Two Hundred A Day - Episode 5: Charlie Harris at Large

Episode Date: February 12, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S1E19, Charlie Harris at Large. Rockford's old prison buddy "Charming" Charlie Harris is in some deep trouble, and comes to Jim to help him find the mystery woman that can save his bacon. This episode features some great character writing as well as a classic Rockford-style nested mystery, both of which we really enjoyed! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the dining audio clip Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Pluto Moved On Podcasts and Video Lets Plays Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars And thank you to Shane Liebling! 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.

Hey Jim, it's me, Suzy Lewis from The Laundromat. You said you were going to call and it's been two weeks. What's wrong, you lose my number? Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. Which episode of Rockford Files are we talking about today, Epi? We're going to talk about Charlie Harris at large from near the end of the first season. Yeah, episode 19 per IMDb or 20, I think, on Hulu. I forget exactly. The numbering is weird. Fun trivia facts about this episode. It is directed by Russ Mayberry, who directed The Countess, which we talked about in a previous episode. And with that in mind,

you can see a couple little stylistic things that seem to maybe be a bit of a tell for him, which is kind of cool. Also, the writing credit is to John Thomas James, which apparently is a pen name for co-creator of the show, Roy Huggins. So this one is a written by the creator episode, show, Roy Huggins. So this one is a written by the creator episode, and it delves much more into Rockford's criminal past than some of the other episodes we've spoken about thus far. Yeah, we're gonna dig deep into his five-year stretch at San Quentin. What do we call our opening thing? I don't know. We haven't had a good word for it. It's the preview? Preview montage. There we go. Yeah, preview montage. I think what we've mentioned before, the preview montage, it's kind of nice, creates a sense of

dramatic irony in the audience. You see what's coming up, or at least that's what makes it nice to audiences today who can just call up a Rockford episode and watch it whenever they want. Back in the day when you had to watch it on television, was primarily meant to keep you on on the line right hook you in and this one i think hooks you in well well hook me in well because it mentioned money right up front so i was i was like okay good we're gonna we're gonna crunch some numbers uh and there are big numbers see a hundred thousand dollars because as rogford said it's an inflationary period and the price of infidelity is going up just a great line yes it's a great line and then you get uh the threat which is always fun when it shows up in the preview montage a villain who you'll see as we go through uh

threatens to call up people he knows in europe to put a bullet in rockford's head and then we cut immediately to him talking to beth who's asking what they do. And he says, we're going to bed, which has some implications if you don't know what the episode is about. And then once you see the episode, you realize that really all he wants is a good night's sleep, but we'll get into that. Yeah. This is, has all the high points, right? There's some kind of payoff. There's infidelity. There's threats on the life there's murder is mentioned in there and then some some sexual tension is brought up so strap in it's going to be a good one so we start right off with a tracking shot of police cars responding to what we shortly find out is a murder in a beautiful uh mansion of some kind i think to fans of shows of this era, such as myself,

this entire opening scene probably intentionally looks kind of like a Columbo episode. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. You don't see Rockford. Rockford doesn't really get involved in the opening scene. It's a bunch of characters you don't know coming upon a crime scene at the same moment as the cops. And not even the first on the scene.

And I would also point out that if you haven't seen the episode yet and you're going to, pay attention to the music in this. It is dark and funky in the very beginning. And then it just, well, it hits a moment where they hit the familiar Rockford theme in a light, airy way. And it's, I think it fits what you were just saying. It feels like something other than Rockford, but still, you know, it's Rockford. And then suddenly they're like, nope, this is going to be a Rockford episode. Yeah, it kind of quickly transitions into more of what we would expect. But the initial scene is very whodunit mystery style.

So we have a woman, she's face down and the body's been taped off. We have a couple of the cops talking to each other to tell us what the situation is. So she was basically clubbed to death with a sculpture, a kind of modern art. Not a particularly good one. No. Her name is Pauline Harris. Not her original name. She was remarried to someone named Charlie Harris, who is a known playboy and the suspect for the murder.

Right. As matching prints are on the statue, the telephone, the mail items in the vanity or bathroom, I forget what they refer to, and that there was a male voice that called the ambulance. Yeah, the anonymous tip that got them in. Also that he is known for his fast driving and that a, I think they say a chauffeur from a neighboring house saw him leaving the scene sometime around when the death occurred. He's known to peel out or something. Leave rubber or something like that.

In his loud yellow sports car, which I don't believe we ever see in the episode, which is a little bit of a shame. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. He is on the run, so he probably had to ditch it. Yeah. So all this conversation is basically giving us all the exposition about like all the evidence is pointing towards her husband, Charlie Harris, and they basically put out an APB. They want to track him down. So that sets us up. The other thing I wanted to call out here is the amazing array of menswear demonstrated by the police, the coroner, the guys coming with the gurney. It is all over the place. The coroner in particular, I think he's one of the major

moments where I felt like it was a different show. You just got the feeling that he was going to play a more important role than he actually does in the episode. Yeah, he gets a lot of camera focus in the first couple minutes. You get his name right off the bat, which turns out to be slightly important for something a little bit later on. But the way he's dressed has kind of a 70s wealthy dilettante. When we first see him, I thought he might have been another amateur sleuth that the police were upset that he was there. Right, or another resident of the house like a nephew or something because he's just wearing this like big slouch collared knit sweater he just looks guilty i immediately thought he was guilty my other thought was that

he'd been waking up in the middle of the night because it is nighttime and maybe just threw on civilian clothes or something. But he does have quite a look, which unfortunately is not really relevant. Also, the array of terrible ties between the detective, the sergeant, the other kind of random police walking around. And none of these police are the ones that we know from the station. They're not Becker. They're not Deal.

They're not. The other cops that we recognize their faces, if not their names. We do hear the name of the detective who will be on the case, who we'll see again later, Lieutenant Garvey or Sergeant Garvey. This whole scene is, I think, has to be intentionally echoing a more traditional murder procedural show. Yeah. I think has to be intentionally echoing a more traditional murder procedural show. Yeah. I think. And then it swiftly moves into the Rockford we know and love. We have the first of many phone calls that wake up Jim Rockford in the middle of the night. This is a motif that will be repeated throughout the episode.

That everything basically wakes him up in the middle of the night in this one so phone call wakes him up uh he has a phone next to his bed of course as we might expect from the title of the show and what we learned in the first scene it is charlie yes or as he refers to himself bunkie yeah which uh is referring to the fact that they were bunk mates or cell mates essentially in jail. He refers to Rockford as bunkie as well. So it's a little, it's, it's a tender term of endearment between two men who are incarcerated in the same cell in the seventies. Um, he's been on the run for three days. So we're three days from the first scene and he's holed up at a friend's house that no one

knows that they were friends and they're in South America. So he's borrowing it to hide out in. There's a little sinister bit there because it sounds like the people that own the house, the friend of his is actually down there destabilizing a government like could be CIA or something. It's yeah, I looked it up because I was trying to kind of pinpoint like was this referring to something that was happening at the time? A couple of years before this episode came out, there was the coup in Chile with Augusto Pinochet, where they put that dictator in power. The U.S. did, and it was horrible, as is what happens when the U.S. puts dictators into power. And I kind of suspect that that was just on the cultural conscience at that time.

And so he was just making a reference. Yeah, it's mid 70s. It's 75. I think that this was released. So it's probably written sometime in the year prior. So it's just kind of part of the cultural language. So, yeah, I mean, Charlie, as we'll come to learn, is kind of a slick operator guy. It stands to reason that he would have friends in low places.

Yeah. He's hiding out. No one knows he's there. He's calling Rockford. Says Rockford owes him, and he's calling it in. Rockford doesn't want to get involved, obviously. It's big news. This murder was big news.

So he knows that he's on the run. He knows the cops are looking for Charlie, but he can't stand up to to his bunkie calling in what he owes so he heads out to this beautiful house out on the out on the beach so we have our first interaction in the next scene between rockford and charlie and they definitely i think behave like they know each other you know like they're they're friends um and Charlie, who Rockford refers to as Charming Charlie Harris, tells his whole story, as you might expect. He claims he didn't kill her. He was out. He came home.

She was already dead. He panicked. He wanted to lift the statue off of her, but then he dropped it. And that's why his fingerprints are on it. He called the ambulance. And she was already a little stiff. So, you know, she'd been dead for a while before he got home. Then he just panicked and split because he knows he's like, I know what the cops would do. They would just assume that I'm that I did it.

This is where we really go from what could have been like a Columbo or any other murder mystery to a Rockford murder mystery where it's not solving the murder that's important to Rockford. It's clearing his friend's name. Or actually, at this point, what's important to Rockford is to get his friend off his back. Yeah, he doesn't want to get involved. Yeah. First of all, there's no upside for him, right? Like he's not being employed and he doesn't have any pressures on him that he can alleviate by helping out Charlie. So and he's as he keeps reiterating, he's taking a big risk even by just talking to him, because as soon as the cops look up his criminal record, they'll know that he was cellmates with Rockford. They know who Rockford is and he can't get brought in on something like this, not with his career.

Right. And he does have a great line here, which is it's so good. Why did you run away? You know, the law, you never run for it and you never plead guilty. So good. And so he says, well, if you were gone, like, what about your alibi? And this is where we start getting to the, the meat of the episode. Charlie has an alibi. Uh, he was with a woman and he was waiting. He didn't go to the cops for the last three days because he's been waiting for her to come forward to clear his name. But he doesn't know her real name. He only knows her as Cassandra. She's a mystery woman. He calls her a mystery woman. Like, I met her on the beach. We've been together six times. I don't know her name. I don't know where she came from. You need to find her because she's my alibi.

don't know her name i don't know where she came from you need to find her because she's my alibi it's the uh the the canadian girlfriend like i totally have a girlfriend she just lives in canada so i don't see her that often and he gets in in here that like i have no reason to kill pauline in addition to marrying her for her money i also was in love with her right why would i kill her put leave my fingerprints all over everything, and then leave? I'm not that dumb. Yeah, here's a kind of a lovely thing about Rockford is that, and not Rockford himself, but Rockford Files, is that we as an audience are suspicious of this man, obviously. This early on in any episode, you're suspicious of everyone.

But the fact that he's having an affair doesn't preclude him from being honest about being in love with Pauline. That's great. Because I feel like in many shows, just the fact that he's having an affair turns that statement into a lie and casts greater suspicion on him. Right. I mean, even characters that don't achieve full three-dimensionality are usually at least two-dimensional, right? Just because he's an adulterer doesn't mean he wasn't also in love with his wife. Yeah. And we'll see that theme come up again in this episode. And that, I think, goes a long way towards adding the realism that we both appreciate in these stories, even when the setup is ridiculous. Like, the characters have this kind of sense of complicatedness to them that reads as

more of a real personality. So Jim hears the whole story and then he's holding strong to his, I can't get involved. I'm already doing you a favor by coming here and giving you my advice. And here's my advice. Turn yourself in. Here's the name of my lawyer. She can help you. If you turn yourself in, I can help you find this woman. But if you don't, I can't get involved. Very cut and dry. This is great. This is a sort of a standard Rockford technique that I think that if we were to write a book,

Advice for Life from Jim Rockford, this thing where he promises little and delivers big is really great. I think that that's sort of the formula for most episodes is that in the beginning he's putting up a wall. He's like, I can only get you this far and that's it. And then he'll take you as far as he possibly can, but he's not promising you that he will. And he's setting some pretty good expectations,

especially given that he doesn't know what's happening. Also, this is what the first part of what I've started kind of calling in my head, the Rockford two-step, where he says he won't get involved. And then so we're waiting for whatever it is that is going to make him get involved. He's taking the one step back and waiting for the next move. I like that. The Rockford two-step. Rockford two-step. I think we can coin a term of art for the purposes of the podcast. And sure enough, in the next scene, Rockford went home, went back to bed, and there's a knock on the door waking him up yet again.

At least it's daylight this time. And it's Detective Garvey hammering on his trailer door. And they have a great little confrontation where not only has Jim just been woken up, so he's kind of grumpy. He knows that this is not going to go anywhere good for him. They have this back and forth about whether if he has a warrant, he doesn't have a warrant yet, but he can get one. Do we really have to do that?

Right. Like any honest citizen would let us in. Do we really need to go get the warrant? That kind of thing. And Rockford's like, okay, fine. You just woke me up. I'm sorry. Come on in.

Because he legitimately doesn't have anything to hide at this point. You see the, the charm come on. Rockford just like a fricking light switch. The moment he decides to let the cops in, he is in control of that conversation. Just so amicable, ready to tell a tale, whatever tale he can tell. Sometime during the rest of the scene, he goes and gets himself a glass of milk, which I appreciate. He has his morning milk, of course. It's a good food episode for you. It's a great, oh man, just you wait. There's so much good food in here. But the content here is that, as you might expect, the cops want to know where Charlie is.

They looked him up. They know that they used to be bunkmates or cellmates. And he kind of lays out a little bit of the backstory for us that Rockford spent five years in San Quentin. Two years of those, he was cellmates with Charlie Harris. So of course, this con is going to go to his ex-con buddy. And he just knows just by instinct, I guess. This is what puts Jim's back up this assumption, I think. Yeah. And this is also one of the few moments when we get his jail time mentioned that he doesn't mention that he's been pardoned. Right. He's not even guilty of the crime that he did the time for. Yeah. In other episodes, it's made clear that he received a pardon from the governor. it's made clear that he received a pardon from the governor.

So his criminal record was expunged, I guess, though still obviously available for people to find the facts of it. And I wonder, do you think that was an intentional omission in this one to kind of amp up the criminality angle? Or do you think it was just a case of no one really cared that much about that detail during this script writing session. I want to think the former, but I'm pretty sure it's the latter. Even if I had to put my money on it, it's something he's usually pretty quick to hit people with, especially. Well, actually, you know what?

I take it back because in this scene at this moment, he is being completely noncompative with the the cops he's he's cooperating with them uh he's hiding something he's lying to them but he's he's not when he wants to fight with the cops then he'll say you know i was pardoned that's not a real thing you shouldn't even be able to get those files or whatever but he's not looking for a fight at this very moment until yeah you can kind of see the change in his face and just his body language when garvey kind of drags him into it and um oh that other little detail uh rockford was the best man at charlie's wedding yeah which i guess would imply that he knew pauline right assuming that's that's the wedding that was... And that's kind of not amped up either in other scenes. I just

made that connection myself, actually, kind of looking at my notes. You just blew my mind. God damn it! What happened there? Yeah, I wonder, again, there's some stuff towards the end where I wonder if there's something on the cutting room floor from this episode. Could be, yeah. Anyway,

free-floating little detail that ends up not mattering at all. But once Garvey kind of gets into the, I know you have something to do with this, this is where Jim says, well, you're no longer welcome in my home unless you have a warrant. And they kind of leave off with that tension of the cops want to get him involved, want to use him as a stalking horse if they can to dig up Charlie. Garvey kind of goes from good cop to bad cop. And the moment he does, Rockford goes from good Rockford to bad Rockford. And he just, I wrote down the quote.

He's like, I've told you the truth, which he hasn't. And you no longer have permission to be here or be on my property. You better get a warrant or you can just take me in right now. And it's great. It's this lovely like, okay, here's how it is. be on my property. You better get a warrant or you can just take me in right now. And it's great. It's this lovely like, OK, here's how it is. I know my rights. We played, we danced,

but the dance is over. We're going to go to our respective corners here and get ready for round two. Before we get back to their round two, we will cut to Charlie in his fancy hideout doing a pile of crosswords

in the paper, which is kind of just like a nice little transitional scene where you kind of see where he just literally has nothing to do. He can't go anywhere. He can't talk to anyone. So he's doing these crosswords in this pile of newspapers. I think that they're sitting there waiting to go in the fireplace. I think they're meant to just start a fire or whatever, And he's just going through them. But the existence of the scene explains something that happens later, which is, I think structurally is kind of why it's there. Like when you're watching, you're like, okay, cool. And then you move on, but it helps hold the narrative together in a way that we'll get to when we get to that element. You, you have this sense of like,

okay, so are some goons going to bust in on him? Or, oh, oh no, we just, Charlie's bored. Okay. Our next scene is amazing. This scene and another one in a different episode are the core of my obsession

with Rockford and food. And thus my larger theory of television detectives and how the ways that they're seen eating and the food that they prefer conveys information about their character, which might be more as an umbrella topic might be more than we want to get into here. But in this scene, we have Rockford and Beth discussing the case essentially at a hot dog stand. We start off

with Beth buying the hot dogs while Rockford's on the phone with the coroner's office. Right. So, and this is the guy we saw in the beginning that he's talking to on the phone, Gabe. So that's why we got his name. That's why we had a moment of seeing who he was, but that's all we get from him. That's it. Though Rockford does mention that he doesn't have money to bribe him. Right, yeah. So he needs a favor. So he's learning the information that Pauline was dead for at least four hours before Charlie got home. Yeah. So there is no way that Charlie could have done it, assuming that he's telling the truth. Yeah.

So Beth gets the hot dogs, sits down. They swap positions at the phone because she's calling to get her messages to see if Charlie has called her yet, which he has not. While she's doing so, Rockford starts eating a hot dog on camera in plain view, just taking bites like a normal person, which is unprecedented thus far in our viewing of the Rockford files. Beth comes back, sits down at the table. They discuss the information we just talked about. Rockford kind of lays out the illogic of the situation. Why would he touch everything? Why would he call the cops? Why, like, why would he do all these things if he did it?

It's a red, you know, it's all the evidence against him. So, and he's not that dumb. While he's laying this all out, he finishes his hot dog. And then Beth is asking him questions and kind of presenting her, her viewpoint. And he kind of just slowly, and I saw it cause I was looking for it cause I knew it happened. But I remember the first time I saw this, I think it was just, I didn't notice.

He slides over, takes her hot dog, pulls it in front of him and takes a bite out of it. And then she looks at him and says, you owe me $1.20. And he's like, what? I thought we were going Dutch. And she says, we were, but you just ate my hot dog. And he looks down in surprise as if he didn't even notice that he stole her hot dog and started eating it right in front of her. Right. Everything is so beautiful about this. And then it leads into what I love about this scene,

which is the back and forth over this $1.20. Because nobody's arguing about the value. $1.20 for the hot dog, $0.20 for the coffee. The whole thing is $1.40. That's a great value for your buck 40. So Beth says, you owe me $1.20. He gives her $1.25 and says, you owe me a nickel. Beth says, I don't have a nickel.

So he takes $0.25 back and he says, I owe you $0.20. And we get all that on camera. It's good for me to know that he, at this point in the episode, is $0.20 in the hole. The content of the scene is important, right? In terms of laying out more reason for them to be you know, be in Charlie's corner on this. Right. Yeah. But the context of the scene is all about the kinds of people they are and the kind of relationship they have. And it ends with a line from the preview montage of what do we do now? Now we go to bed. Beth kind of looks at him with this like, what are you talking about? He's like, I'm exhausted. looks at him with this like what are you talking about he's like i'm exhausted yeah it's clearly the middle of the day and he's gotta sleep and i will note that he then gets in his car and drives away and leaves her holding all of the trash so i don't know it seems silly to kind of unpack every little thing because it seems so self-evident about like what these things kind of say about

jim and his relationship to beth they'll split lunch but then he's gonna basically straight up steal her hot dog then haggle over it and then leave her holding the trash right like this isn't necessarily just him and beth although it does play out but this is him and becker this is him and and it goes the other way with angel and it's different with his dad so i guess it's kind of interesting to see how all of that plays out. But he's got his mind on the case. And so he then lets other things slide. And he's got this set of friends who kind of have to just deal with the other things. She's his lawyer. So when he gets in trouble, she's got to pick up the trash, right? Like that's what she does. And he ends up owing her money for it almost every time.

And then also in contrast to all the other food scenes in specifically in this episode, but also in other ones, we don't really see him eating food on camera except for things like hot dogs and tacos, things that are very working class, quick, cheap kinds of foods. You got to be standing up when you order them and you you gotta be out in the sun when you eat them. Exactly. He's the kind of guy who would eat your hot dog. You know? That's just the kind of guy he is. I don't know. Once I started thinking about that as an intentional choice, right? It's a choice that he

eats this food in this scene and isn't seen eating other food in other scenes. Anyway, if you've ever followed me along when I'm live tweeting what Rockford's eating during an episode, uh, this is why this is the, one of the origin points of that obsession.

We go from here. He says he needs to get some sleep and we go immediately into his third wake up another phone call or Charlie's calling to say he's found Cassandra right? Cut to Rockford going over to the place. Why he found her was because he was so bored. He was reading through all these old newspapers and there's a society pages article and there's a picture of her.

Yes. And she is Mrs. Alfred Bannister, a very wealthy and powerful man. Well, he's got the name Alfred Bannister. You don't get named after stairs if you're not wealthy. So he's done it. He's found who she is and doubles down on asking Rockford to like, she'll be a lot easier to find now. So you need to talk to her and get her to give me the alibi. And he keeps saying like, we need to find her. You know, we need to get her to come forward. And Rockford says, we means us and us means me

he's still rejecting this idea that he needs to get involved there's this other great line in here when when he first finds out about alfred he goes so this guy plays international monopoly which is a perfect summary of the kind of guy we can expect to see later in the episode so this is when charlie finally says look not only do you owe me this, I'll pay you. Well, OK, so we got the negotiation and the negotiation is great. Charlie starts at 10,000. Rockford isn't having it. So he goes up to 20,000.

Rockford's like, it's 50,000. And he goes 25,000. And then this is where my notes fall down, because I wrote down originally that they settled on 35,000. But later in the episode, they mentioned that they have settled at 30,000. So there's a little leeway there. I didn't rewind to find out exactly. So maybe if we have an eagle-eyed or eagle-eared listener out there, they can correct me.

I noted the same thing. So I wonder if it was just a script inconsistency but i'd love i'd love the negotiation you have to assume that rockford isn't expecting any of the money not to pull out the same metaphor that he just did but it's monopoly money at this point right like he's his gravy train is dead and he's about to go to jail for her murder and rockford's trying to weasel as much money out of him as he can but he knows well because the reasoning here that charlie lays out is that he's in pauline's will right she was very wealthy so he's going to inherit her wealth assuming he's cleared so if he goes to jail, no one gets any money. But if Rockford can find Cassandra,

I think they don't actually mention her name, her first name in the scene. And I think even though she's credited with the first name in the credits, but I didn't notice where they ever refer to her by her first name, actually. From here on, they call her Mrs. Bannister for the most part.

Right, yeah. If you find Mrs. Bannister and get her to come forward, then I'll be cleared. Then I'll inherit. And then I can pay you the amount that they settle on 35 to 30 000 so apparently the promise of a potential 30 or 35 000 plus whatever rockford owes him on a personal level is enough to get him to to finally buy into helping out charlie From here we go into a really nice sequence of visual scenes with no dialogue. Rockford finding and then tracking Mrs. Bannister.

He's staked out her house or their house in a state of some kind. He has a takeout thing of chicken with him in the car, and this is in stark contrast to his hot dog antics earlier. Presumably, this is something he bought for himself. It's in his car. There's no one else there. It's in a takeout container. He opens it, takes out a chicken wing, looks at it, frowns, puts it back, takes out a tiny apple, frowns again, puts it back,

pushes it away in disgust, and drinks coffee instead. The Rockford Diet. Even though we're the only people there, he's still not eating any of this fancier food on camera, nor is he stealing it from anyone. But during this scene, he sees her leave the house, get in a car, drive, drives past where he's staking her out. He then follows her to a parking lot of some kind where she calls a cab from a public phone,

gets in this cab, and then takes it to the beach. This is interesting because this is showing some of her tradecraft. Early in the episode, when Charlie was first talking to Rockford about the trouble that he was having, he mentioned that he tried following her home once and she did a triple cab and a turn back, which is what he said. And then I lost her, implying both that there are technical terms for what she did and that Rockford is well aware of what those technical terms are. But we're seeing again, like just to go to the beach, she's covering her tracks. So there's something particularly suspicious about this woman.

Yeah, we get a lot of telegraphing about how this is a thing she does. Yeah. Pick up men anonymously, essentially. And it works. Some nice directorial touches here, or at least editing kind of stuff where he's looking at her through the binoculars. Kind of reminds me of when he was looking at stuff through the camera and the countess yeah yeah a similar kind of visual style and also in throughout this episode there's occasional kind of um interesting angles top-down shots of interior spaces and stuff that make me think that this you know this director

kind of had like a look he was going for not everything is a straight on shot that said we do get a nice tight close-up when she finally enters the beach and takes off her head shawl and we get to see her full-on face for the first time highlighting her as this beauty like she's clearly occupying the role of this you know beautiful woman who men will kind of fall over themselves to be involved with. Several men do. She's walking down the beach. There's a great shot of a double take as this guy passes her and then like double takes to look at her just in the camera frame behind her.

Yeah. The only man who doesn't, I'm going to call him Purple Shorts. He's the guy with the shorts over his sweatpants? Yes, that guy. So it's a cold day on the beach. She's wearing quite a bit of clothing. She's wearing a coat, I think, and everyone else is fully dressed up.

And this guy jogs by in sweats with these purple shorts pulled up over his sweats. Was that the fashion? I don't't know couldn't take my eyes off him if that's what he wanted that's what he got i mean more power to you right you have to wear your running shorts even if you're also wearing your sweatpants these shiny purple

running shorts okay god mrs banister is played by diana moldar i think i'm pronouncing that right who uh nerds will recognize as dr polaski from the season of Next Generation where she replaces Dr. Crusher on the Enterprise. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. I thought she was a little familiar. Yeah. And I assumed it was because I'd seen her in other Rockford episodes.

should pay closer attention to this because like i think almost every episode has an actor that we recognize from somewhere else that uh it just plays a bit part or a bigger role like this one but you've mentioned before how a lot of actors that got bigger roles or more prominent roles later were in these yeah these shows and diana moldar she was kind of in one episode of lots of tv shows for a while basically around this time, and then got more recurring roles later. So, again, I think this is probably a big get for her at this point. Yeah, and she's pretty good here, I think. Yeah. But, yeah, I just thought it was funny because I was like, I recognize her.

Oh, not from other Rockford episodes. Actually, from the obsessive watching of Star Trek The Next Generation I've done. from other Rockford episodes, actually from the obsessive watching of Star Trek The Next Generation I've done. So Mrs. Bannister walks down the beach until she encounters Jim Rockford, who is setting up a camera and has an attitude. He's the only person not in motion, right? Everyone else is running or walking somewhere. He's setting up this big tripod and this camera and kind of calls out to her, you must bebara you've been keeping me waiting i've been here for 40 minutes the ad agency said you'd be here at this time and lays down all this patter about being a uh ad photographer who is supposed to have a shoot on the beach and has

basically been stood up by his model the somerset sweet pickle girl shoot and he gives her just a little bit of it's not really a sob story it's just really a a story yeah about this this uh advertising campaign he's supposed to be working on and he's complaining about it and she's asks him why why he took it if he doesn't like the product his other camera or his lens is at the pawn shop he's basically broke and he needs the money so he's setting himself up as a a man who needs money right in a jam he's he's the honeypot here he's basically broke and he needs the money so he's setting himself up as a a man who needs money right in a jam he's he's the honeypot here he's laid the trap and she's walked right into it yeah and she goes right to it you know she she offers him sympathy and then offers to

get him coffee because he's been waiting out here in the cold and they escalate real quick yeah can i get you some coffee he He's like, how about lunch? She's like, sure. By the way, I'm Jim. It's like, well, how about I'll be Barbara? Right. So they both know that that's not her real name. So she throws that out there.

It's like, well, I'll be Barbara. Where do you want to get lunch? And he says, how about my place? And she says, all right, great. And we're off. So this is both plot expediency, right? Like kind of getting to the next place we need to be for the story. And I think it's also hammering home for us that this is a thing she does.

Charlie met her on the beach. She clearly has this method of avoiding casual detection. Yeah. And so apparently she's the kind of woman who goes like, I'm going to pick that man up and then does it. Folks that she's not going to run across in her real life, in her society. You get the impression that Rockford, well, I mean, Rockford orchestrated this to whatever extent he could orchestrate it. And he knows what she's up to. So he sets this trap. One imagines that Charlie kind of gave him the rundown of what she's up to. So he sets this trap. One imagines that Charlie kind of gave him the rundown of what

she's looking for. There's a thing that happens in this, and this happens a couple of times in the Rockford. Well, I shouldn't say a couple of times. This happens actually more than a couple of times, but it's the most jarring thing to my modern sensibilities. And that is he takes her by the arm. He does that with women often. It's not aggressive in the context but it seems aggressive to my to my 2017 eyes right like i don't know do you see the same thing or is it yeah i think we live in a culture now of like physical touch is very um you know you wouldn't just walk up and grab someone right that you just met. Like on the arm.

Like anything that's not like a handshake. Or maybe a hug if you're in a certain environment. But let's go to this place. And then I just grab your elbow. Yeah. Seems like a very personal space infringing act. And the reason why I bring it up this time is because we're going to get to a thing at the end of this episode. Where I think it's interesting to is because we're going to get to a thing at the end of this episode where I think it's

interesting to compare it to what just happened here. So here, the clear implication is that they're going to get a little bit of the SEX. You know, they're going back to his place. I just spelled it out in case there are any children listening to the podcast. And so he, you know, just

arm in arm, but like in this very old-fashioned way. It's very masculine, just arm and arm, but like in this very old fashioned way. It's very masculine, right? Like it's very like, I'm asserting my masculinity in this moment kind of thing. And either it's just a character thing or it's like a James Garner thing, right? It doesn't seem like something that had to be directed into the scene. No, no. But I will be coming back to this

later so they go back to his place which is the place that charlie is hiding out they have a little toast to your husband because and there's a couple lines of dialogue here to uh establish that she has told him that she's married and that they both know that this is right an affair that's about to happen theoretically and. And then Charlie appears. Dun, dun, dun. There's a lot in this scene. Yeah. There's a lot of dialogue, a lot of little kind of back and forths. So rather than try and recap every single thing, I think we'll just pull out kind of the things we need to know to move on.

But at no point does it feel like it's exposition for exposition's sake. They're all speaking like real people who are trying to work through this complicated situation including that jim like as soon as charlie appears just drops the act entirely yeah and retreats as much as he can and then gets drawn back in he still remains charming and witty but uh she treats him as more hostile as she should. That's what the situation is. It's fun to watch this scene and to see how

he's behaving precisely the same way he was before, but the context changes how she's viewing him. It changes how the whole dynamic works. She has a great line, which is, do you always come equipped with smart remarks or are you just showing off? And he replies with, a little of both. It's a good scene good shot good good exchange um so what we see in this scene is

the three of them realize that they're all in this together now because she's charlie's alibi but she doesn't deny right but she also claims that there's this window of time where she doesn't know where he was and she timed how long it took to get from pauline's house to their hotel and he could have killed her then come over so she doesn't even know if he's innocent so this is when jim is like wait a second you didn't tell me that yeah and she she calls out that now rockford's involved because now he's an accessory after the fact, if it turns out that Charlie did do it. Yeah. So now we suddenly have this situation where the three of them are all implicated in one way or another. They're all claiming that they didn't do it or know who did it.

It's kind of a prisoner's dilemma where it's like they all need to work together to clear everyone or whoever goes first is kind of, they're all screwed. Yeah. Yeah. And we end the scene with Mrs. Bannister spinning the scenario where Charlie should turn himself in, go to trial. If he gets convicted, then she'll come forward as his alibi because she doesn't want this to

reflect onto her real life, right? Like into her marriage. She wants to keep it out of the papers, essentially that she is having these adulterous affairs so that's her motivation for for not coming forward so to save him from the chair she'll say that she was his alibi but then rockford legal eagle of a mind that he has it's like then it'll be too late you won't be you'll be impugned as a witness because you didn't come forward so your your testimony won't count, basically.

So they're kind of back to square one. And then she leaves with like, I'm going to go to the car. You decide what you want to do. That's my best offer. So, yeah, it's a good scene. It's a very point counterpoint kind of thing. Like, here's my position. Oh, well, here's how that's not going to help you.

Here's my position. Well, that's how that's not going to help you. And we end up with Rockford saying, like, that's a bad deal. Don't take her offer. And Charlie asking him to do what he can to get her to offer up something better. So now we kind of have a better sense of the stakes of the situation for everyone involved. We still don't know who the murderer is. That mystery is kind of to the side. This is all about the risk reward of each of these people going to the police with their story. The murder is just one kink in the knot that they're tying. It's a really good setup. And what I like about it is that they're, again,

they're hostile, but not yelling at each other. They're not fighting. They're negotiating. Nobody has anybody else's best interest at heart. They're not fighting. They're negotiating. Nobody has anybody else's best interest at heart. They're not going to let that stop them from trying to get what they need to get out of this. Yeah. So it's real solid and kind of is the big center point of the episode. Without kind of resolving whether they talk about that offer anymore, Rockford drives Mrs. Bannister back to her car. And when he drops her off, he says, look, here's one way to get out of this. I can smuggle Charlie to South America, but it'll cost a lot of money, but it'll solve this whole situation. He'll be gone.

You'll never hear from him again. No one will know you were involved. She's a little surprised, I think, at this offer. offer. There's a deeper plan that Rockford has afoot here. So I think she is either surprised or rightfully suspicious of what he's offering. I mean, it feels like it comes out of nowhere. Yeah. There is a line in the last scene where Charlie says, like, if we can't figure this out, I'm going to have to follow my friend to South America or something like that. And maybe that's what got Rockford thinking about this as like a plan. But yeah, he basically offers to smuggle out Charlie. It's going to be very expensive.

And she's like, I don't know about that. I'm leaving now. Cut to the next wake up knock at his trailer door. Mrs. Bannister has thought it over and wants to get more details before she decides what to do and asks Jim how much it's going to cost to smuggle Charlie out of the country. And he says, this is the $100,000 that we see in the preview montage. This is this is the big payout, which is exciting, but a little disappointing for for Rockford sake.

Before I knew what the episode was about during the preview montage, that's $100,000 I thought was going into his pocket. But now it seems like, taken for face value, that that's money he needs to use to set up Charlie in South America. So not all of that will end up being his if this is the plan that they're going to go with. And it gets even more complicated. One imagines that that includes a fee for him but it's never like broken out like that and in fact he says that he wants 50 up front and then 50 after charlie's out of

the country you assume that the other half is probably for rockford she's i think like i would be uh not being aware of going rates for international human trafficking. This sounds like a high number. She's surprised and thinks it's ridiculous. Tries to bargain him down, but Rockford won't budge. He's like, nope, that's just how much it costs. $50,000 now, $50,000 when he gets to South America. It's an inflationary period.

It's the price of infidelity. He says that it'd be best if they did it today. She says there's no way she can do that today. She'll see what she can do for the next day. Yeah. So now we have a clock. She's going to see if she can pull together $50,000

in two days. Right. So she basically agrees to this plan. I will pay to smuggle Charlie away and make this all go away. rockford then calls his good friend sergeant becker yes of course it is in fact sergeant garvey who answers the phone but he hands it to becker and becker's on the phone next to the guy looking for rockford that he can't give up his buddy jim too so he has to pretend like he doesn't know who's talking to him, which is another delightful bit of a standard Rockford-Becker interaction.

He does promise to make Becker the hero. He does. And you do see that Becker at least is fond of that idea. Like you could see it on his face. Oh, really? Not the grin he gets when he knows he's going to screw Rockford over, but the grin he gets when he knows Rockford is going to do good by him or suspects that he will. So he can't talk. He just listens. Rockford tells him not to go anywhere where he can't get in touch with him in the next two days, basically some kind of big things going down. He's going to get him the evidence, $50,000 in small bills.

Right. And then he hangs up. So this, as I'm watching, I'm now going, so what is the plan here? Yeah. I mean, I didn't really remember how this episode resolved and I'm trying to think what the end game for Rockford is here. And in this moment, I kind of am having trouble is the idea that she pays him. And then because she did that, that's the evidence that she was Charlie's alibi.

I think that's as far as Rockford goes. Well, there's okay. So there's two things about this that well, first of all, the hanging up moment, just at the end of the conversation, when he says $50,000 in small bills, you see Becker realize that Rockford is really in it and gets upset again, which is great. I love that he can't be happy with him. But I think that probably the plan is, is that, yeah, he's going to use the money as evidence against her or just to kind of force her hand to be there is alibi. It's proof that she knows Charlie, I think, because in the big conversation scene,

she makes a point of saying, it's your word against mine that I even know who you are. And the Rockford's like, and mine, right. Bringing him in as like a participating now, but also threatening her with, you know,

if you claim you don't know who this is, now there's two people you need to argue against. And then this would be like the final nail. And you paid me $50,000 for a guy you don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And she does mention in that conversation that she has an old friend who will just vouch for her.

Right. Just whatever. Yeah. So I guess that's the plan in the moment. You know, you're just kind of waiting. You're like, all right, let's see how this plays out. But yeah, I was kind of like, I'm not sure what the endgame here is.

It also could just be Rockford just poking at it until it breaks open. Right after that, two suits get out of a car, come up to him on the steps where he's messing with some fishing tackle or something, and summon him to a lunch with Alfred Bannister.

These goons, these gorillas. I didn't catch the first guy's name. Yeah, I didn't remember their names. But the other guy was Mr. John. So you know, and Mr. John is carrying a briefcase. And that's it. They're wearing suits. They're clearly meant to intimidate him. One of them was named Mr. John and he had a briefcase. And that's it. They're wearing suits. They're clearly meant to intimidate him.

One of them was named Mr. John and he had a briefcase with him. But they don't take him in the car. They just tell him he has an appointment and leave. And that's the only time we see them in the episode. So we then go to Mr. Bannister's club. They're in a private dining room.

Mr. B is eating some soup as he has an ulcer, so he can't have fancy foods, but he enjoys watching other people eat. Rockford, again, has a plate of chicken, possibly fried chicken. You don't get a real shot of what's on the plate, but we do see him eating it.

Mr. Bannister says, the food is excellent here. I enjoy watching people eat then asks him how's the chicken and he responds little greasy mr rockford will not whether whether he's lying because he doesn't want to give this guy the satisfaction of like following up on this this promise of great food or whether he legitimately prefers other places to get his chicken not this fancy club with this exclusive chef. Rockford will not play the game of being impressed by this wealth and privilege.

You get the sense he'd prefer having another hot dog. That said, this is where we get another avenue of pressure onto Jim for figuring out what the hell is going on. And he's old. He's old, white-haired, has his ulcer and everything. Mrs. Bannister is much younger than him. Yeah, there's a clear motivation for her to remain married to him. But he says that he knows her activities. He's aware of what she does. As long as she's discreet and there's no scandal, he doesn't really care. He'd rather have her in his life with her proclivities than have both of their lives ruined by a scandal.

This mirrors sort of the situation with Charlie and her, where on Charlie's side of it, to him, it's no problem for him to be having this affair and also be in love with his wife, Pauline. We get the other side of that equation there, which is this guy who doesn't matter as long as she's not making a scene out of it, as long as she's not drawing attention to herself. this is where Mr. Bannister threatens in very clear terms that if Rockford keeps poking around in this investigation, he's going to have him assassinated. Yeah. Again, from our preview montage, he's going to call up some friends from Europe. They'll fly over here in the middle

of the night. They'll put a bullet in your forehead. They'll go back home. Like, it's very clear. Yeah, but the middle of the night is the best a bullet in your forehead they'll go back home like it's very clear yeah but the middle of the night is the best part because you know he's not been able to sleep yeah this whole episode oh that's a good point so being having this very bald threat by a man who obviously can back it up i think does impress rockford to some degree or at least he's willing to act like he's impressed and he he says he says he'll drop it. Right. One line in here that I thought was great. Just the language of it before he pulls up the, uh, assassination threat, they kind of are going back and forth

about like risk and reward. And I know which way the, the, the deck is stacked and stuff like that. Yeah. And Rockford says, I've cased the deck pretty well and i know what trump is and i was like what does that even mean and then i realized that deck referred to deck of cards obviously not because at first i was like case the deck is that a weird nautical term but he's kind of saying like i know the situation you know and then the guy's like no here's the trump right here's the trump card uh i will have you killed and and rockford's like well that, that's blunt. And he's like, well, I need to be blunt right now. And that's great. Rockford says he'll drop it.

But of course, the next thing we see is him going back to the hideout, presumably to talk to Charlie about this. But unfortunately, instead of Charlie, Sergeant Garvey is there. They've tracked him down finally to his hideout. Rockford claims that he's there looking for Charlie because he remembered that they had this mutual friend who's out of the country and maybe he was here. So I was just going to take a look and then let you know, officer. But Garvey's having none of it and goes ahead and takes Jim in for obstructing justice, harboring a fugitive, and just being a cluck in general.

Yes. To which Rockford replies, I think I'll beat that last one, which is great. Oh, man, it's so good. And then in just a great piece of, I don't know, a great piece of narrative elision, for lack of a better word. Just a great piece of, and then some stuff happened, but it's not that important. Our next scene is Rockford walking into his trailer where Rocky, his father, is on the couch watching baseball. And in like two sentences, oh, you were at the police station this whole time? Oh yeah, they kept moving me around, but Beth finally sprung me. And that's pretty much it. Like he

got arrested. Apparently a bunch of stuff happened. It took all day, but it doesn't matter to this story. So we're not going to focus on it. And we leave this to this story so we're not gonna focus on it and we leave it at uh this kind of nice little downbeat where they're both on the couch they uh have a couple beers open and rockford saying that he doesn't know where charlie is he's on the run again and it's it's kind of nice because rocky knows charlie and is like kind of it feels like he's got like fond feelings about charlie like he's a good guy that guy you know from prison yeah charming charlie harris right like you get the sense that he's a you know makes friends with everyone so even though rockford said that he's going to drop

the case and doesn't know where charlie is the episode continues um we have that brief moment of pause and then yet another waking up rockford in the middle of the night or early morning, I suppose. This time it is Mrs. Bannister again who knocks on the door, wakes him up. And then before he can make a phone call, presumably to Dennis. Yeah. Pulls a gun on him and says, all right, let's drive. A nice kind of productive tension in this scene is you're not really sure what her goal is. Yeah.

I think neither of them telegraph what's about to happen so it's a very like after the kind of downbeat of the last scene where it's like now what's next now it's like oh now what's next like let's see where this is going jim makes a couple attempts to get the drop on her uh they're gentle attempts to do it and and that's kind of nice like uh with the doorway he does the the old lady's first thing like she's got a gun on him he opens the door and he's like go on through and uh she's not having that and then when they get to the car he's like i'd rather you not point that at and she goes i'm not i'm not discussing it yeah this is this is how it's going to be it's kind of nice that he's he's making the attempt he always

makes the attempt but he's not he's not really going to get the drop on her. If, in his words, a gorilla had shown up, probably at some point he would have opened the door in them or closed it on their hand or something like that. But he's willing to go along. He just would rather she put the gun away. And he's still probably thinking about whether his plan is working or not. Yeah. And as long as she's talking to him and still involved, then maybe the plan is still working, right?

The signal for it not working would just be for her to pull that trigger and then, oh. That's it. And this is also nice because subtly it's also kind of implying, well, oh, maybe she is the one who killed Pauline, right? Like she has a gun. She's apparently willing to use it. But the resolution of this is that they drive up into the hills and she has them pull over on the side of the highway. And there's another car on the other

side of the highway. She goes over, gets a shoebox full of cash from probably her friend, one would assume, the one that would back up her story. Her old friend who appears to be old. Yeah. Appears to be an elderly woman. Ms Miss Bannister takes this box of cash, brings it over, puts it in Rockford's car, and is like, here's the 50,000. Yep. So, all right, game on. She apparently is unaware of her husband's efforts

on her behalf, right? She's still following this plan to try and smuggle Charlie. She doesn't know that he's on the run. So Rockford, at this moment, is the only one in possession of like all of the information about who's where and what's happening. And this is where things start getting kind of frenetic. So Mrs.

Banser and her friend pull away in their car. Right. Suddenly a car kind of comes from out of nowhere and blocks the car that Rockford's in, which is a rental. It's not his car. And these two goons get out, uh, two gorillas.

I don't know if they were the same guys as earlier. I don't think so. When I first saw it, I had kind of made the assumption that they were Garvey and his partner, the cops. Yeah, they're in kind of like brown suits, which a lot of the cops wear, but then I think

they're not. They wanted that money. Yeah, they wanted that money, so they they dive for the money. There's actually a great piece of fighting, like just punching and hitting people with doors. And Rockford kicks one of them in the instep and then punches him when he leans over. It felt very Jackie Chan, right? There was a lot of using the bench seat of the car

to slam into one guy and the door out into the other guy. It didn't look well orchestrated. It definitely looked like a Rockford-type fight, but it was just... Yeah, it's all environmental stuff. It was a good fight. Yeah, for about 15 seconds of screen time, it was a memorable little bit of fighting business.

Both of the guys are down on the ground. He reaches in, pulls their keys, throws them off the cliff so they can't follow him. He always thinks to do something like that. Ah, so good. Jumps back into his car. And then as he jumps back into his car, another car, so now a fourth one, shoots by in front of him and goes roaring down the highway. And he sets off in pursuit of that car. Yes. So now we get a mini car chase. I would say not the full potential of a Rockford car chase. It's interesting. I think it's set on actually on the Pacific coast highway,

which is high and windy. So there's definitely a tension there. It's more of just wearing out the front runner. It's not, it's not about smart moves or anything like that. It's more of just wearing out the front runner. It's not about smart moves or anything like that. It's just... Yeah, there aren't the little tactical decisions that make the best Rockford car chases go. We mostly just see him chasing down this car, which finally pulls to a halt on a stretch of shoulder, presumably because the guy was a little out of control and then had to slam on the brakes.

And then we see that he slumped over the steering wheel, so he hit his head. Rockford opens the door, and it is Alfred Bannister who was lurking in the background. There's a little bit of exposition here where Alfred Bannister is the one who killed Pauline. is the one who killed Pauline. Right. Because Pauline learned about Charlie and Mrs. Bannister and was going to expose them, and he couldn't abide the scandal. The question sort of is, did Rockford suspect this for a while, or is this something that he's just realizing now?

I guess I went into the scene under the assumption that he was just he just figured it out when he realized alfred bannister was behind the wheel yeah i think so too because he says like it was either you or your wife right right so he's in the background even though it hasn't been a subject of of the episode very much of like who was the murderer right in the background he's been putting the pieces together to determine that it was either mr or mrs banister for the the motive you know as as stipulated so i guess this is kind of confirming that yes it was him it does leave open kind of this question of like so what was all of that right like were they in on it like she give him the money and that would distract him long enough for these guys to jump him and get the money back right and no one would know what happened they were so

concentrated on the money that when i saw the scene play out i couldn't tell what was in play because that seemed like the wrong thing to be concentrated on right like that doesn't solve anyone's problems the people that need the money are Rockford and Charlie. And the people that just want Rockford and Charlie to go away, they're well healed. They don't need any extra cash. So the fact that they were concentrating on the money was a little odd to me. Like that was a part that I couldn't. Yeah, me too.

And there's no real exposition or explanation about that scene yeah we have kind of a final scene which we'll get to in a second but i guess kind of reconstructing from earlier things alfred does say that he knows everything that his wife is doing so maybe one reading of this is that he knew she was going to pay him off. Yeah. So he had her friend followed or whatever to this location so that she could, in good faith, pay off Rockford and leave. And then she wouldn't be implicated in him sending his goons to... Steal the money. Reclaim the money and presumably, like, you know, throw Rockford off a cliff or something, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, that seems feasible. That seems to be the most in keeping with what we know

about the characters read but that's all me reading into it it's really not explained it's kind of like oh and and alfred did it he's the bad guy you know let's finish the episode okay so this scene when we figure that out when rockford brings it up alfred his car screeched to a halt and he slumped over the steering wheel rockford pulls in front of him so he can't pull away. Gets out, comes over. Rockford's standing outside the car. The window's down. Alfred's inside the car.

He's holding maybe a handkerchief or something to his head. So maybe he hit his head. Yeah, like on the steering wheel. That's kind of what it looks like. Yeah. And Rockford plays out what happened. It was you, blah, blah, blah. And he admits to it. Mr. Bannister is very vulnerable and has this moment out what happened it was you blah blah blah and he admits to it

mr banister is very vulnerable and has this moment of like it's weird he's committed murder but it's this oh this poor old man he's so confused and then this is where like the physical part comes back again because then rockford goes to check his wound and it's this tender, he just puts his hand on the guy's head like you would a child. And it's so incongruent with everything that has happened to this point. And I'm not complaining about it. I don't want to, I want to plant my flag here. I think this is a lovely moment. This is great for the character of Rockford to have him suddenly worry about this guy's health, despite the fact that he has threatened him with European assassins, possibly sent some goons to steal his money and throw him off a cliff and then let him on this car chase. Beat a woman to death with a statue.

Yeah. Right. So it's I don't want to read too much into that moment, but it's an interesting moment. Part of it, right, is that Rockford is magnanimous in victory, except for when people really get under his skin. Yeah, yeah. Generally, like once he has compromised the villain to whatever degree he's going to, he's kind of live and let live about it. Yeah. He's like, well, this is, okay, this is what's going to happen now. Like I won.

You're going to go to jail. Yeah. I can check on your head. The tenderness of it is in such sharp contrast to everything that's been happening that I just like it. I like that moment there, which humanizes this killer in a way that maybe you have to be like, wait, wait, hold on. This guy beat a woman to death. We got to remember that. I mean, he does seem like a frail old man in this moment. Yeah. There is a bit of humanity to him there. Once the dramatic conclusion has been

resolved, we have our final knock on the door that wakes up Jim Rockford. I didn't keep count. I think we're at five or six. Yeah, somewhere in there. Yeah. And it is our friend, Charming Charlie Harris, who has been on the run and apparently ignorant of what has been going on because he's been trying to avoid all the cops. So Rockford hides the headline of the paper, which it says in giant letters offered banister indicted for murder so that he can confirm with Charlie. So how much were you going to pay me for handling your business? And I think this is where we get the $30,000. Yeah. I just want to make sure that we both know that's the deal. And then he shows him the headline. You know, you're in the business. And I think this is where we get the $30,000. Yeah. I just want to make sure

that we both know that's the deal. And then he shows him the headline. You know, you're in the clear. Charlie is very appreciative, but unfortunately,

he can't get the money right this second. And this leads us into another of the most Rockford conversations. Yeah. As you watch whoever owes him money

backpedal for, you know, legitimate reasons, maybe, and bring it all the way back down to... zero. Well, less than zero, because he, in fact, scams... Scams is the wrong word. He asks Jim for 50 bucks

to carry him over until he can go to the bank uh because oh turns out i had no idea pauline rewrote her will before she died and now i'm having inheritance problems and he doesn't know that he's been written out of the will but we do know that pauline knew that he was cheating on her right Right. I didn't think about that. Yeah. So when he says inheritance problems, Jim's face just falls. I feel like $30,000 was several years worth of work for Rockford. I mean, that would set him up for three years. Let's say three years.

I forget what the value of money was that we learned in our first episode. It was like $5 to the dollar or something. Yeah, it's a little north of five to the dollar. So it's $150,000 in today's money. Yeah, that would have been such a wonderful payday for him. And you could tell that he's just like, not only that, but he's out the 50. And then he still owes Beth 20 cents. It's not good for his bottom line this episode.

He had $50,000 in his hands. Had to give it to the police, presumably. Was promised $30,000. $50,000 he made sure he handled with a handkerchief to make sure he didn't get any prints on. So obviously he was not intending to keep that money. Right. So he has basically

seen $80,000 go through his grasp. Ugh, poor Rockford. The money he's never seen. Yeah, and so we end on a, you know, sorry buddy, I'll get you the money when I can. And that's the end of our encounter with Charlie Harris. That was a good episode. You know, whatever. I'm going to say that about almost all the episodes we see. But there was definitely some confusing moments in the episode i think but overall lots of really

good classic rockford moments and uh twists we just talked about how the the resolution scene is a little wanting um in coherency and uh that's kind of why I think back in the beginning, I said, some stuff might've been left on the cutting room floor. I wonder if there was a scene, uh, kind of explaining the things that led up to all those people being there at that time.

But like, like the fact that it's just that particular, we just don't know like one or two bits about the motivation. It stands out against the rest of it where you know rockford files in general but this episode in particular as well the characters are so well motivated and there are things in this episode that are complex that get across beautifully and quite artfully so it just it kind of just stands out and it doesn't doesn't blemish the episode really because you're just like okay whatever that little bit i didn't care about well the resolution of how rockford gets

them in the end is kind of the least important part of the episode right yeah like we know that like we're gonna find out who who did it and why and it's gonna come out copacetic you know even though he doesn't make any money but uh yeah, it does kind of contrast to, especially the scene where Mrs. Bannister, Charlie, and Rockford all realize that they're in it together and how that's very complicated, but handled through smart dialogue and good acting to make it very clear about what everyone's stake is and why they all have to depend on each other in some way or

else they're all screwed yeah and that's sort of the heart of the rockford files i feel like the whodunit is not the what brings you to the table yeah that's kind of the least interesting part of the episode yeah so yeah good episode uh definitely recommended for seeing this kind of rockford episode where it's a little more about his past and kind of the entanglements that that gets him into. Yeah. But yeah, I think with that, we'll take our break and then we'll be back in the second half to expand on some of these thoughts about how to use the great elements from this episode in your own games and stories. What do you think? Sounds good.

All right. I'm down for it. We'll be right back. 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this month, we have four of them to thank. Thanks to Kevin Lovecraft. You can hear him on the Wednesday evening podcast,

All Stars actual play podcast, where they're currently playing fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. visit misdirectedmark.com to find that feed along with other gaming podcasts in the misdirected mark productions network thanks to lol francis check out his thoughtful and extensive gaming blog at ageofravens.blogspot.com thanks to pluto moved on visit plutomovedon.com to find a podcast about tabletop RPGs, video games, and other topics, along with YouTube Let's Plays. And finally, thank you to Shane Liebling. If you want to get a shout-out for your podcast, blog, or anything else you do, check out Patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. Thanks for being the angel beneath our wings.

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Epi, what do you have going on right now? You can check out my Sword and Sorcery fiction and the Sword and Sorcery fiction of other people along with games and comics at worldswithoutmaster.com. So Nathan, what do you have going on? Well, I'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings, including the Worldwide Wrestling World Playing Game, at ndpdesign.com. Or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta. Thanks for listening. And now, back to the show.

Welcome back to 200 Today. We're now going to talk about Charlie Harris at Large as the lessons we can learn from that episode that we can put in our own fiction, whether we're writing it, recording it, playing it at the gaming table. You said you had something to start us off on here. Yeah. I think my main,

main takeaway from this episode was really coming out of that, that big conversation scene that we talked about. And it's the idea of making everyone complicit in something. And we've talked a lot about motivation, giving everyone a motivation for something. But this is kind of the other end of that maybe, or kind of the reflection of that. How can you use people's motivations and relationships to make them complicit in whatever the dramatic core of your of your idea is if it's if it's the crime or if it's the cover-up or if it's the scheme or the plan right because what this episode does so well not only does it give our main characters maybe

not so much mr bannister as we discussed but it gives our main characters motivations, but it also gives them each something to lose that they kind of discover once all the information is made clear to everyone. And I think that's a really strong way to give everyone a direction for what they want to do with their character, say, in a game. There's two moments in this where everything is just on the table, right? The, the scene you were just talking about at the house with Charlie and

Barbara, Cassandra, Mrs. Bannister, whatever her name is. Her name is credited as Linda in the credits, Linda Bannister, Linda,

but I don't think it's ever spoken in the show. So you got Jim, Linda and Charlie at the house and everything's out in the show. So you got Jim, Linda and Charlie at the house and everything's out in the open. Maybe Linda's trying to cast some shade on Charlie. At that point, we don't know as audience members. We kind of assumed going into it that Charlie was innocent and then she's making it feel a little bit like he was guilty. But that, as we find out, is actually where she's sitting. She just doesn't know. So everything's on the table.

Everyone who's sort of at odds with each other, they just lay it all out. And they have this negotiation that doesn't resolve anything. Then they all go to their own corners. And then Rockford puts another plan into motion after that. And that involves deception. But that moment, there's no secret before that, that survives that into the next part. Like everything else that happens after that is a new secret created for this new plan. Oh, there's one secret, I guess.

There's who did it. But they don't know that. No one in that scene is actually keeping that back. It's not a secret that they're keeping from each other. It's actually a secret from the, from them. So I think we as audience can enjoy that. We can,

we can say, okay, here we go. All right. This is, this is where we're at now. This is where we're all bringing together all the information that we can, we can cough up.

And now we're all reacting to it according to our motivations, according to our concerns and what we have on the line and who we are as people. Then we head out and we try and do what we can with it. And it doesn't mean that we can't be secretive afterwards. When Linda pulls a gun on Rockford, she's not telling him, I'm just doing this so that you don't pull a gun on me. She pulls a gun on him and that's it. And then also the scene with Rockford and Mr. Bannister, neither one of them is hiding anything. Mr. Bannister is very open about what he intends to do. And that makes Rockford rethink what he's going to do too. So I think there's a trap or a problem, right?

That most things that are what you would call like a deus ex machina or something like that, like here's a problem and then here's this kind of narrative solution to it that kind of comes out of nowhere and is not able to be accessed by anyone in the story, right? Like it's because it's coming from the author or from the gm or something like that so in this case alfred bannister is kind of bringing that into me like i will end this by having you killed right and that's kind of a it's a very heavy-handed motion and uh it's something that rockford really has no defense against. So in an alternate script, that ends the story, right? Rockford just leaves. He's not willing to take that.

Or he escalates to something ridiculous, right? Like he hires a bodyguard who's an assassin or something, you know, like something that just seems out of scale and out of character for him. Plans to kill Mr. Bannister before Mr. Bannister can kill him. Right. something you know like something that just seems out of scale and out of character for him plans to kill mr bannister before mr bannister can kill him or right you could tell my contempt for that plot line uh but in this case it doesn't do that it doesn't drive him off or or take him in a place that doesn't make sense given what we know about the character it accelerates his motion more than anything else and i think that's a really interesting lesson to take maybe from the side of what do you do when you're presented with that kind of situation? Like instead of trying to overcome it by scaling

up again, how do you use that to motivate the acceleration or the adding of some new element to whatever your plan is or whatever your agenda is that you already are trying to make happen. And it's great that it's put out there. Like, it says something about Bannister, well, that probably the murder of Pauline was, you know, a fit of passion or, well, passion's not the right word for it, but, you know, like... Anger and rage, because he doesn't seem willing to do like he I mean, obviously, it sounds like he could follow through with it.

It sounds like he could call his European buddies to kill Rockford, but he's not. He wants Rockford to tidy it up. And, uh, that option has more merit, uh, narrative potential energy than just having those European assassins show up in the middle of the night and, and jump into Rockford's trailer and try and kill him. Like as, as we see, like he doesn't actually call an assassin,

right? Like he, he has some goons jump Rockford. So in a way, like, was that a bluff right is he just kind of grandstanding and he was able to sell it basically yeah or did something that rockford do push his hand right to where he couldn't set that plan into motion so he had to go with this plan b i think there's that interpretation too yeah it's good stuff. I'm all for having moments of pure clarity

because I feel like sometimes in the service of a mystery, you try and keep it as foggy as possible. I'm thinking particularly when you're roleplaying. In the service of a mystery, the instinct is to keep it as shadowy as you can and somehow

the attention will grow out of there but it's often more fruitful to to just say nope this is what everyone's intentions are this is what they they think is happening and this is where it's going to go so now you got to figure out what you're going to do with that those moments of clarity give you the real stakes to your situation, right? So the situation isn't someone killed Pauline. Charlie is going to be blamed for it. Maybe we can help him out, right? Right.

Like it shifts to, well, if Charlie goes to jail, now I'm an accomplice after the fact. So I don't want him to go to jail. But if Charlie doesn't go to jail, then i'm going to be pulled in by the cops yeah because they know that i associated with him uh and if linda goes to the cops then i become a witness because now i have to testify against her which then wraps me up in the murder in that way right so like that conversation gives rogford very clear um as i said not only very clear motivations for what to do but very a very clear sense of what do i have to lose um and then once he knows what he wants to avoid then he can

make his plan to avoid that yeah uh so that's the main my main takeaway from this one i think as we go through these episodes you know they're they're more similar than they are different yeah so i think unless there's something else that jumps out of it, I think all of the things that we've talked about for, you know, characters have been clear motivations and the, the story kind of skipping past things you don't actually need to know. Oh,

that's yeah. This one does a lot of that actually, where there's big chunks of time that it just skips over and gives us one or two sentences of dialogue about, because they're not that important. We need to know that they happened just to establish time and place and how tired Rockford is. But it doesn't really matter what actually happened during those scenes. And the first one is right away.

We come upon that murder scene. That's at night. And then we have this nighttime shot of the outside of Rockford's trailer. And it pulls in. And the phone is ringing. And then Rockford picks up the phone and says, whoever this is, give me a moment to wake up. Wakes up. And then establishes that it's been three days.

Right. And there's nothing visually that is established that it's been three days. As far as we know, it's the very same night. One of the things that I liked in this episode was the reoccurring motifs that were showing up. I mean, obviously I like that kind of stuff, but the sleeping, I mean, we joked about it, but it really tied the episode together. Anytime they cut to a shot of Rockford in bed, you were like, oh no. Who's going to wake him up this time?

Yeah. So that's good. And that sort of stuff, I am an advocate, thanks to you and your work in Annalise. I'm an advocate for making that implicit at a gaming table when you're playing and just having everyone on board with it and everyone getting an opportunity to frame a scene with Rockford waking up or being awoken in the middle of the night or middle of the day if he has to sleep during the day or what have you. Yeah, I think we've both worked that into games that we've worked on some kind of structural support for players, not just the GM. If there is one saying,

oh, this motif is really compelling to me, I want it to keep coming back. And that's something you can do structurally through your game rules, or it's something you can do kind of at any table, I think. But that's a great idea, this idea of like, all right, the next scene, tell me how Jim is woken up. Right. Right? Like that kind of thing.

And like when you look at it, and's say you look at this this story unfolding let's pretend that they decided to just keep writing these motifs you can see other parts of the the episode fall from that like the bit about the mystery woman right you know you're improvving like you do in a role-playing game this mystery mystery woman. And he says that, you know, she took a triple cab and turned back and lost me. And then you establish later on that she, again, they're like, oh, Rockford's following her, but she drives to somewhere and then calls a cab and takes that to somewhere else. And then that sets up for her know-how when it comes to making the money exchange at the end. And you can see that going one of two ways. You can see that the writers of the episode saying, okay, well, we need her to be savvy at the end.

So what can we build into our character to make that happen? Or you can see it happening chronologically as you're playing it at the table. And just seeing that ending moment follow naturally from just a throwaway thing in the beginning where you're just like, I just need a mystery woman who does weird things and then build from there. Yeah. And I think the strength of the strength of a well constructed narrative is that it kind of doesn't matter which direction those come from.

It matters in terms of like the craft of it, right? Like you need to have different skills to do it building on itself versus filling in motivation for a thing you need later but if it is all part of the coherent character that you're establishing or have established then it doesn't stand out as weird yeah and it it feels natural and compelling as you're watching it unfold in front of you and i think that like uh not to keep harping on the motif thing but it presented some of the best money moments too because there's these negotiations that take place and because of the big negotiations took place the small one over who owed who for the hot dog or who owed what for the hot dog was, was great. It just, it was this, it just put

it in a nice perspective and showed us the characters, both of them worried about this quarter that's going back and forth, uh, and just how much the money means to them. Right. And one thing about that example that I like is that a motif isn't just that it's the same thing that repeats over and over. Yeah. It's that there's each time it occurs, it means something because it continues to occur. Yeah, it builds on itself. It builds on itself, but they're different. So like in the negotiations, Rockford has one where he gets bargained.

They start at different ends and they meet in the middle, right? About how much Charlie's going to pay him. start at different ends and they meet in the middle right about the how much charlie's going to pay him the negotiation where he basically ends up owing beth he he loses essentially that negotiation uh or does he um it depends on whether he pays her back or not i think beth may have lost 20 cents in that whole deal uh and then there's the negotiation where he doesn't budge about the hundred thousand dollars where he's just take it or leave it and she ends up taking it Those are all negotiations. They build on each other, but they do different things in the story and they have different outcomes that drive different parts of the plot. Going back to the sleep one, the motif of Rockford trying to sleep, you know, this is,

you know, I wouldn't call it something that drives the plot. It's more like a reoccurring joke, but not in a wah-wah sense you know yeah it's kind of it's humorous but it's also important in terms of kind of explaining his mood and how he reacts to people throughout the episode and how off kilter the situation is for him like he's he's on a knife's edge and it shows that he's in this episode he's very reactive right he's only a couple moments that he's in this episode, he's very reactive, right? He's only a couple moments where he's proactive and going out and doing things. Almost all of the episode is someone coming to him to tell him the next thing they need,

which again is kind of a technique you could use for creating this kind of story where it's more about solving a problem and less about discovering truth. Right. Right. Right. It's like all these other people need things from Jim at different times for different reasons. So he gets a phone call, they come to his door. He gets a phone call, they come to his door.

Yeah. I think that's most of what I have to say about this episode. Anything else to wrap us up here, Epi? No, I'm looking through my notes here. I think we hit, again, I think we wrote down the same quotes. We're of a mind when it comes to this show. Yeah, I think we hit again. I think we wrote down the same quotes where we're of a mind when it comes to this show. Yeah. I think that, uh, I think we covered what we can cover. This is, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Another, another good episode and, uh, another recommendation to

watch it if you have a chance. Yeah. All right. Well, with that, I think we have earned our 200 for today. Excellent. So thank you all so much for listening. We'll be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files. See ya.