Two Hundred A Day - Episode 84: Where's Houston?

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Nathan and Eppy continue the second season tour with S2E20 Where's Houston? One of Rocky's old buddies comes to Jim for help after receiving a ransom demand for his granddaughter Houston - but it shortly becomes clear that, not only did he not have any money, she wasn't even kidnapped! Unfortunately, he turns up dead, sending Jim on the hunt not only for who killed him, but what the whole fake kidnapping was about, all while handling Houston's building emotions. A great character episode! We mention Lane Bradbury's documentary From the Midst of Pain (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071927/?ref_=nm_knf_t1) in this 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, Madame Arcana at the Zodiac Restaurant. You don't pay that dinner tab, we're gonna repo your birthday. 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 Epidaia Ravishaw. And this time we are coming to you with our penult ultimate season two episode yeah uh season two episode 20 where's houston or perhaps with the question mark where's houston where's houston um and this is so episode 20 is it is our penultimate episode but it is their pen penultimate episode it's the third to the last episode of the season but it's the last of

the season second to last of the season two episodes uh we have left to to watch yeah we're gonna finish out our season two of the rockford files and so we have one more episode before we do that this episode aired before our last episode foul on the first play so we are going backwards none of this is particularly interesting um to anyone but ourselves uh yeah this one so that's just to say that the selection of this one was driven by our our project to um complete season two yeah and of the two left we decided to go with this one at some point we just start running out of reasons right and it's just like these are rockford files that are left let's start doing them which you know that's what we're here to do yeah i don't want to make it sound like

we oh my god i can't believe we have to do this episode right right yeah yeah just at some point we get into we are past the halfway point of the series. So every episode is another step on the path towards being done with the podcast. Yeah, another step on the inevitability of the end. The eventual heat death of the podcast. Yes. That is still a long time in the future. Enjoy them while you can, listener. Enjoy them while you can, listener. Enjoy them while you can.

Yeah, so this episode, just based on the logline, is a Rocky episode, which it is a Rocky episode. But we do get kind of all of our friends. We get some Dennis and some Beth. And that way I felt like, oh, we get to see everyone. Because I think we haven't really done a full cast episode in in quite a while missing only angel which is fine it would have been a very different episode if angel had been involved uh i have a theory about that and maybe we'll get into that okay speaking of uh seeing all of our friends this one is directed by lawrence doney who is uh one of our

prolific early season directors. This puts us over the halfway point for watching his episodes, of which we've enjoyed many, including the other season two standouts, Chicken Little is a Little Chicken and the Farnsworth Stratagem. Yes. This, so Where's Houston was written by Don Carlos Dunaway, who wrote two episodes and did the teleplay for two others. And they've all been Rocky episodes. So he wrote Coulter City Wildcat, which we did recent-ish in the last year. And he did the teleplay for the two Gear Jammers episodes. So, okay, you're a Rockford Files writer, right? You've ended up writing six six episodes let's say if only i could be so so so blessed but yes right who's the character

that's in all six of your episodes that like maybe even gets some of the standout lines in some of these episodes i mean my first impulse is to, uh, you know, go, go, go for something slightly more deep cut and be like, Lieutenant deal. Yeah.

Go for it. Do deep cut. I don't know if that's actually true though. Um, if I was writing, uh, I probably, I honestly would probably have a lot of Dennis. Yeah.

I feel like I vibe, vibe with Dennis more than in terms of like in terms of writing that character yeah and they would all have some something to do with like peggy would be involved in all of them there'd always be a touch of dennis's personal life and how working for the cops is a moral compromise with like his ethics and values as a as a human being i think those would be those would be my themes dennis dennis i think is a good one because you you can take almost any premise for a rockford files episode and just be like all right how does jim's behavior here disappoint dennis right yeah

right like that's all you need to do and obviously you wouldn't ask that question if you didn't have an answer yourself you know what i i was thinking about it while you were saying that i don't okay so the easy answer for me is angel just because that's obviously that's who i would eventually at some point i'm going to be like right and then angel comes in and messes it all up to me that would be um i don't want to say cheating but but that would be the thing in my back pocket. That would be your natural path. Yeah, I get like 30 minutes of an episode. I'm like, oh my God, I just need another 14 minutes.

All right, at this point, Angel, and then once I do that, it goes from a 30-minute episode to a two-parter. Right. That I then have to cut down. So I guess my answer to it is not so much because I'd want to see Angel in it, but because it would be easier to write it. It would fit my process more to just throw Angel. But you know what? I feel like there's an answer that I wish I had that would be better. Like, I like the Lieutenant Deal one.

That's a good one. There's only so many recurring characters that aren't, like, Lieutenant deal one. That's a good one. There's, there's only so many recurring characters that are right. Like the core cast. I mean, so are you trying to tell me that you wouldn't, uh, use your deep affinity for Rocky as a guiding, guiding light?

It would be great. It would be, um, I can't think of his name right now. He's just a uniform cop that shows up every so often. Oh, uh, uh,

Billings. Billings. Billings, yes. Like, Billings would be a good one. If I were to do a Rocky one, I would also make sure that Rocky's plumber bud. LJ. LJ. It's so funny because I kept thinking J-Lo. If I were to do Rocky, I would also make sure that LJ was in each episode, too.

And it would just be like a little bit of the rocky and lj show just somewhere in the background we we kind of get this in this episode but uh rocky episodes but everyone is one of his old buddies so like tt flowers is another one yeah yeah they're all something from rocky's past coming back to to get them and this is so this is season two which uh doesn't start off with but in the beginning near the beginning they have the the gear jammers which is the big rocky like where we learn more and more about rocky yeah and uh yeah it's interesting because like rocky has an iconic feel to him. But I feel like all of these episodes have like a little thing in it that like wants you to know that Rocky wasn't always Rocky. Or isn't the Rocky that Jim sees all the time, you know, or something.

I think that's true. So it's good. It's good to have Rocky as one of the ones that show up in all the ones you've written. Rocky is one of the ones that show up in all the ones you've written. So I think it's appropriate that we've been talking about something other than the writer, because I could not find anything about this guy on the internet. I mean, other than his credits, which include the fact that he co-wrote the script for Cujo, the Stephen King adaptation.

He did a bunch of other TV. I feel like this might've come up the last time we talked about him, which he created a show called Kaz, which the log line is the cases of former car thief turned criminal attorney, Martin Kaz Kaczynski. And we were like, we would watch that. I'm pretty sure neither of us has watched that.

However, there is something about him in 30 Years of the Rockford Files. Oh, good. So I figured I'd throw that out, as this is also closing our Don Carlos Dunaway cycle. This is the last of his that we'll see. Thank you for your service. I'm reading from the book now. This episode was written by Don Carlos Dunaway, who was one of the writers Roy Huggins cited as an example of the double-edged sword

television producers often face when it comes to finding new talent. Dunaway was in Rome on a film working as an assistant director when Huggins came across a screenplay he'd written, but which had never been produced. I read it, told Don he was talented, and brought him here a short-lived, maybe two seasons long, called Party Down. you frequently lose it i don't remember who it was but there's a television show uh kind of a short-lived maybe two seasons long called party down it was a comedy about uh caterers in the hollywood area i think or somewhere like that but it was good uh but it was filled with a cast of people that have like a lot of them have gone on to like pretty pretty big careers and it was like i remember uh one of the creators just sort of i don't know complaining about that

but making the same statement like yeah you find good people and then they find better jobs right that's what you do yeah i mean i'm not sure i would have to i don't really know how to read the the um the credits to figure out what he could have been working on for 20th Century Fox at the time. Yeah. Maybe that was Kaz. Old Kaz. I don't know.

I don't know a whole lot about the actual production, you know, the actual film industry. But one thing I feel like is fairly well known is that you can do lots of work that never sees the light of day. So yeah yeah who knows that was a lot of preamble to get to what i think is a very straightforward preview montage yeah it's pretty straightforward we uh we see that it's got we're gonna have a rocky bud uh show up uh and you can see i can't my notes say you can clearly see that's gonna put pressure on jim i don't remember the exact cut of what was going on in the montage, but they were going to telegraph that a little bit.

We do get to see a nice squealy U-turn. Yes. Like a nice, yeah, like, oh, yeah. Not a J-turn, but clearly some car action. Yeah. Deal. Deal is in there. I have deal with an exclamation point.

I do, too. I spell deal differently than they do in the uh in the in the on imdb yeah i spell it with an h but it's actually just d-i-e-l that's weird i is it often spelled with an h and we're just this episode happened to be different nope oh yes interesting he's alex deal but for the battle of Canuga Park, which we haven't done, he's Lieutenant Thomas Deal with an H. Yeah. What is going on? Are there multiple Deals? He's Alex. Yeah, he's Alex Deal in the movie.

Huh. Interesting. So, yeah. So I suppose the Thomas deal credit was a one-off yeah it's so funny that they would change his name in 77 so he'd already had like six episodes under his belt like at the very least you would think he would be like hey i think my character had a different name last time i was on this show on the other hand you know when you're working in tv i'm sure a lot of the time you just don't even notice that kind of stuff yeah yeah that's funny oh okay well that's a little weird thing we've just discovered not probably not the first people in the world to discover it but well welcome to the deal cast the deal cast what's the deal but but we spell it differently depending on which episode we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And then the final bit is just some good mobster threats

with a nice Rockford retort of stuff 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...

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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 right for you. Well, we start this episode at a house with a nice discovery shot where we're looking at the house

and then the camera pans down so we clearly see that there are two goons in a car across the street keeping an eye on said house. My notes here is that we have a cigar goon with mustache and a sideburns goon that's yeah good distinctions at first i thought the cigar goon was going to be like the boss right because he's kind of in charge but it turns out that there's a boss that he's you know he's the sub boss yeah but yeah he's the one with the cigar and the mustache um they're watching a older guy in a hat who is very rocky ish though though clearly not Rocky, getting into a big wood-paneled station wagon. And they follow him as he heads out, obviously to Jim's trailer, as we cut to Jim's trailer, where Rocky is pacing back and forth.

So I fell for it. I don't think it's anything to fall for, but my notes are all like, goons watching Rocky coming out of a house that's not Rocky's house. Rocky getting into a Woody that's, which he doesn't, he doesn't own that. And then I was like, oh, that's just a guy in a hat. That's just a little guy in a hat. He just looks like someone who would be friends with Rocky. Yeah, yeah. But I definitely thought, I was thinking, like, this is, what's going on with Rocky here. And it is not Rocky. Clearly, there's something troubling him, which is unusual because they go way back. And Rocky is telling stories about how he and Pete cleaned out a bar when they were young.

There were at least 20 guys. And Jim, who's reading a newspaper, isn't quite sure about that. And I think Rocky's like, there were at least 10 of them. Pete then arrives. We clearly see that he and Rocky are friends, like with so many of them. Yeah. Pete then arrives. Um, we clearly see that he and Rocky are friends like with so many of Rocky's friends. They all know Jim from when Jim was like a kid, but they have not actually seen him as an adult.

So yeah, it's always that little bit of like a reintroduction, but he is looking for help from Jim specifically because he remembers that Rocky told him he was in the PI business. Turns out that someone has kidnapped his granddaughter, Houston. Jim gets out his tape machine to record the rest of the story so that he has it all down on tape. Pete, he says he can scrape the money together, but what he really wants is to get those guys. He wants to get Houston back.

And then as he says, lynch those guys from is to get those guys. He wants to get Houston back and then, as he says, lynch those guys from a tall tree. Yeah. Ugh. Yikes. Jim, of course, says that his first step should be to call the cops, but this guy is ACAB. Yes. I wouldn't let the cops in if they were certified,

notarized, and dressed for choir practice. Oh, Pete, he's been in more jails than you have, Sonny. Mostly for brawling and disorderly conduct. Yo a police detective he's the guy said no cops and i'm saying no cops this is i mentioned that i've got a theory and this is um i'm gonna put this out there i don't think they leaned into this but i think this was a possible thing they could have leaned into which is that uh pete here is uh rocky's angel uh he doesn't have angels mannerisms but the stories of their past i think even jim look like jim pulls out the tape recorder when he starts talking which is not a thing he he's done we haven't seen him do this right like this This is I mean, it's a season two, so I can't say it's new behavior.

But it's not like he usually records people when they're talking. So is Jim suspicious of this man is my question. I don't think so. Just in the sense of he doesn't take his money up front. Right. That's true. Yes. I think Pete may be somewhere in between Rocky's Angel and Rocky's Gandhi. Yeah, that could be. Because part of it is that they had this rough and tumble. Yeah.

One of the reasons he doesn't want the cops involved is because he's had run-ins with the law. He's gone to jail for violent activity before. But he also, as we will learn later, has made and lost multiple fortunes. Yeah. Really in this kind of in-between space in terms of his, his past behavior. But this tape recorder,

so Jim records the story and then he gives the recorder to Pete and says, you know, tape when they call, tape them on this in case I'm not there so that I can, you know, get all the information. And I'm like, I'm sitting here. I'm like, all right, PI stuff. We got the tape recorder. There's going to be a thing as we will see. It doesn't even get to that point. And there is no payoff for this tape recorder. It's just a fun piece of business. There's none. And there's even a moment later on when I'm like, oh, oh, okay.

Now they're going to hit us with the tape recorder. And I was like, oh, no, it's just business. As I mentioned, Pete asks Jim how much he charges. And he is pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket. And Jim's like, oh, don't worry about it. We'll settle up later. And just the body language. And I think there's a look where I feel like this is very clearly i'm doing this as a favor to rocky yeah whether he's not going to charge him or

whether he's like we'll do like at a later date i can tell him how much i want him to give me as opposed to i charge you know my 200 a day again that is not followed up on as we will see but i was like come on jim just take the money yeah just take it uh yeah it's definitely a uh it definitely feels like a i'm doing rocky a favor yeah here or you know like maybe jim does remember him or something and it's you know yeah yeah yeah he's like he doesn't want to take this guy's money so you know they they leave and the goons who followed pete then they've looked up jim in the phone book and they see he's a PI. And so they,

they know what they're dealing with as they lurk in the parking lot and then follow everyone as they leave. They, they look them up, but they have his registration, which is another thing that doesn't really like they could look them up because they check his registration on the car. And I'm like,

so they've got, they're connected, but then they're just looking up his name in the phone and i'm like so they've got they're connected but then they're just looking up his name in the phone book yeah i mean it doesn't really matter i mean they i guess they could have made a phone call from a pay phone while they're all in there or whatever yeah yeah so i feel like this whole scene kind of encapsulates the this episode where it's like fun character stuff for sure lots of like details that i'm like all right i'm i'm here i have my my narrative continuity pants on i'm ready to see where these things go you're dropping me stuff that's gonna pay off later um and some things do and some

things don't so like the tape recorder never paid off that That doesn't go anywhere. The fact that Pete has a wad of cash, important. That matters later. So like the fact that that is in this scene matters. But other little details of equivalent importance and given equivalent screen time are just business. And I get into the place where I'm like really ready for stuff to come back up and then it doesn't. Yeah. But then some stuff does. So I don't even know if it's it's not bad, but it is giving it the close watch, I think, is actually giving me more a little more whiplash than if I was casually watching.

Right. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. This one benefits benefits from just enjoying it. That seemed like a really backhanded compliment. Oh, the other thing I want to say is that another read of Jim not taking his money, at some point I got the impression that Jim thinks that a kidnapping has not occurred yet. Yeah, because he asked, like, where does she live? Have you called her have you been out there and yeah he has some due diligence to do before he like quote takes the

case yeah he might just be like oh no she's home you're fine you're getting shaken down for yeah yeah under false pretenses or something i think that's yeah that's totally true because jim his first move is to go check out her place yes which leads to one of the weirdest twists in this whole story so he goes out to her place which first of all i was like we have definitely seen this house before um i'm sure the uh rockford files filming locations dot blogspot.com i'm sure will fill us in if we choose to go take a look specifically i think it might be the same house that they used in dwarf with a helium hat the rock star where that guy has his parents that that come back from their vacation because he needs to get the

money and he has that weird bad relationship with his dad or whatever yeah i feel like when jim goes to talk to them they're in this house i could definitely see that that could be wrong but that's just what i thought of as uh watching it anyway it doesn't really matter what's important here is that the door has clearly been forced it's damaged there's like the jams all messed up um the splintered wood and uh jim goes in to look around and it's been been up. There's splintered wood. And Jim goes in to look around. And it's been tossed or there's been a struggle. There's a broken vase and a broken lamp and a bunch of furniture is overturned. He looks around, kind of looks in each room.

And then he leaves again with a concerned look on his face. And that's when our credits come up. Very nicely placed, as I think we always appreciate, with, Where's Houston? Right over his face as he steps out the door. up uh very nicely placed as i think i always appreciate with where's houston question mark right over his face as he steps out the door where indeed there's this ominous thing where one of the goons in the cars was like they were like you know who we should we follow and he goes rockford will be taken care of yeah and it seems that the way he will be taken care of is this set scene that just feels like a magic trick. So I think the read as I'm watching it was that that refers to the next scene.

That could be, yeah. I mean, I think you may be right once we find out all of the things later. It's just there's a certain amount of effort put into gaslighting rockford right but it may not be for rockford's benefit but because of that line it feels like it's for rockford yeah that's a little unclear at the end so what happened later we will find out we're going to come back to this and all the damage will be gone and it'll be like nothing ever happened in this house and it'll be specifically stated that it's impossible for someone to have repaired the damage in that time yeah yeah yeah so the question is we're gonna take care he'll be taken care of does that refer

to the staging or does that refer to the next thing which is jim's just leaving and then there's a car laying in wait and then he gets boxed in by these two cars one comes out of nowhere and the other one we kind of saw on camera all of our goons get out the two we've already seen and then two additional emergency backup goons um there's a good bit here where the first one says don't move and then the main that cigar chomping goon says get out of the car and jim's like won't you guys get it together yeah um so good but they uh they get him out he he goes for a classic jim rockford sucker punch but unfortunately he's outnumbered he takes out one but the remaining three managed

to grab his arms and yeah some some good gut punches this is one of the bigger beatdowns i've seen jim take on this shit i i don't know there's just something about this one that was just like wow yeah like he had no chance and the uh our i guess he doesn't have a cigar at this point mustache the main goon the guy in charge yeah he tells him to to forget it make it like it never was it don't exist and then they leave leave Jim clutching his stomach as they, uh, leave in their, their goon cars.

Things ramp up dramatically as we follow Jim, as he goes to Pete's, he's still clutching his stomach as he goes into the house. There's no answer at the door. And then we get extremely dramatic harmonica escalation as he moves through Pete's house, almost mirroring how he moves through pete's house almost mirroring how he peeked through houston's house earlier and then we see him see two feet sticking out from behind a chair and uh he goes over and checks and we see from his face that poor pete is is no more so yeah so we cut to the cops are on the scene including dennis of

course um taking pictures and chatting chatting and you know discussing the scene uh rocky's there and then uh in this episode alex possibly thomas lieutenant deal uh is is in on the scene in person interrogating jim about uh you know the circumstances and everything so specifically he wants to know where the money where the money in the money clip jim described was from because this guy he lived on a fixed income he didn't have any savings why would anyone try to get ransom out of him he lived on a fixed income. He didn't have any savings. Why would anyone try to get ransom out of him? He cashed a check recently, which is probably the source of that money,

but they don't know where that came from. That still doesn't explain why somebody had hit him up for ransom. I thought he had money. If he could fool me, he could sure fool a kidnapper. Come on, Rockford, would you snatch somebody without making sure how much is in the kitty? No, I no i wouldn't but then again that's not my line of work this is interesting because deal is uh unlike chapman and i don't know how intentional this

distinction is uh deal definitely is antagonistic towards him but the way he's talking to him he's kind of taking rockford in on it work with me here think through it with me you know like it's it's kind of interesting i think for those who you know are joining us recently or haven't heard these episodes before so there's lieutenant deal is in these early seasons is the you know becker's boss on the force and, yeah. And has kind of this antagonistic relationship with Rockford. And then later Lieutenant Chapman kind of fills the same role. Yeah. They don't ever cross.

I don't think there's any episodes where they're both in. And I assume that's just, you know, an actor thing over time of who is available and what they decided to do with the character. But they aren't exactly the same. Yeah, they're not interchangeable. They're in the same dramatic space, but they're not.

Yeah, they're not interchangeable characters. Diehl always seems to care more about the case, and he doesn't really like Rockford. And if he has a chance, he'll, you know, none of these guys like PIs, right? They're police lieutenants and private investigators stick in their craw because they just make their jobs harder and whatever but lieutenant chapman seems to have a real personal dislike of jim yeah right like chapman really is always looking for an

angle to like get jim even if it is going to hurt pursuing the case while deal is like all right i guess you're involved again. Right. Tell me what you know. Let's figure this out. Now the path of least resistance for me, as we'll see in this episode, is to take you in on this because you're right in front of me. And you're an easy way to get closure on this case. And I don't have any reason to go elsewhere right now.

But it doesn't really seem as personal as it does with chapman i think one way to sort of illustrate this is i think the way that uh and this won't help people who are new to all this but for those that have been listening or have been involved in the rock profiles for a while i don't think the whole joke about chapman really liking lance white would land with deal yeah right there's something personal about how chapman dislikes rockford that isn't there with deal deal has like kind of a professional dislike for him and i think we see in the movies later that deal is more like oh man i'd really have to go back in one of the movies there's the the scene where Deal is interrogating Jim about the murder of that other PI. And he sends Dennis out of the room because Dennis is like... Too wound up.

Yeah, and is giving Jim outs that Deal doesn't want him to take. But at the end of that scene, the takeaway really is that Deal is looking for what actually happened. Right. Not to pin rotford exactly yeah yeah this this episode is really turning into the deal uh yeah what's the deal this is really turning into a what's the deal episode well in this scene we also get rocky explaining that uh pete thought of himself as a rich man even when he didn't have money and he did have money on and off he would come up with some scheme make a million bucks and then lose it all on the next thing that he came up with

jim explains that he went to houston's house and it was all tossed and everything uh deal has a sardonic remark about whether he touched everything messed up all the evidence and jim retorts with like you know oh i just hosed it all down real good or something like that there's some good banter but they're going to go check it out. And there's a there's a good little character beat at the end of this where Rocky wants to go with them. Jim tells him to stay. And then Dennis is like, you know, I'm going to go up there with those guys. I'll call you and tell it how it all goes.

You know, you you stay here. There's that element where Dennis and rocky have a relationship as well it's not just through jim through jim yeah yeah that's good stuff as we we pre pre-mentioned we get to to the house and the door is in perfectly fine shape not all broken everything looks fine inside the house including the the vase that was broken on the ground the lamp that was broken they are whole and in their normal places this was two hours ago they established the the timeline that jim was there two hours ago then he went over to pete's and deals like that's impossible the paint on the door isn't even tacky that's enamel it takes two days to dry

this is i feel like this is a a bit from a column. This is Columbo style evidence. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I mean, not to be all what's the deal with everyone here, but like, this is another great thing that delivers differently from deal than it does

from Chapman. Because this is again, deals like, you know, you got to understand my point of view. You're lying. Right. Right.

Not, not like a gotcha Rockford. Yeah. It's more like you're lying right right not not like i got you rockford yeah it's more like you're telling me this story and the evidence before my eyes contradicts it yeah and then they end in the scene with uh jim all right deal you're a genius where do we go from here like to take a crazy haphazard guess jail you think okay why not so good uh i love that and then we go to the next morning down at the hollywood station where rocky has brought jim's coat and meets jim and beth as beth doing her her her great lawyerly job has gotten Jim out from the pokey. He passed a lie detector test about his story,

which is the only reason that they're letting him go. Even though that's not admissible in court, it does make it shaky for them to hold him. However, and this is, again, the difference between Deal and Chapman, if Deal wanted to bring a case the only real defense they have based on the available evidence is that jim had no motive yeah so he could decide to bring that case he just hasn't yet well you feel like chapman would have been like oh no i'm bringing that case yeah yeah exactly uh so just a little bit of beth here just in this

scene but it's good as always uh just wants jim to behave go home read a book you're out of it jim thanks beth gives her a peck on the cheek which is another little nod towards jim and beth their whole thing yes as we as we like to say and then rocky uh takes him home but then jim starts directing him uh on turns rocky specifically says that beth was great handling deal jimmy should have seen it as we know beth is one of the greatest lawyers of her generation yes but jim wants to go back to houston's house even though he promised beth uh he just did that so that she wouldn't worry. And we get to another great Rocky-Jim relationship exchange. What about me? I worry too. I figure you're going to worry no matter what I do.

And then Rocky starts justifying to himself and also kind of capturing Jim's motivation. You're afraid if I do get to mess around, I'm going to end up in a bind myself. Rocky, I just don't like to get flamed, that's all. When I do, I like to know why. You are doing it for me, ain't you, son?

Shut up and turn left at the signal. But then he kind of smiles and it's like, that is kind of why he's doing it. So this plays a little bit more into that i i'm gonna call it a theme not that peter is precisely rocky's angel but that that we are seeing rocky and peter as older versions of jim one of his sure yeah uh which is very different for rocky uh and uh yeah anyways yeah i really really enjoyed that a little bit and like you said it definitely feels like rocky making up the justification trying to to reconcile what jim's doing with rocky's vision of what his youth was like well jim leaves leaves rocky to

watch outside while he pokes around hou's house again. He walks around. It's still in fine condition. Picks up a book off a table titled Cable Drilling Techniques. I wrote that down and rubbed my hands together. I'm like, now we're into some serious Rockford Files. We're going to do some oil drilling. Right. And again, I was like, oh, because like we get a shot of like the cover.

It's very clearly on camera established. I'm like, oh, this is a clue. But it's not really a clue. It's just a it's a very immediate foreshadow, I guess. It's an insight into a character. Sure. But even by season two, I think we have been primed to think this. This is it.

It's a it's a oil scam. Got it. Yeah. I already clicked in my head, categorized it. Somebody is, uh, there's a, there's a oil field somewhere that people are arguing over. Jimmy Joe Meeker may make an appearance. And I'm like, where's Houston up? See, I get it.

There's several meanings to this title, but nope, that's not where we're going. Jim comes back out into the main room and Houston herself has appeared. Yes. She is a diminutive woman, I would say. These shots are really interesting because she's very small. She's played by Lane Bradbury, who i feel like people might know it's like a like a natural history museum panorama of like early mammals and a t-rex right like yeah she's maybe five feet tall and yeah james carter looks enormous which works with her character, right, as we'll see.

She's very tough. That's her thing. I mean, this is the great thing about this scene here is that he is physically threatening. Like, he's not actually threatening her, but, like, he's a strange man in her house. Right. Who is two to three times her size. And she is undeterred. She's not, like, recoiling from him. Yeah, exactly.

She's like, what are you doing in my house? And it's not even here. My house, right? Right, yeah. Before it can escalate, Rocky comes in and Houston knows Rocky. This is some gear jammers here. Yeah. This is the bit.

Because it's like, oh, Rocky. Like, Rocky's buddy's granddaughter knows Rocky on site. Right. But neither one of them would know Jim on site. So she's like, do you know this man? He's like, oh, he's my boy, Jimmy. He's like, oh, and they like shake hands. And she says, your daddy's told me all about you.

You're an investment banker or something. Or something. Or something. It's like, what is an investment banker doing in my house so they are bringing her the bad news that her grandfather is dead and uh jim is trying to kind of build up to it and then rocky just spits it out and she i would say doesn't take it well right immediately looks angry yeah and then like turns and storms out of the room yeah uh and there's just a little bit of business of like should we follow her no leave her alone i guess i could have done that better there's no good way to tell someone that kind of news uh and they postulate that maybe the kidnappers let her go once they found out he was dead yeah i think maybe rocky

says that nothing in this scene gives any evidence to the to the idea that she was kidnapped right and they immediately are going to follow up and specify that she was never kidnapped but there's that little moment where rocky's like trying to make it all make sense yeah so okay i feel i don't know if this is actually there or not. I don't know if I just read this into it, but like when they first start talking together and they're like, it becomes obvious that they have to break the news to her. It feels like Jim is looking to Rocky to break the news. Yeah. And then Rocky doesn't. So Jim starts and then Rocky jumps in and breaks the news. Yeah. One of my favorite things about this episode has started here, which is the arc of her dealing with the death of her grandfather. And one of the reasons why I like it is that although her dealing with it is part of the story and in some cases the focus of the story another part of it is how other people

deal with the fact that she has to deal with it right yeah this scene where she leaves the room and it's awkward and it's just jim and rocky sitting there discussing what they should have done is very real to me and it feels very genuine the only problem i have with all of this like i really enjoy this theme of it but the only problem i have with all of this is that uh it's all about her rocky has lost an old friend and we've done nothing to deal with that like rocky doesn't he's still kind of like playing a game of being a pi and there's no indication that rocky has to go through any grief for this and maybe that's just because he's old and his friends just keep dying on him anyways sure i mean but like pete was murdered right like yeah exactly yeah like uh so i i don't want to say

this is like a particularly bad thing about this episode because i think uh for the rest of it to work they have to not deal with the fact that like like you said like it's an old friend of rocky's he was murdered and not only was he murdered but now rocky's son and rocky's friend's granddaughter are probably in the crosshairs and so that should also be another thing that rocky should be kind of freaking out about what the stories as it's presented to us is interested in is more of uh how she's dealing with it and and how that reflects with rock yeah there's maybe too much once you start to unpack this actually put it all on screen so you just choose what you you you have here yeah i hadn't thought about that just because the focus on her does really like that's the real emotional yeah of the episode is Houston and her reactions and how she deals with stuff.

And I honestly hadn't even realized that maybe Rocky could be in a different emotional space. Because we've seen him in other episodes be prickly, be angry, be snapping at Jim as a cover or as an outgrowth of his emotions about something. Yeah. And I think, like you say, yeah, this episode is not interested in that in particular, which is just a choice, but. Yeah, exactly. But now that you mentioned it, I'm kind of like, well, that's a missed opportunity. Yeah. Because you could have him have those emotions in his acting.

Yes. Without changing any of the lines or any of the plot yeah oh we're coming up on my either second or most favorite twist of this episode so let's let's go to this well yeah so we go from there to houston angrily uh serving butter in a butter dish to her dinner guests and she's apparently made stew in the interim and she's ladling out stew for jim and rocky as they're all sitting around around her table so that i mean that's my favorite choice is that she has beef stew on deck yeah and she hasn't even been home as we learn yeah she's been in baja so she's a geologist and she's been working on this and she works in oil fields and she's been working on this deal with the Mexican government about this field in Baja.

And she was keeping it secret from her grandfather because part of the deal, the deal, the deal, deal, too much deal, deal. What's the deal? a surprise for her grandfather because the whole kind of backstory here is that she went into this field because of him because he was into oil for you know some of his early fortune hunting or whatever so she went into this field got an education yeah is successful in what she does because of him and so kind of to take care of him now she has this big oil field um deal that she's trying to make but she's going to surprise him with it which is why she didn't tell him she was going out of town and in fact no one knew she was going out of town thus creating the space for this fake kidnapping my rockford files compass is still pointing straight at you know oil fraud right yeah i'm

like oh okay of course he doesn't have any money uh and he's being shaken down because these other people know that he's coming into this oil field and uh they just don't know that he doesn't know it or whatever like i'm still laser focused on this because of uh how i've been trained by the rockford files uh and we'll get to it when we get to it but i'm so happy that it's i'm so happy to have been fooled into anyways we'll get to it you know so we get some of the exposition and then y'all gonna eat your stew or what look houston if you want to let down a little it's it's okay i mean we go outside and wait or leave or you know help or whatever she clearly is holding a lot of emotion tightly in check right yeah we have another beat

where we see that clearly no one is going to eat their stew yeah this is again this is great i like i said i like how i mean it is her process but also how it focuses on what it's like to be around a process, right? Like, Jim is like, we're willing to offer whatever you need to deal with this situation. But we don't know instinctually what that is. And there's no reason why she should know what that is. Right. He's doing a thing that I feel like is a very core Jim Rockford thing. I don't want to be the one responsible for you doing something you don't want to do.

Right. So, like, if my presence here is responsible for, like, you bottling things up, like, I can leave. Yeah. Which is fairly emotionally aware, I think. Sometimes that turns into weird places. But in this case, it feels about right. But we get a lot of unresolved bits, like unresolved moments with her. And this is, you know, the second of them in two scenes, which I think is intentional. Yeah.

Part of their conversation was about, well, we should go down down you should tell the cops that you weren't kidnapped and everything so we are moving on to them doing that when outside her house a uh oily guy as i note him in a checked coat arrives um he saw the news in the papers and came over to see how she's doing. This is Jerry Specht, who introduces himself as Houston's boyfriend. And then she says, friend. Yeah, it's such a great beat. Yeah, my notes are like, this guy's mobbed up. Oh, yeah. There's no way this guy is not involved in whatever is going on.

But he offers to drive her downtown to talk to the cops. And she says, I'll go with him. You know, you guys don't need to stick with me. So she leaves with Jerry and Jim and Rocky go back to the beach. There is a moment that we're given here where Jim and Rocky get in the car and she gets in the car with J-Spec, as I call it. J-Spec, as I call it. And they drive off one direction, and Jim and Rocky sit in the car and wait for them to turn around

and head in the right direction, I think. There's a thing going on in this episode where we get a little bit of Jim's tradecraft. And like the tape recorder earlier, that feels like it's more important than it is but it's just us learning that jim he's he's waiting to make sure they go in the right direction okay they've gone in the right direction we're good little bits that jim does that are just like he's a pro and he's just doing his professional thing but because for some reason

i don't know if it's just my state of mind when i was watching it or whatever but every like you were saying before every single time that happened i was like oh all right like oh no it's just jim's a little suspicious of this guy which i was too like i wrote in my notes i'm suspicious of this guy 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 1000. Or you can go to worlds, plural, without master, singular.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 Worldwide 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. We go to the beach with this great wide shot of Rocky watching the waves. And he's like dead center alone on this beach. And then Jim comes off from off frame and slowly walks up to join him. I think this might be the one moment where literally Rocky is being centered.

Yeah. because we are seeing him like on the beach alone looking out over the waves and it's very like contemplative. Yeah, he's not like grief stricken but he's clearly taking a little time. When we were talking earlier, I forgot about

this scene. So there is something given to Rocky but this does quickly turn into plot related stuff. But, but this, this particular shot with Enya's Orinoco flow playing in the background. And yeah, it's a little modeling maybe.

No, it's good. No, I think you're right. I, I had forgotten about the scene too, because my notes in it are nice beach scene yeah but yes jim is coming out to to fill him in um everything about houston's story checks out

you know she was indeed gone like all that stuff so i think we're getting the strong signal of like whatever happened it's not like she was lying about anything yeah um and he says that he has a feeling that houston doesn't need much taken care of. I have a note here that Rocky waxes patriarchal. Yes. Yeah. Who's going to take care of her? Yeah.

Jim, as I said, feels like she doesn't need a lot of taking care of. The implication we get from the fiction is that she might have been doing a lot of the taking care of Pete. She's definitely presented as a very capable person. Right, yeah. And what we're getting is Rocky's look on it, which isn't necessarily... Yeah, we're getting Rocky's projection. Yeah. The conversation turns to things just not making sense.

And Jim has a good statement of purpose for how Jim thinks about cases. One thing I've learned is that nothing makes absolutely no sense. Yeah? Yeah, you get a set of circumstances that don't add up. It's usually because there's an important piece missing. Well, what do you figure the piece is here? Oh, logic tells me it's money. Yes. you figure the piece is here oh logic tells me it's money yes uh someone sure went to a lot of

trouble to shake pete down but he didn't have anything to to give um so he posits that maybe he had something stashed somewhere uh rocky says he did make a fortune and lost it three or four times so he could easily have a couple hundred thousand dollars stashed somewhere secret especially if it was money he was hiding from the government oh no pete he wouldn't cheat on his taxes very good you're right i i guess he would that wrapped scallion so we cut from that conversation to Jim picking a lock as they're breaking into Pete's house at night. And Rocky is with him. Rocky is worried about getting caught with all the burglar's tools.

Jim says, like, what burglar's tools? And he lists the lock picks, the crowbar, like, all the stuff. But Jim says that, don't worry,'t worry he'll take you know he'll handle things just stay out here and whistle if anyone comes along uh this moves along quickly um but we have a great joke in the cut at the end of this scene where rocky asked jim what makes him think that they'll find the money when the killers didn't and jim says we're smarter than they are didn't and jim says we're smarter than they are rocky says oh and then we cut to rocky and jim at a diner counter with pie and coffee and rocky saying i don't know sonny maybe it just ain't there yeah so this is uh i guess a bit of a little swerve for us watching we're like okay

jim's figured it out he like yeah had money hidden someplace and then turns out nope nope no money hidden anywhere uh they're at a late night diner counter of some kind um rocky asks for uh you know to warm up his cup and the the proprietor says this one's on the house it's the last cup he's ever going to serve because he's selling the business and retiring to like a farm or something like that. A vineyard. Oh, a vineyard. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's what he said. All his customers have moved away. And how is he supposed to run a business if he doesn't have any customers? And so they kind of have some small talk. And then Jim leaves before Rocky has a chance to finish his pie. Yes. Because he goes out on the street and he starts walking up and down the block looking at storefronts.

And there's lots of sold signs in all these empty storefronts. And we see that Jim has a light bulb moment and he's figured it out that Pete, he did have a fortune. This is the, in my notes, I'm like, it's not oil, it's real estate. Right, yeah.

I guess until Jim goes out, I hadn't put together that they were like in the neighborhood still yeah but obviously that's the connection that he draws for us yeah so that all the properties on this block have been sold to someone so we cut to our uh main goon and his driver watching jim and houston through binoculars as they're coming out to Jim's car. She's carrying an overnight bag and the goons follow them as they, as they, they drive off. We have a voiceover of Jim telling Houston,

he's going to need a stasher somewhere safe until this is all over. Yeah. Check her into a motel. She doesn't like the idea of hiding, but Jim says you can't fight what you can't see, which is true. And also not quite sure what that means in this context but okay um yeah we're now in the car uh post voiceover and he is asking about whether

pete had gotten any offers for the house so yes as you say not oil real estate um he had gotten a couple over the last couple months but the first was just a few weeks ago. And it was for $20,000, which is more than the house was worth. Jim then sees that they've picked up a tail. And so we get some good Jim tradecraft. There's the high octane chases that we get in the Rockford Files. And then there are some cerebral chases that we get in the... And this might be one of my favorite cerebral chases. There's just some really good stuff in this here.

He tells Houston to crumple up the empty cigarette packet that's in the glove box and throw it out the window. And then they pull off the highway and pull into a Safeway parking lot. And so our goons are following them. They follow, they park. And we stay with the goons' perspective as they see Houston get out of the Fireons perspective as they see houston get out of the firebird go over to the cigarette machine act like it ate her money and then like kind of wave

at jim and like pulling at herself like i'm going inside yeah and so they're watching all this and the sideburns goon is like how do you know she's not going out the back the boss says because she threw out an empty pack before they stopped you got to learn to keep your eyes open so they're drawing the picture for us watching but it's also very funny that this whole thing relies on someone being smart enough to read the clue and not just believing what they see right there is another bit of business where she comes out with like an employee or something. They do something with the machine.

Then they go back in together and Jim's acting like he's getting impatient. And then we wait, we wait. And then we cut to her getting into a cab in the loading dock behind the, of the grocery store. We go back to the parking lot where Jim pulls out by himself. And the, the cigar goon says, follow him.

Forget her. She's gone. Yeah. So he reads the situation as soon as it changes. And we get into a short but sweet little street chase. Lots of good determined Jim looks during this chase. Yes. Very determined.

Lots of good wide shots so we can see the cars really swerving around corners and stuff, which is another good, solid early season, I think, technique that they do. Again, because they do all the practical driving, we really see the weight of the cars as they rock back and forth on their suspensions. And we really see how the Firebird

is better at cornering than a lot of these like big sedans at the goons drive and stuff like that the real trick here is that jim is taking them on a ride to a combination police station and records yeah facility yeah like you have yeah it might be a narrative convenience there i i mean i just really enjoy the fact that he's got them hooked and they're following him. And he just comes in so hot into that police station and gets out of the car and just waves to them like, hey, how's it going? Yeah. There's a bunch of uniformed officers as they're going to cars and stuff.

And so he just like waves at them as he walks across the parking lot and our goons just back out and leave. The whole sequence is great this the bit uh about setting up the cigarette thing uh and she does a great job of just playing out the whole like trying to get the machine like we even get like the the goons like come on lady it's only 60 cents yeah like yeah it's just like really good jim has thought through this plan he's got he's got a way out of this down to he's going to take them to a police station in fact in my notes i was like is this the same place he just pulled into the record place or is it and we just cut to a different municipal building uh i don't know yeah i don't really i'd have to watch it again because we get establishing shots of the signage and i feel like it was like police station

with an arrow one way and like municipal records with an arrow the other way yeah i could be misremembering that but no i think you're right there's definitely something there uh but the signs that are of the most important are the ones of the rules in this record place positively no photographing yes it's extremely good we now get a jim does some investigation scene uh with a little fun yeah uh humor he's not running a con but um it's he's using some of his con techniques here i think the joke is you're only supposed to be able to look at the records. You're not supposed to take any information with you, which seems weird to me. But I don't know.

Maybe that was a thing in the 70s. I suspect it's it's the 1973 version of the paywall. Yeah. Like if you want a copy, you need to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, he's looking at property deeds. And so he has the big book and he flips it open and he finds some stuff.

And I was expecting, which has happened in other episodes, the classic, he makes a noise and under the cover of the noise tears the paper out. Right. But no, he just takes out his little notebook and is making notes. And I'm like, OK. And then this guy comes over and starts hassling him. You're not supposed to take notes. Yeah, I know. I know.

But you see, I can't remember all this without taking notes. But it's not allowed. I know you didn't make the rule. I'm going to call the police. Well, I suppose you have to. Sorry, I'm going to miss him. I'm almost through here. Could you tell me where I could find the corporate records, please?

It's down the hall, the third door on the right. Third door to the right. Thank you. Everything he does, he agrees with this guy. Yes, yeah. Every step of the way, the guy's like, you're not supposed to take notes. He goes, yeah, I can't remember all this without taking notes. Yeah.

Everything he says just tugs the rug out beneath this guy a little bit more each time so the guy's just like probably he's expecting to be argued with and jim doesn't argue with him he disagrees with him but does the thing he's going to do anyway right so good but uh yeah so he gets the information he's looking for he calls houston because he needs to get jerry speck's address. Every piece of property in Pete's neighborhood had been bought in the last few months, all by different entities, but most of them list Jerry as an officer. So they're all shells for whoever is doing this real estate thing. And so Jerry is clearly involved and probably knows who was pressuring pete if he wasn't doing it himself i

think is implied um so jim goes to said address uh it's an apartment and kind of a nice looking building there's no answer to his knock so he picks the lock and heads in and the lights are on and i'm like oh that's bad yeah that's that's a bad sign um we have an ominous set of shots as Jim moves through the space and then goes into the bathroom, turns on the bathroom light. We see over Jim's shoulder, reflected in the bathroom mirror, Jerry's slumped posture with closed eyes in the bathtub. And we see from Jim's look on his face face of like oh no that jerry is definitely dead then sirens start and jim alerts turns off the bathroom light with his elbow which i think is a nice touch yeah and then manages to uh make his way out of the apartment and hide around the corner before the police are responding to obviously someone has called in something and avoids the the cops there's a bit of a meal

made of this because i remember like having that in this household and probably many others refer refer to this as marking out i don't know if i actually talked to the screen or not but it sometimes happens where i'm like just get out of there yeah just go just go go i mean this definitely felt like one of those moments where jim has been set up to take a fall for a murder or whatever uh but in this case he was able to evade the cops. So he has not taken in at this moment, but yeah, the plot thickens. Pete's dead. Jerry Specht is dead. We cut to Jim meeting up with Houston by the, uh, pool at the motel that she's holed up in.

And she's like, no one saw me. Cause she's supposed to be staying out of sight. Right. She's like, no one saw me. I just needed to get some air. And he understands and he is not there to to to give her any grief. I just want to talk just a moment about the foley at this pool. It's at night.

It's dark. It's not lit. There might be some night swimming going on, but it's not like it's a, you know, a pool with lights inside it or or something like that we are we are shown that there is no one else there yeah yeah but there is so much splashing noise and i was like are there fish in the pool is somebody going for a night swim or like like it was a little it was a little weird it reminds me of earlier in this episode when jim first comes he comes upon the the break-in at her house there's dog barking dog barking foley yeah yeah and so i think this is an ongoing theme with our experience of this episode is that they're for us when they filmed this episode they were like 50 years from now there

will be a podcast we don't know what a podcast is yet but there'll be a podcast that will need all of these red herrings yeah there's just all these things that i'm like am i supposed to think that there's someone in the pool i remember thinking with the dog barking of like it's a lot of dark dog barking like does that mean that someone's coming up to the house? Because it happens again later. And I'm like, is Jim going to notice that someone is coming to the house because he hears the dog barking outside? But no, it's just atmosphere. And same here.

It's like, no, the water's just atmosphere. They're at a pool. There's water. The thing it reminds me of, which it absolutely could not be is uh modern video games right if we were playing the jim rockford files video game and we came upon that and the dog barking just part of the background noise it would be on a loop and it would occasionally come back again in the background noise or the splashing like we're near a pool and the way the audio tells us that is it's splashing it doesn't matter that it's nighttime and nobody's actually in the pool

splashing that's just the sound pools make when you're near them in this video game or whatever anyways that along with the tape recorder along with the like uh there's another bit the book the the cable drilling book and just there's all these things that we're like, is this a clue? And it's no, it's just a detail. We were, you're just getting details.

That's all. The scene is really the with or without the splashing. The scene is really the, the, the emotional core of this episode as expressed through, through Houston's character. The, the dialogue's good.

This is in the grand tradition of Jim being supportive of someone going through a rough time, but also kind of pushing them to accept something that maybe they don't want to. Like kind of a tough love, but he's not being mean. He's like, you need to understand this about what's going on right now, or else you're never going to be able to like accept it or move on or whatever. Right. Yeah.

So it kind of reminds me a little bit of like how he is with, forget the character's name, but the Countess and the Countess and the woman in Quickie Nirvana. Like this is this is a thing he does uh almost always with women yeah uh because that's how it is cast and written um he asked her if she always walks away from things she doesn't want to face i never walked away from anything in my life what do you want from me anyway oh a little emotion i just like you better if you stopped acting like a gunslinger and a b western there's nothing wrong with letting some emotion show you know what'd your grandfather do when your dad died well he didn't cry men don't cry oh sure they do oh i've seen them ball like babies i've done it a couple of times myself the little core here is uh he had a son and her grandfather pete he had a son and he wanted a grandson and then jim replies with well

you you did the best you could so we we get that that picture of houston and her grandfather kind of against the world always she's always trying to live up to some expectation that if he didn't actually have, she thought he had. Yeah. Of how she should behave in a world where if he had had his way, she would be a boy and she wasn't. Yeah. And I feel like that's not a position I've been in myself, obviously, but that is a very understandable set of emotions, I think. This is all in advance of Jim telling her that Jerry's dead. And she has a quick moment where she kind of sits down and reacts and has kind of a little rawness and then kind of recovers.

And she asks why. Because from her perspective, he's always been like nice to her he's never done anything what could he possibly have done that would necessitate him being killed but jim thinks that jerry is the one who killed her grandfather that he's involved in this real estate deal maybe he tried to double cross someone else in the outfit or take a bigger piece of the pie and pressure jerry as part of that and he got killed for his trouble and then we move back into the plot with uh jim says this all is about the title for the house so let's open negotiations for it and like flush out whoever's behind this yeah but in a very in a very helpful moment of convenience, Houston actually owns the title because Pete sold it to her for a dollar for tax purposes.

But they don't have to find the title. She actually has it. And so they're going to set it up so that it requires both of their signatures to release. And so that is, you know, the mechanism by which they will flush out whoever is behind all this. Yeah, so we get back into our our plot quickly from here but uh but yeah this is really all centered on houston and getting that more understanding about why she is the way she is and then seeing how she has another moment of taking an emotional blow and then immediately kind of pushing it away and moving on to the next thing and immediately serving beef stew right right yeah there's a bit here where his

delivery you know she's like why he never hurt anyone and jim is just like i think you may have killed your grandfather like just straight up says it and i think that's informed by what he saw when Rocky delivered the news before where he's like, maybe the best move here is just to get that information out. Yeah, I don't I don't need to I don't need to downplay this. Yeah. So she is adding a clause to the title to the effect that they both need to sign it over. And also that Jim gets 10 10 of any sale price over 20 000 i made a note of that too i'm like okay this is gonna be interesting well he calls one of the companies associated with it he says it doesn't matter which one because they're all

shells of the same people saying you know i have the title i'm willing to open in negotiations i'll be at home at this time. Um, in another one of those details where I'm like, Hmm, this could go somewhere, but then it doesn't. She reads out the clause that she added. And Jim goes like, that's a good job for a geologist. Cause it's all very in legalese. And I'm like, okay, so maybe she's written it in such a way. Like, cause now he's getting 10 percent of the sale price if it's over $20,000. Maybe she's written in something where when everything finally resolves, she's made it such that he doesn't actually get that because of the way she's written the legal contract. You know, like how does Jim not get his money?

Right, right, right. Since he called this out, this clearly is going to be important later. It is not important later. It's just another one of those details. And of course she could know how to write this. Like if she's a geologist in the oil industry. patronizing compliment. But then we do have another important little beat here where he leaves and we stay with her. Once he's gone, she puts her head down in her hands and we see that she's like letting herself actually react to everything that's going on.

But then we cut away from that again. So another unresolved moment at Jim's trailer, he gets the gun out of his cookie jar. Yeah. Yeah. Getting his gun out of the cookie jar. yeah getting his gun out of the cookie jar then there's a knock at the door he opens the door the goons come in immediately frisk him take his gun and then they go for a ride so good that's good um they take jim to a nicely appointed

rich person's house obviously where he's brought in to meet the actual boss. So again, I thought that he was going to end up talking to the cigar goon because I'm like, that guy's obviously in charge. But no, the cigar goon takes him in to talk to the real boss, who is a rich guy, of course, named Charles Blackhorn. No small talk. They want to get right to business. Jim is negotiating on behalf of Houston. If they can work it out, they will go and get her signature in order to turn over this title. The offer is $20,000. But Jim says, no, no, this house is worth at least $100,000. What makes him think he'll spend that much?

Jim posits that he has plans for this block. And without that land, it all stays on the drawing board. Blackhorn increases his offer to $20,000, plus your good health. $100,000, take it or leave it. $20,000. Don't make me resort to primitive methods of persuasion. I have staff members who are literally overqualified in that area. Those are the ones you turn loose on Jerry Speck.

$20,000. Stuff it. those are the ones you turn loose on jerry spec 20 000 stuff it there's a beat and then blackhorn finally agrees will you take a check of course you'll have to make it a personal one we'll set it so the deed is final when the check clears do you have to do it that way i've agreed to all your other terms you have my word. You're not a man who inspires confidence, Mr. Blackhorn. There's a lot of great back and forth here. This is good. Good banter. Yeah, good Jim negotiating stuff.

Something I appreciate. This actor, like, he's one of those that I knew him from somewhere. He's been in a lot of things. Robert Mandin? Yeah, there is something very specific that I know him from somewhere uh he's been in a lot of things robert mandin yeah there is something very specific that i know him from but i don't i couldn't tell you was it the tv movie dr jekyll and mr hyde a legacy of fear uh from 1996 yeah it was probably that yeah i mean he has been in a ton of stuff but i have seen very few of these shows. And this is his only Rockford Files appearance. Yeah, that was the thing I was trying to figure out. I feel like what I'm remembering him from is like an 80s sitcom or something like that.

He was in a ton of things. I mean, he was in a couple soap operas, too. Yeah, but the thing that I really wanted to point out is how his office building is in The Matrix. Oh, yeah. that I really wanted to point out is how his office building is in the Matrix. If you look behind him, the cityscape is just all green. It just looks like the Matrix. And he's one of those again, one of those class of

Rockford Files source villains, like the main bad guy who just shows up at the end of the episode to be like, I was the one who was behind it the whole time. And then Justice is served. We do see the blue goon car follow them at a distance as they go to said motel to sign over the deed. As experienced Rockford viewers, this can't be Jim's actual plan.

This is all just to get them out into the open. Jim goes into the motel, gets Houston. They get into the car to sign the check. He's like, all right, you can. In fact, he says, okay, you can sign the check now. That's when his goons have gotten out of their car that they were following him.

They're all surrounding the car our principals are all in. Black Horn's line is, you didn't really expect me to sign a check for $100,000, did you? Then we hear police sirens and then cop cars show up and Jim's retort, no, Mr. Blackhorn, I didn't really expect you to. Yeah. And then he's all smiles as the cops arrest our goons. And as I said, justice is presumably served. And as I said, justice is presumably served.

We then get into our final scene to wrap everything up to our satisfaction. Another dinner at Houston's house where she is serving pie to Jim and Rocky. She explains that she called the cops and said and reported a attempted kidnapping when she saw their car pull up. And that's how the timing worked out. That's another great detail because it's not Jim calling Becker and telling Becker. Yeah. Yeah. Because probably Becker is getting sick of that stuff. Right.

Well, and probably, yeah, Deal wouldn't approve it or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have the, well, I don't quite understand prompts from Rocky to get the rest of our story. So Jerry was part of this whole scheme from the beginning. When Pete wouldn't sell, then they hatched this plan. I guess this is a little unclear still to me,

but the point is when Houston left town, he knew it because they had, you know, they were friends and had dated or whatever. So he, when Houston left town, he knew it because they were friends and had dated or whatever. So when Houston said, no one knew I left town, Jerry did know that she left town. So he measured her door and had a new door made so that they could do the switch to fake the kidnapping. And he gave her that vase and that lamp in the first place so he probably bought duplicates and had duplicates so it's like how long was this that plan that was my my note was this was a long con or i guess at the least headcanon wise he knew where he could buy them again because he bought them so he knew where he could get replacements uh i mean if he knows that she's out of town often sure he could be like okay when

she's out of town this is what we're going to do we're going to stage a kidnapping that would pressure him into accepting the the purchase of the real estate so he would have the money to pay oh okay you know what i mean like that that seems to be the plan yeah because that mechanism is never explained they just say like jerry wanted a bigger chunk of so blackhorn had a multi-million dollar development plan for that area and through all these subsidiaries was buying up all the real estate pete wouldn't sell. Jerry was involved with the plan and he wanted a bigger chunk of it. And so I guess his offer was like, I'll get the last piece of real estate and then I get a bigger chunk of the

deal or whatever. But then he bungled the job and accidentally killed Pete in so doing. Drawing attention to. Yeah. Right. And then made it look, this was a detail, like made it look like a robbery because like his his money clip was gone and stuff.

But like so like the cops bought it. Blackhorn didn't buy it. And so Blackhorn's goons killed Pete. Killed Jerry. I'm sorry. Yes. Killed Jerry. J-Spec. Killed J-Spec so that he wouldn't be a liability, I guess. Yeah. Was he like sign over the deed and that will count?

Like that will be the money? What you're saying makes more sense. Like. Yeah. You need $20,000 now. I'm offering you $20,000 for your property. He signs up the deed, gets the money, buys. Yeah.

The freedom. Yeah. I mean, it could be that even the whole uh kidnapping scheme might have been like jerry's way of getting the twenty thousand dollars right because right the guy was going to spend twenty thousand dollars to buy uh pete's house and uh pete wasn't going to sell so jerry does this whole scheme uh in which he can force Pete to sell because Pete needs the money. But then also Jerry can get that $20,000, right? Like he gets both ends.

He gets $20,000 for the kidnapping. And then he also gets the deed. Yeah. Which in the end wouldn't have worked anyway, because, because Pete had sold the deed to Houston. Yeah. But nobody knew that, which in its own way is kind of like, that could have been a fun plot.

Right. But nobody knew that, which in its own way is kind of like that could have been a fun plot. Right. If they don't kill Pete and he's like, well, you have Houston and she has the deed. Right. So I can't sell it to you. Right. But they don't have Houston because they didn't actually kidnap her. Right. But that's a different, that's a different episode.

Yeah. The point of it is. All that grief for money. You know, granddad didn't care much for money oh he liked making it he liked spending it but he didn't really care about it he's a good man finest i ever knew houston offers rocky some more sweet potato pie but then before giving it to him, she puts down her utensils and just walks out of the kitchen. Yeah, it's the final bit. So Rocky's like, what did I say?

And Jim's like, just hang out. Yeah. Jim gives her a beat and then follows. And we see from, you know, we follow him to see through a crack of a door. Everything's finally overcome her. She's on her bed, sobbing into her hands and he has a very sympathetic look on his face as he quietly closes the door and leaves her to her thing and we fade out we see him do that fade out over seeing jim as we hear houston's sobs as all of the accumulated emotion she finally allows herself

to to feel a rare melancholy ending to a Rockford Files episode and that's where we find Houston yeah it reminded me of just because one of the few melancholy endings of um beating frenzy where charlie uh is gonna have all his all of the money taken by the irs or whatever yeah and we end with him like screaming like on the dock or something the melancholy endings are are memorable my overall impression of the episode well i mean we said this going into it this is an episode that you kind of want to let it wash over you. Lots of wonderful juicy moments, good interaction with the characters

that wonderful cerebral chase but if you think too hard about it while you're watching it you might fall into the trap that we fell into you just get confused by what's happening and follow the wrong leads. I wonder how much we've poisoned ourselves with our close watches of the show.

Never watch a show like you have a podcast to record. in order to pick up on like the nuances and appreciate the details over to expecting that every single detail is going to be a nuance when it's not necessarily like and it doesn't have to be yeah like the show doesn't have to be a precision machine right that's not the contract that's not the contract and in fact in an episode like this it may not be the episode's fault that we're like this. Yes. This is the way we're broken. Yeah. The memorable part of the episode to me is the Houston character. I think I said, possibly before we started recording, it feels a little bit like this is two episodes that got jammed together in a way.

Like there's some elements that I feel like could have been more fully explored with a different story. Like the whole, as you say, gaslighting of Rockford with the fake. Yeah, it's elaborate. Super elaborate. Doesn't really seem to have much of a payoff. And in the end, isn't actually that important other than giving us a good deal moment. So, you know, I guess that's nothing to complain about.

Yeah. Part of it is that, you know, I guess that's nothing to complain about. Yeah. Part of it is that, you know, we're watching a show called The Rockford Files. So I'm thinking this was done to frame Rockford. Right, exactly. But it's not. It's done to convince... The cops or whoever. Yeah, that she's been kidnapped.

Yeah. And in fact, those goons, the ones ones that are like he's being taken care like it is entirely possible that only jerry knows about the faking of the house right right yeah um that that's all he's doing so when the goons are like don't worry about rockford he's going to be taken care of or whatever that's them talking about oh stop him and just beat him up yeah yeah right it's just the thing where it's like part of the mystery isn't known i guess that's how mysteries work it worked like a mystery well that's the thing though like there's that mystery and that's a big mystery but that mystery

is completely immaterial to yeah the rest of the episode like it feels like here's a cool set piece that i want to put in something but the rest of the something didn't really need that set piece. So it feels a little weird. Like you kind of completely forgot about it by the time the end of the episode rolled around. It's, it's like somebody repainted their front door in enamel paint and they thought this is a day later and it's still tacky.

Hmm. That's a clue. Maybe I could put that in. Right. A Rockford files or a Columbo or a Mannix. Yeah, absolutely. But it was a fun episode. Like I said, it is.

Yeah. It's probably more fun to just put on than to do what we've done. There was one other thing I wanted to mention, which is about Lane Bradbury, who plays Houston, checking out her thing, as I like to do. So first of all, she was married to Lou Antonio, who we have talked about before because he has directed some Rockford Files episodes. I believe he directed the last one we recorded, the one with Gabby, even though he's not called Gabby in that episode. We always go, oh, that guy, because his picture on imdb is the half and half black and

white alien because he played he's also an actor and he played one of those anyway so that was just like oh there's a fun little little trivia but also more relevant to this so she wrote and was in a 2010 documentary called from the midst of pain So it's a documentary which explores the healing effects of creativity within the lives of abused women and at-risk teens. Oh, wow. And the description talks about how she was abused by her mother as a child. Oh, wow.

And getting into acting was like a therapeutic course for her life. And so this documentary is intercutting, I guess, those experiences with the subjects of the documentary of people who are also experiencing abuse and using creative pursuits to kind of get through it.

This came out in 2010. I haven't seen it, obviously. I'm just going off of the IMDb description stuff. But this seems relevant to me just because her portrayal of this character as someone who's so actively controlling her emotions and how that came across as very memorable and specific to me. I feel like there may be a through line to her personal experience of how she was bringing that to the screen in this instance. It kind of seems to make sense to me. So shout out to Lane Bradbury and her turning her experiences into something better, I hope. Yeah.

Not to be a downer, just... Yeah, we can end it on the same kind of downer the episode ended. To be clear, her character here isn't really a downer. Her character here isn't bringing those experiences to the role necessarily. It's more about the like... I mean, it's about grief. Yeah. And the episode is not really a sad episode except at the end. But it's not sad. It is melancholy.

Yeah. Which is nice because oftentimes we get used to murder because that is the medium through which these shows are like rockford files doesn't always have a murder but they happen often enough and we don't get the real stories behind murders right right yeah a lot of sadness right like and this is this is uh i think a pretty good good shot at that and like these shows often make it easy for you to just say oh oh that guy got murdered okay so who's responsible for that what what mechanism does that yeah trigger in the narrative um so yeah i think it in that way it's a very interesting episode and worth looking into i, yeah, it is more successful on the character emotional level

than on the, I don't know, the story itself is a little muddled and kind of distracted from itself to me. But, you know, again, a not super successful Rockford Files episode is still a perfectly fun watch. So yeah, it's good TV. It's still good TV.

And the dialogue's good. The character stuff is all really good. You know, let it wash over you. And then maybe there's a little bit of a a little bit of like a huh at the end. We're like, oh, OK. Yeah, that tugs at my heartstrings a little bit. Perhaps with that,

we have covered our thoughts on Where's Houston. Thanks again for joining us on our exploration. We are swiftly coming to the end of season two. So for one of the very few times we can tell you which episode we will be doing next, we'll be back next time with season two, episode 17, Joey Blue Eyes. This is the one with James Luisi not as Chapman. This is the one with James Luisi not as Chapman. This is the one where he's the bad guy. Oh.