Two Hundred A Day - Episode 43: A Bad Deal in the Valley

Episode Date: December 23, 2018

Nathan and Eppy talk about S2E22 A Bad Deal in the Valley. After an old girlfriend saddles Jim with a briefcase full of counterfeit cash, he has to figure out what her con is before the Feds get to him... or her. A solid, but unremarkable episode overall that shares many threads with other others we've talked about so far. We feel like it's a great introduction to the Rockford Files vibe, and fun to watch by itself, but it doesn't do anything in particular better than any other episode of the show. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars Mike Gillis and the Radio vs. The Martians Podcast And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Uncle Jim, it's Ralph. I got your letter, but I moved out here anyway. I really want those detective lessons. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. As per usual, I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. And for this episode, this was a classic epi-pic, I would say. Which episode are we talking about this time? We are talking about episode 22, season 2. This is a bad deal in the valley. This is the, I believe, the season ender?

I think so. It doesn't end with a click or anything like that as far as i know we don't destroy the uh firebird yeah neither neither the firebird nor jim's trailer is destroyed all in all i'd say jim got off easy in this episode all right that's it we're done yeah good um so this episode is uh as we said uh the last episode in season two which is kind of when the show was re uh reclaiming its creative stride after a bit of a of a dip at the beginning of the season it is written by a team donald gold and lester burke or less burke who we have seen before they uh wrote they wrote the episode feeding frenzy which we talked about in our episode 27

and that's the one that has the amazing um uh handoff like hostage exchange in the middle of the ice very memorable um i don't know if we got into it on that episode i don't recall but uh lester burke was the unit manager for the rockford files i don't really know how tv production works but is kind of a uh production manager lane position um so he was you know around for the whole series came in with this guy donald gold who was mostly a director and an assistant director on other shows he also produced miami vice is in his portfolio so yeah so the two of them teamed up for for for three of these episodes but uh lester burke in addition to being the you know on on for the TV show, he's also credited as the second assistant director on the movies, on the 90s movie.

about a little bit about how people from the show came back into roles that were close to what they had on the show even though they're farther along in their careers at that point i think this is one of those guys where he was producing shows and and stuff in the 90s but they came in as second ad for the for the to get the team back together. Yeah, yeah. I see he's also written some Six Million Dollar Man episodes, which I've been enjoying quite a few lately. So in case if you're wondering if I've moved forward in time in my television viewing, a little bit. A little bit. The director for this one is Jerry London. One of his eight episodes of the rockford files including our very first episode we did tall woman in a red wagon and uh which i believe we both liked quite a lot

yeah and also our episode 18 just by accident which we did not actually like very much so uh yeah we'll see but yeah uh he's one of these guys who's has this extensive tv direction portfolio transition in tv movies and fun imdb lookup apparently he has a movie that he's directing that's in pre-production for 2019 that is 13 years after his last credit oh wow yeah so he's coming back. He had a, he had some, some credits in the early two thousands and apparently is doing this,

this movie. Yeah. That's, I mean, I understand that. So I picked this episode and we briefly, if you've listened to our special edition episode, but I picked this episode because I have been going,

dealing with some real estate and I essentially, here was my technique. I sat down, I opened up Google and I typed in Rockford Files real estate and it said, like real estate in Rockford, Illinois? And I said, no. And then it said, oh, okay, how about this episode? And I said, yeah, that episode sounds lovely. And then it said, oh, okay, how about this episode? And I said, yeah, that episode sounds lovely. It's our extremely technical way of deciding which episode we're going to do next. And started watching it, and it just kept coming back to me. I kept feeling like we had watched it before.

I mean, I've seen all of these episodes before, right? But I felt like we had watched it and discussed it. And as it turns out, it touches upon some themes from some previous episodes that we had done. I guess we'll get into them when we get into them. But I kept having to check to make sure we had reported about this thing. Yeah.

Well, between some recurring or some returning character actors um and actors in the in this episode this episode i think does a good job encapsulating a lot of the meat of the rockford files like this is a good here's what a rockford files episode is um which means that it's familiar because a lot of these things we've seen in other episodes. That's actually, that's an interesting take because I, yeah, I think I would definitely, if somebody was like, I just need one episode to show me what the Rockford Files is, I'd feel comfortable giving this episode. I wouldn't say that this is the definitive episode, but it would

give you an idea of how the Rockford files works and i would tell them to while they're watching it i would say pay close attention to whether or not he's been hired to do anything yeah and uh i guess the only other thing i would say is what you if this is the first episode you're seeing what you're not getting is who dennis and beth and rocky are you get a little bit you get an understanding that there, but you don't get the whole deal. There's a little bit of nuance that I think we, and we'll talk about it, especially with Beth's appearance, that might be lost if you're not familiar with the characters. But yeah, for

a solid, I mean, yeah, I was just going to say what you said. I would be comfortable saying this is yeah i would be comfortable saying this is not the definitive episode but this is a good showcase of um not even it's not even that it's the most witty episode or the funniest or it has the most compelling script or anything like that because i don't think it does but it's just that it's one of the i feel like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in a way. It has a, the vibe is strong. You get like, uh,

part of the MacGuffin or escrow paper that may not exist. Like, Oh, that's such Rockford. Yeah. The only thing better would be if they were bearer bonds. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Uh, I mean, it has escrow papers, but it also has stolen jewelry and plenty of counter things. I don't want to spoil this, but if you're listening to our episode, you should have watched this episode.

So yeah, it's it just definitely, it has that je ne sais quoi of a Rockford files. Yeah. Well, speaking of je ne sais quoi, what, what jumped out to you about our very brief preview montage?

Oh, so I have one quote from it, and this is interesting. So the quote I have is, I don't want to be anywhere near this one, which is Rockford saying it. What I love about it is that without any information, this quote sounds like Rockford is trying to get away from something that he'll be pulled into, right? Like that's what we understand a Rockford F trying to get away from something that he'll be pulled into, right? Like that's what we understand a rocker files episode is.

But when we get to the moment when he actually says the quote, I think he's lying. Yeah. He's absolutely in that moment digging in as deep as he can. And he's may even being a little sarcastic, but we can discuss that when we hit. That stuck out to me. Oh yeah, for sure. And I mean,

this is a real, real quick preview montage. We know there's a quarter of a million dollars. Someone's getting a, you know, a woman's getting abducted. Rockford's getting arrested. He doesn't want to be involved with whatever is going on.

And then there's an out of control car, you know, what's going to happen. Freeze for before we, we know how it turns out. I want to comment. I know we don't always do this, but I want to comment on the answering machine message. Uncle Jim, it's Ralph.

Does Jim have a brother or sister? So the only relatives that I can recall, I mean, our dad, obviously. Through the answering machine messages, I think we hear an aunt, maybe, on another episode. And this one is his nephew, right? Yes. And also he has his adopted brother, Aaron Ironwood. Oh, maybe. But I also do not think that there is a greater Rockford family

that in the fictional universe. I think this was, as has been noted before, these answering machine messages were straight up just we need something. Someone come up with something funny. We need a gag. We run ourselves into a goddamn corner with this. With this bit. And we can't stop now. But yeah, I remember I just heard it and i was like wait what what's

going on here and uh you know i can also absolutely believe that he's has an avuncular relationship with someone could be someone like the the son of someone he had dated in the past sure yeah that kind of thing totally possible 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners but especially Totally possible. 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 RadioVs the Martians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday evening podcast, all-stars actual play podcast found at misdirected mark.com. Lowell Francis with his award-winning gaming blog at age of Ravens dot 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 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe well speaking of people that jim dated in the past yes oh there's a segue

finally we got one uh we begin our episode uh at a nice looking restaurant where jim so clear is uh at the bar with uh karen this woman karen is going to be uh jim's foil for for the episode uh which i think becomes clear very quickly she's played by an actress named sus Strasberg, who played the Countess in the episode, The Countess, that we did as our second episode of our show. And so she was very familiar to me. I was like, she's had she was definitely in the show. Right. And I was like, ah, in kind of a similar role, actually. But she's great. I think she's probably in this one more than she was in that one yeah i think so uh character is well we'll get into the character but i love this yeah um

we start off the episode with they have some kind of gentle banter to establish the tone and of their relationship right we quickly learn that they used to date. They dated three years ago, but it ended. It had like a fiery ending or something like that or went down in flames. But she's looked Jim up because she heals quickly. Yeah, apparently doesn't. I feel like over the course of the scene, I started going like, all right, when's when's the con going to start with her? Right. Right. But for the first part, it seems pretty straight up where she's being very flirtatious, but also saying how he started thinking about him and looked him up and if he was married or not. He wasn't. There was no Mr. and Mrs. Rockford in the phone book.

So because she's still pretty liberated, she decided to make the first move and give him a call. Pretty liberated, she says as she strokes his hand. Okay, so I want to give everyone involved in this scene a lot of credit because you and I watching Rockford Files were suspicious of her because not, I'm not going to say because of women, but because of people in Jim's past. We were just talking about his adopted brother or Angel or Gandhi or, you know, like people from Jim's past. Who just suddenly show up out of nowhere. Yeah. Which again, talking about this kind of encapsulating other episode. Which again, talking about this kind of encapsulating other episode, it's kind of also the beginning to there's one in every port where a girlfriend from Jim's past suddenly shows up and has a problem that and she's running a con.

But the scene still plays out with enough doubt. I don't know. I just felt like they ran that line really close. And I think that that's a difficult thing to do i think and and as we'll find out there's probably something genuine happening oh yeah here's even though there's a con and that comes through it just does and uh you know i want to give everyone that's involved in it credit for that because it just um it really feels real yeah it's it's uh i think a lot of it is i mean it's both of them but i think a lot of the doubt is also coming from jim's body language right he seems yeah a little suspicious but he's curious as they reiterate but he does seem to be willing to respond to her flirtation so it's not like totally doubtful um but he is

reticent um and i think the suspicion perhaps for the audience or at least this audience member grows once they transition into talking about what she's been up to lately which is that she's gotten into real estate she has her own office and she's doing really well she actually has a deal coming up that is gonna that stands to net her a quarter of a million dollars in profit but she's in a bind um she has a meeting that she forgot about but she has this briefcase full of escrow papers that need to be delivered in order to make this deal happen. So she asked Jim if he can do her a favor, pick up her papers at her office, take them to this other office

while she's at this other meeting, and then they can go to the tennis matches in the afternoon if she has tickets. Yeah, and of course Jim accepts it because, right? Yeah, what's he going to do? Not help her out? Yeah, that is... I just did the inflation calculator for the quarter of a million.

That is that is a cool million, roughly. So, yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, quarter of a million is already a big deal. But I wanted to, like, let everyone know that it's a big deal. The episode credits play over a little montage of Jim going to, it's a, her last name is Stiles, right? So going to Stiles real estate office, picking up this briefcase and then driving away with it. And the camera shows us that Jim's being watched by someone.

I would hazard to guess a goon of some kind in another car. He, he delivers the briefcase to, to a Jack Ch chilson um i guess the other party in this deal there's a little bit of business of like making him wait i didn't get the reference to whatever magazine he picked up i think he just didn't care for the reading choices or i you know pre-smartphone um you have to make your entertainment with what's available and it just wasn't uh something suited to him.

What was really fun was the bit about the receipt and how Jim's like, I don't know why you would want like they're just escrow papers or whatever. Like there's this mismatch there between one's expectations and the others. And you as the audience member, we've already been primed to be a little suspicious of what's going on. But it's time to be really suspicious. And it's interesting to me that Jim isn't. Yeah. At this point, he seems genuinely to have fallen for this. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a little bit like in order for our story to happen, Jim needs to wait there. Yeah.

Yeah, so this other party to the exchange, Jack Chilson, as you say, asks him if he wants a receipt and then is like, well, don't you think you should get one in a matter of this magnitude or whatever? And then they make him wait for a while, which we I think becomes evident is clearly stalling. Because as Jim asks about how long it's going to take to get this receipt, two LAPD officers run on in.

They don't run. They quick walk on in and arrest Jim Rockford. And then we get a significant glance of this guy, Chilson, looking out of his office door as they hustle him out. I thought that there was going to be more with this guy. Actually, this is the only time we see him. Yeah, this is definitely a Rockford special where you hire somebody who can look like he's important. But yeah, that's important. Uh, but yeah, that's it.

You just need a guy to be a character for a moment. Yeah. Um, and I guess that the, the, the little bit with the door may is that, uh, push home that he was,

that he's the one who called the cops, right? Like, however, this went down, it was cause he was stalling. I think it's communicated well by that little bit. so now something, something dramatic has happened.

We are going to what I think is our act two of the episode with Jim at the police station talking to his good friend, Sergeant Dennis Becker. I have in my notes here, classic Dennis and Jim. This is very classic. When we say things are classic, Dennis, this episode is a good reference point for what we're talking about. He just doesn't give Jim any slack whatsoever.

It seems like a situation to give Jim slack, but as we know, time viewers uh that the relationship is if somebody's bringing jim into the police station uh that's trouble for dennis like there's he's not incentivized to help jim out because jim just means uh problems like in some ways i'm sure dennis wouldn't mind putting jim in jail so the reason he was arrested is uh as it turns out that briefcase did not contain escrow papers no it was full of a hundred thousand dollars of crooked money um whereas dennis says it's not straight it is counterfeit bills and so he has the actual briefcase and opens it to show show jim that it's full of this money jim of course is like you know why are you bringing me in on this i'm just the messenger uh i picked up the briefcase

it was locked he mentions so like okay so he didn't look at what was in it it was locked anyway i delivered it and yeah oh jim has such a great wounded look in this again like it you see it seems like he genuinely he may not have fallen for it entirely but he genuinely hoped that this was legit right right yeah um and so and he's like we'll talk to karen she can tell you this and uh becker says like well she says that the money that she gave you was real and that she hates to think that you're ripping her off right so now i think we see uh we see jim realizing that he's been he's been played yeah i jumped the gun on that wounded thing yeah this is the moment when that happens and it just comes it's just right all over his entire face you

can see it's also great because of how exasperated Jim is in these situations. By contrast, when you think of Angel being in a situation like this, Angel would be panicking. Right. Jim's not panicking. He's like, ah, let's just straighten this out so I can get on with my life. It's like, I'm so obviously not at fault here. Yeah. We have our, I think our only joke in the the cut here in this episode where but it's a good one where dennis says you counterfeit money that's a federal beef you know and jim goes i know and

then we cut to beth saying that's a federal beef you know and jim goes i know i know this scene oh my all right so i mean we we did talk about it a little bit before about how if you don't know the stuff between Beth and Jim, you can guess at it watching the scene. But if you do know this, this scene is just delicious because you're just waiting for it to come out. The relationship between Jim and uh in this moment yeah so beth uh jim's lawyer of course um he's he's annoyed he wasn't able to find her the night before so he's been in jail for the night and she has a line about how like i'm allowed to have a social life you know and the way that she's acting. And then Jim says something about like, so something about Karen,

I forget exactly what the line is, but Beth is clearly annoyed that whatever is happening is because Jim got involved with an old girlfriend, right? Like that's the subtext to, to this whole thing. Jim and Beth of course have their oscillating relationship over the course of these seasons. And Beth does, you know, have their oscillating relationship over the course of these seasons. And Beth does, you know, turn on her lawyering after she makes him aware that, you know, she's not at his beck and call.

Yeah. She can't always just be there whenever he gets into trouble. But yeah, she does have that. There's that undercurrent of like, really, Karen? And that's, again, i think the joy and watching it you really see it yeah um and it's as you say it is a delicious little ambiance uh to the scene i mean i i want jim to be right i want jim to come out on top but i also love to watch him squirm especially at the hands of beth yes, especially at the hands of Beth.

Beth brings up another rarely seen but appreciated side character, the bail bondsman, Sully. Yes. Sully won't bail him out on this. And I forget what they say. It's like a $10,000 bond or something. Yeah, I don't remember the... Yeah, so Beth is annoyed and annoyed and asks like so who is this karen person anyway and jim reveals information that gives us more context for the first scene

that jim did time with her dad in prison yeah so he knows her through his con buddy her dad again this is like uh one in every port right right? It's that same relationship where he knows somebody, another con man, probably from prison, and knows there's possibly... Dated their daughter, and then it's coming back. That's a pattern that Jim really should probably think about. Yeah, should take some time. Talk to someone about it. think about yeah she takes a dive talk to someone about it so beth clarifies that yes of course she knows that jim's been set up she kind of lets him wriggle about like what you don't believe me either like of course it's a it's a beautiful frame job but then uh becker comes in and hey you know what it's all been cleared up yeah you're good uh we don't have any reason to hold you you're out on it says you're out on or i i looked up because I'm not familiar with that phrase, but I believe that that just means he's out on his own recognizance.

Yeah. There's no bail. You can just. Good episode. Yeah. Episode over. Of course, that is extremely suspicious. Jim heads home in the first appearance of the firebird in this episode oh before we get to that

i do want to talk about one brief little moment where uh it's just the smallest thing but i loved it so much when he's allowed to go he looks a little doubtful about it but he leaves with beth and there's that moment where dennis is left alone in the room and it's like he's like wait why am i here because jim says like hey we'll get lunch sometime. Good to see you, Dennis. We'll have to get lunch sometime. And it's like, yeah, sure. And then they close the door behind his back so he can't walk out with them. Oh, it's good.

Yeah. It's good. I have to believe that that was just how they did the scene. Yeah. It was just on the set, how it worked out. And they're like, no, that's perfect. Yeah. This next scene is very brief.

We just see that there's a mysterious car in the parking lot by jim's trailer with some ominous music so we know that that's suspicious uh jim's dad rocky is waiting for him in the trailer and uh it's like hey it's great you got out of jail but jim you know telling us what we already know the cops must know something that he doesn't and that's why they let him out they just open the door and let me out that worries me a bit though i think now that the plot is thickening we get into the the meat of this episode so i've been i you know i've started breaking these down into these acts kind of just to help organize my thoughts and kind of how the story look at the narrative construction and this one really has like a bell curve, really short bits to set everything up. And then this middle part is like most of the episode in terms of the rhythm

of what's happening. Cause this is the whole part where Jim basically figures out what's going on. We start off with Jim going to the tennis club. It was as, as forementioned, Karen's a tennis fan or it's a part of the club or whatever finds her on the tennis court. She appears to be surprised to see him. Um,

which I think is genuine. I think, you know, she expected him to still be in jail. We have the first of a number of scenes where he basically keeps telling her that he knows that she's conning him and he just wants to know why. And she has layer after layer of deflection about what she's doing and why. In this case, she says that she trusts him.

She knows he's honest, but every man has his price. And she was worried that if she told him that there was $10,000 or no, it's $100,000. $150 even, right? There's $100 thousand dollars in the case okay okay yeah that so if she told him that there was a hundred thousand dollars in that briefcase maybe you know he would have stolen it yeah and he's like well but it was counterfeit and she says like well a week ago she sold a hundred acres of land for cash from a friend and she wouldn't have done it for cash but he's a friend

and i did i'm just realizing now that this hooks into what is actually going on because she says that he's getting a divorce and didn't want to have this on his bank records or something and that does come into play later at the time i was like okay some excuse. But so he's the one who gave her the phony money. She didn't know it was counter. So it's really his fault. So he still doesn't believe her, of course, and wants her to go tell the cops about this. And she's like, what? And then I'll be the one on the hook for this whole fraud thing.

He's like, no, tell the cops about this guy, Tony Letterer, the one who gave her the phony money. Then she's like, OK, OK, fine. And then there's this whole bit where she's like i'm gonna go change jim clearly does not believe her that she's going to go change yeah he's he's well aware that that is not going to happen um but two extremely beefy tennis guys come up and uh interrupt to make sure that everything's okay. And so this is enough to keep Jim from physically hauling her out of there. So she goes to change and we have a little bit here where he asked them if there's another way out of the facility and they both just stare at him. And I'm like, okay, so she's doing a runner. But then I was surprised as we go to the front of the club, he's waiting and she does actually come out. Right.

There's a thing about the question about if there's another way out of here. He asked that and I think the same thing. Like he's trying to head her off before she runs off. But he asks that same question later on. And I think he's trying to avoid what's about to happen. Oh, interesting. But let's talk about what's about to happen. And what happens is that a car pulls up, two goons jump out of it, punch Rockford in the back of the head, grab Karen, throw her in the car and peel off. And we see a close camera shot on the license plate to connect this to the next scene where Dennis says, well, they ran the plates and the guys were smart.

They used Karen's own car to kidnap her. Well, how do they get access to that? Strange. So, yeah, I mean, I guess there is an open question. range so yeah i mean i guess there is an open question still this this episode has a lot of like once you know how it all goes down you know everything kind of falls into place about why why things happen but watching it and not really remembering how it all came out i was like okay either they are some kind of smart criminals who stole her own car to evade it or she set that up and yeah that was how she got out of the situation was kidnapping

herself um dennis ran this tony letterer through the system and he's clean the only thing is a burglary report from a week ago five hundred thousand dollars in jewelry stolen from the wall safe in there and that the wife reported it he knows it connects somehow but he doesn't know how and uh here we get the i think the bit that you were talking about from the opening montage right yeah jim's taking clearly taking dennis hands him the case file so jim starts looking through it and he pulls out a notebook and starts taking notes at which point dennis objects right like oh it's totally fine for you to look through the case file, but don't take notes. And that's when Dennis said that this is very much

an active case. This is very much an active case. You should not be involved. And that's when Jim said, I don't want to be anywhere near this. And in that context, it feels to me like he is consciously lying to Dennis. Oh, yeah. I don't even think he's trying to deceive Dennis. I think he's just it's like this is politely. I have to tell you, I don't want to be anywhere near this, but we all know what's going to happen next. And he ends with saying, like, look, tell me how it all turns out with with with maximum irony, as if you'll figure it out before i will right is the attitude there jim heads out to the letterer place um we see that he's still being followed and in my in my

notes i say i assume these are the fed yeah you know that they're using him as a stalking horse like that's why they let him out that is generally how the the feds work with Jim. He claims to be an insurance agent. Mrs. Letterer is around the back taking care of her horses. This is a good like couple of details to build this character that again, I thought would maybe have more of a role and ends up not really, but like she has this house. She has these like a couple of horses and she cares about them.

She doesn't trust the vet's opinion and wants to get a second opinion. And then she's extremely direct. She's not rude, but she's very blunt with Jim. And like her bearing and her clothing and everything is very much like this woman is not to be messed with. You really get that feeling from her what's his face letter is it tony yeah tony she's divorcing him and she she's not broken up about it she's just throwing out the trash right that is what she's doing and she's like very clear about her boundaries with it and all of that there's a great line in there where she just says i was staying

with a friend. One thing I want to say about before we meet her, the great bit with her housekeeper. Oh, yeah. Jim takes his card back. He has, because we know, we don't see this, but we know that he has a business card printing machine, printing press. A tiny little hand-powered printing that he, he makes his, his business cards one at a time with, and this is probably the only business card he has for this particular insurance agency. So he takes it back from her, uh, so that he can use it again. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah. Uh, so Mrs. Letterer, um, so he's saying he's from the insurance agency

and then he needs to check all the details again because of this is such a high value claim and everything. Right. Specifying that they are five hundred and twenty two thousand dollars in appraised value. So, yes, as you say, she she sets out the boundaries very specifically. She's divorcing her husband. He wasn't home because he's not welcome. This is her home, her property, her bank account. He has some nice clothes. Yeah. Yeah. And she let him keep his clothes. She knows that he didn't do the burglary because she's had him followed by PIs for two months. And Jim wants to know why. And she says that she's not going to tell him.

And that's that. And oh, and that wasn't just a simple burglary. The safe was actually blown up by dynamite. It was a pretty significant event. I love the change in bearing of Jim, where once he gets to like where she's like, no, I'm not telling you anything else. He's like, all right. And then he kind of stops being so like business friendly and just is Jim. And it's like, all right all right well is there another way

out of here we get the second hit on this thing it's so so honest it's so honest because he just says oh because the feds are following me yeah and i want to lose them like he's not there's no front here there's no there's no consequence to her being like you're not actually from the insurance company because she's not going to tell me anything else anyway. Right. Yeah. I also love how this confirmed my suspicion that I wrote down like within the same scene. Like, yep, that's the FBI. That's who's following him. All right. I was right. A good P.I. only when watching the Rockford files. I can I can do a forensic analysis of any given

Rockford Files scene. Figure out who's the feds and who's the mob. We cut to Jim at the gym as he's tracked down Becker playing basketball in his full gray sweatsuit. Which is amazing. So good. And he vocalizes

that he thinks that the feds sprung him to lead them to to the money and is asking dennis you know whether that's true and what else he can tell him dennis is like what come on you don't know this any idiot is aware of what's going on but he tells jim look uh sam styles karen's father who was in jail with jim he was he went to jail for like passing phony checks or something, but he was one of the best counterfeiters in the country. And now someone that knew him shows up with a briefcase full of phony money.

What are we supposed to think? Right. And then I think he asked like, what are you doing with Karen anyway? And Jim has a line where he says that he likes her. He doesn't trust her, but he likes her. Yes. It's good.

Like I said, all along, they've been playing it like that real well. It's not an out-of-the-blue thing. They sunk themselves into that line and wanted to make sure that we, as the audience, believe that when it comes up. And I do, and I think it's borne out by the rest of the episode. Yeah. We always talk about the scenes carrying more than one load, right? And I think this is a nice one where it's like,

we're getting a little bit of the plot about the counterfeit and why they think Jim's involved, showing us another aspect of the relationship between Jim and Becker, because it's like informal, and Becker's willing to tell them something that does help them, but it's not like official police business. Can't tell you because we're in the station um and we get another reinforcement of the jim and karen relationship of how he feels about her and why he's involved it's like all in this short little thing another little bit in the greater story that is Dennis' attempt to better himself health-wise.

Right. That's been showing up in a few of the episodes we've been doing. Between his water diet and his full sweatsuits when he plays basketball at the Y. He's like, I think I need to give them a break. Yeah. So Jim does a nice little ruse to get letter Mrs.

Letter out of the house where he calls from a payphone claiming to be Sergeant Jim Dennis from LAPD. Jim Dennis. Well played. Saying that they found her jewels and that she can go down to the whatever station at five o'clock and recover them. And I thought that he was going to follow her. Kind of one branch of this story, right, is that she is the one who stole the, like she stole her own jewels and her and her husband are in on it. And the way that they framed him coming up to the house and watching her leave as she

drives away in her car, it's like, oh, now he's going to follow her. Yeah, there was something about even the car she drove. I remember thinking to myself, oh, this is important. I don't know why this is important, but this is important. It's a big, like, orange Range Rover Jeep. It's an open top, yeah, like Jeep, but it's like this bright orange color. It's very dynamic. It really stands out as a car.

Yeah, so I'm glad I wasn't alone on that. But it was an elaborate swerve because it was just to get her out of the house so that Jim could talk to the housekeeper. And I was like, oh, that's clever. Like, I totally thought this was going to go in a different direction. So that was nice. Again, posing to be this insurance man asks with classic, you know, Mrs. Lederer told me about the P.I. And I need to check up with him.

But wouldn't you know it? I forgot. I lost my notes. Do you happen to know the name? And of course she does and gives him the name of this other private investigator, Slauson. Murray. Murray Slauson. What a name.

So we go to Jim in the den of a fellow slash rival private investigator. This scene. So this scene, this scene does not need to be in the episode, I don't think. No. But it is a joy. So I'm glad it is. It echoes the conversation he has with the, we're gonna

put quotes around conversation, put quotes around tennis pros, right? Like early on when those two beefy tennis pros came up to him, he asked them some questions and they just didn't respond. And so now he's sitting in the chair, he's looking across at a beefy PI and asking questions. And this guy is just ignoring him. They're the only two people in the room he just doesn't doesn't give him anything whatsoever until jim himself is like just nod your head or say right or something yeah he's like i'm tired of the monologuing here yeah yeah so listen well he's

occupying his time by taking this huge green cigar out of a cigar box and like lighting it with this overly ornate uh lighter just it's so over the top and then we see once he stands up that he's wearing a full three-piece suit that's all in blue plaid it's pretty amazing um once rockford, uh, winds down and demands some kind of response, Slauson says that, uh, Lederer was having an affair with, uh, with Karen. And that's all he'll say. Rockford. Yes. Uh, he studies all of his competition, even though you ain't much.

So he's known it was Rockford this whole time. And then I guess he just doesn't like that Jim is trying to mess with him. Yeah, he calls him, he says, Jim Rockford, the con bowl artist. Yeah. Not only does he not like Jim, but he doesn't like Jim's technique. He thinks that there's something dishonest about Jim. And there is something dishonest about Jim. There's something very honest about it, but it's also, he is deceiving people.

And then Jim fires back about like being a peeping Tom or something like that. Yeah, not taking pictures through people's bedroom windows. Yeah. And so there's definitely this like animosity about the product that they, each the other one delivers. They feel like the other one is a is a poor reflection on their their business or whatever yeah and then sloss and i guess he's like you're

not leaving this office except through me and he's a big beefy guy he's as tall as jim and wider it's so good because jim gets up out of his chair in a kind of a classic, like Jim's a big guy. He's not small. He might be able to intimidate this guy. And then this guy stands up and Jim's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Whoops. Yeah. Not going to work. In classic Rockford fashion, he plays kind of like, look, we can talk about this.

You know, we don't need to go there. And then once he's in position, he drops his briefcase on the guy's toe. So he looks down and then kicks him right in the kneecap and then lays him out with a punch to the jaw. Yeah. Classic. The old drop the briefcase maneuver. The old sucker kick. We haven't seen that in a while in our episodes.

But it's kicking the guy right in the knee or like the inner thigh. It seems terribly painful. It's good. So saying other than that little tidbit about letter having the affair with Karen, which kind of comes up again anyway. There's not really a plot reason that this scene is here. No. But it's it reflects Jim's standing, I guess, in the PI community, which I kind of like. standing i guess in the pi community which i kind of like and it gives us this first look at jim being a tricky fighter which he actually does again later so it's kind of nice that it's teed

up here so that we expect it later uh but yeah so car picks him up again outside of slosson's office and we have a brief car chase um which I know is one of your favorite bits. Well, I mean, this one's interesting because he basically takes them up a hillside. His technique in this chase is not to lose them so much as to just play chicken with them, right? He's driving fast up a winding narrow road and the job here, I'm guessing,

is he's thinking that they're going to slow down. Yeah. And they're honking at him the whole time too, which is great. It's just like, hey, hey, hey, hey. I think it seems like the strategy is like I can trick them into coming too sharp around a corner or something or fish tailing out.

But what ends up happening is that Jim takes a turn down the slope and there's a construction zone directly in his way. And so this is the little scene from our preview montage where the car is barreling down into all these like all these people and construction equipment. And he fish tails out to avoid hitting anything and ends up trapped, which I did not expect. I thought he was going to go like through it or something. Right. Yeah. It's a definitely like it had this been like,

say the Dukes of Hazzard, they would jump something, right? Right. And that would be, there'd be a convenient pile of stuff to jump, but that's not the case here. Hi everyone. Nathanathan here as the show

evolves in format uh epi and i need to reconceive the value and manner of uh this intermission break until we do that i just wanted to make sure that you know where to find both of our other creative works to catch up on what epi is doing with the worlds without master zine his uh upcoming lincoln green game design project and his upcoming kickstarter for a game called wolf spell which is extremely cool and if you like wolves you'll want to check that out go to worlds without master.com or at epid on Twitter. The internet home of all of my work is at ndpdesign.com. That includes the Worldwide Wrestling Roleplaying Game, the Zine 2018 project, all of my other games, projects, and my portfolio of freelance work. I am also on Twitter at

ndpaoletta. That's it for now. Thanks so much for also on Twitter at NDPayoletta. That's it for now. Thanks so much for listening. And now back to the show. The guys get out and I, I wasn't doing a good job of tracking which, uh, goons were which,

cause there's FBI agents, there's these guys. Right. Um, and so until they said, uh, it's something about like, you're,

you're the guys who snatched Karen. Yeah, he identifies them. Yeah. And they say, like, what are you doing, you yo-yo? Yeah. If you want to see Karen, just come with us. Can I follow you in my car? And they're like, sure.

I was like, oh, that was also an unexpected outcome of this chase. I love it. It's just this great amicable end to what was like a brief little like, oh, oh, okay. All right. No, okay. You got me. I'll just follow then. because they are like half are captured but we quickly learn as we move into uh the layers starting to get unpeeled in our uh our act four of the episode yeah um that these guys are uh jerry and fred real estate associates of karen's and they bring jim into what i note as a hell of a wood paneled solarium yeah jim has a greatford Files style line here where he says, if these two guys sell real estate, it comes in six foot plots. Beautiful. So, Jim, of course, you know, he's starting to put pieces together.

Yeah. All right. So I get it. You're framing me to take the federal heat on this counterfeit money off of you. I get it. You're framing me to take the federal heat on this counterfeit money off of you. She doesn't really deny what she's, what he's saying,

but she keeps saying like, look, we just listened to me. I can explain everything. Um, she's still working to get him to believe her about whatever. And so he finally says like, okay,

I'll listen to what you have to say. And, uh, they go into another, uh, hell of a wood paneled uh kind of study this one's in dark wood and the other one was in light wood the wood paneling in this episode is pretty pretty over the top uh very early 70s um so now she says okay the counterfeit money

was made by her father and he just had it. And then he died recently. And so she inherited it basically. And she didn't know what to do with it. Cause what do you do with a hundred thousand dollars of counterfeit money? But she did have this deal with Tony letterer where they were going to split the profits on this real estate thing. So she found the property. He put up the a hundred thousand dollars to, they keep saying exercise the option, which I guess is, you know, be able to get a return out of it or whatever.

It's essentially a deposit, right? Yeah. She finds a property. He's putting up the $100,000. And then once they get the money out of it, they'd split it. But then he backs out at the last minute. out of it they'd split it but then he backs out at the last minute uh so she gets desperate because she doesn't want to lose this quarter of a million dollar deal yeah she happens to have the same amount of money in the counterfeit so she uses that instead so all she wants to do is she wants jim to find tony because he's disappeared because if she can make the deal work that's all she wants so she can find him

she can get him to do to give cough up the real money and she'll even cut jim in on the real estate deal on the on the profit at no point during this uh revelation did i think that this was actually what was going on yeah uh this is the spot where she says she has buyers lined up as well right like that she says as soon as closing is done she's gonna turn around and sell it for the profit that's the next time no but it's yeah this keeps evolving this story keeps evolving yeah yeah yeah um jim also does not buy it i think he doesn't't even commit to finding Tony or maybe he says, like, I'll see what I can do or something. Yeah. He kind of implies that, like, his next move is to find Tony no matter what.

Yeah. And he leaves. And one of the goons says, should we follow him? And she says, I'd say yes, but I don't think you could. Yes. Which I appreciate. Yeah. She accurately assesses his his his skills slippery so we go to

jim and rocky on the pier oh yeah talking out what's going on and just the thing nothing makes sense just none of the pieces you know go together rocky says like look why are you wasting your time she comes from a long line of losers and j, and I think this was mentioned earlier in the episode, but Jim's like, oh, what about her uncle Charlie? He's retired now, but he could have taught her,

but he went to jail for safe cracking. Yeah. Yeah. So he could have taught her how to blow a safe. Now he's starting to, to figure out how these different things could go together. He needs to find a fence. The same way that Jim could teach his nephew how to be a P.I.

Exactly. It all comes back together. So we have this delightful moment where Jim Jim needs to find a fence because he needs to figure out what happened with this stolen jewelry. Right. So he goes to the Blessed Hope Mission to see the preacher Frazier. The preacher. Yes. Who is on the phone, like making like a horse racing bet or something.

In what might be a voice. It might be like, I feel like he was putting on a voice for that. I think he changed his voice when he was talking to Jim. Yeah. This guy, this actor, Jack Colvin is Mr. McGee from the line. Don't make me angry, Mr. McGee. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. This is the reporter that hounds the Hulk throughout the Incredible Hulk TV series.

I was so happy to see this man he has an amazing face oh he does he does he absolutely does uh and and in the incredible hulk tv series this is not obviously a podcast about that that's a whole nother thing uh he he's the reporter that hounds the hulk and he's so aggressive and so sympathetic at the same time and it's it's this face that does it like you just this is a dog with a bone that he won't let go of but also you could tell this is a hungry dog like this is this is a dog that needs this bone um yeah no great character and uh I was so happy to see him as the preacher Frazier in this for as briefly as he was in this scene. Another great momentary memorable character.

He has all these vaguely religious lines, but he opens the collection box. Yes. Because Jim needs a tip on a fence. He's gone to all the main fences, like Large Harry and Fat Joe and all this whole line of names. tip on a on a fence he's gone to all the main fences like large harry and fat joe and like all the yeah this whole line of names um so he needs to know if there's like a there's a shark an up-and-comer who might be involved with something big the preacher now he might know something and

he opens the box very like surreptitiously and jim looks down and drops something in it and he smiles and he's like and he gives him a name, Applebee. He has a great little line in here. The Lord loves a sinner. And we see inside that box. I think Jim gave him a five. I think so. There's a couple ones and then there's a five on top.

It just didn't seem like much. I mean, that 25 bucks uh nowadays or 20 to 25 bucks nowadays but still it didn't seem like uh it didn't seem like what i was expecting him to have dropped in or it didn't seem like enough to show us what he did right it's like look and look how much he gave away it's uh yeah there's no real reason for that it's just kind of a fun little detail yeah um so jim goes tracks down this guy appleby uh they have some business kind of sparring about like you know i want you to tell me about this well why do you think i would know anything and then jim drops that preacher sent him and appleby is like oh well preacher sent you what can i do for you yeah i appreciate that there's this like web of trust because like preacher knows jim also like when jim comes he's like hey jim you know uh so he wants to know

whether he moved five hundred thousand dollars worth of ice and uh turns out that the ice wasn't ice it was it was good but it was just paste whatever those jewels were that were stolen they were fake and then jim uh you know who sold them to you what's their name and appleby goes what's your name and so he just describes her he's like five two yeah it took me a second to be like is he describing karen or uh or or the wife or mrs yeah letter i was having the same thought in my head too i was like wait a minute both these women are described this way yeah uh because he doesn't if he'd mentioned hair color i would have been certain yeah because again i have this this thing where i'm like maybe the wife is in on it uh but no it is it is confirmed in a bit

that it was karen who sold this yeah fake jewelry or tried to sell this fake to applebee so i think jim is starting to put together a picture of what's going on. In our final act here, he goes to Western Insurance and lays out his story, which seems far-fetched, but he thinks that it's worth a 10% finder's fee if he can save the insurance company this $500,000 claim. And so the insurance official goes for it

and lets him look in their records for everything you can find out about Tony Lederer. There's a little bit here where he says something like, it'll make you look good to the home office or something like that. And the guy's like, this is the home office. It is like very, no, it doesn't get any bigger than this. We're in trouble here.

Yeah, it's a fun little scene that I like that it finally gives us a profit motive for Jim. Like he's finally like, okay, how can I get money out of this? He's investing a lot of time and effort in this. And he finally sees a way to get some cash out of it and no small change like jim often goes for these finders fees and he never gets as far as i know he has never earned a finder fee like somebody has found some way to keep him out of it the only one i can recall is in uh the queen of peru where he and the the family from indiana where they recover the the diamond and yeah have a bit about splitting it but he works but then but the the father works

for an insurance company so he's not eligible or something like that and we kept expecting this also to get jim to oh but it doesn't but it doesn't and we were surprised we're like oh somehow jim manages to get money out of this yeah that's right but yes doesn't but it doesn't and we were surprised we're like oh somehow jim manages to get money out of this yeah that's right but yes in this case it would be fifty thousand dollars was able to recover these jewels for the james company um so jim goes back to karen's she's lounging by the pool out back which is she apparently does not have a care in the world and he lays out what he thinks happened he knows that she was the one who went to fence the fence, the jewelry.

He thinks that her and Tony work together to execute this robbery, but he pulled one over on her and stuck her with the phony jewels. He got the real ones. Now, Karen, I think gives the, the actual plan that they had as i think what you mentioned earlier which is that this real estate deal was going to be worth you know they were

going to buy in for a hundred thousand each so 200 total and then two days later once it closed they could resell it to a syndicate that she had set up on the dl that then would pay two million dollars for whatever this real estate is and that would that was the actual profit but letterer double crossed her uh for this jewelry i guess and uh you know and thus she tried the gambit with the counterfeit money because she says if they had not realized it was counterfeit, she would have made two million dollars. Yeah. In the time that has elapsed since we started the episode. And she thinks that Jim knows where Tony is and offers him ten thousand dollars to bring her Tony. So now he's he's sitting on possibly sixty thousand dollars if if he is able to pull this all together.

And so there's a line going into our climactic scene here where he says that he tracked him down via the power and light office as this house is occupied. This is delivered via voiceover. So I think it was probably somebody's like, wait, how did they get here? So I think it was probably somebody's like, wait, how did they get here? Which is kind of funny to me because of all the times that I'm like, these things didn't connect or these didn't sync up or how did they find this out? This is not a time I would have questioned. Yeah. He had we established that he was looking through the insurance company records and he's a P.I. I think he can find someone.

Sure. Whatever. It doesn't matter. But I guess they were like, we need to put something here about how he found out where this guy was. Just tighten that screw down. Somebody's going to trip over it. Yeah. Sure enough, Tony's car is in the driveway.

They knock on the door and he busts out the back door down a little dock into a motorboat. It looks like a lake or like a wide river. My notes are all caps. Speedboat chase! Yeah, speedboat chase, but no. No, no. Tony can't get the motor going before Jim gets down there. And this is actually kind of important.

Yeah. Tony hits him with an oar and doesn't knock him down. Then Jim punches Tony out of the boat and then hauls him back in all dripping wet. So our other villain of the piece has been apprehended and they go back inside. We have the two, we have Karen's two real estate associates as muscle.

Tony is all wet and with like a towel around his shoulders and Karen just wants her a100,000. That's all she wants. She doesn't want to hear an explanation. You know, she just wants her money back. Tony says it's going to take him a couple days. And seems to be trying to squirm out of it. I forget if he says or if Jim says that he sold the real jewels in Europe and the money's in a Swiss bank account.

He says it. And then I think we just all take it as truth because it's so late in the episode. Yeah. Yeah. So many things have been lied about thus far, but we haven't really had a conversation with this guy. So we all like,

he says it and it's like, okay, that's probably true. We we've gotten here. This whole conversation between Karen, Tony and Jim kind of reinforces slash lays out. So basically when Tony found out that his wife was going to divorce him, he stole the jewels himself. And then he conned Karen into stealing the fake jewel so that he would be clear of that.

And in the interim sold them and that's how he had money outside of his wife being in control of all the bank accounts or whatever right this is one of those moments where i'm like i think this makes sense i don't think it matters enough to think through everything sure this this seems to cover all the bases of what we know about what happened so far and yeah it's fine um but karen i guess realizes that she's not going to get her money out of tony and all of a sudden now jim is a liability because he knows everything that's happened and she turns and says that she's sorry but she can't let him run around and go to the authorities about this and And basically is like, I'm going to have my goons kill you now. Sorry, Jim.

Jim has a great line where he I think he even cuts her off. And he's like, yeah, I know, Karen, you're sorry. Like that. Like he's like, I've heard it enough times now. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But Jim's like, oh, but wait, you didn't know that this whole conversation was being recorded.

And he pulls out the wire or tape machine or whatever from out of his inner pocket. But it's all broken, I assume, from getting hit by the oar when he went after Tony, right? Yeah. So then he says, and this place is surrounded and they don't they clearly don't believe him. and they don't they clearly don't believe him uh but jim using the broken tape recorder as a uh weapon of opportunity manages to throw the goons off balance uh and kind of knock the gun out of one of their hands and then there's a scuffle and unfortunately it's basically three against one uh he ends up getting pinned uh like his arms behind his back and the other guy the other goon is coming up and starts punching him in the stomach i don't know but then a wild dennis comes to the rescue

a wild dennis there's a thing that happens just before the wild dennis though the tony picks up the gun yeah and it's uncertain whose side tony is on yeah for sure maybe he thinks he can pull this off without getting killed i don't know but he was definitely on the chopping block at last i knew um but the dennis uh cavalry comes to the rescue um they arrest everyone including karen of course and uh in the last exchange uh i think maybe this is where jim says like yeah i know you're sorry or maybe that was earlier oh that yeah I'm sorry. I may have jumped the gun on that one.

I forget exactly. But she ends by saying that, you know, she really did look him up in the phone book. Yes. There was. She did have some aspect of wanting to know whether he was still available, indicating she does in some way care for him. Not as much as caring about $100,000 or $500,000 or $2 million. But there is still a little bit of something. So we end our episode, the little epilogue scene where we start with Jim chowing down on a victory taco.

Yes. And Dennis is like, how can you eat that? And Jim is like, it's after eight in the morning yeah like everyone knows after eight in the morning you could have a taco yeah oh it's so good so jim has two tacos becker and rocky are both there and neither of them has has tacos they're not eating these are these are jim's survival victory tacos i think we're sitting here watching jim eat yeah everyone oh it's so good uh rocky says that we all make mistakes so that we can learn from them i think jim asks like what's going to happen with uh you know with everything

and between the various charges karen's up for 1 to 20 years in prison which is a wide range but the only thing they have on Tony letter is a conspiracy charge. He'll probably be out in six months. Jim has been stiffed, uh, because the jewels are already gone. They can't be recovered. And so he is not going to get that finder's fee.

Um, and Becker is like, yeah, easy come, easy go. And Jim does not accept that things are easy come easy no becker's like hey why are you you know like why is he being like this and rocky says that well look he liked her that's all yeah we end our episode with jim going yeah yeah and then freeze frame of him

taking another big bite of his taco yes end of episode i was i loved i really enjoyed that episode that was um it may have been because it had been a while since we've we've done this yeah but um i think what we said at the beginning this had the elements this this just hit the beats the way the beat should be hit and they did them well um i think in contrast to some of the episodes we've done recently i was struck by that very like smooth rising you know rising complexity watching jim do stuff and then resolution curve like that was very evenly paced not that that's better or worse than anything but it kind of makes it go down real easy you know everything kind of moves at a nice steady steady clip uh the mystery isn't so much what's actually happening it's more when is jim gonna find out what's actually happening right or

how is he gonna untangle himself from it yeah because like the details about like he stole the jewels and then conned her into doing this theft and she stole the paste jewels and then you know tried to make it work with the counterfeit money like those details are all fun like rockfordy yeah details but the mystery isn't how did that all go down the mystery is when is jim going to get through each of her lies and find out when he's like, this is what happened. Which means you don't need to care about the details. You just watch Jim and find out as he does. I mean, I think that's an interesting point because it's the focus of the question, right? the question right like when you're watching a rock for episode um there's a question there that needs to be answered whether it's one in the fiction itself like who who did it who done it

yeah um or or if it's like we had here how is jim going to survive this how how is jim going to keep out of federal prison right like that's maybe the central question here so what they do when they make the episode is that you you point your attention at that question and you do all of your detail work there but then the little things on the side you don't need to detail quite as much because that's not in the you just have to establish that it's possible for instance in the ending here the police show up jim's been wired we don't get any of that ahead of time right but we've clearly established that jim has a close relationship with dennis so when it does happen we don't go wait that's out of the blue even even though it is. And we've also established that he

is suspicious of her and doesn't really trust anything she says. So yeah, it makes sense that he has an insurance policy, right? Which in this case is the police. Yeah. So there are these details that you don't have to fill in because they're not in the spotlight. They're not the central focus. And you've already given them a plausible. I don't even want to say plausible. Because it's not about logic. It's more about tricking the brain into not wondering about it. You know, you're just like, oh, he knows the cops.

That's how he did it. It's fine. Yeah. Or there was another one. I'm trying to remember. It was just like a little side thing. And it was like, oh, all right it's fine yeah you know or um there was another there was another one i'm trying to remember it was just like a little side thing and it was like oh all right yeah because he just but now i can't think of it oh i had it when i started this whole bit oh well it'll come to me or it won't and it doesn't matter because it's not the central focus right which is what matters yeah no and i think the the combination of the central focus being thought out, conceptualized, how does it work? How do we get through our story? And, you know, while addressing this question is supported by all the external or extraneous details. But it's not. Yeah. About those details. Right. Like all those all that other stuff supports the central question and i

think that's like the craft of it right like it's not that every single little loop is closed it's not that every uh every character has a specific motivation and a goal uh yeah then but their existence in this story just provides a little bit of support for the central focus of the story, either plot wise or character wise. Yeah, I thought of my other example, which is Tony letter, right? We don't get them until the very end. And at the very end, we find out that he's capable of stealing the jewels, selling them in Europe, and buying fake jewels, counterfeit jewels, or somehow getting counterfeit jewels and replacing them and conning Karen into stealing those. All of this stuff implies a little bit more than what we get. But all we know about Tony is that he's kind of a scumbag.

get but all we know about tony is that he's kind of a scumbag right like that's that's all we get from his soon-to-be ex-wife we kind of get that from karen along the way that she doesn't depend on him and um yeah because she just wanted the money to to do her scheme yeah so that when we reach this sort of end area where we're like oh but tony's done all this stuff in the background we're like yeah of course of course tony did it that guy's a scumbag that's exactly the kind of thing he would do yeah for sure um yeah uh i think we said in the beginning this is you know a good or at least i said in the beginning it's kind of a greater than the sum of its parts episode where each of these elements i think is probably done a little better in other episodes, but the way that they all come together in this one is very satisfying. And it's a strong episode of the show and a good recommend for entry into the

Jim gets into trouble and has to get out of trouble genre of the Rockford Files. Exactly. Yes, I agree. And I will say he uh is probably out five dollars yeah that's it yeah he's not made any money plus whatever he spent on his tacos yeah it's what he spent on tacos what he spent on gas uh if he pays beth i don't know if he does like nobody knows uh and there's the maybe five dollar bribe to the preacher um but he earns nothing along the way it's nothing he's going into the third season with a pretty slim bank account yes excellent cool do you have uh any other thoughts on a bad deal in the valley uh no i think we i think we covered it i think uh yeah just a fun episode uh well put together

and and i i would say a well acted i really liked uh what's her name susan um the countess who became karen susan strasberg yeah susan strasberg uh i thought she did quite a good job yeah and uh yeah fun fun episode well even though jim rockford did not earn anything in this episode, I feel like we have earned our $200 for today. So, as always, we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.