Two Hundred A Day - Episode 38: The Big Ripoff

Episode Date: August 26, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E7 The Big Ripoff. Jim goes on a European jaunt to track down the truth about a widow who received a big insurance payout, but his client doesn't buy his conclusion that the husband is still alive. Trying to figure out a way to get paid for his work, Jim goes to the insurance company, leading him to yet another town in California to prove that Steve Nelson is still alive. We felt a very strong "back to basics" vibe with this episode, which features a fantastically tight script by series creator Roy Huggins, good humor, Jim pulling quick-thinking cons, and a fun mystery that keeps the energy moving with each reveal of the NEXT thing that's going on. In our second half, we talk about our a new approach to the show, where we don't get so into the nitty gritty of each episode in favor of talking about how the overall story is structured. We break down this episode and how it transitions from one "act" to another, how to use plot holes as part of storytelling, and the ways in which the writing in this one always is serving more than one purpose, even the stuff that seemed like a throwaway gag when you first view it. 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.

It's Andra. Remember last summer at Pat's? I've got a 12-hour layover before I go to Chicago. How about it? Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I am Epi Dyer of the show. This episode is going to be a bit of a new experiment on our part. But before we get into that, Eppie, you are the one who brought this particular episode to the table. What are we watching? What are we talking about this time? Well, the episode we're going to watch is way back in season one. I feel like it's been a while since we've held into season one. And it the uh seventh episode called the big ripoff this episode was recommended

to us via twitter by diogo cascio and i hope i am pronouncing that correctly if i'm not please uh go ahead and yell at our twitter account it was great he he brought it up because this is an episode where, spoilers, Jim gets paid? A question mark? Yeah. I'm pretty excited about that. As Jim's unsolicited bookkeeper, I'm super happy with how that works out. So we've been doing the show for a while now. So we've been doing the show for a while now.

As of this recording, we'll be somewhere in the 40-episode range, depending exactly on when this comes out. And it's been great. But also, I don't know about you, but I have been feeling a little bit of a grind starting to come together as we've been doing the episodes over the last couple months. It makes sense. I mean, 40 episodes in, Jim's knees are starting to go out, right? Right. It's rough on everyone. So we talked about, you know, maybe trying to mix it up and do some slightly different approaches to how we address the show.

And I think we still want to keep our basic format of talking about an episode because we enjoy the episodes and then talking about the narrative lessons that we draw from it because that's what we what we like what brand right but we could probably do it in a different way so uh for this episode instead of going directly scene to scene with the really uh deep description of what happens kind of moment to moment uh i thought that it might be interesting to uh chunk it up a little bit and kind of moment to moment, I thought that it might be interesting to chunk it up a little bit and kind of talk about how the episode is structured and then talk about what really jumps out to us within each part or to get screenwriterly about it within each act of the episode.

Let's not go into technical terms. So we'll give it a shot. I'm excited about this. Before we get to that, as always, I like to mark the production stuff. As you said, we're going back to season one. And this is, in fact, a Roy Huggins script, a series co-creator, along with Cannell, Stephen Cannell. Because we haven't done a season one episode for a while i'll do a quick recap of that situation so the show was essentially the brainchild of huggins and cannell was kind of his protege who helped filled in a lot of the gaps of the concept and of the character and stuff like

that so hence they are both creators of the show and credited on every episode but huggins after the first season uh left the show as a pretty much as an active part of it. He moved on to other projects. He might have written one or two scripts that made it into later seasons, but the bulk of his direct creative output as a script writer, as a screenwriter, are in this season. He's the guy behind Prisoner. He's the guy behind Maverick. His kind of brand, if you will, his approach was very much this inversion of a typical trope and then really digging into both

the humor and also the kind of different, I don't know, different weird angles that one can take on a genre. Yeah. The director for this one is Vincent McEvity and this is the only Rockford Files that he directed but as a prolific tv director starting in the 60s his resume includes six episodes of the original

star trek oh yeah including balance of terror which is uh one of one of the really good ones that introduces the romulans um in original series. And 45 episodes of Gunsmoke. So, a real working director. And then in the 90s, Columbo's, he directed seven of those, which is almost all of them. I don't think there were, I think there were like 11 or 12. Oh, and he did three episodes of Buck Rogers in the 25th century, I guess for me. I think there might be one of Airwolf in there somewhere. I thought of you then as well.

And this one has a really interesting, well, it'll start right off with a super interesting sequence. Yes. And you are, of course, referring to the opening montage. Well, let's go ahead and talk about the opening montage. My notes for the opening montage are goons travel. So I mean, like, as far as opening montages go, this is this is a good one. It sets us up for what's going to happen. It sets us up for a out of town episode. I mean, when we talked about categorizing

Rockford files, was that one of our categories? The Rockford goes out of town? I think we talked about that, but they tend to be subsumed into the other ones. Like this episode is basically a Rockford is hired slash Rockford gets in trouble episode. And he happens to go out of town as part of it. I do like the out of town ones as a break. Not because I have anything against Paradise Cove. It's just kind of fun to see him elsewhere, even if it's elsewhere in California. But also I like it when the locals don't like him. Yeah. I got excited for this.

And I do think I remembered a little bit watching this montage. But I will say I didn't remember a whole lot of this episode. I like the out of town ones too. Also because they often mean that he's running more cons. So we get to see some good con Rockford. I feel like in the later seasons, you know, we see a distinct drop off in how much he really does, you know, have to pull the wool over people's eyes or con his way through a situation. Yeah. Like a lot of that gets al elided off screen in later seasons because

we just know that's how he works. But this season, first season, we get to see a lot of the actual nuts and bolts of what he does. This episode gives us some of that too. I mean, we'll go into it a little bit, but this is a good like Rockford at work episode. I mean, they're all tend to be him at work, but we get a lot of his trade craft in this episode. The thing from the preview montage that I really noted is that we see lots of beat up Jim. Yeah. So if you want to see Jim get beat up, you won't be let down. 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 Roll4YourYourParty, 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 AgeOfRavens.blogspot.com. But how about that opening shot? I didn't really remember the episode from the preview montage, but then once we hit that shot, I was like, oh, it's this one. Yeah. Because this beginning sequence, I definitely remember it. I didn't really remember where it went after this. Yeah.

But this whole sequence was great. So like we were saying, it's an out of town episode, mostly out of town in California, but it actually starts out of town in a French city, which I assume is supposed to be Paris. They never it's never specified. Yeah, it feels Paris-y. And I don't know Paris to look at it from the air. Like this beautiful helicopter shot panning over all these all this wonderful kind of riverfront architecture.

Is this filmed on location did you or did they you no they had to have there's a lot of like outdoor yeah cars and it really seems like they had to have or at least gotten this helicopter shot on location because the other stuff is could be on a soundstage i guess but it seems pretty detailed like it seems like it's on location it just feels like a very ballsy move uh You're seven episodes in and you're like, we're taking a Paris vacation. Let's go. So this is the kicking off our episode and also of our first kind of act of the story, which is where we're going to see what Jim is doing right now and then how that connects to

the case that he's been hired for once he returns to la uh and then we see that as one might expect the person who hired him then starts acting weird and we get more of the backstory about why he got hired this whole beginning sequence is essentially a little silent film it has a beautiful score the music in this episode is really good yeah i mean the scores are always good but this one seems very very synced up with the tone of each scene in a really fun way. I would agree. So we have Jim in Paris or wherever and a little montage of him snacking on croissants at a cafe as he keeps an eye on a very lovely blonde woman who, as it turns out, is an early screen role of Suzanne Somers. I have in my notes, is this Buffy the Vampire Slayer? She looks very

similar. I knew going into this that Suzanne Somers was going to be in this episode. I was in the tweet recommendation, mentioned her. But did not recognize her when she stepped out of it because i'm used to uh a more mature suzanne right yeah she's pretty young here yeah this is pre three's company based on a cursory look at the filmography i think this is before she became very famous yeah i wonder if she's only in this sequence because she doesn't show up again in the episode and she doesn't have any speaking parts because this is all sign this is all just done with music and we see them talking. We don't hear any dialogue. I wonder if she was like too expensive for a speaking role.

Oh, yeah. But yeah, so this woman's out like she's shopping. She has this car that she's driving back and forth. And Jim engineers a situation where he basically rents multiple cars and parks them super close to her car while she's in a store. So she can't get in the doors as she's trying to figure out how to deal with the situation. He arrives out of nowhere as a friendly stranger to save the day and manages to get one of the cars open with a coat hanger. Yes, that he gets from across the street yeah at the coat hanger shop i mean there's a clothing shop with a bunch of coat hangers next to the clothes but yeah

it's worth repeating that this is all silent yeah it's wonderful because they're going through the trouble of showing you what's happening and what the exchange is uh without actually telling you at any point right like i just really love the way that this is like it feels like almost like an old-time comedy yeah it's definitely it's definitely comedic um like i think the whole point of it is that it's kind of it's kind of a gag yeah but also we see just from like the body language and stuff we see um this woman go from being polite to being invested in like what he's doing she gets closer to him and is really like engaged with what he's doing um as he finally

is able to get into one of the cars and roll it off in neutral so she can get her car out and then we end that sequence with the two of them um he's helping her with her bags of groceries because that's what she was getting to wherever her apartment is or whatever. And there's a very suggestive glance in that last moment. We don't see whether he goes up with her, but there's a bit of a little face body language that's like, maybe that's how that went. We don't actually know because we cut from there directly to Jim on the plane returning to L.A. Yes. And he's not having a comfortable ride on that plane.

No, he is covered in sleeping children. Yeah. The thing about this that hits me in a wonderful way is he is on assignment and clearly enjoying himself. Yes. This is probably the job you want to have if you're a PI. You get to go to Europe. It's on someone else's dime. And then when the job is over, have if you're a PI. You get to go to Europe, it's on someone else's dime.

And then when the job is over, he's on that plane, it's crowded, there's children, it's a mess. It's just not a pleasant trip. And from that point on, there's nothing pleasant about this job. I love that. It's kind of showing a vision of the romantic version of this life. And then it crashes back into the reality. And that's also driven home by the dialogue that we cut into, which is the first dialogue of the episode. Where his client, Nancy Frazier, is not happy that he has been on a trip to how to see Europe on 200 a day plus expenses. 200 a day plus expenses. And then he goes through a whole thing about all the ways that he was minimizing his expenses and living in like a bad hotel and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Where the toilet is like half mile walk away. And, you know, you can absolutely believe that Jim is, he's taking bargain flights. He's staying at bargain hotels, and all of that stuff, and still enjoying it. Because that's the deal with Jim. He can enjoy that. It's not like he has super refined tastes, as we know, when we examine what he eats. So this plays into a dialogue that we have a lot today in the gig gig economy and whatnot where if you're doing something you like or you enjoy people don't think you should be paid for it right you're still delivering the exact service and this is jim's argument right like you know i gave you a

professional answer it's not the one you wanted but it's the one that that's what i think that's what you're paying me for yeah and he did the job it doesn't matter that he enjoyed himself on the job he did the job and he did it cheaply right he did it responsibly yeah i mean this woman is basically giving him our millennials killing the pi business um so yeah she she hired him to find out whether virginia, who is that blonde that we saw, whether she killed her husband. Yeah. So the situation is that Virginia and Steve Nelson, there was a boat accident. We find this out over the course of this whole act, essentially.

But there's this boat accident. She made it to shore and he didn't. There was a $400,000 life insurance claim. She ended up having to sue to get it, but she did get it. And Nancy Frazier was Steve's mistress or girlfriend, had some kind of romantic relationship. And so she hired Jim to find out whether it was murder. Jim comes back from Europe saying that based on his professional opinion, he thinks that the whole thing is a ruse and that he's not dead. And so, or sorry,

it's a plane crash, not a boat crash, but it was a crash into the water. That's why I'm thinking of boats. Oh, that's, I just seen the second episode of The Incredible Hulk the night before, which had a boat accident. So as you were describing it, I was envisioning this. And I was like, wait a minute, doesn't the Hulk show up? But yeah, so Nancy's upset at this news. She doesn't want to pay Rockford. Yeah. Because she says that if Steve was alive,

he would have gotten in touch with her. Yeah. They start sparring about this check. She says that if he leaves a bill, she'll send him the check. And Jim, of course, would rather just get it now. And then there's a phone call. I think there's a moment where she tries to seduce him too. It's a little weird. Wait, seduce might be too strong of a word, but she tries several different ways to get him to come over to her side of thinking on this, which I think makes things a little more interesting later on.

I have in my bookkeeping notes here, he's out the expenses of the European trip. Right. Whatever that is, there's no way she's sending him that check. That's not happening. Right. So once she goes into another room to take this phone call, he notices through a partly open door

that she has a half-packed suitcase sitting on the bed. And there is a significant frown. Clearly this is setting something off for him. From here, we go to Mr. Moss at the insurance company. Jim's giving him a call. These are the insurers that paid out that $400,000. And Jim's calling them because he thinks that he can get it back for him. You know, he's calling because he has a $400,000 offer or something like that. We have a couple bits here. One is that Mr. Moss is a numbers guy. And so he's quoting all these like, like 67% of phone calls are bad news, like all this stuff.

I am 100% with him. If you're my parents calling me, that's fine. But if you're anyone else, why aren't you texting? And if you're texting, why aren't you DMing me? At this point, we've gone up to 90% of phone calls are wrong numbers, up from the 11% that he says. But then before Jim can give so many of the actual information, he sees Nancy get in the cab and follows her to the airport. So at the airport, we get a good, as you were saying, we get to see some good Jim at Tradecraft. Yeah. Well, I do want to say that already Jim is doing

this thing where he's like, okay, I'm not getting paid this way, but I have information and I know that information is worth money. I mean, it's fun to look at this in the context of like how say Angel deals with this sort of thing. Jim's like, okay, I know the people that I know the bureaucracy that will pay me. So let me go and engage with that. It runs really close to maybe blackmailing or whatever, but that's not really what's happening. What's happening is that there's... He's finding another angle. Yeah. He's like, I have something valuable and I need to convert it to cash.

What are the ways to do that? Right. So the information is that he doesn't think that Steve Nelson is dead. Yeah. She doesn't want to pay him for that, but the insurance company might. Emphasis on might. But this airport scene is amazing. Yeah. She doesn't want to pay him for that, but the insurance company might, um, emphasis on might. But this airport scene is amazing. It's so good.

I remember the first time I saw this just being like, where is this going? Because we see him. So he goes to this, uh, newsstand, buy something, goes into the men's bathroom,

uh, uses the coin operated, uh, stall. I will say this. Pay toilets are a crime against humanity i have i have had several encounters with them in which i've uh i've had slightly more urgent causes than jim has at this and i'm just like fuck you whoever invented this it's it's clearly

just part of how this airport works but uh i was like oh that's a little moment in time that i had not expected yeah um so jim has uh bought a little travel bag and he takes off his coat and tie and leaves them in this stall clearly that is too dressed up to look like a cabbie right yes um because he goes to the airline counter so when he got in he saw nancy go to a counter and then go farther into the airport so he goes to the airline counter so when he got in he saw nancy go to a counter and then go farther into the airport so he goes to the airline counter and claims that that he was driving a cab and his fare left the bag in there gives a description to this to the woman at the counter and kind of talks her into revealing her name and destination because of course the cab company this happens all

the time and they have a service to return things like this, but he has to know where she is so they can send her a wire. Also, decades before 9-11. So it's plausible. This is definitely plausible for those of you who are like, how the hell does that red bag not just get blown up in the parking lot by a bomb squad? And I like how the woman at the desk is kind of like, well, I'm not really supposed to tell you this stuff.

But since you're trying to help someone out, it's all very positive, kind of relying on like, we're all friends here kind of approach. In the beginning, I was like, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know why I didn't cue in to the fact that it was going to be a con. But when he approached the desk, and I don't remember the exact exchange, but way maybe you can help me i was like oh yeah here we go yeah this is disarming jim jim uh playing a character who has a problem with some urgency and just needs a little favor yeah he he wants you to to empathize with his situation, and to see that you have the power to make his day a brighter day. Oh,

that's great. I love it. We kind of see it being made on the run. Yes. Yeah. We see him kind of figure it out as needed. He does find out that, uh,

he knew her name of course already, but he finds out that she went to Elmeria, California, and then he goes back to the pay toilet to recover his jacket. Um, the guy in there can only give him 14 cents and change for his quarter. He's got 11 cents, which in today's money is somewhere between 55 and 60 cents. So we shouldn't scoff.

But Jim is so disappointed. This is a moment where I'm like, okay. I mean, I'm not saying this is bad or anything like that. I really love how disappointed he is. But like, does Jim think this guy's scamming him? I mean, I think he's just, of course, just my luck. Yeah, another 11 cents. And then, of course, when he opens the door,

his coat and tie are gone. You knew that was going to happen. So now he's out of coat and tie. Yes. So he knows where Nancy went. Then we go to Jim talking to Mr. Moss at the insurance company. This is basically a big haggling scene combined with revealing some of that backstory about exactly why Jim's suspicious and why the insurance company was investigating, but then ended up, they did end up paying it out, but she had to sue them to get it.

So they clearly have some level of suspicion about how it all went down, but not enough evidence to say that they can't cover it. But Jim says that he has information that the insurance company does not. But Jim says that he has information that the insurance company does not. And they start this haggling process of how much Jim gets advanced and what percentage of the recovery fee they will give him for proving that Steve Nelson is still alive. One of the things I like about this scene is the layers of work the dialogue is doing. Like you were saying, it's haggling, but also we're getting some exposition. We're getting some understanding of what's going on but we're also watching these two play chicken with what jim knows because this guy in the process of haggling is trying to you know where

he's just trying to get jim to to offer it up right like because the moment jim tells him what the information is he has all the power he's like well that's not worth anything and then that's it and then obviously both their personalities are coming out in this too so you've got like this well-layered um it's doing so much work in such a small scene and it's setting up a part of the finale as well because we actually come back to mr moss at the end of the episode yeah this is laying the groundwork for their interaction then yes which is great so jim does get dragged out of him that uh in his investigation he found that uh jenny is living off the interest of

two hundred thousand dollars in investments which just happens to be exactly half of a $400,000 payout. So that, in addition to Nancy acting very strange once she learned of what he had to say, convinces him that Nelson's still alive. Yeah. an initial position of $1,500 up front for expenses, plus 25% of the recovery fee, down to $500 in advance and 5% of any money recovered. Yes. We see Jim basically being like,

well, it's this or not getting any money out of this. This is exactly his thing. He's like, I've got this thing. Hopefully it's worth some money. Let's find out what it's worth. So here's where I think we kind of go from act one to act act two of our story we now have kind of the groundwork established uh jim's on a trail um and we know what the stakes are for him right what's happening now we've just hit a uh a nice summation of all that has come thus far right like that scene is like here we are in the story everybody on board. Good.

We're going to go somewhere else. And like literally, but also we're going into this next act. Well, we go into this montage of hotel signs. So again, this is like how the first, how we kicked off the episode with this silent montage. Yeah. We are now kicking off kind of act two with a silent montage where we just see jim going from hotel to hotel yeah um and we have one little moment of dialogue in one of them where uh the the guy at the desk barely gives rock for the time of day confirms that he has looked at every hotel in almeria and he should check the ones up north this this motel guy i just wanted to call out he's uh he's actually uncredited in the episode but thanks to imdDb, he's an actor named Basil Hoffman. And I vaguely recognized him.

And it turns out that he is a, he's not the like murderer or anything, but he's a principal in a Columbo episode that I quite like, even though it's a very weird one. The one that takes place at the like Mensa Analog. The Bye Bye Sky High IQ murder case. So this hotel guy is one of the high iq people in that colombo he has a really long career uh just going through his imdb but he definitely has a face so yeah jim continues his motel uh searching and then he's heading back uh so you said in the firebird and at first i was a little like wait a second didn't he fly right i see a establishing shot of a plane later we see the license plate and i realize it's not the firebird

because it doesn't have his license plate it's a rental oh it just happens to be the same color and almost the same model as the firebird i was thinking the same thing i was like something uh but i just thought i was confused by just the the fact that she flew and we spent all that time in the airport right like maybe i just picked that up there but yeah you're right and has a little badge on the front that's not on the firebird and it's i forget what it is but it's a similar make and yeah and the same color maybe he just has the type yeah he's rented many cars this episode right he's heading back to Almeria and he pulls over to pick up a hitchhiker. A model

named Marilyn Polanski. So she's actually really the co-star of the episode. It's kind of interesting because we don't meet her until now. She's played by Jill Kleberg who apparently is very well regarded but I don't think I've ever seen any of the movies she's been in.

But she's great and this role is very fun. Yeah. It's an interesting role because she is not wrapped up in any of it. Right. And there's a moment where I thought she was, and then it turns out she wasn't. And that was kind of nice. Yeah, no, exactly. There's a lot of things about this character and Rockford's interactions with her that

I'm just, I was like, this is, I like the angles that these are going because they're not what I expect. So yeah, she's, she's hitching back to Elmeria because she had a real grope freak of a client. Apparently her, her deal is she's a $20 an hour for clothes on 23 an hour for the real me.

So new podcast, 23 an hour for the real me. Yeah. podcast, 23 an hour for the real me. Yeah. I'm not sure if that'll work in audio, but she definitely brings this very like late sixties, early seventies hippie vibe, uh, which is kind of fun.

I think even Rockford was surprised when she said she was coming back from a job because he thought he was picking up a flower child, right? Like, like just a, uh, a hippie on the side of the road. But, uh, in fact, my notes was picking up a flower child right like like just a uh a hippie on the side of the road but uh in fact my notes are hitchhiker flower child ah a model he so he's been uh flashing this picture of steve around and no one's recognizing him same with her she looks

and says that she's never seen that guy before that's why he's looking for for him and he has this great little kind of it's not i mean it's just a it's a joke but he that's why he's looking for for him and he has this great little kind of it's not i mean it's just a it's a joke but he claims to be he's like he's an advertising executive and this guy's our top animator no one else can draw the the avocado bandito the way that he can and she's like is that true and he's like no yeah but it's all very light-hearted yeah but avocado bandito yeah i'm down for that as a mascot. This is a great moment to show off that Rockford can just come up with these things. This is a feasible scenario.

Not quite, because he wouldn't be the executive looking for this guy, probably. But it matches all of the hallmarks of one of his cons. I'm a person with a job, with a stress. You might be able to help me out with it, right? Yeah, she's like, are you kidding? He's like, yeah, I'm kidding. And what's great about that is that that decision to be honest with a perfect stranger

sets the tone for their relationship for the rest of the episode. At that point going forward, he's still tight-lipped about his information he won't tell her exactly what's happening but he won't lie to her about anything he'll just say no yeah i'm not going to tell you about that or or what whatnot and i think it also is a tell to the audience that she's not involved yes it kind of like, Oh, she is kind of this outsider to the, uh,

to the whole thing. He's not trying to con her or lie to her. Yeah. Now we're all in an even playing field about like what we all know about what's going on. Um, and is the beginning of them flirting, uh,

which culminates with, uh, when he drops her off, she offers to cook him dinner, but he, uh, I think he's like, oh, I know where that's going to go. So he's like, how about I'll take you out instead? He kind of pumps the brakes a little bit. Yeah.

Before they get to dinner, he clearly has been trying to find the sheriff in this town to ask some more questions about this guy. Because he's been striking out at the motels. And in just a little piece of fun establishment, I think, he finds him at a... There's been a crash or something. It's a little unclear whether it's a car crash or a car went up on a curb or something. But there's a frenetic crash scene

with bystanders and a bunch of deputies and stuff. And the sheriff is there. And Rockford just walks right in, kind of ignoring all this other stuff going on to talk to the sheriff. This is a very western style uh like a wild west western yeah movie thing normally this would show off how rough the town is and the stranger who's wandering into the town just walks right up to the sheriff who's just like dragging bodies out of the street or something like that like this is a very common scene in Westerns.

And I wonder if this is a thing that Roy is doing. I don't think there's like a big comment that he's making. I think he's just having fun with one of those scenes. It's a fun way to set this interaction up. So the sheriff, of course, has no time for Rockford and wants him out of his town. That's the role of local police in the Rockford files. We do get a really good bit where we learn a little bit about why Rockford keeps his gun in the cookie jar.

Oh, yes. Because the sheriff like pats him down, which is weird, but okay. And asks him where his gun is. And he says that he keeps his gun in a can of instant coffee. It absorbs the moisture, keeps it dry in the salt air. Maybe not literally also in the cookie jar, but, you know, that seems as good a reason as any. But yeah, so he asks about Steve Nelson and he just gets totally stonewalled. The sheriff doesn't want him around, doesn't want him to ask any of his people anything.

Threatens to arrest him if he doesn't just move along for like this long list of nuisance charges right so jim with no lever he doesn't have any leverage over this guy right other than just like trying to be polite he he heads away from the situation and happens to see nancy frazier crossing the street so proof positive that she did come here uh He pursues her but loses her in a park where we do see many people painting. Just like doing like landscape paintings. Which reminded me of Marilyn's comment in their conversation that there's just a lot of artists in this town. Yeah. Again, all this stuff ends up being relevant as we go through.

Artists who can afford 23 an hour. Right. Or 20 if they don't want the real her um and even this interaction with the sheriff is setting up something later yeah this episode everything is super tight and focused which is really nice we uh start getting to kind of the end of this act as uh we go to the dinner with marilyn uh we don't really see much of the dinner food wise or conversation wise because most of this is actually about showing us the first real threat that Rockford is facing. Or he goes into the bathroom.

These two gorillas, who we saw at a table watching them eat dinner, follow him in. They both have real faces for the Rockford Files. Yes. One of them has all the dialogue. The other one just kind of looms menacingly. And the one with all the dialogue I really thought had been in a million of these episodes. But it turns out this is only Rockford Files. Warren Vanders is the actor.

In my notes, I'm like, is this a Carradine? This guy has a very Carradine look. But yeah, in the bathroom, they corner him, flash a badge, and say that the sheriff thinks he's been in town too long. He should move along tonight. The bus leaves at 11, and they give him a bus ticket. Jim has a good line of, I never ride on buses. I get carsick. Yes.

But they threaten him with, it's either like carsick on a bus or six months in traction. In a very Jim way, it's kind of like, well, when you put it that way, guess I'm taking the bus. Of course, narrator voice, he did not take the bus. He does make a quick call to the sheriff's office once out of the bathroom which is not answered or he's not there or something doesn't get what he wants and then returns to the table with marilyn as just as she's getting um antsy that she thought he skipped out on her and stiffed her with the check yeah there's some heavy indications that he did.

But then he does show back up and she is relieved. And he asks her about the guys and she basically, I don't really know about any of that, but you don't want to mess with the sheriff. He's dangerous. He keeps the crime rate down, if you know what I mean. I really dig the chemistry in this scene because the way she's acting, going from thinking he might have left her with the check to her coming back and then realizing that he might be in danger. And then her concern and the way

she delivers these lines, it's a little bit like she's a little bit disappointed in herself for having fallen for this guy. Not because he's dangerous, but that he because he's in trouble. Like, there's just something very real about how this all goes down where she's like oh all right i like you darn it and and it's not i like you so i'm gonna let you in on something it's i like you so i'm worried about what could

happen to you so maybe you should just get out of here yeah even though i don't really know why you're here you're getting into trouble yeah this is the only moment where I was like, maybe she's in on something. Like, oh, you don't want to stay around here. Sheriff's really a problem. Yeah, it could definitely be read that way as well. But I think we quickly see that that's not the case. So he drops Marilyn off. They have a little kiss goodnight.

And then this is, I really noticed here where the soundtrack really amps this up because it's kind of romantic theme and in the very beginning montage there's this very romantic you know score kind of theme going and then i think this is the same kind of theme going through this and then there's just these ominous deep notes that just like enter into it and then go out as it goes to different shots i was was like, oh, something bad's going to happen. This is the part where some musical instrument starts to sound like a tea kettle. There's moments of kind of disturbing dissonance in the music as well, like where they're like, okay, now we're in danger.

Of course, our two gorillas have followed them and are watching him from the car. And then before he can back out of this driveway they uh block him in haul him out at gunpoint and uh throw him into their car but then we get a we do get a shot of marilyn seeing this happen out of her window yeah i feel like when i saw that the expression on her face yeah it was very genuine like yeah she she was worried about what was gonna happen right so of course our goons drop him off at the bus station. They beat him up. This is where he gets all of his bruises from the preview montage. It looks pretty rough.

He has this cut on his cheek and a cut on his eye. They beat him up, drop him, tell him to wait for the bus. It'll be coming for you. And then I think to emphasize how he's really been beaten up, after they leave, we get this one shot kind of from his perspective and it's all blurry he's concussed and then he passes out okay so there's a thing in this scene here i have no idea if this is intentional or not but the way it's shot after they beat him up he's sitting on the ground and the car is behind him but it looks a little bit

like he might be leaning on the car and then the drives off, and he's so close to the tire when that happens. I know that this isn't going to happen. I know that he's not going to get caught in the tire and dragged down the road. But there's a visceral reaction that I had to this. And it reminded me that I had a very visceral reaction to the opening scene when they brought her groceries home and they opened the trunk and the grocery bag with the French bread sticking out of it is leaning against the spare tire. And I was thinking to myself, that's f***ing gross. I'm not going to eat French bread

that's been banging against a spare tire this whole time. Anyways, that's my parallel tire theory of the big ripoff it's a good theory uh and so here i think and i think this goes into a commercial break too where he like passes out right and we are now transitioning into our next act three the stakes have risen again i think that's where i see the transitions right where the mystery deepens and the stakes rise. Yeah. So we come into this act. Unfortunately, no more montages. But we do have Marilyn bringing him around. She followed them in his car. He says that he's been thumped by experts.

Yes. Have you ever been thumped by experts? But she did recognize one of them. And she seems she's a little reluctant. I think she's still kind of like, I don't really want to get dragged into this. And I think you should just leave it alone is kind of the tone here. So it's interesting because her reluctance here and the vibe that we're picking up, which could also be stuff that we're bringing from the just genre or having watched a lot of Rockford Files episodes.

But I feel like it's a bit of a misdirect too, right? She definitely is reluctant and she definitely is concerned about him. But as soon as he kind of pushes back, she tells him what she knows. There's no real organized criminal conspiracy going on here. Right.

She's like, don't mess with the mob. Don't mess with this corrupt sheriff. Don't mess with... But that's too competent for what's actually happening here she does say that she recognizes one of them from his day job yeah before we get to that we get the the line from the opening montage of is there anything you won't do for money because he's saying that like he has a lot of he needs to stay because he has a lot of money tied up in this right Like he needs to chase this down or else he's not getting paid.

So is there anything you won't do for money? I won't kill for it and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything. That's great. We have a joke in the cut here where she says that she recognizes one of the guys from his day job. job and then we cut to our our uh our talkie goon getting punched into a pile of uh like auto part boxes um and wearing the overalls of a garage you know grease monkey and so now we have rockford gating the upper hand uh this is not a professional goon he's uh not part of the mob he's not even a sheriff's deputy which is important yeah. He's just a guy who got paid

$200 to rough Jim up and run him out of town. But he only got $100 because he had to split with the other guy. I love that Jim is worth a single day's work. And I will reiterate for the audience that we're probably talking upwards of a grand in today's money. Anyways. that we're probably talking upwards of a grand in today's money. Anyways, Jim offers them $200 off all to himself to tell him who hired the two of them to beat him up. It's funny. Cause he goes immediately from,

I'm not going to tell you anything to $200. Okay, fine. So he says that Carl LeMay, who has a gallery is the one who hired them. And Jim shows him the picture. And he says, it's not that guy. So this Carl LeMay, who has a gallery, is the one who hired them. And Jim shows him the picture and he says it's not that guy. So this Carl LeMay is not Nelson. And then Jim drags it out a little bit.

The guy thinks he's not going to get the money. And he's like, well, I told you the truth anyways. He was confessing to have told the truth without anything on the line because the guy just assumes he's not getting the money. Right. Like he's like, OK, whatever I told told you so you can do whatever you want and then that's when jim's like all right now i believe you so here's your money the maze gallery is a very tv set gallery with it it's a bunch of random paintings on easels like sitting around so this guy i was

like oh i totally know this guy he's played by br Bruce Kirby, who was Sergeant Kramer on Columbo. Ah. Along with some minor roles. I recognized his suit jacket from all of the D&D games I played. Because he's wearing graph paper. He's also in two more Rockford Files episodes. So hopefully that coat will come along with him yeah um and so here we get to kind of i mean this is essentially the reveal uh in

this yeah well it's kind of the reveal before the reveal this whole construction is kind of interesting and we'll talk about that uh later but so rockford of course wants to know why he's trying to run him out of town. Shows him the picture. The guy says that he doesn't know who that is. And then the lever that Jim uses to get to this guy is that he hired guys to impersonate sheriff deputies. Yeah. And as we've already established that this sheriff is such a jerk, Jim's like, well, I can call the sheriff and tell him that you did that. And that gets Lumet to be like, OK, fine. Yeah. So that threat. So, again, he's not not the bad guy the sheriff is not actually involved in this but the fact that he's such a bull is very relevant to the resolution of the story um

we have a bit of business where uh lumay sits behind a desk and then someone like opens a drawer and there's a gun in it yeah jim gets it before he can so we end up with jim with a gun and lemay behind the desk knowing that there's this threat of the sheriff in the air now i don't know about you i just want to go down the waves of destiny that stand before him in this very moment because we have established enough about jim the sheriff and guns that i thought this was going to be a thing i thought this is where the sheriff shows up jim has his gun and so the sheriff is like you told me that's sitting in coffee i'm taking you in it added more weight to the scene than just having a gun would i feel but uh But that may have just been me reaching for a motif here,

reaching for a parallel. I mean, I think it's one of those things that upon multiple viewings, you're like, oh, that's an interesting little bit. It might not be conscious. It might just be what they needed for the scene just to give Jim a little bit more of a threatening posture. But yeah, it's a nice as you say motif kind of syncing up or it could be a potential yeah we'll keep thinking up so let me ask what

he wants jim offers him two thousand dollars to tell him where this guy nelson is but he continues to say that he doesn't know who that is and that the reason he hired guys to run him out of town is because nancy frazier is an old friend they almost got married once she told him that jim was harassing her and following her around and she didn't feel safe so he hired these guys to run them out we end with a again a little call back to all the statistics talk from earlier jim's like oh you think that was yeah did you think that was really going to work and uh lemay says it would have worked on 99 out of 100 guys. Yeah.

I just want to emphasize that LeMay here might be a little shady, might be a little corrupt. I mean, he runs an art gallery. I'm assuming he's not the best person in the world. No offense to our art gallery listeners. We're sure you're good. You're good ones. But this 99 out of 100 men that would have worked on would imply that he's done this before yeah right and i don't think he has at this point this is starting

to feel a bit like these are a bunch of people playing at being right mafia or mobsters or whatever playing at these kind of outside the law yeah kind of shenanigans and we'll get a little bit of that in dialogue in a little bit here and like just moments i can tell from my notes so here's where i feel like we go into our our finale yeah our act four if you will um because now we kind of know why things happened it's almost come together yeah we have all the pieces we just haven't arranged them yet it's not a a hard transition, like kind of scene to scene. It's more through this next little scene with Marilyn. Yeah. Because we cut to Jim. She's kind of like treating his cut and like kind of putting his bandaid on and stuff. He talks out loud to her

so that we know what he's thinking or he's saying that this doesn't make sense. And he has kind of a sudden realization. Yeah. He must have lied because he's putting all these pieces together as you say why would nancy come here if nelson wasn't here first of all right and then she just happens to run into an old boyfriend that doesn't make any sense but it all does make sense if nelson is here and she also knows that lamay is here and that he's someone that they can pay or whatever to do do what they what they want to happen we have like a support network i put this in my notes as plot holes as evidence uh because the stuff that jim is talking about is exactly the kind of stuff where in a lesser show you'd be like afterwards go wait a minute that's a big

coincidence right there yeah but i feel like here it's great because it minute that's a big coincidence right there yeah but i feel like here it's great because it yeah that is a big coincidence and we don't need to know exactly the nuts and bolts we just have jim saying oh he must have lied so something happened yeah there's something very suspicious about this plot as it's unfolding so i don't trust it it's time to find out the truth um so he shows marilyn the again, because now it's like he has to be here. And we get kind of the most, I don't know, not unrealistic, but kind of the most, in order to make

this narrative work moment, where she looks at it again and then is like, wait a second, and starts drawing a beard on it. And when she draws a beard on it, she's like, oh, I recognize him. This is a painter in town. Okay, sure.

That's why you start off with the beard and then shave it when you go into it. Right, because you can't erase beards out of photos. Yeah, that's been my plot all along. But she does recognize him now that he has a beard drawn onto his photo. Though I guess up to this point, people are invested in not telling Jim things. So they can just glance at the photo and they already know they're gonna tell them no yeah and she's probably the only one who's really looked at it and she's kind of in their head a little bit so yeah or like she only saw him like a few times or whatever right like it kind of makes sense it's

just it was the only thing that stuck out to me as a kind of like yeah that's the thing that this whole reveal kind of hinges on yeah but it's fine so he's a painter in town he's apparently a primitive yes he's not a classically trained painter but his work is fresh and and exciting uh because of its uh roughness and so his paintings are selling for up to two thousand dollars a picture. And also LeMay does represent him. So that connection is made. Jim has this good art appreciation line of people are willing to pay him two grand a picture just because he never learned how to paint. Yes. It's a very Rocky line.

Yes. Well, which I think, again, is kind of setting up our last scene with Rocky, which is it's all there for a reason. We go to Jim rolling up to a cabin in the woods. He's looking pretty rough, I noted. He has the band-aid on his eye and he still has a big bruise on his cheek and everything. We finally get the appearance of Steve Nelson as he pops around the corner of the cabin

with a very antique-looking rifle. Rockford even asks him, you ever shoot that thing before? And he goes, uh-uh, it came with the house. This is the tie-in with the 99 men out of 100. This is the moment of like, none of you are these criminals. Right. As the scene plays out, there's more of this too, but it's like nobody involved in this situation understands what this situation's about, except for Rockford. Right. He's the only one who has experience in this. Right, yeah.

And knows how these things kind of should go. Yeah. But he's dealing with a bunch of amateurs, essentially. Yes. So, sure enough, Nancy is there as well with more luggage. Looks like they were getting ready to split again because, you know, he's breathing down their necks. And we have this, it's not tense. There's not a lot of tension in terms of oh my god what's going to happen but it is there is some

uh tension here because of the contrast between jim being very calm and level-headed and the two of them clearly being agitated and kind of doing what they seem to like see from movies and tv right yeah they have uh like uh nelson starts tying them to a rocking chair with some rope while Nancy is pointing the gun at both of them. And Jim's like, you know, if she shoots that she's going to, it's going to hit both of us.

He has this great line. I don't know if she says like, why'd you come here or something like that. His response to is you should have paid me for services rendered. Yeah. This is on you. But he has an idea that'll help everyone. He'll be the go-between.

Yeah. He already told the insurance company that he knows that Nelson's still alive. So now they're going to be after him regardless of what happens to Jim. But he can be the go-between. Return the money to the insurance company in exchange for them not prosecuting them and letting them go free. He's like, you don't need the money. You're making all this money for your paintings. This is a win-win for everyone.

And that's when Nelson just stuffs a gag in his mouth. That's gorgeous. And then they cut, right? Yeah. And then it cuts directly to back to Moss refusing more advance money. Yes. So we just go to Jim has he's gone back to LA, gone back to Moss.

All he needs is another $500 advance and he's seen Nelson alive. He can track him down and get all their money back. There's something I absolutely find delightful about that cut. They're tying him up,

they throw a gag in his mouth, they have a gun on him and then everybody involved in this episode is like, we don't even know the rest. Right. We just know that Rockford gets back to LA. Yeah.

With nothing. With nothing. Yeah. And Moss, he's trying to bargain with Moss still. And then Moss says that the company is no longer interested in this. And then there's a dawning awareness in Jim's eyes. He goes,

Oh, I know what happened. He took my advice. He made a deal on his own. And now I'm out my 5%. Plus, he says, $200 of his own money. Yes. Now, it does sound like they're going to honor the 500 of the contract. He already got paid the 500 advance. Yeah. So he's up 300 minus the expenses for the European trip, probably the expenses for what he's just done, and the 11 cents to get in the bathroom.

And that's the end of it. Moss is like, we're not interested. Yep. Nelson cut this deal. You're out. And I'm sitting here going, okay, so in this recommendation, it was specified that Jin gets paid, and I don't remember what happens. How do we get there?

I just need to comment on Rockford leaving the room. Because he leaves the room, he turns back to Moss, and he says, Do you know what you are? Yeah, you know, don't you? It's the most, like a cat, like a goddamn cat line that Jim Rockford has ever delivered. Yes. It made me think of you. But yeah, so we go into our epilogue, which I consider, you know, Act 5.

The denouement. The denouement. We are transitioning to the last part of the story, which is our last scene of the episode, where Rocky is cooking on the grill outside of the trailer as Jim pulls up. Jim's exhausted. He's angry. Rocky caught a free dinner. Yes.

Free fish? Yeah. What do you mean you're not hungry? This would cost you $1.60 a pound at the supermarket. Frozen. He's beat up. He's not hungry. He's not thirsty.

Yeah. When are you going to get smart and quit one of rocky's eternal themes of you know when is jim just gonna get a get a real job or at least a non-dangerous job yeah but he has the great response here when you make your first million yes in addition to uh this fish uh someone also dropped off some junk for jim he didn't know where he wanted it so he put it in the back of his truck. They go over to look. Jim doesn't know what he's talking about.

And it turns out that there are ten paintings that have been delivered to him. He opens one up, and of course, it's a Steve Nelson original. And so he unwraps it, and he starts smiling, and Rocky does not understand. What does he think you're going to do with all this junk with all these bad paintings? Jim's like, Oh, come on.

He's a primitive. What's a primitive? A primitive is someone who can paint nonsense like this and turn around and sell it for $2,000 a piece. Ah, yes. So we're looking at potentially $20,000 of painting here, which in today's money would be close to $100,000.

Which I believe is the 5% of the $400,000 return, right? Yes, yes. So that's what he would have made from the insurance company. Yeah. And so Jim sorts through his $20,000 worth of paintings as Rocky says, well, he sure does have a good eye for color, I guess. Something like that. And we end with a freeze frame on a big James Garner smile.

Ah, lovely. Absolutely lovely. Yeah, so he's up $20,000 plus. $300 minus expenses. Like, he's not, probably not a whole lot of that $300 is left after the European trip and all that. But still. And also, there's a question mark of how much he'd actually get, right? Yeah.

Because he's not selling through a gallery direct from the artist and that kind of stuff. That dollar amount isn't necessarily what he's going to make off of these paintings. It's an imaginary amount of money there. But it's something. Even at half as much. Right. It is a nice chunk of change there. Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah super super tight episode um i think like i was saying i really like how everything sets up something that comes later like is like the early interactions between jim and moss yeah we see that moss will do anything he can not to spend money and not to give jim anything so at the end when he's like basically like yeah we got our money back from the guy. Like, we don't care if he goes to jail. That makes sense. Makes sense that Jim got cut out of it. All that stuff. Really the big loser in all of this, when you think about it is Ginny Nelson. Yes. Cause like, does that mean that they got her $200,000 too? Probably. And now she's,

she's cut off in Europe and her yeah husband is now going out with this uh this lover in california but that's not our problem no so yeah a big thank you to diago for this recommendation this is uh this was a lot of fun yeah no it was good and uh it was kind of nice doing the season one episode was you know it kind of felt like going back to the basics to the basics yeah yeah i have i have i have a that, uh, which we might get into it for the second half. Cool. Well then perhaps we'll talk about that along with other narrative elements that we find,

uh, useful in our second half. Shall we take our break and then get right into it? Yeah. All right. 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.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 in 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 The Big Ripoff, a Twitter-recommended episode. And this is the second half of our podcast where if you've not been listening all these 40 some podcasts before now,

we talk a little bit about the narrative lessons, the tips and tricks that we pick up watching this episode of the Rockford Files that we can bring to the games that we play or the writing or however you enjoy indulging in narrative. So I think I have one kind of meta thing to talk about before we get into this specific stuff from this episode. When I kind of threw out this idea of talking about the episode through a series of acts. Yeah. That's something that I see come up as a screenwriting thing specifically like the five acts um and then you can you know you can divide stories into any number of acts three act structure five act structure or whatever i prefer 700 but what i kind of wanted and this one happened to break down into what i felt was was essentially five acts four of plot and then like an epilogue or

kind of a denouement as you say but uh i'm kind of interested in looking at these episodes going forward and not trying to fit them into five acts but kind of see whether and when they break into different numbers of acts because i feel like different episodes might break down a little differently looking for that sort of larger structure in how a whole piece is put together because we've been doing for the most part we've been doing like bits and pieces of things as we've talked about it we're like oh this part here plays into that or maybe we'll talk about an overarching theme or something like that but like looking at structure is is helpful uh well i don't need to tell you this you're also

a game designer and you know that like providing structure for people helps the creative process. Right. If you know that there's this scaffolding to fill in, or if you know, okay, at this point now things should escalate or at this point we should be about wrapping it up. That's helpful because it focuses you and also gets you thinking about things

that you may not have been thinking about at that time. And I think it's neat. Yeah. And I think this episode in particular has a nice rhythm where each of those breaks is where the stakes change. Yeah. And I don't know if I feel that way because that's what I look for or if that's kind of the intention.

But I think it's a natural way to structure a piece of fiction yeah there's like a revelation of some kind there's uh someone new comes into the picture or someone has a new motivation and suddenly the yeah the stakes for our protagonists are now different going forward than we had understood them up to that point yeah so i'm not too interested in kind of being like here's the rising action here's the you know like that i'm more interested in like what what are those transition points and how are they how do they change the story and how are they delineated too which i think is an interesting thing the change between um jim uh he's at the uh insurance company's office then he's off doing motels, like looking at motels.

It's a change in location, change in how they're presenting the information. It's dialogue in the first one, and it's a montage in the second one. And it feels very clean. And we went from here to here. Really hits home when they throw the gag in his mouth, and then he's back at the insurance office.

Wait, was that what we were saying was one of the changes? So, I mean. Oh, let's get in it. Let's do this. So I kind of thought of that as the end of that act. And then like act five. Right. That final scene where we get the delivery of the paintings.

Because to me, that kind of wrapped up the story. Right. Like there's no more plot after the end of that last scene with Moss. Yeah. There's nothing else to be done. Although you could say that that last scene with Moss is the setup to the joke in the Damien Mock. Oh, that's true.

He found them and he told them what they could do. And then all we find out is that they did what he told them to do. Well, I mean, I think there's an interesting thing in terms of looking at it as like, do you want to use some kind of formalism in your transitions because those are kind of like a formal like sharp cut yeah go from one location to another location uh kind of thing where you can think of okay every time i transition and act i'm gonna do that versus one that's maybe a little softer which i think the the scene kind of going from three to four,

where Jim's talking to Marilyn and talking out the like, wait, he lied to me. That whole scene is kind of the transition from Jim getting beat up and finding out why and who's involved to making conclusions and finding George, which was the whole point. So there's not really as, even though there's a cut between those two scenes, between LeMay's office and Marilyn's house or wherever they are that's not necessarily the transition yeah it's kind of the throughout the scene it transitions so this episode uses both of those right uses these hard cuts one to the other that are probably along with commercial breaks um and then some that are more of the scene length gradual transition. Yeah, so I guess that's just stuff I want to, I'll be trying to keep in mind as we go forward with other episodes. And we can see how they break down.

But you had some stuff about this episode in particular. So I have, in addition to my half-assed tire theory, I have a bigger theory about this episode. It might be a Maverick plot. So fun fact. Oh. According to 30 Years of the Rockford Files. Yeah. Have I hit on something? You're close. Apparently it's a retooled version of a story that Huggins developed as a show called The Outsider that he did. And that was titled The $20,000 Carrot. Interesting. Okay.

I'm unclear. I'd have to look up The Outsider. I think it's like a police show, but there's private eyes in it, or there's a private eye that's part of the police force or something. Right. That's apparently from 1968 was that original script. I can feel it. It's not new to us here on 200 a day to see like what was the

name of the one that was the oh uh uh slight of hand yes so slight of hand you know being based on a novel that has nothing to do with jim uh and this is not unusual to writing in general like specifically genre writing i think this happens a lot where like in the pulps where you would write a story for one genre and try and sell it to a magazine. And if it didn't buy it, then you, you know, took the swords out and gave them guns and then sold it as a Western. Right. So this one, it feels a lot like a Maverick episode to me because you know, strolling into town is one thing. Maverick moved from town to town. Rockford doesn't. Rockford

has a base of operations. There's the sheriff in town and the sheriff is a weapon to be wielded but also just like a force of nature in the town and you don't really think about the sheriff as being a force of nature in a town aside from like, oh I'll call the cops cops like i don't know the name of my town sheriff uh and i

live in a pretty small town uh whereas like she's like oh yeah everyone knows him and that's a western kind of thing you know uh the bits with the guns uh are a little interesting too well anyways the point i'm making here is that it's interesting because it feels like a neat uh re-skinning of what was written for something else right and it turns out that i was right so the outsider uh was a show that started in 1968 uh that was a pi show it's kind of almost a proto-Rockford setup. The star is Darren McGavin, who I'm not familiar with. So the summary for the show, David Ross is an orphaned ex-con loner

making a living as a private investigator in Los Angeles to tackle his financial problems and other people's problems as well. So there's only one season of this show. Darren McGavin is Kolchak theak the night stalker which is a show i remember watching some when i was a kid but i'd really love to check it out again as an adult i watched a couple episodes and thought that it was not very good so i haven't watched a lot of it it's entirely possible uh but yeah so the twenty thousand dollar carrot was an episode in in 68 and the synopsis of that here is ross takes an assignment to investigate the death of a

beautiful young girl's boyfriend his investigation reveals that not only is he not dead but he staged a huge insurance scam he makes a deal with the insurance company to bring back the crook and the money but it turns out to be more difficult than he thought so yeah retooled retooled script i think those things are not only do i like them but like i have a fascination with them all right so there's seven samurai i feel like i've talked about this on our on our show yeah we've talked about this generally but you know go into it again because seven samurai is a wonderful movie and then magnificent seven uh is a western remake of that uh and then three amigos is a comedic remake of that uh battle beyond the

stars is a sci-fi remake of that. That includes, I can't think of the actor's name, but an actor who was in Magnificent Seven. But it's, you know, it's the same plot over and over again, but you just throw it in a different context. There's nothing lost there. In fact, there's things that are gained because you get to see the contrast between the genres or the settings or whatever. Plot isn't the only thing that drives a story. There's other bits to the

story that's interesting. Or the same thing where you have Yojimbo and then you have Fistful of Dollars. You could do a Rockford episode based on Fistful of Dollars although that would have been a little too close in time period where people would be like, oh, you're just ripping off Fistful of Dollars. But you could do it.

And it would be really interesting to see Rockford in that role as opposed to Clint Eastwood or Mifune from the Yojimbo. I really like those sorts of retoolings of older stories and whatnot. In this case, I imagine that this Rockford Files episode is probably a better version than the original episode. Yeah. Not to cast aspersions on that show, but it only ran for a season and Huggins has had a chance to retool the script, to develop it. Yeah. This is probably less of a a let's reimagine this very interesting story and more of a all right that was draft one now here's like a new draft yeah

uh and that's fun yeah and i think it it bears out i mean it's like like i was saying in the first app uh it's super tight everything sets up something that happens later or creates justification for something that happens later even without it being like a specific touch point. Like Jim never says, oh, good thing I talked to the sheriff so that I knew he was a jerk. Right. It's shown to us in the scene

so that when he uses it as leverage later, it makes sense. Yeah. I don't have specific tricks or tips here, but I do think that maybe just as a practice, it's fun to do do that and i mean okay i take it back i've got some tips and tricks here so the first one is um as a writing exercise it's i'm not inventing anything new here but people will redo old stories like you can take an old

fairy tale or myth or whatever and rewrite it and people do that all the time and uh it's an interesting process to sit there and be like okay what if instead of you know snow white and the seven dwarves but snow white is a pi in the early 80s in la um but the other thing is thinking about it as a as a role-playing game something to bring to your role-playing game people like having those structures uh doesn't ruin anything like if you're going to run a game and you're like i want to use the framework from this rockford files episode as the plot even if everyone has seen it right yeah the the change in medium there really means that you can rip anything off you want for a role-playing game yeah exactly not

only was the context different enough that people probably won't notice necessarily unless your goal is to be like all right here's all the references which is fine but also the act of play will change the outcomes yeah so you can you know take this arrangement of characters and the same premise and then just see what see where it goes with people who aren't rockford trying to figure out how do I get money out of this situation now that I'm being stiffed by my client? You just go from there. And so this almost segues into my other point, which isn't a big point, but I had a revelation.

Get me out on this. I'm ready. I'm listening. We may be losing those parts of our audience that don't play role-playing games. I apologize to you profusely, but I also assume you turn us off after this first half rockford files not all of them but a rockford files game where it's fiasco but rockford is in it and he's the only one who's the voice of reason right i feel like this episode in particular but

there's a lot of episodes like that are about people who don't know what they're getting into the goons don't know who they're dealing with they're just hired by a local art dealer who doesn't understand what's going on right you've got uh a greedy insurance guy who really isn't paying attention and, like, hasn't handed to him on a platter. You have this insurance scam and fake death that is about to fall apart. And the only one who actually is almost a calming influence on everyone is Rockford, right? Like, even though he gets the s*** kicked out of him, and he does beat up that one mechanic who pretends to be a mobster, who pretends to be a cop.

Right. beat up that one uh the mechanic who pretends to be a mobster who pretends to be a cop right still everyone comes out of it a little better off than what their destinies were going to be if rockford wasn't involved that's all i just had that like revelation there no i think that's a fun way to think about it we've talked about the fiasco comparison, I think, specifically when we were talking about the Queen of Peru, because that's like a very fiasco-y one. But there's something about that concept of a bunch of people who aren't professional criminals, each following their own set of motivations, and it being a car crash. Yeah. That is very early season Rockford Files to me. Yeah. car crash yeah that is very early season rockford files to me yeah and i think later on they get to be sometimes more polished you get more of the mob and stuff especially once david chase comes in we

get a lot of mob stuff because that's kind of his thing yeah or a lot of people who are just more like like white collar criminals and stuff like that uh i think that might be part of the vibe of this one for me feeling like going back to like yeah basics a little bit um even though it is not an original rockford file script it's this retooled one each each reveal in this mystery shows us how there's no plot not i mean there's a plot of the story but how there's no uh conspiracy there's no big bad waiting in the wings and that's fun because we get to we get to see rockford figure out how to get to the next place he we get to see rockford be the smart pi and do the investigation and put clues together and be like oh there isn't some big conspiracy here nobody's name ends in

right there are no x in this one so that's kind of one thing i just wanted to bring up because i feel like at least in our recent recordings uh not again, not quite sure when this will come out, but we haven't talked about too many episodes recently that are this kind of mystery where we're with Rockford and we are watching him peel away the layers of what's going on. Yeah, we get we have no dramatic irony. there's no information we have that he doesn't have and so he and he's kind of a little bit ahead of us right he's kind of putting some clues together and then telling us what he's just figured out especially i think the part where he's like he lied to me right like if we're paying attention like you were saying that might be like a refrigerator moment of like wait a second but when he says that i'm sitting there going like okay he figured that out

before I thought that it was weird. Because it seemed like a plausible thing at the time. And it's soon enough in time. It's just a couple seconds later in just watching the episode real time elapse that you don't have time to think about it and be like, oh. You're too busy taking notes for your podcast.

Exactly. But yeah, it's an interesting thing. And it's like looking at the mystery structure it's not complicated but there's enough that it feels like it really moves along with each revelation what what is the job at all and we find out what the job is and then we see jim figure out okay how do i get money out of this then he does the investigation then he runs into marilyn marilyn's an interesting character here because she's not part of the mystery no well she's a local so that that's helpful she kind of gives rockford a reason to be fit to physically go from place to place because he needs to be in certain places for like plot stuff to happen right like he needs to be somewhere where the goons can

intimidate him um that kind of stuff but she has the key information right yeah because she's the one who recognizes the picture even though she has to draw information. Right. Yeah. Because she's the one who recognizes the picture. Even though she has to draw a beard on it. So there's stuff that Rockford needs to know that she knows. Every time something happens to Rockford it teaches him. It shows him that there's something new going on.

Maybe that's the angle to looking at how this is structured. Because first he learns that Nancy is not going to pay him. And then he learns that she's leaving. So he knows there's something there. And then he learns that he can't find Nelson. And then that he's getting intimidated,

you know, threatened to leave the town. So he knows that there's something there. And then when he gets beat up, she gives him the information of who that guy actually is. So he can go find out who hired him. So that he can go find out why this guy is trying to get him out of town, which leads him back to Nancy, which leads him back to the to the revelation that that was that he must be lying, which leads to the beard drawing, which leads to discovering the painter. But we have a couple that are not even red herrings, but just kind of complications. Right. Like, right. keep things interesting for us. Like, what's up with the sheriff? Is he going to be a problem?

One of the purposes to the whole sheriff deal is to keep Brockford from being able to rely on local authorities. Right, yeah. It solves the, why don't you just go to the cops problem. But then it also presents a nice red herring with these goons, right? Like, they say, oh, we're from the sheriff. Yeah, it's real what these goons, right? Like they say, oh, we're from the sheriff. Yeah, it's a real what the f***, right? Not that they chose to make these things, but at that point in the story,

when they come into the bathroom and they tell him to take the bus ride and they're with the sheriff, you're like, why does the sheriff want to protect? Yeah. And again, it's the fridge moment, right? Like it's a it again it's the it's the um it's the fridge moment right like it's a thing that it's like this doesn't make any sense but it's happening so we'll let it happen and then later rockford's like wait this doesn't make any sense we have a little tell for that

because he calls the sheriff's office like immediately afterwards and it's like okay he's checking up to see if they are actually sheriff or not but that's something i realized on the second watching like that's why he's calling the sheriff then yeah it's less of a fridge moment and more of a potential fork in the road right right the story could be that the sheriff is getting paid by nelson to protect him and he's a crook and he just wants to get a kickbacks right it could be this whole town is made up of people who have faked their deaths right and are paying the sheriff off right so it could be about the sheriff that's the question we're presented with mid-episode is like oh is this the bad guy is this who rockford's gonna have to deal with and turns out that it's not and that's kind of a again that's a that's a question that's answered that moves everything

along it doesn't feel plotting but it feels like it's a fun revelation that something else is going on and it wasn't the obvious thing so yeah that's another example of the whole jim is never at a loss every time he gets stymied it gives him information to move on yeah and that's something we come back to again and again as like a really key lesson to draw out of these episodes even even the stymie itself is information. Exactly. Did you have anything else to pull out of this episode? I'm wondering. I'm looking through my notes right now. Well, okay, so some of the things that I highlighted here. One is the honesty among strangers. This moment between Marilyn and Rockford in the car early on, which sets the scene for this relationship.

Rockford in the car early on, which sets the scene for this relationship. Okay, so I think that this relationship between the two of them is very well-crafted and delightfully understated, right? This isn't a whirlwind romance. It's a little sad because there is a romance going on, but he's going to leave town when he's done, and that's the end of that.

But maybe that's okay. She's probably on end of that but maybe that's okay like she's probably on board for that situation uh but their interactions feel very real and one of the things that feels very real about it is just having jim open up to her in the car on the way there not spill his guts but just to be like yeah no i'm running a con on you or not even saying that just saying yeah that's a lie you got me i was just kidding about that that's fine i i just really i dug that and it also felt true like it it matched some of my experiences with strangers i've often found that strangers who don't need something from you uh but otherwise have a reason

to converse with you will be shockingly honest with you in ways that are, you're like, whoa, why are you telling me this? Except that you have no one else to tell. Right. And like, there's no downside to telling me because it's not like I'm going to go talk to your wife or your boss or whatever. Yeah. I don't know any of the people in this town.

I'm going to be leaving the next day. And I really, really like that. And the other thing that I had highlighted is just this plot holes as evidence. I really like this idea of thinking about it as you're writing a mystery or something along these lines, and you're not entirely sure how or where it's going to go, which is sometimes how these things get written. It's also oftentimes how they happen at the table when you're playing a game to just take a moment and go, okay, not like what would make everything make sense, but like what are the parts here if the movie ended right now where we would go, wait a minute, why were they there or what? And sort of figure those out and find a way to make that all fit together as long as you have some kind of some other points to triangulate right

it's kind of like in this case we have all the characters and we kind of know their their motivations and we have the effect that we need to get to so jim's saying he lied to me we know who he is and we know why he lied because jim then puts together why he lied yeah so we don't really need to know what the actual truth is right so bridges that gap um so like why were they there if we already know who they are and what the point of them being there was like what the outcome of their presence was. Maybe we can kind of allide the specific reasons why they went from point A to point B, because we can kind of interpolate like, oh, well, they both hate this guy. And that's the guy who ended up getting beat up.

So maybe they were trailing him or had someone call them or, you know, got lucky. Who cares? Instead of being like, oh, let's just move on um yeah and play kind of maybe giving it a mention and then if you're writing or constructing a narrative using that as an opportunity to do what jim does here and call it out in order to dismiss it basically that's good that's good stuff helps the thing hang together without having to get super detail oriented because sometimes too many details is like not interesting yeah i agree well uh thanks again to uh the twitter recommendation from diago who i believe is also a patron so thank you for that definitely a fun episode i don't know if i'd be like this is one

of my absolute favorite rockford episodes of all time but it it's really fun. It's good. If you're just rolling through Rockford's and it comes up, definitely watch it. He gets paid. And he gets paid. So it's a standout episode in that regard. Speaking of Jim Rockford getting paid, I think we have each gotten our tenth of a primitive painting

for today. Yes. I believe so. So we'll go and see if we can flog those on the open market. But yeah, let us know what you think about this format, I guess, as we go forward with more recordings in this vein. Either way, we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.