Two Hundred A Day - Episode 79: Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

Nathan and Eppy complete the Richie Brockelman duology with S5E19-20, Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job. Richie's dad has been muscled out of the family printing business by an unscrupulous villain. The only way he can see to get it back is to run a con game on the mark... and that's where Jim comes in. Split into two episodes for syndication, this is another 2-hour-timeslot episode which gives us plenty of breathing room to appreciate all of the work that goes into a "big store" con game. This is really a wonderful episode, and we break it down in terms of the con game strategy Jim and Richie use before going into the scenes. Highly recommended! We mention the book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man by David Maurer. Check it out at Indiebound (https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385495387) or wherever you get your books! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Kip Holley, Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Dave P, Dale Church and Dave Otterson! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Hi everyone, Nathan here. A quick note before we get into this episode. We took a month off at the beginning of this year, so thanks for sticking with us as we had a bit of a break in our usual monthly schedule. Part of that break was because some stuff was moving around where I record, and as it turns out, my end of the recording for this episode did not come out exactly as great as I'd like. It's a little bit rough in spots. It's definitely listenable, but I just wanted to give you a heads up that yes, we are aware that it sounds a little weird. I should have my issues sorted out by the time the next episode comes out, and that one will be much more smooth. That said, this is one of our absolute all-time favorite episodes to watch, and we really enjoyed our conversations, so we felt like there was no reason to delay getting this one out any longer.

So thanks again for listening, and enjoy the show. Mr. Rothbard, Ms. Collins from the Bureau of Licenses. We got your renewal before the extended deadline, but not your check. I'm sorry, but at midnight you're no longer licensed as an investigator. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidaia Ravishaw. And we are coming to you with the second two-parter of the Ritchie Brockleman collection.

Yes. of the Ritchie Brockleman Collection. Yes. For our episode today, it is from the end of season five, episodes 20 and 21, Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job, parts one and two. Oh, that's such a great title. Yeah, it's a good title. It's a good episode.

I think we can go ahead and go off on a limb and say that. Yeah. So our last episode, we talked about The House on Willis Avenue, which was the introduction of the Richie Brockleman character played by Dennis Dugan, who had a spinoff,

Richie Brockleman Private Eye, which only ran for five episodes. Yes. In the Rockford Files time slot while it was off season. If this is your first episode, I think we are going to be referencing stuff about Richie and Jim that we feel like we just talked about because it's in our last episode. So you may want to go back one and listen to that before this. But of course, as with all of our episodes, we don't have deep lore here.

We're going to be just talking about, you know. The episode before us. Right, exactly. Or the two episodes. Yeah. Like that one, this was originally aired as a two-hour single episode. So it was in a two-hour slot. It's an hour 50 or 40.

It's like 140 or something with commercials. I forget exactly. And then split into two parts for syndication. On my Blu-ray set unlike the house on willis avenue this was presented in the two halves like it was syndicated is that true for the dvds that is there was a moment uh and maybe we'll talk about when we get to it uh where i thought it just auto played the next episode uh because it does the opening montage stick at the end of uh the first part to get you excited about the next part here are some scenes from the exciting conclusion

yes yeah and then and then when you do the second part they just uh recap a little bit of the first part there so it feels all of a piece unlike say Gear Jammers, where there was a clear cut in how the story is told, even though it's two parts of the same story. This one, I remember getting towards the end of this one and thinking, the end of the first episode of this one, and thinking, like, well, this actually feels like about the moment in a Rock Profiles episode where they just kind of start wrapping it up and we get to the thing. And they haven't yet, but they haven't hit us with a cliffhanger. There is like a little bit of a tension thing, but it definitely, that little tension thing is, if this makes any sense, feels like a commercial break cliffhanger, not a tune in next week cliffhanger. I feel like that's probably because that's exactly what it was in the original broadcast. Yeah. That said, yeah, this is one continuous story and this is a con game episode.

Yeah. episode yeah i feel like way back now we we had a conversation um uh spurred by some listener questions about kind of a typology of rockford files episodes and so we have some broad categories and we usually mention them in our intros of uh what what the episodes kind of fall into uh we haven't really talked about them specifically in a while so generally we we find that most Rockford Files episodes are Jim gets a job. Jim is drawn into a situation, usually by a friend. Sometimes those cross a little bit, but those are two distinct kind of episodes. Issue episodes, like House on Willis Avenue, we talked about how that was kind of a proto-issue episode. avenue we talked about how that was kind of a proto issue episode um so episodes that use the format and the characters to highlight a real life issue in the world at the time um and con

game episodes yeah and those are ones where jim either jim runs a con game or jim is uh is the mark in a con game and usually ends up turning it or whatever. But these boundaries aren't distinct, obviously, because this one, Brockleman has been established now as a friend of Jim's and comes to Jim with a problem. But I would definitely characterize this. If somebody came to me and they said, can you recommend a con game episode from the Rockford Files? This would be on the list yeah or

if you can recommend television with a con game in it this would be on that list this is i i really enjoyed these two episodes i just had a a uh side thought um i wonder if there's a vector of jim gets paid that maps to those categories where it's like oh jim yeah jim takes a job he gets paid that maps to those categories where it's like, Oh, Jim, Jim takes a job. He gets paid. He doesn't get paid. Jim gets pulled into a job.

He gets paid. He doesn't get an issue episode where it usually doesn't get paid, but you know, maybe there's an example of the former. And then in the con game episode, there's definitely a split between con game. Jim gets paid in con game. Yes. That would be interesting uh i wish i was

more up to date on the um the uh rockford files files uh which would help us determine some of that stuff well maybe if we want to make a graph or a or a scattershot diagram or something maybe if you want to write a python script uh to start plotting these i I'm already thinking about it. Just throwing that out there for consideration. We need the data, but yeah. So, yes, that said, this is definitely a con game episode. And so this, unlike some of the other con game episodes, like there's one in every port

and the Farnsworth Stratagem, which I think are our other two real touchstones for this kind of episode. This is one where we see the entire con from the inside. Yeah. I think almost entirely. There's one or two little bits that are kind of reveals, but they're, I guess maybe a better way to put it is we see it from the inside from Jim's perspective. Yeah. Like we have all the information that Jim has and we see all of his planning for the most part. And so where there is something that goes, that goes, you know, that throws things off

kilter, it's because there are things that are actually happening to throw the con off kilter. They're not reveals that then as audience we see was part of the game all along. Yeah. There are like a few moments where something happens and we're like, I'll point out when they show up, but I think we're well clued in that they're part of the con. They just haven't been telegraphed to us before they happened.

Right. But when they happen, you're like, okay, this is part of the con. You're not meant to be in suspense about it. Right, right. And then there are also some moments where there is some foreshadowing of a thing that might happen but you're expecting it because it is foreshadowed yeah so epi uh so we talked a little bit and you thought that maybe we'll approach this conversation a little differently than our usual scene by scene well so we'll set out what the con

is and then as we go through it we'll kind of talk about how it gets constructed and what happens uh because all right so it's it's a two-parter it's a long episode and we're not doing two episodes about it uh so we'll probably end up summarizing some things that we would normally dive a little bit into but that's fine because i think that the standout bit about this is just how enormous of a con it is thinking about it now um i i really really dig how it's an enormous con for what i want to say it's small stakes because it's not necessarily small stakes but it's not um they're not giant stakes either i feel like the context for a giant con has probably changed a lot yeah just because the media about like heists and stuff has right changed a lot i feel like this is squarely in the early 20th century con game as a

like lifestyle where you have like professional con artists right go from from town to town working jobs making little scores and that's how they make their living it's not the big you know one last job we're going to retire kind of thing and it's also not personal except for richie and j. Everyone else is just working. And Odette, kind of. Yeah. I was thinking about their motivation. Because, okay, Richie's motivation is his dad owns a printing business.

Printing businesses show up a lot in the Rockford Files. His dad owned a printing business and gets muscled out of it by our villain, whose name, I just call him the mark throughout my notes. Harold Jack Combs. Oh, there we are. Yes. Harold Jack Combs. Played by Robert Weber, who was an Oracle in Oracle Wears a Cashmere Suit.

Yes. And thus I immediately recognized him. Went, where do I know him from? Looked him up and went, oh, the Rockford Files. The Rockford Files. That's the answer. So real quick, before we get into the breakdown. Oh, sure. Let's just wrap up our intro, which is just that this is a William Ward directed episode.

One of our big prolific Rockford Files directors. There are a couple specific moments in here that I think are direct homages to some other heisty kind of stuff. Um, but overall, this is kind of a check this one off the ward list. We'll see how close we are to doing all of his. Um, and this one is written by Juanita Bartlett, which is both interesting because I feel like she generally hasn't written a lot of the con game ones i'd have to look that up again but also there's a very specific treatment of the uh she's not really i mean i guess she's kind of a love interest there's one female character yeah um and uh she's key to the to the to the story and to the con and has history with jim um but the treatment of her and her role is uh reminds me a lot of

other women written by juanita bartlett so yeah there's a good conversation uh in episode two yeah the second part that that definitely hits that that area there yeah so we'll we'll go into that but uh you know as with i think as with all of the episodes that are kind of con adjacent if not con game episodes we get a lot of good language a lot of good a lot of good slang a lot of good uh references so i don't know if we really need to go through the preview montage uh we see that jimmy joe meeker is going to be a big yes a big part of the thing there's two i think vital parts of this opening my like you know obviously seeing the angel's gonna be in it which is funny um especially for the first part

where he's barely in it uh but there's the odette saying oh it's going to be so much more than interesting uh is a great line and it's great for the opening montage because you immediately know that there's something going on between Jim and Odette and it's not entirely friendly. It's orthogonal to the con, if you will. Yeah. And then you get race cars and you just know, I mean, if you know James Gardner, you know what's going to happen there. Oh yeah.

The preview montage lets us know that there is going to be a con. Richie's there, Angel's there, and we're going to see some racing. And then it drops us right into our cold open. Hello listeners. This is a quick break before we get into the episode to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com

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about all the media we're currently enjoying and things going on in our lives. 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. Okay, so should we just lay out the con right now and then go into it?

So Richie Brockleman, who is also a PI, right? He's a young up and coming private investigator who kind of, we first saw him kind of have like hero worship for Jim. And then once they worked together, they settled into more of a mentor mentee relationship. Yeah. And I think importantly, a lot of their development was based on Jim's relationship with his father, with Rocky and Richie's relationship with his father. Cause he talks about wanting that. Like it would be really nice to have someone I could just go to,

to talk to cases. And I can't talk to my dad cause he doesn't really understand the business, but you can talk to your dad. It's so great. And great and you know again we went into all of that in the previous episode but that brings us to this one where it's a very natural progression from what we know especially having just watched that episode yeah this all hinges on richie's dad gets muscled out of his printing business and it appears that he gets muscled out of his printing business and it appears that he gets muscled out of his printing business so that uh a well-to-do business and politically connected man he's a crooked i'll do whatever i want business mogul he owns the la icers yes there's a couple references to him as like a sports promoter and i guess that's like his background and it seems like he wants to

level the printing and make a racetrack is that the case yeah he uses a bunch of legal maneuvering to get mr brockleman to where he can't run his business anymore and then he makes him an offer he can't refuse with his goon who beats up mr brockleman until he agrees to sell the business for forty thousand dollars which is about a tenth of what it's worth right like it's worth about half a million so richie is outraged by this of course and is going to do something about it and wants to get his dad's business back and so the only way that he can see to do it is to con coombs out of it somehow through a a delightful set of scenes of getting jim on his side yes he brings in jim as the con game expert to put together a plan so here's here's one of the bits that I like is that their motivations are different.

So Richie's motivation is he's angry and wants to help out his dad. Also wants to kind of prove himself to his dad, I think. And there's that thread kind of going throughout. But they do a great job of showing us how vulnerable his dad is. His dad has changed because we don't know his dad from before, but we can feel this change. This is a broken man now. Right.

And so he's got some very clear emotional motivations. It's fun that Richie immediately thinks I'm going to run a con. That's what private eyes do, which isn't necessarily what private, but that's what Jim can do. Right. His dad does tell him that there's no, like you can't go to the

police there's nothing they can do about it you can't file charges that's just going to get me into more trouble basically right yeah yeah like if i file charges against this guy i'm going to end up going to jail yeah that's how he's orchestrated the situation legally and jim the way jim gets into it there's there's these two-pronged attack pressure-wise. One is that Richie manages to leverage Rocky against Jim. Which is both obvious and wonderful. Yeah, it's great. And a callback to the previous episode, right?

There's a little bit of that where he plays on that, showing that Richie, despite his gee golly attitude is is actually savvy about what's going on here or as he puts it one savvy little sucker here's how i'm gonna get jim on my side yeah but the other bit is that i think what really pulls jim in with all of these other pressures aside what really pulls jim in and also i think richie knows this is the challenge of it like jim is like no no no wait a minute but if you were to do this right yeah i just love that i love that this jim is like like no no you're doing it wrong let me let me help you out here and it's a great way to pull him in and i think anyone who's been in this situation probably has felt this where it's like, I can see that you're doing this wrong.

Right. Like, it pains me to watch you not do this right. And that's the motivation that Richie is able to leverage to bring in Jim. It's also that thing where it's like, it's a fun puzzle. Like, with all the dangers aside, or actually probably with all the dangers included, it's a fun puzzle with all the dangers aside or actually probably with all the dangers included. It's a fun puzzle. It's something that just Jim could sink his teeth into. So he gets Jim on his side and they run this con and this con is a big store con.

Right. Which they say several times, which is great. So real quick, I think we've talked about this on Plus Expenses a while ago. I think we've talked about this on Plus Expenses a while ago. There's a book about cons and con men that I read last year that I feel like really gave me a lot of good context for this episode. Yes. It was specifically written by a linguist who was in the, I want to say, 20s, but maybe 40s. But he wanted to kind of record the lingo in this subculture of con men and ends up basically writing a playbook, like explaining how these work and what the jargon means. This book is called The Big Con, The Story of the Confidence Man by David Maurer, M-A-U-R-E-R. And it is from the big con the story of the confidence man uh by david marer m-a-u-r-e-r

and it is from the 40s and then there's a new forward because it was republished in the 70s i think is an exploration of the con of the confidence game based on interviews with con men almost all men by the author who was an academic and a and uh like a linguist and an anthropologist i guess um and this was a big inspiration slash resource for the sting the movie the sting which i'm sure we will also be referencing yes uh yeah so a lot of this is direct in a lot of it is from direct interviews uh which is great and it breaks down a lot of the well it does a lot of things. I recommend this book. It's a good read. But it both breaks

down the tactical here are all the different maneuvers that were used to execute cons. A little bit of the history about kind of the rise and fall because con games had like a golden age, right? And then they kind of stopped being a

thing that one could do as much for lots of reasons um but uh uh also it talks about the psychology of the mark which i think is super interesting a lot of the the conversation with these con men is about how there's different specialties and one specialty is bringing in the mark and then like identifying the mark and then like identifying the mark and being like this is who we're going to sting and then there's a different specialty to actually running the game and so it was very rare that one guy could do both things so that's one reason why they're often teams there'd be a guy in charge of like an area or something it's kind of mobbed up a little bit so there'd be like a guy in charge of an area or a guy in charge of a certain kind of con that you go to if like you found a mark or

something anything that required multiple touches multiple interactions you'd need a team of people because you'd have to hand off the mark to different people at different times anyway this is all to say that of course this is a officialized account where everything goes a certain way to make the story work. But you keep seeing all those elements of the, like, classic, for lack of a better term, the classic con. And the big store is part of that. So the big store is you have this cast of characters and there's certain specialties. But there's also just, like, extras, basically, who are just there to make things look good. And, like, the store could be a gambling parlor it could be a betting shop like in the sting it's all about horse betting right

so the store is the betting shop um and then in this case the con is a big store con because it involves all these specialties but they don't there's not really a location other than the office i guess yeah there's there's the office and then they make use of other locations one of the reoccurring themes in this is their inability to hold the fictional world indefinitely right like they can present moments to make it seem like this is definitely a thing under their control but then they don't have that. Yeah. So they set up this big store con. Right. And Jim lays it out.

He's like, you can't come to him with an offer. This is a guy who is used to getting offers and turning them down all the time. Right. You have to present him with something that he might want. And you have to come at him at a crazy angle. Yeah. Anything that's in his normal kind of spheres of influence, he already can handle.

He knows how to do, and he'll find out that it's a con. So you have to come at him from a weird angle. Well, and as an advisor, not as an active participant in any way, shape, or form. No, sir. Well, I'd say that the best way to pluck a guy like this is to hit him hard and fast. Take something away from him that he really wants. Get him coming at you instead of you coming at him. He'll be very leery if anybody's selling anything.

He's got salesmen coming at him all day long. Okay, okay, go on. Well, the whole idea of a con is to start the mark off working with something that he understands plausible stuff and then with each move you take him further and further away from reality huh you hook him you show him the pot of gold then you back away then you bring in the stall you get him off balance so when you're ready to sting him he's going to go for something on the first day of the con he would have laughed at you for even suggesting he's explaining to us like here's what a con is to the viewing audience and he's

telling richie and there's a beat at the end richie goes hey i know all that kind of lampshading the whole thing i think it's really funny yeah but the important thing and i think this gets to what you were just saying is that each step moves him further away from reality and that yes at the end of the con he's doing something that he reality. And that at the end of the con, he's doing something that he never would have done at the beginning. And that is totally in accordance with this, this book, the big con about how,

what you're really doing is using the marks greed to allow them to construct a reality where they give themselves permission to do what you want them to do, basically. And there's a fun quirk there where this episode doesn't get into this but where once you get the payoff like once you get the sting or whatever from a mark the first time usually they're actually easier to get a second time if they still have money because they think they've seen it they're like oh i figured i know what you did i'm not going to fall for that again and so there's a follow-up con and so there's there'd be these marks that they that that a team would string along for three or four stings and like they just keep coming back because once they think they're smart that's when they're vulnerable to another one basically so one

of the fun bits inside this is the um is the sort of day-to-day business of running a con. They talk about the budget and they don't have the money. And like you were just saying, they had to do a sting within a sting in order to get the mark to pay the up40,000 that Mr. Brockleman got paid, got, quote, paid for his factory. And then they figure they need another $10,000 to set everything up. So the first part of the con involves getting Coombs to bid $10,000 on a fake auction. For a Hittite pot. And then that is the rest of their operating expenses. And then obviously everyone is looking forward to getting a payout at the end when the big

score is finally made. Okay, so let's break down a little bit so that I have it fresh in my head as well. But they have tryouts, auditions. They pay everyone a $ audition fee i look this up that's about 70 now in today so it's not i mean i would go audition for a con just to get the 70 that's no problem uh it's lovely that they turn angel away angel has his own little con that he's trying to run which maybe we'll hit that later but yeah yeah there's there's a scene in there i don't remember if this pays off at all but this is uh this fun little bit where they have

a guy who comes in and they ask him if he knows uh he's got this accent like southern accent and they're like do you know any foreign languages and he he goes, I got a good French accent. I could go Scottish. And of course, Texas. Thank you very much. We'll let you know. Yeah. And I don't think that guy shows up.

No, I don't think so. But it's a great, it's a great bit. Right. And so they need this cast because they have a specific set of roles that they need to fill. So there's a couple of stages, right? So first, richie convinces jim to help and then jim's like okay here's what i think our in is we need something to get coombs interested yeah uh oh and and this is all specifically based around take something away

from him that he wants right and then him chasing it is what's going to bring him into the actual con. So Coombs has this fancy race car, the Coombs Special, that he basically had this really talented race car driver and designer build, this guy Larry, and then through some machination took it from him. And as part of that, beat him up and wrecked his hand. So now his hand is like frozen in a claw so there's a personal grudge there that jim's able to leverage but larry has another racing car so coombs driving his fancy car is as good as a good driver driving a good car so like a very good driver driving a very good car should be able to beat coombs driving his extra great car right right there's also this

meta level too because jim rockford is asking would a talented amateur driving this car and it's james gardner being the talented amateur here this feels like an excuse this whole bit feels like an excuse just to get jim driving a race car yeah it's amazing it's it's really great you can see his his joy uh in the scene yes he gets to do that i mean so this is the risk right like this whole thing is predicated on jim getting coombs to bet his car and then winning and then coombs coming after him to get his car back um so that all does go down and you know we can talk about some of the details but but it's very funny. It's it's prime Jimmy Joe Meeker. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Most of the episode is is Jim as Jimmy Joe Meeker, his variation, either Oklahoma or Texas oil man. In this case, he's more Texas. So betting the car is all a premise to get coombs interested and then the con is based around this uh spurious situation is the local fixer for this well-known kind of like shady arms dealer guy named uh wendkos um who is arranging with the e the Egyptian government to have a clandestine export of artifacts from the pyramids, and specifically the Tomb of Tutankhamen, to capitalize on the Egyptian mania of the current King Tut exhibition that has been going on, and make it into an even bigger commercial endeavor of it. Yeah. Playing to stadiums, which is the, or convention centers, which is more in Coombs' realm.

Right. I may have misheard you, but this is what Jimmy Joe Meeker is playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the off-kilter situation. Yeah. You know, this episode is from what aired in 79 yeah uh and there was a traveling treasures of two to common exhibition through from 76 to 79 it was huge it was huge it was egyptomania like the 70s version after the 20s version after you know so this is something that absolutely is a contemporary thing. Anyhow, so the con, I think, as we see it unfold, is to get Coombs to muscle in on Jimmy Joe Meeker's operation.

Because he hates Meeker so much for taking his race car, right? Yeah. You know, he's just incredibly annoying and pushes all of Coombs buttons and everything. Jim is perfect at that. Like he just the whole bit with the racing outfit and just calling him Captain Spaceman. And oh, so good. I have to bring up that there's the lie where he's like he calls him Captain Spaceman after the race. I think he's lost it and everything. And he's back in the office. My name is Jack Coombs. We raced at riverside a couple of days ago of course you are of course you are just didn't recognize you in their normal clothes what you just saved those little tinsel

drawers for uh special occasions that was my racing suit it was sure wasn't no winning suit yeah i wrote that down it's i feel like they really were having fun like it really seems like the two of them are are having a good time yeah just giving each other the most the most guff so so i guess as we follow this along seeing how jim's setting things up and whatever they they need the big store because they have a big they have an office setting for meeker to show that he has all these like things going on or whatever and they also need also need to have, um, the shot, uh,

after the interviews where Jim is writing down, um, Oh yeah. Like who's in what position. Um, I know that I was like, this is a very incriminating document. yeah.

So Jim is, is just written down as meeker, which is funny. Uh, and then Richie's going to play the, this curator who's like the one curating the exhibition for meeker and then there's like egyptian attache which is this woman odette that you know we we are introduced to um and then there's a curator at the museum and there's a egyptologist expert so

there's all these these cast members that uh coombs is going to run into multiple times in different contexts in order to sell him on this whole situation. And I think this is a bit of a question mark, but it seems like it is building up to Coombs muscling in on the deal. Once he's interested, they make him think that it's going to be worth over a million dollars. Like, they have these fake account books to show him that the original exhibition made like 1.5 million dollars just in the museum so of course doing it as a big convention center exhibition with all the show business would be so much more money so now he's interested in the money right because he's a promoter and he's interested in getting free money so he's going

to muscle in on the on the deal and take 50 and i think the idea was was to get him just to pay for it like it's a million dollar deal so you know five hundred thousand dollars and you're in kind of thing but that's not how he rolls so he muscles in and we'll go through the mechanics because they're pretty good but like he's like i'm going to take 50 of the deal i'm going to pay one dollar yes and then they have to reset and be like, OK, what are we doing from here? Right. Yes. And one of the reasons he's able to get away with that, which is lovely, is that his man, Harry, is not only muscle, but a notary public.

Right. Right. Everything's legal. Yeah. Harry, Harry doesn't have a giant role. Yeah. Harry doesn't have a giant role. He's a gorilla, but he's kind of a delightful gorilla in these two partners because he's not just a gorilla. Like I said, he was in Notary Public. He's serving him food. He's like everything to this guy.

It makes you wonder a little bit about like what's Harry's deal in all this? Well, I think we see that Coombs is a very like distrusting person right he has like this one guy that knows where all the bodies are buried literally and he doesn't want anyone else to know anything about what he does um i guess so we see them have to adjust the attack uh and and it brings in something that they talk about when they're first trying to figure out how to get to him which is that he seems to be a bit of a hypochondriac. Yes. He takes like six weeks a year where he's in clinics and like he avoids like plane travel

and like he's kind of a germaphobe. So the second, essentially the second, so kind of that whole first part plays out over the first episode and then the first part of the second episode and then the last part of the second episode, like the third act is the rest of the con which is they start killing off all the people that coombs has met uh like at first it was brought up as a joke about like oh the curse of the pharaohs right then they start killing off people he knows and they're all these like freak

accidents that involve strangulation so he gets more and more paranoid and then finally the what finally tips him over is he has a he's having a sit down lunch he doesn't eat but whatever that's another thing um he's having a sit down talk with jimmy joe meeker and then jim keels over just just choking to death out of nowhere and they have one of the store run over as if he's a doctor and pronounce him dead and this is the the like the fourth person that's died that's associated with these relics he is now at the point where he has so bought into the story that he's he's like i have to get out and they've constructed it such that now he has a direct relationship direct through odette to the Egyptian government.

And he's on the hook for their whole project now. But he's like, how much will it cost to buy me out? And they do get the big score at the end where he writes a cashier's check for $450,000 to, quote, buy him out of his contract. And then that is what ends up going back to Mr. Brockleman. Yeah. After a bit of a nail biter, which we'll talk about, but yeah, that's the, that's, that's the big score. One thing I wanted to say about that, that last, the shift, right? So we were talking about how, um, the, instead of the shifts happening in a way that's kind of meant to trick the audience we see that uh coombs is only paying a dollar and now you know we have a moment with richie

and jim trying to figure out what they're going to do next and um richie being despondent and jim's like it's a con there's hooks there's. We just got to figure them out. You know, like that's. And so we know that they're moving to this one. But what one of the things I love about this setup here, this using the curse and putting pressure on his hypochondria is the fact that this is the first con that Richie suggests in the first place. He's in the first place. He's like, I think we should give him some you know symptoms for some strange tropical disease and offer a cure for that and i mean like obviously the details are different but it's precisely the same pressure right like there's a lot of good like motif repetition here right like so yeah it's an inversion where at first richie's

like well this is my first this is the only idea I've come up with. Give him some disease and take him to a clinic and then charge him for this miracle cure. And Jim's like, no, that's too straight because he has doctors. He's just going to go to his own doctors. It's never going to work. You have to come at him at an off angle. And they do. But then their off angle ends up right in his wheelhouse, if you will. Where it's like, oh oh muscling in on a business

operation and doing it legally so no one can protest that's what he does right so he does that and they're like oh oh dang and then they have to come at it from another off angle which is as you say back to the hypochondria where it's totally not part of his his day-to-day and that's what ends up working um yeah so so spoiler alert this is a fun episode and we like it a lot um yeah where uh where do we want to go do you want to just kind of skim through the stages of the con yeah i guess we could do that like and just kind of hit the color scenes that we thought yeah yeah did a good job of pointing things out i will say that part of the the premise uh that puts jim and rocky together when richie comes to ask for jim's help oh so good is that jim is clearing out his trailer and taking stuff to goodwill and rocky keeps taking things

and being like this is perfectly good you just have to fix it. And that we learned that Rocky gave him a toaster for Christmas. That was 3475. Let me just, just so people know, because I mean, like it, it seems petty, uh,

but, um, I'm just going to run that through and just get the exact results here. That's $123 and 88 cents. It's not a cheap toaster. That's a nice, it's a Christmas present. Yeah.

We mentioned that Richie uses Rocky as a lever. And so he tells Jim about how his dad is in trouble and is so despondent and like isn't doing anything. He's just watching TV and not getting out of the house. But of course

Jim's too busy. He doesn't tell Rocky that Jim said no. He tells Rocky, oh Jim's too busy and I came to him but jim said no he tells rocky oh jim's too busy and i came to him but i didn't make an appointment it's my fault yeah it's my fault but this of course gets rocky on richie's side uh and specifically says uh if you don't help that boys daddy i'm gonna be mad at you yeah uh yeah um there's some delightful chemistry between richie and jim uh again just like the the last one we did uh and watching i mean i'm gonna just reiterate this but richie's thing is his sort of golly gee willikers naivete that people assume about him that lets him do things

he has this line to his dad earlier when his dad is all beat up and he's telling his dad that he's going to be able to uh he he wants to get you know make it straight straight for him uh and he says i may not know much about printing business and that's important because on the sign of the print shop it's brockleman and son i didn't notice that that's good it's clear that son is not doing that. And that shows up a little bit throughout the episode. There's like a later moment where Richie's dad is like, oh, yeah, that Rockford guy seems like a pretty decent guy. If a guy like that could be a P.I., then I guess it's not a bad job.

Exactly. Yeah. But this one line, Richie looks at his dad. You know, his dad is all beat up and he says i may not know much about the printing business but when it comes to crooks i'm one savvy little sucker and it's true like he doesn't nobody least of all his parents should believe that about him but it's it's actually true like we see that over and over again in this episode that he's he's he plays this very innocent character and the same way that jim plays his character in the same way the angel plays his

character there's a truth to the character they're playing like one of the brilliant things about the angel job is that part of what he has to do is act terrified about the curse and if you want someone to act terrified angels the person to go to want someone to act terrified angel's the person to go to right like that's like you're rationally terrified of the curse that's a perfect uh role for him i like watching richie play rocky against jim and play the innocent when it just feels maybe not a hundred percent clear but it feels very plausible that that richie is in control of what he's doing like he knows exactly what he's doing here so mr brockleman is played by harold gould who was in fact in the sting uh oh nice and he played kid twist who i don't remember off off hand but is

one of the one of the big store one of the gamblers i believe um but yeah i mean he's a endemic father slash grandfather on tv yeah uh he's been in a million things but yeah uh there's a fun little connection there but i do love that the rocky is trying to hoard the stuff that jim is trying to get rid. And that whole argument between the two of them is very good. It's just going to end up in his, in his, in his garage. Yeah.

Yeah. Richie is the first one who has to get Jim on the line and reel him in. And Jim knows that's what he's doing, but he can't resist. I think. Yeah. So Jim is still strictly an advisor when they go to talk to, uh, Larry, the race car guy, and they're walking around. There's a bright yellow, I guess these are stock cars, right?

These are like the classic, like tiny little cockpit, big, huge spoiler on the back, big wheels, you know, only for racing stock cars. And so this is a big yellow one. And Larry is wearing a matching yellow one and larry is wearing a matching yellow silk jacket which is wonderful jim essentially interviews to find out whether his idea is going to work and then has to pitch being part of the initial con and they tell him the truth they're like we want to cheat mr coombs out of his car can you help us right if jim wins this race with this bet then he'll give the Coombs special back to Larry. So Larry will get his car back essentially.

Yeah. If he loses, Larry's going to lose his car, this yellow one, the new one, and get to visit Jim in the hospital. Which I think is both a funny line, but also lets Larry know how far Jim's going to go to try and win.

Well, and they have a whole conversation about pushing it to the limit, right? Yeah. Coombs has this driver, right? He has a driver who races the car for him. And he's unbeatable because the car is so advanced. Yeah. And the driver is very good. But Coombs likes to drive it sometimes.

He takes it about three quarters of the way just to like impress the girls that he hangs out with yeah when it comes to pushing it to the limits mr coombs has chicken feathers where his competitive spirit should be when we get to that scene where coombs is just coming from racing there's a great exchange between him and his mechanic i don't like the way it's handling verne something's holding it back i ran a 113 just a few minutes ago that's an awfully good speed i'm telling you it's dragging its butt mr coombs there's not a car that can touch it out there that's as good a speed as we're gonna get that's what i want to hear just keep it that way he does the manager thing where he complains about it where the and the mechanic knows sure and well that this car just runs. Right.

Coombs is creating excuses for why he's only going three quarters of the way. And it's just a good tie-in with what happened, but also has this very real feel that I've experienced with managers who just want to have something to say. Right, right. They want to feel like they're doing something. They're contributing in some way. Yeah. Yeah.

And then that whole scene. So the whole hook into that is that Jim pulls up in this like very old style, like even like a 40s style convertible with the little. Oh, it's a gorgeous looking car. It is gorgeous. I don't know. Again, not car guys. It's not a Rolls rolls royce but it kind of has that feel fancy rich person's car um but he pulls up on this racetrack where he's not supposed

to be and he's taking poles out of a whiskey bottle and he comes up and he's he's you know acting half in the bag and starts insulting Coombs. And Coombs, of course, gets drawn into it. So this is Jimmy Joe Meeker staggering around, right? He has his hat. He has his bolo tie. He's doing all of his fun down-home aphorisms. Coombs asks him, you got a problem, fella?

Nothing I can't handle in a pair of regular pants. I don't even know what that means. Well, I'm wondering if he's just making fun because he constantly makes fun of that suit. Right. Yeah. Because Coombs is in a full silver racing suit. Calls him a silver lame jackass. Challenges him to a race. And of course, he can't race his car on the track.

It's a racing track. But is when larry rolls up in his car it's like hey i need the track you guys all need to get out of the way and uh this is the first part of the con he's the shill right meeker goes up to him and offers to buy his car and he says he's not for sale then he peels off thousand dollar bills off of a roll and uh offers him a hundred thousand dollars for the car. You just bought yourself a race car. There's a great Bugs Bunny moment too, where, uh,

you know, he's playing at being drunk and he's trying to get into this race with, uh, Coombs and Coombs says a race with you half bagged. Okay. You're on. He gets Coombs to almost, it almost gets Coombs to suggest the race.

Right. Right. He's clearly just asking like he's being incredulous and uh jimmy joe just takes him at face value he's like yeah no let's do it and then he insults him right because he's like okay vern because vern's the driver yeah and he's like no i don't want to race him i want to race you right like he makes it personal and coombs of course is like i have the best car in the world and you're half drunk so sure if that's what you want and then we have a fun racing scene

uh which you know i honestly thought would be a little longer actually yeah i was actually kind of surprised by how uh how little uh racing bits there were in it right because jim starts off uh behind him but eventually pulls ahead of him on a turn and he sort of spins out and that's it like there's not a there's not a lot of back and forth going on i guess is what what i'm saying which i guess is fair because a there's a lot of other stuff to get to and also in the conversation with um larry that leads to a little montage not a montage but a little scene where he's driving the car and then larry's giving him feedback and yeah and he's telling him how to get the most out of it and he's like specifically says you know you gotta drop your rpms coming into

the turn and etc etc uh when you take your foot off the gas you've lost you know you don't have control he's specifically telling him how to get the most out of it on a turn right and then in the race it's this one turn that is the key moment where coombs he doesn't even really spin out he just goes he drifts too far and hits the the dirt shoulder and that pulls him out even farther and he just loses those couple seconds and that's enough right um to to lose him the race we've all played pole position we know know what happens there. The little button on that whole thing where, you know, he signs over the car is Jim saying, Captain Space, thanks for the race. So good.

So that's the hook, I guess. And then a lot of the rest of the episode is Coombs confronting Jimmy jimmy joe meeker in his office uh meeker enterprises and so this is the literal store this is the whole set that's full of like secretaries and people running around with papers and it's all meant to it's all staged to be all like busy and you know uh active and i love we get the intro to that every time is we hear an elevator ding and then there's like a phone call like the mark is on his way. Like, all right, we'll be ready. It's all it's all coordinated. Yeah, it's very workmanlike.

I do want to point out quick about the race car, which one of the bits that I kind of love about this is that no matter what happens from here on out, they got that car away from him. And that's it. He never gets it back well it's like justice is served right presumably it goes to uh larry for his services and that's great there's moments early on where he's trying to get it back and jim just doesn't even have it to sell it back to him right not that he says that but it just uh it's just kind of a lovely little bit here is that they they're already winning against this guy right right um so this next stage is to get him into the actual alternate reality right yeah and so part of it is getting is staging an argument where meeker comes out

and yells at fenimore who is richie richie's playing this curator um and yells at him to do some menial task and then richie's like you know i'm not an office boy i'm this curator and yells at him to do some menial task. And then Richie's like, you know, I'm not an office boy. I'm the curator. And it's clearly they're clearly antagonistic. So they do that in front of Coombs. And then Coombs wants to buy his car back. And Meeker has this whole thing about, oh, I'm giving it to my cousin's 17 year old for his birthday, which enraging to to coombs but then he blows him off to take this call from overseas that he obviously doesn't want to take and then clears out the little

secretarial area so that coombs can pick up the phone to hear what's going on right yes and so this is mr wincos who wants results for all the money he's paying um he threatens to send Meeker back to the oil rig where I found you or under it um giving Coombs this whole idea that there's pressure points to get at Meeker um I love here where he gives it a beat like they hang up the phone and then on camera we see Coombs hang up the phone and then go over and sit in the chair and then we cut to jim giving it a beat to give coombs the moment to get out of the way so that he won't quote find him at the phone in my notes i make a note of all the sly smiles that jim is giving because he's enjoying how well this is going so far the end of the scene also introduces uh Odette as this cultural attache that I kept on missing her name.

Yes. Who she's supposed to be playing. Who she's supposed to be playing. I never wrote it down. Anyway, she's the Egyptian attache. Yeah. And we see Meeker like making eyes at her and he like gives Coombs like a, I don't know, like a classic sleazy guy like, oh yeah. Because she's a very attractive woman.

And so this is introducing these characters to Coombe, right? Yeah. So one of my favorite things, and I think this is an homage shot, is they have this all set up to follow people through this space as one tracking shot where it goes past the walls, right? Oh yeah, like the sting yeah and so i think this is a an homage to to the sting specifically and maybe other kind of heisty movies because there's there's three rooms there's the main room there's the little secretary room and then there's meeker's office and so it's set up to do one tracking shot where the camera can just go past all of them at once and then back and so we follow a character multiple times through the episode we follow a character through all of them

and then all the way back and uh it's very cinematic and cool so i like that they got a lot of use out of that set is what i'm saying two things should be of note here number one just meeker's office i just have to say you gotta you gotta see meeker's office like there's a pattern on all the furniture the i believe the carpeting the desk and the wall it's all it's it's something but the uh the other thing like it's that elevator shot where you see the the mechanics of the elevator coming up um the filming of it it just shows like you're when they show the mechanics of the elevator coming up is when we often hear the phone call or the saying the mark is on the way. And it's the that's the, you know, how the sausage is made moment.

Right. Like so we're seeing the insides of how an elevator works and we're hearing the insides of how the con works. I know it's just like a little little things like that are really nice. They're not mind blowing or anything like like that it's just a lovely uh it does a really good job of separating out when we're following jim and richie as they're doing like logistical things yeah when we're watching the the store when like when we're watching things in motion for the benefit of the mark and then this is where we get the sting inside the sting. Yes. I was just going to say,

we should talk about the Hittite pot, which is, uh, just a regular old bought in a craft store pot. The five and dime. Richie had a friend who's into pottery who could put a bunch of cuneiform on it. From the Encyclopedia Britannica.. From the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yeah, from Encyclopedia Britannica.

There is no cuneiform on this pot when we finally see it. It just has lines drawn on it, yeah. Yeah, but they do this great job of selling it. So the scene is, so now that they've shown Coombs a couple of avenues to follow to get to Meeker, and he sees that this curator fenimore is clearly unhappy and browbeaten so he follows him that night and they go to an auction and so richie as fenimore is at this auction he's a he's a he's a specialist in hittite anthropology or

whatever and there's a specific pot that he's like been saving up and he wants to buy because he wants to start his own collection because he's young. He's getting back to what you're saying because he's he's young and earnest and. Yeah. All of that stuff. And so they stage a conversation with a number another member of the store about the pot that Combs overhears so that he hears why Richie is so into it. And the other guy's like, oh, no one here wants this. You should have no problem getting it.

Cause it's after all a minor piece, right. Which gives, you know, the opening that they want for, for Coombs. And then Coombs introduces himself. And one thing I like about him as a character is that he's very blunt.

He's always like, here's what I want. And then if he doesn't get what he wants, he's like, okay, here's the terrible, awful thing I will do to get what I want. Right. But he gives him the chance first.

So he comes up, he's like, I saw you don't like Meeker. I'd like to know more about him and what he's doing and what you're doing for him as a curator. And he's like, I'm not at liberty to discuss it, et cetera. And Goom's like, okay, fine, fine. Like, I'm not at liberty to discuss it, et cetera. And Coombs is like, okay, fine, fine. And then he bids him up on the pot from an initial $3,000 bid to $10,000. Yes.

Richie's character counts his money to try and figure out if he can make a thing. And then he's just immediately overbid by Coombs. Because it goes to like $7,000 or $8,000 or something. $8,000. And then he counts his money. He goes like 8 025 so that's the sting inside the sting they get coombs to bid ten thousand dollars and then pays it to the auctioneer who's part of the con so now they have that 10k to add to their you know to their budget uh so nice um and then the other thing this is doing is getting is giving him

richie's character to draw him in further into the main plot. And he keeps backing away and backing away to an extent I did not think he would. Like, again, I have seen this episode before, but I mainly remembered the hypochondriac part. I didn't really remember this part. And it's pretty extensive. This thing that Coombs does next to draw Richie in is great. Well, okay, before we do that, I just want to say there's a thing going on, and it's almost always done, just like the elevator scene,

it's almost always done in voiceover, where the moment the mark leaves the venue, you hear somebody say, all right, the mark is out, everyone. You don't see them shutting down but you get this feeling of how ephemeral all of these locations really are like time to clear out to a point where i wondered if that was going to get them in trouble like if he just turned around to pick up something he had left behind or something yeah if they waited there long enough and they just saw everyone leave at the same time and get into cabs or something. Yeah.

So Richie refuses to take this pot as a bribe. And then Coombs places the pot behind the tire of Richie's car so that when Richie backs out, he breaks it. Feels guilty about breaking it. It's just the most petty. Yeah. And it's something that Richie wanted and he just destroys it. Like, sorry, not Richie wants, but Richie's character. Fenimore.

Fenimore won it. And Coombs just destroys it to show that he can, but also to like, intract him. You know, it's, it's, it's wonderful. I think it's, it's a great villain move. And it's great that we're so in on the con that we can see like that they wanted this in the first place right there's a clear end point that they're trying to get to and you can see how any way they got to it would be fine but they're not going to go out on a limb and get an

actual expensive you know hit type pot when yeah they know this guy doesn't have any artistic background or taste so you know they're happy happy to do the bare minimum to keep him interested. May he destroys it. Maybe he doesn't. Who cares? As long as it gets them to keep leaning on Richie. Because that's what they need him to do right now. So this gets us to how much resistance Richie is going to put up.

To sell the fiction. Yeah. And so Richie gets beat up. gets beat up bad yeah they take him yeah I guess one of the stadiums he owns there's an establishing shot of a sports stadium yeah and Harry the the gorilla just punches Richie in the stomach which is awful uh he says uh Coombe says Harry why don't you show him what honor and loyalty to the wrong person buys him? And then we had this really ominous cut. Like, he, like, pushes him up against the wall.

Yeah. It kind of, like, freeze frames and then cuts. And then it comes back to Richie holding his side, sitting on one of the, like, athletic benches with a bloody nose. And he really definitely got beat up. a bloody nose and uh he really definitely got beat up um there's a moment here where coombs keeps asking him like look you can tell me what's going on or i can have harry keep going and then harry coughs just like a casual like clear throat cough and coombs is like don't cough in my face just that motif that reminder of like oh yeah this is a thing which we don't get a lot of in this episode in the first episode but i like that it's here to remind us of that.

And I would like to just point out to our youngest listeners that there was a time where that is an overreaction. Yes. Obviously, not anymore. But there was a time before 2020. And so this is where, after all of the resistance, no, he won't be bought. resistance no he won't be bought no he won't be bribed with this thing that he obviously wants um it takes physical abduction and a beating to finally get this young guy who doesn't even like his boss to go against his own principles and spill the beans right and this is where we get the whole thing about the second king tucker

exhibition and the egyptian mania he says there's going to be a real big show business approach uh possible tie-ins with some neil diamond concert i love that touch too and then specifically again part of the always take a step back always take a step back to draw him in coombs asks how much money is involved and fenimore says that that's not his end. He's not involved with the money. But if he promises not to let Harry hurt him anymore, he'll do his best to find out. And that brings us to the end of part one, I believe. Pretty much. We end on that cliffhanger because.

Oh, yes, that's right. Two of the crew, we've been introduced to one of them before in the interview scene. They're going into the museum and then two other guys come up and they're like, there's a big problem. We can't get into the exhibition wing. Uh, so the plan, right. Was to kind of probably like sneak in and like use one of the real

curators office as the set for this interaction. Yeah. They were going to do like a gas leak or something to get everyone out. That's what they tried to do. But like the security guard wasn't buying it or something like that. Yeah. So they're gonna have to do it in the main museum museum and so these two guys who are in like work coveralls yeah uh they're like so you're not going to need us so they just peace out um one of them is jack

garner by the way oh nice which i noticed in the credits uh it's great um but yeah so the the main guy who's going to play a curator of the current exhibition or the the one that was just passed that was at the museum. He's like, all right, we'll have to do it. The museum. Oh, Frederick. I'll explain when we get in, Amy. We'll have to station ourselves for the Brockman kid.

Caesars. Let's hope he can roll with the flow. And we get our to be continued after that. It's pretty good. Again, with the motif of they're going to have to roll with things as they change. And this is the first real moment where they're going to have to do some ad hoc improv to keep things going. Yeah, it's a good switchover from like, we had a plan and now we're starting to get a little on our toes here. And I think it's important that specifically it's that Richie is going to have to roll with it. All these other con men and women are pros and have done this kind of stuff. They're mostly worried about

whether Richie is going to be able to, you know, handle the swerves, which I think is also a fun bit. 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 uh 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 ndpayoletta. 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. Jim, Denny from Denny's Pest Blasters got a great deal for you. We'll rob out your rodents at a tremendously low cost. So call us. We're in the Yellow Pages and we mean business. So that's our episode break for the syndicated version.

So at the end of that episode, we get a preview of our exciting conclusion. And then at the beginning of part two, in place of the preview montage, we get the, here are some scenes from part one. It's basically in that slot. It's about a minute of scenes. Some of the other ones we've seen have been like a six to seven minute summary, like short clips, essentially. This is really, you saw the last one, right? Okay.

But we do come back essentially from commercial break as we are watching them to Richie and Coombs entering the museum um and with Richie asking him not to mention anything about his role with Meeker to this curator they're going to meet because he has a whole career in front of him and he doesn't want to be like tainted by this kind of underhanded situation or whatever which I also like because that's part of the part of the fictional reality. But it's also like is a little nod towards getting Coombs to agree to not talk to anyone else at the museum, which is important. Yeah, yeah. So Richie does see them in the lobby and he does indeed roll with the flow.

Here's a con for the benefit of the mark within the con. Yes. Coombs is interested in making an endowment to the museum but he wants to know more details about how the king tut exhibition went and specifically how much money was involved so that he can you know accurately calibrate his donation because there is some pr involved after all etc there's a moment where coombs is like can we just go to your office and uh our our faux curator sees a security guard over his shoulders like oh excuse me i have to go talk to the sergeant about something and goes over and then it's like so uh what time did the museum close

it was good it's like this great way to add legitimacy to what's happening um yeah i it was a great touch yeah it's a nice, and it also kind of breaks the questioning of why they're just standing around, and I guess gives them an opening to just be like, let's go talk in the exhibition wing or whatever, because we cut to them just in an Egyptian display of artifacts, obviously at a real museum flipping through this big ledger book.

Again, there's a little bit of backing away like you know this is going to stay confidential. We're a non-profit and people don't like to hear that we made a lot of money when it comes around for donation time and stuff like that. But this is where they give him some numbers. That there was a

bottom line of over one and a half million dollars of profit on the King Tut exhibition. Plus, like all of the list of things that were sold in the gift shop and like merchandising and all this stuff. And he was like, I had no idea this was so popular. This is where I think the curator slips in the popular imagination is so inspired. Maybe it's because of the ancient curse yeah they go back and forth about what ancient curse oh mumbo jumbo stories of people who opened the tomb strangling to death i was like is is the curse a deliberate part of the con right or is it just something incidental that i knew it was going to be important like there's there's no way

it wouldn't be the question was was it going to be important by um is this part of the script at this point yeah did did they yeah i kind of feel like it was because i think some of the staging here some of the camera work we see richie looking at the other guy the curator kind of intensely a couple times and i think like waiting for him to say something in particular that's how i read it yeah i i think there's there's the element of like throw this in just to add to the right just add some valence of the of of reality to it because this is something about egyptomania that people are interested in there's a part of it that might be like let's just seed this in here just in case if we need it great if we don't doesn't matter yeah but yeah i read that as intentional so that sets up the the latter third like you said of this

right half of the episode the main yeah this this leads us into the the full con like the mark has been hooked he sees the pot of gold right he's like this this is a big payout for no investment from his perspective plus his whole motivation here and he says this at the end of the scene when he's parting ways with uh richie's he says he says to harry uh i'll get that sod kicker if it's the last thing i do yes so it's that that personal motivation is still there but he's also seeing where he can make money. So now I think we get into really the most important person in the con from here on out is Odette. So when she's introduced, she's introduced in the interview scene where she comes in to do her interview with Jim and Richie.

And Jim and Odette clearly know each other. Yeah, Jim is not upset, but surprised that Richie had invited had invited her right because he didn't tell richie to invite her odette and angel are the two people that that yes jim did not invite that showed up to the interview um but uh she's perfect for this role you speak foreign language yes english i meant foreign to americans french italian spanish some german and of course um urdu an old islamic dialect that sound anything like egyptian i don't speak egyptian i speak only because of an old alliance that's probably close enough we may have an embassy post for him we have a little scene with them in the parking lot where we get the line that you mentioned earlier of it's going to be very interesting working together after eight years oh it's going to be so much more than

interesting yeah we definitely see that they have history uh a little unclear about what it actually is clearly there are some romantic situation i think is given by their body language by this time it's been implied that she has run off in the past with some uh con money right yeah that jim was involved in but it's it's a little little unsure and then her role in this con is is to be the representative of the egyptian government in their clandestine uh arranging of getting all these artifacts to the u.s for this exhibition um because it's it's good for them to you know have the you know all this cultural penetration uh it's a little unclear i think to me exactly well i guess it's cleared up later i was going to say it's a little unclear to me

like exactly what the egyptian government's motivation here is but it's cleared up later i was going to say it's a little unclear to me like exactly what the egyptian government's motivation here is but it's cleared up later where it's like they are also going to get a financial return from this whole deal is that the idea so like the the flow of the money from what coombs knows is uh the egyptian government is funding wincoast who is a real person. They're just using the name of this guy as part of their story. But this is a real person that people would know about as this kind of shady international figure. So they're funding Wynkoast and they're providing the artifacts. Wynkoast is paying Meeker to arrange things on this end because he can't come into the country.

And Meeker is shady and and willing to to do underhanded things for money uh but meeker has been bleeding money from wind coast they make mention of like him going to vegas and yeah and then this whole operation is to do this over the top king tut exhibition that will generate a bunch of money and then that money is going to go back to the Egyptian government and to Wind Coast and through Wind Coast Meeker. Like he gets paid off through that also or whatever. So Odette is here as the representative of the Egyptian government. Coombs goes to the actual Egyptian embassy and asks for Odette.

He sees her come out of the embassy. Right. She's talking to someone from the embassy saying like, oh, I, I got the the the address wrong thank you but being very charming about it yeah and and then she gets in a car again as a fancy like old school it's like a it's like an indiana jones car is what it looks like uh and i

think jimmy joe meeker is driving i think he's supposed to be driving but i'm not entirely sure yeah he's driving that because this is, they're going to the warehouse to look at the artifacts. So, so, so that whole thing is staged for combs to see her coming out of the embassy and talking to someone there to lend authority to her story. Anyway,

he follows them to this warehouse. They go up to the warehouse, Jim and Odette, as opposed to Meeker and her character, Jim and Odette are squabbling when they get out of the car. He's uncomfortable because she was not talking to him. Yes. Some other stuff like that.

But when they come out, Angel is at the warehouse with the security guards who are also part of the store. I don't think we mentioned it very specifically, but Angel was at... I mean, we did say that Angel was at the audition right angel was rejected he was paid the audition money but told they didn't have a spot for him in this con and that's important here so he was there with this guy named weatherford and weatherford was cast into the con and there was a there was an exchange where angel talks to weatherford and is like all right so i get 10 of whatever you get like so he you know is trying to get in somehow and then he's here now because weatherford turns out as a narcoleptic and fell asleep and so now angel

is going to take on the role of the uh the egyptologist who's like the expert who's going to be working you know uh letting more authority to this whole story um jim's like you don't know anything about this it's like i know as much as weatherford did so he tells angel to keep it to nodding and knowing looks yes they stage this conversation for coombs to sneak in and over here as he does um there's all these crates with like in my notes i say crates with props sticking out turns out these are props that they you know rented from universal or whatever which is yeah hilarious yeah but this whole conversation is basically uh odette and richie being unhappy

with how meeker has chosen to store the artifacts. Because he's cheaping out. And they could get damaged or whatever. And then for Angel as the Egyptologist. To talk about how great they are. The brilliance of the ages before us. Duty unsurpassed. Wealth unimagined. Thank you Professor Stein.

Who wouldn't risk the infernal spirits. Who wouldn't dare the vengeance of the pharaohs. To touch such splendor. I have held greatness in my hand he shatters a prop by holding it too hard one of the things i love about angel is that they're they want an understated performance from him they want him to say you know that these are great pieces or whatever but they and he just he takes it straight to angel the evangelical priest yeah yeah he hams it up so hard it's great it's a good angel moment both this and the later one yeah um there's a great line from angel in this one too where he's

like who else has seen mummies too 12 times yeah i know what i'm doing um after overhearing this coombs tells harry that he finally knows how he's going to get him. So now he's going to try and lean on him. We have the same tracking shot through Maker Enterprises where he goes right into the office. And there's a great line where Meeker's like, what are you trying to make sport of me, boy? And Coombs says, Jujo, nobody needs to make sport of you. You do it all by yourself. So he lays out all the things that he knows he's in for an equal partnership or when Koss

will find out about where his money's been going. So he has this whole thing. He's like, now that I have this pressure, I'm going to lean on him. I'm going to get in on the action. And then this is the, I guess this is the great like step back that I didn't see coming because I'm like, oh, clearly this is where they want this to go right yeah but then they do another one to draw him even deeper in where jim as meeker explains that he knows this is a kind of a subplot from the first episode that they kind of went by as part of the whole situation into the race car thing yeah but uh

combs has been going through a legal situation with a woman that he lived with for like seven years or something but never married and now she's suing him under common law stuff for half of what he owes yeah and he clearly doesn't want to give that to her but technically that includes his car and since that stuff hasn't gone through the courts yet the coombe special was not something he was at liberty to gamble away so meeker's response to getting blackmailed is to say that he'll go tell the courts where that car went and that is going to throw you know throw your whole situation with this woman that's going to throw it out of whack and you're going to be liable for all the half property. And do you really want to go through that?

And all that stuff. And this appears to be correct. In terms of Coombs's motivations and he storms out as a great little button where Jim he's, he has a dartboard. And so he waits for Coombs to storm out and then he smiles and he throws a dart and he completely misses and hits the the the door of the opening thing not the dartboard and then snaps his fingers um which is symbolic symbolic but it's also very funny this is a benefit of the longer runtime i think yeah this whole little subplot probably would not make it into a single episode yeah it's it's a short bit uh like they say before he tells his his mechanic not to or

verne or whoever it was he was talking to at the track not if his ex asks about it it's a lemon yeah it's a thing that has come up like uh they hit it enough times to make it a real thing but this is the end of it right like there's no payoff after this and so i think where it holds in holds can can uh coherency in this greater hole here is that like you said this is the step back that that you weren't expecting and i think this is the step back that that puts combs into uh not buying in but but uh spending the dollar into muscling in instead of just buying yeah i'm just gonna ruin them yeah just gonna ruin them we have a a great setup for a later payoff where combs goes to the egyptian embassy and asks for the attache and i don't like, I don't know who you're talking about. No one like that works here. He's like, well, I know you can't talk about it because part of it

is that she's there in secret, right? Because this whole operation is supposed to be secret. So he knows it's a secret, but he gives them his card to pass on and to tell her that he's in possession of information of great importance to the Egyptian government. And then they have someone else outside the embassy to note that he went there so that they can know that he's followed up on that. Yeah. I think. And then we get this next scene to really give us the state of the state

of the con. Oh yeah. Yeah. We're hanging out backstage and seeing how it's going. So Rocky's with Jim. Jim's in this like nice apartment that he's clearly is part of the whole thing. He's renting this as Jimmy Joe Meekereker he's straightening out his checkbook because he never has time for stuff like this

when he's running a con and rocky says that there's nothing as sinful as one man fleecing another out of his life's work though there are those who say a man is lucky to have a half million dollars to be took for yeah that's such a great line from rocky angel arrives even though he was told to hold up somewhere. He's like, what? Yeah. I'm supposed to curl up in Wino Alley while you live like Wayne Newton? Yeah.

So Angel, now that he has the one fingernail, he's trying to get in for more of the action. Yeah, yeah. He says something about, like, I didn't hear about no half million. Yeah, yeah. Richie comes in uh rocky of course asks how his father's doing and his father is not doing great and uh he goes over some stuff with jim they got charged for an extra day of prop rental because the guys who were supposed to take it back like didn't get it back by the end of the day on you know when they were

supposed to or whatever right just one of the million little things that you have to keep track of when you're running a con. Rocky talks about how he's going to make barley soup and take it to Mr. So great. To Mr. Brockleman to make him feel better. While Angel samples the extensive bar in the background. So Richie is worried that the blow off was too strong and that Coombs is going to take no for an answer uh you

know that that last setback was too much and jim's like no no everything's going fine we saw him at the consulate uh so he's still in odette we'll take it from here there's nobody better um there's not a lot of it i guess but that little note of like here is a thing we have to spend extra money on yeah that's that is a real concern for the for these cons where like there is a budget and if you don't get the score, you know, you're going to be on the hook for all this money you're spending up front anyway. Right.

Yeah. Uh, we then cut to a dinner scene with combs and Odette, uh, where she dances around acknowledging the story as he's like, I know this, I know this, I know this.

And she's like, Oh, do you? So she's being mysterious but she lets him get out of her that mr meeker is a problem of long standing and that you know she doesn't like him he's a thief and a liar and uh coops is like please go on and so there's a bit here with that line that doesn't it seems slightly less i think she delivers it quite well because it it seems like it's going past some layers here and that she's saying it about jim rockford a little bit and we'll find out later that that is probably the case she's not just playing a part

here she's allowing some of the real life emotions to inform her character work yeah exactly yeah there's some bleed there some bleed so we cut from there to jim's hotel room where there's a knock on the door and harry leads with a punch to take take jim across the jaw and this is where we get the muscle coombs wants his 50 equal partnership with Wincost, or Harry will leave him in traction. Well, are you ready to come up with a half million bucks? Because that's what it's going to cost you. No, not if you draw up the contract the way I tell you. You see, I get 50% for $1 and other valuable considerations.

And you know what that is, your life. So you have the papers ready in your office at 1030 in the morning. And just so you don't worry, I'll bring the dollar in cash. That's the unexpected turn, I think. I think Jim was expecting this visit. A nice thing about this scene that I think I'm not imagining is that when there's the knock at the door, Jim's not in character. And the moment he gets punched, he's in character.

And he doesn't sound like Jimmy Joe meeker when he's calling out hold on hold on but after he gets punched he's jimmy joe meeker uh and he's playing the character see i thought that he was actually in it the whole time specifically because he picks up a cowboy boot oh okay you might be right i i might be projecting some things here like i think he's like in character as he's drunk himself into a stupor because there's like an open bottle and he's on the couch. And like, yeah, he's like, hold on, hold on. He picks up a cowboy boot. Why?

Why is he up a cowboy boot? It's like because that's what Jimmy Joe Meeker would do. And then he staggers to the door. But he clearly even if he wasn't like, I don't think he's really drunk. Right. Yeah, that's yeah. That's true. But he's presenting as.

right yeah that's yeah i that's true but he's presenting as uh so we get the the the next morning and i my notice uh coombs is crowing as meager signs the document they get it witnessed and harry of course is a notary um odette says she's think it's going to be great for all parties involved so they're also playing their roles right yeah and uh richie will now report to coombs directly and not to meeker uh Meeker has a good line. Your government can go milk a duck, man. Yeah. And I'd just like to point out that this purchase, so that we have it in context, was actually more like $3.56 in today's money. Coombs leaves with Odette.

And now dropping character, Jim says, if there's a market on smug, Coombs has got it cornered. And here's our crisis point, our low point for the story where Richie says, this isn't how it was supposed to work, was it? It's just a variation. How does this particular variation work itself out? I don't know. I haven't seen it before. Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad con. No, sirree. This is a dynamite con.

I'd like to find the guy who's going to say that this isn't one of the best cons. He gave us the old greased pole, didn't he? Yeah, we still got a few aces. Like what? Jim says they need a ringer for Wincost. They're going to have to bring him in as a character because the real guy has 18 federal agencies waiting for him to come back into the country. So from here, so we see the turn in the con, and we'll just hit those highlights in a minute,

but this is the chunk where we get the stuff with Odette. Yeah. And I think we talked a little bit about how this feels like the humanistic treatment of a female character that we come to expect from a Juanita Bartlett story. Yeah. So there's this clear implication that Odette in character sleeps with the mark, with Coombs. It is implied on screen and that it is confirmed in dialogue, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Cause her character now is like, we're on the same page. You've won over Meeker. You've taken me away from him. Right. That's part of the thing. And she's flirting with him. But she also needs to keep him distracted from getting anything concrete from seeing the real artifacts.

Yeah. So he's giving her champagne and they're flirting and she's showing them photographs right right and we cut to jim and odette he's also pouring champagne for echoing that that moment he asked how it went she says fine we have a nervous jim cigarette as you know she's telling him everything's fine everything's going to plan. Stop worrying. And then, yeah, she says, of course, I had to seduce him. You said you wanted him distracted, right?

I wouldn't say that Jim's mad, but it throws him off. He's uncomfortable. We got two different opinions about what happened. And Jim isn't forceful about his opinion. He thinks he told her to prostitute herself and she did. Her take on it is more like, you told me to distract him. This is how I know how to distract him. And I had fun doing it.

Like, she had agency in it. I never told you to go to bed with a man. I wouldn't ask you to prostitute yourself. It disturbs you? You're damn right it does. Poor Jim. Always so sensitive. How can i make you feel better really was nothing to do with you i enjoyed it and so he's like oh my god did you interpret what i said as you should do this thing i would never do that while she's like this isn't

about you right yeah it reminds me of the uh rita Katkovic episodes, mainly in the like, this is a sex positive person. Yeah, exactly. This is a choice I made and there's nothing wrong with that. You being uncomfortable with it, that's your problem, not my problem. I feel like that's a thing that's in this that would not necessarily be in this story written by another person. Yeah, I agree. And it's not a huge thing, but it's great that they have that moment. It's another beat in the evolving story of Jim and Odette,

where we don't have the whole thing. Turns out they're not very good at communicating. Yeah, yeah. Our final leg of the con kicks off where Coombs, where Meeker calls Coombs. There's an emergency. Wincost wants to talk to them on the horn. And they go into his office and surprise, Wincost is there.

So they've brought in another con man to play in this role. And so he's being very aggressive. We're cutting this all off. I'm closing your bank account. I'm changing the locks, revoking the company credit cards. I didn't tell you to bring him in and you're going to throw everything off. And the key here is that Meeker had power of attorney. And so legally he was able to bring in Coombs.

Yeah. But Wincost has a document revoking power of attorney dated the day before their contract and so once this is you know submitted that's void blah blah blah blah meeker says he's not going back to any old oil rig and he jumps on win cost when he goes to the phone and they struggle i kind of love this because it's like oh comes is ice cold yeah what he does is he just reaches over grabs the document and starts setting it on fire. Like, what's important here? This piece of paper.

Whatever happens down there, don't care. Destroy this now. Meeker gets win-cost in a chokehold and then chokes him out. Don't stop breathing on me, boy. And he, quote, stops breathing. And Coombs just, without skipping a beat beat go get harry he'll know what to do with the body and there's this great like back and forth there where jim has to justify being the one to get rid of the body and he does it just by saying you know like i i want to know where it's

buried yeah i don't trust you i i want to be the only only one to know where to dig him up so this is an interesting twist in the con because the the way to get the money is not to have Wincos demand the money, right? It's to have Jimmy Joe murder Wincos and sink them both deeper into what's happening, which is fun. This also, funnily enough, is probably the least difficult to believe part for yeah yeah you just it just takes it yeah that murder happened in front of you that's fine yeah that that happens sometimes i know how this goes go get harry this is business this is business sometimes you murder in business uh but yeah they they confirm that they're both still in on the deal and then coombs leaves and uh then uh winott gets up Jim and his buddy Sheridrick because he did a good job.

So I guess, again, this is where we're seeing this all from the inside. Another way to do this would have been to just plunge us into that conversation. And kind of like in One and in every port both of those stories are also based on a maverick episode so i'm not surprised that there's some similar elements yeah but there's a guy they've been claiming they're working for who actually shows up and then everyone acts surprised and in one in every port as the audience we're left in the dark about whether he's the real guy or not and turns out he's right and then here since we're on the inside we know through the whole thing that that he's just part of the con and those are both fun stories they're it's nice that there's two

different takes on it it is super important in this one that we know because otherwise we're like did rockford just kill me did jim just kill someone? That's true. That's a good point. So going deeper Combs is now kind of taking over, right? He's giving orders and he does say that he wants to see the artifacts. They have another shipment coming and then they'll be able to start mounting the exhibition. He wants to see the

first shipment and they're like, okay, well we'll arrange to show you those tomorrow. So now they're on a clock because they don't have real artifacts, right? Yeah. There is a wonderful piece of banter at the end of that scene, which occurred in Coombs' hotel room or whatever, where Jimmy Joe Meeker and Harold Jack Coombs are walking out to the car. I got zip in my back pocket.

Old cash flow ended for Jimmy Joe at 3 a.m. You got rid of the body, all right? Yeah, it ain't the first first ain't gonna be the last and then he goes into like he picked me up off that oil rig blah blah blah and coombs uh ends the scene with meager i want to tell you something you and i are partners because of your little mishap with wenko's neck that doesn't mean i have to stand here and listen to your chicken fucking life story. Such a great line. All right. Now we're into the fun stuff.

Yeah. Combs is getting his morning breakfast. He asks Harry to check whether there's a draft because he feels like there's some cold air coming in. And then in the paper, he sees a headline, Freak Accident Kills Curator. And it's a story about how the guy, that angel was playing, the Egyptologist,

died in a freak accident and then we cut to jim reading the same story in a celebratory manner yeah and i said he's riding his bike and he hit a clothesline and he ruptured his esophagus so they they slipped this page into coombs morning paper and richie goes through his thought process of the story because he's like wow this is really creative. This is good. Good job. I wanted something memorable. Not like choking on a chicken bone.

Yeah. And you just don't see clotheslines anymore. Everyone has dryers. And Jim says, I have a clothesline. Yeah, of course he does. They mention Odette. And then Richie starts asking Jim about her. Because he can see that there's something there.

He's like, she likes you, doesn't she? Jim's like, I don't want to talk about it um and he keeps prying and jim i laughed so hard at this i thought it was so funny uh liz was walking through the room and saw me laughing and so i backed up to show her and then start laughing again and she's like i don't know why you think that's funny jim's like he doesn't want to talk about it before breakfast and they're he has a hotel room so they have like a served breakfast on a little trolley with trays over the the food so they both sit down there's anything i hate more than an amateur psychologist it's an amateur psychologist before breakfast would you like to eat okay sure Okay, sure.

Oh, they did it for the eggs again. And it's a hard cut. Yeah. That made me laugh so hard. He's living it up in this hotel, right, on this con. And so he gets a chance to get good food. But he's Jim Rockford. He's going to end up with whatever food they end up making him and i just love the the implication

that as long as he's been there he's asked for his eggs some way and they keep yeah it to the eggs again you know what it's not angel that died in the newspaper no yeah i just realized it's looking at my notes it's the other egyptologist is the one that had the um the guy that they met in the museum with the going through the ledger. That's who they say died. Because we get the big Angel moment. Right, right. Yeah, so Coombs goes back to Meeker Enterprises and now they stage the big argument with Angel

as this professor, Professor Stein. Yeah. He's leaving the project. I've lost two colleagues in the past 24 hours. I don't plan on adding myself to the list. Are you talking about Dr. Henning's accident? Accident? A clothesline across the windpipe and you call that an accident?

Yes. Well, it wasn't, sir, any more than Dr. Fenimore's death. Dr. Fenimore's death? Yes. Suffocated in his sleep in the prime of his life. Now, Mr. Meeker might call this coincidence. Well, what do you call it? The curse of the pharaohs. Oh, tongue-wash! He says the objects have been profaned and they call it the curse of the pharaohs all it's hard wash he says

the objects have been profaned and they brought the curse with them um yeah and i love angel's accent is all over the place which yes it's kind of fun i kind of feel like that has to be intentional maybe it's not i don't know it's fun it's very angel he's he's chewing the scenery as hard as he can yes so he's, he's not going to be involved anymore he doesn't want to die like his colleagues he storms off Coombs asks Odette how they feel about it in Cairo and she's like

well, some people think it might be something but there's a rational explanation no one really believes in curses so she's being the rational counterweight to make him think about it more and Coombs he begs off of the warehouse trip that they're supposed to, to, to make him think about it more. And, uh, Coombs, uh, he begs off of the warehouse trip that they're supposed to go to that

afternoon. Cause they were going to go with professor Stein. And so now he's clearly like his body language is great. He's like, yeah, maybe I don't want to see these artifacts. And then we cut to him reading a book in bed about King Tut. And Harry comes in to tell him that his lunch is ready.

It's steak. And Coombs asked him to cut it into small pieces for him. Is there nothing Harry can't do? Yeah. So this is the quick dissolution of, uh, of his sense of reality. Um,

we have our, our big scene here in a Mexican restaurant, of course, where, uh, Jimmy Joe Meeker brings him to, uh, to meet their,

this theoretical new, new curator. They do all these little pushes to throw him off balance. So Jim leaves a smoking cigarette in the ashtray to bother him with the smoke. And then he asks them to move tables because he's sitting in a draft and it's too cold. And they move. But the tension here is that Jim notices that the decor in this restaurant is the same kind of vase as that Hittite vase that they originally used. And we see him keep distracting Coombe so he doesn't look around because he's

worried that he's going to notice the pot. Yes. And it's all going to come falling down. There's an interesting thing here. So this scene leads to someone coming through that jim recognizes who's obviously part of the con and at that point jim uh holds up his menu in front of his face fakes choking falls over i mean we talked about this like he falls over and fakes his death and this guy comes over and uh says i'm a doctor confirms jim's death and then there's this little moment there where jim after um coombs leaves or this guy explains that there was traffic or no he got a speeding ticket and that's why he's so late so there's this feeling that that this moment should have happened sooner and so there was like a tension in how long it took yeah that we don't get except through this pottery stuff. The fact that Jim keeps noticing the pottery and has to keep juggling is what brings that home when the real tension.

But again, like the scene is so short anyways, it doesn't make sense that this guy, except that the guy probably should have been there before Jim. Probably, yeah. And not come in at just the right moment. When they change tables, he also specifically is like, oh, I want to sit here because I don't want anyone to be behind me or something. Yeah. To put Combs back towards the door so that he will notice, you know, so that he won't see the guy come in.

There's some stagecraft that Jim has to execute really quick. And there's irony because Combs couldn't care less. Like, he's so concerned because he keeps talking about the curse the curse the curse do you believe in the curse what about what happened in the 20s like i've been reading blah blah blah and jim just wants to keep him distracted if he just engaged him in conversation about the curse more it probably would be enough i mean he does a little to reinforce it while they're talking because that is the point but yeah it almost comes crashing down because Jim overplays it.

And there's this nice little half beat at the very end because the whole restaurant's watching what they assumed was a death. Right. And then Jim just gets up. There's this half beat before they cut where you can see almost sheepishly looking around like, oh, sorry, folks. That was it. Yeah. Then they're done so coombs goes to odette meeker's dead you know he choked to death right in front of me i want out of the deal he says he doesn't know if it's really a curse or maybe it's it's germs maybe there's a virus that's in the artifacts but everyone around them is ending up is people are dying all over the

place so he wants a release from the contract signed by her government and she says that she can't do that uh they're so invested in the exhibition uh they can't just stop yeah and he says well how much i'll buy it i'll buy out the contract he's like well they've they spent close to a million dollars uh but since he has 50 of the deal i love how specific this is he's like how about 450 000 well that buy me off and then they can get the rest from win from wincus which is very funny because he knows that guy is dead yeah but yeah so he offers 450 000 and she says well i guess since you have 50 of the deal that would be acceptable if that's really what you want he's like yes that's really what i want

and uh we cut to jim's trailer where him and Richie are hanging out and the phone starts ringing and Richie's like, answer it, answer it. Jim gives it a couple rings. And sure enough, she's going to meet Combs at noon the next day to get the cashier's check. And Jim says to meet them at the Brockleman's at 2 o'clock. And then we have a portentous shot of Odette after she hangs up the phone. In our next scene, we say goodbye to Harold Jack Coombs.

He gives her the cashier's check, says he doesn't want lunch. He can't eat. He's not drinking. He's afraid to swallow pills. He can't sleep. It's been the worst week of his life. I've been a winner all of my life, and I have a strange premonition. I'm never going to win at anything else again as long as I live.

What a weird thing i know she bids him farewell uh and we follow odette's car as she leaves the bank and then passes a sign with a mile marker to las vegas yeah and then this next scene is another one of those incredibly real moments where you just have a party that's just a bunch of people with like platters of lunch meats in a very real home, suburban home. These con folk just pulled off a big store for half a million, roughly half a million dollars. And the celebration for it is a low level family get together. Your cousin's graduation party from high school. So significantly, Richie was supposed to tell Odette, but he says, well, we can trust her. I didn't think it was necessary.

And it's like, Richie, because everyone's there and she's not there yet. And so he's like, she split on us. Richie, she would never do that. What happened when you worked with her before? She split on us. And Richie didn't know that. And he's like, you should have told me that. So now they think that she's gone.

She's taking the money. What are they supposed to tell his dad? Because that's where we're at, right? They took the $40,000 from his dad. Theoretically, they're going to get this money back so he could get his printing company back and now it's gone jim wants to talk to mr brockleman in private but he has something he wants to say in public and he starts getting everyone's attention and as he's about to speak we get a door closing and odette comes in with a sorry i'm late good old odette coming through well Well done Odette. I did have a moment where I'm like,

I don't remember how this ends. I think it ends happy. I think she comes back. I think that was a fake out, but I don't remember. But yeah. And so the end of this is they, Odette and Jim have a little talk to the side after handing the check over to

Mr. Brockleman. And she says she was going to split, but then she changed her mind. Originally she was only in the whole thing to get mr brockleman and she says she was going to split but then she changed her mind originally she was only in the whole thing to get even because he didn't know how she felt when he left her with that fifty thousand dollars and uh of course that was his story earlier that she left him yes the fifty thousand dollars and they realized that that must have been carl who played both of them so this whole time they've each been holding a grudge against the other for splitting with the take with this third guy who was involved in the con. And he played them against each other and took all the money himself, as it turns out.

I guess we have some catching up to do. That might be pleasant. I think it might. And then we end with Mr. Brockleman making his exuberant final remarks. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, everyone. May you all live to be a thousand and never owe a dime. He tells Jim he's a mensch.

I think something we didn't note was that Mr. Brockleman has been so traumatized that he's reverted to using all these Yiddish idioms that Richie was like, he doesn't talk like that. My granddad talks like that. So telling Jim he's a mensch is like, that's a compliment of the highest order, right? If you're not familiar with that term. You're a real one. Jim's a real one. Yes.

But he has a special thanks and a lot of pride in his son, Richie. And then he looks to Rocky, who is there of course. Hey Joseph, have we got a couple of kids here, huh? We sure have. And we freeze frame with Jim and Richie, arms over each other's shoulders, smiling,

having successfully rooked this criminal for the money to get back the ill-gotten gains. Justice is done and and to earn their father's prides the most important prize of all so that was it was an absolute delight to watch i i really really enjoyed that episode like i said it's it's probably now on my list of uh if anybody's like hey i'm in the mood for a good con do you have one hour or do you have two hours yeah exactly and people might be able to get it now on it it's not yeah it should

be on peacock peacock.tv we mostly talked about it in the intro uh kind of all the fun structural stuff and and everything is there anything else that you feel like we haven't touched on? I think we covered almost all of it. I was happy in the end that he got the money. It's great. There was a lot of good nickel and dime moments. Again, the props coming back a day late and just thinking about all the money they had to put out to interview the con folk. Yeah, because there were like 50 people in that room. Yeah. And when you look at the end of it, you know, you were talking about the 450, which is what at the very end Coombs pays out. But he also paid Richie's dad for 40,000.

Right. Which was an underpayment, but it still is money that came from him and the 10 so in the end it was half a million plus a race car is what he lost nice round number uh yeah clearly there's supposed to be tension with odette at the end uh did that read on this viewing i think so i mean i think the end was the sort of like, you know, Shakespeare comedy where it all gets kind of tied up a little bit where they're like, yeah, OK, we're good now. There was a version of it that I saw again because I couldn't really remember. There's a version of it where they follow Odette because they know that's what she's going to do. And I'm like, clearly, that's what they're going to do.

And then I just like that Richie was supposed to follow her because he's too trusting. Yes, he doesn't. And then I just like that Richie was supposed to follow her because he's too trusting. Yes. He doesn't. He's too trusting. But whenever he's too trusting, it's the right thing. That's true. Yeah. There's this thing about Richie where maybe infuriating for Jim, but whenever Richie goes

with his instincts, it's actually kind of the right thing to do in that moment. Jim's a little too cynical. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably the risk averse thing to do, right. Is to be cynical and, yeah.

And, and, and cover all your bases. And it's also probably what led him to trouble with Odette in the first place. Why him and Odette blame each other and not Carl. Right. Right.

Yeah. But yeah, I think I kind of feel like if it was just about Jim, like if this con was to get something back for jim's sake then it would have been fine if she'd gone off with the money or whatever because like yeah you know jim's never gonna actually make a profit but because it was for someone else you know there was a there was there was a moral valence there that was like okay she'll come back she knows it's the right thing to do she would leave jim without any money but she's not going to leave Mr. Brockleman.

Right. That is true. So, fun episode. Welcome to 2021. Mm-hmm. Getting off on a good foot. There's a... I saw somewhere... I saw somewhere that, like, the original title for this was The Return of Richie Brockleman or something like that.

Oh. But this is a better title. There really isn't anything I, you know, I checked the entry and 30 years of the Rockford files. And other than mentioning that, like there's one in every port, it's,

it's kind of based on slash similar to a Maverick episode called shady deal at sunny acres, where it's like putting together a store and getting other con con artists and stuff. But yeah, other than that, there's no real background information I've found to fill out anything here. So, you know, our speculations stand,

but it's a fun one. And I guess I think my overall takeaway is just that I really like how it takes a very strange premise for the con and shows us how it is made to work yes and the fact that it is strange is what makes it possible and they kind of lampshade that explanation about like you have to come in from an off-kilter angle or else this guy is just gonna you know outmaneuver us or just have the resources or just not believe it yeah he'll be in his element he'll know what

he's doing and, and yeah. So it takes what on the, on the face of it is a pretty, pretty wild, a pretty wild situation and shows us. And the two hour format really shows us the step-by-step and shows us the, the character flaws of Coombs that, you know,

get him pulled in more and more. So it's a good stuff. Yeah. Well, thanks for hanging with us as we explored the Brockleman duopoly, duology. Duology? Duology. Is this the last one he's in?

Yeah, there's only these two, though they're both doubles. So, you know. Yeah. So we've opened and closed the book on Brockleman until our spinoff podcast, The Richie Brockleman Files. Exactly.

So stay tuned for that. But yeah, I think, you know, we will be assessing where we're at in the series, see what remains, and planning out our next couple episodes for the rest of the year, or for the first part of the year. As always, you can keep tabs of what's coming up next and what we're uh looking at for our next episodes over at our patreon at patreon.com slash 200 a day um by the time you hear this hope everyone is doing okay making it through this uh chaotic time that we find ourselves in but uh as always we hope you find a little solace with us as we return to the balm that is the Rockford Files.

And as such, we will be back next time with another comforting episode of the Rockford Files.