Two Hundred A Day - Episode 46: Counter Gambit

Episode Date: March 24, 2019

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E16 Counter Gambit. Jim is hired by an unsavory acquaintance to find a woman, which he quickly realizes is a cover for some kind of valuable that this woman may or may not have with her. Once Jim does find her, however, the situation quickly becomes more complicated. This is a con game episode, and we really enjoyed the twists and turns of the con, and (as titled) the counter-con. Of particular delight is the first regular-season appearance of Angel Martin! If you can see this one cold, you should - there's a lot to appreciate once you know the story, but the layers of misdirection are deftly handled and worth experiencing at full effect, if possible! In addition to appreciating the script and performances, we talk about the phenomena of characters acting in certain ways in order to misdirect the audience (and not anyone else in the world of the narrative) as to their nature or intentions, versus misdirecting other characters while the audience watches. 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, and follow him on twitter @jimlikesgames 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, and Dave P! Underscore Music in this episode from https://filmmusic.io: "Supernatural" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Thanks to: fireside.fm for hosting us 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, it's Jack. I'm at the airport. I'm going to Tokyo. I want to pay you the 500 I owe you. Catch you next year when I get back. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epi Dyer Ravishaw. We're going all the way back to season one for our show today. Epi, which episode did you pick and why did you propose it for our consideration? I picked episode 16 from season one, Counter Gambit. And I chose this one because I've actually been thinking about this one,

I think, the whole time we've been doing this podcast. And it's not because of anything, like, stand out about this particular episode. I really enjoyed this episode and i i hope you have too but um the whole bit with the tape recorder and the safe just sticks in my head and i think that every time i watch a rockford files episode i think is this the one this one i think fuels very much like a season one episode. And a lot of that is because there's a little more attention paid to like Rockford's like trade craft as an investigator. As I'm sure we'll,

we'll go deep into this, this whole bit with the tape recorder and the safe and everything, you know, seeing him use like gadgets and technology. And then also the whole plot is a, you know, is a con job plot. It's a counter con job plot it's a counter gambit it's a counter gambit uh yeah for sure this is one of those where i have some things in my notes where

i'm like is this and then it is and i don't know if it's because i've seen it before or the same thing yes there is telegraphed yeah my other kind of overall thought on this one after watching it was that it's kind of the reverse of um of something like uh there's one in every port where we see jim orchestrate a complicated uh con we're seeing a fairly intense con game but only from rockford's perspective as the uh as the mark he does in the end uh return the tables on right yeah he flips it on them yeah but yeah definitely this is this is uh kind of in a classic noir fashion right like there a lot of classic noir stories start with our private detective being hired to take the fall. Like they're hired to do something and that something that they're hired to do is just going to put them in a position where they can be the fall guy for whatever crime is about to be committed.

Right. Which I would say like I had the same thing. Like you were saying, there were several notes where I'm like wait a minute wait a minute and i you know again can't tell if it's because i'm remembering the full episode because i'm i'm not remembering the full episode i'm only remembering bits and pieces or if they're telegraphing things but one of the places where it did trip me up is that usually then the there's the femme fatale right like usually the woman is responsible for uh messing up the the detective getting the detective stuck in the most trouble and that is not the case here right and that's there's an interesting little wrinkle about that that i'll then i want to ask you but we'll we'll do that when we, as we say, get into it. Yes.

Yeah. This one, uh, as we said, episode 16 is coming right after sleight of hand. Oh, right. Which is one of our early, one of our earliest episodes. Um, I'm fairly sure that these were not written in the same order that they are, or they were not produced in the same order that they were broadcast. Right. Right. Yeah.

I don't think there's a particular relationship between those two things but i just bring it up because the sleight of hand episode is also a very noir-ish episode yeah but more in a noir movie sense yeah um and less in the kind of like i don't know sam spade sense and tonally they're very different yeah oh definitely it's kind of an interesting pairing of those two if you watch them on consecutive weeks right uh as the show is coming out i think that would be a interesting experience i think it's highly likely uh though i won't literally make the claim but i think it's highly likely that uh early on in a show like this, you would rely a little bit more on the sort of noir tropes. You're like, oh, it's a 70s noir detective.

Right. Once you find your footing, then you start making the show the thing it is. Oh, for sure. Yeah. This whole first season is also very much still in the direct kind of creative, I don't know, creative universe of Roy Huggins before he left the show. So there's a lot of stuff that is kind of looking that is looking similar to other things that he's done in the past and like the old Maverick scripts and stuff like that. I would say if I was going to make a meta argument about the Rockford Files, I would say that it ends up blossoming as its own

as its own kind of flavor more in the second and third seasons. I would agree with that. Perhaps that is a argument for another day. This episode was written by Howard Burke and Juanita Bartlett. This is Bartlett's first writing credit on the show. She had teleplay credits uh on episodes before this this is i guess the one of the first places where we have her direct hand in the story uh howard burke i found there's a couple couple little interesting things um his only rockford script but he wrote

two columbos ah one is uh by don's early light which is the military academy one uh which is uh quite good in my opinion he also wrote the super weird ira gun smuggling one that was later in the 70s that is not one of my favorites um but uh you know we're always looking for those crossovers in his obituary uh he he died in 2016 if i remember it and in his obituary, he died in 2016, if I remember it. And in his obituary, it mentions that he was also a novelist. So I was like, oh, let's find out something about his novels. The only one that I was able to track down in my quick internet sleuthing is a, I think, 1974, maybe? Early 70s sci-fi novel called The Sun Grows Cold.

Ah. And I'm just going to read the synopsis for it because it is pretty good. I'm intrigued already. I knew that you would be into this is what I'm bringing it up. All right. The sun grows cold. The time. The near future.

The place. America. Across the devastated landscape of what was the richest country on Earth, a man and woman are running for their lives. Their enemy? The government of the United States, which has become a monstrously powerful agent for the control of every human body and every human mind. Oh.

I'm in. The Sun Grows Cold. If anyone's read that book, let us know how it is yeah uh and then the director is jackie cooper uh who also directed in hazard uh which we covered in our episode 31 uh the one where beth gets poisoned which is a great episode and he has not yet appeared on our show but he but he is in two episodes uh yeah there's no way he couldn't like an actor uh that that looks like him that was acting in that day and age oh yeah to have been on an episode of the rock and one of the ones that he's in is one of the real uh the real in your face social uh

social issue episodes the one about uh the surveillance. Oh, yeah. We should do that one soon. We should. Speaking of Howard Burke's The Sun Grows Cold. The Sun Grows Cold. And, of course, Jackie Cooper plays Perry White

in the Christopher Reeves Superman movies. Right. Are wonderful. Speaking of things that are wonderful. Yes. Epi, what stood out to you in the preview montage this preview montage was jam-packed with wonderful lines this episode has a really a very high quotable line per scene ratio i was a little afraid that we got them all

like you know you can have movies where the whole movie's in the trailer and you're like, whatever. And I like seeing this many good lines in the montage. I was a little worried, but no, not at all. This is the exact same percentage of good lines that there are. It's a representative sample. Yeah. So I wrote down several of them. Uh, my, I think my favorites here are here are uh the exchange between rockford and oh valerie is she valerie at that time well she's always valerie okay yeah so valerie so uh the exchange where they're at a uh life drawing class and they're drawing a nude and she says nudes can be very difficult and he says you know tell you truth, this is the first one I've had trouble with.

And then gave a smile. And I thought to myself, how can you not just be instantly seduced by that? And as we'll see when we get to that moment, you can't. That is all that took. There's Angel. When Rockford says, we'll split the reward money, Angel's like, you mean we'll split the sentence, which is great. Wonderful Angel moment. And then a good gorilla line where he's like, he's got the best guarantee in the world.

He don't want to die. I think it is an appropriate preview of all the stuff we're going to see. There's a lot of mention of like percentages, like in for a third and for half, that kind of thing. Later on, like there are several points where he's like, well, I'm going to make money off of this. I'm going to make money off of that. But he doesn't make money off of this or that. I will say that also, I hope you have your calculator ready because this is a intensely. Yes. number-heavy episode. So we'll be leaning on you to keep track of what all is going on with that.

200 A Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200ADay. Patrons get to add to the 200ADay Rockford Files files, help us pick which episodes to cover, and more. Each episode, we extend a special thanks to our Gumshoe-level patrons. This time, we say thank you to Jim Crocker. In addition to supporting the show, he also sells our games at cons east of the Mississippi on behalf of Indie Press Revolution. Follow along on Twitter at IPR Tweets. Shane Lievlin. If you play games online, you should check out his free dice-rolling app, Roll4YourParty, at rollforyour.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, 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. Well, we start our episode with a shot of the firebird, which is always a good sign. Yes. Jim is visiting an old, well, buddy is the wrong word uh yeah is visiting

a person that he knows in prison moss williams who apparently put rockford in the prison hospital uh from a fight when they were in uh in jail together but he's called rockford because he needs a favor so this is all this is a great establishment scene uh to show us this character moss and his relationship with jim which is uh confrontational at best yeah i my notes for this scene are simply these looks yeah the glares and the yeah but the favor that he wants is that he has this uh he has this girl on the outside who stopped responding to his letters and he wants to know where she is because he doesn't trust himself to go find her once he gets out because he's supposed to get out in a

week uh as he says himself uh he has a pretty pretty violent temper and he doesn't trust himself if he finds out that she's going out with another man or whatever so he will pay jim's 200 a day plus expenses to find his uh his girl uh maria and uh let him know what's going on jim's response to this is there's like a phone book full of pis you never tried to kill right right? Like, why are you hiring me? It's either immense self-awareness or clearly a trap. Right. Yeah. And like his response to that is that he doesn't like Jim, but he trusts him because Jim was also a con and he knows what it's like. Yeah.

But we know what this show is like. We know there's probably something more going on but jim ends this by basically saying no he doesn't want to do it setting up the first part of the classic jim refuses to do work uh before he agrees to do work dynamic we go to his trailer he's on the phone with a dentist about an outstanding bill so we get a good strong look at jim needing money yes it's another important beat in the jim refuses work uh formula where he's like he's refusing work but he certainly needs the work uh there's a knock on his door and it is a man who uh introduces himself as daniel kramer and he says that he is moss's attorney he's there on behalf of moss to get jim to agree to find this this woman maria the knock on the door i have this moment where i was like there's a chain on the door jim like that's brilliant why aren't you doing that all the time

we find out why yeah we find out why listeners. There's a great bit of physical storytelling where the lawyer glances down at the chair like, hey, can I sit? And Jim just shakes his head like, no, you're not sitting. Then he shows Jim the picture of Maria and it's this very beautiful woman. Yeah. And we see Jim kind of do the like, oh, man. Yeah. beautiful woman yeah and we see jim kind of do the like oh man yeah now we know that he is going to get into this and then he nods at the chair to let kramer to sit down that little physical beat of seeing jim given to the inevitable without any words exchanged was something i appreciated and there were some good words exchanged though i do like the uh uh oh i can't remember the lead

up to this that the lawyer says something like like I know you're hesitating or, you know, you may be hesitant or whatever. And Jim's like, I'm not hesitating. You could tell Mr. Williams to stuff it. Yeah. No, no, no. How many times do I have to say no? But at the end of the day, Kramer has a $500 cashier's check ready to give to jim to start this assignment and jim talks himself into it by making sure that he's only going to talk to kramer he doesn't have to

interact with moss directly on that contingency he'll he'll do it and so we get a a joke in the cut here where we end that scene with uh the lawyer saying will you accept the assignment and then we cut to jim in costume with the square glasses and the big um plaid like like sample bag finding a particular motel door and obviously he has taken the assignment and is now on the case so uh jim's at thisel. He knocks on a door. He claims that he is from the Rothschild Beauty Foundation, and he's trying to find new salespeople in the area, and he wants to talk to the little woman. Yes. The man who answers the door has little truck with him, does not really want to talk to him, keeps him from from coming in we can hear that the shower's running

um in the apartment and so jim's asking like oh is is that the little woman i'd like to talk to her and stuff and the guy's like we're not interested get out of my doorway um then we hear a woman's voice saying that she needs a towel so the guy goes to uh get her a towel presumably jim takes a step, sees the same framed picture of this woman, Maria, on the little side table. I imagine that this is the whole goal of this con, was just to get in and

see if this is who he's looking for. The guy comes back and basically kicks him out, not letting him, even though it's a great opportunity for sales, does not let him linger in the apartment any longer. So this is actually the most confusing scene in retrospect. Yeah.

Nobody's behaving how you expect humans to behave in this situation. And at the time, that's fine because that's, you know, you're sitting there trying to figure out what the mystery is. So people behaving odd just means that there's a mystery there it doesn't mean that there's something wrong but like yeah i agree with you by the time you get done with this it doesn't quite make sense the way they behave uh i don't i like in my notes i'm like why doesn't he close the door on jim yeah he just leaves the door open jim so jim that Jim is able to just come in. Yeah, maybe we'll loop back and talk about this scene.

Because it's like, there's nothing wrong with it, but it is one of those... There's an implication about the con game that gets run on Jim that means that it's actually very deep. Yeah. And this is part of that in a way that doesn't really seem appropriate for what the potential gain is. I don't know. We'll see. Stay tuned. We'll talk about that later because this is one where I think it's it'll make more sense once we go through what happens later in the episode, because things immediately heat up in the next scene is the loud knocking on Jim's trailer door, waking him from a sound sleep. His friend Moss Williams busts open the door,

breaking the chain off. Clearly of no use. Possibly the final time we see the chain in the Rockford Files entire series. He busts in, he has a gun, he's waving it around. He's angry and he's yelling at Jim. He's like saying, what do you think, I'm stupid?'m stupid and jim responds with yeah moss i think you're stupid um and he's saying hey i was only gonna deal with the lawyer and moss says i don't care i want you to take me to her take me to her

right now so i guess we have now gone forward that week in the timeline and moss has gotten out and knows that jim has found the woman that he wanted her to find, apparently. They go back to the motel. There's a bunch of kind of banter where Jim is trying to keep Moss from going up there with a gun in his hand, right? Yeah, he points out that it's a parole violation. Indeed. Because Moss is the kind of guy who's going to worry about that. Right.

Moss says that he just wants to talk to her, has him drive around back, and then we see the guy who was in the apartment earlier that wouldn't let Jim in, but did let Jim in, in a bathrobe, taking the trash out. Moss runs up to him with the gun and starts yelling at him, starts slapping him around. His name is Harry, yelling at Harryry asking what he thinks he's doing and harry's like no you got it all wrong moss you got it all wrong it's a very chaotic scene but harry manages to get moss to stop hitting him and they go off into a corner to talk while rockford waits in the car because he's begging him i'm begging you not in front of him yeah which is

another weird moment but go on we hear thus implying that jim hears them say that uh he woke that harry woke up this morning she was gone he doesn't know where she went back in the car moss is uh back with jim and says that he paid jim 700 so far and that uh he'll give him another 500 to track down Maria now that she's peaced out. And Jim says that he thinks that this isn't about her. This is about something that she must have taken with her. There's something going on that clearly is of more value in some monetary sense here because Moss just keeps on throwing money at him. Right.

And it seems a little weird. here because Moss just keeps on throwing money at him. Right. And it seems a little weird. Uh, there's a good line in here somewhere where I think Moss starts threatening him again. And Jim says, get out of my tree.

So get out of my tree, pal, and stay out. So Jim's using his powers of deduction to figure out that there's something else going on. Um, so all these early scenes are like really quick. Yeah.

They're, they're moving by really snappy and I'm just watching, you know watching taking notes and i'm like oh okay so there's there's the weird thing like jim has now found like oh so here's our mystery there's a thing that she has and may the three of them were in on some deal or maybe she stole it from them and you know we'll see where this goes that's kind of where i was thinking the story was at this yeah those were the assumptions that i was like again like i don't i i didn't remember the details of the episode so i just assumed that she was holding money from them from beforehand or uh yeah exactly like my assumption was it was ill-gotten, and they're hiring Jim to get it back. But they don't want to tell him what it is, obviously, because if it's valuable, then Jim's going to want a cut or whatever.

Okay, so our next scene here, back in the trailer, Jim is making himself an omelet. Yay! Yay! There's another knock at the door. Jim is making himself an omelet. Yay. Yay. There's another knock at the door. It's someone who is not suing, selling, or collecting. He just wants to talk to Jim. This man, his name is Edward Birch. He says that he is from an insurance company,

that Moss and Harry stole a pearl necklace before they went to jail, but they went to jail on an unrelated charge. So his pearl necklace is still outstanding somewhere. And that his insurance company has a incentive program. Even though they've already paid out the insurance claim, they'll still pay a reward for someone to find the thing, because the incentives are to keep people looking for these lost and stolen goods. Now this is starting to sound exactly like the kind of case that Rockford would take, right?

Like this is something involving recovering something for insurance that's already a cold case somewhere else. Three years is what he says. You can see the gears cranking in his head where he, this is candy for rockford this is the kind of case that uh and i don't know if this is what they were doing at the time when they shot this but like if you watch all of the rockford files you'll find that he likes to know these sorts of details he'd like oh yeah he likes recovery fees and things like that it's kind of implied over time that that's really his bread and butter are these kind of like lower stakes recovery fees

and stuff like that. Though this one is actually pretty high stakes. One thing I liked about this scene was that it starts off with Birch trying to be kind of like a tough guy. Yeah. I've been following you and you've been associating with Moss

and associating with a known felon like that. That's a parole violation. And Jim's like, okay. This guy knows that Jim was an ex-con, but doesn't know that he got a pardon. And so Jim throws that back at him. I wrote down parole violation. He's not a, oh, yeah, because Jim corrects the before I can even finish my note about. Wait a minute.

That doesn't make any sense. So I think that's like that was an effective way to be like, here's this person who's done some homework, but doesn't actually know what he's getting himself into with Jim. But they go to the insurance company's office to talk to Mr. Cutter. They say it is a two hundred and250,000 claim on this necklace. And so there's going to be a 25% recovery fee. Mr. Cutter wants to know why Birch is cutting in Rockford if he knows that Moss and Harrier have the necklace. And Moss's explanation is that, well, they'll run if they see him

because they know him from the earlier, you know, trying to get the claim or whatever. And since Moss already wants Jim to find Maria, he's the one taking all the risk. And it's worth a third. Yes. To Birch, which Rockford quickly bargains up to 50 percent. There's something interesting about this scene. So this is one of the first moments where I really was like, Rockford walking into this office. Is this a con? There's something about the setup where he goes into here because like there's also this lovely bit about

um birch where he comes into the office and all of the respect for birch drops right he when he goes into talk to rockford he's throwing his weight around until rockford can tell him that he doesn't you know like i'm not a con you know i'm not on parole. I was exonerated. But when he comes into this office, it's this immediate status drop. Everyone treats him like he's like just a low level employee or whatever, which is smart for the con. Right. Right. It puts Rockford in a spot where he feels like he's he understands why this guy seems to have some kind of desperation and needs help 25 of this claim is a lot of money for yeah some some goober in the low-level insurance industry and then they get in and like even this the president uh or whatever

his boss yeah is like again treats him like what what you know i don't have time for this but then knows everything about it yeah i didn't really understand what you said on the phone can you yeah go over this again yeah no it felt really con to me and to the point where i was like open one of those drawers just open like a filing cabinet drawer just to see if there are files in there rockford and that's all you this is the point where i was like i think this is a front but i don't know if i only think that because i've seen this before and that's i'm remembering that's exactly it that's the front or if there's something about the dynamic of all the because it's like there's like phone calls and there's like multiple secretaries and yeah like you yeah like you said it seems like there's too much

busyness and it's all jammed together into one there's like a little hallway and then the main office and stuff like that if it was supposed to subtly tip you off that it might be a front then it was very well staged yeah there is a conspiracy to uh fool jim that he is now getting drawn into but he does uh say that he'll you know he'll do this for 50 of this recovery fee in writing you bet in writing so what does that work out to what is he looking at right now so he's looking at uh thirty thousand dollars which oof people that should have been the other tip off because uh like our a rule of thumb here is we multiply it by five. But let me just do the actual math here.

That's 50 percent of the 25 percent recovery of the $250,000 value. 1975. Yeah, $31,250. That's $146,000 in modern monies. I mean, that's a pretty serious amount for Jim. It is, and it should have been the hugest of tip-offs.

Yeah, because a lot of the time it's like 5%, right? Like, the kind of recovery fees are like 5, 10. It's a good point. But Jim agrees to do this in writing. He goes back to Harry's apartment. He wants to see Moss, who is there, of course. And he says that he's back in. He has a loan shark that's coming on to him strong. And he'd rather help these guys find this woman than get his fingers broken by this loan shark. I like to think that the loan shark is also his dentist that he spoke to on the phone earlier. I'll fix your teeth, but I'll break every bone in your right hand.

We have an argument between Harry and Moss about letting him back in or not, which Moss wins, saying, We don't argue because when we argue with me, we lose our teeth. And I have a note. I forget exactly how this goes down. I have a note that Jim is going to get a third of the necklace. Or like he's, he'll come back in and do it, but for a split with the other two guys. I think this is why this made you think of the other episode.

Because there are all these moments where Jim right now is running a con on them. Right. But they're running a con on Jim, right? Like he's running a con on them at their behest they actually do know why he's there yeah yes exactly and uh at this point i don't as a viewer first time viewer i don't know this but i might have my suspicions as a return viewer who vaguely recalls the episode uh I don't know this, but I am super confident that this is what's happening.

There's money that Jim is expecting to get and there's money that Jim isn't expecting to get and he's making deals left and right over it. For both of them, yeah. And yeah, it's stressing me out as his bookkeeper. All right, well, they agree to bring Jim back in. They've actually tracked her down. That's the other part is Ma says, well, he found her, but she's going to rabbit if they show up.

Right. So they need someone that she doesn't know to to find out if she still has the necklace and where it is and all that stuff. So that's like the usefulness of Jim to them at this point, which makes sense. But she has kind of changed identity. She now calls herself Valerie Thomas. She drinks scotch with water and, uh, takes art courses. And we get this voiceover of this description of her now, like kind of higher class kind of lifestyle into the life drawing course, uh, that we saw from the preview montage,

which, uh, which I think you, you already pretty much encapsulated what happens in the scene. There's something that's going to start happening here with Valerie. And I want to talk about it because Valerie might be the single horniest character in all of the Rockford files. That is possibly true. I i mean like we've had some moments we've had some moments where there's uh very frank moments between him and women that have been like oh we're gonna we're gonna have sex right now but uh we're not gonna tell the audience exactly that's what's happening but you know um i there was an episode no it wasn't him sorry i i get him confused with lance white from time know, there was an episode. No, it wasn't him. Sorry, I get him confused with Lance White from time to time.

There was a woman that Lance White was involved in that. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I did not remember this from this episode at all. But as we watch this episode, if we watch what unfolds, we first meet her at this life drawing class where they're drawing a nude, presumably a nude woman. Rockford keeps looking back and over the left to her painting or her drawing

until she finally says something to him. What's the matter? Maybe you can tell me. What's wrong with that? Let me see. Everything. Oh, don't worry. Nudes are very difficult.

I'll tell you the truth. That's the first one I've ever had trouble with. Smiles. And that's it. Yeah. She smiles and it just cuts to them having drinks at a bar or like, like a restaurant, like a nice restaurant.

Yeah. A Rockford restaurant. Yeah. It's pretty good right now. We don't have the full, like all of her thirst right now. All we know is that like, it just took that line but it's

so clear that he was there to hit on her right like right well that was his that was his in right like he's like this is how i will get to talking to this person so yeah so valerie thomas uh she is played by uh mary fran who um was in a later Rockford Files episode, but also was in Days of Our Lives in the late 70s. So any classic Days of Our Lives viewers, her character was Amanda Howard, and that is all I know. She was also in one Incredible Hulk episode. Oh, which one?

Stop the Presses. Oh, that one Incredible Hulk episode. Oh, which one? Stop the Presses. Oh, that's a good episode. That's a good episode. Her character's name is Karen Weiss. Oh, I bet you she was. Okay, I know who she was in that episode. Listen to my Incredible Hulk podcast, The Lonely Man podcast, to get more details on Stop the Presses. Very good.

So, yeah, as you say, she is real thirsty. And we see that, and that's not just a reading, like, interpretation. We get more text of this. Yeah, no, I'm shocked that I don't remember the text that we do get.

So, just at this restaurant um where she orders her scotch water no ice and that's how jim drinks it as well and then talks about how the last time he was in london and so clearly he's he's using all her biographical facts to establish commonality and it appears to work as we cut back to Moss counting bills into Jim's hand and asking how much longer this is going to take. You know, and he's saying like, well, you know, he can't push any harder because you'll figure out there's something wrong. Clearly, he's getting money to continue entertaining her in this this lifestyle. Moss makes some comment about it, and he has one of my favorite lines in this episode. I can't buy her a hot dog she's not that kind of lady this is great so uh i didn't record the exact value of the money that was exchanged here uh but i i do want to comment on it because

if nothing else what rockford got out of this were a whole bunch of expensive lovely dates right yeah whatever falls out of any of this after this point at least he got that for free so their next date uh is uh he's picking her up at her apartment so we go into her apartment for the first time and it's all white and very kind of high class. My note here is just more flirting and kissy face. She apparently is super into him. I forget if we hear here or later but his

alias here is Charlie and he's some kind of bank person is this role that he's in. And he actually has a box with security deposits in it that a client dropped off with him too late for him to put in the bank because the bank closes he asks if there's somewhere safe like oh this building must have a vault it's a secure building or whatever and she of course says oh don't don't

bother just put it in my safe yes so he uh agrees to do that puts this box in her safe and says that he will pick it up in the morning which is an incredibly important line because again i don't think he's saying that he's gonna swing by in the morning to pick it up um but on saying that he'll pick it up in the morning we cut to him opening the box back at his trailer presumably the next day and taking out these uh pieces of paper and underneath them is this audio recorder so this is a fun scene because it's like oh we get to see jim doing fun pi stuff yeah but it's kind of funny because he's doing stuff that we're just seeing on the screen and i'm like okay i think i see the logic of this. But then Rocky comes over and Jim explains to Rocky what he's doing

so that we will know what that all is. It's not that it's not trusting the audience, I think. I think it is telling the story and then just making it very clear because otherwise this would make no sense. Watching it, you get the gist of what's going on, but you don't, if you think about it, well, just watching it you get the gist of what's going on but you don't if you think about it while just watching it without his explanation right like if you think about it right so just

watching it what we see is that he he takes this recorder out and then he fast forwards past the part where you can hear the two of them talking which is the dialogue that we just heard and then you hear these little clicking noises and then you see him uh making notes making notes of numbers on his little notepad and it's uh montaged it's fading into itself so that we get the impression that it's taking a long time it's taking all day so that's what we see and then rocky comes in yeah and so with just what we see you think oh he's probably counting the clicks or something like that to find out what the combination. And in fact, he ends up writing a combination down on a,

very clearly a combination down on a piece of paper. But I had this moment where I'm like, wait, do locks work like that? Like, can you just count them? Is that really how it works? Like, how do you know where the dial started? Is that really how it works? Like, how do you know where the dial started? You know, like I'm thinking about the combination lock on my gym locker, right?

Humble brag. I go to the gym. It's something I do. Like, I don't start at zero and then go to the first number. I start somewhere. It was fun to watch him figure it out it's fun to watch him do sort of the boring labor intensive work that that he's probably doing all the time while we're not watching him right uh but um then we do need something to put our minds at ease about whether or not it'll work and what's interesting is that he's also presenting

it as an idea that he's had it's yeah it's like he was really excited to try this yeah yeah and he finally has this chance and what i like about that if i i'm just gonna go off on that a little bit there but um this is playful rockford right like this is rock why rockford enjoys doing what he's doing uh is because he gets to think out of the box this way he gets to try and solve these kinds of problems and uh that's fun to see like you don't you don't see that a lot like if you if you present a character and you say this character is an astronaut uh and then you're like so he knows all these astronaut things that that's usually the end of it you don't get to see what it is about being an astronaut that's interesting

to this character and this is like a peek into that with with rockford right like we know he he does he's good at running cons and he's trying to do the legitimate version of that so that's why he's a private eye or that's one way to look at it uh but we we get this sort of peek into his profession as his hobby and there's something about my position in my world that makes that appeal to me and also i love how upset rocky gets with him. It's so good. Yeah. So Jim explains just that. So the theory here is that safes are insulated on the outside, but not the inside. So the action of the tumbler is loud enough, apparently, to be picked up by this recorder.

Yeah. And that there's a loud click at zero and then you just count count them from there and that since it's going to be either left right left or right left right you just try whichever one works that's all there is to it i i am not a safe cracker um i don't know if that's true it's like it's true enough yeah but it's true enough for for me and yeah in this episode of the rockford files um but rocky then you know he's like oh that's very interesting now who are you planning to rob yeah yeah uh because rocky realizes that there's only one reason why you would need to conceal a microphone and count the clicks to figure out the safe combination early rocky uh because i think later rocky just doesn't like jim in this job because it's dangerous

but early rocky doesn't like jim in this job because he doesn't want jim to go to jail he's not 100 confident in jim's scruples well and he also doesn't want Jim to do illegal things. Yeah. I think just as a general moral position. Yeah. And I love that. That's so good. Well, we know who he's going to rob. Yes. So we are back at Valerie's

apartment. She is apparently making a souffle. She just needs a couple more minutes. But don't worry, she's an amazing cook. Yes. So while she's in the kitchen working on this souffle. She just needs a couple more minutes, but don't worry, she's an amazing cook. So while she's in the kitchen working on this souffle, Jim checks it out, and sure enough, his combination is correct.

He opens the safe, he pulls out a box, opens it, and we see this humongous pearl necklace. So sure enough, it's in there. Then he boxes it back up and puts it back. i was so tense during this seat yeah just waiting for her to walk back out with the souffle i was like god damn it why are you doing this right i mean i understand i understand he wanted to try it and we were just

given the opportunity to do it but still oh man i had this like little headcanon moment because like maybe like wait till she's in the bathroom or taking a shower or something right but i had this moment in my head where i'm like jim is probably bursting at the seams with excitement to see if this worked yeah he's looking for the excuse yeah um he puts this necklace back and then we go to the lapd with with our good friend Dennis Becker, who's just getting his stuff together. Oh my God. Ready to go home. The phone rings. He answers it. It's Jim who says, Hey, it's your friend, Jim Rockford. And Dennis just says, no. He says, I haven't asked you anything yet. And Dennis says, you will.

So good. All we need to know about their dynamic for the purposes of this episode, which is Jim is always asking him to do things and Dennis just wants to go home. Yep. Yeah, it's a great tiny little bit of Dennis. There isn't a whole lot of Dennis in this episode, but what there is is classic. But what Jim wants to know is how long the police will hold on to a piece of jewelry if it has been stolen before it can be returned to the insurance company and blah, blah, blah. And Dennis says, depends, but probably just a couple of weeks.

And Jim says, a couple of weeks. He's like, well, as long as they have someone assay it. Yeah. So they know the value of it. They don't need the actual object for like trial evidence or anything. And Jim's like, oh, well, in that case. Yes. for like trial evidence or anything um and jim's like oh well in that case yes he says something like if dennis wants a hot tip on stolen jewelry or something yeah don't go home just yet so i guess what jim's doing here is is making sure that if they just you know call the police and say hey

this woman has a stolen necklace right that he won't have to wait too long to get the recovery fee payout from the insurance company yeah i was i was wondering about that like so i mean this is important for the next scene but it depends on how it's important to the next scene right yeah i i am unaware of what jim is aware of at this point right Right. Yeah. That's a good point. So my, okay. So in the next scene, it's Jim goes to, uh, Birch, the insurance guy tells him that he's confirmed that the pearls are there. They can just call the police right now and, you know, take care of it. And Birch says that, oh no, we don't want to call the police because they're going to hold this for material evidence.

And we're going to have to wait for nine months or a year for it to go through the courts before you know before we get the recovery fee and so the last scene was to set up this so that we know that birch is lying doesn't know what he's talking about or is lying and so jim realizes that as well and grabs him by the tie and is like all right why are you lying to me if you know if you are who you say you are, you should know, you know, they don't need to hold it for, for evidence.

Um, and the scene ends with Moss coming in behind him and hitting him in the back of the head. Yeah. And, all of them piecing out together, you know? And so now we see that they were in on it,

right? Birch and Moss and Harry are all working together. Epi, I need a quick break. I'm going to grab a taco. You tell our wonderful listeners all the places that they can find you and your work on the Information Superhighway. I'll be right back. One way to find me is to go to twitter.com and search for at EpiDia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H.

I'm usually responsive there. Otherwise, you can go to worldswithoutmaster.com where you can find my sword and sorcery fiction and role-playing games. And if you like role-playing games, maybe you want to check out digathousandholes.com where I publish all my other role-playing games. Oh no, I dropped my calculator.

Nathan, while I go pick up a spare, why don't you tell the good folks where they can find you on the internet? In addition to this podcast, I also design and publish role-playing games, including the Worldwide Wrestling Pro Wrestling role-playing game, among many others. You can find links to all of my games and other projects at ndpdesign.com. And of course, you can find me on twitter.com at ndpaoletta. Looks like you're back. You ready to continue the arithmetic analysis for this episode there, Eppie? I'm back. I have my DM-42 with me and I'm ready to dig down into Rockford's books again. All right. Well, I'm done with this delicious avocado taco. Well, let's get back to the show then. Yeah, my note at this point is just, yep, it's a con.

Yep. This is the point where either eagle-eyed observant Epi is right, or poor memory, but porous memory Ep, remembered just enough to be right. Right. And this is driven home with a downbeat in our next scene where Jim goes back to the insurance company office and opens the door. And sure enough, everything's stripped out of there and it's getting repainted.

And that was all a front. So I guess my question for you here. What company rents office space to cons in L.A.? Because that's the... That too. So I guess, so to reply to what you were saying earlier, I think Jim is legitimately checking, like Jim is calling Dennis

because he knows that he can get this information from Dennis because it's pretty straightforward and low stakes. It is a little weird because you'd think Jim would already know this, but whatever. For the sake of making this reveal happen, we get that piece of information

that they don't have to hold it for so long. Maybe he's a little suspicious and he's just waiting for something to confirm. And so when Birch is like, no, no, don't go to the police, that confirms for him something.

But other than that there's not really anything that telegraphs that jim has any suspicion about the situation to me i i think you're right i think that uh especially his reaction to birch like grabbing him is a little bit more uh on the emotional side like i think if jim knew and he was just confirming his suspicions uh he would be cooler in this scene yeah he would he would uh we've seen him do that we've seen him confirm suspicions and then either act like this person had just disappointed him rather than uh you know grabbing him and telling him that they lied or uh would find a way to uh work the angle uh back into his favor yes we go from jim's uh angry response to seeing that he got conned um to rocky fixing his

chain lock on the inside of his door he's answering the phone because jim's calling yeah uh the cops have been to this place three times already uh they took the tape machine that he had and of course they're saying that he is the one who stole this pearl necklace yes you stole that woman valerie's necklace or something and jim says that's not her real name and rocky says what are you talking about her name's been all over the news and says that he should call that that nice lawyer of his and i was like oh beth but no she does not in fact make an appearance um so is that line supposed to communicate to us that she that this so the whole thing with this woman maria that was part of the con yeah and that the the mark this

whole time has been valerie and this necklace and jim is the the patsy that they that they're framing yeah especially because it's coming from rocky i guess is right rocky is the uh omniscient narrator yeah so jim who's of course calling from a phone booth this whole time he calls becker uh says that it's a nice tight frame and that uh moss and harry pulled this job and becker says well then why are your fingerprints all over the necklace case and theirs aren't and he says because they wore gloves and i didn't i'm not saying i didn't handle the case but i didn't steal the necklace the end of the conversation is just this great shot on jim's face as clearly dennis is like chewing him out on the other end.

And he just like makes this amazing facial expression and slowly hangs up the receiver. Yeah, that was right. Because he started that whole thing saying, don't bother tracing it. I'm timing the call. Yeah. We go to some kind of parking garage where Valerie is getting into her car. And then Jim creepily pops up in the back seat where he's been waiting for her. Yeah.

I mean, Jim's not putting off good vibes in this episode. But yeah. He says that he didn't steal the pearls. You know, and she's angry, obviously, that he lied to her and, you know, pretended to be someone he's not and all this stuff but he says that if he trusts him he can get the pearls back and keep himself out of jail so i like here that he's not he's casting it as something that he needs to help himself but he can also help her yeah that makes it a little more not realistic but a little more uh empathetic than him be like no no i can, no, I can solve this all for you. But all he needs is for her to lend him $1,000.

And if she can do that, he can get her pearls back. And she has this wonderful line. I'm probably paraphrasing here, but it's either you have more gall than anyone I've ever come up against or you're innocent. I'm like, it's both. It's both. How much of I'm like, it's both. It's both. How much of her being like, okay, fine, I'll go with what you're saying is the thirst?

Yeah, all of it. Well, okay. So, yeah, there's a lot to deal with there because he has been lying to her and her jewels have disappeared right and uh the police say he's responsible for it and part of the frame is also that not only do they have that evidence of him recording the the safe and stuff which yeah does not look good let's be clear but they also have his like little notebook where he took all his notes about her and wrote down the combination yeah he says that that was planted um so i don't know maybe they grabbed it off him when he was unconscious maybe um it doesn't really matter but yeah so everything should say danger yeah stay away valerie but uh she doesn't so obviously there's something there

there's some charm and it's not that he's managed to convince anyone that he's innocent. Like that's not what's happening. But I think it's the next scene. Is it the next scene? I think it's the next scene that really cements the thirst as real. Yeah. So the next scene, of course, once you want someone, this higher class lady who already isn't happy with you to trust you with her money and recovering her goods, of course, take her to a porn theater. Yes.

I do not remember. And I don't know if when I first saw it, I just wasn't because it's not they're not saying, hey, we're in a point like if this were filmed today the sounds coming from the movie would be grunts and moans and all of like the signifiers that they're watching porn but the signifiers that they're using here that they're watching porn are the bad dialogue between the grunts and groans you know like it's it's the i don't even remember what it is it's about a doctor right yeah this i mean this is all played for humor right like we get the establishing thought that it is a like i think it has two x's it's like a double x theater yeah whatever that means and uh they go in because of course this is where jim has to meet with uh his ex-con buddy angel martin and it's you

know away from prying eyes that's that makes sense yeah yeah uh so fun fact i didn't realize this this is angel's first regular episode appearance he was in the pilot but between the pilot and now angel has not been in the show this is his first regular spot there's some bits about how they interact that feel like establishment right like like they're trying to establish that they were both right yeah joined together like there's things that aren't done with rocky or dennis in this episode to say we're friends and here's our relationship and also the relationship isn't quite right yeah it's almost there but not quite right uh yeah that's interesting yeah so that and

also uh fun trivia fact uh the guy who plays moss eddie fontaine was considered for the angel role at one point that's a very different angel all right so there's two things here one is that jim wants angel first he wants to get information from angel and then he wants to recruit angel into a plot um so he wants to he's like i know these guys have this expensive necklace they're going to try and fence it there's only one guy who would deal with this kind of thing. Do you know if they have a meeting with him? And Angel pays out one tiny piece of information with each bill as a bribe, right? Which is classic. I think he says something like,

it's going to cost you eight Irish in water. Eight Irish in waters or something. I don't know what that means. I mean, other than maybe Irish whiskey with water. Right. Those cost a certain amount or something. Yeah. Yeah.

If anyone knows what that means, let us know. It's a good phrase, but. Yeah. It also looked like he was counting fairly high denomination bills into Angel's hand. I don't know if you. I didn't catch what it was, but yeah. But Angel does know that there's a meeting and where it is. So he gets his three or four bills of bribe.

And then Jim springs the and I need you to help me bit. He wants Angel to impersonate the fence. And Jim will be hiding there in the other room. And they can get the necklace from the two guys and go from there. Sounds like a solid plan. This is where he offers to split the reward money and angel says yeah we'll split the prison sentence yes there's a joke at the end where jim's like okay i just needed to make sure whatever something something with val and he turns

and she's staring at the movie in rapt attention such rapt attention that i in my notes i thought the joke was that somebody had replaced her with a mannequin like she just doesn't move at all uh but this is this is it this is the the moment where uh it's it's all comes clear what her motivation throughout this entire episode has been there's a one one, two, that's the first part. And then the second part is they, they are leaving the movie and she's staring off into space. Lady, why don't you say something?

Why do they allow those movies to be shown? But she's like smiling. Yes. It's not. Yeah. It's good stuff. It's good. It's good.

It's good body language with, to make this kind of a humorous moment. And I think is making this text of her interest in such things and why she is so interact with Rockford, perhaps. There's one final beat with all of this that we'll get to at the very end of the episode. But like. It doesn't stop. Yeah.

At the very end of the episode. But they're like. It doesn't stop. Yeah. Jim calls the defense Manny impersonating Moss to change the meeting. Yes. And then once that happens, he's like, all right, Angel, let's, you know, let's do the thing. And we have a joke here where Angel says, I'm not doing it. And then we cut to Angel with a loop in his eye looking at a pearl.

Classic joke in the cut for Rockford Files. What follows now is such delicious Angel. If I had to pick like a top three favorite Angel episodes, he's not in this one for a lot. But what he does in this would make it a good contender for that. This is his mode. Because there's a couple Angel modes, right? Like, one is where he's kind of like the snively coward Angel. There's the trying to talk Jim into doing something Angel.

And then there's the, like, oh, this guy is actually really good at certain things. And he is one of those things like the sting kind version of of angel where he's inhabiting these roles yeah so here you know he's he's pulling the wool over moss and and uh harry's eyes um about who he is but they only brought one pearl they didn't bring the whole necklace yeah so he makes an excuse to go to the bathroom where jim is plan's not going to work they only brought one so jim says to tell them that it's paste angel goes back out there this is also setting up another joke but so first he does this thing where he's like this is good quality work high craftsmanship you might be able to get 20 25

dollars or something like that and they're like? And he runs this whole line about, you know, you can tell from the like, the blue aura and how it's too spherical. Nothing from nature is that round and all this stuff. It's all good. It's so good. And it's great because you see Angel, he was like, this isn't going to work.

Tell him it's paced. What do you mean? Tell him it's paced. Just do it. And then him just doing it isn't him just being like, it's paced. It's him doing this entire convincing uh spiel the the bit about the blue aura like it's clearly something you can't see he's telling them it's there and because he's the authority right they're

both nodding start seeing it and they're like they're they're like yeah no okay i see what you're talking about oh it's so good it's really good uh so not only does he fool them about telling him that it's paced they also pay him 200 for this time they they leave jim comes out and it's like all right what are we doing now and jim says well they're going to think that i switched the pearls so now they're going to come after me and angel says no i'm through i'm out of it I don't want them coming after me, too. Yeah. So then in our next scene is Angel going to Moss's apartment and spilling the beans that he's not Manny. His name's Angel. Everyone just calls me Angel. Yeah, he's like, names don't matter.

He knows that they are bound to find out that he was lying to them. And he wants to make it real clear that he was forced to do that by Jim Rockford. And he doesn't want to be caught in the crossfire if they go after after Jim right and he's like I lied to you it wasn't paste it was real but if you want to be sure go talk to Manny the actual the actual offense um I feel like when I first watched this episode I thought that this was a little too craven even for angel right and thus it must be part of a scheme right because like why would angel go out of his way like i can see him being like you know getting caught on the street and then like spilling all the beans right because that's what he does but him going there there is a uh a type of misdirect that's done often in television shows that I'm – OK, so I think this is one of those cases where it's done right.

So we as audience members are lacking a little bit of information. And the little bit of information we're lacking is the part where Jim tells Angel to do this. Right. We don't have that information. What Angel does looks like he's legitimately selling Jim out and that Jim's going to be in trouble because of what's happening. So we don't know that this is part of Jim's plan. And it looks like, oh, no, Jim's lost an ally. Jim's lost his friend Angel.

He sold him out. And that kind of tension, a lot of movies and TV shows will create that kind of tension in ways that aren't natural. I'm trying to think of like a good example without actually calling out examples. But like you have the character act that way in front of the people they're trying to fool. It's fine. But they'll often also have the actor act that way or the character act that way in front of the audience in moments where it doesn't matter to sort of drive it home

when it doesn't make sense that they would. I think this is one of those cases where it's done right. But I also think I agree with you. We have seen Craven Angel, right? we've seen angels sell them out to the fbi uh i i keep going back to uh the urban horticulturist right yeah uh chicken little is a little chicken but um well yeah so we've we've seen all of the various manifestations of Angel. I think that's one thing that we're bringing to the episode that like. Right. Probably would not have crossed anyone's mind as they're writing it because it's Angels again, his first appearance in the regular show.

Yeah. You wouldn't realistically expect anyone watching the show to have any expectation of Angel other than what we see on the screen in this episode. Right. And so given that, like, OK, he could be this kind of guy. Like, I don't think it's supposed to be a super subtle like, oh, you're going to see what happens next. I think it is supposed to create the tension of us going like, oh, no, Jim sold out. What's he going to do now?

And I guess I just like it because they didn't go that extra length of like really playing it up for the audience it's it all angel has to do here is play up to these two crooks and we're good uh so we don't have that x him going that extra that extra mile to convince the audience that he sold jim there's not like a scene where he watches jim go away and then he starts hyperventilating and going like oh my god they're gonna kill me when they find out and then go to the door or something well they they uh they believe him um they we cut to them uh actually getting them appraised by Manny, the real fence. Manny appraises the pearl and says, this is, this is the recall to the earlier joke.

Yeah. Really good craftsmanship, high quality, the best flash I've ever seen or something like that. Right. Like what? It's fake. They try to figure out an explanation. Rich people make duplicates of their jewelry all the time.

She must have had the fake one now she's scamming the insurance company right she had the fake one in the safe so she's going to get the payoff and have the real necklace but they can still get jim to take the rat uh he can still take the fall for this and they ask how you know how do you know and moss says i know human nature so we go back to valerie's we see moss and harry who is in a very non-sneaky uh tan trench coat open the safe find the case sure enough there's pearls in it and they switch it out for their necklace that they think is fake and they leave and then there's a beat and then jim comes in from the uh from the porch and it's not a gotcha moment,

but this is kind of played to be like, uh, what's Jim doing? Cause he goes over and like turns on the light and then goes over to the, to the safe. And then he turns around and says something like, it's okay if I open this right or something. And we see that Valerie is there as well.

I'm like, Oh, okay. This was the plan all along because then Manny comes in and then Angel comes in and they were all hiding to make sure that this all went down. And indeed, Manny and Angel were part of this setup con, inside the con, to convince them that their real pearls were fake. And then we go to them with another fence fence a pair of guys who look very tough

and no joke here there's like what are you trying to pass off on us they have a line about like it's worth 250 grand but we'll take whatever yeah that's the insurance on it but you know whatever whatever whatever is fair and they're like they're paced moss and moss and harry they realize that they got suckered back at uh valerie's apartment manny inspects the real pearls says it was one of the hardest things he ever had to do saying that they were fake these are the finest pearls i've seen in five years uh jim tells angel you'd make a great informer and angel goes it's a gift a gift. Yeah. Yeah, Angel has this great line where he's like, I was selling you out and they were buying. Yeah.

So proud. Valerie calls Becker on the phone. Oh. You know what? This is all a misunderstanding. You know, sometimes I misplace my jewelry. She opened her sock drawer or something and there they were. They were never stolen.

Call off the APB for that poor that poor jim rockford the whole time she's on the phone with dennis those two are flirting and it is like you could cut it with a goddamn blowtorch like it's just they're doing it with their eyes over the phone that she's holding while she's talking to dennis He kisses her on the forehead? In my notes I say, she makes a sexy face. Yeah, no, it is like, what? And then she hangs up and we freeze frame on them kissing. Jim Triumphant, end of episode. So Jim Triumphant, but, I mean, maybe?

But? So here's the thing about the money. Presumably he did get paid the $700. So he got the $500 cashier's check up front. That seemed like that was legit. You think then he got paid another $200? Yeah, because there was this point where, like, they said, we've already paid you $700 or something like that. Yeah.

And then there was, like, another $500 on the way, but it seems likely that they don't pay him for that. But they do give him money to like when he's taking her out and stuff. Yes. So there's the expenses part that he definitely earns. And presumably these weren't cheap restaurants by any stretch. Like he was pretending to be a wealthy banker. Right. So he was spending money like a wealthy banker right so he was spending money like a wealthy banker so there's that and also angel pulls in whatever money jim was paying him per

syllable uh at the the porn theater right so that's great and then he gets well okay so it's hard to tell if he gets the 200 that they paid him to do the uh appraisal or if in his it doesn't happen on screen I don't think that he pays them that $200 back but I don't know you can kind of assume he would have to or these like given how hot-headed they were but I'm going to say so far both angel and jim have made actually a decent amount of money nothing compared to the 30 grand plus that was on the line or out there uh at some point during this whole like well it was 30 grand if the insurance scheme worked out and it was... And then if it was a third of the... Like 80 grand or something like that, if it was...

Yeah, neither of which materialized. But more importantly, I think it's this relationship. Clearly. Built on lies. All in all, other than getting roughed up a little bit there's no damage to the firebird yeah rocky replaces his chain on the door of his trailer um jim comes out i would say on balance jim comes out ahead yeah between as you said earlier all the dates he got to go on on someone else's dime in addition to his uh his new best friend here uh here's a question he wanted her

to lend him a thousand dollars as far as i can tell that thousand dollars was for bribing angel that's actually so do you think you had to pay her back oh that is a good question what would that a thousand dollars well and probably manny he probably bribed manny yeah yeah you may be right so he may actually be out money he might be out money depending on. He probably bribed Manny. Yeah, you may be right. So he may actually be out money. He might be out money depending on how much those bribes were. Yeah, because if he was in money, he would have had the thousand to do it. Well, someone's out money. But I think he makes up for it with non-monetary rewards.

Yeah. So good for you, Jim. Yeah, so it's a fun episode. you jim um yeah so the i think the so it's a a fun episode it's kind of paced well where i think we kind of realize what's happening just before jim does generally so that's which is where you want to be um you know we're seeing him react and then take his next action that's a fun inversion of sherlock holmes or you know like there's a lot of detectives that are one step ahead of us and or two or three or depending on like. Yeah.

We're just waiting to be told what they already have figured out. Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, because we're privy to something more, although actually there isn't a whole lot of that. I think it's just that we're the audience and we're suspicious yeah i think we just have more context and yeah and jim is written as not being as suspicious as maybe he would be in a different episode yeah so there's that there's that dramatic irony uh that we then we well we're doing the thing we do when you watch a colombo episode

right in a colombo episode we watch the murder and then we wait for colombo uh to catch the murderer yeah we want to see exactly what it is that he does that he decides is important and yeah how he does his hounding right yeah so in this case we know we don't have all of that knowledge but we have enough knowledge to know that jim doesn't know what's happening yet. He doesn't he doesn't see the danger he's in or whatever. And then we're waiting to see how Jim deals with it once he figures that out. Yeah, I think there's the only moment where we don't have information and Jim does is the scene where Angel goes to, quote, sell him out.

I think this would be a really fun episode to see you know again for the first time right yeah there's someone out there that you want to introduce to to the rockford files and they're a fan of con games and those kinds of tricky mysteries this is probably a good one to to show off because we do see jim getting conned but then we see him flip the con right that's the counter gambit of the title, right? He manages to turn it back on who's conning him, which is what we like to see from our Jim. All right. So I have one discussion point about the con itself. I'd be interested to get your read on. So thinking about it from the perspective of moss who's essentially who seems to be the

mastermind yeah the maestro so presumably he's set this all up while in prison right yeah and harry is seems like the right hand man probably the one who's out and able to like actually do things so they must have figured that they were going to get enough of a score to pay for all those things. Right. Right. So that was the other thing. Like while I'm doing Rockford's bookkeeping, I'm thinking about they rent the space and employ an entire crew. The lawyer, the insurance guy, the insurance guy's boss, and at least two or three incidental secretaries and whatnot are all part of the scheme.

And some woman who was in Harry's room when Jim went there. been part of the con was convincing rockford that the fake that that maria uh this this fictitious person was with harry that morning when he went there to try and figure out if she was there right one of the things that that does on a meta level like on the level of the audience is that it forgives rockford a lot of sins uh if she's there and Rockford's thinking, or if Rockford's thinking she's there. Right. And she's part of all of it, then him playing the role that he plays in the beginning where he deceives her is him working against another con artist. Right.

And not an innocent woman. Right. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that but yeah so one of the things that that does for us is that it lets us go rockford's still a good guy right like he's not this jerk it changes the moral weight a little bit yeah um and then when he figures out that he's he's been duped then uh then he realizes that she's not a part of it and and then he does tell her you know the truth and then she legitimately i feel like they're in that and you know the scene where he's in the car

which is creepy um i feel like she legitimately could have been like no i don't want anything to do with you and he would have figured something else out right yeah but she has the thirst so she didn't yeah so so there's that but that is another function of that thing that i was just talking about which i wish i had a good name for which is this misdirect that is for the audience and not for any of the characters in it right uh because why like like what which part Like what? Which part? Why convince him that she's at this hotel room? Because that's what makes the argument between Moss and Harry seem legit. I guess the question isn't why. It's why that and not something less convoluted.

Oh, sure. Like that's the that's the which. Why do they not just have the picture there and not have to have like a woman in the bathroom to say a line? Yeah. Well, I think in that case, I think that is for the audience. Right. Yes. That's what I'm saying.

Like, I think there's, there's a bit for the audience. I think that part is we're supposed to also be thinking that Moss's story is on the level. Right. Until they come in and beat up Rockford and knock him out. Right. Like that's what that's the reveal of like, oh, that's not how this they were in league all along. Yeah. And it's not even so much that he's on the level.

It's that his it's it's really weird because we aren't we're supposed to be suspicious of everything Moss does. But we're not supposed to be. Yeah, we're supposed to be suspicious, but we're not supposed to be convinced that our suspicions are correct yet. And that helps. Yeah. There's the element of, we know that there's something going on, but we let Rockford tell us what that thing is. And Rockford thinks it's this woman left with something that they want and they want the thing and not her. Part of the con is to make him think that, but that also fulfills our audience suspicion that something is going on.

Oh, Rockford knows what that something is. And then we're just a little bit ahead when we're like, oh, maybe this, you know, maybe the situation is kind of a setup. Oh, turns out it is. Yep. Yeah, it's good. It's in a way very straightforward.

Like the actual plot is just like, there's no, there's nothing extraneous. There's the one story and we go down it. The story itself has the different levels of who's conning who about what. But it's not one of those where like things come together at the end. There's just kind of the one narrative. I felt like there wasn't a lot to talk about because it's just this happens and this happens. But the things that happen are interesting this whole cast may have been a different rockford

files episode where there was this insurance guy trying to get this money you know what i mean like and then you'd have these competing uh factions like the cops and the criminals and the insurance guy and rockford and maybe that's what makes it feel very linear to me, is that there aren't factions. We talked about that before in many, many episodes where there's the competing interests around whatever the MacGuffin is. And in this case, there's no competing interests, which is fine because I think if there were, it would become confusing.

You already have the counter gambit. Yeah. So I think that this was a fun episode to watch think if there were it would become confusing you already have the counter gambit yeah so i think that this was a fun episode to watch and i'm glad you brought it up oh thank you uh yeah no i i was super happy the moment it started i was like well i've suggested it let's see what happens and uh it it paid off um paid off maybe not in increasing Jim's bank balance but it certainly paid off in other ways exactly alright well do you have anything

else to say about counter gambit yeah the only real discussion points I had about it were that question of who's being misdirected is it characters or the audience and this episode nuzzles right up to the edge

of of what i find my own personal taste in it like on the other side of that where you watch something and then you're like ah that was just entirely for our benefit that was just to get us believing that this character was evil when they're really good or whatever that tends to drop me out of my enjoyment of it, right? But in this one, it was just close enough that I actually quite enjoyed it and had that little bit of like, is Angel selling them out? It's written right in my notes. I'm like, is Angel selling them out? Nope. Okay, good. All is right with the world. Well, then with that, I feel like

it may not be in the form of a prepaid cashier's check, but we have made our $200 for this day. Yes. As always, if you want to let us know what you think about our thoughts or help support the show, head on over to patreon.com slash 200 a day and find us on Twitter at 200pod. We appreciate all the things that we hear from listeners. So thank you very much for listening. And we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.