Two Hundred A Day - Episode 49: Second Chance

Episode Date: May 26, 2019

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E4 Second Chance. Following up on our last episode (The Hammer of C Block), we visit the final Gandalf Fitch episode to see how the character has been handled since that debut. Gandy seems to have found a niche for himself bouncing at nightclubs, but when he decides to manage the career of a promising lounge singer (played by Dionne Warwick), he ends up hit on the head and chasing down ghosts from the past - and, of course, turns to Jim for help. Also featuring a complicating Angel appearance, this episode is both action-packed and very funny, paying little attention to Gandy's tragic origin story and leading us to the conclusion that the show essentially treats Gandy as a different character in the subsequent episodes, not a continuous one. This one gave us a lot to talk about, and we really enjoyed watching it! The joy of this one is in the endlessly watchable chemisty between not only Jim and Gandy, but Gandy and Theta (the Dionne Warwick character), Jim and Theta, and the explosive combination of Jim, Gandy and Angel. With memorable goons and a couple of strong character moments, we use our discussion to dive into the complications that arise from how gender and race are used as character and plot traits, along with our meta-discussion about how to square the "different Gandys" that we see across Isaac Haye's three appearances on the show. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi, and follow him on twitter @jimlikesgames Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, and Dave P! Thanks to: fireside.fm for hosting us spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Audio HIjack for all of our recording needs Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

This is Globe Publications. Our records show you did not return your free volume of the Encyclopedia of Weather. So we'll be sending you the remaining 29 volumes. You'll be billed accordingly. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I remain Nathan Paletta. And I remain Epidio Ravishaw. Our regular listeners will already know which episode we're talking about this week. But Epi, what have we brought to the table this time? So this episode, very aptly, is titled Second Chance.

This is the third and final Gandalf-Fitch episode on the Rock for Files. And if you weren't listening to last week's episode uh we decided to do this one because to our surprise i think i don't think either one of us remembered going into the previous episode uh that uh gandalf was something of the villain and uh what we remember of gandy is from the polish wedding and this episode, I think. I think are the things that I took away. So we wanted to watch this episode and compare and contrast the two. But we should probably do content warnings.

Even though this episode itself doesn't feature them, we will probably reference the previous episode, which has domestic violence issues and whatnot. So, yeah, that episode. So that was the Hammer of Seablock. Yes. Which is our last episode in that we discover the backstory of Gandhi played by, I'd say, generally delightfully played by Isaac Hayes, even though he's in a problematic character, at least in that episode, we do learn that he emotionally and physically abused his girlfriend and,

and she took her own life specifically because of what he, of her experience with him. Yes. That's the content that we got more into in that episode and that we will be referencing here though this episode it has a much much more standard rockford files tone of uh treating you know like most of these episodes have violence in them uh we usually don't really talk about it as a content issue because that's kind of the table stakes of this this show uh so it's more on that level we're working off of a hypothesis here that uh the

hammer of block c uh was probably meant to be a one-off um i don't know if we confirmed that or not but uh yeah i wasn't able to find find anything in particular one way or the other about that. And then having seen the chemistry between Rockford and Gandy, they decided to do a couple more episodes. In fact, they decided to do a backdoor pilot with just another Polish. And so that's with another character, Marcus. Forget the full name. With another character, Marcus, forget the full name, another PI who is kind of on the extreme end of the Rockford spectrum where he's kind of more in the middle between someone who's totally on the up and up and someone who's a total scam artist. Yeah.

Gabby is more of the total scam artist. And so we see the adventures of Gabby and Gandhi in that episode. scam artist and so we see the adventures of Gabby and Gandhi in that episode to follow through on that hypothesis I think what we're going to see um is this dark content from the original episode pretty much ignored like not entirely but pretty much ignored or swept aside so that they can just have a character that has that chemistry uh without without horrendous baggage. Right. And we're going to get into a little bit about how that works. Yeah. And so this is the same writer as The Hammer of Seablock.

So Gordon Dawson wrote that episode introducing Gandhi and wrote this episode. So if there is any connective tissue, there is at least the same writer. Yeah. This episode is, it is episode four of season four. So we also have a three season progression in terms of like the overall show aesthetic. Yeah.

This is, so season four is definitely the more is where, where the show starts taking more risks with its storytelling. You know, it got some emmys and such from season three um they had a steady relationship with the production company and with universal and this is where uh we start to get some like just more more dramatic more outsized weirder episodes uh is is kind of one of my ongoing theses this isn't particularly one of those but the kind of sensibility of it being a little more i don't know it's a little more funky right

like overall like also with the style what people are wearing and it's about the music industry so like there's a lot of elements, and specifically black musicians in, you know, mid-70s performance venues. So this is not nearly as gritty as The Hammer of Seablock. This episode is directed by Reza Badi, who is an extremely prolific TV director, among other things. We have not done any of his Rockford Files episodes yet. This is the first of his seven that he directed for this show. But over his career, he directed over 430 episodes of television. Wow.

Which is pretty fantastic. And he was also a title designer. And he designed the titles for Mary Tyler Moore and Hawaii Five-0, including the iconic Wave Swirl. That was him. He did the cinematography and design for that title sequence. So interesting guy. Once you dig into the biography and discography.

Also directed eight episodes of The Incredible Hulk. So you've probably seen his work over there, Epi. I'm looking him up now to see which episodes, because I need to know. Someone, I saw some comments on this episode six million dollar man oh yeah he's all over the place um in a comment about this episode uh someone mentioned the episode really has a deft hand with balancing humor and humor and violence or humor and drama uh in the sense of like dramatic danger. And I think that's pretty apt.

It goes back and forth in a very natural way because there is a lot of like physical danger in this episode. But it's also much funnier than The Hammer of Seablock in a very intentional way. The $6 million man that he directed is the very next one on my queue to watch. So I should say the first one I recognized on the list. There are many.

If you watch fairly to very popular show from the 70s or 80s, you have probably seen his work. Or 90s. He directed a bunch of DS9, Sliders, Baywatch, etc. In the heat of the night. Okay. Back to the Rockford Files. When we need a new project, we'll go to our 430-episode project on the directing career of Reza Baddai. I apologize if I am butchering that.

Speaking of apologies, I don't know if that's a good segue. Epi, you make no apologies for paying attention to the preview montage of these episodes. So go ahead and tell us what stood out to you. Well, there's lots of good classic things going on here. We get Rockford not wanting to work, particularly not wanting to work with Gandhi. I note in my notes here, I'm like, oh, it's one of my favorite Warwick's because we're going to have Dionne Warwick in here. My other favorite being Warwick Davis. We are going to get a good Khan where he's going to be Zach Lyons Jr. or Zachary Lyons Jr. You can call him jack zach everyone else does but i think the thing that stuck out the most to

me here is what i noted down as a mild firebird wreck because i didn't know what actually happens and what actually happens is so much more awesome than this yep so i was like oh okay we're gonna get a little mild but when we get to this moment'm going to put it in my top 10 car moments from the Rockford Files. It's a good one. And we haven't had a really good car episode in a while. Yeah. So that definitely jumped out to me as well in the episode. In the preview montage, I was like, drama with the car.

Yep. Or as I say in my notes, dramatic car incident. Thanks for listening to 200 a day. This podcast is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day. If you're digging the show and want to help us keep on making it, you can join them for just $1 an episode. 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 conventions east of the Mississippi. 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 conventions east of the Mississippi. See where to find him, at JimLikesGames on Twitter. Shane Liebling. If you play games online, you should check out his free dice-rolling app, Roll4YourParty, at Roll4Your.Party. Kevin Lovecraft. Hear him on the RPG Actual Play podcast, the Wednesday Even podcast all-stars, over 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. Help out the show by leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts, and check out patreon dot com slash 200 a day to see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. Well, we start our episode at the state penitentiary where a mustached black man is being let out of jail. Of course, coming from the last episode, I assumed that we are coming into Gandy getting out of jail for something. But as we get in closer, it is clearly not Gandy. This guy's name is Joe. Joe Moran. Yes.

Who is played by Tony Burton, who was the corner guy in Rocky. Oh, nice. I mean, he's been in tons of stuff, but that is the where you would know him from on IMDb. I have just now finished every single Rocky movie. We did a watch through and we're about to start the Creed ones. Although I have already seen the Creeds, but I did not recognize him as the corner guy. Oh, okay. Well, that's on me.

In real life, he also was a heavyweight boxer. So Joe Moran is coming out of the slammer. He is met by a fancy limo. So we immediately know that there's a villain in there. Yeah. By the law of Rockford car appearances. So he is greeted by a Mr. Shapiro in this fancy car. I do want to say something about Mr. Shapiro here.

Mr. Shapiro is played by the actor Malachi Throne. I just want to say that name, Malachi Throne. That is an amazing name. I saw that name come up on the title sequence just before this, right? Like they give you like some of the characters. But I was like, that name is awesome and then the moment i saw mr shapiro with his goatee and in the car i'm like if this is not malachi throne i am quitting 200 a day and uh fortunately he was indeed malachi throne uh and unfortunately uh he doesn't get nearly as cool a name in the episode he's uh

one of one of the many rockford villains that seems like he's been in other rockford files uh episodes but he has not this is only his only appearance here uh he is a 60s and 70s character actor yeah perhaps he will be recognized by some from that and then he's you know continued working all the way through the early 2000s so another prolific working actor he is extremely slimy here yeah he makes for a good villain moran uh we'll call him joe for the most part so joe uh tells shapiro that everything went according to plan and he just needs a couple more days to get everything wired which uh but in context uh you know just to get things set whatever these things are he asks shapiro for a ride and shapiro tells him to take the bus

there is some kind of ominous villainous thing going on between these two status play as well like he's he's definitely putting himself up at the top we then go to jim's trailer where angel is trying to get him to invest in a scheme to uh to take a cut of little kids selling carnations on street corners or something like that as soon as we cut into this i was like all right epi is going to feel good about this episode because we get an angel appearance that's a good one too i i love the pettiness of this scam it's um dickensian practically he's looking for money from jim to buy flowers to give to kids to sell on street corners so he can pull in 80% of the profit. But the kids get to keep a dime a bunch.

The phone rings and Jim answers Wilson residence. So we know he's in some money trouble probably. And sure enough, on the other end of the phone is Gandalf Fitch. They start off with some quips quips about Jim, you know, trying to, to dodge creditors. But Gandhi says that if, if money is his problem, he'll solve it. Right. Gandhi looking good. Um, so when he's first introduced, a lot is made of how, uh, out of time he is. Uh, so he spent 20 years in jail and when he comes out he has like gray in his beard and

he kind of, I think, plays the character as, you know, a little slumped and slow moving. I feel like here and then I don't really remember that from just another Polish wedding, and then here I think he looks as old as Isaac Hayes was

at the time, like yeah yeah he's not played up to to seem particularly uh aged which means i feel like coming off of last episode it's like oh again he's looking good yeah um he's met this girl her name is theta theta best she's a great singer he says if uh if money is rockford's problem he'll solve it all he'll need is 500 from jim because uh she's so good he wants to cut a demo of her singing and of course uh when record companies hear this demo they will be head over heels ready to sign this woman he has saved up two grand of his own and just needs 500 more dollars to cut this demo jim begs off he does not have the money um and through it through another set

of back and forths it's like no i seriously like really do not have the money completely tapped out um but gandy invites him to to come down and hear her sing and he'll buy the drinks because Jim should meet her at the very least. Because he's going to invest in her, obviously. Right. And the cherry on top of this scene is that Angel doesn't know who Gandhi is. I forget the lines, but Angel is established. This is important later. Yes. Angel is established as not being familiar with Gandhi.

I love because the way Angel presents this, he's like, two grand? Who's Gandhi? There's money. He hears that there's money involved. At the Mercury Lounge. So we have Dionne Warwick's credit coming up over her as she's singing on the little stage, which is a nice little touch. When we get these celebrities in the show, I want to make sure that people know what's happening.

Yes. This scene is actually pretty, kind of really starts the weaving of these tonal threads of kind of humor and threat. Gandhi and Rockford take a seat at a table kind of humor and, and threat. Gandhi and Rockford, uh, take a seat at a table kind of right up by the stage. Uh,

Joe Moran comes in in a pretty fancy looking suit. If I do say so myself, orders straight bourbon at the bar and then just like stares at her semi menacingly. Yeah. And then they do this effect where as she's singing, uh, the ambient noise gets pumped up so

that it's like i mean it kind of sounds like the volume just gets turned up right like it's not very natural but the effect is to to show us that there's a table of guys who are laughing and telling stories not paying attention to her and drowning her out with their antics gandy goes over to them to quiet them down or he'll throw them out there are a lot of great rockford files lines one-liners in this episode here one of the guys says hey hey this guy wants to be an oil slick on dry land i don't even know what that means no i have no idea and gandy oh we expect him to just start throwing punches but what he does is he leans in real close and then we see that he has his foot on top of the foot of the other guy and he leans all of his weight onto it as he's telling them to you know quiet down and play nice and the look of suppressed pain on the

guy's face uh tells us that he is going to do what gandy says the intimidation through footwork i don't know what it is i think it might be the just the the style of the shoe and everything this just feels so like if you just show me the shot of the feet i would be like that's from a rockford files episode that's that is somebody working someone over in a rockford files episode um but also like one of the things that i like about this uh you were talking about like the quality of the the sound as it it's to me it's ambiguous whether these people are a problem or gandhi is deciding that they're a problem right like he's really into the singer so he's intimidating everyone in the bar to pay attention like Like I couldn't tell which way this was supposed to play.

And I like that. Like I'm not complaining that I couldn't tell. But it was just like. It's nice that it's ambiguous. Because we're going to find out in a few moments that Gandy has something of an official position in this bar. And then the other thing is, and this is going to play with me until near the end of the episode here. I don't know the crime yet, right? I know that Joe has gotten out of prison and Mr. Shapiro has worked for him.

And it's all very menacing, but none of it is. We don't know what it's about. Yeah, nobody has said, we're going to do this illegal thing. And then as far as we know, Joe just went straight to this bar to watch her. So I think, oh, she's wrapped up in it. And she is, but not in the way that I'm trying to figure out in my brain right now. And I like this. Yeah.

All right. I'm excited to see where this goes. Yes. There's a little moment when Gandhi comes back to the table where he like where he puts out Jim's cigarette in one of the fleeting Jim smokes a cigarette moments, which don't come up that often. No, I don't think there's any particular character association with Jim smoking cigarettes. Just in some episodes, he does sometimes, but not super often. some episodes he does sometimes, but not super often. So it's like,

it's even this moment where Gandy's like, he's confident enough with Jim to just take the cigarette out of his hand and put it out in the ashtray, which in context again is like, is this, is this keeping him from seeing the clearest view possible of Theta or something like that? Yes.

Towards the end of the scene, there's a, there's a scuffle by the pool table and these guys start falling over themselves and gandy just goes over and just with his with his massiveness just shoves until everyone gets pushed out of the door and out of the bar there's a casualness to everyone else in the bar about this so this is clearly this is normal yeah yeah this is just what happens and jim has a line where he's like, real classy place here or something like that. Yeah. In fact, going into it, he was like, I don't remember where he said it was.

It's like San Pedro, I think. Yeah. He's like, there's no, you know, nice places down there. This is an episode that uses a lot of visual language. Yeah. language yeah uses visual language to reference and contextualize the story in the racial community in which it is placed uh it's not like a big issue like we're going to talk about crime and you know in the african-american community or something like that but most of the people not everyone but like most of the people in this bar are black most of the principles are black uh overall the episode is contextualizing what's happening in you know in the black

community yeah for the most part uh feta finishes her set and joins gandhi and jim uh at the bar joe asks who gandhi is so he doesn't know by sight um you know, is answered and looks like he tips the bartender pretty big for said information. And then he leaves at the table. We get some some expository dialogue. Gandhi has appointed himself that his manager. Apparently, two weeks after they met is when he decided that he was going to manage her music career. He basically lays out his vision, which is they'll cut this demo and then he'll make people listen to it. And then he'll make the DJs play it.

It's just like Gandy to muscle a song onto the charts, which I think, I think Jim has a line to that effect. Like you can't do that that's not possible theta uh you know downplays it a little bit says that she's being a realist you don't just cut a demo and magically you're the biggest star in the world and gandy says that he doesn't uh so she says that she's being a realist and he's like don't put yourself down like you're putting yourself down all the time you You're great. And this is, you know, I'm looking out for this, right? Yeah. Because the context coming into this episode is

Gandhi was extremely bad at his former relationship. Yeah. The plot of that episode revolves around him being like, I did not kill her. I need to find out who killed her, his former girlfriend. For whom's murder he went to prison. And then it turns out she killed herself because he drove her to it so he lost the like that one thing he was holding on to

about their relationship and about himself so it's like all right let's see what gandhi's new relationship is all about uh yeah in light of the previous episode um this part like i think in my notes there's a moment here where i'm like oh i'm already sympathetic to him right i kind of and what i want to view this as and again so this is we're getting into headcanon right yeah like because in real life these were separated by multiple years and there's probably not this kind of thought put into this character right yeah yeah but i'm like okay he's being very complimentary very positive he's not over overwhelming her he's not being physical you know he's expressing affection appropriately he seems genuine is this the

gandy apology tour uh you know like emotionally like he knows what he did he knows it was wrong and now he behaves differently uh i would like to believe that that invisible that there was that invisible progression between these two episodes um that said uh this scene ends with another fight landing two guys by the table on the floor and gandhi goes to clear them out and this is when jim remarks that this is a this is a nice spot yes gandhi and theta are then leaving the bar at the end of the night joe moran comes out of nowhere with a two by four and hits gandhi in the back of the head clearly theta recognizes him she is uh startled but not like frightened necessarily joe tells her to get in the car and they peel off leaving gandy crumpled uh unconscious in the parking lot poor gandy um so jim is woken up in bed by a phone call classic rockford moment yes uh it's gandy of course theta's gone uh he's in her apartment

which has been tossed and he says that he needs help bad and then he just hangs up so he does not give jim a chance to try to uh weasel out of this one in theta's apartment uh so we we get some backstory here as jim is asking gandy what he knows about her and how they met and all this kind of stuff. And so they have only known each other for a couple of months. He says that I never asked about her past and she never asked about mine. And so Jim clarifies that he never told her that he was in jail. Right. So, okay, let's talk about this moment because this is the, this is the weird moment for me, or I shouldn't say weird moment. I think this moment definitively tells us that they're going to ignore the vital bit in that first episode. Because Jim says, why hide that?

You weren't guilty. Yes. And my notes are, Jesus, Jim. Like, yes. If you went to jail for a multitude of crimes that you weren't guilty of, then I can see Jim saying this. But if you went to jail for not being guilty of killing your wife and the reason why you are not your wife, your girlfriend or fiance or whatever. And the reason why you're not guilty is because she committed suicide and framed you. Like you can't.

Why would like in a strict legal definition yes but i can understand why you would hide that right and jim could understand why you would hide that like it's it's like not to get all headcanony or anything like that here but just this like it seems that this line to me is saying we're not yeah we're going to keep the fact that he's an ex-con who went away for something he wasn't guilty of. Right. But we're going to drop the rest of it. Right.

And they don't, and in this episode, they never say why he went to jail. Yeah. Like, I don't even think they mentioned that it's 20 years. Yeah. Right. Because that would imply that it was a murder or something. They don't say it was a murder. They don't talk about his former relationship.

Like, it's like, he was in jail for something he wasn't guilty of. Moving on. Yeah. So if you watch this episode out of context of the other episodes, right? That's the thing about Rockford Files is you generally don't need continuity. You don't need to know what has come before to understand or appreciate each episode. Then what you have here is another ex-con friend of Jim's that Jim's helping out.

And that's it. That's all you need to know. And we're good. And we can keep going. Yeah. And in that context, this is a much easier episode to discuss. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

I forget if we mentioned this in our intro or not, but this is much more what I thought we were getting ourselves into with the last episode yes yes jim does ask how they met uh he bought her used stereo and uh found out that she was a singer through chatting with her i suppose at the time found out where she was singing got a part-time gig bouncing at that bar and then uh as he says they got tight it looks like you know all the um drawers have been cleaned out and stuff and if there's anything in them whoever tossed the place got it or didn't find what they're looking for but jim pulls down a cardboard

box out of the closet that's all tied up with um twine just to see what's in it i guess like maybe this is valuable and uh it's a box of records, you know, like single 45s. Jim hands Gandhi one, and we have a nice tight shot on it being credited to Joe and Theda Moran. Yes. Gandhi seems upset about this. He wants to find this man. And Jim has this whole thing, like, maybe he's her brother.

Maybe they got, you know, maybe he's her brother maybe they got you know maybe he's her husband maybe they got divorced i don't know you didn't tell her about your past you know why should she have told you about hers right kind of thing but he wants to find this man and ask him what the deal was uh jim says that it it's a police matter they should go to the police uh it's a abduction you you know, breaking and entering, not reporting a crime is a crime, Gandhi. So this does touch on the, you know, the racial contextualization. Gandhi says, oh yeah, and they'll drop everything to find out who hit a black ex-con over the head. Yes. And that is all the justification I need for not going to the police so he asked jim to find her he was going to

ask her to marry him after they cut the demo and says that she would have said yes to uh in a callback of sorts to the previous episode we talked about jim says that i'm sorry gandy but bird dogs are accessories yes implying without really stating that he doesn't want to turn Gandhi onto someone that Gandhi is then going to go beat up. I should not be here. I should not be doing this. Right. It's always fun to watch the episode build up all the reasons why Rockford should walk away. And then just make sure he doesn't walk away. And in this case, it is because Gandhi offers him that $2,000 that he's been saving up. Yes. To take this case. Jim has conditions.

I mean, he has a lot of money and he needs the money. He is Jim Rockford after all. Yes. He takes it on the condition that they report the kidnapping and that if it turns into a domestic dispute, Jim will be off the case.

Yes. He doesn't want to be involved in domestics at all, which again, may be a reference to some of the earlier stuff or not. It's hard to tell well and then here gandy has a line where he said that he hasn't had much love in this rotten life yeah and that really yeah like uh yeah again in context of the previous episode and i we will think we'll have less of this

to compare as we go through this episode yeah here is this alighting his past so we just move on right or is this an acknowledgement because his whole thing was that he loved this woman and he wanted to find who killed her and then is this him being a person who has come to terms with the fact that she did not love him and that is where the he has not had much love in this right you know like is this acknowledgement of his past or is this skipping over his past yeah is it a rewrite of the past yeah uh or is it like his character's own personal rewrite of the past at some point we we can't know so we can't keep hypothesizing about it right but there's some specific lines that like yeah pull me back to yeah that consideration and this is one of them it also echoes a line

at the end of that episode where i think rockford says something like this life has been giving you nothing but rotten rotten luck and you've been eating the balloon payments or something like that right yes yes in true rockford fashion it has a little bit to do with interest payments yeah it's the poetry of uh actuaries is what it is we end the scene with gandy saying find her rockfish find her so jim of course goes and talks to dennis um so we're at the police station with our good friend dennis becker uh they ran the file on joe moran he has a rap sheet which it is illegal for dennis to show a civilian the rap sheet so jim says all right so just tell me what's on it yeah a perfect encapsulation of the jim dennis uh legal dynamic what i love about this is the um

dennis is like yeah i can't do this i can't tell you any of this stuff and then they just talk until jim gets enough and then that's good we got it now and dennis doesn't know i feel like dennis doesn't know that he's given away the farm anyways. So Joe apparently has been in jail since 1972 on a murder charge. He was married to Theta. Her maiden name is best, but, you know, Theta Moran. Jim is doing the math and he's like, how is it possible that he's back out after only five years? Our fourth season is placing us in in in 77 well he apparently made parole five days ago he yells over to another cop and i think this is how he tells jim this without

yeah like pretending like he's not telling jim because hey fred you know you can beat murder one in five years now there's a second chance program that uh allows certain certain felons to uh come back into the workforce and he mentions that the parole officer for joe is uh a man named arnold rose and he cannot give jim the address yeah cut to jim barging into an office looking for Arnold Rose. So a couple of things here. First of all, also in that they mentioned that he, that Joe Moran,

he went to murder for killing a plastics manufacturer. Yes. Which is kind of a random detail, but this is one of those scripts where like, there's a lot of stuff that happens in this story that is 100% narrative convenience. Yeah. Which is fine but it also does a lot of work to give you some seeds that then pay off uh this is much more of a plot story than character story uh or it is weighted more towards the plot than the last episode so this little one-off detail uh does become important. And then this cut, we don't need to see Jim figuring out where this parole officer works.

Obviously, he has ways. There are more important things to see in this episode. The hoops that he's given. Dennis is like, I can't give you the address. But he's got a name and a job. Like the point A to point B is so obvious at this point that we don't need to you know um yeah we don't need to see how he how he does it or whatever but like um okay i've been reading a lot of math texts this reminds me of a thing that happens a lot in math texts where they say this equals that

obviously without taking you through the steps to do it and it's just tedium or tedious work or whatever and i appreciate that the the uh show like steps over it but also it's just tedium or tedious work or whatever. And I appreciate that the show like steps over it. But also it's one of the things that I love about Rockford is that his detective prowess is being able to look someone up in a phone book. It's the obvious just work you have to do to get things done. Yeah, absolutely. So Jim's cover here is that he has a big opportunity for Joe Moran. He's an A&R man for a record company, and he wants to get Joe back under contract for a new record since he's out of jail. His parole officer does not want him getting involved with the music business.

It's just going to be a nose full of coke and a trip back to the joint. Yes. But through this conversation, Jim keeps finding out a small piece of information and then hammering on it to turn it into a larger piece of information. Well, okay. Okay. You think he's got

a better future working with some laundromat? That's okay with me. The Shapiro Cleaning Corporation is hardly a laundromat that's okay with me the um shapiro cleaning corporation is hardly a laundromat mr lyons really there we go yep and then we have jim's uh james garner's fantastic delivery of the of the word really this is a very narratively convenient this guy gets so offended that jim would denigrate the work of his parolee that right just like he's like oh obviously you know about the shapiro cleaning corporation like that'll impress this random music guy this is not a problem it was just uh let's keep going

you know let's find out the next thing and it's important that jim knows about arnold rose that comes back later yeah it comes back later but i expected it to come back even one more time and it did not. Well, I'll wait till we learn some more stuff about Shapiro and his cleaning company. So Jim goes to this cleaning company building that says Shapiro Linen Supply on it. Yes. Goes into some kind of administrative office. And now he is a life insurance guy. One of his favorite covers trying to find joe moran because

there's been a death in the family and joe is owed some money we get a greatest hits of jim rockford cons here where he has his one-off business card that he shows to the guy and then takes it back off the desk when the guy isn't looking and puts it back in his pocket i love that i love that that that pays off also. Yes, yes. But then Moran's on the night shift, so he can't talk to him now. And so Jim goes into a whole thing about wanting to settle it today. It's his daughter's birthday.

He's all the way up from Phoenix, and he promised he would be back in time. And it's her first birthday since her mother passed away. Yes. And he just lays it on and lays it on until the guy's like okay fine you didn't hear it from me but he works there at wherever another thing that's just gorgeous about this is that we have back-to-back rockford cons again they have the hallmarks like i have a thing to offer but i have like a time limit and i have a uh a pressure uh and now that pressure is also yours because you sympathize with me because you're working

stiff or whatever. But I love that he didn't stick with the same one. Yeah. He wasn't like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm still this record executive. He's like, oh no, we're going to go life insurance now. I know, I don't want this one. This is, this is a life insurance situation. Yeah.

Um, as Jim is kind of finishing up his, his business, uh, Mr. Shapiro comes out of his inner office. He wants to scold this poor clerk about something that he's done. But he did it because it was a fudge that was going to save the company from paying overtime that they owed to someone. And Shapiro's like, oh, okay, that's's great just as long as the union doesn't get wind of it yes it's just this very frank discussion of some kind of paperwork malfeasance to uh you know cheat some of his employees out of their their well-earned money just doubling down on this villain shapiro uh and then he sees jim and is like who are you and jim's like oh i was just leaving and he walks away the the business card thing pays off because our clerk says oh he was an insurance guy oh i have his card here somewhere and then just starts looking through the desk trying to find it but jim took it so he cannot find the business card again there's a physical bit here too that just before

jim leaves uh he actually has his arm or his hand on shapiro i just there's something about it that i love it just feels like just off-putting enough that you're just like well that was a weird encounter and then that was it right like it wasn't yeah um shapiro of course is suspicious and watches jim leaving the warehouse call someone named leonard to get on him and get his story so jim is is uh on the road in the firebird he gets suckered in by this play where a car pulls around in front of him and then stops in the middle of the road a guy gets out as if like oh there's a problem with the car um and jim's like and then the guy comes up like i'm going to ask you for help but of course he is a goon with a gun, and he just

drops into Jim's front seat. Any funny stuff, and I'll blow you into next Tuesday. Tells him to follow the car up ahead. So they have some back and forth, where he keeps asking him who he is, and then he gets his wallet, asks him who he works for, since he's a PI. Jim says that he's working

for the FBI as an initial play, which is kind of funny uh our our goon uh says that mr shapiro doesn't like anyone messing with his cons the car he's following has turned into an alleyway and so jim sighs and says okay okay you win and then suddenly accelerates and swerves the car which is enough to throw his uh aant off balance for him to grab his arm and, you know, keep him from shooting the gun. In this motion, he also sideswipes the car in front of him into a pile of boxes and then manages to overpower the goon and kick him out of the open door of the Firebird. This is all very exciting, but we haven't even started yet.

Exciting, but we haven't even started yet. So then, of course, he accelerates away from the scene, turns a corner, and oh no, it is a dead end. So what does he do, Epi? There is this glorious J-turn that he pulls off in this alleyway. This is a celebration of the J-turn. Yeah, yeah, this is... We have not had a J-turn on the show in what feels like forever. So if you're listening and you don't know

what we're talking about, which I can't imagine is true, this is also called the bootlegger's turn, made, I'd say made notable by the J-turn. It's describing a J, but it's also Jim Rockford doing it on the show.

You're facing one way, you put the car in reverse, accelerate backwards, and then pull on the parking brake and spin the wheel so that you swing 180 degrees around and are then facing in the direction of travel so that you can get out of situations just like this one so from uh front right bumper to back left bumper we have the

diagonal of the car the hypotenuse of the car that is the widest point in the j turn. And I think he's got three extra inches in that alleyway. There's a little cutout that has like another dumpster in it or something. So there's a little bit of width for him to do the, do the spin part without hitting anything. But the camera goes up to an elevated position. So you can see the entire maneuver and all of its glory. This is the moment in my notes where I write, holy s*** with two exclamation points.

But then right after that, I write with four exclamation points. The car comes up, stops just short of hitting a dumpster, then slowly accelerates, and we cut back, and we see that Jim is pushing this dumpster in front of him with the car so that it slams into the green car that was his assailant's vehicle, crushing them back into the side of the alley and clearing the way for him to make his escape. And this, my friends, is the scene that I so naively described

as mild firebird wreck in the preview montage. No, Eppie, no. The preview montage did its job by setting your expectations low so that they were exceeded by the quality of the scene. Oh, I love this one so much. So yes, and that's how Jim Rockford stopped a carjacking. Oh, it's nice to see a J-turn.

Yeah, good times. 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, i d i a h i'm usually responsive there otherwise you can go to worlds without master.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 dig a thousand holes.com where uh 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 ndpayoletta. 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 we have a quick moment with gandy at the bar uh he gets a phone call asking for him by name um it's it's from a record you know some some guy at a record company so gandy is very excited to answer this phone as mr fitch we cut from there um joe and theta are at a pawn shop so this woman is like leaving she's locking up so he has to kind of talk her into letting him give his his story here which is that his his wife foolishly lost a pawn ticket for some stereo components but he wants he's ready to get them back and while he doesn't have the ticket he has a list of them so she'll just go check this whole situation is one where we are seeing that they're not on the same side here no right uh she is there against

her will he is physically dragging her around by the arm uh she's trying not to answer questions yeah she she's a little checked out there's an interesting thing going on here where he's a threatening guy but she's not threatened by him right like uh right yeah she's uh deliberately dragging her feet and stalling like you know that they're not on the same side. They're not quite. She's being kind of dragged into all of this. But she's also somewhat in control of what's happening. Does that make sense? It does.

I don't think you're wrong. I think she's doing what she can to be as unhelpful to Joe as possible. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. be as unhelpful to joe as possible yeah basically yeah but i do think that this is presented as him aggressively dominating her you know what she wants which is not to be there with him and because i'm looking at for this i think this part of me thinks like is this a presentation of of this is the old gandy right yeah uh this is how he behaved i don't think that's a i'm not there's there's not

enough text to say one way or the other also he joe is not presented as actually caring about theta right yeah he needs to get something she has and that is a pretty qualitative difference uh so maybe i was reading a little too much into it but um whatever if your earlier assumptions of like they were in on something together, this is clearly not them being in on something together. The speaker, McGuffin, is increasingly important. And he says that if the speakers aren't in that pawn shop, he's getting flushed down the tubes and he's going to take her with him.

So you see that he's acting out of desperation in some regard here. This continues back at the hotel where he's staying. And again, he's roughly dragging Theda around by the arms and getting his key to go up to the room. A really nice piece of visual storytelling. They go into the elevator. Yeah. And then we see Jim pop up from over a newspaper that he was reading in the lounge, uh, keeping an eye on the, on the lobby area and overhearing which room he has.

Cause he has to get the key from the counter. Yeah. Track down Joe Moran waiting around to wait for him to get home. Great. He makes a call from the public phone up to the room, uh, claims to be from, uh,

a new parole officer. Uh, his, his, his parole officer was Arnold Rose, but now he's been turned over and he wants to see Joe right away. There's an interesting moment here. And I think, and this happens with multiple characters

throughout the episode, but Joe, when he answers the phone and then here's who it is, who claims to be, he code switches how he's speaking. Right. He drops the kind of slang terms, puts on the I am being polite to a white person who has power over me voice.

It's a pretty strong shift. And I think it's just natural to these characters in this story. But it happens in many moments throughout this episode. There's some lines from just before where he's talking, like he's telling Theda that, you know, she's down to seeds and stems with me. Like it's like clearly pot slang, you know, musician. Yeah.

You know, like using that as a, yeah. I like, again, we got Rockford putting a pressure like right away, you're 20 minutes late. Now you're 19 minutes. Yeah. And this is the last we hear about the, what's his face? The parole guy. The parole officer.

I was making the assumption that the parole officer was crooked. Oh. Because of everything else that was happening. I'm still, at at this point watching this, grasping at what the actual thing is that's going on. At first I thought Theta was the whole thing, and then no, Theta just knows where these things are. Right, but what are the things?

It's clear that Shapiro has a bunch of goons. Are they fed to him by Arnold Rose? Yeah, he has a bunch of goons uh are they fed to him by arnold rose or are they you know like yeah yeah he has a bunch of of cons in his employ through this second chance program yeah there's still lots of mystery here uh joe says that if shapiro doesn't get him the man will uh and so he's going to go to this fake parole officer but he wants to know what the stereo is. He doesn't believe that Theda doesn't know. You know, she says that she pawned it, but he's like, I need to know where it is. You're going to tell me and threatens her if she runs out on him again.

Jim watches him leave, heads up to the room. Theda tells him to go away, but then does let him in once he insists on talking to her. He wants some answers she immediately asks if gandy's okay yeah take more than a hit on the head to take uh take out gandy uh explains that uh joe's looking for what tossed her place looking for this pawn ticket to the stereo set and that's what he's you know that's that's what he's after big jim still smells a bit of a rat in that still seems, you know, yes, yes. But why is that so important?

I kind of skipped over a lot of the actual dialogue here. It's good. We kind of get the portrait of Theda as someone who, as you were saying, stands on her own, doesn't want to give up anything she doesn't have to, and has some pride in herself. She's been through a lot and has survived lots of things. She kind of wants to get Jim to understand that this has nothing to do with him and that she'll handle her own business, right? Yeah. Which, of course, Jim is not going to just walk away. Which, of course, Jim is not going to just walk away to try and get more out of her.

He tells her that Gandhi was going to ask her to marry him after they cut that record. But she's apparently already married. And she clarifies that technically they're not married. Joe's her ex-husband, but that she can't turn over on him. It's just not just not right. Jim says that Gandhi's carrying around a $ dollar grudge and a three dollar hat. Oh, such a good line. And then uses the threat of unleashing Gandhi on Joe to get Theta to to tell him more.

Again, a maneuver that he used many times in the previous episode. You know, like if you don't tell me what I want to know, I will tell Gandhi where you are and he will settle it with violence. It's like, oh, no, he's a bad guy. So, yeah, Joe and Theta had an offstrip Vegas act. They took some trip where Joe went crazy and killed some plastics guy, which does not seem like a satisfactory part of the story. And at the time, I was kind of like, I guess we're just skipping over that. Yeah. But there's a reason why some of this stuff doesn't really add up i guess which will get it will add a few scenes yeah um but uh yes and and so she just tried to move on he went to jail and she's just trying to move on with her life here is where i was like no jim don't don't do this again

yeah but he did it so he says that you're playing the victim yeah you're responsible for your life and everything in it including stiffing gandy and going back to joe this is not a good look for rockford yeah so this is the thing that does happen every so often in the rockford files we have a character of Rockford who I would say he has confidence in his moral footing. Right. Yes. He'll lie to people all the time. He does it in these cons, but he draws very specific lines and he holds other people responsible for not holding those exact same lines. Now, that, I think, in general, is a bit of a character flaw.

And it's not a character flaw that's explored in the Rockford files. So we're just supposed to kind of take it that Rockford's moral grounding is the moral grounding of the show. Right. What Rockford thinks is right is probably right. And where people diverge from his opinions on these things is where they go wrong. That has problems. We're going to see it like we see it in this episode where he is going to take a stance

that either from our position in history doesn't look particularly good or in light of the original gandhi episode really doesn't look good right uh thinking about this as not a show that you could pull out of your dvd set and watch at any given time but as a show that aired on television and then disappeared into the ether you can drop elements uh that that were previously part of a show without reference to them right right so again we could have this situation where they decide we're going to interpret gandy this way which is incongruent with the original episode but congruent with this episode. And here we go. But still, I think even without that, this is not the best look for Rockford. No. So there's two things here that I want to say, and then we'll move on.

The particular reason why this particular line or set of lines makes me cringe is because we just watched that the previous episode where jim tries to absolve gandy of responsibility by saying that it was uh his partner's fault that she came back to him yeah she could have chosen not to do that yeah oh in the language as we've developed it now that is very squarely victim blaming the an abused person right so that language echoes it's not the same situation here uh but i think this is a really clear moment where we can see privilege in action in the script as well as in this character i want to contrast this moment cast our minds back to uh one of one of my favorite episodes um quickie nirvana. It was our episode 20.

That episode centers around this woman, Skye, who is on some kind of unending spiritual journey. And she keeps on messing up things. She keeps on messing up the commitments that she makes because she just can't handle having responsibility. And she ends up you know partnered with jim and there's a whole story of course but kind of the emotional heart of that episode is this is this conversation where jim takes her to task for not taking responsibility for her actions in that conversation that felt like it was earned by the character and the story because we'd watched this entire episode of this woman who is white who is as she's not like rich or anything but she's in a situation where she can

kind of bounce around from place to place taking advantage of this kind of new age communal living situation who does have problems following through on what she says she's going to do or her intentions this is the same message right like you had the choice you didn't have to do that you had the choice but delivered here to a black woman who is in a precarious economic situation who was with a man who clearly is capable of violence and murder. These are not equivalent situations. And I think the privilege here is in the script, right? Is in writing this as an equivalent situation. And it's not.

So maybe it's a teachable moment about this kind of thing. Because we talk about a lot of times the conversation about privilege. To illustrate it, you use some you know framework so that it's kind of obvious this is a moment where that really a more subtle moment that is nevertheless i think very apparent once you look for it and there's also evidence of it in the premise of the episode right because jim is saying you have you have a choice when even jim doesn't have a choice, right? Like when it comes to Gandhi, Jim gets steamrolled. He lies to Gandhi. He, you know, like he's, he's judging her for things that he himself

also does. But yeah, I am with you on that. All right. Thank you all for allowing me to go on that little journey. Uh, we'll now get back to our episode. The resolution of the scene is that Theda tells Jim to tell Gandy goodbye. She doesn't want him to be involved with her either. And Jim storms off with the muttered implications of lousy domestic cases. We cut from there to a fantastic shot of Gandy pulling the top off of a beer sitting on Rockford's couch. Oh, yeah. shot of gandy pulling the top off of a beer sitting on rockford's couch oh yeah again as mentioned in our previous episode the joy of seeing these period beer cans uh never never fails yes jim comes in already in a mood of course uh and asks how gandy got in there gandy had to bust the latch on his bedroom window and he tells gandy he's gonna he is going to get that fixed and he's

gonna pay for the parts um and then this seems so good jim then gathers all of his sandwich fixings because he's been out late and he's uh i think he's hangry yeah while he kind of angrily runs down what he's learned uh for gandhi uh and that he's off the case because it is uh as he as he said as it's become a domestic uh affair and gandy's like well you can't give up now uh he got a call from pacific records and uh there's a guy there who wants who heard the demo tape and wants to cut um theta's record jim says that he should give it up uh theta has has left him she doesn't want him involved. So he is putting his sandwich together while he tells Gandhi this.

Gandhi then sighs, nods, and then just punches Jim across the face. One punch KO. The Gandhi special. Rockfish. And he turns around. Bam. That's it. Just like, ah.

He then tenderly tucks jim onto the couch uh puts his coat over him after going through the pockets to find his notebook where he finds the address that jim had written down for joe moran's place so he takes that of course and then he takes jim's gun out of the cookie jar yes and then as his last thing before he leaves he takes the sandwich that jim did not get to eat and takes a big bite of it on his way out the door what a dick but like it's not personal yeah yeah he clearly cares about rockford enough to uh make sure that he wakes up comfortably he He's just hungry after that sucker punch. I mean, what's he going to do?

Let that just sit there and get all gross? We cut to Jim calling Dennis. He's, you know, keeping his hand on his poor, poor aching jaw. To tell him that Gandy's going after Joe Moran. But he's too late. Moran was found beaten to death a half hour ago. And so now, since Jim called, fitch is the number one suspect dennis says that uh theta was not there he jim needs to tell him everything he knows or he's going to charge him with aiding and abetting

jim says that okay he'll come in to talk about it give him about an hour of course jim never goes to the yes to the police station you were talking about the code switching before. Dennis here on the phone suddenly sounds like he cares about Jim. He's like, why don't you come in? Dennis is laying a trap, too. He's upset that Jim's situation has once again made things difficult for Dennis at work. And he's like, why don't you come in? We'll take care of it.

Dennis knows that Jim is not going you come in? We'll take care of it. Dennis knows that Jim is not going to come in and talk about it. And Jim knows that Dennis knows that. And yet we'll still give him the line to cause some false hope. We go to the Shapiro building where we have a intimidating bunch of goons in a dimly lit room with shapiro and theta um sitting in a chair so we go from kind of those humorous scenes uh to this very threatening creepy scene um joe didn't think that she pawned that stereo so now we know who tried to beat this information yeah out of joe and then uh presumably to death and that he is inclined to agree uh he creepily like touches her arm and kind of like rubs her arm while he says that sooner or

later she'll tell them the truth about this uh what happened to the stereo i think i used something like 17 or 18 characters to write the word creepy yes this is extremely creepy at least our villain is being creepy yeah this is making us anxious for theta yeah we go from this very uh dark scene to jim picking the lock to get into her apartment uh he goes in in the dark stumbles around for a bit and then turns on the light and of course gandy is standing there with his gun and i would say the tone of this quickly goes to one of exasperation they're both looking for theta jim grabs the gun out of gandy's hand um gandy says that he didn't kill joe he would have yeah but the place was already crawling with cops when he got there

jim says that uh so something about this doesn't add up she said that joe was looking for a pawn ticket for the stereo but gandy you bought the stereo so there's no ticket uh and this connects the dots for jim she was trying to protect you you know she didn't want anyone as she as he says she didn't want to send any bummers in gandy's direction uh and she was lying to protect you. You know, she didn't want anyone as she, as he says, she didn't want to send any bummers in Gandhi's direction. Uh, and she was lying this whole time in order to protect Gandhi. Clarifies some of the weirdness about that earlier scene. And,

uh, also makes us fear even more for Theta in whatever situation she is now. Um, so they theorize that perhaps Joe hid something in it before he went to prison. Don't so, you know, see, see if there's anything in there as they head out of the apartment jim says hey gandy gandy turns around and jim sucker punches gandy as hard as he can which sends gandy staggering a couple steps and hurts jim's hand i wrote down these lines there's some really

good lines oh yeah like just before that um i i guess gandy referred to his sucker punching jim as a little tap and jim's like little tap i could still hear the ocean which is oh exquisite uh but this one is like oh hey and there's one other thing oh hey there's one other thing feel better now rockfish at least keeps my mind off my headache oh busted his hand on gandy's jaw oh yeah it is extremely good they have taken apart the stereo and it is full of counterfeit poker chips and counterfeiting materials for making same like molds and engraving discs and whatnot. Now we're in a comfortable Rockford zone.

Right. This is exactly the kind of crime that like. Like a needle settling into the groove of a of a demo pressing yes we are settling into some comfortable classic uh rockford material there's counterfeit poker chips now we understand why we keep hearing that it's a plastics guy that gets killed because i'm thinking to myself if i get killed how do i want people to refer to that crime do they be like he killed some podcaster in vegas right like do i want that like iconic role-playing game designer like what what is it that i want well you know what it's going to be the guy who did the jenga game yeah that's exactly it but, you know what it's going to be. The guy who did the Jenga game. Yeah, that's exactly it.

But now we'll know it's because I was somehow involved in a Jenga counterfeit scheme. Right. Right. Because it was a weird thing for this man's criminal epitaph to be the plastics guy until you realize, oh, we need plastic for poker chips. They refer to him from the rap sheet as a plastics manufacturer. So it sounds like you have some kind of legit business that clearly, you know, was part of the scheme and then they killed him.

Uh, there's a noise outside the door. Uh, one of Shapiro's goons comes in with a gun. Uh, Jim jumps him, but then the guy who, uh,

jumped Jim in his car follows with a gun. Jim jumps him. But then the guy who jumped Jim in his car follows with a shotgun. And his line, that was a perfectly good automobile you totaled. So we have some good, memorable background goons in these two. Gandhi asks what happened to Theta? You know, she better be OK. And the shotgun goon says that she got what she deserved. Uh, he calls Gandhi a coconut, which I cannot read as anything but a racial slur. Yeah. And I know it is in some other contexts, like to this day, uh, in this particular moment,

that is what it sounds like, even if it was not, even if it was intended to be like one of those like rockford-y kind of terms uh like you know gorilla or whatever right right uh but with just a i mean i don't think there's even a trigger for it gandhi and jim just jump into action a thing about this that's kind of classic rockford is that he is ready to go the moment gandhi snaps, as soon as Gandhi moves. It's as if Rockford clocked everything in the room and is like, something's going to happen, and when that happens, this is what I'm going to do. And he just slides right into it. So it just happens.

Yeah, you blink and they're at it. So they overpower these two goons. The other one, the wimp, if you will, as Gandhi keeps calling him a wimp squeals, uh, and says that she's in a, she's in a hamper at the cleaning plant. Oh God, that is ominous. Like I, I, uh, well, I'll, I'll bring this up later. Okay. Uh, Jim says that he can't pay him enough. This, they have to go to the cops.

Yeah. enough this they have to go to the cops yeah gandy still doesn't want to because if this doesn't you know this doesn't go right they're going to still arrest him for joe's murder gandy's not wrong so this is now in the clearing his name kind of situation he offers jim 10 of his 25 of theta's recording deal and jim says no and then our key moment of this episode i'm paying you to do a job so stop waffling and punch in you can't pay me enough to handle this gig it's a police matter now and i'll let them deal with it how about 25 of my 10 of theta's recording deal contract's going to be signed tomorrow oh come on gandy i really need your help rockford rockford you to help Rockford Rockford yeah Rockford yeah uh and that that gets him that's the moment that hooks hooks Jim in for the for the rest of the episode is it chicken little is a little chicken

is that the episode with Angel looks at Jim and says because we're friends it's that moment i am desperate and and and cuts through everything and jim's like oh yeah i mean this is also like jim can play it up like a victory like oh you respect me now you can call me rockford uh but i think it is definitely like to see the character of gandhi brought to such a low level that he would refer to Rockford by his given name. Right. This is a continuity payoff as well. This is the only time in three episodes that Gandhi refers to him as Rockford and not Rockfish. So if you watch this one-off, it's part of this episode. But if you have watched all of the Gandhi episodes, this hits with even more like weight.

Yeah. So that's that's nice. They force these goons to take him to the cleaning plant. Jim has shoved the wimp in the trunk and then opens it to kind of get more information out of him as he cannot take small spaces. So he's desperate. He'll say anything to get out of that trunk says that she's in a laundry hamper in the receiving area and jim then shuts him back in the trunk so yes that's what you get for being a goon jim clearly has a plan i missed exactly the back and forth here but jim's plan

involves uh gandy you go get theta i will go to to beard the wild Shapiro in his den. And he takes the shotgun with him. Which, in another great moment, this is a thing. The shotgun motif keeps coming back and will pay off. So it's the shotgun that the tough-talking goon originally had on Rockford in the previous scene.

So now Rockford has that same gun and we go into the facility and head up to Shapiro's office. I think the orchestration of this sequence is really nice where we have Jim holding the shotgun because it's like one of the few times that we see Jim with a shotgun, first of all. But like walking around alert with a gun in his hand, it's like kind of out of step with his whole thing and it's really interesting how it's shot and then he comes into this room with the shotgun which is full of goons as well as shapiro and then he tosses it to one of the goons and says i want to make a deal yes he's like i just stopped by to drop off one of your toys and then make a deal

and oh the power play of just handing the shotgun over. Oh, and it immediately undercuts that. Like, Oh, Jim is like getting serious walking around with a gun. So he gets rid of it as soon as he can. Yes. Uh, he has the poker chip kit.

Um, and he'll trade it for, for Theta. Gandhi, once he is, uh, taken to the correct area, makes,

uh, our tough talking goon get into some kind of large cleaning machine that has a like an electronic door thing uh it's this big drum so it has this like a big round door that opens up and he forces the guy to get in and then uh you know locks him in for the duration so a couple things here like we have this the previous uh goon being claustrophobic right caught trapped in a trunk of a car like that's such a movie thing that it doesn't feel like even if somebody says they're claustrophobic i have to actually spend some time envisioning myself trapped in the trunk of a car to get that right yeah but this door closing jesus like this is more a more visceral like wow you are

trapped forever i literally had myself thinking about what it would be like to be that actor in that scene like and you guys are gonna let me out right yeah yeah it was just kind of horrifying he has a really good tough guy line as he gets in there too. Oh yeah. There'll be another day or something like that. Yeah. He is, he's in Gandhi's power,

but he does not give up any fear like the, the, you know, the guy in the trunk did. Yeah. And this is the guy who got in the car with Rockford, right? Like this is the,

the car jacker. Yeah. So we're cutting back and forth between Jim in the office and Gandy down, uh, on the floor. So Jim, uh, says that he'll, he wants to make this trade because he wants to get cut in on the action poker chip scam. That's, that's big business. He wants in 50, 50 and Shapiro's like, how would you do it? Right? Like what's, uh, what's your your what's your expertise here and jim lays out a fairly convincing to me as someone who does not know casino gambling at all line about you know going into casinos and going to the high turnover tables and he's using like certain slang

words and yeah dropping fake hundreds and taking real fives or something like that and all the casinos that he would go to and all that stuff his plan is to give them give them a hundred dollar chip to get the change bet the five and then walk away with the 95 doesn't matter where he wins or not this hundred dollar bogus chip became 95 worth of real chips and he's specifically he's like when there's a convention in town so there's a lot of action going on. And all of it sounds like a really good scheme to me. But Jim is aiming too low. Right.

As Shapiro is like, what what could you get from that? Yeah. Maybe 50, 75 grand. I don't kill people for that little money. Yeah. To be fair, I don't either. His plan is to hit the cashier's cages. That's where the real money is.

But to do that, you need the fluorescent dye codes and other accoutrement. It's good for a million, and I don't need a partner. I mean, this is all just to keep them talking, right? Yeah, yeah. While Gandhi finds Theda. Yeah, yeah. said what happened to her uh in the next shot we see that she has like a split lip yeah and like a bruise on her mouth but other than that it is totally off screen whatever happened to get the uh you know get the information that they wanted uh out of her so here's my here's my rant thank

god this is a rockford files i feel like a modern show would not blink. They would say, oh, it'd be more important to have her dead here as motivation for our dudes. And I'm so bored with that. There's other baggage involved in all that as well. Even if it wasn't just motivation for two dudes, even if it's, you know know if genders were swapped around and whatever the way characters just get killed so that we can move forward with things to create stakes for other characters yeah i far prefer this situation where we don't have to lose the character we can have more scenes with the character following this and whatnot.

And also, we've already had these stakes. The stakes were already there. There's no reason to escalate this. That wouldn't actually escalate the stakes. It also would rob us of our final scene, which would be a shame. It also would turn the story from one, because from here out,

the rest of the drama here involves gandhi i mean he is using violence but he is protecting theta and if he was avenging theta that would be like a totally yeah i don't want to watch that story either yeah so yeah that i mean that's just my rant it's just that like i I feel like stop killing people. Yeah. Like, if you don't need to kill them, don't. You have a more interesting story. Done.

Back in the office, Jim, as I phrase it in my notes, I think he lets them intimidate him, right? Yeah. Okay, now they're going to intimidate me and beat me up a little bit to get me to tell them where the kid the uh kit is which he does and he says well it's in it's it's in the trunk of the limo with your guy whoever whatever the whippy guy's name was and now we see a shapiro commit a classic blunder so he has a room full of goons right uh so he sends the goons one at a time to go get the kit we see gandy sees our first goon heading out to go to the limo

he has to stay inside he leaves and then he comes back and waves at her and when we go outside the goon is crumpled on the ground unconscious yes back upstairs that guy should have come back by now so shapiro sends another guy and sure enough he also gets gandied um like i said i didn't cop to what was happening in the beginning like i didn't see that rockford had a plan i was too excited about the criminal's plan to see what rockford's was i don't know what but i'm right it's rockford feeding them to gandy and then my next line is i think he is so they're down to two goons. And Jim's like juicing this by being like, you know, that's a very valuable kit if that, you know, someone just took it and ran, like that kind of thing.

Yeah. But Shapiro orders his guys to blow Jim away and then run him through the lint cleaner before they go recover the item. And that is when Gandhi bursts in ready to save his friend jim and now we have our goon with the shotgun that jim brought in and gave to him he levels it at gandy pulls the trigger and it is unloaded uh jim and gandy spring back into action uh get the upper hand quickly and um jim says so now can we call the cops and g Gandhi sent Theta to the gas station to call them already. Yes. He's come around on that point, which I think is also symbolic of Gandhi kind of...

A new leaf. A new leaf, understanding that there's some things he can't solve by himself, like that kind of stuff. Shapiro blusters about how they won't be able to prove anything. by himself, like that kind of stuff. Shapiro blusters about how they won't be able to prove anything. And I think we end with the strong implication that justice will be served as Jim says that they'll get you for Moran's murder sooner or later. We cut to Jim on the phone with Gandhi. Jim and Theta are in Theta's apartment.

Gandhi is at the Mercury Club wearing extremely fancy threads and sporting a half-smoked cigar in his free hand. And Jim is saying that they haven't settled up. Gandy still owes him, right? Two grand plus expenses. That's 10 days worth of work. I don't know if we actually witnessed 10 days worth of work, but it's certainly what they agreed on. Right.

Gandy said that he would pay him that. Before he said, I'll give you 10% of my 25%. Yeah. But Gandy said that it's certainly what they agreed on right gandhi said that he would pay him that before he said i'll give you 10 of my 25 yeah but gandhi said that it's all good he signed a seven-year contract for theta with this uh record company jim's going to be getting his 10 of uh gandhi's 25 what is there to worry about jim needs the money now he's out of money now so he just wants his cash but no gandhi spent the two grand on buying half of the publishing rights to theta songs that could be worth a million easy of course jim is uh you know not going to get any any money out of this another classic maneuver but he invites them to

come meet the man uh he's down at the bar right now they just signed the paperwork and uh well if he's buying yeah it's all you're gonna get so jim and theta head to the club to meet gandhi and this record executive we have a shot of gandhi counting hundreds onto the table and saying just wait till you meet theta she's even prettier than she sounds cut to angel angel and his wide lapels and his sunglasses and doors. My notes at the end of this, I really, I just have, this is perfect. This is so perfect. This final scene is delicious in so many ways, but Rockford coming in and Angel realizing that Rockford's coming in.

Right. And the visual exchanges between the two of them. So good. So before they come in, Angel's trying to leave. He says he has to go. He has to get to Austin. That's in Texas for the Frampton gig. But he is not able to leave before Jim and Theta walk up.

And yeah, just this body language and glance exchange. Because Rockford doesn't say anything immediately. Yeah's gonna juice it right like he's gonna yeah he's gonna get angel into maximum squirm and so once they're all sitting and gandy introduces this him as this executive jim says you've just been conned by the worst in the business. And then Angel tries to blame Rockford. This whole thing was set up by Jim and he was just playing this role. And so Gandhi looks at Jim, you trying to scam me? And that's when Angel jumps over the back of the, they're in like a booth. So he jumps over the back of the booth and tries to run away.

And so Gandhi then springs into action and chases him. Oh, so good. It's so good. It is a delicious little dessert at the end of this meal of an episode. Jim starts laughing as Gandhi runs. And I'm pretty sure that this was just a straight up James Garner cracking up watching this happen. Like, this looks like a break to me. Yeah.

And goes, don't worry, Gandhi won't hurt him bad. And then we have Jim and Theta sitting in this booth. Jim picks up the stack of hundreds, gets a big smile. Should we start with some wine? And we freeze frame on him snapping his fingers for the waiter with the big Garner smile. So this, okay, we've come through the abyss to the other side where we have a scene in a restaurant around money, but we're both in our comfort zones here.

With Angel failing to run a scam. Yes. Jim triumphant. I can't in good conscience say that Rockford ends up with that money, right? Because there's still Angel and Gandhi in play, but we could say he at least has a wonderful meal out of that situation. Right. He will spend Gandhi's money on a meal while Gandhi is chasing Angel. Yeah. I mean, and that's the money he's owed, right? That's Gandhi's $2,000.

We might be able to say that he pulled off two thousand but perhaps not the expenses probably not the expenses yeah yeah so there is our the the final chapter of the gandhi uh the gandhi saga yeah they did apparently want to get isaac hayes back for one of the movies in the 90s but oh yeah he was so busy with south park at the time oh that they couldn't fit him into the shooting schedule that's a shame i know right so you know as an episode of the rogford files this is a solid entry oh yeah elevated by the presence of this iteration of gandhi yes sure he's he he punches but only when it really matters. Yeah, yeah.

This is the Gandhi who beats up a bar full of Nazis. Yes, which is what happened in, for those who have not seen it, there is a fantastic scene in Just Another Polish Wedding where Gandhi and Gabi beat up a bar full of Nazis. Ultimately, I think that's the pivot point here in this uh in our discussion right like i think the the hammer of block c is a really good episode on its own hitting on these dark themes it's it's a darker character study yeah kind of episode and it's twisting the audience in good ways

so that you end up in this rather emotional end, complex emotional end. You spend the time in that episode getting to like this character to find out that this character wasn't paying close enough attention to the fact that they have become the villain, right? Yeah.

And that's great. I think that that's a well done story and it's a worthy story. But then they have become the villain right yeah and that's great i think that that's a a well done story uh and it's a worthy story but then they have this problem that they have this character that they like and they have these two other stories it's hard to take that character and put them in these two other stories and still retain that original tale right right but if you depend upon the fact that tv at the time was somewhat uh ephemeral you could pull it off uh you could just forget that part and continue on with the the other parts there's kind of an interesting thing here that i think you're getting at which is so that first episode was written as an episode of the Rockford files. And then separately,

they cast Isaac Hayes as the character of Gandalf Fitch. After that, they were writing the character of Gandalf Fitch as played by Isaac Hayes. That's not to say that like only he could play this character, but it's kind of, I think that gets to like how that original one was written as its own story and whoever was playing that character that's the story of that character but because they got someone that they wanted to come back right then that's the how do we move forward and then they use the stories to enhance the the more uh entertaining qualities of the

character because it's not like he's a totally different character right i think it's very much we're just counting on the audience to not remember slash letting everyone just kind of forget about his past as as alighted in the early part of this episode i really like i enjoyed watching this episode it is there's a lot of like there's a lot of good humor in it seeing the dynamic the, the, the Gandhi gym dynamics. Great. The angel gym dynamic of course is always fantastic. The payoff at the end is like one of the great payoffs because it's literally first scene, last scene connecting, right?

Like, uh, and how angel doesn't know who Gandhi is. Gandhi doesn't know who angel is. And you've completely forgotten that by the time you get to the end, it's great. Uh, but then it puts me as a, as an audience member who's invested in the show and the position of who angel is and you've completely forgotten that by the time you get to the end it's great uh but then it puts me as a as an audience member who's invested in the show in the position of like do i hold two gandhis in my head right the the flawed uh villain gandhi who does come to a realization and then there's the fun gandhi uh do i connect them with you know head canon as he does demonstrate positive behavior

in this episode so has he turned that corner has he changed how he interacts with other people in order to be a more positive force in the world and that's kind of up to me right like it exists but it does not impinge on my enjoyment of the character which is kind of where i'm at because i really like the character and you know how you feel is how you feel. It's an interesting dynamic that I think is totally being read into this whole thing by me. That is not part of the text of this character.

Yeah, I mean, that's the dynamic of what's going on here. We don't, we're just audience members enjoying a show who have to figure that that out sometimes that's complex yeah so all that said i mean i think it was super i think it was it was really interesting you know watching these back to back i don't think there's like a satisfactory conclusion that i can draw about the questions we were asking at the end of the last episode, both because I don't think that's the point of this episode. Yeah. Yeah. I think fundamentally that's what I see here is that on its own, the hammer of Block C is a thing.

And then as a whole, the other two make their own dynamic that's different from that. For a final point of discussion, the title of this episode, which is Second Chance. Right. What is that referring to? There's definitely a thing in the show that it refers to, right? Like it's the program that gets Joe out of jail early. Right, right. That's the Second Chance program.

Yeah, which is probably a pipeline to Shapiro's goon squad. Yeah. And I think that's that's in the dialogue at some point that that's where he's getting his his underpaid workers and his goons. And there's obviously Theta's second chance at a career. She had a career at some point or the makings of a career before Joe went joe went in but yeah i mean is gandy have a second chance here is that what's happening i mean it only it only applies to gandy if you include the first episode yeah as his backstory yes maybe it's just it's a good title for this episode because of those reasons you mentioned and it just happens to be resonant with uh the hammer of of c block who knows who's to say but uh you know resonant with uh the hammer of of c block who

knows who's to say but uh you know that's the power the power of good storytelling is it gives us a lot of these things to chew on and think about and also consider for when we're telling our own stories how do you responsibly present a character who is a villain who yeah who goes through some kind of character change uh there are ways to do it that are ineffective and will not create the emotional response you want and there are ways to do it that are effective and teasing those out i think is part of our ongoing journey as storytellers so that's what i have to say about that do you have any other thoughts, conclusions, or meditations on Second Chance and or the Gandhi character or Rockfish and his relationship to all of us? I think we covered it all pretty well.

I would say that ultimately all three of these episodes really work. In different ways. In different ways in different ways yeah yeah yeah in like vastly different ways too like uh we mentioned just another polish wedding a few times here but the main thing about that one is that it wasn't about rockford at all right you know it was a backdoor pilot it was an an attempt to make Gabby and Gandy a thing. And that was really interesting, too. I think each of these episodes has really interesting things going on, in addition to being just sheer entertainment. Right. Down to that J-turn in the alleyway. Or, you know, there's spectacle, there's humor, there's drama, there's, you know, all of that.

I guess that's the pleasant note I'd like to leave it on. I think that's a good place to end it. Well, we will go off to the music lounge and count out our hundreds as we have made our $200 for this day. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on this journey that we took ourselves on as we dove into Gandy. Super interesting stuff. But while we may be done talking about Gandy,

there's much more to talk about in the show so we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.