Two Hundred A Day - Episode 36: The Mayor's Committee from Deer Lick Falls

Episode Date: June 30, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E9 The Mayor's Committee from Deer Lick Falls. A group of stand-up citizens from Deer Lick Falls, Michigan employ Jim to find them a firetruck, but of course that's just a cover for their real intent: hiring a hit man! Once Jim rejects their offer, he needs to find the niece who's the target and try to convince the various bureaucracies involved that these "black-belts in respectability" have murder on their mind. A memorable episode that approaches the Rockford Files formula from a skewed direction, we really liked this one, and not just for all of the connections to Eppy's childhood haunts! In our second half, we talk about how this episode gives us a set of non-standard villains who manage to be simultaneously awful and endearing, and how it uses seperate mini-character-arcs within the group of them to achieve that. We also break open the idea of each step of the story raising the stakes for our hapless committee, and how to include that in your stories and games. 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 Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app 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, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Jim, this is Manny down at Ralph's and Marl's. Some guy named Angel Martin just ran up a 50 buck bar tab and he wants to charge it to you. You gonna pay it? Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. As per usual, I am Nathan Poletta. And I am Epidio Ravishaw. And today we are getting back to Peak Rockford in season four, episode nine, The Mayor's Committee from Deer Lick Falls. This is a good one. This one, I don't know if our viewers, sorry, our listeners follow my journey through my Swiss cheese memory. But quite often I don't remember the titles of these things, but this one I remembered. When you suggested this one, I was like, fire trucks,

let's do this. Yeah, this is one that stands out in my memory generally. I think it has a certain charm to it that's very memorable. So in the absence of having another particular direction to go, I was like, let's do this one. Let's get around to this one because I know it's a good one. One fun fact, I did not pick it for this reason, but upon, you know, getting into it, this is the other episode of the Rockford Files written by William R. Stratton. Oh. Nathan here. Our conversation here is referencing another episode that we had recorded previously where we talked about another season four episode, Forced Retirement. Unfortunately, that audio had a problem and we are not able to air that episode.

So the CliffsNotes here are that the writer for this episode, his IMDb credit is William R. Stratton. And in addition to these two Rockford episodes, there's only a couple other credits. And we thought that was very strange. So through some internet sleuthing, we discovered this is probably referring to someone who more commonly went by Bill Stratton,

who was a prolific TV writer, including being the longest standing writer for the original Hawaii Five-O and developing the character of Tony the Tiger, among others, for national advertising purposes. So that other episode, Forced Retirement, is also notable for its off-kilter approach to the Rockford Files formula, in our opinion, and is definitely worth a watch. But that is what we are referencing here. All right, back to the show. I'll just reiterate here that he once wrote an episode

for a show called Sword of Justice called The Skyway Man. And I still have not been able to watch any of that, but it's aimed right at my heart. And then the director for this one is Ivan Dixon, who directed nine episodes of The Rockford Files, but somehow this is the first one of his that we've managed to hit. So another recurring director

and another person who's digging into his biography a little bit, super interesting. In addition to being a Rockford Files regular, he also directed multiple episodes of Nichols, which was the late 60s James Garner, Meta Rosenberg project that kind of created enough notice for Rosenberg to continue, you know, doing shows and producing stuff and was why she brought James Garner in for, you know, for this project, basically. So I thought that was interesting. But he was actually an actor

before he was a director he was on broadway in the sydney poitier raisin in the sun production and then came along with him into the movie version among many other acting credits and perhaps best known as a ensemble character on hogan's. Yeah, he's a pretty well-regarded African-American actor and director. And he, per IMDb, he transitioned from acting to directing because he refused to play roles that he felt were stereotypical in nature. So it sounds like his career transitioned

to where he had more power to call the shots about that kind of stuff, including he was active in the civil rights movement in many regards and the president of the Negro Actors for Action group as part of that. So another of these very interesting people that I knew nothing about before looking into them for the Rockford Files. Yeah, I'm just scrolling through his IMDb. And I mean, there's nothing terribly exceptional about this because this seems to happen with all the directors we look at. But he had a huge influence on my childhood. Like Greatest American Hero and Airwolf and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Anyways, yes, plenty of shows that I watched in the 80s he directed.

And then he also ended up directing a ton of Magnum P.I. Yeah. As part of the Rockford-related detective show continuity, he was another person who seemed to ride that wave for quite a while. I mean, with a mustache like his, there's a certain amount of gravity involved in magnum pi there that would um in terms of this episode there's nothing like flashy or like anything that jumped out as like oh that's a really interesting shot kind of stuff but there's a lot of this episode deals with old hollywood in a way that's kind of interesting and the way that things are kind of framed. But there's a lot of this episode deals with old Hollywood in a way that's kind of

interesting and the way that things are kind of framed and set up, contrasting that with like modern LA in kind of a fun way. So I'd like to think that perhaps that's due to some of the directorial oversight. Yeah, actually, one of the things we might want to talk about in the second half is LA as a character. It wasn't like a giant character in this story, but actually there were certain plot points that occurred because of L.A. Yeah. I think largely because as we jump into this, we'll find out that most of our crew are from Michigan. Yeah, and that's a lot of the contrast.

But we will get to that as we get into the episode, which we'll do after we hear about the preview montage. Some great lines in it. I think the Rockford line, we'll get to it when we get to it. But he says, I'm not going to play caterer to a killing or something along those lines, which is good. Nice line. And then somebody called him a bedroom bird dog, which is a great name for a PI. It's funny because I don't think we do see him doing many of those kinds of that work. Like he doesn't normally handle divorces or cases of people cheating on each other or whatnot.

But there's a clear hint that the heavies in this aren't heavies. They speak a big game, but they don't act and behave like they're mobbed up or anything like that. So, and then some car stuff going around in, including we're ending the montage on a crash. The brakes are out. What's going to happen? How will Jim make it out of this one?

Yes. 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patrion.com slash 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day. Patrons get to add to the 200 a day Rockford Files files, help us pick which episodes to cover, and more. Each episode, we extend a special thanks to our gumshoe level patrons. This time, we say thank you to Jim Crocker. In addition to supporting the show,

he also sells our games at cons east of the Mississippi on behalf of Indie Press Revolution. Follow along on Twitter at IPR Tweets. Shane Lievlin. If you play games online, you should check out his free dice rolling app, Roll4YourParty, at Roll4Your.Party. Mike Gillis, host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast, the McLaughlin group for nerds. They remain at RadioVs the martians.com kevin lovecraft part of the wednesday evening podcast all-stars actual play podcast found at misdirected mark.com lowell francis with his award-winning gaming blog at age of ravens.blogspot.com

dylan winslow dale norwood bill anderson adam alexander chris dave y and dave p and finally big thanks to victor de santo and to Richard Haddam, who you can find on Twitter at Richard Haddam. Check out patreon.com slash 200 today and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. We end the preview montage with a car crash, but we start our episode. Yes. Smiling, sunglass wearing Jim Rockford driving around an old fashioned fire truck. So this is this all is just a quick titles over this little montage of him driving around with this crew of what I noted as happy white men on board with him.

All but one of them is smiling. You're right. Yeah, it just looks like pure joy. Just a bunch of children riding a fire truck. You're right. ish, uh, enthusiasm for riding around this fire truck. And I think it's, uh, emphasized by the age of the truck itself. It's the truck is clearly of an era just before the seventies, which I guess would make it the sixties. Well, uh, once we get out of our credits and into the dialogue, we do learn that it's 20 years old. So yes, this is from the late fifties, but yes, this is, as we learned in the first like three lines, uh, this is the mayor's committee. Uh, and they have come to LA from D'Elic Falls, uh, which is in Michigan.

So there you go. You got the title. We're done. Right. Done. We've solved that mystery. Uh, apparently Rockford has been tracking down a fire truck for them. They wired in an offer on this old version, and they were surprised that their low bid would be enough to get it. It's a little unclear about exactly why someone, a group of men from Michigan.

Well, there's two things. As we will learn, this is a cover for another thing. Yeah. But even just the premise of we're from Michigan and we want to buy a fire truck, we're going to hire someone in LA to find one for us is a little like, all right, interesting. Well, okay. Like, is that a thing that happened? I bet you it is. As a temp worker, I've done weirder things.

Okay. But I'm not a PI, so I don't know. But I'm not a PI, so I don't know. But this is what I wrote in my notes after bragging at the beginning of this episode that I remembered it. I also forgot it. So I wrote in my notes, is this a con? And I was thinking about it from Rockford's angle. Because this, Rockford with the sunglasses and like with this fire truck, it feels like a con.

And it's not the kind of con that Rockford would pull. He's not he wouldn't normally try and just swindle a mayor's committee unless there was some sort of something else going on. Yeah, something else going on, like you need them to confess to something or whatever. So I was like, I don't I don't think this is a con. Like selling them selling them a fire truck under false pretenses is more of an angel con. Yeah, exactly. That's a very angel thing. them selling them a fire truck under false pretenses as more of an angel con yeah exactly that's a very angel thing uh but then as it turns out it is a con just not rockford's con and we'll get into that so through this initial dialogue we kind of get the first look at our mayor's committee and we learn their names and stuff later but i'll go ahead and just run through it so that

we can talk about them as we go. We have Ev or Uncle Ev. He's the main guy. He's the one wearing the big loud tie in every scene. He has big glasses and he's kind of the leader of the group. We have Art, who is the balding guy, and he is the one that's more reticent and is not smiling during this sequence. Then there is an excited guy who's just pumped to be in L.A. and wants to go and check out the massage parlors. That's Newt.

And then there's another kind of spindly, quiet guy who, as we learn, has a heart condition. And he stays pretty quiet. He's kind of the least present of the four in the episode. But we eventually learn that his name is Noah. But the scene does give us these, even before you learn their names, you're like, okay, these are four distinct individuals.

Yeah. Each kind of have a thing, both visually and the kind of emotional tenor of their presence. Yeah, they all behave differently enough. I think, I can't remember now if during the episode this actually gets explained but i had the distinct impression that art was the mayor himself uh no i don't think so because they do

there's a scene where becker runs through each of their kind of portfolios yes you're right yes so they're all yeah they're all part of the mayor's committee, and they're all prominent businessmen, essentially, in Deerlick Falls. If you are like me, constantly searching for Rockford Files GIFs on Twitter and being upset by the number of X-Files GIFs that you see on Twitter, there's a crossover here because Newt is played by Jerry Harding, who plays a reoccurring character on the X-Files, Deep Throat. Oh, I did not realize that. He's also the only one of these men who was in other Rockford Files episodes. Yeah, he's very recognizable. I couldn't find anything, but Art seemed very familiar to me. But looking at his bio, I didn't really see anything I would know him from.

So maybe he's just one of those kind of character actors. And he has a good line here speaking of the glasses uh we find out that he is not particularly happy to be there because he's saying how do you trust anybody in in a state where half the people hide their eyes behind sunglasses that's to protect their vision dude yeah it's bright out there in california i wanted to something about Newt here, because his childlike wonder throughout all of this is great. We'll go on about how each of these characters is important in certain ways. But I don't think this episode hangs together if you don't have these four characters behaving the way each one of them does. characters behaving the way each one of them does. Coming off of this firetruck ride, if they all just became committee members again, and they didn't have Newt to carry on the joy of the fact

that he got to come to LA and ride a firetruck, right? Like there's certain bits that just kind of their personalities carry things forward in thematic ways that I quite like. I agree. Ev says that they're satisfied with the truck. They'll settle up and then they'll go paint the town. And that's when we get them asking Jim about if there's any good massage parlors that he recommends. And he has a good line about the one at the YWCA being pretty good. So Ev kind takes jim away from the other ones to do this paperwork and he's writing this check very casually conversationally asks if it's hard to find people if you don't have their address um and so it comes out that he's looking for his niece in addition to this

fire truck thing yeah um he would like to try and find his niece who is a struggling actress in la he has a profit sharing check to give her, but doesn't know her current address. And they have a few days in town before they head back to Deerlick Falls. So he would hate to go back not knowing how she's doing. And Jim agrees to take a look. So he gives Jim the name Laura Ingeborg. We get a little micro Jim refusing a job and then the person having to lay on a sob story or something like that in this but it's so small yeah it's in like two lines yeah we just have to

go through these beats here you're offering jim a job he's got to go no okay the other relevant bit from this is that his niece uh she used to work for him as a bookkeeper before she decided to try and become an actress which is why he has this profit sharing check for from her former job um but yeah jim agrees to do it so our next scene is at an employment agency where he runs a little con he's looking for an actress who can also do books yes because he's some kind of like cb radio manufacturer right or something like that. He uses all this like trucker lingo. She's going to do like skits or things like that, like conventions or.

Right. They have a convention coming up and they need an actress because they want to do these skits. And then the woman's like, oh, and also she can keep your books. I see how it is. So the woman he's talking to is like okay it'll take two weeks and he just lays on the charm really thick yeah and just kind of charms her into saying like okay i'll just run this right now for you so this this con i like this uh because it has two really good tools in uh jim's tool box that's what we keep tools in it's the charm the sweet talking he

definitely lays on the sweet talking but then it's the blather it's the his ability to just speak in jargon convincingly enough to make people feel like they're out of their element and he's the expert and so he should be trusted i mean this is just a small moment in this episode but it's sort of beautifully done here because it just it just nails that Jim is capable of doing the job like this is this is what he does. And it also yeah, he also uses the time pressure a little bit like two weeks won't be enough. Yes. Next weekend. Can't you just help me out? You know, just it's one time. And also kind of subtly, I think this introduces bureaucracy. Yes. Which becomes relevant later.

And this is a case where Jim is able to sweet talk his way through what usually would be a bureaucratic process. And that's going to contrast with stuff later in the episode. Yeah, because he's up against four big, muscular bureaucrats. We go back to our committee. They're outside the. Oh, it's on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yeah, yeah. So they're there wherever you put your you can put your your feet into the footprints.

Yeah. Because Newt's going, my feet are the same size as Bob Hope's. Oh, Newt. But while he's being excited about that, the rest of them are talking about the thing, the thing that they're there to do. Art has changed his mind about the whole thing. Yeah. But Ev says that Rockford will do it. He's clearly desperate enough because, look, he took money to investigate a fire truck.

And I think Newt pops in with and he lives in a trailer. Yes. And he pops in with, and he lives in a trailer. Yes. So as the audience, we are now seeing that obviously there is some ulterior motive to this mayor's committee. But I really like how, however, they ended up picking Rockford. They have definitively misread all of his cues. Yes. Which is fantastic.

And they're all true. They're just not defining characters of his, you know, moral backbone, right? Like, right. Yeah, he's not doing well financially. That's the sort of the point of why Rockford works the way he does. And he does live in a trailer. He's perfectly happy. We've done I Still Love L.A. We know that he's going to stay in that trailer well into the 90s. Well, he'll take on weird and dumb jobs for money, but he lives in the trailer by choice, right? Yes. And that's something that we know that they don't know, which is kind of a fun dynamic.

Yeah, and I wrote in my notes here that this is an unintentional trap that Rockford has set for them. It's like cosmic bait, karmic bait, right? it's like cosmic bait, karmic bait, right? Like they think they've got a juicy fish on the line, but what they have is, I don't want to call Rockford a shark. They have a sturdy but inedible boot. Yeah, that's good. That's exactly how I would describe it. There's another thing about this scene that I'm going to go off on for just a moment, if I may.

Is it the Brown Derby? It is the Brown Derby. Oh, okay. You know me now. Well, I did not know what this was and had to look it up, but please educate me and our listeners. Well, this messed me up. It made no sense to me whatsoever that he would be excited about going to the Brown Derby. And let me tell you why. Belden Village is a little strip mall in Canton, Ohio that has a Brown Derby. When I was growing up, we would go to the Brown Derby to celebrate, but this would be like going to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate. This is like going to Chili's. It didn't occur to me that, first of all, the Brown Derby I knew was a chain

that was in Ohio and had nothing to do with the Brown Derby I knew was a chain that was in Ohio and had nothing to do with the Brown Derby they were talking about. It didn't occur to me that the Brown Derby wasn't a chain that was all over the United States. So I was getting all these weird cues about this guy being this backwater hick, right? Like I'm thinking, oh, he's from Michigan. So he's excited about the Brown Derby. Like when my aunt visited me in New York and wanted to go to the Olive Garden. But it turns out that the Brown Derby is very much an LA thing. You should look it up on Wikipedia. It's this big hat looking place, a big dome building. It's a golden age of Hollywood reference. Yeah. Which I just did not know about for A, because I did not grow up in the area.

In either area, apparently what you're talking about is Gerv's Brown Derby. Yes. Which has that name to differentiate it from the original Brown or the Hollywood Brown Derby. Also, all of the ones, like the old ones, the the famous ones were all bulldozed in the 90s. They all were in disrepair and and got bought and turned into other things. So it's not a reference, I think, for anyone who's not, you know, grew up in it with that as part of their lives or maybe a big golden age Hollywood fan. But yeah, just from context, I think I got that when he was really excited about like, let's go eat at think I got that when he was really excited about

like, let's go eat at the Brown Derby. It was a let's go to the tourist trap that I've heard. Right. And that was the thing that threw me because it's like, let's go to Chili's. Nothing about it sounded touristy to me until I had to look it up because I was like, what is going on here? Because I am used to ohio brown derby where no celebrity has ever eaten like the the first one i guess the original one there were a couple in la but was like across from the coconut grove and was where like hollywood stars would go clark gable was said to have proposed to carol lombard there right the first episode of i love lucy was set there as a gag like that kind of Yeah. So this is a very new thing to do that. He's here to buy a fire truck to do something nefarious and to meet, see all the sites. And he's going to make sure those happen. So we hear about the Brown Derby here.

And then again, in our next scene where Rockford almost runs into the man bringing up room service to the hotel suite where our mayor's committee is having a party. When he comes in, Ev mentions like, come meet the girls. And Rockford says, oh, did you meet them at the Brown Derby? Like Rockford knows. Yeah. That is a touristy, like you get the feeling that someone like Rockford would never be impressed by anyone going to the Brown Derby, even if it's expensive or whatever. But he does have news. He has tracked down the fact that his niece, Lauren, is using the stage name Inga Lauren and is working. He found a headshot of

hers. She's in some show. He just needs to find out which theater she's working at. Right. He wanted to make sure he had the right person before he did all of that work. Right. So I've confirmed that that's her and then pulls Rockford away to talk privately. Yes. In this kind of dramatic shot, he turns around and just tosses a wad of $5,000 in cash to Rockford. He says, there's 5,000. Rockford says, I figured. Yeah. Yeah. He says, by hindsight, it's a perfect 5,000. That's front money. And he has another 15,000 once Rockford arranges for Lauren to have a

little accident. Yes. Rockford is nonplussed, would say and we have a business between as being like well isn't this the kind of thing you do and rockford being like no this is not what i do i'm not gonna kill your niece for you the uh oh yeah he has i didn't write this one down but he does have this great line about that they they misunderstood the people that he knows but this is where he does deliver the i don't i won't cater a killing line. Yeah, which is great. Another of the committee comes in and it's like, so you're going to do it. And he has a line of how to throw a net over a bunch of you. But not only is Jim Rockford not going to kill this woman for money, he's going to go to the police and inform them of this plot in the next step of them not understanding what they're doing with uh ev

is like what you're going to go to the police with your prison right as rockford fans know uh jim does have a prison record uh but it was he was given a pardon by the governor and is a little touchy about people trying to lord it over him use it as a some kind of leverage on him he says that he's he's not worried he's going going to do what he has to do. But the mayor's committee says, well, they have friends in high places. We're not field hands, is what he says. Rockford, however, does not seem impressed. You handle it however you need to.

I'll handle you from my end. His end, of course, is going to talk to our good friend, Sergeant Becker. So tell us the police and we're done taking care of it yeah yeah sure of course not uh it's night and becker and jim are back at the door of the suite have answers in a night robe uh becker clearly is reluctant and is not yeah super happy to be doing this but jim has strong-armed him into it right um he uh invites them in says they can straighten it all out becker asks about shouldn't there be four of you because there's only three of them there and this is where we get the first mention of noah having a heart condition

so he's he's lying down becker presents the accusation jim here says that you offered him twenty thousand dollars to kill your niece ev denies and has a counter complaint, which is that Rockford tried to stick them with a $5,000 bill for two days of work. And then when they said they wouldn't pay, he threatened to blackmail them with pictures from the massage parlor that they went to. He did put $5,000 in Rockford's hand, but then thought better of it and took it back.

And that is why Rockford has made up this story. Becker hears him out. There's a good moment where he asked Jim, you have anything to add? And Jim says, just a laugh track. Yeah. Becker is noncommittal. Sorry to have disturbed you. Good night. Once they're out in the hall, Jim, of course, is like, what? You're going to believe them. Becker, as we might imagine, Lieutenant Chapman is probably not going to be too happy once he hears that Jim did or that Becker did this. So he wants them to at least remember that he was polite. Yeah. But now at least they know that the police have been informed, even if they are up to something. But now Jim should be the one worried. Jim ends the scene with,

what can they do? And we have a good a good joke in the cut. Yes. Going from what can they do to we can revoke your investigator's license. Before we move on to this next bit, I want to talk. First of all, I love Dennis's play in all this. You're frustrated with Dennis because you're like, why aren't you treating this seriously? This is like, sure, it's from Jim, but Jim doesn't. We don't see Jim messing around with things like death threats and things like that. But it's, jim but jim doesn't we don't see jim messing around with things like death threats and things like that but it's again the bureaucracy right like he knows how this is going to play out and he knows what needs to get done like maybe they realize the cops are on to

they can't do anything they're just a bunch of yokels so they'll go home right that'll be the end of it nobody has to deal with anything and it'll be over but most of all it won't bring more hassle to hit like it frees him up to actually do his job rather than have to protect jim from chapman or you know however yeah that goes down he's trying to make the best trade-off he can right which is to help jim out let these guys know that someone is on onto them if they are doing something and also kind of cover his ass with Chapman a little bit, like as much as he can. So I got a question for you, Ev. Ev asks Jim several scenes before where they're at the fire

truck. Do you know any of those, any good massage parlors? Is Ev setting up this, this oh he's blackmailing us with photos of us at a massage parlor or did ev legitimately want to know about them and then when he realized he had to black they had to like frame rockford work that into his uh his story i feel like it's probably the second i think we have another mention of massage parlors in the last scene in the suite when they come into the suite and stuff. My read was that, yes, our mayor's committee wanted to go to some of those L.A. massage parlors I've heard so much about. Yeah. And then since that happened anyway, that was the easiest thing to reach for to make up this story. That seems good. I'm inclined to agree. So what we're witnessing here is more of a poker game than a chess match.

Yeah. They're doing the best they can with the hand they're dealt. They're not thinking a bunch of moves ahead. I think so. I think that's borne out by the rest of the episode. Yeah. But yes, we are to the maximum bureaucrat in our next scene uh someone named rankin who apparently is part of the bureau of consumer affairs which apparently

oversees private investigator licenses um there's been an official complaint from the michigan attorney general to their office about rockford because of that. And also he has Rockford's physical file. He's like, I've never seen a file this big between that and the amount of other scrapes he's gotten into. They're suspending his license until the official hearing makes a final determination, which is going to happen in three days. Here we see Rockford doing his best to plead yeah he's basically just asking asking for the guy to to to have mercy on him he knows he doesn't have any leverage to con this guy or make him do what he wants right but uh Rankin is having none of it so Jim Rockford his license is suspended yes from there we go to the police station where he's talking to Becker again and uh has the great line of i'm staring down the

muzzle of a double-barreled bureaucrat becker does say that he'll be at his hearing and that jim won't be there alone right which is a great little friendship moment right we always talk about how the little moments showing that these people are actual friends are so important and this is a good one i i wrote that down too. I was like, Dennis is a good friend. I also wrote down the other thing we learned in this scene, which is of particular interest to me, which is the going rate for hired killers in the year 1977, which is about $10,000, which I think is about $50,000. $10,000, which I think is about $50,000. It struck me as a little weird just in the scale of the other money in this episode. Yeah.

Look, I don't know how much it costs to do that kind of thing, but it did seem a little low to me. I too don't know how much it costs to hire a killer in the year 1977. Do not at us. But yes, the $20,000 is twice the going rate. It's about 40,000 nowadays. So they're offering him, with the 20,000, they're offering him close to 80,000, a little over $80,000 in our money. So just to kind of put that in perspective. Yeah. Yeah. It's not nothing. It's not like it wasn't enough to corrupt jim if jim was

corruptible in this way right he just wouldn't do it part of this also is uh becker rattling off all of the committee men's wholesome bona fides uh the successful businesses that they run one's a 32nd degree mason one's an elder of the church. Like one has a distinguished flying cross. Like they have all these accolades, which culminates with they have a black belt and respectability. Yes. So Becker says that, you know, with all that, even with what Rockford said, Chapman can't justify staking these guys out. There's just not the will to do it. Right. So Jim's like, well, I guess he's gonna have to find lauren ingeborg before they kill her and then we get a nice little montage of jim taking notes as he looks at show

posters and drives around la going from uh theater to theater trying to track her down which is nice i think we were mentioning like the idea of la as a character yeah this montage does a lot to show us a little texture of the city just because theaters are very visually interesting, like all the marquees and a lot of them have the very deco like lettering and stuff like that. So the sequence adds a lot of visual texture, which is a nice little bit.

So there's a thing here with, which ties into the thing you were saying before about, we get that scene earlier where rockford gets her name uh from a temp agency by working the bureaucracy the way rockford knows how to work it but now the heavy hitters came in and they hit him with everything they've got right so he can't work the bureaucracy anymore so this is the okay well now it's time for rockford to do what he does what's the next step in the mystery like i gotta find her gotta warn her and uh i like how that ties into this

montage of him going through his city because again they're out of towners throwing their weight around in his city right i i feel like that there's a little bit of that going on here that i like the way it's playing out. Yeah, it's captured really nicely. Our next scene is the mayor's committee eating, presumably, at the Brown Derby. They all have plates of steaks and fries in front of them. Rockford's obviously not going to work out. He mentions that he's possibly found a new contact

through a gambler he knows, but that in order to find her, they're going to have to draw her out somehow. And so he's going to put an ad in the show paper that all the, you know, theatrical people read advertising that he has her check and give them the phone number for their hotel to draw her out. The business here is mostly just to get that part of the plot moving along. I think we have a little bit more of like back and forth between ev wanting to proceed and art being like this is a bad idea you know we've already struck out once but this is also to set up the end of the scene where newt runs back

in drops into his chair and excitedly talks about how he thinks he just saw jane fonda newt absolutely is not seeing these people like he's just thinking he's he just saw Jane Fonda. Newt absolutely is not seeing these people. He's just thinking he's running into these stars. Rockford has found Lauren. He's at a stage entrance to some theater and she is in fact coming to rehearsal at that time. He pulls her aside before she goes in, lays out how he was hired by her uncle to find her, but he wants to know,

is there any reason why he would want you killed? She doesn't think there is. She appreciates his concern, but doesn't believe. So he names her uncle and starts describing the other guys, and then she knows who they all are, right? She names all of them. She doesn't know why they would want to do that. It's a family affair. Ev has a hot temper, and sometimes he goes flying off the handle, but she's used to it

and she can handle it. She does ask where he's staying, but Rockford, under the circumstances, won't tell her. Yeah, so this is our first appearance of Lauren, who is played by Priscilla Barnes, who has had a long and distinguished TV career, perhaps coming to people's attention in the first place because she replaced Suzanne Somers on Three's Company. Right. And that was apparently a big deal. That was before my time. I would not know. But she's been in tons of stuff, including apparently an uncredited appearance on Columbo as her first

TV role. Nice. But she's great. I think we see in this scene we see uh that she's a very self-possessed you know confident person the trope of the like struggling actress could go in lots of ways right yeah and she doesn't seem particularly dramatic or over the top well she's not flaky in any way or anything like that she probably like if a stranger came to me and told me that my uncle had hired them to kill me i might react in the same way that she did. I don't think I want to go with this stranger anywhere.

And let me figure this out. But thank you, stranger, in case you're right. Thank you. I think that this is a legitimate sort of turn or twist obstacle in Rockford's way. And her personality is not going to be a problem, right? Like sometimes characters, I mean, like sometimes we know Angel, for example. Like if you're going to work with Angel, his personality is going to be a problem, except for maybe in this episode.

So that was one way they could have done this scene is they could have had her just like sort of flaky and therefore would be like another thing that Rockford had to handle. But instead, she had a very real reaction to what Rockford said. So this is in his way right now. But she is like a real person and not. Yeah, she doesn't seem unreasonable or like. Yeah, she doesn't seem like she's part of the mystery at this point. We'll see how it plays out.

But it's a nice kind of solid anchor for the rest of the episode. Yeah. Because the other characters are actually a little more fantastical. And she seems very straightforward and real. We go back to the suite where Ev is answering the phone. Lauren did see the ad and we get a shot of it. And it's this giant two column ad in the paper, which is probably very expensive. Right.

Lauren does want to know why Rockford said Ev wanted to kill her. And he has a story about how hiring him was the worst mistake they made. But they did go out and have some drinks. Ev was getting aggravated telling Rockford about what Lauren had put him and her aunt through by running off to L.A. or whatever. So he got a little hot headed and Rockford offered to kill her. Right. So of course he kicked him out right then and would hear nothing of it. But Ev says that they're going back tomorrow.

He does have her profit sharing check. They should get dinner so that he can give it to her. And she agrees. So once he gets off the phone, he says that they're going to have to do it themselves. Tonight is their only opportunity. And we get the thematic confrontation between Ev and Art,

where it's like, have you ever killed another person? Yeah. And Ev apparently was on who flew in the war. And he's like, well, I dropped plenty of bombs or whatever. And Art's like, I'm not talking about about dropping bombs i'm talking about getting up close and he has a whole he has a little monologue it's good it's a good one yeah the part that really hits you is when he's like they fight back this is you're not taking this into your plan you think that it's you flip a switch and it's done they fight back yeah it's dirty and bloody and yeah oh that's good worth watching yeah it's good

and then you see that they're all listening to him but then ev comes back with what about the federal penitentiary yeah you know that's what we're facing here there's no statute of limitations on tax fraud she'll have us under this cloud for the rest of our lives so whatever this is it's tax fraud of some kind. And it's at least to Ev, it's worth it enough to kill his own niece to keep it from coming out, whatever it is. Art leaves the room, leaving the three of them. And Ev says, all right, well, we'll do it ourselves.

So Art has made his case and then absented himself from taking action. We cut from there to Ev and Lauren leaving a restaurant after having dinner. Ev kind of guides her out to go to the car, I guess, and starts walking across a street. And then we see a car's headlights turn on, and then it comes swerving out onto the street. Ev has this moment where he, like, grabs her so she stops moving

and then just kind of pushes and runs off while. So she's facing these headlights as they're coming straight towards her. And she's frozen in fear. I think we're supposed to read. But Rockford was waiting. Yes. The firebird comes shooting out of the darkness and swerves in front of the other car, keeping it from hitting Lauren. And he jumps out and grabs her, you know,

to, I don't know, steady her or comfort her or whatever. Yeah. And she's just staring and says, he wants me dead. Yeah. That's great. I love a firebird rescue. I don't think there's a chase at all in this episode, but there's some good car stuff. And this is one of the great moments. Yeah. It is a little like the staging's a little weird because there's enough room for this car to swerve around and not hit either of them. Yeah, it's staged so that they could do the stunt without actually having to crash any cars. Right. Yeah. Which is fine. But it does leave a little bit of like, I wasn't sure she was really 100 percent in danger. But also maybe part of that is these guys are not hardened killers.

Yeah, they took the option to not hit her once there was something in the way yeah so back at the police station we have a line about uh lauren is glad that jim decided to follow her which is how he was there apparently he's been following her since uh the whole day not at all creepy not at all creepy but because he thought something like this might happen yeah becker's made's made a report. Chapman is reading it. Lots of jokes about how long it takes Chapman to read a report. He might have to read it twice. Yes.

Lauren says that she had contacted the attorney general in Michigan to report her uncle's undeclared income due to some kind of argument or whatever. But he just found out about that last week. That's what she thinks this is about. What she knows about, and that might not be all of it, is $750,000 in tax dodging. Yes. Unearned tax credits stemming from a whole phony farm setup that they were all involved in. They lay out, I think for us, so we know the stakes here, that if that is true, then her reward would be

$75,000 and that they would be facing up to 15 years in jail. So that is what they are so worried about. It's not a small chunk of change. I mean, like $75,000 is still a lot of money nowadays, but like that had bought a house. It would have bought a really good house. like that had bought a house. Right. It would have bought a really good house. Three quarters of a million dollars is a lot of money. So as we might expect, however, Lieutenant Chapman is not convinced.

Yes. He kind of reads through the report and says that there's just not enough evidence to act on what they're claiming happened. He would need another witness or more evidence to corroborate the story. He could have someone swing by her residence every couple of days or a couple of times a day. But that's all he can do. Yeah. Chappy. If Lance White came to him with this.

Right. Lancer. Yep. Good old Lancer would have been there. Oh boy. So Chapman will be of no help. But back at Rocky's place, he is making plates of eggs for everyone. And as Lauren says, back in Michigan, we hardly ever have Mexican breakfast for dinner.

I love it. There's a comment about Rocky's salsa. It's like use it to strip paint or something. Yeah, something. Something. Apparently real spicy. Rocky is also worried about Jim's job prospects. Yes.

And has been leaving employment ads out for him. And starts pointing out ones that he could do now that his license is being revoked and all. You got to look past tomorrow, don't you? Rocky's so good. But Jim Rockford, he likes what he's doing. Yes. That's what Rocky always forgets. And they have to be up early.

They have to go up early they have to go to the irs in the morning they have to be in by nine just to get out by five because it's it's the government yeah um back with our uh our reluctant villains it's noah is the one with the heart condition he's lying down in bed his heart isn't feeling too good as soon as he's strong enough he's going to take a plane back to Dear Luke Falls. So he has an actual heart condition up to this point. I was like, I don't trust these jackasses, but it turns out he has an actual heart condition. There's a moment where they're all like, well, we did what we could. We should all just leave. But now, Art has something to say. Here's the thing. Since you started down this path,

you can't just leave now we're in too deep uh you made the attempt by now she's gone to the police sergeant becker is going to be knocking on our door again ev didn't think that they would fail yeah and since they did maybe we should just leave uh but art says failure seems to up the ante now that we've started we can't stop yeah we have to kill her before she can go to the IRS. Right. Because now there's no reason for her not to. All we've done is given her more incentive.

It's going to have to be today because they have to arrange their accident before the IRS can process her statement. So we see Art and Ev, their positions reverse here as the situation gets more dire for them. Yeah. dire for them. Yeah. It's kind of a nice payoff of their earlier conversation where because Art has the experience of this close-up having to actually kill someone in person, he's willing to kind of gut up and make it happen while Ev, since he hasn't done that before, is getting cold feet about it now that it's become more real for him. We'll probably talk about this in the second half, but what's happened here is that we spent most of the episode looking at newt as the wide-eyed innocent yokel and here's the part where art says that ev was newt all along right like this is you didn't understand what you were

getting into you thought you were going to you know pull this off and it'd be easy and we'd be on yeah we'd just be meeting a bunch of celebrities and having fun or whatever but that's not what's happened and now i kept telling you that what you're asking for is not what you want and now we've gone too far yeah each of them has like a little character arc mostly these two mostly have an art but yeah all four of them have like a bit of an arc and a bit of development, which makes it interesting to see, like, what are they going to do next? This is also sort of the loss of Newt's innocence, even though like Newt was never innocent. He was obviously part of the scheme from the beginning. From here on out, he's not like, hey, I saw this celebrity or let's go to this.

He's not all excited anymore. Yeah, he looks more pensive and nervous in every scene, even though he doesn't really talk much. And sure enough, Lauren and Rockford are at the IRS giving her statement. Her full story here is that she originally wanted to just get back at her uncle because they had an argument. She knew that he had not reported some income and she just wanted him to pay his back taxes

as a way to get back at him for whatever they were arguing about. But once she learned that he could go to jail for it, she dropped the complaint with the Michigan office and decided to just move to LA and be an actress instead. Yeah. Like you do. The IRS guy asks why Jim is there and he says, well, this is not just the IRS guy guy this is less nestman of wkrp i've never seen wkrp oh okay all right so which i'm given to understand is a big hole in my tv watching uh knowledge well most importantly uh less nestman was the uptight uh of the WKRP news crew. So that's what we're looking at here. Typecasted as an uptight IRS man. He is very uptight.

Yes. This isn't the kind of situation that goes well for Jim in general. Yeah. Once he learns that Jim's license is technically suspended right now, he will not give him the time of day. Yes. But he does say that they will file and verify the statement. But Jim wants protection for Lauren. They're trying to kill her. You should do something. And Mr. Romney. Yes. Basically, just very coolly lays out. Here's

how much money we've paid out to people who have come to us with complaints. This is a routine that we do. Complainants should know all the risks involved. And yes, they do get threats and sometimes attempts. Yes, that happens. But that is not our problem. Right. Yeah. We just deal with the numbers.

Jim's like, how many of those are paid out postmortem or something like that? Mr. Romney has no to give about the physical danger here. So they're packing up Lauren's stuff. Her apartment is very yellow. She's just grabbing nothing but the vitals. Yep. Bottles of things, lotions and hair product. It took her four months to get the role she was in.

And now her understudy is going on. That's a shame. But, you know, Rockford reassures her that there will be other roles. Yes. And she's not like complaining and trying not to do what they need to do. It's just kind of like this sucks. This is just my luck. Yeah.

Being the target of four old men who want you dead is so annoying. They go out to the Firebird to leave and we get a dramatic shot of a pool of fluid under where it was as they pull away. And then we see Ev suspiciously peeking out of the window of another car on the lot. And as Lauren is telling Jim about a

good sashimi place that they could go to if he likes Japanese food, they crest a hill, go down the next side, and he has no brakes the brakes are totally out so we have a tense driving scene where jim is avoiding oncoming traffic swerving around people coming in his way honking horns yeah and finally manages to steer the car up onto someone's lawn and through a wooden fence to kill their momentum without coming to any harm.

Let's forget the sashimi and call it a day. I was watching this scene and I thought that when she started suggesting sashimi, I was like, okay, Nathan's got a thing for this. But Rockford's got his out. He's good. He doesn't have to pretend to like tiny slices of fish. Yes. Though I feel like that's the thing. Sashimi.

Not sure that counts as a garbage food. Not in L.A., I guess. No, it's a street food. But in the 70s in America, probably not. Yeah. No, this this is probably her being an actress, probably the trendy thing for people to eat. So they they survive they're back at rocky's place uh lauren is writing down the whole thing so they have it down and on paper uh rocky took a look at the firebird there was no brake fluid at all the clamps were taken off so there's not even evidence that the that the brake line was cut or anything right like it could have just come off so what what is he going to do now there's some line where rockford comes comes out saying well for all they know they did kill her yeah his hearings tomorrow but until then they don't know that she's alive so if he moves fast he can make something happen we cut from

there to hearing angel martin saying why me yeah it was just the outside of uh presumably the newspaper building i wasn't paying attention i just heard his voice say why me and i was like yes yes and he wasn't even in the preview montage no so a fun treat jim is offering angel 50 bucks to help him do something angel has a story about how he has this poker game he's supposed to go to where with other people from the paper, he can get money out of them. But they throw, as Jim says, they throw nickels around like they're manhole covers. This is 50 bucks for 15 minutes of work. Angel says that would be a much more efficient use of my time. Yes.

He has to wear a suit and tie. Angel gives him a face and says, fine, another $5 for the tie. Yeah. Ties hurt. We're back at their hotel suite. Art saw an ambulance, but there's nothing in the papers. How do they know that she's dead? Yeah. They ask him if he followed. And I think this is part of my overall theory of la here because he tried but he couldn't and the reason why he couldn't is that he got on an on-ramp and ended up on a 45 minute detour because he took a wrong turn in la like he's the out-of-towner and la is like you're not going to get to witnesses you know i am going to protect my people send you off on this yeah uh out of the way journey yeah so he saw an ambulance

going the other way but who knows if that was for that or something else yeah uh so he does call the theater that she's that she's the play that she's in and they say that she's in the hospital and that she's not expected to live so they're like oh all right well then mission accomplished we should leave let's check out and get back to Jailok Falls. Then there's a knock on the door. And there he is. Angel in a suit. Yes. He says that he is from the coroner's office at the hospital.

Should have called them by now. Yeah. But that she that Lauren has, in fact, passed away. Uncle Ev's name and the hotel address were in her purse, along with a number of pills. Yes. Oh, and then Ev says, was there anyone else in the crash? And he's like, oh, no, she was alone, like in a 65 Mustang. So they know that Rockford was not killed in the story that they're spinning.

Right. But he's there because they need to make arrangements, especially for someone from out of town. Ev has a particular mortuary that he asked them to transport her body to in Deerlick Falls. He has a business card from that mortuary. That's some to transport her body to in dear look falls he has a business card from that mortuary that's a forward thinking there ev and so angel plays this totally straight he does his thing he tells them the story that he's there to tell them and he gets out he has like one little moment i think on his way out where he says something like oh it's my pleasure and then he recovers by saying this is by far the easiest job I've had today. Yeah, the easiest one of these I've had to do today or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Oh,

it was good. So out of character for Angel, but you get the idea that Angel can do this stuff. This is why Angel and Rockford are friends, right? This is one of the reasons because every so often Rockford needs an Angel to do this and Angel is happy to take Rockford's money. Yes. And he has no angle to take Rockford's money. Yes. And he has no angle to get more money out of the situation. That's just it. They didn't have any more money to throw at him. He just might as well do the job.

Maybe he can get back to the poker game. So, yeah. So once he leaves there, they're like, wait a second. What happened? How did she get to her car? Ev says she never she never mess with drugs. She is. She had allergic reactions.

Yes. So they know that something funny is going on. And then the phone rings and it's Rockford. And he says, yeah, a nice trick with my brakes. But we managed to get out of it. I don't know what happened to her after it. That had nothing to do with me. But now that she's dead, she managed to write down the whole thing before she left.

So I have it all on paper. And he gives a couple of details to them to kind of verify that. What he's proposing is that as soon as they withdraw their complaint so that he can get his license back, he'll hand over the evidence. Oh, and also I had a couple other expenses. So I'll also need a hundred thousand dollars. And so, yeah, he sets up a meeting place. And after they hang up, we have a line about how it just doesn't stop. Gets worse and worse. Yes. The thematic through line of this episode.

Every time they think that they've made a step forward, it's two steps back. Rockford, of course, was calling from Rocky's place. And he says that he had to play it greedy to make them believe that's not just about his license. Yeah, I like that Rocky is worried about jim's uh uh moral character here i didn't raise you to blackmail a bunch of killers from michigan well and lauren says that he's just making himself a target he's leaving them no alternative but to try and kill jim and jim's like that's right that is in fact the plan plan. So our committee is laying their plans. Art is wrapping up a bolt action rifle like a like a Christmas present.

I think Newt is getting off the phone. Noah, he's in coronary care. He keeled over when he went out to make the bank draft for this hundred thousand dollars. They have no money for Rockford. Yep. They're doing both, right? Like they're going to get this money. But also Art was going to be like, we have to kill jim they're they're falling apart noah literally yeah yeah noah literally

died or in the hospital yeah no this is this is the descent of the crew here this meeting is at an indoor mall i guess at the time all malls were probably indoor. Yeah. There's so much just this little piece of establishment is so great. We have this panning shot of the various stores, including a giant Walden Books. Yes. I remember from my youth, there were still Walden Books. Yes. That was where I got most of my role playing game books as a youth. And as the camera pans over it in the weldon books

we see becker browsing so we know becker's on the scene and there's a giant tolkien lives sign over an end cap it's like yeah 1977 this was like peak counterculture tolkien crossover yes all right so you may remember from earlier in the episode when i mentioned belden village where my brown derby was i believe that's also where my walden books was panning through the mall like i have no nostalgia for malls whatsoever until they hit the walden books because that's the refuge right there's a shoe store over there. There's the, you know, like where you don't want to go, but you have to, because you have to try on new shoes because your feet keep growing. You just go through all of these boring ass stores. Then

you hit Walden Books and you see Tolkien lives. You don't even know who Tolkien is, but that font, you know, it just drags you. And yeah, I got a lot of my game books at Walden Books. It was like this fantastical island in the middle of all this mundane reality. Not to, you know, hinge the entire episode on this, but oh my God, the moment that camera panned across that, I just slipped back into the late 70s, early 80s and wanted to go to Building Village. Wanted to see what new books they had, look at the covers and not afford any of them. I mean, they're clearly just on a location, right? So it's just a great little slice of the time period that stands out because so many of

the stuff in LA is all exterior. Yeah. And so much of Jim Rockford's life, it's either very straight or very criminal, right? Right right and this is just a little between this and then there's also like a hippie playing guitar on the bench that they sit on and we get that little slice of like oh right it's the late 70s there's like hippies and counterculture and fantasy and sci-fi and music all the stuff that was highlighted i think for us most pointedly in the episode we did on quickie Nirvana, which is like about that. Yeah. I don't know.

There's just that little bit. I think it kind of adds as the memorable miss of this episode. That's all. And if anyone is interested in catching up on quickie Nirvana, which is one of the great Rockford files episodes, we talked about that in episode 20. So you can go back in the archives there. We've probably talked about the Walden books more than the rest of the action in this in this scene but basically uh they're

they're there to make the exchange um ev and newt rockford meets them uh next to the guitar strumming hippie hands over the sheaf of papers and then when they're not handing the bag that presumably has the money in it over, he starts getting suspicious. I think the camera looks up with him to the balcony where Art is like doing the action on the bolt action rifle that he has half in wrapping paper. It's very awkward. Little awkward. And he yells for Dennis and that he's up on the balcony.

Art gets a couple shots off as they all dive behind columns and stuff. People start yelling and screaming. Dennis runs up onto the balcony and collars Art before he can do any real damage. And then Ev tries to run up the down escalator in a little visually resonant moment for his whole episode, right? Yeah. He tries to run up the down escalator. Another cop appears at the top of it and he just rides it as it slides back down towards Rockford at the bottom. Yeah, I love that shot. It's really nice. Rockford reveals that Lauren is still alive and well.

And as the cops hustle our mayor's committee off of the scene, our guitar strumming hippie starts getting in their face and be like, you don't have to take it from these pigs. Read them their rights come on you know and rockford as we know from quickie nirvana not having much patience for people spouting rhetoric uh when he's trying to get things done kind of takes him aside and says verily i say unto you brother button it so we end our episode back at rockford's trailer where yes rocky is opening some champagne or rosé or possibly rosé champagne. And Rockford is trying to stop Lauren from paying him. You don't owe me $1,800. You didn't hire me. Right. But she endorsed the profit sharing check over to him. So it's too late. Yeah. Too late now. Rockford says that, well, your 10% is going to be more like $75,000 for turning in these tax evaders. Angel is also there

in a fantastic Western shirt and jeans combination. Yes. And at hearing about this $75,000, he gets very excited. He knows someone at the paper who has not reported her freelance income for five years. She brags about it. All kinds of people don't report their income. People who get paid in cash. People like Jim. Just saying. Yeah, it's just an example.

Random example. They laugh and laugh. And then Jim goes, all right. Anyone for pizza? Yeah. And everyone enthusiastically is like, yeah. Including Lauren. She was proposing sashimi

earlier right but she seems extremely excited at the prospect of getting some pizza now yeah who wouldn't oh it's so good it's across the street they all leave but angel he needs to call his sister and tell her that he he's not going to be home for dinner uh as the rest of them leave the trailer he goes over to the phone and then starts looking through Jim's file drawers and looking at his paperwork. And we get a little final gag as we see the camera sees Jim come back in and he's looming over Angel

staring at him as Angel pulls out a piece of paper and looks at it and looks up at Jim. They have the last little moment and Jim gives him an aggressive laugh.

Yes. And we freeze frame on Jim's laughing face as Angel abashedly puts the paperwork back in his drawer. Caught him. End of episode. That was fun. I really enjoyed that episode. Fun episode.

All right. That's all we have to say about that. Cool. Yeah. Sounds good. There's actually a lot of interesting things to talk about in our second half. Yeah.

But I think I said at the beginning that this one just has like a charm to it that I find really memorable. It's a combination of our bad guys, our villains not being really villainous. Like they're doing a villainous thing. Right. But they're not bad guys in the same way that like mobsters or con artists or like cold hearted killers are. They're very much out of their element. Yeah.

So like their bad is not reporting something on their taxes. And now they're going to do several orders of magnitude more bad to try and cover that up. And then they're not prepared for it at all. It's kind of this combination of naivete and like determination. Yeah. That is really kind of memorable memorable so that's nice and the pace of it's really good uh there's a lot of good like here's a little bit of the mystery oh we found that out but now there's a little bit more of the mystery um it unfolds as you watch

and there's not the big like and here's what's going on all along at the end yeah so it kind of feels like a very satisfying story well told there's not a whole lot of information that's hidden from us as viewers that's something i want to talk about in the second half maybe we should go ahead and move on to that because i think that's more the meat of what i want to get into it's all kind of second half stuff but uh really solid really satisfying episode. Good performances. Good story. Well written. Yeah. Jokes.

It's got a Walden Books reference. You gotta appreciate that. So I would go ahead and say another great season four episode. Yeah. Recommended. Go watch it. Agreed. Because of that, it sounds like we have a lot to talk about in our second half.

So let's go ahead and take our break and we'll come back with all of that stuff. Sounds good. We hope you enjoyed that discussion of back with all of that stuff. Sounds good. We hope you enjoyed that discussion of another wonderful episode of the Rockford Files. Here are a couple of ways to support us that will keep us bringing this podcast to you, our fellow Rockford Files fans. First, you can rate and review us on iTunes or whatever else you use for podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. And of course, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now?

As always, I'm working on the next issue of Worlds Without Master. You can go to www.worldswithoutmaster.com or just patreon.com slash Epidaya. Or you can go to dig a thousand holes dot com where I talk about my other projects, including non sword and sorcery games and fiction. How about you, Nathan? What are you working on? For the year of 2018, I am doing a monthly zine project called Zine 2018. Each monthly issue is a collection of essays, art, photography, and a game, and each one organized around a central theme based on the month.

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We just got done talking about the Mayor's Committee from Deerlick Falls. Deerlick Falls, of course, being in Michigan, as you all know. It was a wonderful episode. We both enjoyed it quite a bit. Now we're going to talk about some of the lessons that we learned from the episode that we could apply to the fiction that we create, whether it's sitting down and gaming at the table with friends or writing our own hit TV series, which obviously we have a lot of experience with. So I feel like we called out a number of things as we went as like, we'll

talk about this in the second half. Are any of them top of your mind to get us started? Yeah, well, I've got one that blew up in my brain at the very end of the first half. As our listeners may or may not know, this is the summer of The Rock for me. After watching the Jumanji and Rampage films, I thought, you know what? I just enjoy seeing Dwayne Johnson on screen. So I decided I would pursue every single The Rock film I can get my hands on and watch it. We watched one recently called Faster, which had nothing to do with the Fast and the Furious series. And in it, there's a thing that's going on where there's a twist. And I'm not going to reveal the twist,

but there's a character who has a hidden agenda as you're watching it. And you kind of know what that person's hidden agenda is from the beginning. So that the moment that they reveal occurs it doesn't quite hit it's sort of like oh okay and watching that afterwards i thought to myself this probably would have been more interesting if we were just up front about that character's hidden agenda and we watched as that character's plans fell apart, trying to work against the rock. And this episode is precisely that. Like very early on,

$5,000 gets thrown into Rockford's hands and we find out exactly what these four gentlemen from Michigan are all about. And from there, there's no twist. There's no mystery to solve. We talked about that. Like Rockford's detective work in all this is finding the woman that they want to kill so that he can protect her. And even that isn't.

That's just like it's handled with a couple of montages. Yeah, that's it. There's not mystery in the sense of what is going on right now. Right. We get the revelation of the motive. Yes. We get the why is this happening, but the what is very clear. One of the reasons why this episode is so entertaining is that we see the struggles

from the antagonists because we know what they're up against. We know their goal. We know what they want to accomplish. We know where their inabilities exist and where their abilities exist. And we see them put the pressure the way that they can. We don't have to see them getting Rockford's license revoked. We can see Rockford get his license revoked and know that they didn't. All right. So I think one of the kind of neat things that they do in this episode

is whenever somebody comes to their door or their phone rings, in the beginning, it's happy, right? They're having a party. There's a person coming in with alcohol and food. And when Rockford comes, that's great. But from the moment when Rockford tells them, I'm going to the cops, every time there's a knock on that door or there's a phone that rings, we see them and we see them afraid of it. phone that rings, we see them and we see them afraid of it. We see the anxiety that they have over this sort of communication, even though like sometimes that phone is Lauren calling to tell them where she is. Like sometimes it's good news for them. But there's also news that's pulling them farther into this thing that they are conflicted about doing. And those are all great

scenes. I love watching that concern when that happens, partly because I have like, I mean, we live in a day and age now where if there's a knock at my door, I'm like, oh, what has gone wrong? And if somebody calls instead of texts. That's bad news. It's clearly an emergency, right?

So if instead this episode was going to be like i don't even know how they would have turned it into a twist but i'm just saying if instead they wanted to hide the fact that these people were trying to kill her and it was up to rockford to find out who was we wouldn't get that right what makes this work is that they're very forthcoming with the information they're like here are the concerns that all of the characters have this character wants wants to get the murder done. This character thinks that it's dumb that we're trying to get the murder done. This character is just along for the ride. He thinks it's going to be fun. This character has got a troubled heart and we're not entirely sure, except that he's implicated with all the rest of them. He's implicated. And I think at the end,

it kind of implies that he is the money guy. Yeah. Yeah. For whatever reason, he's the one who has the power to move the money around. I just want to kind of advocate for that style of storytelling. I mean, the show was classified as a detective show. People might even think of it as a mystery show. And there is mysterious elements, I guess, or elements from mystery. But yet we're just very forthcoming with this information. That's helpful. You can make good drama out of that. I think it's a really good example of the conflict in the episode comes about from people having conflicting agendas, not people having wrong information or hidden information. We've talked about this,

but probably not in a while. The opposite of this, right, is the story where if they all just talked for five minutes, they could straighten it out. But because it is narratively constructed such that nobody chooses to talk to each other. Yeah. You know, like that kind of thing, which can be done well for like a comedy of errors kind of thing, But often in many, you know, subpar dramas, it's a crutch. They're sort of leaning on it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a crutch where it's like if they just talk to each other, they could solve this,

but they're not because the story needs them to have conflict. So in order to avoid this, you want to do what this episode does, which is even if these characters all know 100% exactly what each other want, what they want is in conflict. Yes. And so that is what pushes them together and makes them take action. Even while there's the element of revealing information to the audience, because it's fun to see something unfold before your eyes. But yeah, like we're saying, it's not a mystery in the sense of let's find out at the end what was going on all along. There's tension in when is Jim going to find out what, and once he does, what will he do?

When Jim first confronts Lauren, this is a scene where they could have written it, and I'm very happy they didn't, but they could have written it where Jim decided that he didn't want to upset her by telling her that her uncle was trying to kill her. And you can feel it in the scene. You can feel like he even comments on it to some extent, like, I don't know how else to tell you this, but your uncle wants you dead. His first couple lines leave it open to where he's going to go. Yeah. Right. Like he could try and run a con on her to find out what she knows.

Right. And you get the sense that maybe it would be different if she was a different kind of character. Right. But I, like, I really appreciate that they instead we're going to put it out there because again,

her reaction doesn't have to be in line with the, what we as the audience would do, knowing everything that we as the audience do. Yeah. But then once she's confronted with the evidence, once they do try to hit her with a car, the pieces make sense for her. Yes. And it's like, oh, they are trying to kill me. I mean, she's shocked when she says that in the show, but her character is not someone who is trying to think the best of her uncle no matter what her character is one who's kind of clear-eyed and once given more information about the situation makes the right call there's something there's a nice aspect of this episode where no one's really

dumb except like i mean kind of the whole conception of we're gonna kill my niece so that she doesn't reveal this that's a little romantic in the sense of that's the thing that people in movies do. Yeah. It's a little naive. Yeah. It's a little naive and they clearly don't really know what they're getting themselves into. Yeah. But they're not idiots. I mean, they do some idiotic things, but they're clearly a bunch of men with an agenda trying to do the best they can to achieve it. And, you know, she's not portrayed as dumb. She's she wises up real quick. She knows what's going on.

Clearly, Jim is on top of it as he is wanted to be. I mean, hell, even Angel does what he needs to do and doesn't get sidelined. Yeah. So there's something there where it's like it kind of treats the characters with respect, even though the story is kind of a fantastic story. I think that's what's really compelling to me too. I think that like, this is advice that's maybe, I don't want to say easy to implement, but certainly something that we don't really have to tell you how to implement it. When you have a story like this, just show the audience the pressures and the reasons why the villains are behaving the way they are what's difficult about it is keeping in mind that that is a really

effective way of telling this sort of story i think that a lot of times you can get tempted by the big reveal they're behaving this weird mysterious way and we'll we'll eventually figure it out that's fine fact, I just realized they had a little bit of that in, in this episode and it was Jim's plan when Angel is telling them, no, it's not the, like she had a bag full of pills and, uh, it's not the firebird that was in the accident. She was all alone. I'm sitting here going, what's Jim's. Yeah. But that's small, right? Like that's a tiny moment in it and it gets, the payoff is almost right away. So like the tough part is just like letting go of that desire to have a big reveal.

Like most of the time, either people have guessed it beforehand or they're like, you laid no groundwork for it. Like it's hard to find that middle line. I think where this may need a little bit of like a shove is at the tabletop, right? Like if we're playing a role-playing game. Okay. So obviously there's a role-playing game about this and this fiasco. The mayor's committee from Deerlick Falls is a fiasco playset. You play the mayor's committee and you all have these situations that eventually make it all

fall apart and you're unable to do what you need to do. But if you're not playing fiasco, if you're playing a game and your characters are interacting from a more protagonist standpoint, a more... Yeah, your viewpoint is your character's viewpoint. The way that this episode is structured is very audience facing. As the audience, we see almost everything. And Jim does not see things until he finds them out or is told them. So if this was told strictly from his perspective, it would need to be structured differently in order to get that sense of steadily unfolding information, I think. Yeah. I mean, we can assume that he's sussed them

out to some extent. We know that they're doing something nefarious before he gets the offer to kill her. Right. And that creates tension. Because we know why they picked him. Et cetera. So anyway, but yeah, if you're playing from the protagonist's first perspective and interacting through character interactions. I think try doing a scene where you just show the antagonists. I say have that scene. I say show them what the antagonists are doing, even if their characters don't see it. I think it's perfectly okay to say,

oh, okay, I'm going to show you a little behind the scenes for a moment here. This will contextualize what's happening. Now, your characters don't know this. So would you play it? play towards that uh and what does your character actually think that they're they're doing and there's also like the idea of they could be more forthcoming in those interactions to give the character the information that the audience would otherwise see you know when they try to buy him off maybe that's with all four of them. And, uh, I mean, that scene was really delightfully forthcoming, like right down to Jim saying, no, I'm going to go call the cops. That scene could be with like art is in the room and art says they're doing this. And I don't want,

I don't think that this is the right idea. Right. And that argument happens in front of Rockford. You can still convey that tension. And you can totally play into a player character by just saying, here's what you see in their glances. You can guess that this is how they're all pointed at each other or away from each other based on your keen perception of the human condition or whatever detective powers you have, Batman. Yeah. I think I wanted to go a little further into talking about our, our,

our reluctant villains here and how sparsely, but perfectly positioned they are as not having the same agenda or as having overlapping agendas that aren't all one circle of a Venn diagram, right? They share a common goal, but as we kind of laid out when we first talked about them, like both physically and in the way that they interact with the camera and with the other actors, there are four separate people with four separate personalities. There is as much fun in this episode seeing how they interact with each other as seeing Rockford and Lauren solve the problem. What's the minimum you need for a character to create that much productive movement in a story.

Right. So I'm thinking about Newt, right? And there's a scene where Newt chases a limo. Yeah. He thinks that Betty Davis got in it or something. Like even at the time or anachronistic reference. Yeah. First, he just said, there's a limo.

And he ran after it. And he thinks he saw that person in the limo, right? Like, I don't think that this is an accident. I think that the writer or the director or somebody, or maybe even Jerry Harden, who played Newt, was like, oh, this guy is a puppy dog and puppies chase cars. So we're going to have this happen, right? That little teeny core element, they were like, oh yeah, that's all we need. He's a puppy dog. And he really does behave like a puppy dog and he really

does behave like a puppy dog throughout the whole thing and he kind of goes with the the strongest personality in the group right at first he's on he's with ev because i have the determined one who's making things happen yeah and then once art kind of takes over that role then he's backing up art but he's much more serious about it and has lost that like he's got his tail between his legs yeah yeah i was thinking you said in our first half something about like it'd be impossible to imagine this episode without all four of those characters yeah i mean i think you're right but also i was thinking about how you certainly need all four of those energies like all four of those ideas about what they're doing but it could be in could be

condensed into less people maybe yeah because like it's kind of like they're almost four parts of one person right noah is like the weak link in any theory i have about these four just because yeah there's not so much about noah so noah's frail and ailing i think what he does is he kind of makes their whole group a little more sympathetic and a little more like out of their element yeah um like there's a little bit of tension there like what is going to happen with him but also what can he possibly do right he? He has this frailty, as you say, to him that makes their whole group slightly less cartoonish. Yeah. No, I think that's right.

And like thinking about them as a single individual, like Noah is that individual's mortality is a reason why if they go to federal prison, it's not just justice. That's a death sentence. Yeah, they don't really call that out, but that's a good read, I think, on that. Like, yeah, if he goes to prison, he will probably die in prison. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way I was thinking about it

was just each one of them has like momentum and a vector that takes over at different moments to drag them where they need to go, right? Like Newt brings them to the Brown Derby. Right. Ev is carrying them most of the way towards this horrible attempt. But then once the attempt occurs, Ev's done, out of energy. That transition is really key.

Yeah. To, again, making that unit feel a little more human. Because you see the overlapping arcs of ev and art and uh kind of what they both care about and what they're willing to do and this kind of gets to another thing that i wanted to make sure we talked about which is the idea of the failure upping the ante yeah first of all when that transition happens it's a welcome surprise right because we've been seeing ev be the driving force behind this whole thing. So when he's like, you know what, maybe we should drop it. It's like, oh, that's interesting. You're a big talk, but now that you're presented with the outcome,

you're losing your nerve. It's an interesting dynamic thing that drives the story forward. Oh, now that art is pushing for it. And he's the one who is talking about how terrible it is to take a life with your own hands and how gross and bloody and everything. That is a scarier guy to be in charge, to be pushing for murdering someone. This idea of reluctance is an interesting and powerful one. And I think we're tempted to have very capable villains and to have very hateable villains. And there's nothing wrong with that. I love me a hateable villain. Yeah.

But parsing the antagonist in your story along the lines of like something that they feel they have to do and then how that like overwhelms whatever moral sense. That's a very human story that might be a counterweight to something that's a more fantastical tale. Wow. The more we talk about it, the more I'm like, this is a well-crafted episode. So, you know, we start off with the fire truck and all but art are smiling on that fire truck. And they're like, yeah, look at us. And I think that's what carries us in the beginning. Let's go to L.A. and have fun. Let's paint the town.

Yeah, exactly. And then you have Ev who's like, well, we have this thing we have to do, but it's complete naivete on his part. Right. That he can get that accomplished. We found this guy. We'll give him some money.

He'll do the thing. We'll be done. He's got a record. Clearly desperate for money because he lives in a trailer. I love the fundamental misreading of Rodford. Yeah. That's so good.

That sort of what's driving them forward is that in the beginning is that none of them really know what they're up against except for Art. And he's the one who's like, maybe we shouldn't do this. Like, we should think about this. And then when it comes down to it, Art's the only one who has the gumption to pull it off, I guess. The arc is really specific and well done for him. Yeah. This idea of failure upping the ante is a very tabletop idea. Oh, yeah.

Many of our friends and peers and perhaps listeners are probably familiar with the idea of failing forward, right? When you have usually a mechanical failure, you blow your roll in a game. That shouldn't stop the story. that shouldn't stop the action, that should be some outcome that still carries things forward just in a way that is unwelcome you don't get the thing you wanted or something resolves not in your favor, but that it makes the stakes of whatever you're doing higher in maybe a way you hadn't anticipated, right? Like when you started this journey, you committed to doing X, but you're not yet even thought that Y was on the table. But then because something does not go your way, now all of a sudden it's the fate of the kingdom instead of recovering the stolen sword or whatever.

And I think that's a little different than a reveal about the stakes. You didn't know. Right. But as it turns out, the fate of the kingdom actually rests on your shoulders. It's more that it is directly because of the actions this character took.

The outcome is now getting more and more serious for them. Like, I think that plays all the way up to the gunfight, if you call it a gunfight. The attempted assassination on Rockford. At that point, the whole gang falls apart, right? Like, I don't think they know that Art is going to shoot him right in front of them. They know that art has the gun but also like no one has thought about the next step what happens after art shoots someone to in the middle of a mall in broad daylight yeah it's all like up to this point they're like oh

we have to make it look like an accident yeah at this point then it's like i don't know what else to do we're just careening towards this ending here and uh we're stuck in it which i i love i love those kinds of stories yeah and it's and it's directly growing out of the actions that they took earlier and the combination of their personalities yes so do that but i i think there there might be something there about like when you're assessing the outcomes of something that was a a failure quote unquote or know, some mechanically poor outcome for your heroes. What is an outcome that not that it punishes them for doing the thing, but that if they had not done the thing, this outcome would not be on the table. Right.

What do you add to this spread of possibilities for where it's going to go next that they don't want, but also is only there because of them? I think that really adds to the feeling of your characters being present in the world as opposed to just like moving through a story that any character could be in. Right. And it's really good for that kind of play. play and like another thing you could do that wouldn't get at that the exact same way but it would be like another way to take these four characters and turn them into a lesson here is thinking about them as a single individual or as a unit to sit down and have these four personalities or however many personalities you have for whatever you're you're writing and then just kind of figuring out when is each one in charge. Because when Newt is in

charge is different than when Ev is in charge, which is different from when Art is in charge. And we never really saw when Noah was in charge, but I'm assuming that would also be a different situation. For sure. All right. So Rockford's position as the boundary of the story, which you brought up. Right. So they pick Rockford and they don't pick him at random. He advertises in the phone book. So they found him that way, but they know that he's not wealthy. They know that he needs money.

They choose him because they think they have the ability to manipulate him. And part of that decision is the fact that he has this criminal record. And they think to themselves, this is a person that we, upstanding citizens of Deerlick Falls, if it's his word against ours, we're going to win. So what that does in this story

is it puts boundaries on where Rockford can go and what he can do. He says, I'm going to go tell the cops. And he does. And it doesn't solve the problem. Right. So it's kind of a large scale status thing, right? The entire narrative is framed by the fact that there's this

status difference between our villains and our Rockford. And instead of treating this as a something to ram his head against, Rockford is like, oh, those are the boundaries. Let's see what I can do inside those boundaries. I'm going to lose my license. What's the next step? The cops aren't going to help me because Chapman. So let's find her. And we find her.

She doesn't really want to go along with it. All right, let's follow her. Oh, there's a lead. They attempted to kill her. And now she's on my side. So they were using the fact that like, he's a less trustworthy source in the eyes of bureaucracy. Like, and we see that happen.

The consumer bureau is more than willing to yank his license. And that's what puts the real pressure on Rockford, right? Like in the longterm, he needs to have his license because this is the job that he wants. Yes. So this is the engine or this is the job that he wants. Yes. So, so this is the, the engine, or this is the tool that the, the, the mayor's committee is using. Uh, and it sets these boundaries in the story for Rockford because this is bureaucracy. I think it's kind of easy to see it as, oh, okay,

well then he can't do that because the bureaucracy says not, but like if those boundaries have been set by thugs who just stood there and stopped him from going down a certain street, the story had two ways to go there. Either he tried to go through those thugs or he's like, all right, this street is not a street I can go down. Let's find some other way through this. I just I liked that the boundaries were built right into the character. Here we have Rockford. were built right into the character. Here we have Rockford.

Here are all the ways that the society doesn't support him and is willing to throw him under the rug. And all these people have to do is ring some alarm bells and let that happen. Yeah, it frames the story. It constrains what Rockford can do in an interesting way. And we don't see him do a lot of like, he doesn't sucker punch anyone. He doesn't get in a car chase.

He has to like do other things in order to solve this problem, which is nice because we like variety. Yes, exactly. All right. Well, that said, I think we've gotten our profit sharing check signed over to us. So we'll go ahead and take that to the bank. But we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.