Two Hundred A Day - Episode 83: Foul on the First Play

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

Nathan and Eppy explore the origin episode of one of our favorite guest characters in S2E21 Foul on the First Play. Louis Gossett Jr. plays Marcus Hayes, a fast talking PI who needs Jim's help to untangle a sticky situation concerning the purchase of a new basketball franchise. Marcus was at one time Jim's parole officer and they didn't part on good terms... but once Hayes tricks Jim into taking a beating on his behalf, they need to work together to come out the other side in one piece. A satisfying meal of an episode! 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

Jim, it's Eddie. You were right about Sweet Talkin' the 7th. He breezed in, paid $72.50. But I didn't get your bet down. 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 Epidiah Ravishaw. And this time we are going back to season two for a late season episode, Foul, on the first play. But before we get into our episode, I see that we have the light blinking on our answering machine. So let's go ahead and see what's come in since the last time we checked.

From Patreon, in reference to our episode 80, A Good Clean Bus with Sequel Rights, co-starring Hector Elizondo, Charles calls out that he was also in a season one episode called Say Goodbye to Jennifer, with a lot to recommend it. This is one that we have not yet done. And I don't remember if we mentioned that Hector Elizondo was in multiple episodes, because it's possible that we did and it got cut or, or I might just have missed it when doing my usual kind of look see. Um, but either way, say goodbye to Jennifer. Um, Jim and Hector had great chemistry in that episode as well. It's an out of town Rockford story that also has Pamela Hensley from Buck Rogers and, uh, the eighties detective show show Matt Huston.

Yeah. It also has Ken Swofford in it, which perked up my ears because Ken Swofford is one of my favorite Rockford reappearing character actors. We've done a couple of episodes with him, including Queen of Peru. So I feel like that means that this episode has a lot to recommend it when we do get to it. Yeah. Yeah. Also from Patreon, Bill mentions that something that the two Hector Elizondo episodes share is also that there are visible low boom mics in a couple scenes. I remember noticing the one in the episode we did and deciding not to mention it because usually production mistake stuff.

I feel like this isn't that interesting to talk about, but I do remember noticing it because there is actually a fairly low incidence. I think of those kinds of things. And yeah, also from Patreon and someone I know in real life, friend of the show, friend of the show. Sam says the big hit man in this episode.

Uh, and this episode is the same episode we were just talking about, right? The goon from Calumet city, right? Yes. Uh, Sam says the big hit man in this episode has shown up enough that I finally

looked him up and he Dick Duroc, a wonderful name, which is Sam's, uh, comment on it, but I have to agree. That is an amazing name. Is apparently best known for portraying Swamp Thing in the 1982 and 1989 films, as well as the 90s TV show. Truly the Derek Mears of his day. This is a very Sam thing.

But I do remember both those Swamp Thing films and the TV show. I mean, if you played Swamp Thing, obviously I didn't recognize him behind the makeup there. It's more the size. Yes, exactly. But yeah, that's great. That is wonderful trivia. On Twitter

at CarterHall underscore goes back to our episode 74 The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company with a comment that at carter hall underscore goes back to our episode 74 the great blue lake land and development company with a comment that uh i believe in that episode we mentioned how that plot was modeled on a maverick episode yeah which we haven't seen because we apparently at this point stubbornly refuse to watch maverick i well i've seen some maverick you see so that yeah yeah yeah for my part it's kind of like i kind of like seeing it it in Rockford and learning that it was in Maverick. And at some point when I watch Maverick,

then I'll be like, Oh, that's where that came from. Anyhow, the Maverick brothers apparently had a thousand dollar bills clipped to their coats. Uh, we had mentioned the scarcity of thousand dollar bills in,

uh, in, in that timeframe. Um, and also, uh, the, the escape from jail in the Maverick episode comes from brett maverick reading a message on the cell ceiling about how to open the door which is a a classic little bit that's great thanks for the throwback reference when i

watch maverick i will fully appreciate all of the interims. I promise you. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a thing about the thousand dollar bill that shows up over and over again, at least in the episodes that I saw. And I think it's something that their dad, but it's, it's often like, since they're gamblers, that's their stake money or,

or it's something that they can rely upon when things go bad or, or whatnot. It's a good idea. I would pin a thousand1,000 bill inside my coat had I a $1,000 bill and a coat to pin it in. Also on Twitter, Jordan Bockelman continues to investigate Jim's bookshelves. We'll share any additional discoveries as they come in, but you can follow Jordan at Jordan Bockelman, B-O-C-K-E-L-M-A-N on Twitter. The latest is a shot from Gear Jammers of Jim's bookshelves, which is pretty great.

Speaking of Bockelman, not Brockleman, an addendum that I wanted to bring in is that I recently rewatched the Columbo episode, Last Salute to the Commodore, which has Dennis Dugan as a new police sergeant joining Columbo. And I was like, how did we get through that entire episode? How do we get through all of the Backelman episodes without me remembering slash seeing that he was in that Columbo episode as essentially the same character, just as a police, a fresh-faced young police sergeant, not a fresh-faced young PI.

That is one of the weirdest Columbo episodes. So it kind of is of a piece with the overall strangeness of that whole thing. It was supposed to be the series end and then they ended up continuing the series. And there's a story behind it. But anyway, shouts to Dennis Dugan for all of the great things that he did in seventies

television detective shows in the alternate universe, Columbo Rockford crossover episodes. It would be a delight to have him play the opposite character. Like play Richie Brockleman in the Columbo episode and the police officer in the Rockford. And just do like a Shakespeare style comedy of errors. We can dream. Yeah. It would be bad.

You shouldn't make my dreams a reality, Des. All right. Well, that looks like all the messages on the machine for now. As always, you can leave comments and thoughts for us at our Patreon, patreon.com slash 200aday, at our website, in the

comments on each episode at 200aday.fireside.fm, and on Twitter at 200pod. Alright, so this was your selection right epi yeah um yeah i chose this one so we've been trying to we yeah we're getting up there in podcast years um was it like every podcast years seven years anyways the point is uh we're coming to a spot where we're going to be able to close out some of these seasons we're running out of rockford in the context of we technically have fewer episodes to do than we have done yes yeah we're over the rockford hill that's what it is it's all downhill from here so um we we've been kind of concentrating on season two to see

if we can do that and this is i've been enjoying this because uh season two is a good season and it's uh it's sort of like where the heart of rockford kind of comes together comes together yeah so like before it you can see them trying to find their way into the rockford files and then after it it feels like everything after it is either uh is like a commentary on that season yeah it's either it's either continuing out what they've solidified or or then it starts increasingly as time goes on pushing the boundaries of like okay this is our world right now what's a weird new take on it yeah yeah um and this one it's interesting because uh well i chose it specifically

because gabby was going to be in it but i i should make a note that uh he doesn't have the nickname gabby yet i kept on calling him gabby in my notes and then halfway through the episode i'm like no one calls him gabby in this episode uh i believe he's called gabby specifically to create the gabby and gandy yeah thing with uh gandalf finch and uh in just another polish wedding which is where we first encountered this character and now we're going back to his first appearance and i'm trying to remember if if uh gandy or rockford gave him that moniker in that episode i don't remember i don't remember either i i have a vague memory of them being in the back of the limo and that coming out. But also, whatever.

The point is, I wanted to see more Gabby, more Marcus, or as Rockford sometimes calls him, Mark. Mark. We wanted to see more Lou Gossett Jr. That's what we're saying. Yeah. gossett jr that's what that's what we're saying uh yeah so this is uh in the grand scheme of things what is our our our nomenclature for rockford files episodes are our our typology yeah yeah so this is a this is kind of a jim gets hired you know just a straight up jim gets hired for a job and then you know things go south it's a little bit of a jim's friend that drags him into trouble right but it's hard he's not really a friend right someone familiar to jim drags him

into trouble a shadow from jim's past reappears which usually is a woman but in this case is a parole officer yes this is old parole officer uh yeah fun it's a fun episode. I'm going to warn you of that going into it. This episode was directed by Lou Antonio. We have done two of his other Rockford episodes. This is the third that we're doing. The ones we've done are the No Cut Contract and the Aaron Ironwood School of Success. He also directed the pilot, which means that we are not going to finish his cycle for quite a while if we keep to my goal. Right. Which is to do the pilot and the last episode as our final thing.

Spoiler alert, we're not going to do the pilot or the last episode until the end of our podcast. I mean, in addition to being a director, he's also an actor. We know this because when you pull him up on IMDb, his headshot is as one of the half and half black and white painted aliens from the Star Trek original series episode. That is like racism. That's bad. Right. Let that be your last battlefield. Anyhow, this one during this episode i was like the

staging of a lot of it is very humorous it's very like it has a lot of really fun echoing and stuff like that in terms of like shot composition and stuff so yeah props props to lou on that this episode is a teleplay by stephen cannell from a story by Chaz Floyd Johnson and Dorothy J. Bailey. Now we talked about Chaz Floyd Johnson recently, of course, uh, Stephen Cannell, the,

the gift of words, uh, the, the dialogue in this is pretty, pretty excellent throughout. I could not find a single thing out about Dorothy J. Bailey from the internet. However,

Oh, Ed Robertson comes to the rescue in 30 years of the Rockford Files in the entry for this episode. So Dorothy Bailey was apparently a longtime assistant to Roy Huggins, co-creator of the show. That would explain why she was involved with a Rockford Files episode. Came up with the idea with Chaz Lloyd-Johnson. the idea with chas toyd johnson and when they wrote they specifically had lou gossett in mind when writing the story because it was like they're kind of looking for an excuse to get garner and gossett together again because they've been in a movie in the early 70s uh skin game which i've not seen but now i want to yeah um anyhow uh she was more of a producer and a post-production person yeah that's what her imdb

is filled with yeah production and post-production and this says that she occasionally wrote under the pseudonym chris wesley which i also could not find anything else about on a internet search so i'm glad that that filled in a little bit of a hole because she is not involved anywhere else in credits for the rockford files um but apparently yeah was a worked worked with roy huggins had some kind of relationship with chas lloyd johnson they they wrote a fun story and yeah we get to enjoy it but yeah and i think we get right into it with a very brief preview montage the the things that stuck out to me in this preview montage of course is like uh gabby's in it but and like we've mentioned this is his first appearance on the rockford files we don't know that he's gabby we just know that he's louis got us junior um

the chemistry between the two of them though in that montage is perfect it sets the stage yeah it's apparent from the montage that's like oh this is going to be fun yeah uh there's the great line you just hired me to take a beating and we're like okay so there we know precisely what rockford's in for uh and then the other thing that really stuck out is the old two cars up or the one car up on two wheels trick yep uh which i was like yeah i want to see this happen. Always exciting. Yeah, we know there's cops. We know Jim's being used in some way, and we're going to get right into it. 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 WhatYou'reEating.com, Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color, at FruitLoopsPod.com, Shane Liebling, check out his dice rolling app Roll4YourParty at Roll4Your.Party

because you know you're playing roleplaying games online. Jay Adan and his amazing miniature painting skills over at JayAdan.com. Dale Norwood, 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, $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 right for you. So we start right off with a night shot of some kind of office building, and we have two guys reviewing basketball footage. In the first shot, I was like, oh, who's that guy? I know that guy. The cigar smoking guy. So I thought that he was going to be much more important in this episode than it turns out that he was going to be much more important in this episode than turns out that he was but that is um al ruscio who played vic in the dog and pony show so he played the not the enforced like the mob boss's assistant guy yeah who uh jim flim flammed around with being

a record producer and he had the i don't know he was like very much a memorable character in that and i'm like who's that guy i thought he was going to be a villain from other rockford files but no he was i'm just remembering him from dog and pony show this scene the setup of this scene is interesting because it's they're in the dark obviously because uh they're watching in front of a film projector um and he's smoking a cigar and it's just the two of them and it just has a very maybe it's because i remember him from this other one like or just it's rock profiles i feel like these are probably mafia like they're watching basketball footage and they're talking about how good the players are going to be and there's just this the the threat in this scene aside from

you know how they're playing the characters comes from this talk about one of the players having a problem with his wife. And he's like, well, if I acquire the team, we're going to make sure that's not going to be a problem. Right. And none of that. The bit about acquiring the team is what's important to what's happening here. I mean, like we just mentioned that this is season two not further if this were further down the line if this were season four or five uh i would say that this scene is a deliberate bait and switch with the audience but i think instead it's just meant

to convey this information i think it's just an establishing kind of shot of like basketball is going to be involved yeah because it's a little bit before, or not too long before we find out that basketball is involved, but it still has this like, like, why, why are we caring about this? What's going on?

And yeah, basketball is going to be involved. That's, that's what we learned here. Our, our classic Rockford file score hits as we see our credits over a very exciting moment to get us into the action. As Lou Gossett is getting kicked out of a car and two very chunky goons are roughing him up.

We're going to see these two goons a lot. One of them, his main character trait is that he is asthmatic. And so he will get overexcited and start using an inhaler. The one we barely see his face he's just a big goon the character's name is marcus hayes as we will learn soon they have marcus down on the ground wrenching his wrist and roughing him up to to get him to spill some kind of information um well two things they want him to stop whatever he's doing asking questions about the franchise and they also want to know who he's working for. And there is some excellent goon dialogue. Oh, yeah.

Gabby, Hayes, Marcus. We're going to end up calling him Gabby. Because we imprinted so hard on just another Polish wedding. But yeah, just for our listeners who weren't around when we did that one, that's he has the gift of gab that is why he's called gabby anyhow he says something about like i i can't tell you there are there are other people involved who would violate everything i stand for the only thing is you ain't standing mr you are sitting and in two hours you're going to be in refrigeration on a six foot porcelain tray you hear me um so i got a little confused with some names here so his his story is that he's the parole agent for one of the players, right? Yeah. There's someone's

leaning on this player to shave points from games. And so he's trying to find out who that is and stop them from this nefarious effort. He does have a badge for his office. It is in his shoe, which

is a nice touch. Yes. And so once they grab his badge, they seem satisfied with the story and leave him in the alley with a thematic saxophone wail as Hayes puts his shoe back on

and their car pulls away. I too noted the saxophone. The music here is great. It's this, I said, lonesome sax that turns into quite the swing while the credits roll. One of the things about this scene that's great is these goons interrogating Marcus

are asking questions that we'll be asking through the rest of this episode they're trying to get straight answers out of him and we'll never not never but it'll be very difficult to get these straight answers out of him um and uh that's great and i i like that and also this bit like i made this note here that i'm like oh his asthma i bet that'll be important later and it's not it's it's it's like his character tree kind of is a little bit we'll get to it in the okay maybe i missed it but it's less that it's important later as a plot device and more like it's beat one of a three beat gag oh yeah Yeah, that's true. As we will see.

Um, we, uh, cut to Hayes knocking on Jim's door. A great opening, uh, interchange. Hi Jimbo,

get out of here. I don't want to talk to you. Um, the scene concerns, uh, Marcus talking his way into Jim's trailer. They should move past that one time. with the thing that happened, because it got along pretty good before that.

So, a couple things here. First of all, Jim is interrupted mid-snack. Yeah. He has his glass of milk, and he's going for the cookie jar when the knock comes. So we do get to see him enjoy his Oreo as the scene unfolds

once Marcus is in his trailer. And there's a nice, I don't think this is like really overt, but we know that's where he keeps his gun. Right. There is a moment where he goes for the cookie jar and then pulls out a cookie and it's like, okay. Yeah. That could have gotten a different way. a different way. We also learned that what happened four years ago was that Hayes was

Jim's parole officer and violated his parole, which I guess is a term of art for flagged him for violating the terms of his parole. And he ended up getting an attorney to clear it up in the courts because it was an erroneous use of

the parole officer's power. So he ended up getting that the record corrected but clearly this left a bad taste in jim's mouth and he doesn't want anything to do with with marcus however he says he has cash to put in jim's pocket and offers to buy him breakfast for five minutes of his time there's a specific exchange of uh jim asks to see his money and he does not show him money but says i got I got the money. And in my notes, I'm like, I bet he doesn't have the money.

However, I was wrong. Yeah. He, um, it's also very well dressed. I like, I made a comment about that.

This is, I mean, we know this about Gabby, but, uh, if you're watching this for the first time, uh, like you would have been like,

this is our introduction to him. Um, how he's dressed is very important. He is 98% show. And that's, that's the thing that they are getting across here. I think, yeah,

it's interesting. This whole first part of the episode is like, we know who this character is already. So I'm kind of like waiting for the turn or, you know, waiting to find out the reveal of what he's really up to and whatnot, what his scam is. I think if you're watching this for the first time there's an open question because i think luke gossett does a really good job of playing sincere and then playing okay you

got me on that first one but here's the real story when there's a third story behind the second story and we know that because we've seen this character before so it's fun to see that play out as a as a piece of craft for me right while i think it would be equally fun to watch it play out just as a revelation of how this character works if you were not familiar with this character uh there's a great line about uh i can't remember how it's set up why didn't we work well together or something like that and jim was like well we, we hated each other. That always gets in the way. Yeah, I think that's once they're in the diner. So they go to the diner across the street, the restaurant across the street.

And yeah, we get a little more of their banter. So he gives us a little more of the same story that he told the goons, which is that this player who was in San Quentin, Marcus was his parole officer and got him hooked up with the Lakers. And now he's playing for the Lakers on this franchise expansion team in Santa Monica. And so this is the franchise that is the subject of the drama to come,

the Santa Monica team. So he was brought in on this point shaving thing by the player's wife. And that's who's hired him, I guess, or not hired him so he's still saying he's the parole officer right? So it's not that he's been hired but it's that he's investigating

this. So Jim says well why don't you just violate his parole and send him back to jail. I've changed. I've learned something Jim. I've found that helping people help themselves can be one of the most emotionally rewarding games in town what is it what's funny helping someone help themselves to what mark

what's the angle huh um but the wife wants to figure out what's going on and has money. And so Hayes wants to hire Jim and the wife is paying for it. That's where the money's coming from. We don't find out that detail until after Marcus gets so offended that Jim is laughing at him about this supposed new leaf that he throws down some cash for the meal and storms out. And Jim follows him, but not before taking the last piece of bacon that was on his plate yes because he's not gonna not get the that food that someone else paid for uh i have in my notes that this is such a good play on on marcus's part the wounded pride yeah because immediately following that jim is you you could tell that Jim feels bad about being so cruel to him. Even though he deserves it.

We don't really know that yet. But it's great because, you know, this is just how Jim reacts. Like he says no and then something comes up that makes it so that he can't. And I really do like that. It feels very deliberate on Marcus's part. Once Marcus has hooked him with this act, I would say, he gets down to business. They're in the parking lot now.

He has the money. He's going to hire Jim for his regular rate to find out who's putting the pressure on. But this is when he reveals that he got beat up for asking about this yeah and jim's like oh well when it gets dangerous i get lost but all hayes wants him to do is to put an electronic tracker on the car because he has the car he he has a license plate he can track the car, put the electronic tracker on it, and then, you know, once they know where the car goes,

they can find out who these guys are working for, move on down the line. Yeah. So there's a good bit going with the money here in this scene that I don't know who is responsible for it, but good on them. It's probably Jim Garner. for it but good on them that is probably jim garner but rockford has got his eyes on the money in uh marcus's hands when marcus like when he's talking to him he's focused on that money and then when he when he hands the money to him jim does a quick count of it like i didn't notice that the whole bit is very good like Like this is, you know,

the acting is reacting thing, right? Like the whole time Marcus is talking, Jim is telling you what's important here. And it's that you, that you might not be able to trust that this money is, is real. Yeah,

that's great. Yeah. I didn't notice that, but good, good call. We go to a parking garage where Jim's walking around and we have a quick intercut montage where he's finding the car with the right license plate. While Marcus is on the phone making a phone call, sneakily keeping an eye on Jim and then using a very like show enough voice on the phone to play at being like a, like a, a custodian or janitor and calling someone saying like, I've just seen someone looking around your car and you look suspicious.

And I thought you should know. Um, so our two goons come out of nowhere with guns to surprise Jim as he's straightening up from planting the tracker. Um, and then we see Marcus in another car watching this all go down. So now we're like okay clearly this was his his game the whole time his setup yeah jim's line is that he's uh from smug control

with the city and that he's like inspecting um uh mufflers or something like that and they of course don't believe him um including the great line get in the car mister or you're going to be wearing your ears on your belt yes i got that written in my notes too uh one of the things i mean this continues but one of the things i think i i really enjoyed here was jim's commitment yes to this particular lie it's a look at his uh trade craft actually Right. We often see him do these little bits where it's like, okay, he's fast talking, right? Like, here's a story, spin it out just long enough to get himself out of trouble. But then over this and the next scene, we see that this is actually a cover that he has constructed just in case this kind of thing comes up. Yes.

Maybe he should have put a little more thought into it. But at the same time, we get the feeling that no amount of persuasion is going to affect these goons. Right. Yes. And it sits in nice juxtaposition to what you said earlier about Marcus, who will change up his story to a new lie when the first one doesn't seem like it's catching. And Jim, whether he's too invested in the current one or that's just the route that he found most successful, is not doing that. Yeah, you get the sense that he thinks that

changing the story isn't going to help. Right. What happens over the next scene is we get, I mentioned earlier about how there's a lot of mirrored stuff. This is the exact same shot as earlier when Marcus was getting thrown out of the car, but now it's Jim getting thrown out of the car. With the same blocking

and lines as the one goon grabs his wrist and wrenches it and the asthmatic goon yells at him to tell him what he knows and who he's working for. I think the score is different because Jim andcus have different themes uh in in the score for the episode but uh it's so perfectly mimicked that it's humorous like it's a yeah actually lightens it up a little bit

when this could be a very serious scene it's kind of like all right now we're seeing this run back again just with jim instead of marcus what are you working for well i told you i don't believe in smog we don't have any smog in la we have some brown air but no smog and since there's no smog there can't be any survey to measure it now can there be of course there's smog what's the matter with you uh so he keeps keeps up his line about working for the smog inspection unit or whatever. You got my wallet? It says who I am. You're a little short on ID, Metcalf. And you know what?

The ink can't even dry you. Sure it is. No, it ain't. We have a close-up of his business card, which is, you know, Jim Taggart or whatever his alias was. But then the goon rubs his thumb over it and the ink smears. Yes. Jim Metcalf. That's his alias.

Yeah, yeah. That line, like I said, he's got this commitment to this line, and that line is like the final straw. Like, let me tell you, the thing you're seeing is not actually happening before he can get roughed up anymore a car pulls up with the like uh searchlight oh yeah and they're like oh no it's the cops and so they speed off and uh it of course is not the cops it is marcus who was following them and just has a car with the little searchlight thing yeah because of course he does because of course he does. Because of course he does.

And so Marcus picks up Jim. Or no, Marcus does not pick up Jim. No, he just drives right past. And so Marcus, yeah, just drives right past him following the other car. And Jim sees him, is clearly angry. And then we have a great harmonica sting mimicking the saxophone which is wonderful and then the scene ends we just follow Marcus

as he follows the other car stops at a house and he's like alright this is the information he was looking for he says gotcha so now of course Jim is on on the march he is affronted and angry and he is going to track down marcus hayes so he goes to the parole office of course but turns out uh there

hasn't been a parole officer named marquez there for the past at least the past three years another guy just one of the great bit yes characters that we've seen in a minute i feel like the first couple of the first couple seasons we really talked a lot about these like little bit incidental characters who seemed like they were just fully realized real people um and it's not like that changed necessarily but i think maybe we just got a little desensitized to them because they're kind of consistently good for whatever reason this this guy really jumped out at me it's just like one of those like yeah no he's good so i guess he like runs the department or something i don't know if we ever learn his name but he just

comes in he's like oh rockford isn't it fred no dave wait a minute i'll get it steve jim right jim rockford so like you know this guy he has all this knowledge, but not, he's a little shaky on the details. He says that they, he fired Hayes. Mm-hmm. How come? Why didn't I say? What, you had the idea of where I could find him?

In the alt pages. Only he's changed his name from Hayes to O'Brien. Guess what? He's in a whole new line of work he's a sleaze of what sleaze i'm sorry i don't think i know what that is private detective oh a sleaze yeah sure and it's just like oh man we could just then follow this guy on to like the rest of his day and like the the the barely functioning bureaucracy that he apparently is in charge of and all of the and all the trials and travails of the people that work

under him like it just seems like there's a whole show there which is always super fun to see from the moment when he he says you know obviously he recognizes rockford at the beginning and then he's like we always hate to see recidivism or whatever yeah yeah he's like sorry you're back here uh he's like oh that's not why like it's nothing personal it's just like a a former felon that i recognize oh another one like that's a shame you're back i think that's it just it is that you need this character to you to be written from his point of view. This is a thing that he would be thinking about what's happening here and not like, what do we need right now for the story?

What do we need right now for Rockford? Of course, this is what this guy would be thinking, is that Rockford was there because he violated his parole somehow or something. It's that little detail, that little nuance that I think gets to why the writing is so good and why we keep saying that the writing is so good. Yes. It's that little distinction between kind of that top-down, like something needs to be in the story here to move us from A to B.

So here's the thing in the story that will move us from A to B. So here's the thing in the story that will move us to A to B. And then viewing that as exactly as you say, from the perspective of writing the character from their perspective, not from the perspective of what the story needs, even though it's in service to what the story needs. It's in service to getting Jim to finding Marcus, but the manner in which it is delivered adds to the sense of the living, breathing world. It adds humor. It reveals a little bit about the character of Jim because, you know, he's like, no, no, no, that's not why I'm here. Yeah. It's, I guess sometimes when we're talking about like narrative stuff, I feel like it's hard. It's hard to put into words why something that feels mechanical in a story isn't as convincing or isn't as engaging as something that is doing the what you need from it and making it feel like it arose naturally rather than just artificially. Rather than from a point of like, we need this in the story, inject.

Emerging from the, of course, naturally, this is what would happen when Jim comes into this office. Yeah. And of course, they're both artificial. They're both being written by someone to serve a role. And so, yeah, it's just that little bit of like, this could be generic and mechanical, but it is in fact engaging and memorable because of the way it's treated.

Anyway, there is a little rabbit hole to go down on a very short scene that really is just getting us to get to Jim learning that Marcus is operating getting us to to get to jim learning that marcus is operating under the name marcus o'brien as a pi because he is no longer a parole officer and if you want to go down that rabbit hole i can recommend the podcast 200 a day all right marcus o'brien of course is a public facing private investigator with a big, nice office receptionist. Yeah. Everything's decorated well, like there's clearly like money here. Right. Like that's the whole point of everything here is to be like, look at the success that he is having as a P.I.

We start off with the great bit to show us that Jim has his number from the jump. Right. The receptionist says he's on the phone. Jim goes in anyway. He's on the phone with his back to Jim talking about like, oh yeah, I can get six agents on that, blah blah blah. Jim hits, I guess like a speaker button on his phone

and it's just a dial tone. Looks like you're talking to a deadline. And then Marcus says that it's a thing he does to make new clients feel important which he probably does yeah yeah this doesn't seem too much like a lie but also that's not why he's doing it in this moment they have good banter about jim being reasonable about the whole thing sure he got set up but he understands etc etc and i think we know as audience that we're just building up to jim doing something yes uh and he does when he grabs mark's

tie and pulls him to him marcus takes a swing which jim blocks and then just punches him across the face sending him sprawling over the table. Marcus holds up his hands. He's like, you know, you got paid for that, but I'll offer you more for your trouble. You know, 50. And Jim picks up his fist. He's like, 75. And he picks him up gently

and then punches him across the face again. So Jim's getting all of his anger out on taking some swings here at poor Marcus Hayes. I'll tell you what i'll come clean but hey look now we should cut out this punching and bleeding i mean how am i going to talk to you through a swollen mouth huh okay mark but not here we're leaving and he goes to uh marcus's desk opens a drawer pulls out a gun that's in the drawer he's like and we're going to go out the hidden side door marcus says what hidden side door you have one want to bet 75 on it um and of course there is a hidden side door so just

jim with the upper hand with his righteous anger knowing that no matter what marcus says there's gonna be another thing behind it so yeah this all culminates with going outside to wait for his limo, which turns out there is in fact a limo. I think this is another one of those because we saw, uh, just another Polish wedding where the limo is kind of an important detail. Um, I,

I don't know if the scene, cause there's a little bit of, um, tension is not the right word, but there's a little bit of suspense in whether that's because Marcus is like, well, why are we waiting for my ride? Yeah, because it's cold because Jim pulls him out without his coat, which I think is just, you know, to be a jerk and it's cold out. Yeah. So it's like, why don't we go to, you know, we're waiting for my ride. And he's like, well, I'm parked two blocks away. And there's a moment where you're like, oh, this is another play to call his bluff about having a limo.

Right. But then a limo does actually pull up. Yes. Before we get into the meat of the scene, we see that the goons are across the street in their car. And they see Jim and Marcus get into this limo. And they're like, oh, we knew they were working together. And then they're going to follow them as they drive. the limo we get more of the story um because jim doesn't want to be in it but he wants to know what he was in before he gets out of it all right what marcus says here

is that there's the santa monica franchise there's three bidders on it and so there's a bidding war there's a lot of money involved and there's a commissioner who's going to decide which of the bidders is going to get the franchise. He says that he's working for one of the bidders, whose name is Eastman. And Eastman thinks that one of the other ones are pressuring the commissioner to award it to someone who is not Eastman. So as a PI, he has been hired by Eastman to find out who's doing that. He got picked up by the two goons. So then he fed Jim to the goons to find out which of the other guys the goons are working for. And they work for Tom Carell, who is Al Ruscio, the guy who I recognized at the top of the episode.

And he's mobbed up, or at least he's mob adjacent. And so at the end of the day, yes basically hired jim to take a beating and so jim wants half of the score to square the deal i got hired to take a beating i'm still mad about it but to make things even i'll take half yes which marcus says five thousand And I'm like, it's probably more than $5,000. Yeah. But that's the number that Marcus says. This is when the driver of the limo tells them that they're being tailed and they see that the two goons are tailing them. And so Jim's like, all right, I can lose those guys for you for $5,000.

Marcus wants to know what the plan is. Jim says, you don't need to know the plan. We're just going to go back to my car and then have you go drive around in the park. And Jim will handle it from there. Well, let's take a little break. 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 Epidaya. I am the

only one out there that I know of. You can go to dig1000holes.com. That's the number 1000. Or you can go to worlds, plural, without master, singular dot com and find my work there. How about you, Nathan?

My internet home for all things NDP is at ndpdesign.com You can find all of the links and information for all of my various games including the World Wide Wrestling role playing game, my zines and podcast projects

of which perhaps there may be more than one You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at ndpeoletta. 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. Before we get into the fun in the park, I'm like, okay, so this is the story behind the first story. Yes. Check. Now there's a strong possibility that this is also a lie, right?

Right. Or at the very least that the amount of money that he's offering Jim is substantially lower than what he is going to be making off of this job, whatever it is. Right. Yeah. And so we just have to wait and see how that plays out. Where were you with that tracking the Marcus story situation? Yeah, because Cause I mean, obviously I've seen this episode before,

but it'd been a long time. Yeah. I didn't remember the actual plot of this episode at all. Yeah. I didn't either. I think partly because it's not until another Polish wedding that he really sticks in my head. Sure.

Yeah. At this point, I think I'm like, I don't trust anything he's saying. Like we're not getting any, any real information think I'm like, I don't trust anything he's saying. Like, we're not getting any real information. But also, like, we're getting information as viewers that, you know, Jim isn't getting. Like, we saw at the very beginning, we saw the guys watching the film. So the basketball bit pans out.

Like, that's the only bit. That is the premise, yes. Yeah, so that's sort of where, like, I know as long as they're on the run, there's no straight answer Jim's going to get. Because there's always going to have this pressure that will allow him to step out of, allow Marcus to step out of the, cause, costume to focus on something other than markets, right? Like the,

there's, it's always going to be a distraction there. And of course the imperative here is to get rid of these goons. So now we have a pretty, pretty, pretty fun scene. We followed the limo, the limo lets Marcus out in this park,

and then he just takes off on foot. And then our goons pull up behind the limo, jump out of their car and start chasing Marcus again on foot. I noticed that this is a very chill score for a foot chase. Like it's just kind of like standard interlude music score. As we're watching these two guys with their guns out, chase Marcus Hayes through a public park. I don't know if we commented on this yet,

but it's maybe important to know that Jim says he has a plan. Yes. And that Marcus should trust him. And then we see them split up before this happens. Yes. So it's not like, is Marcus running away from Jim or anything like that? We know this is going somewhere. Yeah.

And where this is going is there's a sudden swell in the music as the Firebird comes shooting over a hill. Such a classic Dukes of Hazzard jump. Oh, it's so good. And it's shot from below, so we really feel like it's getting a lot of air as it shoots over this hill, and Jim basically runs the guys down. They dive out of the way as yes firebird again this is all on dirt this is just in the middle of a park as a firebird goes

right at them they'll throw themselves out of their way marcus jumps in the car they fishtail out of there shooting up all these big clouds of dust and our goons are shooting their guns after the car to no effect that part part I was a little surprised by. Because it's a park, right? Right. And we see there's people. I mean, obviously, they're not shooting real bullets in the staging. But, like, there are people there.

Like, this is in a public park where they probably were like, oh, yeah, you know, we're going to be shooting a TV show. Just stay over there or whatever. Like, there are people in the background. Yeah. There's just, just like gunfire um we do see that the asthmatic goon is having trouble running and has to stop and uses inhaler lean on a fence they get back to the goon's car jim reaches in grabs the keys throws them away and then they take take off in the firebird. And then this is like the, I guess, the payoff for the inhaler. Right.

Where the other goon runs to the car, sees that there's no keys in it, turns around. He's all yelling. He's frustrated. And in the background, the asthmatic goon has just collapsed on his back. Yes. And as the other guy comes up to him he's like i'm out or something yeah yeah he's out of his inhaler spray which sucks like that sucks yeah yeah um but uh yeah i i guess that's why i'm saying this is kind of a that setup is for a comedy bit like plot wise they would have

gotten away either way but comedically the fact that this guy can't make it on the foot chase because of his inhaler which is probably planned for by Rockford also. Right. Like because they know what his deal is. So it has a purpose. It's just not as much of one as maybe it could have could have been in another episode. The bit with the keys is fun. I don't honestly remember if people left their keys in the car all the time in the 70s. They did on tv

yeah uh but you know it makes a certain amount of sense if you're jumping out of the car chasing someone on yeah right yeah that's uh it's a little funny that rockford throws them rather than just pockets them but uh again that's like a tv thing right like you would it's a universal sign of i got your keys ha ha in the firebird marcus says that was smooth and jim says i'll take a check unfortunately jim's not gonna like hearing this but marcus hayes doesn't actually have any money apparently he's in chapter 11 everything that he earns is going to the bank to pay off this bankruptcy proceeding. The limo is leased.

And if Jim doesn't believe him, he can take it up with the bank president. And Jim calls his bluff. Jim's like, all right, let's go to the bank. And then we cut to, so I guess this is a good joke in the cut, where they cut to them leaving the bank and Hayes saying, I'm sorry, but that's how it is. So we get to something that is real and for true. And it is that Marcus Hayes is bankrupt and does not have any money to pay Jim. This is such a standard Jim thing where if he's got some trouble with someone, he doesn't believe Marcus.

So he's just going to strong arm Marcus into situations where it has to be proven true. Right, right. Like we're going to the bank then like yeah i'm not letting it go until we know for certain jim understands marcus had a problem and he dealt with it the best way he knew how it sure is nice of you to think of it that way well i do you know now i got a problem collecting five thousand dollars from you uh-huh i've got to deal with it the best way i know how well you can't get blood out of a turnip yeah hey babe do me a favor and drop me across town no which is totally fair so jim goes home by by his own self and he's met by a younger guy and

i think is was wearing a corduroy suit is that it, it's a, it was a weird looking fabric to me. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of, um, I looked this word up. I pretty sure I looked it up on our podcast before a more, a more,

a more, a more, uh, yeah, there's a lot of that going on in this episode. Uh, but there's always a lot of that going on with, with Jimbo's clothing and, and lots of plaids.

Uh, I've got it going on right now as we talk to each other. In my little preview image, I can see it. Yeah, we have a good contrast here between your plaid and my tie-dye. A little peek behind the curtain for our listeners. Yeah. We are very cool. We're a couple of cool dudes.

Very fashionable dudes. This is Mr. Eastman's personal assistant, who has a very stilted manner in how he is asking Jim to come see his boss. Jim busts him about it. Where did you learn to talk like that? It says Harvard Law School. And people understand you? Yeah. If Mr. Eastman wants to see him right away,

he'll follow the other guy's car, which I like is a classic Jim, like insurance. Like I'm not getting in a car with you. And it's a thing he can demand of this particular person because this particular person, he might be able to overpower. Right. If that if it came down to it, but also just doesn't look like he's going to try and physically force Jim into anything. Half the time I'll follow you is the response is they pull a gun and they say, no, how about we take my car? Yeah, exactly. And the other half the time he gets to just, you know, follow him in his car.

Jim meets with this Mr. Eastman, who is a very, I was going to say genteel. That's not the right word. I don't know. He's a warm, a warm older fellow. Yeah. Friendly, gregarious perhaps uh you may remember him as larry tate from uh bewitched which is i believe darren's boss um i mean i i was like this guy this guy has definitely been on tv yeah yep it's darren's boss well you know we start this off with with Eastman laying out the situation with the three bidders, etc. He pours Jim a drink, which Jim seems to enjoy as he listens to all of this without contributing anything himself, which is a classic Jim move.

Jim's like, what do you want with me when you've already hired Marcus O'Brien? I like how Jim does not blow his spot and keeps up his PI name, which is very nice of him. Eastman says that he did not hire Mr. O'Brien. And in fact, he thinks that Mark is the one possibly pressuring the commissioner on the behalf of one of the other bidders. So he wants to find out what the situation is.

He wants to hire Jim because I was told that for a detective, you were reasonably worthwhile. Yeah. Lots of shade cast on the private investigative industry in this episode. I know. It's just a shame that it can't be in front of Rocky so he can join in. Yeah. He wants to hire Jim and has a $20,000 bonus on the line if Eastman ends up being awarded the franchise.

And so that information takes them from Mr. Rockford and Mr. Eastman to Jim and Marty. That's such a great line. You don't mind if I call you by your first name? Why don't you just tell me why you sent for me and then we'll decide whether we're going to become Jim and Marty. for me and then we'll decide whether we're going to become jim and marty but yeah so he wants jim to find out who's pressuring the commissioner and if necessary get concrete evidence to take to the authorities yeah uh jim takes the job on his way out he would like his first day up front why don't you just bill me because i like to get it up front oh come on jim i'm worth 50 60 million dollars surely you're not concerned about my credit. Well, no, of course not.

That's why I'm willing to take a check. Another little beat on the general sub-theme of the Rockford Files, which is that Jim has to care about the money because rich people will do whatever they can not to pay him. The more money you have, the less likely it is that you'll actually pay Jim. We have a short scene which is just a press conference with the commissioner saying that he's made his decision and he'll be announcing it the next day uh which is to set up the drama of the next uh act i suppose of the story so we follow marcus at night as he's strolling up to a nice house he goes up a staircase and then rings a doorbell he walks in and then there's a cut and we see him walk out quickly and close the door.

And I wasn't quite sure if that was supposed to be. Right. It doesn't. I wasn't sure if that was just a slightly misaligned cut and we're supposed to see and it's supposed to look like he went in and came right back out. Or if that was a cut to indicate the time had passed. It doesn't matter. I think the implication is that he goes in and then he comes right back out. I think that's what we're supposed to get from that.

And then he walks down the staircase real quickly. And then we just see these arms reach out and grab him and pull him over the railing. But it is, in fact, our good friend Jim Rockford. He'd like to know how the commissioner is. How is he supposed to know that? Well, that's his house you're coming out of. Which is, in my notes, in parentheses, is he dead?

Right. Jim would like an introduction, and he makes Hayes make time to do it. So they go in, and sure enough, there is the body of the commissioner on the floor. Dun dun dun! Marcus says that he did not kill the commissioner. He found him this way, which is why he was running out of the apartment, which makes total sense.

Why would anyone want to kill him? That slams the lid on the whole thing. No one's going to get the franchise. Jim wants Mark to come with him. But wait, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. But the thing is, you see, I don't want to hang out with you just now. But Jim threatens to call the cops and have Mark explain the whole thing to them. And so he decides that, sure, he should go with Jim. There's two good bits here where the first is when we see the body.

Jim almost leans on the railing almost puts his hands on the railing and stops himself and it's just like this like oh wait that's right this is a crime scene now yeah don't get my prints anywhere yeah uh and then there's the line i think this i didn't write in my notes you said if i think it's marcus they were going to have a conversation marcus is like death can be very contagious. Yeah. Like we should, we should leave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's extremely good. Um, so we go to them, uh, in a, in a bar somewhere, um, where we kind of cut into Hayes filling out his transition into being a PI a

little bit. Um, after he lost his parole officer job, he says he was making a hundred,000 a year on divorce cases. Yeah. So the courts changed the laws to not admit photographs. $100,000. Like, I mean, maybe.

One thing we know is not to trust him about money on anything. Wow. Like, wow. And also, technically, he has an agency, right? Like, it's not. But still, wow. This is to explain that Jim needs to understand where he's coming from on why he got into this case. Because Eastman offered him a $10,000 bonus or whatever.

But then Jim's like, you don't work for Eastman. Sure. Okay. He was actually working for the commissioner. The commissioner hired him because he had received threatening phone calls telling him that he was going to be told who to award the franchise to. Yeah. Right before he was going to do it so that he couldn't like go to the authorities or whatever.

And so he hired Hayes and offered him a $10,000 bonus. If he found out who the, these threats were coming from and Jim's like, how did you know he was good for that? And again, this is gets into the trade craft here, which I think is great. Yeah. Marcus says, well, I knew he had it in his bank account.

That was good enough for me. But Jim had checked into him, said that he wasn't in that income bracket. He only made $40,000 a year and he owed lots of money. Where was he going to get $10,000 cash from? Maybe he was taking bribes and that was – or taking a bribe. And that's where that money was going to get a 10,000 cash from maybe he was taking bribes and that was or taking a bribe and that's where that money was going to come from Hayes thinks that so the goons work for Carell Carell's mobbed up maybe they hit the commissioner right uh when they found out that Eastman was going to get the franchise or something like that but how would they have found that out

is the question at this point in the story uh the case has me so thoroughly jumbled up that i'm like i'll just wait till jim figures it out right right yeah well because we have both the what is actually going on and we also have the what is marcus lying about right yeah why is marcus involved doesn't necessarily answer the question what is actually going on here? There's a lot of who do those two work for? Who killed the commissioner? What's everyone's stake in it?

There's a lot of stuff. Before they can talk out more of what's going on, they're interrupted by one of Marcus A.'s old parolees who recognized him in the bar and is a very Gandhi-ish guy,

I would say. He is tall and bald and muscular. He served four extra years because of Marcus. And Marcus tries to pretend like he doesn't know who that is and he must have the wrong guy, but that does not save him from getting taken out to the alley and getting another punch before Jim can come in and save the day in the Firebird yet again.

Right. In a setup that's very similar to the two previous alleyway beatdowns that we've seen it has this line from the opening montage where marcus claims to be a reverend now yeah there's a couple things i love about that first of all i was waiting for the line uh because it was in the opening montage and there's some distinct possibility that he could actually be to varying degrees a reverend right sure so i was wondering what would come of that like it was this story going to dip into an area where you know something uh that had to do with that would come up um and then i'd forgotten that it happened and then when it's delivered it is the worst lie he's done yet because he's been lying to this guy this whole time.

And now he's like, no, I'm just a very – I'm a very angelic person, right? Like you're – everything this guy knows about you says you're not a reverend right now. Like that's the – you're not leaning into anything he knows. You're just – You're just throwing something out just to hope, just with a prayer, if you will, which is only answered by Jim in the Firebird. What took you so long? I had to go get my car. I like how this guy takes after Jim's car, like the T-2000 or the T-1000.

Yeah, that's good. In the car, Marcus continues complaining about how he was getting beat up while Jim kind of puts it together for us. Uh, so what Jim's theory is that the commissioner must've been taking a bribe from a, from one of the bidders. And now that Eastman hired Jim, I love this.

Cause he says at some point I'm going to get hauled downtown and I have to answer some questions and I don't have the answers to give to lieutenant deal yeah that that was i wrote that down too he's like uh i'm gonna be in a room with lieutenant deal right and i'm not gonna have anything to tell him so i need to figure out what's going on and it's nice because uh marcus probably knows who he's talking about yeah right it's not uh it's not just him mentioning any old cop name right like it's not like him going you know lieutenant smith i mean anyone who's been watching the show at this point would know yeah who deal is specifically i think but yeah it's a

it's a it's a good little moment um so he needs to bait a trap to get the answers and of course the bait is going to be marcus hayes um it is not up for discussion but don't worry jim has his back so the play here they both crowd into a phone booth which is a great bit of little physical comedy yeah so we go through a sequence where they call corral and then they call eastman with the same story it's also funny because j Jim starts off playing total hardball and then Marcus takes the phone and rephrases everything in a more conciliatory tone. Yeah. Really fantastic. But he says that he has evidence to the effect that the person they are calling was bribing the commission.

Carell found out about it and that's why they killed him. But for $100,000, they can buy that evidence back. Meet me at this street at this time. corral found out about it and that's why they killed him but for a hundred thousand dollars they can buy that evidence back yeah meet me at this street at this time um so same story to corral then same story to eastman eastman plays it more cool like corral's like who is this what are you talking about and eastman's like so you say yeah plays it much more cool marcus still doesn't like this but jim's, there'll be lots of cops there. I'm going to get lots and lots of cops. You'll be fine.

You'll be safe. Yeah. You know, make the third call and then we cut. So this third bidder, we hear his name, but like, I kind of like that there's three bidders, but we really only care about two. And in fact, one is bribing and the other, I've lost it now. One is bribing and the other, I've lost it now. So one of them has to be bribing and another one might have been putting, like making threats. Right, right.

But not bribing. Yeah, but not bribing. So yeah, anyways, it could be that, you know, this is a real team and they left themselves open for that innocent third bidder. Right, right. To be the real life person who owns it but we cut to this you know this meeting spot and uh mark is just walking around waiting jim is in the firebird also waiting a car appears out of nowhere jim goes to turn on the firebird but it won't start like flooded or something a rare moment of mechanical failure to cause some drama. And we get a pretty physical little bit here where Hayes runs over to like a

drain pipe and like jumps up on top of a trash can or something as the car tries to hit him and then jumps onto the hood of the car and then gets driven around and then rolls off the hood of the car and then runs up the steps. And then that's, that's where Jim is able to get the firebird going. And then we get the great scene where the car follows Marcus, then hits the two wheels and goes up on its side, you know,

chases after him a little bit and then falls over on the top of the car. This is, uh, exactly the sort of scene that would have been in the, uh, not the preview, but the opening credits montage for, the fake cop show cop oh for um freeze turkey yeah freeze turkey yeah uh falcone falcone yes so this is exactly the kind of shot

we would see in the title sequence for falcone yes absolutely um absolutely. And dun dun dun, it is Mr. Eastman who is in the car. Jim's reaction to this is the best. It's so good. This might be like, if we ever did another Malibu, I don't even know what the No, this would be Rockfordishness.

His reaction here would definitely be in the running for me. What's wrong? Hey, where are all the cops? I'm about ready to call them. You're about ready to call them? Yeah. You mean there were no cops?

You mean I was standing there like a tin pin in a bowling alley and there were no cops? He was going to give me a $20,000 bonus. But you promised cops. Boy, I was really hoping that was going to be Corral. I could have been killed jim i could have used that twenty thousand dollars so jim is just upset that it's easement because that's where his twenty thousand dollar bonus everything else just kind of falls apart he's like oh i didn't want it to be him

that was it well hayes is concerned where are the cops i'm about to call them yeah uh so good so it turns out it was eastman all along um we'll go to our final scene of the episode uh in hayes's office where he's on the phone trying to talk the bank out of liquidating his company but they just just hung up, hang up on him. Jim is there. Why don't you change banks? But it is too late for that. Marcus makes another call,

which I love how, how the tone of this is absolutely like, you know, this is situation number six. Let's do it. He's got an exit plan and it's everyone there knew about it and they were ready for it. Same as always.

He says, yeah, uh, specifically take the the typewriter like the the tangible assets yeah grab the tangible assets we can tell the type and the typewriters yeah he tells jim not to take it so hard they got out of the case alive and eastman is going to be convicted so they can be satisfied like it so there's some satisfaction there at least all right so i guess in terms of the the mystery the plot whatever yes whatever has happened so there's the

three bidders eastman bribes the commissioner to award it to eastman the commissioner hires marcus to get evidence yeah as far as i can tell, Marcus is doing a legitimate job. Yes. Right. His methods of doing it. And when you look back on it, I think our listeners who are, who maybe are a little bit more perceptive on this might be able to correct

us. But when you look back on it, it makes sense how he behaves because he isn't going to give up who has hired him. Right. Partly because maybe there is an ethics thing there. Maybe he just doesn't do it. Or it could be because he can't get the answers he needs if people know what he's looking for.

So I guess the pieces that come together that seem to make sense to me are, I mean, it has to be that Eastman is bribing the commissioner, but the commissioner is also getting these threats. Yeah. Right. Those are, and those are two separate things. So he's going to award it to Eastman because of the bribe, but he's being threatened and he knows that's not Eastman.

So therefore whoever's threatening him wants him to award it to one of the other guys, which will get him in trouble with Eastman because he's taken Eastman's bribe. So he hires Marcus to find out who's threatening him. He can't tell him that it's not Eastman because of the bribe. Right. So we may not have solved that mystery. Well, I think it's heavily implied that it's Corral. It's the other one we met, right? Yeah, exactly. The one who clearly has heavies, who employs the goons, like that yeah so then eastman knows that marcus is sniffing

around hires jim because he he also wants whoever's threatening the commissioner to go down because that clears the way for him and his bribe to to work out either way yeah Yeah. But then why does he kill the commission? So then I guess that's just the story that. I don't think it's Eastman that kills the commissioner. I think it's. But that's why Eastman came to the. Oh, right, right. So I have evidence that you killed.

That you had a motive for killing the commissioner. Because you were bribing him. So yeah. I guess he is. So I guess eastman thinks that the commissioner is not going to award it to him and that's why he kills him i guess that's the quite like that's yeah maybe it's addressed and i just missed it because of how i was taking notes but i guess that logic there those words make sense in the in that sentence but yeah i'm not

sure that i understand the motivation. Right, right. But whatever. It drives up the stakes for the story, and that's what's important. And he's going to get prosecuted for it. Anyhow, we have a montage of staff packing up the office as Jim and Marcus leave, which is very fun. marcus leave which is very fun um and then we get outside and there's one last little thing to deal with which is that the leasing agent is getting the keys from the limo driver and is about to take the limo back and so jim does decide to help his buddy out and he takes marcus's gun

and they play this great little game this is this is interesting because this is uh i mean it's illegal uh he's impersonating a cop here so he takes marcus's gun and pretends to have arrested marcus and that they need the limo as evidence this car was used in a robbery the money is still missing we're gonna have to take it down to the police impound area go through it take the seats out everything i'm sorry and he specifically says that oh you can you can come get it from the impound at 2.30 this afternoon. Like, he has a very specific, like, oh, you'll get it back. You just can't have it now. Yeah.

There's a fun little thing here where Marcus can't let, I don't know. It's hard to tell what exactly is happening with Marcus here, whether he can't let that tarnish his reputation or if he's just playing along with the con and realizes he has to object to what's happening. It's a bum rap. It's a frame up. But it feels very like here's someone who's been doing a lot of acting and playing at people. And this time it feels like somewhat like he's putting on his acting i'm acting you know like uh voice or whatever so but it's fun it's definitely a fun little bit they they managed to uh run this line past the the the leasing agent they get the keys back from him

and the saxophone score plays as the limo rides away and we get voiceover of hayes musing about what to do next and how to bounce back and we end with it's always been a problem ever since i was a little kid i've been worried about my future hey jim can i borrow 10 bucks no end of episode i really enjoyed that episode yeah it's a fun one just the the chemistry is just so yeah great with the with the two of them i guess again kind of like what you were saying how in a later season it probably would have gone been a little different like i feel like like the basketball stuff yeah like that that's a more like off kilter potential plot to go down but this episode isn't really about that this episode is about figuring out what

marcus's angle is and then getting them both out of the trouble that marcus has gotten them into it is 100 a rock profiles episode to have a commissioner making a decision and being leaned upon and then finally ending up dead because of it. The fact that this commissioner is a basketball commissioner rather than like, you know, building commissioner or, you know, whatever. But like, so it's kind of like, I really enjoy that. Like it has basketball, but like none of the glamour. And also there's something about how like the original story could also be an interesting episode where

if it's about like point shaving and you know the players like an ex-con player being like you know being being extorted by the mob you know for a numbers racket to go or something like that is a perfectly cromulent roidford files premise so that's kind of thrown out as like what is going on and it turns out that that's just a story and that's not what's going on at all so there is a beta you said like yeah so there's a bit of a bait in the switch at the beginning where you kind of get that sense from seeing those guys talk about the players and then gabby's original story you're like oh this is what this episode's about and then it's just not at all. But I would also be interested in seeing that episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Some really good lines in it, too. Yeah. It was just filled with, like, it's one of those ones where I'm like, I'm just transcribing what they're saying in my notes. I need to go a level deeper here. Yeah. Sometimes when I'm deciding what audio to to drop in it's uh

it's exactly what we note as we as we go yeah and then sometimes it's like oh right they also says something here and i go back to the episode and i search i'm like yeah i should put that in yeah and i cannot tell you now exactly how much of that is going to happen because i do that in editing however this kind of episode tends to end up having more drops that i edit in than we call out in our notes because i just get reminded of the good stuff and then i yeah you know i'm playing it i'm like oh yeah that should go in as well there's a little peek behind the production curtain for uh for everyone so many peaks behind so many curtains today that's how we do but yeah uh a satisfying meal of an episode i feel feel nice

and full of rockfordishness yeah after this one i need the rockford bomb what should i watch go for it it's a good one that'll just lots of good interaction enough action to keep you going forward yeah brief brief but very well staged action scenes. Yeah. And I feel like this one is a fun one too, with just another Polish wedding, as opposed to Gandhi's first appearance with just another Polish wedding. Or there's an abrupt change in tone. While this into that is a continuous. Yeah,

exactly. Continuous line. All right. Well, I agree with everything you said as per usual. Good. Do you have any other thoughts on foul on the first play? Which I will say made me think of baseball.

Yeah, me too. Because I feel like when I think about plays, I don't think of basketball. Obviously, you have plays in basketball. Yeah. But just that term made me think of baseball. But then I'm like, oh, yeah there's, there's fouls in basketball. Yeah. But yes,

any additional thoughts on foul on the first play? No, I think we covered them. All right. Well then I will go, I need to go work on my bid for an upcoming expansion franchise here, here in the windy city. But until next time,

when we talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.