Two Hundred A Day - Episode 80: A Good Clean Bust with Sequel Rights

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Nathan and Eppy join Jim in S5E6 A Good Clean Bust with Sequel Rights, as he's hired to babysit the celebrity cop Frank Falcone (Hector Elizondo) in advance of a big toy line opening. Falcone isn't exactly the role model he's being advertised as, and after he beats up his ex-partner, Jim gets fired - but now they're both being followed by goons from Calumet City, IL. Jim and Frank need to work together to figure out who's in danger and stop a hit before it's too late! We found the plot of this episode to be pretty unremarkable, but the Jim-Frank dynamic makes for a good vibe, and we had fun talking about it. Freeze, Turkey! Plus, we debut our new Answering Machine segment to address listener feedback! 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) * Kevin Brown * 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

Jim, I have to thank you for talking over my problems with me last Tuesday night. I love you for it, but can you have lunch tomorrow and talk about the divorce? I'm real bummed out. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. And before we get into this week's episode, we have some big news for our listening community. Here at 200 A Day headquarters,

we finally procured one of those fancy answering recording machines that we've all heard so much about recently. So as longtime listeners may know, we don't keep a very specific recording schedule. However, we do get comments on our previous episodes. And as those come in, we will try to collate them and read them on the show. So that's what's coming into our answering machine. Yeah, I'm excited to air these grievances. They're not grievances. Sometimes when we get questions that are specific, we'll try and answer them wherever they come in. But, you know, a lot of the time our wonderful listeners just leave us some little heads ups or notes or clarifications on stuff. And these can be in our email or in our Patreon or on Twitter.

And so we just wanted to start making sure we acknowledged that we hear those and that we're glad you're listening. And thank you for taking the time to send us your thoughts on our show. So I'll see if I can get this device working here. Over on our Patreon, Brian, one of our long-term gumshoes,

noted that we breezed past an important point, a very important point, in fact, in the house on Willis Avenue, our episode 78. As we've said in the past, we were not car guys, so this one went past us. But Rocky, we probably said that he drives a Ford. Rocky drives a GMC pickup, and the whole conversation about the red Ford

is a red herring. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we missed some stuff by not being car guys, but I appreciate that our audience and fellow sleuths are there to back us up, to fill in the gaps. talking about his uh his the red fords that he would be driving a red ford but that is not the case though i do think i would have to go back but i do think that there is some relevance because brockleman richie brockleman drives a ford he drives a mustang just saying we were our our love for rocky blinded us to the real the real parallel that should have been drawn there over on our website eric filled us in on our dry humored goon from the house on Willis Avenue as well.

The head goon in the episode with the dry wit is Purnell Roberts, who had played the oldest Cartwright son on Bonanza for many seasons and went on to play the title role in Trapper John MD, which I don't think stitches together any fictional universes. There might be a connection with Bonanza and Maverick. I'm sure there is some seven degrees of Maverick that can be drawn through all of those. I have not seen those shows, but if he has a similar kind of performance, then if Trapper John MD ever comes on my radar, maybe I'll give it a look.

Trapper John MD does belong to a larger cinematic universe, though, I think. All right. Well, while you check that out, I'll just let everyone know that if you're not aware, at our website, which is just 200aday.fireside.fm, there are comments enabled on our episodes. So that's where website comments come from. Anyone can go ahead and leave a note on any of our episodes. If you go back through them, you'll see some fun ones where people get mad at Eppie for not pronouncing Garner correctly. I'm bad. I'm sorry. Trapper John MD is a spinoff of M.A.S.H., so there's that.

So we're learning already. Yeah. Speaking of cinematic universes, on Twitter, at Jordan Bockelman, not Brockleman, though that threw me when I first saw it, at Jordan Bockelman clued us into a fun Easter egg on an episode that we haven't done yet. They say, I may have just discovered a Rockford Files expanded universe in Season 3, Episode 8, Rattler's Class of 63.

A book titled Mrs. Melville in London, appears on Jim's bookshelf. Mrs. Melville is, of course, the fictional detective who is the subject of a series of books written by, or co-written by, the murderer from the first non-pilot Columbo episode, Murder by the Book. Oh, yeah. Jack Cassidy plays that murderer and he kills his co-author who actually did all the work on their Mrs. Melville books. And so at one point

Columbo's walking around with a big stack of Mrs. Melville books. And so that was 71, Rattler's Class of 63, came out in 76. Seems like an intentional Easter egg, which is very fun. That's wonderful. I have seen that episode of Columbo. That was a good episode of Columbo.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a Steven Spielberg directed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a strong first episode. I mean, technically, it's a TV movie. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah.

All right. Well, that's what's on our answering machine for now. As we accumulate some more comments, we will check the machine in another episode or two. Feel free to let us know what you think at our website, 200aday.fireside.fm. If you're part of our Patreon over at patreon.com slash 200aday, or you can tweet us at 200pod. So you picked this episode. Yes. When I was supposed to.

Yeah, we had some back and forth because your original pick, while an episode that I like very much, is another two-parter. So we're going to – and we've done two of those in a row. So we're going to push that off for a little while. Yeah, so I was just going back to find one that might be a little easier lift for our next recording. I think I probably casually set the creative constraint that I wanted to see something from the later seasons. And I think we landed on season five, I believe. Yep. Season five, episode six, a good clean bust with sequel rights.

This is almost a meta episode because it's our, it's a, so we are watching a detective show, the story of which concerns a detective who has had a show made about him yes uh and that rockford ends up having to uh babysit or at least at the beginning and as luck would have it for a ride along on our podcast we have two hollywood stars who are watching us record the podcast so they can play people who do a detective show podcast in an upcoming sorry that's a bit i couldn't follow all the way through good effort uh yeah so this is one that i have seen all of these uh before this one i i kind of remembered as being like fun but not particularly like convoluted. And I think that is true.

The most convoluted thing is just, I think the central character's motivation. So you have a character who is, whose decisions and choices are what's pulling Rockford and therefore us through the story. And there's a little bit of like, why, what,

what are these? And some of them made sense as it unfolded. And some of them maybe together we'll figure out how they make sense. But the mystery, there is a mystery here, but it's mainly just following this destructive force running through his own life. Episode is written by Rudolph Burchard, who we have not seen before in our show. He actually wrote three episodes of the Rockford Files and did the teleplay for two others. It's kind of interesting. You know, I try to take a look at who the writers are. His IMDb, I feel like, is not particularly extensive. He did a ton of chips.

Okay. And other than that, no more than like four or five episodes of a couple other shows and then lots of one offs. Some cold shock. The Night Stalker was involved with a show in the 80s called Scarecrow and Mrs. King that I'd never heard of. And I checked it out. The Adventures of a Housewife and a Spy with whom she fell in love. I remember Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I don't much about it because i it's been since the 80s since i saw it but i do remember it but yeah the only real info i could i could find about him um was from his obituaries um he died in 2003 but apparently he was he worked with steven cannell a lot and he was sought after as a fixer and an emergency man able to compose a

completely new script when the need arose in 24 hours. Oh, nice. That's a good. Yeah, it's a good skill. Yeah, I was going to say something that you probably want people to say about you. But then I thought then you're the one that they're going to call and say, you got 24 hours to do it. And there was also a line in there in one of the obituaries about how he was very research

oriented. And he was like, that was one of his skills as a writer, was he did a lot of deep research on stuff, which is interesting in contrast to being a fixer and an emergency man. Multifaceted, perhaps. But I feel like there's a little bit of that that comes through in this episode, and maybe we'll get into a couple of those details. Oh, yeah.

Because there is some stuff that at first read, I'm like, oh, that's a tossed-off thing. But then when I looked into read, I'm like, oh, that's just a, you know, that's a tossed off thing. But then when I looked into it, I'm like, oh, there's actually something here, which is always, always fun. And this one is directed another William Ward production. Oh, William, we'll have to do a full breakdown of your stuff at some point. But we're still, I think, in the thick middle of the like 20 odd episodes that uh he directed up the show um do we want to talk about the main character about frank falcone before we get into it sure i think there's a um all right so it's interesting to see that the writer here uh just looking through his imdb pre this episode well he did a lot of uh uh kolchak the night stalker which i appreciate

uh but he i guess it isn't he doesn't really get into like he's done some police stuff what's interesting is that he's writing a send up that some of this is the main character frankie falcone or frank falcone uh is a cop which you wouldn't expect from that name in the rockford files uh unless i guess falcone makes him a cop if they were like Falcone. Right. But anyways, he is a retired cop who has had like a movie and a TV series based on him. Rocky is really into it. It's very popular.

And the presentation of this TV series is, I think, in the Rockford Files, in this episode, it's presented as a send-up. They're making fun of cop shows to some extent. So it is interesting to hear that this guy then went on to write, say, Chips. Right. Not to disparage Chips or anything like that. It's just like it's best to make fun of something from the inside. Right. The best parodies are often done by people who are already steeped in the genre and know.

Right. And what struck me was the layer of parody going on. Because you have the earnest show that is a funny gag because the guy's catchphrase is freeze turkey it's the most generic thing uh but rocky just rocky loves it rocky loves it uh and then you meet the guy and he is uh like in the beginning i was trying to get a handle because i couldn't remember how this episode panned out i couldn't get a handle on whether he was running a con right yeah i think what what i get from him is that he's a he's an operator who's kind of fallen into a position that now he's going to take advantage of yeah right and i think that's i mean that's what the his framing

story is about with the toy company and everything um that's where the tension comes from but like i do think he's played so first of all uh frank falcone is played by uh hector elizondo who doesn't i think is is great um this is one of those where like i know him from a very specific thing but the majority of humanity would know him from things that are much more famous like chicago hope where he was one of the main character but anyway he he plays the non-iranian chic in the colombo episode that's about the diplomats compound where he commits a murder and tries to get away with it because he has diplomatic community anyway 70s casting not always always great in terms of racial representation. However, Hector Elizondo, a great character actor. Anyway, so here he has a lot of manic energy, right?

Like that's his whole character is just having all this like relentless restlessness and kind of, you know, having like a short temper, right? That's kind of the other thing. But yeah, it's earnest. It's not, it's not, he's not hiding something, really. His dialogue, his speech patterns are very... It's almost a noir send up. Yeah. The things he says are florid in that noir way. You know, he waxes poetic about the streets, you know, and that kind of thing.

He waxes poetic about the streets, you know, and that kind of thing. So in a way that you would expect Angel playing that character would talk. That was part of what sort of got me. So anyways, I think it's really interesting. And as we go on, maybe we to be a little bit of ironic distancing so we can separate him from, say, Dennis? So you have a show, The Rockford Files, which has cops in it. You have that deals with things that presumably Frank Falcone also deals with but you have to separate frank from rockford you have to separate you know so you know part of this is just uh a tech a writing technique to get a little distance from um the reality of falcone's reality and rockford's

reality yeah but maybe i'm reading too much into it anyways i don't know i think the other thing i would throw in there and then maybe we'll we should get into it is that I think an element of that distancing is kind of to talk about the nature of celebrity. Yeah. Because that's the thing is he's a – I mean, we see clearly through Rocky, but then also through Dennis. He is a celebrity because he is being played by an actor on TV in a show they like. But it's very clear that he's not the actor. Right. He is being played by an actor on TV in a show they like. But it's very clear that he's not the actor. But he's famous because of what we would now call a parasocial relationship that viewers have of the actor that plays him on TV.

He's an influencer. He's an influencer. I think that's probably a good time to go ahead and jump into our preview montage. Yeah. I don't have a whole lot in this preview montage. I will say this. Yeah. It's a little thin.

Yeah. There was, you know, someone pulls a knife and Jim jumps in the water. I think I might've mentioned this before, but there's something, um, it probably shoots to a little earlier than the Rockford files,

but the diving mean equals excitement. Right. Like there's just shorthand in that era, but we do get that there is a 25 000 reward so our ears pick up and we also see jim take a big bite out of a sandwich in the review montage yes and uh personally seeing dennis i was like wow it's been a while since i've seen dennis yeah that's true and i was pretty happy about that other than that that, that's what we get. It's pretty standard. It says excitement, characters that you like, money's on the line, someone needs a sandwich.

Hello, listeners. This is a quick break before we get into the episode to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day. This show is free to all, but the support from patrons really goes a long way. So we always extend a special thanks to our gumshoes. This time we say thank you to Chuck from whatyou'rereading.com. Check out the site for reviews of books, games, movies, comics, and more.

Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color at fruitloopspod.com. Shane Liebling, you're playing games online, so check out his dice rolling app Roll for Your Party at rollforyour.party playing games online, so check out his dice rolling app RollForYourParty at RollForYour.Party. Jay Adan, check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at JayAdan.com. Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Dave P., Dale Church, Kip Hawley, and Dave Otterson.

And finally, we cannot thank our detective patrons enough for their generous support. Big thanks to Eric Antenor at Antenor on Twitter, Brian Pereira at Thermaware, Bill Anderson at Billand88, and of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them too at 200pod. Why become a patron for as little as $1 an episode? In addition to supporting the show and exclusive episode previews, our patrons get plus expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about all the media we're currently enjoying 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. So after our preview montage, we start our episode with a preview montage.

Yes. As we watch Rocky watching the beginning of the show Falcone. So in this preview montage, we see an exploding car. We see a car going through a gas station and busting through barrels. We see a car hitting a fire hydrant. We see cop cars chasing a car. And we get a funky bass groove going as we cut to Rocky as he's eating his sandwich and yelling for Jimmy to come over to sit down because it's about to start. Here it comes.

And speaking of your thing with diving equals excitement, we then have a montage of people jumping off of rooftops and falling off of fire escapes. I am curious. Like it's neither here nor there. But I wonder how much of this was just pieced together from not necessarily stock footage. Although it could be stock footage. It could be just stunt person reels that they had access to or something like that. Or did they go out and film this for this episode? Because that must have that must have been fun right well they got to blow up a car just for this yeah um but i suspect it probably was just stitched together from there's very little of

the the actor's role or something yeah and this whole beginning scene is is basically a big physical comedy bit where rocky keeps on yelling at jim jim's getting all the things for his dinner on a plate yes and then as he's just about to sit down rocky gets so excited about the iconic freeze turkey and that makes jim jump and spill his spill his sandwich on the table which rocky does apologize for but that's the part that he really likes. Freeze turkey. And so this is an episode that does one of the things that is just, I don't know, just one of my favorite Loki Rockford files things,

which is the put all of our setup exposition, like in the first scene. Yeah. It's kind of in the first two scenes. But you know, we're, we get to see Rocky. We're setting up the whole vibe with Falcone,

but he's also giving us as the audience, the exposition about the situation, which is that Jim's going to be working with Frank Falcone. And so Rocky wants him to see the show so that he'll have a sense of who he's working with. A world famous cop and a world famous P.I. working together. But Jim, of course, being the realist, reminds him that that's just an actor. He's not going to be working with the actor. He's working with the realist reminds him that uh you know that's just an actor he's not going to be working with the actor he's working with the real frank falcon yes uh somewhere in this dialogue is when we do have a nice we have an kind of an over-the-shoulder shot of rocky as he's talking and we see jim behind him take a big bite out of his sandwich so everything is fine things are cool there's no tension here we see jim have a bite to eat. But when Jim says that, it doesn't seem like this is a guy who needs babysitting.

Rocky gets offended. You could put him in any situation and he don't need no one. He don't need you to help him out. That's because he has got the guts of a burglar and nerves of steel. Yeah. Doesn't he say something like he works alone or? And that's actually kind of thematically important. Yeah. Doesn't he say something like he works alone or? And that's actually kind of thematically important. Yeah.

What we learn later is that all of his story is based off of stuff he did when he did have a partner. And his partner has been kind of written out of the Falcone legend, as they say. But yeah, the childlike glee that Rocky has about this show is pretty amazing. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, there's something about it, about using Rocky to introduce us to it, that I just really... It both endears us to what's happening, because Rocky is just inherently endearing,

but also I think it gives it excuse to be whatever it is. I think it gives it excuse to be whatever it is. So our next couple scenes, we kind of get the rest of our premise here. Jim is at a hotel. He's talking to Bob Parsons, who is a representative of Boston Casualty. And he who's someone that Jim has been doing lots of does lots of regular business with. And this is this guy, Bob bob is his like contact there so this insurance company boston casualty has an account fun toys which is debuting a line of toys based on frank falcone and they want the uh the the toy launch to go off without any drama.

But Falcone is difficult. And so they're asking the insurance company to ensure, I guess, that Falcone doesn't get into trouble. And that's where Jim comes in. So we actually went into this a little bit in Plus Expenses, which is interesting. Because a lot of what's happening here is the new phenomena where toys are becoming big business and there are sort of child safety advocates and whatnot who are maybe concerned that this too hot to handle ex-cop is not the right role model for kids. And this is a day and age in where that concern might have sunk the toy line. I feel like that's a little out of date nowadays. Well, there is something that I feel like is kind of relevant that is outlined for us very specifically.

There's pressure on this guy, Bob, at all levels because their insurance company is invested in a mutual fund that is invested in the toy company. And so if the toy company's stock goes down because Falcone has a big public flame out, that hurts the mutual fund and that hurt, which hurts the insurance company. So it's all this big, like financial, like everyone's, you know, tied into each other. Yeah. I think there's something where that could be the premise for the episode. All these like financial interests.

And that's not that's just that's just setting us up. That's just why Jim is there. But yes, that feels more relevant to today with the like everyone is invested in everyone, regardless of what your business actually is or does yes yeah it's two uncommented things because there's that and then just the copaganda stuff like it's just both of those slammed together uh and then there's just background material for what's actually right gonna happen here what is going to happen um is we are going to see one of the finest examples of art department we need this today yes graphic design that i've ever seen i've made a note of this one too i think i've posted this this on instagram before but i'll i'll uh i'll include a screenshot on on the patreon at least

of the sign for the convention hall where it's just a white sign with blue letters and it says fun toys dot dot dot and then in the middle is a sketch illustration of falcone's face and then convention at the bottom and it's very uh graphic design is my passion yes oh it's beautiful i love that stuff it's so good and this is just that you know we're seeing people mingling and looking at these like i guess sample toys this is where we first see frank falcone as we have a nice little shot of him handling the hostage puzzle ages two to six i have a little mini thread throughout this about the hostage puzzle that we maybe you've got the same thing um the hostage puzzle appears to be i this game probably has many different names like marble maze is how i remember it sure it's a board that has a uh um marble on it and then like walls and then two holes uh or maybe just one hole the exit hole

uh and two knobs so you can change whether this board is tilting on the x axis or the y axis and you're supposed to get uh oh there's probably many holes i'm trying to remember exactly how it goes i think there's different variations yeah yeah and you're trying to get it through this maze to the exit hole now this is like this is a thing that like my grandpa has made them just fashioned them by hand and sold them at uh flea markets or whatever there's nothing about hostages but it has been rebranded because it is a frank falcone toy yes uh but throughout this episode it'll be rebranded several times and i'll just point that out when we get to them oh great i don't think I noticed the other ones, so I'm excited for that.

Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming because they keep mentioning it, but they don't. Well, we'll talk about it when we get to the next one. You know, we see Frank Falcone, Hector Elizondo in an amazing mustache and goatee combination. And he's glad handing and, you know,

saying hi to people. and then we see him zero in on an attractive woman in a red dress who's walking across the room so i think we start to get an idea of who this guy falcone is right yeah uh and then we cut to the back room where jim is now meeting with the pr guy for the toy company and getting the lowdown on the situation from their perspective, which includes the line that toys are the hardware of child's dreams. Yes. I wrote that down, too. That's a good motto for a company.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And so this is where we get I mean, we get more filled in about why specifically they need Falcone to be like handled in this conversation. That there's some recent revelations about his past from an ex-partner. And there's some distance between the image and the legend. And the whole idea with this toy line is that their forecasters think that there's going to be a backlash against the permissive vigilante in today's freewheeling culture. And so the clean, good guy cop image is going to be a counter to that. And so that's why they're branding their toys with Falcone.

Because of the TV show, that's his image. But I think as we already see, there's a little bit of a gap between that and the quote real Falcone. And we hear that he is an impulsive man. Uh, this scene continues with him, uh, back to Falcone making a kissy face at the woman. When she comes over to him, he grabs her and tells her to put it back on the street, pulls her into the back room to confront the PR guy with like, you know, this woman's in here hustling Johns. And so it's a bit of an undercut, right? We get that first image where he's like, oh, he's scoping out the ladies. But it turns out that he's using his finely honed cop instincts to, you know, see when someone is turning tricks or whatever.

But he is told that we are well aware of her one-on-one hospitality and that she's you know supposed to be there it's yeah it's clear that this is a um again like it's how the sausage is made which is the thing that just keeps happening over and over in this episode like the toy companies are not um uh lily white either that you know they're they're very they're a-okay with with uh prostitution at their conventions if it keeps whoever they need they're there the buyers happy or whatever yeah and and falcone you know points out the hypocrisy you're all worried about my image and then this is what you're doing but uh they kind of change the subject and tell him that you know this is jim rockford he's

going to be spending time with you uh falcone says that he's a man alone but it is it turns out that's in his contract that if they want him to have a bodyguard he's going to have a bodyguard and so we transition to the one-on-one jim and frank uh yes hangout situation the hangout situation which we're about to see is interesting because it feels uh at that moment when when they start hanging because leading up to this jim doesn't want to babysit him we see that he's probably going to be a nightmare to babysit there's you know this uh jim's like doing his thing where he does everything he can not to take the case uh but he's gonna have to take the case falcon's doing his thing that's trying to reject him but there's this third party that's gonna make them

have to and then when they get when they are hanging out genuinely you think they could just hang out yeah they have they have good chemistry yeah like oh yeah these two actually could just have fun and just enjoy their time there's a bit of a uh you know opposites collide kind of chemistry yeah but i think it's real i think it it seems to me like they have a lot of fun in this episode as actors yeah so uh frank starts off by asking him asking him if he likes the guy playing him on tv because falcone doesn't he thinks it's kind of wooden and then when jim kind of is like well i don't really he's like there was a gag earlier where jim was like well if he asked me if i watched the show i'll just

tell him i read proust or whatever and he's like oh don't tell me you're at home reading hamlet everyone's an intellectual when it comes to tv which again is a cultural context that is completely gone right the idea that like yeah tv is only for dumb people or whatever uh i feel like that has long since changed he uh says that he he picked out the the prostitute at the convention uh because he has the eyes and then he asked jim how long he was down down where down home man and uh so five years how do you know i told you i got the eyes yeah i feel like this is establishing that he is not a fraud in the sense of he's running a con like he is who he says he is yeah yeah like it's it's hard at this point to figure out the signals but i think i suspect at this point that

he is an actual cop he's just over the top um they run into a friend of frank's named augie uh who wants to talk to him alone who lives so that leaves jim alone with augie's uh companion debbie with an eye one b or two she has to think about it yep um yeah so i got a question for you here in this scene are they i feel like they're clearly implying, because Augie's looking for a local connection. There's this suggestion that he did movies back in Detroit. Chicago. Come on.

It's all from Chicago. It's all from Chicago. Apologies. So anyways, he's a connection from Chicago and he did movies back in Chicago. I think there's a clear implication that these movies are porn. I think so. I got that too.

Yeah. It's never stated outright, but it just seems like that's what they're hinting at with the winks and Debbie and all of that. Well, yeah. And Frank tells him like, you didn't do anything more than hold a spotlight or something like that. And put a camera on their tripod yeah i think he says like that's not real film uh and augie's like look if it's on a if it's on a screen

it's it's film yeah yeah because augie is specifically trying to break into like the movies like he's come to la yeah to try and get into legit or he doesn't say legit but it is implied to get into you know the real movie business and um he i guess he has engineered running into falcone because he thinks that since falcone always has he's always he always has an edge so maybe he has some connections or something like that we cut from jim getting some info from debbie which involves coming from chicago um and that he's looking for local connections and that he augie mentioned that he wanted to talk to frank like as soon as they got there he's like oh i have to go talk to frank and then we see falcon and augie talking and

there's something about uh he's letting him know that his ex-partner wexler is in town he's gotten this from an unimpeachable source his cousin told him this so he wants falcon to know um and then they have exchange about you know film is film and uh frank finally it's like look i can't help you right now good luck and like brushes him off so at this point i am uh like this this is the beginning of our mystery right uh there's a uh core mystery here that is not important to the plot. Right. Part of it is who is this guy and why does he need Frankie's attention? But also we're going to see in just a few minutes Frankie goes way overboard trying to make things happen.

We've been set up with the, oh, now you have to follow this guy. Right. uh we've been set up with the oh now you have to follow this guy right because what's happening here in the episode is that we're following rockford following uh frankie falcone and this is the mystery that leads falcone and to that extent rockford has to kind of solve it as well uh but again it is neither here nor there what What's really important is just that Jim is thrown into this chaotic situation. This is very much a reactive story where stuff happens and Jim reacts to it. At the end, there's a little bit of like, oh, let us put some information together and here is the solution to the mystery. But Jim isn't trying to do anything for like the first two thirds of the episode.

He's trying to stop things from happening. Yeah. So it's a little more actiony and a little less mystery-y, I think. Yeah. We end that scene with Falcone wanting some fresh air. He wants to go walk around for a while. And Jim says, well, you want fresh air? That's at the beach.

Yeah. And we have our credits play over our opening music as we do a little la montage this is one of our later credits it comes at like 13 minutes into the episode yeah i was a little surprised when it came out i was like oh yeah i mean we got the falcone credits right away so we have some some fun street scenes of la and then we zoom zoom back down to them uh just walking down a street falcone has a tip on a great chili place that they're heading to uh maybe to meet up with colombo who knows uh i'm sure there's some sort of joke here about the uh it being chili like i know okay so chili shows up in the rockford files a lot

we know that jim and james don't like garlic or no, we know specifically that James Gardner doesn't like garlic. No, there was too much. There was too much garlic in the, in the chili and, uh, yeah, the roadhouse that,

uh, Rocky was running. That was, that was an onscreen thing. Yeah. But like, I don't know if that's, if any amount of garlic would be too much or if it's just because he was

taking it by the handful and throwing it in. Right. Like that's the joke or whatever. But otherwise I associate chili with angel. Right. And we see angel eat chili or any other sort of hot sauce thing. I guess Jim does like hot sauce. I don't know.

Maybe I'm stepping too much on your toes. No, no. Trying to interpret the choice of food here. But here's my thought. Yeah. This is part of the extended universe. Yes. Chili is cop food so because colombo he's a chili man with beans without beans colombo's a chili man frank falcone

former cop chili man angel you'd think this would break down but angel always putting hot sauce in it it's kind of like an inverse like a reverse chili he's more interested in the sauce and the crackers and everything. Okay. All right. That's how I pull those together. That works. That tracks. Yeah, it definitely felt like they were trying to say something when it was like a chili.

And also, and I will say this, maybe this is like a regional thing. No, it is absolutely a regional thing. I'm sure elsewhere in the world, people are like, I know a really great chili place. But I've never heard anyone in real life other than that. Other than being in Cincinnati. I don't know where else you'd really aim for a chili place in particular. I don't know. If anyone has a great chili place that they want to recommend to us that does a vegan chili, let us know.

Oh, you know what? I'm wrong. I'm absolutely wrong there was a chili place that used to be next to uh the convention center in indianapolis that uh it had a vegan chili uh and it was really great and then uh they were there one year and then the next year it was noodles company so that's my story of a really great chili place. I take it all back. However, we do get the great line that was also from the preview montage. It's the streets.

He's like a lady. Kiss you, kill you, but she'll never bore you. You got that straight from Falco. That's good stuff. Jim says that he thinks that maybe he wanted to walk around because the stoolie brought him bad news. It's like, oh, you figured a doggie for a stoolie? And Jim says, I've got the eye. Yes.

But yeah, they go into a pool hall, which is apparently the chili place. Order a bowl and a beer. And then Falcone racks up some balls and then immediately starts getting into an insult contest with the two gorillas at the next pool table technically they do start it i will say that right because they give uh jim and falcone some some uh some static about uh oh what are you guys doing here you're all dressed up for sunday school because they're wearing suit coats yeah or sports jackets i should say they're wearing sports jackets well falcone's wearing's wearing more like a windbreaker. But anyway. They're more dressed up.

One of these guys, and it's commented on, has his sleeves cut. Right, has a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. Yeah. Jim tries to calm things down, but Falcone obviously intentionally escalates the situation. Yes. Okay, so this is kind of a turning point in the character for me. And I think it's a nice one. I really kind of enjoyed it.

Because up to this point, as far as I could tell, he was just hot-headed and itching for a fight wherever or whatever. Like there was no rhyme or reason to what was happening here. And then when the fight broke out, I was like, oh, he's trying to lose rockford right yeah i mean i love it when it when that hits at a good moment i mean it may be a personal thing between me and the show maybe a smarter viewer would get it before it happened maybe uh other viewers didn't get it until i mentioned it right now i don't know but the point is when it hits at that sweet moment that feels good to me. And I think that that, like, is well crafted.

And this is definitely one of those ones for me where I was like, yeah, okay. There's a depth to what's happening here. Yeah, totally. Again, a scene doing more than one thing. Yeah. Yeah. So Falcone escalates to where there will be a fight. And then when one of the guys interrupts his pool cue, that's the trigger for it.

But yeah, as you say, Falcone takes the opportunity to run up the stairs while Jim is still busy with one of the other guys. And so, yeah, while, you know, Jim, Jim and Falcone win the fight. But by the time Jim gets out of there, Falcone's jumped a cab and then jim jumps in a waiting cab and goes you're not gonna believe this pal follow that cab uh yeah this is more of the like kind of parody level right yeah yeah a little self-aware wink um to the genre um but there is not an issue following falcone they both pull up to the g the Gilbert Hotel. There's two good little money moments here. Where first Jim has to find the cash to pay the driver. And then he just like starts trying to calculate a tip, I think.

And then he says, I'll just keep it. Yeah. It's not worth the time. Yeah. And then he goes in and asks the guy at the desk, you know, where'd the guy who just came in go? And he won't tell him until he pulls out another bill and lays it on the counter but then he he does run upstairs to wexler's 314 we cut to to falcone yelling at this guy this is his former partner wexler they have a bit of a argument that that is that is pointing to things that we learn later right but i guess they haven't been in touch

for two years um frank's telling him he's an idiot for coming out to la wexler saying that i never hear from you now i'm supposed to he says grow points on my ears which i'm not 100 sure what that means but like now i'm supposed to pay attention to what you're doing or something like that i was trying to figure that one out too and i i don't know i didn't use like as well, I was just thinking it was like a reference to antenna or something. I don't know. Anyway, Frank then punches him in the stomach and takes him down. And then we follow Jim in to break up the fight and help the guy up.

And he's clearly, his arm is clearly messed up. It is no good. And there's a very abrupt break here. Yeah, I wrote the same. It was like weird commercial cut. It probably makes more sense if there was a commercial, right? Because this will cut, we go to commercial, we come back at the police station. But yeah,

watching it straight through, it's like, cut. Completely different scene. Yeah. Where we are downtown at the police station, where our good friend Dennis Becker is coming into his desk with Falcone, a lawyer, the PR guy, and Jim.

And Falcone wants to be clear that Jim had nothing to do with it. Turns out that Wexler suffered a broken thumb and a dislocated shoulder. So he's still sedated at the hospital. And then Dennis is kind of playing things slow. We don't have the statement. He's still under sedation. And then this like random police captain comes in and just leans on him it's specifically he hates rockford yeah no have we seen this i

don't think so no this is a one-off character yeah i was trying to find him in the um the credits but there's nobody i can't remember what his name was yeah i don't i don't remember the point is that like he clearly wants to stitch up rockford and there's nothing right stitch rockford up with and dennis it appears wants to make sure that falcone doesn't get stitched up for anything yeah he's just playing it very very calm and cool uh and so you've got these competing uh interests that are putting tension on the scene the captain wants something done but nobody else the one person the captain can point to they can't get and then nobody else wants anything to happen to falcone so right but he's like well you have the arresting officer

statement right yeah book him like that's all you need yeah so dennis has no choice it's an interesting thing because it's like other than just having like oh all of the police captains hate rockford which is fine i like like that's a fine theme to reinforce um because it's not like this is a political this doesn't come back there's no like the la police are you know hate the chicago police and that's why or something like this is really just this one little bit and i guess it's to show that to like preserve the fact that dennis is starstruck because after falcone leaves dennis is like can you believe yes i have frank falcone in the cells and he like calls his son to tell him yeah hey scotty you'll never guess who we got in here tonight and he's a personal friend of mine frank falcone that terrific

no not the tv actor the real guy yeah the real detective i'm not kidding i don't know it's just like a weird little i mean it's fun it's fine like there's nothing wrong with it but it's it's a it's a it's a it's a little piece of uh i don't, a little piece of business that just kind of like is there for fun, I guess. I suspect that this captain is there because they didn't have the lieutenant on hand. Yeah, they didn't have Chapman or something. Yeah. And so the lines were probably written for Chapman. Ordeal.

And they just threw someone else in to do it uh but but yeah there's the other bit that kind of comes out in this scene is that jim's going to lose boston casualty that's the important thing yeah his whole job was to babysit falcone falcone was not babysit so someone's going to have to like someone has to answer for this. And yeah, he was hired to do this. He didn't do it. So he's the one who's getting cut off. Now, I don't know if we've seen his contact, Bob.

I don't think so. In other episodes. But Boston Casualty, I think, is that comes up a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Much like how Chicago is where the gangsters are. Boston is where the gangsters are. Boston is where the insurance is from. I mean, this actor, James Murtaugh, is in a bunch of Rockford Files episodes,

but I don't think this character. I mean, he's got a face for a bunch of Rockford Files episodes. With this one, we've seen all of his episodes. Oh, good. he was in tall woman in red wagon he was in a portrait of elizabeth and he was in the hawaiian headache hey well there we go the complete murtog the complete murtog so jim's gonna have to take the fall and this is a big enough deal that this is like the end of his relationship with boss and casualty basically if bob doesn't fire him, Bob's going to take the fall. Like he's going to be the one who gets cut is what he says. So he's off the account. They'll send him a final check.

And this, he says, is worth a steady five to six grand a year. Yeah. And to put that again in today money uh it's usually around five times that amount so this like that's not a it's nothing to say maybe even half his income dependable income yeah yeah so it's a big deal um but there's nothing jim can really do about it uh even though he does say that he thinks there's more to the story but that's not the point we have the business with becker being so excited about talking to Scotty's hero, Frank Falcone. We see Jim give

a good eye roll in the background as he tells him the good news. Cut to Wexler at the hospital on a payphone talking to someone, basically telling them what happened, and specifically mentioning Rockford. Yeah. 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 final 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 my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worlds without master.com. Or you can find me on Twitter at Epidia,

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 nd payoletta 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. Then we go back to Jim's trailer where Rocky is serving him up some fish stew, angrily, I would say, because clearly it's Jim's fault that Rocky's favorite, Frank Falcone, is in jail. Where'd you get the recipe? Well, it's my own recipe. And it's a lot better than Frank Falcone is eating right now.

Jim explains that, you know, he's done with Falcone. He's out of it. That's it. And then we have another visual, another little gag where Jim spoons up some of the stew and there's just a whole fish head that he pulls out of it. He stares at it as Rocky says, he gives it flavor. No, Rocky's mad we then uh spend a little time with falcone and the pr guy the next day after he's uh posted bail there's a little bit more kind of like backstory exposition here you know there's a narrative here you beat up your ex-partner who wrote a critical book about you that is a violation of your like a good behavior clause in your contract or something.

So I'll try to talk to the board, but they will be able to abrogate the contract if they want to. And Falcone is mad because Wexler couldn't write a police report. He spilled his guts to someone who wrote it for him. But yes, so there is a book that was written about their past that is not favorable to frank we uh go back to jim where he's setting up some fishing poles relaxing in the sun in his deck chair on the pier life is good yeah get to get some relaxing fishing time in a couple of gorillas and coveralls roll up with tackle boxes they have a little pleasantry about the day and then jim notices that they're wearing loafers yes uh you know sneakers or other appropriate fishing footwear so he sees one sees the other they both uh slip knives out of their tackle boxes that's when he

jumps off the pier into the water yeah is. Is this Skippy? It might be. I mean, I don't know if it's the actor. I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, he does. He makes some comment about like, get my buddy, which may be Skippy. Like, I think it might be a reference to Skippy. It might be.

I mean, so this is both a like, you know, immediate preservation, but also in a very rock, rockford move. It draws a bunch of attention the lifeguard comes over a bunch of people run over oh did he fall is he okay and so our two goons peace out because there's too much uh too much attention on uh what's going on yeah it's a very it's a it's a very good maneuver on rockford's part um it just ends it right there makes it impossible for them to do the thing that they came to do although Although I got to say, they didn't have a really good plan. No. Was it just like stab him and throw him in the water or something?

Yeah. Probably what they were going to do was threaten him and get him to a second location or something like that. Probably. I mean, if I were them. Right. We then go back to the convention hall where Falcone is holding court for the toy people. And then Jim just like edges in and grabs his arm. He's like, I need to talk to you, which is kind of funny to me.

I don't know. It's just like everyone's staring at Frank and then Jim just like walks him away. Yeah. Yeah. He's definitely like talking to everyone when he shows up and just yeah there's no subtlety going on here um says that two men were tried to kill him they were serious and so am i he hustles them into a bathroom where they can talk uh more privately falcone says after saying you know if you if you call me on this i'll deny everything uh he gives jim a little more about what's going on, which is that Augie.

So what Augie wanted to talk to Frank about was that Wexler was in L.A. on a contract. So he's there to take somebody out, but he doesn't know who. And Frank was not able to make Wexler tell him in their fight before Jim broke it up. He's disgusted about how his former partner's fallen apart. You know, I used to work with that guy. I had his back and now look at him. And that's why he started throwing punches. He just like, just couldn't take how far he's fallen.

So Jim thinks that maybe someone figures that Rockford and Falcone are a team. And so since Frank scrambled the contract by messing up Wexler, maybe now whoever that is is coming after Jim because he's an easier target. And so Frank says that could be it. And then they end the scene with, come on, let's take the fire exit. I'm up to here with toy people.

Yeah. A little of the mystery peeling back, I suppose. We have another commercial break and we come back to the Firebird on the road as Jim and Frank

go to where Augie is hanging out in a nice pad. He's out by the pool. Debbie is reading lines and then she's reading the wrong lines and then

Augie's sunning himself with the little reflector thing. And it's all very what my TV idea of Hollywood is. Yes. So as soon as I saw the pool, I was like, someone goes in that pool, right? Yes. Check out this pool. It's interesting how that ends up, though.

When we get to that, we'll talk about that. There is a interesting take on that um so they they come in they want to talk to agi uh find out more about what he what he knows he has aligned it to calumet city illinois yeah i heard from my cousin leo this comes straight from cal city the chicago prosecutor has got a strong witness stashed in L.A. The contract is on that witness. Are you sure? When it comes from Cal City, it's like it's on tablets. It's the word.

Jim describes the goons. Augie recognizes one of them, but says he's personally sure that that guy's in Chicago right now. So couldn't possibly be that guy. He's at a wedding. Yeah. They're flying in some singer. It's going to be great. Yeah.

There's a little bit of business about the script he's like this script is so bad these writers he's like a pilot doesn't talk like this writers don't know their character expositions which is always very funny um but uh yeah that's the info they get from agi so here i think i mentioned earlier about like the this, Rudolph Borchert. There's a little bit about him being a research, being a deep researcher. Oh, yeah. I was like, kind of that city. I mean, that is a place.

I don't really know anything about it. So I looked it up and it is a southern, it's like a far south Chicago suburb. But as it turns out, it was during Prohibition. It was actually a big mob town. It's right across the border from Hammond, Indiana. It was called West Hammond before it got changed to Calumet City. And it was it was a big gambling strip. It was like the sin city of the Midwest. there that ended up getting taken out by capone and like all that stuff so at first i was like like oh you know how you met city illinois as opposed to chicago offhand it's kind of like oh like it sounds like a small time like a small time right kind of thing and it is because augie is small time but it is actually a city that actually does have a mob background right and like could

conceivably in the 70s be considered to still be mobbed up. That's not out of their own possibility. So I just appreciated that once I took an interest and decided to check it out, oh, there is something there. That's not just a totally random reference. Fair points to the writer. In the category of well-researched, not 24-hour turnaround. Right.

Probably. The two products that he provides this is the the former not the latter also well researched not important details there's a moment in this one where they have the joke about rockford telling augie to be careful of the sun and he's like yeah i'll put some iodine in the baby oil yeah and it's just we're so dumb oh boy so uh back in the car with frank uh they're talking about sam cassell who is that enforcer that was uh that augie swears is still in chicago um so cassell another classic rockford files mob name yeah um they have some good banter about what to do next you see my show last Tuesday?

Well, in the plot, I send a witness off to Acapulco for a week to cool off. Why don't you go to Tijuana until it settles down? What happened to Acapulco? Hey, this is real life. How would you know? But Jim wants to talk to Wexler himself before doing anything else. I made a note of this because I had to remind myself that Rockford is not on a case right now. No.

This is all self-preservation. He's not getting paid for any of this. So Frank heads back to the hotel where the PR guy intercepts him in the lobby and says it's a minefield. The consumer groups representing kids' safety are going for the throat and asking all kinds of questions. But Frank's like, I can sort this all out. I know what's going on. I can tie the whole thing up in a week, but I can't talk about it now. Which he gets out before a quartet of women. I think he refers to them as frumpy.

Like they are dressed in, you know, conservative kind of dress and everything. A little older. As they have some questions for mr falcone as they come up the pr guy mumbles fake a heart attack which is very funny to me but they're the anti-violence ambiance association which is a hell of a name they're not stretching for any kind of acronym there it's like we're not against violence we're against the ambience of violence yeah i i wonder if it's it's kind of taking a shot at them yeah i wonder if there was an association at the time that had a name that was very similar to that like anti-violence environment committee

or you know something like something like that that they may have been trying to um i'll also point out this is the first time uh or this is uh one of those moments where that game may have been rebranded oh yeah because they make reference to the SWAT versus the terrorist game oh which now we've only seen one game so far they may have more than one but there's a one more permutation that makes me think that these are all different titles for the same game but yeah yeah the SWAT versus the terrorist game, which I was like, okay, all right. They don't think that's appropriate for children. They in fact say, we are against you and all your toys.

As we might expect at this point, we see Falcone get confrontational. He starts coming back at them. Who's watching your kids while you're down here? School's out by now. Where are your kids? Why can't you tell me? Which is a bad faith argument, right? kids while you're down here school's out by now where are your kids why can't you tell me like which is a bad faith argument right but yeah that's the kind of guy he is specifically he says

you know what's on tv and reruns in the afternoon god zappa eats wolfman i'd watch it i'm imagining a composited giant zappa versus like someone in a rubber wolfman suit i feel like that has to be a music video or something yeah but i rewound it because i was like did he just say godzilla weird i swear he says god zappa yeah no that's i heard that too. And I was... Godzappa eats wolf, man. After that, the PR guy peels them off with some glad handing. Our toys have a psychological counter-violence design. And he keeps babbling while Frank kind of just fades. And we go to the next scene.

I have to say, this is a moment when I wrote in my notes like i just got hit by a truckload of con nostalgia in this moment and i don't know why this moment in particular except that maybe the the foyer that they're in just felt like a lot of cons that i've been to i've never been confronted by the anti-violence ambiance association at a convention before. I hate to say it. I wish I had. But yeah, it just had this... Something about people just walking up and talking and then a subset of that subset of that group splitting off. Then Falcone

goes towards the doors and just kind of stands there for a bit. I don't even remember if they had any dialogue there. But to me, I was like, oh man. I don't have anywhere in particular to be yeah and this is just there's action here somewhere if we want to go looking for it otherwise we just hang out here we'll see people we know yeah no it was weird i mean probably a mountain of uh pandemic lockdown

uh yeah on top of all of that is is uh is what what was affecting it but it was the first time in all this where i was like yeah i liked going to cons anyways anyway from con to con uh we cut to jim talking to wexler so this is an interesting scene where i was a little unclear about how much was Jim making stuff up to put Wexler at ease versus just stuff maybe he'd learned that we hadn't seen on screen. I think it's mostly stuff he's making up because he's saying all these good things about Frank because I think he sees his strategy as not being confrontational. It's probably the best way to figure out what's going on. He's only known Frank a couple of days,

but he can see something in the guy. Wexler rode with him for four years and only saw a self-centered grandstander. And Jim says that, you know, you have it all wrong. Frank bounced him around to keep Wexler clean from the contract because he doesn't want Wexler to get into more trouble. And being mad about the book is like a cover story

because he has his pride or whatever. But he really went on the line for you. And I think we see Wexler kind of accept that, but also be like, I don't know. He always has an angle. And he does. Well, I mean, this is actually kind of complex in, in the background of everything that Falcone has done, there is this feel of a hustle of something. He may have been a dirty cop.

Like, there's a few things that come out here that just kind of hint at that. Yeah, there's some stuff about, like, the stuff in the book is, you know, painting him in a worse light than his like good guy cop image on tv yeah and i mean where i mean the kind of emotional beat here is that like frank got the fame and that's his thing like that's his hustle and that's fine but he just wants to be acknowledged he could mention me once in a while i was with him the entire time right and i think that's kind of like the core of the issue is is not necessarily that he's been cut out from the money and stuff it's it's more that he's been cut out from the story jim wants to know who the hit is on and uh he's like oh just some some some small time flake and then before he can tell jim the name frank appears in the doorway like don't believe anything this lush

tells you and so once he appears Wexler gets defensive again. He's like, oh, you're, you know, you're the good guy. And then he comes back in here and he kicks him out and so on. And so Frank tells Jim that Wexler is just telling tales. He wasn't going to tell him anything for real. This leads to them getting back in the Firebird in the parking lot. And then Jim sees that they are being monitored from a blue car. You know, the goons are watching them.

So before we get into that, I guess in terms of like the plot. Yeah, it's a little confused at this moment. It gets clearer after this. So Augie tells Frank Wexler's in town on a contract. Yeah. So Frank goes to Wexler, doesn't find out who the contract's on and beats him up. Why? Right.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is a little bit of the... I mean, so there's two stories. One story is he's mad because Wexler wrote this book that is putting him in a bad light. And he has low impulse control and he's flying off the handle. And then Jim is giving this other interpretation where he's like, he wants to get Wexler out of being on a contract that could be dangerous for him, I guess. But that's just Jim saying that, right?

Yeah. Like, that's not a thing I picked up from Falcone. But yeah, we've got this thing. This is my take on it, right? Augie comes to town, needs Falcone to make connections for him. Right. Has information that Wexler's in town, offers up what he knows to Falcone. Falcone doesn't care for Wexler because of the book and is using the fact that he's in

town on a contract as an excuse because he gets to play cop. He gets to put himself kind of in the right position and still just beat him up. And Jim is trying to solve the case. But I don't think Falcone wants to solve the case. I think he doesn't want Wexler in town. Yeah, he just wants to get his, like, not even revenge, but just, like like i don't know

vent his spleen chase him yeah yeah yeah that makes sense uh because i mean like we're right on the edge of the actual mystery being solved right yeah uh but before we do that we have a bit of a car chase yes which i honestly thought would be more of a car chase i was like all right let's go but it's mostly um so first of all there's some great lines oh yeah keep talking take a look at that blue sedan over there i can't tell the driver the other guy sam cassell they're the ones from the pair what are we gonna do we got nothing oh we got something and then the music picks up as he pulls out and then he drives out of this parking lot to where the blue car with the two goons who tried to jump him earlier yeah can kind of like parallel him

they're not even following him they're like trying to sideswipe him and then i'm like all right the chase is on but the entirety of this is this big blue car swings around in front to block them and then we pan backwards so we have a nice wide shot of a big beautiful j turn just executed just for us just to see the splendor the firebird just drives away and we go go back inside the car that was slick oh not really local drivers do it all the time you know this is the moment where rockford's life meets the falcone television show right like you know we see all these car stunts in the beginning this is the sort of thing that the fiction around falcone is made of and it is rockford's life it is something that he he he does all the time uh I just love that. I love that whole setup and just the sort of wonderment in Falcone's eyes when it happens.

You know, this like, oh, oh, okay. And from this point on, I feel that this is when Falcone stops running in opposition to Rockford and starts seeing them as on an adventure together. Yeah. This is when he buys into Rockford's stock at this point, I think. He's like, oh, okay. Yeah. We come back from a commercial break to Rocky's place where he's asking if Mr. Falcone would like any more ice cream. He tells just call him frank rocky is clearly a gog in the face of you know his hero but he does ask him to do it just one more time and frank indulges with a freeze turkey jim wants to go get these turkeys some chicken and rocky offers to fry up the chicken himself but but no jim likes it likes the kind from the store that has the real crispy skin

and he starts winking. He's like, I'll go get it. He's trying to tell Rocky to keep Frank occupied while he goes and does something. Which is, in fact, going down to the station to look at a file of some kind with some mugshots with Dennis. They're not looking through like a mugshot book. This is like a file. It's like a hot sheet or something. Yeah. One of the goons

that Jim recognized has a $25,000 reward for his capture. Then that's coming from the Calumet City Business Council or something like that. So it's not eligible for police officers to collect, but it is legit. Dennis also

checked and there is no witness undercover from Illinois in L.A. And this isn't something he would be given a runaround on. Yeah. It's just not happening. So what are these goons doing here? Right, because that was Augie's story that the hit was on this witness. Jim calls Rocky to talk to Frank, but Frank had to go back to the hotel. Something about the toys.

And Jim's like, oh, no, not again. And we get some resolution to the toy story, if you will. Yes. As we go back to the to what looks like a board meeting in progress in the exhibition room at the hotel. So the PR guy, Jeff, is defending the situation from the pointed questions of a number of other board members. And at the head of the table is a woman who's like the one in charge. I don't know if we get anyone's name. It doesn't really matter. Falcone shows up and kind of stalks around while they're talking and he keeps interrupting and she keeps shutting him down. It's like, if you interrupt one more time, I'm going to have to throw you out of here um but they're not seeing a lot of

light for the toy line you know anyone have any ideas and was this your other moment yeah this is the uh the hostage and terrorist game uh it should go to the european market yeah that's what it was yeah uh if this is the same game, it starts off as the hostage puzzle. And then it's SWAT versus the terrorists. And then the hostage and terrorist game. All of that could be 100% intentional. It's a trilogy. It's a trilogy.

It could be three different games. It could be they keep changing the name of the game to try and match whatever they think the market is is going to you know ab testing or whatever or it could just be the toy execs not knowing the names of their own games and those are all good i like all of those options um this guy also has a different product line to to pitch of solar powered vehicle toys yes they didn't test well a couple years ago but now with the energy crisis and all we can frame them as being, you know, they're,

they're solar power. They're preparing children for the clean energy age. They're a nonviolent scientific kind of toy. And Frank picks up one of them's a tank. So Frank, he's hearing this whole thing slip out of his grasp, right? Yeah.

So he picks up this tank. He's like, you think this is nonviolent? And he starts getting more belligerent again. And Jeff is able to back him off and tells him to leave. And he's like, nothing's decided. We're still going to talk all of this out. We still have a couple of days of talking to the buyers. You know, don't worry. I got your back. Once Frank leaves, Jeff sits down. The woman goes, I like the solar toys, Jeff. I do too.

Well, it's unanimous. Bury the Falcone line. And that's why we don't have Falcone toys today now. Uh-huh. He goes outside for some fresh air and Jim pulls up in the Firebird, whisks Frank away to take his mind off the toys for a while as they figure out what's really going on. And we have some shots of them driving with some voiceover.

How does a stoolie like Augie end up in L.A. with enough money for that fancy pad and not any money trouble? Because Falcone specifically asked him at one point, what, you need some money? And Augie's like, no, no, no, I'm good, I'm good. How is he here with all this backing and nothing to do? Like he's reading scripts, but it's not like he's there for a job, but he's trying to get a job. What if he is the small time flake getting set up?

Dun, dun, dun. So they pull back up to the fancy pad. They go in. I was expecting the dramatic going in just as the goons appear or whatever. But no, Augie's just asleep by the pool. They wake him up.

They tell him what's going on. His cousin Leo must have been setting him up the whole time. The contract's on him. And that's when Jim looks out the door and sees the goons pulling up. How long can you hold your breath? As long as i have to and uh yeah this is i think you mentioned uh the unanticipated yet very welcome use of the of chekhov's pool yeah so they put him in the pool as a body face down uh the the goons come in they see that and uh that distracts them long enough for uh

rockford and falcone to get the drop on. Falcone coming in with the garden hose, which is a great move. Not using the garden hose like a fire hose, like literally just holding a coiled hose. Those were heavy. Wielding it as a weapon. Yeah. But this is the bit that just, I was like, I can't believe they didn't do it. Nobody got punched into the pool.

I know. Right? You just sit there and you watch it the whole time. You're like, no, they're't believe they didn't. Nobody got punched into the pool. I know. Right? You just sit there and you watch it the whole time. You're like, no, they're driving them away. Which makes sense. If you punch them into the pool, then you have to reveal that Augie's alive. And instead, Augie just sits there holding his breath throughout the whole fight sequence. And they drag him out afterwards.

It's very funny. Jim's going to go call the police. there's a reward on the one guy and we end the scene on frank's line that was a good bus jim maybe i'll write a sequel to my book yes poor jim uh and then we go into our last scene apparently theoretically you know justice is served we see uh frank falcone pulling up outside jim's trailer where he's leaving with some bags uh he asks like did you see the last episode or something like that so we're getting apparently his show's been canceled yeah frank asked jim if you ever got that reward did you collect the 25 grand on accident oh yeah the irs got a bite i stashed the rest of the time deposit account makes up for some income I lost.

This is a great snapshot of the reality of Jim's financial life. That's the Boston casualty. Oh, yeah, that's the income that he lost. Yeah. I don't know what a time deposit account is. Yeah. It's like a CD or if that's just like you tell the bank not to let you take it out. I suspect it's that. I suspect that's just like you tell the bank not to let you take it out i suspect it's that i suspect that's it it's like he gets access to it on a timed basis like a little trust or something

yeah yeah um frank wants to know if he feels guilty that he didn't split the reward with him i agreed with like the calumet city decision know, you were an obstruction to the investigation, so you weren't eligible for it. Yeah, but don't you feel guilty? And Rick's like, okay, fine. Just remember, none of this would have happened to you without me. I'll always remember.

Now that his show's over, and his prospects aren't looking so good, a little last-ditch attempt to shake something out of Rockford. But it's not going to fly. Jim does offer to buy him a beer. And he's like, nah. But then we end our episode with Jim taking a beat.

And then freeze, turkey. And Frank spins and does the finger gun at him with a big smile. Freeze frame. End of episode. So they're still friends. Despite the 25 grand between them what's 25 grand between friends yeah um the one bit i wanted to point out that i missed when we went through it was just that the sort of vital part of the plot that augie was the target gets

revealed in the voiceover uh as they're driving over and it uh it definitely feels like one of those they did the show they were done with it and they're like oh maybe we weren't explicit enough let's sneak something in to just yeah because they tell augie in the next scene yeah but yeah if you hadn't heard it yet then that would be easily lost yeah uh but as we've said several times during this uh that mystery that that entanglement is uh sort of what's pulling everything along but it's not important it's a very uh it's a very mcguffin-y kind of plot sure a thing is happening but the thing isn't really that important what's important is is watching falcone and watching jim respond to to falcon like yeah that's that's what's fun about the episode uh yeah i don't know if it would go down in the annals of the great uh

rockford finals plots uh personally but it has good energy like it just has a fun vibe yeah this episode just vibes yeah just vibes there are definitely some action sequences in it too that were just really good the the setup to the fight in the bar i really enjoyed it's a little string of set pieces really yeah like here's a fun little set piece here's a fun little set piece here's a fun little set piece they all occur because there is a plot that pulls you from one to the other but yeah yeah so one thing i wanted to mention speaking of of connections and whatnot, Falcone is kind of a send up. Well, OK, so there's two layers here. So before the Rockford Files, there was a show called Toma, which was a Cannell, Roy Huggins, Juanita Bartlett show. It was a show about a cop.

I'm not sure where it was set, but it's a show about a cop. And it's based on a real cop from New Jersey named David Toma. There was only one season of that show because the star, Tony Musante, who I don't know if I'm really familiar with. Oh, he was on Eyes the World Turns. Anyway, the star didn't want to come back because he didn't want to get typecast as a detective, apparently. And so when they were like, we want you to come back as a detective for the second season of our detective show. He was like, no, I don't want to do that. But it turned into Beretta.

One of the Beretta episodes is what eventually turned into the Rockford Files pilot. OK, so Frank Falcone is based on dave toma as well but kind of as at at this like abstracted you know almost send up e level because i think that was a pretty straightforward show so yeah there's a a deep a little a little deep cut callback situation um to earlier cannel projects yes the cannel cannon the cannel cannon cannel cannon um and so david toma did write a book and right so that's the plot right yeah he wrote a book they made a show about his book anyway uh yeah so fun facts and i feel like in this episode there was definitely uh you know they're making fun of maybe toy manufacturers saying, you know, this might be a little bit of a ridiculous character. But when I was a kid, Rambo was a cartoon. Right.

Like, it was just after this time, but it was definitely heading in that direction. Yeah. I mean, the idea of a toy line based on a cop show is not that weird, right? The idea that there's anything that the real life person could do to, you know, stop the wheels once they're in motion to the point where they have products that they're showing to buyers that would stop that,

that that's, that's the most unrealistic part. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's kind of, it has that kind of offbeat vibe that, you know, I like yeah but yeah it's it's kind of it has that kind

of offbeat vibe that you know i like so much it's not a cannel script but it has that kind of like this whole thing starts because of a insurance company that is insuring a bet on a toy line yeah that they that they've invested in right through a mutual fund that uh yeah but yeah once we're kind of off to the races it's kind of like let's just see where this goes yeah uh just just just vibing just vibing just vibing rock profiles just vibing just vibing uh again it's just like a wonderful character to to have central stage they had uh pretty good chemistry together lots of good scenes with um rocky being rocky one thing i i really thought was great was that he refers to jim as a world famous pi in that yes first thing he's like a

world famous cop and a world famous pi so a i'm acknowledging jim's profession and being positive about it yes uh is great and then later he's so disappointed that it's jim's fault obviously that uh yes frank goes to jail for one night uh he serves him a fish head in his fish stew that malicious fish stew it is a malicious fish stew i do i do also like the uh rockford suspicious of it right away where he's like before he even sees the fish head he goes what recipe are you yeah it's good but uh jim ends up getting paid or at least breaking even i think it's implied that he basically breaks even right he gets paid for the initial babysitting job right yeah and then he gets the 25 grand which is about four to five years worth of uh work that he lost because to five years worth of uh work that he lost because boston casualty won't won't hire him again now for the real the real detective work is to see if he ends up working for a boston casualty

for in the rest of the show because we'll see if that continuity is kept or not yeah we haven't finished all of the 90s uh movies maybe there's a a reconciliation somewhere in the later films um all right i think that pretty much uh covers it gets us yeah it gets us to the launch of uh the 200 a day toy line with our rubber rubber chili and a little counting bank that you can put your your coins into your crumpled up bills from inside maybe not that pocket maybe not oh that there it is there it is keep the change yeah uh yeah do you have anything else to say about a good clean bust with sequel rights uh it was a good clean bust and i'm sure someone cornered those sequel rights all right well speaking of sequels we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files. Boing, boing.

Boing, boing, boing. Boing, boing, boing. James. Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim.

Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim. Oh, just the vibes.