Two Hundred A Day - Episode 52: The Paper Palace

Episode Date: July 14, 2019

Nathan and Eppy talk about the first appearance of Rita Moreno on The Rockford Files in S4E16 The Paper Palace. When a pair of French-speaking tough guys assault Moreno's character, Rita Capkovic, the police don't seem very interested in helping out a known prostitute. While Dennis is a friend, she ends up hiring Jim to find out why anyone would want to hurt her - and when one of her only other friends, an elderly woman, is killed, it ups the stakes of the mystery. This episode shines as a nuanced portrait of a woman who lives her life unapologetically in the face of judgement, and the character work throughout is fantastic - overall, one of the great episodes of the show! In this episode, we mention Rita Moreno's Emmy acceptance speech, and a Variety piece where she talks about it in more detail. We now have a second, patron-exclusive, podcast - Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon at ALL levels of support. 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 Erik Antener 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, Dave P, and Dale Church! Thanks to: fireside.fm for hosting us Audio Hijack for helping us record and capture clips from the show spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by game and narrative designers Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. In each episode we pick an episode of The Rockford Files, recap and review it as fans of the show, and tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

This is Mrs. Owens with the Association for a Better Malibu. Thanks for your contributions. We made great strides, but it would help, dear, if you could move your trailer. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rutherford Files. I'm Epidaia Ravishaw. And I'm Nathan Poletta. There we go.

We have done, what, 52 shows now? One for every card in the deck? You'd think we'd figure this out by now. We are. But we are here back with you to talk about another fantastic episode of the Rockford Files. Epi, I gave you the charge this time, as our last couple episodes have all been kind of driven by a choice i made so what did you select for us to talk about uh i chose the paper palace which is episode 16 of season four and the first one uh featuring rita well of the rita moreno the actress playing rita capcovich i didn't pay close enough attention while watching

the show to try to memorize how the name was pronounced. Or Kap-po-vich. This is a reoccurring character. I think she's in three episodes. I don't believe we've done any of them yet. This is the first that we've done of the Rita character. She's in three episodes of the show, and then she also has an appearance

in one of the movies that we have yet to get to. Well, it's good that we we've we've hidden we're hitting uh this now um but i was just thinking because there are several characters who do reoccur we've done a few already we um gandy and uh lance white are both characters that have been in more than one episode but not fully reoccurring characters, but there are, I think two or three more out there. We haven't done the,

the originating episode for, uh, the Gabby character, Marcus Hayes, uh, the Lou Gossett Jr. Um, recurring character.

Uh, there's the, uh, uh, Richie Brockleman who comes up in later in the series that we haven't seen yet. And I think we had one episode that had the disbarred attorney. Oh, oh. The disbarred attorney that ends up being Jim's legal contact after Beth is gone.

Oh, yeah. Yes. Did we do one with him? He was in one yet but not as a folk like okay we mentioned him yeah he was just kind of like yeah coop uh john cooper oh yeah so yeah there are these these recurring characters uh yeah uh so he doesn't he doesn't show up till later in the series. But definitely ranking at the top of the list would be Rita. Yeah. Both Rita Moreno and Rita Kapovich. And I was super happy because we just finished watching the third season,

the most recent season of One Day at a Time, which is fun. And I really enjoy that updated version one on Netflix. But on this weird wiki hole that we went down here, it just discovered that Richie Brockleman Private Eye is a five-episode detective series that aired on NBC in 1978. Yeah, it was spun out from Rockford Files. It did not do well. Yeah, it was spun out from Rockford Files. It did not do well. No, it did not.

I think he's originated in a two-parter that is one of my favorites, but I think that character is not particularly interesting in the long term. But that's a different episode. Yes, let's, okay, we'll get, let's do this one first before we start dreaming of, who knows how long this

podcast will go. If we do enough episodes, we'll get to it. We'll get there eventually. So Paper Palace, this one was written by Juanita Bartlett. And I feel like that's pretty significant both because as we've done these, we've kind of noted, I think, that a lot of the Bartlett scripts are both trend a little closer towards like actual real life issues in characters lives. Yeah. And also tend to have more rounded out female characters. Yeah.

And I think this episode, I wouldn't classify it as a social issue episode, actually. I wouldn't classify it as a social issue episode, actually. I don't think it's really about the big issue, but it does have one of the more compelling female characters in Rita in like a very like three dimensional sense. Yeah. And the issues that surround. So I don't know if we're technically beating around the bush here, but I'll just say like her character is a prostitute. And this is how society treats sex workers is fundamental to how the action of this episode goes and like where she's able to find the resources to help her and where she's not. And yeah, the, the social positioning of being a sex worker in a bunch of these different social contexts is what makes the show right. It's like what drives this episode in terms of like compelling character work.

And then we get into the mystery plot, which is, it's not immaterial, but it's kind of, it's not a David Chase mystery, right? Like it's not like immaterial but it's kind of uh it's not a david chase mystery right like it's not like right yeah full of twists and turns it's it's more the motivating plot through which we see all these characters uh interact uh and it is fun to watch these characters oh yeah i'm gonna say that from the get-go uh there's some scenes in here that I think are definitely on the list of just watch it.

For sure. Maybe we'll get a little more into I mean, I don't think we need to drop a biography of Rita Moreno up at the top. You know, what do you say? She's an iconic figure. She's like one of the few people who's gotten the EGOT, as they say.

Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony swept the board of awards and while this was not her first Emmy, it was in fact her second because she won one for an appearance on The Muppet Show prior to this. Oh. She did receive an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress for this episode. Nice. Well, I know how to pick them. Good job. Yeah, so I how to pick them. Good job. Yeah, so, I mean,

this show won lots of Emmys for various people, but it was, you know, in terms of watching compelling, dramatic character work, this one is one to watch. There's some more stuff about her and her relationship to the show that maybe we'll go into as we go,

but let's get into the action um jump in yeah this one's directed by richard krena who is probably would probably be better known as an actor uh than a director the only stuff that i particularly recognize him from is that he was uh in the rambo movies um which i haven't actually seen because I don't really like those movies, which is, I guess, a tautology I have not seen because I don't think I'd really like them, but he's a Troutman Colonel Troutman.

But he, he directed some, like some TV and, and TV movies for the most part. This is his only Rockford files appearance as a director or an actor so one-off directorial appearance um but i think our preview montage gives us a strong a strong sense of what to expect when we get into this episode yeah actually so this is the thing i thought this was kind of interesting about this preview montage. There's a little bit about the action.

There's a little bit about a car going fast, I think, at some point. We see a J-turn. Yeah, but for the most part, it's centered around letting us know that Rita is a sex worker, how people are going to react to that and how it's like kind of important for us to not think of her that way. Like it really sets us up to just follow the whole, like this main character is a sex worker. You probably have these, these prejudice about sex workers and we're're going to you know uh not necessarily shame

on you for doing that but like she is a human being here this is a day what we are gonna because other people are like oh you're a hooker that is all she is uh very specifically we're seeing the pushback against being uh uh minimized to that identity and that's like in the preview montage well from my point of view like it just did this great job of just saying you're going to see this and we agree with you this is a horrible way to treat a person let's get this out of the way that's kind of the point there you go uh or it might if you if you come at it from another point of view if you're just like well i don't i don't know what the other point of view is but just like i don't i shouldn't characterize how well of a job it does i should just say it at least it makes this attempt to

to just present who she is how society is going to view her and how we being the writers and the audiences in jim treat her uh her as an actual human being. And I think that's great. I think that it actually fits as one of my, you know, if I were to start rating preview montages because of what it does, and I think it's so interesting to have used the preview montage to do this, I would definitely put it in my top ten of like, hey, pay attention to to this one see what it does uh see if this is an interesting technique or not the the uh the hook for the channel flipper is less here's the action of the episode that you

can look forward to though there is like the j turn and the like they're after me they're trying to kill me right so we know yeah there's some stakes kind of given to us. But it's also like, here's an examination of this trope. Yeah. Are you in, right? Like, if you want to see it, that's what we're doing. Otherwise, you know, you've got the remote control or the dial is right there. You just have to walk across the room and turn it.

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wherever you get your podcasts. Tell a friend who you think would like it. And check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you so we start our episode with rita and and so there's a bit of a it's not even really a gag but there's a bit of a bit um about people not being able to pronounce her last name oh yeah which i fell right into yeah um but it's uh kapovich. Capovich. Capovich. So Rita Capovich.

So we start off with Rita being booked. She's been, you know, picked up by the cops. For being a poet. For being a poet. Well, not for being a poet. She's,

so our, our initial montage is showing all the things like taking our personal effects and fingerprinting. And then we get her, you know guest star rita moreno credit over her headshot yeah that was great i say headshot because it doesn't look like a mugshot it looks like a like a headshot from for like an actress you know yeah resume uh and i think that's actually a significant choice it's not a blown out against the prison

wall mugshot right also i'm sure part of that is like let's read them right now what are we gonna do but um i'm i'm reading a lot of intention into the choices in this episode and i think it matches uh with the tone of of what we're going to get into um so this whole montage kind of has her going in and then has her coming out as uh our good friend dennis becker comes down to uh spring her from from jail the desk sergeant the guy at the desk uh called becker because he knows that becker and rita are friends and as he says she wasn't doing too much good in the slammer um yes as she comes out she's annoyed understandably but we kind of see we see both a little bit of familiarity uh they do have backstory and we learn a little bit more of it over the

course of the scene but also she's annoyed i think as anyone would be not particularly because she was arrested but because she was arrested for something that does not that she she wasn't doing right and we don't really go into the details but her she says that uh a couple times that she was arrested for for being on a certain street and she's like i wasn't doing anything there right she was not out like trying to pick up people or whatever she was arrested for um we get the line here where the so the guy at the desk is like get a load of what you put down for occupation poet uh and then so she starts a dirty limerick there once was a man from man tuckett uh i actually in my notes that the play-by-play as i'm watching this

is that uh during that opening sequence they they type in poet on her rap sheet or whatever, like under occupation. And I rewound and watched that three times and then wrote poet. And then we get this gag here. And I thought at first it was just going to be like a visual gag and that they were just going to let that go or whatever. But yeah. Becker offers her a cup of coffee and wants to kind of. So Dennis, it definitely appears that Dennis legitimately likes her as a human being. It's also pretty obvious that their connection is that she has been an informant for him at some point.

But he's also – it's also clear that everyone on the force at least implies that there's something else to their relationship, that he's sleeping with her or something because he just constantly says or repeats, we're just friends. We're friends. And then rightfully she's like – I might be jumping way ahead in this. No, no. Go ahead. I can't remember how it all folds out. But rightfully she's like, hey, you're not treating me like a friend. You know, he's ushering her into a private space and trying to keep her from, like, being seen publicly with her, whether that's to protect her or him. It's not evident, but it certainly seems to protect his reputation more than to protect hers.

And he also is, and she calls this out, he's acting like he wants to help her, but that's to make himself feel good about helping someone who needs help, not necessarily to actually make her feel better. He gets a little offended at that, but I mean, I feel like that's a dynamic that we've lived through, right? Like on one end or the other or both, they can both be right. But he wants to her,

he does want her to acknowledge that he came down to help her went out of his way, you know, to, to do her a favor and not to do her a favor, but to, yeah, he genuinely wanted to help her,

but it's still in service of, because their relationship is one of kind of this professional they one of them says like we keep we've always kept things professional or something like that right once she's back out on the streets he knows that he can go to her for information and she'll feel obliged to do that there are two kind of great things about this is that they play that really well uh with these scenes it's it's often tips one way or the other that somebody is clearly in the right or somebody's clearly in the wrong and i think they do a really good job of like showing that dennis just hasn't seen it the other way uh so to dennis he's he is in fact

doing her a favor and and all that but then once she kind of points it out, Dennis being the amazing person that he is, tries to rectify it. He has to get caught in it. That is a major moment in this scene is that he gets caught in the sort of caught not considering her a friend. But then once he is caught, he's like, oh, that's right. I am not doing that. I should fix this. He wants to bring things into line with how he sees them. Right.

Yeah. And so once she's like, no, you're seeing this wrong. He's motivated to make a more human connection. One key thing in this scene that happens when he takes her into the break room or whatever to offer coffee. They pass Billings going in. Yeah. Good old Billings. And Billings says like, oh, hey, Rita, how's tricks?

And that is a reference to being a prostitute and is a joke, right? Quotes. You know, Billings, that's his idea of humor. Yeah, sure. That makes it okay. You're treated like a cockroach around here. That exchange is just, it just brings, it's just so relevant to today, right? Yeah, because Dennis is like, this is why you shouldn't get worked up about that.

And she's like, well, that's no reason why I shouldn't get worked up about it. Yeah, if someone says something insulting and then says like, oh, it's just a joke. It's like, oh, well, if it's just a joke, well, then that's fine. It wasn't insulting and that's not how it works. But that's like such a well-worn smokescreen for bad faith argumentation and people just being phobic and you know just saying like the most horrendous things and then when they're called on it you're like oh that's just i just have this sense of humor oh it's just a joke yeah it's bad and not funny and still an offensive thing that you said yeah that doesn't fix everything and it's depressing that that particular relevance uh has not changed since uh 1978 oh yeah all right there we go but this whole time

rita is the she you know she's keeping it together and she's clearly annoyed and probably exhausted and is trying to get dennis to understand that he's being kind of paternalistic and see where she's coming from. When she actually breaks down is when he says that he is her friend. And she's like, oh, a friend would have believed me when I said that. She says she wasn't working. She wasn't working Wilshire, like whatever she's on. It's like, would have believed me when I said I wasn't working Wilshire. A friend would have sent me a Christmas card. Yeah.

17 years, one lousy card. And she even says she sent plenty. Yes. She apparently has sent Dennis Becker Christmas cards and he has never reciprocated. And that's when she starts like breaking down and crying. There is something about this moment where you find out that she has sent him Christmas cards. Yeah. At no point did I think, oh, this character,

I don't care for this character, or anything like that. It's not like she had to win me over. But the fact that she, there's a warmth there that she gives the cop that she helps inform Christmas cards, that shows up later, like throughout the episode when

you see her interact with people you see her interact with jim uh in fact how this episode ends which is a weird thing we'll get to when we get to it all of this is that like this character is actually um a super generous character both the fact that rita moreno's playing her but also the the nature of this character drew me in i was like i want i want to be friends with with rita she seems amazing dennis i think this uh you know that is probably coming out of this place where she is at the end of the day extremely alone. Yes. And this comes up specifically in the next scene, but she's always reaching out and she just doesn't have anyone that seems to reciprocate.

And that's tragic. Yeah. So elsewhere in the station, Jim Rockford has dropped by. He was in the neighborhood and wants to see Becker. Chapman sees him and is immediately outra is is immediately outraged uh you know what he had to come down in person instead of phoning in his order like usual and so he goes to tell becker to kick jim out we cut back to the break room rita's still crying and becker is telling her that she has nothing but friends here like i, I'm your friend. Yeah. Whatever, that guy, he's your friend.

You have nothing but friends here. And that's when Chapman opens the door and makes a really sh**ty comment that I didn't even write down. My note is just, Chapman's a dick. That is it. Yeah, it's awful. And Chapman gets his villain. He gets the villain casting here as well he should. Chapman gets his villain.

He gets the villain casting here as well he should. But he is the representative of the mainstream puritanical morality. Yeah. So he makes fun of Rita. It's really a mean thing to say. Tells Becker, whatever Jim's here for, tell him no. Get him out of here. So now Becker is under immediate pressure to do that uh he goes to kick jim out and we have a bit where he says whatever you're here for no the answer is no i

don't care what it is but jim he just has uh he got a pair of tickets to the lakers game he just wanted to see if becker wanted to go with him but i guess the answer is no yep becker goes back to talk to rita and this is where she starts talking about like how she's she's just lonely she wants someone to talk to uh sometimes she pretends like she's shopping just so she can complain about prices to interact with other people sad but also like certainly a thing yeah she drops here that she knows she knows one old lady and other than that doesn't really know anyone because you usually make friends through work and how's that going to work out for her and then she kind of lays out some things that friends do like spend time together talk about things that aren't work

uh and this is when billings comes in to tell becker peggy needs him to pick up some soda for the party tonight here we go after becker says oh, maybe I'll see if we can, you know, get dinner sometime. Becker's like, no, it's not a party. It's a get together. It's not a party. It's just dinner with a few

and then we pause and then Rita finishes. Friends? Yes. He gets right on the hook with that whole exchange. We know what decision he makes because we cut directly

to Dennis's wife, Peggy, in an outraged tone of voice saying that she can't believe that he wants to bring a hooker into the house. We don't see Peggy too often. We saw her in our episode 44, Kill the Messenger, which is when Becker has his lieutenant's exam. We first saw her way back in episode four, the Farnsworth stratagem. Yes. Oh, that was so good.

When the Becker's were looking to get in on some kind of special property deal that turned out to be a scam. She's great. I think like we probably don't need to see a lot more of Peggy Becker in the show, but when we do see her, I think she's a delight. Well, I think it's important to kind of talk about,

so we have these characters who are all friends with each other, but grind on each other in certain ways, right? Like the way Angel gets on Jim's nerves or Jim gets on Dennis's nerves, you know, all of that. And here we have this scene where Peggy is, I think she comes out and says that she's upset that he brought a prostitute into the house or whatever. But I think we shortly find out that that's only part of what made her upset. Like there's pressure on this particular dinner party.

Right. And it was suddenly made to be bigger than what it was going to be uh it was made later than what it was going to be like there's a bunch of things happening and she's and she's snapping about this one thing and i think this is kind of a great thing about this character is she's uh there's plenty there for her to be upset about that has nothing to do with uh rita's profession and i don't think she fixates on Rita's profession for terribly long at all. I think we see a bit of an arc here.

Yeah. So what happens here, so Peggy is, you know, snapping at Dennis. They're in the kitchen and they're arguing about it. He's basically like, what else was I going to do? She's feeling rotten. And Peggy responds with, oh, so bring her here so we'll all feel rotten.

Yeah. But that Rita's helped him out a lot and never asked for anything. And she's in a tough spot. rotten and peggy responds with oh so bring her here so we'll all feel rotten yeah but that uh rita's helped him out a lot and never asked for anything and she's in a tough spot and if it's dinner she wants then dinner she gets so he kind of like puts his foot down about it uh they're having dinner with this couple uh this couple the lofts who have some kind of say over a permit that they want to get to build an apartment over their garage so i think they're like neighbors and it would block their view so they just need to approve it right and so they're kind of the idea here was to kind of wine and dine them but now uh we have you know rita's here and

then uh apparently jim was also invited yes to kind of like round out the evening yes which is fantastic so when i go back out to the table we have sid and eleanor loft and we immediately get the uh the message here that that sid is kind of henpecked right like yeah whenever he does like he wants to take extra beef and eleanor's like oh beef doesn't agree with you it's late at night because she's upset about the time well she's upset about something else but yeah and so rita's trying to keep up the conversation because she's a genuinely conversational person um so she's so she's talking to jim they start talking about like animals and the kinds of

animals that they like whenever the conversation starts steering into like dangerous territory either like crassness wise or topic wise someone jumps in with like who's ready for broccoli yes so everyone's kind of like on their toes there's a fun game to play here, which is who knows what. Yeah. Because obviously Dennis, Rita, and Peggy know. It seems fairly clear by the way that Jim is acting that he knows what's what. But it's not necessary for him to actually know that because Jim could just be like realizing that there's they keep touching on a source subject and savvy like that. And something that I like about this is that we've that this all establishes without really calling out that Rita and Jim haven't met before. Yeah, we're actually like seeing them meet each other, each other.

Yeah. And get to know each other in this episode, which is kind of fun because a lot of the time there's backstory right jim and whoever and here we're actually seeing this like develop with the character we will see multiple times it's not a one-off like romantic right lead or whatever uh but the lofts okay i mean there's things that are there's there's a class thing here right like yeah uh peggy says in the kitchen that like you could tell as soon as she walked in that i think she said that she's a hooker. Yeah. There are class signifiers that she's, you know, has this low status profession. Yeah.

And Sid and Eleanor are acting like stuffy old prigs who also can see those signifiers and already know that they are and feel superior to everyone else at the table. So there's a thing here about Sid's line of questioning. Yes. The social contract is that Rita is a model, right? Like this is the way to clear the way so they don't have to talk about anything other than that. But Sid keeps going at that. Yeah. Just like laser

focused on that and and as i'm again i think i've mentioned this every time uh i i have seen this episode before but it's been a long time so i'm only vaguely recalling and i could not remember what sid knew or didn't know at turns it felt like is he going to get her to say it without realizing that he's that she's not a model or does he know that she's not a model and he's being a kind of a dick about it and what we find out late in the episode makes it like wait not only does he know that but like he may be one of her johns right he's a huge dick in this conversation no he's yeah he's he's the worst there's an immediate at least for me i mean like okay eleanor is positioned as like the domineering wife here and so it's kind of like the doofus husband but then as the conversation

goes on and he starts like going over and over he's like yeah it's like i'm obsessed with professions you're a model and that's like of course i can remember a time i think it was in the 50s big scandal they rounded up all these girls took them up right off the street and every single one of them was carrying a hat box claiming to be a model guess what they were do you have any idea how long it's been since I had Yorkshire pudding? Prostitutes. Every last one of them, a common streetwalker. Now, I haven't thought about that in years. Funny how it jumped into my mind when you mentioned being a model. That's actually, there's this like layers of jerkyness that could be going on here, because he could just be hitting on her, which would be a jerky thing, but not as jerky as what it turns out to be.

But I do want to say my favorite bit of this entire conversation is the monkey story. And I don't think we should wash over the fact that Rita once had a pet monkey who made all over her couch, all over her living room or whatever. Yeah. It's extremely good. And that's like the levity. And then that comes crashing down when Sid starts going down this path. And then he tells a story about like all these women, they all said that they were models and they all,

it turns out they were all prostitutes or something like that. Oh my and that's when eleanor stands up and she's like i think we should go they they leave in a bit of a huff i really love how the scene ends so there's a beat and then rita apologizes to peggy right she's you know she's like i'm sorry like i kind of ruined your your dinner here yeah my bad and then peggy says that she's sorry too just like kind of ruined your dinner here. Yeah. My bad. And then Peggy says that she's sorry, too. Just like kind of a general, I'm sorry that this is how everything went down. Then she says, you know, we wanted to build this apartment over our garage for my sister to move into. But she wouldn't want to live next to people like that. Oh, that's so good.

And then everyone relaxes. Becker's come back in with a bottle of wine that just got opened that didn't have a chance to serve. Oh, it's like no this is good this is a good scene it's kind of a thematic mission statement of the episode right the arc of the scene is more is about seeing like okay who are who's really the problem here yeah and sure while rita is the catalyst you know like she has this socially unacceptable profession she's coded as like lower class um but then she's the only one who like brings any life to the conversation yeah and then the the lofts the ones who leave once they're gone the rest of them can can have an actual human dinner and like interact with each other as actual friends uh and peggy as you were saying her tension isn't necessarily about rita as a person it was about the the chaos

that she brought to this already chaotic interaction and now that the interaction is done peggy can be like yeah i'd rather have you here than them yeah right again it's another character that just like things have been wrong let's just do yeah right again it's another character that just like things have been wrong let's just do it right now let's you know and and that's great uh i i this scene is is uh worth watching if you if you if you're like i i can only get in 15 minutes of the rocket files this month then watch the first 15 minutes or so of this episode and you'll at least get this scene. And I will note that this whole dinner, it's like roast beef and broccoli and whatever. But Jim is particularly complimentary of the Yorkshire pudding.

Yes. He has not had a good Yorkshire pudding in a long time. And that is what he brings up every time he tries to break the, uh, break the tension with, uh, cutting off someone with a comment. Um, after this, this dinner party,

Jim takes Rita home. Um, she usually just takes the bus to the corner, but she feels better when someone can walk her to her door. The neighborhood's really gone downhill. In fact, just the other night, two guys in a blue Mustang were following her and then jumped out and tried

to like jump her when she got home. Once she into her apartment uh they did finally go away but it was very scary jim is i think appropriately concerned but she's more telling a story than yeah she's not trying to engage his services right quite yet um he takes a rain check for coming in for coffee yeah and um she ends their conversation by saying that Peggy and Den have some real nice friends. Yes. Good old Den. Good old Den. Jim is leaving.

And as he's taking a turn at a stop sign, he sees a blue Mustang racing past him into the neighborhood. I just say I love this moment i love this decisiveness where jim's like wait i just heard about a blue mustang that's a blue mustang boom the camera's like on his face as we see him kind of like just driving by reflex as he decides what to do yeah and then his resolve oh firming and then we pull out and we see him pull pull a j turn not just any stopping yeah no he's like let's do it yeah like i gotta get there immediately uh the music gets very exciting here we get into like exciting action music underscore as he pulls the j turn races back and sure enough there are two goons in rita's apartment one of them's grabbed her and the other

one is tossing stuff around looking for something apparently uh jim rushes in he jumps uh one of the guys the other one let's go rita and then hits him in the back of the head with a vase oh it's like a vase or maybe it's a lamp uh it's big and heavy yeah uh rita starts screaming for the police and they run off um we have a moment where she's she's please please wake up right like it's very dire um but then we cut i think there's probably a commercial break here and we come back to jim uh coming around uh sitting sitting on the love seat with a ice pack on his neck jim and the ice pack i love jim's business with ice packs too like uh because there's a time there's a moment where he he takes it off his neck and looks at it quizzically

and there's no explanation or any reason that other than just like i don't know i i just i love his business with it just because uh there's something comfortable about how hurt he is by this because this is a thing that happens to him i mean what we're on season four now i think he he has a finely developed sense of like how much pain he's in yeah at any given time he's like oh okay no i'm concussed so uh rita doesn't know who those guys were or why they were coming after her uh but it's three in the morning and so jim says well they're long gone by now i'll let becker sleep in oh and does he yeah apparently he lets him sleep until five in the morning so they are at the

station giving their report to becker who is in full i'm grumpy that you are coming directly to me everyone here is fully trained in taking reports. Yes. Jim needs an aspirin. And I only really noted this because. Me too. Same reason. Because we recently did the movie where there's that whole extended bit about Jim needing aspirin and no one giving it to him.

I wonder if that was seeded in this episode. That was. giving it to him i wonder if that was seeded in this episode that's it that was asked uh becker for aspirin and then asks if there's a specific police rule that would not allow him to give him aspirin for his headache literally like the my notes exactly i was like is this foreshadowing for the movie like is the movie an easter egg is that what's going on? Well done. Well played, Cannell and company. Bartlett wrote both of these scripts, so maybe she was casting back. Well played, Bartlett. Yeah.

So yeah, the report's pretty sparse. Two French-speaking guys that were kind of yelling at each other in French during that whole altercation. One yelled out Rudy, so one's name is probably Rudy. They have a license plate number, but Jim didn't write it down. So there it's one of a number of possibilities of transposed numbers. Rita is kind of concerned. I think I rightly so that Dennis doesn't seem to be taking this too seriously.

He says that like, it's not him, but you know, once he files this or whatever, you know how it is. Chapman is going to just think that it's some john with a beef and she says that well you think i don't know faces yeah you know these guys weren't johns uh she's never seen them before doesn't know what they were trying to do uh becker says

that she shouldn't go back to her apartment while they check things out okay and so here is a moment that i'm just as we go back that i'm just kind of noting. She says something about like, oh yeah, because I can afford to just check into a hotel for however long this is going to take. Yeah. And he takes her over to the side to talk to her alone. And we don't really, we get like the sound of them talking, but we can't really hear what they're saying on the audio. And we're watching Jim watch them talk. Yeah. And they um come back and i think they say they're like oh jim can can get you set up somewhere safe for now right yeah something like that and at the time i was like huh i i wonder where that's going and then i completely forgot about it and now i'm

realizing what that was me too actually yeah i like it wasn't until you mentioned it that I was like, yeah. And then I was like, oh, because it does feel out of the blue when it comes up later. Yeah. We're both thinking about the same thing. And our audience who's clearly already seen the episode is having the exact same revelation right now. Right. And they're also thinking about the same thing. We'll reveal it at the correct time. Yeah.

So, you know jim jim's is ready to help her out to find a motel uh she's like so you're a pi though right like that's what you said last night it's like all right yeah they've just met each other she asks him if he's looking for work he's always looking for work but his plan for today was to take a nap and then go to the lakers game uh but she wants to hire him the cops aren't taking aren't going to take us seriously she's willing to pay he's like oh it's pretty expensive and we get the full line which i feel like we don't get in a lot of episodes especially past the first couple seasons hiring a private detective is expensive well how expensive two hundred dollars a day plus

expenses she has $125 Yeah And she has like a roll of bills in her hand But she'll have the rest for him tomorrow He says that he doesn't want to take her money Her kind of motivation here is that like she can see that Dennis is drowning under red tape on this, right? Yeah It's not going to move fast even if it moves at all And that she's legitimately terrified

She's so scared she doesn't know how to act yeah and why you think that my life isn't worth 200 measly dollars um good line there's an interaction here where he where she like offers him the money says that she'll get the rest of it tomorrow he doesn't want to take it from her and i don't remember if he says what kind of implies like i don't want you to do what you need to do to get the rest of the money right yeah and this is in the preview montage right the character defining line of the episode right yeah look jim i do what i do i'm not gonna apologize i'm not gonna explain i'm not asking you to they have achieved an understanding yes she's a sex worker that's what she does she's not gonna apologize for it and she's not gonna like explain why she does she's not going to apologize for it and she's not going to like explain why she does

it or like what led her into her life yeah we're not given the hard luck story that uh that we need to feel good about what's happening right and then jim's i don't need to hear it yeah your word is good enough right like once we get through the usual rockford trying to turn down a job yeah yeah he he gets it. So he takes, takes the one 25 and says, all right, we'll work something out. Leave me the door open too.

Yeah. I won't take any more money from you, but he'll be on the case. She says that she does have her one friend. She can stay with this, her soul lady named Maggie. Uh, and,

uh, who's that? She's not what you think. Yeah. And she's not our joke in the cut here. that? She's not what you think. Yeah. And she's not. Our joke in the cut here. Uh, she's not what you think. And we go to meet Maggie Gilson,

a, an elderly woman. I know that she has very sweet grandma vibes. Yeah. So Jim and Rita, uh, have apparently have like just arrived and she's bringing in Rita, uh,

saying she has a full house all of a sudden because she has a social visit from two other, uh other gentlemen who are there. Dr. Woodruff and Mr. Halpern. Or Mr. Woodruff and Dr. Halpern. I might mix them up. Doesn't really matter. One of them matters and the other doesn't. Yes.

One of them will disappear. But they're just there on a, as she says, on a social visit. As they can see, she's doing fine. She's feeling good. And she's not at all alone because Rita is going to be staying with her for a little while. So they seem reassured by this and they see themselves out. Maggie apparently already kind of knows what's going on. Yeah, she gets immediately conspiratorial the moment it happens.

Like, okay, what are we going to do? Yeah, no, it's great. I love the way she jumps into it. So Rita's going to stay there while Jim stakes out her apartment and sees, you know, if those guys broken once, they're probably going to try again. Yeah. Go from there. There's a joke here where Rita says, like, this is what I get for drinking California wine. Oh, well, because they were speaking French.

Right. They go around and beat up everyone who doesn't drink french wine that's that's what we know about the french they are well known for beating people up um and so we have a thing of like well just because they were speaking french uh that doesn't mean they were french that's universal language oh yeah maggie specifically says that you know my my my husband her late husband um he was a big fan of a Canadian hockey team, the Ottawa Otters. And they speak French up there. French is a universal language. So I'm watching this. I'm like, so this is all business, but also something in here is important.

And so I noted the Ottawa Otters. Also, I think I kind of remembered from the first time I saw this. I'm like, like oh but that stands out in the conversation yeah and also there's just something there's something about the ottawa otters like that sounds like the name of a hockey team that somehow angel would get a scam going with or something like that like jim would find out that it's a fake hockey team yeah angel would definitely get money from jim to buy in a share share of the Ottawa Otters that turned out not to exist and to be money laundering for some something or other. Yeah, we could just write these episodes.

Why don't we? That'll be our first fan episode. Yeah. Jim goes off to do, you know, things he needs to do. Rita and Maggie make a plan for dinner. They'll do something special. Oh, yeah. We'll make French trout. And there's another bit of business about how she only

buys light foods because she doesn't want to be want the supermarket to be mad at her for taking the cart away or something like that. That is all to say it is kind of established that Rita and Rita is like, oh, I'll go get the groceries. Yeah. We go to Jim waiting at Rita's apartment. He has a tape recorder next to the

phone. And at first I'm like, oh, he's going to record a call or it's an answering machine or something. Yeah. But no, the phone rings. He picks it up, holds it over the tape recorder and plays. And it's a tape of Rita saying hello. And then he holds it up to, you know, find out who it is, which is a great little piece of analog tradecraft. I wrote down, Jim is up Rita's client list. Oh, yeah. Because I can't imagine there's a lot of repeat business from people who call up Rita and then hear Jim's voice. Yeah, it's like get lost, buddy, or something like that. Yeah. Well, he does that on the first one. And then someone starts knocking on the door, looking for Rita. Come on, it's Bill.

And he looks at the little peephole and, like, shakes his head. The phone starts ringing again. So he picks it up, and it's someone else. And that one, he just kind of smiles and hangs up, right? Yeah. But still, like, we get the picture from his facial expression that he's like, okay, this is what happens. This is the life. But yeah, he's definitely messing with her business in one way or another.

So he's there. We then have a voiceover of French chatter as we see the blue Mustang pulling up outside of Maggie's house. And we see our two francophone goons find a window and slide it up and go in. And then we cut to Rita carrying a bag of groceries, walking back to the house. And we hear an alarm go off. Then we hear a shot. And then the goons run out of the front and peel out in the Mustang. And then Rita screams Maggie's name and drops the groceries and runs in to see what happened. And we cut to a couple of cops bringing in the gurney,

the whole shebang of crime scene trappings as poor Maggie has in fact been shot. Eppie, I need a quick break. I'm going to grab a taco. You tell our wonderful listeners all the places that they can find you and your work on the Information Superhighway. I'll be right back. One way to find me is to go to Twitter.com and search for at Epidia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. I'm usually responsive there. Otherwise, you can go to WorldsWithoutMaster.com, where you can find my sword and sorcery fiction

and role-playing games. And if you like role-playing games, maybe you want to check out digathousandholes.com where I publish all my other role-playing games. Oh no, I dropped my calculator. Nathan, while I go pick up a spare, why don't you tell the good folks where they can find you on the internet?

In addition to this podcast, I also design and publish role-playing games, including the Worldwide Wrestling Pro Wrestling role-playing game, among many others. You can find links to all of my games and other projects at ndpdesign.com. And of course, you can find me on twitter.com at ndpayoleta. 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. The only thing that other than what you just said there that i have my notes is to just make note of one of these french guys's mustache oh yeah the blonde one an exquisite mustache but yeah uh yeah i even write down to poor magnum chapman's on site uh the doctor uh the the doctor is there uh he's an old friend of the family. And so they called, I guess Jim called him because they had met the day before or whatever. Okay.

So there's two things here that I wanted to talk about. So plot wise, they established that she went for it. Like the doctor's kind of like, oh, I, you know, I kept on telling her she should get a better alarm system, but she didn't want to pay for it to be in the windows. And I'm like, well, the alarm did go off. Well, she went for the panic button and she hit it and that must have been why they killed her jim is telling chapman that you can't just ignore that these are the same guys that accosted rita these must be connected you know you can't just dismiss that there's more going on here they weren't just burglars yeah there's a bit where the doctor wants to know what's going on and then jim

kind of like clams up. Yeah. Which I think might be indicating that he's already thinking that there's something suspicious about those, you know, the two guys. But I don't think we see the doctor after this. It could easily be the fact that Jim just doesn't like talking about cases with other people, right? Like he's all about client confidentiality. But yeah, it is suspicious in that it seems that he might be suspicious and so jim ends up agreeing with chapman that this is uh the

important thing here is that we concentrate on keeping rita alive yeah okay so the two things that i wanted to to bring up here and see what you think uh first is there's a whole bit where rita's blaming herself yeah if i hadn't come and stayed here this wouldn't have happened they were after me and they killed her or whatever and jim he's trying to calm her down and tell her it's not her fault and he specifically says you know you're not responsible you know who's responsible the goons who pulled the trigger they're responsible and in my notes i do a big thank you. Yes. I will contrast this with our ongoing conversation with the Gandy episodes. Yeah.

Jim keeps on telling Gandy that it's not his fault that other people made decisions that were in response to Gandy's actions. Yeah, yeah. that were in response to Gandy's actions. Yeah, yeah. This is a case where Jim is right as opposed to where Jim is wrong when he's talking to Gandy because Gandy's actions lead to things not entirely foreseeable,

but definitely foreseeable consequences. Whereas here, in fact, Jim says that he's, he had his eyes in the rearview mirror the whole time he wasn't followed right that's the scene right this is uh i think that's in the next the next oh okay but we're gonna be jumping ahead no but yeah i mean that's part of it is where his his mind's probably working and kind of being like you know yeah trying to put the pieces together yeah so here's here's the situation where when a crime is committed yeah right it's the person who did it they're the one who that's the intent you know that's the

that's the person who is at fault sure there can be a structure within which that made that the only possibility for them or like whatever but yeah at the end of the day this is a correct interpretation to me of uh placing blame for someone's actions right yeah and and so i just yeah it really jumped out to me as like as as something that uh you know contrasted with how he has placed blame and responsibility before uh in other shows so that so that's the one thing the other thing I wanted to bring up as a question, so in our last episode, we talked about how the murder of the woman

in Angel's penthouse by the mob in order to frame Angel and Jim in order to make it so they couldn't go to the cops, right? And how that felt like kind of an unmotivated, like kind of fridging of a,

of a woman. Yeah. For our plot effect. Now here's a general, here's a genuine question. I didn't have that visceral response to this. Is this appreciably different though? Taking this character of Maggie,

introducing her with a little bit of characterization, and then she's killed. The interesting divide there, yeah, it's weird. Okay, because we can say with, again, spoilers, we know the ending, and we know that she's the target, right? Right, yeah. So, fiction-wise, absolutely not. Like, as a whole, when you look at the whole thing, absolutely not. It's not the same thing. But at this point, what do we know?

Other than that this is, she may have been an innocent bystander in the middle of whatever is going on with Rita's character, right? And so, yeah, it's hard to tell. Like, I didn't have that visceral reaction of like, oh, okay, they killed a woman to raise the stakes. Like, I didn't feel that way here.

And I'm trying to parse out whether that's because of the actual way that it's structured in the show or whether it's because the character is more sympathetic here than she is in the previous episode? No, I think at this point in the episode, what we don't know is important, right? Because I think it's never not clear that the woman is killed in the other episode to put pressure on Angel. It's kind of purely functional, like both the act itself in the fiction and as part of the plot.

And where we sit right now, I think it is clear to the audience that there's enough red herring material out there that we really don't know the motivation of these French speaking assassins, assassins. I think it's still up in the air about the motivation behind why she was killed. Right.

I think that's why as a gut reaction, we don't have a reaction yet. It's more an element of the mystery. And it's like, it's a bit of a tragedy, right? Yeah. We're not like, oh, they're doing that to motivate someone. We're like, whoa, why did she get killed? Like, how did they end up at that home what's going on here i felt sorry for maggie uh but i also felt that she was doomed from the start

so maybe that's going on too maybe i'm remembering enough of the episode to know that possible i think also this guy um uh i'm looking at the imdb woodruff the non-doctor woodruff is the partner yeah he's vaguely vincent pricey and so when we first meet him i'm like oh this guy's a villain look at his mustache yeah yeah i do have like a little bit of like oh the villain knows hurt maggie so this is probably yeah which is some real meta things going on there and not at all like the the text of the episode oh sure yeah it's just i think it stood out to me because we made hay about it in the last episode and then i think for for both of those points i do think that it matters that this is a uh a bartlett script yeah and i did a little bit of looking around about this episode this is because rita moreno did win an uh emmy for this and as it turned out this was

the first time she could be there for the award ceremony when she won her first one she couldn't come to the ceremony for whatever reason um so this is the first time that she was went up on stage and made a speech and there's a clip of it on youtube and uh it's very sweet she's very excited but there's a line in there where she says uh and i have the support of jim garner and meet a rosenberg and a lady who really knows how to write about ladies, Juanita Bartlett. A super producer, Charles Johnson. I can only wish for you that you were me. Thank you.

And a lady who really knows how to write about ladies, Juanita Bartlett. Oh, nice. I thought that was a really demonstrable thing. Like, she said that when she accepted her award yeah there's there's a variety article that has a little bit more commentary from her and i'll link these both in the show notes but um at the time not a lot of people really gave a crap about writing female characters and yeah this was a, this is someone who actually cares about that writing, writing good female characters. So I feel like, you know, Jim's reaction to Rita here makes much more sense in that context than his reaction to Gandhi.

So just wanted to call that out as some interesting and I think meaningful stuff about this. I'd back that. Story. and I think meaningful stuff about this story. I'd back that. In our next scene, they go to Rocky's, the safe haven for all of those who are being pursued by goons. They go there because Jim thinks if they tracked Rita to Maggie's, they could have possibly tracked him as well. They might be waiting at his trailer. So this is a safer place. And the bit here is that

Rocky, he hasn't seen her eat anything. He wants her to drink this cup of coffee. At least drink this coffee. There's lots of cream and sugar. He takes a sip and makes this horrendous face and goes, how much sugar did you put in this? And he says it's instant energy. I do like Jim's's comment that rocky is about 98 mother him which is great and and demonstrably true yeah yeah there's a gag where or dennis finally gives them a call back he because

jim gave dennis his his liker tickets in the end because he was now on the case so dennis took his son scott who as we know from other episodes had they've told jim that he was named after jim because his middle name is scott but that is not actually why he was named scott oh not relevant here bringing in some outside context uh anyway dennis calls he wants to talk about the game but then peggy calls him upstairs because scott's throwing up all over the bathroom. Dennis needs to clean it up. I love it. So they don't get to talk until the next day when they finally made the plates. And it turns out that the car was indeed stolen.

It was stolen from the forum during a hockey game. So Jim and Rita are talking to Becker at the station. Chapman comes in and starts berating becker while jim keeps asking him questions so he's doing the giving jim information on the side while being harangued by chapman that that that dennis becker does so well uh jim asks was it the ottawa otters and as it turns out yes it was during an ottawa otters game that this was stolen. Yes. But then Chapman wants to talk to the three of them in his office. As they make their way to the office, Jim tries to lay out this connection. They're French-speaking guys.

Maggie's late husband was in some kind of business with Ottawa Otters. They're from Canada. There's some connection here. You can't just dismiss this. But then once in the office chapman lays it out frankly uh he's apparently known rita since his time on the vice squad and says that that jim and rita are two of a kind they'll do anything for a buck oh god the way he says it is really bad but also that is you can you can see why they have formed the relationship they have formed

right because they are kind of on the same end of the right social spectrum of socially acceptable jobs uh doesn't he have a line chapman have another line in here about collecting oddballs is her yeah job or something like that yeah it's really pretty bad stuff a chapman's a dick i'm just gonna put it out there oh yeah there's no doubt about it and uh it made in light of the most recent tv movie that we watched it's great to see him get i mean i always love it when chapman gets his comeuppance but this one really definitely yeah yeah he's really the voice of the like moral majority puritanical american attitude towards sex and sex workers. You know, you don't count is basically the thing. And we know that Chapman is always the antagonist, but this is very clearly placed on him as that disapproving voice, right?

Yeah. He basically wants them out of it. He's sending Becker to do a very important seminar in traffic safety somewhere else. And he wants Jim and Rita to get out. Here we get what I think is the explanation for that pull-to-the-side conversation between Rita and Dennis earlier. So Jim's like, look, she's scared for her life. If Rita thinks it's important enough to pay me $200 a day...

Where did Rita get $200? Well, she didn't have the full $200. She gave me $125 down. Is that the $125 you got from me yesterday? Is that the $125 you requisitioned from the department? And then Jim and Rita leave. Oh, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis. Yeah, so, yeah, the first time I saw this, I didn't catch that moment, that quiet moment where they were off together, where clearly he was giving her cop money because she couldn't afford a hotel.

Makes total sense. All connects. I just didn't realize it until we were going back through that. That's the payoff for that moment earlier it helps with this this particular scene it helps to know that now because i was having this weird like what are you doing dennis like why are you giving away the the the farm here by saying oh it's is that the 125 i gave you like that seemed in like a weird flex yeah exactly but now now realizing that it's money he gave her for a hotel room right then you can see maybe what's going through his head like well then why were you at did you take my money and then just go to maggie so you can get that you know like you can see

a little bit more about like that money was meant for a hotel room. Sure. And you're paying Jim with that money. Because I know when I saw it and didn't piece that together, I just assumed it was money that he paid her for informing on something. And I didn't know what. I kind of just assumed that it was like he felt bad, so he gave her some money. Yeah. Because think times were tough or whatever. Yeah. Which is essentially kind of what happened

the function i mean it's kind of a gag right like the functional thing here is to kind of like break the tension of the scene and move us forward into the next sequence um so i don't know if it's really it's not really like plot necessary or anything like that but uh i think it's more about dennis anything else because not only did he feel bad or whatever and want to help her out, but it's not his money. It's department money. Yes, exactly. I think that says something about Dennis, too. Yeah. Not quite sure what it says, but I think it says something.

We do cut from here to a hot dog stand. Where Jim has gotten himself a hot dog. And this whole episode, this becomes clearer as we go. You know, usually we don't see Jim eat. In this episode, we actually do see Jim eat a hot dog. And this whole episode, this becomes clearer as we go. You know, usually we don't see Jim eat. In this episode, we actually do see Jim eat a couple of times.

And Rita is the one who doesn't eat. She doesn't eat unless she's involved in the creation of the food, which is interesting. She says that she's not hungry. And then sometimes she's involved with food, but we don't really see her eating. The same, we saw Jim yorkshire pudding earlier and then here he uh quietly chows down this hot dog while they're

talking like it's not even a big deal yeah but she again she doesn't have anything here earlier she told rocky she wasn't hungry later she's going to tell rocky she isn't hungry she's taken over the i'm not eating mantle in this yes somebody's got to so jim says so what if it wasn't a mistake what if they were looking for maggie this is where he says that he's sure that they weren't followed yeah uh i read it's like so how did they know where i was well those two guys woodruff and halpern were there we just said it they you know you're going to be staying here um what do you know about them and she doesn't know the one guy but uh woodruff was maggie's husband's partner in whatever business they had and that he actually brought maggie a check every month and you know was friend of the family or

whatever uh so i think jim asked like so is he he also owned the otters jesus like oh i don't know about that he told rita that he was a furrier. Yeah. So he does the equivalent of, let me, let me Google this real quick. He goes to the phone book. That's in the, that's in the phone booth,

looks them up. And sure enough, finds an entry for Woodruff and Gilson furriers. I love this moment. Yeah, me too. He, he tears the page out of the phone book.

And every time he does that, I always have the thought of like, someone else is going to need that. Yeah. And Rita gives him a look and he just goes, I'll put it back, okay? It's so good. Yeah, I mean, I just love that they comment on that. Because it is such a trope to just find the information you need and tear it right out of the phone book um and maybe you know maybe that's okay i mean phone books get replaced or used to get replaced i'm gonna say yearly every year yeah and so when you consider

how many pages are in the phone book the odds of someone needing that particular page you know looking for furriers at that particular time. Maybe it's okay that pages get torn out of phone books from time to time. I don't know. We don't, it doesn't matter anymore. Because you have a, you just say, okay, Google, find me a furrier. But it was great that it was, like, commented on. And that they, like, they just had a moment where it was like, yeah.

So we see them quickly following this up uh there's a building with the canadian flag out front yes so it's the canadian american trading company and the woodruff and gilson furriers are a subsidiary and then they do some more research as we can tell from uh rocky's kitchen table completely covered in newspapers and magazines and brochures and this trading company is a conglomerate you know that owns uh the furriers or whatever jim says that he's no wizard of wall street but whatever this concern is it's got to be worth millions this is where rocky brings rita a sandwich and wants her to eat but she's just she's just not hungry.

And here I thought that you'd appreciate what she brings up in terms of Jim's tradecraft. Yeah, because they've got paperwork all over the place and they're digging through it. And I wrote this down. She goes, you know, PI work is not what I thought it would be. This is boring. And Jim's response to this, I wish I would like to take a picture of it and just somehow turn it into an inspirational poster because he just says, I always thought of this stage as restful. Like we've discussed this before where he makes comments on the fact that if his life was always like these action moments, he wouldn't live long.

Again, the movie one that we did recently made that comment. But this one was just so great to just get this insight into Jim just being like, you know, this is when I do the research. That's fun. I relax. I get to sit down and pour through documents. Yeah, what's not to like? Yeah.

My dad makes me sandwiches. No one's shooting at documents. Yeah, what's not to like? My dad bakes me sandwiches. No one's shooting at me. He does ask her if she knows anything else about Maggie's husband and his business. And she doesn't really know much. She does say that Maggie was always complaining about these papers that Woodruff wanted her to sign

and was bringing by all the time. They try to see if they find a hockey magazine and take a look at the roster of the Ottawa Otters. But these guys, she does not recognize either of them in this picture. But the husband sold off that interest over 10 years ago. So maybe these guys, you know, aren't current players. They were hockey goons from that era is what they posit and which I think we can take as truth. There's a bit made where Rocky asked them if they're going to clean all this stuff up. And Jim says, yeah, when we're done.

By the end of the scene, Jim has decided that they've gotten all they can out of research. Let's go to the next phase. And they just leave Rocky. It's like, hey, I thought you're going to clean this up. And Jim's just like, later, I thought you were going to clean this up. And Jim's just like, later. I'll do it later. Yeah. And after they're gone, Rocky, with a grumpy face, takes a bite of his own sandwich.

Yes. I think the transition line here is that he's going to introduce Rita to a very important part of PI work. We're going to talk to Woodruff. He says no. And then we cut to them sitting in the car outside of the trading company building. And Rita says, we've been here for hours. Waiting is the other part. Rita says that they should go back to her apartment because if they tried to hit her there once, they'll try again.

And then they can get them if they're prepared. But as she says this, a fancy Lumo pulls up. Woodruff gets into it. And Jim is proven right as he is able to follow them through a brief montage. This is the most leisurely chase sequence in the entirety of the Rockford Files. I don't know what it is about this that I love so much, except it was such a... I can't help but think it was done as a joke of some sort. Because it's just this car following that

car and it's just going along gentle music and it is the exact opposite of every chase sequence they've had soft fades from one to the other so it's kind of like it kind of implies that there's a lot of time in this and it's just like a long drive through like pleasant coastal California

this is all established through signs they pass which is kind established through signs they pass which is kind of nice so they there's they're they're going on to some kind of like golf course or or country club or something there's a sign like you know watch out for golfers and then the limo pulls up to the castaway restaurant and uh woodruff goes into the private party for the ottawa otters welcome ottawa jim and rita crash the party and we get another piece of goes into the private party for the Ottawa Otters. Welcome, Ottawa Otters. Jim and Rita crash the party, and we get another piece of tradecraft here

with Jim and his business card. I made a note of this before Jim actually literally comments on it, but there's this great moment where, as he's coming in, you see him flipping through his business cards to choose the right one. And then when he pulls it out, he won't let the guys see it. Right. And it's just gesturing with his hands so that like there's no examination of it whatsoever.

So good. Yeah. And so he claims to or he implies that there are reporters from some kind of national publication doing a story on the Ottawa Otters. But they'll say some nice things about the restaurant. So's a guy it's invitation only and a guy wants their invitation he works for the restaurant uh jim kind of butters him up the guy says that well if anyone complains they're going to have to leave but if they're there for a story then he gets sure it's fine um and then yeah and then uh rita makes the comment of like first he says like how do you have that business card and he explains that he has his own printing press and he prints them himself

and then she says how do you know that you wanted to be a reporter and he goes through the list of all the different cards that he had printed up so that he'd be prepared for any occasion oh good they make contact with woodruff uh he sees them he He comes over to talk to them. So in my notes, I say that this is where Jim goes fishing, right? He just starts this conversation where he kind of makes accusations and implications and lets the other guy react to see what's going on. I love, I just love how, I guess menacing is not the right word for it because Jim doesn't come off as physically menacing. No. But from the moment that Woodruff notices him, Jim just pretends he has the blackmail right right like that's that's just it like just the nod to him at the party is just clearly showing woodruff i'm on to you

now i'm just showing off now i'm just flaunting it yeah straight up confidence like confidence game but like being confident and letting the other guy make the connections for you yeah yeah i mean it's not a whole lot but it's kind of just enough to show us that they're on the right track right yeah there's kind of a gag where he says like oh you know we don't want i don't want much maybe just a couple of fur hats for starters yes um there's plenty in the Woodruff-Gilson empire for everybody. Woodruff kind of gives them a little bit of, I don't even know why you're here. I'm going to have you kicked out if you don't leave. And then Jim hits him with the, so did you steal all of Maggie's money?

Little old lady like that. Yeah. And his response is, you have no proof. It's like, aha. Right? Like that is a response indicating that you're on the right track you have done this and so jim leaves it out like send us those hats and we'll be in touch later for the rest of it right like he kind of leaves it hanging about he doesn't make any accusation or he just kind of again leaves them with this impression that he knows something, that he knows enough.

That he got what he wanted. And Woodruff looks worried at the end of this scene. I think this is another standard Rockford maneuver, which is poke the bear and anticipate a response. Right. He has now shown Woodruff that he knows whatever Woodruff thinks he knows. And that is going to provoke him probably to do something drastic, which of course he does. So in our next scene,

we cut to Rita on her couch and Jim hiding behind it. I love that. His head popping up over the thing. Jim's a big guy. I think that somebody even commented on that in this episode. Anyways, the point is, it's just funny to see him try and hide behind the couch. Yeah. So there's still something that she can't figure out.

If Woodruff was stealing money from Maggie and was afraid that she's going to find out about it, that explains killing Maggie. But why were they after Rita? Right. And that's a good question, which is not answered because there's a there's a phone call that Rita answers. And from her responses, it's clearly a client calling, trying to make a date. She kind of foists it off, says that she can't tonight, whatever. The facial acting between her and Jim in this scene while she's on the phone is really amazing like there's a whole conversation that they have with their facial expressions oh can't believe that you have

to deal with this yeah you know kind of all the way through to like you know let me just handle it this is my business not yours and kind of like okay you know as long as as long as you can get them off the phone we're fine like and i'm just reading all of this into these glances and their facial expressions and it's another moment where it's like she has her job she does her job she's not going to apologize for it and jim's like okay fine that's your job i'm not going to give you grief about it carried out with looks and movement it's uh it's really good and then there's knock on the door so this is also echoing when jim was there alone earlier like it was the phone call and then

there's a knock on the door jim goes over looks out the people and then pulls the door open and who is it but sid sid loves from dinner has come by with a bottle of, as we see later, French wine. Or so she opens the door. I'm sorry. Rita opens the door. Yeah. And when Jim climbs over the couch and Sid sees him, he is flabbergasted, I would say. So, I mean, this is where it comes up now.

Sid's behavior at that dinner party is the worst. It is the worst of all possible worlds he knows where she lives he must have been a john yeah so he's somehow toying with her i don't know if he thinks he's being flirtatious the way he's toying with her at that that meal like talking about the models who all turned out to be prostitutes because kind of daring her to say that she's a prostitute but knowing just yeah sid is what i'm saying this guy i think his so he's the stand-in here for the hypocritical yeah husband who you know has all these morals in public but in private like teats on his wife and indulges in what he judges so harshly around other people

yeah right and that is that is a bad person in this in this episode uh so sid is played by bruce kirby um who's been in another couple rockford episodes um but is also a recurring character on colombo he's kind of like a bit part in a couple episodes, then he's also Sergeant Kramer in later ones where there's kind of a recurring Sergeant character. I mean, this character is terrible. Bruce Kirby is great. Yeah, no.

He was in the big rip-off, our episode 38, which is the one where he's the, where there's the insurance scam with the husband who fakes his own death. And then goes to Southern California and is an artist. Bruce Kirby is the art dealer that Jim confronts and has the gun in his drawer. Remember that?

It's a good scene. Yeah. Anyway, I'm a, I'm a big Bruce Kirby fan, but Sid is terrible. He, yeah,

he says that. Soim like pulls him in by the tie and is like you have to leave and sid has like he looks between the two of them and goes like look we're all adults here we can work something out just what is sid trying to work out i want to know i know exactly he clearly assumes know, that he knows what's going on. So they're all arguing. And then we have a shot outside in like a stairwell of a foot knocking a bottle over. And Jim hears it. So he drags it into this hall closet and closes the door.

Rita goes into the kitchen. And then our French goons bust in. They have guns. They run into the living room. Jim opens the door and shouts, Becker. And then they take a shot at Jim. And then our good friend, Dennis Becker, jumps out of the kitchen with a bunch of other cops and they capture the guys red-handed, arrest our nefarious francophones. So this is I'm going to propose a urban legend here. If you

hide in a closet and then jump out and yell Becker, you'll summon summon Becker? Dennis Becker and a bunch of cops, right? It's like Candyman or Bloody Mary or what have you. I'm going to call this just a bit of convenient writing

because this is a part in where i'm like how did everything else that went down at the beginning of this scene go down with the without these cops coming in and telling them to shut you know what i mean like like so much of this is this conversation that they have where the cops are hiding just in the other room and uh yeah i mean i would assume that don't come out until i call you right like there's some kind of like pre-arranged you know let things happen until i call you out here but yes it is a bit of uh and given all the pressure that has been on dennis uh especially from chapman uh and then being able to just pull all of these, you

know, squaddies or whatever. Like, it is a thing where, like, I'm not going to think too much about it. Yeah. I just love the fact that he jumps out, shouts Becker, and they come running. It's a fun little set piece. Yeah, yeah. Well, and thematically, it's important that Becker specifically is there, right? Yeah.

Because the end of the scene might be the high point of the episode. There's this camera shot where, you know, they're taking the goons away. And then Sid is in the closet, pushed all the way up against the back wall as if he's trying to sink into it with his face, like, to the side. Like, if I can't see them, they can't see me. With the bottle of wine still in his under his arm. And then there's this moment where Rita, Becker and Jim are outside and all looking at him as he's trying as hard as he can to pretend like he doesn't exist. And then he slowly looks over and sees Becker and Becker goes, Sid, what are you doing here? And Sid immediately is like, look, you can't tell Eleanor. She won't understand.

This is all a misunderstanding. I'll make sure you get the permit, blah, blah, blah. And Becker's just like, what can I do? There was a shooting here. You're a witness. I need to take your statement. And then we need to publish it in the papers with the account of the crime. He's clearly getting back at him for all the stupid crap he's had to put up with these people. Oh, it's so good ah yes

it's very satisfying so in our final scene uh we start off with rita telling peggy don't you know go ahead and put these out this is my party i'll do the work if i want to so yeah you know inverting their their uh initial meeting it's a party at rocky's rocky Rocky, Rita, Jim, Dennis, and Peggy are there. So we get the, let's wind up what happened so that we all get some narrative closure. It turns out that Woodruff stole millions out of Maggie's estate. They're not quite sure how much yet, but he rigged all the business statements so it looked like a paper palace. Yes, and we get our title.

And Rita was being targeted because Maggie had changed her will and left Rita a million dollars from this estate. So and Rita says, well, maybe if she hadn't done that, maybe Woodruff wouldn't gotten scared and started pushing all the badness. But apparently he did. In the end, Jim says that she is going to end up with $300,000 out of that will. And ladies and gentlemen, that is $1,175,834.36 in today's money. It's nothing to scoff at. Yeah, it's a hell of an inheritance. Yeah.

And now we get into everyone telling her what she should do with her money. God, I got angry with Rocky. How Rocky just wants her to, to, to buy a house. Yeah. You can't go wrong buying land.

I was like, although in that day and age, you couldn't. Things are different now. Yeah. Peggy agrees with Rocky, but Jim says that she should spend it however makes her happy. Yes. What she wants to do is she's going to furnish that garage apartment once they build it.

Rugs, lamps, everything. This moment, how this is staged is great because Peggy's like, oh, we couldn't possibly. Yeah. Rita's like, no, this is what I want. Let me do it. And then Dennis says, no, you don't understand. I can't accept it. I'm a cop.

I can't take gifts based on just doing my job. Like, I literally cannot accept that. Yeah. And Rita's like, okay, fine. So she's like, okay, everyone, come with me. Come outside. They all go out and there is a hell of a car sitting in the driveway um i assume just based on the body style that it is a rolls royce perhaps yeah i actually just have what is this car written in my notes uh i know that we have at least one listener who will answer this question for us

yeah it is not yet in the 200 a day files files if so if it gets updated we can check that out anyway it's what i would associate with like the 40s as like a very fancy yeah car it's a i don't know if it's technically convertible but there's no hard top on it has like the giant fenders and the big white wall tires and it's very fancy rita says that uh it's a it's a custom job it's full of oh i don't know all the stuff that's in it i don't remember but the key here is that she wants to give it to jim it's yours oh hey rita no i can't hey come on you're not with the department nothing's stopping you i can't accept a gift like that i mean that must have cost hey didn't you tell me I should make myself happy?

Yeah. Well, this makes me happy. She pushes the key into his hand. It's like, I want you to have it. We end our episode with him putting the key back in her hand, saying it's absolutely out of the question, and smiling as a freeze frames on him pushing the key away. End of episode.

End of episode. Yeah, that's a hell of a gift to just drop on someone, I gotta say. I am going to assume that she has paid Jim for his time. I think this is one of the few times where I think Jim has made his fee plus expenses without much hassle. So that was a very fun episode. I enjoyed that one a lot. In addition to kind of the social commentary aspects, it's a hell of an episode.

Yeah. I think I said at the beginning, it's not like the mystery is particularly interesting in and of itself. Right. But the way that it gives the room for all the character interactions to happen is really deft. It's all about navigating the situation brought about by what society is telling people and how they're supposed to act around her. I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I'm not saying anything. I think I hear what you're saying. It's kind of i'm looking at like where the conflict comes and obviously there's

there are these french canadian goons that are going to kill someone uh and uh maybe several people and they need to figure out who that is but the main source of the conflict is the fact that nobody is paying attention to what she's saying. Right. Except for Jim and Dennis, like, except for our crew of trustworthy individuals. Right. The drama is kind of from watching Rita respond to each of the challenges that is presented before her. Right. Right.

And she, you you know she's helpful on the way right like she's you know jim's doing jim things and becker does becker things uh rocky does rocky things but uh what is compelling about this episode is is is the tension between what we expect this kind of character to be like in fiction and then how she actually how the story actually goes and how she actually acts the whole thing here is that this is like confounding the expectations of the hooker with a heart of gold stereotype right yeah um because she's not apologetic about who she is and what she does we don't learn or particularly care about her backstory, you know, what drove her into this life or whatever. She is not saved by rejecting the business that she's in.

Right. And we don't get going to sleep with salacious details of the actual business. If anything, it's played for humor. Yeah. Yeah. And we kind of get a picture of like,

she's good at what she does right like she's in demand and she gets rewarded at the end for sticking to her guns and being who she is and that's awesome yeah like she's she is in this will because she's friends and such good friends with this woman and she had no idea that this woman was wealthy or was going to put her in the will or, you know, it's, it's,

it's, it's a complete, she's in a transactional business, how things turn out for her or because of all of her non-transactional relationships. Yeah. Right. Or just particular non-transactional relationship.

Yeah. It's good. And, you know, and, and, and the role is like incredibly compellingly played by this great actress. Right.

Like it's that's excellent. Written by Juanita Bartlett. Like, yeah, it's good stuff. It's all good stuff. I forgot to mention this is I don't know if this is deliberate or not, but it felt like the answering machine joke was pertinent to the episode like not pertinent to the episode because of the plot but was thematically pertinent to the episode because this i mean we play these at the beginning so you heard but it was this is mrs owens with the association for a better malibu thanks for for your contributions. We made great strides, but it would help, dear, if you could move your trailer.

But if you just move your trailer. There's just something about it. Jim is, yeah, thank you for helping out, but also you're an undesirable. So move along. Yeah, I think every so often they sync up. Yeah. So thank you for bringing this one up. It was great to revisit i feel like i've

been kind of picking other ones because we've done a couple like series of characters recently oh yeah i don't necessarily know if we need to now do all the rita episodes yeah yeah but uh she does come back we do learn what happens with this car in this next episode. So, Oh, and, and all of our money. So we can leave on a cliffhanger there for the next, the next Rita Capovich episode. One of the, one of the greats.

Do you have anything else to, anything else to add about the paper palace? Go watch it. Like, I don't know. That's not, it's a poor recommendation to someone who's already listened to our podcast because I'm sure you've already seen it. But in case you haven't, maybe it's worth rewatching again just to see that the dinner party scene to figure out what the hell Sid is doing there and to pay closer attention to Dennis and Rita at the police station when they're silently in the background.

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of good physical and facial acting kind of across the board in this one. Yeah. For sure. Great. Well, I don't know if you have a fancy vintage car parked outside your house to go jump into. But I know that I'm ready to go take mine for a spin. So we have earned

our 200 for this day so stay tuned friends we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files