music's really again i think it's probably intentionally playing up a little bit on some of the noirish ideas uh the music's a little more i don't know what a good word is it's a little more nervous it's a little more tense yeah and and because it's so sparse in this episode that oftentimes you just get nothing and then you get something and you're like whoa what what is that yeah and it's kind of underscoring big reveals and stuff yeah yeah yeah it's good i think just watching it as someone who appreciates how tv shows are put together stuff like the music and some of the framing is really interesting in this one and and unusual for other rockford files episodes right yeah the only other note i have here is that i just love the moment when he told deal and becker at the end when he jumped in the

car i think they threatened to arrest him yeah and he's like you're out of your jurisdiction yeah yeah he feels like you're under arrest it's, you're out of your jurisdiction. Yeah, that's not happening. Yeah. So let's get on with it. Which, again, is they do mention how the inn is two hours away, right, from L.A. Yeah. So that's another one of those little details that just like hooks back in and is like, oh, right, obviously. Yeah, he's very specifically told not to go, not to leave town.

Don't leave town. And then they yell at him for leaving town. He's like, yeah, but now you can't touch me. Well, like we said, kind of a downer of an episode. I'm not sure if I would recommend this for your lighthearted first viewing of the Rockford Files. But take it in context of all the different kinds of episodes that are, that exist in the series. Uh, definitely stands out,

I think. Yeah, I would definitely put it on a must see list, but I'd also not watch it after a hard day. All right. Well, it seems to me like we've earned our 200 for today. So yes,

thanks everyone for listening. And we'll be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford files.