Two Hundred A Day - Episode 37: The Attractive Nuisance

Episode Date: July 29, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E14 The Attractive Nuisance. Rocky has started a road-side restaurant, but a mysterious figure keeps prowling around the place. Simultaneously, Jim is being threatened by a lawsuit from a guy who climbed onto his trailer to look at the interesting telescope that was up there. In trying to keep Rocky out of trouble and also track down why his roof was REALLY so interesting, both Rockfords are caught up in a knotty situation with roots in the Prohibition era mob/FBI conflict. Thankfully, a smooth Cannell script keeps watching this mess unfold entertaining and rewarding. Maybe an episode that actually is better the second time you watch it, but it has a lot of fun, noir-inspired characters, witty dialogue, and a strong set of motifs throughout that keep this messy mystery engaging. In our second half, we discuss how expertly this episode uses motifs in order to keep everything coherant and feeling like it's part of a single piece, even while the storylines don't all end up with neat endings. We also talk about the use of characters that feel like they're from a different story, and how integrating them into a narrative works to create and then resolve tension. 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, 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.

Jimmy Scott, this is Aunt Bea from Tulsa. Cousin Randy just graduated high school and wants to be a movie producer. Now you live out in Hollywood, you just do something. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I am Nathan Poletta. And I am Epidiah Ravishaw. I am Epidiah Ravishaw. And for this episode, Epidiah, you're the one who made the choice. Which episode of the Rockford Files did you pick for us to talk about this time? I chose episode 14 from season four, The Attractive Nuisance. And I'll tell you why.

Three or four previous episodes that you pitched to me, I went, oh good, it's going to be this one. And then it turned out not to be this one. And so I thought I would stop going through that entire struggle and just finally watch this one. I wanted this one because I was in the mood for some Rocky and I knew Rocky was involved. And I was in the mood for some garlic. I knew garlic was involved. Both of those things are highly featured in this episode. This is one of those that I did not

remember the title, but as soon as it started, I was like, oh, right. It's this one. Yeah. I also remembered this one as having a fun mystery in the sense of, you know, as the audience, we are trying to figure out what's going on um many of our recent episodes have been more we know what's going on when we're watching jim figure it out yeah so this is a nice change of pace uh style wise for that so yeah this is coming uh the the back half of season four this is a steven cannell script uh with the signature wit and um breakneck pace of such things. Apparently this episode was recorded, like in terms of the series shooting order,

this episode was shot right before Queen of Peru, which aired earlier in this season and which we covered in a previous episode. But they're kind of thematically linked, I think, through this CB radio chatter. we covered in a previous episode, but they're kind of thematically linked, I think, through this CB radio chatter and some of the gags about that. So that was a fun little piece of trivia that I learned. We've been hitting this season pretty hard, haven't we?

It's a good season. Yeah, it's a good season. Well, I guess we'll get into the CB chatter right away. So this episode was directed by a fellow by the name of dana elkar who is not a prodigious director this is the first episode of tv that he ever directed oh really of a total of nine um he's an actor with a pretty long career uh from stuff in the 50s through the 90s. And his final credit was an ER episode in 2002. He might be familiar to viewers of MacGyver and was just in a ton of stuff,

including a bit part in one of my favorite Columbo episodes, In the Old Port and Storm, where he played one of the wine connoisseurs that's giving the murderer a wine award. Oh, and he was also the FBI agent in The Sting that comes in at the end and in the big reveal of another thing that's going on. It may come as very little surprise to you that I also remember him from Black Sheep Squadron. See, I don't know that show.

That was, like, I don't think he had a big role in it uh but he was in a lot of it 36 episodes so yeah he did i'm kind of curious as to the story of why like this guy got pulled into directing an episode of the rockford files or whether it was like i'm gonna see how this directing thing is and it didn't work out or what. There's a few cuts that I find, I feel like have a nice playful sense of humor to them that I don't know if the director gets credit for those cuts or the editor or the whole team, but there are a few in here where I'm like, oh, well done.

That's fun. Speaking of straightforward things, I feel like our preview montage is fairly straightforward. Yeah, it is. But it scared me. I've got to tell you, going into this thinking, finally, we're going to watch this episode. And then nothing about this preview montage was anything I remembered from this episode. We get this telescope on Jimim's roof and i'm like

what what is going on with that like it's not an important part of the plot but it's actually kind like it's an instrumental thing that i had completely forgotten about we do see beth in the preview montage which is great i'm always happy when beth is involved we see her specifically in the context of uh's getting sued, apparently. Yes. And then in addition to that, we see that Rocky is getting threatened in some manner. Yes. No, I think when Rocky is threatened in the preview montage, you are morally reprehensible if you turn the TV off at that point. You are maybe the worst person in the world if you don't sit and make sure Rocky's

okay by the end of the episode. That's all I'm saying. And we know there is a danger because there are certainly some gunshots and the little burst of action at the end of our montage. And some sirens too, right? Yeah. It's very exciting there. 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 200aday 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 RadioVsTheMartians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday Evening Podcast All-Stars actual play podcast found at misdirectedmark.com. Lowell Francis with his award winning gaming blog at age of Ravens dot blogspot dot com. Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P. And finally, big thanks to Victor DeSanto 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. Our episode starts here with Rocky on the CB radio calling out to all them gear jammers to come down to Rocky's Summit Inn,

as he has apparently started a new highway side restaurant catering to truckers. We see Jim there nailing up the grand opening banner on the side of it. Yeah. While we're hearing Rocky call out on the CB, I think we realize over the course of the scene that all the replies he's getting are truckers saying, no, sorry, I'm not going to come. Oh, poor Rocky. And then our establishing shot in the restaurant is a huge tub of garlic powder,

helpfully labeled garlic, so we know what it is. Well, yeah, it's just a white powder, right? Yeah. With the chef or the cook with his hand in it, and then just throwing handfuls of it into a into a chili pot, just a big meaty hand coming down, just grabbing up as much. I mean, it's a big pot of chili. So you know, if you're if you're cooking for the army, or a bunch of truckers, yeah, a bunch of truckers. And sure, that's, yeah. But like, this will be a reoccurring motif. And I'll talk a lot about motifs when we get to the end here. But this will not only be reoccurring, but we're going to find out that there's a vaguely sinister edge to what's going on with this. Well, okay. So the garlic thing is going to be a big gag, right?

Like, we're going to hear about the garlic for a while. I remember the first time I watched this episode being kind of like, is this vaguely racist? Right. Cause the cook, as we end up learning, his name is Vince. And then he has an Italian last name.

Uh, maybe we'll save, save that for the dramatically appropriate moment, but you pick up at, he's supposed to be like Italian-American pretty early. As someone of Italian heritage, I was kind of like, this is one of those stereotypes that I forgot existed. I love garlic. Don't get me wrong. But Italian chef who puts too much garlic into everything is this weird mid-century stereotype that wasn't my

favorite maybe this is something we should go into a little later there's a weird step up too when they find out that vince has a son whose name is vinnie and that's when everyone's like wait a minute are they italian uh yeah we'll get into it yeah it's and it's fine it's not a deal breaker it's not offensive it's just a dumb stereotype uh and it's garlic lover personally i want to try this chili i can't eat the chili i'm sure i can't eat the chili probably cannot eat that anyway uh so we go from the the kitchen area to seeing rocky calling out on the cb he's the only person in the restaurant none of the truckers are responding to the invitations my favorite thing that he says is uh and this is all full of great cb lingo right but

he says uh we're slinging hash and pumping gas come back yes there's a a gag here where one of the one of the responses is a is a trucker saying that he he had grilled steak five miles back, so he's not going to be coming in. He has a pedal to the metal or something. And Jim says, I thought you were the only place for 10 miles in either direction. And Rocky clarifies that a grilled steak means that he hit a cow. And so he's making up for lost time. Our chef Vince comes out with bowls of chili to serve to Jim and Rocky.

And we get a fantastic showcase of James Garner's facial expression acting. As he takes a bite, looks unimpressed, tells Vince it's terrific. But then he's just crumbling up so many crackers to go into this chili. Right off the bat, we're not so sure about Vince's cooking skills. This is a good Rockford food episode. I think he eats more in this episode than any other episode. You know, typically chili is the Columbo food. But I think in this case, we get to see Jim enjoying a garbage food or not enjoying,

but Jim having a garbage food that is in fact not to his taste yes even though it is uh roadside chili he has like he has a chili problem doesn't he i remember him sitting across from angel and angel was eating chili and he like had this look of like disgust or something like that was a while ago hotel of fear maybe or which is interesting because he generally likes hot food so we're getting a little bit of a rockford palette refinement here we're we're reconstructing the rockford palette even in that one he also put lots of uh crackers in it yeah maybe he just needs something crunchy that could could be yeah well rocky is clearly a little down about how no one's coming in yet,

but it's like the first day, right? And so Jim is reassuring him that once the truckers know about it, they'll start coming in. Another prominent feature. There's two more prominent features in this scene that I know our listeners are going to want to hear from us about. And the first is the menu on the wall i wrote down uh the prices they were chili for 75 cents uh steak and sal which i'm assuming is a salad

i would assume so uh for 250 and soup for 50 cents so if you can't afford the chili you can enjoy soup uh adjusting for inflation that chili is a little over three dollars so that's not bad that's that's a fast food chili yeah the uh steak is only about ten dollars you know i haven't bought a steak in so long that i don't know i don't know and then the other thing that i i had to i couldn't not do this The either jungle princess or jungle queen pinball machine in the background here. I saw this gorgeous tiger print on the side of a pinball machine. And I was like, I need to know what that pinball machine is. And as it turns out, I can't know what that pinball machine is because we don't know how many players that pinball machine plays.

If it plays two, it's Jungle Princess. But if it plays four, it's Jungle Queen. I think the final feature of this scene is that when we leave the restaurant, we have a shot of what I refer to as an old leathery guy in a hat watching the place from the highway. It's essentially like a 40s detective hat. Yeah, yeah. He's old even for us in the deep future of 2018 looking into the deep past of the 1978.

This guy looks old and out of place still. Like he's from some sort of holodeck simulation of a detective show i wouldn't know anything about that um but yes so we get the shot of him we know this guy will be uh important in some way it's very mysterious i think this is the one of the playful cuts we go from rockford stomaching the chili to this guy drinking the coffee to rockford drinking the scotch i think that's what happens here yeah because we we cut to uh jim at the bar the place by his trailer right the beachside bar whatever it's called so jim is uh complaining to his bartender that vince cooks with a skillet in

one hand and a clove of garlic in the other the chili the soup the stew everything tastes like garlic now even his 12 year old scott yes tastes like garlic so uh jim drinking the not not the 10 year olds going all the way up to the 12th yeah oh and then we get your favorite minor character in the rockford files as the uh bartender excuses himself to go kick out the beach lifeguard skip for trying to bring a girl who's under 21 into his bar oh my god so skip we also saw lasso on our show in queen of peru yes this was recorded before queen of peru but aired after correct that's actually a pretty decent move because at this point us as audience members are already skeeved out by skip and his affinity for

younger women uh yeah it's real gross so he's the the lifeguard who hangs out on the beach and uh is always trying to pick up uh much younger women so yeah so the bartender doesn't let him in this is mostly just to show us that skip is there and what kind of person he is because he comes up in another scene or two skip is oh god skip's a fun character even if he's skeevy yeah i mean he's he's comic relief he's comic relief that the actor is fun to watch and it's fun to see him dance around uh rockford which we'll see in a little bit here and he never gets what he wants right like he's always denied yeah so that's like that's good yes that keeps him from being like really gross while uh he's getting kicked out we start to hear

a commotion outside and police sirens the bartender sees that there's a paramedic unit out by jim's trailer we go out to the parking lot to see what's going on. There's a guy lying on the ground next to the trailer. The paramedics are there. They say that he has spinal trauma. He looks bad. They need to get him to the hospital right away. He has apparently fallen off of the roof of Jim's trailer.

This is the first big mystery that we're going to get here. And it is a humdinger of a mystery. Who is this guy? Why was he on the roof? In another good kind of humorous cut back and forth, there's a car on the highway and we hear like they're apparently listening to a police scanner with this calling in this report. There's a guy who we soon learn is a lawyer uh named don silver who's on the way to an event of some kind with his wife who hears this on the police scanner and like pulls off the highway in to check out the scene as he's clearly an ambulance chaser uh you know coming to find see if there's any way that he can represent this person who has uh

injured themselves uh his wife is not happy about this because it's the third time this week that he's done this kind of thing that she's never going to get to go see chorus line but uh he has her take the camera out of the trunk and start taking pictures of the scene while he interrogates witnesses to find out what happened so there's a thing here right so he's an ambulance chaser, like quite literally chasing an ambulance to a scene of an accident so that he can get work as a lawyer

suing those who might be responsible for it. And I remember growing up, like that was a thing. It was common fodder for jokes. It was, you know, just, like I'm sure every one of these shows had a joke about an ambulance chaser. And I feel like that might have disappeared from pop culture, probably as a good thing, because I do think that a little bit of what's going on with the ambulance chaser

jokes is that they're trying to tell you that you shouldn't hold companies and whatnot responsible for making unsafe, you know, like the whole point to getting a lawyer, if you get injured by something is to make sure somebody's doing something right. And so it doesn't happen again. In terms of the environment around us, I think maybe that role is filled by the advertisements for like mesothelioma victims and stuff like that. like law firms that will include you in a class action suit if you have some kind of condition and you worked in a certain kind of place there's a you know a big suit against a manufacturer of some building material and you could be part of it like that kind of thing yeah luckily enough i have not been involved

on either end of a legal situation of this kind so i do not know how well it reflects reality so uh this is a fun scene because we we see we see don being kind of skeevy and and finding out what happened to the guy and then being excited because it seems like he has a good case uh even though this guy is like potentially injured and maybe paralyzed uh he catches a ride with the ambulance i guess and leaves his wife there to take more pictures there's the telescope on the roof and there's a ladder leaning against the trailer and while she's doing that our friend skip comes up to rockford he's he's concerned about what's going to happen to rockford because he saw the whole thing he lays out that the guy

you know is looking for for ways to sue Jim about this. And Jim's like, no, why would he do that? Skip says that maybe he and his girlfriend were out in the parking lot. And maybe they saw that the guy had been drinking before he got up on that ladder. And maybe he wouldn't come forth with that testimony until after it was too late for him to take a blood alcohol test. The role of Angel will be played by Skip Spence this evening. He knows that Jim is concerned about his scholarship fund. And so he would do all this maybe in exchange for,

oh, let's say a grand towards my education. This is where Skip and Angel do diverge. Angel would start with 50 and would get argued down to 25, but then like toss expenses on it until he got back up to 50 or 60 or $70. But this pie in the sky, like good on Skip.

He's got dreams. That's what I'm saying. No, he's got hustle. Jim, of course, does not go for this. This guy isn't going to sue me. I don't need your skeevy help and we end this shot or we end this scene with another dramatic shot of our older guy in his hat yeah and this is kind of the the most memorable shot to me because it's taken through the perspective of the lawyer's wife taking pictures so she takes a picture of him and it turns from the color tv image to a black and white photograph image of this dramatically backlit out

of a noir film kind of image of this man the next morning in jim's trailer uh we have a bit of banter between jim and rocky where we find out that, well, it's Rocky's telescope that's up there and it's heavy, which is why he left it up there. And him and Vince were going to hook up his camera to it and take pictures of the whales that are migrating and give a talk about them at the Great Power meeting.

No, I think it's Grey Power. Grey Power? As in like a play on black power, but for the elderly. That would make more sense. I looked this up a little bit and all the references to things that I could find via Wikipedia all take place in the mid 80s, which is a little late for this. But near as I can tell, it's about politically organized older people who who want to i think it's probably been surpassed by the aarp oh sure i mean functionally what they're saying is that there's there's some

kind of organization you know like retirees and older people and that's where rocky and vince met yeah and jim is kind of like you you, all you do is talk about these meetings now. And we see Rocky get a little defensive. Old people can still do things. You know, that's why like me and Vince, we decided to go into business together because we still can. We can still be active and we can still like have a business and do things. Yeah. Rockford, he eats an Oreo out of his cookie jar. Yes.

He's kind of like, why don't you just enjoy your retirement? You're still good at things. You're the best at fishing. And Rocky calls him out that Rockford doesn't like that he doesn't get to see Rocky as much as he used to. You missed me. So this is like an inversion of a lot of our typical Jim Rocky dynamic, where Jim's saying he misses that Rocky isn't around to tell him that he's wasting

his life and he should get a real job. So this is a nice moment for that. And also setting up a motif that we're going to be coming back to over and over about this, the role of old people and retirees in society. There's no resolution to this argument, right? Like they're just kind of butting heads about it a little bit. But Rocky does say beth has been calling oops i forgot to tell you she saw the story in the paper about the guy falling off of jim's roof and wants to talk to him jim you know waves that off doesn't seem important to him rocky takes a beat and then asks do you think that vince is using maybe a little too much garlic and uh And Jim allows that perhaps maybe there's a little bit too much. There's a clear implication that that Oreo tastes like garlic to him.

Beth does intercept Rockford at the hospital and starts lecturing him about what's happening. That these kinds of things can get very legal and very tricky. So we're seeing Beth out of the gate in full lawyer mode, which is great. Yeah. Oh, this is good Beth stuff. I mean, I have written all over my notes. Listen to Beth. Listen to Beth.

Listen to Beth. And we are going to find out that the thing about Jim is that he always knows what's best until Beth knows. And then he doesn't. He just doesn't know. Whatever you do, don't say you're sorry. Yes. That could be taken as an admission of

guilt. Don't say you're sorry. Jim's like, why are you so worried? Well, he already has a lawyer and they have a good case for an attractive nuisance suit that he was lured up there by an interesting telescope and his access was made easier by the

ladder turns out this this guy is named uh weinstock jim goes into his room uh and he's in traction i guess i don't know what traction actually looks like but later they referred to him being out of traction yeah there's like another there's a device pressing on him to keep him from moving and he's all wrapped up in bandages and stuff. Jim feels bad. And as soon as he walks in, he just goes, oh, I'm sorry. And I counted. He says, I'm sorry, three times. Yes.

Over the course of this brief interaction. Weinstock doesn't want to see him, says that the doctors say he could be paralyzed. So this is all fun and very humorous, but also so incredibly real. Jim loses all of his suaveness. He loses any ability to con anyone. He clearly feels guilt over what's happening here. He just can't navigate the situation in any reasonable way. Not only is he ignoring Beth's advice, but like the things he's saying are just dumb like

oh i feel like you're gonna get better like he's he goes into rocky mode yeah he really does i just need to make everyone feel like everything's gonna be a-okay tomorrow morning and if we can do that then we get through all this they leave and uh our our attorney don silver uh comes into the scene he and beth clearly know each other. They call him Hi-O Silver because he's always right behind the ambulance. And then there's a good bit where he's like, some idiot left a telescope on the roof. Can you believe it?

And Beth says, this is my client, the idiot. Don Silver says, I'll see you in court, Mr. Rockford. Bring your wallet. Goes into the room and first thing out of his mouth, did he say he was sorry? Good comedic stuff, but also framing Jim as someone who is in trouble. Yep. Putting the pressure on Jim for the crime of having a telescope on his roof. For the crime of his dad putting a telescope on his roof. To watch some whales. Beth does not believe that the telescope is why that guy went on the roof. Something smells a little fishy about this and that it's some kind of setup. And her take is that it could have all been arranged in advance. This guy, all this guy has to do is sit in a

wheelchair for a couple months and they have a good case to take Rockford and his insurance company for everything they got. I think Jim, he's not like trying to talk her down from this idea, but I think he also thinks that something is a little weird, but he also still feels guilty. I think, yeah, I think Rocky Jim, you can see him transition from this like super possessed with the guilt, but this lawyer comes in and comes at him and that kind of brings the old Jim back.

And then all Beth has to do is plant the seed of doubt and that gets into Jim's head the way any seed of doubt gets into Jim's head. And by the end of the scene, he's like, wait a minute here, this doesn't add up. So they leave in the Firebird. And as they leave, we see that Rockford notices another car. Yeah.

Which looks like a older version of his Firebird. Yeah, it does. I'm sure someone on the 200 a day files files will be able to identify that for us, but it looks like an olive version of a slightly smaller Firebird to me. So we see him notice that, right? He kind of gives it a good look as they drive away. And then the camera stays static. So we see after they pull away that our older hat wearing guy is in the phone booth behind them and is making a phone call. Yeah. So this is the first time we hear him speak. He's calling someone named Benedict. It was a little hard for me to follow a lot of his dialogue because it was so like slang filled and also a little muttery okay so we're gonna hit this

pretty hard in the second half here this is i feel like part of this ongoing theme and motif they have because we start with uh rocky doing the cb lingo he has to explain to jim what it means and i feel like this is an echo of that this guy he's speaking in old-timey cop lingo right like that right yeah so this is like a i think meant to be bewildering to the audience yeah it's a little confusing and you know i i'm trying to keep track to follow like plot relevant yeah things most of it is not particularly important other than establishing that this guy uses this lingo yeah um what we hear out of this is that he has an eye on a private named rockford and he might have something to do with crazy horse and vince end of scene we go back to the

restaurant to rocky's summit inn um we see that there are more trucks in the parking lot uh there are more people in the restaurant uh rocky's calling over the cb we're serving three seconds on everything and this is another motif right rocky's business looking like looking good and then we shortly learn that it is not going as well, right? Yeah. So we see a lot of people in there. But when Jim comes in, Rocky explains that there's all these guys in here, but they're not eating. They're just playing pinball. They're playing either Jungle Princess or Jungle Queen.

We're not sure. Jim performatively orders a bunch of food, chili, soup. How's the veal? It's leftover from last night well he'll have one of those the special salad and lots of coffee so he says that in a very loud voice so everyone can hear rocky says that he never noticed that jim was such a big eater yeah neither have we i love how rocky reads it as oh i've never noticed this. Right. But yeah, that's good. We see Jim brace himself for the incoming bowl of chili,

takes a bite and goes, hmm, sure is some kind of chili. Oh, Academy Award winning performance, I believe here. This is good. We cut to later that night. They're cleaning up in the kitchen. Apparently, Jim's performance did not help too much as Vince asks how they did. And Rocky says that they made $15.35. Not counting Jimmy, of course, or the pennies in the mint jar. We're looking at something approximating 75 bucks.

That is not a good night. Jim is trying to keep everyone's spirits up. He's optimistic. Hey, it was better than yesterday. Rocky wonders if they're doing something wrong. And Jim does mention, well, the chili is a little too hot. And Vince seems offended. And there's this whole business about, well, maybe it's spicy, but hot. Yeah. And Jim's like, business about, well, maybe it's spicy, but hot. Yeah.

And Jim's like, no, no, no. I mean, maybe a little spicy, but chili is such a personal thing. I mean, everyone likes chili a different way. But we see Vince's face falling and he's getting like sadder and sadder. And then he like takes off his apron very slowly and slowly folds it up. Oh, poor Vince. There might be too much garlic in his chili. Or not enough chili in his garlic.

They head out of the kitchen into the main restaurant. And Vince, so we kind of transition from him being like sad and defeated about being criticized for his chili to him kind of taking a deep breath and being like, OK, well, here's this other thing that we need to talk about. He thinks someone was in the restaurant last night. There was stuff moved around. The door on the fuse box was left open. And Jim's kind of like, well, all you can do is make sure you have good locks. There's no money to take. So yeah, there's one other cooking tip from, from Vince that we should take away. And then Vince does say that he's sorry about the chili. Maybe there is a little too much garlic in it. Maybe he ought to take the garlic cloves out of the salt cellars too.

We have a close-up shot of Jim holding the salt shaker and seeing a big clove of garlic. There's a mystery solved. Now, I got to say, I want to try that now. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying I would want to know that that's in my salt. Right. Yeah. You don't want to surprise garlic clove in your salt you want a uh strategic garlic clove salt we've been hitting this garlic thing really hard uh yeah i think in a move that is in a lot of cannell and and david chase scripts in particular where they have a gag that they really utilize in the first half, and then they abandon it before it gets too overused. So in our final little piece of this sequence,

Rocky and Jim head out to the parking lot. They're both leaving. And Rocky says that he's glad that someone finally told Vince about the garlic. There are a couple more references, but in terms of too much garlic and stuff as a gag, we have finally put that behind us. We've gotten all the juice, if you will, out of that that we're going to get for the episode. Jim pulls out like he's leaving, but then he turns his lights off and circles back.

So clearly this idea that someone might have been in the restaurant, he was just kind of playing that off for the guys while he thinks that something might be going on and then we see that he sees the car that he noticed before parked next to the restaurant what is up he heads around back and our older man in the hat is doing something at one of the back windows yes so in a classic rockford move he picks up a stick pretends it's a gun and uh surprises the guy at this point we're like oh oh where do we get some answers not all the answers but some of them right surely some answers will come from this and not more questions as he pats the guy down suddenly there are gunshots uh from the wooded area so the restaurant is like in a parking lot right off the highway And then there's this whole wooded area that's also the property.

As we learned, there's two or three acres behind it. There's little trees and scrub and stuff. So someone's taking taking pot shots with a rifle. The two of them jump down. The old guy skitters around the edge of the restaurant and Jim takes shelter behind a crate. Clearly, this rifle is shooting at the older guy but once he escapes the they shout for to lay his piece down yeah lose the piece and come out of there he says he doesn't have a gun uh the guy says well i i have a scoped rifle so it wouldn't

help you anyway yeah another guy in a great yellow zipped windbreaker comes around from the other direction and he has a gun so jim is now in the power of these two uh younger fellows i would say yeah younger than him they pull his wallet and uh it's the wrong guy and they start arguing because the guy who got away was the one they were waiting for question mark this is old joe's kid and not why they're there the two of them are arguing about like i forget what they say but they basically are they're in some kind of situation that was not planned right right uh they asked jim who that guy was he doesn't know so they're like all right well get out of here and he takes his wallet back see See you later.

Just walks out. We end the scene with the skinnier guy, the guy with the rifle, that he really hates this. Yeah. So we know so much right now. So we now have at least three things going on, right? Yeah. Weinstock with the injury and the lawyer and whatnot. We have whatever this old guy's up to. And then whatever these these younger guys are up to which apparently is related to the old guy but we're not sure why but they know who rocky is because that would be old joe right yeah um so

what is going on the mystery deepens we cut to rocky's house there's a knock on the door i of course was expecting this to be jim right he He opens it. It's still in the dark. He hasn't turned on any lights. He opens it and it's our old guy in the hat. It's Pry's appearance. And again, this is kind of a bit out of like a noir movie. It's all dark. He's very backlit in this silhouette with his hat and his coat. Yeah.

He's angry. I'm going to get you if the last thing I do. And then he closes the door and leaves. Straight up threatening. Neither Rocky nor the audience still know what's up with this guy. So we go to a knock on Jim's door. And this time my expectations are fulfilled as it is Rocky coming to see Jim. They both say that they have to talk.

And in a interesting way to handle a kind of exposition scene. We cut back and forth between Jim and Rocky talking in the trailer and this older guy dialing in on some kind of surveillance phone and he's able to listen in on their conversation. Now, it's important to note that he's literally dialing. The technology here is a wonderful amalgamation of old school and what would be new school in the 1970s, late 1970s. He has a phone and he's dialing and then he's leaving the receiver on the table so he can hear however this works. He can hear it through the phone receiver. In addition, as he settles back to overhear their conversation, we see him start eating his dinner.

A plastic spoon and a can of finest quality dog food. Yes. This is very sad. Yeah, no, this is, yeah. Our understanding of this man kind of shifts, I think, in the moment of seeing him holding that can, right? Before this, he's the menace. What is he up to what's he trying to do why does he want to hurt rocky and now he's a sad old man can't afford a real dinner

jim so they kind of tell each other what happened uh jim says you know he connects that the guy who threatened rocky is the guy that he surprised at the restaurant why would he threaten you i guess in the previous scene we one of the guys that held him up was named Sid. He asks Rocky if he knows a guy named Sid. And Rocky says that might be a friend of Vince's nephew, Vinny. Because Vince asked if Vinny could stay in the land out back where there's like a garage or something while he's like getting on his feet after something. It's vague. So there are some people out there that are related to vince in some way um jim says that he saw that that same guy's car at the hospital which ties him in into weinstock somehow he doesn't

know how but he's going to go find out more about weinstock so he's going to check that out in the morning and tells rocky not to tell vince anything yet because he still doesn't really know what's going on uh so our old guy hears all of this and then after this conversation makes a call to benny who we see on the other end of the phone is another older guy uh with thick glasses and a very serious little mustache we finally hear this older guy's name his name is ed uh ed Ed is asking Benny for a favor. Benny says that things have changed. He doesn't have influence in that way anymore. But Ed says that there's a chance to take down Capo Bianco.

Benny says, who cares? That was 40 years ago in Chicago, where all the gangsters come from. It's still important to Ed. This guy took out 12 of his best friends. Yeah. And Benny sighs and asks what he wants ed gives him the address of this guy weinstock that jim is going to check out because he wants he wants someone to put jim on ice for a little while right so there's a thing in this

scene that i i quite like jim gives a rundown of all the moving parts right and reveals that he doesn't have a clue what's actually going on and uh i remember this episode because of the funny bit just the charming stuff about rocky trying to have a restaurant and i don't remember the the plot itself but this this bit here is very helpful because it one summarizes all the the stuff that's going on, but two, lets us as audience members know that we haven't missed the trick yet. In watching something like this, when the mystery gets so elaborate or so involved, I mean, we'll find out that there are about four parties with four different plans, and that's not even counting sub-parties of parties that have different ideas

of what's going on. There's some tangential stuff that could be counted as part of the mystery. Yeah. And so if you don't know what's going on, you can get kind of frustrated. You can be like, this is just super confusing. And we have our main character, our detective tell us, this is confusing. And it lets us know that we don't have to know at this point what's going on uh so i i really like this little little technique here and i might talk about it a little bit more in the second half anyways i just wanted to point that out that's great uh we cut to the address that uh weinstock apparently has which is a very beaten up almost a shack or like a garage or something. And the place is totally full of wires and surveillance equipment. So the plot thickens.

Outside, we see a truck pull up. Two guys who I refer to in my notes as fly black dudes come out. These guys are clearly out of place with everything else that has gone on in the story so far. Like one has like a big flat brim hat and they're in like very colorful clothes and they're clearly there to, you know, whatever this thing of putting Rockford on ice, that's why they're there.

I think there's two things going on with this casting. The first is to throw the audience off a little bit about what's going on. I think that they play a little bit on racist tendencies to assume that these are thugs here to beat up Rockford. And we'll get into why that's not true in a moment. But then also I think it's plays into this again, time has passed motif.

When we find out who they really are, they're definitely going to be a different makeup of i'm dancing around something here that maybe i should just come out and say well we'll touch back on this when they come back i think your reading is is the charitable reading uh that that makes sense with the motifs as you've stated but i think it's also playing a little bit into what audiences would assume these guys would be there for. Yeah. So they come in while Jim is holding up with clearly two viewers of crime TV,

a bug of some kind. It's like a little microphone. It's an old timey one that they used to make where they didn't have a light that blinked to let you know as a viewing audience that this is an electronic. And a wire coming out. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And they surprised Jim with a good line. You're going for a ride, Tarzan. as a viewing audience that this is an electronic and a wire coming out so you know yeah yeah and they surprise jim with a good line you're going for a ride tarzan because he is about six inches taller than both of these guys yeah yeah um they are uh pushing him through like a back gate like

behind this house which gives him the opportunity to tip a trash can in their way. So they both fall over it and he's able to run off before they can recover. So a good little bit of Jim taking advantage of his environment, right? Yeah. He gets to the Firebird before they can catch him. And then he throws it into reverse and rams into the front end of their truck and then peels out. So when they get to the truck it's dripping fluid and there's steam coming out and clearly they're not going to be able to drive after him he puts a steak on their grill yes i don't think am i using trucker lingo correctly here jim gets away and

then we uh cut to seeing a black and white comedy on a tv there There's some cops on motorcycles getting pie in the face and they zoom out from there and our traction patient Weinstock is laughing. He has a neck brace on but he is holding on to like a pole and he's upright in his bed. Yeah. Clearly enjoying life.

I do want to point out here that this is another one of those very playful cuts. Especially if you know who these two guys that just tried to grab Rockford are. They cut to these Keystone cops bumbling. It's just fun. Yeah, it's a good little joke. Jim comes on in, turns off the TV, glaring daggers at Weinstock, has some qu quip about like glad to see that you have so much to laugh about or something like that.

Weinstock says that the nurses give him two hours a day when he can be unhooked from traction and they put his bed like that. Jim confronts him with the bug. It's a fun little business you have going there. Um, this scene has a lot of great Jim Rockford dialogue, like a lot of great jokes. Yeah.

Where he's clearly has no respect for this guy, Weinstock, and just wants to get to the bottom of it and just kind of keeps coming at him over and over, mocking him for like his feeble attempts to try and downplay what's going on. Yeah. But Jim finally gets him to crack by saying that the one that he's holding, he's like, what about this one that came out of my trailer? And the guy says, come on, I didn't use one of those. And gotcha.

Yeah. So now they both know that that's why this guy was on the roof. He's planning some kind of surveillance equipment in his trailer. He wants to know who hired Weinstock to plant this bug. So he's using the leverage of now that we both know why you were there, your suit has less merit and I have grounds for coming back at you. So let's deal. One little note here is at some point he either moves towards Weinstock or says something and Weinstock, his legs move like he's trying to get away from Jim. And he calls out, it's like, oh, look, your leg's getting better. This will come up again later so finally weinstock uh he doesn't know why but

he can tell him that he was hired by edmund lasalle uh to plant this bug and he gives jim the address of the fleabag hotel for for non-chicago residents uh this is a bit of a chicago reference lasalle is one of the big downtown streets in Chicago. So there you go. We cut from here to Jim picking up the half-eaten can of dog food. So he's kind of looking through the room, looking for clues. There's a framed picture of presumably this guy ed's family facing a faded uh some kind of commendation on fbi letterhead yeah i think it's dated from the 40s or something up to now i thought

he was a pi like that's what i was thinking is that because you know it's the rockford files occasionally we get other private investigators involved in it and this is the moment where i'm like oh he's he's fbi or he's a former cop of some yeah he's ex-fbi yeah and then jim uh sees the table with the telephone and all the wires and there's a notebook that has has been very helpfully labeled telephone patch numbers yes jim's trailer restaurant i think rocky's maybe another one. There are three digit numbers that you call to dial into these bugs that have been planted. Jim calls the one for the restaurant and he can hear Rocky talking. About changing the window dressing or something like that. He's worried about the curtains.

And this is when our former FBI agent, Edmund LaSalle, he comes in, sees Jim. He has a gun. So he has Jim hang that up, kind of has Jim in his power. Rockford wants to know what this guy wants with him and his dad. What is going on? What's the deal? And this is another scene where it's like watching it. It's very well constructed.

It's the dialogue between the two of them is really interesting and kind of hard to communicate okay at this point we know maybe a bit more than jim does i mean we've certainly seen more uh we're not as confused as jim is about what's happening here so when he says ness we're like holy this guy knew elliot mess right and then that gets revealed. It's fun to watch Jim navigate the scene to figure out what is going on, but also figure out that he's with a piece of history. Right. But also always keep in mind that this piece of history is pointing a gun at him. It's a pleasure to watch because of all of that.

Yeah. So Ed goes into kind of a, uh, into kind of a monologue in a manner, which strikes me very much as your, your grandfather going into a reminiscence and it no longer really is about you. It's about the story that they want to tell. Yeah. Kind of has that air to it. I don't care about the connections you have in Washington. It's kind of a list of of men who have like committed suicide or died like because they've been thrown thrown aside and treated so unfairly by uh retirement essentially yeah he's like what about nessie he died broke uh you know

couldn't pay for the funeral and then jim connects that to like you mean elliot ness so elliot ness for for those who uh may may not be familiar with earlier 20th century history uh he's the fbi he's a prohibition era fbi agent and he's the one who basically busted al capone uh jim says and this is a fun little piece of background on jim elliot ness was one of his childhood idols and that's even before kevin costner played him ed references capo bianco that's why he's here jim still doesn't know what he's talking about he doesn't believe that jim doesn't know what he's talking about he wants to take him downtown he's not going to be pensioned off on handouts uh he

has a list capo bianco is at the top up to this point it's still like okay where is this going still don't really know what the deal is so finally ed, Ed reveals, it's like Capo Bianco, the guy that your dad's doing business with. Vince Whitehead, Capo Bianco means whitehead. So that connection is closed for us. And we end the scene with Jim going, that sure explains the garlic. A bit of a groaner.

But yeah, so the scene does start finally giving us some answers. Yes, yes. It doesn't explain everything for Jim yet. Yeah, we still don't know what those other guys were up to or who came after him. Yeah. So we have an ex-FBI agent who still has a grudge against a mobster. And it turns out that this mobster is rocky's business partner okay yeah got it that's that's the core of what's going on yeah uh so we go to

the federal building uh jim is apparently given a statement in the background we see the two guys who had tried to pick him up uh so it turns out that they were in fact, uh, planes, clothes, I guess, uh, FBI or undercover FBI agents. Yes. This gets back to my charitable read of the situation that I do think that there's a little bit of a, uh, you know, finger waving at the audience, like, ha ha, you, you thought that, that they were thugs, but they're not, they're actually FBI agents, But also it's a contrast with Eddie LaSalle, right? Like Eddie LaSalle is an older school out of date FBI agent. And these are very modern FBI agents. Right, right.

So we have LaSalle, the guy, Benny, who I guess still works for the FBI, but is of an age of or like knows Eddie. There's an FBI inspector whose name we never get we get a admonition that he's an ex-agent he's not a commissioned officer anymore he shouldn't have a gun so make sure he does not have one when he leaves this building yeah i appreciate but he also clarifies for jim that vince is a crook of some kind it's unclear whether he's like an under doing something active or whether he used to be. They just don't can't bust him or whatever.

I think he says your dad's in business with a hood. Jim is angry, of course. He's aggrieved. He was brought down here at gunpoint by a civilian that's kidnapping. Yeah. But Ed has a breaking and entering charge for Jim, you know, breaking into his apartment. So the inspector finally says, OK, how about you forget the kidnapping? I'll forget the B&E and we'll all go away feeling cheated.

It's a great line. I loved it. I wrote that one down, too. I was just like, yeah, I like this guy. And it's another good joke in the cut here because we cut to a parking ticket underneath a windshield wiper on the word cheated. Yeah. And I assumed that that was Jim's car.

But then we zoom out and we see that it's actually Ed's car in the visitor parking. Yeah. So this guy is getting more and more pitiable as the episode goes on. Yeah. So Jim encounters Ed as they're both going to their car, basically. He asks him, hey, did you ever think that me and my dad just didn't know that Vince was Capo Bianco? That doesn't believe it. I don't believe that for a minute.

But we kind of transition from here from this confrontation because Rockford just doesn't want Eddie to lean on Rocky anymore. But he's willing to help in order to, like, get him to lay off. They should work together and pull what they know because Jim thinks that something's about to happen. He still knows that those other guys were there with guns. Who knows why? Vince is a criminal. So that's potentially an issue. And he doesn't want Rocky to be hurt.

Ed says that he knows that there's something happening that afternoon in Vince's garage that he owns. And I can show you, you know, show you what's going on or something like that. So we go to this garage, which is an active garage. There's a guy, you know, putting some tires on a car or something. But then in the corner,

there are all these guys in suits. And clearly we are now looking at mob guys. Yeah. They have all the Rockford files coding for mafia. I did not recognize Vince. Me neither. So he's not dressed up as a chef anymore. When he was dressed up as a chef,

he always had this haggard look about him. The world has got him down. He is snappily dressed here and is looking like he's in charge, which he is. It's such a transformation that it actually took me to the IMDB page to make sure that we were talking about the same guy.

I remember the first time I saw this episode being so confused because I was like, who's this guy? Right. Yeah. And it took me until the very end of the episode to realize that that was the same guy as the chef in the beginning of the episode.'s uh laudable that he's able to act like physically embody that difference yeah um i don't know you needed to have like a signature hat or glasses or something so i'd recognize the same maybe just be eating a bowl of garlic there you go yeah just scooping garlic in his mouth but yeah so vince is in the middle and there's all these guys around him and there's a guy who's very slick as i uh i refer to

him as the slick guy in my notes who i'm sure we have seen another rockford files episodes but i don't know if he has a name in this one so i couldn't track it down but he's talking about some issues with some guys on the eastern seaboard and vince says well have the guy come by on tuesday i'll work it out with them and our slick guy says oh thank you thank you mr capo bianco so we know we then see ed and jim in the firebird watching this from across the street yeah um the nephew uh who is the skinny guy from earlier who had the rifle yeah um so that's vinny uh so he was there and then he leaves and he like peels out of this the garage and ed says that oh that's that's the nephew they call him crazy horse uh he just got out of a two-year stint in jail for boosting cars and he's the one using the garage on the restaurant property through this conversation

which is kind of half half exposition and half rockford telling us what he thinks which is actually what's going on so that we get caught up. Right. Because of Vince's tax problems, Rocky is the one who owns everything. It's all in his name. So whatever operation Vinny is running wouldn't be traced back to Vince. Yeah. Maybe he's running a chop shop back there and they're going to check it out. And Ed goes, maybe this time he's seeing a vision of the future where maybe he can get these guys. So we cut to them watching the parking lot

at the restaurant. Sure, there's a bunch of trucks there, but they're oriented so that they can't be seen from the highway. And we see guys run up, hurriedly unload one of these trucks and there's a bunch of fancy cars that are in this truck.

And they get driven around behind the restaurant into like the wooded area. I think those are the guys who were just hanging out in the restaurant playing pinball. Yeah, I think so too. I think that connection is supposed to be there, like which kind of explains why that whole bit was in the episode earlier. Yeah. They're just hanging out to unload trucks. They're not actually like truckers.

Yeah, and they're not eating all day or anything like that. It doesn't explain whether the pinball machine is jungle princess or jungle queen. That will never be resolved. All right. So we established that there are fancy cars being brought to this location. Later that night, Jim and Ed are watching the garage and there's lights on. Ed explains the scam. So these cars are stolen in la they come out here within a couple hours to get stripped down and then because this is on a highway then

the parts can go out all over the country in these other trucks and no one can tell that they're not originally from uh germany or italy or whatever so it's like performance auto parts, I guess. Yeah, specifically calling out Germany and Italy, I think was a cue that these were high end. He thinks it should net a couple million a year tax free. Yeah. Jim, of course, wants to go get the cops, but Ed wants to go prowl the place. I think through his body language,

I think it's like he wants to be involved. Yeah. It's the thrill of the hunt is still important to him. And he could probably, if he had to, make an argument that the cops haven't believed him in the past. So they need more evidence. But yeah, I think it's more like he needs to be useful still. So he heads down and Jim is not willing to leave him in danger because that's the kind of guy that Jim is. So he follows him down. And then as they are prowling around, they get surprised by a guy with a shotgun.

So they are brought into the garage at shotgun point. Vinny sees them. He almost rolls his eyes like, oh, these guys again. He yells at another guy to get his uncle to get his uncle vince in there uh then we cut to the restaurant to this little sequence where rocky's wondering where the order is where the chili is yeah he sees that vince isn't in the kitchen goes back to get the chili himself sees vince and vinnie heading out back through a window and then gets curious puts the chili down looks out the window again as they disappear behind the restaurant.

And then I think we see him go out the door himself. He goes to find out what's happening. There's a slow zoom on a messy bowl of chili. An abandoned bowl of chili. Which I quite like. Symbolism. Chili has been abandoned. Yes. been abandoned yes we get our i think our last kind of noir reference scene where eddie and jim are in like a dark kind of like side room um that's kind of only lit through the door i think

and vince is confronting ed like a dog with an old shoe when are you going to leave me alone when one of us is dead vince i wonder who that'll we see that, yes, this is an old grudge. Vince remembers him as well. Yeah. Brought home by Vince asking about Priscilla. You're from Priscilla lately. Ed says that she's been dead for two years. And Vince says, well, nobody told me.

Yeah. Then he tells Vinny to do them both. So there's this moment where it's like, oh, they have like a history. Just this, that one little thing. vinny to do them both so there's this moment where it's like oh they have like a history just this that one little thing it's like there's something that like connects them that isn't just like cops and robbers yeah i like to think that priscilla is ed's wife or and that he's genuinely like asking after her yeah like an old friend like okay well i'm gonna kill you but how are things see i kind of read that as maybe like that was someone that they had both had affection for or tried to court or something and yeah he ended up going with ed and

yeah and vince is like well no one told me like i deserve to know about that kind of stuff exactly but yeah he's like i'm gonna have my nephew kill my partner's son like but then we cut to rocky in the cab of a truck on the cb asking when the cops are going to be there. And he hears that they're on the way. And then he sees these gangsters setting up Ed and Jim on a tarp outside, which is very ghoulish. Yeah. But before they can do anything, he turns on the lights and hits the horn and comes screaming down the slope in this just the truck cab. There's no trailer on the back right

yeah barrels down on them this distracts everyone enough for jim to grab the shotgun away from the guy next to him uh ed takes down vince and they start rolling around and fighting and they roll underneath a trailer and then before anyone can really get to their feet or anything the cops arrive and start arresting everyone so rocky saves the day oh it's so good and what i love about i mean there's a bunch of things i love about this but one of the things i love about this is that rocky honks his horn yeah because the worst thing that could happen here for rocky is for him to run someone over even if they're about to kill jim so he's like please get out of the way i gotta save the day jim helps rocky out of the cab uh and

rocky is he doesn't understand any of this he took action and it was clearly necessary but he also clearly does not know what the hell is going on and this makes jim so happy yeah and he like hugs rocky and goes ah dad sometimes i just can't get enough of you so this thematically made me think of the gear jammers two-parter yeah both because it's all about rocky and he's a trucker and it's very truck intensive yeah but also because as a similar climax where rocky takes action yeah he kind of spends the entire story not knowing what's going on. Yeah. And it's charming. So if you like this episode, make sure to see Gear Jammers, which we also talked about way back in the archives.

We end this scene with Ed giving Vince almost a playful slap on the cheek and saying, gotcha. And then in this great transition, there's a freeze frame on the two of them as Ed is smiling and the harmonica theme rises. And I was like, oh, is that the end of the episode? Yeah, right. Definitely feels like it. And I had paused it because I was making notes and stuff. And I was like, do they just never resolve the lawsuit thing?

Like they might not. But then I started it again and that freeze frame dissolves into the final scene well not the final scene sorry the penultimate scene yes i was like okay so we will get some closure we'll get closure and we will get an amazing beth outfit yes so this dissolves into a door labeled therapy room in In this room are Jim and Beth, Weinstock and Silver, and Silver's wife. Joy.

Yes. And this has the air of, all right, let's try and work this out one final time. Yeah. The lawyer, Silver, says that they are negotiating with Jim's insurance company, and it looks like they're going to get a $40,000 settlement out of

court. Jim is, I would say, irate at the unfairness of this all. I know he can walk. I saw his legs move, but it's a your word against his, you know, in the courts. Beth says that she will be filing an invasion of privacy and emotional distress countersuit because of the bug and everything but they'll drop their suit if silver drops weinstocks yeah which he is not inclined to do he thinks that they have a stronger case than beth does rockford threatens to stay on weinstock every minute because he's going to see him get out of that chair this is all kind of interrupted and ended by joy kind of snapping and being like, look, can we just get the hell out of here? She apparently has an audition that she needs to get to in 25 minutes. And it's a good part.

It is. That's what I hear. Yeah. And so the three of them leave. And that's all the resolution we get of this. Well, and Beth, once they leave, admits that she thinks they should forget it because Silver and Weinstock do have a better case. And Jim says he doesn't want to drop it because he has a good story here, but no one wants to listen. And that transitions into our final montage.

Yes. And that's another delightfully playful transition, I believe. So we go to Ed holding court in like the break room of probably the FBI office. All these guys are listening to him as he's talking to them about follow the money. You always follow the money. And we cut from that to Vince in a prison laundry room holding court with all these cons on the jumpsuits talking about you gotta get the money out of the country fast change numbered accounts get it out of there that's how you do it then we got to rocky at a gas station holding court with a bunch of younger truckers telling them how to place their brakes so that they don't uh jackknife on a you know a big downhill or whatever yeah jim pulls in uh he's

picking up rocky so he's like hey let's go but rocky has So he's like, hey, let's go. But Rocky has to he's like, hold on. Let me just let me just finish what I'm doing over here. And we hear him transition from one story into another story. And Jim at first looks a little aggrieved, but then he just relaxes back into his into the driver's seat. And then we freeze frame on Jim smiling as he listens to his dad's story coming in through the window that's that's good stuff i i love this ending montage this or maybe montage isn't the right word for it but the trifecta yeah we talked about this early on that there's this reoccurring theme or motif about uh old age and people who are past their prime, as you will, and what they're going to do with it. Maybe trying to say, oh, they can teach or they can tell us about all their wisdom. But I think just generally, it's just here are three old dudes whose story came together and ended this way. While we were watching Rockford, this as well uh and uh i liked it yeah i really really enjoyed that it's a little heartwarming at the end right because you're

seeing yeah maybe a little less so with vince but definitely with ed and with rocky you're seeing these guys who have been kind of disrespected or ignored uh in their old age kind of coming back to this role that they have which which is being the storyteller, being this, you know, pass around of wisdom. And sure, maybe it's a little hokey, but there's something about the positive depiction of older people in media that I like. So kind of the emotional center of this one to me, you know, I'm always looking for the emotional center. Yeah. Is it's both showing us showing us this real problem.

What do people who want to do things do once society kind of has decided that they're too old, right? Yeah. It doesn't answer that question necessarily, but it portrays how those people can still be involved in their community. And we see that as a positive at the end of the episode. Yeah. This was an interesting one when it comes to Jim and his money. Like aside from what I calculate to be roughly $3.75 that he's out for that giant meal that he bought. They did say that their take did not count Jim, implying that they did not charge him.

Yeah. So, I mean, aside from, you know, the the general wear and tear he didn't even like really well he did ram a truck and also beth well i was gonna say beth isn't working for free but yeah he's probably not paying beth yeah so there's really nothing to tell about this he doesn't make any money but he doesn't lose like even the insurance company is going to cover well his premium is going to go yeah because if the insurance company has to settle but he'll probably catch him like i have faith that this like he's already caught him up once you know i think sure he'll uh waste some time and solve that problem the other way uh but yeah i think it was uh a pretty straightforward episode where money had very little to do with

anything or jim's money had very little to do anything anything or Jim's money had very little to do anything. It was mostly a, someone that Jim knows pulls him into a problem slash Jim needs to get out of, needs to get out of trouble. And then the, I think the other big outstanding question, which I think is implied at the end of the episode is what happens to that restaurant? Yeah.

Cause I think if Vince goes to jail and then we see Rocky at a gas station, I think that implies that the restaurant stops being a going concern. It was probably, I mean, it was a front to begin with. Like it was an excuse to get those trucks there that were filled with hot cars. But it probably also was a way to launder money. So they probably just seized everything and shut it down. They seized that $15.35. Yes.

So good episode. Thanks for the pick. Is there anything else before we get to our second half? I know we've already brought up some of the ideas. Yeah. The use of motif in this episode in particular and a couple other things. Yeah, I think we're about ready to go to the second half. Let's do that.

We'll do that. Well, so to be perfectly clear, recommended episode, super fun. Watch it. We also learned some lessons. So we'll get to those when we come back in our second half. We hope you enjoyed that discussion of another wonderful episode of the Rockford Files. Here are a couple 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. 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 digathousandholes.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. So you can see more about that at ndpdesign.com slash zine 2018, and it is available through my Patreon at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta.

In addition, you can check out all of my games at ndpdesign.com, including the Worldwide Wrestling Roleplaying Game and the forthcoming Trouble for Hire, which may be interesting to some of our listeners. So that's it for now. Thank you again for listening. We very much appreciate your support. And now back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a day. We just got done talking about episode 14 of season four, the attractive nuisance. We've learned in the previous half what that title means. It's a legal term. It's about something so attractive that it would lure you into doing something that could hurt yourself. Therefore, you hold the person who owns that thing responsible. For example, if you were so engaged in listening to our podcast that you walked right off a cliff, you could sue us. Please don't do that. Keep in mind that we are not lawyers or

haven't even checked the Wikipedia article on this. We're just basing it on what Beth told us in the episode we just watched. Generally speaking, in the second part, we're going to talk about some of the lessons that we learned in the episode that we can apply to our own fiction stuff we're writing or playing at the gaming table as we play our tabletop role-playing games or uh incorporating into some sort of con where we're trying to get some bureaucrat to hand over paperwork so i have a quick one i have a quick one too maybe we do lightning yeah um which i feel like is probably mostly kind of a conceptual thing maybe for game stuff stuff. I don't know. Tell me what you think. But there's an element of this episode that I thought was really mysterious in a good way,

or may mystify in a good way. The character of Eddie LaSalle seemed like he was from a different show. And over the course of the episode, each appearance, he kind of came more and more into the Rockford Files as a Rockford Files character. Sure, yeah. Like the first couple of times we see him, we see him in like a static image and then we see him dramatically backlit in a black and white image. And then we see him and hear him talking to someone that we don't know who it is. And then I think the moment that he comes into the world of the Rockford Files is when we see him eating his premium dog food. Yeah, yes.

That's both a gag and it also complexifies his character. Because as we talked about in the first part, he turns from this figure of menace to this figure of pity. Yeah. And also directly becomes involved in the plot of the episode. I dig that a lot. There's other interesting things that kind of fall out from there. Like the first time we see Vince through his eyes, we both go.

Who's that guy? Yeah. I think that that's a really neat thing to have this character who appears to be from something else and is slowly integrating their world with uh rockford's world on a on a on a very meta level i'm not sure if this is like an actionable thing it's more kind of a uh stylistic thing that i think could be really fun for a certain because what it does in the narrative right is that it creates a tension of who is this and why are they here? Yeah. And then it slowly resolves that tension plot wise by telling us this is why he's here. But it also gives the character distance because they're from another time. Yeah.

It gives a lot of kind of juice to creating conflict later in the episode because his concerns are 30 years out of date. Yeah. because his concerns are 30 years out of date. Yeah, yeah. What he cares about is actually in conflict with everyone because they weren't around when the thing that he cares about happened. So that's an interesting way to have a character who is essentially a protagonist.

He's on Rockford's side. Right. He's someone that we end up rooting for. The reason he's in conflict with Rockford is because his motivations are so out of sync with Rockford's world. I think there's a tangential thing here that's slightly more actionable, but not quite as neat. The other thing that we see happening here is his level of menace swaps with Vince's. While he's a dark, shadowy figure, we think something'saps with Vince's. While he's a dark shadowy figure,

we think something's up with this guy. He's following Jim. He's following Rocky. He's threatening Rocky. That whole time, Vince is just, like I said, this beaten down line cook who can't get chili right. Maybe when we go from the chili to the dog food, we switch and start to see one take the place of the other.

And then it turns out that Vince is actually the real menace here. He's lured Rocky into a criminal enterprise. So that is something that I think is easy to take. Well, maybe not easy. It's clearer to see how you could take that and just throw two characters in the story. This will pop up a lot where one person seems like the bad guy and the other person seems like the good guy. And then they switch roles or whatever.

That's a pretty common trope. But that lines up exactly with what you're talking about, about this other world. While he's the menace, he's of his other world and then as we understand him more he comes into rocky's or into uh rockford's world and uh we swap who who who's the real villain of the piece this is one of those very well-crafted scripts yeah all of these elements kind of line up to make the whole thing work in a way that's very natural yeah uh what was your quick thing uh my quick thing we already kind of hit on it but it's this moment when jim uh pretty much lists the cast of thousands that are involved at this point in

the story somebody has threatened rocky uh jim has already been shot at by the mob but he hasn't connected the mob to vince yet he hasn't connected who this other guy was to that mob. Then there's the whole business of the guy who fell off the roof, Mr. Weinstock, who is suing. And the lawyer who happened upon the scene and is jumping in on all this action. There's a lot of stuff happening. There's a lot of real pressures, real threats to everyone's livelihood here and there's no clear vision to uh jim and to us as audience as the audience yeah where it's coming

from or where it's going like it all seems like coincidence at this point and some of it is coincidence but not all of it so jim just expresses this frustration with this there's this there's this i don't know i just need to find the next step. And what I enjoyed, as I said before about that, is that it lets the audience know, hey, we're not there yet. Don't worry. You're cool. Yeah. The high level lesson to take from this is to consider your audience with whatever you're creating.

That's so hard to do because there's more in your head and you've lived with it longer than everyone else. Even if you're at the table making it up, you've lived with it milliseconds longer than everyone else. So it's hard to think outside your own head. But I think it's nice to have those moments. It's kind of a nice technique to both to have a beat where you're reminding the audience like here are all the things going on yeah and also it's a yeah it's a little reassurance of like your viewpoint character is also confused yeah someone who does a really good job with this i'm a fan of uh steven brust and the the Vlad Teltosh series of novels that he writes.

That's familiar. This is fantasy series. Uh, that's kind of in the cloak and dagger Thofford gray mouser tradition. Okay. That's, uh, my understanding is set in a world that was originally created for a D and D game, but, uh, I mean, he's been writing these since the late eighties, I think. Anyway, the point is, so the, so this, so a human, as we understand humans, in a world of Dragyrians who are elves, essentially. So he's smaller and weaker and shorter lived than them.

But he has all these friends and all these other advantages and stuff. And he's an assassin originally. Okay. So he gets involved in all these plots because his friends are all involved in politics and the life of an assassin is a dangerous one. And he has all these pressures on him and all these goals that he wants to achieve and all this danger and stuff. Many of the books are concerned with some kind of plot against him or against someone he knows that he has to figure out what's going on and then solve it so most of them are mystery stories sure in a lot of them there are multiple points in the story where much like rockford says what he's thinking to someone else so that the

audience hears here's what's going on in the story or vlad you know has a conversation with someone or with multiple someones laying out all the things that he doesn't know yet yeah motivating how he's going to figure those things out yeah and uh it's a great technique for these like fast-moving mystery stories because you know as a reader i'm like okay i wasn't supposed to figure out this stuff yeah i am with pace with vlad because i have no idea who this character is and he also doesn't know who this character is it's also like a very natural thing for a human to do yeah when when working on uh a creative project if i paint myself into a corner or somehow don't have i i can't see how i get from here to there just sitting down with someone and just telling them what i have so far is often tremendously helpful. It's a natural thing to do. So it's great seeing characters do it. It doesn't feel so much like here's exposition. Right. Yeah. There's like kind

of a line right between this as a beat of the story and unending exposition. Yeah. I think it's pretty natural when you see it. Yeah. I think because it's such a natural moment in the story for it to happen. Yeah. It just is exactly the conversation that Jim would have with Rocky at that point. And so that scene, so specifically this is when they are being eavesdropped on by Ed, right? Yes. So that scene is doing so much in the story, right? Yeah.

So it's doing this this what we're just talking about it is also showing us ed in his pitiable moment but also that he has these like skills that are kind of feel old-timey and kind of illustrate that he has some kind of expertise right even though it's kind of out of date it is giving a nod towards why that guy was on his roof. Yes. Because how is this whole eavesdropping thing happening? Yeah. And it's also giving the motivation for the next part of the story, right?

If Ed didn't try to get the FBI to apprehend Jim, then would Ed and Jim ever have actually encountered each other? I guess they would have because he still would have found him through Weinstock. But there's a reason for that, those two guys and that tension that they set up. And then we learned their FBI officers, which is counterpointing the old FBI versus the modern FBI. That's part of the story too, right? So that scene is doing a lot of heavy lifting in a way that feels natural. And you're just watching the show, right? Because it's just a good, it's a well-constructed scene.

I mean, I kept saying, yeah, throughout. I agree 100% with that. And that's kind of a nice segue into a larger thing I'd like to talk about, which is the motifs, if I may. You may. Well, thank you. So the motifs. We talked about this. Motif and

theme are a hard thing to split apart sometimes. It's been at least 18 years since I've taken an English course. I'm going to talk about the motif as like a reoccurring element. The literary motif. Yes. A recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. I am going to accidentally call it theme, a theme a couple of times, and I am on board with that mistake. Like I'm not going to apologize for it. The one we talked about was this, what to do with retirement, right? We've got three guys who are in retirement age, who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Gray power.

You got Rocky trying to find something to interact with the truckers the way he used to. So, hey, I'm going to run a truck stop. That sounds great. And you've got Vince who isn't retired but is of retirement age and probably should be retired. And then you have Eddie, who nobody's paying attention to because he's trying to solve crimes from decades ago. Settle old, old scores. And there are lots of elements throughout that point to this, that bring this up. And it all culminates with that wonderful montage at the end where they're each giving

advice and it's just a mirror of each other. That, I think, is present enough to just say, oh, that's just a mirror of each other that i think is present enough to just say oh that's even a theme in it and we're good but there are other little parts that i really liked and part of why i liked it is that these little parts make everything feel tighter and more whole when we watch it as so for example we start off off with Rocky on the CB trying to communicate with the truckers. Then we have the ambulance chaser with his police van radio that he's listening to. The guy who falls off the roof is setting up an electronic surveillance thing. And several times we overhear conversations that are not supposed to be overheard or somehow

transmitted. This doesn't play to like a thesis of any kind. It just happens over and over again in different ways to kind of make, bring it together as a whole, right? Like it just feels of a piece. And I think we mentioned this in the first half, but some of those are motifs with different content, right? Like the idea of the CB lingo, and then Ed's FBI thirties lingo, both being kind of incomprehensible to outsiders. And we even get a little criminal lingo when we're at the garage. So yeah, I mean, like I just, and the criminal lingo doesn't stand out so much to us because that's the water we're swimming, And the criminal lingo doesn't stand out so much to us because that's the water we're swimming in, right?

That's the Rockford Files. So that's different than, say, the garlic joke. Right. Which is one person and they just kind of keep hitting it. Yeah, that's not really a motif in the sense of the bare idea of repetition, I suppose. But that's more of a gag. It doesn't grow in any way. It doesn't become something else other than a metaphor for Italian, which is a metaphor for the mob. Yeah. But the, the idea of what, what is tying this together as a cohesive whole is the idea

of these repeating elements in different contexts versus like, this is just kind of to split this hair, right. Versus a, a gag or a bit, which is for humor, right. Kind of going to the same well over and over. Perhaps the garlic thing could be a motif if other characters were over seasoning other things throughout the episode. I think it does play into one that they don't follow through on that.

Well, uh, which is, this is going to be one of those weird moments where we are slightly critical and it looks more critical than it than it should be just because we love the show so much but the garlic plays into this motif with the dog food right way like way over seasoned versus yeah the blandest yeah Yeah. Like this guy. Lowest rent. Yeah. Food. The only reason why it doesn't stand out that way, because we don't have a third beat to that. Sure.

There's no moment where finally they get to eat something they want. Right? That doesn't happen. Which is perfectly fine. I can also see them having written that into the episode and then cutting it because they didn't have time or anything like that but like it it feels like two of three beats like there should have been one more thing in there so i think this episode is a great example of motifs versus you know bits yeah and it's also a good example of the motifs not necessarily having to serve the theme of the episode right like the the themes are a little more uh pervasive and a little less specific right like so like we're saying one

big theme of the episode is you know what happens when you are no longer wanted the conflict between age and youth right yeah those are the themes of the episode. And so the motifs don't need to specifically be about those themes in order to support them, I guess is where I'm trying to go. Like, then you end up with a one-note story where it feels like ham-handed and you're hitting people over the head with the idea or whatever. The motifs serve to construct the world and make you feel like you're watching characters interact in some kind of real space

and then the theme is expressed through the interaction of the motifs with the plot and the characters and like all the other aspects okay so imagine this situation here imagine you're writing this episode pretend you're steven cannell and you're like, okay, I've written everything about this episode except for the excuse for why this guy might be on. We know the real reason why he was on Rockford's roof. Why would someone be on Rockford's roof if not to bug him? Why wouldn't Rockford immediately think that? So you're sitting there going, I need an attractive nuisance, right? I need something on top of that roof to lure him up. If you just have a blank page there, there's nothing. But if you're like, oh, I've been working with the motif of surveillance, what surveillance thing would be up there? Like a telescope. Well, why would there be a telescope? Oh, so look at the whales, right?

Rocky is looking at the whales. Which also plays into the relationship of Vince and Rocky. Yeah. And also leads to some of that exposition about why they are together in the first place, which is part of the theme of what do you do when you're old? If you have a motif to hang it on, it gives you that initial hook to just go, oh, okay, I'll just play into one of my motifs. What do I have for motifs so far? Sounds like a really clinical or maybe just boring way to- Kind of procedural. Yeah, procedural way to do things. But it's so helpful to just have a list of them there as you're doing it. You're like, hey, this guy's doing this and this guy's doing- And sometimes

it just happens naturally and you just have to recognize it. You can sharpen it up by being like, this lawyer should be listening to a police scanner, not just be passing through the park. So the lawyer listening to the police scanner is the big coincidence in this story that we, as audience, don't give a because it fits the motif. I think that gets to the last main thing that I wanted to talk about, which was even while this episode has like these recurring motifs and it brings it together into this coherent whole, it doesn't bring all of the plot threads together into a single cycle. It is overlapping stories. It's not stories that all come together into a single story. Right.

And that makes it feel vibrant in its own way. Like, yes, there is a relationship between the guy planning the bug and the quest for Vince. But as you say, the big coincidence of this lawyer coming in and wanting to, you know, take Jim and his insurance company to cleaners because that's what he does. That is not resolved. Yeah. Like we talked about, it's kind of resolved, but it's still a big question mark at the end. It doesn't have anything to do with the main theme of the episode really um yeah but it adds some plot development and the pressures on jim to do certain things you know so it has a plot relevance

there for the main mystery and it also just adds texture to jim's world one one of the reasons the show is so great is because the world feels lived in and lived in worlds have coincidences things just happen sometimes i mean some stories operate entirely on coincidence right and that's a certain kind of story yeah yeah but sometimes stuff feels too uh wrapped up when everything connects to everything else it starts to feel like artificial when you connect everything to everything else it makes the world feel smaller instead of bigger. Yeah. It feels like everything happens in the same circle.

But then if you have these coincidences that bring story in from outside that circle and are connected with these motifs, as you say, then the world starts to feel sprawling. Especially if you're going to engage in some sort of serialized fiction that will progress larger stories. Having this moment where we don't resolve the lawsuit, it's great because you could just bring that back. Now your insurance company is dropping you or whatever. You could have a whole other Rockford story start with him following this guy and then stumbling upon something else. Anyway, but the point is, is that like, if it's not vital to your story to wrap it up, like what they do here, what I feel like is like,

just not an escalation, but an advancement of it. Well, we're not wrapping it up, but here's the next step. The boundary expands outwards. Yeah. From the beginning of the episode to the end of what could be in the next episode right yeah speaking of wrapping things up yeah no i think we got thankfully we have not been uh sued for an attractive nuisance suit so uh we have earned our 200 for this day yes but we will

be back again to talk about another episode of the rockford files