Two Hundred A Day - Episode 91: Friends and Foul Play

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Nathan and Eppy return to 1996 to talk about the fifth TV movie, Friends and Foul Play. Jim's friend Babs ends up dead after asking him to help her find out more about the murder of her son. Before he can even start to investigate, Captain Chapman turns up with a class of criminology majors, messing both with the crime scene and with Jim's efforts - so, of course, he has to join the class himself in order to skirt Chapman's ire and bring Babs killer to justice! It's always a blast seeing all the characters we know so well effortlessly re-inhabited, and this Stephen Cannell script is full of classic Rockfordishness. Though there's a few plot elements that seem to sprawl out of nowhere, we really enjoyed this visit to the movies! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Matthew Lee, Kip Holley, Dael Norwood, Dave P, Dale Church and Dave Otterson! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Welcome to 200 a day the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show the rockford files as well as the 90s tv movies the rockford files movies, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. We are indeed going back to the 90s for a long, maybe not long anticipated, but after far, far too long of a break. Yes. To look at the fifth movie from the decade 1996 is Friends and Foul Play. This is normally where one of us asks the other why this was chosen, and I think that this just arose naturally from our last episode, the ending of our last episode, right? Yeah, in our Q&A episode we had a good question about the transition or whether there was any particular kind of lore between the 70s and the 90s.

If this is your first episode, you can go back one to listen to us talk about that. But yeah, the basic history is that the Rockford Files ended its sixth season early due to illness, essentially, season early due to illness essentially as as james garner was too injured and physically worn down to continue shooting the show this then tumbled into a long drawn out legal uh legal battle between garner and garner's production company and universal um about you know whether he'd you know had he reneged on his contract had they paid had universal been been doing the accounting correctly and uh actually led to a big rift where garner refused to do to do work for universal or nbc um for a long time and then that eventually did get resolved and one little quirk about these movies

is that, um, so these were actually, uh, they ended up, um, being picked up by CBS. And, uh, one quirk about the movies was that they could have been shooting some of them on universal lots, but James Garner still refused to set foot on those properties. That's great. Yeah. So there's a history there that is worth going into if you're interested. But we're not going to go into it now because we have an entire movie to talk about. Yeah.

This one is directed by Stuart Margolin, who also directed the most recent episode that we talked about, and written by OG Stephen Cannell. And it shows, I mean there's, well, it shows in that there's some good Stephen Cannell dialogue from time to time in it. Yeah,

I enjoyed this episode. Sorry, movie? Alright, the runtime is what, Two hours? Made for TV movie? Yeah, two hours. It's hard to distinguish between television and movies these days. That's all I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah. And in that way, this was ahead of its time. So I was watching this. So the current situation of my living room area involves good I was hoping for an update it involves some toddler control mechanisms so there's

some gates up and so without going too into boring detail the face of my blu-ray player was obscured at the time by a towel that was being dried and was draped over one of these gates so not only did i have to do the high angle remote oh yeah to actually pause it and stuff um i couldn't see the display so i was in a state of blissful

ignorance as to the remaining runtime and i'm also pausing to take notes and stuff. So like my sense of the pacing is a little all over the place, but it does do, it doesn't have like a false finish. Yeah. And then more story, not, not false in the sense of,

of untrue, but sorry, that's in the, in the pro wrestling sense where there is a, something you think is the end. And then, and it comes to one resolution, but then there's, there's in the pro wrestling sense where there is something you think is the end. And then it comes to one resolution. But then there's more story to tell. And it comes to a second resolution.

I had a little bit more control over how much time was left. Which is something that I definitely do. It's, God, okay, this is deep, dark confession time. Okay, this is deep, dark confession time. When I watch these and write up my notes, I am acutely aware of how much time is left in each episode. And I don't know if you do this too, but it's not that I'm not enjoying myself, but it somehow fell into the category of my brain of being work. And so I'm trying to get it done before whatever my schedule for when I should get my work done. Right. Right. You know what I mean? Like it's not a real thing. It's not a it's not a hard line or anything that exists in reality at all. It's just a habit that has formed over the

years of being self-employed, of having like a understanding of how much work that needs to get done and then an understanding of like when in the day you want to make sure you're done with it so that you can move on with your life and do other things yeah yeah yeah for sure uh and uh all of that sounds like i'm about to complain about it but i'm not what what that did was create this really weird moment where that false finish you talked about happened and my brain was like oh you got done with work early today and there was definitely a moment where i i sat there and thought wait this is longer isn't it this is like when um i did the this weird thing in my head where i was

i'm very used to long credits now and thought oh maybe the you know the the next 20 minutes are just credits it was not um yeah i think my version of that again didn't really impact this viewing uh but when we're for the regular tv length episodes my version of that i think is that part of my brain is looking at the pacing of the episode so i'm checking the time stamp to kind of be like okay is this like is this part of the dramatic arc is it happening like on pace for the full length of the episode or is it peaking a little early what does that mean if it's peaking a little early yeah or that kind of stuff um it's just part of the kind of like analytical framework um that i noticed that i don't really do when i'm you know just watching something uh but again in

this case i was not looking at the time so i got to not worry about that as much yay um but yeah it is a long one and we'll uh probably we're talking a little bit before we started recording, and this is, like, it's a full movie. Right. It's not like there's a lot of filler, and it's not like it's stuffed. It's like a comfortable amount of stuff for the time. Yeah. But a lot of it I think we can kind of summarize, and then we'll just kind of jump around to whatever stuck out to us. Yeah.

Because going through at the more granule level, our episode will just be too long. Yeah. Our pacing will be off to the point where you'd be sick of it. That's what we're sticking with. That's what we're saying now. You can look at the timestamp for this episode and see exactly how badly we mess up this goal. Witness our hubris we're going to take a quick break to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day thanks to you we are

a 100 listener supported show we extend special thanks to our gumshoe patrons supporting this episode chuck from what you're reading.com Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color, at FruitLoopsPod.com, Shane Liebling, check out his dice rolling app Roll4YourParty for all of your online gaming needs at Roll4Your.Party, Jay Adan, check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at JayAdan.com, Dale Norwood, Dave P., Dale Church, Dave Otterson, Kip Hawley, and Matthew Lee. And finally,

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and of course, Richard Haddam, at Richard Haddam. We follow them too, at 200pod. Why become a patron for as little as $1 an episode? In addition to supporting the show And of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them too at 200pod. Why become a patron for as little as $1 an episode? In addition to supporting the show and exclusive episode previews,

our patrons get Plus Expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about media we're enjoying and the things going on in our lives. An episode of Plus Expenses comes out in advance of every episode of 200 a day. Help out the show by leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts tell a friend who you think would like it and check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you there's no opening montage uh we just have our good harmonica harmonica with rock synth and guitar 90s theme that was literally my first note was speaking of music because again in the previous episode uh i i do not remember who asked us about um making notes about the music and we i know we called out the 90s thing but it felt so good to hear it again and realize just how

and i think i could better characterize it now it feels like a late 80s remake of the Rockford Files theme song as someone would imagine it in the mid to late 90s. It certainly doesn't call to any of the music that exists. None of the contemporary music in 96 sounds like this. Right, right. But it certainly does sound or it sounds like someone in in the year in more recent years trying to look back and recreate a 90s sound without actually having listened to 90s music. What kind of struck me, not about the theme necessarily, because the theme is very self-evidently. Yeah, it's there. But throughout the rest of the movie, a lot of the incidental music and transition music and stuff a lot of that because i was paying attention to it again just as you said because we had just

were asked about it so now i'm like i need to really pay attention to the music a lot of it actually struck me as extremely average in the rest of the movie yeah and and what came to mind was like yeah this sounds like made for tv movie music yeah which i think is a genre uh yeah definitely i think um we were just talking about like what's the difference between tv and movie uh and there is there is this thing this made for tv movie that uh i don't feel like exists in any any way anymore. I don't know. Are there movies made for TV in the same way that there were in the 90s? Because like, yeah, it's all made for streaming, if anything. Right. Like, yeah, the 80s and 90s, 70s to probably the 60s.

I don't know. I'm not a TV historian. I shouldn't be on a podcast. But like I do remember a lot of made for TV movies when I was younger. And I suspect that to some extent they got churned out, you know? And part of the process of churning something out like that is having either a formula or something to rely upon for things like music and credits and opening sequences. Not saying that any of this was particularly phoned in, but yeah, I agree that music stood out in how it did not stand out aside from the theme song. Actually, I should say it particularly stood out during the diary sequences.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think we'll go into each diary sequence, but I think when we get to the first one, we'll probably do some talking about these diary sequences. Yeah, yeah. I don't think we'll go into each diary sequence, but I think when we get to the first one, we'll probably do some talking about these diary sequences. Yeah, for sure. Well, this movie starts with our credits over that theme and some nice aerial shots of Malibu as we get our good 90s big serif font. Yeah, yes. Rockford Files.

Yeah, it does stand out a little bit in how it it doesn't look like the rockford files title sequence at all hey it was the 90s everything had to be different uh for some reason at the beginning of this episode i was thinking about it as what the experience would be for someone who had never watched the rockford files and was just kind of like in the 90s was presented with this uh and i do like the these sort of gorgeous aerial shots of the beach and stuff like that and you're coming closer and closer to rockford's trailer i mean the way i described that is not exactly how it it's probably wouldn't play out in your head the way it actually plays out but like it just had this feel of like uh yeah this is all very beautiful

but here's this rundown old guy right right although the trailer like again it's looking good yeah in the 90s it's a it's a little more spacious it's a little bigger uh yeah we we end with a nice establishing shot of the firebird and rocky well we know to be rocky's red pickup which you know is still there is a in memoriam i think yeah little riff uh again as discussed previously this is well after um noah beary uh passed away so yeah he's we see his photo in one shot later uh this is also past when they did like a dedicated little and he's mentioned at one point actually in a yeah yeah but yeah so the truck and the firebird are in front of the trailer and this whole movie the axis of this movie revolves around the walk between jim's front door and yes the sand

dollar restaurant that's across the parking lot we're gonna see that walk a lot and we're gonna spend a lot of time in the restaurant in our initial walk we have jim getting into the or he's walking across and he encounters zuki the bookie um who seems straight out of the 70s show um waiting for uh for the uh did i say sand dollar i think you did isn't it sand castle the sand castle yeah real-time correction sand castle uh jim and and zuki are going in they're the first customers of the day Isn't it Sandcastle? The Sandcastle, yeah. Real-time correction, Sandcastle. Jim and Zuki are going in. They're the first customers of the day at the Sandcastle. And we get this little portrait of them just being the absolute regulars, right?

Yeah. Everyone greets them by name. They know their order. Zuki goes and sits at the bar immediately. And it's 10 a.m. first thing, right? While Jim goes to his regular booth and and we get a clear indication that zuki is an alcoholic uh and that everyone knows even before they say because i think um the bartender makes a comment about uh 10 a.m awful early or something like that or i wrote this line down this i should have written the other one down

but the where jim says leon's the name of the bartender says yo good morning leon or something like that ain't no morning is a good morning jim right well and then he continues to say that nothing's going right for him these days and jim says things get better and this is i'm as i see my note i'm like ah this is actually a uh a motif or not even motif, a theme that we will come back to at the end of the movie. Well, after I completely forgotten about this scene. So Jim sits down, he gets his regular, which is a Denver omelet. Yeah. And the waitress, Babs, settles in to talk to him. So we are going to go through a pretty extended scene,

introducing us to Babs and getting our initial premise going. She starts by, yeah, putting into text, says that they're all starting to get worried about Zuki because he's been showing up earlier and earlier, waiting for the place to open so he can go in and go to the bar which is pretty rough and then she's also been asking Jim to ask Dennis about something so what we learn over the course of this conversation uh Babs has um she has two sons we're talking about one of them in particular here, Cal. And Cal was killed.

Yeah. And it's been 18 months or so. So it's been, you know, a while. The last thing that he was doing before they found his body was he was painting. He had a painting gig and he was painting a pool house for a mobster, Happy Cortillo. And so she thinks that Cortillo killed her son but there's no evidence to that effect uh yeah essentially a cold case like they just found his body in a canyon or something as we're talking about it right now i cannot for the life of me recall

if the official police line i think the official police line is a cold case murder and not a uh not like an accident or something accident or anything like that. Yeah, I was trying to for some reason I'm blanking on that, but they clearly aren't interested in investigating the case. And she is because she she's convinced that she knows what what happened. And she has this whole thing where she sent the autopsy report to this other lab that does like animal autopsies. And so the gag here is that she's explaining to Jim. So Jim gets his omelet. He takes one bite of his omelet on camera.

This is so good. And then she starts explaining all the like intricacies of the stomach enzymes and how much material was still in his colon and, you know, all this stuff and like how he always had a, he always had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and so the the rate of of digestion of all the things that he would have eaten this all indicates that he was killed earlier in the day than the cops say he was killed which means that he could have been killed before when uh cortello had an alibi he was at a he was

at church or something. Right. During the time frame that the cops say the murder would have happened. So Jim, in the face of getting all this very detailed information about stomach enzymes, loses his appetite. And pushes his omelet away. It's just a wonderful scene. I just, like, you know it's coming. You just, you see him sit down with food and then

she's i don't even remember what the first thing is but the the so it just keeps going and going and then she starts talking about his colon yeah it was just like and then there's a button on it where she's like oh is there a problem with the omelet right it's like no the omelette's fine um but babs has been staking out the house of this mobster every night because she if she can catch him doing something then at least she can bring him to justice in some way uh and and do right by her by her dead son she says that he can't just kill her son and walk away jim's been laying out how there's all this lack of evidence, how he's gone to Dennis and Dennis is starting to get mad at him because he's asking him about this cold case that Dennis doesn't have anything to do with and can't do anything to help with. Right. And so he's trying to kind of talk her down and she ends this first

scene with, I'm sorry, you're not willing to help me. I thought we were friends. And this clearly gets Jim. He throws down his fork and chases after her and tells her that she can't just follow this mobster around. It's just going to make him angry. And she says, well, then that will make us even. So as always, I spend time trying to figure out how Jim tries to get out of the case and how people rope them in and when she said i thought we were friends i was like this is this is kind of a classic line this is how you get jim to to do things for you he's still only half in the case at this point right like he he's more worried he doesn't really care i mean maybe not care but he's he's worried about her he doesn't have any investment in this murder or solving a murder or whatever but the fact that she is putting herself into danger because she

thinks that it went down a certain way that's what he is worried about a big difference between how she investigates and how jim investigates i mean investigates is a strong word. Yeah. We'll find out more, but she really wants the mobster to know that she's watching him. Right. She feels like that's going to sit on his conscience or whatever. And Jim knows that that is bad, bad news. Right. And there's this exchange in there because Cartello's nickname, because he's a mobster, he needs a nickname, is Happy Cartello. This is written by Cattle after all.

Yeah, it is. Exactly. And so and I loved this exchange where Jim's like, they don't call him happy because he's happy. And she just paused. She goes, why do they call him happy? And Jim, I don't know. And there's a payoff to that. There's a good payoff to that.

Yeah, yeah. Can we, before we get further into it, can we talk really quick about how I find such absolute continuity between 70s Rockford and 90s Rockford that it does not, like no point am i like oh man he's old or like right exactly yeah it doesn't uh it's not like he's back on the case it's that he's always been on the case yeah yeah there's just he i think we probably say this about all the movies especially since he got the haircut in the first movie he had the like fraser crane haircut with like like the mullet at the back that to me makes someone look 10 years older than they actually are. Once he lost that, all of these actors inhabit these characters so well that as a viewer of the show, there's just no like feeling of discontinuity or weirdness about

seeing them, you know, this many years later in this new context yeah yeah i i agree like it it just feels uh for the most part like i'm sitting down to watch a rockford files and nothing has changed yeah i would agree i'm glad we're i'm glad we agree about that so yes we can talk about that and now we have have. Then we have, yes. Okay. So it's the end of the day and Babs is leaving and Jim stops her as she's driving out of the parking lot in her old beater. He wants to make up after their argument. But he does specifically want to try and warn her away from continuing to stake out Happy Cartillo's house. As her friend and a seasoned pi it's a seriously bad idea but she refuses to back down unfortunately we don't spend a lot of time

with babs yeah but we do get the picture of a very i think i don't know i think very understandable state of like i've gone through this terrible tragedy. There has been no resolution. And I have no control over what happened. But I do have control over this. And what I have control over is making this guy, who I think is responsible for the death of my son, know that I'm watching. I don't know if she even realistically thinks it's going to achieve anything. It's the only tool she has right now.

It's the only leverage she has. Even if it's a bad idea, that's what she needs. Exactly. And she doesn't have anything else she can do, but she has to do something. And the something in this case is I'm going to sit in my car outside his gate every night, which is, you know, not great. It's a bad place to be. I feel, I mean, it's's a what a terrible state to be in um so jim of course can't let her commit suicide this way no which is again a kind of a weird

foreshadow statement and says all right let's go and she gets in her gets in the passenger seat and she gives a big smile and they head out uh she parks directly in front of their gate and jim's line is we're more obvious than Quakers at a barn dance. We get more about what's important to her. It's almost more that he knows that she's watching rather than getting any actual satisfaction

out of this. I noticed that they took off their seatbelts after she backed up and put the parking brake on. I'm now hyper aware of seatbelt wearing after the standards and practices note from a couple episodes ago we also learned that so her so her one son cal the one who that died he was like really good everyone loved him he was working really hard he's putting himself through call it or she was working and he was working to put him through college and then she has another son cory and he's he's the bad one he's dealing drugs he's getting

arrested and she doesn't understand how they could have turned out so different we have some some reminiscences about and also you know rockford knows basically perhaps has been working at this restaurant for 10 years i think and so jim has known her this long and so has known both of her kids as they've grown up and he knows about her and her life yeah in a way at least um he specifically says that when cal died rocky who was the best judge of character he ever knew said that he was so good god could only loan him to us yeah it's a great line that's such a rocky such a rocky line i okay so this this gets into um a little bit of the mystery mystery. This is a whodunit, right? I think, I don't know.

I think that... Who do you think done it? Yeah. I am primed as a Rockford Files viewer to assume Happy did it. And we're just trying to figure out how Jim's going to get Happy. how Jim's going to get happy. But when this line happens, and it could be just because of our particular experience of having to go through each, having to,

our particular experience of getting to go through each episode. Having the privilege of going through each episode. Having the privilege, yes. That line, Rocky was probably the best judge of character I ever knew, is objectively false. Like we know that he is a horrendous judge of character. So that, it set me on what I cannot tell if, in retrospect, I think that line is delivered earnestly. And I think in the moment, everyone involved believes it.

Yes. But at the time when I saw it, I thought, Oh, so, uh, if Rocky thought he was so good, right?

Like he's up, he was up to something. Right. The, the sort of tragedy of this story will be that Jim will find out that this perfect kid was up to something and, uh, spoilers. Uh, but that remains with

me uh up to the end of the episode and then i'm like oh not at all and there are other moments where it felt like they were pointing at that and now that i look back on it i think that was all purely accidental i think yeah i think you're reading that in a little heavier i think this is yeah rocky is gone now right right so like jim's not going to say anything bad about him yeah exactly and uh yeah and and and babs knew rocky from this context and like this is a comforting thing that he's saying yeah exactly yeah but yes our our particular uh rockford files brain damage does yes does mean that sometimes it's like wait a second um this reminisce is is cut short as a car does come out of the gate and they follow they're falling close enough that we can read the license plate which is happy too and jim tries to get her

to tail correctly just drop back we're trying to tail him, not tick him off. Stay back, Babs. Do it my way, will you? And this is where I think we see, and she's like, no, I want him to know that I'm here. Yeah. I'm always watching, right?

And so this time the car that she's following slows down and pulls over and she follows and stops. And Jim's like, why are you slowing down? Why are you stopping? Because Jim has a fundamental misunderstanding of what her goal here is. Yeah, yeah. The man himself, happy, cartello.

His door is open for him by his driver. And he comes out with a maniacal laugh on his face. He's played by David Provel? He's played by a guy you have seen in mobster movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this guy, if I said, imagine a guy who's a mobster. I mean, I think he goes on to be in Sopranos, right? Yeah, well, I mean, every mobster that was in the Rockford Files showed up in the Sopranos at some point.

But yes, yes, he plays Richie April. Richie April. It seemed to be in quite a few episodes. So if you I've never seen those Sopranos. So that's that's a hole in my panel experience. I think that might be our spiritual success successor show. Like, yeah, we've watched all the Rockford Files, time to watch The Sopranos. Oh, wow. This guy, I never would have guessed this.

This guy was the voice of peace in Wizards, which is just a weird intersection with my other interests. Yeah, he's quite the character. I think there'll be a better time to talk about him in a few scenes. But what happens here is he comes over, Jim rolls down his window and says, hi, and Cortillo punches him in the face. Yes. And pulls him out. And as Jim later explains, karate kicks him to send him flying. Jim's big weakness has always been the karate kick.

Yes. And he sends him rolling down the verge on the side of this road. yes and he sends him rolling down the the verge to the side of this road and then he grabs babs and threatens her but then he says like i never hit a skirt or something like that yeah i think the implication here here is that since she brought someone else he finally has the opportunity to confront her but yeah he basically threatens her tells her to stop following him you know kind of gives her a push and she she ends up where Jim is. And we see that his eye, like he's all bleeding from around his eye where he got punched. And he's been laughing this whole time, right?

Yes. Yeah. He's just maniacally giggling almost. And so Jim says, now we know why they call him happy. Yes. We go to the hospital where Jim's getting stitched up There's a uniformed cop there where Jim is giving a statement to And he wants to file an assault charge And this cop, he's great, he's kind of like So I just want you to know that you're not the first person this has happened to

However, most people decide to drop the charges I can't say why That's just how it goes. Everyone knows who this mobster is, right? So he wants to be absolutely sure that Jim's going to follow through with it before getting into all the legal BS as he says.

All that whole legal system tying our hands. Yeah. Jim is so sure that his palms are itching. The next day, we're back at the restaurant zuki's there early as per usual and jim couldn't sleep so they're in there like first thing as soon as they open the door uh jim wants to talk to babs but it's her day off because it's saturday or whatever leon asks if jim got bounced like a bad check he has a big bandage over his eye so jim

you know tells him what happened and they're they're like that's who you decided to mess with because everyone knows this guy and so he says he's called happy because he has an overactive adrenal gland that dumps adrenaline into his system and he doesn't know and he can't control himself so and uh i did not do the research to find out if this is a thing uh but uh it's certainly effective uh later on in in this episode i want to point out there's just like a minor background detail jim is clearly so comfortable here at this restaurant that he pours his own coffee yeah he goes over to where the mugs are like on a rack for the servers to take and he takes those mugs and yeah yeah uh it's yeah it's not it doesn't it's not the kind of restaurant where you would do that it's just that jim is such a regular and he comes in

first thing in the morning other people are doing their own things right he grabs the carafe with the orange on it right is jim drinking decaf i didn't notice that that's a question for our listeners because this is first thing in the morning if i understand drinking decaf i didn't notice that that's a question for our listeners because this is first thing in the morning if i understand drinking decaf later in the day if you're just like oh i'd like some coffee but i can't you know i wouldn't be able but he he's been up all night right unless he's thinking he's gonna get back to bed at some point but anyways something to ponder one of the mysteries of the universe maybe a production thing where he's not going to drink black coffee during every shot so yeah exactly they just brew they just brew decaf just in case

yeah i don't know good question and yes part of his comfort extends to he's just talking to everyone's just like he's just bouncing stuff off of people he's just talking to everyone you know telling them the story um everyone agrees that it was a bad move filing charges and we see that jim has talked himself into withdrawing the complaint overnight yeah but last night i was mad you know i got up this morning and i started thinking hey it's a small town everybody has a bad moment now and then maybe i caught cortello on a bad day so maybe the right thing to do is just say hey no hard feelings let's all move on down the road hey it's damn sure the right thing to do unless you say, hey, no hard feelings. Let's all move on down the road. Hey. It's damn sure the right thing to do unless you want to take advantage of Forrest Lawn's annual special.

Well, not that I'm scared of this meltdown. I can handle him. Sure you can. I know. Stuff happens. Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly.

This old man circle of talking himself out of it. Like he's thinking, maybe I should remove the complaint or something like that. And just listening to all of these guys, like, yeah, no, that's like, I don't know.

It was just fun hearing all of them try and justify the thing that he knows is wrong to do, but also like for self preservation, he should probably do it. Right. Right. Yeah. And you get the sense that like,

this is a group where he's not going to get a lot of pushback yeah yeah exactly um well he wants to go tell babs that he's withdrawing the complaint so she shouldn't try to start the hospital she's like i'll sign it too i was a witness and he told her that she should stay out of it um so he wants to go tell her that what he's doing so that she stays out of it so he gets her address from leon and goes to her place and i guess he could have called her sure but i think this is also like he wants to go kind of like explain himself to her there's there's a couple things about this that so narratively it's convenient that he's going to her place right

right part of that whole discussion with the uh trying to withdraw the complaint, I couldn't tell if that was Jim running a small con to get her address to go and check on her. Oh. Right? Because he does need to get her address, right? Right. He doesn't have it and he needs to get it from them. I don't think anyone was reluctant to give it to him. It just required more work than standing there and not doing it which yeah we get it we get the picture of leon as very

like what do you want me to do right this will come up later he's very grumpy he has a very uh pessimistic view of human nature he doesn't see he doesn't seem to appreciate the idea of putting yourself out there for you know when you don't need to i would say then that going to her place is jim's strongest move just because of all the conversations he's had with her so far on screen he's not going to be able to convince her over the phone so yeah yeah it didn't strike it didn't strike me as weird in the moment there's some stuff in this up in this in this movie that does strike me as yeah not super smooth right but this wasn't one of them i was just to the invisible critic in in my head was

like why didn't he just call her i'm like because he wanted to talk to her in person because that's how he's more comfortable like yeah yes I think that's a simple answer. Anyway, so he goes to her place. There's no answer to the front door. He sees that the mail hasn't been picked up yet. So he pokes around. The back door is open and we get a swell of ominous walking through the house music. Yeah. As Jim walks through the house and there is a very sad shot of him seeing her in her bed she is clearly it's

actually a little hard to tell from the framing but i think she's been shot right i mean we know that later yeah yeah we turn it later but yeah but from his reaction and seeing her in the bed she is clearly dead and uh it's a strong acting facial acting moment moment of Jim's reaction to that. And it's rough. I was anticipating it because we read the episode description in advance and knew that she gets killed. But it's a rough one. But then I guess as Rockford fans, business starts to pick up in the next scene. Oh, wow.

As the next thing that I've been anticipating because of the episode description comes up. So our next scene here is going to be during the funeral. Jim's there, obviously. Her friends from the restaurant are there. But then they're getting interrupted by a van full of college kids. by a van full of college kids. They are a criminology class that is being taught by Captain Chapman in partnership with a professor,

with Dr. Trish George, who we'll get to know more in the future. But for whatever reason, Captain Chapman is in charge of this class and wants them to see some first-hand criminology techniques and investigation

stuff. I don't know. He's brought a vein load of kids to this funeral to observe Becker observing the graveside behavior of the attendees it is uh a hell of a thing i'm just going to go through some some some greatest hits here and then we'll go to whatever you want to talk about so first of all this is also the first place where we meet cory her other babs's other now surviving son who's wearing dark glasses uh he's a bad boy he's clearly a bad boy and he i think we see him like he he asked

jim a couple questions like seems expensive who's picking up the tab like right yeah he's and then he grabs a tree like he jumps up and like hangs off of a tree branch, like just to, I don't know, because he's being so demonstrably bored at his mother's funeral. Yeah, exactly. And so my reaction is like, this guy looks like he's out of central casting for a 90s vampire, the masquerade character. I looked at his IMDb. This is the actor is Ivan Sagai or Sagui. And he was in fact in an episode of the Can You Be Embraced series earlier in 1996. So nailed it.

Yeah, no, that is exactly, that is the best way to describe him. And you are absolutely correct. We get Becker being mad at Chapman because Chapman is bringing in a bunch of kids to mess with his investigation. But he can't do anything about it because chapman's also his boss uh we get chapman being mad at jim because jim is there and jim is mad at chapman because they're disturbing this funeral of his friend which makes sense uh but jim but chapman's uh these are budding criminologists they're all criminology or pre-law majors the emphasis on the pre-law was really interesting. I mean, there's definitely something going on here where Chapman feels like he's, I don't know what, like he's going to win the influence of future powerful lawyers or something.

It's hard to tell. Or like the sheen of education is gonna rub off like he's gonna seem like a more important person because he's teaching a college class of or something yeah because dennis at some point lists the benefits that that um chapman's getting and they do include an honorary degree i think or something like that so yeah something like that but yeah it's there's he definitely thinks that this is his way towards some sort of legitimacy. I mean, it's fine if it's just he's got an entire captive audience. Right, right.

It's kind of an ego trip. Hanging on his every word. There's a lot of it too. Yeah. Let's see. Chapman points out Jim. He's the one who found the body. Over the years, he's found lots of bodies.

Such a good look. Jim tells off Dr. Trish George, you know, for interfering with this moment and everything. Dennis is telling him not to piss off Chapman because Chapman is just going to make it difficult for everyone. And we see some of the women in the class making eyes at Corey because he is this hot bad boy with a motorcycle. And then we actually end the scene with one of them getting on his motorcycle. And they peel off in one direction and Jim peels out in the firebird in the other direction. We get a lot of good angry Chapman, angry Jim, angry Dennis. Jim, can I talk to you for a minute?

Oh my God, Dennis. Just shut up and listen, okay? Chapman is out of line, but you don't want to get him riled up. What is this? It's Southwest California University criminology course. I know you feel bad about Babs, but you don't want to take on Chapman. This guy is leading a field trip to Babs funeral. Why?

Because she was a waitress and he doesn't think she counts. Okay. But those are all kind of the plot points. Anything else from this big bomb of, oh, here's what this episode is going to be about. Well, I did write down. This is James Scott Rockford. Mr. Rockford found the body. Over the years, he's found lots of bodies.

James Scott Rockford. Yeah.. Over the years, he's found lots of bodies. James Scott Rockford. Yeah. Look. Remember this guy. Yeah. There's a guy who just keeps taking photos. We do get our types, right? So the individual college kids that we are going to need to know for the rest of the episode are established here.

So we have the girl who goes off with cory we have the other woman who like like who saw cory and it's kind of has kind of a sassy manner to her we have the kid who keeps eating candy and uh because he's he's like he's like lying down on the firebird yeah he's tired or whatever and then we have the uh insufferable nerd who yeah uh has a who's his own theory yeah who has his own theory about what happened which is counter to you know becker's theory which is based on evidence um one of them is taking pictures this is okay so i'm being only because this has happened to me twice this week earlier i watched uh earlier this week i watched a colombo episode the one with roddy mcdowell

short fuse yeah and uh in it he uh is both spoiler the murderer uh that's not a spoiler in colombo but whoever the the one with x in it x is the murderer you never refer to yeah yeah exactly there's it's never like you watch them commit the murder so it's not like But whoever the the one with X in it, X is the murderer. You never refer to. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's never like you watch them commit the murder. So it's not like it's but he's in a dark room where he he creates his explosive. I don't want to get too deep into it. But the point is, is he he throughout it, he has a habit of taking photos of everything. And that is kind of important for like one bit

of thing happening but i absolutely thought that this habit of taking photos would have had him accidentally photographing incriminating evidence against himself and it didn't and then that primed me for the photo taking that happens all over the place in this episode being important to the the case and it's not so it's just it's just 90s kids have cameras yeah exactly instead of phones instead of phones right i guess maybe we'll talk about the kids in a minute because i have something to say about the oh okay the kids apparently the working title for this for this movie was field trip to a funeral that's a good title uh yeah why did they change it i don't know i feel like this is probably the scene around which the entire episode was conceived yeah i think so too yeah like what if chapman brings a van load of college kids to interrupt a funeral that jim is mourning

well speaking of mourning we go back to the restaurant where all of her friends from the restaurant are kind of you know leaving flowers by her picture and reminiscing uh zuki is drinking a salute to to babs um we have a bit of uh zuki telling telling jim it wasn't his fault and j saying, I kind of feel like it was my fault. Plus now there's Chapman tramping around. So Jim, I forget how much of this is said and how much is kind of like we just know how Jim's mind works. But clearly, if it weren't for him being with Babs, then Happy wouldn't have gotten out and messed with them. And if it weren't for him filing the complaint, then Babs would be alive right like he he's like happy must have gone after her yeah like i put her in danger right

um so the other waitress that we'll be talking to uh trudy is the other main uh restaurant person uh it comes up to jim and and everyone there has taken up a collection. And they have $600 to hire Jim to find out who killed Babs. And then Zookie kicks in another 50. Leon has some strong words. Everybody's sad about Babs now. Well, where were you guys when she really needed you? When she was trying to put Cal through college. Where were you guys when she was working double shifts

and that poor boy was hashing all night, painting houses and gardening just to make the tuition? Now he's dead, she's dead. They can't use your money and you've taken up a damn collection. And you people amaze me if you've been listening to this show since the beginning you've heard me say this several times but like good dialogue often does more work than just like say one thing and this is really good because it it's it hits at a truth right like we we mourn the dead and we want to do right by them,

but like it's the living that need our help. There's that going on. It, not to spoil anything, it's a little bit of a deflection and that's good too. It also, I think, brings Jim over to accepting the case. Like I can imagine, certainly Jim was still reluctant when they were offering

him the money because that is just the default way that Jim works. But also I can imagine it just being weird, accepting money from friends to investigate the death of another friend. That you probably already were kind of intending to do. Yeah. And at some point, that's just a recipe for broken friendships, right? Like, I can't believe that guy bilked us out of that money, especially if it's not a thing he could do anything about, because it's this mobster who gets away with these things. So it is definitely one of the high points of this movie here, because it just pushes everything forward with this very poignant uh statement but also upon reflection uh after watching it has a whole nother layer to it i just it's just one of it's a moment of craft that i really really enjoyed and it ends with uh with leon saying you people amaze me as he

puts another bill into jim's hand yeah right so's like, even though I'm calling you all out for this, we're all in this, we're all, we're, we're all on the same page about like, about wanting some closure. It is never specified what Jim's rate is in the nineties. Very intentionally.

Yeah. I think in the first nineties one, I think we did find out that he was still charging 200 a day. Cause I remember being like jim you gotta change what you're charging but uh i don't think that they they've specified it since then so this is you know probably i think there's there's a line in the ed robertson book that's like we never decided what he would charge in the movies but by then his rate would probably be like 350 a day yes this is a couple days not

that it matters yeah we see this money it doesn't come out it does not break any friendships oh this money does not break any friendships let's say let's put it that way um and uh jim does as you say he's tipped over and that says he'll take another look at her at her house uh he does want to check out her locker at the restaurant and there's a diary in it and we get the first of many uh kind of crossfades as jim reads a diary entry and so this is voiceover from um from babs uh of these uh older entries they're mostly thematic i don't think there's any like clue. There's one, there's one like clue that gets called out later, but they're mostly giving us some emotional resonance for the next couple scenes.

This is the counterpoint to what I just said, right? Like this. So this is when the music gets very schmaltzy. Yeah. And it's, you know, very schmaltzy yeah and focus uh and it's you know very sentimental and it's literally only except for like what you said there's like a clue that comes across at one point but literally the only purpose to this is for us to realize what a great person uh babs was uh i'm gonna be critical of these let me just put it that way they feel they feel like they have

not aged well yeah and they're not necessary we i think we're already on board with babs being a great person and then because they don't do much else this is another one of those points where in my brain because of my brokenness uh i'm thinking all the lovely things she's saying about the the son that was murdered are leading us away from the fact that he's done something horrible and put himself in this spot it is not like that is not the case uh it's just he's great and the other kid is kind of a jackass right and uh that's apparently how it works so um yeah and like i said i am critical of these diary things uh largely because that it's not that they don't serve a purpose it's just that they're not they're they are what they are just right on the tin there's no they don't serve more than one purpose yeah exactly and yeah just stylistically

they're kind of yeah schmaltzy they feel very 90s and there's a few of them like there's oh yeah there's a good amount of them they're kind of used as transitions yeah which is fine i mean i guess yeah i don't know yeah they're they're not great i get why they're there yeah they don't really do it for me they don't break, but it is what it is. Yeah. Um, well, Jim goes to her house,

which is an active crime scene and is also surrounded by Chapman's class, messing everything up. We get a, another talk with, uh, Dr. George. I don't think she's ever referred to by her first name,

even though they end up having a pretty casual relationship, but I think it's Trish. Um, I just call end up having a pretty casual relationship. But I think it's Trish. I just call her Dr. George in my notes. She apologizes to Jim for, you know, intruding on the earlier moment. But apparently the dean of the college, it's like Southern, I forget, it's some made-up college. But apparently the dean of the college gave control of her class to Chapman as part of whatever this deal is. Yeah.

And Chapman thinks this is an important opportunity for the class. So, you know, he's calling the shots. We continue with the, as I call him in my notes, the nerd who keeps on coming up with different theories in contravention of the available evidence. in contravention of the available evidence. Dennis has an armful of notebooks because he's supposed to grade all these essays on the evidence collection for Chapman. But there's not much in the house. And Jim says, well, that's because it's a professional hit.

Yeah. All right. Kind of an important bit here is that outside the house, Jim encounters the heavyset kid who is sitting down and eating uh a candy bar yeah dropping the candy bar wrapper on the ground and tells him that uh he used the bathroom and it was so hot that he opened the he forced the window open because it was too hot in the bathroom this is then paid off when chapman says there was forced entry and jim's like was it in the

bathroom because that was one of your kids and then in the backyard there's a candy wrapper with an evidence number on it and jim's like that kid's just dropping candy wrappers that's not evidence or one of them i think jim picks it up and then chapman sees him and starts yelling yeah yeah becca what is he doing what the hell is he doing give me a blue out here right now the lab people mark one of those candy wrappers that one of your class dropped well if they marked it then it's evidence this is a crime scene i don't want civilians in my crime scene unless they have a student bodyguard. But Chapman, of course, is driven to distraction by Jim's presence and has him arrested for interfering with the investigation and tampering with evidence and suspicion of murder. And we just get the most Jim's low-key aggrieved.

Chapman. As he's led away by the uniformed cop. And then there's just this faint someone's talking in the background i just noticed someone just says like you need a lawyer jim like quietly in the background as we're watching tennis so those are the beats again fun scene all the yelling is fun it's a delight to watch uh some good good lines uh the only thing i have to say like the only like sort of content warning or anything is that jim is being like has some fat phobic language in the in the

yeah in the scene uh but uh aside from that like it is it it's a delight watching i mean one of the joys of chapman is his double standard right right this is just a masterwork in it absolutely yeah um yeah so i think maybe this is a good time to to talk about the the college students so you know as i say there's kind of like four of them that we're gonna hear more from and the rest are kind of just in the scenes uh i found that the writing and portrayal of these students to be very bad. They're caricatures, right? There's such caricatures that it started to kind of take me out of the movie because it felt to me, and there's more caricatures to come.

We're going to get a little more of big character displays. So it's kind of a piece with that. But my knee-jerk reaction was that these these students these you know young young adults were being written by someone who has never talked to a 20 year old in their life it is a very okay boomer uh script in this regard right like this is yeah um the movie isn't really about them right like they're there to serve the purpose of creating chapman rockford beef kind of and then there's a little bit more which we'll get to uh but the kindest view of a kid of a college age kid in this movie is of the

kid that was dead before this started yes yeah and that's it yeah uh there's there's maybe one of the students that like uh later on like becomes it's not a big thing but like it's just like hey uh i like this this old man's style or this old man's theory or whatever um but most of the time the idea is that these kids either don't care or they care too much and that's it either that they don't care or that they're stupid yeah yeah and i don't know i guess what what really what kind of i guess irks me about this and like you can have you know i don't know you can have stupid college student characters. That's fine. But I think what gets me is that in this very movie, we kind of have like, quote, like normal people. And then we have these

like weird cartoons. And like all the people who work at the restaurant are kind of like, are written and played like people that you would meet in real life. And you'd kind of feel, you know, you feel their lived in-ness of the world and everything. And that's something we really appreciate about the show is most of the characters are like that. And then when we get these characters that just seem, they seem like they're written without even thinking about like, huh, I wonder if someone would talk like this. Right. And the answer is no, no one would talk like this.

Yeah. It just feels to me like because they're kids, like they kind of got like the rough writing pass of like and they're kids who cares like they're stupid or they have this one character trait and that's all we need to know about them and they're just so out of step with the average level of a side character in the rockford files that just seems like they're being deliberately written to be bad yeah i agree i like i i think that this is uh like a weak point but i also they're not super important no and that actually is kind of also a little bit of a weak point there is this moment of um well i i guess we'll get to it when we get to it but like

there's definitely a point where i'm like so this this kid's this kid doesn't matter at all. Right, right. Wow. Yeah. Well, this is where this first really started to hit me, where I was like, these are not interesting characters. It feels like they're written by someone who doesn't want to write them, I guess. Yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, sure. I get your premise.

Here you go. You're some college kids. Enjoy. That's my Stephen Cannell voice. Well, let's take a little break. We want to make sure that you know where you can follow all of our other projects and interests online. Epi, where can our listeners find you? You can Google Epidaia.

I am the only one out there that I know of. You can go to dig1000holes.com. That's the number a thousand. Or you can go to worlds, plural, without master singular dot com and find my work there. How about you, Nathan? My internet home for all things NDP is at ndpdesign.com. You can find all of the links and information for all of my various games, including the Worldwide Wrestling role-playing game, my zines, and podcast projects, of which perhaps there may be more than one. You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at ndpeoleta.

As always, if you want more information about the podcast, go to 200aday.fireside.fm. And now back to the continuing adventures of Jimbo Rockfish. Of course, Jim's arrested, so of course we get a very much appreciated Beth appearance. Yeah. So we cut directly to Beth chasing Chapman and yelling at him what we're all thinking.

Beth on a rampage, yeah. She's right. He knows it. So he does let Jim go, but he threatens to dropkick him into orbit if he keeps interfering and messing with his investigation. So we go outside where beth dutifully relays this yes this threat to jim jim of course downplays it uh though beth does kind of try to emphasize that like this is this is one where you might really get yourself into trouble um he'll get you in jail this time or something and jim says well then you'll get me out it's the legal line dance and kisses are on the cheek i really all right so this is what little we have of beth in this

episode but i really enjoyed like how utterly ferocious she's it she is with uh with chapman she like she has this line where she's like captain i'll always be here to drop a flag on you right like she just isn't having any of it and then but then takes exactly what chapman has to say and brings it to jim and and is trying to convince jim to to stay clear of it and it's just uh i just really appreciate uh gretchen like you know switching the character this sort of 180 and um yeah no it's good uh it's it's classic beth compacted into right one one great scene yeah uh she does end by telling jim to eat a lot of twinkies which i assume is a because when you go to jail you can't get twinkies i yeah i, I wasn't quite sure what that one was, but assumed it meant something.

We have a transition voiceover from Babs Journal, which includes nice thoughts about Jim, though ends with, I just wish you were a better tipper. That line will come back. And then we get to the, I don't know, we get to the other part of the, what if? Yes. The two tentpoles for the episode. So we have Chapman with a classroom of kids rolling up into a funeral. And then we have Jim enrolling in Chapman's class.

Let's build the rest of the episode around that. So Jim goes to the university. He wants to re-enroll. He apparently did three credits in 1989 and should still be in the university. He wants to re-enroll. He apparently did three credits in 1989 and should still be in the system. And the administrative person rolls her eyes and says something like, another true seeker of

knowledge. On a technicality, he is able to enroll in this criminology class if Dr. George signs off on it. He says he needs a prerequisite you're kidding me right i teach criminal science how is introductory golf a prerequisite both courses are about hitting defenseless objects with clubs wow just wow nailing. But we see that Dr. George is on Jim's side because they both can agree that Chapman is a jerk.

And so she gives him her signature. So we go to class where Chapman is giving the five W's and asking for thoughts on suspects. We have our know-it-all nerd who who says that uh he's like this guy rockford he seems like your classic not very smart criminal going back to the scene of the crime which of course is a gag because jim is sitting right behind him calls him out on it uh which is extremely good it's a little convenient that that jim this guy's suspect, walks into the classroom unnoticed and sits directly behind him. But whatever, the scene is great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's like, eh, Jim's a master of disguise. Yeah. He's a master manipulator. He could probably get into that classroom without anyone noticing. Chapman, of course, tries to kick him out, and we have all the drama around. No, no, I'm allowed to be in this class.

Dr. George is there and she's like, yep, I signed his paper. Jim then says that, well, if you're looking for suspects, uh, what about happy Cortillo? And he lines, you know, lays out what we know and then says that he doesn't think it's a good idea to involve a bunch of students in a case with a guy known for knocking off witnesses. So in this, so there's a lot of yelling with Chapman, right? As you might expect. And part of it involves Chapman saying that this class was assigned to study every aspect of the Honeywell murder. Right.

Importantly, Jim has a tape recorder and has tape recorded uh chapman during the yelling this will come up later uh at the end of the class the bell rings and jim has a good line class dismissed and stay low i loved all of the the sparring yeah this is all good stuff uh jim and chapman it uh it's also good like fun to watch jim uh sort of old man these kids if you will uh well i guess this will come up in a moment but like the um the the bit about tape recording him and the exact line that he delivers is a little convenient but again i'm i'll let that go just because it produces some fun stuff. Right. Like it's it's a neat excuse that Jim is is is has been able to mastermind here.

Right. Jim has engineered this a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's it's it's a little out of character for the way Jim tends to engineer things like it feels a little bit more. character for the way jim tends to engineer things like it feels a little bit more uh yeah anyways it you know because this is usually the kind of thing that you get from like shows about like criminal masterminds who know the human psyche so well they can get them to say anything you know or something like that but uh whereas jim's just flails in his cons a little bit until he gets what he needs so i think this one i I think he had a plan, right? Yeah, yeah. This gets clarified for us in a minute, but yeah. Also important before we move on is that Chapman,

because he started the class two weeks late, he needs to write a 30-page makeup paper on proper evidence collection. Neatness counts. So now Dr. George is getting kind of drawn into Jim's orbit, right? She wants to know why he's so keen to stay on the case. And we end up at the sandcastle with Leon and Trudy kind of going through everything. And Jim explains that Jim Rockford, the PI, has been told to stay off the case. But Jim Rockford, the student, was specifically told to, you know, he plays the tape, investigate every aspect, etc., etc.

So he asks for a special assignment, a field practicum to access and coordinate research material. You know, what does this mean? He wants to toss Babs' pad. Dr. George says that she will give him this assignment, but only if she can go with him. And we start to get the portrait a little bit of her being like, I'm an academic. I teach this stuff. But now, like, this is an opportunity to, like, really see how it's done. Yeah, yeah.

Wonderful cut. Probably my favorite cut in the movie of frantic knocking and Angel's voice yelling, Jimmy, open up. We get to the heart of the episode here. He comes into the trailer with this giant suitcase angel's outfit here he has a loud print like blue like aqua tone jacket shorts knee socks and his long hair it's uh it's so good um this is a, good, solid Jim Angel banter. What's in the briefcase is his new product line. No one sells it cheaper. Jim's like, oh, so you have a bunch of hot merchandise.

He's like, it's not hot. It's previously owned. But what's going on here is that Jim is hiring Angel. He's going to pay him $100 to write his paper for him. I love the whole setup here. I love everything about it. I really honestly thought Jim was going to have to write a paper while doing all of this. Yeah.

It's slightly uncharacteristic of Jim to just straight up cheat like this, but maybe not. Like he does run comms and things. I feel like academic stuff it seems i i am not i was not surprised i guess let me put it that way and i would have been like why would you choose angel of all people um but it's explained right away like before he even gets into what he wants to do the angel wrote a lonely hearts column uh like so it's clear that angel can write and angel can pretend to be other people or whatever so try to make it look like i wrote it you want to deleterate right yes because zing uh he does say that that angel can use his

computer to write it but he better not swap it for another one he'll notice if if he comes home and his computer is a piece of junk and then we end the scene with angel sitting down at jim's computer and saying oh this is a honey yeah that's like a little like laptop like one of those giant square 90s laptops yeah uh also jim rockford computer user i really appreciate that he's caught up with the times yeah he's always been slightly slightly around the cutting edge of technology right he's got an answering machine answering surface it was uh yeah jim jim rockford computer user is very good yes all right so this honestly this is the most confusing part of the episode to me so so jim and dr. George go to Babs' house. They go in.

There's someone in there. Jim calls out, and there's a dim shape that takes a shot. Jim Rockford is hitting the arm, and dun-dun-dun, it's the nerd from the class. Yes. Oh, my God. I shot him. We get a brief scene where Jim has to get surgery for this. I think it's showing us the severity

of the injury and then we crossfade him reading the diary more while he's convalescing in the hospital and essentially for the rest of the movie he's gonna have his arm in a sling um so right this kid why is he there why is he there all right so this is the the nerd with the alternative theory right i think his he has a His character's name is Tennyson Yates. Yes. It's, yeah, two poets thrown together. Tennyson Keats? Yeah.

Tennyson Keats. Yeah. Yeah. At this point, I don't know his name. Oddly enough, my nickname for him has the same initials, which is just this kid. This kid. In all capital letters. This kid.

Yeah. This kid. Yeah. which is just this kid this kid in all capital letters this kid yeah this kid uh um yeah his tennyson keats which is uh it's a beautiful name um wasted on a character yeah honestly it is shocking okay the part about this that i don't get is that it just feels a little like something ended up on a cutting room floor it feels like like we're missing a scene. Yeah, because we don't see him again. He literally was hiding out in the crime scene in the dark with a gun. Right. We don't know what his plan was. I don't think that's ever really explained.

Yeah, I don't really know. So the portrait we have of him thus far is that he's know-it-all and he thinks he knows what happened out of proportion to the evidence that is presented, right? So I guess you could kind of fill in the blanks of like his theory is that the murderer is going to come back to the scene. So he's going to wait to find out who the murderer is. He does suggest that that's why Jim showed up while everyone was in the crime, like investigating the crime scene. Right. Because he's so stupid. He's one of those stupid criminals that comes back to the crime scene. Yeah.

And he might just still be playing that. And whether or not he thinks it's Jim. Right. Right. And that he's going to catch Jim jim and shoot him yeah i guess why does he shoot because jim's like calling like he's like jim said you know jim's calling out he's not sneaking he's like isn't he in here or whatever so does he panic i guess i mean he's clearly panicked benefit of the doubt this is what happens is that he he brings the gun to apprehend Jim to catch him in the act and apprehend him and then just panics when Jim gets in and shoots him.

None of that is is is made text by. Right. That's the problem. Right. Like, yeah, it's left a little open as to what his plan is, what his you know, why he got caught up in all of this because i certainly i mean i was never a criminology major but um i didn't when i was in college didn't go even remotely that close to that amount of work putting myself in that amount of danger for any including the kendo class i took where we were hitting each other with bamboo swords moving on so we spent some time at the hospital chapman comes into hassle jim while he's convalescing um this is pretty much just another fun yelling scene uh and i think this is kind of the last so like they're

paced out pretty well i think i'm i'm good on this interaction after this you know so that's yeah well spotted uh jim has some good language about apologizing for getting his paper in late it's hard to write with a morphine drip and uh yeah we end with so jim's eating his like hospital breakfast uh during this and chapman says something at the end as he's leaving where jim picks up his toast as if to hurl it but uh dr george who is there uh holds him back and that's just a great visual i don't i didn't make any other notes about uh anything i don't think anything important happens in there it's just the only thing i have is just a little bit before this just before jim goes under for the surgery oh yeah where they like the doctor lists all the things that she'll need and jim was like i don't

like the sound of that she's like oh and also put this guy under right right yeah some fun fun fun comedy fun medical comedy yeah good stuff and and also i do like the Doug, you don't mind if I call you Doug, followed by your busted Jimbo, you don't mind if I call you Jimbo. That's good. It's fun. It's fun character stuff. Yeah. Okay, so Jim is checking himself out of the hospital, even though multiple nurses are trying to tell him that he's going to bust his stitches and get infected and stuff. He's like, no, no, I'm ready to go. There's a bit of like, well, you certainly can't drive yourself. He's like, well, I'll get something. And then as I say on my notes, the most weirdly

attractive guy just walks up and is like, are you Jim Rockford? We're here to give you a ride. Okay. So we're going to get into this in a little bit here. It's about Happy and the men in his employ. Okay, right. So the deal here is that this guy says that Dr. George ordered a transport for him and that she already paid for it. And he's like, okay, well, if someone else paid for it, fine. If someone else paid for it, fine. But then as it turns out, they in fact work for Happy Cortello and they're taking Jim to Happy's little mansion to talk to the man himself. So as I'm watching this, I'm taking these notes.

I'm like, this is the most weirdly attractive guy. I think I paused it to like write something down. Liz came walking through the room and went, why is he so attractive? Yes. So I don't mean weird like he looks weird. It's more like, where did this man come from? Like all these normal looking people are here. I mean, James Garner is an attractive man, but like, right.

There's a difference between like 70s TV attractive. My notes. I said, like, is this a setup? Right. Did they get him a stripper? Right, right. they get him a stripper right right to drive him like that's what i like it looks like because he comes in in the paramedic uniform and the other guy with him is also you know muscular or whatever and it just you feel like they're out of like magic mike or something

yeah at any moment they're gonna break into the pull out a boom box and start dancing and this would be like angel's way of like had to get you out of there, Jimmy, or something. Like I was expecting like somebody to call upon some strippers to pretend to be paramedics to get Jim out of a situation. But instead, they work for Happy and they're bringing him to Happy's house. And Happy is surrounded by these muscular men. bringing him to happy's house and happy is surrounded by these muscular men uh which i i honestly can't tell if that's just like another character treat uh are they trying to say that that i mean happy's married but we don't know know if he's we don't need his wife we don't know if he's happily married i don't like are they trying to imply that maybe he's gay and he's got, you know,

because it is, they stand out. They're, they're like, um, it's like, they're, they're like soap opera star.

Yeah. They're like beach body guys. So I didn't actually, now that you say it, I'm like, huh? Yeah, you're right.

I didn't really pick up on that outside of just this guy. Yeah. Well, this guy was like next level. Yeah. He was, he definitely was like magazine cover attractive. Like, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, that stood out. And then it turns out that they indeed are taking him to talk to Happy. And then so he's still in a wheelchair and his arms still in a sling. Jim is. Jim's is, yes. Yeah. And so Happy has them carry him down these stairs to this little poolside.

His one was really flat. I forget what those are called, but the flat pool. Yeah. There's no real barrier between the water and the land. There's just tile around it. Yeah, yeah. So this scene, where to start? First of all, we know he's a bad guy because he has a pool.

Right, yeah. So Happy Cortello wants to apologize to Jim for kicking his ass, which is very funny, and is willing to pay his hospital bills, but wants a favor. He wants him to stop saying that he killed Cal and Babs because he didn't do it. And it's like making him angry that he's getting falsely accused. During this, he's sent his goons to go find his meds. Yeah, he needs lithium. This is a weirdly cartoonish mental illness bit where he says that he has what's now called bipolar disorder. Right. I used to be one of them manic depressives or something like that and that he

needs his lithium to even him out and there's a running gag where his goon uh nicky i believe keeps like leaning out of a window being like i can't find it he's like check the check the drawer in the by the other bathroom like all this stuff and he's like jittery and he starts laughing and that's when jim tries to tries to talk him down because when he's laughing that means that he's getting excited he's going to get violent okay so from sort of the storytelling point of view this is a really interesting tension that that like you as the audience know that the laughing leads to violence. Jim knows it. Jim can't help but be sarcastic. Right.

Because he's Jim. Yeah. To mouth off to authority. And it keeps getting him into deeper, deeper trouble that you can see this guy getting frantic. And also it's great because his goons are getting frantic about finding the medication. Right. Like everyone's kind of in a panic about this. All of that said, I have no doubt that this is insensitive.

Like I have no experience in the matter, but like looking at it, I'm like, yeah, that can't possibly be how it works. There's a good sense of tension. There's a good kind of sense of chaos which i think is important and he does end by punching jim again yeah which i guess you know echoes the earlier scene and everything um but then his meds are found and yeah he calms down sure like i have no idea if that happens that quickly like all of this is very uh it's kind

of of a piece with the with the with the college students to me where it's like is this supposed to be an absurdist take right on this kind of character or is this being written for the purposes of the plot but at the expense of actually really caring about portraying this kind of person and that's a little more how it feels where it's like, Oh, this will be funny. You know,

there's some other episodes of the 70s show. You know, there's lots of monsters, obviously. And some of them play up having certain issues. Yeah. And sometimes it's written well, and sometimes it's not written as great. So,

you know, I don't know. This just, it's so big. Like the portrayal is also so big. Yeah. He's taken big swings with his movements and his body language and his voice. And it's just like, it's a little much.

It's a little much. This also has not aged well for me. But yeah, the important thing here is that Cortello denies these murders and thought it was important enough that he wanted Jim to really believe him about it. Right. Right. We get another diary transition. it was important enough that he wanted jim to really believe him about it right right we get another diary transition um dr george comes over to talk to jim in his trailer uh the school has closed down or the school is closed down the school has closed down her course um yes for

obvious reasons and apparently chapman wrote a letter to the dean accusing her of letting the curriculum get out of control or something. It sounds about right. Yeah. She asked about the diary. And Jim has a thing about how Babs was a real tender soul. She really was there for everyone. And then asks, is a 10% tip too little? And we get, I don't know, Boomer Jim?

Yeah, yeah. Dr. George explains that. At least 15. 20 if the service is great. So this is 1996. In our post-pandemic service economy world, let me amend that to 20 generally. Yeah, yeah, just 20. 20 generally, more if you can afford it. Yeah, yeah, just 20. 20 generally, more if you can afford it.

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of where I'm at with most things, especially delivery services. 20 is the moral floor. Yeah. That's the official 200-a-day stance on tipping in 2021. The conversation is great because she points out, because Jim... All my life I've worked, nobody ever tipped me. Yeah, but you can set your fees. Waiters and waitresses are underpaid. great because she points out because jim all my life i've worked nobody ever tipped me yeah but

you could set your fees waiters and waitresses are underpaid they depend on the tips to make up the difference seems like 10 is enough uh and then he notices that angel stole his computer yes uh jim but he will not let this go he wants to go check out babs place again because obviously he wasn't able to that first time but he knows that she kept a notebook with her investing you know when staking out cortello and stuff so he wants to see if she found out anything that would make him want to kill her we have them going back up to the house we have a shot from inside the house to watch them coming up so that we see over the shoulder as the the the student from the course who was taken with cory is in fact putting her

clothes on as she opens the door and cory and uh this woman i forget her name if it's i've even mentioned have moved into uh babs's house as his house now i guess i think this is melissa that's yeah that sounds right yeah let's see we get a real portrait of a couple of jerks here yeah this is i think the least kindest of all of the portrayals of the youngins in this uh episode cory says that melissa did a bunch of work to get your bloodstain out of the carpet but it's still there i'm gonna bill you for new carpet and then melissa's like you know i even wore your mom's rubber gloves and which is a weird thing to say and then there's there's a point of like you know a woman just died and right and she's like well i didn't know her and yeah it is the most like

the youth are the problem they don't care about anything yeah portrayal which at least in this context that's what that's the character of cory that we've been seeing so like that's fine the writing for melissa is very thin and very like i am a bad person who doesn't care about anything yeah her her character trait is that she likes Corey. Yeah. And that's it. But the upshot is that, you know, Jim wants to look through Babs' stuff. Corey will sell him the stuff if he wants it so bad. They have a back and forth about that. Jim has $100 on him. Dr. George is $75.

Corey can't believe that Jim's such a loser, that he only has that much money on him, I guess. My brother Cal used to always say you were okay, you know, but I just never saw it. To me, you're just always running in place. Why don't you give it up? Start bagging groceries. It's always good to get advice from a guy in a diamond lane to Terminal Island. It ends up costing them $175 between the two of them and Jim's watch.

Right. Which he needs Dr. George's help taking off. Because his arm's in the sling. Yeah. So he's like, all right, I'll show you where I stored the stuff. And my note was like, it's in the trash, right? And then sure enough, it's just trash bags in the carport. So they take it.

There's a moment where we see jim take the pic so babs had a picture of cal of her you know her murdered son in the car with her and there's a moment where jim takes that picture which is you know it's a nice little visual of jim yeah jim actually cares right yeah we uh have the restaurant staff looking through pictures while jim has finally found the log and is looking through that then we go back to some zuki business um he asked for another drink in babs's honor and this is when jim tells him about the diary and that she wrote about him in her diary and she was worried about him uh worried that he was killing himself drinking and says why don't you not have one in her memory and so we see zuki perturbed by this he leaves but he does leave the drink behind yeah um this whole time there's been a couple times where dr george has said that they're that cory could have done it right like

that's not outside the scope of what they know and jim just doesn't believe it uh and then in this scene we go into that again jim he's like cory's always been a sneak but he's all show and no go it just doesn't fit jim's mental picture of him to shoot his mother in cold blood right or even in anger but from her little investigation log there's six addresses that he wants to check up on she asked how he's going to do that he's like what i need is a transformer that's street slang for someone willing to roll over on anyone do you know one of those intimately intimately oh that's good so we get to see a little bit more angel uh we crash cut to angel getting thrown into a wall by jim wearing his i mean serious business trucker hat.

The mesh trucker hat is just such a good look for him. Yeah. And Angel's initial squeal, I almost finished the paper. There's a good Angel Jim banter, including, you know, you always mess with me. I've never messed with you. And Jim kind of shoves him. Okay, once. Shoves him again.

Okay, twice. But Jim, he needs some info. Angel, of course, says it's not free. It messes with his price structure and his downstream revenue. But after Jim smushes him into a chain link fence, goes, I guess credit is acceptable. But Jim just wants to know if Happy Cortello is into anything he would be willing to kill over keeping someone quiet about right yeah apparently he had the only thing that angel knows is that he's been getting into into into luggage into knockoff fashion luggage we are deep in rockford files territory now this is exactly the kind of scam that someone would murder someone over.

Yeah, I think he says it's a $10 billion business. Makes more money than drugs. You make knockoffs in Mexico and they look exactly like the real thing until the weather changes and then the stitching comes out or whatever. We end with a wonderful exchange.

You know, this is not the way the two old friends discuss problems. Angel, my computer is back in my trailer by tomorrow noon, or you'll be discussing this problem without your bridge work. If you're interested, the paper I wrote for you is brilliant. And then Angel's run up those stairs to get away from jim is uh kudos to the director and the actor because that was it's very good it's good it's good um jim and dr george go to see dennis who is at the shooting range no one is wearing ppe yeah by the way there's no no earmuffs no no glasses um so one of the addresses

is a warehouse and so now jim is giving dennis a tip on a warehouse it's full of counterfeit luggage you should check it out and becker's like all right how do i get a warrant for that i can't just go on you say so so dr george's plan is she'll go in the warehouse, mess around. Someone will grab her. Then it's a kidnapping and Jim can call in the police. And since it's a crime in progress, they don't need a warrant.

She's like, it's not like, it's not exactly illegal. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they start arguing about which one of them is going to do the poking around to get snatched.

And she yells, she yells at Jim, i'm the victim and then dennis starts shooting again and muttering what sounds like italian to himself yeah that's what i think as well they're leaving and she asked jim what is he saying and i rewound this three times trying to figure out what he says and what i hear is it's the old rockford movie the victim i don't know the the exact wording but what i took away because i had trouble hearing it too but what i took away was that jim was fabricating uh dennis saying that jim should play the victim should should be the kidnapping victim yeah yeah the end of the argument is that jim should be the one who who pokes around yeah

yeah i just couldn't the context just was not clear to me and i tried to figure it out and i did not so you're probably right yeah um we go to the warehouse and we have a nice gag where jim sees he's waiting he sees a car go in and then he starts doing stuff to get attention that doesn't get any attention so he kicks over a couple of trash cans then he breaks in a window with a rock. Then he has to do it again. And we see him getting impatient, like, come on. And then finally, sure enough, the door opens.

It is Cortello's goon, Nicky, who pulls him in at gunpoint. There's guys doing something in this warehouse. There are crates that say Mexico on them. So I guess Jim was right um he starts freaking out of course he starts laughing jim is trying to talk him down and he gets punched again he falls and then he sees a candy wrapper and looks up and we see that nikki is eating the same kind of candy that they we had seen from the uh the the overweight kid in the big dust up over candy wrappers earlier in the episode he's like where's that and cortello says something like oh

nick eats those all the time so turns out it was a clue after all that's when a jeep crashes through the loading door and guys in SWAT gear roll out and round up everyone, including Dennis, which is always fun seeing him in all the kit. Jim asked Dennis what he did with that candy wrapper. And Dennis was like, it's still in my pocket at home. Like, well, dust it for Prince. It's evidence. And then as Happy Cortello is being hauled away, Jim looks at him and gives this really

weird screechy hee hee hee of victory. Yeah. So that's good, I guess. What? It's just the way you worded that. That's good, I guess. I guess. No, it's fun.

I like that Chapman was right, that that was evidence. Chapman was right. Right, right. I mean, with Chapman in charge, they never would have gotten here. But still, here's this little bit that's like, oh, yeah, all right, I messed that up. Yeah, every so often, Jim does need to learn, you know, he does have to have his own ego deflated every once in a while. And this is a pretty good moment. And we've gotten now quite a bit of angry, badass Dennis.

And I literally was thinking, I want to see the other side of Dennis. Well, I have good news. Well, I have good news. So we go back to the sandcastle where they, including Dennis, are watching Dennis's interview on TV about the arrest and everything. The aforementioned Mr. Zeno's prints were on a aforementioned candy wrapper, which was at the scene of the aforementioned Miss Honeywell's murder, which indicated his complicity in the aforementioned murder.

So we get the fun, very nervous Dennis not really knowing what to do with himself on TV, which is great. But we learn that Nikki is turning state's evidence in this whole case and that that Cortello is going to go down for the murder of Babs, if nothing else. So Jim solved the murder

and the manager of the restaurant tells him that his Denver omelet is on the house all next week. Case closed. Episode done. Just because I didn't reference it anywhere in particular earlier. We've had a couple references of the restaurant barely scraping by, not really turning a profit. I think one was in one of the journal entries. And I think we've had it in the dialogue a couple times.

This becomes important later. Yeah. But this moment where he's like, it's on the house all next week is a good... Yeah. It's not just a joke. That's actually also kind of an outgrowth of the fact that this guy can't afford to give a free breakfast to Jim all the time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. give a free breakfast to jim all the time yeah yeah exactly at the bar jim apologizes to zuki

for upsetting him and reads him a diary entry that was about him that he found that includes the phrase that uh you know she's worried about him he's too good to lose to the dark spot inside him and there's a moment he uh eats his olive out of martini. And then he says that he's going to go home. He's had enough to drink. This is after Leon has already put another martini next to the one he's currently drinking. Yeah. Yeah. So he leaves.

So then Jim tells Leon that he should help Zuki out and not enable him. Right. And Leon has a whole thing about how people don't change. Like, he's going to be back. He's going to be back he's going to want to drink he's not going to change like you have to look into all these and all this business that isn't yours you're not going to change i'm going to serve drinks i'm not going to change right like it's kind of his his his whole thing um and then i think like us we are

now casting our minds back over what we've learned so far in this movie right jim is wondering so cartello had i mean nikki did the killing but cortello had babs killed for finding out about this warehouse right but he seemed really passionate about making sure i knew that he hadn't killed her son he even said that he liked him he was having him paint his pool house right yeah and there's no evidence about any reason why he would have killed a killed uh cal so jim wants to find out for sure that's still unknown um jim uh asked for dr george's help in finishing out this investigation if she's interested they're talking over the case and then she mentions that they haven't heard from the kid uh tennison keats yeah this is when we first hear his name and go what right what so the kid who shot jim she hasn't heard anything from him in two days and wonders if he's gotten himself into

trouble i mean i guess because he did go to class but then the class got canceled this whole thing is very ish yeah yeah it's very like don't think about it too hard um so all right so this so they go to his place his apartment i guess uh jim goes to pick the lock but it's already open after he explains all the careful craft you need to know about lockpicking or whatever yeah and we get the ominous music as we travel with them to a fairly graphic shot where yeah they come across him propped up in the corner with a gunshot wound in his head uh and he is clearly dead i think the purpose for this is to give some uh credence to the idea that he committed suicide even though there's no indication that he would anywhere in the text but it's fine we all know that he didn't but for the cops to think right right you know um and jim jim's line i'm sure getting tired of finding bodies yeah yeah i bet uh before calling dennis they look at his call his answering machine or whatever his

phone machine and it has a record of the last number he dialed so they take that down as it might be a clue and then he calls dennis and we get our i think our last bit with chapman um because he's on the scene yelling at jim you're going down for this one this time you know like basically threatening to arrest him for murdering this kid uh and she was like you better watch it for all the times you falsely accused me like you really want to haul me down for this one and becker's like don't bother chapman this is i'm calling this one a suicide yeah chapman's beeper goes off and he says yes if i ever find the guy who wrote the department that letter about the class, I'm going to kill him.

So he's apparently under some kind of of I don't know, he's being he's being hassled about what a terrible job he did. I really thought that when the beeper went off, that was like he called Chapman. That was the last number he called before he died. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. But he was kind of like a teacher's pet when it came to Chapman. Exactly. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah. But no, kind of like a teacher's pet when it came to Chapman. Exactly. Right. Like, yeah.

Yeah. But no, this is exit Chapman. And then Jim and Dr. George tell Dennis that it couldn't have been a suicide because, as Jim knows from sitting behind him in class, Tennyson Keats was left handed. Yes. Also being shot by him. That too. The gun and the shot and the wound are on the right, right? Yeah, yeah.

We go to the Firebird. They're wearing seatbelts. Trying to talk through who would have killed Tennyson Keats and why. It's probably not Cortello. He's in jail and his cronies wouldn't care. Like, it's not like he has people going out for revenge on his behalf. Like, he's just not that kind of guy, right? I guess we should check out that phone number that we specifically said. We should check out this phone number in the last scene. So that takes us to a plumbing and heating place.

Dr. George's theory is that, still that it was Corey, maybe he couldn't handle Cal being liked by everyone. And that was the motive. Jim still doesn't like the idea of the family tearing itself apart about that. The guy who runs this company asked for a $50 bribe to look at his records. And between the two of them, they can scrape together $30. Yeah. Precisely because they still need five for gas. Right.

They're like, my tank is low, which is, I, you know, everyone knows that those are my favorite little details. But this is the, this is a place that did work for the Cordell pool house. And so the guy who worked on that project remembers Cal,

but only because they're the second people to ask about him in the last day. Yeah. He got a call from this kid asking about him. So Gumpy is the, I don't know, plumber that they're talking to. The long and short of it is that when they're doing the pool house job, he remembers some guy coming over to talk to Cal about something. And it was something about food, about some food being stolen. They had a big dust-up argument. And the guy left. And then Cal was really mad about it,

and then he stormed off, and then, you know, they found him dead the next day. Jim asks, was the guy tall, maybe in his 40s or 50s, African-American? Which is the description of Leon. Dun, dun, dun. Gumpy says, oh, I didn't mention that. Yeah, that's right. And Jim says, no, you didn't. Thanks for your help.

The plot, it continues to thicken. This one, I will say, and I think this is a well done maneuvering from the Corey character. Definitely caught me by surprise. Yeah, yeah. It's a twist. It is a twist. Now we have our big finale so we had the you know the thing we're at the warehouse that was kind of the false finish that i mentioned and now we have our our our finale our last finish our real finish jim goes to the sandcastle to

talk to leon who is loading his uh the trunk of his car with crates and he starts asking how is it that this place never turns a profit i guess leon in addition to working the bar also manages the food inventory or something like that yeah and he asked leon about remember when we went out on your new boat last year how much did that cost and leon's like oh i can't really remember and pulls the brochure out from under his sweater that he's wearing yeah well i have it right here and with the stuff, all the kit that you put on it, that's $105,000 to put that in the water. Mm-hmm. How does a guy who pours drinks for $7 an hour end up with a $105,000 boat?

If, you know, it's in Babs' diary about how they're, you know, they're never turning a profit and they can never really figure out why. they're you know there's they were never turning a profit and they can never really figure out why but if someone's managing the inventory and skimming 10 off of the you know off of off of everything that passes through that sure would uh add up and that would just about eat the profit from this kind of restaurant so the summer that cal died he was working at the restaurant maybe he found out something maybe he figured out or found out that leon was doing this and so you went out to cortella's house maybe he's got in an argument maybe someone takes a swing he hits his head all of a sudden he's dead um i i didn't write down the exact dialogue but my notes were like and then along comes tennyson keats he's a hateable guy which is true yes he figured it out somehow

sure and now he's dead all right and we move on yes uh leon tells him he should leave it alone and then throws a box at jim and topples some shelves on him and runs away yeah jim says it's no use the cops are on the way but we have an ominous shot of leon picking up a crowbar and then a slightly less ominous shot of Jim picking up a frozen leg of meat. And there's a bit of stalking through the restaurant. I didn't mean to kill Cal. It was an accident. That's what happens when you make the wrong things important. Now I have to kill you, Jim.

I don't kill too easy, Leon. I've had better guys than you try. Another good Rockford line. They creep around. Jim rushes him through a door, so he catches him by surprise with the opening door. They have a couple swings at each other, and then he gets him with the leg of meat, and he goes down.

Of course, during this scuffle, he kind of grabs Jim's arm that was shot and gives it a good yank so yeah that clearly messes him up again um and then uh he kind of has has leon down and they're just waiting for the cops and everybody at the sandcastle gave you the benefit of the doubt you'd come in and growl at us with smile and call you the sand crab. We were your friends. We were all wrong about you. In the very beginning, you were nothing but a mean, angry son of a bitch.

Yeah. It's a good old man fight. It is a good old man fight. Just, like, lots of exhausted, can't keep going. It's good stuff. So we'll just finish out the movie with our last scene at the sandcastle where Jim's arm is all up in like traction, essentially. Yeah. Because it got re-injured. They ask if he needs anything and he says that it hurts or like if he needs like aspirin or something.

And he says it hurts where pills can't help. We have a Zuki appearance where he tells Jim that what he told him from Babs' diary really stuck with him. appearance where he tells Jim that what he told him from Babs' diary really stuck with him. He just checked in with a AA program and he's going to straighten himself out, which is great. Yeah. I have to say, I have to say, I just really liked the fact that they didn't end it with him just being like, oh, I'm clean. I now right like that there's a process ahead of him he received the first step that he had to do right you know and i think it also reflects that like you can't make someone do that like they have to do that themselves yeah they have to like you can help like right you know but they have to make that that choice uh yeah and that's that's nice

um and this is kind of getting back all the way to our first scene jim has a line where he says leon said nobody changes but you can do it we all can all we have to do is try and this kind of again links back to the first scene where leon said like you know nothing ever gets better for me and jim's like oh things will get better yeah right yeah their their fundamental difference in outlook is book book ends the movie which i which i like and we see that jim wins right like jim's jim's outlook wins which is why the show's named after him exactly uh and this is also part of part of the core like why do we like jim rockford like he has this very humanistic view where he's not always

optimistic but he is willing to give people the space to grow if they want to anyhow he heads home zuki says uh he comes on like a tough guy but inside he's all warm and runny like okay inside he's a soft-boiled egg thank you yeah thank you zuki the bookie and then trudy checks the bill and says i'll be damned he tipped 20 percent so uh he's he's learned a little something himself um the bill for this dinner which presumably was him and dr george i would would assume, was $45.79. I saw that as well. I did not do the math to see if they correctly calculated his 20% tip.

I just assumed. It looked about right. It was about right. I think the 20% tip was like around $9, which it would have been around $10. So it's close enough. It's almost a 20% tip. Well done, Jim. You've learned.

We have a music swell as they all look at Jim going back to his trailer. And then we have a crossfade of Babs walking on the beach to the same music swell. And then we kind of fade back to Jim in profile and freeze frame as he smiles in profile recalling you know the meaning that his friend Babs had in his life yeah that's the end of the movie I was very happy to be proven wrong about uh about Cal Cal yeah I was in the position where I was like okay so they're giving us a lot of Corey is a bad person. Right. Is this because he's the bad person or is it because they want us to think that he did it when really he's just a slime ball? Like, you know, there was enough doubt there that I was willing to go with wherever the movie took me. The curveball, not curveball, the false ending uh i thought it was also good i felt like

like it was just like yeah wait what we're not done with this are we like there's there's more to this um and the fact that jim had to make that decision to keep going to keep investigating because that's what babs would have wanted uh it was good. Yeah, all in all, I actually really enjoyed it. Like I said, there are definitely some really strong moments in it. And then there are some moments where you're like, okay. But none of them are detract. None of them are deal breakers. I think the thing that I most appreciate is that the real story,

the stuff with Leonon that feels like it worked pretty well when it very well couldn't have right you know this is kind of two stories that are stuck together and sometimes that can be more disjointed than other times i think this does a good job of like giving us the early setup and then we concentrate on the other story for a while and then we come back and it's kind of like jim is still suspicious and it's like okay i see that i'm i'm with him on that and then yeah he he he carries on um i i man i really feel like there's something something that got edited out about the the kid tennis and keats because it's just like yeah he shows up to do the bare minimum that he needs to do to shoot Jim and then to die. Why was he there?

Don't have a good answer. Why did he shoot Jim? Yeah. And it's Leon that killed him, right? Yeah. And Leon killed him. And that's a little weird too. Yeah.

It certainly seems that Leon killing Cal is not premeditated. Right. Well, that's the little that's kind of what we're given to understand, I think, which is like that was an accident. But then when he got pushed on it by this, this hateable kid who. Yeah. We all hate like I hate him, too. Yeah. He's a hateable guy. once he gets pushed on it by that guy he chooses to kill him and tries to make it look like a suicide and so that's like the next step so now he's like well now i'm a killer and so when jim's like well i figured it out too he's like well i'll just kill you it's like where's your end game here like so like leon's kind of unraveling i guess like there's a there's an alternate version of this where that's the main story and the like thing we step out to deal with and then come back from is yeah yeah you know like like we swap the focus of the two the two crimes right um which might give us more context for tennyson keats and for leon's unraveling um yeah so i just feel like there's something

yeah because it's kind of like he's looking so like the class is over but he still wants to investigate because he's a nerd and he thinks he knows what's happening then he shoots jim and then he decides to investigate cows instead of babs which i guess makes sense the benefit of the doubt is that he's still investigating to impress chapman despite the class being over because he just seems to be kind of a kiss. Chapman really likes him and he's kind of a kiss up to that. But there's no incentive for him to get it right. He's painted as a character who, especially like Chapman, just says what the easy answer is and then just kind of rides that yeah so the fact that he

he's on to leon is just weird it's just really weird it's kind of like what does he do with i mean i guess like confronts leon and then leon like follows him home and kills him or something like is it yeah it's a lot of like i don't think about it too much we don't care like that's not what we're really here for we're here to see jim put all the pieces together which is fine yeah we shouldn't really be harping on it because it's not that much of the movie i was just thinking that like i i don't even think you need his death to push anything forward that's kind of what i was thinking where it's not that it takes up a lot of screen time but it's just like that was it narratively important that jim be injured like i guess it puts him in the position where he's in the wheelchair when happy wants to talk

to him which helps create that tension because he's in happy's power right like yeah like physically and i guess it gives the ambulance gag with the weirdly attractive ambulance driver um but like those aren't really doing anything i mean it, it's always fun to have Jim hurt. Like, that's fine. Yeah. I guess I guess the alternate version of this without that stuff is like Jim just gets picked up by the goons to go talk to Happy. And like maybe they injure him in the scuffle. Right.

Or something. I mean, you can easily have the living son. Right. Corey. Yeah. Because Corey's the living son. Right, Corey. Yeah, because Corey's like moving in. Yeah, Corey could have shot him. That would be totally in character. Yeah.

And then we have the, we still don't, we don't think he killed Cal. Who killed Cal? Let's talk to this missing kid who turned out he got murdered. And he called a number that we then follow up on. And that gets us to, to who killed Cal. And it's like, and we don't know how he got that number,

but he could have gotten it the same way. Jim could have gotten there by talking to the employer. Let's go back to basics. You know, who was he working for when he did the thing? Maybe whoever was working with him there saw something. And that's how we get there without having this character in it at all so you know we're this is sunday quarterbacking not sunday armchair

quarterbacking yeah monday monday quarterbacking i think it's both but welcome to 200 a day the podcast where we rewrite the 90s movies about the 70s detective show uh all that aside uh it was fun i i mean it comes as a recommend uh to rockford files fans uh for me i don't feel like it's it felt like a rockford files yeah it feels like a rockford files story it has a good like let's hang out with jim while he does his thing yeah the last couple movies have been very Angel heavy, which is fine because Angel's great, but also kind of at the detriment of Jim doing stuff. A lot of it is Jim managing Angel. This is

the perfect amount of Angel. We never know if he gets his computer back. Guess we'll have to watch the next movie. It has some stuff that's kind of stuck in my craw just about the writing of the kids and stuff like that. Yeah.

I don't know. I guess you're not going to, you know, you can't bat a thousand. So yeah. What are you going to do? But yeah, the good stuff is very good. Yeah. I'm comfortable saying that. And yeah.

Speaking of being comfortable saying things, I think I am ready to be done talking for this episode. So do you have any other thoughts or notes about friends and foul play i too am comfortable with not saying anymore all right yeah well thanks for hanging with us and uh we will be next time with an episode of the television series the rockford files i don't know how to do the guitar wow I don't know how to do the guitar. I don't know. There's a little guitar riff in it.

I don't know.