Two Hundred A Day - Episode 58: The Battle-Ax and the Exploding Cigar

Episode Date: October 13, 2019

Nathan and Eppy talk about S5E14 The Battle-Ax and the Exploding Cigar. In some ways a parody of spy thrillers, Jim gets accidentally drawn into a plot by a national security operative that involves illegal gun-running - and in short order the FBI and ATF are also involved. Jim teams up with the no-nonsense Mrs. Bateman, head of the Federal Building steno pool, to figure out what happened to one of her secretaries, and in the process unravel this covert operation. It's a fun romp! 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.

Miss Hallroyd, City Federal, your lost check still hasn't arrived. It's impossible for us to lose checks, so unless we receive full payment by noon today, we'll foreclose. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidion Ravishaw. And today we are sticking with our Season 5 choices and going into Episode 14, The Battle Axe and the Exploding Cigar. That is a delightful title. Season 5 has the, like, we're going to do weird titles now thing going on. If you scroll through a list of the titles, there's some of the good ones like the Nehru jacket one is quite fun. With the French heel back, can the Nehru jacket be far behind?

Yeah. So, I mean, we just, you and I just talked about this, but maybe we should mention it for our listeners that you've done a rundown of where we've done our episodes. You know, ones we've covered in season five, seems to be the final frontier, right? Yes. We have the most remaining episodes to

talk about in this season. Yeah. So, which is kind of an artifact of a couple things. One is that when we first started the show, the first three seasons were available for streaming on Hulu. So we did a lot from those because we wanted to make sure that if someone wanted to watch the episodes,

they were from the selection available. Once those went off and it was no longer streaming anywhere, then it was kind of like the floodgates were opened in terms of our choices. So since then it's been hopping around by inclination, by audience request, and by, you know, whenever we get into kind of a bit of a groove, like doing the Gandhi episodes back to back, like that kind of thing. I think I probably mentioned this every time we talk about a season five episode, but season four is when the Rockford Files won a bunch of Emmys. So best, best dramatic series.

I believe James Garner won an Emmy and that's when Rita Moreno won an Emmy for paper palace and, and the downward slide of audience since from the high of the first season had evened out. So it wasn't like the top show or anything, but it was dramatically acclaimed and had a solid spot in the TV lineup. Uh, whatever,

whatever night it was, the way I read it is that they're a bit, they're kind of emboldened to do weirder stuff. Once all of those milestones had been kind of achieved. So season five has some of the weirder episodes. That's a good read. Uh, I mean,

I don't know if it's true, but I would, I'm happy to believe it. In this episode, I think we'll find a little bit of that weirdness. Yeah, I think it might bear out the theory a little bit. It's experimental in certain ways. It's experimental in certain ways, but it's also very, I was going to say retro, but that's not really the right word. It's experimental in some ways for the Rockford Files, but also in ways in which it seems like it is, it would be totally normal on a different kind of show.

Yeah. This feels like the Rockford Files, I almost, I kind of want to say spoofing something else that's happening at that time, right? Maybe something more Mission Impossible or Man From U.N.C.L.E. or, you know, like some sort of spy show. This is what, 79 episode? Yeah, it's early 79.

So stuff like the outfits and stuff like that definitely have the later 70s kind of vibe to them. Can we, I guess, before we jump into the show can we talk a little bit about uh jim's suit and the way it interacts with the television set i don't know if this happened to you but like the plaid the pattern on his suit would be okay and then they would switch to another camera and it would just be like jim was actually an octopus disguised as jim flashing its bioluminescence at me you got the pattern on the suit yeah started like and that may be a product of like the current resolution on my television set or how my vcr

interacts with my television set and not like not a thing that would have happened back in the day but I definitely had a like what is happening here the main thing that I noticed was his uh pale yellow shirt with the pop collar not popped but like yeah the style of that shirt is where it has the high collar that kind of goes over the top of the suit jacket. Yeah. The man looks good in pale yellow. Don't get me wrong. But some of the scenes are night scenes. And for whatever reason, whenever there was a night scene,

it was like top button, unbuttoned, big lapel, yellow shirt. That popped out to me as a strong, strong fashion choice. I mean, so one of the reasons why this might feel a little different is because, I mean, we've had a long string of like very central creative voices. We've had a lot of Juanita Bartlett scripts. Yeah. And this one is this one is three credits for the writing. There's two story credits and then there are the teleplay credit. writing there's two story credits and then they're the teleplay credit so story by man rubin and michael wagner and then teleplay by rogers turrentine so rogers turrentine apparently

ended up uh this was one of his first tv credits he ended up becoming buddies with probably through this with david chase and worked on a lot of david chase later. And also some Magnum PI, where he actually did, you know, story, not just the teleplays. Michael Wagner, I didn't find out a lot about him online. He did tons of TV. He ended up a staff writer for Hill Street Blues. So he has 60 Hill Street Blues credits. Wow. Which sounds like a lot of Hill Street Blues.

A single Rockford Files. Yeah, this is just the one. I think all these guys, this is just the one Rockford Files that they did. Yeah. And then Man Reuben, also tons of TV. Hold on. Sorry, I got to stop you. You're burying the lead.

I never know which of the obscure properties someone's worked on is going to be the one that jumps out to you. is going to be the one that jumps out to you. Well, this one, Michael Wagner, a man of mystery by his IMDb bio, which is how I judge all people. The obscure one I'm thinking of is, all right, do you remember the sci-fi television show Star Trek? There was a sequel in the late 80s, early 90s

called Star Trek The Next Generation. And he wrote three episodes of that. That's true. I glossed over that. That's my bad. I felt like I was talking about him too much, so I moved on. Anyway, Man Rubin. Yes.

Again, tons of TV and some feature film credits. Also wrote for DC's Strange Adventures and Mysteries in Space. Oh. wrote for DC's Strange Adventures and Mysteries in Space, and had 15 short stories in Alfred Hitchcock Magazine. Nice. So it seemed like an interesting person. I didn't do too much digging on what any of those were. Right. So when I went over that, I was like,

oh, maybe this is one of those, like, a story that is adapted from some other thing. But I don't get that feeling here necessarily. I'm just looking at Man Rubin's catalog. If he does have Mission Impossible, I think I've seen his Six Million Dollar Man. Yeah, I've seen his Six Million Dollar Man. That was a good one. I mean, he wrote some Manix episodes.

Yeah, he had a Fugitive episode. Yeah, he was all over the place. Yeah, he's written for everybody everywhere, so it doesn't... But those sci-fi writer connections are always one that I think we like to see. Neither one of us is adopting the standpoint that this was a script written for something other than rockford files and then turned into rockford files this feels like rockford files making a comment on something right or a script that could be for a number of shows and this is how it works for rockford versus how it would work for like kojak um and this is one of uh ixon's nine Rockford Files directorial

efforts. We've seen him before directing the Mayor's Committee from Dear Luke Falls and Kill the Messenger We went over this I believe in Mayor's Committee from Dear Luke Falls we talked about him a little bit more He was an actor on Broadway

and ended up friends with Sidney Poitier, was in The Raisin in the Sun. Yeah. Broadway show and movie. He was in Hogan's Heroes in like an ensemble role. And he was an important figure in the African-American filmmaking community. And he was an activist against stereotypical roles for black actors. Yes. I have been on his imdb page before uh which is kind of interesting considering some elements in this episode oh yeah right well we could talk about those in this yeah and this episode has lots of

uh formal elements that are kind of send-ups of the genre. And I wonder how much of that is his hand versus like the editing room, you know? Yeah, I'm curious about that. That's not my theory, but I'm not, but I totally agree with what you're saying there. Well, let's get into it. We've been here long enough. I believe that our preview montage is short and sweet. We start off seeing that Rockford's in jail, which is lovely. I mean, how can you not want to watch an episode where he starts off in jail? We hear the National Intelligence Agency. And so we type exclamation points into our notes because what the hell, Rockford? What are you into now?

And we see some wiretapping and wonderful line about um i didn't write down the first part of this but it was just like oh your case is getting away or whatever and he's like are you kidding i'll sink it if i have to referring to a boat that's about to leave like that's rockford who's who's got he's a dog with a bone right like he's he's not letting us get away and it ends with a dramatic dive from said boat into the water. However, we do not see who's doing the diving. No. Hello, listeners.

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Tell a friend who you think would like it. And check out patreon.com slash 200aday to see if becoming a patron is right for you. Well, we come into this one with our title right at the start and our credits play over the soothing tones of Rockford Files music. Jim driving a Cadillac down some desert-looking roads. He has, there's a fellow in the passenger seat. We'll shortly learn this is Bernie Petrankis. Um, who's just throwing back slugs of some kind of brown liquor.

Uh, while Jim gives him the side eye. Uh, he's got lots of nice mixed metaphors to toss out about life, which I'm enjoying spilled milk under the bridge, a little soliloquy about, this is the first day of the soliloquy about, uh, this is the first day of the rest of his life.

Look forward, not back. Uh, some highway patrol vehicle, uh, sees them drive by. They see the passenger with the open container and pull out to follow. And they have some dialogue to establish that that's why they are following.

And then a call comes over the police scanner for a stolen vehicle. And it is the make and license plate of the Cadillac that is in front of them. So they hit the sirens, pull the car over. There's a great moment as they're pulling over where Jim tells Bernie to chug a lug or something like that. I told you you shouldn't be drinking that where people could see it. And as these two cops are acting on a call of a stolen vehicle, they demand for the guys to get out of the car. They start handcuffing them. Jim asks if they've read the Constitution recently.

And the cop says, well, there's not a lot in it about stolen cars. And so Jim is, of course, aghast that this is he could be implicated in such a crime. And they open the trunk of the car and turns out it is full of

guns and ammunition. Yes. I'm going to go on record right now and say that I love this opening because I have no clue what is happening. This is a true in-media res. Yeah. So we don't know who this guy next to Jim is. I mean, we'll learn his name. jim is i mean we'll learn his name uh they seem friendly enough that this guy would sit in the car next to him drinking and tell him that uh this is the the first day of the rest of his life and

blah blah blah jim's not in his car this isn't this is this is a like a distinctly non-jim car yeah right like this is not the kind of car that jim would be in we don't know why jim would be driving it uh when we hear that it's stolen we're like oh so this is the hook uh somebody has tricked him into taking a stolen car and then the cop is like we have probable cause and that makes it uh kind of nice because we can go all the way and they pop the trunk and there are all of these guns in there and just like okay like every now you're like i'm gonna need some answers soon because because what is going what is that going on and someone i wrote this down i don't know who said it but somebody just shouted holy leroy uh and that was that was my thought too exactly maybe i shouted it maybe i just wrote down what

i said in the room well we cut from that to our establishing shot of the federal building in la and the first of this distinctive formal it's not a motif it's a it's a technique uh it's a it's a device which is the typewriter sound effect while the like computery font is typed onto the screen one letter at a time in the lower left hand corner 1500 hours federal building la yeah this occurs over three days basically it's like the 10th 11th 12th or something like that so it does the date it gives you military time location um and uh that's the first indication to me that's like all right what ride are we on like it's so it feels like a parody yes but i don't know if it was supposed to be a parody at the time or just because of my media diet, that effect is a parody effect now. You know?

Yeah. Right. So when we say computery words, right, computery font, what we're talking about is the font that if you look on your checkbook. Oh, God. Remember checkbooks? Anyways, there's a font that certainly in the 70s, the reason why this font exists is because computers at that time could read it. This is the type of thing, I don't know why I'm explaining this.

What I'm trying to say is that was definitely at that time used to make it look futuristic or cutting edge. Maybe not futuristic, but cutting edge. I think this has to be parody. Apparently I've got many – or this show is making fun of the idea that the government can do super spy stuff that we see in Mission Impossible or – I mean Man From U.N.C.L.E. was tongue-in-cheek anyway. So that would – but you know what I mean. Like we're going to find – we're going to run into spies here. We know that. It was in the opening montage, National Intelligence Agency.

And they are not going to be good and effective spies. They're going to be the opposite of that. And I think that that's why this font and this was done was sort of like to give it that air so that it felt. It has that like spy, counter-spy... Yeah. Intelligence. Right. You don't know who's doing what, why kind of thing.

And nobody else in this is going to live up to that. The plot is going to be that, but the characters absolutely won't. And that's great. The plot is going to be that, but the characters absolutely won't. And that's great. This effect, this type is called MICR, Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. Nice. So it's a standard that was used to print characters so that computers could read them at high speeds. And I guess so there are different literal fonts that accord to this standard, but it's M-I-C-R.

So if you search for that or if you go to any free font site and search for checkbook font, there's a pretty popular one that is just a digital version of what these generally look like. If you are having a hard time envisioning what this is. Like I said, this is like at that time, that would have been what the future looked like. So it was meant to be like, get ready for a cutting edge story of spy thrills and chills. And oh, yeah, we're in for something much better. So we get into the federal building. Jim is meeting with his lawyer. Unfortunately, his pal Cooper is out of town.

So Beth Davenport is no longer in the picture, as Gretchen Corbett is no longer on the show. Coop is his new lawyer buddy, who we still haven't done the episode where he actually arrives, I believe. But we don't need to deal with him because he's not in this episode either. So there's this very young guy who's like, oh, I'm a Harvard Law grad. I will, I'll be fine. And I think Jim does not think that he'll be fine. As his advice is, just tell it like it was.

A new character runs into this office, blows by everyone to go into the inner office of the FBI agent that we'll shortly be looking at. And I think this is where it's like, OK, this is for humor because we just had 1500 hours, blah, blah, blah. Now we have 1505 hours. Yes. Inside this office. uh, inside this office. And this guy, Tony, uh, Moosey or Moosey, uh, who's from the ATF and the treasury department, um, is coming to see FBI agent Spelling, who is the FBI agent who has picked up Jim and, uh, uh, Bernie for this hot car that was full of guns.

Yes. And the thing to know about Tony is that he is one groovy cat. Yeah, he's like, hang loose. We have a righteous interest in this. He is a new breed of G-man. And so Spelling says that the FBI isn't about to hand over this case, but Moosey, I this case, but Musia. It's pronounced like once or twice in the show, and I still couldn't figure out what they were saying.

Agent Tony. Yes. Agent Tony says that these guns were probably part of a theft from this military base in Nevada. from this military base in Nevada. And everybody knows that the FBI is only on this because they always pop hot cars so that their stats look good at the end of the year. But this involves alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. So it should be his case.

You know, the guy was drinking, the guns, obviously. And I think there was a reference to cigars at some point, right? Yeah. I think we'll find out that this guy in the car is it yeah he's like a he works for like a tobacco company or something yeah yeah so spelling says like okay go ahead and then asks yes you've uh had some experience with firearms huh oh about two months uh before that i was mostly in tobacco this show is a catalog of great incidental characters.

This character isn't just incidental. He comes in a few times during this episode. But we just get right off the bat that they know how to establish this character. He is cocky and self-sure in such a way. He just storms past everyone into this guy's office because he belongs there. And then he takes part of the case and the guy's like fine uh the uh i shouldn't say the guy agent spelling is like okay you know like you can have this or whatever but it's he is very self-sure and he probably shouldn't be as self-sure as he is right he he doesn't know what he's actually into here

as self-sure as he is. He doesn't know what he's actually into here. Agent Tony goes to interrogate Bernie in an interrogation room, and then Jim comes in to give his statement to Spelling in Spelling's office. Before we get into that sequence, Agent Tony

comes out of the interrogation room, sees a secretary at the water fountain, and basically charms her into like hey i need you to come take some dictation when clearly she's not supposed to she's supposed to go back to the stenopool but he's clearly such this young good-looking guy right yeah that she uh she's like okay what can it hurt yeah and uh the camera you know as they go back into the room, the camera shows us that there's a slightly older dark haired woman who sees that interaction and then like looks kind of about it. And she stalks off.

This plays into some of my favorite kinds of humor here. We now have two government agencies. We have the trappings of the show telling us that this is a spy thriller. government agencies we have the trappings of the show telling us that this is a spy thriller and the obvious point of contention the obvious note the dun dun dun here is that somebody is upset with a co-worker from the steno pool right and that's that's the hook for the entire like that's why everything in this episode happens yes Yes. Right? It's because that woman saw this secretary, Stacy, I believe, go into that room when she wasn't supposed to. As experienced Rockford Files viewers, the whole time we're like, Rockford doesn't know it quite yet, but he is in way over his head. And then we see this moment and we're like, this is it.

This is Rockford's in. This is where rockford can play and that's i love it so now we go into this sequence where they cut back and forth between their two statements we start with 1600 hours agent spelling and jim saying his first sentence and then it cuts to the interrogation room 1605 right like there's these five minute increments um and then it just cuts back and forth but uh basically they each tell the same story making it sound like the other guy is the one who had the car um so jim went to vegas gambled away all his money wanted wanted to make one more effort at the last chance.

Ended up not making it there. They wouldn't let him have his car because he owes $200 to the casino that they loaned him to gamble before they let him get his car out. So then he ended up running into Bernie, who was leaving and offered him a ride. And then it's cutting back and forth. And Bernie's saying that, you know, I was tapped out. You know, this guy offered me a ride in his car. Jim says that he didn't know that the catch was that Bernie was going to talk the whole time. Yes.

And then Bernie says that, you know, we were just riding along and he kept on talking. And he said something about a trunk full of poppers right before we got pulled over. And this answers the question that I had the whole time that I didn't really think about. Because for whatever reason, I thought that when he talked about having to get his car out, he was talking about that Cadillac. But no, the Firebird's still in Vegas, right? That's why there's no Firebird's still in Vegas right that's why there's no Firebird in this episode yep he's he's got it uh in in Hawk they're holding on to

it until he can pay them the $200 and I don't want to give it away but uh he's not earning a lot of money this episode he just needs to work for one day. Just one. Yeah, just one day. 1630, Stenopool. So the dark-haired woman who saw the secretary get taken away by Agent Tony comes in to talk to Mrs. Bateman. Mrs. Bateman is the administrator. She's the head of the stenographer's pool. Yes. It's somebody, a co-worker being upset who's about to report it.

And one who's gossipy because later she shares some gossip after saying, you know I don't gossip. Yes. So Mrs. Bateman, I think the best word to describe her is officious. Yes. But she, I mean, the other way to describe her is that she's the titular battleaxe, but she is definitely a by the books kind of gal. She is not happy that, that regulations are not being abided by. As she goes to Spelling's office, she passes the interrogation room, and she sees what I describe in my notes as a guy with a face looking through the window. We'll come back to the guy with a face in a second.

But it's important that she sees him in that moment. Then she walks into Spelling's office, interrupts his interrogation of Jim, and Spelling immediately, like, stands up. Mrs. Bateman, can I help you? You can be of great help to me, Mr. Spelling immediately, like, stands up. Mrs. Bateman, can I help you? You can be of great help to me, Mr. Spelling, if you will simply comply with the departmental guidelines regarding steno services. You'll have to excuse me, but I'm somewhat at a disadvantage.

Could you tell me what you're referring to? And uses his most polite, formal voice with her. Yes. Which is an amazing way of immediately establishing the relationship that this woman, who is clearly an administrative official in this office, has with these government agents who are the ones who are supposed to have all the power. He says that he's very sorry, but he's in the dark on this. He doesn't know what she's talking about. She explains and he's like, oh, that must have been Agent Musia in the interrogation room and sends her back that way.

And she goes to handle that business. Those ATF boys have been known to bend the rules. And then Jim has a smart aleck comment and Spelling says, just talk guns. Like he immediately drops back into like no i'm in charge here it's just lovely status play he clearly has more authority than she does but at the office she can bring his life to a standstill right yeah so he's a pushover when it comes to uh mrs bateman which is which great. So she goes back into the hall where she confronts Mr. Donegan, who is the guy with the face, and asks why he's, you know,

is he involved with this interrogation or something? And he says, no, no, he was just down there to go to the bathroom as the one upstairs was broken, clearly lying. Yeah. And gets away from uh from that door she walks in again interrupting this interrogation scolds stacy the stenographer uh tells her to get back to work uh and then tells agent tony that she's going to file an official report about this untoward you know action that he's taken when she leaves she looks down the

hallway and sees the so the elevator doors are closing as stacy's in the elevator and then this guy donagan who said he was down there just for the bathroom jumps over and like shoves his arm in so that it opens so that he can go in to the same elevator with Stacy. Again, suspicious move. Yes. Nothing about this is natural. So Mrs. Bateman, Mrs. Eleanor Bateman, as we learn, is played by Marge Redmond, who I could have sworn was in other episodes, but maybe there are some other kind of physically similar actresses in other episodes because this is uh her only um rockford appearance she was in a show called the flying nun which i

assume is where the the concept slash reference to the flying nun comes from uh yeah i i mean i yeah I mean I remember seeing this show she had a recurring role on Matlock and in kind of a coming full circle thing she was in the final episode of Nichols which was the Juanita Bartlett James Garner show

that did not do well that kind of was the precursor to the Rockford files in a lot of ways. She's great. This is a fun role. So the outcome of all these statements and interrogations is that Agent Spelling throws Jim and Bernard into county jail for the night.

Jim asks his lawyer what he's going to do about this, and his lawyer is very discouraged. Yes. My notes just say, Jim needs Beth. And we never see this young man again. 2,100 hours.

County jail. An officer comes in and pulls out Bernie. Apparently he's gotten bailed out. Jim asks, Hey, what about Jim Rockford? Don't you have anything on Jim Rockford?

He is ignored by the guard and goes back to sit on his cot with a cigarette. The plot starts to thicken as you know, why is this guy getting bailed out? This is the scene where Jim is yelling through the bars, deputy, deputy, the other inmates start mocking him off camera. Poor Jim. So we go from there to Petrankis, as everyone starts referring to him from here on out.

Our Bernie Petrankus. Petrankus is in a taxi and he's dropped off in kind of a random lot where he comes up on an extremely fly custom convertible with painted flames on the sides. This car. painted flames on the sides. This car. It's funny. Cause it's like, like it is clearly a, like,

Oh, this is all custom. And it's this whole kind of like, I don't know, jive kind of infused character. And it's supposed to be all fancy, but the actual painting of the flames is kind of like, this is the best we could do in the time we had.

Like, it's not like professional. It's not like beautifully airbrushed. It's kind of like this is the best we could do in the time we had like it's not like yeah professional it's not like beautifully airbrushed it's kind of like painted on um like we're gonna find out more about this character in a little while it feels like a deliverance to how over the top this is uh the car and and uh the way this character speaks and everything. So Bernie's meeting this black guy in his car. He has big sideburns. He has like kind of loud clothes. He uses kind of over the top jivey language.

As the scene unfolds, I was like, OK, this is interesting considering the director. Yeah. As it seems like the kind of thing that is, I mean, you know, whatever. I'm sure he's working with whatever he has to work with as a functional matter. But I was like, oh, this seems like an odd fit. But it turns out that this is, there is a, there is a turn. You know, there's a reveal about this. Yeah, there's a deliberateness to what's going on here. So he wants the demonstrators back.

He gave Bernie some guns to prove whatever stock he had. So we're learning that Petrankis is in fact the gun runner here in this deal. So he was supposed to trade those back for the factory merch.

Unfortunately he can't because the FBI, you know, popped the car and he explains here that Unfortunately, he can't because the FBI, you know, popped the car. And he explains here that his ex sometimes goes on a bender, decides that she hates him and calls him calls in his car as stolen. Yes. So it just happens sometimes, which I assume is what has actually happened. Yeah. There's no other explanation for that particular event. So we got to assume. Right. Because as the plot unfolds, we see that the fact that the FBI found this car with the guns in it is a problem. Like that was not the plan. Yeah, exactly. But he says that he got out of jail on some loophole. Opening the trunk was a legal search and seizure which i

thought was interesting because i specifically said they specifically set up the police search as saying oh we have probable cause yeah but as we learn again there's a little behind the scenes here so maybe that's just what he was told i think is what you're supposed to take away from that yeah somebody's pulling someone's ticket here. Like this is not. Yeah, it's not straightforward. It contradicts what we've witnessed. And I think we're supposed to know that it's contradicting that what we witnessed.

Yeah. This this episode has lots of things that maybe go like, huh? And then after another couple of scenes went, oh, yeah, yeah. I was right to question that. Okay. I was supposed to get hung up on that detail. Yes. Well, since the cops are involved, it's going to be more difficult.

And our gun runner guy wants another 10K over the 75,000 they've already agreed on. And they have to do the delivery tonight at midnight. Petrangus does not seem very happy about this, but he says, you know, he'll do what he can. And once he gets out, the convertible pops up with hella rad hydraulics front and back.

And that slowly moseys off screen. It takes its time doing that too. I do enjoy that they're like, no, we're just going to sit and watch this. We paid to have this car do this. Right. So 2100 hours is nine o'clock, right?

Yes. 9 p.m. So 9 p.m. Bernie gets bailed out. This happens in daylight. So I assume this is the next morning, probably. They don't actually do a ticker over this. And then 10 hundred hours, Jim barges into Agent Spelling's office So I assume this is the next morning, probably. They don't actually do a ticker over this.

And then, 10 hundred hours, Jim barges into Agent Spelling's office, wanting to know why Petrankis got sprung. He has a line where he says he spent a lot of time and money making bail this morning. And he wants to know what's going on, because clearly, why would they let him go without letting Jim go at the same time? And his lawyer did, you know, was trying to find out when, you know, some some paperwork thing when he was supposed to arrive for a hearing or something. Yeah. And there's no computer record of Petrankis checking in or out of the county jail. Spelling doesn't know what he's talking about. You know, it seems very genuinely like that doesn't make any sense. There has to be a record, right? He says, there's a copy of the statement on microfilm. I don't have it on my desk yet.

It probably got hung up in the system somewhere. But if Jim is concerned about the paperwork, go talk to the steno pool. And so spelling tells Jim how the ATF agent grabbed one of the secretaries. Like, I know there's a record because I know that the ATF guy took a secretary to take his dictation. Because I got yelled at about it, right? You were here. Yeah.

Jim leaves with a wonderful line of, because they're going back and forth about like getting paperwork, right? This is the federal government. Now I know why my old man got 111 medicare cards sent to him not one of them had his name on it so good uh but after jim leaves spelling does pick up the phone and calls over to the jail to find out what happened so jim has now planted the seed with spelling of like oh something weird is going on, right? Mm-hmm. Quick aside, a number of years ago, the Chicago transit system turned over to a new like fare card vendor and a new system for putting money on a card and whatnot. They had all kinds of problems with it, including people would get multiple cards in their own name or they would get a bunch of strangers cards that had all been sent to their address.

Wow. And there was a story. So there are stories in the paper about like, Oh, the stupid stuff that venture is doing. And I think one of the stories was something like someone who had a PO box when it opened it and it had a hundred venture cards in it that were all like to the same name or something like that.

Like the system just duplicated his request a hundred times or something. I understand how that kind of thing can happen is what I'm saying. All right. So that was 10,000 hours. 10, 15 hours. Officer of the Steno Chief. So we start with this great establishing dictation from Mrs. Bateman. It is not the act of pilfering

that concerns us. It is the attitude that condones it. That presumes it's alright because no individual is deprived of anything. But it is the individual that comprises the system. And we are each to some degree diminished

by the crime against the whole. So it is imperative that we stop this filching of supplies. We are policing the members of the staff for their own good and for the good of the department. And we must encourage them to police each other. It's like, this lady is a cop. I, like my notes, I say, like, I love characters like this lady is a cop i uh i like my notes i say like i love characters like this those who have like just a box of power like here here's the perimeter this is where all your power is and they wield that like it was the most important thing in the world right she is

surrounded with actual cops but she she's the one who who is so by the book and so strict you know especially like compared to uh spelling right who's the atf guy walks in is like i want a piece of this case he's like all right you've got a piece you know what i mean like it's very as we heard he had like 362 other cases or something, right? Yeah, yeah. And she's got like this very petty domain, but God damn it, she's going to run it as the tightest ship possible. Yeah, so good. So she sees Jim walking around and taking notes in a notebook. So she goes out to confront him. He's standing at the desk that Stacy, the uh hijacked secretary usually said that has her

name place he says that he's from personnel and he's conducting a spot check on absenteeism i think he makes the correct read on her right and says right i i refer to in my notes as he has techno babble about statistical analysis right yeah this isn't formal this is just so that we can establish a baseline against which to compare deviation of absentee, you know, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mrs. Bateman says that, well, she's

on sick leave. That's why she's not in. And in fact, her father called in to say that she wouldn't be coming in. Jim thanks her, says that you run a tight ship. And then I think gets out of there before he can be interrogated anymore, right? Yeah, yeah. Throws out a compliment and then runs.

The dark-haired woman from before, who I think was taking the dictation at the beginning of the scene, had overheard this and tells Mrs. Bateman that, you know I don't like to gossip, but she happens to know that Stacey doesn't have any relatives in California. So how could her father have called her in sick? Interesting. And then the end of the scene is we see Jim go over to the punch card thing. If anyone remembers punch cards. Yes. There's a rack of paper cards next to the door.

And when you come into work, you take it out and you put it in the punch machine. And the machine records that you came in and then you punch out again at the end of the day. I had exactly one job that had a mechanical punch machine when I was a teenager. Since then, it's been, I've had jobs where you like tap a card, right? Yeah, yeah. Since then, it's been, I've had jobs where you, like, tap a card, right? Yeah, yeah. I can physically feel the, I can't remember what kind of punch machine I saw in this episode,

but the ones that I used, like, detect it when the card was in, and they punched it, but when they did, it was like, cha-chunk. Yeah. There was no mistaking it happened. You could feel this, like, cha-chunk. Yeah. There's no mistaking it happened. You could feel this, like, vibration. It felt very final at the end of the day and really oppressive in the morning of the day. Yeah. Jim takes out her punch card to look at it

and then puts it back and then gets out of there. And the end of the scene is Mrs. Bateman goes over and lifts out the punch card and looks confused. I think, like, why did he want to see this? Yes. Well, what's his interest in this one woman who's not come into work? Right. Something's afoot.

Something's afoot. All right. 1,100 hours. National Intelligence Agency. Office of Agent Donegan. So earlier, Agent Donegan, the guy with the face. Turns out he is a National Intelligence Agency officer or agent. So I assume that the NIA is supposed to be like an NSA analog because that's not a real it's it's not a real agency.

There's a director of national intelligence. Yeah, they just left. Right. But that's not it. Yeah. That's part of, I think, Homeland Security? Yeah. Or they're part of whatever unit, like, is supposed to coordinate all the intelligence, all the federal intelligence or something?

Yeah, it's a cabinet-level position, so it's not, like, in a department. So I was just looking to see, like, did there used to be NIA? And it got... Yeah. As far as I can tell, this is just straight up a, for whatever reason, we aren't going to use the NSA. Yeah. Or the CIA, which they've done in other episodes. Maybe I'm missing something about this and someone who is more politically aware in the 70s would have some insight into this choice.

But considering how they have no problem using FBI, CIA, ATF, like all the other agencies, why like this one? They made up a fake agency? Yeah. I'm looking through the internet and not finding anything. Like everything has intelligence in the name, but none of them are. There's a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. There are a lot of intelligence agencies,

but the NIA is not one of them. That we can tell. That we can tell. That's what they want us to think. So that said, so this is a national intelligence guy. And so he is reviewing pictures and an audio recording of Petrankis talking to who it turns out was an undercover agent. The guy who was in the car, agent Watkins.

Donegan is not a fan of how much pressure Watkins is putting Petrankis on. And he says something like, I had to take his mind off of why he got out of jail so easily I that he had to pull his mind off the vaudeville routine at the jail yes so it definitely feels like Watkins is a little hung out to dry right like he's right uh he's doing his job what's going on behind the scenes over here what donagan's up to is making his job tougher donagan tells him that he shouldn't have done what he did but i think watkins even says it's a by the book strategy something like that yeah he says something about how you know there's a lot

of moving pieces there's a lot of stuff going on that isn't great that is going to make this more difficult but you know actually considering what we fell, the company's going to come out of this smelling like a rose. I mean, we've even got a sponsor on the Cadillac. What's that guy's name? Rockford. Yeah, Rockford. You know, with any luck, that guy's going to eat it for all of us. Which is a great line. Rockford's going to eat it for all of us. So Watkins wants to know about his partner for tonight um and he's not gonna get a partner donagan says that to be totally honest we're running out of black guys we can trust yes then we're like oh okay yeah now we understand

precisely what this episode is saying about racism well Well, and Watkins says, well, I think that that's vice versa. Yes. Storms out. Chef kiss as a response. But yeah, so we are, this is the fault line that kind of will lead to the inevitable fall of this plan, right?

They're putting all this pressure on Watkins. They're using his identity as a black man to make him more legit to this guy who's trying to buy illegal guns. Very specifically, somebody who reads as a rich white dude. Right. Who's trying to commit the actual crime. And then they're not giving him any support for this very dangerous thing they've asked him to do. And he just has to suck it up. And he is not happy about it. Good times times it's not that it's particularly subtle but it is kind of nicely nuanced i think yeah it's a knot right like it's it's a tangled knot but it's one that it's not easy for us

or sorry it's a tangled knot but it's one that is easy for us to undo to to see what's like i just at this moment i wrote down well sorry not this moment the very next moment i wrote down all the players in play because i was like okay there's petrankis the fbi the national intelligence agency the atf rockford this guy uh watkins and then as we'll find out, Mrs. Bateman. Right. As long as I know all the players, they all have different concerns, which is great, too. They're all pointed in different directions, some of which align and some don't. And they all have different levels of knowledge about what's going on.

Yeah, yeah. There's a quick scene where we're back in spelling's office i think he's talking to uh agent tony uh there's no paper on patrankus he can't find it there's nothing on record and atf says that well you know i gave it to steno like i physically saw her take it and go in there right like i know that it existed, but now there's no record in the computer. There's no record at the jail. And agent Tony says,

well, sounds like the fix is in top to bottom. So now they both know that there's something not right going on. Epi, I need a quick break. I'm going to grab a taco. You tell our wonderful listeners all the places that they can find you and your work on the information super highway. 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 dig a thousand holes.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 get dig down into Rockford's books again. All right. Well, I'm done with this delicious avocado taco. Well, let's get back to the show then. We're just about to get to the meat of the episode and my theory of the episode. All right.

In my notes, I have written, Mrs. Bateman is on the case. So Mrs. Bateman goes in to talk to Mr. Donegan. Yes. And he is much more like, I mean, he is polite, but he's much less like, oh, Mrs. Bateman, like, let me not get in trouble with you, then Agent Spelling. He certainly believes he's much less like oh mrs bateman like let me not get in trouble with you than agent spelling he certainly believes he's in charge she tells him that uh her she had her employee stacy who might take a day off but her father called in and she doesn't have family in california and she's not the kind of person to lie like that. Yeah. So she wants to

know if he knows anything about it because he may have been the last person to see her before she left yesterday because Mrs. Bateman saw Donegan get into the elevator with Stacy. Yeah. Donegan assures her that he has no interest in her employees and that he has a important lunch call and he can't help her. Yeah. So she leaves his office. He has a secretary outside named Jill. So she goes out, looks at Jill,

tells her to go to lunch on time, because if you go to lunch on time, you'll come back on time. Yes. Uses her power a little bit there to send her away from the desk. uses her power a little bit there to send her away from the desk. And then she picks up the secretary's phone to listen in on Donegan's call, which is ominous. And he says that we have another problem on the cigar shipment.

And that old battleaxe from Steno may need to go on a vacation, too. All right. So there's a lot to love about this moment here. Mrs. Bateman could, up to this point, have been just a regular secondary character, somebody that is on the receiving end of a Rockford con. And in fact, she was in the earlier scene when Jim was pretending to be doing his statistical research. Just the lightest touch of a con.

Yeah. A sous-son of, come on. Yes. But now this thing where she does, where she goes right to the man she thinks is responsible or somehow knows what's up and just lays the cards out on the table and then walks out, dismisses his secretary and picks up her phone to listen in this puts her on par with jim yep this is jim tactics that she's employing from a completely different angle but like she she's a different side of jim's coin here and uh am, as the kids say, here for it.

She has the skills. Or at least the inclination. Yes. I feel like this whole episode has a really good economy of scenes. Yeah. Everything is like super to the point, gets you where you need to be. We cut back and forth between all the different, I was going to say all the different

actors, but in the sense of all the different interests in what's going on. Right. Anyway, so our next one is a quick one back in Spelling's office. So there, it seems like Rockford might be getting set up, but they don't really know. Maybe he's the actual, maybe he's involved in getting set up or maybe he's not. Yeah. So Agent Tony wants to sit on him to see who shows up and asks if you got any friendlies in the area and spelling turns around and gets this enormous rolodex and puts it down on the desk in front of him the thing is the size of like a basketball yes it is gargantuan just this morning i was in an office supply store and saw that they still had Rolodex cards, I guess.

And I was like, well, that's impressive that this is a technology that is still somewhere in use. But I should point out that this office supply store also had, I think, labels for three and a half inch diskettes. So maybe they just don't churn out their, their supply that often. A Rolodex, if you don't know. Google it. So Mrs.

Bateman goes to her reserved parking spot in the parking garage, but then she sees two agents looking around at the cars. It's so good that she's got a reserve spot, like with her name right there. And it's like right next to the door. It's pretty much as close as you can be to the door. It's so good that she's got a reserve spot, like with her name right there on the car. And it's like right next to the door. It's pretty much as close as you can be to the door. Yeah. So she doesn't like the looks of this

and so she ducks down and awkwardly runs behind the line of cars out to the side door so that they don't see her and manages to make her escape before these agents find her. I am telling you, she missed her calling. So, and then there's a cut there that I assume was to a commercial.

We come back and we see Rocky's truck in front of a house. Or as we know from G.G. Garner, Jim Garner's truck. Yes. Being driven by Jim Rockford. And Jim is, we heard her last name earlier, so there's a little establishing shot of the nameplate next to the door. But this is Stacy's apartment. Jim is picking the lock and goes in. Snoops around, hears a noise, runs up the stairs to the second floor.

And then we see Mrs. Bateman come in, presumably having picked the lock also, unless Jim left it open. He might have. Like, I mean, maybe we can just assume that he left it open. I was expecting a bit where she, of course, she has a key to her secretary's apartment. Some kind of very bureaucratic overreach kind of thing. But no, this is not an important moment. That's just something I thought might happen. I mean, because we do discover a little down the line

that there is like, she knows where her employees live. Well, I mean, or at least she has the capacity to look it up, right? Like she has their time cards, which I assume is why Rockford doesn't get the time card to get her address. Yeah. So Mrs. bateman snoops around and there's this great shot that's kind of low angle so we see her in the foreground looking through a drawer and then the stairway going up is kind of open

so we can see jim leaning over the rail to watch her he He's in the background, but he's above her. So they're almost in the same plane. Like it's a really, it's a cool shot. And it like puts them both in this really active kind of position. And then Jim makes a noise to surprise her as he comes down the stairs. And she's, she's startled. And I think this is the difference here, right? Like, yeah, she's legitimately like is the difference here, right? Yeah. She's legitimately like...

A little out of her element. Yeah, surprised. Yeah. Well, Jim usually, even when he's surprised, he's always kind of expecting it, I think. Mm-hmm. We establish that she was snooping around, not stealing. She just comes out and says it. I'm snooping.

And then we start cutting back and forth with what's happening outside, which is that a van pulls up and Echo 2 is in position. Jim says it looks like Stacy hasn't been home for a few days. There's a pound of hamburger that's been defrosting and it's not smelling too good, but that's not evidence of foul play. Obviously, Jim's into hamburger forensics. Oh, he knows. Yeah. but there's not much else to see uh jim offers her a ride home uh she says that she'll take the bus uh but then she ends up getting into the car so i guess he talked her into it so the truck leaves the van calls it in and we learned

that echo 2 was there to stake out mrs bateman yes like because it's like an unknown male whatever you know so now we were like oh because we just had the scene let's sit on jim but now this surveillance is on her so we're having even more of these overlapping spy kind of things yeah it's a different it's not not the same people that are looking at Jim. Who's doing what for who and why. Driving in the truck, Jim comes clean, says he's not whatever alias from personnel, his name's Jim Rockford, and that he's snooping around because Stacy has the key to keeping him out of jail. There's something going on. She's involved. It's mysterious that she's disappeared.

She's involved. It's mysterious that she's disappeared. And Jim has the feeling that now the three of them are hard luck pawns who stumbled into the wrong game. Yes. The other delightful thing about this line is that I think this is the moment when Mrs. Bateman figures out that he's a PI, right? She asks him, so what do you do or what line of work are you in? And he says that he's a PI. I feel like there's something about her reaction to this line that was like, the line just tips her off, I feel like. It's just a very PI line. And then she ends the scene by saying that, well, then he's free to indulge in fanciful speculations. Oh, that's what it, yes. Yeah. Because clearly she's too logical and rational to believe this

conspiracy theory. 1400 hours. We see a spelling and another guy with a telescope on top of a building near Paradise Cove, and they're staking out Jim's trailer. So many attractive nuisances

in Paradise Cove. There's been a couple before this, but this is where I started noticing the, like looking at things through telescopes and binoculars, like that effect. A very spy movie kind of thing. Yeah. I think that's a motif that we see more and more of as we see all of these

different spying kind of things going on. Yeah. There's a great detail here where it's a retired colonel of some kind is helping them out, giving them permission to be on his balcony or whatever. And he's glad that someone is finally doing something about that Rockford. It seems very natural to him that there would be an intelligence agency spying on him when his problem with Rockford is that he was doing like donuts in the parking lot or something like that. They see Rocky show up in a different truck. So Jim's driving Rocky's truck. Rocky's driving some other pickup. Yes. He goes to the trailer. He comes out of the trailer.

The colonel says, oh, I think that's his dad. And Spelling sends someone to follow him. And then if he goes home to tap his phone. Really good use of department resources. I feel like it's been a while since we've had this kind of episode where there's a lot going on, there's a lot of moving pieces, but everything that happens, the logic for it has been established previously. Yeah, they let you know. Even in cases where it doesn't necessarily have to. Yeah.

There is a payoff for let's put a bug on his phone because later there's a phone call from Rocky's house that gets overheard, right? Yeah. We didn't need a scene where he said, oh, let's put a bug on his phone to assume that that could have happened. But it's nice that it's there because it plants the seed so that when it happens, it's a payoff for that moment. And it doesn't come out of nowhere. And it's just part of the fabric of the story and i feel like pretty much everything in this episode is like that yeah like i said before it's like a tangled knot but it's not something we can't untangle like we we're not stuck in a situation where we're like i don't i really don't know what's going on

it just feels frantic enough that you can kind of understand that none of none of the agencies involved here have the full picture. Right. Of what's going on. Maybe the the FBI guys who want to frame up Rockford right now have the full picture. That's it. Was the National Intelligence Agency. I'm sorry. Yes.

Not the FBI. I apologize to our friends in the FBI. But the NIA doesn't know that the FBI is trying to find out what's going on. So even though they know what's happening with Jim and Mrs. Bateman, they don't know that they're also being chased. Yes. And the FBI doesn't know who they're chasing. Yeah. Right? So, yeah, no one has the full picture and it's great because pretty much you can see all the decision making all follows from

what each individual knows at the time like it doesn't really feel like there's decision making that's being made in order to make the plot happen it kind of feels like the decisions are all being made because they're following the characters as established and what their goals are, right? Yeah, it's a complex plot, but it is... I don't want to go so far as to say character-driven. Right. No character makes a decision that you're thinking,

this is just so the plot can get to where it's going. There's the big coincidence of of stacy being seen to be pulled into the atf interrogation right right and then there's the coincidence of mrs bateman seeing don again yeah but that's like that's just set up to get her in tank right those are just oh that's why the story is happening yeah exactly no it's good stuff. Good, good stuff. So Jim pulls up before they get to Mrs. Bateman's house, because as he points out, there's someone in a blue car across the street watching her front door. He asks if there's anyone else home. Is there any Mr. Bateman? And she says, no, I lost him in the war. And, you

know, Jim says, oh, I'm sorry. And she's like, oh, it happened a long time ago. Again, little things that pay off. In the moment, I was like, oh, this is a nice little detail about this character. Right? Yes. But I was like, and that's all it is. And I noticed it. Turns out this has a payoff.

Yeah. It's good stuff. So she tells Jim about the whole thing with Don again, seeing Stacy, and how he overheard his phone call, explains to Jim that he is with the National Intelligence Agency. So now Jim says that, so now things are starting to make a little more sense with all this framing up, right? Like, well, they're involved. Yes. It's a little funny because they both clearly have different experiences with the National Intelligence Agency. And Jim's is very much like, oh, okay, these a**holes.

Yeah. But she deals with them like on a daily basis. That's her job. I think maybe she says we should call the police. Yes. And Jim says, what, are we going to walk into the police station and say the National Intelligence Agency is following us? Can't really do that unless they have something harder to go on. And then we have a little gag where he has Mrs. Bateman take a memo.

Yes. And it is just writing down the license plate number on the car. You could tell that Jim would enjoy having a secretary. So we have an establishing shot of Jim leaving the motor vehicle's annex. He needs a dime for the payphone, of course. I guess he's calling whatever the contact number is, talks to the operator or whatever, and he's trying to find the Golden West Tobacco Company. But there's no listing, and the address is a PO box.

And so this seems like perhaps this is all a front organization set up by the NIA. Mrs. Bateman says that, well, Stacy works for her. I don't know if I maybe noted this wrong or if they talk about Stacy, but then they go talk to Jill

in order to find her. Essentially, Mrs. Bateman is like, okay, the next thing we can do is track down the people who work for me who might know something. And so they go to Jill's apartment. They're not so

nicely welcomed in by Susan, who is also a secretary in the Steno pool, who has a drink. She's celebrating and gloating about how Jill doesn't have to say anything. They don't have to listen to Mrs. Bateman anymore. She's going down the tubes.

They found missing secret naval intelligence files in her desk. And so she's been suspended until the agency completes an investigation. There's so many agencies in this one building. It is the federal building. That's true. So we have Jill, who is Donegan's secretary and seems not unhappy, but is not celebrating. And then we have Susan, who is there just to show us how the stenopool feels about mrs bateman right i love the the dynamics at work in this scene because we have four characters with different relationships to what's happening uh they deliver the information we need to see but they also show uh that the stenopool

might not miss mrs bateman you know but but they also through through um jill there's there's a moment of like or there's a humanity to it right and and also the fact that Jim steps in and, uh, defends her or maybe not defends her, but shuts Susan down. And Susan's drunk. Like that's another like important aspect of this, but like, I really liked the dynamics going in the scene. It's another like complex,

but straightforward moment in this, uh, in this show. Yeah. And Jim ends, ends up by saying they just want to ask some questions the answers to the questions might be critical to saving stacy's life yes so if jill has anything she wants to say maybe after susan is you know finishes her drinks um jim gives jill the number to call to talk to him, which, as we will learn, is Rocky's number.

Yeah. But they leave with that. He leaves on that line of like, you know, this might save Stacy's life. There's a lot at stake here. So we have a bit of an emotional beat on the back end of this as Jim and Mrs. Bateman are back in the car. She says that she'll be okay. The thing that bothers me is how anyone could give credence to such a story in the first place.

Oh, well, people are always willing to believe the worst about somebody they, well, that they... They hate? Is that it? She says that all she asks is an honest day's effort in exchange for their salary. That's all she asks. Yeah. And she prides herself in an efficient and functional department. What's so bad about that? I gotta say, the Rockford Files have done a great job with this episode because I...

Because you don't hate her? I don't hate her. The nature of my being is that I would hate this character. Especially for a phrase like that. You don't understand what you're asking with your your wages there you're you're you're demanding more than what you're letting on and instead i'm like yeah i like this character this leads to my total nonsense theory about this episode which is that this is a backdoor pilot you think they're all backdoor pilots? I do, I do, but like

Eleanor Bateman, Steno Chief, right? Like, every episode, something comes into that federal building. It could be with the FBI, it could be with the ATF, it could be with the National Intelligence Agency, it can be with Naval Intelligence. Something gets

messed up in the paperwork, and she's on the job uh and then occasionally she calls in rockford to help they could have done this they could have the rockford files could have owned the 80s well we get to see jim's uh philosophy expressed in his response here which is well no there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's not the only reason for living. Yes. So they go over to Rocky's. Rocky is excited to welcome a guest. Yes. She gets introduced as Eleanor here to Rocky, so it's a little more informal.

Rocky offers to serve wine, and then there's some kind of joke about the kind of wine that I did not understand. Over my head. I'm with Rocky on this. Whatever wine he was serving must have been fancy. He does mention that he was waiting. There's a TV special that he's been waiting all month to watch. And I love that. And she's down for it.

There's something incredibly charming about what's going on here. Is it Jim setting Rocky up with Mrs. Bateman? I feel like a little bit. I feel like he's kind of like, yeah, let's see what happens. So he serves this wine. There's some joke about it. Jim and Mrs. Bateman kind of like share a glance of amusement over what this wine is. He's been waiting to watch this special program about the

Portuguese fishermen. Yes. And as they settle in, I think he just asks like, so is there a Mr. Bateman? I'm like, whoa, Rocky, getting right into it, aren't ya? And Jim is reading a newspaper and he has reading glasses on. Yes. Mrs. Bateman starts to say, well, no, I lost him. Repeating the loss in the war line.

But then Jim, like, tucks down his glasses and looks at her over the top of his glasses over the newspaper. She looks, sees him do that, and then goes, he left me when I was 22 and never came back. Yes. It's like, oh, my God. Yeah. Was Jimbo on that apparently he gives her this glance like you're gonna tell my dad that it's a really intriguing scene to me yeah um it adds a lot of humanity to her yeah and i think it's a little bit of him you know having insight into human nature and being like yeah i can tell that there's something else going on that explains why you need to

have so much control over this domain. Like that kind of like pop psychology kind of interpretation. It's not important. It doesn't go anywhere, but it is. Yeah. It is a fun scene that just kind of punches up this whole, the whole second half of the episode.

One other thing it does is that it solidifies the rockford baitman alliance yes that they're on the same team because there's there's this moment that's going to come up and like i think just the next scene where she's like i'm going with you and there's no argument we're working together on this and so many people jim would have tried to talk out of going with him but this feels like no we're we're we're a team here it's you and i against the world yes we go to rocky's uh asleep on the couch we have this nice little mirroring where so rocky's passed out on the couch watching the tv the phone rings it's jill finally calling yeah when we see her in the background susan is passed out on their couch yes jim answers the

phone and he wants to know what she can tell him about petrankus we then have a quick shot to show the the tape reels going to remind us yes this is recorded. Remember how we planted a bug here? Yeah. And if we think really hard, we can remember which agencies did this, which is the FBI and the ATF, who were in the dark about what the National Intelligence Agency was doing. You know, his job is that he's a cigar distributor, but she thinks that Golden West Tobacco is some kind of front. She doesn't know more than that, but she does know the address.

So she gives them the address for the warehouse off the top of her head. So the person actually listening to the recording is Agent Tony. So he calls Spelling and says that he's getting the whiff of, quote, our agency friends. So they think they should check out the tobacco place. They have to be careful about how they're doing it because if the intelligence agency guys see that they're getting involved they'll get iced out of whatever this operation is yeah because all they care about is looking good

on the year-end stats which is exactly exactly what he accused the FBI of. Right. So now it's the FBI accusing the NIA. Yeah. Echoing that from their earlier dispute. Again, good stuff. Jim bets that cigars is a euphemism for guns. So it's time to go check out Golden West

Tobacco and see if they have any U.S. Army cigars. U.S. Army brand cigars. 2230 Hours.s army cigars u.s army brand cigars 22 30 hours golden west tobacco company has a wonderful little graphic design is my passion uh sign um so yeah and so that's when jim's like let's go and she says i'm coming with you and there's no argument so in my notes here i start talking about uh i start talking about how this lines up with certain sorcery tales i mean this is a little bit more complex than usually a certain sorcery tale would be but you you have somebody who has uh a plot uh

you have this this national intelligence agency oh man i forget the name of um donagan agent donagan has got this plot that he's hatched at this point and i think we'll find out like this is his idea this isn't um this isn't like from higher up right his fat is in the fryer at this point and it's all going smoothly but for some reason it rolls up a road into it right this could have been jim rockford it could have been conan it could have been you know like whatever but what i love about this is that it's not just jim rockford that got rolled up in this it's eleanor bateman that got rolled up in this as well she's the true rogue yeah um so yeah this i love the structure of this kind of story. So, yes, it is 22, 30 hours. Jim and Mrs. Bateman are watching from afar as Petrankis rolls up in a Jeep as a big unmarked box truck pulls out of the warehouse being driven by Watkins.

So this is clearly not the plan. The Jeep cuts in front of the warehouse uh being driven by watkins so this is clearly not the plan the jeep cuts in front of the truck and cuts it off yeah the tranqus gets out with a gun gets into the cab tells watkins to just follow the jeep he feels like he's getting jerked around this deal is going to go down the way he wants it to now and he has a line where he says uh i don't like dealing with your kind of people, which I assume is racist. Yeah, I think it has to be. That's definitely an underlying thing going on throughout this episode is the... The pressure being put on this lone black double agent or undercover agent, I should say.

Yeah. So the Jeep pulls out. The big white box truck follows the Jeep. Then Jim and Mrs. Bateman follow the truck in Rocky's truck. And then Spelling and Agent Tony are also watching from a different location. They see this all happening. And Spelling says to fall in behind, but don't get too close. We don't have a parade permit. It's another great line. So now 23, 30 hours, the jeep leads the truck out onto a pier and there's a waiting boat tied up there. And now we see that Donegan and his goon are watching this

whole thing happening from a rooftop, it seems. They see Watkins getting hustled onto the boat as you know, goons and masks start hauling boxes out of the back of the truck. Uh, nothing they can do. That boat's got a sale and we don't know that they're going to kill Watkins. It's like so callous. Their plan for whatever this plan is, has been to get these guns to Petrankas.

Yeah. And they're willing to sacrifice Watkins, if that's what it takes. We then go to Jim and Eleanor, who are watching this from a different shadowed corner. And we get the bit from the preview montage where Jim sees his case going out to sea. He'll sink that boat if he has to. But as they're talking, i guess it gets the attention of donagan he sees jim is where donagan is extraordinarily brave so jim tells eleanor to go get in the pickup and call the police but then donagan and his goon don't want them to interfere

so the goon goes to get mrs bateman donagan goes to get jim is it um it's the other way around you're right it's the other way around yeah because donagan gives the command head him off i'll take the old broad oh don again bravest man in the force uh right so then we go to spelling agent tony spelling says to you know get to a phone call in the police the coast guard to seal off the area and get a couple of our people down here. Yeah. So now we go through this whole, the big action scene. Donegan grabs Mrs. Bateman, tries to pull her out of the truck.

She starts yelling. Jim goes back to help her. Another guy pops up with a gun and Jim just goes, hi. And that apparently throws him off long enough for Jim to get him one good punch across the jaw and then take his gun. So good. It is extremely good. So then he gets the drop on Donegan while

Mrs. Bateman is struggling with him. Then now Jim has the gun, so he hustles the NIA guys towards the boat. Spelling can't see who's who, so he needs to get closer. As they get out onto the pier, Donegan starts yelling,

Shove off! Get those guns out of here! And then he just, because why not, tells Jim that Petrankis sells guns to revolutionaries in the third world. And that's where these guns are going.

And now Jim is interfering with classified government business or a classified government operation. And Jim's like, so the agency is furnishing arms to communist revolutionaries? Yes. So as we know, Jim, in his own way, a patriot. Yes. Then the FBI shows up, you know, sirens are going, Coast Guard boat is approaching. There's a line in there where they're like, what's going on down there? He's like, I don't know. Just chaos. Watkins takes the distraction to shove Petrankis away from him and jump overboard.

So that's who we saw. That's who our preview montage was showcasing. And then the guys who are unloading the guns grab them and start shooting at these oncoming cops. But the guns all start misfiring and jamming in their hands. And then Donegan says, Well, we were supplying those guns. They were defective. Loaded cigars. Communists waste their money on these useless materials, undercuts their own reserve.

You guys actually sit around and think these things up? Yep. The goons are not able to use the defective guns. The Coast Guard moves in. Everyone is getting arrested. And then we have the face-to-face confrontation of Spelling and Donegan. They're each blaming each other for

everything going wrong. And then Watkins comes up, soaking wet from his trip into the water. He takes a swing at Donegan. It takes both Spelling and Agent Tony to hold him back

Saying you were going to let me go down He clearly sees how they were willing to let him Get thrown off this boat in the middle of nowhere In the service of this dumb plan The threat that was said to him earlier was You're going for a ride at least halfway Which is a very Rockford Files style threat But yeah, I would not care for my boss if I were him too.

You know, they're holding him back and they're like, you know, this isn't going to solve anything. Calm down, calm down. And he's like, I want a tape recorder. Yes. So I feel like clearly this means that he's going to make some kind of statement. He's going to testify. To ensure that justices serve.

make some kind of statement he's gonna testify to ensure that justices serve they ask uh uh donnegan where's stacy and he says well she should be home in bed by now termination of the plan was at midnight yes i hadn't noted it but i think in the thing that she overheard mrs bateman heard the word termination maybe i was trying to figure that out too, because this, this is a weird, there's two hits on this, on this word. Yeah. And I feel like it hadn't come up before, but maybe I just missed it.

I know. I didn't hear it before either. And you know, here, here, and I'm like termination at midnight sounds very final. Sounds like, like we're supposed to take it as very final.

Right. But everyone in that scene, including Mrs. Bateman and Rockford, are like, oh. Well, because he says she should be home in bed by now because termination's at midnight, implying that termination of whatever was keeping her out of the picture is supposed to end. And so their reaction is like relief. And I'm like, no. And Mrs. Bateman says, well, guess everything's back to normal. Yes.

So that was 2330 hours, right? Yeah. Then 2405 Cypress Motel. There's Stacy with a smile on her face, fiddling with her little blouse thing. And there's a man there who's putting a bottle of champagne back in a bucket. She's just had the most wonderful last two days with this guy, Dick. It's just been so, so wonderful and romantic. And he's like, yeah, it's been great. They like embrace. He says, why don't you go down and return the hotel key?

And then once he leaves the room, he picks up the phone and makes a call. The operation is completed on schedule and has now been terminated. Yes. There you go. It was a happy ending for her. She got to go on a two day vacation. Yes. And our final scene, 0915

Federal Building. Mrs. Bateman comes in off the elevator. Jim's been waiting waiting makes a joke about how isn't she a little late well she doesn't have to punch a clock so she can sometimes she comes in late and leaves late so see she's loosened up a little bit she can be yeah jim says that he's just there to uh finally meet this stacy uh and make sure that she's okay but mrs bateman knows the real reason which is to check on her yeah it's very nice but she says that it's going to be hard going into the office after they threw a party

when they thought that she was fired um jim has a line about as the as the great philosopher petrankis once said it's the first day of the rest of your life. So calling all the way back to the first scene, she goes into the steno pool. The room falls totally silent. We have a closeup on Stacy who kind of like smiles. And then we freeze frame on Mrs. Bateman who is just looking kind of disturbed. Like the expression on her face is very strange.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's meant to be a smile i mean freeze frames i used to transcribe television shows which had all sorts of random pause moments and now i i really appreciate the art of the freeze frame because when you randomly pause just try it as you're watching an episode, just randomly pause at moments. And none of them will look good. Somebody will have one eye half closed or whatever.

I don't know. I read it as everyone's all smiles at the end here. But there was no definitive thing. No. Nobody cheered her. They just went quiet when she came in. It's kind of like she's back. But I love that

Jim showed up for her. Right. And Jim is smiling. Yeah. I think it's a bit of a question mark. Like, what is she going to do next? Has she learned anything from this experience? Right. And the answer could be no. Yes. But it is overall a happy ending. No one

was killed. Yeah. The weird plot was foiled. Justice, I guess, is served? Question mark? The plot that was foiled, Jim managed to stop the federal government from selling faulty weapons to communist revolutionaries in South America. Right. faulty weapons to communist revolutionaries in South America. Right.

Because he was picked up for a stolen car that wasn't stolen. And he's being framed for transporting illegal weapons across state lines in order to save Petrankis so that he could continue being the conduit to sell the weapons. So Petrankis is a legit criminal. criminal yes who deals in arms or cigars as the case may be yes so the agency was using him to they were selling him the faulty guns to sell to the communists but he's still profiting off of that right yes yes one can imagine this all ends up with he actually does go down yeah so the the person that we see at the very beginning of the episode being kind of a jackass right gets their comeuppance yes uh the shady national intelligence agent probably gets his comeuppance too because we have that plot in the middle which which is Watkins dealing with his crappy bosses.

Right, his crappy racist bosses. Yes, and we can assume that that works out for him. I'd like to think that he ends up transitioning into ATF and partners up with the young hotshot agent Tony. Oh, so that's your backdoor pilot to all this, right? Musia and Watkins. Musia and Watkins, ATF. I really enjoyed this episode.

It was a rollick. It wags its fingers at the federal government, but it doesn't, it's not like a hard hitting, this is a thing that's happening, right? some of the bull that does actually happen uh probably before most of that hits the the newspapers but it's mainly this almost cozy tale it's it's a really good example of i think like you were saying with how it's like a sword and sorcery yeah you have a unstable element, which is the protagonist, enter into a previously stable situation and everything changes. Yes. And it's not even that they're trying to change it. It's that their very presence makes everyone else involved have to make new decisions. Like those are the kinds of setups for role playing games that I like the most.

Yes. Yes. So it feels very relevant to like that kind of storytelling where it's like, okay, we have these three factions and this is the plan and here's how they're related. No matter how our, for the sake of argument,

our protagonists, Jim Rockford and Mrs. Eleanor Bateman, no matter how they enter into the story, they are going to throw off at least one of those factions. Yes. And then the reactions to that change are going to drive the rest of the story.

Here are the factions, here are the people, this is what they want. And this is how their day is going wrong. Right. Right. Like this is, I really liked it.

It's a's it's a it's a fun adventure really more than anything else uh in small spots very heartwarming uh i really appreciated how rockford didn't he took this this different tact with eleanor uh where he didn't um talk her out of right like he talks her out of some like really nonsense stuff like going home when she's obviously under observation from some unknown agents right right uh but mainly it's them working together he's not withholding information from her uh and she's not withholding information from him there's like a mutual respect thing that's going on there there's this sort of small quiet romance with rocky uh that just flirtation

or whatever like i don't even know if it was meant to be that or if rocky's just uh that way with everyone jim brings home yeah i agree i i really enjoyed this episode. I think it's, it's kind of a sleeper, I think. Yeah. So first of all, I thought this was a different episode when I picked it. So I was like pleasantly surprised when I was like,

oh, it's this one. Yeah. So I think I enjoyed it for that. Just being along for the ride. And when I say it's kind of a sleeper, I guess, I mean,

if you're going to list all the things that make the Rockford Files the Rockford Files, this actually doesn't have a lot of them. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what I meant at the beginning when I said that this is kind of a story that could have been in a different show. Not in the sense of it was developed for a different show, but in the sense of you could do

this story with any PI or detective or cop protagonist and kind of adjust some of the details in order to suit whatever their deal is. Yeah, you could definitely do that. But like, it doesn't really have most of the supporting cast. It doesn't even have the Firebird. Yes.

He doesn't really try to talk anyone out of doing stuff. There's a few ways in which it's not like an iconic rockford files episode but it does definitely feel like a little bit in conversation with them because like i got excited the more alphabet soup you got involved right like there's fbi and then all the bureaucracy yeah like when i saw that the steno pool was going to be the center of the controversy. I was like, yes. Right. And that is very Rockford Files.

I guess what I'm trying to say is like, it feels like a Rockford Files episode, even though if you're ticking off boxes of Rockford attributes, it actually has fewer of them than many other episodes. Yes. But like the spirit is there. And I guess that's what i mean by it being kind of a sleeper it's not the queen of peru but yeah you'll be pleasantly surprised when this one you know comes up if you're just watching a couple in a row yeah it's good um thumbs up wait do we do we don't do that i mean we can say we both liked it and we can recommend it to finish out that thought if you have not seen it

in a while and have the ability to you should watch it you may be pleasantly surprised um the really big question at the end is how long is it going to take jim to make that 200 he needs to get his car yeah he already tapped himself out to get bail somehow. He's out bail. Yeah, no, he's hurting. It's $200 for the car. And that was the whole thing was set off for him going. Going to Vegas and losing all his money. Yes, basically.

Yeah, it's definitely not a bread winning episode for Jim. But who knows? You know, maybe he can do a little work in the steno pool. He knows someone there. Yeah. Well, while we pour one out for Jim and however long it'll take him to get the Firebird back, I feel like we have earned our $200 for this day. What do you think? I say yes. And I would gladly lend it to Jim. If you give me the firebird for collateral yeah

with that we will uh move on with with our plans and and weird plots to destabilize the communist regimes across the world um as we usually do but we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.