Two Hundred A Day - Episode 74: The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

Nathan and Eppy take a road trip to S2E6: The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company. After Jim is ripped off in a small town, he needs to get his 10 grand back - but nobody is talking. He brings in Rocky and a fast-talking con buddy, but everything changes before they can run the con! While it felt to us like it didn't have the full Rockfordishness that we see in later seasons, this is a fun episode with a lot of individual points to like! 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 Chuck from whatchareading.com And thank you to Dave O, 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.

We're starting this week's episode off with an impromptu on-air unboxing as Epi has received something from Nathan. If you want to get right into our episode, you'll want to skip ahead about 10 minutes. But if you want to hear more about Nathan's new game, One More Thing, listen to this next part. I went down to get my glass of water, and I was like, walking by the front door, and we have like glass on the sides of the front door, and I saw this laying on the porch. So I thought, oh, I'll just grab that and do an unboxing here on the show.

Okay. This being, for those who can't see us, which is all of you, a parcel from NDP Design. That's me. Yeah, to Epidaeus Ravishaw. Presumably it is Oh god, I chose the wrong day to clip my nails. Presumably it is

just one more thing. Wait, that's the title, right? The title is One More Thing. One More Thing. So presumably it is just, comma, one more thing. Epi is currently using a screwdriver. Oh, there's a lot of tape. Yep, I am prodigious with the tape.

Oh, yeah. I opened it without the need for tetanus shots this time. Oh, nice. This is very well packaged. Got a little foam insert. Got some nice tissue paper around it. Jesus, you spent some time, buddy. Get into a groove. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Oh, God, it's got heft. Yeah,

there's a bunch of stuff in it. That's why there's a box. The lovely box. Oh, it opens nicely. Not all boxes open nicely. I mean, I know that that's what you were looking for. Yes. Two six-sided dice of different colors. Little meeples. Wow. Is this? Okay.

These are different mysteries. These packages of cards, right? Yes. Those are the clues for the different pre-made cases. We live in a post-legacy world. so now i'm like oh wait am i allowed to read all oh wow that is nice sorry i just the one more thing uh nope oh the little notebook yeah detective notebook uh that's got a nice texture to it too there's the board oh more get rid of my screwdriver go Go. Some assembly required. Oh, disassembly, really.

This is a special exclusive for our listeners. Yes. So one more thing is a detective mystery game that I designed and developed with the aid of a friend out here named Stephen, Stephen Winchell, who also did all the art. And so it is clearly inspired by detective mystery fiction, such as Columbo. That's kind of the core dynamic that the game plays with. But you can, you know, play it in all kinds of different genres or decades or whatnot. You know, we also cite the Rockford Files, of course, Poirot, Miss Fisher, Mysteries, etc. There we go.

There's the board. That's an adorable board. I know. It came out great, right? So it's a two-player game. One of you plays the detective and the other plays the murderer. You can either set those up fully originally using the writer's room mode, or you can use one of the five included cases

with the game where you're on assignment and so those are pick up and play scenarios and the board represents how the audience sees your murderer and so as you play the detective builds their case with the clues and the murderer tries to cast doubt

which of course only creates more clues and you see whether the audience ends up sympathetic to them or not and how much evidence they end up with against them the murderer always gets caught in the end but the board state tells you kind of what their uh you know how their story is going to end and what the audience watching your show thinks of them wow this is this is, this is quite nice. Thank you. I mean, I don't mean to sound surprised. And we actually did not,

we did not plan this as a promo. Uh, and he literally got this package as we were sitting down to record this episode. So we'll treat serendipity as it comes. I love your detective and murderer image. I'm going to show them to you oh thank you because you've you've seen them yeah that's steven's art uh is great the box set comes with

the board the rule book the five cases which are two little pamphlets one for each player and then a deck of clue cards um dice which are used for the writer's room mode where you come up with your own detective or murderer, meeples, there's two, because there is one scenario where you both are on the board, where you don't know which one of you did the murder. Oh, nice. Reference cards and two tearaway character sheet pads so that you can just use the kind of disposable pads

to make your characters. your characters so it's everything you need to play except for a pencil so um the hand assembly on this did you have to like sort the cards into the the yeah there was a lot of assembly because so for people who are not familiar with how this stuff works because it was a low volume effort and things couldn't get ordered all together in quantity because that would require a much higher order all the parts were kind of ordered from different places and then some hand assembled so the box and the board came from one place all of the printed stuff uh so the the character pads the rule book and the case files came from

one place so those all had to be collated into sets and then those go in a box and then each deck of cards we could have just put the whole deck in there as they came which were just right plastic banded but i thought it would be nicer to have them separated so each case is in its own little ziploc um so those just had to be sorted into those and then the dice and meeples put into a bag. And we had a little socially distant packing party to help get everything together. But because it was kind of a long process with COVID related delays through manufacturing, it was kind of like all of the printed stuff came at once. So I was able to just like collate that during my spare time while I was waiting for the boxes to get done. Like that kind of stuff.

I don't know why I never noticed this before. Because I've seen this cover like every time because that's what you do you share the yeah the image of the cover but this is this is great how the murderer is literally throwing the murder weapon away yep as the detective comes back in with like oh one more thing yeah yeah no that was the first i mean that was kind of their origination of it all was going to, I mean, I came up with kind of the core of the writer's room mode, which is the more role-playing version. You know, I've been working on that for a while. I'm playtesting it. And then I started working with Steven on some other stuff.

He does a murder mystery radio play occasional podcast. It follows Marty Crane from Frasier when he was a young police detective in seattle he told me about his wife are the are the protagonists uh and so i've helped do some of the mystery development for those scripts uh for that stuff and then he's also cartoonist and so working out this like basic image was like a lot of the uh a lot of the original creative momentum for the project. Yeah, he's great. Anyway, so there's your promo for one more thing.

That's great. That's wonderful. It is in limited quantities, but by the time you hear this, you can check it out at ndpdesign.com. There's the box sets. There will be a set of just all the printed stuff, like all the booklets, because I have more of those. And then you just would print the board yourself, then everything else you can get um from me uh and there's also a digital print and play version nice yeah uh i'm looking forward to it uh m and i obviously we're looking

at two-player games a lot but thanks for your unboxing that was fun that was it was fun uh i'm super excited i was i literally was thinking yesterday i was like i should have this game by now no not that but like you know i'm glad that it finally got to you yeah should we jump into this episode hello jim rockford's machine this is larry nohini's machine will you please have your master call my master at his convenience? Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where, aside from doing on-air unboxings, we also talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I am Nathan Poletta.

I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. For this show, we are going down a dusty desert road to one of your picks, Eppie. Yeah. We're going to do episode six from season two, The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company. And this was recommended from Twitter. And if I were on the ball, Diogo. Let's say Diogo. Diogo from Twitter. A fan of the show. He says that for his money, this has the best Rocky line of the series.

So as we go through this, we're going to have to keep in mind and maybe take our guesses at what we think that line is. I'm excited. This was an enjoyable watch. I was excited to sit down and watch this and super excited when i saw that uh juanita bartlett uh came up as the the writer yeah definitely we'll get into it but this is uh it's an interesting um it's kind of a proto issue episode without really being an issue episode. I'll talk about that a little later once we've gotten through it, because there's

some info from Juanita about the inspiration for this episode. Yeah, this episode if this episode had happened earlier, like say in season one, I would be like, this is where they were figuring out a bunch of the stuff that later became

sort of standard Rockford files. Uh, well, I, again, we'll get into it. Right. Sure.

But, um, yeah, it's an interesting place. It feels, it feels a little more like a season one episode to me as well. Yeah. This one is directed by Lawrence Doney,

uh, who we will actually get a reference to in the show. I don't know if you caught that. No. We've been keeping an eye on our directors recently. We're not quite close enough to do a full retrospective because he did direct 12 episodes of

the show across the first two seasons, but we have done a lot of them including perennial favorites Chicken Little's Little Chicken, Farnsworth Stratagem. um after we do this we have four more before we get to the end of the dony cycle putting in putting in the good work and this uh this one feels a little bit like a fun one i think from the production standpoint uh this is a totally on the road episode jim's not in la at all so it's all on location somewhere and there's a helicopter involved uh it seems like it was probably a fun one to kind of you know get out of the city and go do go do out somewhere in the desert yeah i think uh that chase near the end

well i i would i would not be surprised if i heard they were like oh i just want to drive the car out in the desert so let's let's put an episode around that the reference which actually our listeners already heard but did you catch in the answering machine message is it the robot yeah oh that's great this is this is larry doney's machine that's wonderful i do i do like that kind of cringyy like that's a deep cut for us specifically it's like yeah anyone watching the show who maybe noticed the name and then saw his name in the credits yeah but really it's for the that's that's just a that's an easter egg for uh for the podcast that would eventually arise right 45 years later i well let me let's because we don't normally talk about the answering machine messages. But let me just ask you a question about this answering

machine message. Is this answering machine message left by a robot or is it left by someone who's pretending to be a robot for a joke for Jim Rockford's sake? I believe it is the second one. Oh, yeah. That's what I was thinking, I was thinking too because it felt like the kind of joke that people would make about answering machine messages in the 70s. That's what I meant by cringy because it just felt like that like, oh yeah. It's like, yes, you're very funny. Thanks, Larry. Well, other than that, the answering machine actually does not really come into play in this episode.

But instead, we do get some some elements of some exciting elements in our preview montage. Oh, yeah. So I broke the preview montage down to three mysteries. The first one is and this gets answered pretty quick. Where did Rockford get ten thousand dollars? He's like ten thousand dollars of my money, and I'm immediately suspicious. Like, where did that come from? And then the next one is helicopter. And then finally, one of many wonderful Rocky lines from this episode where he's like, they're selling an invisible lake.

I just need to know about this invisible lake. I think the montage does a great job of setting the stakes, showing you that there's going to be action. Because they could have had a helicopter just sitting on the ground and just a still photo of it, and you'd know there'd be action. The desert chase is something to anticipate. We start the preview montage with the mention of 10 grand and getting his money back and then we end it with a death threat uh oh yes uh death by drowning or whatever so clearly we need to see how we get from a to b 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. This time, we say thank you to... If you play games online, you should check out his free dice rolling app, Roll For Your Party, at... Check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at... 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.

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Is this a country theme of the Rockford Files theme song? I mean, we say this, I think, a lot, but I just love the variety of music they pull out of that theme for this show. Yeah, this is the, I don't know, road trip cruising music. Yeah. And I'm just going to lay some appreciation down on just, I wrote it in my notes. Is this going to just be a full-on pleasant drive in the country just 49 minutes of watching jim drive a car i'm in this first scene in this whole establishment uh in particular the score really does a lot of the work uh to kind of go in and

out so we do start with seeing j Jim driving the Firebird through the desert. Titles are playing as we, I don't know, we go in, out, all around. Yeah. Really enjoy the sense of space and movement. He is wearing an amazing red and white stripy shirt, which is a strong look. Yeah, it has a little trouble with my television set. Oh, yeah. I'm sure there's a word for that

thing where it creates the weird patterns. But yeah, it's a good look. And we definitely see that it's hot. He has the windows down. It seems like he's not getting anything on the radio, I think. It looks like he scans through some static. But then there start to be some spluttering sounds and Jim frowns getting anything on the radio uh i think he looks like he scans through some static um but then

there start to be some spluttering sounds and jim frowns and we can see that he's having some car something's wrong with the with the poor firebird um he pulls over to you know take a look and he's next to a giant sign that says the great blue lake land and Company, turn here. So as people who've tuned into a show and seen the title, we're like, aha. Yeah, so the sign might as well say, your mystery over here. Turn here for mystery. Turn here for plot. One of my notes here is this. It's, oh, it's a lovely, long, luxurious establishing shot.

Like, that's what we got here and i love it i like it just again uh something to just kind of relish in it might be the day i was having when i watched it but i was like yes this is all i want right now i want to just sink into the world of rockford as he drives into this town clearly in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think part of the fun that they were having was like having all this landscape to really like use for all these nice big shots. And also, you know, we saw it in the preview montage that there is a helicopter.

I think the fact that they had a helicopter, they really got a lot of juice out of that. Yeah. Because there's a lot of helicopter shot in this episode, which is also pretty good. Throughout this establishing shot, we're also getting hints. Well, obviously, because he pulled over to check his engine. Yeah, we know that he's got car troubles. Right. And that's setting us up for just Jim's luck.

Jim having car trouble going through a random California town usually does not bode well for him. Yeah. Yeah, so he goes down this long dirt road to get to this Great Blue Lake. So there's some terminology drift, I think, throughout the episode, but I guess the town, they all refer to as great blue lake

i think so that's what we'll say and then there's the company which is the development the development the developer yeah so he pulls into great blue lake pulls up to a gas station uh with a sign prominently in the foreground so that we can see that it is the last gas and groceries for 35 miles. And then the proprietor is literally closing up shop as Jim rolls in. He says that he got some sand in his gas line, or some sand in his fuel line is what he thinks is the problem. And, of course, would like to try and get his car fixed. But this guy is closing up for the night.

He can't just stay open a little while longer because he is the night manager at the motel. And he needs to be there to start his shift. Yes. But he does offer him a rate on a room and they can deal with his car in the morning. It's fun to watch Jim get frustrated at every turn. We all know how this is going to go. We've seen the preview montage. Yeah.

We're going to just watch Jim bang his head against this guy who is like, no, I'm living my life. Jim has other concerns. He's got something burning a hole in his pocket here. Yeah. The real issue here is that he needs a safe. He has some important papers, he says, that should be in a bank, but apparently this town does not yet have a bank, but everyone uses

the safe in the land development office. He says it's just as safe as a bank. I believe he mentions that he has $500 in there himself. And so Jim is, as you say, frustrated at every turn. This is basically a horror movie setup right yeah there's plenty of horror movies with this beginning the whole town is going to be against jim and i think we just are supposed to know that right off the bat uh in fact uh that i spend most

of my time wondering is this person in on something that's going to like that they're trying to or is it just they're just a small town and they don't trust this outsider? Yeah, there's an interesting tension that I think is played for tension in the episode about like, like how much collusion is happening versus how much is this just what happens when you live in a small town and a stranger comes through. Yeah. But we will get to that later. For now, Jim goes to the Great Blue Lake sales office. And I like this. This is a nice contrast, right, where everything's been dusty and desert, kind of shabby. And then when we cut to this, it's like beautiful manicured green lawn.

It's like a southwest chic kind of building. Very familiar to me from growing up in New Mexico. There's a look of a nice place that is built intentionally to highlight the regional look. This building definitely has that. book right this uh this building definitely has that jim uh uh goes in to the uh goes into the building and we get a there's a big model uh of you know what i assume is the development right um in the lobby so it's this uh big uh uh 3d yeah like diorama big enough so you can walk around and look at it and there's like the lake in the middle and all the green hills around it and stuff like that. Nice tall trees.

Yeah. That's important. But there's, there's only one guy in there. He's also closing up. Uh, he was in fact supposed to be gone half an hour ago, but he says that his name is Murray Johnson.

Um, he's a salesperson and that the safe is a courtesy extended to residents of the town. And I believe this is where Jim explains his issue here. Yeah. Which is that he has $10,000 in bail money in cash for a client. And he, you know, wants to keep that in a safe while he's going to be there overnight. He offers a bribe.

He offers a $50 tip to, you know, allow use of the safe. Johnson says that Mr. Hart is in charge and it's his safe. And he may not like this, just having some random person using it. And you're not a resident. Jim says, sure, I am. I'm staying at the hotel until they fix my car. It's $50, huh? And I believe we cut from there.

Nothing to trust about this situation like there's nothing here is is making me think that that money is safe in any way but jim does so there is something here about how and maybe this is um getting back to a little bit of may the season oneness though this is also a thing about season two where we've talked about this before how kind of canonically some of the season two episodes have Jim being taken advantage of more. And that was something that people didn't like as audience. Right. And this actually falls into that pretty, pretty strongly because I based not on this episode, but just based on my expectations of Jim Rockford.

I'm like, why did he tell them it was $10,000? Yeah. Like, why did he just say it was something important? There's a level of like, I'm going to tell you this fact in order that this plot is going to happen a little bit. But maybe Jim's just, you know, he's a trusting guy. Although he's not entirely trusting too, which we find out about what happens later. Well, which we find out immediately because we cut to him following this guy, Johnson. Yeah.

As he goes to his house or whatever, presumably. And Jim watches him from the Firebird on the street as he parks and goes in, grabs a key off of the light next to the door, which is important later, and takes some notes about his address, possibly his car license number. And then he drives on to the motel. So Jim isn't totally, he's covering his bases a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. But I do agree with you on the, just declaring how much money it is. The only thing that makes me wonder is just like, if he said it's important papers, I'll pay you $50. Does that increase the chances that this guy will look into that like does it offer jim a chance to sum this guy up by telling him how much money it is right away because then if the guy's like okay we'll put

that in the bank jim could be suspicious of him whereas instead uh if he's like oh i'll pay you fifty dollars these are just important papers he doesn't have a chance of testing whether this guy might just look at it and then run off with it. I don't know. Maybe I'm giving Jim more credit than what the episode is trying to offer here. Well, Jim does get settled in at the hotel and he calls his own phone to get in touch with Rocky, who's been waiting there, but apparently who has been there for an hour and just not answering the phone.

So I guess the situation is, so Jim has this client that's in county jail. And Jim has this money to bail him out. And he's supposed to be back tonight. And he's clearly not. And so now the lawyer is calling Jim's phone, where Rocky is the only one there answering it. To yell at him about where's, where's this money. Yeah.

Rocky's getting tired of being hollering that. Yep. Jim, uh, says that, you know, he's having car trouble, but he'll be back in LA at noon.

One at the latest. Um, and, uh, Rocky has a good, good, uh, bit here where he's,

he says, uh, this guy's getting pretty mad. He really doesn't want to stay in jail tonight. I don't want to give him the bad news. And Jim says that it's not all bad. It's Thursday. They have chicken fried steak for dinner on Thursdays.

It's great. It's a nice little establishment of the fact that Jim has done time, right? Like he knows what the county lockup is like. So my question for you, has Jim been calling and leaving messages on his own machine and Rocky has been ignoring them? Oh, that's a good question. Probably Jim has been calling and then hanging up because the machine like probably doesn't expect Rocky to check his messages. But I could be wrong about that. I mean, it is never explained. It is a bit of a, just because we're, you know, answering machine aficionados.

Yes, yes. But yes, I would also not expect Rocky to check Jim's messages. Yeah. Well, we clip right along. It's the next morning and Jim's back at the Great Blue Lake sales office to recover his property. Now that it's the morning and, you know, it's business hours, we have a bunch of there's a bunch of clients in there. They're all looking at the model. It's all older people. Yeah.

We're seeing that this is some kind of development that is being marketed and sold towards like retirees, that kind of that kind of jammy jam. towards retirees, that kind of jammy jam. There's a fast-talking salesman who intercepts Jim and is trying to sell him on looking at some of these properties. And Jim just says that he wants to talk to Mr. Hart. Mr. Hart, he's not in sales. Yeah. There's this wonderful, I guess, exposition thing that they're doing here where this person, the salesman, is trying to convince Jim that he's making the right choice being a younger person buying into this.

Right. Because the older people won't have a chance to cash out on it or whatever. Right. Or like you'll have a longer, like your investment's going to have longer to give you returns. Yeah. longer to to give you returns yeah but clearly so you have like there's mainly old people there looking at it but then this guy is straight up stating that they're bilking old people without saying it and then like walks back from it because he suddenly realizes wait a minute this is a happening young man he's probably wants other happening young folk to be around him so uh yeah

i i thought it was a good good bit of dialogue and it's fun to see like knowing what i i mean i know i'm watching a rockford files but also just this isn't a timeshare one we went into that when uh dennis fell for the timeshare way way long ago but like everything about this felt skeezy from the get-go right from from the the giant billboard in the middle of the desert saying that there's a lake there, you know, like all of that. But this one, this moment nails it home. And I like watching Jim trying to let this guy know that he's not there to be scammed. Right, right. I just need to get to the point and get out of here. I know what you're trying to do. And I'm just not interested.

Yeah. Well, while he's trying to make that point, we see an older man come out of an office and kind of eavesdrop on them. It turns out that this is indeed Mr. Hart, who has Jim go ahead and come in. And then this scene is one where I'm expecting it. One where I'm expecting it, and then I'm just so pleased that my expectation is fulfilled. Where Jim just says his piece. He's like, I'd like to get my money out of your safe. Here's my receipt.

He has a written receipt. And Mr. Hart listens, nods, listens, and then just says that I don't know what you're talking about. Dun, dun, dun. Yes. $10,000. That's about. Dun, dun, dun. Yes. $10,000. That's right. It's signed for by Murray Johnson. And just who the devil is Murray Johnson?

He's one of your salesmen. Well, I have three salesmen. Paul Tanner, Terry Burch, and Henry Fielding. And Murray Johnson. What kind of a shakedown is this what are you trying to pull you know the the crux of our first mystery here right who who knows what and who is trying to get one over on who mr hart uh you know is like i don't know anything about all this i don't know this person jim has some reasonable points i think well he had a key to the building he knew where the wall safe was he showed it to me i can tell you where it is and he wrote a receipt on your

letterhead yes but uh this just angers mr hart more and he's gonna call the sheriff which jim wants to see the sheriff as much as heart does the fun bit about this conversation i think well is that uh maybe for the audience but definitely for jim heart is playing like he doesn't know or understand what jim's talking about and jim's evidence isn't there to convince heart that that this person exists and something like that it's there to convince heart that heart's not going to be able to gaslight him right like he's like i know that you're messing with me here so drop the act you don't have to do the act i know you're messing with me at least that's my take on it and i and i like that that interplay there having watched the episode to this point we saw this guy in the in the preview montage threatening to kill jim so there's a moment here which is actually another part of

the mystery is this guy heart scam Hart, scamming Jim right now? Yeah. And you kind of assume that he is. At least I kind of assume that he is. Yeah. Like this is all some kind of weird setup. And we'll find out more about how it's all gone down. But right now, this innocent act is part of stealing Jim's money.

Yes. Another really economical thing that this episode does is cut to scenes where we start off immediately giving us the context for what has happened in the intervening time. Yeah. So we don't see Jim go over to the wall and move the painting and be like, here's the safe, you should open it

and we'll see if my money's there. Right. We cut to Jim pulling up to the sheriff's office, and the sheriff's behind him, and he comes out, and he's like, look, this is all settled. There was no money in the safe. Yeah. Which I like.

But Jim wants to file a complaint. Murray Johnson must have stolen my money. This sheriff, he can't stop Jim from wasting both of their time, and then we have a good bit here. Murray Johnson. Height? Oh, he was about medium. Weight?

Average to normal. Hair? Brown. His eyes and his hair were brown. Light brown? Dark brown? Medium. Look, Sheriff, I'm trying to be as accurate as I can, but he didn't have any distinctive features.

He's just one of those guys who kind of fades into the background. All right. Give me your home address and phone number and anyone turns up looking average medium normal i'll give you a call jim says there's look there's more to it he has you know he has my money uh he has a copy of the serial numbers of the bills so it's like yeah apparently it is ten thousand dollar bills yeah i've never seen one i've never seen a thousand dollar bill there is on the imdb trivia there is a someone that has a note about how the thousand dollar bill i guess they stopped being printed in the 60s and so by the time this episode came out it would be pretty

unusual to to have any in circulation but also i don't know yeah they existed like it's possible they're legal tender but uh yeah but so he's like i have evidence that i had this money here are the zero numbers of the bills and also i have johnson's address because i followed him because i don't give someone ten thousand dollars and just you know walk away that's our gym um he's like i want to go there now and uh i have a note here where the sheriff is suddenly very interested in going with him the same thing like we were just talking earlier about how like we're not entirely sure uh if this is just a town a small town and jim is in it and therefore distrusted or if it the whole town is in on as we're watching this i'm like okay is the sheriff in on it because that not only is a possibility but it like has happened in rockford file right plot maybe even before this episode like i they're

all jumbled up in my head but um and my note here is just that like i think that this guy's cooperating with jim as it falls out i really kind of of like where this sheriff plays because he's not on the take. Spoilers. But he is also not just going to take Jim's word for it. He's kind of like appropriately suspicious. Yeah. And he's also part of this small town. So he's naturally going to believe the people that he's known all his life over Jim.

But he also has a job and it appears to want to do a good job. And I think that's also definitely part of it. So we go to this house that he saw Johnson going to. They knock on the door and a woman named Billy answers. She and the sheriff know each other. Yeah, right off the bat. The sheriff is not at all shocked that she is there. I think calls her by name, like calls her to the door by name at all shocked that right she is there i think calls her by name

right like calls her to the door by name or something like that yeah yeah jim tells a story demonstrates that he saw you know where he saw the man take the key from and he reaches up and it's you know that's where she keeps her key billy says that she she lives there by herself she was busy at the restaurant at that time last night that That's where she works. Nothing was stolen or nothing's been messed with in her house. Sorry, I can't help you. Right. Right. And the sheriff here says specifically, you know, it's a small town.

She's lived here as long as I've been here. Like, I'm going to believe her. Right. Yeah. There's a little bit about if or is this a little later? I can't remember. But there was a little bit about if she was having men over the town is small.

I would have heard about it. Like that's the kind of rumor that people would tell. Yeah. That's here too. Yeah. Jim ends the, ends the scene saying that, uh, I'm going to get my money back. And at this point I don't care how. Yeah.

That won't bite him in the ass. Um, so at this point, can I throw out something that I think is, it's not a problem, but it's something that keeps that just like, once I start noticing slash thinking about it, I cannot stop. Sure. At what point does Jim just go,

you know, maybe he lied to me about his name. Right. This episode has a few, uh, moments like that. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.

Like that seemed like an obvious, uh, thing, but also like, like, I don thinking the same thing. That seemed like an obvious thing, but also I don't know what you do with that information. It doesn't change anything. But I think as a viewer, it's like a little itch where I'm like, can someone just acknowledge that he lied about his name? Because Jim's like,

his name was this, and he did this for me, and everyone's like, I don't know who that is. So it's like, well, maybe he didn't tell me the right name. i don't know who that is it's like well maybe he didn't tell me the right name billy says nothing was taken she would have known if someone was in the house right right but clearly billy could because billy does know him by another name right and he would have been able to come in and out of her house and it wouldn't take anything because they were involved well i think we kind of established later that she's, you know, that she's intentionally, may not lying, but obfuscating that he was there.

Yeah, no, that's a good question, though. I mean, like at some point we clear it up, but yeah, I agree. It's just kind of like, I'm like, just someone just give me a line so I can stop worrying about this. Yes. Because like Jim Smart, he knows that at some point someone could have just lied about their name well regardless of all of that jim wants to get his money back and he doesn't care how so he gives rocky a call there is a line here that i just want to mention the sheriff says to him you mean you're right and everyone else is wrong and jim's

like so far yeah that's a good jim line and that's also kind of reinforcing the like is everyone in on this yeah so jim gives rocky a call so i guess this town is actually called colson i guess all right yeah that makes sense it's the development is the blue lake right development but this town is colson yes jim's in a town called colson uh he wants he wants rocky to come meet him uh to figure out this money thing and he wants him to bring fast harry yeah who rocky says i wouldn't take him to a chicken fight like this is the first rocky lines we get uh that's my first uh contender for the great rocky line from this episode um fast harry by the way his his full name in the imdb is fast harry de nova

that is an amazing name fast harry de nova just want to say i just want to put that out there the last time rocky saw saw harry was also last time he saw his 14 karat gold lodge ring uh but jim says like he needs his help uh tell him that he's on to something big and he's going to cut him in on the action. We're creating an old con man buddy of Jim's out of Hulkla in order to join him in this episode. So when does Angel show up in the Rockford Files history? I mean, before this. Because this character, watching it, not to besmirch Fast Harry at all, but watching it, I was like, they could have done this with Angel. Right, yeah. Down to Rocky not wanting to work with him.

It felt like a good Angel role that instead Fast Harry got. And Fast Harry is nowhere else in the series this is it which is kind of a shame yeah because i kind of feel like there's i feel like there's more to fast harry yeah yeah i feel like we didn't get to see him do his thing right which maybe we'll talk about um we we we cut to the three of them jim rocky and fast harry leaving a restaurant as harry says that i would have picked up the tab i but I don't have change for a 50. See? Yeah. He's wearing a three-piece suit

and a hat and a bow tie, which is amazing. And he can't believe that Jim got suckered into losing all this money. So there's this whole kind of back and forth about, like, why do you want me? You know, why'd you bring me out here? What's in it for me? And at the end'd you bring me out here yeah what's in it

for me and at the end of the day there's not really anything in it for him but he but harry owes jim a favor and jim's calling that favor in was what i took away from this yes there's some interesting things about uh harry and rocky's involvement in all this. Because Jim is setting up a con. Right. And we don't see, we don't know what the con is. And then it never comes to fruition. Right, right, right. There's a moment in here where Jim says to Harry, but it sounds almost like he's imitating Rocky. Why not level?

Were you afraid I wouldn't come? I knew you wouldn't. You never done nothing for nothing in your life harry that is true yes it seems like it's jim doing a rocky impression to give some stick to harry which i really like yeah yeah no they're absolutely setting up a con and i'm sitting here going like all right let's see where this goes and then it turns out it's not that it doesn't go anywhere it's that it gets cut short because events change yeah like something that jim does not expect happens uh which is interesting by itself but also makes me kind of wish we could have seen what this con was going to be right like what is jim's plan right here right yeah they're going to go to blue lake separately uh the sales office um because

they can't get tied together or they're gonna blow the whole thing so they're all each individually gonna do something to get involved with the blue lake sales company and development um so fast harry basically walks in and gets a job as a salesman. Yes. As you would if you're like, my name's Fast Harry, and they're like, you're hired. I'm wearing a bow tie, you're hired. Yeah. They do, and this is plot relevant, they have an opening. They usually have three salesmen, and one didn't show up for work, so they hired me.

All right. And then Rocky's in there kind of as a punter, as our friends across the pond would say, looking at the model and getting the sales pitch from our fast-talking sales guy that was giving Jim the business the day previous. And I think this is kind of the heart of the issue element

of this episode, where Rocky goes out with this sales guy to look at the parcel that he's interested in. They just drive out into the desert and there's just nothing. And like the wind is, is whistling and there's like some little shrubby, some little shrubby desert trees. This was the thing about like that diorama,

the, the model, the thing about it that really stuck out to me was how tall the trees were on that model. And there are no, you know, there's shrubs, but there are no trees out here. Rocky specifically is looking at a lakefront parcel. So, you know, they get out there and it's just desert. And he says, where's the lake?

And the salesman says, oh, it isn't in yet. But, you know, if you buy in now, this will be lakefront property. You're close to the country club, but not too close. It won't be too loud. Yeah. If you prefer the quiet, et cetera, et cetera. And he's like pointing at places.

He's just like pointing at random. And he's like, that's going to be over there. And that's going to be over there. And he pitches all the benefits of all the fun lake activities. There's no motorboating. Safety. But you can sail and fish uh

one thing i love about like noah barry's performance here is that uh we are definitely getting a conflicted rocky like you can see that rocky is almost buying it even though he knows that that that's not what he's here for and that's in the this guy and and a little bit later that like he he is pretty angry about what they're doing but like right here in this moment rocky is exactly the kind of person that if he wasn't prepped for this would believe that that lake was coming in and would like buy into this idyllic uh dream yes and no i mean i think he is playing it conflicted because you also kind of see him see the promise of it but also he's literally looking at desert and like seeing what's actually there and he does kind of turn at the end and he's like okay well

i've seen enough and the salesman's still trying to pitch him on stuff he's like well i'm going to talk to my son oh we'll bring him out here he He's like, no, he'll believe me. He'll believe what I tell him. And then we have one of my, this is one of my favorite transitions. I mean, it's, it's, it's not like really bizarre or strange. It's just like so smooth and well done. The salesman ends this scene saying like, take a look, mister. Take a good long look. No smog, no crowds, no roads, no water, no electricity. They're selling an invisible lake. So good. Is this yeah. Is this where or where Rocky gets a little you know, a lot of these people live on a pension and, you know, they're taking advantage of these of these old people who just want to retire. A lot of my notes up to this point are the question of is Rockford just in it for his 10K or is he out for justice?

Right. We don't know what his con is and we also don't know his intent with his con. And my note in this scene is like, oh, Rocky makes a play for justice. He's he's like, hey, they're bilking people. This might be my vote for the rocky line for this episode out there where there's nothing but sand and jackrabbits this guy tried to sell me a boat yes yeah oh it's an exquisite line uh i don't know if that's uh if that is the one but that was that's a very that's a good one yeah i think we

we i mean this whole scene is the transition for jim of whatever his plan was to yeah a new plan which i think probably involves transitioning towards justice there's some there's some text about that so yeah there's a knock on the door um jim makes rocky go hide in the bathroom because they're not supposed to be seen with each other, right? For whatever this con is. I think just before this week. Sorry, but there's a really good Jim line I got to drop here. And that was about this justice thing where Jim says, I don't remember the exact lineup, but he goes, yes, I do.

And I look lousy on a white horse. Yeah, there's one moment where Rocky's like's like i don't know what do you think you know where yeah where rocky's like do you think it could be a good investment yeah so i read that as jim being like we're not like no you're not gonna invest in this we're not gonna go ride horses oh i read it as like the the white horse is uh uh the good guy like he's not rocky was making a play for uh putting them putting this company out of business because they they were bilking old people and jim is like yeah i think that that's what they're doing but gotcha i'm not i'm not i'm no good guy i'm no no hero

i think perhaps i i missed exactly what's going on there but that makes sense given the rest of the scene i think yeah because then there's this knock on there, but that makes sense given the rest of the scene, I think. Because then there's this knock on the door, makes Rocky hide, and it is in fact Mr. Hart who wants to come in and apologize. Dun, dun, dun. So he says that, and Jim of course is suspicious and still doesn't like this guy, but does let him have his say. One of his salesmen is named Terry Birch, and that Terry did not come into work that morning, but he knows that his mother is in L.A.

and needs a lot of help or something like that, so he sent someone to check, and they found him, and sure enough, he had your money. So he hands Jim the envelope with his with his ten thousand dollars plus a few hundred for his trouble yes and jim wants to know why he's being so helpful all of a sudden mr hart doesn't want jim to press charges against terry because it would look bad for his company for the blue lake land development etc so they go back and forth a little bit, but that's basically the takeaway. And then Jim leaves it unresolved by saying that he'll think about it.

And then Hart leaves. He turns around and he's smiling and he has his money. Rocky comes out. It's like, oh, great. Whatever their plan was, I guess it is no longer needed. He wants to call Harry out of the, because that's, of course, where he's going to be. We'll head back, but Rocky wants to stay the night and drive back

in the morning when it's nice and they can see the countryside. We're going to take a quick break so that everyone can walk around, stretch, get a refreshing beverage of choice, and 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 1000 and then holes.com. Or you can find my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worldswithoutmaster.com. Or you can find me on Twitter at Epidiah, E-P-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. This for me is the one convenient bit

of the plot. And it's not even, i'm wrong about that but it's it puts rocky in position for stuff to happen later and i wasn't i i think what it was was i was trying to read more into what rocky was doing because i was like is rocky trying to get him to stay around so that they could so maybe he convinced jim to go after the company itself or is he just looking for a more pleasant drive i think he's just being rocky i think he's just like it's it's late we got what we came for we already paid for the hotel but he does need to go and and uh call in call in harry so uh we uh go to the motel bar uh where harry is selling a parcel to a sweet old lady yeah they have like a big like

laminated map and then he's surprised to see jim because jim just walks up to him yeah and he's still in character right so he's playing off like oh you wanted to talk about those two parcels okay well wait for me over there i'm still talking you know um because they're not supposed to be seen together but uh when he hooks up with jim jim got his money back so they're gonna head back but harry he's so close to closing the deal and it's his first day as a salesman he's got this great line that's like did i invent pigeons this is the he's the anti rocky right like this is the mother load this is a bunch of suckers who are gonna you know blow all their money on on real estate and i get a commission yes uh i like that he uses the fact that Jim, like he establishes that Jim is interested in property

and then sees the old lady's interest in Jim. And he's like, you're going to be neighbors. Right. You get to hang out next to that nice young man. Yeah. It's extremely good. Hang out next to that nice young man. Yeah.

It's extremely good. But here we get Jim's full transition, I think, in his goals here where he's like, this is all a scam. And if I have anything to do with it, I'm going to call the land usage board or something and get them investigated and shut down. The old lady tells Harry that she wants to buy. investigated and shut down. The old lady tells Harry that she wants to buy, and then Jim just fast talks this whole thing of him backing out of his, quote, deal. What, you're not buying? I know you told me about that little problem with the land

because of the kids, and I appreciate that, Harry. What did Harry tell you that he didn't tell me? Oh, well, it's not a big deal, really. The land is good, I guess. They haven't run any tests there in years. Tests? Oh, come on, Harry. I mean, Mildred isn't going to be scared off

by something that happened 30 years ago. It used to be a nuclear testing ground. You're selling radioactive land? Why, there ought to be a law against it. Episode over, right? radioactive land why there ought to be a law against it episode over right yep we got to see a nice good jim con like an anti-com i guess like a defense like when he got got that woman out of it plenty of uh back and forth jim's got his money we're good i i looked at the time at this point i was like how much longer is there yeah it's like this is a little over the halfway point of the episode i think you know because i was kind of like in truth like i wanted

to see what this con was going to be and i was like oh i guess they're don't need to do it yeah now they're dumb yeah so we go to jim drive so they all arrive separately so i guess they're all leaving separately right so jim's driving uh the fire. He's leaving town. But then the sheriff runs up on him and his lights blazing and pulls him over, pulls his gun first thing and has him get out of the car and pats him down and ask him where the money is. Like, how did you know I got the money back? We found a body, Terry Birch. He was shot twice behind the hotel. And you said you didn't care how you got your money back. Yeah, there you go jim loose lips uh but yeah dun dun dun we go to the sheriff's office where jim's getting fingerprinted and during this whole during most of the scene jim is getting fingerprinted and then like cleaning his hands off and it's all just like physical business i liked it because it did seem extremely routine yes it felt like this is just something he's done so many times. He's just on automatic to clean the ink off

his fingers and stuff, which I thought was a nice little inhabiting the role business. It sort of echoes back the bit about knowing that it's chicken fried steak on Thursday night. My note was oh, this is how we get into it.

The whole time I've been like, Jim's not in it yet. He's still bouncing off of what's happening. Uh, he could have gotten away with it, but nope. Now,

now you've pulled Jim in. Now you've made your mistake. You, you tried to set them up. There's kind of a, a little, uh, nod here,

which, so there was an earlier that I'm just thinking of now, but I think it's in the episode. Um, there was an earlier line when he was first talking to the sheriff about how, like, if this guy got 15 miles in any direction, he would have been out of my jurisdiction. Yeah. The sheriff catches up to him on the road in the morning as he's leaving town. So it's like if Rocky had just not been stubborn, they would have left the night before and then he wouldn't have been in the jurisdiction for this whole thing.

Not that he wouldn't have gotten in the jurisdiction for this whole thing not that he wouldn't have gotten in trouble but like right i think there's a there's an element of that that i'm like rocky but yeah so of course uh you know jim tells his story and of course uh mr hart denies giving jim that money what would have been his motive jim had motive uh he had opportunity and he made public threats yes and then jim wants his phone call and there's a great line you're not going to be one of those guys who reminds me of their rights all the time are you but jim makes his phone call it is to rocky um who they have a whole conversation so jim's in this cell there's like one cell in this sheriff's office yeah so jim's in this cell uh rocky's outside, obviously. And they have this whole conversation without really without us knowing what it's really about.

But Rocky wants to call Beth. I'll call your lawyer. She'll get you out of this. And Jim's like, no, this is the only way I'm getting out of here. Please, you have to do this. We don't know what this is. And Rocky's like, I ain't doing it. You'll get yourself killed.

But then Rocky shakes his head and he's about to leave. We see on his face. We're like, OK, fine. I'll do yourself killed. But then Rocky shakes his head and he's about to leave. We see on his face, we're like, okay, fine. I'll do the thing. So he goes to the sheriff and says, you better keep an eye on Jimmy because he's going to try and break out. And I don't want to see him get hurt. There's no way he could break out. Oh, that doesn't mean he's not going to try. So he primes the sheriff, right, to expect that Jim's going to break out, try to break out.

And the sheriff is not going to let that happen. He'll keep an eye and a shotgun on him. We then reinforce this where he goes in to tell Jim that he has no chance of escaping. And Jim makes fun of him and his sardine can of a jail cell. The real question is, who couldn't break out of here? The sheriff is going to stay right there all night long with his shotgun. And we see Jim give a big smile as he lies back down on the car. So this is whatever his plan is.

It's apparently going. This scene and its fruition feels very Maverick. This could easily be a sheriff's office in the Old West, right? Down to the, like, I've got a shotgun and, like, all of it. It's good stuff. Yeah, and I love Jim just saying, I'll just walk out. Like, if I wanted to, I'd just walk out of this. Morning comes.

The sheriff comes in with breakfast, and Jim doesn't respond. There's a little, you know, blanket with something under it on the cot. The sheriff's like, like oh he didn't like goes in and pokes it and it's just like his jacket or something so he stalks off in a rage leaving the cell door open and jim just rolls out from underneath the cot yeah just strolls out of the cell so a bit of a long con but it apparently works yeah he uh hightails it to a barn somewhere where he managed to get word to Rocky who shows up with Harry.

The only reason Harry came was that Rocky threatened to tell his parole officer that he had left LA. And we see buried or like hidden underneath the hay the police car that Jim apparently stole in order to make his escape from the area. Harry said that he went to work that morning at the sales office,

but it was all locked up and they were packing things up. Looks like they're planning to split. And without Hart, you got nothing. So this is this part here. So I'm thinking about the mystery of this, right? At this point, we know who did it, but that has that really in question. Like we've been, well, I mean, obviously from the, from the opening montage, we knew Hart was the guilty party here.

We sort of know why, but not really. We don't know exactly what happened. And maybe when we get to the end, we could talk about that a little bit. But like, we know how Jim got involved. But like this guy who took Jim's money and put it in a safe used a fake name. Then he gets killed. And those decisions using the fake name and killing him. I'm really perplexed at this point in the story.

Like, I don't know. Like those are not motivated yet in any way. Yeah. I mean, I think the next scene Like, those are not motivated yet in any way. Yeah. I mean, I think the next scene does fill that in. Okay. Maybe I missed some of it then. So Rocky and Jim go to Billy's house. Remember Billy, who is upset, you know, and scared.

She says that it's all over the news that Jim killed Terry for that money. And her and Terry were seeing each other. And Jim has one of his great Jim lines. $10,000 isn't enough money to kill a man for, at least not for me. I think he makes a guess that's on target, right? Which is that Billy was in love with Terry. And Jim wants to know if she wants to find out the truth.

Oh yeah, that's right. Because he surmises. So when Jim first went to the sales office and met Terry, uh, who lied to him about his name, he saw Terry, he was like going through files and had like a ledger and he was putting stuff in his like briefcase.

Uh, so he wonders heart is making millions off of this whole development deal, but maybe his salesmen were not making out so well. And Terry, you know, looked for and found something that would hurt Hart. Right. And he saw Terry with his attache case, as he says, when he got out of the car, when he followed him and went into the house. So if that's still there, maybe that's the evidence. And that would be the proof of whatever Hart was up to. If that's here, we can prove what happened.

And so we cut to Jim on the phone with a ledger in front of him saying, it's all here. Yep. It turns out he's actually on the phone with Mr. Hart because he says, you bought a lot of protection. Yeah, I think that's why I missed it. To explain what I said before, I hit that point in my notes where I'm asking all those questions, and I completely forgot about this attache part. Mm-hmm. Because it is brought up and resolved right then and there. Immediately.

Like, yeah. It's like, oh, here's what happened. Jim demands $100,000 to stay quiet, $50,000 for the murder rap, and $50,000 to return the papers. Yes. Hart asks, where does he want to make the exchange? And he says, let's do it at the lake. And so we cut to Jim in the middle of the desert. And as a longtime Rockford Files watcher, I'm like, all right.

He's got something set to spring when this goes down. Let's see what his plan is. Hart rolls up with his salesman goon, who is officially a goon at this point, the fast-talking salesman guy. And then another random tough. They have a briefcase full of money. Jim has the papers. Jim gives the papers over and says, all right, where's my money? And then our salesman goon pulls a gun. He's going to escort Jim to the center of the lake, like Terry.

And we have the quip from the preview montage of the cause of death will be drowning. Yeah. I mean, clearly with a bullet in him. Clearly. There's no lake there anyway, so what does it matter? Well, he says, like, we are going to kill you. And then Jim says, like Terry? Terry wanted a bigger piece of the action.

And that's when a helicopter comes into view in the background and jim lifts his hand and he had a not a receiver but he had like the walkie-talkie like radio like wired into the car yeah thing like the sheriff's been listening to this whole conversation dun dun dun so heart jumps back into his car and tries to take off as this helicopter lands and jim jumps in the firebird and we have a desert car chase at this point i'd forgotten about the helicopter and then it showed up and my brain was like how does colson this tiny little town but whatever it's good we get a helicopter in a car chase here. So this is a fun car chase, mainly because it's, you know, not on roads. Yeah. It's on the Fury Road.

It is on the Fury Road. Yes, absolutely. There's two things I really like about it. It's not particularly long and, you know, we get what we're here for, which is seeing cars ride around in the desert and lots of dirt kicking up and everything. But part of it is that we get a lot of the perspective of the helicopter because the helicopter is following them and kind of hovering over them and bumps Hart's car on the top a couple of times in a classic maneuver. Yeah, I was going to say the standard helicopter attack. Right, a helicopter attack. I'm just reminding you I'm a helicopter.

Our point of view keeps switching from on the ground to from the helicopter, which is, again, let's get as much use out of this helicopter as we can, which is great. And then we basically have Jim keeping pace with Hart and just needs to out endurance him, right? Right. Because he doesn't have anywhere to go. Yeah. What is Hart's plan here? Right.

He's just running. He's just one of those jackrabbits. Just one of those jackrabbits. Yeah. So Jim keeps pace. There's this one really beautiful shot from the ground where the two cars are in the front and then the helicopters right behind them so they're in like a three vehicle formation that's like really really nice like it's a very every frame of painting kind of yeah composition uh which i really liked but jim

basically keeps pace with him and eventually kind of forces him into a little like rock outcropping and his car bottoms out going over these big rocks and then him into a little like rock outcropping and his car bottoms out going over these big rocks and then crashes into a pit of dirt and is stuck that is the end of mr hart's ambitions to uh swindle old people out of their money for a bunch of dirt and i i dig that like i like i said i don't we don't know hart's plan because he doesn't have one. He's just panicking. But then we still get a Rockford Files let's use the terrain. Let's let Jim think through what he's going to do about

this situation. One thing that this scene also has is a bunch of squealing tire foley. Which is one of those things that you can't stop paying attention to once you're like, wait a minute. Tires that are not on asphalt are not going to make the squealing sound. I know it's a persnickety dumb thing, but once I was like, oh, they're doing tire squeals.

And then it's like the entire chase. All right. That's a choice. It's just how TV is sometimes. That's fine. this person whose job it is to add tire squeals to the chases all the time is probably doing it for this one going it doesn't make sense here it doesn't make sense here but if we don't have it this is a really quiet chase so we end our episode at the sheriff's office hey uh so he's been on the side of justice this whole time just he's had incomplete information so it's not like

he's been in on anything uh but he can't let jim go because after all he did steal a police car and break out of jail yes but he does say i'd let you go if i could and this is an entree for jim's strong play here at the end of this episode which might be my favorite thing about the episode yeah i agree well it's a shame i mean you got walter hart for fraud attempted murder murder one it's gonna make all the headlines when i tell my side of the story yeah i'm gonna look like a jackass i know of course if we'd been working together that'd change the whole picture i mean you were just playing along with them until you could drop the net there's no law that says an unofficial deputy can't use the police car and who is gonna believe

that i could walk right out of your jail without your help huh yeah and uh we see the sheriff kind of acknowledge that this is really in everyone's best interest yes as long as he just needs to stay available for the trial uh and then he dumps out all their like manila folders of effects on the on the desk oh yeah and rocky sees something bouncing. My lodge ring. I want to file a complaint because Harry is saying, oh, come on, that's my dear old father's lodge ring. Yes. Did he have the

initials J.R.? Well, funny story. Yeah. And Jim's like, let's just go. Let's just go. Come on. Let's just go. No, I want to file a complaint. Our last line is the sheriff saying runs in the family. Yep. And we freeze on Jim's rye shrug and smile.

Yep. Uh, that was a, it was, uh, a fun ride of an episode. I think I mentioned it was, uh, precisely what I needed at the time I got it. The pacing on it is really interesting. precisely what i needed at the time i got it the pacing on it is really interesting i like how uh uh relaxed it is even though it has tension in it and going on but you just like sort of take your time getting to things and like you were saying like the economy of the cuts where they were uh especially that that early one with the um you know he he says you know call the cops or whatever and then we cut to where the cop is explaining, he says, you know, call the cops or whatever.

And then we cut to where the cop is explaining how he's not going to help in this. Right. Yeah. We get the whole implied scene in between of all of the back and forth and the accusation and counter accusation. Like, yeah, that all happened. We didn't need to see it. Yeah. Yeah. The mystery is interesting because I don't feel like for an audience, the tension isn't in, in solving the mystery for us. Yeah. We, we know from the moment heart is like,

I don't know who you're talking about on. We, well, from the opening montage, we know heart is the villain. Right. Right. I do wonder if it would be like a little different if he wasn't in the opening

montage. Yeah. You know, like if instead of seeing him we just either like heard him off screen or we just saw like the salesman goon with the gun or something yeah maybe just a little bit more of the chase that's a little bit more of the chase yeah um but but like we we know i mean we know from when jim turns into this town and he's like i need to put something in in a safe that that's going to get taken away from whatever that ends up being.

And it fills that that pattern that I love, which is the your life would have been so much better off if you just let Jim go through your town. Right. Like but instead you had to frame him for this murder. That's where you went wrong. But instead, you had to frame him for this murder. That's where you went wrong. There's a lot of like implied story that is kind of interesting that we don't see. Like, does, you know, does Hart know from the moment that Jim starts talking that he's talking about Terry? Right.

Or does he kind of put two and two together? Well, he has to know something because the money wasn't in the safe right right so maybe he uh realized that that money like okay maybe terry had the money on him maybe terry came back and grabbed the money to make a run right and then he took the money off of terry when he killed him or when one of his goons killed him. And then that's why it wasn't in the safe. But like I if if I had just killed Terry, I would not have also stolen the money that just went in the safe. I would have let Rockford walk away with that money. Oh, right. I would have just given it back to him then and be like, yep, here's your money.

But also Hart is just a con man. I think the timeline implies that terry took the money and then he gets caught up with the next day like the next night because they find the body right day after that's true yes i was thinking that because he said he gave gave the money to yeah so terry took the money and then he probably killed terry and found the money right and so he knew to get rid of Rockford to give him the money. Put the extra $200 in it, which I love because it's a day. It's a day of Rockford's work.

You know, it's like, there you go. Well, so he ends up up on the deal, right? Because he paid a $50 bribe. Right. Which he can expense. Nice. I think money-wise, Rockford, he didn't make his 200 a day because he was here for i think three days and he also had to get his car fixed yeah but nonetheless he he uh

and and he's out the hotel because he he could probably expense the first night of the hotel but not the second um yeah we're getting into did he eat anything i don't think he ate at all we know that harry did not pick up the tab at the restaurant yes so yeah which was less than 50 because they couldn't give change for a 50 bill right uh yeah so harry was interesting too uh yeah so it's a little like why was harry in this episode i don't mind i like harry de nova he is a fun character and seeing him and jim banter was good there was there was like a little tidbit early in the episode where you know it's one of those throwaway things of like uh uh rocky said he tried to sell my

pickup yeah right and so i think what we're getting is that terry sells things usually thinks he doesn't own harry you know that yeah that kind of con man the the one that's like i've got you want to buy a bridge i've got a bridge to sell you you know that kind of thing um but yeah like if if i were making the decision before the episode was made if i were making the decision and somebody said well we can either make this new character uh i'll even tell you that his name is fast harry de nova uh or we can go with angel i would be like well just go with angel right like uh angel can do all of these things create all of these tense situations still be a liability for jim uh but if i was in season two and i was like maybe we want to create more disreputable people that jim knows a wider network of con men yeah then this is a good

character to introduce for that it's something it's interesting to me because it's like kind of like structurally like what purpose does having this character serve in this story right in one way it's kind of like a very live it's for it's for creating the lived in this of this world a little bit where jim has a plan so if he has a plan he needs to get someone else to be in on this plan yeah right like that's like necessitated by the you know the coherence of the of the world so even though the when you're writing the story you know that that plan is never going to come to fruition right you still need someone to come in to give that coherence to the initial plan um and then thematically harry's like uh i guess he's emphasizing the con and nature of the enterprise

like how he just so easily falls they're like oh yeah sure you can be a salesman and he's emphasizing the con and nature of the Enterprise, like how he just so easily falls. They're like, oh, yeah, sure. You can be a salesman. And he's like, this is so easy. I'm just bilking old people out of their retirement savings. Yes. I think that's the like thematic reason he's there, because we don't want Jim to be that person. And Rocky is not going to be that person.

And Hart is the villain in like a more concrete sense. It's just interesting because it's like we never see Harry do his thing. Yeah, yeah. We see him adapt to the role straight off the bat, but not like what he's going to do once he's in there. Yeah, like we don't know what the con was, and I still kind of wish that I could have seen the alternate cut of this where we see the con.

Yeah. Because I feel like it would have been fun. I do enjoy that. I mean, like I mentioned Fury Road. There's that great scene in Fury Road where it's near the end where they're being shot at from a great distance at night. And Mad Max just wanders off. And then he comes back. And you don't see that

he is gone and just wiped all these people out uh because you don't have to what's more exciting is the aftermath so i don't mind having like that thing happen but it's it is in this case it does leave the question of of fast harry right i i kind of like that they don't show us what that it falls apart and we don't need to see what it is. Oh, I think that then there's a fast Harry beat that we don the dime on Rockford getting out of town. And that's what brings it back. You know, they didn't do that. But like one more bit with Fast Harry would have just kind of gave it something else, I think. Yeah, it's one of those where it's like this could have gone in lots of ways. There's no reason it had to go in other ways.

But it's kind of fun to think about the other versions of this episode um so i think i mentioned at the beginning that this is a bit of a proto issue episode oh yeah the entry on this in in 30 years of the rockford files uh quotes wonita bartlett as saying that the idea for it came from reading an article i think it might have been like a like a time magazine article or something i don't have the book right hand so I don't have the actual quote to read. But she read an article about this thing about land development scams where they are designed to part retirees in particular from their money by investing in these land developments that are never going to go anywhere. Yeah. And she thought that was terrible.

But it's a hook for the episode to show that this is a thing and also show the comeuppance of the architecture of the scam. And I guess the proto part for me is that if you didn't know that factoid, I don't know if that 100% comes through in this episode, the way that the issue of grand jury malpractice comes through in So Help Me God, etc. The other ones that we talk about all the time. It's not quite as central to the audience experience, but it is certainly played to show how it is bad yes and we do get a little like uh rocky uh talking about how it's bad and yeah we get to hear the we get to hear the issue from the voice of of uh rocky who would be the person who would be targeted by the scam. Yeah.

Yeah. Fun episode. Kind of. I felt like I was wanting a little more just because it ended up zigging when I thought it would zag. And I kind of want to see the zag. Yeah. That's fine. The story is told the way that they decided to tell it.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. A choice was made. And we got a lot of good helicopter. We did. They, they, uh, paid off the helicopter,

tap the roof of a car, which is all I need. It's all we need. Well, uh, thank you to, uh, listener Diego for the recommendation.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Do you have any other thoughts on the great blue lake land and development company? No. And then I'm going to give you them. Uh, no, it was just kind of fun. I'm enjoying, Yeah, do you have any other thoughts on the Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company? No, and then I'm going to give you them. No, it's kind of fun. I'm enjoying, now that we've done so many, I'm enjoying that we occasionally pop back to these earlier ones and see a little bit about where they're finding the show.

where they're finding the show. This one feels, like I said in the beginning, this feels a little bit like, it feels like a well-formed show, but it also doesn't, I don't know how to say it, so I'm going to go back. No, it's not quite dialed in yet. Yeah, yeah, it's almost there.

Yeah, the pieces are all there, but there's something about it where it's not quite as, it doesn't have quite as much rock-furtishness as maybe we would assume right i think which doesn't detract from it at all i was just like it's interesting to see it in that context because there's also some comments on the imdb reviews of how like this echoes uh at least one maverick episode i don't think it's the exact same plot but it has something similar i was gonna say that the whole prison scene was very... Yeah, was very Maverick.

Yeah. But also, this is also kind of an episode that could have been done, like another TV show could have done this episode. Yeah. As opposed to the very Rockford-y ones where it's like, yeah, only the Rockford Files would do this. Like, this episode could have been done in a different show without really changing anything and i think maybe that's a little bit of this that sense of like it not quite being all dialed in it's not because it's bad it's just because it still has the possibility of having other people do it right sure yes so i see what you're getting so it's not quite at the 100 rockfordishness yeah level well uh that's all good.

I think it's time to hit the old desert trail and get out of these small towns before something else happens. So we will see you next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.