Two Hundred A Day - Episode 42: The Big Cheese

Episode Date: November 25, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S6E10 The Big Cheese. Jim gets a phone call from a reporter friend telling him to expect something in the mail... just as he's murdered! He doesn't know what it is, but it's something that a crooked union boss wants to get ahold of. And when the package is finally delivered... well, it really "sharpens" the mystery (it's a wheel of cheese!). This is a remarkable episode in how it handles considerable back-and-forth tone shift between grittiness and humor - and it also reveals another emotional layer of the Jim Rockford character, as he reacts to the death of his friend Eddie. Quite recommended! 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.

This is the Baron. Angel Martin tells me you buy information. Okay, meet me at 1am behind the bus depot, bring $500 and come alone. I'm serious. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. As per usual, I am Nathan Pauletta. And I am Epidaur Ebershaw. And with this episode, we're going to expand our evolving approach to the show, where we feel like we've talked about a lot of the recurring things, recurring structural things and aspects and narrative devices that the show uses.

And we've kind of hit a point where there's not so many new things that are coming up in these episodes that feel interesting to talk about. Insofar as that they are, if this is the first time we've encountered them, but it won't be the first time, right? We've already encountered quite a few of them. So now we're going to, as we talk about the episode, just interrupt ourselves and talk about the perfect execution of these things right we're gonna try and uh you know we'll be using an approach uh that we've used a little more for like the uh movie episodes yeah talk about the whole episode uh when things come to us as opposed to necessarily going through like scene by scene uh though we'll still use that as

the general structure long-time listeners shouldn't fret. There'll be plenty of the stuff that they've always enjoyed. But yeah, I'm excited to try out this new format. Like all things, you get into a rut. I certainly feel like I've been in a little bit of one. So hopefully this will freshen it up and we'll find new and more exciting ways to be excited about the Rockford Files. Yes.

So that said, this episode, we are going to be considering a season six episode of the show. Episode 10, The Big Cheese. Yeah. Not only from the title was I excited about this one. I picked this episode. And obviously with my obsession with how food is treated in the show yeah what could possibly go wrong uh plus the uh summary included a note about lieutenant chapman getting some kind of uh comeuppance and i was like yes i'm always here for that uh but as it turns out

this one has actually has a lot of good food moments yeah actually quite a few so this is this is the third to last episode right so we're we're going as deep into the catalog as we've ever gone without going into the movies um and it's a little sad to think about it as approaching the end but i don't feel like this was in any way a like sometimes when you get to the end of a series that the episodes are more about a look back. Right. You know, a retrospective or some sort of meditation on the series itself. Self-referential. Yeah.

And or the other way could go. Well, not the only other way, but one other way it could go is that it could just be phoning it in. Right. phoning it in right in this case it's kind of the opposite uh they were it's the the sense that i have from the final season is that they're really trying to get everything in that they can because production wise um they basically had to stop the season halfway through there's only i think 12 episodes and we've talked about this on the show before but if you hadn't heard us before uh james garner because he did all his own stunts and was very physically active his body was like destroyed by the time they got into this season i forget exactly what

it was but he basically ended a show like ended some shooting schedule sick like coughing up blood and like really like ill and his doctor was like you can't keep doing this you're destroyed like you're literally destroying your own like body by pushing yourself yeah do all this shooting so he was like i can't do the show we're gonna have to end it after this episode and then that was part of the struggle between the studio universal and his production company about whether he'd broken his contract and how much money they owed each other and all the stuff that led to bad blood for decades between him and universal but i think there's a sense that they're really trying to get good stuff into this season i think one reason we haven't really done so many of season six episodes is that a lot of them when you look at it are either two-parters which we need to kind of like

gear up for and be ready to do, or they're returning characters from earlier seasons. Yeah. So we did the episode where Tom Selleck comes back as Lance White, but there's also an episode that reprises, where Rita Moreno reprises her role, which we haven't done any of her episodes yet, which is a shame. We need to get to that. Yeah. What is wrong with us?

I know, right? This is one of the few non-two-parter, non-returning character or returning special character episodes in a short season. It is written by a fellow by the name of Shell Willans, who I could not

find anything about other than the IMDb credits that he that are listed, which are spare. He's written about 20 various episodes of TV, including this, a Mrs. Columbo episode, a Miami Vice. Looking through his stuff right now and it's super 80s. That's what happens when you live and exist in a time. Couldn't find anything else about this guy, but he does appear to be on linkedin oh can we we take a moment maybe you said this i apparently did not know this existed

kate mulgrew was mrs colombo mrs colombo yeah goddamn now i got you don't got to watch those because that show is not good but it is kate mulgrew so make your own choices as an adult okay to be fair i have watched some really really really bad stuff just because i felt like i just needed to know but yeah so is what's his name in them peter Falk? Yeah, Peter Falk. No. Oh, because we never meet Mrs. Columbo in Columbo, right? Yeah, we never meet his wife. Yeah. How many wrote for Auto Man? I'm sorry.

I gotta stop. Let's return to the Rockford Files. The director of this episode is Joseph Pevney. I wouldn't recognize the name, but looking through the credits, this is one of the main Star Trek directors for the original series. He directed 13 episodes, sorry, 14 episodes, including City on the Edge of Forever, the Harlan Ellison one.

Perhaps our Star Trek fans will recognize that name immediately. Also, two Incredible Hulk episodes. So you can follow him back down that trail but this guy so he started his directing like career basically in the 50s in like studio movies yeah so he's accomplished very accomplished at this point super accomplished and i think whatever stuff he brought to this episode definitely influenced it there's certainly some shots some cuts that kind of stuff but also the general tone of this one is a little edgier, a little darker. We'll talk about that, but not in

like a really, not in a depressing way and kind of a noir-ish way. Yeah. We'll talk about this as it goes along, but there is a weird dialogue between this and say, revenge flicks and things like that that this kind of flirts with but doesn't quite get there and uh i think it's interesting in 30 years of the rockford files uh the episode kind of right up talks about how it showcases a little edgier part of rockford and references the other episode that i would reference, which is Sleight of Hand, that we did way back when we started the podcast, but is one of the darker, grittier episodes. Anyhow, we keep on saying we'll get into it, so let's get into it.

Okay, so here's my deal with the preview montage. First of all, toothpaste Rockford. That alone is worth the price of admission. We've already won the episode. You just see Rockford with toothpaste foam around his. We've already won the episode. You just see Rockford with toothpaste foam around his lips as he's answering the phone. Chapman is also in this montage. We get to see some exciting chase sequences and a truck, which will very briefly, but very starkly play a role at the end.

My note for that was dramatic truck danger. Yes. Here's the thing about this preview montage I want to talk about because it's setting off on an emotional roller coaster for the rest of the episode because we don't see, other than Chapman, we don't see any other regulars in this preview montage. Right. Yeah. It's not luring us in with the promise of the cast. Yes. And there's going to be a moment real early on here where that plays. I get super sad, but then happy again. So let's let's go into it. 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at Patreon dot 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. So the big cheese kicks off with a,

I'm not sure if cinematic is the right word, but like this very artfully constructed shot that could have been out of. Yeah. Postman always rings twice kind of, you know, movie where we have this beautiful train terminal. I think you even get like a shot of the union station or whatever it's called. As the title credits roll and you kind of see where you're at and we're waiting for something

to happen. And then a man carrying a package just kind of comes into the shot in the very center of it and just pauses for a moment and then walks away. And it's like, all right, so we're following that guy. And it's just like such a such a constructed bring your attention to where it needs to be shot that i associate with the big screen this opening feels like a uh big screen noir right like the train station at night presumably at night uh vaguely lonely but like in the city and still got you know the, the, yeah, no, this definitely has this feel to it that, uh, could have come out of a black and white film. The initial, our initial kind of situation gets set up. So this guy in this bad suit,

he's going to buy some stamps. And then we go to a couple of guys who are clearly goons. Yes. Uh, and they're playing pinball. Yes, they are. And, uh, I would like to would like to point out that I kept trying to figure out where I knew the guy in the blue suit from. And as it turns out, I don't. I just think he's Chris Pine. That is my... I see it. Yeah.

So my brain is like, well, if you ever wanted to see Chris Pine as a gorilla in a Rockford episode, this is the episode for you. They're at this pinball machine keeping an eye on someone else. And it turns out this is an older gray haired guy in this gray suit. They're talking about whether he has a package and he does not. So now they're like, oh, no, where's the package? Then we go back to our brown suit wearing guy who is making a big production of sticking all the stamps on this big rectangular butcher paper wrapped package and then scrawling in terrible handwriting an address. Though you can clearly see the word Rockford in the middle of his terrible scrawl

in in my notes this is where he transforms from being a suspicious fellow to drunk fellow yeah i was like oh this guy's not suspicious he's drunk that's what's up uh he puts this in the mailbox and then goes to the payphone callsford, and we get our shot of toothpaste Rockford answering the phone. This whole first kind of act really moves super quick. Yeah. So this guy in the suit that mailed the package, his name is Eddie, and he's some kind of reporter. He calls Rockford and tells him that he has something coming to him in the mail, something big. And then before he can say what it is or any other context uh i

think it was the was it the chris pine looking guy no it was the other guy who was the the lackey chris pine's lackey comes up behind him and we have a shot where he's clearly palming an ice pick i think by the standards of the rockford files this is a pretty graphic murder this is this is my notes are straight up murder yeah there. There's a straight up ice pick murder while this guy's on the phone with Jim. And then we see the guy grabbed his business card that says Jim Rockford agency and his address and everything. So it's like, oh boy, this, this escalated quickly, but again, feelings, uh, you know, detective noir crime. Yeah. But again, feelings, you know, detective noir crime.

Yeah. The other thing that this very brief phone conversation has established is that Jim and Eddie go back. Right. That they know each other. I, at this point, was under the mistaken impression that Eddie is also an ex-con. That they went back to prison. We'll find out later that they went back to. They're like childhood friends or something.

So Rockford gets this call. Here's Eddie get cut off. Yeah. So he knows something is wrong. He calls Becker, of course. This is all handled through like cutting to where the thing is happening. So we cut from Rockford on the phone to the police station

where this guy Floyd is answering the phone. And we're only hearing his side of the conversation where he's like, oh, Becker's not here. This is my emotional nadir of the episode. Because we don't see Becker in the opening montage and then they have someone else sitting in his chair answering the phone. I was like, f***.

Also, I would add, because it's the final season, it's another symptom of final seasons that they often have new cast members to replace other ones who've gone off to find more work or what have you so at this point i'm almost in a panic that we're not going to see becker and then a wild Chapman appears. Yes. So Lieutenant Chapman, a longtime foe of Jim, you know, always coming down on him, always trying to bust him for stuff. Though every so often we will see them have to work together on something. Yes. He's getting this guy to come with him because there's a couple of stiffs at the train station. They got to go check it out.

And then on their way out. Yes. Be up and i am weeping for joy one thing that stands out about this is how much is spent on uh roy floyd here uh the screen time is he a reoccurring character he does not have a link on the name on the IMDb. He's been in the Rockford Files. The actor's been in the Rockford Files, but he plays three different characters. So this is the very first time we see Sergeant Roy Floyd and the very last time we see him. And there is a considerable amount of effort dedicated to making him a character. And then we just never see him again. Yeah.

to making him a character and then and then we just never see him again yeah yeah i mean we've talked before about how good the rock profiles is about making incidental people real and and there's a few examples of that that are going to show up especially people who work in bureaucracy but uh but this just stood out to me in kind of a way i wonder if they had intentions for roy here i think maybe what elevates him just from a memorable side character to like oh they're doing something with him is some status play stuff that he ends up in the middle of uh in a couple scenes so maybe we'll go into that when we get there but we do get the start of this interaction where chapman is just like ordering him around and telling him to do stuff and he's a little he's a little like oh shouldn't we check with whoever or you know shouldn't i talk

to you know check with becker or whatever and then he's like no you're with me so chapman is exercising his authority over this guy floyd so we get becker's appearance uh and then we go right back to our two goons busting through the door into Jim's bedroom while he's asleep. This is a door I didn't know existed. This is a part of the ever-changing morphology of Jim's trailer, where his bedroom has a different configuration depending on what the plot needs. In this case, it appears to have a door to the outside of the trailer. Yeah, and we do.

We get a picture of the outside of the trailer where it is later on. And I assume that must be the back of the trailer? A little bit later, we'll see where it is. And it's just further down on the trailer, facing the same direction that the other door is. But the thing about it, my notes were like, where are we? What's happening? So it makes me wonder if he just had an an escape door put into his bedroom, right? Just in case.

We are past the point where someone literally dropped a grenade into his trailer. So anything is possible. Yeah. Like I said, this goes at a pretty much a breakneck pace to like get all of our initial situation going so yeah there are two dead bodies so in addition to eddie someone else got killed then these guys bursts into his bedroom the boss wants to see him and he's incredulous that someone would give him this line and i think this is where we start to get the real rockford sense of like it's not a straight up we're just going to tell

a crime story with these characters like his expression and whatever his line is is like really you gotta be kidding the boss yeah and he does make sure to get his slippers before they take him to see the boss uh who happens to be in a slaughterhouse full of you know hanging pig carcasses or whatever so we we learn uh that this boss is a union guy by the name of chuck ryan we establish him as being on the phone with his wife i suppose and telling her like don't call me at work and like yeah saying like oh there's something about the kid and the school it's like okay, okay, so we get a little like, this is a guy with a life. He's got concerns. And then he hangs up and is a mobbed up union boss

from then on through the rest of the episode. But this is all fairly straightforward stuff. They want to know, they know that this guy Eddie called Jim. They want to know why he called him there's a fun exchange here where the the boss where chuck ryan says i don't like wise guys and jim responds with i don't either yeah and uh through whatever combination of jim really not knowing what's going on and knowing that he doesn't have any power in this situation yeah he's just as straightforward as

i've ever seen him or like yeah he he called me uh he said he was mailing something to me and uh brian says that well that that belongs to me and he's gonna have his goons uh sit on rockford until he cracks cut to joking the cut cut to Jim cracking eggs into a skillet. Because these guys are literally staying with him in the trailer waiting for his meal to arrive. And he's essentially making them breakfast at gunpoint. I have grown to appreciate these jokes in the cut in a way that I like. Now I just wait for whatever one's going to jokes in the cut in a way that i like now i just wait for whatever one's going to be in the next episode in the beginning when we set out with this entire

adventure i did not realize that one of the reoccurring elements was going to be uh this joke in the cut gag that they keep doing i'd be hard pressed to think of an episode where they didn't do it uh so many times somebody says something and bam we're right there I think it does a lot to it adds a lot to the overall tone of what makes it a Rockford Files episode yeah I think

it's not like other shows don't do this or whatever but it's one of the elements there's some banter about like how they like their eggs and how he likes his bacon and then the mail comes and there's no package. They're like, all right, we'll go tell the boss that it didn't come today or whatever. But we'll be back tomorrow for mail call. And they walk out with his plate of food.

And he yells after them like, you know, hey, at least bring my plate back. And then we get another. It's not really a joke here. This is just kind of like a match cut. Another quick transition to he takes the one plate he still has, Jim does, throws it into his sink. And we match cut to a diploma, a framed diploma with Eddie, his last name's Hellinger. So with Eddie's name on it, being thrown down onto a desk. And we zoom out to see that it's

Chapman. Yeah. Something about this episode that stuck with me was that it's a little hard to put my finger on really the tone of it because it does combine this kind of gritty crime aesthetic and story with our more lighthearted ephemera around how like Rockford works and the characters that that are around him. And it's not that it doesn't work, but it does. It is a weird kind of back and forth tonal shift. I don't know if you felt that as well.

I think so. I mean, like there's a few things that happened in this episode where I'm like, wait, I should be more suspicious of this or wait, this is a this is a sad thing that's happened. Yeah, I think one of the reasons why it works in this episode, like, for instance, with the suspicion thing, I'm suspicious in moments when Rockford isn't when Rockford should be. And I think other people are funny in moments when Rockford is sad. Yeah. And I think that that works. There's a great scene with Angel coming up that I think does kind of a good job with that. But one of the themes in this episode has to do with the fact that Eddie is a loner.

Yeah. That Rockford's really the only person that Eddie has. And nobody is respecting that. Nobody is giving him the space for that sort of, he's lost a friend. Not the best of friends, but like a friend, someone he knows better than anyone else knows. We get that theme first expressed in this scene.

Yeah. So we're in Eddie's apartment where Chapman and this guy Floyd are checking it out. It looks like it's been tossed. And Chapman's like, you know, look through everything. This guy Floyd, he's not arguing, but he's just kind of like being, he's kind of pushing back with like other options. Yeah. What if he's just a really messy guy? and chapman is having none of it chapman is like no you have to check every single thing this is a very important case it could even mean a transfer to internal affairs

so i got this sense that like oh there's something going on yeah yeah that like chapman is really like gung-ho about breaking this case, which turns out is not the case. No, it isn't. I remember that line very distinctly and thinking the same thing. And now, but it didn't occur to me at the end to reexamine that. Nowadays, internal affairs in every cop show is the villain, right? Like even if they're not the villain, even if they're the good guys, the guys the cops treat them like the villain like why would you want to be transferred there so it had this weird ring in the modern sense i think in context it's like this could mean like promotion

right yeah like it's kind of the sense of how he's how he's talking about it and the other thing is we get a little bit of the idea that Roy here is a rookie. Yeah, maybe maybe just made detective or something. Or I don't I don't know how rankings go. But the the way people are treating Roy, it's as if he's a little naive. Yeah. And so the question is, is Chapman telling Roy this because he sees that in Roy's future? Or is Chapman far more likely saying this because he's dreaming of that for himself? I think it's that second one. I think that fits with the Chapman that we see in this episode.

What we see here that gets borne out later is that Chapman is under some kind of pressure. Yes. And here I assumed it was professional pressure. It turns out that it's not. But in any case, after we get that line about internal affairs, Jim comes around because of course he does. He knocks,

you know, he doesn't know that Eddie's dead. Like he knows that the, that the phone got cut off, but he doesn't know that Eddie got killed. So he's knocking and they hear him. So, so Chapman and, you you know takes up this position

kind of hidden around a corner so rockford of course picks the lock to come in chapman swings around on him and there's this great piece of body language where jim like jumps because you know he's startled and it goes directly into like an eye roll of like, of course. So Chapman's hassling him. Jim's just saying like, he's a friend of mine. You know, I'm worried about him. And then Chapman tells him that Eddie is dead. We have a shot of Jim agonized sadness on his face. Just going like, oh no.

Yeah. And that's the first, oh oh he really cares about eddie yeah in a way that so far no one else has had any reason to show us probably realizes that he heard eddie die right like that's the yeah kind of horrifying thing is that he's on the phone with him when he's murdered and he didn't suspect murder right away. Or he was like, that is an option, but I do not want to think that that's what happened. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. So we go right back to the station with Chapman leaning on Rockford, trying to get whatever he knows, threatening him with the breaking and entering, all the standard Chapman stuff. Yeah. And we also get, you know, Rockford's fairly standard,

like, what, you can't get any of that stuff to stick you know he's a friend of mine i was just looking after him it's a nice touch because chapman tries to hit him with breaking and entering or something like that right uh that felt sloppy even for chapman and i think that's great like this is a moment when chapman's going to be sloppy right this is as is, as we'll find out, he's got problems. Yeah. Chapman has a line where he says that Eddie didn't have friends. He was the biggest stew pot in town, which I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like an insult. I don't want to be the biggest stew pot in town. So Chapman, I don't remember Floyd's there. If he has Floyd come in, it doesn't really matter. So there's Chapman and Floyd and Rockford. Chapman, I don't remember Floyd's there. If he has Floyd come in, it doesn't really matter. So there's Chapman and Floyd and Rockford. Chapman leaves and tells Floyd to sweat him till you have a good size puddle.

Yes. So he's like assigning this guy to interrogate Rockford, which seems like a bad move. And I'm like, OK, I'm excited to see where this goes. Right. Yeah. Because we know that Jim is very good at not giving into pressure not playing the game that the cops want him to play when he has something he wants to keep from them all that stuff and we have this moment where floyd like puts on his like bad cop face and turns

around and starts trying to grill rockford and before we can really get into any interaction becker comes in you're gonna book this guy and floyd immediately changes his entire demeanor and goes like oh well lieutenant chapman told me to interrogate him yeah and we get a look either book them or cut them loose they're not gonna book them so uh he says all right well i guess you're free to go i think this is the status play yeah that i was mentioning earlier there's this very clear tension between Chapman and Becker that's expressed through Floyd. Yeah. And that may be the whole reason for Floyd.

I think so, because there's a later, we hear more about this tension later. Yeah. And that would make sense for expressing it without having them have face-to-face confrontation, which is actually kind of a nice method. If this episode is about Chapman, what we have here is Chapman distracted and thinking about moving into a different department, and we have Chapman having trouble controlling his department, right?

Like, he's pushing Floyd around, but Floyd will cave to Becker. So yeah, like who's in charge here? And it's not in Becker's character to take command like this. So he clearly knows that like he can just tell this guy to do stuff. Yeah. So maybe that's the only reason why we have Floyd there. Because this is the last time we see him. Yeah.

Because it feels like this is building to something for Floyd and then he's gone from the episode after this. But as that medium of expressing the Becker-Chapman conflict, that's pretty effective. This is the last we see of him until the three seasons of Sergeant Roy Floyd. So once Floyd leaves, we get Jim and Dennis talking. We get a little more about why Jim is so upset about what's happened. Yeah. I forget if there's a specific thing, but he mentions, I think, that they knew each other since they were 15. Yeah. And that Eddie, even though he let himself down all the time, never let Jim down.

Yeah. He didn't have it all together. Like he was a drunk and all that stuff. But he was a good friend to Jim. I forget if we noted it earlier, but Eddie's a reporter. Yes. That's definitely evident to me by the end of the story. But I think I did miss the moment when that was said.

the moment when that was said. But so I think implying that like, you know, Eddie's always like helped him because he's kind of in touch with stuff that's happening, right? Yeah. Because he's a reporter. Becker hits him with the fact that there was a second murder,

a guy a block away from the train station with the same kind of wound. Yeah. Looks like an ice pick or something. So now Rockford is in possession of that information. Upon his departure, he meets a woman in the hallway by the name of Sally, who says that she worked with Eddie at the paper.

She didn't really know him because he is a loner, kept to himself, didn't make friends really well, but she knew who he was and worked with him and that she was actually assigned to write his obituary and that Jim seems to be the one his obituary and that jim seems to be the one who knows him the best would you tell me about him yeah so we're getting all the stuff about the eddie isolation uh rockford of course invites her to dinner um so this is the last season this show's been on for six years that's a long enough span of time that if you watch a first season episode and a sixth season episode, you can

see the age on James Garner. Yeah. Right. Not that he was super young when they started the show, but as things do, you can see it. Yeah. Sally is played by an actress named Constance Towers, who has done lots of stuff and was a stage

actress as well as TV shows and TV movies and stuff. This is her only Rockford Files appearance. And I'm not really familiar with her, but she's not an ingenue. She's, you know, of Jim's age and bearing. Yeah, I was just comparing their birthdays because I figured this is where you're going. And she's five years younger than him, not 10 or 20 years younger than him. And he acts with her like he would with any other attractive woman that comes into his orbit that wants to talk to him about something.

Invites her to dinner. You know, they're slightly flirtatious, but not too. Slightly flirtatious, but not too... I appreciate that the show would cast a diverse range of ages and books for these roles. Yeah. So we go to them having their after dinner coffee in this restaurant. She says that that was the biggest steak that she ever saw. And Jim says that he would watch Eddie eat two of those and then a lemon meringue pie. There you go. That's all you need to know about Eddie. He would eat two enormous

steaks and a lemon meringue pie. So here's an important question for you. Is the steak that she's referring to something she ate or something Rockford ate or did they split it? I assume that it's something she ate. Okay. be wrong so far food wise we've seen rockford make breakfast that he didn't eat uh we see this meal and she is discussing what we assume is what she ate not not what he ate i mean they could have both had one enormous steak yeah it could be and i thought there was another food no there's more food there's definitely more food to come yeah i do want to point out this is, this went under the radar when we were discussing it, but he made breakfast for the goons when they checked the mail.

It was two overdue bills and an ad for life insurance. That's exactly what Jim would get in the mail. So the rest of this dinner scene, we get a little bit more about how they grew up together and uh we see more of jim really being emotionally yeah not emotionally involved but we see that jim really cared about this guy yeah uh sally says that he was writing a series on chuck ryan and the union uh so maybe that had something to do with it and she's not wrong, but Jim also says that,

well, Chuck Ryan's a, he says he's a sticks and stones kind of guy. And he doesn't think that he would go to this length just for a newspaper story. Right. And I wasn't sure if that was Jim saying what he actually thought or Jim downplaying what she's saying so that she doesn't get worried or try to

follow it up herself. I think Jim is thinking that it has to be something more than that. Like there has to be a smoking gun. So continuing with a bit of our food theme, we cut from there to Angel, as far as I could tell, just dumping hot sauce into a cup of something. I wrote this down. This is angel tea. This is what I've been able to... I watched this, rewound it, watched it, rewound it, watched it. He's got a mug. We don't know if there's anything in the mug

before the scene begins. He has a large bottle of hot sauce. Could be Tabasco. Tabasco sometimes comes in a large bottle. He pours that into the mug. Then he pours what appears to be. He pours that into the mug. Then he pours what appears to be hot water from a kettle into the mug. And then he picks up what could either be a shaker of salt or pepper. It is dark in color, so I assume it's pepper. And he puts that

in the mug. And then finally, he takes a small bottle of what is silhouette makes it look very much like Tabasco sauce and just a few dashes of that to round it out. Then he takes a plastic spoon and stirs it for a little bit. Amazing. And this is all while the dialogue is going on. Yeah. This is like, I could not concentrate on the dialogue until I figured out what the

ingredients were. It's entirely possible that what he has in that mug is like a cup of soup, instant noodles or something like that. But it certainly looks like he's just making tea out of hot sauce. Two kinds of hot sauce. Two kinds. So Angel in this episode, so this is an interesting thing. I mean, it's great. We get to see Jim and Angel, which is always fun. It's not important at all, like to the plot, except to showcase Jim's emotional state. Yes. Jim, the excuse here is that Jim wants to know if there's, because he was a newspaper guy,

if there's anything else about Eddie or what he was working on that Angel could find out from his stepbrother's newspaper. Yeah. Which is a different newspaper than Eddie's. Right. out from his stepbrother's newspaper. Yeah. Which is a different newspaper than Eddie's. Right. And Angel's very noncommittal. Yeah. Jim has a line about how, you know, Eddie didn't really have friends and like, it's going to be really like, it's really depressing.

That's just going to be like him and Sally, like seeing him off or at the funeral or something like that. And Angel goes on this extended tangent about, like, death. You ever think who's going to be around for you? And starts singing a song about, like... Yeah, you remember that song from when we were kids? And it is a morbid, morbid song. It's so morbid.

Buried. And so Jim is like, look, I just want you to help me out. You know, stop being so morbid. Like, that's not what I want to deal with right now. I need your help. And then Angel gets mad because Jim dropped the bummer on him. So what is he supposed to think? I want to take a moment because I think you're absolutely right.

Angel's existence in this episode is to give Rockford a way to let us as the audience know that he's hurt. Yeah. And in this scene, we see that he's trying not to think about it because he just wants to find out what happened. He needs to like do the job and he'll worry about the emotional part later. But Angel keeps bringing it up. But the thing about this scene that I think is perfect, because this scene is an incredible embodiment of

Angel's character. Like the, from the joke with the, you know, angel tea with this, like Tabasco hot sauce mix or whatever, which we've seen angel like overheat food in the past. He's living in a hotel room.

It appears, or I think later on, he mentions that it's a hotel room. It's a little bit of a mess. He's got a hot plate and two kinds of hot sauce. But also his dialogue in here, I think he starts off by saying, I don't see where I fit in Jimmy.

I don't know why you're coming to me. Yeah. The way it's phrased the, I don't see where I fit in. Jimmy like goes to how angel looks at the world. Like everything is a con and he just wants to know his place in it. What's my piece in this con? Not like, oh, I'll help you out.

Or I don't know if I can help you out. Or, you know, like, what am I getting out of this? Or what are you getting out of this by asking me to get in on it? What's, you know, what's my role? What am I supposed to play? And like, you know, he's got lines in in it like, who will mourn for Angel Martin? And Rockford will, obviously. And then just down to that thing at the end where the line is specifically, that's what I get for letting you lay this bummer on me.

It's not even that Rockford can lay a bummer on him. It's that Angel clearly is magnanimous enough to let Rockford bring him down. Right. Oh, that's great. It is a wonderful portrait of Angel. Throughout it, Stuart Margolin is still as charismatic as ever, right? Oh, yeah. This is a horrible individual.

And we watch the scene and it's like, I want to hang out with Angel. I just want to know more about this guy. I want him to teach me how to make that hot sauce. Yes. Similarly. Oh, yeah. Teach me how to make that hot sauce. Yes.

Similarly, in our next scene, we get just the most essential thrust of the relationship between Jim and his dad, Rocky. Because Jim goes back to his trailer and Rocky's there and he's boarded up the door. You know, we already talked about our question mark about where exactly, what has happened to the trailer. But apparently the door happened to the trailer but apparently the door was to the outside and and rocky has you know taken the trouble of boarding it up and

you know fixing it up while jim's been running around you get the impression as this scene unfolds that rocky has shown up seeing that the door was yeah and just he was like well the only thing i could do is fix this door for him there There's no, like, it wasn't like Rockford asked him. Right. And we get a extremely direct reprise of Rocky wanting Jim to get out of this line of work because it's too dangerous. And Jim saying, we had this conversation a year and a half ago. We said we'd never have it again. I'm not having it again.

You know, this is what I do. Don't hassle me. And he just wants Rocky to leave until he tells him to come back. Yeah. The attitude with which this is done, because we've seen this in so many episodes, right? This is like part of their relationship is that rocky worries about him um and jim values his independence but the body language here and the like the way that the stuff is delivered really felt like jim has been like just leave just get out of here like get out

of my life yeah until i tell you to come back uh in a way that i feel like we have not seen in earlier episodes um he's scared here he's already had one friend die he's so emotionally raw about the fact that eddie's dead yeah that he's like just get out just get out of here get out of my life get out of away from my trailer i will tell you to come back but i might not ever tell you to come back was kind of like we'll tell you to come back, but I might not ever tell you to come back, was kind of like part of, was subtext that I read into that because he seemed so viscerally mad at Rocky. It's not a long scene, but as with so many things between the two of them, it really packed a lot of narrative subtext into their interaction.

To play into the thing that you mentioned before about the way this episode is sometimes at odds with its own tone it ends with a joke right it ends with uh rockford saying it's just a little problem with the mail which is also a joke in the cut because we cut to a post like a post office processing line and all this like mail getting shuttered through the automatic machines um we have two scenes where like jim is like really seriously aggrieved and then it kind of lightens up into with this joke and into this scene which is a little more classic rockford running a con we have great business between him and this postal administrator or whoever uh yeah jim is is the the line that he's running is that he needs to trace this package because it contains some kind of like, sounds like it has like anthrax in it or something.

Yeah, yeah. He doesn't come out and say that it's a dangerous element. He just like makes these offhand comments about the person at the lab. Right. Like she should have recovered by now. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy that he's talking to is super young.

And I think that's important for how this plays out. Cause he's young. He seemed he's buying everything that Rockford's selling. And he says like, well, if it's that dangerous, we should just shut everything down. Give me the word.

I can shut everything in this place down. And he's like, I just got married. Yes. And, you know, Jim's like, no, married yes and you know jim's like no that's you know we just need to find the package you don't need to do that and talks him through to bringing him to mr hoag who's a nixie uh which i guess is a specialist in misaddressed packages or deciphering handwriting that uh yeah you know the automated system couldn't figure out.

And the guys, when he hands him off to Hoag, his voice cracks on something that he says. And he ends by saying, like, my wife needs to talk to me or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Like, he wants to get away from Rockford because he's super worried about something that's going to happen. I think he makes up an illness.

I think he says, like, I have to go. My wife isn't feeling well or something. It both explains how easily Rockford gets to this point when after this, the episode's all about how intransigent the post office is. But it's also a fun contrast, and it, like, lightens up the mood after the previous couple scenes. This Nixie finds it in the book he goes to the book by the way the person whose job it is to decipher poor uh handwriting

has giant thick ass glasses yeah but uh yeah he's like oh yeah did that one. Here it is right in the book. It went to John Rockfield. So when I was looking at the, you know, the cast and stuff for this, just skimming, I was like, oh, there's a John Rockford in this. I wonder who that is. I'm looking forward to this expansion of the Rockford family. No, no. I just saw Rock and assumed it was Rockford. But this character's name is John Rockfield. This character is another great example of we've just got a few moments. Let's just make sure he's a real person when we put him on screen.

So here's where I think we go into our third act of the story now that we know where the package has gone. Jim goes to see John Rockfield, who is kind of like played as kind of a country bumpkin. Yeah. After just like a line or two with this guy, I know already what the problem is going to be. Yeah. Like, you know that this is the kind of person who plays it by the book and would absolutely, like, he's trying, that's not my package. It's not for me.

The term that comes to mind is salt of the earth. This guy's a salt of the earth kind of guy. Wholesome. Yes, extremely wholesome. I tried to not let them give it to me, but they insisted. Clearly it says Rockford, not Rockfield rockfield like he can read the hand yeah but anyway yeah so he received it even though he didn't want it he didn't open it because it wasn't for him and he took it back to the post office and

gave it back to them to deliver you know rockford's trail uh is going to take him back to the local post office branch where the package has now been re-posted. Yes. Then we go to a postman and is driving his truck. And then a dramatic piece of action where our two goons drive up to it while he's stopped. And then just drive their car into the side of his van, slowly pushing it over because it's so tall, right? I'm not sure if the physics of this actually work, unless the truck was on some kind of like drop.

It would have to be two of the wheels, the opposite two wheels would have to be off the curb, right? Like, you know, or something. It just didn't seem right, but whatever. It doesn't matter because the yeah because it's it's both hilarious and a little terrifying as we have this shot of the truck just going all the way over so we cut from there to seeing it go over to seeing it on its side and our postman outside of it he's alive he's banged up, but he's okay. And then Rocky's truck is driving towards it.

And I was like, oh, why is Jim in Rocky's truck? I thought he told him to go away. But of course, this is the mail route to Jim's. And Rocky knows this mailman and saw this. So he came over to see, you know, what happened. Yeah. I was going to say, like, my notes are, of course, Rocky knows Fred. Of course.

Of course. Fred the mailman. They pushed me over with a car and they was after Jim's mail. And by the way, this is the moment when I realized we haven't seen the Firebird at all this episode. So while the opening montage tricked me into thinking we weren't going to see Beck or Angel or Rocky and we've seen all three of them. It holds true that we won't see the Firebird well we see the inside of the firebird oh yes we go from dramatic but humorous moment into another very movie style noir shot where we have this i i refer to it as brooding in my notes so we're inside the firebird the shots from the back seat over jim's shoulder but we see his eyes in the rear view and then out

the front we see him coming up to this whole scene with the turned over truck and now there's police cars because rocky called the police and whatever it's super long, but it's long enough that you're like sitting with Rockford alone in his car for a good couple seconds. I think it really brings home his emotional state, I guess, uh, in a way that an exterior shot of him just driving up into the Firebird wouldn't.

Yeah, I think you're right. Chapman's on the scene, of course. A couple of guys smack the mailman around looking for Jim's mail. Yeah. What's going on? And Jim's like, well, package went to this other guy.

He took it to the post office. I've been there all day trying to get it. And Chapman guarantees that he can get the package from the post office before Jim can find his socks. that he can get the package from the post office before Jim can find his socks. So Jim, so now we elevate, you know, out of the darker tone again with another joke in this transition where Jim says, we'll take a change of clothes and a couple of sandwiches. And we cut to Jim eating a taco outside a taco stand with Dennis. Yes. And Dennis says, how can you eat that thing?

And Jim responds, I'm hungry. The history of how people treat food in popular culture is got to be interesting. Because was there a time when people thought tacos weren't good? I know, right? Or was that just a Dennis thing? Yeah, yeah. We recently posted an episode that also involved a scene where Jim and Dennis talk over tacos. Yeah.

And Jim says, oh, do you want some? And Dennis is like, no, I'm on a water diet. Yes. So Dennis, and now I need to check every time and see if Dennis always turns down tacos. I can remember another time where Jim gets a breakfast taco and Dennis just gets coffee because breakfast taco. How can you eat that? So I don't know if it's a if that's a cultural thing, like he's expressing what people thought about tacos or Dennis doesn't like tacos. This is the early 80s. So this is probably five years before like every television show had to talk about how how weird it is to eat sushi.

Right. Like that is a thing in the late 80s. Everybody was talking about how sushi is weird because it was probably a fad at that time. So here we were just getting this this interaction, both seeing Jim and Dennis kind of talk informally about the case, which is very classic how they do things. And Dennis telling him that the other guy that got killed was this guy who ran a laundromat by the name of Arnold Moe. Yeah. I don't remember if he says that there's a specific connection between Eddie and this guy Arnold or not, but that gives jim the next lead to to figure out what's going on is this where dennis floats the police theory that he was just a witness to the crime yes yeah he's like maybe he saw saw him yeah get killed and that's why because he was a

block away and jim was suspicious of that as he should should be. I was going to say, the other thing that happened between this scene and the previous scene is we get a lot of business about receipts. We've seen IRS papers on Chapman's desk. But this is where we learned, like, Dennis is everyone on the force or everybody in the squad or whatever. They're collecting their receipt to give to chapman and dennis is like what it's not like it's a felony it's like it's a felony i had to yeah i had to rewind this to figure out what the business with the receipts were because i wasn't really paying attention to that. So what is declared here by Dennis is that Chapman's getting audited. Yeah. And that he like lost all his papers or something. So it's the idea

that he's getting all these receipts so that he can show the IRS, oh, here are my expenses. But that but they're fake because they're not his real expenses. Yeah. So the the bit that probably didn't hit that well, I don't know why. Like, I don't know how it's supposed to have hit. But in the previous scene, when Rockford is talking to Chapman, a receipt falls out of Chapman's wallet. Right. And Rockford comments on the restaurant. Yeah. It's like a barbecue place.

And he's like, I don't see you. Oh, yes. Like eating barbecue or something like that. And I thought that was just a dig at Chapman. Yeah, another weird food hang up. But the barbecue place had a great motto on their receipt, which was like, rub our meat against your gums or something. It's horrendous. Anyways, the point is, Rockford was making some comment about how Chapman, he didn't see Chapman as the kind of person that would eat there.

So now we're learning that Chapman isn't. Somebody in the department is, and they've given Chapman their receipts. Because what Chapman has to do now is to justify all of the food expenses that he's done over the course of working there that he's told the IRS that he's done so that he can get the return that he gets. And the thing that doesn't make sense to me is that receipts usually have dates on them. Maybe they didn't back then, but... And also, as we learn at the end of this episode, Chapman's a little dumb about the IRS. So we have that to look forward to. learn at the end of this episode, Chapman's a little dumb about the IRS. So we have that to look forward to.

Okay, and then we kind of finish out this part of the episode with Jim returning to Angel's theoretically to find out if he's found out anything, like he asked him and asked him to look into this other guy. Angel, I noticed this time, answers the door in heart boxer shorts,

which I feel like we've seen him wear in other episodes. I think we might have, yeah. He's very familiar. But here, this is the real harsh point of the episode. Jim starts asking him about stuff and then notices a portable typewriter. And he's like, Angel, where'd you get that? Angel says that he took it from the newspaper. Jim picks it up and it has,

uh, E H on it, which are Eddie's initials. And then he turns around and sees a new small television. Yeah. And he gets so mad because Angel, as he says, you picked his bones.

Yeah. So after Rockford told Angel that Eddie was dead, Angel went to Eddie's apartment and stole a bunch of stuff. Yes. The typewriter, the TV, and his press award. Yeah. Well, I mean, that is an Angel note, right? Like, that is so incredibly Angel to be like well i just i i should have gotten one of these anyway so i'll just take this one um this is definitely one of

those like you really have to watch it scenes yeah i mean i think we can all appreciate it in the abstract but like the impact of this scene is seeing jim get as close as I've ever seen him to just killing Angel. Yes. Like a violent outburst on someone who's supposed to be his friend. It's one of the things that I really like about this episode is that, like we were saying in the beginning, this is the, Rockford is mourning a friend and nobody's there to help him with it. Maybe Rocky would have been there,

but he can't actually talk to Rocky about it because he's just going to get Rocky telling him to get out of this line of work. Right. The closest we get is Dennis, actually. Yeah, it's a surprisingly sad episode, despite the fact that it is... No, it's not the funniest Rockford Files,

but it has the standard amount of rockford files humor in it yeah for sure and i think this is the grimmest point of the episode yeah well no there might be one that's slightly more which will at the end but uh just the you know the look on jim's face the way that he like raises his fist and angel like huddles away and cowers and it's uh it's a little rough but jim takes all the takes all the stuff to like take it back i guess angel has this whole thing about like what you want the no you want the state to take all the stuff shouldn't it be with a friend like all the angels justifications he's ready with them yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's good. But yeah, so we get to, so we see just how much this is affecting Jim. But now that he is, you know, successfully defended and he's honor posthumously,

and he has a new lead for what was going on, we go into what I feel like is our fourth act following up on this Arnold Moe guy. 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. You can go to www.worldswithoutmaster.com or just patreon.com slash Epidia, or you can go to dig a thousand holes.com where I talk about my other projects, including non sword and sorcery games and fiction. How about you, Nathan? What are you working on? For the year of 2018, I am doing a monthly zine project called zine 2018. Each monthly issue is a collection of essays, art, photography, and a game, and each one organized around a central theme based on the month. So you can see more about that at ndpdesign.com slash zine2018, and it is available through my Patreon at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta.

In addition, you can check out all of my games at ndpdesign.com, including the Worldwide Wrestling Roleplaying Game and the forthcoming Trouble for Hire, which may be interesting to some of our listeners. So that's it for now. Thank you again for listening. We very much appreciate your support. And now back to the show. So he goes to his apartment, looks around. This is kind of a longish watching Jim do stuff scene. But the important things are that he finds a big suitcase that looked like it was brand new.

Had a big price tag on it. I think it was like $259. Or was it $259? No, I think it was $259. Which, that is like a grand. Yeah. Like maybe it's all leather. I don't know.

Like, yeah. Well, that makes sense given the context we learned in a minute. But I was like, damn. Yeah. So far we've heard that this guy is a, he runs a laundromat. Yeah. So it's an expensive suitcase. I guess there's not that much stuff in the closet.

And then a piece of mail comes through the slot, another piece of mail, from a savings and trust bank. Jim calls Sally to set up the background for a con that he doesn't actually end up needing, which I kind of like. It's like we always see Jim running it, but we never really see him prepping it. It's like we always see Jim running it, but we never really see him prepping it. He asked her to take a message for Mr. Cooley if she gets one because banks are so because banks are just about the hardest people to get information from. And she says that she will. So his strategy here is that he shows up an hour late to the appointment that he had made just when this guy from the bank, George Neff is leaving for lunch so that he can invite himself along. Yeah.

You know, I really need to get a burger and a beer or I just go, you know, crazy or whatever. I was all set for this guy to be a total like stonewall, have to pry it out of him. Yeah. Use this Mr.

Cooley gambit that he'd already set up in the previous scene, but no, they go to Tommy's on the corner cut to them in a booth with this guy neff ordering his fourth martini yeah with a huge plate with it like a plate with a giant sandwich on it untouched in front of him while rockford has half of a burger and half of a beer in front of him uh yeah no this is good it gets even better when uh a little bit later in the scene rockford takes the check it's a small moment but his look at the check is exquisite it's just this tiny like uh yeah so his his line not that it almost doesn't matter but he says that he's a

inheritance tax yeah you know official for the state or whatever one of the things that he commonly does but now that uh george neff is on his fourth martini you know you're gonna tell me about arnold moe the guy's like, I was? You were. Okay. So he starts telling Rockford everything that he knows, which is that he had extensive holdings, but there's not much left now because he instructed the bank to convert his assets into bearer bonds. And so by now he must have six figures worth of bearer bonds in his safety deposit box. We've learned anything over the past six seasons of the Rockford Files

is that nothing good ever comes of converting money into bearer bonds. Criminal activity always involves bearer bonds. It is the Bitcoin of the 70s and early 80s. Jim's like, oh, well, his laundry business must've done really well. Arnold Moe laundry business. You must be joking. He was a great accountant. Yeah.

And the state accountancy board will know his, uh, where his office was and how to get in touch with them. Uh, we, uh, go back to Jim's trailer where he's talking to Sally and we get the, we're going to talk out what, what we think happened so that the audience knows what happened scene.

I mean, in this scene, it's important to note that Jim offers her a delectable dessert. Is that a dessert? I couldn't tell what it was. He said, would you like some dessert? And she turned it down, right? And it's a Twinkie. He has a prepackaged Twinkie. It's a very Jim moment.

Well, because he says this is a poor dinner for Eddie. We know Eddie likes good food and good drink. That was a thing that he said earlier. Like, he doesn't have any friends, but he loves good food and good drink or something like that. Right. So, I does not want Jim's Twinkie. drink or something like that yeah um so i does not want jim's twinkie uh and we uh get the information that uh arnold moe worked for the union that ryan is the head of yeah uh he must have cooked the books while ryan in order for ryan to steal money and he probably skimmed a

bunch for himself as well and it looked like mo Moe was looking to cash out, right? He was converting all his cash into bonds and he had the suitcase and all this stuff. So maybe he was tipping off Eddie to what was happening and he was going to give him some kind of evidence so that everything fell on Ryan and Moe could just skip town with all of his money and be clean of wrongdoing with his own take.

So they theorized that it must have been something like a book or a ledger of all these accounting shenanigans. That would be the proof of all these fraud, you know, embezzlement and whatnot. That must be the package. It hasn't gotten to Rockford yet. It's got to be in the morning mail. Cut to Ryan yelling at his goons to find that package

cut to chapman in a dimly lit room exhausted trying just trying to get something out of the united states postal service yes rockford had been proven right all along uh chapman should have brought some sandwiches the staging is great because it's like it's this woman with this helmet of hair at a desk with one light with the big usps seal behind her the rest of the room is in darkness and chapman's in just like one chair like a supplicant before her and his hair's all down and he looks exhausted oh that's good stuff it's regulations regulations regulations we only deliver packages to the addressed recipient chapman blows up about all these regulations why can't you just help a guy out and he even says something uh like you know you won't get the package you won't let me see the thing you know

you have to see all my receipts like he he, he slips in a complaint about the IRS and then ends with, doesn't the fact that I'm a police Lieutenant mean anything? And she looks at him and just says, no. Yeah. The Chapman is falling apart. That's the emotional core of Chapman. Yeah. Why doesn't my position mean that I get better treatment? And this woman saying regulations can't do it. He, he, he would need a search warrant from a federal magistrate in order to,

uh, acquire what he wants here. But, uh, yeah, I love how this shows us exactly why he isn't taking like the, like he's simultaneously super pressured and not taking seriously his audit. He doesn't think he should have to deal with it.

It's interesting to you because so obviously this episode is setting up some, uh, schadenfreude, right? Like we're so, and you know, there's going to be a good note to that at the end, but,

uh, it has to do this though because we as longtime fans have seen chapman over the years we know we we would love to see him get his comeuppance it's interesting to see this show and think of it in isolation see this episode and think of it in isolation yeah he is a jerk to to rockford but not really he's just frustrated with everyone um like this is a comedy about a man whose life is falling apart like that's what this part of it is we can appreciate a lot of it because we know that we know the history of this character um not that you can't appreciate it if you saw it as a standalone episode because it does the work to show you

why he deserves you know what he's gonna get but i think there's a level of appreciation of exactly how satisfying this is going to be that comes from seeing jim get hassled by this guy so much over and over yeah now that we know that chapman isn't getting anywhere. We roll into our kind of our final act. I guess at this point, Jim knows that Chapman is not going to get the package. So Jim is waiting for Fred, the mailman. And as he and so Jim and Sally are like riding are together in this scene. So he gets out of the Firebird, goes over and Fred's like, I have your package. She's like,

like, like I want to be done with this whole thing. And he's got a huge bandage over his head. Poor Fred. Yeah. This is a nice, uh, uh,

intercut, uh, scene here. So Jim starts opening the, finally starts opening the wrapping on this package before we can see what it is. We cut to the goons who intercept Fred closer to Jim's house. Yes.

And he's like, I already gave it to Jim. And they, to their credit, are like, all right. They just get back in their car. Why would anyone lie to us? Right. So cut back and Jim lifts out what is clearly a wheel of cheese. Sweeney's green mountain cheddar. Yes. Sally says, I don't understand. And Jim says, it's my favorite cheese.

I had, I had by this point completely forgotten the title of the episode and i was like oh you got me i like that we know uh jim's favorite thing of cheese finally six seasons in three episodes to go and we know his favorite cheese uh and it's so weirdly touching because this is this final act by a loner friend who only Jim really knows. Angel doesn't know Jim's favorite cheese. Rocky probably doesn't know Jim's favorite cheese. Only Eddie could possibly know Jim's favorite cheese. And probably sent it to Jim as a joke. I mean, there's a reason for him to send it.

Could have bought it at the train station maybe it's a whole wheel it's like yeah yeah it's a lot of cheese as we'll see eddie you know executed a clever double blind here but eddie chose his favorite cheese in addition to the other purpose of sending this package good old eddie course, our goons drive up and grab the package that Jim has put the cheese back into. And he has a line as they come up of like, no matter what I say, they're not going to like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll never believe me. They'll never believe me.

Right. Yeah. But they just grab it and drive back off with it. Like, what do we do now and he picks up the outer wrapping that the package had been wrapped in and i guess we see on the camera i guess we see the return address maybe there's something about it that jim looks at yeah and goes like you know what i remember and this is a thing that i don't really know what it is because we don't have newspapers anymore right but so maybe you know what this

meant he remembers that eddie kept a box number with the classified section of the newspaper because he moved around so much he needed somewhere to get his mail so in my notes i'm like oh he had a po box but that's not what this is no i suspect it is a little bit like a P.O. box. I bet you if you're selling things through classifieds that a newspaper might offer this service where you can get in contact with me at the newspaper or something like that. Sure. So, yeah, like sending someone mail, you know, in care of the newspaper. Because it seems like a simple thing for them to do and to upsell you on a classified, right? Yeah. Anyway, he recalls that.

And so this is actually kind of a clever thing that I didn't realize until just now because I know the rest of the episode. But Sally's like, oh, yeah, I forgot that too. Yeah. My very next line in my notes here is don't trust. I don't trust Sally. Interesting. Why not? notes here is don't trust i don't trust sally interesting why not there was a scene early on where it felt like she was pumping jim for information like i think the first scene where

they're together right because she has this whole story about her friend that she could tell anything to yes yes and it's it feels a little bit like a con and then then when Jim invites her in on the con, now all of this, like in my notes, it's like, I don't know which way to feel about this. She's a reporter, so she's probably run a con like this. So that's why she's in with Jim on this. And it turns out it's even less likely than that. The truth is actually doesn't really explain that. I did not question this character at all until the reveal, which we'll get to in a second. Yeah, it's just a moment later. But yeah, I mean, I did think during that dinner scene with that whole story and stuff

was a little bit of like, you should tell me more about this guy. I will construct a story that's kind of similar so that you will tell me something. Yeah. But I thought that was still in service of I have to write a story and I didn't actually know him. Exactly. And then she got invested in finding out what really happened. That's as much excuse as we need

for someone to ride with Jim to do things, right? Yeah. At this point, like, I didn't trust her, but I also had no clue what her angle would have been. This is kind of a tell,

as we learn, where she's like, I forgot that also. So they go to the newspaper so that Jim like i forgot that also so they go to the newspaper so that jim can track down the box and they go into the doors oh i want to say just before the doors because i gotta i gotta point as his accountant i gotta point this out sure he needs her to feed the parking meter it's just you're inside the uh uh newspaper office looking out the window and you see pantomime business around the parking meter.

But it's very clear that she's ready to run in. And Jim is like, I don't have a coin. They do go in and she says that she needs to go file or something because she hasn't been at work because she's been doing this. And the editor will be mad at her or something, which sounds plausible. In my notes it says, still don't trust Sally. Jim goes to the classifieds. So he does a very quick classic Jim con on the poor woman who's at the front desk in the classifieds section.

So you've got the vice president of the newspaper, send him down for the package that's in Hellinger's box, and he's going to be real mad if the thing that he sent me down for doesn't happen. And she, of course, who is she to argue with the vice president? Right. So she returns. There was no package, but there is this envelope. And so Jim, of course, opens the envelope and there's a key inside.

The trail, the breadcrumbs continue to to uh create our trail uh so they said we'll meet back at the car he's in the lobby doesn't see her gets impatient yeah and goes to find her uh there's a bunch of reporters at desks or whatever he asked one of them hey where's uh sally i forget what her last name was. I didn't note it down, but it's like Sally Parker or something like that. Yeah, it's not even an IMDb for a reason. This is the part of my notes where I wrote down, here we go. We're Sally Parker. And the guy's like, oh, she's over there.

Jim goes over and the woman at that desk is not the Sally that we have seen. He's like, where's Sally? And Sally Parker is like, I'm Sally Parker. Dun, dun, dun. I trust that Sally. Yeah, she seems trustworthy. So dramatic reveal. Sally has been lying to Jim all along.

Yes. And I was actually surprised because, again, I did not pick up on any of those tells while I was watching it. I trusted Sally. That's what I'm saying. My distrust of her. I wasn't I wasn't 100 percent in my distrust of her. And I was always like half a step. You know, like it wasn't like from the beginning I knew that she was a problem.

It was like at this point I'm like, oh, it was just before they were about to reveal it. And I think it's handled pretty well that it works both ways because of who she actually is, which we'll learn in a second. Cause if it had like huge dramatic implications for like who killed, uh, Eddie, then I'd kind of be like,

I wish I had had more indication. Right. Right. But it's, it's fine that it's a surprise because so jim confronts her and we see that his affect has totally changed and he's like being sarcastic and stuff because he knows that she's been lying to him and he grabs her bag and starts going through it it's like oh just looking for id i'm like i i know you're not sally parker or whatever the name was like fine

i'm sally sternhagenagen IRS and he immediately hands the purse back and says I don't think I disturbed anything yeah yeah he went from being like I'll get to the bottom okay here you go so it turns out that she is in fact a treasury department

IRS agent has been all along Eddie contacted the IRS saying that he had info that would nail Ryan on tax fraud and all these other things. So she was coming out to follow up on that. He got murdered. And so she decided that Jim, I figured if I stuck with you,

that was the best way to find out what was going on. I am all here for the Sally. What was her last name? Sternhagen. Sally Sternhagen, IRS agent, backdoor pilot. Yes. I would watch her solve financial crimes. Yes, exactly.

Adopting a variety of guises. Yeah. Yeah, she'd be great. I feel like Jim's like, all right, fair enough. This is not really a problem for him because she's not after him. Yes. You know, he is not the target of the IRS investigation. Therefore, they can continue this track that they're on, which takes them back to the train station.

Because the key is, of course course for a locker at the train station they there used to be those i remember lockers and public uh places and airports and stuff yeah we cut to ryan this is a another great little humanizing scene in his like office and we think we i think we could get an establishing shot of the seal of the like international union of meat packers like we finally find, I was like, Oh, that's why it was in a meat packing plant. That makes sense. Anyway,

he opens the box and goes, it's a lousy stinking cheese. And the two guys are like, we didn't know it was a cheese. It's like, why would we open it? You know, like he's yelling at his dumb goons for being dumb,

which is great. But then he says, it's like, where's the book? I'm looking for the book i'm looking for the book so yes the thing that they theorized is what's what's in play here if it got mailed from the train station still got to be there so they're going to go back and look for it themselves so of course all of our principals are headed towards the train station yes dim and sally

opened this locker and sure enough there is is an identical brown package in there. They open it up, and inside is a big ledger that is helpfully labeled Ryan Pension Fund Accounts. Yes. We see our goons. We see Rockford and Sally see the goons. And Rockford, you know, thinks on his feet, tell Sally to go call the police. And then he grabs the package and start and like, obviously makes himself known so that the goons chase him.

And now we get this, this very dramatic finale where they chase him outside the station into the actual train yard. They're running in between trains and uh it ends with jim running through something where he can't really see what's on the other side they chase him and then we hear the honk of the semi horn and we had the scene from the preview montage of the oncoming truck and then the camera flips to them to to the two goons, and they're both putting their hands up with horrified looks on their faces. And then it cuts.

Yes. And in my notes, I think I have, did they get hit by a bus? Holy s***, did that truck hit them? Yeah, that is what I wondered as well. And that's not even the most holy s*** thing coming up. It's immaterial, the logistics of how this happened. the most holy s*** think of it up. It's immaterial, the logistics of how this happened, but

Ryan is in some kind of, like, one of the train cars or something, looking for Jim. He's like, hey, we can settle this right now. You're never going to get away. That kind of stuff. Jim's waiting for him, and then closes this big steel door behind him. So the two of them are

in this, like, isolated, dark chamber. The way that it's lit you see ryan's face and you can see rockford but he's kind of in shadow yeah and he has a line about this is the first time we've been alone and then we see rockford's shadow eclipsing over ryan yeah and then we cut from there it's just just, it's like, oh my God. It's out of character for Rockford. And probably a reminder that this guy has had Rockford's friend killed, right? This is not a moment that shows up a lot in the Rockford files, but usually when that

thing happens, he just gets them caught. Like that's his MO. In this case, it's not. It's this very dark. And if they had ended it there, I would have been like, what? Yeah. The ever living hell. Fortunately, we do have a finale scene here.

Back in Chapman's office, Jim and Sally sitting in front of his desk. Chapman dressing Jim down as he always does. There are two guys with critical injuries. Yes. And the union guy, Ryan, with contusions. So Rockford had a sack full of oranges with him or something? Yeah. It is established that nobody was killed,

but critical injury sounds pretty bad. And Jim definitely beat that guy up. It's so, and contusions is such a Rockford Files threatening word, right? Yeah. I feel like there's mob folk that have threatened people with contusions before. Yeah.

But yeah. So we let our imaginations play with what happened in that room. He could have tripped backing away from Rockford. I would have done it. We have an Officer Billings appearance as he comes into the room to tell Chapman that he has a phone call. Chapman's like, oh, you know, I'm busy. Well, it's really important, Lieutenant.

It's your accountant. So, of course, Lieutenant Chapman takes the call at his desk in front of the two of them. His accountant's name is Murray. And he's like, change whatever you need to change. I'll swear to everything. All those idiots at the IRS, they don't actually look at anything. Like, he insults the IRS agents yes implies that he can get out from under this audit and tells his accountant to do a crime right he hangs up and then there's a little

bit of business where sally asks him for a pen because she's going to take down his name and he gets suspicious and he's like wait what is this and jim goes you want to tell them and uh Sally shows him her badge with her IRS ID and he starts stammering and being like oh that was a joke my my accountant he's my second cousin we're always joking about this kind of stuff and then we end our episode with this fantastic freeze frame of Jim Jim Rockford leaning back in his chair, cup of water in hand, smiling his broadest smile, watching Chapman squirm. So there's no raw numbers in this episode with relation to Rockford's...

Well, he clearly wasn't getting paid. No, he wasn't getting paid. And he definitely paid for things. It seemed very clear that he paid for the lunch with the banker and may have paid for dinner with Sally that one time it was fun watching his

as our interests intersect here his food choices I felt descended as the episode went I think you could see him losing money as the episode goes on like like she's like i've never seen a steak that big to let's split a twinkie to and you pay the parking meter yeah whenever he has to get food with other people it's like expensive and not the stuff he

would have and then when he's on his own he's like like, a taco. Yes. A package of Twinkies. Yeah. So we talked about a little bit, but that climactic scene. Yeah. Yes. So this episode has a nice like circular kind of pattern to it where we start at the train station, we end at the train station. Circular like a big wheel of cheese. Like a big wheel of cheese. Yes, exactly.

But also we start with a more gruesome than normal act. And then we end with a more gruesome than normal act. Yeah. We don't see that on camera, right? But that's one of the, you know, the technique is cut away before you see the results so that the audience imagines it. And that's executed well to show us that Rockford is, he doesn't just want to bust the case open, right? He doesn't just want to get this guy to jail. He wants some kind of revenge for what this guy caused to happen to his friend.

There's also a description of what happened to his friend. I think Dennis delivers it and it is gruesome all the blood was leaking out of them like uh yeah what was the line it was a good line um and just talking about how it was just this very cold and professional hit yeah like they knew what they were doing and so uh yeah uh it has interesting contrast sometimes when these happen you know i've been known to say oh i bet you this was a script from something else that they slammed into the Rockford files. I don't actually think that's the case here. This feels very Rockford files.

But it does also feel like, like I said at the beginning, like a revenge flick. And it's also interesting that he spends most of his time trying to figure out like he knows who he's just trying to figure out why right he's trying to figure out why and find the evidence yeah so it's actually it's kind of an interesting look at using a mcguffin also which we've talked about before we're like yeah not only is it the thing that everyone's chasing and that's what makes the plot it also has a story impact the fact that it's the ledger because that makes the narrative of the union boss embezzling and you know all that stuff come together and it also thematically highlights chapman's issues with the irs and then the fact that jim ends up with the

wheel of cheese is like a character moment that further illustrates his relationship with Eddie. And it's also funny. Yeah. Yeah. It's in this case, it's not just a scene that carried multiple did did multiple things. It's like the MacGuffin carried multiple weights, which is kind of nice. One of the things that's so wonderfully Rockford about it is that most of the tension in this episode comes from bureaucracy. You got Chapman's story, which is about the IRS.

And it's about him trying to somehow, you know, get around the letter of the law. So he's got his receipts and, you know, he has his accountant and that's all. Right. Nothing about receipts and accountants sounds exciting. Right. But it's still fun and it's enjoyable to watch and then the other half is this mail procedure this this things lost at the postal office uh and where they go and who has them it could be in route or whatever and um it's just something very Rockford-files about that. Like the using bureaucracy and the difference between people in power because of their position and people in power because of being criminals or having physical threats.

Yeah. And also, like we talked about, all the humor is very Rockford humor. Yeah. all the humor is very Rockford humor. Yeah. I think I might have a clarification slash retraction coming in live from 30 Years of the Rockford Files by Ed Robertson. So first of all, just fun trivia,

the original title for this episode was This Package is Extra Sharp. And they retitled it The Big Cheese, which I guess is also addressing the fact that he's the union boss, right? Yeah. And also that Chapman thinks he's such a big deal. But this package is extra sharp is also pretty good. That's good, yeah.

But reproduced in this write-up is a page from the shooting schedule for this episode. write-up is a page from the shooting schedule for this episode and it includes the scene with rockford and becker uh getting the address of the other victim and under the line that says vehicles livestock and props it lists chili dog oh in addition to coffee slip of paper rockford's firebird and becker's car. So, that thing that we said was a taco, perhaps that was in fact a chili dog. Oh, but I could have sworn it had a taco shell. I thought so too.

Maybe they reshot it or something. Or maybe it was supposed to be a chili dog, but they made a game time decision that it was a taco. A chili dog seems more in line with that dialogue. Like, how can you eat that? Right.

So it seems chili dog does sound like garbage food. Right. It's still garbage food. But confirmed that Rockford and Neff in the bar were eating hamburgers and fries. Good. Good. I was worried about that. Yeah.

That's the other thing about that scene that was a little out of character was, and you could easily read it as Dennis feeling sorry for Rockford, but Dennis just hands that address over. Yeah. There's no cajoling or anything like that. He's just like, here you go. Ongoing police investigation. Enjoy. Well, in here, I think we can kind of use the other things in this episode to headcanon why that happened without any textual evidence, which is we talked about how they set up the tension between Chapman and Dennis. So, like, if this is a thing where it's Chapman's investigation and Dennis knows that Rockford is, like, really serious about this, He doesn't have any reason not to help Rockford because what? He's just going to mess up Chapman's investigation. That's Chapman's problem, not Becker's problem. Right.

I mean, it also is just the easiest way to get him to the accountant's apartment. It doesn't stand out as weird to me because I think there is a justification provided by the rest of the episode. I will, I will agree to that stipulation yeah uh i think this is a good episode it's a little weird not in a bad way but in like a memorable way it stands out a little bit from the you know quote unquote standard rockford files episode it's a little darker we get to see jim be really grieving yeah and like not very good at processing that and uh some great character moments between him and the regular cast like all the deals with him and angel are funny and also sad uh the deal

with his with rocky is is pretty sad as well uh And yeah, no, it's good stuff. In fact, the entry about this episode compares it to Sleight of Hand, which we mentioned earlier. And I was thinking about that a little bit as we were talking, because I would have to watch it again because it's been a while.

But my memory of Sleight of Hand, which is an episode that centers around Rockford getting into a longer term relationship with a woman. And then she just straight up disappears and he has to find out what happened to her. And it turns out that she was murdered. Very sad. But that one's more melancholy. Yeah.

And this one's more like raw. Yeah. Like we don't really see Rockford as angry in Sleight of Hand. He's more i mean he we might in moments but not to the degree that we do in this episode yeah i would have to watch it again it's been a while but uh i think um there's definitely a difference in tone i think that like this one is the the read you had on it with that rockford is throwing himself into the case and that's keeping him from having to deal with what actually happened or having to to process it or whatever I think is

great I think that's precisely what's what they're trying to get across and what is going down cool well do you have any other thoughts about the big cheese uh no I think that's uh that covers just about all of it like i said uh it's clear that rockford has not been able to pay his bills by the end of this episode well he only has three episodes left so hopefully he can keep the creditors at bay that long and he's he's got a good friend with the fbi now or i'm sorry uh with the irs now he's got a good friend with the IRS. Recall that this season opens with him getting audited because they're threatening to sell off all of his stuff because he lost a lawsuit. So he's making lots of friends with, like,

people who are potentially in control of his financial destiny in this sixth season. Well, hopefully this was as entertaining and interesting uh as our uh usual format go ahead and let us know through the twitters uh or through our patreon at patreon.com slash 200 a day if there's anything about this that you preferred or thought was not as good as we're going to continue tweaking our formula a little bit as we uh record our next couple of episodes uh yeah i'm excited to see uh how people received it cool well even though rockford didn't make any money i think that we've earned our 200 for today so we will be back next time to talk about another

episode of the rockford files