Two Hundred A Day - Episode 57: Guilt

Episode Date: September 29, 2019

Nathan and Eppy talk about S5E15: Guilt. The woman that Jim almost married calls him out of the blue - someone is trying to kill her! Jim has to handle not only the puzzle of her mysterious assailant, but also how Valerie uses their past relationship to get what she wants out of him. The title of the episode is indeed the main emotional theme, and we find it to be a well-told but, in some ways, difficult story. It does have perhaps the most spectacular vehicle chase we've seen so far, though! 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 Brian Perrera Eric Antener Bill Anderson 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 Jay Adan's Miniature Painting And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, 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.

Jimmy, Angel, listen, Eddie Talaferro just gave me a hot tip on a class filly in the 8th out at Holly Park. Only trouble is, I need 20. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show The Rockford File. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidaur Evershaw. For this episode, we're traveling to the wild and woolly season 5.

Oh, yeah. Traveling to the wild and woolly season five. Oh, yeah. Epi, which episode did you select for us to consider this time? Okay, so this is episode 15 of season five, titled Guilt. And that title is important throughout this episode. It is a bit of a theme, perhaps. Yeah, a theme, yes. Heavy handed at that.

My selection for this was, it wasn't random, but it wasn't because I remembered the episode at all. I just wanted to get more LJ. Because as it turns out, LJ isn't really in it all that much i don't know why i have a memory of lj and not memory of sully who probably has more speaking lines than uh lj but anyways i wanted to get more lj uh and so i just picked one of the two episodes left that we that we haven't seen and um turns out i enjoyed i don't know how you feel about this we actually haven't pre-discussed the episode at all so uh we're gonna do it all live fresh yeah i i will say this is not my favorite episode oh controversy so we'll have a controversial conversation um mostly not due to any particular flaw in the writing or anything like that, but more what this episode is about is stuff that I did not enjoy watching.

So we'll get into that. What about LJ is so interesting to you? So LJ is the, I mean, his appearance is pretty brief. So maybe we'll talk about it now since you were thinking about him he's kind of the the friend he's a friend of rocky's he's kind of a handyman he's kind of a buddy who comes around uh we mainly see him when he's been asked to come over to look at something that rocky doesn't want to pay someone to fix yes uh or to play cards so i i think that's part of it is just

that like lj is part of the wider world that isn't wrapped up in the seedy side of things uh he's uh a plumber by trade so that makes him one of rocky's friends right like if he were a con man or a cop he would be one of Jim's friends, but instead he's, he has a useful trade and, uh, therefore one of Rocky's friends. And, uh,

I don't know. I, this kind of gets into this, um, this zone of, uh, I wish there was a word for it. Uh,

we talked recently about the word cozy as it relates to murder mysteries a little bit. Like that's the thing that I recently discovered. But I'm also discovering now that people are using the word cozy to relate to other forms of fiction and in games in particular. And I think this kind of plays a little bit into that side where LJ is part of the Rockford world where Rockford is at rest. He's never involved with the mystery. Yes. And it's not that I need more of that. It's that I enjoy the amount of that that is there.

And I honestly can't think of another character. I mean, Rocky ostensibly is, but he keeps getting pulled in. Not all the time but like you know uh enough times and i'd mostly everyone else is is somehow involved in the dangerous side of things yeah even like even sully the bondsman he's he only comes up because jim's been arrested and he's right exactly yeah that's a good point so point. So I guess I'm craving that in the same way that you might crave like a condiment on a sandwich. Where like you don't want the sandwich made out of that condiment. Horseradish, right?

I like horseradish, but like I'm not going to require a full on fake bacon, lettuce and horseradish. Though maybe you should. Probably my favorite thing about this episode is the family drama. Yes. This is a strong Rocky is poking around and very involved in what Jim is working on and

then LJ is kind of a he gets to be a bit of a Greek chorus in his appearance where he just kind of shows up and kind of casts some light on the fact that this drama is going on. Gets us out of their heads a little bit in that moment. So, yeah, I hear that. Yeah. But Blink and you'll miss him. Right.

I know. Unfortunately. This episode is, so as we said, season five, this is where they start to get a little get a little weirder, get a little more experimental with a lot of the plots and also the titles. This episode is neither. I'd say it does not have much experimentalness to either the plot nor the title. experimentalness to either the plot uh nor the title and in that way feels a little bit like a throwback uh in context um of other season five episodes where jim's dealing with tom selleck or or pursuing uh down on their luck rock stars and stuff like that right this is a oneita bartlett script um which i think we've had a string of recently. They're always appreciated.

And all the stuff that I like in this, I feel like are Bartlett kind of signature elements, the family drama, I think for the most part, the well-written female antagonist slash co-main character. She's kind of, I don't know if antagonist is actually the right, we'll talk about her role. It's kind of, I don't know if antagonist is actually the right, we'll talk about her role. It's kind of interesting structurally. And this is a William Ward directorial jaunt. One of the many, many, many of his 28 Rockford Files appearances. We've seen him many times

before. We will see him again. He did a lot of the fourth and fifth season episodes, He did a lot of the fourth and fifth season episodes, including a lot of the two-parters. I think the last episode of his that we talked about, though, was actually, it might actually have been Gear Jammers. Is that true? Oh, wow. So we probably haven't talked about him recently. So he's done a lot. But like Sleiphan, Just Another Polish Wedding.

Like there's some standout stuff in here. But those are, like, from our much earlier coverage. Yeah. Yeah, the thing about him is there's not a lot about him online. Okay, the thing about him is that there's nothing about him. I just felt like we've talked about him before, but I guess not. Hmm. Yeah, he just did a ton of TV. Anyway, William Ward, he directed this episode.

It is totally fine. It has an interesting, it has a good chase sequence at the end, which I'm sure we'll talk about. We don't have to beat around the bush here because I will at least mention it in the montage. Well, let's go ahead and get to the montage. this montage, but I'm just going to tell you where it begins and where it ends, because it begins with a gunshot and ends with a helicopter chase. And if your butt is not stuck in that couch for the rest of this episode, I don't know what to do with you. There's an attempted murder, someone's life is a soap opera, and someone's changing their name. Yes, I do like the line, how can you call an attempted murder impersonal, Dennis? But, that wrapping feature there that just said,

we're going to get this and we're going to get this. And I don't know, let's just do it. Also, I'll mention it now so we can talk about it again later. Our answering machine message, which you heard at the beginning of our episode is from angel. So he is,

he's credited. He does not appear in this episode, unfortunately, but he leaves a message about a tip on a horse. Yes. Keep that in mind. Hello, listeners. We really appreciate you being here.

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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. We get to the beginning of this episode with an establishing shot at a yacht club. We see a woman walking her German shepherd. This is a woman named Val, Valerie. Valerie is walking her dog, just doing her thing,

turns to go up a stairwell, and a man appears at the top of the stairs with a gun. Oh, God. My notes here are maybe the most heartbreaking notes i've ever written good doggo and then in all caps no uh i would be lying if i didn't say that this kind of immediately lost me yeah so he appears at the top of the stairs he has a gun uh she's scared she's saying please no and then he very obviously moves the gun. It is off screen.

It is not shown to us, but he shoots her dog. Yes. And then his gun jams before he can shoot her. And then he looks concerned and runs away. Unfortunately, that is the last we see of poor Sam. Yes. As we learn later. This does not predispose me to like this episode.

No. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to like dwell on this very moment or whatever, but nobody else does. No. One of the things that makes it stand out maybe from stuff that's today that might have that exact same scene is that I

felt like that was not an attempt to make him into the nastiest of bad guys I felt like that was just the workmanship of it's just so kind of horrible how it's like oh yeah if he's going to kill her he would get attacked by the dog so

that's what you would do and that's horrible there is kind of yeah there's like a very similitude to that decision made in that moment yeah he's a guy doing a job and this is the first part of the job it's just one of those things where yeah no violence against animals it's it's not my favorite yeah and it's also not necessary like the plot point is she sees a guy he tries to kill her his gum jams and he runs away you don't need a dog in that scene right the dog was not necessary um but that is how our uh episode begins uh we then cut to rocky and jim coming back to jim's trailer. They've obviously been putting in a full day

painting Rocky's living room. And we do start off here with 100% pure, uncut family bickering. Yes. We start out, we get right to some good stuff. I will give it that. Including the fact that Rocky

complains that they don't make paint the way they used to. And Jim's like, it would have taken two coats then to rocky yes um rocky uh once they're in the trailer rocky goes to start the chili they have this whole plan they're going to call coop and lj and dennis and invite them all them all over for poker night. Rocky starts his chili now. It'll be ready just about 7 o'clock. Do we know who Coop is? Have we met Coop? We have met Coop once on our show. He's a season 5 character.

He's the disbarred attorney. Oh, yes. Okay. Jim starts going to because Bethh is gone because due to contract disputes they couldn't keep gretchen corbett yeah in the show yeah so he's a secondary character that if you've been watching season five while it was broadcasting you would have seen him a couple times by now yeah but we haven't seen him in a long time that okay rocky's in charge of the chili jim goes to check his messages and we get, what is this?

A follow-up to the answering machine message from the beginning of the episode? Jimmy, it's the voice of prosperity. Don't go inviting him. Listen, turkey, you didn't return my call. I told you I got this hot tip on that Holly Park filly. Like I said, you can give us both 500 guaranteed. So call Old Angel. I can make us rich.

I don't know why I live for this because I really shouldn't. Like every fiber of my being. But yeah, so Angel has a hot tip on some ponies that he needs. He just needs a little money from Jim. That's all. Just 20 bucks. And I think by now we all know the rubric. 20 bucks is probably $100 nowadays, right?

Like he's not just asking for what you would pay for like a movie nowadays. I don't know. I'm trying to put it in context here. My favorite thing about this is Rocky's aside, don't invite him. Yes, he cheats, Jim. Rockies aside, don't invite him. Yes, he cheats. He cheats, Jim. After that message plays, there's another message.

Jim, it's Val. I'm sorry to bother you, but I just don't know where to turn. Jim stops the message before it can complete playing. Yeah. Rocky is immediately interested. He really perks up once he hears the name Val on the answering machine. We have a bit of business where Jim keeps trying to redirect him from talking about her, including threatening to come in and help him with the chili. And Rocky says that he don't want no one in the kitchen with him while he's cooking, which I appreciate. Yes, I was thinking the same. I wrote that right down.

As someone with a smallish kitchen myself, it's just easier when there's, even if someone's being helpful. Yeah. Rocky was thinking about Val just the other day because he was looking through some records that she gave him. He mentioned he liked, you know, some artists

and she just gave him a whole, the whole collection of his records. That was 20 years ago. Rocky starts going down memory lane in order to inform us of some of the backstory that is going to inform the events of the episode. So this is a woman that clearly Jim was in a relationship with. They almost got married. There was a child involved. Little Nancy was only three.

And she sure loved Jim too. And Jim finally cuts him off and doesn't want to keep going down memory lane. Over a long time ago, the embers are stone cold now. Yes. But Rocky does want to know what she wanted. So Jim does finally play their last of the message. Jim, I need you. Somebody shot Sam.

I dug this scene. I mean, obviously there's good chemistry between James Gardner and Noah Berry. They do these family scenes so well. And just having them talk over each other, it's easy to have that be annoying to an audience and instead like uh i'm in i'm invested but it could be that i'm invested because i have i have a bunch of notes sitting on my lap and i have to prepare for a podcast based on this episode i won't i won't

deny that but like nonetheless it's clear that j Jim knows stuff that Rocky doesn't know, that he doesn't want Rocky to know because he's trying to protect Rocky's innocence in a certain way. Right. Like in a way, but I don't know if he's trying to protect Rocky because Rocky knows. Right. As we will see, there are some not really secrets, but there's some pretty some pretty rough stuff that ended up happening. And Rocky already knows about that. It all happened while he was there. I read it more as Jim just doesn't...

He knows how Rocky is. Yeah. And he knows that opening this door, all of a sudden, Rocky's like, Oh, Val, I always liked her. Yeah. I think he knows that it's going to go to where it goes kind of midway through the episode where they have a conversation about what know what could have been basically right jim's the one who has to deal with the fact that he ended up not wanting to marry this woman right and rocky's like

why don't you just marry her it would have been great he's like rocky how many times do i do we have to have this conversation it's kind of he just doesn't want to keep having that conversation over and over. There's a kind of a heartbreaking element to this. Cause it's, it's clear that, well, maybe not clear, but like Rocky wants grandchildren,

I think is part of what's happening in this conversation. Yeah. I think so. And I can't remember if it's this conversation or it's another one. Cause they have quite a few about this where he's like, you know, you've brought me all sorts of enjoyment in life like but you haven't done this one thing yeah that you that you know the the biological imperative here i mean and at the end of the day jim jim already has a complicated set of feelings about Val. Yeah. And having Rocky, you know,

putting the screws to him. Yeah. Isn't making it any easier for him. Agreed. Well, we do not dither around. Uh, once we hear that she,

you know, she's in need, we cut to, uh, Val, Jim, uh, Dennis,

and, uh, a man who we soon learn is Eric, Val's son-in-law. In her house, Dennis is taking her statement, and he seems dubious that they'll really be able to find out anything. He takes her description and says that they'll try to run it down, and Jim is immediately giving him... This is where we have the moment from the preview montage where he says,

how could attempted murder not be personal? And what are you going to do, brown on brown, medium height? giving him this is where we we have the moment from the preview montage where he says uh how could attempted murder not be personal and what are you going to do brown on brown medium height not much to go on but dennis in his way is like i'm doing my job here jim what do you want from me yeah she says that she she has some meeting coming up that she still wants to prepare for she'll be better off at work than sitting around after this very disruptive kind of scary experience. Everyone else kind of leaves and it's just her and Jim. She thanks him for coming.

Says that he never lets her down. They have a kiss that indicates that they, you know, have had a relationship before. It is not chaste. Yeah. He has a great line where she's like you've never let me down. He's like oh I can think of a couple of times which it's referring to not marrying her yeah exactly like he has let her down uh he has another good line where he doesn't want to shake her faith

in the system but you know dennis doesn't have a lot to go on he's they're probably not going to turn up much so he'll go ahead and poke around himself. So here we have an out of character moment for Jim, right? It's an open case. Nobody's asking him. He's like, I'm in, I'm in, I'll do the work. So at this point, I'm like, okay, so Jim is volunteering to nose around in an open case. You know, first time viewers of the show, maybe that doesn't mean anything, whatever that just gets them going but like long time viewers of the show okay something's different about this woman or this case or something yeah and that feeds into the the theme that we will come back to again and again which is jim feeling like he has to do things for her because of this this this uh existential guilt that he has about how things went down, basically.

Right? I think that's fair to say. No, I agree. Yes. Val is played by Pat Crawley, who definitely seems like a, I'm sure I've seen her before, actress. But she's not been on the Rockford Files other than this. And I wasn't, maybe she just has one of those faces. Um, but she's played, she was all over TV, uh, at the

time. And then I realized that maybe where I knew her from with a different hairstyle, but she was actually, uh, in a Columbo episode, one of the early ones where she was the murder victim. And then Columbo goes on to determine what happened. And you'll be shocked to hear ends up solving the case. What? I know. But that's in a death lens, a hand,

which is the one with the private security firm guy. Who's the killer. It's a good one. Recommended. Is that like the very first one? It's in the first season. Anyway, it's good.

It's a good one and this is i i see more of her acting in this episode than we saw in that columbia i think she does a good job with this character yeah it's um like we haven't really gotten into it yet but this character would have been easy to play her wrong i feel. The way she's playing it right now, and all the way through to the end, leaves it as kind of an innocent character, although we'll find out that she really isn't. I think

it's great that she's done that way rather than arch. Or cruel. Yeah. So she's kind of like a femme fatale, but not the standard femme fatale in this one. And that's as far as I can go with anything that has to do with noir. I apologize. Well, Jim says he's going to take a look, and then we come back to him heading up some steps.

And he kind of has a double take on a uh on a on a woman who's sitting outside in a convertible inside there's an argument in progress uh there's a a beefy guy in a loud tie uh who's mr zekarian he does not approve of the decor that his wife who we learn is the woman sitting outside in the convertible has has approved for their interior decorating one of the things that you know this is one of those scenes that the rock hood files does so well which is bring us into the middle of something and then we learn everything we need to know about who and what and why just through the scene unfolding so there's no like up top exposition it's all in the scene but this is so val's business

she's an interior designer interior decorator um studio of some kind so that's what she does and this guy's a carrion uh is using her to decorate someplace and she's arguing with someone else a second level design guy who we do not see again in the episode. Yeah. But he looks like Gary Oldman, I think. So I noted that, but it is not Gary Oldman. No. Even though Mrs. Zakarian approved all the furniture, he wants to throw it all out, get

rid of it. And he is told that even if they throw it in the boxwoods, they're still going to have to pay for it. And then he threatens to sue if they insist on making him pay for something that he doesn't want to pay for. And this is when Val stops and steps in. She tries to straighten it out and calm everyone down. No one wants to be calmed. We get the threat of a lawsuit.

threat of a lawsuit and jim has entered at some point during this and kind of seen this all unfold and then comes up to to val's defense once they start directing their anger at her she she ends up introducing jim like oh this is my friend jim he's a private eye he's looking into into the guy who tried to kill me today or whatever yes which is very frank this does not appear to change zakarian's mind. And he storms out saying that his attorneys will be in touch. Yeah, he has this great moment when Jim butts in where he's like, well, who asked you? And she's like, I did. I agree with you about this scene just kind of laying it all out.

And there's stuff that happens here that is going to be important to the mystery, but isn't quite obvious right now, I think. Yeah, it had the feeling to me of this scene is more than just business. There's stuff here that matters. We'll see what happens with it later. You know, I wasn't like obsessively looking for clues. I was kind of like, okay, this will be important at some point. And I think it actually took a long time before before there's a payoff for this but our next scene is at the police station um where jim is trying to tell jim is telling dennis how to do his job in the way that jim would do it if it was jim's job yes but it is not two different concerns going on here. Jim has one job. Dennis has many jobs.

So Jim comes to him with what, for Jim, would be a really good lead, which is merely 100 people to follow up on. You were complaining you didn't have anything to go on. Now you got something. The entire membership roster of the Brentair Yacht Club. Hey, how about a little gratitude? You know what it took me to con the management out of that? There's like, there's almost 300 names on it. That's what it was, yes.

And this is important because the car, the Peugeot, which is also the kind of car that Columbo drives, not that model, but a French car. Anyway, the car that the assailant drove away in what's in the yacht club parking lot which is key card access only to club members so therefore this lead yeah is that this guy is either a member or uh knows a member there's almost 300 members on this roster but uh val only recognized about 10 of them so that's where you should start. And so Dennis then is going into, you want me to look at 300 people

and all of their known associates, et cetera, et cetera. This seems very reasonable to Jim, not just because Jim has a vested interest in this case, but also because if Jim's investigating a case, it's the only case he's investigating. Right. And he's willing, as we know, because he's willing to do drudgery and paperwork,

he's willing to go through a list of 297 names and, you know, figure out who the most likely suspects are. But Dennis, like, Dennis is a cop who probably has several cases to deal with. I mean, ostensibly, he also has more resources and can send other cops out to do it. But it's I don't know. I just like that. It would be very clear for Jim that this is the right way to go. And it's very clear for Dennis that this is never going to happen.

Well, and also that Jim's like, look, I've done you such a favor. Right. Yes. And it's like, yeah, you gave me a bunch of work. Thanks. Yeah. Towards the end of the scene, Dennis says that he recognizes the name Valerie Pointer.

He recognizes it from somewhere. And Jim's like, oh, probably because of her well-known decorating business. Please stop asking about this. He's like, no, no. It's something that Rocky said. And then Jim redirects with the whole spiel of like well here's how you can narrow down all the leads and you know yeah who you should follow

up on and again so i thought that this was going to come up again but uh it does not it is just a i think a moment to show us that jim doesn't want to deal with another person poking into his personal history with this woman. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The capper to this is Jim telling Dennis that he's, I'll be waiting for your report. Yeah. Just a teeny little status play there. That's all that's.

We cut to a top-down shot of the big bowl of chili that Rocky's's been working on looks like bean chili to me we cut back and jim's the one stirring it and he starts adding in hot sauce because it doesn't have any bite and rocky's like it will like stop messing with it it'll have bite by seven o'clock but it turns out that uh coop can't come he has work uh dennis he's gonna be busy with this case now. And because Val's been so shook up by all this, Jim's going to take her to dinner. So it's just going to be Rocky and LJ. A game of checkers.

A game of checkers. This is the C-plot. How utterly impossible it is for adults to make a game night work. I think that this is identifiable drama for many of our listeners, where everyone has something else that they have to do last minute or, or whatever. Like you can plan all week. You can plan all day.

You can get ready for it. And in the end, it might just be you and a friend playing checkers. Rocky starts off angry that he's done all this work. He's been slaving over the stove all day, which is hilarious because chili is not a dish that you need to slave over. Yeah. But once Jim mentions that he's taking Val out to dinner, then he's like, oh, OK, well, then LJ is a good checker partner. We'll have a good time.

her. We'll have a good time. There's a knock on the door and a young woman who gives her name as Jean Lugwig says that she needs to talk to Jim. This is just how she ended up dressed or whatever. But there's this little affectation where her gloves are sitting on her shoulder.

They just ride on her shoulder the whole time. Which I could not stop looking at. It just seems so weird. But she wants to hire Jim. How much do you charge? $200 a day plus expenses. Her story is that her and her sister recently moved to San Diego.

Oh, is she missing? Sorry. No, why would you say that? I love that beat. Sorry, go on. Jim's like, that's why most people come to me. Yeah. No, she's not missing.

She is going to get married to some man who this woman, Jean, is suspicious of. Thinks he's an unsavory character and is just taking advantage of her sister for her money. They're moving very quickly and she wants to, it's a little vague, but like have him investigated and see what Jim can turn up. And when he seems a little hesitant, she's like, I'll pay you $500 a day. That's double your rate. That's how important my sister is to me.

There's a nice little beat for the audience here where Jim, like basically as soon as she says that she'll give him like she and she has a big roll of bills in her hand she says she'll give him 500 a day first rocky says oh he can't take a case he's busy now what about val you're already busy you're fully booked uh because rocky cares about val yeah and then jim says you know oh i'm okay i'm sorry i can't take this case. And it's so definitive. And I'm kind of like, that seems weird. Because it also does not seem like Jim would be like, oh, the only thing I can do right now is deal with Val, because he's kind of

equivocal about that, even though he is trying to help her. I mean, I was relieved, because in my notes, it's finally Jim's got a case he can refuse in this episode. So I was worried we weren't going to get that beat and we got it. I didn't really I didn't remember this episode at all. And I kind of assumed that, you know, this would be a he takes another case that is, quote, unrelated. But turns out it is related. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not that's not the beat the beat is he says no and then she tries to insist and he's like no i'm sorry i just can't help you i can recommend someone and she's

like no no i've already wasted enough time finding you yeah so when she leaves he watches her out out the window and she's in a very fancy uh little porsche sports car yeah rocky wants to know why you know why do you why does that matter and so jim says that five hundred dollars a day for an out-of-town job i think someone's trying to get rid of me yeah and i don't have her plate and that's probably not a real name so as an audience member i'm like okay that explains it the little one two got me is what i'm saying yes yeah yeah no me too i mean like i was happy that he got to refuse someone i thought he was going to take the case uh just to spite rocky but um but yeah once once he said there's looked out the window i don't even think he had to say anything once he watched her go out

the way i was like oh he's suspicious i see we have a brief pursuit sequence where he follows her as she peels out in the Porsche. She ends up heading up one of those twisty California mountain roads. And Jim is blocked behind a van that just drives in the middle of the road and won't get over far enough for him to get around it. Once he finally does, she has put the pedal to the metal and disappeared up into the hills. He is unable to follow. In my notes, I yelled at Jim because that blind curve that he passed the van. I was just like, Jesus Christ, Jim. It's going up a mountain. It's a hairpin turn and he's just right on it. And he's like passing the van. And so from our crane shot or helicopter shot or whatever, where we're seeing it, we can see there's no traffic coming down the hill in his direction.

So he's safe. But like from his point of view, just a few feet away is that turn. And somebody could be peeling down that at any speed. And he would have no idea until. Yeah. Anyways, this is old Epi. And buckle your seatbelt. Back in the trailer, Rocky wants Jim to take some of the chili to Val.

You know, since it can all be frozen anyway, but he should take her some home-cooked chili. He pulls out these ice cream containers to store the chili in, which Jim does not approve of. Because even though, sure, they're designed to go in the freezer, the last time he froze some chili in one of those, there was a distinctive butter pecan aftertaste. Yes. Which I think would actually probably be nice from chili. Like a little sweet nuttiness at the end.

Yeah, a little something at the end. Yeah. But Jim is apparently very particular about his not contaminating his chili with ice cream. Right. And then here we are, Epi. It finally happens. We see LJ. He gets a beer.

Yes. And I mean, my notes here are just about the epic quest to try and make a game night work. This is the death of a game night as as rocky goes through how each person can't yeah yeah there's a point in here where lj agrees with one of the two of them and i can't remember who it is but i remember thinking wait he doesn't know any of this situation and he's already taking a side rocky Rocky explains to LJ and thus to us to clarify about how Jim and Val almost got married 20 years ago. Jim's the one who called it off. She's been in some trouble.

So now he's taking her out to dinner. Jim says that their reservations are at the Cocked Hat. It has the best ribs in town and the best cottage fries. Yes. And then Rocky says, why are you going there? She's not going to like that. That's a place you like. Well, I asked her where she wanted to go.

She picked the place. I didn't. Yeah, because it's one of your favorites. That's the way she is, you know. She's always thinking of the other fella, never of herself. Yeah. Whatever, you two. I drove all the way over here for a poker night.

And now I'm going to eat some chili and play checkers with Rocky. Not too bad. Not too bad. And then we say goodbye to LJ. Yeah. I mean, like, LJ seemed cool with the fact that he drove over there and it was like. He's Rocky's friend, right? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, I'm not surprised that he's cool with it. What I'm saying is that, like, it is the kind of. I've been LJ in this situation before. Like, sometimes the person that has come maybe even the longest distance who's shown up and it's like oh nobody else can make it you're like ah okay yeah now that happens well i'm here now yep let's let's just make that i got chili i got beer we got checkers he ends up having a great night i'm sure yes as opposed to

poor jim um okay so we go to the cocked hat where Val's trying to tell him to forget about the case. Let's just have a nice night. And here is, I mean, it is extremely telegraphed and obvious. Yeah. The text here is fighting over this food is the metaphor for their relationship. Yeah. How their interactions are, you know, were 20 years ago and are going to be as we go forward.

So there's two tracks here. One is some more explanation of their past. And it's pretty well crafted as exposition. I forget exactly how it all kind of comes out. But the central points here is that we learn not only did Jim decide that he didn't want to get married, and that was very traumatic. It was apparently so traumatic that she tried to kill herself at that time. And she doesn't blame him for that. Right.

But that is what happened. And coming close to death again brought this back up for her. And she says that she never held Jim responsible. Yes. Which is what happened. And coming close to death again, brought this back up for her. And she says that she never held Jim responsible. Yes. Which is very coded. Okay. So the first thing to do here is to remind our listeners that the title of this episode is guilt. Right.

My notes on this scene, like over and over again, say, this is tough. This is a hard conversation. I think it's well done, partly because it is tough but we can watch it we're not turning turning away it's also kind of complex because that's coming out at the same time that jim is making a realization about this decades-long relationship that rocky just laid out for him moments ago just Just gave him the bullet point. Yeah. Yeah.

Like Rocky's like, oh, she picked that because you want to go there. And Jim tests out this theory. He's like, right. Yeah. You know, you pick this place just because I like it. And she doesn't deny that. She just says, are you trying to tell me you aren't salivating over those ribs? Right.

Right. And it's like, oh, oh, Rocky was right. He's trying to make Rocky wrong or, or maybe he like oh oh rocky was right he's trying to make rocky wrong or or maybe he's trying to correct that or he's trying to fix something here uh which is great because that is as we'll find out like the entirety of their relationship at least since they broke up it's trying to fix but he feels guilty for it i don't think that this is subtle, but I think it's very well done. Yeah. It's not subtext.

It is the text of what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of what I was saying with the food play, which is the whole back and forth about the order. Jim has already realized that Val indeed just said this place to please him. The reservation isn't a contract. We can go somewhere else.

Can I just say a reservation isn't a contract is not only like a great way to suggest it, but also probably a legal thing that Jim knows. No, no, they can't sue us for leaving. I've looked into this. Yeah. If you're not interested in the ribs the steak's good or the lobster i'll have the dinner salad i told you we didn't have to stay here we could go someplace else that's all i really want honestly nothing for me

jam two orders of ribs two orders of cottage fries. I don't want you to eat something you don't want. You don't want me to eat something I do want. Dinner salad for the lady, ribs and fries for me. This exchange, I think, is the heart of the matter here here jim says i don't want you to eat something you don't want and val says you don't want me to eat something i do want yes yes oh boy do you think jim enjoyed that meal not even a little bit i think we can scientifically prove that he did not we do not see them eat of of course. We cut right from there to Jim dropping her off after the night and our next scene.

This scene, though, this is the... I mean, we see this reinforced by more stuff over the course of the episode. But this is the dynamic encapsulated in this scene. And, oh, man, it feels... I think this is part of why i i wasn't really into this episode yeah this dynamic is one that at times in my life i have lived in and do not want to relive yes and while i trust that everything comes out fine in the end because it's the rockford files that emotional journey is not one that I want to be on.

So now I'm just kind of like watching for the plot and waiting for it to be over. Would you characterize that as just about as far down memory lane you'd care to go? Yeah, yeah, perhaps. And it's not even about like details. It's more about like, oh, this dynamic, this feeling of there is no possible way for me to feel like I have actually satisfied you or I've actually made happiness happen or that I've actually answered, you know, the way that will make this all okay. And the feeling of impossibility. Yes. That is a very visceral feeling.

Yeah, I'm with you. And the feeling of impossibility. Yes. That is a very visceral feeling. Yeah. I'm with you. I think in the Plus Expensive episode that we recorded just before this, I mentioned that there are many personal stories I could tell that relate to this episode. And I'm about to, in like a scene or two, tell the one I'm comfortable telling. Okay. But these, i feel the same thing here like this reminded me of very specific relationships i had uh that ended and um the dynamics of them so i really identified with what jim was going through here in several ways.

And I mean, I will point out that like, I don't think that in those relationships, any of them were exactly Val. Right, yeah, yeah. But there's that thing where a relationship has gone wrong. Somebody in that relationship has to say it's done and maybe they've done that wrong. Yeah. It's not a Jim is blameless in whatever happened or what,

like the guilt part is, is the fact that he feels responsibility for Val for something about her, for her wellbeing. Yeah. And I think it's given to us through the dialogue that probably the suicide attempt is the root of that. But that's also a toxic power dynamic, right? Yes.

Now, I have now made you responsible for my well-being, but you have no control over my well-being. Right. That's the dynamic that makes me shiver. Yes. If I watched this and I thought, oh, Jim is blameless entirely in this relationship, and therefore this is her putting this all on Jim, then I would come away from this episode. I would not like this episode. Okay.

But I don't feel that in these scenes. I feel that Jim's guilt is not unfounded it's just really complicated because uh like not not a guilt over how she reacted to it but probably the situation probably wasn't good like we get this painted picture from rocky about all the good times and where he has her daughter dancing with them and and like all of these uh so maybe maybe he strung her along too long or maybe like i don't even there's no need to really go into what exactly he did wrong we can see a part of it here in this meal where he had no idea going into it that she was making it all about the stuff he

wants he was maybe just unobservant inobservant there's a word not observant enough to uh uh see what's going but anyways i don't look i didn't mean to deep dive into this scene at all but i like i like it for uh its complexity but also you look at the preview montage and you get a gunshot in a helicopter chase you're waiting for that helicopter chase yeah you know and then this episode has several gut punches throughout that aren't that which is not a complaint about it i'm just like there's an expectation uh switch yeah maybe the last thing i want to say about about this is that um and this kind of gets back to what i was saying in our intro about it's kind of hard to describe the role that val plays as a character yeah because i i

said antagonist because she ends up having an antagonistic relationship. But she's not the antagonist in terms of pushing action. She's not a villain. And I think the complexity of how she is written and her dialogue paints a portrait of someone who has been through a lot of trauma. Yeah. And the way that she behaves in the world reflects that. But that also means that she is a hard person for me to empathize with. Yeah.

Because it feels like she doesn't take responsibility for overcoming her trauma. She just has all these coping mechanisms that hurt other people. Yes. Yeah. I would not disagree with that. That's all evinced in this conversation very well. But then also, I have now sat back and am taking notes and waiting for the episode to be over yes because i don't want to dwell with that character longer than i have to i see yes agreed happy 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. And if you like role-playing games, maybe you want to check out dig1000holes.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 games, including the Worldwide Wrestling Pro Wrestling role-playing game, among many others. You can find links to all of my games and other projects at ndpdesign.com. And of course, you can find me on twitter.com at ndpayoletta. Looks like you're back. You ready to continue the arithmetic analysis for this episode there, Eppie? I'm back. I have my DM-42 with me, and I'm ready to dig down into Rockford's books again.

All right. Well, I'm done with this delicious avocado taco. Well, let's get back to the show then. As we said, after this dinner, Jim is dropping her off at her place, and then we have an establishing shot of a guy in a stocking mask with a rifle hiding behind a car. That was a nice night. When we're not fighting, we get along just fine. Yeah. She also has another key character line.

Sometimes my life seems like such a soap opera. And that is the cue for Gunshot. Yes. A planter next to them explodes. We see Jim see the guy jump into his car and peel away. And then we have a brief freeze frame,

which is probably leading into a commercial of the two of them huddled down underneath the railing. So we come back to cops on the scene. Dennis is back. He is complaining about all these essentially soft leads that Jim keeps

giving him. This Yacht Club membership, this Jean Lugwig person, if that's even her name. Jim has a little smirk that he shows during this scene. And I don't know if that smirk is Jim or if it's James Gardner. Just being like, I was right, Dennis. Yeah, yeah. And I liked it. I liked it a lot. Just being like, I was right, Dennis.

Yeah, yeah. And I liked it. I liked it a lot. This assailant was not wearing a mask this afternoon, but was wearing a mask at night. That seems strange. Maybe that indicates that the person this afternoon knew that Val wouldn't be able to identify him. And so maybe he's a contract killer? Question mark? Val can't think of anyone who hates her that much.

So this whole time, there's been all these questions about, like, who would want to kill you? What has happened? Who, you know, and she's like, I don't have arguments with anyone. Nobody hates me. So this is my story. This is the one that I want to share. Okay. This is the thing that happens all the time in TV cop shows and crime shows and stuff like that, where either somebody has been killed and you asked, like, well, who would want them dead?

Or there's been an attempted murder, like in this case, and you're like, well, who wants you dead? And I have had a cop ask me that question. And I want to tell you, that is a scary question. So what happened was I lived in New York for a while and early one Monday morning. And by early, I mean like probably like four or 5am the window to my living room was shot. And I live on the third floor. Uh, this is, uh, in Brooklyn, New York where you're kind of used to hearing loud noises from time to time in the middle of the night but never a noise that loud like i sat bolt right up

in bed looked around like figured out where i was and what was going on and then went back to sleep like a few hours later there's this knocking at my bedroom door and it's my roommate and she's like epi epi i think we've been shot and i come flying out of bed actually what had happened was is a bullet had hit this aluminum frame that went around our window so the window didn't shatter or anything like that uh but the blinds did and pieces of that aluminum frame were like all over the room. So I called the cops because that's what you do. And in fact, calling the cops, I called 311, not 911. I guess it's a civil matter. In my mind, that obviously happened hours ago.

And so I don't, it's not an emergency. Right. So I call 311. And if you live in New York and you're wondering, like, if you have trouble with your 911, I highly recommend calling 311 and asking them what to do, because here's the hack. They will patch you through to 911. But 311, which is information where you call about reporting potholes and things like that, is the mayor's office so the cops i find out get get this 911 call from the mayor's office i had a cop like during all of this asked me like who do you know at the mayor's office why are we here what are we doing here yeah uh anyways the point is the cops didn't come right away uh and while i was waiting for them i kept you know you you're

doing this thing where you're like we've been shot i'm fine with it oh wait a minute hold up maybe i'm not or whatever and you go back and forth you turn on the tv to try and drown it out your voices in your head so what had happened was is i turned on comedy central and i hit mute uh and it's roughly around that time that the cops came in and they were investigating the place. And it is not at all like the competence porn that is on television. And then so a terrifying moment to think, is there someone out there who actually wants you dead? That's not a thing everyone has to deal with all the time. Not being Angel Martin. This is not something that you frequently have to deal with. And up until that point, I had assumed that nobody wanted me dead now my working theory of what actually happened was that somebody was drunk and just shot a bullet into the air because like i said i'm the third

story you know uh they never solved this crime but okay comedy central i don't know what they're like nowadays but at the time they had all these like comedians on stage doing their thing part of the craft of filming those things involve taking uh footage of the audience laughing right it turns out that my high school girlfriend had attended that show uh she has a lovely laugh so they clearly put the camera on her several times to show you that so here's my tv on mute here's a cop who asks me do you know of anyone who would want you dead and i'm trying to think this through and i look up at my tv and i see my high school girlfriend laughing her ass off am i in a television show like Like, what is happening here? That's pretty good.

But it turns out, no, she doesn't want me. That you know of. That I know of, yes. That is my one story connected to this that I'm willing to share. Well, thank you for sharing. That's a good one. Well, similar to Epi, Val cannot think of anyone that hates her enough to try and kill her.

And then the scene gets real good Jim asks Dennis to leave a couple cops there overnight just in case and Dennis is like yeah sure of course and then Val starts coming over faint and asks Jim to go get her a brandy which is in a different room while he's out of the room she tells Dennis you know what I don't want you to leave your men here Jim's gonna stay I'll be fine and it makes me anxious to have people i don't know around so you know please don't leave your men here and dennis is like you know whatever you say right like he's a little concerned but professionally so and does what she wants so he leaves jim comes back in she says oh, Dennis had to leave and get back to the station.

I told him not to bother leaving his men. I'd be nervous with them here. I'll make up the guest room for you. And Jim is not pleased to hear, A, that Dennis didn't leave anyone, and B, that Val was expecting him to stay. Where I sleep is something I like to decide for myself. There's no reason to be upset. I'm fine, really.

You do whatever you think is best. Which is the most passive aggressive. Yes. So... Oh my God. Up to this point, I was not reading ulterior motives in the things that she was doing. I mean, she obviously liked Jim and wanted Jim in her life and probably in a capacity that Jim wasn't comfortable with. But this moment, this thing that she does here, this is wrong.

Yeah, this is manipulative. Yeah. And so this is this is the part where i'm like all right jim good on you for holding those boundaries yeah so he he does end up staying this is also a moment where i and maybe this is another episode creeping into my memory but i was like is she setting herself up has she hired someone to take shots at her in order to get j to, you know, stay with her and have an excuse to keep him around. That's what I was thinking was happening after seeing this little manipulation. Yeah, I think that that's a deliberate misdirect in this. Like, I don't think you're wrong for thinking that. Like, I think that's one of the things they're trying to imply but not actually say that's what's

happening right and that is not what's happening to be clear but that is where my brain went oh a red herring yes indeed that's those are the word i was looking for we go to rocky's place where there's still uh paint drops all over everything after they've been as we know they were repainting the living room jim's looking for his card case. He's in quite the mood. Rocky's like asking him why he's behaving like an angry bear or bear with a sore tooth or something like that. And Jim very clearly saw what happened. Yeah. As soon as I was out of the room, Val sent Dennis away and made it so that I had to stay.

So I stayed with her I think this is after there's a little bit of like oh you stayed at Val's yeah the guest room Rocky yeah and he's saying it's not safe she shouldn't have done that she didn't think and Rocky has this weird line of she doesn't have to think she's a lady. Yeah, Rocky. God damn it. We get Grandpa Rocky here where Jim is the one who says she has a successful business. She's responsible for her own life. She's doing well.

What do you mean she doesn't have to think? And Rocky's like, all I meant was she should have a man in her life. Yeah. That's what he's trying to communicate here. This is the first of several feet that Rocky put in his mouth. I think you were saying there's a series

of gut punches. Here's one. Man, she really loved you. Who do you know that ever loved some other person more than their own life, huh? That's a rough thing to throw onto someone. He's not saying that Jim's responsible, but it wasn't until after they broke up that she took all those pills.

Yeah. And then she married that Dr. Pointer who turned out to be to be bad. I guess he drank or something. Almost killed her in a car accident where he did die. Rocky keeps repeating that. And none of that was your fault. But, and Jim finally snaps with like, but everything would have been different if I had just married her. Right. It's like, no, it's not your fault.

He's like, Jim has told me it's not my fault a thousand times. And that's how she's kept me on a string for 20 years. Yeah. One of the trajectories going on here with Val from the audience's point of view, we get Val in the very beginning. We know nothing about her except somebody's trying to kill her. And then we have the Rocky and Jim. You can easily imagine a parent harping you about an ex that you're just like, it didn't work out. I don't know what to tell you. I know you like them. Right. Yeah. It's like, I know you like them,

but you weren't the one who had to decide whether to marry them or not. Right. Exactly. Then we find out at the dinner that there was a suicide attempt. And now I feel like this is the part like where we're starting to learn that there is so much tragedy in her life because the other thing that we're getting is that she's a successful business owner who has it together. And, um, so I guess from an audience point of view, uh, in the beginning, it's like, I don't know who would want to kill you, uh, to, wow, there's so much drama in her life. There's a lot lot going on there's a lot that we're just not

scratching here um yeah so i i feel like in some ways we're shifting from rocky's point of view to jim's point of view of what's going on that's an overgeneralization but it's uh an interesting way in which all these things keep getting revealed to us jim ends the scene by saying well just as a parting gesture, I'd like to find out who it is that's trying to kill Val so I don't have to feel guilty for another 20 years. I'm getting out. This is it.

I'm, yeah. He goes back to her business interiors by pointer to confront Val and shake something loose. He wants her to be honest with him. He knows that she hasn't told him something. My notes here are a little mixed up because there's a lot of, the flow of this conversation is kind of circular. But Jim raises the point of like, you said your life is like a soap opera.

Tell me about that big argument that was happening when I came in the other day and stuff like that. Yeah. And he also asks about Eric, her assistant, who is also her ex son-in-law. So this is like, so he brings this up,

I think in order to illustrate a principle, why do you have your ex son-in-law as your assistant? And there's this whole drama where he was married to her daughter, Nancy, and then they had this acrimonious divorce and there were suits and countersuits. And he ended up with the kids. And then Nancy took the kids and moved out of state.

So he has no recourse. And so she's doing him a favor by keeping him with her because she knows how much it hurts him to not be able to see his kids like it's this whole thing right and then jim's like i know that that is the drama that it's in your life you're all about these dramas tell him you know what about that big argument yesterday that didn't seem like a normal a normal client interaction and so she talks like oh joe don't worry about him that guy joe zakarian he married cynthia who's very wealthy so he married into money recently a couple months ago and now all

of his dreams have come true he used to hustle for quarters and now he you know lives in this beautiful house in bel-air um jim just asks her straight out did you have an affair with joe and apparently she did it's like okay so uh did you threaten to go to his wife about it and she's like no i would never do that and he knows i would never do that jim's like well that that would explain that whole that whole argument because if he comes in here and threatens you with a lawsuit and then you go to his wife he can say that you're just trying to get revenge for breaking the contract when triangles break up this kind of thing happens yes if i ever write jim rockford's elements this will be one of the fundamental axioms when triangles break these things get said yeah that's it like we'll start with there

and we can prove the rest after it right um that That's motive. If Val was killed, she wouldn't be able to make these accusations and Joe would be safe in his money and his new marriage. And so if Jim can place Joe outside her house last night, they got the motivation and they got the man. I don't know if that all hung together as a series of sentences, because i said the dialogue here again is well written in terms of it conveys all this information and it makes sense when those two people are talking to each other uh but it is kind of circular and going back on itself a couple times yeah in order to make these points about how val presents this front of everything's fine nothing's going on but once you dig even the even the slightest into stuff under the surface there are these soap opera dramas i felt a little bit like this is also all right we

need to we need to get moving with a story here yeah i mean the dam is broke now right like that line that he has where she's like honestly we've been through all this. And he says, we've been through it, but not honestly. From that point on, it's like, okay, here's all the stuff that we've been hiding. Like, stuff she's been hiding from us, but also, like, this is her that Jim knows. We haven't gotten that yet. And it's a little bit of a time constraint dump, if you will. But it gets us going forward. And it's not unusual for the genre, right?

Sure. To kind of have this breaking point where it's like, all right, you want me to do something, but you're not giving me the tools I need to do it. So our next scene is one of our great minor characters. Jim goes to talk to Cynthia, this rich woman that Joee zakarian has married our establishment shot is a suitcase being thrown down a flight of stairs uh and then we see uh

cynthia in a in a very nice dress with like uh pearls um kicking the suitcase so that it'll keep you know going down the stairs because it's heavy heavy. And the doorbell rings as she's doing that. So she goes to open it. It's Jim. And he gives a false name that he's from Pointer Interiors. Yeah. But he says, you know, I'd like to talk to you for a minute. She's willing to talk if he can help her carry some bags because...

Ordinarily, i don't lift anything heavier than a coke spoon i got obsessed with how much this house looked like the brady bunch house on the inside it is not it is uh actually different i had uh a misunderstanding of how the stairs are arranged in the brady bunch house but i kept thinking are we in the brady bunch house what's going on here this scene unless my unless my DVD was synced up weird, which is possible, I think this scene had like a weird ADR thing going on. That might have been the case, yeah. Her dialogue was pretty heavily ADR'd.

Yeah. It was fine. It doesn't matter. I just noticed. Anyway, as he helps her lug these heavy suitcases downstairs, he says he's from the interiors. And as she knows, they have a large outstanding bill for all the things that they bought. And he just wants to know when they can expect payment. He had a meeting with her husband to talk about it last night at 8 p.m., but he was stood up. So this is also digging for, you know, where was your husband last night?

Right. Yeah. He asked when they can expect payment and she says, whistle for it. That's great. I love that. And so when he says, where was your husband? You know, where, why, why couldn't your husband meet me? She says, well, you ask Valerie Pointer.

Oh boy. Uh, they had a party last night, uh, to celebrate their perfect marriage. And he spent a bunch of time on the phone and then disappeared. She followed him to see where he went, and he was across the street from Valerie's apartment waiting for her to come home. Zakarian menacingly shows up in the background while she's saying this, so we see how he overhears it. He tells her to go to her room, which incites another furious exchange of words, but she ends up storming out. Jim tells a carrying that it's only attempted murder now. Yeah.

Why it's not too late. Good old Joe takes a swing. Jim ducks out of the way. Joe trips and falls down the stairs. Yeah. We have a shot of him crumpled on the landing. And then good old officer Billings telling us that he has a, he has a concussion.

I do want to point out that with stairs like those, I mean, that's like Chekhov's gun. Somebody's got to go down those stairs. They're the open plan stairs where there's no back between them. And also there's only a railing on one side. Yeah. And when we see him, she's kicking luggage down.

Like, it's just, I'm just happy it wasn't Jim. I know. So Zakarian's unconscious. He has a concussion. So he hasn't said anything yet. But as Jim tells Dennis, his wife puts him in front of Valerie's house at 930, which was half an hour before the shooting. And so we have this motive to cover up the affair. And Dennis is telling Val that, OK, your thing should be OK now.

You are going to have to deal with the publicity and there is going to be a trial. So you have to prepare for that. But we got the guy. Val and Jim head out of the hospital. Jim wants to know how how did he end up hiring her company? She's like, well, we were friends.

And so when I heard that they were buying a house in Bel Air, I told him to think of me. Jim wants to know if she thinks that he took that as an ultimatum. And she's like, no, no, no, no.

You don't understand my relationship with Joe at all. He's just doing little favors. He would just do favors for me. Like if I was having trouble with my car, he would come over and take a look. You would ask for little favors and a man married to a famously jealous

woman would drop everything and come over to your house just to do them. Doesn't that sound a little more like guilt than friendship? Oh no, Jim, you don't understand the kind of relationship we had oh i think i do i think we do i think we do too it's not sound healthy everything's fine though right we got the guy jim's back at his trailer and then before he can even even get inside uh someone

starts taking pot shots at him with a rifle and he has to dive out of the way and it's our original assailant not wearing a mask in his Peugeot once he sees that he wasn't able to hit Jim he jumps in and drives away Rocky comes out Jim tells Rocky to call Dennis he's gonna go get a line on the lady in the Porsche that's the

last lead he has and then Rocky has a great little salute over here some life you live coming home getting shot at getting in your car and tearing off some life i say the jim is like call dennis here's his busy work yeah now i'm gonna go solve the case like not not with that air like not not like a uh modernday adaptation of Sherlock. There's a lot to be done here. Dennis has the authority to do that.

I'm just going to follow up this other lead. Yeah. To follow up on the sports car, we have Jim go to the factory sports car club. He gets in good with the guy putting up the derby poster. He has a quick throwaway of like, oh, that's a loner car pointing at the firebird mine whatever whatever whatever is in the shop um because there's all these there's these very fancy stock cars that this mechanic is you know dealing with that hurt there is a paper in there if anybody pursuing a doctorate uh listening to us wants to, I highly recommend writing a paper comparing,

uh, Peter's denial of Jesus to Jim Roberts, denial of the firebird, denial of the firebird. Oof is what I have to say about that, but this is a good con. I'm enjoying, I enjoy watching this con.

Yeah, this is the good, the good con of the episode. So it's a, it's a double layer con. There's a first level. And then when that doesn't work, he escalates to the second level so the first is you know he was at this other mechanic you know he saw this lady and he describes the porsche in technical detail

you wouldn't happen to know who i'm talking about right i just wanted to try and try and talk to her about something something and no lie she's a stone fox and I'd like to talk to her. But the guy's like, well, our membership record is confidential. Yeah. Okay. Well, to tell you the truth, it's not just that I want to talk to her. Here's something that I saw. And he talks about how this mechanic at the other auto club did something under her hood and then didn't fasten it all down correctly. And so the guy's like, well, then that could go at any moment. And he's like, yeah, send the pistons shooting up right through her seat. So I want to make sure that she knows about it because the guy who owns it, he'll never admit a mistake.

And she could be driving around on a time bomb right now. So he gets the pressure in. He gets the like, you're better than this other mechanic. So I'm appealing to you because you're a professional and you'll do the right thing. you because you're a professional and you'll do the right thing good on this guy for initially resisting when it when it felt like jim was a creeper coming on right like like like oh that angle let's switch to her her life is in danger angle or her car is in danger so he doesn't even have to look at the membership uh roster based on the car description he knows that that's it sounds like sandy lugmer to him and he gives jim the address so we cut to a personal parking spot in a parking garage with

her name spray painted on it and we see the fancy car pull up the woman that we had met as jean who is in fact sandy gets out of the car jim is creepily waiting behind a support pillar and uh surprises her he says that again it's not too late um right now you're an accessory only to attempted murder you don't want to be an accessory to murder some guy's taking shots at me i need to know why you were why you tried to hire me away from the val you know case she looks like she's panicked and she says no no it was not that way at all. She's an actress. She didn't even get paid for this gig.

It was a favor. And I was like, Oh boy. But, um, but, uh, the person she's doing this for said that Jim was working for his ex wife and causing

trouble. And he just wanted Jim to be out of the way so he could, you know, resolve things or whatever. Yeah. It's like, okay, so who did you do this favor for? And she says it was for Eric Gethner, who is Eric, the son-in-law, ex-son-in-law of Val.

And then Jim looks furious, storms off for the Firebird, and she just keeps calling after him. Keep me out of this. I just got this new gig and my career is just taking off and I can't afford to be in the papers. Like, keep me out of this my i just got this new gig and my career is just taking off and i can't afford to be in the papers like keep me out of this she's got this yeah this great line that's like i'm not an accessory i'm just starting to get picture parts yeah uh he peels out and she goes to a pay phone makes a phone call to uh brian my face blindness kicked in here. I was like, who is Brian? So this is the guy who originally

shot at Val, right? Yes. I did not recognize him, so I was like, who's this new character? But it became clear after a little while. I was kind of confused by this whole thing, to be perfectly honest. So she calls Brian to say, oh no, someone is on to us,

I guess. Yes. And I was so scared. I told him about Eric. So now he knows about Eric. She mentioned something like, and you know, I'm only doing this for the money. I told him about Eric and that he's trying to kill his mother-in-law, but I didn't mention you. Maybe Eric won't say anything. And then Brian says like, well, he won't say anything about me once I have a chance to shut him up. That is the end of the call. I felt like this was a scene from a different episode. This is my guess. This is, this is me reading too much into all of this, but my guess is this. You could do this entire episode without Brian. Yes. Have Eric do his own dirty work, wear a mask when he first tries to shoot Val, which just to be clear,

he did not. He hired someone to do that. But if you do that, you write Brian out. And Brian is there at the very beginning and now at the very end. And he exists for one purpose only. Right.

And we're going to find that out in just a moment. So the question is, how do you write him in? And I think that's why we end up with this weird, awkward, we need to show the audience that there's this other guy because we need to put this other guy into this situation. And I understand that. I guess I don't understand, like, did she lie to Jim when she said that she did it as a favor? Because she tells Brian that she's only doing it for the money yeah drives a porsche so like is that not her car but she has a parking space so what is that rich yeah that's fine if she's a she lied to jim in order to conceal

what's actually going on but she still told him the truth about eric it's a convolution here that i was more confused by than than added to interest in what's going on and in the end doesn't matter like that conversation could have just been like yeah i told him about eric i don't know what to do but there's all those other lines in there yeah i don't know why it's okay uh we move on from here yes jim goes back to the yacht club to talk to Eric, as Eric is also a member, of course. He tells Eric that whoever you hired made a try for me earlier today. And then Eric freaks out and throws his bag down.

He's like, I tried to call him off. But after Val saw him on the beach, he was determined to kill her because she saw him. And now, because Jim's been asking questions, he wants to kill Jim. Yes. Jim says, what questions? Because Jim really hasn't been doing much, right? It was Eric's key card that got Brian onto the lot.

So that would be the line of questioning that would bring him to it. Brian runs a flight school. So we're getting up to our big finale. Just a random fact we're going to throw in there. He and Sandy both take private lessons, which is how they all got connected together. Yeah. His plan here. So Val, she ruined Nancy.

She ruined his marriage. She's the reason that he can't see his kids. He can't see his kids. So I guess his plan was somehow if Val was killed, that would get Nancy back into the state. And then he could get his kids back. Yeah, it was like, yeah, it falls down. But then he says he didn't want to kill her. He just wanted to scare her, which is not consistent with Brian.

Yeah. But now he's apparently this is all gone horribly wrong and he's willing to go with Jim downtown to talk to Becker. Great. Eric is played by Ted Shackleford, who has a leading man face and has been in lots of soap operas. But in his credits, he has a show from 1994, 1995, where he has a leading role in this show called Space Precinct. The name's Brogan. Lieutenant Brogan.

For 20 years I was with the NYPD. Now? Well, let's just say I've transferred to another precinct. Which I now want to watch just for that title. Yes! Oh my god. He grew up. Brogan and his partner,

Jack Haldane must adjust to living in another solar system and investigating crimes being committed by aliens as well as humans. I have seen episodes of this. Of course you have. So the creator is Jerry Anderson, who's also the, I think the creator of Space 1999. And I think I might have seen that because of Space 1999.

Because it sounds so familiar. And looking at the picture of it, I'm like... There's a 2013 documentary called Space Precinct Legacy. And the tagline is, The Story of the Most Ambitious British Television Series Ever Made. Wow. All right. All right.

Good to know. Note that for later. Stretch goal. Anyway, Jim and Eric are in the Firebird and then we see a mysterious helicopter start following them from the air. Jim notices and then Eric sees it and he's like, it's Brian. He's crazy. Like, what's he trying to do?

Kill us? I believe that's also in the preview montage. And then we have the exciting helicopter chase scene. Okay. So first of all, technically accomplished. I'm trying to think. I've got some things written down here. My first thing is, oh, flight school.

Like when they first mentioned it, I was like, here's the copter. Right. I know there's a helicopter coming. I saw the preview montage. Yes. By season five, I feel like they've earned a copter chase. Oh, sure. I feel like they've earned it. I'm not saying that the show needs a copter chase, but at some point you could just say, here it is. You can have a few more calories in this meal. You've been good. Sure. So a thing about a copter chase is that there's a few things they do with the car but it's not as tricky as the car chases are right like and by tricky i

mean like technically it is tricky to do it but i mean like there's not a lot of like tactical moves that you can make in the car and they're out on an airfield so like a lot of it is just clear open sky like that's the whole point to having an airfield where out on an airfield. So like a lot of it is just clear, open sky. Like that's the whole point to having an airfield where you have an airfield. Right. It's like it's flat ground or whatever. So there's some fast driving. There's some interesting moments where they clearly don't want to actually have the copter come down and hit the roof of the car.

and hit the roof of the car. So they have the copter in one shot, and then you have the interior of the car and the sound of the copter hitting the roof and them describing that that is what's happening. And it's fine. That's great. That sticks in my head. There's a point midway where Eric turns to Jim and says,

you're pretty good at this. Yes, I wrote that one down too. And I'm just like, yeah, no. Also, kudos to Brian because he's pretty good at this. Apparently. They have him flying into hangars and through. Like, I've never flown a helicopter. I cannot imagine most of these things are easy to do with a helicopter.

Like, probably the stunt work done here, it looked good. And I think probably was done quite well. I wrote down, that's a hell of a pilot. And then I wrote down, holy f***, explosion. I know, right? And I did not expect this ending. I don't know why I didn't expect this. I expected, I don't know what I was expecting.

Maybe for Jim to drive into some place and come out a way that the helicopter wasn't expecting. Right, or the helicopter to get caught in a tree or something yeah but he drives into a hangar the helicopter this is the second hangar they've done this in right well they established that the helicopter is willing to follow them in the hangar by going through the first one yes and then they go into the second one and that helicopter comes in and then you see them come out where the doors are just wide enough open for the Firebird to get through. And then there's this explosion behind them. And I was actually stunned by it. I don't want to say I'm jaded, but like the year is 2019. How many Fast and Furiouses have we seen?

He didn't have the rock hanging out of his car window, holding onto the helicopter with a chain. And still I enjoyed this. My response was more like, wait, so is Brian dead? Right. Did they just kill Brian? That seems unlike the Rockford files. Yeah.

Even to the point where there's a few moments after the explosion where I'm like, so how does he survive that? There's no trick here. He's dead. They killed Brian. There's an explosion. Brian's gone. The end.

So we cut from the explosion to Val thanking Rocky for the chili he brought by. She can't wait to try it. She's still just so overwhelmed and can't understand why two people wanted to kill her. Jim explains that Eric thought he'd get his kids back somehow and that for the first attempt Joe Sicarian saw an opportunity to keep her quiet about this affair

and so he took it. But thankfully they're both incompetent and neither of them achieved their goal. And Rocky says that well it's all over now and that's what counts val thanks jim uh they get another kiss here and then she says you know uh she's been having trouble with her car like the starter or something maybe he should come over when he has some time and take a look um and jim gets this great look on his face uh as she walks

away with the uh the big big serving bowl full of chili. It's not like a container. It's like a big stainless steel catering bowl. With saran wrap over the top. The way she was carrying that, I don't know. This is adult Epi going, God damn it, you're going to ruin your clothes. You're going to spill that chili. Well, she has to go because it's so crazy now that she's running.

She doesn't have the assistant, so everything's crazy with the clients and whatnot. So as she leaves, Rocky says, seeing her again after all this time. She's had a really rough life. She's been through so much, and he starts to think in how he never visits, and he never gives her a call around Christmastime. What I mean is it seeing her again? Just made me feel kind of guilty. End our episode with the two of them sharing a look where I think the look on

Rocky's face is that he finally gets what Jim is trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. In that last moment of the episode. And that is guilt. Some life. Some life. All right. So, uh, yeah. So I, like, the episode and that is guilt some life some life all right so uh yeah so i like uh it's a little late now we've gone through it we've all seen it we've all seen it it's not a rockford files that

i'd be like hey you want to just have a fun rockford files time here's one that ends in a helicopter chase like instead i would be like oh here's one of the ones that kind of gets a little dark. Trying to put my finger on what leaves me feeling very unsatisfied about this episode. I do think the end is very abrupt. I mean, so kind of like mystery story-wise, the pacing on this

one's real weird to me. It's kind of slow burn, slow burn, slow burn, red herring. Yeah. Resolution, resolution. That works as a story, slow burn, red herring. Yeah. Resolution, resolution. That works as a story, but it wasn't that interesting to me, I guess. The motivation was a little unclear. Yeah.

Kind of from all parties. Yeah. I'm going to go with the theory that this is two episodes jammed together. It feels like that to me. Like an episode of visuals that they didn't have a story to hang on moments and action scenes and things like that. And then they had this, this more serious story about Jim's personal history. And they kind of slapped them on top of each other. It's functional.

You can make that work, but it's like the joints aren't perfect. Yeah. And then I think there's something about the emotional arc of the episode doesn't have any catharsis. Yeah. Nobody seems to learn anything. Yeah.

I don't get the sense that Jim has achieved any resolution with his feelings of guilt. And I don't feel like she's learned anything about herself. Yeah, the closest we've got is that Rocky might have learned something about her. Right. Feels not very satisfying when so many of these episodes do, even when they have a lot of plot going on, also manage to give us an emotional arc that goes somewhere.

So, I don't know. I'm being kind of a negative Nathan today. I had a visceral response to the toxic relationship that was laid out in front of us. Yeah. And then was not brought back into it by the other elements of the show that in another episode might have been just fun.

And in this one, we're kind of like, yeah, okay, that stuff happened. But you liked it more, it sounds like. Yeah, I liked it. I think we're both informing it with our own personal history. Oh, absolutely. And it's split two different ways there. I was like, yeah, drag me. It sounds like you were ready to wallow in that particular pool.

Yeah. And I was like, nope, don't want to get in the water. Well, okay. Let's be artistic about this. Yeah. We talked about that meal he had with her, right? Like the ribs and the cottage fries that he was looking forward to. And then he clearly wasn't going to enjoy the meal because of what happened, right?

I think that that is this metaphor for the whole episode. I think that that is this metaphor for the whole episode, because so much of our enjoyment of things is not the thing itself, but everything around it when it happened. And like, I could definitely see this episode going the other way for me. And I'm just coming out of it going, oof. There are gaps gaps right like we we talk about the the uh moments where afterwards you think about it when you're doing your podcast and you're like wait a minute why is he trying to kill her i mean it makes sense if you think that everyone is is not very smart and everyone's not very smart and thinks that killing someone is a solution yeah uh because there's plenty of not smart people out there who don't then hire a

contract killer. Yeah. With all of their flight school money. Well, so your point about our enjoyment of a thing is not just the thing. It is all the things we bring to the thing. Right. Right. Yeah. I think anyone who spends any time critically thinking about what they enjoy, that is something that you end up having to consider. It is valid to have responses to something based entirely on your relationship with it that aren't like, quote, objective, right? I don't think either of us, and if anyone listening is like, but you've been trying to be objective this whole time, then we have been doing a bad job of explaining how we approach the show. Because it's not about objectively analyzing it's kind of like

coming to this thing many many years later as the people we are here's all things i like about it and then sometimes it does stuff i don't like that doesn't mean that the it's a failure of an episode or a show like if anything in the episode is has quote-unquote failed i think it's character motivation and kind of syncing up why these attempted murders were happening in the first place and giving us a little more to go on than like i have a psycho flying school instructor that i can just hire to try and kill my my ex mother-in-law and then who won't give up no matter what, seems a little weak to me structurally. I don't think the character of Val is, I think that's a great character. And I think her dialogue's good. I think the way that her relationship with Jim is portrayed on screen

is very, or very deftly handled to not make her a pure villain and not make her a stereotype. But my encounter with that character is my encounter with the character that I do not want to empathize with. And then that kind of brings down my enjoyment of the things that are good in the episode, like all the family stuff with Rocky and seeing LJ and, you know, that kind of stuff. To be perfectly clear about where I'm trying to parse my reaction here. I just finished watching a series of lectures about the mathematical concept of chaos. These are systems where small changes lead to drastically different outcomes. Sure. The classical example is a pendulum where if you take two pendulums and you

let them go, they tend to behave the same way. But if you put on these two pendulums a second arm and then let them go from as close to the same starting positions as you can, they will soon become follow very different patterns. Right. In a very broad way that's what uh the mathematical concept of chaos is about anyways the point is i think that there's certain bits of fiction uh certain rockford files episodes that are like the pendulum where it doesn't really matter you just kind of get into it and you can kind of get the groove and you get out of it and everyone's kind of in the same spot and then there are episodes where small differences in where you come in have larger things coming out.

I think it is a metaphor that makes sense. Yeah. You know more about it than I do. So you are the source of authority on this matter. Oh, God damn it. I think that as, as we saw poor Jim did not end up making any money on this adventure, turning down the $500.

So, right, where did that $500 come from? Okay, whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Our good friend Jim Rockford did not make any money on his endeavors here. I feel like we've earned our $200 for this day. What do you think, Epi? I would agree. $200 and a bowl full of butterscotch chili. Yeah. As always, thank you for listening and hanging with us through maybe not all of the highlights of the show, but even

here, there's some good stuff. So if you like helicopter explosions, this is the episode for you. With all that in our past, we'll look to the future and be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.