Two Hundred A Day - Episode 9: Gearjammers (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 16, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S2E4 Gearjammers, Part 2. Jim's car has exploded, Rocky is still being targeted for death and just why were those trucks hijacked anyway? It's a race against time for Jim and Dennis to figure out the mystery that started last episode and save Rocky's hide. This is the second in a two-parter, see our last episode (#8) for our discussion and analysis of Gearjammers, Part 1. Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the dining audio and more you know audio clips Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Pluto Moved On Podcasts and Video Lets Plays Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars And thank you to Shane Liebling! Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Hey Jimmy, it's Angel. Don't pay no attention to my other message. You're out of it. You're clean. No trouble at all. Just ignore the first message. Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. Which lovely episode of The Rockford Files are we talking about this time, Epi? Today we have Gear Jammers Part 2, a follow-up to our previous Gear Jammers Part 1, because it would have been very cruel of us to just do half of a two-part episode. Yeah, even though that one definitely had a lot of cool stuff in it, as we discussed, the plot, if nothing else, extends through this Part 2, so we are going to tackle that today. Other than addressing how this

episode treats its own recap, we're not really going to do too much recapping of the first episode. You can hear that in our previous episode of the show. But I am glad that you are interested in how this episode treats its recap because I am interested in how this episode treats its recap. It's kind of interesting. It is, yeah, and we'll get into that directly. But I just want to point out that I believe the whole thing was conceived as one two-part story, right? So it has the same story team of Huggins and Connell, the series creators, the same script writer, and the same director, William Ward. So it really is one extended story just cut into two episodes for publication of the show.

That's interesting to me because, I mean, obviously the plot follows through, but it definitely feels different, this second part to me. I don't know how it is for you, but... A little bit. We'll get into it. But I think a lot of that is because this episode is really much more about the plot yeah the events that are going on while the first episode was very much about the relationship between jim rockford and his father rocky yeah and rocky's kind of secret life almost takes up a lot of that episode so they're almost two different genres. Like one's kind of a character story.

Right. And then the second half is the mystery. But as with all Rockford episodes, we do have a preview montage, which doesn't do any recapping. It really is a preview. Yeah. One of the nice things about it

is that they end the preview montage on what would logically follow directly from what happened at the end of the previous episode. So the whole thing ends with what is the first scene of the new episode. But before we get to that, we have to do the review, the previously on. Right. And so for this episode, they have James Garner do a little voiceover introduction where he says, I'm James Garner, and here's what happened on part one of Gear Jammers. And then we get, because I timed it, a seven and a half minute scene by scene

montage of the highlights of the first episode. I don't want to accuse you of not doing his voiceover justice, but it's a little more pedantic than that. These scenes are scenes from... Yeah. It's as if he's describing, not to the audience, but to the network executives, what they're about to witness. It's very workmanlike.

So I don't know how things were with shows like this at the time, if it was uncommon to have a two-part episode like this, because... I feel like it is it seems like a lot of very on the nose explanation about what you're watching yeah in case you didn't see the first one where modern audiences i think not only are we used to longer story arcs that occur over multiple episodes so we're kind of used to coming in in the middle of something yeah if there is a recap it's usually just like, bam, bam, bam, highlights. Here's the story beat you need to know into

the new thing. This is a full television segment, like between two commercials worth of TV. It's before the opening credits. We're used to just somebody from the show just saying three words. Previously on show title. And that's it. And this

one, he's like, laying it out for you. This is going to be a little different. Just hold on. We're about to watch some scenes from the previous one. I do really appreciate getting to see these scenes over again, though. One thing that I caught this time around is the scene where Rocky finally catches up to LaSalvo. He's trying to sell him the OODA ball tickets. And LaSalvo has already purchased his from someone else.

And through their dialogue, it is revealed to LaSalvo that Rocky witnessed him talking to the big bad of the show, right? And I really enjoyed watching how that actor goes through the paces of what his character is thinking at that time. I don't know. I should have looked up who the actor was, but he's at first happy to see Rocky. He's laughing about the mix up about the OODA ball tickets. And then Rocky says, oh, I should have sold it to you earlier.

And he's like, what? And just you see it fall out of him. And it's so good. It's so good. So that's a character actor by the name of Ted Gearing playing Johnny LoSalvo. His face, just like how he smiles, then his face just falls when Rocky says, oh, I saw you talking to some fancy dressed man. Yeah.

And you had all these papers and his face just crumples. And that's when you know that Rocky saw something that he shouldn't have. In a way that was earlier communicated by the the camera is communicated in that moment by the actor's face. Yeah. I mean, it's great in terms of giving you the beats of the narrative. Rocky sees a payoff of some kind.

Jim gets beat up by goons looking for Rocky. Yeah. Cause they know that he saw it. They take the time to do the whole egg bit again. Yes, the whole $30 of steak. Yes. The whole breaking his 99 cents for a dozen eggs. This is a scene that between the two of us, this intertwines our two obsessions about Rockford.

And it's as if decades ago, the creators were like, they're going to want to appreciate this once more. They left that in for us. Yeah. And in addition, the segment of the car chase we see includes the J-turn. Yes. Which is like the signature moment there. We see Johnny Lasalvo wants out of whatever this deal is. Then we see that he's been killed.

And then we see Rocky hitting Jim with the frying pan when he thinks he's an intruder. And then waking him up with the water. We get a quick bit at the police station showing that a bunch of trucks were hijacked uh and then we see the whole pretty much the whole sequence of the uh goon casual right bad guy from the last episode wiring up rockford's car with explosives the whole let's go get dinner lobster is a real lobster place around the corner, etc. conversation. And then the car explodes. And this is the most interestingly constructed bit here, right? So this whole preview thing, it's just the scenes from the earlier one, but they're not really like cut.

You can kind of see the padding on either end that are in the first episode. It's just the scene as it was in the first episode. Yeah, just laid there. Which is kind of why it's so long. You know, this could have been four minutes probably just by trimming out camera shots showing people walking where there's no dialogue. It's not tight. It's not a tight edit. But then at the end, we see the car explode.

Then there's the credit Gear Jammers part two. And then the scene just plays from there. Like the camera shot stays pretty much where it is and we start this episode that's a cool transition that's a very like and now we're watching the right you know the rest of the story unfold yeah like you said before like this is probably fairly early on in how television deals with previously on i feel like if it were a fast cut given to the audience that it had it'd be a little weird and out of place. It would seem avant-garde. It would be out of the style that the show is shot in.

Yeah, yeah. I don't want to be all kids these days, but, you know, it's before MTV. Like, before music videos do all these fast cuts and changed how we do movies and things like that. I feel like our filming style has changed a lot, and it makes sense to just go, it would have made sense to go the way that the Rockford Files did there. It just looks different to our modern eyes. They're not depending on people to remember the last episode. They didn't have a podcast to recap it for them. Right. Also, it was broadcast broadcast so who knows if they even saw the last episode clearly it's a different era of television but it's just interesting to me because it is really long yeah yeah it is that said we start this episode uh right on the heels of the car

exploding rocky got a scratch on his head so he's kind of bleeding from his hairline they're both freaked out jim in kind of a very i told you so moment look rocky somebody's trying to kill you can't you get that through your head because rocky keeps on being like what is why are they doing this what is happening yeah he he brushes off help he doesn't want help he might be in a little bit of shock is what it seems like to me but they're right outside the police station so jim gets him back inside the police doctor who's on staff or call or whatever hustles him away to to take care of his head and we have this great argument between jim and dennis about what to do right off the bat you can tell

that dennis i mean dennis is worried but he's also he's worried about the condition of his friend jim and there's this thing where he's like let's get get a cup of coffee. And then he puts his hand on the back of Jim's neck. Did you, did you catch this? The physicality of it? It's tender, right? Like it's this like gruff tenderness type thing. Like let's go and get you a cup of coffee, but I would never grab another friend by the back of the neck. It's a very kind of like masculine yeah way of offering comfort yeah it's not a hug it's not like right a pat on the arm well my thing with with the coffee is that dennis is trying to be the voice of reason here right and he's like look we'll figure something

out you know i'm worried about him too we can't do anything immediately we'll run it through the lab we have a good lab you know that kind of stuff and jim kind of keeps poking him like, well, you have to do something. You have to do something right now. And so Becker is trying to be the voice of reason. But then he pours the coffee. But then when he can't find the sugar, that's when he breaks. Where he's like, why is there no sugar? Because he needs sugar in his coffee.

God damn it. It's so good because both of these guys care a lot about Rocky. It's important to both of them. And they're also, or at least Dennis's job is to try and keep Jim calm. And he just kind of, he breaks. Like he just has this moment where he can't, and I love it. It's a very relatable moment because I don't know about you, but I feel like that is certainly a thing that happens where you're trying to keep it together for a certain person or on a certain topic. And then something comes at you out of left field.

And that's what makes you snap, even if it's really ridiculous or has nothing to do with what's going on or is minor. It's just very human. If you haven't seen the first episode, this is giving you all the like someone's trying to kill Rocky. Jim and Dennis are very upset about this yeah but they don't really have any information about it because those are kind of the core tensions for the first part of the episode they're both upset and helpless right and that's the the combination that's going on there rocky he comes back he heard them yelling everyone in the whole police station could hear them yelling apparently which just kind of heightens the whole thing but

becker and rockford agree that rocky shouldn't go home right because he's still in danger but they also say that they don't want to use him as bait right it's too dangerous so he's going to go home with uh jim while the police do their thing there's a fun little struggle going on here that plays out through a lot of this episode which is the the fact that rocky is Jim's dad. So he's used to being the adult in these situations, but he's out of his element and he has to let Jim, he has to let Becker be the adults. And he doesn't want to do that.

Partly because he doesn't want to face the fact that somebody's trying to kill him. He has still has trouble facing kind of been denial about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a scene later on that really highlights that struggle for him. So when we get there, I think I'll have a little more to say about that. But in this, you definitely see Becker and Rockford going back and forth,

but then kind of like at the very end of the scene, kind of apologizing to each other and both understanding how difficult it is because they're both in the same boat. Yeah. While Rocky's still kind of like, I don't need anyone to take care of me. And they're like, yes, you do. They can agree on that. So we cut to Jim's trailer the next morning. Rocky has been up all night.

He's been doing some detectoring work himself. So plot wise, six trailers from the Pacific and Western shipping company. So six. Tractor trailers, yeah. Yes, tractor trailers were hijacked. And this is the company that DeSalvo, the guy who got murdered, worked for. And Rocky kind of knew him professionally and also as a friend. So he's been going through what those six trucks had to try and figure out the motive behind this hijacking.

And so we have a classic back and forth between him and Jim where Rocky is jumping to conclusions and he's kind of proud of himself for figuring this out. And Jim is doing his best not to be mean in pointing out how not correct those conclusions are. There's this great exchange where Rocky says something about maybe he could be a detective or something like that. And Jim... Oh, he says like, this isn't so hard. Something like that.

And Jim says, that's a disreputable occupation. And Rocky, I'd love to hear your interpretation. But his response is, that's what I've been telling you. It's as if he's oblivious to the sarcasm in Jim's voice. But maybe he's just playing along with Jim. I don't know. I read it as him just being oblivious to it. I read him as being

oblivious, too. I think this whole sequence is kind of pointing out how this isn't a thing that he thinks about, right? His brain doesn't work the way that Jim's does. Because he's taking things that are in these trailers. There's some weapons, apparently. There's some jackhammers.

Dynamite. Dynamite. Dynamite, some other stuff. And so he's trying to put together a picture of why would someone steal all of these items? Oh, they must have some kind of big thing going on. They could be trying to break into something. It could be a big operation. They might even be knocking over Fort Knox. And Jim kind of is playing along a little bit.

In any other situation, he'd probably just be giving Rocky crap for just being wrong. But because I think he still feels scared for him, he's kind of humoring him. Right. There's also a little bit here, maybe I'm reading my own psychoses into things, but there's also a little bit here where Rocky is not giving Jim's profession the respect it deserves, right? There's that feeling that Rocky thinks, well, anyone can do this detective work. You just have to think about it and you're good. And I feel like that's getting under Jim's skin a little bit. This is what he does for a living.

He knows how to deal with this stuff. It's an actual profession. You can't just step into it and be good at it right away yeah so he points out how like there's these things that rocky is seeing but it doesn't make sense to just steal them like sure you can steal a bunch of dynamite but if you don't have blasting caps they don't do you very much good you can steal a bunch of jackhammers but if you don't have generators and hoses and bits, they're not much good. So to the audience, he's kind of showing us that he knows how to think about this kind of stuff. And it doesn't add up.

This random assortment of cargo doesn't seem to have anything to do with each other, nor is it particularly valuable to resale. Right. Especially if it's stolen and is being reported stolen because the trucking company knew it was stolen within 20 minutes of it disappearing. Jim also knows that for these operations, because Jim knows about criminal operations, you usually have a buyer lined up right away. They go a little bit more into details about how this kind of thing could work. work the upshot is that since the the hijackers had to know that it would be a very short time between when the hijackings happened and when the authorities would know about it jim says it'd be like 20 minutes because of yeah how often drivers check in and how far they drive and stuff like that but it's been days and they still haven't found the six trucks so how do you get six trucks

out of that small area without them being seen yeah he kind of ends the conversation by calling the station to get an update about whether they found anything so that's kind of the mystery that that we have right now is not only why were they hijacked because it's not clear it's not like they were carrying something valuable for its own sake but where did they go? During the scene also, Jim is making scrambled eggs. Yes. Or he's making eggs for breakfast, asks Rocky how he likes them. And Rocky doesn't like them up or over.

He likes them scrambled. To which Jim gives kind of a face, which is kind of funny. It's like, Jim doesn't like his eggs scrambled. He'd prefer them up or over, I imagine. This is my other theory as to why they have the egg scene in the previously on montage. That we understand how rare this scrambled egg breakfast is. How many eggs could have survived that fall? And he's using the last of his eggs on comforting his dad.

But he goes ahead and cooks them up. He serves Rocky while he's still talking. And then he does give himself a plate of eggs. But we do not see him eat them. We end the scene before we actually get to see the rare view of Jim Rockford eating any food on camera. There's something else I want to kind of comment on here. As Rocky is going through the list of things, he mentions a bunch of stuff that he can't fit into his theory. Rocky says, well, that's the exception that proves the rule.

And Jim says, well, I've never known what that meant or whatever. So I think that this is a perfect opportunity for one of our classic 200-a-day PSAs where we explain what the exception that proves the rule means. Okay, go on ahead. The classic example of this is if you see a sign that says free parking on Sunday, that is the exception. It would imply that on days that aren't Sunday, you would have to pay for parking. So that is the rule that that exception proves. So Rocky is absolutely wrong.

That is not what the load of grapefruit is. Not at all. The exception that proves the rule is one of these things that in the world of game design is often frustrating to me. If thieves get the ability to backstab, then that's the exception that proves the rule that's never stated that nobody else can backstab, right? Right. Like you've got a special power. We do that all the time accidentally in game design. And I think it's an important thing to know about. So that's classic 200 a day public service announcement. Well, thank you very much for for providing that valuable service for all of us.

Well, from here, we go to Jim poking around another shipping yard as he is trying to figure out where these trucks could have gone. He uses his name, Jim Rockford, but he is posing as a official from the Pacific and Western Company, which is the one whose trucks were stolen. So he talks to a yard boss here, Mr. Koenig, who seems like another of our, like, I bet he has an interesting story to tell. Too bad we only see him for about 30 seconds kind of guy. Rockford has this spiel about how he has an informant about some disappearing cargo, and he wants to, he's following up on it, and he doesn't have all the information, because the informant was not specific.

He just needs to know if there was a shipment like lately or scheduled for the day. This is where we get the first use of the term bills of lading, which come back later, but it's just a thing used in shipping. It's what shows what's on the truck essentially, or a way bill is I think what they actually say here, but it becomes relevant later on. It's a way of confirming what's being shipped and what has been received so that you can tell if anything's gone missing in transit. It's one of the many checks that they put in place. Mr. Koenig does not have any record of a PNW shipment out from their yard anytime recently. The last one was three days ago. This throws Jim for a bit of a loop. He expected there to be

something else. But as they're walking away, Mr. Kanig does ask him, what do you want to do with this partial shipment that we have? And that's when we finally get a break in what's going on, as there's this unspecified partial shipment that is waiting for, theoretically, waiting for some additional information before it can be dispatched. And sure enough, there are six, they call them vans, so the actual container part that's on wheels. This will be relevant throughout the episode.

There's the cab, which is the actual part that the driver sits in and has the engine, and that hooks onto the van, which is the shipping container part. You probably have seen trucks driving around on the highways, so those are the two parts. So when we say cab or van, that's what we're referring to. Yeah. So there's these six vans and Rockford's like, oh, well, and here are all the numbers that we are looking for of the stolen vans. It would be a very Rockford move to just read off information that is right there in front of him as if he knew it. Sure enough, those are the ones. Yep, that's it. So he says, I'm pretty sure these are empty, but they still have the seals on them because

there's a little sealing device that goes around the lock. So you know if the lock has been opened or not, right? Mr. Koenig's like, hey, I am not authorized to do this. And Rockford just bowls ahead and does it anyway. Again, it's a very Rockford moment. We are witness here to the unstoppable power of the Rockford smile. He breaks the seal, but then he pulls out his lock pick set to pick the lock on the truck. Because of course, somebody in his official position would be using a lock pick set

and not the actual keys. We keep going back to this yard boss who looks worried about it and voices some concerns. And Rockford's response to it is just a smile. It's great. Yeah, it's another entry in Rockford rule to live by. If you act like you have the authority, other people will be like, OK, fine. Well, if you have the authority, it's on your head, even if you are not actually responsible. So nevertheless nevertheless he breaks the seal he picks the lock on this truck opens it up but sure enough it is not empty it is full

of the arms cargo going to the u.s army that this particular one was holding rockford looks stumped again he was legitimately expecting these to be empty because why would you steal these things except to take the cargo out cargo still in them we then have a nice beat where so instead of watching rockford call dennis we see dennis receive rockford's call acknowledge that he found this cargo and that they're going to set up a stakeout to see who comes to try and drive these trucks away or take the cargo out or whatever the next step would be dennis Dennis is very shouty on the phone, which is probably necessary in a crowded police station. But I love that when he's off the phone, he then shouts for someone else, just yelling. We go back to Jim's trailer where Rocky

is still there. There's police protection outside, a couple of quote unquote head crushers in a car keeping an eye on the place. And this is where we get this really interesting argument between Jim and his dad about responsibility and who cares for who more. Right. This scene is worth watching and then watching again. I think it's filled with some great lines. Tinker's dam, which is something that Rocky said that i've never heard in my life but uh i think i'm going to take up now but also i love what they did with the tone in this scene i'm pretty sure last episode i talked a little bit in the car chase about shifting tones and whatnot but they're arguing and they're escalating and it gets to this point where there's nowhere else to go. And then Jim plays his ace card and he just quietly says, please. He just pleads with his dad and like it just takes all of it out of the air.

And you can see Rocky just completely changed. He's getting all worked up about scolding his kid. And then he realizes that he's actually scaring Jim. He's putting Jim in a very, very vulnerable spot. Yeah. So this whole argument, it's like a real argument where it's not really about what it's about, but what they're arguing about is whether Rocky is going to go home or stay in Jim's trailer. But what they're really arguing about is this feeling of being scared for someone that you really care about. Right.

And what you can do to protect them. Rocky's coming from this position of, how do you think I feel every time you tell me about a time you got beat up or about a thing that you're going to do that's going to put you into danger? And Jim's saying, yeah, but that's my job. I know how to handle that. Yeah. You don't need to worry about me because I'm a professional, but I need to worry about you because you're in danger and I know how to handle that yeah you don't need to worry about me because i'm a professional but i need to worry about you because you're in danger and i know how to take care of you

and rocky i think really just wants jim to understand that how jim is feeling right now is how rocky feels all the time yeah that's kind of the the subtext there that explains the escalation about how they're both getting so mad about this. Yeah. Why don't you understand how scared I am about you? What's kind of important about this subtext is that it also explains why Rocky is being so stubborn about this. It would be really easy just to say, no, Rocky's character just wants to go home. It's important to the story to put him in danger, right? So we're just going to make it so that Rocky's just wants to go home. It's important to the story to put him in danger, right? So we're just going to make it so that Rocky's character wants to go home. But what's going on here is that it's built into this argument, built into this

misconnect that they have about who can handle themselves and how it makes the other person feel when they're in that kind of danger. It just does this sort of double duty bit here where it both explains the characters to us, but also gets us to where we need to be but he doesn't he doesn't go home does he no he's he he agrees to to stay because when jim says please rocky's heart kind of melts right i can't say no to my son you know there's great facial expressions great body language and uh that please kind of lets him back down. And that's where he really realizes that, like, Jim is not messing around. Yeah.

That it really is this important. It's not just him being stubborn. It's not just them both trying to show who's more macho. That he's really worried about him. And despite it being, like, the quietest syllable in the conversation, it is the loudest moment in the conversation. If you were watching it and you were kind of checking out because you're like, oh, they're arguing. When the please hits, you're going to go, wait, what did I miss? Yeah, it's really the emotional core of the episode in this scene for sure.

So Rocky agrees to stay in the trailer and we go to the stakeout of these trucks, these six vans. For more coffee antics. Yeah, this is a great little callback. There's another, a plainclothes cop, Dennis Becker and Jim Rockford, hanging out in this very poorly concealed empty trailer across the parking lot. The cop asks if Becker wants coffee.

He says yes. How do you like it? Cream and sugar. We're out of cream. Why did you ask then? Just put in the sugar. And then he goes to unscrew the thermos and oh, no, we're out of coffee why did you ask then just put in the sugar and then he goes on screw the thermos and oh no we're out of coffee i feel for this guy so much because i mean imagine becker being your boss yeah he's always annoyed yeah you want to please him but it's not humanly

possible i just really appreciate how there's a callback to him wanting sugar in his coffee and not being able to get it first time because there was no sugar at this time because there's no coffee but it's established through here that the stakeout has been happening for a couple days there's been no activity as they're talking about how they're gonna have to pack it up because without evidence they can't just indefinitely put manpower on this stuff including indefinitely give police protection to rocky yes which comes up again later but while they're giving us that information through the dialogue, a car arrives and pulls up in front of the six vans. I did not recognize this model visually, but as we learn from the call-in to check the plates, it is a Rolls Royce.

So this Rolls Royce shows up in a... Shipping yard. Yeah. The plainclothes cop goes out to talk to him. The car is registered to Pacific and Western, and it is in fact the president of Pacific and Western who, while he understands that there is an ongoing investigation, he has customers who paid money for what's in those containers and who would like them back. And so Dennis is like, well, tell them, OK, we can't keep them much longer anyway. We get an interesting narrative moment where that's the last lead and now we've run out of the ability to follow it up right jim does point out right at the end of this scene that this shipping yard or any shipping yard i guess is a good place to hide full trucks of stuff but

a really bad place to move them out of or get them out of yeah because of all this paperwork one imagines which is another bit of foreshadowing. Did you recognize the Rolls Royce? No, but it's a villain's vehicle. Oh, yeah. No good guy drives that. So we seem to be at a dead end with this investigation. Jim goes back to his trailer, but the doors open and Rocky is not there. Yeah.

As he's panicked and running around, we hear gunshots. He's calling the police, right? Yeah. When he hears the gunshot, he's trying to get a around, we hear gunshots. He's calling the police, right? Yeah. When he hears the gunshot, he's trying to get a hold of Becker. Yeah. And he just grabs his gun and drops the phone. Yeah, grabs his gun, runs out of the trailer, sprints up the hill behind his trailer. Oh, my God.

I was winded watching this. This is a 45 or steeper, 45 degrees or steeper incline. This is not like a little hill that he's rolling over. This is climbing the side of a mountain and we'll mark again that uh james garner did all of his own stunts for the most part so this is him running up this incline in suit jacket gun in hand uh he hears more shots runs past a car that's parked on a little area up there and then runs up another hill until he sees rocky who is taking shelter behind trees and trying to run. Then we get a little action sequence of him sighting the two goons who are chasing Rocky.

We recognize them from the first episode. And if you were paying attention in the opening scenes, you might recognize them. Yeah, that guy's mustache is recognizable from a mile away. That's true. We recognize the mustache for sure. They're taking pot shots at Rocky. Jim manages to wing one of them in the shoulder. The main goon, the guy who blew up his car, in fact. The guy who planted the dynamite in his car is the one that he shoots in the shoulder.

In my notes, I just write down, holy sh**, James shot one. I mean, we've discussed this before. It's kind of rare when he pulls the gun out to begin with. It's even more rare when he literally pulls the trigger. And yeah, I was a little stunned. I don't recall him having done this before. Yeah, we'd have to go back to find if this is the first time in the series that he actually shoots someone and they are injured from it. He shoots at people and they usually run away or drop their gun.

This is definitely a 200 a day first for seeing him actually shoot someone else. His dad is being shot at. I feel like I do a lot of explaining to try and get desensitized modern audiences to realize that this is a big deal. He shot someone. So once he shoots the one guy, they run. They stumble back down the hill themselves, get back in the car and tear off. He recovers Rocky, who is uninjured, though his knees are about to give out. They're both obviously feeling the effects of this sudden sprint. Rocky in particular not being a spring chicken has to sit down.

Narratively, it's kind of interesting because as far as we know, there's no action on thisacking we're at a dead end with that but these guys are still after rocky they're still trying to kill rocky so we know there's still something going on yeah we go back to mr hamill's boat uh hamill is the guy that we saw uh lasalvo getting paid off by or exchanging papers or whatever in our in our flashback little montage So we know he's the bad guy. This has been established. He lives on a boat. That helps. The guy who got shot is there getting wrapped up by a mob doctor or something like that.

The bad guy equivalent of the doctor that wrapped up Rocky. Yeah. We finally get these two gorillas' names. Ronnie is the one who got shot and John is the one with the mustache. Yeah. So Ronnie's out of the picture now. Like he got shot. He's not going to be going around.

John has until sun up to finish the job or Hamill is going to put the word out on him. Yeah. Which is bad. They have a little discussion about how he's going to do it. And he's like, I hear Freddie Gates is back in town. And Hamill's like, he's a junkie. Oh, he's sober now. I Freddy Gates is back in town. And Hamill's like, he's a junkie. Oh, he's sober now. I'll get someone who's sober.

I really dig these sorts of scenes where you see the struggle that the bad guys go through to complete their side of the plan. Right? Like, it's not all a well-oiled machine on their part. So, you can see. First of all, you can see how Hamill has. Good help is hard to find. He can't get these guys. And you can see how John is like, oh my God,

my job is on the line. I got to kill an old man. Like, how do I kill him? Why is this so hard? It's taking so much work. Yes. Just to see those kinds of pressures and troubles, and they're almost akin to the same ones that Jim has. Yeah, I know. It's a good little scene, and there's a great bad guy line. John says, like, I'll do it. You can bet on it. And Hamill comes back with,

I'm not betting on it, John. You are. Yeah. It's a great villain line. I just want to add a little bit to John's backstory here. There's this, in the previously seen section at the beginning, right, we get the egg scene. I keep referring to the egg scene.

Yeah, he's the one who pulls the egg out of Rockford's arms. So when they first confront Rockford, they ask if he knows Rocky. And Jim says, what, is he behind on the payment? It's hard to see because John's the guy with the big bushy mustache.

But when you watch this, he gives a smile to that line. I like to think that this is a moment in John's day where he's like, I like this guy. I'm going to break his eggs, but that's just because it's my job. Yeah. One thing I like about my job is the people you get to meet. Right. Oh, man.

Well, spoiler alert, John's day does not get much better from here. No, it does not. So we head back to the police station where, again, Rockford, irate about how much danger his dad is in. He's going back to Becker. And here we get Rockford running into institutional barriers. While Becker is sympathetic to what's going on, he doesn't have the manpower to put another protection detail on Rocky. He says go to the lieutenant, who's not Lieutenant Deal. It's a different lieutenant. I didn't note his name, who of course doesn't like Rockford because no police

lieutenants like Rockford. Rockford doesn't want to escalate to that. But Becker does say, well, one thing I can do is book Rocky as a material witness. Yeah. Put him in police protection in a jail cell. Rocky's all for it. Rocky loves this idea. Just kidding. He is independent minded man. He refuses to be locked up, especially when he hasn't done anything. Right. Kicks and screams until Jim is like, well, you're just gonna have to stick with me while I continue figuring out what's going on. I read a little bit into that because, you know, Jim's done time.

Jim's been in prison. It's not stated, but there's a little bit of like i've never i haven't done anything wrong i should never go i should not go to prison that's not where i belong like just like uh i was expecting a line from rocky that would offend jim because jim is an ex-con but yeah that line doesn't come so that's good but it just i still feel like there's a little bit of that there yeah there's a little bit of that there. Yeah, there's a little bit of, unlike my son here, I do not want to go to prison. Food's good. Apparently.

Yeah. While there's still this investigation that needs to happen, they do have a little pit stop on the way for Jim to talk to his insurance guy. Willie Thompson. This is, I would argue, the single greatest scene in all of the Rockford files. I have seen this episode before, not recently. Completely forgot that this scene existed and was so delighted by its existence. My notes say, hot insurance code action.

Rockford literally quotes chapter and verse of the California insurance code off the top of his head in this scene. And it is delightful. This is Rockford and his insurance agent arguing over how much Rockford's insurance is going to cover on the car that was obliterated by the bomb at the very beginning of this episode. I'm all flustered. I love this scene so much. Willie, obviously, he's an insurance agent. He wants to pay as little as possible.

So he's trying to classify it as various things like The first one was a civil disturbance, I think. Yes, civil disturbance, which is like a riot. And Rockford starts completely, like you said, chapter and verse. Every parenthetical phrase in that code, he just rattles off the top of his head. And you, of course, get the impression that he's had to do this before with this guy. This is not a new fight for them. He wants to give it collision, I think is what he does. And Rockford has a deductible for that.

He doesn't want to pay the deductible. Right, because if it's under comprehensive, then it's just the value of the car. There's no deductible. $1,500. He says that it was a bomb. So this guy goes, oh, oh, it's a mob warfare. This is an act of war. Okay, good. And's a mob warfare. This is an act of war.

Okay, good. And it's like, it's not an act of war. So they finally have this argument, which Rockford wins with this amazing line. They're going back and forth with threats. And Willie says, I'll cancel your policy. And Rockford returns with, I'll cancel your butt. I waited my whole life to hear James Gardner yell, I'll cancel your butt. There's nothing in the world that will top that.

Maybe my wedding day was. But anyways, the point is. It's all downhill from here. Yeah, it is. This is it. It's like this whole argument is Jim just bullying him until he gives in. Yeah. So he gives in and then they start going back and forth about the price.

The insurance agent wants to do $1,400. Rockford says it's $1,500. Insurance agent says, okay, it's $1,500. Writes him a check and leaves. And then we get a closeup of the check. It is $1,487.50. It's not even the full amount. But the other bit that I wanted to point out here, I feel like this is another truism from the Rockford files that Willie gets to say here, where he says, when you're dealing with money, that's when a man's true colors really show. Oh, so good. It's a great, great day in the life kind of moment. But he does have in his hand a check for $1,487.50, which is the most solid amount of money we've seen for Rockford. So this whole time, they've been driving around in Rocky's pickup truck, right?

Because Jim's car is obviously non-existent for the duration of this episode. So now Rockford's driving Rocky. He says he's going to take him to lunch, which is very large of him, now that he has this check for $1,487.50 in his pocket. We kind of get back on track with the mystery of the episode. He asks Rocky to tell him again about how he knows LaSalvo and how LaSalvo was involved with the company, with Pacific and Western. Yet again, Rocky says that he just can't figure out how LaSalvo would be connected to this

hijacking because his job at the company, while he kind of did a little bit of everything, connected to this hijacking because his job at the company while he kind of did a little bit of everything didn't put him in the position to necessarily like know which cargoes were going into which trucks so it doesn't really make sense that he was involved right that's when rockford's like why'd you say he was involved he's like i didn't say he was involved you and dennis kept saying he was involved and i assumed because you're smart guys that you knew what you were talking about rockford asks is there any valuable cargo because none of that cargo that was stolen is actually that valuable but is there anything coming in soon like gold or something like that and it turns out that rocky does know because he moonlights at this company who's how he's he knows all these things

there's supposed to be a load of sable furs from russia like a whole shipload that's due to come in rockford drops the factoid that apparently a sable coat could go for as much as forty thousand dollars which given the previous argument he had that's a lot of money and that a ship loads worth is millions of dollars worth of cargo aha we have a potential endgame for whatever is going on. All right, and then we see the car of our goons pull off of the highway in hot pursuit. Rockford looks in the rear view just in time to see the new second goon, not John,

but whoever this other guy is, lean out the window with a shotgun, and the chase is on. So the last episode, we talked a lot about the car chases uh and the car chase in that episode in particular we like them a lot in this show yeah this one in particular is more of a test of driving skill than a strategic back and forth yeah right fairly straightforward one yeah rockford pulls into a train yard and so i thought he was going to go for something where it cuts them off by going in front of a moving train or something like that. But it's mostly just a setting for some, some nice cross country driving. Rocky's

pickup is this kind of like jacked up four by four. Like it's a huge. Yeah. Rocky's got an expensive pickup. It's a, it's a fun visual seeing him plowing across fields and stuff like that. There is a little bit of subtlety to the end of it, I think, where Rockford keeps over on the side of the road. The chase car starts to pull up alongside them so they can shoot at him like directly instead of shooting at them from behind. And that's when he takes a sharp right and he's on the inside curve and they're on the outside curve and they can't make the same corner and they end up running into a light pole boom chases over and this is when rocky is finally scared and not like angry scared but scared scared and i think or finally sinks in that it doesn't matter why these people are trying to kill him he also has this great line about it's going to be weeks

before he can get into traffic again. Yeah. The driving has terrified him that much. But he still doesn't know why. Yeah. So we have now had one in three quarters episodes where he doesn't know why they're trying to kill him. But he's willing to go into the cooler if it's going to keep this kind of thing from happening. He's finally seen the light of day, which is that he should not see the light of day. That he should go to prison for a little while. In addition to just the sheer volume of number of times someone has tried to kill him at this

point, I wonder if part of it is also like, and also this time was like in his car. Every other time has been in someone else's environment. They haven't tried to kill him at his house. It's been when he was at Jim's or in Jim's car. And this time was in his car. And I think maybe that could be part of it sinking in and being like, this is real. I think that's good. Yeah, yeah. in a moment of narrative convenience, but also it's crawling with cops and Dennis is there. So there's a nice beat where as audience, we're like, oh, they must've learned something. Rockford gets out and is like,

how did you learn about this first shipment? Becker says, well, how did you learn about it? But it turns out that actually the company informs the authorities of when they have really expensive cargos to keep them from getting ripped off. So this is actually just standard procedure. Yeah, they're just there. That's what they're supposed to do.

They're doing their job. Which is another layer of the mystery now, where it's like, so how does this all connect? From here we do get into the final piece of the action. But before we get into that, so far through this entire two-part narrative I still really don't know

where this is going. Right. What the goal of this crime was. And they haven't really, unless I've missed something, which is totally possible, I don't think they really telegraphed this at all, other than just giving you the pieces and let you think about them. Right. I don't know. Have I missed any mystery details? It's hard for me to tell, because I think by this point I've remembered what it was from when I previously watched it.

So I don't know when it was clear to me the first time around what was going to go down. I feel like throughout the episode you're with Rocky. You know a little bit more. So the one bit that the audience has put together that Rocky hasn't put together is that that Rocky saw Hamill, right? This is what everybody else needs to solve the puzzle is that Hamill was involved in the bills of lading. And Rocky doesn't know that that's what people need to know to solve the puzzle. And he doesn't know that that that he holds the key to it. So we know why people are trying to kill Rocky. It's not like we're in the dark about that bit,

but we still don't know what was so wrong. Yeah, we don't know what that payoff was about. So Rockford's like, look, everything seems to connect here. Do you mind if I just poke around, and maybe I'll have a genius idea that I haven't had yet, right? And Becker's like, just don't get in anyone's way. And that's fine. As long as Rocky stays with Becker, he'll be safe.

So, you know, he'll stay with me until we can get him into protective custody. But he does walk around with Rocky. They talk a little bit about paperwork under the guise of when you've been telling me how great it is to be a trucker. You never mentioned all this paperwork because they're seeing guys with paper and clipboards and signing stuff and what and whatnot and so this is where rocky kind of breaks down you know for the audience this thing about the bills of lading and how there's originals but there's lots of originals and copies aren't the same as originals and and they have a little run-in with you know a guy that knows Rocky who mentions this key detail. P&W moved up their pickup by four hours for these containers.

So the containers, which are labeled with a lovely CCCP logo on the side because they're the Russian furs from Russia. Anyway, they're all lined up and ready to be taken out of the yard. This guy is a rarity in the Rockford Files, which is the random passive buyer who gives you exactly the information you need and nothing else. Yeah.

I've been in role-playing games that have had that moment where, okay, we're so close, we just don't have it. Ah, here's the last bit. It's the, they turn on the radio and the news announcement has the piece of information they need of this episode.

It's not horrible. It just sticks out because it's a Rockford Files episode and you don't expect that. Though at least we do have the thing of there's a reason for him to talk to Rocky. But yeah, so P&W has moved their pickup ahead by four hours. And then when the trucks, the cabs, roll into the yard and then execute a very visually pleasing synchronized maneuver where they all turn and back into the things at the same time. As an audience member, that's when I'm like, oh.

And that's when Rockford then goes, oh, they weren't stealing the cargo. They were stealing the cabs. And that's how this all connects is they have these stolen cabs and these presumably non-PNW drivers, fake drivers, to take this cargo legally and then abscond with the furs. That's what's going to happen. So the first one is already out of the yard, almost out of the yard by the time Rockford puts this together. He starts yelling at Becker not to let him go. But it's too loud.

Becker can't read lips. And the guy actually checking the paperwork gives him the go ahead. So one of the trucks of furs is on its way out of the yard. Becker is polite enough to wave back to Jim. He's trying to get his attention. He's like, yeah, it's good. Rockford, of course, runs over to an empty P&W cab, jumps in and tears off in pursuit. He does stop at the little barrier.

Do you know where that cab came from? Becker's like, what? The same place I got this one. It was stolen. And that's when we see another cab go ripping around the other side of this little station. And it's Rocky who has stolen another one and lit out in hot pursuit of the stolen furs. One thing you don't impugn in Rocky's presence, that's truckers in the trucking industry. That is the sanctity of trucking. Yes. And so we get our final car chase of the

two-part episode, which is in fact a truck chase where both Rockford and Rocky are driving P&W branded cabs after this stolen load of furs, which is mostly Rocky behind the stolen truck, Rockford trying to come up on the other side and hitting a series of obstacles so that he can't actually get around on that side, but giving Rocky enough time to pull around on the driver's side and finally use his superior acceleration as he's not dragging a whole cab behind him

to pull around in front of the stolen truck and make it stop and abscond the villain. How did you feel about this chase? I enjoyed it. There is a little bit where the chase on its own makes sense. But in the context of the story, I kept thinking, what is Jim trying to do here? Yeah. His dad's in trouble.

The whole story is about how his dad is in trouble. But it could be that Rocky is great in a truck. So you just trust Rocky when he's in a truck. Let him do his thing. But I kept trying to interpret the various maneuvers as attempts to keep Rocky safe. And they obviously weren't. It didn't click in my head. But that was me putting my own narrative on what was happening in that chase i'm totally willing to buy that jim started off in pursuit just because he needed to be involved yeah and then was trying to guess what rocky would do and trying to help but right the physical situation was such that every time he tried to help he got knocked back

because there was a thing in the way that he had to drive around where he went through like a barrier and that slowed him down because it's not until he goes on the other side of the truck behind rocky that he then becomes useful because he helps he also can speed up and help block the thing so yeah i i agree that it's a little guesswork of like why he's doing what he's doing but i think the purpose of it the purpose of how it's constructed is to show that Rocky is a truck specialist. Yeah, yeah. He knows what he's doing. Follow his lead.

I think my favorite part is actually after it when he goes to get Rocky out of the cab and Rocky is just sitting there staring straight ahead, maybe a little afraid that he's going to get shot or something. I think he just it's he's probably in shock about what he just did. Right. Yeah. And I don't even remember what Jim's line is. Well, he has a great line, actually, where he opens it and he gives a big Rockford smile and says, come on, you old gear jammer. You nailed him.

That's right. Oh, so good. The relationship is healed, right? Yeah. Whatever else has happened, they've come out the other side in a positive place. Rockford, he just looks so proud. He's like proud of his dad in this moment, which is great. We need one last bit here, right?

Yeah, the story wraps up after this. We see the Rolls Royce trying to leave the yard. They stop him. And sure enough, the president of PNW is in fact this guy, Mr. Hamill. He's like, look, I'm the, you know, I'm the president. I'm, I'm leaving. So bye. And they're like, no, we need to get a statement from everyone about this, what's going on. And that's when Rocky recognizes him. He's like, Hey, that's who I saw talking to. Finally, the final connection is made. Uh, and then he kind of tells the little

story of seeing him in LaSalvo. The guy demands his lawyer. And we know that he is now on the path to getting his just reward as he's taken into a squad car by Becker's men. So that resolves there. And then we get a great little bit where Rockford puts together the story. So we all are on board with how it resolved and talks about how he respects the scam. How it's a good con. Rocky's like, how can you respect that kind of man? He's like, oh, I don't respect the man.

I respect the con. Yeah. Made everyone think that they were stealing the cargo. That was great. So that's a great little insight into Rockford. And then they talk a little bit about money. Before we go to the money. Yeah.

There's a moment in all of this where Rocky is recalling the day and he says that he was running late because he was with Violet. Yes. Or had a date with Violet or something. And they're like, who's Violet? Because she's one of my girlfriends. And I had to go back to my old notes. The one we met last episode is Mary Ramsey. Yeah. Who is not Violet. No. Or in this episode. Rocky's a dog. It's just great because, you know, nowadays that would just be a thing.

The internet would know about it and boom. But like when that show first aired, it was a week after the other show. One last little bit about how nobody will ever know how full Rocky's life is. Yeah, absolutely. But the money thing, this is important here. Rocky, he has sowed his detective oats. He feels that he's earned a portion of the fee. So they do a little debate back and forth where he insists that he should get 50% of it.

Jim is like, well, no, you've earned some of it, but I think it's more like 30, 70. He goes, no, 50%. He goes, okay, but less expenses. He's like, yeah, less expenses. And then we get into the cab and he goes, so how much do you think that's going to come to? And he's like, well, I didn't have a client, so zero for the fee, but it's about $200 in expenses. I'll take that hundred from you in cash or a check. Yeah.

Oh, it's so good. When he says split 50-50, I'm sitting there going, oh, no one's paying for this. Yeah, right. I love how Jim suckers him in. It's a little Jim con where he's like, he offers him the 30-70 to make him actually commit to this. Oh, no, I want it. I want a piece of this action. Knowing Rocky, they're never going to exchange that $100.

Let's be real. Yeah. That kind of laugh line is the the end of gear jammers so i can say with more certainty than i do most episodes what we've seen here is that he's out twelve dollars and fifty cents on the insurance money twelve dollars and fifty cents less than what he asked for and he knows that he's had about two hundred dollars worth of expenses so we're talking about two hundred and twelve dollars and 50 cents less than what he asked for. And he knows that he's had about $200 worth of expenses. So we're talking about $212 and 50 cents in the whole this episode. But Rocky owes him 100. Okay. So yeah, there's accounts receivable. And we still don't know if that $30 of state got spoiled or not. Yeah. So this one, it was rollicking, right? It moves along real quick.

If you watched both of the episodes back to back and probably fast forward through the seven and a half minutes of recap, that would be really easy to do. I mean, not that the first episode didn't pick up, but it was fun to have more of the character moments in the first episode followed by more of the running forward with the plot in the second episode. Although, like we said, plenty of good, good development between Becker and Jim and Rocky and Jim. In the first episode, we see a lot about Rocky as a person. And then this episode, we kind of see Rocky and Jim's relationship. Yeah. With more dimension to it than we do in any other episode where Rocky's involved, I think. When we started, you mentioned that even though it's the same director, these feel like two different episodes.

Yeah. Stylistically. I think part of that is that this episode is much more about the plot. Yeah. We learn things, things happen, things are resolved. The plot events of the first episode could fit into about 10 or 15 minutes of an episode. They're extended out by both visual choices right like the montage the back and forth montage to show the hijacking the kind of longer cuts showing more physical business with characters and stuff like

that and it also the interest of the episode is actually more on learning details about people and less about learning plot. Yeah, I agree. But a heck of a good ride. Oh, yeah. Always recommend a Rockford Files episode. This is a good one. This is no exception. No exception.

Do you feel like one of them is better than the other as a standalone piece because they are two halves as they exist in the world? I mean, yeah. I mean, if you said which of these two would you recommend? I would do the first one, I think. I would too. That car chase in the first one is such a good showcase for it. And then just the fun things that they did with Jim learning about his dad. I think the first one's more interesting, especially if you've seen...

It's interesting if you haven't seen a lot of the show, I think, because you learn a lot about the characters. But it's also interesting if you have seen a lot of the show i think because you learn a lot about the characters but it's also interesting if you have seen a lot of the show because it's not the same formula while the second episode is a little more of the formula yeah it plays more closely to how a rockford files episode would the actual caper like the actual plot to steal the you know to hijack the trucks and then steal the furs yeah that could just be one one episode like it's not like there's so much going on that you needed two episodes worth of screen time to show it to the audience. They solve almost nothing of it in the first episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Almost all of the mystery in the first episode is how are you going to catch up with Rocky and his, the usual. Yeah. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get any callback or mention of mary ramsey yeah right i was sure there would be something especially since becker knows yeah i did a little digging on imdb and that actress that was the only episode she was in oh so i don't

think she shows up i don't remember another episode with her in it, with that character in it. Yeah. And just kind of doing a quick search around to see if that was a thing. I didn't see the name mentioned in any other episodes. That's kind of a shame if that was a one-off. Because, like, we saw her house. She met Jim.

It makes me want to pitch, like, the Rocky and Mary Ramsey show. All the stuff that takes place that Jim doesn't know about. The drama involved with Violet, his other girlfriend. So that was a little bit of a disappointment in that

not even like a callback or a mention other than this offhand thing about Violet and there is a little bit of narrative convenience and Mr. hamill was present for this which on the one hand i guess he might be just to make sure it went off so he's scamming his own company right like but also there was no reason for him to be there other than to get pointed out by brocky which is a little like and let's just close the loop at the end of the show moment. Scamming his own company.

Okay, so in the previous episode, they made mention of Hamill's dad. Yeah. And Hamill's dad working with LaSalvo. But now we know that Hamill owns the company, so it could have just been... Like, I was assuming that Hamill's dad was a crime boss. That's the company that Hamill inherited. But it could be that he's the first crime boss in his family. That's kind of how I would read it.

That, like, LoSalvo worked for his dad doing trucking or whatever. Yeah. That was legit. And then this guy is a crook who happens to own this company. That adds some interesting things with the goons, the head crushers that he's hired. These probably aren't professional head crushers either. Yeah, that's an interesting thing, how usually when there's crime stuff, it's mob, right? It's the mob.

And that's actually not said or even really implied in this, even with their outfits and stuff. They're not wearing suits. They're wearing very California 70s their outfits and stuff. They're not wearing suits. They're wearing very California 70s casual gear and stuff. And you get the sense that it's not a wide operation. He has two guys. One of them gets shot.

And the other guy has to go find more help. There's at least a third guy that we see on the boat. The guy who looms behind Salvo. And there's other guys involved in the hijacking. Yeah. Because they need drivers for all those things. Yeah.

But those could just be like hired muscle, right? Yeah. So that's kind of an interesting little sidebar. It's his own little empire that he's running. So he needs to be involved with every aspect. He doesn't have guys in that way. And were it not for Rocky. The whole thing would have just gone down. If it weren't for that pesky old man another great episode you know you could just watch the second one on its own like

the recap gives you enough gives you enough yeah you're missing a lot of the fun stuff about rocky's life which is really the meat of the first episode but in terms of watching a rockford wins the day adventure the second one has all the pieces. Yeah. But you should probably watch both of them. Let's be real. You should watch them all. Alright. Do you have anything else to say about Gear Jammers Part 2? No. I got some stuff

for after the break. Perfect. Well, in that case, we will take our break, and then we will come back and get directly to the stuff you have for us. 200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this month, we have four of them to thank. Thanks to Kevin Lovecraft. You can hear him on the Wednesday evening podcast All-Stars actual play podcast, where

they're currently playing 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Visit misdirectedmark.com to find that feed, along with other gaming podcasts in the Misdirected Mark Productions Network. Thanks to Lowell Francis. Check out his thoughtful and extensive gaming blog at ageofravens dot blogspot dot com. Thanks to Pluto Moved On. Visit plutomovedon.com to find a podcast

about tabletop RPGs, video games, and other topics, along with YouTube Let's Plays. And finally, thank you to Shane Liebling. If you want to get a shout out for your podcast, blog, or anything else you do, check out patreon.com slash 200aday and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. Thanks for being the angel beneath our wings. While we have you here, if you like the podcast, there's three ways to support us.

First, rate and review on iTunes or whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. This enables us to do things like upgrade our audio, and if we get enough support, release shows more often, so it'll be more Rockford for you. And third, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now? You can check out my Sword and Sorcery fiction and the Sword and Sorcery fiction of other people, along with games and comics at worlds without master.com so nathan what do you have going on well i'm always working on designing and publishing new games you can find my current offerings including the worldwide wrestling role-playing

game at ndp design.com or check out my patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash nd paoletta thanks for listening listening. And now, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We were just talking about Gear Jammers Part 2, and we're about to talk about some of the lessons that we learned in this episode that we can apply to the various fiction modes that we engage in in our day-to-day life. Let's start off talking about that recap, because there's an art to the recap. Yeah. So for this show, we recap with a much more granularity than one needs to for other purposes.

We are often longer than the actual episode when we recap. Exactly. And I think that's because both we enjoy talking about the shows on a very detailed level, but also because there's kind of a painting the picture for a listener who hasn't seen the show. I feel like it's important for what we're doing. But to be a little less meta about it, the recap that this episode does of the first half is serving a different purpose, right? Right. I should say it's actually serving multiple purposes. Yeah. One is if you have seen episode one, it is reminding you of all the things that you saw and highlighting for you what the important things are to keep in mind so that the rest

of this episode will make sense. Right. The second goal is if you haven't seen the first one. To give you the bare bones skeleton of what you need to know to enjoy the second part. You know recaps are pretty commonplace nowadays. A lot of most shows have some sort of continuity from episode to episode. And you can tell how much a show is going to play into its season-long arc or series-long arc based on how intense the recap is at the beginning.

And also for a lot of shows, especially ones that have, say, multiple seasons of interconnected stories, the recap will orient you towards a character maybe that you've forgotten about or something that happened last season that is now becoming relevant again. Some random moment of drama. Yeah. You know, somebody says, I'll never blah, blah, blah.

And then, you know, they're going to have to blah, blah, blah this particular episode, which is fun. I mean, like the art of the recap has become a little more refined than this, but also it serves a different function than what we had in this particular episode. I do feel very much that this recap was meant to make this episode work on its own if you had not seen the previous episode. And I rarely see recaps like that nowadays. As we said, it's long. It's seven and a half minutes. And it gives you a lot of stuff to watch on your TV as you're learning the information in addition to just giving you the information.

Right. And I feel like part of why it's a little bit longer is that it's trying to be entertaining in and of itself. If you get a recap for another show that's maybe a minute, minute and a half long, if you've not seen the show before, you probably just zone out a little bit during it, right? You're like, okay, maybe this will be important stuff, but I don't even have the context to know what this recap is telling me about these characters.

Whereas the one that we saw on this show put you in that context, right? I was thinking particularly of the scene where Rocky knocks Jim out, right? This scene is so good that we've seen it three times already. We saw it in the preview montage in the previous episode. We saw it near the end of the previous episode. And then we see it in the recap going all the way to him taking that frying pan

and going into the bathroom and filling it with water and dumping it on Jim's head to wake him up. water and dumping it off right jim's head to wake him up there's nothing in that scene we need to go forward except that it tells the story of this the this sort of relationship between rocky and jim it says that like he literally says i've killed my own son oh jim jim and how distraught he is yeah yeah but yeah it has no narrative importance. Right. If that scene was not in the plot, it wouldn't change anything about how the events unfold. But it establishes their character in case you've never seen the Rockford Files before. And it's just entertaining.

Right. Right. They're like, this was a really fun bit we had last week. You're going to want to watch this. If you missed it last week, here it is again. So this idea of the recap of here's what happened last time is really important for multiple session games, especially if you have a group, say, that only meets once a month or every other week or something like that where you have enough time elapses to where our frail human minds start to forget.

Some minds more frail than others. I have such trouble. I often view it as part of what I'm bringing to the table when I'm running a game is this idea of like recapping last time to get everyone on the same page. There's usually asymmetric information, right? Like I might be running a game where a character has yet to be introduced, but I want to make sure that there's some kind of foreshadowing. So I'm going to include that in my recap because it was a minor detail that was easy to forget

because it didn't matter last time, but it's going to matter this time. And usually for me, that's just like, last time, here are things that happened. Am I missing anything? Because often other players remember things differently and have different priorities. So it's important to make sure that people have the chance to be like, oh, and also I had words with that security guard, you know, and he told me about this thing.

And I'm like, oh, right, I didn't make a note about that. I forgot, but it is actually important. I think that that's the vital part there. make a note about that. I forgot, but it is actually important. I think that that's the vital part there. When you look at recaps with more contemporary shows, especially ones with long running plots, they'll bring a scene with a character that maybe you haven't seen in a few episodes, right? And what they're doing there when they're doing their show is just preparing the long standing audience. Remember this, have this in your mind because you're going to see this character again in the next half hour or so, or however long the show is.

When you push that over to the table, everyone who gets involved in the recap then gets to remind everyone of things that are important to them and their characters, the part of the story that they want to see more about, or just the part of the story that's stuck in their head. They had a nice interaction with a security guard that was chomping on a cigar and they're like yeah i like that guy even just that detail can help somebody else go all right that guy really liked his cigar when we have that guy again let's make sure he has that cigar that's something that we'll enjoy you could see the recap in this episode as towards the end the showrunnerner turns and says, hey, what else should be in here?

James Garner's like, oh, what about the part where Rocky hit me with the frying pan? That was my favorite part of the episode. And they're like, OK, fine, we'll put it in. And it does a lot to keep that feeling of the living, breathing world going, right? Yeah. So what in addition to the recap can we talk about? What, in addition to the recap, can we talk about? Well, one thing about this episode that I really liked and I think is worth talking about a little bit more is the scene where Mr. Hamill and his goons are on the boat.

Yes. The one guy got shot by Rockford, and so he's getting bandaged up and moved offscreen. We never see him again. And the other guy with the magnificent mustache is given the the very strict instructions to take care of rocky by sunup or i'm gonna put the word out on you no one will even hire you to run numbers and podunk indiana or something like that yeah you're not gonna work at this town ever again yeah with also the implication that or i'll just have you killed yeah as we talked about in part one, seeing that guy, John or Johnny, the mustache guy, how he has his own little set of concerns is fun and interesting. In the context of the whole episode, there are bits of padding.

The actual events of the episode are relatively straightforward. We had the long intro. You have this scene, which isn't really strictly necessary other than the get him by sunup part. Like that could have been a 15 second cut of just that line and achieve the same narrative effect. But the padding is done in such a way that it's enjoyable and fun and adds a new dimension to the feeling of the living world that they're in. And that moment in particular, we get to see the bad guys have a conversation about what they're doing that isn't about the good guys, right? Right.

Other than just the line about, you know, you have to get that old man. They're not talking about Rocky and Rockford. They're talking about their own concerns. It's such a nice change of pace, I think, from a lot of the other stuff in the episode. We get a peek into poor Freddie Gates, I think his name is, or the guy that John says, oh, I'll get Freddie Gates. And he's like, isn't Freddie a junkie? He goes, no, he's sober now. I'll get somebody who's sober. Poor Freddie Gates has ruined his life and ruined his chances at being a hitman with drugs. We never see Freddy Gates. But what I enjoy about this is that you see John mention that he's going to get this guy,

immediately realize that his boss is not keen on the fact or thinks that Freddy has some problems, and then walks back from it. And I feel like there's disappointment there. I feel like John was looking forward to working with Freddy again. Yeah. Like, hey, Freddy's back in town. We can go kill an old man together. It'll be fun.

So television is a visual and performative medium. So the actor who's playing John can deliver this in a certain way to send that message to me, or he can just deliver it however he's going to deliver it, and I can read that message into it. That's fine. When I'm playing in a role-playing game, I am not as accomplished an actor as this man. I can't actually deliver what I want to deliver to my players that precisely with how I'm acting out these characters. So I feel empowered to just tell them, you know, like if I had a scene like this that they were witnessing, right? Like if they were hiding around the corner, I would say, John sighs and you could tell that maybe he was looking forward to hanging out with Freddy or something like that. If I have this little tidbit in my brain, I want to just go ahead and let the players insert whatever sort of emotive detail their imagination come up with to deliver the actual message, which is that John and Freddy were friends.

And what does it matter? It's just this minor character. But, oh, God, it's fun. Doing something like this in a game, you know, you can do this technique of cutting away from the main characters, you know, using this kind of omniscient narrator idea, you know, you guys are doing your thing. While that's happening, you know, here's a conversation that these two characters are having. Or, you know, in some games, it's structured such that I can be like, hey, Epi, play this hitman. Right. Because I want to play out this little conversation to drive home that there's a deadline on killing off Rocky. Because I think a lot of games,

it's easy and natural to stick with the player character's point of view and play out the story as seen by the protagonists. There's a tendency when talking about games to think that they're going to be like television or a play. But in fiction, it's super easy for us to switch like this, to go into a narrator and come out and switch narrators between chapters. This is such an easy thing to do in fiction that I don't think we even really need to

talk about it, right? Like this idea of shifting the point of view around different sets of characters at different times. In a game, because we're so one-to-one with our characters most of the time, I think it takes a special effort to kind of be like, what are we going to gain by breaking out of this and looking at this other conversation? Whether it is temporarily casting other players into those minor characters or describing the conversation and being like, this is happening off screen. Right.

Now we all know that it's happening. That can just be a way to break up the, and then we do this, and then we do this, and then we do this. Right, yeah. Style of a linear kind of narrative the other beautiful thing about this scene is that they these people they have real concerns and legitimizing villains that way yeah does a good job of presenting situations in which you don't have to end the villain the same way you end a video game boss, right? I mean, they end them in this particular episode just by Rocky saying, oh, that's the guy. That's it.

Like, he's done. There's nothing he can do. He's in, I mean, he's in a car, but he's surrounded by cops. Nobody has to pull the gun on him. They don't have to have a battle. And the way that we, you know, end the story with John and whoever his third man is that he managed to get, They get outdriven. They hit a telephone pole

and the last we see is John smacking the steering wheel in frustration because he has all this pressure on him and he failed again. He's almost sympathetic in that moment, right? Exactly. If you get in an accident, it's going to be

frustrating, but for John, this accident is bigger than that you know it's it's worse than that it's uh yeah it's you know it's a little thing but it continues to drive home this thing that we always talk about which is that these these other characters have their own lives and how fun that is i wanted to go back to one thing you said, which is conveying the emotional weight or the meaning of a thing just by saying, and this is what it means. Right. Yeah. I was thinking about how the scene where Rocky and Jim have their argument. We talked about it pretty extensively in the first part, but that scene where they care about each other, but they also are not hearing each other. And that's why the argument has such weight to it. If we're at the table having that argument,

it would be really, really difficult to convey all of the layers that we can read into it as viewing audience, right? Yeah. There's a team that went into this, right? There was a writing team, a director, the cameraman, the two actors. They probably did several takes. Then a whole team goes into making that scene work the way that scene works.

And if you don't have a whole team and multiple takes, if you don't have the acting talents of James Gardner and Noah Berry Jr., you can find other ways to make that scene work. And most of those involve being very honest with each other, right? Yeah. I often, in games, will deliver a line of dialogue or describe an action and then say, and what this means is, you know, and then just put

it out. So it's like, we have this dialogue where we're having this argument. Those are the words I say to you. But what I'm trying, what my character is trying to get across here is that you never listen to me when I'm worried about you. And I really want you to understand that. Making that subtext explicit at the table is so important for interactions that have more emotional weight and making those apparent to everyone watching the scene. It can be really powerful. And you can throw people for loops, like really good loops too. Like you can have a really heated series of threats that you're shouting out at each other. And then you could just say, what I mean by that is I think I'm falling in love with you.

And just have everyone go, oh, okay. How do we deal with that? And sometimes those hook into mechanical interactions, right? Like games where maybe the drama of the scene is whether my character understands that you're falling in love with me, right? And maybe there's a role associated with that. And that's where the drama comes from. Right. And it's not about, like, who wins this argument.

I think that that's a very good point. There's a tendency to take arguments at face value in role-playing games, I feel, to think that the reason why you're arguing is to win the argument. Right. And in real life, that's rarely true. And in fiction, when you're doing courtroom drama, then yeah. But a lot of arguments in fiction, the whole point is to raise the tension to change the tone of the scene in a certain way and to you know set the stakes for the relationship between the

two arguers right and not who's going to get what out of this it's more like yeah where do they stand with each other well like in this scene you could say that jim wins right yeah at the end of the day rocky does what jim wants him to do but on another level there is an element of they come to an understanding by the end of the argument yeah and in that way they both win it's not a zero-sum situation you can even probably say that jim because he realizes they're both getting louder and angrier. And then he realizes that this is about them caring about each other. And he just brings it right down to that please, to that pleading moment that addresses that directly. And there's nowhere to go from there.

Like that's great. That's brilliant. Both as a how to win that argument, but also for what makes for good fiction here. Like that was, oh my God, I loved that moment. It's a great scene. And I think that idea of this argument is about a thing, but it's actually about a different thing. And I think that's an important thing for any fiction where you're cognizant of

the multiple things that the argument or the fight or the conflict is about. Yeah. It has a very real feel of an argument that is getting out of hand. If you're personally involved in the argument and you start saying things and you're like inside something is screaming, why are you saying that? Like, why are you going there? Yeah. Like, okay, I guess that's what we believe now, right?

We've just suddenly decided that this is what we believe because that's how we've positioned ourselves in this argument. And that's a hard thing to do. That's a hard thing to get across in whatever form of fiction, whether it's role-playing or writing or, you know, whatever. I think that sometimes you can discover that, right? Like it's hard to force that. It's hard to, at the beginning of a scene, be like, this is where this scene is going to go. But there is a part of the joy of role-playing in particular is when you can get into an argument or an in-character moment and have that internal process play out and discover something new about your character in that way. Yeah. Capturing that maybe by saying, so this is what my character really thinks about this, or this is how my character really feels about this, can be a really strong way to bring your internal revelation out to the table so that everyone else can kind of participate in your joy of discovery. That's super interesting. I wonder, this is an experimental challenge I will offer to our listeners. they find themselves in a fun argument like this in a role-playing game, cut and literally walk away from the table for a few minutes and then come back and try and explain the true reason why your character was holding that.

You know what I mean? Give all the players a moment. It's weird because the way I'm saying it sounds like I'm trying to prevent some sort of player versus player argument here, some player-level argument. But what I'm talking about is the character level argument. Stop and give everyone a moment to be like, oh, this is great. This is juicy what we've just done. But why is this happening?

Yeah. What is this about? Are we arguing about this because we just have different ideas of the most effective way to storm this castle? Or like, is there something else that this is leading to that's a more relatable set of concerns? You know, I think that that would be kind of amazing like in just like a standard dungeon yeah you get into these arguments all

the time in those about like where do we go next or how do we deal with this we're at an impasse about what to do next let's drill down and find out why our characters really are opposing each other yeah and what's not on the table is that we're right. We can't say I'm opposing you because my opinion is right and yours is wrong. So what's next? Why does the paladin and the fighter constantly argue? A dungeon crawl into our hearts. That's good. I like it. So I think the last thing we touched on this in the second part of our first episode recap, when we're talking about the car chase and the rhythm of it and how things change and how you keep it exciting by changing things. As we were talking about this

episode, you brought up the idea of tone and shifting tone more specifically. And I know that this idea of tone is one that you have thought a lot about as in your phenomenal sword and sorcery game, Swords Without without master the tone of the scene is a central mechanic the scene is going to be either uh jovial or glum and that is going to drive how we all describe what our characters are doing some of the specific powers our characters have to affect the scene and also like strategic decisions about like, what do I want to achieve here? So what is it about this idea of tone that you find so powerful? It's a thing that we've all experienced. We've seen movies that have done this.

We've read books that have done this. Music will convey this with like key changes or I'm a metalhead at heart. And the early days of the metal that I really enjoy, the second half of the song is often, you can't guess at what the first half of the song was because it goes through these different changes and there's a narrative being told there. The thing about a shift in a tone is that all you need is the shift.

What tone it comes from and what tone it goes to will inform you, but you can escalate a scene by shifting a tone down if you want. When Jim says, please, in the argument scene, that is a complete shift in tone, but it's not escalating in the sense of always going up. It's downshifting almost. It's going from a peak down a step in intensity. Yes. It's quieting. It's disarming. And he's more vulnerable in that moment. And because of that, you take note, right?

Like it's the moment when you stop and go, what's really happening here? Because while you're in that other tone, you're like, oh, I know what this is. This is a fight. We're going along for the fight. And then he does that. And that's when you have to sit and think about what just happened. Like what made this change? And I think there's something even primal about that, right? then he does that and and that's when you have to sit and think about what just happened like what made this change uh and i think there's something even primal about that right if you're thinking

about primeval humans that are wandering around in the forest and they're like blah blah blah and chattering away and then suddenly they go quiet we all know that that's a reason to be scared right like that's makes the hair on the back of your head stand up and you're like why is everybody so quiet suddenly and that is so ingrained in us. Last time we talked the same feature in a chase sequence, we were talking about how Rockford will speed along and then come up to a dead stop and that will change the situation and the dynamic. And I think part of that is because tone shifts like that can be alarming

and disarming, even if they're going from blaring alarms to those blaring alarms stopping. I think another way that the tone shifts in a lot of Rockford Files episodes, but in this one in particular, is the use of humor. And this is usually more of a scene level shift. There's the scene where he goes to talk to his insurance guy. And that's a comedic scene. Yeah, this is not a particularly dark episode, but it is a pretty serious episode. The stakes are serious. Rocky is in physical danger the whole time. But this scene, it is not necessary to make the plot happen. It is necessary for us to see because it might be the greatest scene of The Rockford Files ever filmed. It's sort of just a larger, more extended version of the answering machine gag, right? I think you're right. And I think

that that's one of the functions of his relationship with Dennis. Often he'll go to Becker when things are the most dire. He doesn't want cops involved in what he's doing, but when things get dangerous, he has to get the cops involved. So he'll do that. And scenes with Dennis are always funny to some extent, like they're always kind of jabbing at each other. And that lets us as audience deal with,

in real life, you don't want to end up in a police station. There's no reason to want to, you know, like nothing that happens to you in real life, you don't want to end up in a police station. There's no reason to want to, you know, like nothing that happens to you in real life, you would welcome that brings you into a police station. So it's very useful to have in the nature of their relationship, this sort of ribbing. Yeah, it makes I think as a as a series viewer, it means that when we go to see Dennis, it's going to be it's going to be kind of fun of fun. Because you know they're going to be joking and giving each other crap. There will be an element of comedy to it, even if the subject matter is serious.

That keeps us always looking forward to seeing Dennis. Yeah. There's an interesting sort of equal and opposite reaction with Angel, too. When he goes to involve the criminal element, which is Angel, it's also funny, but it's stressful funny, right? Like there's an anxiety there when Angel's involved because Angel is a f*** up. Yeah, but being conscious and intentional about what the actual tones are can be really helpful, especially being like, this scene is feeling very tense.

So I'm going to go ahead and make sure that in the next scene, we're doing something a little more relaxed. Okay, I'm going to toot my own horn here because you brought up swords. Yeah, tell me how this works in Swords Without Master, Epi. If you insist. In Swords Without Master, you roll two dice. One is your glum die and one is your jovial die. And you're looking to see which one's the higher value after you roll.

And that's the tone you are. If it's a tie, that means something else. There's a bunch of it. I won't go into the whole thing. You can go out and buy the game. It's cheap. The point is you roll for your tone in that game, and what that often will do,

you're chugging along, ready to tell your part of the story, thinking about it in the tone that the story's already being told in, and then you roll these dice dice and they tell you, oops, we're bright and boisterous and thunderous. And we're spewing all of these battle cries as we're cutting across this battlefield. And you've rolled glum. What does that mean for your character?

Or for your narration? And I think that that's what you were just saying there. Being conscious about it. Rather than just saying, oh saying oh okay this is the tone we're in this says yeah but what if you had to switch that like what happens when that needs to change as storytellers there's natural moments where changing tone makes perfect sense but then there's unnatural moments where it's surprisingly good when it happens. You're not working towards it and then it hits and you're like, whoa. And that is the scene where Jim pleads with Rocky. It's not a thing that I was expecting. And then it happened

and I was like, wow, that was good. Yeah, good stuff. All right. So have we earned our 200 for the day? I will go ahead and say that we have certainly earned our 200 for today. Half of which Rocky owes us. Right. We'll track him down. Maybe we'll just get him to buy us a lobster bisque out of the can. Lobster's lobster. Lobster's lobster.

But until that happens, we will continue watching and then talking about the Rockford Files.