Two Hundred A Day - Episode 73: Resurrection in Black & White

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

Nathan and Eppy talk about S2E8 Resurrection in Black & White. Jim is hired by a magazine reporter named Susan to help clear the name of a man who's been in jail for 6 years for a murder he says he didn't commit. The case is pretty cold, but with Jim and Susan's powers combined they manage to figure out what happened and track down the culprits - in a motorboat, no less! We really enjoyed this episode, especially the chemistry between Jim and Susan and the nuanced character work woven into their story. Plus, we get to talk about director Russ Mayberry, as this is his last appearance on our show! 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 Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app 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.

Hey Jimmy, it's Cut and Lou! Gonna be in town a couple of days. No, you won't mind putting us up. It's just me and Aunt Sissy and BJ and the kids and Lil' Freddy. Hello, and welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I quickly was seeing if Henry had come in or not. I heard a noise. Definitely, yeah. Welcome to 200 A Day. I'm not allowed to be talking about the show. Welcome to 200 a day, the show where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I am Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. And today we are finishing a director cycle. We talked about this a little bit on a Plus Expenses episode at the end of last year. So if you just listen to the main feed, this probably hasn't come up. But since we've been doing the show long enough, we've started discovering both familiar names amongst our

directors of these episodes, and then also seeing that we are covering their entire corpus, if you will. We're not keeping track of every one-off director or one or two episodes, but this episode is our last appearance of Russ Mayberry. Mayberry. A director that we saw a lot in our first year or so, as he mainly did early season episodes. And in our first year or so of recording, we were sticking to the first three seasons of the show. Yeah. But yeah, we are coming to you this time with Resurrection in Black and White, chosen because it is the final Russ Mayberry episode that we will be covering on 200 a Day. Now, it's not his final episode for the Rockford Files, is that correct? It's just the final episode, because we've done his final episode earlier. Right.

earlier. Right. This is the third episode he directed chronologically, and then the seventh episode of his that we are covering since we go out of order. But if you wanted to put together a little Russ Maryberry retrospective, you would go with our

episode two on The Countess, then our episode five on Charlie Harris at Large, then our episode 16 on The Oracle Wore a Cashmere Suit, then our episode 21 on Hotel of Fear, then 27, Feeding Frenzy, and then Coulter City Wildcat number 70, and now this episode, Resurrection in Black and White. episode resurrection in black and white those are i mean those are all standouts i mean i i don't rightly know if if you just listed seven episodes of the rockford files i wouldn't think those are all standouts but i was like oh yeah that one and that one yeah um i think it's interesting uh

specifically because we did the cactus so early and it turned out to be such a foundational kind of like Jim's philosophy episode as covered in Malibu Madness and then Hotel of Fear is a great Angel episode Feeding Frenzy has perhaps the

best scene of television ever recorded so you know it's a good a good set of episodes scene of television ever recorded. So, you know, it's a good set of episodes that I'm sure just happen to be directed by this man. There's not a whole lot about him online. I don't have any really pithy biographical notes or anything. He was just all over the place, really prolific director in the 60s, 70s,

through the 80s. The list of shows that he worked on, you know, goes from The Brady Bunch to McCloud to Kojak to Magnum P.I., Rockford Files, obviously, In the Heat of the Night, The Monkeys, I Dream of Jeannie, like all over the place. He even did an episode of the night um the monkeys i dream of genie like all over the place he even did a uh

an episode of the next generation star trek next generation he did i looked at that because i was like oh we always like that crossover yeah it is both one of the worst episodes it's the second episode of the first season the uh the really racist one yes that one and if you look at the uh memory alpha for it apparently he left during that production and it was finished by another um person who directed a bunch of star trek episodes wow well congratulations on star trek surviving that episode yeah i didn't do any digging about whether there's a story behind that, but I thought that was funny. But yeah. Yeah, it's a very storied history here.

There's a lot of classic shows from the era. I'm just scrolling through his IMDb here. Yeah, so as I said, you know, not a whole lot about him biographically, which is, you know, fine. The man was a hard worker and made a lot of good TV. What else is there to say? But there was a Variety article about him when he died. He passed away in 2012, I believe. So there's a Variety article that linked to,

that had a link for like, if you want to leave a message for the family, because it was like contemporaneous, right? So I just followed that up out of curiosity. And there is a page on this, on the memorial, on the, you know, the funeral home that they, you know, did his service. They still have a public page with comments, with memories. And one of them is from Charles Floyd Johnson, producer of the Rockford Files.

Oh, huh. I don't want to be too creepy i'm not going to read this private remembrance uh for us you can if you want to find the variety article and then follow the the trail of breadcrumbs yourself you can be your own internet sleuth right but uh it's a really nice comment and you know that's uh that's a nice little coming full circle for us, I guess, of that. This Rockford Files producer would go to the trouble to leave a really thoughtful and kind memorial. It certainly adds to my imagination or my my perception that it was all one giant family. Absolutely. And we'll we'll do a quick assessment of his Rockford Files work, maybe at the end of

this episode. But of course, our focus here is on Resurrection in Black and White. Yeah. Which is a season two, episode eight, and written by a co-credited to Juanita Bartlett and Stephen Cannell. Yeah, this is, I mean, I don't want to get too much into it right away, but there's some amazing dialogue in this episode. This episode certainly has some bits that I think would have been in contention for some Malibu Madness

consideration. Chronologically, it's just before Chicken Little's A Little Chicken, which was like maybe the Malibu Madness MVP. What I'm saying is sometime in late 1975, there was some good weeks of Rockford Files television for people who just tune in week after week. I agree.

I think we should go ahead and get into our preview montage. Well, almost everything I grabbed from the preview montage is part of that great dialogue. Yeah. There's just so many good lines that will hit when we do the show here. But there were so many good lines that played straight into the philosophical nature of Rockford himself that I was afraid we had already done this episode. Yeah. Because it's just hit so many things that we already said. There's where he's telling her, you don't want a detective.

You want a bodyguard. She accuses him being chicken. And he says, of course, it goes without saying. And then the bit with the gun. I can't remember what she says. I have it written down somewhere else. But he responds, shoot it. I just point it.

I think this might mark the first time that we've had a joke in the cut in the preview montage. Right. Because then he starts shooting it right afterward. She asks him, why don't you carry a gun? And he says, because I don't want to shoot anybody. And then the next bit is, yeah, shoot it. I'm just going to point it. And those are separated by time in the episode.

But in our preview montage, it is, as we say, a joke in the cut, which is pretty good. And then, yeah, we end up with a lot of guns and boats. Guns and boats. Hello, listeners. We're going to take a quick break to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day. As always, we extend a special thanks to our gumshoe level patrons. This time, we say thank you to shane liebling if you play games online you should check out his free dice rolling app roll for your party at roll for your dot party jay adan check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at

jayadan.com dylan winslow dale norwood dave p and dale And finally, big thanks to our detective-level patrons. Check them out on Twitter. Eric Antenor at Antenor, A-N-T-E-N-E-R. Brian Pereira at Thermoware. Bill Anderson at Billand88. And of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them, too, at 200pod. Why become a patron?

In addition to supporting the show and exclusive episode previews, our patrons get Plus Expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about all the media we're currently enjoying. 200 a day will remain free to all for as long as we do it. But if you want to help support us and get access to the Plus Expenses audio feed, you can become a patron for just $1 an episode. Help out the show by leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. Tell a friend who you think would like it and check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. We get into the episode and right off the bat, right? We're in a car chase.

Yeah, we start right off with immediate credits over our protagonist for the episode, Susan Alexander, in her sporty little number who is being pursued and attempted to be driven off the road by someone, by a man in a much larger car. And we have a, just a little, yeah, a little establishment car chase where she's a little faster, but she can't quite get away from him. He keeps on trying to get up alongside her and push her off one of those classic winding roads on the side of a California mountain. But then she gets a little ahead of him and a pickup truck comes down a side trail onto the main road and that cuts off our pursuer and he spins out and

is unable to continue the pursuit. I had a moment because like when i was writing down my notes for it i said a gymless car chase and then the pickup truck i thought for a brief moment i mean it's not rocky's pickup truck but also this is early in the series i can't remember if we've established that rocky has this kind of nice pickup truck or whatever but i thought wait is this jim are we coming in like in media res with like jim coming to the rescue but no this is just some some uh bystander who happened to be in the right place at the right time because what jim is up to is far more important ah yes as he is on the phone in his trailer arguing with someone over an invoice that they're trying to get

him to pay he got a letter from the computer. Yes. Which was very nice. And he reads it out. And it says that they've located the missing invoice, a copy of which is enclosed. But nothing was enclosed. Now, I mean, this is obviously like a little bit of like computers, huh? From 1975, I think I said it was.

But also, I've had this conversation via email. You might not have attached the thing you said you attached. And then, of course, we can complain. It's a very modern complaint, and I'm sure it felt weirdly futuristic or critical of the future, and rightfully so. I think the future has become computers

neglecting attachments and whatnot. While he's on this phone call, the woman that we saw in the car knocks and then comes in, you know, waits for him to finish up his conversation, which he finishes with a fine line. You do a dandy two-step, but I'm

not dancing. No invoice, no payment. So this is Susan Alexander. She's a reporter, a feature writer. She is played by Joan Van Ark, who we have seen before in There's One in Every Port. She's the old girlfriend who grifts Jim. But this is her second appearance on the Rockford Files chronologically. She's in one earlier episode in season one as well.

This is very much a case of, I know I recognize her from somewhere and I thought it was going to be Columbo. And then I looked it up and I was like, oh no, she was in another Rockford Files episode. I think with a different haircut maybe. Because I am bad at faces. Yeah, right away, there's a...

I don't want to use chemistry, because chemistry implies a romance here, and I don't think that that's what's happening. I mean, maybe there's some flirty business here, but I really dug the two of them together. Yeah, they definitely have a rapport. Yeah. And they have like screen chemistry.

Yeah. I think there's a moment that like if they had wanted like script wise, story wise, if they had wanted to make it more of a romance, it easily could have just trended that way. And I think they just didn't. And it's fine. But they have the, I guess I say the screen chemistry to have made that work if that was the story. Yeah. But I think in the end, they almost have more like Jim and like Becker chemistry, except that they're on the same side. They don't need to like pretend like they're opposed.

Yeah. Necessarily. Yeah. Let's talk about this a little bit like okay so we're gonna get a little ahead of ourselves here but there's a setup here where she could be this rockford files type of client that you know has a has a go get him attitude uh and he has a we shouldn't go get him here like either he has a tap the brakes yeah kind of energy and oftentimes what that is is that one person is very naive and and jim is the one we're supposed to listen to because he's more experienced and he understands these things more and that's how this starts this is how this feels but as the episode goes on they don't say

haha you're wrong they just learn that he's wrong uh There's some moments in it where they work together so well that I just like would love to see more of that. And he comes around to her way of thinking a few times in ways that like I think plays against that that type. And with this being season two, I don't know if that type is thoroughly established yet for the Rockford Files, but it is a type in the Rockford Files. And I think there might be a slightly more meta thing we can talk about with that, but maybe we'll save that for the end. Yeah. So here we're setting up our story here. So Susan, as she says, she's a feature writer. So she's a magazine reporter.

And she's doing a feature on a man who is serving a life sentence for murder, but she thinks he's innocent. And he's been in jail for six and a half years. She's been doing the story, talking to him, and she just thinks he didn't do it. And since the case is closed, she wants Jim to try and find out more about what happened. Hopefully help prove this guy's innocence. So that's kind of like this setup and then jim of course is uh has has some questions about this yeah and so throughout this next bit and this episode has everything he's getting milk and cookies to snack on while

he's asking these questions he offers her uh one of his cookies from the cookie jar and she declines every everyone who's in jail says says it's a bum rap why this guy which is wonderful because jim was in jail for a bum rap that is a foundational part of his character and if you think he's innocent why don't you go to to the da and that's the thing there's no hard evidence she just think like she just thinks that he just is not the kind of person who could have done what he was accused of convicted of which was like brutally beating his girlfriend at the time to death and they make a point of saying the body was almost unrecognizable yeah so he keeps poking holes in in her assessment of the situation and uh resulting in with her saying uh are you always this hard to hire well only when somebody comes in with mark written all over them yes so he wants

to be up front with her uh so that he doesn't feel bad taking her money that he thinks that she's getting conned by this prisoner right that doesn't mean he won't take the case. He just wants her to know that that's his perspective coming into it. And he eats the top half of an Oreo as she asks him for his going rate. A stone cold classic early season. Yes, $200 a day plus expenses. But then as he gets his coat to leave,

she says, in New York, the going rate's $250. Yeah. This thing about him wanting to be up front with her and and managing their professional relationship through that is great and it's a thing we're going to come back to in the episode and i kind of love it it's just a really interesting uh ethical boundary that he seems to be holding right like he's like hey well i mean we just said it like i don't believe this guy is innocent i think you're you're you're being taken for a ride and i want you to know that before i start taking money from you for this thing this is the only

ethical way i can do this and we'll come back to this because there's a there's another business relationship decision that they make later on that turns out to be really good for the plot but also follows this ethical through line it's part of why i feel like i don't think the whole episode is the tightest of episodes but there's some really good bits here where they they do kind of tie everything into itself and yeah it's a very it's a very consistent episode like yeah the motivation and character through lines are very clear yeah it's a very it's a very consistent episode. Like, yeah, the motivation and character through lines are very clear. Yeah. It's not like a tangled web to to untangle.

It's more of a stubborn mystery that once they kind of figure out the central point, we'll get to it. But yeah, once the central point is revealed, then it's like, OK, this is this is what happened. Once the central point is revealed, then it's like, okay, this is what happened. Yeah, because most of the mystery right now is just them casting as wide a net as they can to find the very first clue. Right, yeah. Yeah, once they have the first clue, they're good. But they just don't know where to begin. We follow their conversation in the car where she finally mentions that some man tried to kill her today.

And Jim is like... Yeah, like, hold on. She did report it to the police. some man tried to kill her today. And Jim is like, yeah, like, hold on. Um, she did report it to the police. Uh, but Jim, that's the kind of thing he'd want to know at the beginning of this, uh, business relationship.

Cause he doesn't want to be muscle. That's not what he does, but she didn't ask him to put on a gorilla suit. She wants him to prove Dave's innocence. Uh, she sets him up with, um, the attempt this morning was against a woman alone and unarmed.

And next time it'll be against the two of us alone and unarmed. You're not armed. No, but you're a private investigator. Why don't you carry a gun? Because I don't want to shoot anybody. So many good lines in this whole exchange. And again,

they all get to the sort of character of jim uh the tearing down of the macho facade uh there comes a time when you know right now she is saying on the face of it that she's not looking for a gorilla she's not looking for muscle but what is she looking for because she can do investigative journalism like she can do these investigations and she proves that later on and it's she kind of is looking for muscle right like or or looking for someone who has like a slightly different ethical standard than she does yeah we'll see this play out more as we go um so we go to the jail to talk to dave dave kruger while they're waiting for Dave to show up.

Jim asks, why does she care so much about this? What is this guy to you? Susan says that she grew up with a lot of Daves, people who don't have a chance once they're stuck in the system. She feels like he didn't do anything, and so she has a chance to help him when no one else is going to. She mentioned that there wasn't a whole lot of evidence other than the relationship, you know, that it was his girlfriend that got killed

and that he passed three lie detector polygraph tests, but they were all thrown out on technical reasons for one reason or another. And then in one of my absolute favorite minor things about this show just like the nods to how things actually work where jim just says in pat kind of not in passing but just says to kind of corral this uh that avenue of hope um well those aren't admissible in court anyway yeah and so she asks if he trusts anybody yes she asks if he trusts anybody and his response is, my father. But of course, he's bonded.

Oh, I missed that. Did you miss that? Oh, so good. Like, do you trust anybody? My father. But of course, he's bonded. Which is wonderful because, like, is he bonded? But I don't know.

It doesn't matter. Oh, this guy. Dave. Yeah. He is certainly cast to be the most non-threatening person you could imagine. He's very folky. He's wearing glasses. He's kind of scrawny.

Gee golly. And he is so excited that someone is taking an interest and might help him. And he says that he'll do anything that Jim wants to get started. Anything he needs, he'll do what he can. We certainly are being put in the position of, I think of Jim of being like, all right,

is this guy for real? Right. And Jim, of course does not take him at face value. Once he wants to talk to him alone. And he says to, to drop the foot dragging act. Um,

Jim's done time. He knows all the cons, but Dave seems to be, uh, earnest. I, my note is that he plays dumb, but it's done time he knows all the cons but dave seems to be uh earnest i my note is that he plays dumb but it's not that he plays dumb like he doesn't understand he yeah he seems like genuinely like i don't i'm not playing a con yeah i think very specific to what gets resolved you know how we end up solving the mystery or whatever um he's naive in a certain way that that is either an act or you can see how somebody would be able to set him up exactly to take the fall so it's yeah it's still on the edge there for us as the audience jim drops that uh he knows that um susan wasn't supposed to

go over that cliff that whole car thing was just a scare so that she would stay on your case right and uh dave hearing that susan was put into danger is like whoa whoa whoa if susan's in danger that's not okay yeah you should you should stop if that's the case and i think that is what convinces jim that maybe he's uh not playing them for fools uh because he does seem to legitimately be like, oh, you're, you're in danger. No, I'm not worth it. Right. Yeah.

Susan says, well, you know, she's not going to drop it. They're going to do what they can. And Dave tells Jim that he doesn't have a whole lot of money, but he has a little bit and he'll give it to whatever he can to Jim to keep an eye on Susan and keep her safe. And Jim ends the scene by telling him that I already have a client, but I'll keep an eye on her anyway. I'm going to harp on this this episode, but we get a lot of lines of dialogue where Jim is just telling you where he stands morally.

Like this is either a like a professional thing, like he's not going to take on another because Jim's got money problems having some getting paid twice for the same job yeah he's not above doing that uh in other circumstances right but i think he uh this could this could either be him sensing a possible conflict of interest or him legitimately sympathizing with this guy and thinking i'm not going to take the money you've got right now because you know and i like that i like the the the ambiguity in what's happening there. The next scene, they are picking up a conversation they've clearly been having in the car on the way to Susan's apartment where Jim, where he's saying that Dave might have arranged that car to go after her. Right.

But like they talked with the warden. Dave didn't make any calls. Well, but everyone loves Dave. Maybe someone else called for him. So he's not abandoning this idea, but he's also giving it a good like shaking. They did check with the warden. You know, they did do what they could to see you confirm or deny what he may have done. But then as they are going to go in and get some records or whatever from her apartment,

they see the car that tried to force her off the road coming up on them. And we see a gun extended out of the window. They dive behind the Firebird for cover. There's a shot that shatters one of the windows of the poor Firebird. And then it speeds off. Jim gets the license plate number while Susan is wondering why they're not getting in the car and chasing after him. Yes.

And you're just kind of like, why would I want to do that? As he's calmly writing down the license plate number as it drives away. Working smarter, not harder. That's the Jim Rockford way. The exchange here is really good because he kind of walks her to the answer, but she gets to it on her own. I mean, like, again, there's a progression here because she knows what she's doing. She just doesn't know how to deal with the danger. And that's what Jim is there for.

But she's clearly learning from him. She's not like just there to be a counterpoint to everything Jim wants to do. So I like that. Yeah, I think that's what makes Susan an interesting character here and maybe elevates her a little bit over the you know it's a high average but the average uh yeah usually female client that jim you know is hired to or ends up helping out of the goodness of his heart um i think in a lot of episodes that client is uh always passive isn't the right word but um that client is kind of like i am i have hired you to do the thing and now i am often a sounding board for you to explain

why things are happening or exactly or to talk out like here's what our next step should be uh while susan i think that's a great observation she She's learning from Jim as he works. And we actually see her incorporate or come to conclusions that he would have come to, but faster than him because she has a different perspective or she knows another piece of information that he doesn't know yet. Yeah. So it feels like a more dynamic partnership and less like, here is the client in this story.

like here is the client in this story we go to talking to our good friend dennis becker yes as of course jim has uh easily gotten him to run a license plate um good old dennis unfortunately it is a stolen car it's on the hot sheet so that doesn't really help them dennis asks why someone seems to be coming after susan and she says it's because she's nosing around the Dave Kruger case and they must be scared she's going to dig something up. He once reminded he does remember the case but he asks what can he do? He has a stolen car and a description of half the guys in LA and Jim says he has one other thing. He got the case filed. Oh no. Let me take a look at it. What's it going to hurt? My chances of making lieutenant. And he's not wrong.

No. Jim gets to him by saying that maybe there's something in that file that would save Susan's life. Yeah. This is a fun thing about this scene is that from the moment when she says that it was a second attempt on her life, you can see that Dennis is now very concerned about her. I feel like in Dennis's head head it's jimbo coming with another guy who's taking a shot at jimbo right at the beginning of the scene like okay we'll report it your car is stolen blah blah blah but then when she says the second time you can see the change in dennis and how he's like oh wait a minute hold on maybe this is something i should pay attention to all right so we go to the file room but the case file is not there this is such a wonderful set piece this

file really is the really narrow filing shelves full of banker boxes yeah and the three of them all crowded together in like the little tiny aisle as dennis uh tries to find this file uh but yeah it's not there and it's not signed out so uh that's that's unusual and it means that jim had better start looking over his shoulder on this one dun dun dun back to the trailer it is evening um susan saying that everything was in that file there might have been something they could use it's a real blow that they can't get it. Jim wants to go through the other principals who were involved with the case. So the victim, her name was Cheryl.

Her mother was involved. She identified the body. There were character witnesses for the defense going all the way back to grade school. Something like that. And the prosecution didn't have any eyewitnesses, but there were neighbors in their building that heard them arguing. And then there was no one who saw Cheryl before her body turned up a week later. Yeah.

Dave never denied that they had an argument. But of course, you know, he says that doesn't mean I killed her. And that's pretty much everyone who was involved with the trial. Jim asks about the lawyer, but apparently shortly after the trial ended, he had a stroke and is now in a rest home and is not lucid most of the time. That is a lead, but we'll see where that goes. Yeah. Jim doesn't want her to go back to her apartment, of course, because she is in danger.

So he starts getting pillows and blankets, and we have a great back and forth about who's going to sleep on the couch and who's going to sleep in the bed and this is the moment you were talking about where they could have gone one way and and they chose they apparently chose not to yeah this could have been like a something that was or turned into flirting and it's not like rock for files is afraid of that. Right. Like they won't show the steamy romance side of it,

but they'll certainly imply that these two got together if they got together. Yeah. So this moment could have been written that way and it just isn't. And that's fine. We have a clash of wills more than anything else, where they're both insisting that they'll sleep on the couch because Jim's such a gentleman of course and susan goes through the litany of uncomfortable places she's slept in order to get stories including in a phone booth and on a pool table and jim has a

great comeback oh so good so you deserve a good night's rest yeah and i like to think uh my in my own headcanon here is that one of the reasons why he's making this i mean there's gallantry involved but also jim has seen enough people come through that front door on oh sure unwelcome that like he wants to be the first to greet them if that happens that's a good point but uh yeah it's great this is also a moreo scene where he has more oreos yes i'm moreo scene a moreo scene my first time getting to use that phrase and probably the last time so enjoy that we end the scene with you're stubborn aren't you aren't you yep and i think and this kicks, it's not a rivalry, but their relationship of each trying to. Yeah, it's almost professional one-upmanship, but not quite. It's a little bit friendlier than that.

Yeah, it's not about one-upping each other. It's more about like, well, let me show you what I can do. Yeah. Let me show you what I can do. And not being willing to just be like, okay, you do your thing because they're both stubborn. Yeah. The next day they do go to see the lawyer and ask him about Dave's case. I'll run through the plot points on this real quick.

But this is a very melancholy scene. Right. It's not really about what it's about so much. So this lawyer, he did have the stroke. And so he has memory problems and he kind of dr won but then he never did and mrs wilson wanted him to file the appeal and that's the the mother of the victim but then he had this stroke and yeah and uh so that will come back later but the substance of the scene involves him talking about the shuffleboard issue where they're not allowed to play shuffleboard inside anymore and the baked potato lunch yeah he gets gassy with baked potatoes so he hasn't given him a

raw potato and he puts toothpicks in it and grows it in water yeah um yeah i was thinking about this scene i was trying to figure out like there's obviously there. OK, so he reveals a clue that doesn't have the full impact that it should have until later on. So one of the things that they're doing here is that they have him as kind of an unreliable witness. some mental deficiencies and that makes it hard to tell if uh what he's saying is should be taken as coherent or not and uh that allows for a little bit of delay before the sort of significance of the clue that he's revealed uh comes comes out but the other thing i think that's going on in this scene is that we're getting that both susan and jim are uh they're the way they treat him is very familial almost right like they're both very like uh appreciative of his situation even though that they have urgent needs and they you know they understand that they're putting a pressure on him that he may you know he may not be able to and that kind of comes home with this

moment where he he wants them to join him for lunch and jim is resistant to that until he says and then i can have your potato and you know we get that james gardner smile and he's like sure and that's and i think that like i may be reading too much into this, but I think that this sort of the purpose of what's going on there is to see from Susan's point of view. Jim's been reluctant to do any of the stuff. And I mean, he's been gallant maybe, you know, with the whole you sleep there and I sleep here or whatever. But this is the moment where we see that he he it can be sympathetic. I'm sorry. Empathetic.

He it can be sympathetic or sorry, empathetic. The fact that he doesn't necessarily believe Dave isn't just him being a cynic. Right. Like it isn't just him unable to empathize with this guy. But again, I might be reading too much into what's happening in this scene. It's interesting because it is a pretty decent amount of time to give to a pretty incidental point. Yeah, that's why I was reading so much. I think that's a good reading. Also, it shows us and Susan kind of puts this into text and the next little follow up scene. Yeah. While Susan is seeing Jim's empathy, we're seeing Susan's empathy. Yes. And that is also filling in a little bit of why she uh or reinforcing her whole premise here which is i want to help this guy dave yeah for no gain

i mean there is gain she's gonna get she wants to get a story out of it but yeah the uh but the desire to help dave is driving the story it's not that the story is driving the desire to help Dave. And that's because of her empathy as well. And then that, that, that punctum on the end there is they're, they're back in the car. Yeah. It seems strange that Mrs.

Wilson, the victim's mother would want to finance an appeal for the guy who was convicted for murdering her daughter. So that's interesting. And then. I wonder why they won't let him play shuffleboard in the main house in the mornings when nobody's asleep kind of makes you hate mrs tucker doesn't it for a journalist you sure have a thin skin that's why i'm so good yes and so

that's kind of putting the the text there about susan. Yeah. She's a good reporter because she's empathetic, not in spite of it. So that said, they go to the house that Mrs. Wilson is supposed to be living in, but there's a different name on the mailbox. Maybe it was sold. Let's find out. Here we go, Epi. Oh, yeah. I cannot believe we did Malibu Madness without this scene. This is pure Rockfordishness.

Yeah, this is, I mean, this is the business card scene. It's not the first one, but it might be the definitive one. The definitive one. Yeah. The write-up in 30 Years of the Rockford Files mentions this episode um echoes some earlier scenes including the uh printing press which was in um a tall woman with red wagon yeah um but yes so let's find out what's going on with this house jim is going to take a real estate approach but he's all out of real estate cards so he pulls out the business card printing press out of the back seat. And Susan is amazed.

Yes. Not amazed in the sense of, what is that? But amazed in the sense of, oh, you print your own business cards? Yes. What a good idea. She says that she gets all of her bogus cards printed up professionally, and she wants one. Oh, I cannot describe the joy i had watching this scene

where it just kept going like i can't like my note was like oh the business card bit yay and then i'm like oh he's gonna bring out the press and i'm like wait like she gets her own permit yeah like like this is an odd thing and then he tells this backstory i mean it's not a big backstory but he's like yeah no i have a friend in the printing business and i explained what i needed and he described how to make it or whatever and it's just like yeah it sounds like he he did work for someone in the printing business and they designed it for him yeah oh and all of this while then they have this discussion about the tactic right to approach here where he wants to be a real estate agent

and she wants to be surveyors and they yeah the whole like back and forth this is i think the moment when me personally where i'm clued into oh she's super capable right she's done this before she knows what to do her her idea isn't like that sort of idea that somebody has in a meeting just because they haven't spoken in a while but it's like a legitimate good idea and has good critiques over what jim was trying to do yeah they kind of have like a pro and con it's like well if we're surveyors we can just walk around the property and no one will bother us right but like real estate you have to like talk your way in. Yeah. You know, and he's like, you know,

trust me, like this is the better approach. And she says, you know, I've opened up a lot of interviews. I'm good. And Jim replies with, well,

so am I. Yes. So she already, and she has the pre-printed surveyor business card. So she has her business card. Jim has his that he just pressed. They argue the whole way up to the door about who is going to, which fast talk they're going to do.

And Jim knocks on the door and a woman answers. And even while Susan starts talking, Jim jumps in to say that they're from, you know, double A real estate. And because he sniped her approach she immediately falls into backing him up it is so beautiful it's amazing it is definitely a moment where if if i had not been paying attention to this episode which i was i would have just sat the

hell up because uh it changes everything i was expecting about her going into it she's not even giving him i think she gives him the side eye when they have a private moment or something like that. Like, but no, she just, she just steps right up to the con and just goes with it. Yeah.

This woman on the other side of the door is helpless against the combined might of Jim and Susan. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, she immediately falls into, um, being the client. So like Jim's the real estate agent and they're driving around looking at houses and she likes the look of this one. So they wanted to just come and see, see if it's available basically, which I guess is something you did in the seventies.

She invented a husband and what his concerns about the house were. and what his concerns about the house were. Oh, it's just... Yeah, and like a kid, so that the school being nearby was a consideration. And they're moving from Detroit or something. And like this whole thing. They talk their way in. Like, hey, do you mind if we take a look around?

And this woman finally lets them in. I will also point out, I don't know if you're going to get to... I'm sorry, I'm jumping on this. But like the eyes that this woman is giving Jim. I know, right? Are important. It's like she seems to have some good feelings about this random real estate agent that walked up to her door.

Again, I don't think that there's an accident here. I think the camera does definitely linger on her looking at Jim and Jim looking at her. on her looking at Jim and Jim looking at her. So part of what's making this con work and part of maybe why Jim taking the lead was the right idea in that very moment is that she is enamored with him in some respect at that moment, right? Yeah, I have a note.

She seems to be into Jim. Yes. So yeah, so he asked some questions about the house while Susan walks around. It's like, oh, the wet bar could go over there. And we have a giant couch and never fits anywhere. But this room. So she's really hamming it up.

Jim finds out that this woman's aunt was the second owner of the house and she left it to her cousin when she died. And so her cousin owns the house and lets her stay there. Yeah. So her aunt is Mrs. Wilson. Because Jim says something about like, in retrospect, this is just like a really, this is a point that didn't need to be addressed in the dialogue.

But since it is, I appreciate it. As we find out later with how everything unfolds. You know, I've been in the area for quite a while. I always like to know the residents. A good broker is a good listener. Let's see, your aunt would be, uh, Wilson. Mrs. Wilson? Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, Martha Wilson. Yeah, she, uh, she left it to my second cousin when she died five years ago. Uh, he kind of, uh, you know, lets me live here temporarily. I think he's the one you ought to talk to. Well, it was a shame about Mrs. Wilsonson i'm terribly sorry she she was old and she took a lot of pills it was an accident but but she was in her late 60s yeah your second cousin would be roy pierce roy pierce jim feeding her that name so that she goes down that path is actually really important versus if he was just like so who owns this house yeah who's gonna barf up that information they kind of are

are wrapping up and uh she asked so what would you what would you offer for this house so here's the thing so jim makes her a an offer he says uh twenty thousand dollars plus you know some points on a mortgage you know what yeah real estate talk later they say she was offended at this offer yeah i wasn't sure whether it was clearly like oh she wasn't interested in that but given how much things have changed in real estate i had no idea if that twenty thousand dollar offer was like super low or like low or like like right in the median where she wouldn't be interested. Right. I was thinking about that too. I mean, I I've said this before, but when you go and look at, uh, uh, old calculator manuals, financial calculator manuals from just after this

$20,000, uh, is, it seems low, but not terribly low for their examples of like mortgages or things like that. I think it's meant to be somewhat insulting. Yeah. I mean, from context later, it is meant to be insulting. But in that moment, I was kind of like, that could be low or it could just be like a number that is just not interesting if you're not actually interested in selling your house, because she says, I'm not interested. You know, I never thought about selling it or whatever. By our rule of thumb inflation rate, which doesn't apply to housing because. Because housing has gone much faster than inflation.

Yeah, that would be 100,000, which I think for California around like feels pretty low. Yeah. One thing I love is that he does that. One thing I love is that he does that and Susan, again, just follows the cue and is just talking about things that she doesn't care for with the house. Like you would do if you were low-balling an offer. Yeah. No beat has been skipped. And she realizes that now they're on the exit and she's following again.

There's no patio. There's no yard to speak of. Only three and a half bathrooms. Yeah. And so this woman says that, you know, I wouldn't be interested for that. And then I guess she does get kind of offended. She's like, I wouldn't even let out the third bedroom for that much. Yeah.

And they exit on that with Jim being like, well, if you are interested, give me a call at the realty. I'm there. He has this whole patter of like, I'm there from like nine to 1030, except for Wednesdays because that's a real estate caravan day. Yeah. So as I leave, Susan's like real estate caravan. He's like, yeah, usually on Wednesdays, all the real estate agents, you know, do a driving tour of the area to see what's, you know,

what properties are available. You know, that's when they're not available. Yeah. I've run the scam before. I know what to say uh the scene is great from the uh printing press onward this whole thing is just this is a delight watching these two work together oh and we're gonna get more great classic rock traditionists ah yes good food cold drinks well as we get there uh we have a brief moment in the car where you know she busts his chops a little bit about the um the real estate stuff she says that when she hires

an operative she usually calls the shots yeah and jim says that well when you hire me you get the whole package they say that it does seem a little weird uh that mrs wilson died apparently accidentally like six months after her daughter though she could have been distraught and depressed maybe it was some you know an OD situation and Jim says that he'll check the medical records so yes then we go to him hanging up a payphone

and then heading back to the incredible restaurant that just has Mexican food and wonderful sign front hot food cold drinks susan is sitting outside with their plates uh there is a full beer glass in front of where jim sits and then over the course of this conversation he says susan that's my taco yes i in my notes when i watched her reach over and grab it, I was just like, did she just take his taco?

That's what you get, Jim. You're always stealing other people's tacos. This time, joke's on you. This has this, and it also has percentage math. Oh, yeah. So Jim talked to the medical examiner. The one who did that autopsy is retired, has a boat at the marina. And actually, the same guy did both autopsies on both cheryl

and cheryl's mother i think susan's like that's strange and jim shrugs he's like oh there's there's two deputy examiners that do that and two victims so it's a 50 50 and she's like no it's not it's a 25 75 so uh yeah i want to talk about this it's's a 50-50, but let me explain why. It's a 50-50 that the person who did the first autopsy is also the person that did the second autopsy. Because you have two coroner deputies or whatever. So one of them is going to do the of one of the particular ones then the odds of that one having done both by random chance is 25 right but they're not at this point particularly suspicious of either deputy i don't think i don't think so so i i think she might be wrong about

this this math in this moment here. Is this an example of what's it called? There's a thing in statistics. It's the Monty Hall thing where it doesn't make intuitive sense, but the fact that you open one door first does change the probability that whatever you're looking for is behind the other two doors, even though before you open that first door, it's equal that it's behind all three doors. It's like that. Okay, so one of the classic examples that may have happened back when

people went to classrooms. Welcome to Epi's Probability Corner. Yes. You may have in school at one point, a teacher might have said, okay, what are the odds that two people in this classroom have the same birthday. And those odds are, if the classroom is like 30 people, it's something like 50%. It's close to 50%. And the reason why that's the case is that if you have a class of two people, the odds of both of them having the same birthday are 1 in 365. They both have birthdays so we one day is we're looking at the day of the first person we pick and we just see if the second person matches that but uh see i might i might i'm not getting it wrong i just don't know if i'm simplifying things talking about

this the point is is that uh if you have a classroom full of people and you don't care what day that birthday is the odds that somebody uh two people share the same birthday go up pretty fast but if you have a classroom full of people and it matters whether someone else in that classroom has your birthday as a birthday those odds don't grow nearly as fast and that's because you're starting off with one particular day. So each time in that birthday problem, each time the second person has a 364 out of 365 day chance of not having a day on your birthday. And then the next person, it's 363 out of 365 because they can't have a birthday on the first or second person's birthday and so forth. So you start eliminating days and that surprisingly, that becomes a vanishing

probability surprisingly fast. But if you're looking at one day in particular, then it doesn't diminish that fast. It actually takes quite a bit. You can have 365 people in the classroom. Sorry, 366 people in the classroom, and none of them have February 2nd as their birthday. But you can't have 366 people in the classroom and no two people having, you know. And this is sort of the same thing, is that her way of looking at it is... It's a simple multiplication, right? There's a 50% chance of this event and a 50% chance of this event.

So multiply those together and it's a 25% chance of both events. That's the simple probability. But we're given the first event and that's the thing. We have two deputies, one's corrupt and one isn't, but we don't know that.

Given that this particular examiner definitely examined the first body. Yes. It is a 50% chance that they also examined the second body. Yes. However, given no information, if you're just flipping two coins twice. No, it's the other way around. If we're given more information, if we know that one of the examiners is corrupt, we're suspicious of one of the examiners, then the odds of them examining the first body is 50 percent.

Odds of examining the second body is 50 percent. The odds of them examining both is 25 percent. But we have to we have to be like that one is the one that's under suspicion. I see what you're saying. I might be wrong, but I think at this point in the story, yeah, they don't know one way or the other. From her perspective, in a universe where you just have these two events happen, it is slightly odd that the lowest probability thing that could happen does happen. And thus, it is worth thinking about a little bit more. Right?

Her math is wrong, but clearly her suspicions are correct. If they got Jim to keep going with it, then that's good. As long as they don't convict anyone on that math, that's bad news. Right, right, right. So going further from there, Susan says that there was, you know, when she did have a chance to look at the records before they mysteriously disappeared, I guess. She remembers that Mrs. Wilson broke down on the stand when she was first asked to testify. And then it took her two weeks to recover to where she could testify to it being her daughter's body. And so Jim goes through the sequence of events,

which now is starting to sound kind of suspicious, right? Her daughter dies. She has a breakdown. She comes back, testifies to put this guy in jail, then wants, goes to the lawyer and wants an appeal. Then the lawyer has a stroke and then she kills herself. It starts to add up at that point. Yes. The people standing in Cheryl Wilson's emotional attic didn't fare too well, did they? I suppose you're right.

If I know what you mean by emotional attic, your journalistic metaphors are showing. I know. I actually tried to look it up just now. It feels like something that was probably from some kind of like self-help meme around that time or something. Clearing out your emotional addict. Everything I'm seeing is very internal. So I don't know how other people being involved in it. Well, I don't know.

It doesn't matter. It's a great turn of phrase is what it is yeah it is it is we're going to take a quick break so that everyone can walk around stretch get a refreshing beverage of choice and uh find out where you can find us on the internet when we're not talking about the rockford files of course 200 a day can be found at 200aday.fireside.fm, patreon.com slash 200aday, and on Twitter at 200pod. You can also email us at 200adaypodcast at gmail.com. Epi, where can our fine listeners find you elsewhere on the internet? You can find my games at digathousandholes.com. That's dig and then the number dig a thousand holes dot com.

That's dig and then the number one thousand and then holes dot com. Or you can find my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worlds without master dot com. Or you can find me on Twitter at Epidia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. Where can we find you upon this Internet? D-I-D-I-A-H. Where can we find you upon this internet? All of my stuff, including my game design, my freelance graphic design and layout work, and other projects that I do, like zines and podcasts,

are at ndpdesign.com. You can also find me on Twitter at ndpeoleta. I'm also on Instagram at the same handle where you can see pictures of my dog. I hope you're comfortable with your favorite beverage in hand as we return you now to the show. They're going to go talk to the examiner, the retired examiner. She wants to just go in like as a reporter. And Jim's like, no, no, we should be, we'll go in as an insurance investigator. And he lays out this like complicated insurance like reclamation scheme and susan says it's too complicated yeah he's about to argue and then he

goes you know you're right again yeah yes we do just need to make a quick stop at the coroner's office i just want to point out that again i'm pointing out that this happened just before chicken little is a little chicken which is when somebody should have, well, somebody did. Angel did tell him it was too complicated and he didn't listen to him. This is good. Yeah. Cut to Pat Elber on his boat and Jim is introducing himself

as Mr. Slauson, who must be new at the coroner's office. So they are impersonating people at the office who have started since obviously obviously, Elber retired. I say that they yuck it up with references to people that they, quote, both know and the old poker night, etc. In the background, we see the guy who's been coming after Susan pull up in the car and just like stare at them from across the pier across the the pier um it's it's foreshadowing i guess i remember writing in my note and i'm like wait what why didn't that pay out but it

does pay out but it's it's it's a little more cerebral i think uh so the story is that you know you know how we're moving all the records to that place across from the courthouse um they're trying to sort out the old records that are going to go to microfilm, but there's some of them that have been missing or have been damaged, and they just need to fill in the necessaries so that the old boss, who's a stickler for detail,

will be satisfied. There's a moment here where, so Susan is like the assistant, and Jim gives, you know, go ahead and ask him about the people, and she's digging in her purse. And there's a moment, and I think this is just to play it up for Elber, right? He's like, come on, we don't have all day.

Is he just rolling with some improv? And she's like, oh, now I have to do something and stalling. But I think it's just to play up the urgency. Okay, let's talk about this. Because I actually have a question about what's going on with Elber. Call me Pat. I was just looking at him on imdb to confirm his name and his headshot there i was like wait a second i recognize that guy i

did not recognize him in this episode but he is uh the guy who he also plays irving rock felt in dwarf with the helium hat here he's wearing that like fishing hat that kind of comes down over his forehead so i didn't i didn't recognize him from this but if you look at his headshot it's like oh that guy he's the dad the jewish dad oh yes yes okay yeah his only two appearances in the rockford files apparently so there you go in this scene i feel like they're mirroring what happened at the house because he is soft on uh susan yeah right yeah it's sort of uh flip roles from when uh shirley was soft on on uh jim it seems that jim by the that business that they have there where she's kind of trying to get her thing and he's like oh we don't have all day uh patrick steps in and defends her a little bit and so that helps with that like hey

we got rapport here you know this is a him and her and i really like that mirroring i like that that like oh okay yeah we're gonna go with whoever you know almost good cop bad cop whatever but the other thing that comes to mind though is okay we've got the car that just pulled up and we've got this is Roy. That's Roy. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't established that it's Roy yet, but we will. So spoilers. This is just spoilers all around. Roy and this guy are in cahoots and Roy has been going after Susan all episode.

Right. Trying to trying to run her off the road, trying to shoot her, like literally trying to kill her. So the question is, at this point in time, does Patrick not know about Susan? Is he not in on what Roy's been doing? And I don't think he is. Yeah, I don't think so either. Because the the looks aren't like menacing mastermind looks. They're legit.

Like, I think he's soft on her. And I think he's like, they go and ask very specifically about the case in which him and Roy conspired together. And he doesn't appear suspicious about it. Right. He doesn't appear suspicious, but he also gives them the story yeah right like yeah i think at this point he is still like you know he's he's keeping to the plan which was as we'll learn to to lie about some of these deaths so as far as he knows roy isn't going around trying to kill this woman he doesn't know what roy's up to right now or he doesn't know or he knows that roy

is is trying to get rid of some reporter but he doesn't know that that's up to right now. Or he doesn't know or he knows that Roy is trying to get rid of some reporter, but he doesn't know that that's Susan. Right. That this woman that he's talking to is that reporter. Yeah. I think so. I don't think there's any tells that he knows who she is. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is all to say, so they give out another name to give a little credence to the story of like, we need to fill in all these different holes. But then they ask about the two Wilsons and Elber confirms the story that we know so far. The one was beaten to death and is brutal and very sad. And then the other one, she did take a bunch of pills, but the cause of death was heart failure. She was just old and her heart gave out. So we go back to the trailer and Jim is quitting the case. Yes. Now that they're friends, he doesn't like taking money from his friends. Yes.

Plus they're out of leads. And at the end of the day, Dave might just be lying anyway about not having done it. What about the man making the attempts on her life? Well, maybe that's because of some other story that you've done. Or maybe Dave did hire him to throw you off the case and we just haven't figured it out. But either way, they've gone through the maze and ended up at the start. He's making out a receipt for her. He says he's giving her a break on the rate and not charging expenses, which I think offends her.

Yes. I do like at this point, she goes, what expenses? All you had was. Yeah, it was like a gas money in shoe leather or something like that. And there was one other thing I can't remember what it was. Because, yeah, we charge you for those things. That's what expenses are. But you don't want a PI.

You want a bodyguard. I can recommend some very competent bodyguards who will do a much better job at this kind of thing than I will. And they cost a lot less. Chicken? Well, of course. Goes without saying. Oh, good. So good.

So what about this appeal? We still don't know why Ms. Wilson would want an appeal. And Jim says, look, maybe the lawyer, he just misremembered, mixed it up. You know, he himself was saying that his memory comes and goes. And then he, like, kind of does one final, just talks through each person who's been involved so far and how it's a dead end. And then he says, and then there's Mrs. Atwater, which was the name on the house. The woman who was kind of sweet on Jim, her name was Atwater.

And he snaps his finger. Yes. Something's been bothering him. She said that her cousin, Roy Pierce, owned it. But then when I made that insulting offer, she got really proprietary about the house and started saying, I, I wouldn't be interested. I wouldn't let the room for that much. Maybe she doesn't own it, but she sure feels at home there. Maybe there's something else going on. Let's go ask. We head back to that house. They knock on the door. And even though there are two cars parked outside, there's no answer. They go around the back, but once they're gone from the front,

the door opens. And I, again, maybe it's just because I was taking notes. I didn't really recognize. Maybe he wasn't wearing a hat or he was wearing a hat or not wearing glasses. I don't know.

A guy runs out of the front door and I'm like, who's that? But it's Roy. It's the guy who's been following Susan, right? Yeah. He runs out of the front door and takes off in the car. And by the time they's been following Susan, right? Yeah. He runs out the front door and takes off in the car. And by the time they get back around, he's already gone.

He's too far down the street to get his license plate number. But he helpfully left the door open. Oh, no. So they go in and we have a dramatic shot of poor Mrs. Atwater tied to a chair, fallen over on the ground, clearly not doing well. And we cut, it looks probably a commercial break cut. And we come back to like an aerial shot of a bunch of cop cars and the like County coroner people.

So unfortunately she is dead. Dennis is explaining because of course Dennis is there. Looks like she was tied up and maybe her gag slipped or something. And the guy hit her to keep her from shouting and that's what did it um and then he ran because that's right when those you know jim and susan showed up so why have you been here two times in one day anyway jimbo there's a nice little bit where jim's like well susan here usually has a lot to say but clearly she's just gonna let let me talk right now.

He says specifically, I'm working for Mrs. Alexander as a defense PI client privilege. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I'm working for Mrs. Alexander who like usually would explain what's going on. But clearly now is just letting me hang out to dry or something. Yes. She says she's a reporter working on a story and she doesn't want to get into the local press. So she's not going to tell the local cops about it. She's instructing her employee to remain silent. The First Amendment and all that.

Uh, yeah. So we cut to downtown with a, like a teletype printer printing something out while Jim is finishing making his statement to Dennis over Susan's objections, obviously. And she's explaining the First Amendment. That means you don't have to tell them things. You know, I told you not to say anything. And Jim says that their employment agreement was terminated just before the cops arrived. He's not going to withhold evidence in a murder case. Okay. So this is the,

I was kind of talking about this before. This is the, the plot reason for why he dropped her as a client, right? But, but him dropping her as a client has already been set up as part of this ethical motif that he's got going about how and when he's going to take money from someone

because he doesn't want to be scamming them or if you know that kind of thing and i i just love the way that that kind of comes together if he still had her as a client at this point we would be tied up in a bind and we might have him in prison and maybe we'll see a scene from beth that would be lovely but we don't get beth this point. And instead we get this. But like, it's not just in service of moving the story along. It's also part of this. Yeah, this motif of him changing their professional relationship based on what he thinks is the most ethical place to be at that moment. Yeah, Susan is not happy with this regardless. But then another cop comes in and they just got the prints back from the dead woman to identify her. And it took so long because dun, dun, dun. Her prints were in the deceased files. Her name was Cheryl Wilson. Yeah. Mystery solved.

Mystery solved. That was a good episode. episode no no there's more uh we go to jim's trailer where he's on the phone and um you know he's he's he's talking to someone um he'll he'll be on hold and then he's on the phone as susan comes in and she looks exhausted he says something like uh are they finally let you go or something yeah and she says well they were they're starting to threaten to just to throw me in jail. So I did finally after two hours, I made a statement. This First Amendment thing only goes so far. And then the person who's on the phone comes back and Jim is impersonating a clerk at a jewelry store who thinks that someone left a watch and would like to get a description of Susan Alexander to make sure he's going to give it back to the right person. And Susan's staring at him while he does this.

Oh, you want to see my birth certificate too? We have some banter about her credentials as it's in fact her secretary that he's talking to. And she does confirm that Susan is who she says she is. Yeah. And there's a bit here where Jim's like, everything's moving so fast. I never had a chance to check up on you in the first place. Which I like as a nod towards what he usually does do. Yeah. So now that they know the truth about the fate of Cheryl Wilson,

Dave is going to get a hearing and probably be released. Right. But who was the dead woman? Jim thinks it was a convenient body. And so here's here's the deal. And I like how some of the key investigation here happened off screen. Right. Here's the story.

So Cheryl was insured, had a life insurance policy for $200,000. And her mother was a beneficiary. You know, how do you find that out? I like this because he breaks down how he thinks about doing fast talk. Yeah. How'd you know that? I have an inventive mind. And i went over to the insurance company and i got some adjuster by the name of mr beyond very confused and he gave me that little bit of information inadvertently did you tell him you were a cop no irs investigator doing a company audit you never stop do you uh this is a tie-in to the plus expenses for this episode

because we talked about this sort of thing uh in the fafferd and gray mouser series the off-screen adventure thing and i think one of the keys to making that work is the details like this right because this would feel like a cheap move to just be like oh he needs to know something else so he just happened to check on it yeah but the fact that we get a description of how he checked on it and that it like was its own little con and could have been its own little scene but we feel like we've seen it because he just explained it and, you know, let it,

there's just something about the level of detail that is not wearing. It doesn't take away from what's happening, but it's enough to invoke in our heads what we could see him doing this, right? Like we could definitely feel it happen. It's like we could, we could block out that scene in our heads yeah how that happened yeah so there's no need to actually do it so here we are so this

must have been a whole scheme faking cheryl's death to get this insurance payout with the coroner and her cousin roy being in on it who knows how they made it work with their mom with her mom if she talked her into it or, you know, something else. But this happens. They find a convenient body. Her mom identifies it. And that's the and then the coroner positively or the coroner gives a tentative identification. Then the mom confirms it.

And then that's the scheme. And then they split the money. Of course, the mom breaking down on the stand was probably her realizing that this innocent man was going to go to jail for this. But somehow they talked her back into it. And then I think it's a little unclear, not unclear, but I think it's a little skipped over of like, did her mom die? Like, right. Or was she murdered? That's an open question.

Like the whole scheme kind of works either way. Yeah. But then Jim thinks that when he started asking her at the, you know, had her kind of go over it again when they were at the house and her insisting it was an accident, maybe that made her think about it again and start to get suspicious. Maybe it wasn't an accident.

And she started asking questions or something. And that's what got Roy to try and shut her up uh maybe she stopped believing that her mother's death was an accident yeah so jim wants to go stake out elber's boat while uh susan calls the cops and this is when jim gets his gun out of the cookie jar i thought you didn't like to shoot people shoot it i just point it i do like how front and center the cookie jar has been throughout this episode it's been chekhov's cookie jar we've seen it twice and then and and like the fact that it produces cookies before it produces a gun is great too yeah so we go to the dock uh which is apparently only five minutes away from paradise cove which is nice yeah

convenient uh but elber's boat is gone. Susan arrives after making her phone calls, and then Jim has her make more phone calls. Call Becker, tell him to call in a chopper in the Coast Guard. Then Jim goes to steal a boat, jumps in with her camera right as he's getting it ready to go. It's going to be a photo essay. He'll point his, and she'll point hers.

Yeah. So this is straight-up piracy, right? Oh, yeah. yeah he steals that boat he just jumps into some random person's motorboat has has the keys in it he just gets going uh and then out on the water we have a dramatic boat chase yes this is really a lot of gunplay for the rockford files it really. Yeah. So our, our goon who we finally positively identified as Roy Pierce is with Elber. Uh, but Elber is clearly kind of in charge in this moment. Go below and get the shark rifle. Yes.

Uh, so Roy starts taking pot shots at Jim and Susan with the shark rifle. Uh, Jim takes a couple of shots back with his pistol. Just wants to give him something to think about. Cause as Susan notes, there's no way he could hit anything from that distance right which i appreciate i think that's a very jim thing like okay fine if i'm going to shoot it it's going to be in a way where i'm pretty sure no one's actually going to get it we then have the growth of some groovy chase music

i think through this this is like i mean it's not a long scene most of it is aerial shots of these boats kind of like swirl like the motorboat going back and forth and the larger boat like puttering out into sea so we have some exciting music to juice it all up uh and then a coast guard chopper finally appears becker is in it and there's a guy with basically a sniper rifle yes i can't imagine anyone in any of these situations actually able to hit anyone with any gun right and i can't imagine anyone in any of these situations actually able to hit anyone with any gun right and i don't think anyone is actually shot i don't think so either i think he takes a couple shots to kind of like show them that they mean business yeah but they clearly are

in a helicopter yeah helicopter versus boat helicopter wins yes as just the classic example yeah rock paper scissors uh motorcycle boat helicopter yes you may be asking how does a motorcycle beat helicopter well that's when it launches itself off of a roof into the helicopter obviously die hard five sure die hardest yeah one of those um then we end the scene with Jim. He's like standing up with his arm holding the gun over the little front windshield of this motorboat. Yeah. And Susan's taking pictures of him. Yep. And we get a series of shutter click sounds.

And then we freeze frame on one of those pictures of Jim holding the gun and kind of looking off into the distance like I'm coming after you. That could be the end of the episode. Yeah, it could. We could just stop it right here. But we do have a final scene with a celebratory dinner with Dave, Susan and Jim. Obviously, Dave just can't believe that Cheryl was alive all those years and that her cousin was the one who killed her. I had a thought while I was kind of watching the rest of the scene and taking notes of like, man, this is a real mind job on poor Dave. Right. Yeah. Like I thought she was dead. I was in jail for killing her,

which I know I didn't do. Turns out she was alive the whole time, but left me in jail and now she's dead. So nothing has really changed except that the whole last six and a half years were a lie the first thing he says about her is that you have to understand that you know she was his life right like yeah and then to find out that this woman that he was madly in love with framed him for her murder and like this is a plot we've seen elsewhere in the rockford files in this case it doesn't seem like he should have been framed for her murder. It doesn't seem like he was abusive or anything like that. Right.

Yeah. I can't remember. I think there are open questions about like, I don't think they murdered someone. I think they found a body. They could just say was her. That's what it sounds like. Or like,

because he was a coroner, he could like, he had an access to bodies. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Anyways. had access to bodies, right? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, anyways. Anyways, poor Dave is what, is my point here.

Yeah, they fill in a couple little holes. It turns out that Elber, like, he was kind of the mastermind. He even got someone to take the files once he learned that, once they learned that Susan was digging around. It's still an open question, I guess, about whether he knew she was Susan when they talked. This makes it sound like maybe he did, but it works either way, whether he just knew a reporter was sniffing around or not. But of course, this photo essay has been published by now. And so Susan has a copy of the magazine with the photo essay title page is that picture of Jim holding the gun, staring off into the distance.

That picture is causing me a lot of trouble, Susan. Because as we know, he doesn't have a license for that gun. Yeah. So I think he's appropriately upset about it. Yeah, yeah. But Susan says, let's not quarrel. It's Dave's party. Dave toasts to both of them.

Susan threw him a lifeline when he didn't have any hope left. And Jim got the job done. And Dave has been officially pardoned, of course. And so Susan wants to know what he's going to do. You know, maybe there'll be another photo essay in it. Well, first, he wants to borrow 50 or 100 dollars. Well, to do what? Well, before we jump into that, because that stuff is good.

But I love that he's got a dream of opening a gas station. I always thought it would be nice to have a gas station. Yes. Him and Rocky would really get along. Yeah, yeah. But first, you know, he wants to borrow $50 or $100. Susan wants to know for what. Well, then what are you going to do?

Well, I'd like to do a photo essay. You don't want any pictures, Susan. Well, why not? I think it'd be fascinating. You do? Yeah. Tell her what you're going to do, Day. I'm going to get a woman and I'm going to get drunk.

Oh. So this bit here is a little redemptive of Rockford's read on him in the first place, right? Sure. He's not some like naive, innocent. Yeah, yeah. Paragon of virtue. Like he's just a regular guy is the coding here. Yeah. So Jim will drink to that and they click glasses and there's a beat. And then Susan says, well, I guess I can too.

And so we end with a freeze frame on the three of them toasting and smiling to celebrate Dave's freedom. Yep. Yeah, that was a fun episode. I think like the highlight of this episode, I love the printing press scene. But I think the dialogue in this episode is some of my favorite Rockford Files dialogue. Lots of good things that got into the heart of who rockford was um there wasn't like a whole lot of the um i'll climb your tree yeah not a lot of like slangy kind of stuff yeah we had a lot of that in um dwarf with the helium hat right yeah where there's a lot of like good like slang and then this is the other kind of good

dialogue or it's like good character dialogue yeah It's interesting also because it's all in context of a non-regular cast member. Yeah. Because Susan, this is the kind of thing I think we're a little more used to seeing with like Jim having heart to hearts with Rocky or like Jim bantering with Dennis. And this is the Susan character is a little more expansive, as I think I was saying earlier, as a character and is a little more on as I think I was saying earlier as a character and is a little more on Jim's level. Yeah. They have really good stream chemistry and presence with each other. And the dialogue helps with that.

This could have been a pretty decent reoccurring character. Having her come back with another story that she's trying to investigate or doing an inversion where he needs her help for something yeah she's she starts taking the lead on all the investigations and like he has to be this he has to be the backup like that would be really fun but yeah i like this is a it feels

like a classic episode i it's weird to say that about a show where it's all they're all classic but like this there's something about i guess this is season two, right? This is when they found their feet and early on. But it definitely had a great flow to it. I just really enjoyed it. Yeah. Dennis, I mean, Rocky's mentioned, but Dennis is the only regular cast member. Yeah, it feels more like a season one episode than a season three episode. Yeah.

You know, because I feel like season two is interesting because it has has the even though it has a lot of episodes that we like in isolation it has the thing where they got a little like jim had episodes where he was more the butt of the joke and he was more the one who got fooled right they lost audience during that season and that was a reason that they thought that was happening um so this isn't really one of those episodes i think this is more of this which i guess is why i feel like it feels a little more like a season one episode because we have like some like little definitive bits for the jim character that come out right and we have like a pretty straightforward mystery that isn't too complicated but it solving the mystery is not really what we're like we're here to kind of see

the the journey like the solution is kind of like oh and then that's how it all came out as opposed to kind of the weirder premises and stuff that start popping up in the third season it definitely felt like they were uh defining the character a little bit um not like for the rest of the series but more like hey if you haven't seen the show before, this is how Jim is not the private eye you expected. Right, right. You're like, chicken? Of course, it goes without saying. Like, no, I don't want a gun.

All that sort of stuff that I think is really good. It's interesting that it doesn't have it lacks for it but it's just missing from having the the whole rockford thing is that there isn't a good car chase with jim right at the wheel yeah though one of those expenses that he doesn't wasn't going to charge susan is fixing his firebird window oh that's true yes let's throw that out there though you get the impression that she she ended up paying him yeah i would imagine i was thinking about it obviously i'm thinking about his money all the time i don't know how much that invoice at the beginning was for well he was going to cut her a break so it was probably for less than 200 oh no no i meant the the invoice that

he used about the computer forgot oh oh yeah whatever that. But that's clearly from a previous thing happening. But yeah, like he cut her off at some point. And then that's when he did most of his dangerous work. Right, right. Was after he was. Yeah. So I don't think he made out too well, but I think he did all right. Probably did fine. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's go ahead and finish up with a Russ Mayberry episode power ranking. This is what everyone tuned in for. The seven episodes that Russ Mayberry directed in order from earliest to latest are The Countess, Charlie Harris at Large, Resurrection in Black and White, The Oracle Wore a Cashmere Suit, Feeding Frenzy, Coulter City Wildcat, and Hotel of Fear. Yes. Okay, so what is our intention here? We're going to... How about this?

Top three. All right, so obviously the two more recent ones... Yeah, have a little recency bias. Yeah. Okay, but if I'm going to say one of those two, I think I'm going to... Oh, Jesus. No, that's tough even. These are all pretty good for one reason or another and in different ways.

Yeah, these would all be on a list of like... Well, I don't know if they would all be on a list. But you were talking the last plus expenses about the... What is it? The 20%? Yeah, the Sturgeon's Law. Yeah, so what would would be 20 of how many episodes there are in the rockford files 123 okay i bet you that doesn't include the 90s movies but

that's fine let's not include them yeah so 20 of that is 24.6 so 25 let's say 25 episodes would i put all seven of these in that 25? I don't know if I would. Yeah, I don't know if I'd put all of them in there. Okay. So this, we don't need to agree on this. I think this is just a quick, like kind of gut. I think Charlie Harris at large probably is not in my top three.

Okay. Probably the least memorable of, of, of these. It's the one where he has the prison buddy who, who's hiding out. Oh, it's the one with, um, it's, it's the one with he has the prison buddy who's hiding out. Oh, it's the one with the woman who plays Dr. Pulaski on Star Trek. Right. Who does a great job. That was our episode five. Anyway, but yeah, it had some fun performances, but didn't really stand out to me kind of plot-wise.

I don't really remember the actual story. So I probably wouldn't have that in my top three the countess might be though the countess is the countess just feels so foundational yeah i mean it's our second episode so that's gonna have a thing too hotel of fear i cannot not do it yeah yeah hotel fear just has so much angel goodness and yeah it has really good jokes like it has sight gags and it has good like written jokes it's yeah yeah i really like the feeding frenzy but i actually don't think uh like that one scene in the feeding frenzy with the the hostage exchange at the roller at the ice rink is wonderful absolutely wonderful and also probably a thing we can attribute somewhat to to Russ Mayberry himself.

Yeah, absolutely. Because it is, I think, as we talked about, we've mentioned it in Culture City Wildcat also. But like what makes that scene so good is how it's directed. Yeah. So, oh, you know, I just talked myself into that then. If we're doing if we're doing a Russ Mayberry. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. This is our. Well, yeah. Is it a Russ Mayberry top three or is a rock for files episodes top three if we're doing a russ mayberry then feeding frenzy on the strength of that scene alone uh and again the countess uh for i think the directing style did stand out that was good we talked i remember even talking

about because that starts off with that like camera camera effect and everything that was like very 70s and cool. Yeah, I guess like Culture City Wildcat was really fun. But thinking about it as a like, yeah, top three Mayberry episodes, I'm not sure if it really crests over the other ones. Yeah. All right. I'll go ahead and say, oh oh this one is so good though with all the like the screen chemistry and like yeah that's not separate from direction right there's things that i've noted in this particular episode that we did and obviously it's more recent but um

where the camera lingers on shirley slash cheryl or whatever her name, staring at Jim and Jim staring at her. It's completely unspoken, but there's something conveyed there that isn't in the text of the dialogue that comes through very strongly and I think was well done. So maybe I would go for this one in particular to put the resurrection in black and white. Would I? I think so. I wonder who's responsible for jokes in the cut. If that's editing.

Yeah. This one didn't particularly have them. Hotel of Fear did, though, I remember. Yeah. Hotel of Fear had a lot of good jokes in the cut. There's also a mention, and now I don't know where I put the book, so I won't quote it. But in 30 Years of the Rockford Files, the entry on Feeding Frenzy does talk about how it's from the perspective of the actor who played the guy, the dad who stole the money and now the statute of limitations has worn off. The main guy.

Yeah. Who's kind of a coward. The main guy. Yeah. Who's kind of a coward. He, I forget the actor's name, but there's some quotes from his son, I think, about how that was one of his favorite roles he ever played. Because that actor usually had very like quiet, stoic kind of roles. And this is one that was more like he was able to like yell at James Garner and like really get all of his emotion out. And that there were whole scenes where, you know, usually the television shooting is very economical.

But like there were scenes where the director or Russ, Mr. Mayberry, if you will, would do the whole scene shooting Jim and then do the whole scene again shooting the other guy. And they would, you know, put it together in editing. So it gave him a chance to get like all of the stuff out for his character and it was like a positive experience and everything and that sounds like a cool working environment uh yeah so with that i will say top three russ mayberry episodes as we sit here today probably change on any other given day for me would be the countess our episode 2renzy, our episode 27. And we'll go ahead and privilege Resurrection in Black and White just because the Susan Jim stuff is so good. But I think you could swap that out with Hotel of Fear on any given day depending on what my mood is and what the parameters of the question might be.

I would agree with that. And I would, yeah, I think it would be a really fun exercise if somebody out there is listening to our podcast and not watching the Rockford Files and is like, what kind of Rockford Files stunt do I want to do? Just giving all of these a shot to just to see. Yeah, that's not a bad playlist. Even just doing them chronologically and just seeing what they think of it. And they are streaming on Amazon Prime and IMDb TV with commercials.

Yeah, oh, nice. That's right. That might change by the time you hear this. But in case you didn't know, that is currently what's going on. Excellent. Cool. Well, it's a bittersweet goodbye to Russ Mayberry. Just looking back at these, I've enjoyed each one of them.

So yeah, I thought I had more of a year with you there, but I do not. Well, that's where we're at. We're getting up to, if not crossing the halfway point of the series. So we're going to start closing some of these director arcs as we continue our recording. And so I guess with that, we will say goodbye. May your speedboats always be found with keys in the ignition. And we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.