Two Hundred A Day - Episode 40: A Blessing In Disguise

Episode Date: October 28, 2018

To celebrate our 40th episode, Nathan and Eppy take a look at the second Rockford Files TV movie, 1995's A Blessing In Disguise. The premise is that Angel has become a televangelist preacher, so it's worth watching for that alone! Though padded out in some odd ways to our eyes, this movie really showcases how rock-solid Garner and Margolin are in their roles as Jim and Angel, no matter how much time has passed since the original show. As a 2-hour TV movie, we use our entire episode to go through it, with overall impressions and digresses about the highs and lows of the storytelling. We certainly enjoy the performances and the character arc of the actual center of the story, an aspiring actress played by Renée O'Connor (Gabrielle from Xena: Warrior Princess). However, it does feel more like a victory lap than a really sharply rendered story, with too many scenes that don't seem to do anything past provide a gag, and a story that simply drops threads as the movie goes on without any impact to the story. It's always a pleasure contrasting these movies with the original show, but we are still left a little wanting compared to the best 70s episodes. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars Mike Gillis and the Radio vs. The Martians Podcast And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, and Dave P! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Welcome to 200 a day podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show the rockford files but every so often venture into the 90s to talk about the the TV movies of the same continuity. Yes. So yes, we occasionally try to make a venture into the 90s to talk about these movies starring many or most of the returning cast of the Rockford Files. And which one are out, I think, was it 95? Yes. May of 95. Oh, 95. I have a certain melancholy when it comes to these because my nostalgia for the 90s is not as sweet as my nostalgia for the 70s. Not only because the actors that we know and love clearly are 20 years older than they were before,

but also the world itself is 20 years older, and it reminds me of my own mortality. And that's what we're in for on this episode of 200 a Day. It's a little weird because i obviously was you know not around in the 70s maybe not obviously but i i was not around in the 70s uh and then the mid 90s was

not a time that i was paying attention to the world around me right so seeing this this movie in particular uh i mentioned before we started recording, has lots of references to things that I didn't realize were references because I wasn't aware of pop culture in 1995. Yeah. So you're going to have to help me out with some of those as we go. Hopefully. We have no opening montage. I don't know how we start an episode without an opening montage. We can go ahead and ease on in with the salient details here.

So this was a Stephen Cannell script. So we're getting back to OG Rockford storytelling. uh rockford storytelling and i think we can kind of see that not only in the tenor of the episode but also how it felt at least it felt to me and let me know what you think a little bit like a concept for an hour-long show that ended up getting stretched out for a two hour movie. Yeah. I think. Okay. So we hear at 200 a day, love every episode of the Rockford files. Right. But this one, it does feel a little padded.

It does feel like they, they, they nudge some things out, but there's also, there's a couple masters at work here, right? Like, right.

Yeah. Some of what they're doing is here's a mystery or whatnot that rockford has to engage with but also we need to do these things because it's been a while since we've chatted with our fans and we just want to like say hey we're still at it and then we also have to do these things because it has been a while and we have to say we now live in the 90s and uh instead of all of that coming together into a tight hour-long episode they had the room to do it in an hour and a half so it's not quite as tight as some of the better examples from the uh earlier seasons right like that i guess more is not necessarily a better thing

without i don't want to poo-poo this episode too much because i had fun i enjoyed it quite a bit but uh when it comes to actually talking about how it goes together i think the fact that they had all this room didn't help them right it's there's kind of a con at least for me there was kind of a contrast between the performances, which I think were great across the board and the pace and kind of storytelling pieces that were a little lax in that way you described. So, yeah,

but we'll, and so because this is a, for a two hour slot movie, so it was about an hour and a half running time somewhere in there. We are going to take our whole episode to do our walkthrough of the show, but also we'll be, you know, expanding out on our thoughts as we hit them, as opposed to taking our discreet second half. So strap in. Yeah, get out your notebooks now. This one was directed by Jeannot Zwark, who we last saw in So Help Me God. He was the director of that standout 70s episode, as well as Two Into 556 Won't Go, which is way back in our archives. Yeah. An experienced hand

on the wheel. Obviously, he had a ton of other TV credits. He was working between the original and the network movies, including the standout directorial credits of Jaws 2 and the Supergirl movie. Oh yeah. And Somewhere in Time, which I probably mentioned last time. It's a time travel show that starring Christopher Reeve that I enjoyed quite a bit. They're not a show.

I should say movie. And this is one of the things about these movies that was a big feature, I think, for the people making them was that they had shooting the Rockford Files coming back to their old roles that they hadn't been in for decades. Yeah. So that they could be crew on it in the 30 years of the Rockford Files write up for this one. It mentions a guy who who who was like a cinematographer or a director of photography or something who came back and served as the second assistant director for this movie, like because it was all of his buddies and that was what he did in the seventies. That's wonderful.

I, I'm really curious about what that experience is like. I am often jealous of collective creative endeavors and to then go on, advance your career and then decide to go back to your previous position just for the sake of playing in the same playground that you did when you were 20 years younger is a pretty interesting. Yeah, I'm curious about that. interesting uh uh yeah i i'm curious about that 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day patrons get to add to the 200 a day rockford files files help us pick which episodes to cover and more each episode we extend a special thanks to our gumshoe level patrons this time we say thank you to jim crocker in addition to supporting the show he also sells our games at cons east of the Mississippi on behalf of Indie Press Revolution.

Follow along on Twitter at IPR Tweets. Shane Lievlin. If you play games online, you should check out his free dice rolling app, Roll4YourParty, at Roll4Your.Party. Mike Gillis, host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast, the McLaughlin group for nerds. They remain at radiovsthemartians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday Evening Podcast All-Stars actual play podcast, found at misdirectedmark.com. Lowell Francis, with his award-winning gaming blog at ageofravens.blogspot.com. Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Chris, and Dave P.

And finally, big thanks to Victor DeSanto and to Richard Haddam, who you can find on Twitter, at Richard Haddam. Check out patreon.com slash 200 today and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. But yeah, as you say, with these movies, there is no opening montage. We do get an answering machine message, which is appreciated. And I believe this is the last one of those they abandoned that gimmick for the later movies uh from here on out they are they're entering the world of beepers also what i forgot since last we saw one of these movies

is the theme the synth theme which i think we might have mentioned last time but thank you for doing a synth version of this and not like attempting a hip-hop or something that would just embarrass you right uh i i quite enjoyed it it was great it's good and like the whole score has that like synthy yeah version of like the harmonica but it's a synth instead of an of what a harmonica sting would have been in a 70s episode is like a synth sting in this one. Yeah, it's fun. I also I really liked how this one started with the helicopter kind of shots of L.A. and various landmarks just while the credits were playing. But it was a nice kind of establishing montage that got me excited to see Jim as he has stayed he has stayed in la as we know from the first movie

he still loves la he's still there despite the uh wildfires and earthquakes and rioting and then we start off our movie proper straight in jim's expanded refurnished trailer yes apparently he is getting cable installed for the first time yes and yeah this is you know giving us our little establishing bit of our older jim rockford i think i know who his cable guy is uh i think his cable guy is scully from brooklyn 99 uh if you don't watch brooklyn 99 you should watch brooklyn nine nine i've been uh scolded but yeah but he is he is installing jim's cable and we have business about how old his tv is it ought to be a smithsonian um jim is a little aggravated about how long it's taken for them to

you know get out there and install it and everything. And as soon as it turns on, we hear the audio. The audio is of some kind of gasping and moaning. It's porn of some sort. They're kind of talking about it, like talking about what they're actually watching. We don't get kind of the expected old man prudishness, maybe, of Jim wanting to change it or something. Right. Which is kind of in expected old man prudishness maybe of Jim like wanting to change it or something. Right. Which is kind of in keeping, I think, with Jim.

This guy should sell some vitamin supplements. But once the cable guy leaves, it just transitions into other things. So I was a little unclear about whether, I mean, it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. No, I had the same thought. I was like, it's lovely that it did. Like we didn't want porn going on in the background the whole time. And what it transitioned into is beautiful. I mean, it gets gets our story going, but. But there's no hint that the channel got changed. So it just seems like we've interrupted your porn broadcast to bring you this.

that broadcast to bring you this exactly which uh but yes he just lets it play while he goes to the fridge um there's a little gimmick here where he's bending over at the fridge and we hear angel's voice shouting let me in yeah he's specific he's like angel the door's open you can come in or whatever like but he mentions him by name and we hear the voice and i i'm like okay that's angel that's great and then angel's voice goes on and we realize that he's not there. He is, in fact, on the TV and he is preaching up a storm. You know, let the angel into your life. So A Blessing in Disguise is the title. The bulk of this movie is concerned slash driven by Angel has somehow become this televangelist preacher.

It's kind of a send up of the TV prayer kind of thing. I did not note all of the things that he says. They are all good. Yeah, yeah. A lot of them are puns on his name, right? Because he's Angel. So let me in, let the Angel in, the Lord's Angels come, that kind of stuff. me in let the angel in the lord's angels come that kind of stuff uh really this is the bulk of the joy of the episode is seeing angel go deep on this character what's great about this is that for

a long time rockford viewers all of this sounds like stuff that angel could just say right off the top of his head right like this is unscripted angel playing a character i i just kind of i really enjoyed that like he's he is saying nonsense in a way that sounds profound and he's so in his element here this is a job that angel was born for and uh it's almost a shame what happens with it jim of course is dumbstruck to see angel preaching on his tv we see jim getting kind of mad kind of upset as he's watching and you think it's like angel what are you you know it's it's about whatever angel's doing because clearly he's this is some kind of scam right we all know this that's the table stakes of this of this This must be some kind of scam. But then he bursts out with the fact that it's not just that it's Angel on TV.

He's wearing Jim's sport coat. Yeah. And this is the motivating factor for Jim Rockford. He wants his coat back. And so while Angel is still preaching to the camera saying, you are my special angel, Jim is calling the Temple of Holy Light. Yes. special angel uh jim is calling the temple of holy light uh yes and he wants to talk to angel and he goes through multiple rounds of no he's not a paying parishioner or no he's not buying whatever yes he'll hold and responding to things that angel's saying on the television because angel has tried to sell you a pamphlet that tells the story of his conversion and that's one of the

selling points of the pamphlet is that it's short and rockford is like it would have to be we start off at the temple of holy light with a gathering of picketers and and picket signs and people yelling and we quickly learn that they're organizing to go somewhere else to do a boycott. So they're not picketing the temple. They are the parishioners, the flock. The guys at the gate won't let Jim park in that parking lot because he's not associated with the church. One of many indignities that our friend Jim is going to suffer. Yes. We go inside and we get our nice solid look at what Angel is up to, I think.

There's a woman talking to a bunch of people who are on this little stage. Someone's in a wheelchair. Someone has bandages. Someone has like the dark eyeglasses of the blind. So these are, you know, people who are suffering ills of some kind. And a woman is explaining to them that the Reverend

Angel, he's going to read their auras. And then based on their aura, he'll tell them which one he can provide a miracle for the show, essentially, for when they're on camera. So we then watch as Angel comes on out in full preacher mode. In my notes, I say that he flim flams about their auras. Yes. If you're going to watch this episode, you watch it and then go back and make an angel super cut because he's so good. But yeah, so he's looking at, you know,

people's auras saying this one's shimmery, this one's whatever. These people, like the guy in the wheelchair, he's lost his legs. He wants his legs back. There's a woman who's pretty deaf. She wants to hear. And when he comes to the last in the wheelchair, he's lost his legs. He wants his legs back. There's a woman who's pretty deaf. She wants to hear. And when he comes to the last person in line,

he lowers the like hat in front of his face. And it is Jim Rockford in a big bulky coat who disguised himself amongst these other, these other seekers after a miracle. And all he wants is his sport coat back. And we get the, just the perfect angel. Hi,

Jimmy. Yeah, no, this, this one I did write down because the shift in his face from being on top of the world, here he is, uh,

the authority in the room, complete masterful control. Everyone's paying attention to him and following his orders. And then he sees jim's face it doesn't matter we've gotten nothing about anything that jim has over him or anything like that all we know is that jim has shown up at his church and old hurt angel comes flying through this sort of cowering terrified hi jimmy what's gonna happen and he is right to be scared uh as jim says in case you can't see his aura it's red hot and shaped like a fist and he chases

angel wanting his sport coat back uh so he kind of collars him in this entry area angel explains that the black and white jacket that he wore for court was too strobe-y for TV. So that's why he borrowed. Jim says, no, why you stole. Let's use the right word. Jim's coat. Jim wants to know what, how did this all happen? Last time he saw Angel, he was selling hot VCRs out of a shopping cart. And we all remember that from, I still love LA.

Angel kind of elides any explanation of how he got to where he got. But he is very excited about it because this new life that he's leading, it's all tax free. Yes. He woke up one day and he heard he heard the message of the Lord. He was talking to him because his name was Angel. This moment is where we find out why Evelyn Martin has been called Angel this entire time. As Jim says, your name is Evelyn. We call you Angel

because you were always on your knees in prison praying not to get killed by the hard cases. Chef kiss. Angel, you know, does not want to be in this conversation anymore. He calls for his angels of the Lord, his bodyguards, to help this sinner on his way, and they

drag him out of the church. One of these thugs, gorillas, if you will. His name is Zack, and Jim recognizes him because they did time together. So, you know, clearly, Angel has called on his old connections for these bodyguards. We cut to a mob of these picketers pushing a woman around, yelling at her, calling her a slut and angry about her satanic message.

There's one kind of main guy who's like the mouthpiece of this. Yeah. Like all Hollywood people are the same. It's liberal sewage that they're spewing over their children. As he's want to do, Jim comes to the defense of this woman who's being harassed and messed with. He holds the guy back from pushing her around more, tries to find out what's going on.

It's all chaotic. The crowd starts throwing fruit at them, I think. Yeah. Maybe they brought some because they were going to go to a protest or something. I mean, they all have the signs, right? So this is the crowd that was going to go pick it somewhere. I do want to say something very specific about this crowd.

I want to point out one individual in this crowd who is wearing a black windbreaker with a purple and a teal stripe on it. That is the 90s. As we get further and further from the 90s, the rosy glasses of nostalgia will make us think about it as a cool time where Trent Reznor rose to power and all that. No, no. The 90s is this windbreaker like when i saw that i was transported

back and like the opening of the ark of the covenant my body melted away the way it fits him is so 90s like all of it all of it all right um as jim hustles her away she does take a picture of the main guy who was harassing her so she has like a portable point and shoot camera which is unremarkable to us uh today of course i feel like this is supposed to be a bigger deal in this like that she has it or that she takes pictures of things there's a callback to this at the very end of the movie and by the time that happens i'd forgotten that she like carries a camera around right but i wonder if the fact that she had one was supposed to be memorable yeah because like it wasn't a disposable camera it was like a polaroid kind of yeah it's pre-digital camera right it didn't look fancy. This is not a day and age when everybody would be carrying a camera.

So that's important. And it is something that you need to point out that a character had a camera if you wanted that character to use a camera later. You know, it's the old beginning of a what would be a two-hour sitting uh and and it comes up again at almost the very end but yes jim gets her into the car they drive away uh as the firebird is pelted with fruit and we go into our next sequence where uh she starts talking to jim uh we learn that this is Laura Sue Dean, the actress, Laura Sue Dean. Yes. She talks very quickly and she has lots of fills, just like things that she says and references to like actors and places and stuff like that.

I got lost in a lot of that and kind of started tuning it out to make sure I was getting kind of the plot relevant stuff. So I don't know if I missed anything that was supposed to be a joke in all of this, because for the first, I'd say six sevenths to seven eighths of this movie, I found this character very difficult to engage with. She is a bit of an actress stereotype, especially from that era. This was, I guess, of an actress stereotype, especially from that era. This was, I guess we,

this is my second viewing of this. I had not remembered that I'd seen it before until it started up. So I think I had a more favorable read of her because I do know her. One of the things that I liked this viewing about her is that, so she's clearly self-absorbed, which will be a running gag as she now is tagging along with Rockford, who she doesn't know at all. Just oversharing everything about her life and her decisions. But in that process, while she's definitely supposed to be this stereotype and supposed to come off as a little shallow, we end up with like these random moments of vulnerability where she just kind of explains her anxieties every so often and i uh i did like that about the character

we at least get to see her as as a as a full being rather than just a chatterbox yeah she does she does develop over the course of the movie for sure yeah but i i was more annoyed than not uh for for a lot of her her performance um she is played by renee o'connor who would go on uh pretty much immediately from here to be gabrielle in uh xeno warrior princess so um that's where folks would know her from so they go to a cafe of some kind. Rockford is getting cups of coffee and croissants. She knows what her diet should look like, but she can have her guard down right now.

So this is what she wants. The deal is she has a role in a movie that's coming out called Little Ezekiel. This is what the Reverend Martin is boycotting, sending the parishioners to go boycott because it is apparently blasphemous. Yes. But none of them have seen it yet.

And so she was there because she wanted to talk to Angel and try to explain what the movie was about to him so that he would call off the boycott. She wants to make that happen because this harassment is ruining her career. She doesn't want to be the person who is boycotted, you know, because of this movie. She starts telling Jim the plot of the movie.

There's something about the miracle of the bowling balls, but then she interrupts herself because there's a juice commercial that she's in that comes on the TV that's on in the place. And she starts analyzing herself in the commercial. Yeah. I look terrible. I didn't play that right.

That was a great swimsuit, but they wouldn't let me buy it from wardrobe. Like, yeah. And then kind of changing on a dime. Uh, she has also been getting death threats in the mail and she has them and shows them to Jim. And Oh, what's this? A review from the play that I was in. To be fair, I keep all of my reviews and death threats in the same place. They just happen to be the internet. Um, we, we get that running bit about her best quality coming up through this. Like she keeps on referring to running bit about her best quality coming up through this.

Like she keeps on referring to different things as her best quality. Yeah. Jim finally kind of stops her by saying that she's self-involved. She should take this to the police, you know, these threats and everything and the harassment. She says that her agents don't want her to, because that'll become the story and not the movie. Oh yeah. She's got great agents.

They're great. They're great. They're lovely. Jim mentions that he has a client meeting. And so she finally asks him what he does. He's a PI. She heard of some other actress who had a bodyguard or something. So she wants to hire him for protection. He does not seem excited about this.

No, no, it doesn't seem like the kind of job that Jim wants. And also, I think it's very telling of her character that she's not seeking a bodyguard for protection. She's seeking a bodyguard because that's what actresses get. We end this scene with her pushing her croissant away. She does not eat it. She's not hungry, as it turns out. As Jim's bookkeeper, I wrote that down. I assumed he paid for all of this,

but I don't know how much. As we'll find out, this is a bookkeeper's nightmare because I have no idea if he ever got paid or hired or anything in this episode. Out on the street, she says that I'll see if I can get the studio to pay for you, if not i can afford you i made a quarter of a million dollars uh we cut from there to the firebird getting trashed oh no it's so sad there's the beating in the windshield with a baseball bat they're graffiting satan on the side a group of the picketers have apparently tracked them down and started trashing his car. He, you know, goes in to try and fight them off. But there's like five of them and they quickly get the upper hand.

Laura Sue starts beating them with her purse to try and help. But it's not looking good until a cop car with its lights on comes around the corner and then the guys run off. And so we end that bit with Jim saying that she has another quality. That's guts. Another best quality. This is a kind of a nice running gag that they'll do throughout this episode where we get to define her by her best qualities. her by her best qualities jim saw uh a woman being assaulted by a crowd and did what jim would do which is step in and take her to safety and offer her some comfort he's about done with that and she comes and rescues him and this is the moment uh where we're like oh yeah and it gives that

little seed of like character motivation for Jim, I think. Yeah. Because this is one of those very much where Jim Rockford doesn't really want to be involved, but every step of the way he gets more involved and it seems like the right decision at the time. Right. Yeah. He gets involved because nobody else involved has her best interests in mind. He says that she should go somewhere that no one will know where to find her for the night

and he will press her case with Angel. So we go to Jim staking out a very fancy house and Angel being chauffeured in in a fancy car. Jim slips in through the automatic gate as it closes and then we go to angel giving these like instructions to his bodyguard the main guy zach says like sure whatever you say boss angel does not want to be called boss perhaps your your holiness or your eminence but i think this is where we see that these guys are gorillas, right? They're not part of this weird evangelical thing going on.

They're not true believers. They know who Angel is. Yeah. Despite their efforts, Jim has managed to sneak into the house and he collars Angel, just comes out of like nowhere and grabs him by the collar. Now that Angel's protesters have trashed the Firebird, it's not just about his coat. Jim is mad.

Angel plays it off, says he'll fix it. Makes some crack about like Jim shouldn't be so concerned with material things and he should do the work to cleanse his spirit. And Jim says that if Laura Sue is threatened again, he'll come back and cleanse Angel's spirit with a can of mace. This is while Angel is leading him upstairs through this very nice house. It's totally all kitted out with every fancy piece of ephemera you can imagine. And as they go into the walk-in closet upstairs, this is not just his coat. There's a whole Rockford section.

There's a leather jacket that he, that had disappeared. There are multiple bags that are just sitting around that were originally Rockford's. Presumably with like surveillance equipment or something in it. Like it just, yeah. But seeing it all together,

it's like angel. I've been stealing my stuff for years, which, you know, makes sense. Yeah. So this whole sequence, it takes

up a pretty good amount of screen time and it's mostly it's mostly the banter between them and the threats from jim and angel trying to he alternates between full like you know i saw the light of the lord and now i must preach to my congregation and then he switches from that to you know oh this is a really good deal, Jimmy, right? Like he just keeps going back and forth. In classic Angel fashion. Like this is, so a fun thing about their dynamic is, if I may.

You may. Rockford came in for his jacket, but he's gone so much further for a jacket. And part of that I think is because the jacket is the excuse. Right. So that rockford can save angel from himself and save the world from angel like that's that's his job that's what he tries to do watching rockford try to nail angel down in a debate or conversation or whatever and watching angel just flip through his different personas and all.

It's beautiful. I love watching that. When I was saying before, it felt like some stuff was padded. This doesn't feel like padding to me. You want to see these two. So here you go. This is what you came for. Yeah.

A Rockford movie with Angel in it. This is why you're here. Yes. Plot wise, it's not like a lot happens. It's mostly the sequence of seeing them do their thing, which is great. Throughout this sequence, Jim has this kind of monologue about Angel's terrible ethics. Like, ever since I've known you, you've done bad things for bad reasons. He wants to know what the scam is.

What is your deal here? Angel finally says that, you know, he was called to one of these sermons given by the reverend star and he got up on stage and he was possessed by the spirit of the lord and he started talking in tongues that was his revelation and he was speaking in perfect aramaic the reverend star was so impressed with this they made him a deacon. And when Starr died, Angel took over. At least that's what he makes it sound like. But that's the story. Yeah. He ended up just getting sucked in, and now this is what he does.

Jim still has him kind of trapped. Yeah. He does kind of finalize this by offering to make Jim a deacon himself. To let him out, let him go. There's this laundry list of benefits that come with that including uh there's use of the choir on your birthday that is my uh favorite also during this uh there's talk about jimmy's bad knee oh yeah yeah i can heal i can heal your knee yeah but uh angel has a as a time commitment here. He has a point counterpoint with the people who made this movie that he's protesting. And Jim's like, well, I'll go head down the stairs, he strips Jim of the

deaconship that he just offered him because usually those cost 10,000. We go to this point counterpoint. Okay. So I did not realize that this was a real thing that they incorporated into the movie, but they are doing this point counterpoint on the Morton Downey Jr. show. Right. So Morton Downey Jr. I remember hating him.

I literally did not know who this was. Like that this was a person that was not part of a fictitious movie. Elucidate so he's i think like maybe the first of the like jerry springer or you know the bring people out put all their trash on display talk show folks i think he had like largely conservative politics uh you know what i actually don't know much about him so I shouldn't but this is a thing this is a show that existed so there was a show called Downey in 1994-1995 and then there was the Morton Downey Jr. show in the 80s

he was definitely like one of these people that tried to maintain relevance by inventing things like invented uh a nazi skinhead attack that he saw that he admitted later that he didn't uh that didn't happen i feel like like he's somewhat responsible for where we are now as a culture i i do remember him from back in the day and just not liking him one bit. So they're on the show. I think they call it the Morton Downey Jr. show in the movie.

Yeah. Its role in this movie is clearly to be a site for creating conflict between the movie people and Angels protesters. Yeah. He's playing himself, but he's also, uh, parodying himself in this. He's not like,

he doesn't loom very large and what's going on here. What happens here, right. Is that we, we finally meet the, the, the filmmakers, um,

Acropolis pictures is the studio. Yes. Um, and so there's these two guys who like own Acropolis pictures, Bronca and Milovan. And they're Israeli. Yes. And so there's these two guys who like own Acropolis pictures, Branca and Milovan. And they're Israeli. Yes. They are positioned as foreign investors,

you know, running this, this studio in Hollywood, big gold chains and flashy clothes and all that stuff. They're on stage with Laura Sue and the Reverend Martin reverend martin the reverend martin there's no blasphemy you know we just we make entertainment laura sue points out the specific guy who's getting in her face the man who threatened her uh he calls her a slut again and you know you're ruining our children and then also in the crowd is a producer for the show i guess uh which we kind

of learned later uh but his name is danny i'm a producer in this show in this movie all this protest is an infringement on my rights to make it like to pursue a profit yeah it's this weird free speech argument that he's making yeah uh this definitely felt like the kind of argument that would gain morton downey jr's sympathy yeah i say what right do you have to get in the way of me pursuing profit yeah everyone here is is on the wrong side of history in a different way to me um yeah angel starts preaching from the from the stage uh says that they're uh idolaters um he doesn't need to like he doesn't need to see it and he brings in an east indian mystic to see the future so this is a woman in a wheelchair i think uh all wrapped up in um kind of like sarong like

clothes and he calls her sarah lonka so bad so So Jim's watching from off state or off camera. So they like bump him and like shove him over to make way for this woman. And she starts saying that she sees a future of violence and fire and, and such. The Reverend Martin starts fire and brimstoning from, from the stage. And then suddenly a whole section of the audience gets up and starts singing. Cause there's like a specific song that he has. Yeah. He's, it's a,

he has, he snuck a choir in as audience members. Uh, and every one of his songs is a classic song with, with the word angel in it. They get, they get more and more tenuous as it goes on, which is, which is a good joke i enjoy morton downey jr tries to get control but it all turns into a full-on brawl good for ratings the protesters have rushed the stage they're struggling with the producer and the other hollywood guys we see a shot of jim seeing angel getting choked, I think by Danny. So he runs on to help Angel because, of course, he does. So he pulls Danny off of him, keeps Angel from danger, and then someone breaks a chair over his head.

Goes to black. I imagine that is a commercial break. It's very dramatic. Yeah. Man, that scene, I couldn't tell what tell what like in retrospect going over it i'm not sure what was supposed to be jokes and what was supposed to be like contemporary references i guess right uh i think you go on that show expecting a fist right the audience will be like oh ah you know trying to engage that and i think some of that is meant to just be exhaustion

with that style of of show yeah it is presenting that as a parody of how those shows happen yeah but within that especially with like the east indian mystic who's like a white woman and she gets up and runs right like so everything about her is a fraud. But I think it's also meant to be part of the sort of the counterpoint or the illustration of Angel's hypocrisy, as if we knew it. When he accused them of being idolaters to then bring a fortune teller, which would be somewhat flirting with idolatry. But one thing about the scene that I think does stand out, and this plays out later, but it's this other producer. Danny? He is just in the audience. He's not up on stage. And it seems like nobody else knows that he's going to be there. He's not on the same wavelength of everyone else who's involved with this. Like he's more sincere.

Yeah. He's got money on the line. He's concerned about his money. Everyone else seems to be there for the theater. Everyone's there to be part of the entertainment, except for him. In any case, when we come back, we're outside in the parking lot. Angel is dictating a bunch of notes for someone on like a like a tape recorder. He's talking about a university and a stadium. And there's a callback to this later, but it's mostly, I think,

showing that he's he's got big plans. And also he's clearly gleeful about what just happened. So he's clearly gleeful about what just happened. Jim is still bleeding from being hit with that chair. Angel makes a crack about good thing he didn't keep the coat because now it has blood on it. Yeah. And when we get a little bit about Angel, he's like, you know, that all went great. Yeah. That brawl is good for Angel, right?

That's bringing attention. And Jim's response response is i love a fistfight with a good downbeat laura sue comes over to him she is also excited uh and doesn't really seem to be taking it all seriously yeah jim is concerned that she's still in danger you could have been hurt in there and like those death threats these people are are clearly violent. Yeah. But I guess they're, they have an opening night party. They have an event that she's excited to go to. And she also makes a crack about how that corny gray jacket with the blood stains that'll kill at the Phoenix.

And she basically talks him into coming with her to this opening night party. Yeah. Cause you know, that's exactly the kind of place that jim wants to be so we had this establishing shot of uh the phoenix room so my wife watched part of this with me and when this came up she was like is that supposed to be the viper room um and i think so maybe so but you know so that's like a legendary club in LA.

But she was like, when did River Phoenix die? Because he died outside of the Viper Room. And that's like a big thing. So we looked it up. And he died before this movie was certainly aired and probably shot. I think it was 93. All right. So is that a reference?

Is that a reference? That's in bad taste. Yeah, that's weird. We might be reading too much into it. I don't know. I mean, that's a fine generic name for a club. Yeah, yeah. So there's a line and there's a bouncer at the door.

So this guy lets in Laura Sue and then Jim is coming behind her. He stops Jim. And then Jim flashes a badge and says that he's dea and runs this whole line about you know what's in that roach behind your ear do i need to run your name and see what what else you know we have on you and the guy's like okay fine and lets him in which is funny but also like wasn't she right there like he's with me i i wrote this down i have padding question mark the dea badge comes up again yeah but like i think in neither case is it necessary it's this is the only place in the movie where jim does like any kind of fast talk that's what i was thinking too like is this

them saying this is a thing that jim can still? Yeah, but but it doesn't do it. It's a little clumsier than the way Jim normally does it. It doesn't quite fit right with with the greater body of work. Usually a con like this would have a little bit more finesse and it would come back to bite him in the ass or, you know, there'd be something about would it'd be carrying more than one weight right yeah exactly yeah it would be something other than just giving him past a obstacle that they just put in his way and i think that that's kind of what you were getting at too there's no reason for there to be an obstacle at that moment i think it would have been kind of a more in keeping bit if he like came later and there was no one there but the bouncer was there and then the bouncer wouldn't let him in then he has to like do something that's

the thing that like uh i've been trying to put my finger on uh about a more recent stuff that i've seen not rockford files related but other stuff a lot of times they'll just be like character tried to do this this is the obstacle character overcomes obstacle and then that's it and that doesn't tie into the rest of the fiction it just gives them a beat of you know will they or won't they well of course they will because we got to get to this next spot it's not even interesting how they do it it's just that they're capable of doing it, I guess. Like in the best cases of that, at least it's showing us something about the character,

right? Right. But in most cases, you don't even need to do that. I feel like you either want to create a reason for why this would happen and that would generate something interesting in your tale or have other things come out of this right maybe there's somebody in line who's also a dea agent you know that would be a completely different story but at least then you're you're not just throwing this moment away kind of uh that i i don't don't want to complain about uh rockford files but i think that this is kind of a teachable moment right like this is a moment of like that doesn't quite fit i think you're right he he does the bit with the da badge and then we cut to a

shot with like ominous music of this limousine just sitting outside yeah then we go back inside jim finds laura sue we get great background shots of more 90s fashion including the the the guy that uh laura sue is dancing with who appears to be in head-to-toe flannel um uh but yes he comes over and gets introduced to our producers to bronca and milovan who are in a booth with uh some other people and some women and they're all drinking and they have fancy drinks and everything he lays out how she's in danger. He thinks that she needs protection. They think everything's fine. They don't think she needs defense. But if she does, she can hire him, but they won't pay for it because they don't think they need defense.

And then we go back outside and we see suddenly the limo explodes. suddenly the limo explodes the door guy sees this turns to go in and at least we get to see the back of his head which has the little tiny ponytail that's shaved yes all the way back to a little spot and it's like six inches long just dangling off the back of his head that is worth introducing this character because he has a mustache in the front absolutely and a tiny ponytail in the back of his head, that is worth introducing this character. Because he has a mustache in the front and a tiny ponytail in the back. So yes, he informs them that their limo has exploded. It was the limo of Branka and Milovan.

Everyone seems startled. And then we cut to Jim talking to our good friend, Dennis Becker, outside in the roped-off area outside the club. Don't blink, folks. Pay close attention because this is precious little Dennis you're going to get in this episode.

Jim wants things that Dennis should go talk to Angel. It's his people that have been making threats. And he thinks if he leans on Angel, they can get him to stop. Dennis, of course, is saying that there's no evidence of that. He'd need a warrant. And Angel has influence now. So he doesn't want to do that unless there's a good reason. And of course, Jim does not have a good reason. So I think we have two different reads on what Dennis is doing here. The read that I came off of this with when I first saw it was that Dennis was finally taken in by an angel scam. Angel has transformed himself into a man of God and he is not worth my time and effort.

Now, I think your read is also completely legitimate. I can see Dennis being like Angel's too much work right now. Yeah, my read of this was that Dennis doesn't have enough motivation to go after Angel to make it worth the headache he knows he will have going after Angel. It could be both. It could be a little mix.

Maybe he's like, and I'm not inclined to because Angel has turned himself around, right? Yeah, but there's a part of me that really loves your read just because that is the more broken old man read and that's and uh dennis starts as a broken old man and just continues down that path uh but there's just something in the way he says that this is the reverend martin we're talking about right and that either is an ironic line or it's not.

We'll let our audience decide. Yeah. There's a little gag where Laura Sue is bummed out and Jim assumes it's because she's realized that she's in danger, but then it's because the cops won't let her leave yet and she wants to go to the other party. Yes.

But Jim impresses upon her that like, this is getting serious now. You know, go stay with someone that no one else would know where you are. So we go from here back to the temple with an establishing shot of a security guard with a dog. And I think you had something about the dog. Oh yeah.

So, cause this dog is patting no i think this is another kind of weird scene where they did that thing we were just talking about with the da badge and maybe you can or the dea badge but the dog is barking at something and the security guard tells it not to it's not even barking at jim like because the camera pans over to where jim was hiding and it's not where the dog was barking yeah jim is hiding basically in that frame just like in a bush and the dog was barking the other direction so okay charitable read of what happened here they were like we want to clearly show that they meet they that they're so serious about security that they have guard dogs right and we need to show that the guard dog is interested in something other than jim and that's

why jim manages to get past these guard dogs but it also feels like another one of those moments where it's like here's a problem here's it solved we're done i think it's just padding. Yeah. I think you have already put more thought into it than the scene probably had. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's my job as a podcaster. I think it was just to see Jim sneak around. He does pick the lock on the big main doors, very throwback Rockford action. And then he finds the room conveniently marked records. There's a computer terminal there because it's the 90s and he needs to enter a password the best bit of the episode it's just clearly the best this was so i talk about this idea sometimes of in game design but

i think it applies to entertainment i most appreciate outcomes of scenes or of, or of, you know, processes that are either like surprising yet welcome or obvious yet satisfying. Yeah. Right. Like those are kind of the two main vectors where I'm like, yeah, this, this narrative did its job.

And, and this is the biggest example of obvious yet satisfying. I think it's important that we don't utter it right now. I think we should preserve Angel's privacy and security and we don't say what his password is and just say that, dear listener, you know it. If you don't want to be spoiled on Angel's password, we're going to surround this with the with the answering

machine beeps so you can go ahead and skip ahead so yes so rockford sits down to look at the computer a screen comes up that asks for a password to be entered he thinks for about half a second and then he types a n g e l and of course it's the rice password. And he even says, Angel, you're so obvious. Yeah, yeah. There's some line in there, but it's just, ah. By typing in the very technical search string, criminal records. Yeah. He looks up the criminal records of parishioners.

up the criminal records of parishioners i would argue that uh the criminal records of parishioners is something that angel would indeed have on hand in the annals of like dumb computer stuff on tv this is actually closer than a lot of things but it's funny well i think i think the only reason why it it feels dumb is not because it's not a thing that a computer can do because this is precisely what a computer can do uh it's that we know the amount of work to put that database together like angel doesn't do that it's still running its search and then the uh the the angels of of the lord the guards uh come on in uh zach and the lead and they haul rockford out of the Lord, the guards come on in, Zach in the lead, and they haul Rockford out of the room before his search completes. So the camera stays like over the shoulder

to see the screen as they hustle Jim out the door. And so we see the search complete and then just a big list of names start scrolling up the screen. So that's a kind of a cool shot. It's nice and ominous too. Yes. It's funny, it kind of doesn't have a payoff no it doesn't i was just that's why i tripped up on that line there because i was like

it's ominous for what um i think that's kind of like i think maybe part of why the pacing feels so weird for this for me yeah is that there are lots of setups that don't seem to have a payoff or the payoff doesn't seem equivalent to the amount of time spent on the setup. It's a bunch of red herrings, right? Like there's a lot of sure. Yeah. You know,

as you're watching, you're like, what's angel scam. Angel scam is, I mean, he probably has a larger scam in mind, but really it's, he's just taking money from the pair,

the, from his parishioners, right? Like his scam is just being a televangelist. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. It's straightforward and something that we can... At this point, we don't trust

any of the producers because they're all just... They all seem slimy, yeah. But someone blew up a limo, so like, there is a real danger. But nobody really panicked about that. Yeah, everyone seemed fine. Things are happening that seem like they should

be getting bigger reactions than they are yeah uh laura sue is like blasé about everything angel is pretty blasé about everything within the parameters of how angel acts yeah it's it's hard to describe angel as blasé but like yeah um Well, we do go to seeing Angel watching himself on TV, of course, in a what I describe as a resplendent silk robe. If it didn't have a TV, if instead it had a fireplace, this would be Vincent Price. Yes. Sitting there like a book open and about to unleash some horror upon you so uh his his gorillas bring jim in to see him he says that he is disappointed in jim sneaking around his place but is still willing to just talk to him so like he like dismisses the guys and we get another good angel jim yeah scene

as they talk there's a lot of business with this. There's a scale model of the, uh, university of T H O U for, for, I guess, angel to plan out where his stadium is going to be, but that's going to displace like a,

uh, Bible study house. Right. And then, yeah. And so Jim, you know, it's like,

yeah, oh yeah. Get rid of the Bible study house at the, you know, Bible college calling out the hypocrisy. And Angel does not understand why this is a problem. It's a funny it's a funny piece of business because he's literally moving this little model house around and it doesn't fit anywhere because he's put a giant stadium in the middle of everything yeah it's this moment here where i think i am probably most at sea with with the the scheme again i had the benefit of having once seen this episode so like there's a little hint of like i know i know who the villains are but i was like is it a real estate scam sure like is this whole thing building up to this stadium is that the actual end point of the of the con i guess again spoilers it's not like this doesn't this is this is the end of this

thread of this story yeah don't follow this anymore this is actually very important in the jim angel dynamic the reason that he has the gorillas leave them alone is jim like looks him straight in the eye and says in all the years i've known you i've never hurt you yeah uh and i think that's like gets to the heart of their dynamic he's exasperated with him he threatens to hurt him all the time yeah but like when the chips are down jim has never actually harmed angel yeah and uh it's so funny because his so much of his uh way of wrangling angel is throwing his weight around which is something he does with no one else i mean he won't back down from a fight but he'll he'll uh try to avoid a fight or something like that like

i feel like angels maybe be the only person. No, I guess there's been a few people just incidental characters that we've seen where he's like, I'll climb your tree. I remember that line. I mean, when he's talking to like goons and stuff.

Yeah. But angel in terms of people that he is friends with is the only one that he also threatens, but he doesn't actually hurt. That's a real strong connective thread to the original show and like to their characters as established through all of this history um so that was nice i like that jim wants uh again uh wants angel to call off his people uh someone's gonna get hurt someone blew up that limo yeah and so angel goes into well i can't call off the boycott i have a schedule schedule here. I'm on a timeline.

So like, okay, now we're getting, right. Now we're going to find out something that's going on. But this kind of goes into the real story behind how he got to where he is. Because he starts talking about how this all started with an IRS audit and, you know, churches are tax free. Yeah. So he essentially conned the first reverend reverend star or whoever right he showed up to the thing with the sob story yeah and then he got up on stage and then he says that he started choking like jimmy i was really choking and that was the

perfect aramaic uh that got reverend star to to take an interest in him. And so from then on, it's just been like, now like, I don't pay any taxes. This is great. There's a great line in there too, where he's like, and for all I know, it was. I don't know. I could have been speaking Aramaic. You and I don't know what that sounds like. Look, it just happened to me and I just went along with it. Jim wants the name of the biggest nut in his congregation.

And he threatens Angel with Becker getting a warrant to get this information. Yeah. Which is kind of an empty threat, but he makes it. And immediately Angel's like, there's a guy named Buddy Rennie. And our scene ends with a gag where Angel sits down heavily, makes a face, stands up, and he is sat down on the on the bible study model angel angel angel we get into uh our next scene is at the there's a screening of little ezekiel oh god and we pan across and we see our producers and everyone and then we see a man asleep and then we see laura sue and then we see jim next to her and he is also asleep

yeah uh she wants reassurance that she's good in the scene like and so she wakes up jim and he's like oh yeah you're you know you're very good um and then we watch the scene in the movie that's the miracle of the bowling balls ezekiel is this kid and his parents break up and then he engineers situations that are like god taking a hand to get them back together what was most interesting to me about this was that they used bad digital effects for the movie in the movie yeah to do these like flying bowling balls i just thought that was the weirdest choice i think it made that movie look like a movie from the mid 90s like it really that's true when we talk about bad digital effects you have to look up lawnmower man 92 all right so yeah so i i suspect they're intentionally bad uh this scene

is also basically padding yeah the real action is uh at the reception afterwards where laura sue continues to want reassurance that she's good and uh keeps badgering jim with questions about the movie and he in the end can't lie and says that it is a little boring yeah she does the most kind of stereotypical actor thing of like, tell me I'm great. No, tell me the truth. Oh, you told me the truth. That was really a mean thing to say. Yeah, yeah.

But Jim says that there is something weird going on. He's getting a weird feeling. That film is not blasphemous. Like there's no real religious content, basically. And there's no need to boycott it. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense and i lost i think i lost track of this thread earlier in the movie maybe but laura sue is looking around for

that guy danny because they're dating as well as he's the producer or they did date or something yeah so yeah i think i got confused about who was who it's my prerogative i'm an old man as part of this conversation, though, of course, he'd be at these things because he has money in the movie. Yeah. He has bought 40% of the movie. So that's his stake. That's another red flag for Jim, right? Like, oh, there's money involved. They go to Danny's house. Cars are there in the driveway. She knows where the key is in the bush beside the front door. And we have this very ominous silence in the driveway she knows where the key is in the bush beside the front door and we have this very ominous silence in the house as they're walking through and she's calling his

name and it's echoing and there's no response right getting up to the dramatic mid-movie reveal yeah they go into a bathroom from the camera we see i, an arm and a leg draped out of this bath. And then we see our protagonists see that Danny Bartley is dead in this bathtub. I think there's an important life lesson here, too. Is that if you get into a bath, don't drape an arm and a leg. I think most dead bodies, most dead people in bathtubs. They're draped. Yeah. And it could very well be that that's what kills people in bathtubs.

Written on the mirror over him is Matthew 1349. Oh, yeah. We hope you enjoyed that discussion of another wonderful episode of the Rockford Files. Here are a couple ways to support us that will keep us bringing this podcast to you, our fellow Rockford Files fans. First, you can rate and review us on iTunes or whatever else you use for podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day.

And of course, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now? As always, I'm working on the next issue of Worlds Without Master. going on right now. As always, I'm working on the next issue of Worlds Without Master. You can go to www.worldswithoutmaster.com or just patreon.com slash Epidaya. Or you can go to digathousandholes.com where I talk about my other projects, including non-sword and sorcery games and fiction. How about you, Nathan? What are you working on? For the year of 2018, I am doing a monthly zine project called Zine 2018. Each monthly issue is a collection of essays, art, photography, and a game in each one organized around a central theme based on the month. So you can see more about that

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Branka and Milovan, the guys dripping gold and insincerity. But then in a very red Lamborghini is the sudden arrival of, as Dennis says, the best PI in LA, Vincent Pinguinetti. Ah, Pinguinetti. Or otherwise known as the Penguin. Yes. My suspicion is Pinguinetti is a name that they wanted to use for years. And then they said listen i don't know how many of these movies we're gonna have this is our chance it's either now or never i think it's time for the penguin penguin eddie is played by richard romanis uh who i did not

recognize but apparently was one of the voice actors in Heavy Metal. Oh. And had a role in an original Rockford Files episode that we have not done yet, Three Day Affair with a 30 Day Escrow. He was also in Wizards. Yeah, he was Weedhawk. Nice. Among just a bunch of TV and stuff. Yeah, he's got that 80s and 90s TV show heavy feel to him.

I mean, he definitely looks like he stepped out of magnum pi honestly we are introducing a new character here in the middle of our movie he has a bunch of lines that are very lance white s yes dennis is falling all over himself to uh fawn over this guy he's been talking dennis up he did a real good job on some case and he has his poker nights with captain chapman so he's been uh he says he has very complimentary things to say to chappy yeah about uh about lieutenant becker like you mentioned lance white but chappy in particular that's between uh lancer and chappy so this is this is a rarefied company that this guy keeps right um apparently uh so acropolis pictures that's the movie production company they have hired penguinetti

to arrange security now that there's these obvious threats uh jim does not like the penguin no forget if it's here or later but has, some line about how he has great PR, but, and no morals or something like that. Yeah. There's this great shot where they're like face to face, like trying, like staring each other down and Jim is not backing down from him.

And that clearly is kind of throwing off penguin Eddie. He kind of insults Jim says, you know, go back to collections. You're done on this case. Something like that. Before he leaves, Jim tells Dennis to look at Angel's congregants. They're basically a bunch of bottom feeders and criminals.

So he'll probably find something there. But he did check out this guy, Buddy, that Angel had told him about. And he does not think that that guy's a killer, even though he's a creep. And we never hear of that again. Jim tells Laura Sue that he's leaving. Penguinetti is the new security. She asks what she owes him. And he says that she doesn't owe him anything.

So... Damn it, Jim. He just wants to go home and go fishing. As he's leaving, she gets into his car and is like, no, you're my bodyguard. Vincent yells, hey, that's my client. And Rockford is like, OK, fine. I am your bodyguard. He's been resisting saying that he's her bodyguard this entire time.

And then it takes Vincent Pinguinetti wanting to get in his business to make him accept that role. I love the simplicity and the cadence of this turnaround because he's just like, she says, you're my bodyguard. He says, no, I'm not. And he's like, hey, that's my client. Yes, I am. That felt very Rockford Files. It is a linguistic J-turn, if you will.

Yes. Well, speaking of J-turns, not that we get to see a J-turn, but we go back to Jim's trailer and it looks like the Firebird has been fixed. Yeah. Looks all clean and graffiti-less. Dennis complains about Satan being written on the Firebird at some point, but I think that's earlier. You're not helping anything driving around with Satan written on the side of your car. Yeah.

Weird connection between the first movie and this one about this uh satan stuff being involved yeah like incidentally in both of these movies um oh the 90s yeah like a lot of the satan stuff really came up in the 80s and then the evangelical like reaction to it i feel like it's it's referring to this sort of discussion I will also note that around the time that this was probably being filmed, I had a friend in high school who, for homecoming, we just grabbed a bunch of caution orange spray paint and spray painted 666 on the side of his car and a giant pentagram on the top of his car. And it stayed that way until he got rid of the car. Nice. So drove around my hometown with Satan written on the side of the car. And look at where you are today. I am a mildly known podcaster about the Rockford files. Um, this, this gag was funny to me just because

in these movies I'm like, Oh, Jim's trailer. It's so big and nice compared to the seventies. They go in and she looks around clearly unimpressed and says, it's kind big and nice compared to the 70s. They go in and she looks around, clearly unimpressed and says, it's kind of small. And he says, I'm kind of broke. We have a bit of an emotional moment here where she starts breaking down a little bit about Danny's death. He was just trying to do the best he could

in his father's shadow. I don't know if that came up earlier that his dad was a producer or something but i think we get the message that he he was kind of collateral damage to whatever's going on yeah like he wasn't a bad guy um jim looks up the matthew reference and it's about severing the wicked so shall it be the end of the world. The angel shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just. Later that night, Jim is sleeping on the couch. Of course, she is watching a movie on the TV in his room where she's sleeping.

And that wakes him up. It's 3.30 in the morning, but she wants to talk. She's clearly still upset, right? Talking about how like the movie's bad and it's going to be bad for a career and stuff. And Jim is saying that it's in, look, in LA, it's an achievement just to be in a movie. You're already ahead of the curve. And so he's kind of like comforting her in a way that she, I think, can actually accept. Yeah.

Like he's not just buttering her up. He's kind of saying, sure, the movie's bad, but lots of movies are bad, right? That doesn't mean that your career is over. she was good in it and people might recognize that uh and so he segues into talking kind of talking through the situation with the movie uh she mentions that it was over budget and that's when they sold 40 to danny and so he wants to know like maybe that got sold at a discount what happens to that 40 now that danny's dead can they buy it back starting to get to some of the motivation behind follow the money right yeah and this is this is classic rockford style oh good we're in bureaucracy we're in this we can sort out we finished this scene with her talking about her best friend, Stan, her bear, Stanislavski.

And we get a little kind of confessional style monologue from her where she's talking about how she doesn't really have friends. Yeah. And so, you know, she's like, I have my club friends. They'll go anywhere. And I have my actress friends, but we're all competing for the same parts. Boyfriends, but they're all on the prowl. So she doesn't have any real friends just stan and now jim so is this a turning point with you and her are you are you making your peace with her now yeah a little bit i started being less

annoyed watching her on screen starting with this scene and also she's actually not in it as much for the rest of the movie. So that helps. I mean, I think it's a good scene. And she says that she wants to be more than she is, but she doesn't know how. Yeah. And asks if that's nuts. And he says, that's not nuts.

It's your best quality. Yeah. This is where I make peace with the best quality gag. That went past being kind of a gag into a motif, right? Yeah. Into a character thing. Yeah, this is a shared joke between two of them and it's becoming tender and it's a way for them to communicate in a way that gets through to her. And also it just shows a connection there.

I like it. I dig it. I don't know. Amazer's about the performance or something. and also it just shows a connection there like i like it i dig it i don't know amazers about her like the performance or something on paper i see how she has developed another dimension yeah and we see a little more of motivation for her and why she's so flighty and why she acts the way she does how those are all layers of camouflage right for this like deep insecurity that she has but i just didn't have sympathy for her before so this was me being

like okay this is where i need to have sympathy for her going forward and not that i actually felt sympathy for her but again that might just be because i was not super engaged in taking notes and pausing it and stuff like that maybe if i was watching straight through i would have had a more natural yeah maybe if you had a human heart maybe um we go to the next day where uh jim now driving rocky's truck yeah r.i.p noah barry jr there's a and there's a deal about jim's suit the one he gets the blood on that was given to him by rocky something like that yeah so that came up at some point but yes uh he drives her to her management agency. She's been with them for six months. And this is the first time that she's been called in for a meeting, let alone on a Saturday.

And there's all this buildup where she's getting more and more nervous. And then they go into this boardroom. And there's a big, long table and surrounded with people. And they're all just staring at her. At this moment in my notes it's this meeting exclamation point it's a it's a thing to behold this is probably the most tension-filled moment of the episode for me so this is really well done but so they're all staring at her and there's this beat and you see her super nervous and she's like trying to smile but not really you know there's

one chair at the head of the table and she sits down in it. And then everyone stands up and starts applauding. And it is so weird. And I think she doesn't know what to make of it. We don't know what to make of it. The main. So I guess her actual agent. I don't remember if we've seen him before yet, but his name is Jerry or Jer.

Yeah. But he gets up and he is very slimy and obsequious and immediately hateable. Right. At least I found him to be. So a little Ezekiel it's, it's doing great. It's boffo in the city and Socko in the burbs.

This is exactly how I would describe something doing great. So this is a celebration of her as part of this management agency for being in such a successful film. They're estimating the opening weekend to be a $23 million take, which sounds pretty respectable for a bad movie in 1995. So in 1995, a $23 million opening weekend, it would come in behind Mortal Kombat, but ahead of Die Hard with a Vengeance. Oh God. It would be the eighth largest opening weekend in 1995 over Waterworld and Bad Boys and Seven. Oh my God, I've seen all those films.

I want to see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the theater. And Jumanji. Wow. A lot of good movies came out in 95. Clueless. Braveheart. Wow. Anyway.

So yeah, assuming that these numbers are all not adjusted for inflation, I guess. That is a boffo opening. Jim. So Jim is like hovering behind her. Like he's inhabiting this bodyguard role. Um, and I think he brings up that she's, you know,

still in danger. And Jerry says that they should go on TV, uh, confront these right wing wackos, you know, it'll be good for the box office. They were slightly irrationally hostile towards Jim and Jim's presence. Yes.

I can easily read into that as a, they don't want anybody influencing their star. That's what I read it as. But it was, it was slightly jarring to me. I was like, okay, you're obviously up to no good if you're like this. He says something like, oh, is this your favorite uncle? Right. He should scram so we can talk business, right? Like that kind of thing.

This guy has some of the best lines of this whole, oh, is this your favorite uncle? He should scram so we can talk business, right? Like that kind of thing. This guy has some of the best lines of this whole, we're about to hit my favorite. Jim says, you know, this is real danger. Are you willing to take a bullet for her? And he's like, of course, I know danger. I was, I was in Grenada. Yeah. This is a pretty fun scene.

I think this is probably the most like comedic scene really uh i mean outside of angel just being a funny character but in terms of the snappy dialogue and the back and forth and the barbs and everything this is the most like yeah this is where he sets this this line i've been to fear city i've seen that elephant and we know as viewers of the show that Jim and Jim were both in the Korean War. So he's also seen action. The U.S. invasion of Grenada, not a lot of live fire. And as we're about to find out, he was a cook. He says, well, we were expected to fight too or something like that.

And then this winds up with a big dramatic fear. It's just a four-letter word and then there's a sudden gunshot through the window that he's standing by and we see uh the glass break and everyone starts yelling there's a couple more gunshots so jim takes like immediate command of the situation which is very cool this is one of Jim, my favorite character traits of Jim. And that is when it becomes dangerous to people's lives. It's not that he takes control, but he's just like,

he drops all nonsense. This is what we need to do. Do this, do this, do this. So in this case, he is like, keep low,

make for the lobby or whatever. Keep going. These, these walls are too thin to stop bullets. So stay low. Call 911. And he like hits a button to lower all the shades. All these very practical things.

And then we see Jerry huddled underneath the table as Jim does peek out one of the shades, which I thought was, as he's standing in front of the window, which I thought was probably a bad call. But thankfully he sees the rifleman on a rooftop below the level they're on, running down a stairwell. And then we get this final bit of Jer, you know, what am I supposed to do? There's 10 yards of open terrain.

Just very, like, he's clearly afraid. And he's still trying to keep up his bravado with technical military language. That do not apply. And he ends that with, what am I supposed to die for an actor? This moment is just a fun bit of instant karma, right? This is the most 70s Rockford feeling scene to me. This is the most 70s Rockford feeling scene to me between all the verbal gags, like seeing this character get his immediate comeuppance, Jim taking command, you know, the action happening right on the dialogue, which was fun. We go to that rooftop, I suppose.

The cops are on the scene, as is Penguin Eddie, who's complimenting Dennis. He's found the shell casings. So, so delightfully patronizing the way he's complimenting him. He really, it really is. Good job, little boy. Good job. Jim, of course, has no time for this ridiculousness. But Dennis does get in the line. The Penguin said, I'm a policeman's policeman.

Dennis loves Vincent Penguin Eddie. policemen's police yeah dennis loves vincent penguinetti uh vincent says that he has uh two female operatives to take over the bodyguarding duty for laura sue he says that they're both martial artists jim's like i'm a good artist myself finger painting finger painting sometimes i sculpt mountains out of my ice cream laura sue does uh kind of whisper to rockford that she feels like she has to do what her agent says and her agent says yeah penguin eddie's taking over but she'll sneak away as soon as she can and give him a call jim returns to the truck in the parking garage and then as he gets in he hears two two of the other agents that were in that boardroom. They're talking to each other on cell phones, but they're both in the garage.

And it's a gag, but Jim can look out his window one way and see one of them and look out the window the other way and see the other one. So we're just hearing him overhear them talking and they're complaining about another movie that they think is going to fail. And then one of them says, we sure could use a boycott on that one. And Jim sits up and goes, so that's what Angel's selling. Peels out and the two guys see each other. I guess they did not realize they were in the same place. This is, I feel like, a little bit of a curmudgeon about burgeoning technology here.

This is not the first time we've seen mobile phones in Rockford Files. The car phone. I think this is just, it's a funny bit once I realized that this was not another layer of mystery. That this was a plot revelation to get us going into

our final act of the show. We cut to angel doing a full on evangelical preach the TV broadcast, I guess again, well, this is the first time we see him doing it like live. Right. Other than that, I feel like this is a little bit more padding.

Yeah. Yeah. And we see him doing his thing, which is fun. And the camera works kind of interesting because it keeps like the camera's moving around as the omniscient audience and then it'll stop and then angel will start addressing it directly and then we'll cut and we'll see that he's looking directly into a one of the tv cameras so like that's a cool like stylistically i i

thought that was a fun little way of bringing us into his world a little bit. But it ends up with him leaving his choir singing another classic rock song with the word angel in it. This one, the most ridiculous of them all, which is Teen Angel. Right. A song about my adolescence. So he scurries off stage because he's parched. There's supposed to be Perrier waiting for Reverend Martin at all times. So he's giving his guards the what for. But they're having none of it.

Zack says that they haven't been paid in two weeks. Now, where's the money? Angel tries to fob him off. And he's like, look, in a scam, when the bodyguards don't get paid, they leave the body in the gutter. And then his bodyguards grab Angel and haul him off of his own stage. Good on them. They throw Angel through a door and then before they can follow, Jim comes out of nowhere to close it and lock it so that they can't pursue. And so Jim gets Angel away from his angry criminal body criminal bodyguards yeah this is sort of the end

of the angel plot right and this is the the thing that rolls through to the end of the episode with angel deciding what he decides i guess but yes that is the end of the preaching um jim is driving away with him in the truck asks him straight out if he's selling boycotts to movie producers. And he says that he controls his flock, but it's big, Jimmy. This is big business. Prayer pledges are dwindling. This boycott thing could be huge.

Yeah, this is a new product that he's testing. Free publicity, brings up the box office, you know, rinse and repeat. It's good. Yeah, it's good. But he says that he does not know who killed danny they uh meet back up with laura sue oh it's like a polish restaurant i think yeah because angel it's danish it's like i'll get a danish coffee and a sweet cookie or something yes he goes on a racist tirade about immigrants which we saw in the first movie yeah so remember angel has this has this streak of american exceptionalism and he doesn't appreciate yeah uh people coming in from other

countries yeah yeah it's a weird element to his character that i don't think is evident in the 70s show i mean here it's a laugh line or it's intended to be a laugh line i think of like danish coffee and a sweet cookie why can't these immigrants do anything right and then a beat later he's like i want a danish coffee and a sweet cookie and jim says we're not feeding you um they pull out of him that the boycott was biff adams idea he's the head of marketing at acropolis. And so he's the one who set up the meeting between Angel and the Israeli producers. Danny was not involved. He didn't know about it.

So Jim then talks through so that we see what's happening. You know, if the movie was on the rocks, it looked like they were selling Danny 40% of nothing just to get it done. But suddenly with the boycott, it's worth something. So they wanted their 40% of nothing just to get it done. But suddenly with the boycott, it's worth something. So they wanted their 40% back. Maybe they rigged the explosion to cover the murder to make it look like it was these protesters or whatever, or these boycotters. Jim wants Angel to come with him to break into the Acropolis studios and look up Danny's deal, find out what the actual deal was. Angel doesn't know why Jim needs him. And he has a good line of,

I might need you to grovel if we get caught. Yeah. I am slightly with Angel on this one. I mean, I think it's just Jim doesn't want to let Angel out of his sight. Yeah. Yeah. We,

uh, go to the three of them at Acropolis pictures. They, uh, Laura Sue is going to wait in the car um angel is still wearing his like vestments that he was giving his uh doing his preaching in so now he's put a coat over it but he still has this like bulky robe which is pretty it's pretty good bit jim and angel uh head into the lot and then we see Vincent Pinguinetti watching them through a window on the other side of the

street with binoculars. Like a penguin. He lifts up the phone and he calls Branca. Jim Rockford and Angel Martin are breaking into your studio. Jim makes Angel go over the fence first so that he doesn't run away after Jim goes

over the fence. I mean, it's run away after Jim goes over the fence. I mean, it's a very fun and clear ploy on Angel's part to try and get Jim over the fence so he can run. But Jim's not having it. And that's another thing about these movies. We saw it in the last movie where at this point in their relationship, Jim knows all of Angel's tricks and does not fall for any of them. In The Office, we see movie posters for Dr. Giggles and Raising Cane. Yeah, I've seen neither of those, but I remember them coming out. Angel sees 30 boycotts.

Yeah. 30 movies, 30 boycotts. Outside, Branka and Milovan have shown up. They have guns. Now we get this really interesting conversation between Branka maybe mainly and vincent bronca's like oh they broke in i'm going to kill them yeah this is like this is america we call the cops yeah it's like why yeah it's i mean we could solve it right it's like this is premeditated murder now i'm an accessory before the fact if you go kill them i think unstated like i'll sell you out to preserve my own skin

unless you hire me on your security staff permanently how much do you want he goes oh how about a hundred thousand a year bronca says why would i pay a hundred thousand to get rid of a problem that i can solve with this two ounces of lead. Yeah. And he points the gun at Vincent and then there's like a noise crash. Yeah. And we're back with Jim shutting a file drawer. That's a fun exchange there. I mean, fun like murder, but.

I mean, I think it's an interesting dramatization of something that I feel like happens probably in tabletop games a lot. One side of some kind of conflict or issue has no reason not to go to an extreme. Yeah. And so you're trying to find some common ground, like some way to make some kind of compromise worth having. Right, right. Like, this would be too much of a hassle for you.

If you killed me, you'd have to hide this or that you know like something that doesn't just because he just provides them with the like another problem that they can solve the exact same way they were about to solve the the previous one right like exactly as it turns out there are consequences yeah but there's something about how like these guys they don't think there are consequences yes or they think any consequences are not going to apply to them so they're willing to go to this extreme so it's an interesting little microcosm of that dynamic. I've experienced that in games where it's like, okay, how can we find a way for this not to just end with let's kill this guy? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because that's like actually the easy answer when there are no

consequences in many narratives. So how do you build that around that moment? In this case, it's serving the greater story. So we see it come back in a minute. Back in the office, Jim has indeed found the deal. Danny bought his share for $5 million, which means that now that the movie has done so well, he would be getting $20 million or more, depending on how well it does overseas. But there was a survivor clause for them to buy it back at fair market value. And they killed him after the boycott started, but before the return, like before it actually opened. So the market value when they bought it back was that same $5 million.

So yes, they killed him. He makes a point about how there's like similar handwriting and braga's signature as the threatening notes he makes a french seven i did not know that was called a french seven where you put a cross through the seven i i knew that i don't know why i knew it was called the french seven other than i also know that their ones look a lot like sevens as well uh That's how I make my sevens. I did not know it was French. Oh my god. You could be so easily framed for murder in 1995. Our two Israelis jump

them on the way out of the office with the line, it's against the law to break into my building so you have to die. They put them in the back of their car and we get a dramatic shot where we see poor Vincent Pinguinetti already in the back of their car and we get a dramatic shot where we see poor Vincent Pinguinetti already in the back of the car.

Like we see his face and then we cut to the side and we see the blood. He is clearly dead. And Angel, of course, it's in the middle. And Jim is on the opposite side and they start heading out to Vincent's boat. Like it's a simple story. You killed him and then had an accident. Their, their plan doesn't seem to work in my brain.

I tried to figure it out while I was watching it. Right. This is a whole sequence, right? So yeah, they kind of tell them what they're going to do. Angel starts praying, saying,

this is a legitimate prayer this time. Yeah. Please don't let me die. And if you have to take Jimmy, I understand. It's hard to save to save both of us. And this reminded me of in Chicken Little is a Little Chicken when he does the same thing with the mob guys. Yes. Jim should be enough. So they're on this marina. They're making Jim and Angel carry Vince's body, which is very ghoulish. And they're saying something like, you shot him. We shoot you, then we put the gun in your hand.

You all shot each other. Sure. Yeah. Sure. It is thought through exactly as much as, we'll shoot everyone and make it look like we killed each other. All right. We've gotten away with blowing up our own limo and hiring a sniper to shoot our own meeting. Yeah.

Like, we're not going to face any consequences. So we don't have to think about this too hard. But then Laura Sue to the rescue. Yeah. We hear honking and see the headlights of the truck as it comes barreling towards them. Everyone scatters and there's a brief chaotic scramble. Guns are dropped and picked up.

There's a bit of a brawl. Angel ends up shot in the butt. And we know this because he starts yelling, my butt, my butt! And I thought of you. I loved it. I could think of no better place to shoot Angel and

no better moment for that to happen. Milovan goes down. Branka flees with one gun. Jim pursues him with the other gun. And Laura Sue takes care of Angel. Yeah, she runs up and is like, I'm going to turn you over. No, no, no, no. Yeah.

Jim chases Branka onto a boat. He's trying to find the other as they're going around. Jim ends up with a strategic advantage where he drops a life raft into the water and then as bronca tries to stock uh stock him he loosens up a swinging boom he starts saying that they can make a deal and then jim has the final word with negotiations are over yes the boom swings around knocks bronca off the boat into the water. He starts yelling because he can't swim. And Jim, always the good guy, throws him a life preserver.

Yeah. I understood half of Jim's plane. The raft hitting the water and attracting his attention made sense. I couldn't figure out the physics on the boom, but that's fine. Yeah. I believe that a boom could do that i just couldn't figure out like how he was doing it from where he was and i i do love that he throws the the life preserver in after him that that is classic jim all right so uh the cops are there

cleaning up angel uh he says it's it's a divine penance that he's taking this shot in the butt um jim makes a mention about how once the you know the fraud investigation really gears up It's a divine penance that he's taking this shot in the butt. Jim makes a mention about how once the fraud investigation really gears up, then he'll be in trouble. And Angel's like, nope, I'm out of the church. So I think Angel, seeing the advantages of that position swiftly dwindling, claims that he is abandoning his preaching ways. Becker is super sad about the death of Vincent Pinguinetti. Pinguinetti, he privatized private eye. He can make you laugh.

He can make you cry. You know, they have these guys for this whole, you know, kidnapping them and assault. But it's their word against Jim's for Pinguinetti's death and Danny's death because they're alibying each other for both of those and blaming Rockford. Yeah. We have all of our principles kind of come together. Laura Sue confronts Branca, says, I know you killed Vincent. And he's like, I'm not going to let some actor who works for me tell me what happened, right? You know, you're lying.

I have it on film and she holds up her camera that we have not seen since the very first time we saw her at the beginning of the episode an hour and a half ago so yeah uh i mean we talked about this at the beginning uh it should have shown up one more time yeah it felt a little out of nowhere right like i believe that like that makes sense for the wrapping up the plot yeah but it it wasn't clear to me that she was there when those events went down it's not unreasonable that she would be because she may have been there with uh jim and angel but they left her in the car oh right right the way they the way it was paced out did have her there i feel like that

that that was supposed to be like a dramatic yeah reveal but it kind of felt random to me yeah it needed it needed an extra nudge yeah you know like one more moment to make it keep it in our brain yeah you know you need two points to make a line and then once you do that you could put whatever you want on that line you know what i mean like you just need to say here it is here it is again and then people will be expecting it but not right well that it gets back to that like unexpected but welcome or yeah exactly like obvious but satisfying like once it's queued up then it's obvious yet satisfying and this case it was not obvious yeah so it felt random because i've forgotten about this camera gimmick at first so whatever it's fine yeah it's functional it just

seems like it could have been easily punched up with just adding that camera into an earlier scene somewhere yeah that's all exactly so our our bad guy producers are looks like they're going to jail so we end our movie in Rockford's trailer. Laura Sue is packing up her stuff. She says that maybe she should worry about being a good actress instead of being famous. Yeah. Her character arc, right, has now come to this end point. And then Jim sits her down to have this quick heart to heart.

I forget all the, he says a couple of things and finishes up with, if I had a daughter, I'd want her to be a lot like you. And then gives her a tender kiss on the forehead. And then we freeze frame on James Garner's wonderful smile as he has had a familial breakthrough with Laura Sue, who has found a friend. Good on Jim. Good on Laura Sue. Yeah has found a friend. Good on Jim. Good on Laura Sue. Yeah. So overall thoughts. I mean, we talked a little bit about it in the beginning,

but now that we've gone through it again. Yeah, I kind of want to watch it. Like, I kind of want to let this sit and maybe watch it again down the line, not for the show. I feel like I would probably like it better if I wasn't pausing and taking notes. Yeah, Yeah. Um, I think that broke up the already kind of weird pacing for me. Uh, cause I kind of, kind of came away being like, eh, that was fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'm trying to, as I watch them, put them in the mind frame of someone who hasn't seen a Rockford file in 20

years. And I want to just live with the characters a little bit more. Certainly when it comes to Jim and Angel, we get that. This is not only a lot of fun Jim Angel stuff, but also the Angel scam to end all Angels. Right. Yeah. On that level, I think that this episode does a really good job. But like I said in the beginning, the tightness isn't quite there because I don't think they have the constraint to help them out so they they kind of pad certain things and

things only do single duty rather than double or triple duty like they usually do it feels kind of weird because it's like it's a candle script right so i wonder if it's something of like the muscle memory for the hour show yeah were what drove this script but it actually needed some like a different set of you know skills yeah he wrote one other and then co-wrote the last movie so maybe we'll see yeah how they stack up against each other um i feel like i'm probably a little unfairly down on this. Sure. Like you're saying, I think if you'd watch this with The Big Gap, you'd be so swept away by seeing Jim and Angel do their thing that that would carry it. And there's a couple excerpts of reviews in 30 Years of the Rockford Files for this

from TV critics with stuff like, The movie is so whimsical, it's almost weightless. The new Rockford Files movie with a sparkling script by stephen j cannell and a chunky performance by stewart margolin as angel martin i feel like maybe at the time it read with more yeah wit and humor than i see in it yeah i'm uh enjoying the exploration into these uh movies but i i think so far they they feel slightly more like victory laps than actual like hard-fought innings i'll take that yeah because like the first one had kind of the weird construction like with all the time gaps and stuff which worked for the overall idea of it

but made the story kind of complicated in a way it didn't have to be while this one the story is actually very straightforward but it didn't really have as much of the other things to keep the straightforward story interesting as yeah there are in the best rockford files episodes that have straightforward stories i mean i liked watching it i would watch it again i would be able to get absorbed into uh angel more i think would be a big part of it and there are individual scenes that really gave me the rogford vibe that i really liked but yeah yeah overall i'm still kind of like after the first one i'm like waiting for the good movie still yeah i am i'm a little bit there too like i think that so clearly jim is still magnificent

in the role yes you know like an angel is still great in the role. Yes. An angel is still great in the role. Dennis, I still love Dennis in the role. So it's not like this kind of thing where you're looking at and you see people phoning it in or anything like that. Right. The context is just a lot to overcome, I think. Yeah. Especially for us since we're so immersed in the 70s version. But yeah, I enjoyed watching it.

I mean, if you like angel you should watch this movie oh yeah like this is old angel doing a preacher thing is yeah beautiful it is as far as his money is concerned i think he came out all right i assume she paid him it seems like she's okay for money at the end maybe i mean he does say she doesn't owe him anything so like maybe he wouldn't accept her money but it's not like he's okay for money at the end. Maybe. I mean, he does say she doesn't owe him anything. So like maybe he wouldn't accept her money, but it's not like he's out money other than the Firebird. Yeah.

The Firebird, you know, and then that coffee and the pastries, but maybe he's just happy that it led to him getting back all the stuff that Angel stole from him. That's true. And that's significant. There's a lot of leather bags in addition to that coat. Yeah. Well, whether Jim Rockford made any money or not, I think we have earned our $295 for today. Thanks for joining us to talk about this movie.

Yeah. We will be back next time to talk about another TV episode of The Rockford Files.