Two Hundred A Day - Episode 44: Kill the Messenger

Episode Date: January 27, 2019

Nathan and Eppy talk about S5E5 Kill the Messenger. Our good friend Dennis Becker is under a lot of pressure - not only does he have his Lieutenants exam coming up, the wife of the deputy chief police commissioner is murdered, and he gets assigned the case. Jim tries to help, but everything he uncovers about this murder just makes it harder for Dennis in one way or another. A spotlight episode for Becker, it really showcases Joe Santos's hold on the character, and we get to see some big changes in Dennis Beckers life. We really loved it! Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app 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.

Jim, Chet, returning your call. Sorry I missed you, but I appreciate you calling back. Now if you call again and I'm not in, just leave your message and I'll get back to you. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. time we are going to our least covered season uh we we did a little analysis based on updating the 200 a day rockford files files which is our spreadsheet of info and ephemera that's accessible to our patreon backers um and we have not done too many season five episodes so uh i decided to skim through what's available and go with uh one of our good friends that we haven't seen quite as much of recently a dennis becker episode uh so this is season 5 episode 5 kill the messenger this is such a good dennis becker episode too this is

yeah it's kind of the dennis becker episode yeah right like there's there's a little bit of uh i don't know if it would be a trilogy but there's a little bit of a series of kind of the life and times of dennis becker and i think arguably the farnsworth stratagem might be the first one of those which we covered way back when at this point but there's also an episode called the becker Connection that's all about him and some difficult case. And there's also the one where he...

It's not really about Becker. There's the one where there's the crooked cops with the... where Jim knows this cop's mom, and she's like a Golden Age era kind of actress. The Four Pound Brick pound brick I think is that one that's the Lee Brackett one

anyway there are a couple episodes that are kind of like tracking Dennis's career and this one Kill the Messenger is a pivotal episode in that which is interesting on the meta level just because we've we've uh i feel

like way back we talked a little bit about how one of the things we appreciate about the rockford files is how it has this kind of development of character arcs or characterness character development if you will but it doesn't have story arcs like it doesn't have a meta plot it's not yeah that kind of show you'll you'll never have an episode where it's just catching you up with the characters like this episode might be the closest it ever gets to that it's not that there's these long dramatic narrative arcs you know all uh mad men or whatever uh yeah but the characters do progress in their lives. And so this is kind of a big milestone in the life of Dennis Becker at the heart of this episode. This was written by Juanita Bartlett.

Her episodes are some of my favorites. She is the executive story consultant during this season. And then I believe in the next season, she kind of moves into a full producer role. And then I believe in the next season, she kind of moves into a full producer role. And then the director for this one is Ivan Dixon, who we have talked about a little bit before. He directed the Mayor's Committee from Deerlick Falls, which was our episode 36. I went into his background a little bit in that episode, but he's notable both for his TV direction career. He was also in hogan's heroes uh he was uh uh kinchlo i haven't watched hogan's heroes i have not since i was a child and did not understand what it was

about he so he started out acting moved into directing and he kind of uh became a activist in kind of fighting against racial stereotypes in casting and movie roles for African-Americans throughout his career. So this is one of those where there's like one shot that I really enjoyed in the episode. But overall, it's a pretty, you know, it's good. It's solid. It's fast paced. kind of keeps keeps everything moving any other initial framing thoughts before you tell us all about the preview montage uh like we've said this is a good dennis episode i love a good dennis one of the things that i guess we'll talk about when we get into the episode one of the things that i kind of like about it is how it's two stories uh this this is kind of a nice one where dennis gets almost as much screen time as jim does maybe more i don't know i wasn't keeping

track of it while i was watching it it had not occurred to me until later that uh as i looked back on the episode and thought about it i kept thinking about the things that Dennis was doing as he was moving along in this plot line. And it generally wasn't him hanging out with Rockford. It was Rockford off doing his thing, trying to help Dennis, and then Dennis off doing his thing. I guess in some ways it reminds me of the first episode of Gear Jammer. You see Rocky's life and you see rocky living a life separate from jim and this is kind of got uh the same thing going on yeah but should i talk about that preview montage yeah yeah because uh it's got my favorite maybe my favorite quote from the show there's some good

quotes in this uh but dennis almost in tears talking about his case. And he's saying that it's the deputy chief town wife. And Jim saying, that's your hot potato? Oh, I love the dialogue of this thing. My notes say here, Captain Crunch, which, I mean, come on. It's not that I've seen Captain Crunch before or will ever see Captain Crunch again on this show. It's just, you know, a nice shout out to a Breakfast Hero mascot. Then I have Dennis. Then I have Angel.

But Angel's not in the montage. He's just mentioned in the montage. And that is such a tease. And then Rocky. And then I have the car chase down here. But now that I think about it, they threw a car chase in the montage. But this really isn't a car chase-y kind of episode. No. They do this a lot in the preview montage where they end it with a car doing something and they freeze frame as everyone's looking terrified behind the windshield.

And I think that's just to be like, there's going to be some dramatic action, which sometimes is true, and sometimes is a bit of a letdown. Not that there isn't dramatic action in this one, but it's character drama. It's not like life and limb drama, really. Although, I mean, when we do get to that moment in the car, Rodford's bold, bold move,

it made me tense up. Every muscle of my body was like, oh no, don't do that. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day. Patrons get to add to the 200 a day Rockford Files files, help us pick which episodes to cover, and more. Each episode, we extend a special thanks to our gumshoe level patrons.

This time, we say thank you to Jim Crocker. In addition to supporting the show, he also sells our games at cons east of the Mississippi on behalf of Indie Press Revolution. Follow along on Twitter at IPR Tweets. Shane Lieblin. 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. 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.

Speaking of cars, we do start this episode off with a cop car, sirens on, coming into the parking lot of a grocery store. This car has been sitting there all night, so it being a very wholesome 1970s kind of world,

the day manager called because there's also a weird smell. Yeah. I think it was all weekend, actually. Oh, yeah. It was like Friday night. They noticed the car Friday night, and then it was still there on Monday or something like that. This is all to set up these two beat cops coming in.

They run the plates, and that's the first bad news because the car is registered to Deputy Chief Eugene Town, the Deputy Chief of Police. I like how they have a little exchange. the deputy chief of police i like how they have a little exchange there's a lot of very like procedural business in the sense of this is how the job works not really in the sense of like babble in this episode so like one of them just mentions like well that's probable cause so yeah they force the trunk and there is in fact a woman's body curled up in the trunk bad news uh i was gonna say i think actually a lot of that uh probable cause uh the dialogue about you know here's the next stop of the process i think a lot of that in this is about people trying to convey that the that people are hesitant once they know the deputy chief is involved right like yeah it's the deputy chief

well this is what we have to do none of us want to be here none of us want to know to see what happens next we all know where this is going but we got to do it so of course we cut from there straight to the police station officer billings is helping dennis becker cram for his lieutenant exam with a great rundown to set this all up where he's going through all the different stages of the appropriate use of force. Too relevant to our time. Yeah. The best part about this is that there's a guy in their office in handcuffs who's clearly, you know, a perp of some kind who starts feeding becker answers and like answering the questions before he can uh just showing off a how experienced a criminal he is and be heightening becker's discomfort he's clearly stressed that's the big thing about this episode dennis is very stressed

so having this guy uh sass him is not helping his mood and then he literally runs into lieutenant chapman in the doorway who places a literal figurative last straw uh places a case file on top of his big stack of books so dennis drops everything so when dennis picks it up he opens it and we get a shot of the name Eileen Town, the wife of the deputy chief. And Dennis' face is going, oh no. Put upon Dennis in my notes here. I love that part. That character is great.

Showing that he could have been a lieutenant, too, if he wanted to. That's no problem. He's an expert in the use of force. Yeah. So there's actually a freeze frame there on Dennis's face. I was trying to decide if that was an intentional freeze frame or if that was just, we need to hold it for just a little bit longer before we go to the next, you know, we just don't have the footage.

So let's freeze it there. But it is a little weird. There's a lot of little moments in this one where I think they, know kind of spruced it up in the editing room like there's some voiceovers that don't quite match the audio over like panning shots that don't have anything to do with with the scene to kind of stitch a couple things together yeah the the voiceover that is ostensibly dialogue but it's just telling the audience what's happening. Yeah. We go to the Becker household. Of course, Dennis is there, but we get the appearance after a long gap on our show, I think probably not since the Farnsworth stratagem

of Dennis' wife Peggy, as well as Jim. Jim and Dennis are moving furniture around because they're apparently having some friends coming over soon, the McGowans. And there is a lot of business here about nicknames, which is hilarious, but also not important at all. The one thing I wanted to pull out of this was that there's something about one of the kids. His name is something else, but they call him scott and jim always thought that that was because yeah jim's uh middle name because he's james scott rockford uh and it's it's not it's because of something else but dennis never told jim that and jim has been signing cards like

to my namesake scott i love that we we get all this with the kids and a little bit later we'll get the kids and you know they're yes they're the worst in my notes for the kids i have these are monsters yeah yeah it's it's interesting so there's this whole thing with the mcgowans i think we should we should just talk about whatever we have to say about this now because it's not very important except there is a story reason, right? So they have these guests coming over. And that is one of the elements that is stressing out Dennis. That they're going to have these people coming over and these kids. And he's going to be expected to do things, like give them a ride in the squad car and try to get them a tour of Universal Studios, right?

That's an ongoing motif in this episode. So this is the case with dennis dennis has a case that he has to solve he's got um the lieutenant's exam that he's always had trouble with uh coming up and then he's got the the mcgowans coming over uh to visit and then dennis's partner in all this uh frank uh is this his only episode we haven't gotten to him yet but like he's got outside stuff as well he's got a pregnant wife that he has to both worry about and depend upon right i just i like that thing that this it's this busyness and piling up of all of the stress uh that brings dennis to these points as we're about to see in this scene here there's this great dennis meltdown right that we're on

the verge of a very relatable thing of i've got my work stress and then i've got my other work stress and then i got my home life stress and it's all like right it's all coming to a head yeah and nobody else sees all of the facets so they're all just worried about the part that they're worried about right and yeah so this thing with the McGowan's is its role is to be that extra point of stress for Dennis it doesn't matter to the plot and it doesn't really come up other than in there's another scene with the kids. As you say, Dennis has this meltdown. It's triggered because he's asking

Jim to spot check him on questions for the lieutenant exam. While they're moving stuff around in the house, right? And then Jim starts asking him questions from the homicide area and Dennis doesn't want to talk about the homicide stuff

he knows homicide he's only been working it for eight years um and you can see both jim and peggy being like this is weird yeah what's going on here certainly a lot of the stuff in this episode with with with dennis are big acting moments right yeah this is. This is a big Joe Santos gets to really dig his teeth into some acting stuff. So that's most of what the scene is, where he's just escalating and winding himself up more and more. And then he hits this breaking point.

And then he like sags down on the couch and tells them that all the stress is because of this case. It's the deputy chief's wife this poor middle-aged lady worked as a probation officer downtown and she was beaten to death i think he's both kind of horrified you know like it is a sad thing that is very sad and also i think he's personally like this is someone i kind of know right and he knows homicide he's only been working it for how many years? So he knows that not only is the deputy chief a suspect,

but he's the prime suspect. And like, there's all sorts of bad news around that. You know, like he's got to investigate his boss. Somebody who has power over him when it comes to his own career path that he's like at the threshold of right now. And it could be entirely impossible for him to get justice for this woman.

Right. If the deputy chief is guilty and decides that he doesn't want to be guilty about it, what's Dennis going to do with that? How is Dennis going to change any of that? Yeah, and Jim points out that he's going to need to ask a lot of hard questions. A lot of personal questions. Dennis leaves to get some coffee so that

we have a little bit with Peggy and Jim. She's clearly worried about Dennis, but she's also worried because she's seen him work so hard for this lieutenant exam. He's really been tying himself in knots to really prepare this time because he's done it multiple times before, and he's never passed

to make the grade, right? And so Jim tells Peggy that he'll ask around. Maybe he can make it easier, dig up something that'll make it easier for him, you know, help him out somehow with his investigation. So that gets Jim Rockford on the

case. It puts it in that category of episode where it's jim helping his friends out which is a subset of that category of episode where there's no chance of jim making any money but this episode really isn't about jim so i don't feel too bad no um jim's first uh uh gambit here we see that he's clearly in a role as he puts some big honking glasses on in a suit with a briefcase to go into the corrections

parole department as we find out where Eileen, the dead woman, worked. And his line here is that he's from the comptroller's office and so he's doing an audit basically he mentions a proposition like prop 13 or something uh so i assume that's referencing a you know of the time current event yeah proposition that passed about not wasting

government funds or whatever and we get a couple good like memorable uh in passing characters here first of all the secretary who's smoking the cigarette the entire time yeah the way she is like on the phone it's this great like she calls back to her boss on the phone and you get her side of it you just get state local federal i don't know this this place is primed for jim to just walk in like he he belongs there and just do whatever he needs to do yeah they're so used to people picking over everything they do that they're it's like yeah okay whatever yeah but yeah she's great she's a great character her attitude is such that i kept expecting her to call jim on his bullshit yeah i think she played it as i know that this guy is full of it but i do

not care enough to get in his way. Yeah. Like, I'm not getting paid enough to try and defuse whatever situation is happening. But yes, her boss comes out. He is worried because their budget's already cut to the bone. Jim kind of talks him around to the staffing. And basically, Eileen, since she was was murdered they had to redistribute her cases but he was planning to do that anyway because he was going to fire her she was going to be fired

uh because she had been going out with some of the perps and that the latest yeah was captain crunch oh so good so jim gets this information uh He continues playing out his role as this, like, controller person. He leaves, and we have an intentional shot seeing some guy see him leave, get up out of a chair, and follow him out. Yeah. So I have a brief digression here. When they talk about Captain Crunch, they mention that he ripped off Ma Bell. So this is a reference to the activity known as phone freaking. Fans of the movie Hackers may remember that one of the characters being a phone freak from that.

That's one of those like off kilter details that's very like of the time. Those like off kilter details. That's very like of the time. And yeah, makes me appreciate how they kind of reach outside the standard procedural box or like things to put in these episodes. But I wanted to kind of see what the state of, of this was at the time. Turns out captain crunch is referring to an actual person.

What people who are big up on the history of computing may, may have already recognized this, but yeah, there's a guy who was known as captain crunch or crunch man uh who is a legendary phone freak and he was profiled in uh an esquire article in 1971 so this is something that would have been probably known to juanita bartlett and people who pay attention to such things. So the deal with phone freaking, right. Is that at the time, uh, you can imitate the signal frequency that the telephone line uses to make a long distance call.

So you can trick the, you know, trick the phone company into thinking that you've dialed long distance and paid for it when you haven't among other things. But like, that's kind of the core. That's what people did. And so this,

I did not know. Uh, so this guy, so his name's John Draper. He became known as Captain Crunch because as it so happens, Captain Crunch cereal had a toy that came in one of their cereal boxes. That was a whistle that happened to reproduce the frequency of the AT&T long distance lines. So you could blow into this whistle into the phone and trick it into making your long distance call for you. That's amazing. That is, what a wonderful world we lived in.

Yeah, so apparently after 1980, the phone system changed so that this particular thing doesn't work anymore or didn't work anymore. Or so they say. Or so they say. But yeah, so he was kind of one of the this kind of notorious generation of i mean he's essentially a hacker right he actually went on to work for apple served some some prison for phone fraud uh

but then ended up writing easy writer which was like the first word apple word processor oh so he works some stuff with Apple. He also worked for Autodesk, apparently, which is the company that does AutoCAD, which is the drafting software for engineers and architects and whatnot. So just scrolling through this guy's Wikipedia

bio, it's like, wow, this is a significant figure in the history of computing. Also, apparently being name-checked in the Rockford Files in uh with this character captain crunch so there's your fun fact for the day that is as a complete delight um because i i did not expect any of that and i had just assumed uh that captain crunch was not a reference to the serial but somehow a reference to, you know, it seems like an enforcer's name, right? Yeah. Like Private Punch. Or, uh,

that was a really bad one. Major Distress. Sergeant Slaughter, if you will. Right. Yeah. It wasn't until you got started on that whole digression when you said that he ripped off Ma Bell, I was like, what the hell is a bruiser like Captain Crunch doing ripping off Bob Bell?

But it turns out it is the cereal. It's a reference to the cereal. I mean, when we see him, it's not like he's a bruiser. Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. There's a bit here that's coming up that I got a little confused on. But when we get to it, I'll ask you about it. But it has to do with him. Okay, there's no element uh hacking the phone lines is involved

in this episode it's just like yeah that's what this guy happens to have been arrested for and why he's on parole so uh jim is followed out of the parole office by someone um and we actually go to rocky's place where jim is rummaging around looking for his dry cleaning ticket he starts getting all stressed out about the seemingly innocuous thing it's a mirror of dennis's earlier kind of freak out yeah uh of course he wants to find the ticket because he had two sport coats good shirts and he thinks a cashmere sweater doesn't want to lose those i mean i listed those because i was sure he was going to lose them and i would have to as his accountant right so so Rocky's like why are you freaking out about this it's just dry cleaning and so Jim he doesn't know how to tell

Dennis that yeah the deputy chief's wife was having an affair or possibly multiple affairs his whole goal here was to make it easier for Dennis but the first thing he did turned over a rock with you know a bunch of worms underneath right it's only going to make his job harder jim is getting stressed out because now he's not helping his friend the way he wanted to so we get to see see that i wrote again in my notes that this this case is a communicable disease yeah no matter who it touches if you get involved in it you're like oh god now i've got it whatever this is um and so he says that he's going to wait to tell Dennis until after he takes the lieutenant exam. So at least he doesn't have this to worry about while he's doing that. So apparently he did find the ticket because we go to him picking up his dry cleaning.

And there are a couple of dudes sitting on the hood of the Firebird and they start messing with him when he comes out. One of them pulls the windshield wiper off, which is awfully mean. They start pulling off the rear view windows and such. Jim tries to jump them, but it's two on one and they start beating him up and basically warning him off.

Stay out of it. Then they run off when the proprietor of the dry cleaning place comes out and starts yelling. So this is my question. Did we see them follow him here? Because the bit about the dry cleaning ticket, did Captain Crunch grab that from him?

Did that fall from his pocket and I missed it? You know, that would be a good way for them to know that he was here. Like, I was wondering if that was, if the intent was to say he accidentally revealed where he was going to be next. And that's how they found him. Or so he catches up to Captain Crunch eventually. And in the scene where they're talking, this gets explained. Kind of.

It's the guy who followed him out who we don't see again. He's just like some someone. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's not Captain Crunch. Right. He's just like someone. Oh, that's right. That's not Captain Crunch. That's like someone else. But he's someone who recognizes the name and knows who Jim is or something.

He's like a mutual... He refers to him as a mutual friend. The younger guy who kind of mouths off to Jim, eventually he's called Bandit. So this guy hears that Captain Crunch is going to be in trouble and went to bandit to warn rockford off on behalf of his friend yeah it's unclear whether it's that or

whether he just says that that's it but he actually sent the guy um but that's the connection that's drawn in the dialogue later it it seems a little unnecessarily convoluted yeah uh but it is it is referenced later it was one of those things where uh i thought i was being inattentive and i probably was uh but i i filled in the gap the wrong way is what happened i think it would have made more sense just in the sense of cutting kind of an unnecessarily logical leap out if the guy bandit had been the one who followed jim out and then just followed him there or whatever. Right.

Like there's a third party who we never see again, who we only see for a brief moment. And that's the person who like put this all into motion. It's a little over convoluted for the, the story beat of Jim gets beat up to warn him off the track. Yeah. Not just Jim though. I mean, I think we need to acknowledge the other victim the firebird I really expected Jim to whip that guy with the windshield wiper

so many people were at their wit's end in this episode that I just expected Jim to go nuts on this guy but that did not that was not the case Jim calls Peggy trying to get to Dennis he's still taking his exam there's some business about the McGowan's

are stuck in Palmdale, but he tells her that he found out about this affair and that Dennis does need to know about it. So if she can give Dennis the message next time she talks to him so that he knows because Dennis is taking his written exam. So he

gets out of that and we see him meeting up with his partner on this case frank dusenberg who we mentioned earlier um so the bit here so he's younger he's clearly the junior in this partnership yeah and dennis wants to know so how's the investigation going did you show the picture around and turns out that Frank hasn't had a chance to do that yet because his wife was having some kind of pains. And they're doing this whole Lamaze thing that they're both involved. So he had to go home and nothing's been done yet. And so this kicks off this whole motif of the investigation hasn't happened yet.

Right? Yeah. hasn't happened yet, right? Yeah. There's so much reluctance to actually investigate this that this becomes a motif over this middle act of the episode. I just, I love this illustration of procrastination

without it being, like, a slacker thing, right? Like, every one of them has all these concerns. I think there's a clear implication that Frank is leaning on the fact that his wife is pregnant. Oh, yeah. There's, like, a payoff for that Frank is leaning on the fact that his wife is pregnant. Oh, yeah. There's like a payoff for that near the end.

But like with Dennis, this is the third or the fourth time he's gone for his lieutenant's exam. It's something super important to him. But also, you know, I don't know. Like, I really identify with this. Because if there's something that i need to get done and then there are dishes that need to be done i will clean those dishes before i do the thing i really need to get done uh and i'm not even trying to investigate the chief of police or the deputy police chief uh for the murder of his own wife yeah i just love this kind of depiction of uh

of procrastination as uh a defense defense mechanism that's going on here. This is good stuff. Well, they do have to go to Deputy Chief Towne's office because he wants to see them. Yeah. And so it's the two of them and Chapman in this guy's office. And he has a little monologue about he does not expect nor does he want any special treatment. He wants us to be you know investigated like any other murder right and we get to see a lot of good chapman sucking up here oh man it is

wow the uh that format of chapman is sucking up and assuming that he's going to go one way with what he says and he goes the other way and chapman has to like hustle to to sound like he meant that and that was the smart way of doing it that sort of uh uh bait and switch going on which i i do enjoy chapman thinks he's being you know a teacher's pet but really he's misapprehending the signals right yeah uh the chief chief has one prerogative. He wants to be copied on all the reports, but there hasn't been a report filed yet because Dennis has been bogged down with the lieutenant's exam

and Frank didn't do anything. This is this moment, right? When it happens, here's this guy whose wife has been killed and he's in charge of the people that are going to investigate it and the people who are going to investigate it and the people who are going to investigate it have not done so probably because he is a suspect but you know they have other excuses but those other excuses lose all of like as dennis is trying to explain them you feel like oh god no right like this does not sound like a good excuse.

Yeah. Maybe, like, if you were like, I didn't get your clothes back from the dry cleaner because I was doing this. Yeah. But that's not what's happening. I haven't started investigating your wife's murder yet because I had to take a test. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you kind of see his face, realize how dumb that sounds.

And so Chapman's like, I'm so sorry, I'll take them off the case. I'll give it to someone who's going to be more professional or whatever. But Town is like, no, no. He wants them to stay on the case. I don't think he really has a particular reason. We're used to him now

contradicting Chapman's attempts at second-guess guessing what he wants right like i think it just follows that model so we're like yeah of course he's not gonna want what chapman thinks he wants he's gonna go the opposite uh it could be at this point because we're uh if we're not in the know we're also suspicious of him and incompetent police work is exactly what he wants exactly and i was going to say this is a nice kind of subtle way of framing that where it's like so far he's been set up as our main suspect

and it would be in character for him if he did kill his own wife right to be like no yeah put your most incompetent officers on it that's what yeah his his excuse i just remember now what he says is i don't want that special treatment that's exactly the kind of special treatment he doesn't want. Right. They go back down to their office. Peggy calls and gets Dennis on the phone. The Palmdale thing is that he can't take a break from this case to drive to Palmdale because they broke down. Yeah.

So that's another little, you know, that's the other stressor here still. He has to do this murder investigation. And then we're just hearing his side of it. But we clearly get to the part where she tells him what Jim said. you know that's the other stressor here still uh he has to do this murder investigation and then we're just hearing his side of it but we clearly get to the part where she tells him what jim said and he's like no that's impossible that couldn't have happened tell jim to stay out of it uh what is he trying to do ruin me so that knee-jerk response of dennis being like that is not something yeah that i want to have be true um we finish out this uh this act uh with becker and dusenberg getting on the case they're going out to the the scene of the of the discovery and they're talking about statistics before we go to the statistics

i have this in my notes and i forget exactly where this happens but billings gets uh status dropped oh yeah chapman um what does he say something like if you don't solve this or whatever you have about as much chance as becoming a lieutenant as and then he looks over and sees billings because as he does and that's it for billings and his face just goes oh did you have to say that we all know oh. Did you have to say that? We all know that. But did you have to say that? Yeah.

That's right before Peggy calls. Yeah. That's good. So statistically, Chief Town is the most likely suspect. Murder victims tend to be murdered by family and relations. So they're going to have to question him, but they agree that they'll do it tomorrow. This is another pushing it down the road. Uh, they'll do other stuff and they'll question him tomorrow.

Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow. Sounds good. They start talking about what the possible motive could be. Uh, clearly this has been percolating in Dennis's mind and he brings up, well, or it could be adultery. Dennis is really leading, uh, Frank by the nose here. it could be adultery dennis is really leading uh frank by the nose here he's he's he's he's trying a little awkwardly to make frank feel like frank is connecting these dots he's kind of trying to

run a con on frank uh and we can see it and it's not altogether clear whether frank can see it yet or not uh or that they're both they're not talking about the exact thing until it arises casually. You know? Yeah. I think that's more it, that they're kind of dancing around it because once Dennis brings it up, Frank's like, well,

remember how they used to have these dinners for promising young officers and they stopped doing that like six or eight months ago. There are rumors that she was as he says making it with some of those promising young officers now that has been said i think frank can kind of bring in this it's a rumor but it is relevant yeah so jim still trying to help he goes to la cita bar gets a beer and talks to the bartender, who I believe his name is Junior, asking whether he's seen Angel recently. And I, too, was like, oh, man, we're getting Angel in here? Yeah.

But no, it's just this inquiry. We do find out... I mean, Angel just loves chili. As we know, yes. Because Angel hasn't been back to this bar since they stopped serving chili. But Jim mentions Captain Crunch. And Junior says, oh, well, he comes in for the chili, too. Yes.

And we get a good little bit of bribery business here where Jim asks questions and Junior says, oh, I don't know. And then he gives him whatever it is probably fives hard to tell what the bills were yeah i'm guessing uh what we do know is that they're clearly worth more than a beer yes because uh so so he learns that captain crunch is his government name his real name is nick uh nick d'onofrio and he's staying at the Savoy Hotel and then when Jim goes to leave hey, you haven't paid for that beer yet. And then they laugh and laugh. This is great

because Jim gets a pose. He's going to get physical about it or something. And I just looked up the guy who plays Junior here and he is a ex-Nfl player oh really like this yes this guy is huge and jim is like what and then he's like i'm just kidding and they laugh about

it like no you pay your beer it's like you bribe me for information and you give me money for the beer jim's a big guy but he's not this guy big. His IMDB literally starts with plenty of height and built like an ox. Of course, Jim goes to the Savoy and in the lobby sees one of the goons who beat him up, Bandit, and he sees Jim and yells like, hey, like, oh no, or something and just like runs away the guy he was talking to it was on the stairs and this is in fact nick captain crunch d'onofrio yeah he has a cane um he's all beat up we kind of see in a later close-up that he still has like a big black eye and everything jim grabs him before he can go anywhere and basically uses the fact that he's

in pain and has this cane that he needs to walk with to to force him to stay and answer his questions. He just got out of the hospital. He says he did not send Bandit after Jim. So this is what I was talking about. He says that this mutual friend overheard at the parole office and told Bandit about it. And they're both trying to protect him, protect Nick. It's like okay sure um he needs his he needs his pain pill he needs his pain pill real bad so jim goes with him up to his

apartment uh he kind of spills while he's rummaging around looking for his pain pill he says that uh eileen town came on to him he didn't hit on her, so that's different somehow. And they got together okay, maybe a couple times. Maybe half a dozen. Okay, ten or so. And Jim's just like, just logging with his face how this is just getting worse and worse. And says that

he wasn't the only one that she was going around with. Not the only turkey she's making it with. While he's getting his his his pill. Jim picks up a fancy ashtray that has a big thing in the bottom for the Seder Hotel. And then at the window appears a wild, young Ed Harris with a shotgun. My notes are shotgun. I know that forehead.

My notes are shotgun. I know that forehead. This is one of Ed Harris's first, uh, uh, roles on film. Uh, it is his fifth IMDb credit. So there you go.

Launching careers for Rockford files. Uh, but yes, he has a shotgun and I think, uh, Jim asks Nick another question or something. And before he can answer, Ed Harris shoots him through the window with the shotgun.

And then I think shoots kind of vaguely in Jim's direction, and Jim ducked under cover. And then he hightails it down the fire escape or whatever, and gets out of there before Jim can follow him. The plot thickens. Hi everyone, Nathan here. As the show evolves in format, Epi and I need to reconceive the value and manner of 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 Masters zine, his upcoming Lincoln Green game design project, and his upcoming Kickstarter for a game called Wolfspell,

which is extremely cool. And if you like wolves, you'll want to check that out. Go to worldswithoutmaster.com or at Epidia 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 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 listening. And now, back to the show. Paoletta. That's it for now. Thanks so much for listening. And now, back to the show.

He's not in uniform at this point, is he? No. Spoilers to our audience. He owns a uniform. Jim tells Dennis what he learned. Dennis doesn't want to hear about it. I'm supposed to say that the wife of the deputy chief was having an affair on the word of a convicted felon. And this actually pays off again later. But Dennis is throwing the fact that Jim served time back in his face, which he very rarely does, right? Like, this is something that usually, you know, Chapman does or whatever.

But Dennis is so aghast at this idea that he's just, like, rejecting Jim with whatever he can. that he's just like rejecting Jim with whatever he can. I thought that the convicted felon was a reference to Captain Crunch, though. Well, I thought, because Captain Crunch is dead, so now it's, because he's like, it's hearsay. Oh, right, right. He told you,

but we're supposed to take, I mean, maybe he meant both, or maybe that is what he meant, and I'm just reading too much into it. I mean, it works both ways. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But Jim does say, look, just check her out at the Seder hotel. And he lays out his,

his concept here, which is that, you know, Nick just got shot and she was seeing other people in addition to him. So someone didn't like that. She was seeing Nick and beat him up and then went and beat her up, but didn't stop. Yeah.

This is all taking place in the like staff room at the police station. Yes. And there's this amazing moment where this other police officer comes in, goes over to the coffee machine. They all stopped talking. And Dennis just like awkwardly picks up a newspaper and then just like holds it. Like just standing here reading this newspaper,

this officer pours a cup of coffee and then like looks around and sees the tension and then just puts around and sees the tension and then just puts it down and leaves like he doesn't even take it with yeah it was it's great like all the little like he comes in he puts the the quarter in the cup that is you know obviously there or if you enjoy the coffee then help buy another you know more coffee right like and yeah i don't even remember if he actually pours the cup or he picks it up as if he's going to pour and just is like this like this is not a situation i want to be a part of he turns around and leaves it's it's a great piece of blocking blocking and

kind of physical business it's it's really nice and and you know highlights how difficult it is for dennis because not only is he having to deal with his superiors here, this is all like it's a community, right? Like the police all gossip. Yeah. We already know that from Frank. Yeah. So, yeah, because he keeps on having all these things where he starts bursting out and then realizing other people can hear him and needing to lower his voice and stuff. It's a great visual moment.

After that guy leaves, Jim says, like, look, maybe town pressured some... He knows plenty of crooks, right? Like, maybe he pressured someone into doing this hit for him. That could be the connection. But he does end by apologizing and saying he's sorry because he didn't want to bring this bad news to Dennis. He doesn't want to make

Dennis' life harder, but this is what happened. These are the facts. So Dennis and Frank do go to the Seder Motel harder but this is what happened these are the facts uh so dennis and frank do go to the seder motel and this is the a nice uh shot here where you start we start with the camera pointed at the mirror the round mirror over the waterbed and we see frank and dennis reflected in it and then it pans down while they're talking. So we get the full view of the Love Motel decor as it rotates down. And we see Frank poking at it to confirm that, yes, this is in fact a waterbed.

Are waterbeds even a thing anymore? I don't think so. If anyone out there still has a waterbed. Yeah. When I was a kid, one of my friends had a waterbed. We were like 10. That is where waterbed slots in my head. Like something you might get for your kid because they think it's like sounds really fun.

No, it's that two spots, right? Like it's the kid that has one or it's just the swingers. Right. Being an adult now, because when I was a kid that was a thing like there was friends of our family that had a waterbed now as i say it i'm wondering if they were swingers but nonetheless we'll just put that aside that doesn't need unpacking right now that is nothing to do but i remember being excited and thinking when i grew up i'm going to own a water bed even as like a teenager and in my early 20s i think i had friends that had water beds that like

they were always dudes and they always had like the dark mahogany with the faux leather trim it seemed like a very masculine thing to have a waterbed. I don't know why. But as a grown adult, I couldn't imagine a more torturous way to spend a night. It does not sound comfortable. Waking up that next morning and trying to get my stiff ass out of bed would just be horrendous. See, it wouldn't work in my house because we have a dog who likes to dig into the sheets, because we have a dog who likes to dig into the sheets and that waterbed would be destroyed. We would be flooding our apartment within two days.

Just thinking about them and thinking about the massive amount of water you would have, just waiting, just all of that potential energy of disaster. Just waiting to flood your house. You're a homeowner now. Yeah, exactly. You feel the fear. What floor do you want to put this on you put this on your top floor so that it like it goes down through as many floors as

possible as it tries to find ground level anyway waterbeds the the satyr motel clearly doesn't have that concern um this is a round waterbed which makes more sense than no corner square water uh with a delightful star in the middle there's a certain vaguely satanic feel to this whole room that i think is intentional there's that and then frank picks up there's just like a vhs tape just like sitting somewhere yeah he picks it up and on the spine the label says uh satan and satin the business here is about they they say that uh the manager identified eileen's picture and nick witness has put them together here multiple times and dennis is trying to figure out how to phrase this stuff in the report so it's not so it's not as bad as it seems basically and they mention maybe there's something on this on

the clothes there's like a closed circuit tv and then they both look at it and go mention maybe there's something on this on the clothes there's like a closed circuit tv and then they both look at it and go yeah no that's they probably didn't do anything with that like we don't even want to know what it would just be the the ultimate nightmare for them to have to the deputy chief of police wife caught on film that they would have to then oh yeah no they're like we're not even going to try uh but they are definitely going to have to talk to the chief tomorrow 8 a.m sharp we're going to do it tomorrow i'm unclear whether this is the same tomorrow as earlier or if we are now an additional day and they've just been pushing it off but either way additional day i think so yeah um the the humor in this episode is interesting so that scene is

is humorous because they're kind of you know talking around what they're trying to talk about and like it's so this bed is so ridiculous and stuff but overall it's not a funny episode right so i feel like that's probably why this next scene exists just to like kind of cut the tension and give us like a counterpoint of humor because the next scene is the next morning it's the station parking lot and dennis is doing donuts in the squad car with these uh horrible mcgowan children because he promised to take them for a ride um there's a bit about little den uh earlier they were talking about little den being so such a cute name and now he hates his name and it's dumb the kids are punching each other they're

saying being in the squad car in the parking lot's boring they want a real ride all the stuff that leads to my note of these kids are monsters yes and we're just seeing dennis be as like this is the bare minimum of commitment that i have to do to do this before i get on to the really hard thing i'm gonna need to do yeah More of the stress stew for him. And then, of course, he gets inside. Frank is calling because he is going to be late, even though he promised he would be there at 8 a.m. But on the phone, he says that his wife, Dory, is having some trouble,

some labor pains, and he needs to be there with her. And then the camera zooms out, and it is a total lie because she's just making breakfast while he's on the phone he's giving her he's like two a yeah it's not one you know like there's there's two things i love about this scene number one that dennis is so understanding about it yes yeah he's not demanding that you know he's like oh no you're right yeah you should be like it's it's very like it's important. You should be with your wife.

And that's the most important thing. Yeah. And then when he hangs up with the whole time, I'm like, oh, what a douche. And then when he hangs up with Dennis, you can see he regrets it. Yeah. It just feels so good. He doesn't want to do this. But how else is he going to get out of this?

Right. How is he going to keep from being in this incredibly awkward next scene yeah because we go straight to the this meeting dennis meeting with with deputy chief town oh can we can we just talk about this opening dialogue it's so weird right like uh it is there is it's a lot of package talk yeah i okay the deputy chief of police town now town we should point out that the way town has been behaving in the few scenes that we've seen him in has been incredibly even-tempered very by the book yeah his wife is has been beat up and left in a car over a weekend and he's super suspicious in that he's not reacting in any emotional way. Right. Like, and he's got, I presume the package is a package of evidence.

Yeah. It's like the report. It's like a big thick folder, I think. But what he says is, I've been going through your package, Sergeant. Quite a package. You don't mind me looking at your package do you it's weird and i'm like is he coming on to dennis like what is happening here i think that language just hasn't aged uh yeah like i don't think it's supposed to be anything but i noted that as well because it's a weird way to phrase it like packet would

make more sense to me yeah there's another line a couple scenes down down here where i think frank says that dennis is down city hall south taking oral yes again i know exactly what he's saying are they intending this to sound like this is this is it not aged well like you said or i think our context has just changed so much that yeah these things sound silly okay i just want to like i just want to talk about it because there's you can't talk about this scene without talking about those don't mind if i look at your package do you is just a weird thing to say no matter what okay all right but this interview okay joe santos i mean this is this is one of my favorite performances like how he handles like the whole episode has been pointing

at this right they've been putting this interview off they've been putting this interview off and they've been telling you the weight of what's about to happen here i don't know i just i don't want it to go unappreciated yeah just how awkward but steadfast dennis is in this scene i i just think this is an amazing bit of acting that goes on here yeah i totally agree this is where we see why dennis is such a good cop yeah and it's not anything about the actual dialogue or the plot of what's going on it's all in his bearing and how you see him power through the anxiety to like do the job that he has to do yeah later in the episode this is i'm skipping around yeah uh deputy police chief town describes this as tough and compassionate a rare

combination and joe sant Santos nails it, right? Like, that's, come to think of it, that sort of garners thing too, right? Like, that is definitely a Rockford quality, this tough but compassionate. Why are they friends, right? Like, they have this in common, I think. They're just on different, you know, in different lanes of what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah.

in different lanes of how they, what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, according to the, the Ed Robertson book, this is, uh,

reportedly, uh, Joe Santos's favorite episode. And I think you can see why. First of all, he gets the most screen time, but he gets a lot of just great character moments and he really gets to like be Dennis,

um, in a really compelling way. Well, plot wise, uh, he does have to ask these questions to complete the investigation. She was gone for three days over the weekend. Why didn't he report his wife missing? He thought that she'd gone away to another house.

She does that sometimes. And I think we get a little sense of like, I don't ask where she goes, you know? Yeah. Then Dennis introduces, I forget if he says or asks, but you must be aware or whatever that your wife was having an affair with her parolee, blah, blah, blah. And this is where we finally get an emotional response from town.

He tries to, like, kick him out and whatnot. Dennis quietly but firmly says that you know given the facts of the case he's gonna have to ask for town to account for his whereabouts over the weekend he's he's he's asking the hard questions we get to that that point yeah great scene i have a thing in my note here and uh maybe you can help me with this i think this is dennis's response to something uh where it says no, I'm afraid it isn't. Oh, I think he says like your your investigation is over or this interview is over. And it's such such a Dennis line, too, because it is this like let me say this.

It's not Columbo delivering that line. Right. You can see Columbo delivering that line and he has all the control in the room when colombo says no sir i'm afraid it isn't well colombo would say no sir there's just one more thing yeah but like dennis is not in control here but he's keeping keeping it on track no we have to do this oh i just love it i i love it uh a great moment for that character i like like my note right after that is all-star dennis yeah yay dennis um jim is still trying to help out and he's back at the parole office uh we get another good business with the uh secretary where she

doesn't think it's worth trying to stop him doing whatever he's doing though clearly it's a little weird he's looking at the phone records for Mrs. Towne quote, for a full accounting whatever that means. And he sees that in the phone log, she got three calls in three minutes from Officer Kempner, like the day before she disappeared or whatever.

And he muses that three calls in three minutes, she must have been hanging up on him. That sounds personal. And then the secretary's like, why do you need to know the records yeah personal calls on government time yeah yeah i'm i'm surprised you have to ask yeah yeah she's not falling for it but again i think it's the same thing you were saying before it's above her pay grade yeah okay whatever just keep going uh and then we get this fun little it's not really a con i mean it is a rockford runs a little con but it's kind of this uh snowballing little narrative story to to get us to the to the climax um it's one of those things where it is obvious and um satisfying

as this whole thing plays out so jim calls for dennis frank answers the phone because dennis isn't there jim runs this little con do you have the number for officer kempner we were talking about like some real estate thing and i got a call about it i want to talk to him and dennis gave me his number but i lost it so of course frank gives him the number and his address just in case he needs it and then as soon as he hangs up, Ed Harris, Rudy Kempner, in uniform, comes in to the room, and Frank's like, hey, Rockford called about

that deal in Bear Valley or whatever it is. And we have this very ominous line of, you know, I gave him your number, I hope that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. It's time me and Rockford got together. So then, this rolls into Jim from Rocky's house, calls Rudy and pretends to be an insurance salesman to set up a meeting.

And Rudy just goes with it because he obviously knows that it's Jim putting on an act to try and get him to a place. Yeah. So this all just like rolls together real smooth. And I think from the way the kind of body language and facial language i think we see that rudy knows what he's doing jim does not realize that he's being suckered in even though it's like the easiest con job he's ever he's ever done yeah yeah yeah it's too easy right like it's too easy but um rudy is wonderfully cast right here's a

person it doesn't take much for ed harris to be menacing right he just does it and there he is a menacing ed harris we we cut from there to dennis at the other big drama of the episode he's taking his oral um facing his oral board for the lieutenant exam. And Towne is there. He's not part of the board, but he's present. This is the other side of the Dennis Coyne from his professional gotta-do-it version. Because as he says, he has this tendency to freeze up in these oral exams where everyone's staring at him and expecting him to say things. And they're like, do you think that's a good tendency in an officer to freeze up in these oral exams where everyone's like staring at him and expecting him to say things and they're like do you think that's a good tendency in an officer to freeze up um but it's very clearly in this exam right like yeah he does well on the written uh it's just like this

thing and then the examiner you know he's taken the exam multiple times he's never made it and frankly it's his association with ex-cons and specifically jim rockford that is tainting his yes his record and dragging him down or damn it dagger in the heart um becker does have kind of a first of all he defends jim and this is kind of the payoff for what i thought earlier of him being like no one will listen to you because you're an ex-con yeah um like he defends jim he's like well sure yeah he went to jail but he he got a pardon and that has nothing to do with how I do my work and all this stuff which actually is not true but no what else is he going to say um there was something here I didn't quite catch or understand

about how it would mean getting back into uniform and I don't know if they were threatening him with changing what he does now or becoming a lieutenant means going back into uniform, which I don't think is the case. I was a little unclear about what this interchange was, but it's leading up to Becker making a little soliloquy about how once you find your niche in life, like that's a special thing. once you find your niche in life like that's a special thing yeah it's and he does a good job and he just wants to keep doing a good job because he's found his you know he's found his niche yeah i was wondering too when i was listening to it like just before becker's speech is this the thing where if you don't get promoted you get demoted you know like i'd have to watch it again and see what that was or if that's referring to something that if you know police stuff would make sense right um the thing i took away was his speech about finding his niche he's stressed out he sees horrible things he has to deal with

terrible people but like he's good at his job and he likes it uh at the end of the day um it's very stressful that town is there but i didn't really make any notes about and he says some stuff but i don't it didn't really seem to matter there was menace in there uh yeah i think most of it gets kind of conveyed afterwards with uh dennis talking about how he's probably in there talking to him right now and they're like well he's not actually on the board so yeah there's that back and forth well yeah because our next scene is he's back at the station uh frank has finally decided to show up for work and dennis is like but what about your wife he's like oh that was a false alarm

yeah but dennis says that he better get used to being a sergeant um everything that you said about how the town is probably telling them about him and whatnot um frank mentions like oh hey by the way you know your friend jim called to talk to rudy about this like real estate thing and dennis is like jim doesn't know doesn't know rudy yeah i think frank says like oh he lied to me and dennis says well he lies all the time right you're not special but then frank says you know what's funny one of the rumors about mrs town with those like promising young officers included yeah rudy kempner and dennis puts it all together in a flash and there's a dramatic guitar riff as the two of them yeah spring into action he snaps his fingers and then the music takes off.

Yeah, it's pretty good. And we get into our dramatic finale. Jim drives up to Rudy's house and Rudy answers the door with a gun, handcuffs Jim. Jim's like, hey, you know, enough people have died. How do you think you're going to walk away from this? And Rudy says that no one will question an accident. So he apparently has some plan to make Jim's death look like an accident somehow. Well, one thing we know about Rudy is that he's really good at murdering people and covering it up.

Right. So far, so good. I do like that Rudy is probably just as stressed and just as much at his wit's end as everyone else in this. Like, we haven't been really getting his story, but like, he's not making smart moves anywhere, in any way. And Jim is pointing this out. Well, he stuffs Jim into

the passenger seat and takes off in his squad car, and they pass Dennis and Frank driving up. Unfortunately, there are not precision enough drivers to J-turn. They have to stop and back up to turn around and chase Rudy. So now we get our fun little car chase here, which has an interesting element. Well, okay, so this gets explained in voiceover, right?

Like, this is one of those voiceover dialogue moments. The cop car flies through. I don't remember if the intersection was controlled, like if it was like a red light or a stop sign. But the cop car goes through and Dennis and Frank are following, but their car is on mark. And there is a good Samaritan. is on mark and there is a good samaritan there's a gentleman with a pickup truck uh who had been a malibu cop for 10 years i wasn't a malibu policeman for 10 years for nothing uh yeah i'm not gonna allow that um and decides he's gonna get involved and save the cop from the car that's chasing him. Right. So we get this wonderful chase where Dennis is trying to convey to this guy in the pickup truck that he's a police officer trying to show him his badge.

Uh, but the pickup truck eventually, I mean, he's just like side swiping him. Yeah. It tries to get between, uh, Dennis and Rudy,

at which point this is where Jim leans back. He's in the passenger side, leans back and kicks the gear shift. And every muscle in my body seizes up. I don't know what it was about that, but I had such a visceral reaction to the impending crash. And it wasn't that big. I mean, like, there was. Like, it was a three-car pileup. But it wasn't, it was like a three-car fender bender that resulted from this.

But, oh, man, like, I just, everything was like, no! Yeah. I think my favorite bit out of all of this is when everyone's out, they pull the gun on Ed Harris and Ed Harris surrenders right away. And Dennis just pulls his badge out and shoves it in the face of the guy driving the pickup. Like, come on, come on, I'm a cop. I also stressed out at the kicking of the gear shift. It's like when a car goes over a speed bump and you hear the scrape. Yeah.

And you're just like, ah! You physically feel it. It's one of those moments when a potential financial issue is... There's, like, physical danger and also, like, you just ruined that clutch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's a fun little chase. This thing with the pickup

is bizarre it's yeah again very out of left field uh and i was going to say it seems like just some set piece that they're like oh we can put it in this episode but your point about yeah dennis you know shoving his badge in the guy's face does make it more relevant to the story than i've thought because it's like emphasizing the difference the different things you have to do as a plainclothes officer versus being a beat cop how he does have this position but it's not always recognized thematically those things are relevant so maybe it's less random than i thought they play a little bit with like how uh if we if we were still doing takeaways that you can

bring into your own fiction. And we should. Yeah, alright, let's do it then. I think that this is the thing people should consider. I don't want to say mistaken identity, but just the good, somebody with good intentions messing things up and putting

your main character in a position where they have to deal with both that and the situation at hand right like that's uh because this could have been just a boring scene yeah you know them chasing the cop uh but i think that this definitely makes it a standout having this third party not understanding what's going on and being like how do we deal with both of these right now? Because this person, you don't want to wreck. You don't want to run them off the road. They're an innocent who's just trying to help. They're just dumb or ignorant of the situation. Yeah, it's a certain kind of irony. The person who has incomplete information and so ends up

doing the exact opposite of what the protagonist wants or needs them to do from the best of intentions. Yeah, I agree. You've brought me around on a scene that I was kind of shrugging about. Ah, that's what I'm here for. All right, the culprit has been apprehended. We're back at the station. Dennis wants Jim to sign the statement. Everyone's still prickly here.

And then Frank is the one who lets slip that it's Jim's fault that Dennis is stuck at Sergeant. Yeah. Then Chapman and Town come in. Chapman's saying that he'll handle all the PR. And it's the same thing where he's like, and you'll just issue the statement, blah, blah, blah. And Town's like, I'm not issuing a statement or whatever. He does the same. Yeah, yeah.

Here's the thing that I think you're going to do. I'm not going to do that. But Tal congratulates Dennis and says, you're a good cop, Becker. Chapman keeps trying to take the credit. That's why I put my best people on it. I knew that they would leave no stone unturned, whatever. And we have this shot of Jim just laughing behind Chapman's back as he desperately tries to take credit for this thing that he has no business taking credit for. One of my pet peeves is he uses the line, the one bad apple doesn't spoil the barrel or whatever.

Yeah. And that's not the phrase. The phrase is one bad apple spoils the barrel. Yeah. It's always used to say like, oh, well well don't judge all of them by this one you know person like no no no it means that if there's one they're probably all bad like that's how i deal with apples like when i bite into an apple i'm like oh that's a mealy mess i don't think well the rest of these will be fine i'm now suspicious of the rest of them and I should be again another all too relevant to today

moment so even though Frank told Jim that it's his fault that Dennis is stuck at Sargent Jim is happy for Dennis he has a big smile for him and he says how does it feel Dennis? You're a hero

and Dennis gives him a slightly reluctant but very true feeling smile. Like, yeah. Yeah. I am a hero. This goes right into our final scene at the Becker's. There's a big party. Everyone's walking around with drinks.

The monster children are nowhere in sight, which I appreciate. Yes. And Rocky's there and he's busting jim's chops for not throwing parties like why don't you ever do this whenever you like you know whenever you solve a big case so that's hilarious um becker is uh like telling frank that it's okay you need to take care of your wife first or whatever and peggy exposes that lie she's not into labor. She's not due for another five weeks. Frank gulps and goes to see how she's doing. Yeah.

It's like, well, I gotta rely on it now. I gotta get out of this somehow. This is all I know. So we're doing it. There is a champagne toast that Peggy leads. Congratulations to her husband, Lieutenant Becker. Yeah. And we freeze frame on Lieutenant Becker. Yeah! And we freeze frame

on Dennis Becker's triumphant champagne. He's got that line too. We missed the one because the only drawback is now he has to call Lieutenant Chapman Doug. And everyone laughs and laughs. Yay, Dennis!

Yay, Dennis! Yeah, he did it. This is interesting because this is not just a episode that features dennis this is a dennis episode and i think the two episodes that this reminds me of are um the gabby and gandy one just another polish wedding yeah uh which was a backdoor pilot which was an attempt to make that a show. And the aforementioned Gear Jammers, where we get a lot of Rocky going through Rocky's life. But it's not a common thing to kind of lean on somebody who isn't the main character in a Rockford Files episode. So it's interesting. Very well done.

And a nice, well-earned moment for oh yeah for sure it's nice to see every so often this like someone getting a good outcome because i mean it's not a downer show but part of the rhythm is you know jim doesn't make any money things don't always go the way that they want sometimes the guilty person goes free because there's other considerations all that kind of stuff so it's nice to see like this guy who works so hard get get a reward so this is the fifth season

the other episodes we've done from this season include the first Lance White episode white on white and nearly perfect oh yeah I think in there we talked a little bit about how so this is after they've won like a dramatic Emmy, um, and kind of after their audience drop off from the first couple of seasons has

kind of stabilized. And also after David Chase has come on board and been kind of established. So like this season really does feel like it's a little more experimental in terms of the kinds of stories they want to tell. It's not all just you know the jim procedural story and so this is a nice like departure that's not a departure yeah we get jim we get him running a nice little con with his his uh glasses and everything yeah yeah um he is still instrumental right because he pulls rudy out of hiding uh and makes that connection but it's not about him he's

a he's a force in it and one that we as uh fans of the show he behaves how we expect we get what we would want from jim uh but it doesn't he doesn't have to be the center of it this this particular time which is great i also um like we were talking about before, it's not like Rockford Files has these arcs. They have these arcs, but they're not like the structure. They're not the plot of the episodes to bring us from season one Becker to season five Becker. But this is a thing that's in the background that he would like to be a lieutenant and he stresses out about it and he doesn't do well with the exams i think that's stuff we knew going into this one i think so yeah so i think it was just kind of a nice way to do it to to hit him with this

like the case itself wasn't like a terribly tough case except for the social situations that it put in him i was going to talk about that a little bit because i think the the case itself the mystery is kind of tuned exactly for the format yeah we have kind of one reveal right we're kind of set up to think that the chief is guilty it turns out that he's not but the fact that he's involved creates the social pressure that makes it a difficult case. And once Rudy is revealed, they just catch him, right? Like there's no mystery there from then on. If this was a movie, maybe there would be another level that would complicate, like implying that Towne did hire Rudy and then they have to find something that proves that he didn't do that.

Something like that where, you know, there would be a little more, another layer to what's actually happening. But in this format, the social pressure is what makes it dramatic, and it's just enough. It's not a boring mystery. You want to find out what happened. Yeah. But yeah, the tension comes from the status

relationship, not from the mystery of the plot. I do have one regret for this episode. And that is the character of Towne, Mrs. Towne, the body. Eileen. Eileen, that's it. Eileen Towne. I feel like

this episode relies on the fact that she's promiscuous to let us off the hook about certain things, right? Like, a woman has been beaten to death and the episode ends with us happy for dennis and i'm happy for dennis but uh i i do think that like the idea that she was promiscuous sort of lets this murder be what it is well she played with fire right and that's not good i wouldn't say that it is that it is. Well, she played with fire, right? And that's not good. I wouldn't say that it is a victim

blaming situation. No. But it is in a context where it kind of is shifting the moral weight away from the murder itself. Yeah. And kind of more to like, oh, well, what was she up to? And that's

where we're concerned. And I think one of the shames of it is that I kind of like this character here. Here's this woman that people were describing as average middle age. There's nothing special about her, uh, was the description. And she was using her position,

uh, to, to get these men like the, the, either the men that were, um um she was the parole officer for uh so she had some sort of power over them and then uh when they had the parties for the up and coming young cops again she had some power over them because she was uh the wife of the deputy police chief and and then like that wholecurrent, that's all good stuff.

That's all interesting stuff. This is an interesting web that is being laid. And the idea that Towne knew about it but doesn't want to talk about it is great. Or kind of knows about it but isn't willing to confirm anything he suspects. And is like, yeah, is he like live and let live? Or are they in some kind of arrangement or somebody shut down the party?

Right. Right. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a whole story there. Yeah. And I think that's great.

So like, like I said, I don't want to throw the baby out in the bathwater here. I think it's a very interesting thing. But also, yeah, it kind of sucks that that is the reaction that it can provoke in the audience. Yeah, definitely something to keep in consideration. Like, what are the elements of the character that make them compelling? What are the elements that are supposed to get you on their side? And what are the elements that are supposed to get you on their side and what are the elements that are supposed to yeah distance you from them it's kind of an element that's like you don't need to care about her so much because she was like you said she was playing with fire like i don't necessarily agree with that assessment but

that is kind of a bit of the tone it's a thing that I picked up. Okay, so for the listeners that may or may not know, for years I transcribed television shows. That was a job that I had where I had to write down everything that anyone said. And they aren't good television shows. They weren't the Rockford Files. They were quite often reality TV. They were horrible. files they were quite often reality tv they were horrible uh but there were these sets of shows that i would do that were about either people escaping death like uh i you know i survived an animal attack or you know that kind of thing where they interviewed them and they talked about

them uh and they talked about the attack and in those shows they did everything they could to bring you on board and identify with these people who have been attacked by the animals and survive and then there's other shows that were like a thousand ways to die uh where the people didn't survive and they just want to tell you about these weird gruesome ways that people died and if you ever get to see one of these shows pay attention to how relentless they are about how much every single person in these shows that dies deserves to die it doesn't matter they need to distance you from it because you're not going to tune into a show about people dying if you're going to identify with the people who have died right and it is

so just there that is just the tool that gets used and uh it becomes really evident when you watch one of these shows about people surviving when a group of them have survived but one or out of the group doesn't and the story about the one out of the group is always like you know that person first person that dies in a horror movie. Right. They've committed some kind of sin or. Yeah. Done something that's socially unacceptable.

Right. And this is just they're talking about an actual person who had an actual life, who, you know, was in the same bad situation as everyone else. You just happen to be unlucky about it. So it's just this natural way that uh we deal with death and whatnot i don't know why i'm using the end of this wonderful episode i think it's worth pointing out because it's so easy to let the framing of a character just kind of yeah slip by so like you know that's that's part of uh analysis and criticism right like not only what happened but what are the tools you know what tools that's part of uh analysis and criticism right like not only what

happened but what are the tools you know what tools do we need to build up in order to accurately or may not accurately but in order to assess not just the what but also the how yeah how was this episode constructed that is one element of how it was constructed is how this murder victim was framed but that said not to end on a downer um it's a it's a great episode yeah yeah there are a lot of really good things i just love how at every moment in this episode everybody from those first two cops that show up at the parking lot who are like he says there's a bad smell and he has to say that twice yeah to get them to open it everyone's like oh no yeah like this is gonna be bad and it just everyone is doesn't want to be so in that beginning opening montage when we get the uh that's your hot potato

is such a good line for it is just yep you gotta deal with it yeah nobody wants to touch this but it's yours now and that's it's funny because it's like chapman is basically giving it to becker as like a punishment right like yeah this case is going to suck here you go dennis uh yeah part of their eternal uh struggle in this case it ends up biting him because dennis makes lieutenant so good work chapman um and anyone who's who's into the into the show and likes dennis you know this if you haven't seen this episode it's a high a highlight it's a great joe santos star turn um we get to see him not just be over the top but also very interior with the character yeah uh which is great and we get to see peggy and she's great

doesn't really do a lot plot wise but just that feeling of dennis's life outside of being a cop is one that i appreciate and i think the actress actress is really great in that role so uh yeah yeah definitely uh going down as a as a as a I recommend it. All right. Well, even though poor Jim had absolutely no chance of getting paid for anything. Yeah, he's out bribery money, out one windshield wiper, and maybe some laundry because that got thrown around a bit. But I feel like we've earned our $200 for this day. I agree. We've gotten some great suggestions recently about episodes to look at, so we are

queuing up our next couple watches. If you have anything that you would like to hear us talk about that we have not already gone over, let us know. You can get in touch with us through our website at 200aday.fireside.fm. Our patrons can get a hold of us through Patreon at patreon.com slash 200aday. And you can tweet at us at 200pod.

We'll get better about being on Twitter with that. Oh yeah. I have been derelict in checking the account. As have I. One of my resolutions for the new year is to be more on top of the twitter account so hit us up there as well and with that farewell but not goodbye or we will be back next time with another episode of the rockford files