Two Hundred A Day - Episode 62: Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Waterbury Will Bury You

Episode Date: December 29, 2019

Nathan and Eppy talk about the long-titled S3E13 Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones, But Waterbury Will Bury You. Jim comes back from vacation to learn that fellow PIs are losing their licenses through a series of set-ups. He teams up with a crack squad of motormouths to figure out what's going on, who's behind it, and why the private security firm Waterbury wants to do this in the first place. It's a fun David Chase-penned romp with that lovely Rockford Files stiffening of fantastic character play from guests Cleavon Little, Simon Oakland and Val Bisoglio. 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 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.

This is Department of the Army. Our records show that you are the Rockford James who failed to turn in his service automatic in May 1953. Contact us at once. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we continue to explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. For this episode, we are going to a season three David Chase episode. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Waterbury will bury you. I have two questions for you.

Okay. Question the first. This was your selection. Why did you pick this episode? Question the second. Do you think there's a better pun available for this title? Because I feel like it almost got there, but not quite. Okay, those are two good questions.

I'm going to start with the first question. I picked this episode because we didn't have time to do the episodes I wanted to do. Which we're going to do. And i cannot remember the names of them now but they're coming up right there are some longer episodes that are related to each other so yeah and okay i wanted to do an episode of him with fellow pis right and we've done like the gabby and gandy one and uh in this episode we're going to have vincent st cloud who was also in the um was in the second uh lance white episode oh i mean he's in three episodes this is his first appearance but we saw him in nice guys finish, which is the second Lance Wright episode. Isn't he also chasing the diamond in

Queen of Peru? No. Okay, see? Look at this. I could just use IMDb, but instead I use my brain, which is... This actor, Simon Oakland, does play a different character

in one episode. Oh, okay. I know who you're thinking it's not uh he is not in queen okay well anyways the point that i'm getting at here uh is that i would oh yes i remember okay yes he's in the we it was the one with the awards yeah he's the one presenting the awards because he's like the head of the pi benevolent association or whatever they call it so i basically just wanted to dive into the underbelly of the the private eye world um and this one was adjacent to what i wanted to do and had uh an immensely long title which i thought fun. Right. As for the better pun in that title, you know, that's a good question. I would characterize this as they had a title, like, I think somewhere along the lines,

some writer, I guess the writer in this case would probably be, is it Campbell or is it? No, it's David Chase. It's David Chase. Yeah. Yeah. I think at some point david chase had the line waterbury will bury you in his head and thought oh we'll make that the uh the title and then that's when they ended up coming up with the name of their operation

as sticks and stones so like i feel like that all of it was kind of... I feel like this title was workshopped to where it is. And where it is is fine. But there's something about the second part that could be a tighter pun. I don't know what it is. I'm not David Chase. Shocker. I think that's my theory is that that second part that isn't the tighter pun, I think that's where they start.

They work their way out to build the rest on top of it. And they're stuck with that part that isn't the tighter pun, I think that's where they start. They work their way out to build the rest on top of it, and they're stuck with that part that isn't the best part. It's kind of a sacred cow situation where it's like to really get there, you might have to let go of that original concept. Right. That's fine. And then they're like, well, we have to record it, so let's just do it. Let's just do it.

Let's just do it. Before we get into this, though, I have a warning. My parents are visiting. Two things about this. One, I watched it with them and I will be sharing some of their notes. I'm very excited about this. They did not know that I was taking notes for them, but I was. And then the second thing is that at any point they can walk in and interrupt the podcast.

I'm not promising that they will but it's a it's a possibility if it's uh if it's a particularly funny intrusion i'll leave it in the yeah um so i feel like this is the first david chase one we've done for a minute um yeah it's been a while since we've had a good solid chase uh episode um and so I think we will see a lot of the signature humor focus on the seedy lives of these out from the law PIs.

No mobsters in this one. But there is some crooked authority figure situation kind of going on. Yeah, actually you could tell that there's no mobsters because the bad guy has that same affected upper class voice that are the one of the villains of the previous episode we did has had the Italian bird fiasco.

That kind of like transatlantic accent. Yes. Yeah. Right. Which are its code for these people would be mobsters, but they were born rich. So they can do it legally. Yeah, exactly. This episode is directed by Jerry London, who has done some of our favorites.

Yeah. This is completing our Jerry London collection. We have done all of his other episodes. Well, we need a sound effect for that. A final Jerry London collection. We have done all of his other episodes. Oh, we need a sound effect for that. A final Jerry London. Yeah. So to recap, that's a tall woman in red wagon

just by accident, the reincarnation of Angie, the hammer of Seablock, a bad deal in the valley, sticks and stones may break yourident, The Reincarnation of Angie, The Hammer of Seablock, A Bad Deal in the Valley, Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Waterberry Will Bury You, which we are doing now. And then The Trees, The Bees, and TT Flowers. Right. And that's the next episode. And that's the next. Yeah, that is the next episode that they aired.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, those are all good. Just by Accident is one that we were cool on that's the race car one oh yeah we did it a while ago now but uh i think of all of these we were coolest on that and the rest have all been uh good to good to great so go back in our archives listeners uh these are some good uh some good ones you can listen to our digitally young down voices oh my god oh boy so yeah big ups big ups to jerry yeah doing a good job on the rockford

files overall i'd say yeah no i i i'd say so too he looks like he's still out there and kicking yeah he has something in production, I think. Yeah. Game of Power. With all those compliments out of the way. What do you want to talk about first? I'm giving you lots of choices this episode. Yeah, that's good.

I like to choose my own adventure. What do you want to talk about first? The answering machine message or the preview montage? I remember laughing at the answering machine message or the preview montage? I remember laughing at the answering machine message. As you heard at the beginning of our program, this is the army calling to follow up on the fact that he never returned his service revolver. I guess we're talking about this first. This is good. Yeah, I actually had to explain that to my parents.

I was like, oh, okay, hold on. Is this the canonical source of Jim's unregistered gun? I guess so. This, like, this seems like it. And not only is it that, but again, it plays not, like, the gun doesn't show up in the episode, but the talk around. The use of guns as a PI is actually relevant. Yeah. And so it's interesting.

That's another, I would say it's another, another good thematic fit with it. We've, we've talked about this before, but maybe not for a while. The answering machine messages were a gimmick that at a certain point they couldn't stop doing and they kind of ran out of material at a certain point. I think, so they get much more random. I think as the show goes on, they usually just had someone who happened to be around when they were putting the episode together to record them.

Sometimes it was Stuart Margolin. Sometimes it was Juanita Bartlett. Sometimes it was, you know, someone's assistant who happened to be around. So it always stands out. I think when the answering machine message actually or answer phone message as we will hear yes it has something to do with the episode we're always like we're

like kids finding a few times it's been like a plot point right yeah like two or three times now yeah but mainly it's is we just i just enjoy when it thematically hits on something. Yeah, like level one is where it's a plot point in the episode. Level two is it is thematically relevant to the episode. And that's where we're at here. And then there's the ones that are just demonstrating some aspect of Jim's life. And it has nothing to do with the episode. Which are fine.

That's the baseline. Yeah, no. Yeah. And speaking of things that are fine i feel like this preview montage is fine yeah it was okay i the notes i wrote down were uh inheritance con i feel like we've seen similar ones before um which is again i'm not arguing against it i i welcome it like seeing a regular cast member show up. I wrote down FBI. That'll change.

I was like, oh, the FBI's involved. No. And then spin out, which I was excited about. And then PI fight. Yeah. Which is actually a fun fight. And we'll talk about that when we get to it. And then the final, like, kill him.

Very ominous. Yes. My two comments on the preview montage is that all I could think about from the shot of them squaring up for the PI fight. So that's Jim and... Vern St. Cloud. Yeah. And so Vern St. Cloud is a larger, older, rumplier man than... I mean, he's wider, but shorter.

Yeah. Older and more rumply than Jim Rockford. But he's putting up his du mean, he's wider, but shorter, uh, older and more rumply than Jim Rockford, but he's putting up his dukes, right? Like to box. And all I could think of was the cowardly lion, like put him up, put him up. Um, and then my second note is that when I started playing the episode, uh, I think my dog did something I had to, like, I didn't turn the volume on at the same time that I actually started Let It Play. So I sat down with no volume at the point where Jim is

wearing glasses in the preview montage, and I just wrote, Jim running a con. Yeah. The visual signifier was strong enough. Like Superman and Clark Kent. Yep. Jim and the probate officer that he plays. Hello, listeners.

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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. Well, we start our episode with our credits playing over some, I think, stock footage of a plane landing in Los Angeles. Yeah. And the camera cuts to a nice long shot of Rocky's truck and some voiceover from Jim and Rocky.

And it seems that Jim has been on vacation for some amount of time, presumably to Cuba. Right. Or somewhere in that area, like somewhere where there isn't an embargo. Right. As Jim has brought back a huge handful of Cuban cigars for Rocky. And Rocky is, he's Rocky, so he's worried. Ain't that illegal? I don't remember what his actual line is but that's very he's worried about

the illegality but uh jim reassures him that it happens all the time no one actually cares about the cigars and uh rocky takes them with the comment well it won't hurt us to have a few good smokes it won't make us a pair of commies yes and i will point out here this is the first moment where we get a little note from my parents. My dad is concerned about their seatbelts and the lack thereof. Yeah, it was the 70s. No one wore seatbelts. Yeah, exactly. They arrive at Jim's trailer and there's someone bent over taping the door.

Jim hopefully informs Rocky that he's putting a piece of tape there so that he can come back later and see if it was disturbed. That means that someone, you know, came home. I got such, I don't even know how to explain the emotion. When I was younger, and by younger I mean younger, like elementary school, we had a book, like a picture book called Spycraft. And I think the cover had, or like a picture of a pair of and i think the cover had or like a picture of a pair of glasses with a fake nose like because that's what a spy wears right but it told me this trick of taping a door to find out if someone had been through it that's a trick that has stuck with me my entire life i've never had an opportunity to use it, but I was super excited when I recognized that somebody was doing it at the same time that Jim did.

I'm proud of young Epi. The version of that that I've, I think, absorbed from some book is sticking a hair across a doorway. Yeah. No one notices a hair. Nobody. Well, Jim surprises this mystery taping man. Turns out that they know each other. This is Billy merrihew uh and he is also a pi and as soon as he turns around i go i know that guy yeah so billy merrihew is played by cleveland little who i think anyone generally would know

from blazing saddles as he is yeah the he. He is the black sheriff brought in to the little town to restore order. I always feel like he should have had more of a career, because he's not in that many things. And he died pretty young, which is really sad. He's good. Oh. But, yeah, he's great. He's great in this episode, for sure.

I tried to look. I didn't find anything. I feel like there's a scene that specifically is referencing some stuff from Blazing Saddles. And we'll get to that. Yeah. I know the scene you're talking about. But Blazing Saddles, the Mel Brooks movie from... If you don't know Blazing Saddles, I don't know what to tell you.

It is the rare example of a movie that could absolutely not be made anymore, should not be made in the current day. But it's one of the few times I'll go out on the, it was the time limb on something. It is about racial prejudice. It uses a lot of very racially charged characters and language and all this stuff. But it's on the right side of history about it that's one of the few times that a spoof actually spoofs for me anyway

i'm sorry i'm going off about placing saddles no that's great yeah uh i was just digging through his his imdb while you were doing that and realized that he played a character in fletch lives which if you don't know Fletch Lives, I don't know what to tell you. Oh boy, I need to do some homework. That is the sequel to Fletch. But his character's name in Fletch Live is Calculus Entropy, and now I have to watch Fletch Lives.

All right, very good. Well, Billy has been trying to get in touch with Jim for days, and we have, again, something I feel like we haven't had for a while a nice solid joke in the cut where Jim says oh yeah why didn't you call my

answer phone cut to Jim playing his message but the batteries are out and it is dying and so you get the tape slowing towards the end clearly it cannot receive calls. Rocky's very helpful in this moment, I feel.

He's like, maybe the batteries. It never occurred to me that it would be a battery-operated answering machine. No, no, no. That's the thing. I think we're learning in this scene that Jim has had a problem with the utilities as well. Yes. Because his stove doesn't work and the milk in his refrigerator is spoiled like all of that whatever but it's just it seems

like he's been gone and the whole place is falling apart yeah so it could be plugged in and then the like the backup battery is now dead like that like he doesn't have any it's not explained i'm justifying it well uh billy wants to talk to jim uh for a job um he can't do it himself because he has lost his pi license on a what seems to be fairly i mean i think it's a little premature to say bogus but kind of seems on on a fluke kind of situation um yeah he was caught by the police breaking and entering and that is a felony and thus the license board stripped him of his uh private investigator's license um but he went into this house because he was you know staking it out for a job he thought that there was a woman in trouble so he went in and got uh got popped by

the cops he's still worried about her. And so he wants Jim to check up on the whole thing. He's telling the story to Jim while all the business that you mentioned is going on. Trying to use the stove and the gas is out. Rocky's, you know, trying to be helpful and kind of bubbling around. Rocky offers, when he hears that, you know, Billy's out of a job rocky offers him a cigar and he just very smoothly says you know oh thank you takes the one from rocky's hand and then takes one out of rocky's shirt pocket so he has two and puts them into his coat that's like oh it's a great little physical comedy yeah um but to tell him

the rest of the story he wants wants Jim to come for him, come with him to, for a ride on the way to his nine 30 appointment. This is another gag where we come back to them as they're walking up to the employment office as this is where his nine 30 appointment is. It's a pretty exposition heavy first part of the episode to get all of our get all the stage set right yeah so i have two points about that number one and this is going to uh this is going to be a theme that's going to be reflected throughout the show i cannot keep track

of what jobs these pis have been on like there's there's a con that's going to be a slightly different con played against each PI. Right. I get the gist of what's happening, but I can't keep track of who is what and where as we go along, because I am not a private investigator. All right. That out of the way, there's a lot of exposition. But like you said, there's business going on in the background it's always with physical business and jokes this whole trying to find his spot in the line uh at

the uh unemployment office is uh not like hilarious what am i trying to say about it it's it's interesting yeah instead of just filling it with what would be a stereotype of an unemployment line there's people that are dressed in different like uh economic classes you know to signify different economic classes and things and it's enough to keep your attention as to what's going on there uh so you're not just sitting and kind of zoning out on an exposition dump. Yeah. It's interesting how they craft this, I guess is what I'm saying. Oh, yeah, for sure.

And another element is that there's a little drama in the scene because Billy's trying to find his place in line and he keeps striking me out on where he's supposed to be. So there's a little dramatic question that we're like, is he going to get into the line or not, right? It's not hugely dramatic, but it gives a sense of momentum to the scene over them just standing outside and talking.

So not to leave you hanging, he does eventually find his place in line. Yes. I have never been to... I have been on unemployment. I have never been to, I, I have been on unemployment. I've never been to a physical office and I don't know if this is a thing that still happens. The, the line, um, right. You line, it's like boarding Southwest airlines.

You like line up based on your appointment time, but that doesn't mean that if you get there at that time, you have an appointment. That just means that that's when you get in the line. So Billy does eventually find the first 945 appointment guy and gets in line in front of him because he's the last one to show up for his 930 appointment. So Billy was hired by his by a client, a fashion model named Odette, because Odette had a friend named Jamie who met a guy named Wexler, and Odette was worried that Wexler was beating up on Jamie. That's basically the situation. Yeah. Odette didn't want to go to the cops because Jamie had had some trouble with police back in New York. There was a particular house that they were staying in. Wexler was house-sitting for someone that was abroad.

Billy staked it out all day. There was no sign of anyone. He thought that maybe she was just in there and maybe in trouble. So at 11 o'clock, he decided to go in. Three minutes later, the cops showed up and arrested him for breaking and entering. The couple, when they returned from abroad, said they had no idea. They hadn't hired anyone to house it. They didn't know anyone named Wexler. And when Billy went back to Odette, she had ghosted.

She was gone. So he's left in the lurch. He's trying to find out what happened. He wants to dig up some evidence that explains why he was there. And maybe the license bureau would give him his license back if he can, you know, show that he wasn't just, you know, breaking and entering for fun, I guess. Jim, of course. I charge $200 a day plus expenses and you are on unemployment. Don't worry, I'll work it out.

This is also establishing that they know each other uh they're friendly um jim is willing to take this on for this guy he's kind of a buddy yeah yeah this might not be the worst favor to give and then yes as you say we do end on a joke because uh he finds his place in line says i like this like this every Tuesday. And Jim says, it's Wednesday. Womp womp. Womp womp. One of the pieces of info that Jim got from Billy was that they had met, Jamie and Wexler had met at the Palace Disco. So we go to Jim at the disco asking the bartender for, you know,

if he'd seen the woman, knew anyone named Wexler, etc. The bartender says he has no idea about any of that. So Jim drops a couple of bills to pay for a personal, no, a business call if he does happen to see them come in. Now, we're dealing with nothing but variables this episode i i'm afraid to tell you in insofar as we'll never ever find out if jim gets paid for any of this and we never find out how much money he dishes out uh in expenses as he goes along uh but he seems to be free-flowing with the money here uh despite probably having misgivings about getting paid um that goes that speaks again to what you were just saying before that we we get the the vibe here that him and

billy although they don't hang out they have a mutual respect for each other uh that this is not one of our usual cast of jim's friends but you get the feeling that this is going to become personal even if you don't already know feeling that this is going to become personal. Even if you don't already know what this episode's going to be about, it kind of is sliding in that direction. As soon as Jim leaves, the bartender picks up the phone and makes

a phone call, and our rumply guy, as we know, Vern St. Cloud, but as audience members we don't know who this guy is yet, except that we saw him in the preview montage trying to punch Jim in the face. He's the one who answers the phone. The bartender, you know, says someone was asking about Wexler. I got his license number, but you're going to have to come down here to pay me for it.

That was our deal. Yes. After this phone call, it is established that Vern here is in the back of a shoe store and his brother-in-law comes back to find him because he is being derelict on the job and he has not gotten the 1488 in bone for the customer who's been waiting for it. So there are a whole bunch of indicators here that this character, who we don't know yet uh is down on his luck that revolve around this job he has at the shoe store and it just seemed like there was a time that that was how you showed that a guy was down on his luck was that you had him working at a shoe store uh and i suspect that this is like you know some patriarchy stuff i suspect that it's emasculating to uh you know your customers are most likely women who are demanding or whatever like i'm sure it's all wrapped up in a lot of that but also the fact that it's a job that he got from his brother-in-law

right confounds that um but it's just it was weird to me because i i was like they don't that's not a thing anymore and in fact if i walked into a shoe store and there was this guy selling shoes i would be a little like who hired him i don't know jim goes to this to the house where all the drama went down um they keep mentioning their name and i was like oh it's not that important um but for the sake of keeping track it's the Molinaro house. Oh, yeah, the Molinaro. Yeah.

So Jim is here in his glasses disguise. So we know he's running a con. He's from the probate office. And Hugh Wexler is the only relative of elderly Wexler who died and did not leave a will. And so the probate office has tracked him down and he's trying to get him his several hundred thousand dollar inheritance if Mrs. Molinaro, who answered the door, can help him out. She says that she doesn't know who this Wexler guy is. Jim is the second person who's come around asking about him and she'd love to help but she just has never met this person doesn't know who they are doesn't know anything about them um jim

wants to leave leave her his card to call in case wexler shows up and then we have a very uh awkward little moment where mr molinaro shows up and asks, who's this? What's this guy doing here? And she very clearly not wanting to let him know what's going on says, oh, it's just someone that I can't, you know, I can't really help. I'll tell you about it on the way to the club and like closes the door in his face. Yeah. So this is meant to give us some suspicions about the mullin arrows right yeah yeah this is highly suspicious so i'm here and i'm like okay so we have pi we have this rumply guy who looks like he's in the lurch in some way uh who i you know and i was like i think that might be the same guy i think i've looked him up so like i know he's also a pi so i'm like okay he's probably also been hit by this thing then we have the uh this weird interaction mysterious people who don't seem to exist like all right all the

stuff is there's a lot going on um so i did not really expect the next scene to be jim taking the groceries out of his car while verne st cloud sneaks up behind him in the darkness and then whaps him across the back of the head with his pistol. This is such a wonderful Rockford Files scene. My notes for this scene start off with the groceries. Yeah, no, what's going to happen to those groceries? Jim never carries groceries and gets them all the way to his fridge. Like either something happens to him and he has to drop him or

somebody that is ostensibly his friend will take food out of the groceries and eat it in front of him or something but like he never gets from the car to his front door yeah we will cut in to him already in the trailer unloading his groceries that's the only time he actually gets them to the fridge. If he starts in the car, you never get him inside. Yeah, that's just that. It's like what's his name? Chekhov's gun, right? It's Rockford's groceries. So there's a lot of business

here even before we get to the fight. Jim falls down on his face. Vern puts his foot on his back and is acting all tough. Tell me everything to do with your business with Hugh Wexler. And Jim starts gasping and plays that he's asthmatic and that he can't breathe. He can't tell him anything if he can't breathe. Vern does do one, you know, yeah, sure, whatever.

But Jim sticks with it. And so he finally lets up. And so Jim does take that uh to spin around and knock the gun out of his hand kick it away and then uh get to his feet and that's when vern squares up put him up put him up all right a quick note from my mom oh the gun okay go on uh vern apparently has some boxing experience yeah okay so this fight um i appreciate the choreography of this fight it's still two old guys slugging it out right but there there is a difference between how the two of them are doing it you can see a like a little narration or narrative going through it where

they're surprising each other yeah Yeah. In a weird way, it reminds me of, um, that famous sword fight from the princess bride with the, I'm not left-handed thing. Like it, it's not exactly that, but it's sort of,

it still has a nice, uh, little story to it all of itself. This is just me appreciating this. And so, I mean, the story is basically they square up. First, Jim gets punched in the face a couple of times because Vern has these very boxer like jabs.

And you see the surprise on Jim's face that this old guy is punching him in the face. Yeah. So Jim goes for what he's better at, which is surprise and kind of charges him, gets him in a kind of a side, kind of like a side headlock almost, and just starts giving him body blows in the gut. So even though you would think that, you know, Vern, who is a, again, more rotund man. Beefier. Could take some of these blows. He starts coughing and doubles over in pain

as apparently Jim tore up his ulcer with all of these punches to the gut. So Jim does get the better of him and he needs to start taking his Maalox to treat this ulcer. I just got to say, what a great character thing about Vern here that he carries Maalox with him. Like this is a man with stress issues. Well, and he says that you know he's desperate this is the first lead that he's had on wexler in a month and that's why it's coming on so so hard why is he so desperate well he lost his pi license after 33 years for breaking that ring go ahead and laugh uh so vern is the older crusty relic from an earlier era, right?

Yeah. He has all these turns of phrase that are straight out of, like, 40s gangster movies. Good. They're very good. He thinks he knows everything, except when he needs help, and then he's completely helpless the after fight here where there's this little conversation between the two of them the physicality of what what each actor is doing is great like jim is like picking at his lip uh because he's obviously going to get a fat lip in this afterwards they sell that they've actually beat the crap out of each other, right? Like, I just really appreciate it.

I'm going to like it when a broken old man is involved in a fight anyways. Finally, a character you can identify with. Yeah. But I just like how just without going into like a great deal of makeup or anything, they're just like, yeah, actually, like the way Jim favors his lip, I'm like, yeah, I've gotten a swollen lip before. And I know that beginning part where you're like, oh, shoot. Yeah.

Anyways, just enjoying the craft. We cut to a meeting of the minds in Jim's trailer. Vern, Billy and Jim are all comparing notes about what's happened. So Odette basically ran the same job on Vern that month before. There was a different address, but it was the same setup with

Jamie and Wexler and a house that was being house sat. It's a different address, but same thing. Vern went in to check something out, and it was the old Framola. He got busted on the breaking and entering as well uh this is happening while jim is trying to fix his stove he has these like giant

wrenches and is like doing stuff in there while they're all talking this this scene uh also ends the tension from the molinaros uh it gives us an explanation oh yeah. Because Jim did do some digging on them. And apparently the husband has tried to file for divorce three times because of his wife's infidelities. And so Jim thinks that their squirrely behavior was explained by her not wanting more strange men asking about strange men around. Yeah. So he thinks that they didn't have anything to do with it and they just use that empty house so yeah question asked question resolved um so he thinks that the thing to do is to concentrate on finding this woman odette because the other two are

probably not even real uh just part of the frame so we have a nice transition here where billy tells him where she was last and it's a voiceover as we see jim go to that location so it's like a very like smooth transition to like more action um jim is leaving the wind drift apartments there's something about how this was framed that was really good so the sign for the wind drift apartments has a big secondary sign that says uh no children or pets yes it could very well just be a background detail but i did notice it when we came into that scene turns out that's actually important so yeah you know good camera work there i guess like i noticed but really the the joy of this scene is jim lording how much of a better PI he is over these other two guys.

Yes. My notes are Jim is proud of his game. He, you know, didn't ask the manager. The manager couldn't say anything. She left no forwarding address, obviously. So he checked the switchboard and Billy's like, ah, see, I tried that too, but she didn't leave a forwarding number either. And Jim's like, no, I checked her outgoing calls.

Duh. Duh. She made a bunch to the Triple R Pet Clinic because she probably has a cat. And as you can see from the giant sign, no pets allowed. So while she was running this game, she must have been boarding her cat or whatever. He has a lead.

I think one of them asks oh that's probably isn't even a real name i mean i checked the phone books i checked all the model agencies it's a waste of time she's not a model all right she's blue eyes very thin but both of you said that she was five foot four you gotta be at least five seven to be a model designers clothes hang better on taller women who are you eve? Yves Saint-Laurent? Which I thought was a very funny joke. I was not familiar with who Yves Saint-Laurent was. The joke is pronounced Yves Saint-Laurent. I get it now. Not Yves Saint-Laurent. Got it. Yes. The other thing is that Billy and Vern have decided to buddy up on this because Jim is

basically doing the same job for both of them. And Jim's like, OK, great, that's fine. And they're all smiles. And he says, of course, I'll be charging both of you. And they start arguing. And he has a simile that makes sense, but also doesn't about if he was a doctor and if they're in the same accident, he wouldn't charge them just once to set two broken bones. Get your money, Jim. Don't get me wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do feel like you're doing the same work for two people. Just do a package rate. 300 a day. Call it good. You're not setting two bones. Yeah, you're not doing twice the work. Anyway.

Yeah. So we go to the Triple R Pet Clinic, which has an establishing shot with some good doggos. And Jim goes in for a good, solid cold read scam. Oh, that's so good. His wife was driving by there and saw a woman leaving with a dog that looked just like their dog that had been lost. So he describes the woman, Odette, because he has the descriptions from the other two. The receptionist very obligingly says, oh, that sounds like that's a spitting image of Susan Hanrahan. And so Jim then asks a bunch of questions with random biographical info so that the receptionist will correct him with the correct info.

Yeah. Oh, it's so good. So smooth. So good. info yeah oh it's so good so smooth so good what's great about it is that he's thinking on his feet enough to do it but then also he's presenting himself as a person who would make these mistakes and need to be corrected i don't know it's just something about it that's just like yeah okay yeah here you go here you go um so he gets the name susan henryhan and uh her address i believe um but you know are you sure that's who you're talking about because she doesn't have a she has a cat like she doesn't have a dog and uh we end with a good little gag yes she had her animal neutered but as I said sir it's a cat miss

Carla does have her problems but she can tell a cat from a dog. I mean, that's rather basic, don't you think? Ah, good times. But yeah, so he looks her up in the phone book, does get the address, and we cut to there where he's seeing the cat in the window, so confirming that yes, this is where Susan Hanrahan lives. We then have the

appearance of a mustachioed man in a cast on a crutches with his you know his leg basically totally immobilized in a cast and my first thought was bruce because i swear to god i thought this was uh bruce uh tuttle who has been in a number of rockford early rockford. He just has a background character, but he just has this very memorable face and mustache. He was in Pastoria Prime Pick, he was in Four Pound Brick, Just Another Polish Wedding, and in Hazard.

But this is not him. He just has a similar mustache. But this is a man, we learn his name is Garth, but this guy in the cast sees Jim looking in the window of his apartment and then sees him go across the street to the Firebird where he takes a nice little rest where he can see the apartment as he browses through a gas range manual to pass the time. I appreciate. I mean, I know he's trying to fix his stove, but also I appreciate reading an instruction manual to pass the time. I appreciate, I mean, I know he's trying to fix his stove,

but also I appreciate reading an instruction manual to pass the time. That is a thing I do as a hobby. I would love to do it in a Firebird while staking out. We go to a phone call in an office full of dudes. The framing of this is there's one important man in a suit sitting at a desk and then a bunch of important men in suits standing around um so you can tell that this is a bunch of important men in suits uh garth uh is calling in saying that he's being staked out

this guy's been here for three hours um he's run its plates and it's Jim Rockford, a PI. We establish that this is special projects that he's talking to. And someone says to tell Susan not to come home until they know where this guy's at. So, the plot thickens. There are men in suits involved. Yes. And there's something called special projects which is always... Ominous.

Yeah. So we cut to a goon in a pinstripe suit. These are very much official goons, not rock and tumble goons. Pinstripe suit comes up to Jim's open window and they have a polite exchange of veiled hostilities as another goon in a brown suit comes up on the other side. The moment this started, I remembered this exchange. Oh, really? this has to have been one of my favorite exchanges hi hi what you doing oh just putting up my guard like i always do

when somebody sticks their nose in my business and you see him making preparations for his exit like we all know what this is i know you're talking politely, but I'm just like, yeah. Yeah. It's very good. Um, so just as pinstripe tries to open his, his door, he hits the gas and it peels out, leaving them both stumbling. Uh, but they, uh, quickly run to a very sporty Corvette. Uh, I know it's a Corvette because Jim says, uh, you came out of that vet. Um. Thanks, Jim. This is a gorgeous car. I'm not a car person, but Corvettes do it for me. And this is a gorgeous Corvette.

This chase, I think, quickly establishes that they are just straight up in a faster car. Yeah. Even though he had the advantage and he was able to get around corners before they can catch him, but they catch up with him anyway. So we have some great practical street driving with these cars waving all over the place. Jim cuts down a dead-end street and stops at a barrier. The Corvette stops at the barrier. Jim looks over, smiles at the guys,

and then just pops a from- dead stop j turn oh so good it's very good i have now seen all of hyperdrive on your recommendation yes were you already can you hear the announcers did you see a line of lit pylons that uh i did that wouldn't be hard though because it's coming from that dead stop so yeah his back end goes pretty far i don't i think he would have gotten some penalties on uh on that course for this particular one because he didn't have any speed going into it i do love how they just leave the camera there to contrast these so jim does the j turns very quick and the corvette has to do a three-point turn um to you know turn itself around in the same space and it's uh it's like oh yeah

j turns way better it's a way smoother it's a way slicker uh maneuver but they again use their superior speed to catch up to him so what does he do to to get away from these guys and their faster corvette there's something about this whole sequence here from from that the beginning when the the guy comes to his window to hear that is so indelibly etched on my brain and i don't know when it happened but i got so excited the further along this race went because i kept anticipating this moment where jim just as he's flying away notices that there's a pair of cops that have pulled over someone and just slides right in behind like he coming down at speed just turns it again and slides the car and right behind the cop car gets

out and just surrenders to the cops right away anything to keep himself out of the hands of these goons who then... They just drive away. They just go past. Yeah. Doesn't he say hello? He says hi to the cop. That's what it is.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. As they're putting him in handcuffs, he just gives a big smile and says, hi. Yeah. So good. And then the cut. Epi, I need a quick break.

I'm going to grab a taco. You tell our wonderful listeners all the places that they can find you and your work on the Information Superhighway. I'll be right back. One way to find me is to go to Twitter.com and search for at Epidia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. I'm usually responsive there. Otherwise, you can go to WorldsWithoutmaster.com where you can find my sword and sorcery fiction and role-playing games. And if you like role-playing games, maybe you want to

check out digathousandholes.com where I publish all my other role-playing games. Oh no, I dropped my calculator. Nathan, while I go pick up a spare, why don't you tell the good folks where they can find you on the internet? In addition to this podcast, I also design and publish role-playing games, including the Worldwide 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 ndpaoletta. 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. This cut is to Jim blowing in a balloon because they're giving him a breathalyzer, I guess due to his reckless driving. They're giving him the breathalyzer while they're, you know, doing that operation. Jim, we see Jim see Dennis out of the window and call to him. And then he goes out to try and get him. And the opposite door closes in Jim's face. goes out to try and get him and the opposite door closes in Jim's face. So I was like, oh, I wonder if that's the only Dennis appearance.

Like, I think that would be very funny if the only. Yeah. If Joe Santos got paid for like Jim shouting Dennis and the door closing in his face. Thankfully, we do see Dennis. But in this moment, the whole point of this, and this is all like just good, solid Rockford pulling threads together in this narrative moment. Right. Jim needs to use the cops to get away from the goons. The cops take him downtown because they arrest him for the reckless driving and whatever.

He runs out to see Dennis, who doesn't want to talk to him because that would be an embarrassment, as we know. So in the hall, Jim sees another P that he knows Marv he sees Marv asks him how it's going and turns out that Marv has been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and it looks like uh he's going to lose his license over it we have a slow zoom into Jim's face this is turning into something that is bigger than he thought yeah the addition of marv does exactly that it it lets us know lets us and jim know that the stakes are are bigger or yeah it's a vaster thing that's happening here uh but also and like as you mentioned before sort of the difference between billy and vern with billy is is younger and uh it's sort of like looking at the two

different sides or you know that this is the ghost of pi past and uh i would have guessed vern as future but then marv shows up and where vern is like sad in the pathetic way, Marv is sad in the like, like this is like a broken shadow of a man. He's more down to earth. Like Vern is kind of a caricature, right? He's kind of from another time and he doesn't, you could easily see that he just kind of lives in his own little bubble. Marv is, as we learn in a second, he has a daughter going to college. He has bills to pay.

This is the version of Jim that Jim could see himself turning into if things don't break right. While I think Jim never sees himself turning into Vern. Yeah, yeah. But it's great. You've got these three PIs, in addition to Jim, who don't necessarily have a lot of screen time each.

They've got a bit, but, like, again, in true Rockford Files fashion, each one is a clear character that you can, like, it would be easy to confuse Vern and Marv because they're just these two old guys. With similar names. Yeah, with similar names. Yeah. It was similar names and, and like they're both broken and, but they managed to give them these two different, very distinct flavors and personality.

Uh, we have a crossfade to Jim and Marv, uh, leaving the station as Marv explains what happened at this point, he does not think it's a setup. Uh, but Jim, you know,

kind of fills them in about what's going on. But so the setup for him was that he had a client who was going to a meeting with her ex-husband because he promised to pay her some money that he owed her, but he's notoriously like volatile or violent. And so she wanted him to come along kind of as protection is what it sounds like. Um, so he brought his gun just in case, you know, just to threaten the guy if it needed to happen. Uh, and there's this great moment where he's like, uh, what you've never done that. And Jim just shrugs and it's like, yeah, Jim's done that. Yeah. Like just in case. And then, uh, they're sitting there having dinner. The husband hadn't even showed up. And then these cops come in and just roused him out and, uh and arrest him for the concealed weapon. He's like, I don't know what happened. Maybe in the bathroom. Someone saw it in my jacket.

Yeah. And he gets on. He's telling the story as he's going to a pay phone because he's like, you know, I didn't even think till now I need to talk to my client. She doesn't even know what happened. In the middle of this is like the line. You know, Jessica is supposed to go to college this fall. What am I supposed to do for money? Get a Mickey Mouse job? client she doesn't even know what happened uh in the middle of this is like the line uh you know jessica's supposed to go to college this fall what am i supposed to do for money get a mickey mouse job uh but it's like yeah i need to call my client odette dun dun dun odette this odette

we come back in to vern picking up a hugely filled pastrami sandwich. That is my note. The camera's on the sandwich, and then his hand comes into the frame to pick it up. It is an enormous amount of meat between two pieces of white bread. Yes. And then we pull out and we see that Vern, Billy, and Marv are in the back room of the shoe store,

and Vern says, where's the big R? He called this meeting. So from now on, officially, we get to call Rockford the big R. The big R. So Jim does appear. Vern immediately starts into him. Why don't you go back to Susan's apartment? You know who she is now.

But Jim doesn't want to get his gourd stomped. And clearly this is a well-planned operation. Uh, whatever she's doing, she's the common thread in these three setups. And it's a systematic attempt or a systematic, I guess, success at destroying PIs.

Um, in a moment of offscreen narrative convenience, uh, he got a lot of very helpful information from, uh, the valet at the restaurant where marv got set up uh i believe it yeah including that uh the description of her so that description matches everyone else's and that she left with a tall guy in a three-piece suit uh who does not seem to be anyone that we've seen so far so jim says it's at least a four-man operation it could be more um

the brother-in-law pops in to uh tell vern that breaks over he needs to get back to work and uh we get into the back end of the scene which i think which is which is funny well done and i think has to be a reference to blazing saddlesdles. To Blazing Saddles. Yeah, so this is a couple years after Blazing Saddles. I don't know if that explains anything, but... Well, it's after Blazing Saddles. Yeah, no, I think it does. So, everyone laughs at Vern because he has to go back to work for his brother-in-law at the shoe store.

And Vern says, oh, it's easy for you to laugh. You're sitting over there on welfare. He points at Billy. And Billy very specifically says, oh, it's easy for you to laugh. You're sitting over there on welfare, points at Billy, and Billy very specifically says, it is not welfare. It is unemployment insurance. Yeah. And Vern invoking a racist talking point

about African-American people in America. Welfare, unemployment insurance whatever sure beats working oh man but yeah then oh man how do you even this works on screen much better than i think it will sound yeah there's no reason for us two white dudes to try and recreate what happens here billy responds to that like understands that insult and responds to it by using very using like NASA coding to invoke the stereotype of the the happy slave to come back at Vern. Yeah. I mean, like he's he's clearly showing Vern. He's responding to Vern in a way that just illustrates the culture where his ideas comes from. So what he's doing is he's telling Vern that he's going to need to eat up that whole sandwich.

So he has the strength to go back to that hard job that he has. Yeah. But he ends it by grabbing Vern's hands and shoving them together to destroy said sandwich. Yes. And then he just pushes past him out the door. You know, he kind of uses a humorous illustration of Vern's biggest bigotry to get back at him. Vern is clearly the butt of the joke here. Yeah, exactly.

It is an interesting moment. Yeah. And that whole dynamic is what Blazing Saddles is about. Yes. Turning the bigotry of all these, you know, quote, Wild West white people back upon themselves through both the smarts and also just like the internal character of the sheriff that Cleveland Little plays. Anyway, I hope that made sense. The point is, it is funny in kind of a weird way. And there's a button on it. Yeah. Did you see that it is funny and kind of a weird way. Uh,

and there's a button on it. Yeah. Did you see that? Did you see that? That's a salty battery. No, I think it was corned beef and mustard. So there you go.

The show is giving us the correct person to, to identify with the situation. It is still, uh, an awfully, I don't know, strongly coded scene. Yeah. The kind of epilogue

to all of that is that Billy and Jim leave together and then Vern calls Marv back in and says, okay, Jim isn't doing what I think he should be doing, so let's take turns staking out Susan's apartment while he goes off and does whatever.

Poor Marv falls for it. Because again, I think Marv is desperate and wants something to happen. And he's like, okay, I see how this can help. While Vern is feeling slighted and that he's smarter than everyone and no one's listening to him. So he's going to do something. Yeah. Again, the characters, they make sense.

This valet also gave Jim the description and license plate of the car that the tall man in three-piece suit had come in. And so he has clearly followed this up and he is at the named parking space for Ted Clare at a building labeled Waterbury Security Systems. Having seen the title to this episode, we know he's on the right track. Yes, we were waiting for it. We cut back to Marv. He is in a hilariously, it's not obvious, like with stuff sticking out of it, but it's like this is obviously supposed to look like a nondescript van. Right. Yes.

It's a deliberately descriptly nondescript van. And so Marv's in there surrounded by equipment, eavesdropping on the apartment that Garth, the guy with the broken leg, is in. We hear some women talking, and then we cut into the apartment and we see that he's just watching a soap opera. Then we

come back, and the back door of the van gets pulled open and it is our two suited goons, Pinstripe and Brownsuit. Pinstripe has a pithy line. Some sort of threat. Marv responds with Rockford-like instincts. Yes. You better leave me alone.

I'm with the FBI. But clearly that's not going to work as the response is, that's nice. My wife's with the PTA. going to work as the response is that's nice my wife's with the pta and the camera goes outside the van for an ominous door close as the two goons have uh yeah closed themselves in there with marv poor marv we cut to a big painting of judah waterbury the founder of waterbury security systems um in the lobby as jim is uh talking to a receptionist and gets passed up to talk to ted claire uh so he takes a elevator to the 12th floor this becomes important later um and meets uh our our tall man in sure enough in his three-piece suit uh and with his uh transatlantic

accent i think as we were uh yes mentioning jim's line here is that he was at the restaurant with his wife that same night and he thinks that his wife and the woman that ted was with accidentally switched their sunglasses and so he's trying to get his wife's sunglasses back i love how much jim's wife comes up in this in this episode yes i feel like he doesn't use that super often. This is a good, I like this particular con because this is. It's so inconsequential. Yeah. As a premise. But it's plausible.

And also we're in this situation where the people he's dealing with aren't going to buy it, but they have to buy it to keep their own. To keep kind of their own con running. Yeah, yeah. it to keep their own to keep kind of their own con running yeah yeah it's not to his advantage to be like i know that you're a pi in this if he even does which he might not like they might know the name but not you know his face or whatever yeah uh we also get in in jim kind of being like wow this is such a beautiful building we get a little bit of exposition that uh uh waterbury must be the biggest detective agency in the world. Well, other than the Pinkertons. Ted does give a call to Suze and she appears.

She says, nope, those are not my sunglasses. And Jim's like, oh, well, he does a whole aw shucks routine about, you know, are you sure? You know, it was really chaotic that night. I mean, the police came in and dragged away that guy with a gun and everything and insists that they must remember uh all that and then like susan tells putting him off with a story in order to get him to leave but without yeah just telling him to leave right yeah they're both kind of like this annoying guy is still here yeah and the fact that he knows they're in a story yeah gives him leverage to just keep cranking you know he keeps pushing in he's like oh but you sat with the guy just won't let him go won't let him uh get their way out comfortably right um so uh they finally

make their final you know sorry we can't help you. Ted guides him into the elevator. Jim closes the door. And then we see that the doors immediately open again as he watches them leave around a corner, trails them through this open kind of office. We overhear Susan saying, oh, did you hear Wendell Butterfield was killed on the freeway? And Ted says, well, that's one we don't have to concern ourselves with. Yeah. They say this as they walk up a staircase as opposed to taking an elevator. So Jim hears them say this, sees them go up the staircase, goes back to the elevator, looks thoughtful. And we see some directed glances at the floor indicator.

This scene continues on the outside as he goes to his car. Hold up, because this is the moment that my mom breaks the case wide open. Because as we're watching it, my mom goes, is there a number 13? I don't think there's a number 13. Boom. This is communicated to us through Jim on the outside of the building, looks up at the top of the building and is obviously counting the floors. And floors and so it's like okay there's something about the floor that's going to be important later yeah yeah telegraphing the stuff that we'll need to know right to lay the groundwork um he calls the shoe store uh trying to get in touch with vern who isn't there but his brother alon is mad

you tell me when you hear from vern he forgot to to order the satine wedges. We're out of stock. Oh, Vern. Oh, and it's senior prom. The biggest night of the year. Jim goes to Marv's office and we get our downbeat of the episode. Oh, yeah. There's this little

country music bag a radio's been left on or something like that. And somehow that makes it more ominous. Jim opens the inner door to his, to Marv's office and the phone's off the hook. There's a dial tone, stuff's all over the place. The place has clearly been tossed. And then he walks around to the side of the desk and we see a hand. And then we poor marv blood on his face lying motionless on the

floor or as my mom describes it oh no that's his buddy i know jim hears the outer door open and he kind of takes a position where he can't be seen uh from the door uh as vern comes in and he's yelling for marv uh comes in sees the body, and then Jim stealthily from behind him kind of startles him with, I just got here. He must have been surprised. Jim clarifies for us that he's been beat to death. Vern is upset, obviously. He was supposed to be on the stakeout, Jim.

What stakeout? Cut to commercial. We come back with cops on the scene. Dennis is there. We get some fun interactions now. Billings has a good line at the beginning of the scene. If we had a dollar for every maybe, we wouldn't need this job.

There's a lot of maybes about what happened. Dennis says that the evidence here, it looks like there's a break-in and a burglary. A bunch of stuff is missing in addition to, you know, the stuff being all over the place. Jim tries to tell him that there's this game being run on PIs all over town. It's a coordinated thing. Marv was on a stakeout at the apartment of someone involved.

This must be related. But then Vern interrupts him and he's like, let me tell the story. And then he starts talking down to Dennis. Vern and Dennis have great like, let me tell the story. And then he starts talking down to Dennis. Vern and Dennis have great chemistry, let me tell you. He's basically like, all right, you're a stupid cop. So let me, a smart PI, tell you what happened. Like it is very blatant. And then we get the gag where Jim is behind Dennis facing Vern and trying to like wave him off.

No, don't say it. Don't go there. And we see Dennis's face get grumpier and grumpier before Jim finally cuts in and says, look, it's my story. Let me tell it. Gives him all the details that he's overheard. Talks about this Wendell Butterfield who was killed on the highway, but he's also a PI. And so obviously he must have been on

their list uh if they were talking about him now they don't have to deal with him one of the world's foremost security firms and they're worried about the little neighborhood stores right there's always a big attrition rate in your business you people are flaky undependable flaky yes and you have your moments admit it look at this case history. This guy busts into an old lady's house. Our dead man started a flash his gun in a Chinese restaurant. And this kind of thing is not unusual. So let's not blame it on some kind of a gigantic plot. So Dennis is not being helpful.

We end the scene with Vern saying, like, what can we do? We have no proof. And Jim is unwilling to accept that as the end. Why don't you just go sell shoes, huh? Poor Vern. I mean, he deserves it, but poor Vern. So finally, as audience, we get to see a little bit of what is going on. We're in a fancy office with Ted Clare and someone who's clearly an important guy.

I'm pretty sure this is the guy who took the phone call in our first, let's see all these men in suits scene. Mr. LaPointe, who's reading a headline in the paper, Hollywood private eye slain. This whole thing has gotten out of control. So Ted is in charge of this operation. LaPointe is like the special, like head of the special projects division, whatever that is. Or maybe Ted is also just special projects.

It doesn't really matter. They called in sticks and stones to deal with Marv. Because special projects is trained to subdue ex-husbands and bodyguard rock stars, not conduct interrogations. But unfortunately, Marv had a heart attack so they did not try to kill him but he he died when they were asking him questions and this is the cover-up though like the robbery the fake robbery the whole operation was just aiming for a 20 reduction in the private investigator share special projects market so this whole thing is just like a little marginal thing that they wanted done.

Yeah, they just wanted to be able to bodyguard more rock stars. That's all they wanted. Yeah. Ted had good operatives. They had over $84,000 in salaries dedicated to this project. Now, in today money, that's a little over $350,000.

So, you know, it's a chunk, but this is a, you know, second to the Pinkertons. This is also when executive salaries weren't so ballooned. Yeah. The point is, he had a lot of resources at his disposal,

but it's turned into a bloody mess. Ted explains that they were going to, the term they use is disenfranchise. They were going to disenfranchise Rockford. He was fourth on their list, but he was on vacation. So they couldn't get to him until he came back. Yes. Which implies that Billy, Vern, and Marv were the top three.

Or just under Rockford, right? Because they were the next in line. Because he's gone. So they went to the next. Yeah. But in any case, these are the cream of the crop here. Right. Or maybe they're playing it smart and they're just taking out the...

They're like, if we took out Lance White, we'd have trouble. Taking out the less successful PIs opens up the market at the least risk. Yeah. Who knows? successful pis opens up the market at the least risk yeah who knows uh uh the point is uh he's saying that the this whole thing went south because ted allowed cohabitation oh yeah and i love ted's response you have allowed two of your people to cohabit isn't that so hanrahan and mccreary mr la pointe it is the 1970s, isn't it? Yeah. Get over it.

Well, it's sloppy practice, but they've instituted containment. Susan has been taken out of the city. They've destroyed documents about who was hired and who was in what department. All the operational records are going to London, and the program has been terminated. The loose end is that they still don't know what Rockford knows and we get our scene from the preview montage. What are you going to do about that? Ted says, kill him? And LaPointe says, I didn't

say that. Yes. Ted leaves and then we see LaPointe pull out a drawer and turn off his tape recorder where clearly he was recording the conversation for his own protection. Yeah, just in case. Yep. So sneaky. CYA.

Alright, we get into our grand PI gambit. Here we are, yes. In Jim's trailer, Vern has never heard a plan so ridiculous. But Jim explains that this operation must be coming out

of the hidden 13th floor because the elevator skips floor 13 like a lot of buildings. They don't have a 13th that goes 12 to 14 because 13's unlucky. But he counted and the building has 16 physical floors. So in a 15

story building, that means that they do have a hidden 13th floor yes this is the clever deduction that my mom pulled off vern doesn't want to be the diversion because that means he's on the spot but he doesn't he doesn't have any moral ground to stand on because as jim says he's the one who talked marv into a casket yeah um this is basically the only chance for them to get proof of what happened justice for marv and get everyone's licenses back. Jim doesn't like what's happening to his friends or his profession. Then we end with the weirdest version of the angel relationship.

Yeah. With Vern saying, oh, yeah, am I your friend? Jim just looks at him and we freeze frame on Mars face. Yeah. It was a weird choice. Presumably for a commercial break. Yeah. We see there's a little more about this at the end,

but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here goes with the operation. Oh boy. What, what was your emotional journey during the sequence?

Cause I feel like there's a lot. There is. I had a lot of people in the room. They had journeys as well. They don't tell you what their plan is going to be, obviously, because you're going to watch it unfold. That's fun. It's a little complex. There are some phone calls to be made.

And it took me a few moments to figure out who was actually making which call. And because they said that Rocky was making one of the calls, it turns out that Rocky was making the call that Rocky should make, and that was perfectly fine. But I had some real apprehension about what would happen. Yeah. So the setup is this. Marv is going to get up onto the roof and as far as i know he just walks in and goes up to the roof i i can't remember if he does any finagling to we do seem to get off at the 12th floor and go into the janitor's closet so i wonder if it's just because they know for sure there's a janitor's closet there. So that's where he should hide.

That could be. Yeah. Then Billy goes to make a phone call. And Billy's phone call is to say that he sees someone on the roof who's going to jump. This is the diversion. And Marv is on the roof with beer. I'm sorry, Vern. Sorry. I think I said Marv also.

I had it mixed up in my notes. They're very similar names. So Vern is on the roof with beer. I'm sorry, Vern. Sorry, I think I said Marv also. I had it mixed up in my notes. They're very similar names. So Vern is on the roof with beer. Yeah, it would be a trick if it was Marv on the roof. Well, he brought in his briefcase like an important business person full of bottles of beer for just this purpose. While he's up there making a thing of it and throwing beer bottles down at people as he's finishing them billy and jim uh sneak into the building right sneak the keys away from the guard because the guard predictably left him in the door that was a little that's like the moment of like but then again jimbo knows how to pick a lot true uh but anyways they go up to they take the elevator up to the 12th floor get off and take the stairwell to the 13th floor right now they have to figure out which room

to go into this is my favorite part this is this is where rocky comes in yeah exactly rocky has an important role to play because rocky calls the phone number for Claire. Right. Ted Claire. I am at this very moment now wondering how did they get. I think it's just, I mean, he works there. He probably just has, you know. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

So they call Ted Claire. And so by the ringing of the phone, Jim and Billy know which room to go into. Genius. It's a great plan. They go into the room. There's a great plan. They go into the room. There's a little bit of business with Rocky on the phone. Jim answers the phone. And then clearly Rocky wants to tell him something or ask him something or have a conversation.

And he just goes, no, I can't. Dad, not now, okay? Hangs up. And so they start searching the room. The drama there is, will they get it done in time the cops have shown up the fire department has shown up uh vern is on the roof there's a crowd accumulating and it's like where did this crowd come from because it's not like they're near a street but if there's someone on the roof obviously there needs to be a crowd it's gonna be a crowd and i really i like vern during this uh he's doing a good job

i don't think we as viewers are supposed to think that he's suicidal no i think we're supposed to know he's the diversion yeah um he uh i mean we see him checking his watch before he yells again you know get away and then the cops send up a negotiator. Yes. You got kids? I got kids. You want to see pictures of my kids? And Vern tells him to suck an egg.

Yes. In very Vern fashion. But eventually, I think they're about to give up. And then they try a file cabinet. Well, they turn around and see another door. I think that's what Jim picks, maybe. Yes, that's it. Okay.

They get into this room and that's where they find the files on everyone. And so I presume these are the files that are being sent to London. Yeah. Great, got the files. We keep cutting back and forth, right, between this drama and what's going on on

the roof yeah my next uh little great bit here is uh you know they go back down to the 12th floor and then jim's like we can't take the elevator there's going to be people so now they have to walk down 12 flights of stairs oh good job and in a shot shot that I think perhaps previews a similar shot from the end of part one of The Trees, the Bees and T.T. Flowers. Yes. We see from the perspective of Jim and Billy as they walk through the empty lobby towards the doors that are closed and may or may not, you know, have some be locked or have someone there. And then a security guard just appears from off camera to challenge them. There's amazing blather during this sequence here. I can't do it justice, but the Jim just talking fast and with authority

to keep anyone from spending any time thinking about anything at the end here is great and it's like just enough hold it what are you two doing here where's the nearest liquor store i said hold it answer me the man on the roof has demanded more beer now we're gonna get it you two were up there we're police psychiatrist now stop wasting time i gotta get over the man's home and coach his wife there's barry's wine cellar near camden okay you get on that, Hank. I'll get a black and white. Go over to the man's home, code three. Now, if he wants Rocky Mountain brand.

Yeah. Not only does he have the guards' attention, I think you see Billy kind of being like, bam! Billy seems impressed. They do get out the door, but as the door closes, you see the security guard's face kind of being like,

wait a second. It was just long enough for what they needed which is exactly the point to blather um and then up on up on top vern just uh they give him the all clear or he sees them down below right like yeah he sees them on the street and he's just like jump never said i was gonna jump like all right we're done uh we cut to ted claire in very uh swanky tinted glasses handcuffed at the police station yes saying that it wasn't as nefarious as it seemed so apparently you know this information has brought down this uh special projects uh thing um then it says they're gonna arrest those other two goons and all three of them are gonna face homicide charges for what happened to marv so that's that's that's good at least um there's a great exchange where uh dennis s rockford uh do you happen to know uh the identity of your mysterious friend who sent us all these files

in an unmarked brown envelope. I love how Dennis clearly knows that it was them. But Jim's just like, all I can say is thank you to him. And Billy chimes in like, or her. Dennis tells Vern that he's lucky no criminal charges were filed

for that stunt up there. So there's a little line. Because I was thinking, I was like, isn't he just going to get, like, arrested? Yeah, yeah. So we have a little line of apparently they decided not to do anything with him. And then we leave it with our three PIs for the exchange of some banter to round out our episode. Billy says that we hit it right on the bullseye. three PIs for the exchange of some, some banter to round out our episode. Uh, Billy says that we hit it right on the bullseye and Jim offers to pop a cork of champagne to,

to celebrate. They come over to his trailer later, but Vern, he, uh, doesn't appear to, to share in this, in this.

Yeah. In a couple of weeks, we are going to be competing with each other all over again. Dog eat dog. Oh, so what, man? Let's bury the hatchet. Bury the hatchet.

That's a catchy phrase. Very original. Hey, come on, Vern. We went through a lot together. Let's be friends. Well, see you guys around. Hey, fellas. Don't take any wooden nickels.

He just can't admit that he can be friends with anyone, right? Right. He's Vern. He's a tough old, you know, tough old so-and-so. He doesn't need these guys. So when Jim says, let's be friends, he cannot respond in kind, but he does leave on, hey, fellas, don't take any wooden nickels. Yes.

And then Billy and Jim toast with their little police department coffee cups and share a smile and freeze frame. End of episode. Does Rockford get paid? Who knows? Probably not. I mean, I can see Billy maybe trading him a favor. Yeah. I don't think he ever gets anything from Vern.

No. So I enjoyed that episode. Yeah, me too. That was a good one. It's a good ensemble cast piece, right? As far as you still have this lead. You're still here for jim and that's who you're going to follow around but uh for a bunch of characters that we don't get before and only

one returns later dennis and rocky are in it a little bit too that i should give them credit for that but like it just does a great job of like building camaraderie right away showing that there's a group with this interpersonal stuff but like you can see how and why they might get along and uh yeah it was a delight i definitely enjoyed it uh this was definitely one where i kind of just like tried not to think too far ahead because i have seen it before and just like kind of let it do its thing yeah yeah let it wash over you like the ocean. I feel like I've talked about this on some other recent episodes, but the stakes are important personally,

but they're not of earth shattering consequence. They're very important for our, you know, our heroes here, our friends, the PIs. But once you zoom out of their perspective it really like even the people executing this plot it's not personal right like they're just trying to like expand their market share which is that very cold yeah corporate logic um that makes that villainous but it's not about fleecing a bunch of retirees of their retirement funds or something like that. Even at the end there with Ted Claire's line, like it's not as nefarious as it looks. Like you kind of get the impression that it wasn't like they had a plan that they were a

little proud of maybe. And we're just going to put a few PIs out of business. Right. Nobody would have cared about them. Whatever. Right. And we're doing it. And we provide a better service. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Yeah. So it only matters because these are the characters we care about that it impacts. Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff that draws me in more than big, vague stakes. Like the small personal stakes are good. Yeah. And yeah. me in more than big vague stakes like the small personal stakes are good um yeah and uh yeah i think this is a this is also a good blend of audience perspective where we we see uh we see more than jim knows just so that we have the context for why jim's decisions are going to matter um yeah right so we we see stuff before the detectives do

so that we know why things are dangerous to the detectives in the next scene or whatever. So that's all good stuff. I think I mentioned at the beginning that there's a lot of exposition in this one. There's a lot of like, let me tell you all the stuff that's happening, which is handled well.

And, you know, we talked about how it wasn't like overbearing or anything uh in the uh in our ed robertson book uh 30 years of the roffer files the entry for this particular episode talks about the um because this was an early david chase episode talks about the differences in the writing style between Juanita Bartlett, David Chase, and Stephen Cannell. And there's an interview with Cannell where he kind of breaks it down and says that, like, Juanita wrote very short. Her lines of dialogue were very short, one or two sentences. And she had this amazing ability in a very few number of words to say so much and be so funny.

David, on the other hand, wrote soliloquies. Some of his speeches went on for half a page. I was somewhere in the middle of the two of them. Um, and he also says that David's more of a cerebral writer while he and Juanita were more visceral writers, which I think is really interesting. I guess that kind of resonates with like how much exposition there is in this episode. It was like, yeah, there is some speechifying a little bit, not declaiming, but just like, I have a lot of words to say. Well, yeah, because it's three different cons that are played on the PIs, right? Not including

all the stuff that Jim does or anything like that, but just the, but I guess Vern and Billy have pretty much the same one. Yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to say here. Something about that that i really like is how it's asymmetrical and that is has intrinsically has more energy than if it was all a symmetrical setup so this is something i think we talk about in game design sometimes where if everything in your design is perfectly balanced it's static um yeah you know you gain points here you lose points here that kind of stuff it's when things get out of balance that you start getting more dynamic tension. And that principle is kind of at work in this setup where we have the first setup,

which has the details of the house and the break-in and entering. And then we have the second setup, which is almost identical to the first setup, right? And has the same result. So we're like, okay, here's a pattern. One, two. And then the third one breaks the pattern in terms of the setup because it's the same result that feels more systematic almost yeah if there are three different ones then we have a whole other level of exposition we need yeah just to get us to the same place but if all three are exactly the same we lose all those storytelling opportunities of

the restaurant yeah it's in a public place and uh it even has that thematic resonance with the gun and the answering machine message like the the fact that it's two and one instead of three or one one and one is more of a dynamic device there's something there i think for narrative structure that's really uh a nice little takeaway lesson i would say there's also that imbalance that we were just saying this before so i'm just going over again but the between what's at stake for waterberry and waterberry's employees and what's at stake for these pis right like they're different outfit doing a different thing they're not really in competition either i guess they are technically in competition with the pis but they're just like you could just see a memo coming from accounting yeah that said you know if we could take over

20 more of of the pi market yeah like our target for quarter three is a 20 gain in yeah personal protection contracts or something like that and you're just just like, okay, we're going to give that job to Ted here. Ted, you take care of it. And it gets blown out of proportion. But even from Ted's point of view, it's not really blown out of proportion. It's just a little bit. A little too far, but that's all. Yeah.

Anyways. Good stuff. Good stuff. I dig it. Good. It's nice uh we we like the rockford files it continues to be nice excellent all right well even though jim probably does not uh get anything from his friends and is out whatever it costs to fix his stove uh i feel like we have earned our $200 for this day as the two of us have buddied up

on this particular job. Agreed. We have a bit of a plan for the next couple episodes. I hope you enjoy it. So please join us again for when we come back to talk about another episode

or maybe two of The Rockford Files.