Two Hundred A Day - Episode 82: The Deep Blue Sleep

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Nathan and Eppy start wrapping up Season 2 with S2E5 The Deep Blue Sleep. Beth needs Jim's help to find out what happened to a model friend, and the search leads to a fashion designer, a shady business deal and, of course, the mob. One of the few creative contributions from producer Chas. Floyd Johnson, we enjoyed the twists and character business in this one a whole lot! 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, 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 Jim, thanks for the dinner invitation. I'd love to, but does it have to be the taco stand? Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Pelletta. And I'm Epidiah Ravishaw. And before we get into our episode, we are recording this episode before the last episode airs, in which we said, hey, we are going to start doing our answering machine messages for people who tell us stuff about the show, that give us feedback about the show.

Obviously, our listeners have not yet heard that episode, so we do not have our answering machine queued up for this episode, because we don't have much more that's come in since then. So this is just to say, if you listened to our last episode and you sent us something due to our time-shifted nature of recording, this is like a maybe it's a Mr. Show bit. I forget

exactly, but there's a comedy bit where it's like, if you have questions about the next episode, call us now so that we can talk about it next time. Which is to say, if you send us something, we'll get to it next time. Yeah, sometime. We'll get to it. With that out of the way, what episode are we looking at this time at Badiah? We are looking at The Deep Blue Sleep.

It's episode five of season two. Nathan recently did an in-depth analysis of what episodes we have left to watch. It looked like we were getting kind of close to closing out of season two. So we thought, you know, we might make that a goal and see what we could do. I chose this one after establishing those criteria. I chose this one because it was the first on the list and Beth featured prominently in it. And it's been a while since we had a good Beth story. and Beth featured prominently in it.

And it's been a while since we had a good Beth story. I was thinking about that because we're recording right now a year after our Malibu madness. Ah, yes. And Beth featured very prominently in Malibu madness. And then I feel like we didn't see her for an entire year. So, yeah, I think that was a good impulse so that's that's where we are now in a bethisode a bethisode the deep blue sleep this is a uh another william wired uh directed episode so uh we'll get to you we'll get to you willie someday when we uh do the

full retrospective but uh perhaps more interestingly to me at least, this is one of the few episodes, it is a story by Chaz Floyd Johnson with the teleplay by Juanita Bartlett, but the story idea, yeah, it's coming from one of the producers of the show, first associate producer and then moved up to being an executive producer eventually uh i think there's only four episodes that um he contributed so uh yeah that i guess that struck me because you know i'm so used to seeing the name from the credits but in my head kind of like like meta rosenberg has been kind of like filed under like one of the producers and i know that they're that obviously they're going to have some kind of creative contribution but since we usually focus on the writing uh and the acting specifically like the producers i don't think of in the same bucket necessarily as like right quote creative

staff i guess i'm also so acclimated to the david chase track where he came in as a writer and ended up a producer right right that. That it just stood out to me. I'm like, oh, this is one of the producers. I don't know why my brain works like that. No, it's good. But yeah, so just doing a little dig into the biography. Seems like a really interesting guy. I don't need to rattle off a bunch of stuff that you two can read on Wikipedia.

But I guess what stood out to me from looking at his background and kind of how he came into this show, he started out acting, and he was also a lawyer and ended up deciding not to pursue that and pursue the world of entertainment instead. And, you know, moved out to L.A. and was doing stage acting and whatnot. And he ended up working as

a production coordinator for Universal. And so that's the studio that's producing the show. And I guess production coordinators are generally like farmed out to whoever needs them. You know, it's kind of a studio level gig. It's not a show level gig, right? He'd done some work for Stephen Cannell before. So he had kind of like, there was some familiarity there, and then in, I believe in the second season, because Roy Huggins left, I think, you know, they were

looking for another associate producer, and Chaz Floyd Johnson was able to put his name forward, and because they'd done, had a good working relationship before, they brought him in, and it's kind of like, put his, his name forward. And cause they'd done, had a good working relationship before they brought him in. And it's kind of like the rest is history. Thanks.

Yeah. So he's from New Jersey originally in Delaware and then ended up in the DC area and doing DC area theater before going on telly. So he is African-American and has been involved with uplifting black voices in entertainment throughout his career as well. And I thought that was also particularly relevant to this episode because we do touch on the role of race. Right. With our non-Rockford main character. The situation she's in.

Yes, the situation that adrian the fashion designer or as as credited on imdb fashion designer adrian clark yes the situation that she's in they specifically frame it as her being black is relevant to how she ended up in the situation she's in which we will go into when we get into the episode i have an imdb question for you yes so when you go to his imdb page there's a picture of him holding an award of some sort because my eyesight's bad i can't tell what award it is but uh so probably wouldn't be able to uh and then there's uh a image of the green dancing alien from the original star trek series. And I thought, oh, he must have been involved in Star Trek, but he was not. So why? Yeah, I don't know. And when you click through to the five

photos, they're just more photos of him. They're not the green dancing. Okay. So this is, but you're getting the same. Yes. Yeah. Okay. That's wild. All right. So that award is probably an Emmy. He went on to produce Magnum P.I. Oh, yeah. I mean, that might actually be the Rockford Files one, because Rockford Files won Outstanding Drama in 1978. And then you had two more nominees with Rockford Files and then two for Magnum P.I. All right. Yeah. I i would assume i also cannot identify it from the picture though the step and repeat does say celebration of diversity so maybe it's because he was involved with some like other award this is i'm sure super entertaining podcast but i will say uh he's dressed more he's not 70s dressed in that picture. The suit is... I mean, suits are timeless,

but there's a certain 70s quality of suits that he doesn't have in that picture. So I'm thinking that's probably a more recent... Well, whatever. Anyhow, the other thing I wanted to mention, and I'll put the link to this in the show notes, there's an interview with him on Jim Suva's blog, on uh jim suva's blog uh the suva files jimsuva.typepad.com um who does lots of car related rockford coverage oh yeah as well as other uh other movie cars the inverse to our show perhaps um people have linked us to his blog for some other stuff as well but yeah he has a 2013 interview with uh email interview that he did with with chas floyd johnson and there's a lot of interesting stuff in it and what i particularly wanted to call out was was something that i think we've mentioned with the movies in particular but how the rockford files cast and crew was a very

like tight group of people they really you know kind of viewed each other as family and he mentions that in this interview in a couple of places he's so again obviously he's done a lot of other things um but this interview is focused on the rockford files as well and uh he ends with um rockford holds a very special place in my heart primarily because it is the show that launched my producing career became the series for which i won my very first emmy and gave me the opportunity to work with so many talented people moreover to have remained friends with so many of the cast and crew after 40 years is in itself a blessing for which I will forever be grateful.

And I thought that was very nice. Yeah. So I'll link to that in the show notes. But yeah, just a little since we had the opportunity to take a look at Chaz Floyd Johnson and I learned things that I didn't know. So that's the whole reason we do the show. Is to learn things we didn't know. So that's the whole reason we do the show. Is to learn things we didn't know. Yeah.

With that covered, Eppie, tell us about this episode's preview montage. Well, I think it's a very special one. It starts immediately with Bette very angrily shouting, 200 a day plus expenses. You want the job or not? My inflection on that was wrong. But nonetheless, it was a delight to hear our iconic line. Yeah.

And also and maybe we'll well, let me just address this now. This is a insight into the expenses portion of that where he charges seven cents a mile. And I was very happy that that's what he does i assume that that is the the government rate for claiming your mileage yeah um but uh yeah super happy to see beth then the other two real highlights that stuck out for me was the mention of organized crime uh i'm like okay good good and then borrowing a cop car always good i will point out at some point in this episode i was like when does he borrow the cop car i've been waiting for this yeah it sets up an expectation that takes it takes a little while to pay off yeah you know i was taking my notes for the preview montage. I noted all the things that you did. And then the credits roll and I'm settling in and getting my drink and whatnot.

And then I hear what is possibly one of the greatest answering machine messages of all time. Oh. Which you already heard at the beginning of the show, listeners, but it's... Hi, Jim. Thanks for the dinner invitation. I'd love to, but does it have to be the taco stand? Yeah. Canonically, Jim takes his dates to get tacos. That got a guffaw in our household.

Yeah, no, that was great. 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 financial support from patrons really means a lot to us. And we extend a special thanks to our gumshoes. This time we say thank you to Chuck from what you're reading.com. Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, serial killers of color at fruitloopspod.com. Thank you. Dave P., Dale Church, Dave Otterson, and Kip Hawley. And finally, an extra special thank you to our detective patrons for their very generous support. 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 Epi and I casually chat about the media we're enjoying and all the other 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 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. And then we get some ominous music. Very ominous. This whole first scene is very ominous. We start at Clark Fashions Limited,

where a woman is leaving the building. She's clearly being observed from a black car across the street. She seems freaked out. She gets in her own car, which might have been a Firebird. I wasn't 100%. It's a muscle car. I mean, like, or a sports car.

It doesn't matter. She gets in her... It's a nice car. Her sporty red car. Yes. It's a red car. It's a red car. Hmm.

Anyway. And then we cut back and forth where Jim is woken up by a red car. It's a red car. Hmm. Anyway. And then we cut back and forth where Jim is woken up by a phone call. You always notice bad news when he's woken up by the phone. So this woman, her name is Margo Adams. She's in a phone booth. She calls Jim, says her name, and then sees the approaching black car and drops the phone and runs back to her car so jim shakes his head and goes back to sleep and then we have a bit of a car chase here where she tries to take some sharp turns to get away from the car that's following her but can't shake it and then gets trapped in

in some kind of alley with a chain link fence she gets out of her car and tries to run away and can't climb the fence and then we have this fairly disturbing freeze frame on her screaming face as her ominous music crests. It does that and then we get the ringing of the phone at the same time, which was

I think well done. Jim is getting woken up again, this time by Beth. She had to ask the operator to clear the line, which I am too young to know what that means. Does that mean that he left his phone off the hook? Or is it because she left the phone that she called him since she never hanged it up?

That's more likely what happened. Okay. Before cell phones, before smartphones, there were cell phones. before cell phones before smartphones there were cell phones and before cell phones uh like this is before probably before redial before call waiting you wouldn't hear that there was a call on the other line which is like a thing that nowadays is just ubiquitous right like you can well nobody calls anyone anymore it's a nightmare to get a phone call now but back when people got phone calls if you were talking to someone no one else could get through to you right right right and so if it was an emergency you might be able to get the operator

to basically hang up the other phone and then uh get through but i don't know the mechanics of how all that works i don't think i've ever heard the term clear the line before that was yeah so i was like huh this is clearly a thing that i just have not run across all of our older listeners are now shaking their heads in derision at my sad lack of knowledge back when phone numbers were only six numbers long uh but yeah so beth is panicked and so the situation that she fills in is margo called bet, asked for Jim's name, then called Jim, said her name, then abandoned the phone. And so Beth doesn't know why she wanted to talk to Jim, but clearly she was in some kind of trouble and she wants to know what happened to Margo. And Jim's like, I don't know what you want from me.

She called, she said her name and she hung up and Beth is having none of it. I've got to know what happened to her. All right, I'll hire you. When you say hire. 200 a day plus expenses. Do you want the job or not? There are other PIs in the book.

Seven cents a mile. Jim. She is dead serious. Yeah. So we've got this juxtaposition here between um uh rockford being very cavalier about it probably annoyed that he's being woken up uh quite a bit uh but and unable to hear just how frantic beth is about what's happening yeah he's being snarky in a way that normally would probably be fine, but she is having no patience for it. None whatsoever.

They're going to meet at Margo's place because they don't know, like, maybe something happened. Maybe she's at home. Maybe she's not. Who knows? So they're going to meet at her place. Jim goes there, lets himself in with the key under the mat, and immediately gets whacked in the back of the head. Such a classic Jim. Classic move.

immediately gets whacked in the back of the head. Such a classic Jim. Classic move. So we have a great early season regular cast scene as Dennis has come with the cops and we get to have a Dennis, Beth, and Jim throw down over what's going on and who's responsible for what. Dennis is in no mood

because he was just sitting down to dinner and Peggy spent $20 on a standing rib roast. I think he says what it's going to be cardboard by the time he gets back to it or something like that. It's a shame. That's a, that's a big, that's a lot of roast.

I honestly, I, I don't know. I don't have the context for it, but my head was the thing in the Flintstones that they pick up at the beginning. With the big ribs sticking out. Something like that. So other than getting the info that the place had been tossed, someone had been looking for something in Margo's place.

And she's clearly not there. Other than that, this is kind of a dynamic setting for these three characters. Jim's annoyed because he got hit on the head and he wants Dennis to do something about it. Beth is still panicked because she wants to know what happened to her friend. Dennis can't do anything about that until 24 hours passes because that's what you need for missing persons. And so he's kind of trying to calm everyone down. for missing persons and so he's kind of trying to like calm everyone down he's being snarky towards jim but kind of accommodating for beth uh and then kind of at the end of the scene he ends up being like okay tomorrow afternoon i'll put in that paperwork i'll fill out the john doe assault for

you rockford just let us handle it you know this is police business now so even with the back and forth he does you know kind of at the end of the day. It's like, okay, okay. I'll do all the things. I'm just annoyed because I'm not getting my rib roast right now. There's a few questions I have about time. Yeah. Like, did Jim go to bed early?

Is Dennis eating late? I guess he says he has to come all halfway across town. Yeah. So who knows how long that takes. But I do think it's interesting because you had mentioned that his attitude towards Beth and his attitude towards Jim are slightly different in the scene. And then also the legal stance he can take with each of their complaints is the opposite of that. He can't actually do anything for Beth, but Jim has a legitimate complaint to file but yeah it was a really fun scene to watch not just because I haven't seen these three at it in a while but it just is that it is a classic the three of them all angry at each other different ways yeah I do feel like

this is a bit of a you know when we do these the earlier the first and second season episodes I feel like I probably say this every time now, but it's like, it feels like we're getting back to like, quote, classic Rockford a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Fourth, fifth, sixth season are a little more, I don't know, out of the box with a lot of the situations and stuff. And the first couple of seasons are a little more,

formulaic isn't the right word, but. They're still going over the ground. Yeah. They've got the ground that they want to tread, and they're still doing it. At some point, they're like, okay, we've got to get beyond this. So it feels classic, but it's also probably very fresh

for when it happens. Because it is the second season, right? Yeah. So Jim is walking Beth back to her car and asks, why is Margo so important anyway? They're old friends. They were, they've been friends since they were 10 years old.

And Jim says that, uh, really, you never talk about her. And Beth says, my friend Susie, she changed her name when she came to LA to start modeling. And he's like,

Oh yeah. I kind of liked that little detail because I guess if she hadn't changed her name, maybe Jim would have recognized her name from talking to Beth. Right, on the phone. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit of a little ironic piece of narrative gristle there that I like.

But yeah, she's only seen her a couple times since she moved to LA four months ago. She works at this place, Clark Fashions, and that's pretty much it. Jim says he will check it out in the morning and that he's going to follow Beth home. And she says, I don't mind being alone. And he says, I mind.

Yes. So we see his protectiveness kind of start to overcome his annoyance. I think for our next scene, we go to Clark fashions for a funky runway rehearsal, a sign that we eventually see establishes this collection as the Ivory Explosion. And I have absolutely no reference for how...

So it's a rehearsal for an upcoming runway show. Right, yeah. And so it's a bunch of models and they're coming down and posing and whatnot. And I have no idea if this is like of the moment,

like if they're establishing Adrian... So Adrian Clark is the fashion designer that we're going to meet in a moment like if if they're establishing adrian so adrian clark is the fashion designer that we're gonna meet in a second yeah but so if they're establishing adrian clark as like very of the moment or progressive or not you know or out of step like i don't i don't know if this is supposed to establish her in a particular way because i don't have the vocabulary i was thinking about the same thing because the fashions themselves to me seem not out of step with what we would see in the Rockford files. Like, yeah, they're not high fashion.

It's not like crazy over the top couture. It's it's stuff that people would wear, but expensive, not every day. It was kind of surprising to me how fashionable they would still appear today at least to my uneducated eye i was like oh yeah no this would this is perfectly fine fashion today um yeah so i yeah i spent a little time thinking about that myself because if this were done today i think the urge would be to make the fashion appear even vaguely ridiculous to show off that it's the high end sure you don't yeah or at least that's what i expect from whenever a fashion show happens in a happens on television yeah yeah whereas like this just seemed perfectly reasonable fashion which maybe

that's what we're supposed to get but this is a perfectly reasonable fashion designer's place and you know she's doing and i guess this is kind of established later how she's like she is successful in her field yeah she's not a a brilliant luminary star but she's also not way out on the fringes trying to make it right solid success and um i think we get that also by the fact that she's just so busy she can't have any appointments and her assistant tries to keep j Jim from coming in to talk to her. But he just bowls right past that guy like he bowled past the secretary and just comes over to Adrian Clark and interrupts the rehearsal. I want to talk about her assistant for a minute because this threw me.

Oh. So the assistant is played by Robert Hayes. And it turns out this is according to imdb his first role but i absolutely thought that this character was going to be so important to this episode because this is the guy who played starman in the television series starman based on the movie starman which starred uh uh bill pullman no i have not seen it jeff bridges oh all right that's me so not jeff bridges but the guy who plays the jeff bridges character on the tv i don't i watched the tv series a lot when i was a kid uh i remember it being fun but also

he's the lead from airplane airplane. Which I did not recognize him. So he's like, to me, like immediately I recognized him and I thought that this was a name that they had brought on board to play a meeting substantial role. Instead, this is his first role and this is all we'll see him in this episode. So I have already wasted more time on this podcast than we should have.

Anyways, Robert Hayes, everyone. He is ineffectual at stopping Jim Rockford from getting, getting to talk to, to Adrian Clark. But yeah, he interrupts the rehearsal.

He wants to know if she can answer any questions about Margot Adams. And she says she doesn't have anything to say about Margot Adams. She did not show up to work that morning at nine o'clock, which means that she is fired or specifically two words. She's fired. Yes. This cuts to a car getting hauled out of a lake and Jim joins Dennis with the police presence.

And sure enough, that is Margot's car and her body is still in it so no mystery there we uh get the solid establishment that she has been well the establishment that she is dead we as rockford files viewers know that she was murdered but as of yet the police can't say whether it was an axe more than an accident which, as we see in our next scene, making Beth furious. Yes. We do get to go to Beth's apartment, which is always a joy because it is covered in plants. This must be before the cat.

It must be, yeah, because they don't mention having to take care of the cat. We would have to track over in chronological time about whether the cat is a persistent character or whether it was just in that one episode that's a schrodinger's cat so this is davenport's davenport's cat yeah davenport's cat davenport cat may or may not exist in any episode depending on whether beth needs to have someone take care of it or not yes um but yeah beth's apartment apartment, the set changes like everything.

You know, all the sets, all the interior sets kind of change over time in one way or another. But Beth's apartment, I feel like, definitely changes significantly from one episode to the next. But it's always covered in plants. And that is a feature that I've always appreciated. Yes. Beth is furious. She wants to know who killed Margo. It couldn't have been an accident.

She couldn't have killed herself. She wouldn't have gotten drunk and driven into the lake. She just wasn't like that. So she wants to know who killed her, and she wants to know now. This, of course, is an open case, and Jim is trying to talk her down by saying that the police have all the facts that we have. They know it's suspicious, but they don't. They can't say it's a murder investigation until they complete the autopsy.

You know, he's like trying to use logic. And Beth is not interested in being talked down with logic. The cops are on it. That makes it an open case. I'm not going to pull your ticket for asking a few questions. I'd like to help you. OK. If the department gives you any kind of flack you get my legal services for free now would i offer that if i thought you had a chance of taking me up on it i i really do appreciate this

um the back and forth about who owes who what i mean yeah we'll get into the whole Beth and Jim thing. But what I like about this is that she is assessing her worth in a way that is this. It's I'm trying to think of the word I'm trying to. Well, anyways, she's obviously saying, like, my time is worth more money than I'd be willing to spend. And I like that. Yeah, definitely. What I like at the end of the scene is a thing that we see all the time, but it's the, they're kind of at loggerheads. Jim is kind of, he's not doing a hard, like, I'm not going to do anything with this, but he is trying to logic their way into, like, just let the police handle it. But we do end with Beth taking a step back and giving him a look and, please, Jim.

That's what gets him it's not all the arguing it's the she really needs his help yeah and then in a touch that i really like the camera stays on beth as jim leaves so he goes out of focus as he leaves her apartment and we like stay with her and i feel like that really puts the like emotional weight yeah makes that more significant like that she's not kidding around she's really worried and while jim's going to go out and do the jim things the motivation here is coming from beth right it's also it's troubling everything is troubling here there's no no signs point to good outcomes yeah there's no good news here the news is not gonna no matter what it is the news is going to

be bad yeah jim heads back back to Clark Fashions. Yet again, he walks right past Ms. Clark's secretary to head into her office as she's trying to take a call. And who's in there but Robert Weber playing Bob Coleman. We saw him very memorably in Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job. He was also the Oracle in a cashmere suit and he has one more rockford files appearance that we have yet yet to cover but because we saw him so recently in a very similar kind of role i had a thought at the end of the episode which was like there are two possible like for this character like robert weber playing this like slimy

businessman who's willing to use extra legal tactics to get to just like make lots of money covered by legalities that there was there's like a parallel universe thing where it's like there's this version of the character and we see what happens to him and then there's the version that ends up going up against jim and and um richie brockleman. And he got over this hump. He figured this part out early. Right. And that's why he has his goon.

Yes. I don't know if that made sense, but you see where I'm going with that? No, I do. I see. Yes. The Robert Webber verse. The Robert Webber verse.

Yes. It's like the spider verse. Like we see all the different versions. Oh man, that's actually very funny. We'll have to see what his last character appearance is and do a little retrospective. But yes, Bob Coleman is a friend and business associate to Adrian Clark. Jim tells him that Margo is dead. Boy, that was pretty blunt.

Miss Clark has so little time. My notes on this scene, because Jim drops that line, and then my notes are, there are a lot of looks in this room. Because what's happening is everyone's acting and it's good. But they're all conveying things that have depths to them that draw me in to a way where I'm like, okay. So why is, well, because we were just talking about the Robert Webber verse. I know why we're getting the looks from him. He's just shit he's just shady like right we see him we're like okay this guy is involved somehow uh but yeah i

really enjoyed that moment where he drops the the bomb and then you just have like each person sort of reacting to it in a way that that uh isn uh, isn't just shock. There's, there's layers to it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we are as audience, we are meant to see that there are looks being exchanged and things probably not being like truth, not being told. Yeah.

Uh, Adrian doesn't have much more to say about Margo. She did her job. She was an employee. Didn't really know her personal life. Uh, Bob Coleman says he'd know where to look at her, but doesn't know, you know, doesn't know any of the life. Bob Coleman says he'd know where to look at her, but doesn't know

any of the models personally. And this is the character line for Bob Coleman, where Adrian wonders if they should postpone the show. I mean, the girl is dead. There's nothing we can do about that. 24 hours isn't going to make a lot of difference. Business as usual.

Well, of course. I'm shocked that you would even think I would care about anything other than the business. Right. Jim takes his leave. He talks to the secretary on his way out. Because she heard the news. She was in the doorway when he told them that Margo was dead. She's clearly upset.

He kind of offers some comforting words, but is also prying in the way that he does. Bob Coleman didn't seem too shaken up. He must not have known her. And the secretary says, oh, he knew her in the biblical sense of the word. Dun, dun, dun. And then she starts fake typing in order to show that she has so much work to do and can't talk to him anymore. And Jim can see from her fingers on the typewriter keyboard that she's doing the brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Yes.

One of the things I like about this moment here is that Jim sees her as he's leaving. And you can see him realizing that he has an opening here to maybe get more information and turning around and engaging in that. He's very, like like blunt in this episode. Yeah. Adrian calls him out on it later where she's like, you're coming in like a bull elephant. And it's not like he doesn't do that, but I guess at this, like right now,

I'm still a little more accustomed to the slightly more con-esque things where he's a little more, where he's being a little more misdirectional. And here he's just coming in and like i have no attachment to you people here's what i need to know if i come in this way will you tell me what i need to know how about if i do this uh and it's very like transactional there are a couple moments later in this episode where this tactic there's a subtlety to the tactic uh which

i think you just hinted at that that kind of becomes text later on he drops some things on adrian and then leaves and he admits to waiting for a couple hours to see if she does anything right right so a lot of what's happening is him uh going in with his well spoon and stirring it up uh and then stepping back to see how people react to it uh and um and then there's very specifically i will get to it but at the end of the episode i think a very clever ploy where he does the same thing it gets him what he needs to know um but that one actually is a little bit more of a con but it's still it's still very like i'm gonna just give you the information yeah what's important is what you do with it not yeah whether you know it yeah jim uh stakes out the parking lot

and follows coleman when he leaves in his in his green station wagon though i don't think it's actually a station wagon but it is green yeah this is important later um So he follows Coleman to a parking lot where he hands off an envelope to someone in this black car that I think we've seen this. Yeah, we've seen this black car. It's from the from the beginning. So now we know for sure that he's involved with whatever's going on. Jim gets the license plate number of the black car and then continues following Coleman, who goes up to a fancy, fancy house. And then Jim just shoots. So the camera's following Coleman. And it's like, OK, so now we're following him. car and then continues following coleman who goes up to a fancy fancy house and then jim just shoots so the camera's following coleman and it's like okay so now we're following him

and then the firebird that shoots in from off camera to cut him off before he can get into his driveway good it's like oh i guess jim was also still here yeah that's a fun surprise and uh jim confronts him uh right there at the bottom of the driveway. He wants to know why Coleman claimed he didn't know Margo. Kind of implies that Adrian already knew about their affair, which I think he's just throwing out there to see how Bob reacts, right? Yeah. Coleman will not give anything up, really.

And he says that he doesn't know anything about Margo's accident, but he'll know all about Jim's. He starts honking his horn and a couple of goons come running down the driveway and Jim peaces out before they can get to him. But this is a fun little face off of Jim trying to get some kind of information and seeing which way Coleman's going to jump once he confronts him. And Coleman just being like, I'm not telling you that I'm not shady, but I am denying this specific thing that you're accusing me of. And now we do actually follow Coleman to his house without Jim suddenly swooping in. And I guess this is where the episode opens up a little bit. Before we started recording, we were talking about this a little bit. And one of us mentioned that this is like more of a omniscient narrator episode right from here on

out we definitely are getting a bunch of information that jim doesn't have so it's not as much of a mystery to unravel and more of a waiting to see what the motivations are kind of story yeah yeah exactly it's like in the same way that jim's just putting things out there i think the story just isn't being coy with uh a bunch of details that you would expect it to be coy with no this guy's mobbed up yeah which is pretty clever i think because at least for me what that ends up doing is completely concealing the twist that's coming in a little bit yeah yeah because like oh we're just gonna watch this unfold uh and it does not actually do any telegraphing of the twist which we'll get to in a minute so uh a a goon you know comes up to coleman as he comes into his house there's some, big important person who's been calling him. They mention like a $3 million deal.

Coleman's like, I'll call him this evening. And then he kind of lays down the law. You stop talking. I'll call him back this evening. Now leave me alone. Kind of establishing that he's the boss, right? Yeah. So then he makes a phone call once he's alone.

He wants a message delivered. Says there's a new player, Jim Rockford. He's poking around and you guys are blowing it. And if he can't trust who he's working with, he'll work with someone else. Then he hangs up the phone. Jim is talking to Beth as they're both returning to Beth's apartment

and trying to suss out what a motivation would be. Coleman seems like he's involved. Why would he kill her? What if Margo threatened Coleman that she'd go to Adrian to reveal their affair? But then Beth's like, she wouldn't do that. Maybe she'd do that.

Having trouble establishing motivation here. But they go into Beth's place and it has also been tossed. Jim asks if Margo had given her anything to hold, and she says no. She can't tell if anything's been taken because everything's all messed up. What I took away from this scene

was the shift of expertise from Beth to Jim, kind of, over the course of this scene, where up to now it's been like, Beth wants this done. Beth is the one who knows the information, who knows the person, you know, who's providing the the motive force but here jim's like whatever's happening now you're in danger yeah it's like your parents are back in pasadena right go stay with them

yeah um this is it's it's a slightly disappointing moment in the story for me because again i picked it because i want it more beth yeah and this is where beth steps out uh but also i like what you're talking about this dynamic is you know it's the thing where jim's whole job is that he gets in trouble like that's the thing so he's like okay now now we're in trouble and now he's being he's the one who's being very serious and not letting any jokes happen while he manages this situation. He does call Dennis to find out what they got from the license plate trace that he'd called in with some standard, why don't you give some business to the DMV, etc. But it turns out that that car, that black car was registered to a produce business, Macklin Produce Company. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. Like cantaloupe, string beans.

And I'm like, oh, so that's the mob. But Jim takes Beth's phone book, finds a page, and I was like, he's going to tear it out. And then he tears it out. And Beth goes, Jim. And he says, it's OK, i'll return it jim then goes to talk to adrian clark at home they have kind of two cons or they have kind of two sparring scenes this was the first one jim thinks that she knows something that she's not telling him and she is denying that she knows anything that he doesn't already know. Specifically, Adrian's the only one that he told Beth's name to. Like, when he first talked to her, he was like,

I have some questions about Margot Adams. I'm working for her friend, Beth Davenport, who's curious, you know. Yeah. Adrian's the only one who knew Beth's name, and now Beth's apartment has been tossed. Did you tell Bob Coleman who my client was? And she says, no, of course not. Why would I have done that?

Jim throws out that he was having an affair with Margo. And Adrienne says that she didn't know, but she isn't surprised that Bob does not live a monastic life. And she does not appear to be surprised. So yeah, it's more like I didn't know because I didn't want to know. Right. It's the 70s yeah she tells him to look for a motive for murder somewhere else and he says that he's looking exactly in the right place so adrian adrian clark or as credited fashion designer adrian clark yes um is played by janet mclaugh, who I have not been familiar with.

And I had a question for you, because I kind of found her affect very flat in this episode. And I don't know, it wasn't very compelling to me, but by the end, I wasn't sure if that was on purpose or not. purpose or not i suspect it is um because i mean we've hinted at this but it'll come up that she's trying to survive however she can survive so i think that like by not reacting i don't know i i kind of got it as like guarded that's how it came across to me but that's a hard distinction to make when you're watching it i wasn't sure if she was playing someone who was like keeping all of her emotions tightly under control. Right. And it just coming across

to me as a little unemotional. Right. You know, like that's a delicate line. Because we do see her have more emotions at the end of the episode. But again, it's still kind of one-dimensional because she's like physically threatened. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Like it definitely could have just been me because I'm taking notes and not just like watching it and picking up on any. That is the danger of a podcast. I think probably the thing we really need to examine here is the fact that Jim makes coffee with a French press. Yes. That's true. We do see coffee with a French press. Mm, yes. That's true. We do see that in a few minutes. We just have a quick scene, though actually a very important scene in between.

So this was the first head-to-head for Adrian and Jim. And then we'll have another one. But in between them is probably the most exposition, like the most required for making this plot work exposition scene. Back at Clark's, Adrian asks Bob if he had had Bess apartment search, because she did tell him, right? So she had lied to Jim.

She did tell Bob about it. And he denies it. He's like, why would I do that? Adrian knew about the affair that he had with margot the day it started she doesn't care and it doesn't matter but she does want to know what's going on which i think that all makes sense so bob coleman he basically changes the subject by being like you know what that's not important because you have to be ready to talk to the new owners of your company whoa whoa whoa well those were the papers that he had her sign yesterday, not generic contracts. And

there's a lesson for you. You should always, always read the fine print. So this does feel pretty sudden. Yes. It's also very arch. He is, he is gone from the smarmy, smarmy, yeah, smarmy, comforting. Cause like when Jim, when Jim came into into the office with him when bob was there with her and dropped the bomb he was like protective of her and like caring and now he's like you get what you deserve right for trusting me right and it's been it's been the long con because it's been yeah three years so what we get from this scene is clarkashions has been built on Bob Coleman's money over the last three years. And he has been in the background making this deal to sell the company behind her back because she's signed away some of her, you know, some of her rights or whatever without noticing it. her rights or whatever without noticing it um though it is on the open market she can buy it for herself if she can raise three and a half million dollars by next tuesday

and then in addition to that the company that now will own her company has her on a contract and has sold that contract to someone else for the next five years right you're like a baseball player baby you've been sold to another club uh so yeah so bob coleman bad guy uh there's something about like this having kind of no build-up that feels a little sudden but also i don't know it's effective it's like whoa right okay so i think this is a part of what we were talking about before, where this episode keeps just showing you things that you're expecting them to keep quiet. Like, you almost expect her to come across that contract, you know, not have him drop it in her lap and tell her, but have her discover it and be like, wait a minute, what's going on? So the question is, like like is this done on purpose i think there it could be read as there's a purpose to this because i think bob is in a hurry now and that's the part of the

mystery that hasn't been revealed to us yet because that's the big uh reveal coming up i think so like i think that there's a way to read this to go oh right he's maybe even in panic mode right yeah yeah uh and that's why he's being the way that he's being and just dropping it on her yeah and we're not really sure why we just know that like you know he probably killed margo that's still not like 100 confirmed right or he had her killed probably, right? Yeah. Because that black car seems to be whoever he's dealing with. Yeah, now he's like, I need to sell this company right now. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd buy that. Well, speaking of being in panic, we go to Jim's trailer where he is making his French press coffee. Yes. When Adrian knocks on his door. I was so shocked by that. And I don't know why. I mean, he's had a coffee machine in the past.

He's just had drip coffee, I think. I cannot tell. I can't remember. But when you get right down to it, why not have a French press? It makes sense for his setup. Yeah, it does. It's him alone in a trailer that it just seemed so French. It seems slightly... Fussier than he would be with his coffee slightly more bourgeois than we would expect from right from jim i'd almost

expect his coffee to come from the taco stand like he would just walk over to the taco stand order some coffee and it's just really bad taco stand coffee if if keurig cups existed at this time or instant like that's another thing he might um with uh crystals folgers has crystals that was the thing i think around the time when it was really they're trying to convince people that they had tricked a restaurant full of people into believing it was real coffee and i gotta tell you i'm not even a coffee snob, but instant coffee is... It's not for you? No. In this household, we call it ironic coffee because of the coffee mugs.

The Worlds Without Master coffee mugs make fun of instant coffee. But every so often, I have instant... Okay, so here's the deal. None of this should make it to the show. My dad makes instant coffee all the time. And it's an after dinner drink. And for some reason, if I drink instant coffee after dinner, the caffeine doesn't mess me up for falling asleep. My family's version of that is the after dinner espresso.

Yeah, exactly. Yours is better than mine. I mean, yeah, exactly. Yours is better than mine. I mean, look, I'm not making a value judgment. I'm just saying I have the same experience. If I'm at my parents' house and I have an espresso after dinner, I'm fine. Anywhere else, if I drink coffee after like noon, I'm messed up for the rest of the day. No, this is exactly it. So for some reason, the instant coffee has this no this is exactly it so for some reason the instant

coffee has this effect on me where it helps me wake up but it doesn't keep me up and that's it okay that's the extent of the story we can move on jim rockford has a french press right well let's take a little break uh we want to make sure that you know where you can follow all of our other projects and interests online. Epi, where can our listeners find you? You can Google Epidaia. I am the only one out there that I know of. You can go to dig1000holes.com. That's the number a thousand. Or you can go to worlds, plural, without master master singular.com and uh find my work there how about you nathan my internet home for all things ndp is at ndp design.com you can find all of the links and information for all of my various games including the worldwide wrestling

role-playing game my zines and podcast, of which perhaps there may be more than one. You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at ndpeoleta. As always, if you want more information about the podcast, go to 200aday.fireside.fm. And now back to the continuing adventures of Jimbo Rockfish. So this is our second Jim Adrian head-to-head. This time, she's coming to him. Now, he mentions his methodology of after telling her all those things, then he staked out her place to see if she was going to go to Coleman.

And she says that she had her coat on for about a minute and a half. Not really sure what that means. But they start having some banter throughout the scene. He knows that whatever is happening is tied into Coleman and wants to know his role in her company. She says bookkeeping, which he says is ridiculous. The series of lines is great. I love the dialogue here.

I made a mistake coming here. Then leave. I don't have anybody else to go to then level yes i wrote that one down too it's really pleasant when it's written down to then leave then level anyways it's good yeah it's good credit for that goes to juanita bartlett for the teleplay i would i would say yeah she's clearly afraid to say something so i guess guess this is, yeah, I mean, she does a good job in this scene. I retract my previous shade throwing because she clearly has something she wants to say. Jim can see it.

We can see it. And we can see her giving Jim enough time to pressure her to spill what she wants to do, but she doesn't want to do, but she wants to do. Right? Yeah. Part of that is laying out some of her story where three years ago was just her and her sewing machine she has you know passion for fashion design and she worked really hard but she i think she says she's from watts right so you know it's like the fairly disadvantaged area um that she's from yeah uh and that things are tough coming from there uh being black and being a woman like deck stacked against her no matter how hard she works she topped out at

a certain point and like didn't have anywhere else to go she's stuck and i feel like that all rings very true right yeah possibly truer now than it was then and then uh bob coleman shows up with a green station wagon full of cash yeah uh it got her out and she didn't want to know where it came from so jim's like so wait he finances companies in cash so he's involved with organized crime then yes and this whole kind of thing is is long-term uh money laundering you use dirty money to fund a startup company then it sells to another company in a legit business transaction and that's where you get you get your your clean your clean money out of the out of that business she doesn't know what's going on but she does know that he keeps an insurance policy in the form of written records

of his transactions for all this stuff which is bad news if you're dealing with the mob yep so jim is now putting the pieces together with that piece of key information i think uh she doesn't want to go to the cops they never want to go to the cops uh but specifically it's the end of her whole business if she goes to the cops you know too many questions it's built on dirty money etc she she wants to go confront bob and if he doesn't come with her she'll do it alone and that's what gets him yeah now that he knows that bob is involved with organized crime uh that is too dangerous and so he will not let her do it herself and so he invites himself along for this confrontation i want to just point out that this conversation,

it was really good, but it also encapsulates our standard Rockford contract, which is, I'd like to hire you. No, no, I won't do any work for you. And then, well, now I've put you in a situation where you have to say yes. Right. And I also noticed that though she starts off by saying she wants to hire him. Right. By the end of the scene, there is no mention of his fee or anything. Yeah. And unfortunately, I don't know if he is officially hired or not. Yeah, I doubt it. I don't think so.

No. I mean, given his track record, but also. He's also already working for Beth, theoretically. But I just imagine, again, as the role of Rockford's bookkeeper, when she says, I want to hire you. And he's like, no. And I'm like, you're doing the job anyway. Just take the money. Just get paid twice for doing one job. It's fine.

It's fine. Yeah. In the car to Coleman's, Jim posits that maybe bob told margo about his book and she got a hold of it right and and that's what she was killed for and but they didn't find it so that's why they went to beth's etc etc that is our current hypothesis but there are cop cars at coleman's driveway so jim wants adrian to stay put and he'll go check it out. And Becker is on the scene talking to the coroner. We have our sudden turn here into some gangland territory.

Yeah. One bullet in the throat, one in the mouth. What does that tell you? Thought he was a talker. His friends didn't like it. They signed their names so nobody else gets ideas. Dennis asks Jim why he's there. He's there to ask Bob Coleman some questions.

Well, he's fresh out of answers. If you thought our last scene was sudden, now Bob Coleman has been killed. Yep. Yep. Jim explains the situation from his end. Becker is not surprised to hear that he was connected, that Coleman was connected. But he did not know about the record book. So Jim did have a piece of new information.

This scene, this is one of those scenes where I feel like telling our audience, if you haven't watched the episode, you should just watch this scene. This is a really good scene between Jim and Dennis. Dennis has so many good lines. What do we do without you? A bunch of stumble bums running the department and you're always right around there saving us. Oh, good. Jim Rockford's here to save us. And the way that Jim takes that in stride.

That ironic dismissal tells Jim that Becker already knew about the mob connection. Right. And then he says something about the, so does that mean you already found the book or he recorded all of his transactions? Right. Yeah. It's like,

Oh, you didn't know about that. Oh, it's so good. It's just this fun little back and forth. Yeah. Where are you going? Oh,

take a shower. Stay out of it. Stay out of it. But then again, dun dun dun when jim goes back to the firebird adrian is gone i have a note here that i missed but uh in that previous scene before jim heads out to discover this uh when they're in the car there's just this great moment of like it feels like this mutual respect they come up and they see that there's the cops there and they pull back and it's just this great moment of like it feels like this mutual respect they come up and they see that there's the cops there and they pull back and it's just like uh like a moment when they both realize that they're both very capable in in their situations so when she was gone i had this

thought like did she she would run out with him and And as it turns out, that is not the case. But, you know, like I just had this like. Like, did she go off on her own? Because she had her own idea of what to do next or something. Yeah. But no, she has been picked up by our ominous black car where she is now in the backseat with a pinstripe wearing goon. He turns out to be George Macklin of the aforementioned Macklin Produce Company, if you'll remember.

You know, cantaloupes, string beans. Yep, and we can tell immediately from the slangy line delivery that this guy is all mobbed up. All mobbed up and nowhere to go. And they're going to put Adrian on ice until her company is sold

as there's still some papers she needs to sign. She's clearly freaked out. She asks if something happened to Bob, and he ends with a great line. Hey, hey! Right now you're an asset. Like that, you become a liability. Yeah.

Yeah, that is a good one. Jim makes a phone booth call to the Macklin Produce Company. Good thing he brought that page from the phone book with him. Otherwise, he'd have to check Google. I mean, what if that phone booth didn't have its own phone book? Maybe its page is already torn out. You never know. Exactly. Maybe a PI has been there before. The secretary that he calls says that there's no way he can talk to Mr. Macklin, but he claims to be from the fire department and that there's a brush fire behind his house.

So he needs to talk to him immediately. So she patches him through to the car phone. Yeah. Once on the phone, uh, it says he's a friend of Adrian Clark's. Jim, this is where I think you were saying Jim's big, big play, right? Yeah. The back and forth is great because before we had bob who is mobbed up but maybe not a mob boss like now our understanding of

bob's situation is that those thugs with him may not have been his thugs but now we've got the big big bad guy and he does not care to be talked to. And Jim is walking this tightrope of being just aggressive, just abusive enough to keep his attention without getting him to go offline. But largely to say that the because Jim doesn't know where he is. So he's like, you want to know where this this ledger is? It's in his home in a safe. And I didn't know where he is. So he's like, you want to know where this ledger is? It's in his home in a safe. And I didn't know Jim's play, right? So I'm watching it and I'm thinking, well, he just told him. So he can't use it as a bargaining chip to get Adrian back.

What's going on? Then it occurred to me as I'm watching it. It didn't occur to me before it was actually shown to me. I'm watching it, it didn't occur to me before it was actually shown to me, but the whole point here is to get somebody to go back to the house that Jim can follow back. Right. Yeah, because

he's like, once the cops search the house, they're going to crawl through the whole thing, they're going to find the safe, and that's where the ledger is. All I want is Adrian's safe. I'm giving you this information in exchange for letting her go free or whatever yeah and and and macklin's just like okay you told me goodbye yeah so the goon that he has with him is the guy

who coleman like brushed off in that earlier scene yeah uh who's very oily and says that he never saw a safe in the house worked for for him for five years and never saw a safe and it's like well you worked for him for five years and you didn't know about the ledger either so get over there and go through the house thoroughly and as you see jim has it staked out uh sees the black car arrive time passes follows the black car as the guy leaves and when we turn to the warehouse where they're holding adrian jim sneaks up and eavesdrops. There was no safe. You know, there's absolutely no way that that was in the house. And so Macklin is suspicious. Well, does anyone follow you? He's like, no, there's no way anyone followed me. So we know his powers

of observation are not 100%. This is also the point in the tale when I'm like, when does he borrow the cop car? Well, Jim is at a payphone calling it in, calling in the situation to Dennis. Don't come in here like it's a New Year's Eve party. And then we zoom out or pan out or something as he leaves the phone booth and we see the cop car sitting there in the middle of the gas station lot and the cops who were in the car are off chasing some kids they'll have to be back any minute now when they do you tell them i'm

borrowing your car what are you crazy tell them sergeant becker said it was okay sergeant who and now we have a it's not really a car chase but it is a automobile based action scene i love this scene i agree like it's it's a lovely take on the because he's running out the clock right like yeah he's waiting for the cops to show up and so he's just playing every trick he can to try and uh delay it and it's just it's a neat way to involve cars that isn't just a standard chase but it has all the elements that a chase would have. So it's a fun scene. The situation is that there's a warehouse in the middle of like a lot.

There's a main entrance with a gate and then there's an alley behind the warehouse and the warehouse also has big doors on each side. Right? So Macklin's car, the black goons car, they've, they've stuffed Adrian back in there. They're peeling out. And then Jim cuts them off at the last second.

Sirens blazing in the cop car that he borrowed. Yeah. They back up to go around the warehouse. He gets to the fence on the main entrance first and chains it shut so they can't get out through there. So they go back to the alley. Jim burns rubber backing up to block them with the car again. And then he is calling on the radio in the car that officer's in trouble i'm outnumbered get down here he follows them back

into the lot as they're backing up macklin leans out the window and starts taking shots at him he dives grabs a bullhorn out of the car and starts yelling fake orders like get the snipers on the roof get another squad around the back again establishing that he's sergeant becker right right this is becker that was unnecessary but wonderful they realize that they can go through the warehouse so they roar in through one side and then there's lots of squealing lots of brakes lots of rubber burning but uh it takes them long enough to open the opposite door and go through that the rest of the real cops have finally arrived and they all pull in and surround the car and um as they're getting the mobsters out of there at gunpoint jim helps adrian out of the car

and she's she's terrified and says that they're, they're going to kill me. Jim says that it's all right. And we have a little freeze frame on the two of them as he's kind of arm around her shoulders to, to comfort her in this, this time of time of need, presumably, uh,

justice is served and the Macklin produce company perhaps ends up with a new precedent. It was just a fun tactical scene i think just you know with the cars just the different ways he boxed them in yeah and you know it's like one of the real features about the show that you know comes up with a lot of the car stuff where the the physical relationship of everything is very clear and so yeah all the tactics make a lot of sense yeah when things get confusing for me is usually when it's like wait where are they what street are they

on how did they get there and we've mentioned that in the past for car chases that are like wait a second i'm not sure how they ended up there right yeah and then this kind of thing is just so visceral because it's like i could watch it all play out in my mind that like bird's eye view as they were doing all the stuff at the street level. And that makes it feel very real to me, which, which I like. And there's a, there's a feeling of like they could slip away at any moment. Yeah. Yeah. There's a real desperation. Yeah. It's like a juggling thing, you know, like, oh no.

And it's good. It's good. The one thing that is missing is Jim doing a, pulling a J turn in the cop car. Right. Yeah. But you know, turn in the cop car. Right. Yeah. But, you know, you can't have everything. Yeah. We end our episode with, I believe, some time has passed and Jim and Beth are going into a more of a retail store, Adrian's. So this is Adrian Clark's new store.

Business is picking up. She's even a lot of her old clients have come with her and are buying her stuff. She's even selling to her probation officer so we fill in a little bit of how things all went down there were a lot of questions she built her company on dirty money and she could have gone away for a long time but she had a good attorney so even though beth still thinks that their probation is unnecessary it sounds like she got off a lot easier than she could have right yeah i think because jim says you had a good attorney and i think does beth get a little choked up is that what that moment is yeah yeah because she then excuses herself right like i'm gonna go browse but she's like a little like oh yeah exactly jim said i was a good attorney

but that leaves them uh jim and adrian to have a little final conversation and fill in a little bit of the plot for us in the end. Coleman, as it turns out, kept his record book in a safety deposit box. And if it hadn't been so, the oily groom, his name was Ray. Ray was trying to take over his territory and he was going to use that as leverage. And if it hadn't been them, it would have been someone else because you don't you know you don't keep those kinds of records when you're dealing with the mob i guess so margo's death is still listed as an accident but the only accident that was made about it was that they did it before they found the record book right adrian is is making it more on her own now and she's going to slam the door on any more green

station wagons full of money but now now, if it's baby blue, and Beth looks at them in the background as they laugh and laugh, and freeze frame, end of episode. Beth's look at that freeze frame, it's so horrified. It's so... Clearly, Adrian and Jim are laughing. It's an inside joke. I mean, there probably isn't a reason why Beth should know about the green station station wagon uh but it just it's like wait no you're not don't even joke about that yeah uh

it's good it was fun there are some moments in this episode that i i like really stand it out there's a lot of good uh jim and dennis jim dennis and bet Dennis and Beth and Jim and Beth stuff going on. And like I said, I really enjoyed that car thing at the end. The car thing. Not a chase. It's a car thing. The car action scene. Yeah.

The cat and mouse kind of thing going. So, yeah. Solid season two episode. Yeah. It felt, I think we talked a little bit about this, but like it felt, you know, I think I said the word classic maybe two or three more times than I should have. But it felt very, like you said, we've been doing later episodes for a while. And so coming back to the roots, especially I think season two, which is not only the roots,

but the roots once they figure out where they're planted. The signature of the show makes sense. Back to our episode typologies. This is a, well, this is a Jim's friend brings him a job. Yeah. It's also Jim takes a job, kind of, because she is going to pay him. And we presume that she did, I guess. Well, it's in that ledger. The Jim Beth ledger.

Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so there's kind of an angle of the episodes, too, where, like, are they about the... I mean, there's always a mix. But, like, are they more about the crime slash criminal? Or are they more about the client slash victim? And there's always an amount of both.

But this one was much more like we don't really care what the actual crime is we do care about the people who are being affected about the you know the the victims are so it's more like Jim protecting people than Jim excavating to get to the root of the of the of the problem and so that's a little more actiony i think um and a little less mystery part of it is that the the crime itself was always going to out itself yeah right like whether or not jim was there well i mean if jim if jim wasn't there adrian would have been in trouble right well yeah i guess because everything's in motion. Bob would have been executed either way. Right.

It's not something Jim did that brought to light that the ledger exists. Except for possibly bringing in the fact that Beth knows about it. And so getting them to toss Beth's apartment, which then I guess presumably at some point in that chain, the mob learns that Bob has this ledger. Yeah. Well, they know it ahead of time because that's the whole reason why Margo's in trouble, right? I think that was unclear to me, I think, in the end, which is like Margo is killed by the mob indicated by that black car. Yeah.

Was Margo killed because the mob found out about Bob's ledger and thought she knew something about it? Or did Bob have the mob kill Margo because Margo found out about his ledger? Right. Those are two different chains of motivation. Yeah. And so the ledger itself is never found. Yeah. Like the cops find it later in a safety deposit box or whatever.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. When Bob makes his phone call and he says, this guy Jim Rockford's poking around. Right. If I can't trust people, I'm not going to do business with them. That's him calling another mob contact because then it's like that guy Jay was his mob contact, but he's the one who sent out of the room. So it's a little like, was there some weird mob politics stuff going on that was kind of underneath it all? It's a little muddled to me. I guess there's not like a solid establishment other than Jim saying this is probably what happened of why Margo was killed.

In the name of like having all the full narrative arc kind of together. That's a little shaky to me, but as the premise for the episode, like it's fine. Right. Yeah. Like that's what gets us into the story. So.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. So the main concern is not the mystery itself or on the, you know, unraveling that, but is the,

how to keep people from being harmed by the unraveling of the mystery. Yeah. And so we see Jim take that very seriously, which I guess perhaps takes us into our last topic for discussion, which is we were saying that this was nice to get back to see Beth

as we haven't seen her for a while. And this was, you know, in the arc of the Jimim beth relationship um this definitely has its place yes so yeah i think we see a an interesting subsection an interesting slice of the of their dynamic yeah i was actually thinking about this because i got to refresh my mind my refresh my brain rockford files and just kind of glancing at the episodes that have come before to see where we are in the gym beth not that there's like a huge arc to their relationship i mean i think there's kind of like where are we vis-a-vis a portrait of elizabeth that that was

the one i was thinking of specifically and this is before that yeah which is towards the end of this um this season yeah so yeah because because portrait of elizabeth is definitely where uh their relationship comes into question like what is it that they're doing so that's not in question here um what's interesting is that jim is treating her not as a client but as a friend until she absolutely insists on being a client right not in those terms but just basically is like like this is how seriously i'm taking this i'm willing to pay you like i'm not asking you for a favor i'm not offering you like a trade i'm do you know how important this must be to me for me to say i will pay you yeah yeah and we talked about like jim tries to talk everyone out of paying him uh and uh i think it's angry when nobody pays him at the end but anyways that's his jim's thing um but it is different if

it's a friend right and so she you know it has to get uh over that hump uh to get him to do the work for her this is definitely uh well i don't think there's any point in the series where there isn't a thing between them right yeah so specifically there's a couple of moments because i was watching you know looking for them because i was thinking like if you have not watched this season or haven't watched a lot of this era of the show yeah do you get from their dynamic here like from what you see in this episode what do you what is the read of their relationship right right you know we learned that she's a lawyer you know she and jim clearly have background you know they're friends you know like in the same way that we see that him and dennis are friends

right and then i think there's a couple there's some hints to a romantic relationship that are pretty lightly light touch in here that i think maybe we notice because we kind of know more of the episodes there's a moment where she's like i don't mind being alone and he says i mind and that's before her apartment is tossed right like that's before there's any idea that maybe she's in danger because of this there's a line where he says or they're talking about um like whether margo was gonna tell adrian about the affair maybe maybe not and he says something like people do funny things when they're in love and she just gives him this look like really i don't even know how to describe it but it's very like yeah you know yeah oh you you're gonna tell me that people do funny things for love so that moment you know it seemed to encompass a little bit more of uh uh you know of their past it's interesting because it's yeah there's nothing

in this episode that specifically is about their relationship actually not nothing but like beyond what we just talked about but it's taken as written and it's certainly taken as written by the actors. Yeah. Yeah. And probably the director. Well, I mean, even Juanita is probably not specifically writing scenes that convey this, but having that inform the scenes. Everything about their dynamic is informed by everyone's deep knowledge of these characters. Yeah.

Even at this point, which is, you know, a season in, like they know the characters. There's still stuff that's getting paced out over time, but it's not like they need to dig deep to find backstory and stuff. Like everyone I would imagine is on the same page about what informs their performance. Yeah. Cause it would be different if it was like,

cause you could have this exact same, you could have this exact same episode just with another person who isn't Beth, but is a lawyer that is a friend of Jim's. And maybe it wouldn't have that valence because we haven't seen her before. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's interesting because it isn't,

it's even a trying thing. There's trying things that occur. Beth's friend is murdered. There is good moments when, you know, that is revealed and Beth, you know, reacts to that. Beth's apartment is tossed. And in none of those situations, is it like fundamental? Uh, I think what I'm getting to is that, uh, that although there are these moments that, that could highlight their relationship, uh, that deeply traumatizing moments that could

highlight their relationship and how that, that doesn't become that important of a factor in this episode, uh, which is an interesting choice. Yeah, it's definitely more focused on Adrian. Yeah. Definitely some fun individual scenes and looking into the creative background of Charles, of Chaz Floyd Johnson was fun. While I was watching it,

I think I kept on, not that I was anticipating something else to happen, but I kind of was waiting for something that never really came for me. And I don't know if that was like something about the plot. Maybe it was that the pacing was a little weird and I like that, which is weird. Cause like, I liked the sudden twist. Like that was kind of my favorite part. Cause I really didn't see the murder of of uh bob coleman coming i think like i said there were so many there were so many things that were just

shown to us that i was like okay this is just going to show us what happens yeah that happens i'm like oh that was not foreshadowed at all maybe it was maybe i just missed it because i wasn't yeah you know looking for it so i and i like that because i was like kind of a surprising thing and something the show doesn't do that often sometimes we get we find out that there's like a big boss behind who you think is originally behind everything right but that sudden like oh yeah now he's dead yes not very common but uh it did mean that the pacing was very like here's the thing here's a big thing here's a thing here's a big thing uh yeah which maybe was not as uh pleasing to me as some other episodes but now i feel like i'm i'm being mean to an episode that doesn't deserve it because it's a it's a perfectly fine like it's

a fine episode with a lot of fun stuff in it no i i think i know i i mean i i can't pinpoint uh what you're talking about but i i think I probably felt something of the same. It's not like there's a loose end. It's not like there's something promised that wasn't delivered, or maybe it's exactly that. We just can't figure out what was promised. But it was a very enjoyable episode, and at the end of it, I was like,

oh, that's done. Yeah, oh, and that's that then. Okay. Yeah. I guess I do feel a little bit like Margot's murder isn't actually resolved. Yeah, I think that might be then. Okay. Yeah. I guess I do feel a little bit like Margo's murder isn't actually resolved. Yeah. I think that might be part of it.

Yeah. As we kind of explored just moments before, it's not really clear what was the motivation or was she, well, yeah, it's not really clear who was responsible or how it happened. But then again, that's the cops are saying it was an accident,

which I might've misstated whether again, that's the cops are saying it was an accident. Which I might have misstated whether that line was at the cops say this or whether that was just Jim using that as to make that line delivery work. Like the only accident that they made, you know. My impression from the show was that that was the story that the mob, that they were trying to get her and she died trying to get away. That was my impression of it, right? So, like, it wasn't that the mob intended to, they didn't put a hit out on her. They were trying to get the ledger from her. Right, right, yeah.

And she went off the road and ended up drowning. But, like, I could be filling in some blanks there. In fact, I probably am. Yeah, again, it's the premise for the episode. It's not really resolved in a way that makes me feel like I know what happened. Yeah. Sometimes you have a 50-minute television show, and some stuff's more important than other stuff. And in this case seeing the uh

the car action scene and um yeah that's good having good uh beth jim and dennis banter is probably more important than spending more time on a lot of the premise setup so you know that's how it goes fun episode fun episode this episode is followed sequentially in broadcast order. So this is the Deep Blue Sleep, and then the next episode is the Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company, which we did actually fairly recently, followed by the Real Easy Red Dog, followed by Resurrection in Black and White. So we have a whole little color story here. Oh, the Rockford Spectrum.

Yes, none of them really have anything to do with each other that i know of we haven't done real easy red dog yet but uh yeah i did think that the deep blue sleep might there might be some like noir like reference or something but i don't think that i think it's just from she died in a lake yeah i think that's that's what it was anyhow i think we've we've gotten through all the things to say about this episode. Do you have anything else for us, Epi? No, as always, never have anything to add. All right. Well, in that case, we will be back next time with another episode of the Rockford Files.