Two Hundred A Day - Episode 4: The Farnsworth Strategem

Episode Date: January 15, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S2E2, The Farnsworth Strategem. This episode features Rockford running a confidence game on behalf of his friend Becker, and contains a number of recurring characters as well as an in-depth look at how he uses his okie oilman character Farnsworth to swindle the mob! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the dining audio clip Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Pluto Moved On Podcasts and Video Lets Plays 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.

Rockford, this is Tony. Now your car's ready. I couldn't reach you, so I went ahead and put in the new pistons. The tab's 527.54. And this time we're talking cash. Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. I'm Epidaur Avershaw. Before we get into this week's episode, I just want to mention that we are now live throughout the Internet. We've launched all of our things. So if you want to check our previous episodes or get a little more information about the show, our website is 200aday.fireside.fm. You can follow us on Twitter at 200pod. And you can also help us cover these pesky expenses at patreon.com slash 200 a day. Thanks so much for listening.

This is our first post-launch episode, and we've been getting some tweets and comments about people enjoying the show, including people who haven't actually watched the Rockford Files, but are learning about it through some of our episodes, which is kind of amazing. I think our mission is done. If we brought one person to the Rockford Files, we've done something good for this world. It's all gravy from here on out. Yeah. But yeah, so we're getting into the groove of the show. We're recording this early 2017. So I don't

know. It feels good. It feels good to have a new thing for the new year. What do you think? Yeah, I'm down with that. I think I made a list of the reasons why I'm excited about doing this show online, and largely because I get to talk about this show with you, which is great. Yeah, I know. It's super fun. Oh, there is one sad bit of news, which is between when we recorded our first three episodes and now, The Rockford Files has gone off of Netflix, which was unforeseen by us and kind of a tragedy. Fortunately, Hulu has stepped up. And I don't know if Hulu had it all along,

but at least then the first three seasons are on Hulu. Right. And so for now, I think we're going to try to keep our picks to the first three seasons so that people who do want to go back and watch some of these, you'll be able to kind of follow along. So we'll keep an eye out for other sources as they come up. And I recommend writing your congressperson and demanding that Netflix brings Rockford back. We'll make a change.org petition. I'm pretty sure those work every time. So yeah, thanks again for joining us. We're excited

to talk about this week's episode. Which one are we talking about this time, Epi? We're talking about the second episode in Season 2, the Farnsworth Strategem. Is it Strategem or Stratagem? Stratagem, probably. I don't know. I think I've only ever read that word. Yeah, I actually know that I think about it probably the same.

It ends in gem. Yeah. So you can let us know if you know how to pronounce that word on any of the previously announced internet connection Jim. Yeah. So you can let us know if you know how to pronounce that word on any of the previously announced Internet connection sources. Yeah. So this is a great running a con episode. Yeah. Essentially. So we'll get pretty deep into that.

And a huge, huge cast of regulars, too. I think everyone, most everyone makes a makes an appearance there's off-screen mention of lieutenant deal but it's a good good episode for people who are really digging rockford and just want to see everyone involved yeah we don't see too much of his relationships with everyone because it is it's kind of a plot focused episode in that regard yeah but we do see everyone so it's kind of a nice like oh here are a bunch of other familiar faces that we're going to see in other episodes. This episode was written by Juanita Bartlett, which is a name that as you watch the show, you start to recognize because she ends up being really central to their creative team. I was just looking it up because I just recognized the name.

And I was like, oh, she probably, she was involved with lots of these episodes. She wrote 26 episodes over the run of the six seasons of the show. In addition to doing teleplays and story for another handful, for another nine, I think. So this is the first one that she wrote

that we're reviewing actually. And actually the first one that she wrote in the sequential episode order. And towards the end of the series she started producing episodes and later went on to to be kind of the producer behind the rockford tv movies and uh other associated things so i went down the rabbit hole a little bit because i recognized her name and she's uh integral uh to the to the show the director is lawrence doheny, who directed a dozen episodes across the run of the series. And this is the first of his that we're seeing as well. So we both remembered this one, I think, when we started watching it, right? Really

kind of stands out. The intro is very straightforward. Unlike some of the other episodes, the intro doesn't really show us like critical things that we're going to see later. Yeah. It's more establishing that Sergeant Becker got swindled in some way and is asking Jim for help. And Jim is a little reluctant, but is helping. And that's kind of all we know from the beginning. We do know, I think it ends with him with the line that sounds more like a threat. So we do know that it wouldn't be a rockford episode

if some heavy didn't put a little pressure on rockford but yeah we start right off after the credits so the credits are kind of split up between a couple scenes which is an interesting little stylistic thing they do kind of the main show credits during the the intro sequence the music and everything uh and then they do kind of this specific episode credits in the next little interstitial scene. I do want to make a monetary note about the main show credits because the voicemail in this one, as we dig deeper and deeper into Rockford's books here, we find out that Tony has been repairing his car

and probably repairing his car for a while and no longer can Rockford get his car repaired on credit. So he owes Tony $527.54 cash. Cash this time. This time, yes. So we're getting to understand Rockford's debt a little more. That figures heavily in later as well. I thought about that actual repair cost. You know, when something goes wrong with my car, I assume at least $500 or something like that in today's money.

So I got to figure what happened in 1970, whatever. He says something like he put new pistons in or something like that. That's pretty serious. I mean, Jim is not kind to his vehicles, right? No, he's not. Spends a lot of money on that car. Speaking of, we start the episode in his car. He's driving Sergeant Dennis Becker.

In this episode, much more his friend than his adversary. We've discussed before how sometimes when they're on opposite sides of a case, Dennis takes kind of a glee in bringing Jim down a peg or two, even while he kind of helps them out. But this is, they're kind of off of work. Rockford's driving Dennis and his wife Peggy, first appearance for Peggy in our lineup, to a hotel. Because apparently they have bought a share of some kind in this hotel,

and they're going to go enjoy a weekend away, show the place off to Jim, and they're excited about this kind of this aspirational fulfillment. We've spent some money and it's like a shared thing, but we're part of a hotel. And they always have rooms reserved for VIPs. Dennis is so goddamn proud of what he's done here. It's fun to see him gleeful. He's kind of a dour dude and he's clearly giddy with the idea that he gets to show off to Rockford how sensible he's been

with his money, which is, of course, the first sign that he's not been sensible at all. Yeah, that something is not right. And Rockford always assumed he's kind of a cynic, right? So he's, he doesn't seem like he's 100% on board with this. But he's, you know, they're friends, he's going to take them along. They pull up in front of this hotel. And it's really nice. The location is beautiful. It's very California. This is giant building, big manicured lawn. And Jim does not believe that he's like okay good joke now where's the real hotel right and they're like no no we're we're part of you know we're part of a syndicate this is the place they're pulling golf clubs out of the back they have like everything for this weekend

adventure and as rockford kind of interrogates becker about this, we learned that they bought a two and a half percent share in this syndicate that that is supposedly owns this hotel. It costs them seventy five hundred dollars. Yes. They get a little kind of technical throwaway. If you know know how these things work. I don't know how accurate the language is, but they're basically like there's a loan that is held by the syndicate that we all pay in to pay off. And that's like $700,000 or something like that. Yeah. So I did a little math here because Peggy did a little math.

And I had a little trouble reconstructing the numbers that she had. I think she's overestimating how much they have to pay by twice. But it's still a considerable sum. Like she said that they have to pay $1,250 a month, which is, you know, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that in today's dollars. Yeah, yeah. I suspect because it was an 8% note. And I think that they probably had to pay about half of that a month.

But that's still a solid chunk of change for for 20 years basically they made this 7500 down payment they have this ridiculous monthly payment and they were going to rent out their room that they thought they were getting to pay for it because they can't afford it on dennis's salary which is made very clear yeah but a lot of those details come out after this initial scene where they go in. It's a beautiful lobby. They go up to talk to the guy at the desk. You know, I'm here for my room.

He's like, who are you? Dennis Becker, we're part of Bradley Investments Limited. And the guy's like, I have to get my manager. This is when it is made clear that this hotel doesn't rent rooms. It's actually like a condo. And all the living areas are inhabited by tenants who own them. Right. And that essentially this whole thing is basically a big scam

where they've been told there's this hotel, which is technically true, but they can't actually use any of it. Yeah, yeah. They said backwards, like, well, what did I pay for if I didn't pay for the rooms? And they're like, well, there's this's this lobby yeah so that's the scam and jim while this is all going on you can see jim in the background kind of mentally checking through each of these details to be like yeah it's a scam yep and he's kind of asking little questions on the side there's a fun bit just before this when when they show up to talk to the concierge and he went to go get his

manager where you know before really any of this has come out i think jim is is already well he's been suspicious but now he's you know and i think becker and peggy don't want to admit that they're suspicious yet but they're they're on the edge and there's this awkward moment of small talk where peggy's like that's a nice color for a carpet. And he's like, yeah, it's really nice. It's a great quality carpet. Yeah, just this awkward small talk. Point out that the carpet's color, near as I could tell, was beige.

It was very beige on beige in there. Yeah, but I guess in the 70s, if it's not like some sort of olive green or dark brown. The place looked nice i'm sure they you know rented out some location and it was definitely expensive you even see that that little you know how when you know something is going wrong but there's a little moment of hope like oh no this is the sign that it's not actually wrong yeah when dennis tells him his name tells the the manager who comes out it it's like, I'm with Bradley Investments Limited, Dennis Becker. He's like, oh, right at the top of the list.

And he turns around, he's like, see, at the top of the list, it turns back around and the manager says, the list is organized alphabetically. And his face just drops. So yeah, it kind of dawns on them that they've been scammed. The three of them go out to the patio to talk it over. And we see Dennis really call on his bond with Jim to help him out here. Rockford says, you need to go to a lawyer, you know, and all this stuff. He's like, no, I can't go to a lawyer. Do you know what they're going to do to me at the department if this gets out? Right.

Rockford tries to talk him into it, basically. He's like, well, you'll get kind of laughed at. It's a scam. And the guy's like, I can't, I can't go. I really need you to help me out. And there's a great little moment where he just like, look, looks right into the camera, basically. It's like, Jimbo, we need you, man. Yeah, it's great. So good. He's so sad. I wrote that line down too, because yeah, it is, he's beggingim for help uh which is not a thing that he likes to do one of the things that i like about this moment here and i don't know that i like about it until later is that this pressure that for him not to go to the police because he'll get razzed is not convincing pressure to me and in any other show i would i would be like all right

i'll just go along yeah it's kind of the excuse for the episode to exist. Yeah, right. But he's lying. And we'll get to that when we get to that. But it's so Rockford. It's so good in Rockford because whenever somebody starts acting in a way that doesn't quite make sense, you got to think like Rockford himself and be like, wait a minute. Something's not adding up. I'll just put that on the shelf for a moment. We'll come back to that. sense you got to think like rockford himself and be like wait a minute something yeah something's

not adding up i'll just i'll put that in the on the shelf for a moment we'll come back to it and the motivations here in this episode like we always talk about how the character motivations in the show are always so good and make the plot make sense yeah and that really comes through in this episode and i'm sure we'll touch on it as we go when it comes up. But yeah, kind of the same thing where you're so ready for the action to start that you're willing to forgive this kind of weak sauce. Like, I can't engage the proper authorities. They'll make fun of me. It's like, you're a cop. But there is something behind that decision.

Also, we don't see a lot of Peggy. She's not like a really well-defined character. But we do see her kind of physical presence in this episode is pretty pretty good i think she's she's on board like she was on board with making the purchase happen yeah and now she's on board with trying to get their money back she's not like mad at becker she's not right any more than a reasonable person would be right just kind of mad at yourself also for for making a poor decision. You get the impression that they made this decision together.

There's no drama in the tension between the two of them, which is good. They're a couple that works well together. So we know the scam and Rockford basically agrees to do, he says he'll look into it, basically. I'll poke around. I'll poke around. Then we go to Rockford's trailer where he is trying to dig burned toast out of his toaster with a fork in a beautiful moment of bachelorhood. And he's digging around with that fork and there's a knock on the door and in comes Audrey Wyatt. Yes. Who's played by Linda Evans.

I was like, I vaguely recognize that name being bad at other genres of TV than detective shows. And she was a key player on Dynasty, right? Yeah. She's the guest star of the episode. She has a lot of focus from here on out. For me, the star of this episode is that toaster. Let me tell you why. Go on.

Because Rockford has this line, you know, there's smoke rising out of the toaster. He's clearly burnt his toast and he's trying to rectify the situation somehow in a way that I remember in my youth, always being told not to do. Never stick a fork in a toaster. I never hear that advice anymore. So I don't know if we've built better toasters or people just don't use toasters anymore. But the thing about what's happening here is he says to her, when you switch banks, don't accept the free toaster. This is his fourth free toaster he's got from switching banks, which he's probably done just to get the toaster. But it could be that he's switching banks because, as we'll find out in a little while, he's got some financial issues. But this thing, all all right so i had a flashback

with this because my parents used to go you know back in the the 70s and early 80s when i was a kid they would go to these seminars where they would basically lure you in with a free appliance of some sort and then give you a high pressure sale about about a timeshare at a condo or something like that. So this was kind of a common thing, and my parents would do it deliberately to get the free appliance. They had no intention of signing up for it because at the time we just couldn't afford that sort of thing, but we also couldn't afford the appliance that we need, so here's a way to get it. I mean, we'll find out that it's not exactly the situation that happened with Becker. But I could see at that moment that Becker and Peggy going to somewhere to get a toaster or a blender or something.

Yeah. And then putting into this sort of high pressure condo sale. They were so common back then. I mean, I'm not familiar as I have not gone to high pressure sales things, but that's definitely something that I see in referenced in movies that I didn't know if it actually happened or not because I being younger was not aware of what was going on in the seventies and early eighties. And, uh, that's kind of amazing to me that that is indeed a thing that happened. So all you people who lived through it can laugh at me for my naivete in that regard. But yeah, it's just so, so such a perfect little

moment of Rockfordness. Yeah. Yeah. So in addition to learning more about his toaster, this woman, Audrey has come to him because she's a fellow investor in this syndicate. There's 30 people in it. She mentions that mentions that you know she heard that he was looking into it from peggy because they're they're friends rockford lays out kind of the con like here's what happened to you here's how you got swindled right and she's like well i had my lawyer in new york went over the contract i read it to him word for word and he says it's ironclad and that there's nothing you can do about it and uh he is like well becker's my friend and i'm gonna poke around and just see if i can shake anything loose

basically so she comes in and she's kind of presenting him reasons not to look into the con but he right pushes back and is like no i'm gonna keep doing it and she just kind of smoothly transitions into like okay well if you're looking into it anyway, how about I'll split the cost of hiring you. And then if you manage to get anything, even just a little bit of our money back, then I'll split the recovery. It's like, oh, so you're not a hundred percent altruistic here either. And they kind of have a little moment about that. So in this scene, it kind of feels like he talked her into letting him look into it. This is like a wonderfully classic Rockford, where first we have Becker trying to get him to take the case, and Rockford's like, no, no, no. And then the moment somebody tries to push him off the case,

he's like a dog with a bone. I'll look into it. Don't worry about it. I'll look into it. And it's that instinct that keeps him going after these things when when uh when he's given outs he's given ways to just call an end to it also this scene actually a lot of this episode still is really interesting after you've already seen the episode and know what happens it works on the surface and we'll as we get to it we'll backfill about what else was happening in this scene but on the face of it makes total sense you know what's happening you're ready to move on in the episode once you've watched the whole thing and you watch it again you can see that there's a second layer of motivation specifically from audrey about why she's there and why she responds to jim in the way that she does

as he says that he's not coming off the case it It's so smooth and just makes so much sense on both first and second viewing. So this is really one I'd recommend to maybe watch, and then if you ever feel like watching Rockford, come back to it. It'll pay off. My only other thing about this scene is that he goes into a whole spiel about the con, and he uses all this specific con language. If you've ever seen the sting which is kind of my paragon of the confidence game movie it starts to sound like he's a character from the

sting right and when he sums up the operation that has been pulled on the syndicate tell him the tale show him the game take off the touch and blow him off a classic and she's like i only understood one in three words that you just said yeah which uh spoiler alert not true yes we'll get to that later this is also establishing how comfortable he is with this kind of confidence game and that he kind of knows his stuff so the next scene is they go to the police station because they're just going to go basically check in with becker and like tell him that she's now involved or whatever. But he doesn't let them into the main squad room. He's like, wait for me over here. And so there's a couple, not even like maybe a minute or so while there is just the two of them alone waiting for Becker to come back and talk to them.

And that's where Audrey kind of lays out her little origin story about how she's taking this Spanish class at the extension school. And that's where she met Peggy. She feels responsible because she has another friend that brought her into the syndicate and she brought Peggy in. And that's another reason why she wants to be involved because she feels bad for Peggy and Dennis. Part of her story is that she's learning Spanish because she's thinking of taking a trip to South America, maybe Brazil. So Jim's like, oh, Brazil, where they speak Portuguese. And she just like just rolls right past that, doesn't acknowledge it and moves into her story about how what she actually does is that she's a children's book author. She's Uncle Ralph.

She ghost writes essentially for this children's book series. What's kind of beautiful about this, spoilers and all, is that she's working him. I have no doubt that he knows that she's working him at this point. Like, I think that the Portuguese in Brazil moment is him just saying, OK, oh, OK, we're not going in a minute. All right, let's just keep going then. Let's see how long this is going to play out. And I love how they both roll with that yeah i noted that also because in addition to establishing kind of like where are we in our back and forth for the two of them it's also a big like wink to the

audience like hey pay attention she's not everything that she seems or she has some other agenda that was hinted at in their first conversation and that in the previous scene but now that you're looking for it you start to see more of her weird behavior going forward. But we still have no idea where it's coming from necessarily. Right. But also this kind of tells us, knowing Jim Rockford, that now he's kind of onto her. So he's now playing her as she's playing him, right?

Letting her do whatever she wants to do so he can figure out what her game is. Once Becker comes in to talk to them, cutting off that conversation before it goes much farther we learn that simon lloyd who's the guy behind the the con he's the he's the guy who sold them these shares uh that simon lloyd has peaced out the reason that they're there to talk to becker is because jim has done some legwork on simon lloyd yeah so his place is empty it was rented anyway his business office is empty there's no forwarding address and becker's like okay great thanks for telling me you guys got to go

why do we have to go well because lieutenant deal is around and as we know from previous episodes that we've discussed lieutenant deal does not like jim rockford thinks he's a scumbag thinks he's a con artist doesn't like it when he's involved in police business. And as it turns out, his wife, Mrs. Deal, is also in the syndicate without his knowledge because it was going to be a present to him about this investment. But now if he learns that the investment is a con, it's going to be Dennis's fault. Yeah. And this is where we kind of find out what Dennis's real motivation for not wanting to go to the city attorney is. Yeah, yeah. This is great Rockford line where he's like, when Lieutenant deals in,

I'm out. I love the animosity between these two. Yeah, because they have real animosity, not friendly animosity. Also, a nice little recall to a previous episode here where, not one that we've discussed yet, butcker is basically like look you have to help me out and you know everything about cons like and you that switcheroo you played with the the tape recorder in the safe that was so great you know you know all the things to do basically and kind of buttering him up in addition to appealing to his friendship and that's a callback to um i believe an end of season one episode maybe where that was part of the plot. Jim concealed a tape recorder in a safe to catch a jewel insurance scam fraud thing.

Another great Lieutenant Deal Rockford moment when somebody off screen tells Becker the deal says book him or get him on the streets or something like that. Book him or get him out of here. Yeah. But yeah, so they get out of there. Jim is basically under these multiple pressures, is now coming around to like really figuring out something to do to help Dennis. And this is going to be amped up even more as we are back at his trailer and there's a knock at the door and it is a bank collector who has come to do the quote, worst part of my job and tell Jim that the bank is calling in the loan on his trailer.

Yeah. Because they're not confident that he's going to be able to make his payments. A couple of things about this scene. Well, first of all, it actually starts off with Audrey reviewing his bill and being like, you charged me for the whole day. Yeah. So they're apparently settling up from the first day of the investigation. He's like, I don't have an hourly rate. That's $200 a day. Yeah, which is good. But before that can be resolved, the bank collector comes in.

But this is no random collection. No. There's some pressure on the bank because somehow the bank has been made aware that Jim is getting involved with this syndicate deal. Jim's not cowed by anybody. So the moment this bank guy comes in, Jim's like, I've been up to date with my payments. And the bank guy is like, well, we just think that you have a very particular line of work.

And he said, well, I had that when you made the loan. He pulls it from him that current events, a current case is the reason why the bank has suddenly decided that he's riskier than he was when he originally made the loan. And of course, if someone else is now trying to get him off the case. Yeah. Now he's really digging in his heels. Plus, you know, they basically leave it with we're taking it back on the 15th and we're going to sell it on the 16th.

And he says, hey, I still have the right to pay off my loan. You'll get your money. Now Rockford has to come up with the entire balance of the loan on his trailer by the 15th or else he's out of his house. So. So Rockford's all in now. Yeah. So in addition to his friendship with Dennis and trying to help Dennis solve his internal problems and this woman, Audrey, paying him to to help now he has a very specific financial aspect if he can get the money back on this he'll be able to pay off his trailer so now he's all in we understand why he's been drawn in slowly through sequence of events so now he's trying to figure out what to do so jim jim and audrey go to what looks to me like the taco place on the beach and we get our

our beth appearance for the episode his lawyer and sometime girlfriend beth comes because she's been reviewing the contract so rockford is finishing something he's eating he's he's wiping off his hands with with the wrapper of what i can only assume was a taco when Beth comes up with the contract. And the contract's good. She says it's all legal, enforceable, and she doesn't see what he can do about it. He takes it. He's like, let me look at that. I've never seen a contract that didn't have a loophole and asks about the mineral rights. This is when we start going off to the races. What's good about this is that Beth is reading this contract as a lawyer with a lawyer's outlook on it. Rockford looks at it as we'll find out as an accomplished con man who's

not what he says a loophole. He's not looking for like a clause in the contract that allow him out. He's looking for somewhere where he can gain leverage to do what he's about to do, which is kind of awesome. Yeah, he's looking for what it doesn't say he can't do. Right. And one of the things it does not specifically exclude is the mineral rights to the property that the syndicate bought, which is literal property of like the literal ground that the hotel sits on. Right.

So Becker owns two and a half percent of the lobby, but he also, along with the rest of the syndicate, owns the land that this hotel is on. So we know that Rockford has a plan. They established that the whole syndicate is going to have to buy in on this plan because they have to assign him the rights from the contract. And so this has happened. Becker is kind of finalizing the deal. And Rockford needs $5,000 to fund the plan, whatever this plan is. Becker's like, what are you going to do? No, actually, don't tell me. Just tell me it's going to work. And Rockford says, you want me to lie to you?

Of course I want you to lie to me. He wants some assurance that they're not throwing good money after bad. Yeah. And Jim explains that, well, his trailer's on the line too. It needs to work or he's losing his house. Yeah. So he gets his $5,000 in cash in an envelope to fund this plan, the scheme. This is where we find out about Farnsworth.

We're back at the hotel. A limo pulls up. A chauffeur gets out, opens the door for Audrey and Jim. But Jim is now in a role. J.W. Farnsworth. Yes. An oil tycoon from Oklahoma. He's wearing a big hat. He's wearing a Western coat. And there's guys rolling in behind the limo on construction equipment wearing jumpsuits that say, J.W. Farnsworth Development Corporation in giant letters on the back of them.

Among them, not only Jim Rockford's father, Rocky, but also our show's first appearance of Angel, a standout, slimy, conniving friend of Jim Rockford, friend from the crime side of his background. The line between Rockford and Angel is so thin, but the gulf between them is so vast. Yeah. Angel's always on the make. He's always looking to scam. He's always borrowing money. And he seems to have no moral compunction about pulling the wool over people's eyes. While Jim has the ability to do these things, but chooses not to. So yeah they they pull up and there's this whole set of equipment and guys angel takes out a jackhammer and starts uh breaking up the asphalt in the driveway and these guys come out of the hotel and they're obviously pissed and a man wearing the most amazing pair

of plaid pants and has a great 70s haircut comes rolling up demanding to know just what exactly the hell is going on. What are you doing in our driveway? And so Mr. Farnsworth explains that he's a Oklahoma oil man. The soil samples from this land are extremely promising. He's had the lab boys check them out. And he bought the mineral rights from the syndicate. And so he's going to drill for oil right here on the line in front of the hotel and God and everyone. This character of Jim's is so, so good. He is constantly got a smile

on his face. He's just happy about his life. He really enjoys what he's doing. He completely empathizes with the situation that the people who bought condos in this hotel have. Like, he's like, yep, no, I'd be mad if I were you too. But that doesn't matter. It's not his fault. It has nothing to do with what he is doing or who he is. You have to bring it up with someone else. So he's just such a great character because it just completely validates their anger while redirecting it.

There's not even a hint that he feels guilty about what's happening here clearly this is a technicality that happened somewhere else down the line they should look to and obviously he's pointing them towards simon lloyd here but like it's a character that he not not with this specific name but he plays this either oklahoma or texas oil man character in many many episodes but i think this episode may be the only one where like, it's the entire, the rest of this episode is all about Farnsworth drilling for oil from here to the end of the episode. So this might be the most fulfilling time

that we get to see him acting as this character. So we go into an amazing construction sequence with guys in hard hats and jumpsuits, welding and setting up tracks and doing all these things with fantastic guitar or picked fiddle music to the rock free theme i don't know if you just sat there and enjoyed listening to the music in these in this construction sequence but it is amazing i could sit and just watch those montages there's something about both the music and just seeing those montages there's something about both the music and just seeing all of this come together in my head i'm going over that all of

this is brought together by about five thousand dollars right like this is what he's borrowed from the syndicate to to get their money back so i'm thinking about that but i'm watching this and it just like it reminds me of when i was a kid and watching sesame street and they would just like show you how crayons are made or, you know, like you get like a factory scene with music playing over the top of it. It was just sort of like, here's all the hard work that con men do. It's just a great little little sequence with great music.

We go from this to this big fancy house that Rockford's rented because as he explains to Becker on the phone, he's going to need another three thousand dollars because things are more expensive than he thought and he has to rent this house because he has to look like money for when someone comes sniffing around he can't be operating out of a hotel or something like that yeah that house doesn't even have a number yeah and its address it's just I can't remember the name of it but it it's just the house's name. And so he hangs up as as the butler says, Angel and the rock are here. Referring to Rocky as the rock may be the most amazing little side detail of the whole episode. Jim's dad, Jim's dad, Rocky as the rock.

So they're coming in to talk to Jim about the construction site. This is where we get kind of our first real interaction with Angel, where he he's talking about how he wants to work the crowd that gathers to watch them work and destroy this beautiful lawn in front of this beautiful hotel. He's like, yeah, you have a crowd like this. It doesn't seem right not to work. It's a sin. This is a good scene

to get the difference between Angel and Rocky. I mean, there's plenty of differences between angel and rocky but it it is such an angel and rocky moment that angel would hire a bunch of con men that have no idea what they're doing and rocky would go out and hire people that know how to drill that don't want to associate with these con men rocky he he tells jim that he promised his guys a raise because they were going to walk off because they were working with these con men who don't know how to do any work. So it's like these two ends of the spectrum coming together because Rocky is a long haul truck driver by trade.

Like he knows actual tradesmen. He knows construction workers. While Angel, on the other hand, knows flim flam men and charlatans. So that's the crew working on this, on this project. Jim tells them, you know, do what you need to do. I need to see the Derek go up. Like I need, we need to finish this by the 15th. So I want to see this happen right now.

So that we're, we stay on schedule. So we get a sense of the pressure that's on him. Like he's, he's fully committed now. He's already blown through five grand. This has to come together by a certain date or he's put everyone in a worse position than they were before he started the con. Yeah. We get another construction sequence after this.

This is where at least I remember the first time I watched this episode where I went, Oh, they're literally building an oil Derrick. Like this isn't just, let's do a bunch of construction and tear up the lawn. They are, in fact, putting up a real by God oil derrick on this lawn. And this is where we get our first mention of we're either going to hit oil or we're going to hit water, which means we're going to hit natural gas.

Yeah. Does this, like, extent of the con surprise you? Do you remember that moment? Or is this just. Yeah, no, it was because there's things in the air that you expect to come that moment or is this just yeah no it was uh because there's things in the air that you expect to come tumbling down by this point right like audrey is definitely not what she seems and yet she's integral right to his con oh yeah she's kind of like farnsworth's assistant slash secretary slash get stuff done person he's every time she's in a

scene where he's acting as Farnsworth, he's ordering her off to go do something important. Yes. And then they're lounging about this house in their bathing suits, and it's certainly a more intimate weekend get-together for them. We see them get more intimate in private kind of slowly over the course of these scenes. Yeah. And the thing about it that was a little surprising to me is that at this point,

as an audience member, I'm definitely suspicious of her. I know Rockford is, and I don't know what he's doing with that angle, but he's invited her into every last detail of the scam. And... Right. That could be really dangerous. Like, if we're suspicious of her, like, is he making a mistake here or does he know what he's doing? Yeah. And if she's not what he thinks she is, if she is actually a children's book writer who just wants her investment money back so that she can go on vacation, she's behaving really odd.

She's just going along with it and enjoying the ride, you know, and it doesn't it doesn't quite add up. So this part of the story, i'm like how deep are they gonna go here like from here on out is it just the farnsworth files and we just have this ongoing scam but uh uh there's a another level of pressure about to a visit here yeah for sure because after the second construction sequence uh we're back at the fancy house. A couple goons, a couple gorillas, if you will, who call themselves representatives of the condo association, come in to talk to Rockford. This is 100% just threats, like veiled kind of threats and pressure to get them to stop through fear of some kind of perhaps bodily harm. They mention accident insurance. You know, they say anything can happen on these with all this heavy equipment.

And Rockford, as Farnsworth, kind of goes through a couple phases of like, you know, everything's legal. I'm sorry. Association just gets what it gets to like, are you threatening me? Because I don't take well the threats, right? Like he goes through all those stages and kind of fobs them off and doesn't give them anything in return. But it gives him a bad feeling. And this is the section that we see in the beginning of the episode, part of the flash forward that they do at the beginning where he does call them out for threatening him.

It was neat for me to see, because when I saw the first part of it, the opening sequence of it, that was Rockford saying that. But now this time it's Farnsworth and it has a different context than what I was expecting, which was kind of nice. I feel like you get a little bit of him being like, I was waiting for this to happen as Rockford, right? He's kind of like waiting for some kind of response.

And this fits into a mold that he knows with these kinds of threats and talking about accidents and stuff like that. So he calls Dennis because he wants Dennis to check the, mold that he knows with these kind of threats and talking about accidents and stuff like that. So he calls Dennis because he wants Dennis to check the names of the people who own these condos and see if there's anything he should know about that, which I did kind of think, wouldn't this have happened earlier? But maybe they were just so focused on getting the con running that they assumed, as they've been told all along that it's just rich second second homes essentially we can get away apartments for for rich people in la so we have a little bit of that pressure coming in but we come we go back to the hotel and the derrick is up it has been raised it's

ready to drill and uh we have a nice which i thought was a little nice moment where it's actually angel who's kind of like assembling the last bit of like the drill head or whatever it is. So ironically enough, it's probably the person least qualified to get that all going together. And then we go back to the to the fancy rented house for Jim Rockford's victory lap. He comes in to tell Audrey that it's completed. to tell Audrey that it's completed. But more importantly, this is when he's finally decided to call her bluff

to really test out her story and see what she does. Not until after a little kissy face. They do have a little kissy face. And this is where it's like, OK, so I guess they have been having some kind of romantic interaction while they've been running this con.

In addition to her lounging around in a bikini and everything else though kind of a dick move where he's like well have some kissy face and then i'm going to accuse you of lying maybe not the most uh gentlemanly thing to do no but but the accusation is the delivery of it was it was nice like he he starts off with kind of a compliment where he's like i went into town and i picked up you know i picked up your book and he has a copy of the children's book that she says she wrote and then they go through a series of of uh thrusts and parries about the veracity of her story so she's like oh you want me to sign that for you he's like it's already signed oh well

that must be a promotional copy well i talked to them and uh uncle ralph or whatever the grandpa ralph whatever the the name of the author is he and his daughter came through two weeks ago and signed all the copies in five stores he's like okay well the truth is i wrote it but i don't get any credit because i work at the publishing house and he doesn't write anything except his name on the back of checks right right so he then goes yeah so what's the first sentence of the book he just keeps going with uh to find out how far back she'll fall in the story basically i wrote a note here because i could not tell you what the first sentence of any story i've ever written absolutely not rockford is on to something

rockford knows what's up. And he's been applying small amounts of pressure to give her the opportunity to to fess up to it. None of that's come out. So he's trying to confront her with something. But I will say that what he's trying to confront her with is bullshit. Unless you're Dickens and you wrote it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. You're not going to going to remember well maybe that's not true blanketly but i i can't it is unreasonable to expect someone to remember the first line of everything they've written if they've written more than like one thing yeah i would say in that moment i was desperately trying to remember the first line of anything and i was like my i don't know that's

the thing though she's like look writers don't necessarily remember every line they wrote you know like that would probably be a more a better comeback. But she makes up a line which is wrong and then it just goes downhill from there. So I think as an audience member at this point, she's obviously involved with the original con in some way. That's for certain. So it's like, OK, now where is this going? Her defense here is basically to clam up she gets angry which is fair she gets angry takes off the dress she's wearing she has her bikini on underneath dives into the pool and swims along the pool while he's talking to her and trying to get her to answer

more questions has it has a pouty swim you just yes you throw a fit you just need to do a lap she needs a minute yeah comes out on the other side and then kind of decides that her best bet now is just to come clean i guess yeah so essentially she was in on the scam she was the the roper she was actually the person getting people in so she didn't have a friend who got her and she got peggy and like that was part of her job yeah while lloyd was the one who sold the idea. And then he left. And then it started to kind of fall apart because of Jim.

So she's like, I'm going to try and keep it together. But now she's so impressed with the con that he's running. Or so she says. Yeah. She thinks there's more money in what he's doing than in trying to get keep the original scheme together. So that's why she's been helping him oh and also he threatens to go to the cops right like this is his ultimate he makes the ultimate rockford threat which is tell me where lloyd is or i'm going to go to the cops and you

can explain it to them right and she does know where he is and that's been a problem is that no one has been able to get in touch with lloyd who's the one who's going to have to actually get involved to like get these people their money back. This is actually kind of a key moment in terms of the plan. This is reading into it a little bit, but I would think that Rockford assumed that someone at the hotel is going to be the one who gets in touch with Lloyd. Right. But they had a little side conversation at some point about, like, we don't know know where he is and they couldn't get in touch with him. And she's the only one who can.

This is when we find out that Lloyd's been in Brazil. Yes. Yes. Where they speak Portuguese. And she kind of accepts that this is what it's going to be, says that she's in on his side now. And they establish very clearly that from now on, they're going to have a professional relationship.

Yeah. Which won't be as much fun. Oh, and the final thing is just to call back to the first scene where they talked. This makes it a lot more clear about why she went to him in the first place and why she tried to kind of warn him off the case. But then she saw it was more valuable to go along with him than try to stay in his way, which was smart of her. From here, we go back to the hotel. This is where things start falling into place for this episode. From here, we go back to the hotel.

This is where things start falling into place for this episode. Lloyd arrives. He's very sharply dressed, I would say. Very slick guy. And he basically offers Farnsworth a succession of deals to get them to stop drilling. Wants to offer him property on the side that he can slant drill into or what have you. Yeah, he offers the adjacent property. And Farnsworth's like, I'm not sure if there's going to be enough room. Says, OK, well, you know, the hotel owners are putting a lot of pressure on me.

I have a 50 percent stake in an active oil field in Texas that I'll sell you. That's like money that is happening right now. And that's when Farnsworth says he couldn't stop drilling even if he wanted to because then he'd be in breach of contract to the people that he's promised the proceeds from this this oil dig too which is i think is interesting because it's like rockford had a fallback position to explain why he wouldn't take these offers yeah without just saying no and i will say that this uh, this character, Lloyd, he sounds like good deals.

Like this is a good, he's very charismatic in his dealing with Farnsworth, who he thinks to be Farnsworth. And the acting dynamic between him and James Garner is really good. Watching it,

I can see how that guy talked 30 people into spending a bunch of money on something that didn't exist. At the end of this scene, get to where uh rockford and audrey are leaving in their limo and angels walking down the side of the road in his hard hat who i guess was was threatened by the mob is what it sounds like he says he was told to take a hike so he's going to take a hike that cement boots were mentioned i don't think it's established really but i can't help but think that the reason why angel's the one doing this and not anybody

else on the crew is that angel probably tried to sell them some sort of ear protection right like he just went ahead with this scam despite rockford telling him not to he went and tried to scam without realizing who he was up against. Without realizing that the tenants were the mob, that they were criminals willing to do bodily harm to him. So he decided to take a hike just to get out of there. Not to give Rockford the heads up, but to just leave. And like how Rockford is always very careful when organized crime is involved because he doesn't want to get murdered, Angel turns into a complete craven coward and flees they have the same impulse just expressed a little differently that said jim manages to get him back in the car and stay on the

the con by threatening him with becker yes like well you can come with me or i can take you to dennis and he's like okay i'll come with. Angel does not want to be involved with the, with the cops even more than he doesn't want to be involved with the mob. And then this rolls into heading back to the rented house where Becker's there with the names that he ran. And sure enough, they're all mobbed up. He has a great line,

which is Mrs. Deal and I are running a country club for the mob. And here is where Rockford suspicions confirmed. And he just starts laughing. Yeah. Yeah. is great because it's he's he's heard the worst news he possibly could hear about this and uh he's just he finds this situation hysterical he's just laughing at his own his own misery at this point his own misfortune yeah because again kind of unspoken but obvious especially from other episodes he doesn't want to piss off the mob because they will then put a hit on him yeah so trying to scam them out

of a bunch of money definitely cement overshoes uh so he just starts laughing because it is a dire this has suddenly turned to a very dire situation so we head back to the hotel for kind of our final sequence here before we do that there's there's a line here that I quoted from Rockford. I think, I can't remember exactly what Becker wanted, but, you know, Rockford did the thing where he's like, well, I'm out. I don't care how much money has been gone into this. This is ridiculous. We're not going to do this.

And Becker was trying to keep Rockford back on the deal. And Rockford's retort to that was, you work on your Medal of Honor. I'll work on staying alive. That's Rockford. Yeah, Dennis says something about, like, all these guys should be doing hard time or something like that. So we get back to the hotel. All of our principals are there. And Lloyd comes up to Farnsworth.

Look, I saw all of the paperwork, essentially, for this drill, for this construction. And it all looks so good. I just want to buy you out, buy the contract back so that I'll have the oil. Which is the goal, right? Like that's what he's been going for. This is where Rockford starts backing out. No, no. Those are phony.

Those are forged. Right. And then Lloyd says, no, I did my own tests. And the soil samples are good. They're real. You're going to sell to me. And Rockford just says like, look, this is all been a scam. I don't think there's oil here. I don't want you drilling for oil and not getting it and coming

after me. Right. Cause I misled you into it. And Lloyd's saying, no, I, I think there is oil here. You were right. I'll buy out the contract. So there's a couple levels here where he's being offered what he wants, but he's not willing to take it because he doesn't want to suffer the consequences. You know, if the mob feels like they've been scammed, but he's not willing to take it because he doesn't want to suffer the consequences. You know, if the mob feels like they've been scammed. But the mob is in on the promise of the scam. This then escalates to talking to Mr. Christian, who is the guy with the awesome plaid pants from earlier. Right. Who's the mob guy.

And he's like, if Lloyd tells me it's good, it's good. And Rockford's like, my name's Jim Rockford. I'm not Farnsworth. I don't drill for oil. Those were all forged. He's like, if Lloyd tells me it's good, it's good. And Rockford's like, my name's Jim Rockford. I'm not Farnsworth. I don't drill for oil. Those were all forged. He's like, okay, sure, whatever. Lloyd lied to me once. And he's not stupid enough to do it again.

He's like, all right, I just want you to know that I'm out. I'm not misleading you. This is the truth of the matter. He's like, fine, fine. All right. He's so dismissive. In fact, he's about ready to walk away from Rockford. And Rockford almost grabs him to tell him, just so you know that this isn't on me.

He's like, okay, fine. And they're signing the paperwork in the background to buy out this mineral rights contract. Then suddenly, water starts shooting out of the top of the oil rig. An angel starts running around going, oil, oil oil oil oil until it runs over to rockford because gas gas starts running around again gas gas because hitting water indicates the presence of natural gas yes underneath the drilling site everyone's very excited and then rocky leans over what did we hit and rockford replies what we were aiming for the water main oh such a good scam it's so good and it's so we'll burn through the the last scene real quick and then we'll we'll get back to the

scam so we have a freeze frame on rockford's like smiling face and then we cut to becker's backyard where he's grilling for everyone and he has a big plate of steaks and and potatoes that he's putting on the grill rockford's relaxing with a beer. They kind of button up the story of the con, which is, you know, he made them think what he wanted them to think, even while coming clean. Yeah. And they kind of mentioned in passing that the buyout got them

five and a quarter percent back of their two and a half percent buy-in. Yeah. So I did a little investigating on that one because Peggy says, do you know how long it'll take to double our money? And I think what it is, is that they bought it with a loan at five and a quarter percent. So I think what happened was Lloyd bought it all back, but we'll pay them back over time at this certain interest rate. And I did the math and it'll take them about 13 years to double their money on that. So it's not a great investment, but it's five and a quarter percent, which nowadays is actually a pretty decent interest rate.

Yeah, for a guaranteed return, that's not bad. There wasn't a lot there in that interaction. I read that as we got five and a quarter percent, which is basically double the money we put in. Do you know how long it would have taken us to double our money under the original deal? Yeah. Okay. That could have been it too. Yeah. Again, the details of the financial instrument are not really delved into in the episode, nor are they particularly important yeah but i think the takeaway is that they came out of it better than they would have even if the original

investment had been a real thing right right is what it sounds like to me though i appreciate you running the numbers and making sure to put a point on uh on our rate of return there uh audrey thanks jim for keeping her role a secret not telling everyone else that she was in on the con right yeah because she helped him fix it and we end the episode with them sharing a little kiss yeah so uh all's good in love and war but yeah just just looping back to the the con within the con yes i think this did take the second viewing to really unfold for me there's a lot of layers in what happens in that scene. There's a thing about con fiction.

Sort of an easy way to go with it is to do this big reveal at the end and then hint or even explicitly show that the person running the con knew precisely how everyone would have done things. It was all organized to do this from the beginning. That's kind of like what the sting does. If you have seen the sting, thinking about the reveal at the end. Yeah. And the sting does it quite well.

And I think what happens in this one with Rockford is that I got the impression that he went in with incomplete information, but with contingency plans. He went in with incomplete information, but with contingency plans so that if his suspicions were true, specifically the two big ones I think would have been that Audrey was part of the con to begin with and that these guys were mobbed up, the people that he was. So given those two routes, I think he's even a little shocked at how well it worked out for him. Right. I don't think at the end he's really playing them when he tells them i do think it's part of the grift to kind of fess up that it's a grift but i don't think when he's telling them this is on you this isn't on me i i get the impression he's not working them at that point he really wants them to understand that and then he's he's out and they're they're

gonna hang themselves because he's given them plenty of rope to hang themselves with right yeah i totally totally agree with that there are a couple aspects of this that i don't know if they were meant to be part of the grift or not there's i think there's a line where lloyd says um i reviewed the papers your office sent over last night and kind of like looks at Audrey and she kind of like looks at him and turns away. I didn't know if that was meant to be. Audrey sent him papers that she, quote, was not supposed to because they were in the original con. Right. But they are in the service of Jim's con.

Yeah. So there was like on purpose, like he told her to do it as if she wasn't supposed to do it or something like that. Like, is that an honest moment of him looking at her betrayed or was he acting betrayed? And he was going to play out being betrayed. Right. And that's not really clarified. That's kind of in the background of the conversation with Lloyd. And then the other thing is when Lloyd says, I had my own people analyze the samples and they're good. That seemed like a true moment of surprise. Like, really? But also and they're good that seems like a true moment of surprise like really but also since they're aiming to hit the water main anyway right they somehow doctor the samples or

do something you know like so that's kind of like a little bit of connective tissue where it kind of works both ways it's just not really clarified in that conversation it's not made explicit that i could see him taking samples from an actual site and swapping them out or something. But it's not made explicit at all. So that's either left up to the viewer or on the cutting room floor. Yeah, I feel like maybe that detail may have been something that got edited out for time or something. something that that got edited out for time or something yeah but that said these are those are kind of persnickety because the movement of the scene is for me at least was definitely one of so jim is is trying to back out of the con yeah but now he's learning new information that is

actually bringing the other party into it so now it's going to work even though he's getting himself out of it but then he obviously was planning for for something like this because they were aiming for the water main the whole time yeah but is it accidental that they're so in right when they hit or was that on purpose does it work despite his intention or does it fulfill the plan yeah oh now i'm gonna watch that ending scene again because i think watching it this time through he looks a little exasperated by what's happening. So like my read this time through is that he's trying to get out and nobody's letting him out. Right.

He's trying to get out because he wants to save his skin. Yeah. And the hitting the water main at that moment is a little bit of a wah-wah moment for Rockford. But the way that that plays out, what i'm reading in his emotion there could be just him responding to angel running around saying that they struck oil when an actual person with the job angels pretending to have would know that they struck gas that that right like he needs to keep the facade going yeah yeah so yeah it's a it's a it's a mystery so and i think it works again it works both ways it's more of a like if you really want to unpeel the scene and look at all the elements it's just

interesting because those interpretations both work and it's kind of like how how doubled is rockford's con you know like how many layers is it going and how much is it taking the opportunities that he's presented yeah or just staying committed to the to the bit this has definitely been one of my favorite episodes of uh i mean i you know i enjoy them all and i'm sure throughout the podcast i'll be saying that over and over again but oh it's so good and i was thinking about it because you you mentioned earlier uh we get when i said that you know we're going to get all characters, and we don't get a whole lot of good relationship stuff, but they still make time for it for every single... We don't get a lot of Rocky, but we see enough of Rocky to see that he disapproves of Angel and his stuff.

The sort of Angel and Becker scene near the end where Becker's like, what's Angel Martin doing here? where Becker's like, what's Angel Martin doing here? Like, just very, very upset that this nefarious thing that Rockford is doing for him involves criminals. There's also the throwaway kind of line there where Angel's like, you told me you put in a good word with my parole officer, and you haven't even told Becker that I'm here. Yeah, exactly. Like, Jim's making promises to both of them to keep them both ignorant that the other one, you know that they're there basically and i think this episode is good for that it's good for seeing how all these different relationships kind of vector through rockford himself even like the very short bit about i'm sure there's a paper out there somewhere about uh rockford and his love affairs

but so we have beth in this episode and there is a relationship between Rockford and Beth. And I think I cannot remember now. They kiss when she shows up. And he's sitting with Audrey. Nothing has happened between him and Audrey yet that we know of,

but it will happen and it doesn't seem to be a deal. Rockford is in the 70s and he is as free loving as television will allow him to be that's interesting to me like to see how they play it because they don't really ever play it for oh no he's got himself in trouble with women yeah oh and this episode it's it's treated with a really light hand where yeah it's just their interactions over the course of the episode like we see them kiss a couple

times him and audrey yeah we see them kiss a couple of times, him and Audrey. Yeah. We see them kiss a couple of times and that indicates the escalation and then kind of de-escalation of their relationship. Yeah. But you can easily read the thread of whatever their romantic situation is in contrast to their plot interaction. Yeah.

They're obviously, they're like attracted to each other in the beginning and then they're spending all this time together in this big empty house and letting things happen as will happen but then that's not keeping either of them from their agenda and then they put it on hold while they finish the job essentially yeah and then once the job's over it's like we can kiss again and do whatever we end up doing go to a barbecue at the Becker's. Right, but neither does it threaten the plot, right, or threaten the

con, nor is it played for laughs or for playing up what a scumbag Jim is or something like that. It's just kind of a thing that's happening. It's off-screen, but it's there, and it's another dimension to both of their characters. I don't recall offhand what episodes, but there's definitely episodes

where Beth and Jim have some serious talks about their relationship, which is also interesting too. They have a business relationship in addition to their personal relationship. Right. Yeah, this one, as you say, is very like plot focused,

but we recognize the characters and like can appreciate what they're doing. It's not like a deep dive into their relationship with Jim or anything. And the con game itself is so over the top. It just stands out.

It's just so engaging. Yeah. Again, that moment where it's like, oh, they're actually building a working oil rig here. It just stands out to me, I think, because it's going the whole way. It's fully committed

and it forces everyone to react, right? They build that oil rig on $8,000. $8,000 plus he rents out the house. Yeah, because he actually lists it out. He goes for the house equipment and salaries. And one of the things, just getting into the craft of it, the thing that I really enjoyed, as plot-focused as this was, none of the characters behave weirdly or counter to their own character just to make the plot work. Yeah. Everyone's motivations are clear and make sense

with what we know of their characters. Yeah. And I think I might have a little more to say about that in our second half. But yeah, it doesn't stand out in a bad way. It stands out just in the scale of the con. There's a two-part episode in a later season that's similar, where it's all structured around an elaborate con that Rockford runs that is just bigger because it occurs over two episodes. There's just more stuff going on. But other than that, this might be the best, or at least my most memorable at this point,

Jim Rockford runs a con game episode. All right, just to runs a con game episode. Yeah. All right. Just to put a button on, on this, uh, not too much food in this episode, other than the burn toast in the toaster, which is, as we discussed a perfect moment, I'm reading into his napkin that he ate a taco earlier. I'm going to hold to that. And we end the, end the episode before he gets to have any of those sweet steaks that Becker's grilling. Right.

He even makes a comment that those are good enough for him. What's everyone else going to eat? Yeah. So he enjoys a fine glass of beer during the barbecue. And that's all we see. Sounds like he comes out pretty well financially. Yeah. Presumably they paid him.

I think that. and also you know he was at it for quite a few days so it's a little uncharacteristic not to have anybody who's who owes him money for his work weasel out of it um and we could probably read into it that they will i mean let's let's assume he did it for the days. I bet you he did it for more, but that's a grand right there that he's owed. I'm willing to bet that that got rolled into his fee or whatever. Yeah. Or the money recovered.

And that knowing Rockford, he was able to pay off his loan and is probably in the same financial straits than he was before. Yeah. But perhaps now he owns his trailer outright, his home, which would be nice. All right. Anything else to say about the Farnsworth stratagem?

Good episode. If you haven't watched it before listening to this, sorry about the spoilers. That said, that second viewing is still a lot to appreciate, even once you know the plot movements. If you've made it this far in the podcast, you can watch it the second best way, which is knowing what to look for and then watching it. Otherwise, I would recommend watching it first and then enjoying it a second time on the podcast. Right on. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and then we will come back to talk about some of the narrative elements from this episode that we think stand out and are worth discussing. Excellent. Sound good? Yeah.

200 a day is supported by our listeners, especially our gumshoes. For this month, we have two of them to thank. Lowell Francis. Check out his thoughtful and extensive gaming blog at ageofravens.blogspot.com. And Pluto Moved On. Visit plutomovedon.com to find a podcast about tabletop RPGs, video games, and other topics, along with YouTube Let's Plays. Join the two of them in supporting this podcast at patreon.com slash 200 a day. You're the Beth and Becker to our Rockford, and for that we thank you and apologize. the podcast there's three ways to support us first rate and review on itunes or whatever you use to listen to podcasts second you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day this enables us to do things like upgrade our audio and if we get

enough support release shows more often so it'll be more rockford for you and third both of us have other projects epi what do you have going on right now? You can check out my Sword and Sorcery fiction and the Sword and Sorcery fiction of other people along with games and comics at worldswithoutmaster.com. So Nathan, what do you have going on? Well, I'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings, including the Worldwide Wrestling World Playing Game, at ndpdesign.com.

Or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta. Thanks for listening. And now, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. Nathan and I here were just discussing the Farnsworth Stratagem. Stratagem.

Stratagem. Stratagem. Stratagem. Curses. You know, like, in the break, literally looked it up online and listened to how it was supposed to be pronounced. And then the moment the mic was going, I had forgotten. Went back to my, went back to my old ways.

This is another sign of the professionalism you can expect from our podcast here. Yeah. Now we'll talk about some of the lessons that can be learned in the various applications of narrative and fiction, whether you're writing stories or telling them around a table while rolling dice or not rolling dice. I don't know. Maybe you're standing up. I don't know how you game. It's not my business. Yeah.

So I think you said that you had some things specifically that you had in mind here. Yeah, I had a couple threads out of this one that I thought merited some highlighting. First of all, I do think we do say this for every episode, but how everyone in this episode in particular has really clear motivations that drive them to take the actions they take. And often they have both a surface motivation

and then like a secondary motivation yeah the dynamic between audrey and jim i think is uh something that that could be examined a little more closely because like she's at odds with him you know you have to have seen it to know that she's at odds with him they hint at it but it's not revealed until much later that she has goals that aren't the same as jim's, but it's not antagonistic. She's constantly adapting. And then when she figures out that Jim's goals might be not the morally correct set of answers to the problem, but the more lucrative answers to the situation, then she's on board and that's it. Nobody's being honest with each other, but they're still able to trust each other.

And I really like that dynamic. She has kind of this root motivation of make some money. Yeah. Whatever the grift is, she wants to make some cash out of it. And then she has the secondary motivation of make the scam work. But she gets to shift her allegiance as to which one once she sees you know which way the wind is blowing because her uh motivation unlike maybe lloyd who's kind of like working for the mob essentially yeah she doesn't really care about the details of what

happens to these people in this hotel she cares about getting out of it as as clean as she can that's all kind of tempered with whatever like romantic relationship she ends up having with with jim that as we discussed was kind of off screen a little bit but definitely informs their behavior towards each other she's got enough of a sense to watch the big picture to sit like she she reminds me of jim in this way where she's she has her scam and what she's doing uh but she's going to pay attention to what's happening and adapt according to what she needs not what the scam itself needs whereas you see maybe the character of angel not particularly in this story but you know i can

see angel just spinning his wheels trying to make a particular lie stick uh or just changing it up again and again and again to to try and get something through yeah he's always kind of distracted by the new idea or the new thing or the path of he's a very path of least resistance like if something's just a little bit easier but we'll have the same return then he'll go for it even if he's already sunk up a bunch of effort into the first thing which we kind of see with him when he's like, I didn't sign up for being threatened by the mob. Right. Whatever he's getting paid by by Rockford to be part of this con is not worth the potential downside. But then Rockford threatens him with bringing him to Becker. Angel really doesn't want to go back to back to jail.

Kind of a side character here, but that's a strong character motivation for him is staying out of jail. Yeah, and that plays into that thing. Sure, you've said in the previous episodes about how the cops are, generally speaking, in the Rockford universe, they're the ultimate stick, right? You can threaten someone with the cops and very few people won't take that seriously though here that's kind of has an interesting role because this is the one time that rockford can't just go to becker and be like hey there's something illegal going on the mobs involved right because becker is involved and back to the his motivation uh staying staying in lieutenant Deal's good graces, which has significant career implications for him in his job, is important enough that he's willing to go down this kind

of outside the law path to solving his problem. In terms of building the scenario, if you will, in terms of saying, here's the adventure, for lack of a better term, that these characters are going to go on looking at the characters roles and what their motivations are i think really guides the parameters of the story so we have you know we have the pi and he has this relationship with this cop how am i going to build a story where he can't just go to his cop friend to solve it that's kind of a root question for a lot of Rockford episodes. Like what is going to make it such that he can't just go to Dennis? In many cases, it's this friendly antagonizing relationship between him and Dennis. Dennis is, it always comes off as put upon by Rockford. And this is when Dennis goes to Rockford. And from a,

like a story point of view, then you, you know, they have a great reason for why, even then, they can't just go to the cops, right? Yeah, it's good stuff. One of the things that it makes me think of, because I just wrote a little scenario for it for the Kickstarter for Prince Valiant, which is quite a distance away from Rockford, thematically speaking. But in Prince Valiant, the game came out in the 90s, but they got a new version coming out very soon now. They had a Kickstarter over the summer. There are these little one to two page scenarios in the book, and they are designed to be like really quick runs. Like they give you all the information you need to run just a little story, just a quick tale. And I think the purpose of them, if I remember correctly, is to let the

game master have a night off and somebody else can just run one of those or something like that. But one of the things about the structure is that they are structured around an encounter with an actual person, right? For the most part, they'll say, this is the thing that's happening. Here's the name of the person, whether that person is somebody you're about to fight or about to rescue or about to negotiate with or whatever. And then they list that person's short-term goals, which is just like a one-sentence thing. They want to steal your money. And then they list their long-term goal. They want to get enough money to buy their castle back.

And I may have made those a little too tied together because they don't necessarily need to be tied together and explicitly in it. They say the long-term goal may not have anything to do with the scenario, but I like this idea. You've got Audrey, her short-term goal is to keep this scam afloat. Her short-term goal is to take Rockford off the scent, but her long-term goal is to come away cleanly with as much money as she can. And it is without really knowing those, Rockford, well, maybe he does actually. Now that I think about it, he's a good judge of character. Right.

We kind of mentioned how there's a kind of an open question as to how long he lets her play him, right? Because he tells us, like as audience, we know that he's onto her in some regard, pretty early in the episode. Yeah. With the thing about, like, they don't speak Spanish in Brazil. Yeah. But it's another act, basically, until he calls her bluff. So I think he's probably using that time to figure out what her real goals are. Like, is she just going to disappear? Is she going to turn the whole thing on him? You so like and i think that's a good uh mechanic to have on hand and it's adaptable to almost anything is if you're going to make a side character or um like a non-player character for a game or if you're writing characters for a story and you don't want to flesh out the whole character just giving them a short-term and a long-term goal that may not be even related to each other to just have open

that opportunity for them to change how they're behaving as as things change and again it's kind of the power of the the motivation is what informs the story we don't really need to know the back story behind where she came from or who she is right they even have a little kind of side discussion um i think right before they pick up angel actually maybe where she says like don't you want to know my story broken home life out on the street had to make it on my own and he's like like that's not actually what happened is it she's like no like yeah and they don't go into it because it doesn't matter it's it's kind of a playful where, you know, now that they both know what each other's agenda scene right or more than one encounter the idea of this ally or this potential ally who has a hidden motive and that hidden motive is revealed later i think is a interesting

thing to approach especially in the game space yeah because the line that you want to walk if you're running a game if for example if audrey is a is a gm character is being controlled by the the game master the tension there is like when do you do the reveal or when do you see how the character dynamic is going and let that information come up for the other characters uh for the player characters so they know what they're dealing with that's kind of a tightrope that you have to walk, right? Because you don't want to necessarily be like, ha ha, she was actually in on the scam the whole time and have that destroy the suspension of, you know, of disbelief and what people thought was going on in the story. So there's a thing I like to criticize some fictions about. Actually, I like the way Rockford

doesn't fall into this trap, but it's this thing where there's a story built around redirection and misdirection and chicanery. They're running a scam. And in order to make that work, a lot of people will rely on tricking the audience or having specifically feeding the information, feeding the audience information that wouldn't come up in the story at all but the audience you need to tell the audience to point them in the wrong direction right like you'll have two characters who are both in on the scam nobody else around pretending that they're doing this thing so that the audience thinks that these two characters are going to do this thing but in reality they weren't they were just tricking you. The way it's written and the way it plays out is that the only person that they could possibly be

tricking is this omniscient audience that they're not aware of. And Rockford does not fall into this trap ever that I can tell. We'll find out as we watch more and more episodes, but I get frustrated with it in a lot of more modern TV shows and whatnot. And I think that there's a fundamental problem there. And that is the big reveal is fun, but in order to do it, you need to be handling the audience. And if you're handling them too much, it doesn't, the big reveal doesn't make any sense. It feels kind of artificial, right? Where it's like, oh, that's the story that we're being told. Right.

As opposed to, oh, we are seeing the result of the character actions taken earlier. Right. Like, I think that's what Rockford does so well is when you kind of look at how the episode unfolds, the resolutions are usually clearly linked to how the characters were interacting earlier. And there's little of this. It happens sometimes. Like, you know, sometimes they need to wrap something up or make a loose connection happen. So there's a little bit of exposition or something about like, oh, and this is what was happening.

But in Rockford, that's usually at the end to connect a couple dots as opposed to kind of in the beginning where it's like, why are these two characters talking to each other? Yeah. In 10 minutes, we know that they're both playing a character. Yeah. The joy of the reveal, either that reveal has to be really exciting or I think it's one of those things where I think they call like a refrigerator moment where like once

you think about it for a second, like, wait, but why were they talking about that? And then you start questioning the story instead of having it bring you joy. And I think I've said it earlier in this episode where there were a couple of times And then you start questioning the story instead of having it bring you joy. You know, the Portuguese, they speak Portuguese in Brazil. Like he made that evident right away. But I could see in a Rockford episode with her saying that she's learning Spanish to go to Brazil. And I'd be sitting on the couch going, that's weird. They don't speak Spanish in Brazil. And then have it revealed a little bit later. And that's a good one where you tweak the audience and make them think, wait, something's not right here. It's the ones where they do the opposite, where they spend time covering it up only to then reveal it. And you're like, oh, I watched you cover that up.

Those characters weren't just lying to each other. They were lying to me because there's no reason for them to have lied to each other. The only reason for them to have lied was for me to be around. So are there ways to avoid this in your experience, avoid this problem in face-to-face play, or when you're thinking about a more, you know, when you have the audience right there with you as you're going through this conversation? That was the thing I was thinking about, because that's troublesome, right? When you're sitting at the table, and then... And I think often, if there's a mystery, part of it is like, oh, I need to make sure to keep back the juicy stuff for the big reveal because I made up this mystery that I want everyone to enjoy. A lot of the

details obviously are going to be context dependent on you and your group and what you like in play. But the one thing that I would think is that what you kind of want out of a mystery is not for it to come out of the blue, right? So sometimes when we run games or play them, we err on the side of withholding too much. And I think it's perfectly okay to just tell the players, this person says this, and you know that they're not telling their truth. You don't know what the truth is, but you don't trust what they're saying right now. Because that says there is a mystery, but you haven't solved it. I think a lot of times in our attempts to preserve the mystery,

we hide that there is a mystery in that particular corner. You may know overall there is a mystery. You brought up earlier the sting, which I have actually seen within the past month, which I had never seen before. Oh, really? Yeah. It's one of the classics that did slip through my fingers. But that one's really good because there's definitely some moments where you're like,

what the hell? And then you think back and you're like, oh, right, right. Okay, this was set up all along. Well, in The Sting, unlike in The Rockford Files, there's a deliberate choice to fool the viewer, not to spoil The Sting. sting but honestly if you haven't seen it you should watch it because it's great but there's a key resolution that makes you go like oh my god i can't believe that just happened right but then it is immediately revealed like why it happened basically yeah and part of the joy of that movie is being shocked and then finding

out how you were fooled and then thinking back and looking and finding all those little tells in the storytelling. They don't telegraph it. Right. It's not an Agatha Christie thing. It's not like you could have figured it out if you just known all the clues to look for. But it's more like, oh, now a single author for the sense of like a movie or a book mystery rather than a collaborative authored like a game thing where if you're all making the mystery happen, you kind of need to let everyone in to participate in the mystery. The characters that would be fun to play would be Rockford and his crew, right? Rockford and Audrey would be fun to play. Angel to some extent.

But it wouldn't be fun to be any of the mob guys who are in this hotel. And there's oil drilling outside. I'm sorry, gas drilling outside. And they're being scammed, right? So if I were to bring this particular episode to the table, it would be the player's scam that they would be running, right? Right. And then the mystery for them to unveil is what's Audrey's position in all this? Because we know Lloyd is responsible from the get-go. Yeah. There's a bit of a reveal about it's the mob, right? But that's not really a mystery. It's more of a plot event.

This is like how Rockford uncovers clues is that he's got this great sense of, you know, something is amiss. So, you know, he gets a little bit of a scratch and he just itches it until it bleeds. His job isn't necessarily to solve the problem and come away clean. His job is to stir the pot until somebody tries to stop him. And then he's like, that's the one. More often than not, the resolution of a Rockford episode is from him agitating other people enough that they take action. And he still doesn't really know why what's happening is happening.

But the fact that he's poking around is what drives the story. I feel like we'll probably have other episodes that do that are a better showcase of that. Yeah. Because this one is almost the inversion where they're the ones running this running the con game. So I think that's something maybe to touch on a little bit is the getting the team together and running some kind of scheme. Yeah. That's the actual thing that happens in this episode. some kind of scheme. Yeah. That's the actual thing that happens in this episode. But unlike,

say, The Sting or like Leverage or something, we're not really that interested in the scene where they all get together, right? Where like everyone figures out what their job is. We more see it unfold over the course of the episode where Jim has hired his dad and his con buddy to, you know, do the things he needs them to do and then delegates. Yeah, yeah. He gives kind of the actual construction job to his dad. And he gives the like, look like you're making a lot of noise job to Angel. I was thinking about the butler, right? So he's hired a con man to be his butler. And I was like, why didn't he hire Angel to be his butler? And then I realized,

if I were Rockford, I would not hire Angel to be my butler. Like the worst thing. Well, you want to keep Angel away from like the fancy house with the expensive stuff in it is the other thing. Because he's also literally a thief. But I think the structure of it is interesting in that playing out the swindle, you see everyone in their role as it unfolds. And that's a very

efficient way of delivering the idea. Playing a game, I think there's a lot of fun in the let's come together and come up with the idea, right? And then we see it play out. But I think there's also something to be said for here's all the character motivations. Let's build the idea as we go. Yeah. So let's assume that Rockford and Angel and Rocky are player characters. And why not Audrey? Yeah. It's kind of questionable because Audrey has these split allegiances. But let's just say for the sake of argument. I mean, it's totally possible to have a game where you have a secret from the other player characters and part of the game is unveiling that secret, right? And I mean,

honestly, from my personal style of play, if Audrey was one of the characters, if Audrey was my character, I would say, here's my secret. You guys don't know it yet. Let's play it. I clearly have a secret that, you know, I'll unveil at the right time. Don't push me, but push me. Let's play with it a little bit. So then what you have is this set, this hotel, and you have a scheme that maybe from the get-go, here's the setup.

Your friend Becker is in trouble for the following reasons, and you have the mineral rights. So you're going to try and leverage that into getting this guy to buy them back and go. That's enough, I think, that you don't need to plot out a big elaborate scheme because it's not particularly elaborate. You show up and you start drilling. In my notes for this idea, I just wrote down that it's about commitment to the bit, right? It wouldn't work if you just showed up with construction equipment and threatened to drill. It only works if you actually build the oil rig and drill in their front lawn. Then you can have the other pressures. I mean, if I were running

this as a game rather than watching the episode itself, I would definitely build a little bit more about Lieutenant Deal coming closer to finding out what's going on, maybe the mob finding out before you have time to find out about them or, you know, what have you and put the tensions in there. Because there's, for a game, when you have three to five main characters, you have different concerns than what you would have in an actual Rockford episode. But I think you could definitely, you wouldn't even have to worry too much about making it a mystery. It would be about the moments of reveal. You know, when one of them takes Angel aside and says, I'm going to give you cement shoes if you try and sell me earplugs

again. That's a great reveal, right? Like it's a great moment for this cowardly character to suddenly realize, oh shoot, we're scamming the mob. I'm out. Bye. I was thinking about this, shoot, we're scamming the mob. I'm out. Bye. I was thinking about this, the rig, right? Putting the whole rig together and bringing that to the table and fun ways to do that. Because I mean, we kind of waxed poetically about this in the first half of the episode about the montage with the music and how enjoyable that was, right? In this day and age, we have access to Google image search. You can find all the parts to an oil rig or whatever, and you could just set them out, print them out,

put them on the table one at a time. Yeah. Uh, with a little montage with the tiny bit of voiceover, I think that would be kind of a nice, pleasant moment, a change in, in how the pacing of the,

your adventure is normally going. Yeah. I think that there's room for montages in role-playing games. There's something to be said for when everyone is looking at the same thing and reaching out and moving stuff around. Yeah. Whether it's part of a planning process or part of some kind of assembly, kind of mini-game or something like that.

That's a nice moment where it's like, now we see the progress of all the work that you're putting in. That's a lot of good stuff. I think the last thing I wanted to mention is kind of building off of what you were saying about having a little more pressure coming from different directions if it were to be a game. I think it's also a good example of if you're running this, you have a whole set of potential pressures, right? You're like, all right, I have Lieutenant Deal. He's going to be mad. I have the mob.

They're not going to like what's happening. You're like, all right, I have Lieutenant Deal. He's going to be mad. I have the mob. They're not going to like what's happening. I have Audrey and her motivation could be to undermine the swindle as opposed to help it. You even have Angel and maybe he sees an opportunity to sell Jim out and get something out of it for himself. You have Simon Lloyd as well.

Will he find you out? Will he realize he's being scammed? And so you have all these potential pressures. And then depending on how the actual events play out, you pick and choose, which is the most appropriate to keep the pressure on in that moment. Things are actually really going well with Audrey. She, she's going to flip,

which means that the mob is going to have to be a little more pressure. Oh, you have the bank also, you have the bank taking, you know, calling in the loan on the trailer so there's all these pressures and if you did them all at once it would be too much right like rockford can't fight off the mob and the bank and the cops and the scam artist uh right but since they come in sequence and they change how important they are based on what else is going on. It's a steady pressure that pushes the story along. Yeah, it's good to have all of them,

because you don't know which way your table's going to go. Like, it could be, you know, Lieutenant Deal may end up being the biggest pressure of them all, and you end up having to run a separate con on Lieutenant Deal to keep him from seeing Rockford as J.W. Farnsworth. You know, like, that sort of stuff but yeah there's definitely there's plenty of opportunity there there's a lot of uh um juicy bits and you don't have to have the building of the con ahead of time you could just say this is what your con is now

uh react right to whatever comes your way like how do you keep it together when all this is is going down do you have anything else i have this is going down? Do you have anything else? I have this note here. This is, you know, you're just talking about refrigerator moments where I was like, he drilled into a water main. There are consequences there. This is a little bit like the, a little bit of the end episode hand wavy bit where if you're doing it to help out a cop, then maybe, maybe some of these wheels can get greased. Plus they're not even in LA. So it's in a different jurisdiction. It's such a good episode.

Yeah, it really is a great episode. And there's a lot to enjoy. And then I think there is a lot to to just speculate. Like if I was going to do this as a game, how would I do it? Or if I had this set of characters, like how would their motivations interact that would drive this in a different way? It's just a lot of really good material here. You could certainly like just turn the dial to any one of those characters. Like you can turn it to Rocky and see how Rocky might end up ruining it for everyone by being too earnest. Yeah. Yeah. It's just got plenty of opportunity there.

All right. Well, I think with that, we have earned our $200 for today. Great episode. Definitely recommended. So go watch it. Enjoy. It's a highly quotable episode too. Yes. Like the bank guy with the foreclosure is as painful for the bank as it is for the customer. I love pulling quotes from these episodes. I don't know why it is. It is one of the many services that we provide. Well, with that, we'll be back next time to discuss another wonderful episode of the Rockford Files.