Two Hundred A Day - Episode 93: Irving the Explainer

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

Nathan and Eppy dive into one of the most oddball episodes, S4E8 Irving the Explainer. It's an intentionally obtuse episode that really benefits from seeing it cold - if you haven't, be warned that we might spoil the fun with our discussion! Written by David Chase, this episode seems to be a pretty polarizing one, and we talk about the various lenses through which you can view it to find the fun. Content warning: the episode isn't really about Naziism, but it contains references to Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and includes newsroom footage of Hitler in the opening credits. 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) * Jay Thompson, 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

Hey, am I too late for those African goats? Haven't got the whole 300 cash, but like I got a lot of homemade cheese. Maybe we could work something out. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidae Rabashaw. And we have quite an episode to talk about today, if I do say so myself.

Epi, what episode are we considering this time? We're going to be doing... We were just complaining about IMDB's interface. Here we go. We are doing Season 4, Episode 8, Irving the Explainer. Perhaps one of the most controversial episodes. Yeah. As as we've discovered, this is quite a polarizing text.

Now, you chose this episode. I did. I did. So defend yourself. All right. Well, so this one came to mind recently because on our Q&A episode, we were asked a question about the director of this episode, James Coburn. So the actor James Coburn directed this episode. This is the only thing he's ever directed. And so we talked a little bit in that episode about that. I guess I'll repeat it here just because we're already talking about it. But James Coburn, Academy Award winning actor, he had starred with James Garner in three movies, two movies before this, in The Great Escape and The Americanization of Emily. And then he was also in the Maverick movie in the 90s.

I posit, I wonder if that had something to do with it, that he's, you know, a buddy. Yeah. But also, as we'll get into, this episode, is it an homage? Is it a send up? Mm hmm. It references and incorporates golden age Hollywood film noir tropes yeah right uh and and so there's some specifically there's at least one casting uh choice that is a kind of a direct reference to to that stuff as well i don't think james coburn necessarily is associated with that era but i

don't know there's something about like having an actor direct, right? You know, kind of Hollywood insider kind of thing. That is a little bit of resonance to me. I don't know if that's, that's all just me reading into the things that we know. I haven't dug up anything in particular about it. There's definitely a lot of fun bits about Hollywood in this particular episode. Hollywood in this particular episode. But yeah, so our Q&A question brought it to mind. And I do hold this episode in particular, I don't know, regard. It sticks with me.

Like it's stuck with me ever since I first saw it. It's just a, huh, that is quite an episode. And every so often have kind of thought about proposing it and then being like, I want to be like ready. Like I need to be in the mood to do this one because it's going to be a bit of a departure. And so since it came to mind recently, I kind of started girding myself to take it on. And so when it came my turn to propose an episode, I was like, you know what, let's do it. Let's go for it. So this is probably a good point for us to do a, I guess, uncharacteristically non-ironic spoiler alert, right? Like, I think I make fun of spoiler alerts quite often because this is a show that is, we'll get into how old the show is a little bit later in the podcast.

There's an element of watching it cold that the way that it unfolds, well, yeah, how to say it, right? But you said earlier, oh, go on yeah the i guess yeah so when we're talking about this in our pre-show discussion about how are we going to talk about this episode i had a thought along the lines of i've now watched this episode maybe three times but like i watched it the first time on my original watch through of the series yeah totally cold just oh time for another rock profiles episode and that is what stuck with me and then since i already knew what i was getting myself into watching it for the show for our show i'm going into it with a different context and i'm getting something slightly different out of it yeah and it's not that like there's a huge twist

and you'll be so surprised like that's not really the point it's not a spoiler in the sense of like you sure don't want the ending spoiled for you it It's more a spoiler like, I don't know, you don't want to walk through the haunted house during the day when there's like staff people there hanging up the last of the lights and you can see the mechanisms of all the monsters. all the monsters, you don't want to do that before you go to the haunted house on Halloween, right? Like, yeah, sure, you're walking through the same building, but you want to go through that first experience where you don't really know exactly what's going to happen next. And that's part of the that's part of the construction of the episode. Does that make sense? Yeah, like, it's, it's the same thing of like, like, you know, you're going to get scared, like, you know, you're going to see Rockford, right that's not the question but yeah like you don't want to necessarily spoil the spoil the the mechanisms so that you're looking out for the thing that's

about to jump out at you because you know it's about to jump at you yeah so i guess what we're positing here is that being in a state of confusion while watching this episode is what the episode is trying to do. Yes. Because the characters are in a state of confusion. Yes. And if you don't have that state while you're watching it because you've gone and listened to us beforehand, that legitimately might be a spoiler. It legitimately might spoil the experience in some way so if you're like well i'm just gonna go ahead and listen to i feel like these guys sure are talking a lot about

the episode without talking about the episode i wonder why that is yeah you might want to try and watch it and then come back yeah exactly uh that said should we jump into it or do we have any other caveats we want to throw out? No, no other caveats. Well, one content note. Oh, yeah. Content warning. This is about Nazis.

Yes. This story itself is about a character who is a Nazi sympathizer. And they talk about Herman Goring and the looting of artwork and stuff like that. Like, yeah, it's not like we go super into details. There is footage of Hitler shown during the credits, which is really weird, but that's what they did. Yeah. Yeah. That's an odd of all the choices that might actually be one of the oddest choices.

Yeah. Um, none of the, none of the characters are Nazi sympathizers and that viewpoint is not given airtime. Yeah. None of the none of the characters are Nazi sympathizers and that viewpoint is not given airtime. Yeah. But it is part of the plot because it's about stuff that happened in the 30s and 40s and and is directly a result of stuff that was part of the Nazi regime. Yeah. So content warning Nazis, which we we get in the opening montage. Yeah. Quickly, before jumping into the opening montage, just want to mention this one is written by David Chase. So this is season four. We're getting a lot of chase scripts in this season. This one does not involve the mob. So it's a departure there. this one does not involve the mob so it's a departure there but also uh i think there's there's an interesting question of like how i don't know we'll get into it but i just because

we usually talk about the writer this one's written by david chase it is almost all talking this episode is almost all talking there's very little action and so it's uh you know a pretty pretty majestic display of like let's write an entire hour of talking. Yeah, I'll throw that out there. Yeah. But speaking of talking and Nazis, we get into the preview montage. We start off with Rockford saying, I know about the painting and I really don't care. And somebody saying a painting worth three million dollars.

And that's got our interest, right? Like three million dollars. I'm sure Rockford isn't going to sell a painting worth three million dollars and that's got our interest right like three million dollars uh i'm sure rockford isn't going to sell a painting for three million dollars there's like even like a 10 finders fee or something is going to this seems like a motivating factor for rockford yeah yeah yeah uh and then the other thing is just lots of nazi stuff and then the great line um uh between at the end between um jim and becker where he's like someone mentions nazis around you and it sure rubs off so uh right off the bat we know what's gonna we know that it's gonna involve a painting lots of money and uh probably some nazis and also they uh there's a couple mentions

of people being dead, things happening long ago. So we're set up for this is concerning incidents that happened in the past I think is also fairly relevant. We're going to take a quick break to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com

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watched the episode and now you've come back and you're like yes why did you send me to watch that episode or maybe you're like huh what an interesting episode i wonder what you guys have to say about it we're hoping it's the latter or you decided never to watch our uh never to listen to our podcast again these are all legitimate feelings. Responses. Yes, legitimate responses. So I think what we want to do here is instead of doing the go through front to back treatment. Right.

I'm thinking of more of a onion treatment where we'll talk about the outer layer and then maybe go into the next layer. Sure, yeah. And then see if we get to a core of some kind. But maybe it's just onion skin all the way down. Someone went to art school. Guilty as charged. All right, so in Irving the Explainer, Jim gets hired to look up some associates of a Nazi sympathizer director, Hollywood director from the 30s and 40s who died in, I think, 46, they say.

He is hired by a woman who is writing a biography and wants to talk to people who knew him at the time. Ostensibly. Ostensibly. Yeah, this was what he's hired to do so this episode takes place in 77 um or maybe 76 uh it airs in uh 77 so we're talking about the hollywood of 40s 50s 60s of of 30 to 40 years ago right that helps me contextualize because we are watching a show from the 70s so 80s 90s 2000s 30 almost yeah there's a there's a line um part way through it uh i actually didn't even write down who said it but they said uh i mean when you think about it the 40s were only yesterday and i paused and did the math and the episode that we're watching is probably further away from us than the events they're talking about are from them right so it's like

because sometimes it's really easy to just be like well that's really far in the history you know but it's not to the characters that we're talking to and and it is reasonable that there's people alive uh anyway so that's what he's hired to do in so doing he uncovers this horrific not uncovers but he discovers uh this horrific murder that happened this director's wife was murdered and there were all these potential people involved it was never solved there's also a painting that he's supposed to have had that was being couriered to him from Hermann Goring. Yes. Forget the title, but the Luftwaffe Marshal or whatever in Nazi Germany. And he was buddies with Nazis.

This director was, Korper. He was a right-leaning guy in the 30s before World War II, right? There's not a joke, but there's a reference. It's kind of a joke. I don't know. So Goring gave him a car and then... Yeah. So this is the car that he crashed in and died later in the 40s. So this is the car that he crashed in and died later in the 40s, apparently because after, you know, the fall of the Reich, he couldn't get parts for this car anymore.

So the brakes failed or whatever. Anyway, there's this very valuable painting that disappeared basically around the time that this guy's wife was killed. So we have stolen art. There's stolen art. There's this unsolved hollywood murder and then there's a pair of germans who appear and are convinced that jim knows something about the painting there's a pair of french spies secret service yeah yeah essentially it's like the national french secure the security uh something national security something something there's a couple of french guys who have been on the trail of this painting

like their their office has been on the trail of this painting since it was smuggled out of germany um and have been trying to find it and and now the woman who hired jim um has something to do they've identified her as being associated with the current whereabouts of the painting. We'll get to that. So they're following Jim because they think he knows something about the painting. What else? What else? Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to

briefly summarize. But yeah, so Jim goes through this whole thing and over and over he's like, okay, how does this all fit together? We have this murder. We have this painting. Everyone's after this painting. But this murder was this inciting incident and the hollywood buddies of the of the director that he keeps that he turns up are have more to say about this murder and who might have been involved and who did it than this painting that they don't care about and then all these like secret service guys and French and German, you know, spies and whatever care about the painting.

They don't care about the murder. Jim's trying to figure it all out. Put all the pieces together. We're with Jim because we're like, Jim's going to figure out the mystery, right? There's a mystery here. Let's see how it all fits together. There's a bunch of red herrings throughout it. Yeah.

Oh, God. You know what? He's not one of the cast members obviously because he's been dead this whole time but um i can't think of his name corpor the director the director yeah so alva corpor yeah he he in addition to being friends with nazis uh he made a bunch of films and i'm going to say i'm going to specifically the bloody sky wings of deceit hell on wilshire boulevard and eerie canal exquisite names i would watch every last one of those films um and then he reportedly destroyed them burned them right right we have a picture of

this guy from the very beginning that doesn't say oh he was this nazi sympathizer uh that gets uncovered as um rockford starts investigating he learns that like he talks to people that worked with him who hate him it just unfolds that he just wasn't a pleasant pleasant person uh so there's that sort of smaller mystery of like who who is this person? And then, uh, there's a cast of characters that never show up that are all around the murder, right? His, his wife was having an affair with Julio,

who's the younger brother of Raul. And so though, and they were the gardeners at the time, one of them may have killed her. Uh, uh, Al them may have killed her. Alva might have killed her himself. There's these two Patricks. There's Irving Patrick and Patrick Parnell.

And there's confusion around which Patrick people are talking about all the time. And again, only Irving shows up because his name isn't the title. Right, right right if it was called patrick the explainer that could have been yeah another layer another layer yeah uh i think it's important to to kind of note that this there's a whole cast that doesn't exist it's almost like we're watching people talk about an agatha christie yes yeah history right like there's a whole cast of people that will never show up on screen. And so as far as a visual medium goes, we don't have clues as to who they are.

So you have to kind of like remember their names. There is a literal corkboard with red string moment in the episode because it's so confusing and Jim's trying to figure it all out and keep things straight. Before we dive into that because that's another thing we could dive into that's the deepest mystery of all by the way but we'll get yeah yeah um jim eventually uh reconnects with his original client she gives

her name as karen hall that's not her real name we'll get into that what's kind of kind of tying this all together logistically and also bringing in denn and the police is that one of the director's cronies, not cronies, but like one of his he was his assistant director and his assistant and stuff at is killed um by these germans who are after this painting that brings in the police and the french security forces are working with the police or whatever uh so that's why dennis is involved but anyway so there's a murder there's an actual murder in our timeline that is also like we kind of know who did it but like trying to track down the germans involves figuring out the painting so what's going on with the painting so that where the painting is jim reconnects with karen hall they discover that there are two grave sites for the murdered woman for olivia um corper so they're like oh maybe it's buried at one of those grave sites they engineer a situation where the germans abduct Jim, go to this crypt, open up the crypt.

Surprise, it's not the painting. It's all the film reels that he was said to have burned. So this brings the Germans kind of to justice. While the French go to the other gravesite, the painting is not there. So we're kind of left at the end with this like, wait, so, you know, what happened to the painting? Are these things still connected? And then Jim has this whole like, OK, I've figured it out. Here's what happened.

Wait, wait, before we get to that, we need to say just how triumphant this reveal is, because I wrote this quote out. He made this reveal. Everyone's standing in awe. And Rocky says, Fourhead never stops happening. You never stop making me proud of you, son. Which is how we know it's not accurate.

Yes. Oh, was it? Yeah. So this is all, all undercut by the sudden appearance in our final scene. Irving Patrick, who's been this kind of like, we haven't been able to find him.

We haven't been able to talk to him. Yes. Throughout the entire episode. He's probably the only one left alive from that, the events. And he's having a heart attack as he pulls up on Rocky's lawn and they all go out and he, as the title says, explains what happened all those years ago and it turns out that he actually is the one who killed olivia corpor because she was planning to run away with the

other patrick with patrick parnell and they're going to sell the painting to finance their life together and irving patrick he's an art dealer now And at the time he was trying to get into the art world. And so he was going to take that painting as his own, like entree into art dealership or whatever. So he killed her to keep her from taking and selling the painting, I guess. Uh, then there's, there's other details about some other stuff that they all thought was true. That isn't true. Um, and the, the point point is is that every conclusion that jim has come to about this entire thing including he has this big moment was like oh here's why it's so confusing these things are not related we've been trying to make them connect the art and this murder though they involve similar people are not related crimes right and that leads him down his road to like figuring it all out and then turns

out that he's wrong they are related because right yeah every last bit every last bit and uh yeah and so we get a bunch of reveals about what really happened the painting never even made it to corporate they think it was stolen everything's it was stolen by the german courier so it never even made it to brazil because that's where the handoff was going to happen. More details. He was planning to kill Karen Hall because she, it turns out, is the daughter of Alva and Olivia. And then she was taken away after her mother's murder and told that she was the daughter of their housekeeper who took her away. And she had just found out that that's not the truth.

But she, as a child, had seen Patrick. And so he was afraid she would remember him and was going to kill her. But now he's having a heart attack, so he wants to confess. And so on. She has no memory of this. Right. Which is another just weird twist is that she has no memory of this very traumatic event, but he remembers her very clearly and her in an excited state. So, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I got no conclusions to draw from that other than, like, it's yet another fog dropped on top of everything that's going on. The episode ends with the Souris joke. I don't even know. But I can't live with it anymore. All right, I'll call Dennis Becker, police sergeant friend of mine. But Irving, you're going to have to do the explaining. Irving. Irving dies in're going to have to do the explaining. Irving. Irving dies in Rockford's arms?

I guess. And it's like, wah, wah. Now you have to explain it. I mean, I guess we shouldn't jump straight to the end here, but we're going to dig into other things too. But just like. Yeah. So I think that brings up maybe the first question. Like what? Yeah, no, think that brings up maybe the first question, like what?

Yeah, no, what? What? Well, I was going to say, what lens does this episode benefit from being viewed through? Right. So when we scared people off earlier in our podcast, this is what, because my notes at the end here are like, Rockford's frustration is our frustration. Rockford's frustration is our frustration. Rockford's confusion is our confusion. Never have we been asked to identify so closely with Jim Rockford's emotional state as we are in this episode.

So and there is I think there's textual evidence for this. If I if I may use the word textual and evidence. I'll allow it. and evidence i'll allow it throughout there's a very fun and interesting motif that happens throughout uh which is becker and chapman's involvement because they hang on everyone's word about every chapman is still like vaguely adversarial to rockford but not like he normally is the most chapman-y thing he does is so so the Securite guys, the French guys are giving, it's this long scene. I know because I took notes and I was like, why, why am I typing so much? It's all exposition and it's broken to three discrete locations because it would be too long to sit in one place and have this conversation yeah and it's also played for laughs everyone's getting tired dennis is yawning and at one point chapman chapman breaks in and asks them if they want to get something to eat but he does so in like high school level french yes and that's the

most chapman you think to me because they're talking in english this whole time yeah yeah but he's like oh i'm going to use the little french i know to kind of suck up to these important guys from another country it's like this scene the joke at the beginning of the scene is so great because they're like what exactly would you want to know oh the whole mcgillow painting karen albert corper herman garing but don't just jump in in the last couple of days, all right? I'm confused. Just begin at the beginning. Very well. France, 1789. Queen Marie Antoinette, on her 30th birthday. Yeah, so this is one of the big, not Mr. X, but one of the big, like, meaty,

here's what this episode's about that's not actually what it's about. We have a significant amount of screen time going through every beat of this painting. It's a Watteau, Antoine Watteau's French painter. A Watteau. There's a gag when Jim is first interrogated by the Germans where

the way that the German guy says it is like Watteau. And Jim's like, I don't know what word. And I'm taking my notes. I'm like, I don't know what word, like, and I'm taking my notes. I'm like, I don't know what word that's supposed to be. It's because it's a German accent on a French name as an American English speaker. I'm like, I don't know what that's supposed to be. Anyway, but Anton Watteau is a French,

a real French painter. The painting they're talking about is fabricated. They call it Pilgrimage to Avignon. There is a Watteau painting. There's actually two paintings or two different takes on the same subject. Pilgrimage to Scytheria or like a trip to Scytheria. There's a couple of different translations and there's two separate paintings. Not to make things more confusing.

Yeah. No, no, we should. And I don't know if this is actually a reference to that or not or is it just like or it's like we just made up a french sounding uh painting um but this particular one is understood by some art historians as kind of being about like the fleetingness of love and like the end of love people have paired off and are leaving um this island of of love so if you wanted to read a little bit into that i think there might be something there i might also have just

gotten two two yarns on a cork board here to right for my own good um what we're talking about again oh so yeah so this whole long sequence yeah because all the details about this painting um uh plot wise they think that corpora's housekeeper took it when she fled after olivia's when he he got crazy or he got you know i don't know he got unstable and she disappeared after olivia's murder and so they think she took it um and then she died in a bus crash like a week ago and they discovered her name because this has been an open case for 30 years or whatever. Yeah.

But when they went to find her, she was already dead, but she was traveling with a young woman who she said was her daughter who turns out was Karen Hall, who's the one who hired Jim. So that's the trail that they're following on. Anyway, lots and lots of details, lots of good jokes. trail that they're falling on. Anyway, lots and lots of details, lots of good jokes. There's a great gag where Dennis is like falling asleep trying to take notes.

Yes. For political reasons, they tried to tie the theft to a family of Jewish art thieves who trace their roots to the time of Louis XIV. This guy Louis XIV, is he got a spelling on his last name? X 14 is not a last name

louis 14 means louis the 14th anyhow i yeah it's okay so to zoom out for just a little bit the thing i was saying before like dennis is taking notes throughout all the time on everything everyone says chapman is just hanging on all of the words like he's just listening to the whole thing i mean he is i think he is also kind of getting to the end of his stamina though like yeah yeah like getting more and more slumped but but it's it's um like when a kid wants to stay up late and they're falling asleep but they don't want to admit that you know it seems to me oh okay so this motif that i was talking about that keeps showing up is that the moment anyone

hears about any little bit of the these mysteries that are all roiled together, they become obsessed with finding out the clue. Now, sometimes it's for the $100,000 reward for finding the painting, right? Like, there's the greed motive that exists out there for a lot of the different parties that are getting involved. But there's, like,

Rocky, he gets angry that Jim's putting himself in danger, but he's strangely into this well not strangely rocky occasionally just gets um let me let me stop there for a second can we talk about daphne yes so um after this big scene with the french inspectors where we get all the stuff about the painting which ends with again, again, like you were saying, with Jim being like, okay, here's some conclusions that I'm drawing.

Because we get through all this whole thing and then Dennis is like, okay, so how does this tie into the murder of Buddy Richards? And one of the French guys is like, who's Buddy Richards? Because this is totally parallel, you know, a different track. Chapman asks...

Wait a minute, wait a minute. You think the homicide ties in with the painting? Hey, hey. I think that Ronald Sanchez or Irving Patrick has the answer to that question. And he's so excited, right? We see Jim. It seems like Jim doesn't sleep during this time. Like, he's getting increasingly obsessed with trying to figure out what's happening he he's manic in in the beginning

as he's explaining it to dennis at one point he just starts holding his head and just complaining about this headache that it's giving him and like i think there's a viewing of this where this all of this is a tumor there's a last scene where he wakes up in a hospital yeah exactly the um but anyways go on yeah anyway so jim bursts in with like well i think that raul sanchez or irving patrick has the answer to that question and everyone just stares at him because it's like we haven't we don't like we haven't mentioned raul sanchez irving patrick i don't think has come up except very tangentially but jim has been you know dutifully trying to connect all the dots so we have all this information and then we uh cut to um rocky getting out of his truck holding a bag bag of groceries. Always appreciated. It's Rocky, so we know that no one's going to come and shove them out of his hand. Yeah.

And he's saying, there's a $100,000 reward? So the French are offering this $100,000 reward for finding and returning this Watteau painting. So they walk into Rocky's house, and there's a woman we've never seen before sitting behind a typewriter with this cork board behind her. And Jim introduces her to Rocky in Rocky's house. Yes. As Daphne Ishawahara. And she's a PhD candidate in logic that he has hired to help figure out what's going on in this case. Yes.

figure out what's going on in this case yes so all right so there's some things about this that that uh that intrigued me because the way she's introduced and there okay so there's some fun jokes in the scene about logic right and occam's razor occam's razor they explain occam's razor to us which is you know you don't want to make assumptions about your television viewing audience. So I appreciated that. Yeah. And you have to explain it to, to, uh, to Rocky. Yeah. And there's a great line in here. Um, you know, another great Rocky line where he's, you know, you're as good as those folks on the educational TV shows. I don't watch them, but I'd like to. so there's something about this introduction that made me feel i i remember when i first watched it because i was like we were watching it through and then she showed up and i was like oh it's her she's not a character anymore like she just exists in this episode and it felt so much like they were introducing another character that would be part of the reoccurring cast.

Like there's this logic professor that he would go to from time to time. So that's neither here nor there. That's just I just want to like just point that out. Right. She's here to both, I think, add to the general sense of chaos to make jokes about about logic yes not at her expense but like no no in order to write jokes about logic at usually at jim's and rocky's expense into the script so yeah so this is my my thinking here because she's sitting at a typewriter she's behind her is our cork board with yarn and everything let's go ahead and start the petition to replace the standard.

I think is it from It's Always Sunny? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of Charlie with all the yarn, to replace it with Daphne and her cork board of yarn and index cards. index cards. So her role in this is, aside from doing these jokes and also kind of explaining Occam's Razor to us, but it's to present

Jim is in so far in over his head. He called in what would otherwise, if this were like a sci-fi show, they would be like let's talk to the computer. Right, right, yeah. Okay, I guess what I'm saying is that you have her at the typewriter typing out these cards that go up on that board and you know it seems that like her

job is to process the information right yeah and generate answers or something like that and um it's just funny yeah yeah yeah no it's a it's a it's a it's a counterpoint, you know, for for comedic effect of like, this is a deeply, deeply illogical situation. So we're going to so we bring her in and she creates the humor of like trying to, you know, just using the wrong tool for the job. And we are I did check. We were like about a half hour into the episode when she showed up. Right. Like so that's also kind of an the episode when she showed up right like so that's also kind of a um interesting thing when it comes to shows like this because normally you get like almost all of the characters are at least mentioned or introduced in the early part so we so i guess

what what i'm saying is uh she stands out or at least stood out in my mind from when i first watched it way back yeah i didn't remember that she was in this actually like this, this character was in this. I remember the character. I couldn't remember what episode that's the thing. And I think that's why, like she, at some point I probably saw her and thought,

Oh, she'll be a part of the show. And she just wasn't. And she's not part of the mystery. She's just showing you the resources that Jim's trying to pull together to make this happen. Right. Part of the fun. Yeah. She's part of the mystery. She's just showing you the resources that Jim's trying to pull together to make this happen, right? She's part of the fun. Yeah, she's part of the fun.

Not part of the show, not part of the mystery, part of the fun. Yeah. But also it feels a little bit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm focusing on this, but like it feels a little bit to me like Jim thinks he's on to this $100,000 reward. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because he's hiring. He's hiring someone. Yeah. Yeah you know we see that jim is hired but then karen disappears and we i think we can assume that he never gets paid for yeah yeah no this is out of pocket and um yeah he is interested in this reward but unlike other episodes, he now has an excuse to stay on the case. Like he could get the reward out of it, but he is obsessed. Yes. He has a need to figure out what is going on and the story behind everything. Right.

Because there's this cold case and then there's the painting. Yeah. So Karen Hall. case and then there's the painting um yeah so karen hall so this character is played by barbara badcock who has been all over tv i think she was in a soap opera or two she definitely has a very familiar face yeah i mean a lot of people that we see on on this dude i'm i was just scanning through this trying to find she did oh she did a number of uncredited voice roles on the original series Star Trek, as well as was in a few of them.

But yeah, she was in episodes of Manix. She was in... Oh, she was on Dallas. Oh, she was in Night Gallery. Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele, a couple episodes, multiple episodes of murder she wrote etc etc anyway yes very familiar face kind of familiar name i wasn't i was like i feel like

i should know that name anyway i feel like she's like a dc comics character with the name like that that's a good point um so this character her name is karen hall so when jim talks to buddy richards who i was like i i also recognize that name but that's because I was thinking of Buddy Rogers, who was a pro wrestler of this time, actually, I think. Speaking of a recognizable face. Buddy Rogers was one of the first Nature Boy wrestlers. So Nature Boy, Ric Flair, that's an inheritance from Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. When Jim talks to Buddy Richards, who was the director of Corpers, like assistant director, he tells Jim all the Nazi affiliations and all the stories about Goring.

And he mentions Karen Hall, which was Goring's like estate in the black forest spelled with a C and one word, but Karen Hall. So Jim's like, so a woman named Karen Hall has hired me. So that gets him suspicious. I was waiting for the reveal on this to be that it was a coincidence. Right.

But it turns out that her, I guess her real name is Catherine. Um, something I guess, corporate. I mean, she's his daughter. She's the director's daughter though.

Right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the housemaid who took her in and ran away with her when she was like three or whatever, told her that she was her daughter and her father's name was Hall.

And her name is Karen Hall. Yeah. So she never made that connection. And I'm like, I don't know why anyone would until it was brought up and her name is Karen Hall. Yeah. So she never made that connection. And I'm like, I don't know why anyone would until it was brought up as a plot element. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like that is a name that people have. There are real people named Karen Hall, but yes, it turns out that that's not her real name, but that was an intentional dig. I guess it was a, there were a couple,

there's a, there's a, a running gag of people telling Jimim that corporal did something funny and he just goes deadpans what a card yeah yeah and i think this is one of those it's like it was a big joke on his enemies i wasn't going anywhere in particular with this except that she she hires him at first and then he runs into her again and she's also trying to poke around the old, uh, mansion that corporate owned,

right? That was his house before he, he, he went over the cliff or whatever. And so they reconvene and kind of Jim accuses her of lying to him. And she tells him the story about how she didn't even know that that was her name until a week ago. And now she's being chased by the,

you know, the security guys and she just wants to find this painting because it means that she'll be able to i don't know figure out who she really is and she also is interested in the reward like yeah like i i get the distinct impression by the end of this that um she's more interested in the reward yeah yeah than anything else right like although okay so let's talk a little bit about karen uh because there's this moment that doesn't quite sit right with me at the end of this episode where irving r irving the the explainer comes in is explaining things and confesses to the murder. And Jim is frustrated and upset that Irving has chosen now to confess for the murder.

Right. Just when Jim thought he had it all figured out. Yeah, exactly. I think you can feel Jim's frustration for being wrong. And he's sort of laying it on Irving. And he's like, why confess now? It happened so long ago. And then we turn to Karen. And she goes why confess now it happened so long ago and then we turn to Karen

and she goes yeah that was so long ago we were talking about him murdering her mom yeah it's an interesting like acting moment I think for her we see her holding back tears yes she seems as I don't know not

as upset but I think one thing that is going on is that he's this guy is telling her i killed your mom and you saw me do it and she's like i don't remember her being my mom and i don't remember seeing you ever yeah right like she has an entire life that does not include this and now and this guy's confessing to wanting to kill her right like so there's just yeah because he was going to kill her and then yeah because he was afraid she was going to expose him because she would remember him from seeing him as a child and then he started having a heart attack yes instead she has a lot hitting her all at once yes and know, I think we kind of see that on her face. And I don't know if we need her to do anything in that moment necessarily.

Yeah, I'm not. I guess what I meant was it's that moment. There's a lot going on in that moment, which is otherwise kind of a joke about the whole episode, right? When you think about her emotional journey from the beginning of the episode to the end of the episode right we um i i honestly don't i can't i can't parse out what her motivation was at the beginning other than to find out who her real father was she does want to track down the painting she knows about the painting all right so by that point she

knows about the painting she does want to visit She wants to visit her mother's grave like that. That comes up later, like as a thing she specifically wants to actually do. Right. She knows both. She knows one grave site and that the. And then Jim has found out a different grave site from like the law firm that handled. Yeah, yeah. The affairs or whatever.

So. And she was told all this stuff by her they call her foster mom but the the housekeeper yeah yeah bus crash yeah it's just a it's a weird journey for her to be uh not even like a secondary character on it well maybe she was like it's yeah i mean okay i guess this is the part where we talk about how this is put together right yeah yeah yeah um if we can if we can well let's take a little break uh we want to make sure that you know where you can follow all of our other projects and interests online epi where can our listeners find you? You can Google Epidaya.

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

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go to 200aday.fireside.fm. And now back to the continuing adventures of Jimbo Rockfish. So our onion tackling here is interesting because there's no end to the layers. Right. Yeah, because there's even a question where it's kind of like irving in the end could be making a false confession yeah right for some other reason like jim kind of accuses him of doing that he does bring up the like oh and so here's the other another big reveal from his confession is that alva corpor didn't actually die um that the body that went over the cliff in that car was the body of patrick parnell who was who mysteriously disappeared around that mysteriously disappeared after olivia's murder and it was like revenge

because alva thought that parnell killed olivia yeah or was gonna run away with her or yeah i forget if it was like because you were having the affair or yeah what exactly but like and so he's been in a he says he's been in a sanitarium for alcoholics in jersey until last year so until you know 76 or whatever and that's when he called irving patrick and like told him all this because irving patrick and like told him all this because irving patrick also thought that he was dead yeah that started him down the road of like trying to find out if this you know if his daughter was still alive and if the painting was around and etc so okay um we have our cork board we have all of our yarn uh we have not hired a phd student in uh logic which is a shame because this was a

real opportunity for us to do so dig deep into our budget we'll make a we'll have to make a new patreon goal yeah yeah so i think there are a number of different ways to look at this so okay i'm going to now let me go back i think there are a number of different lenses through which to view this episode uh some of which you can do and and uh not enjoy the episode right it offers itself up to that in ways that other uh rockford uh uh files don't necessarily yeah i've had a conversation with someone a couple years ago now where i think i mentioned the show or something and they said that they'd watched a couple episodes and one of them was this one and it was so bad that they stopped watching the show yeah so there's that we uh being who we are have the we're in a position to give rock profiles the benefit of the doubt we obviously know that um there's lots of really good ones so

looking at lenses through which to view this uh where it is an enjoyable episode and one that we can um one of which i think is a send-up right now it's an it's an interesting one to look through that lens because for instance and we've we've said this before but the title uh credits are all footage of nazis and hitler with like a military music playing behind it so it's not a screwball comedy no yeah that certainly sets a weird tone so the credits start nine minutes into the episode it's one of the later debuts um they've done in a while so they don't start until after we get the um exposition about corporate right nazi sympathetic sympathizing and connections right and i think not i think it's after the conversation yeah it's after the

conversation that jim has with buddy richards where he kind of tells him all this, you know, gives him all this background and that conversation ends on the thing about the Karen Hall, you know, Jim making the connection of the name Karen Hall and then we have our credits and so we've just been hearing all this stuff about Goring or Garing

and we go right into the stock footage of Hitler and it's like the humor in the episode kicks in after this. Okay. So one of the things that we have going when he's talking to Buddy is that we get the list of the movies, right? That he's done. Or no, no. We get the list of the movies earlier.

Now I'm all out of whack. But it doesn't matter. There's the list of the movies right that he's done um or no no we get the list of the movies earlier now now i'm all all out of whack but it doesn't matter there's the list of the movies and one of the things that buddy talks about is how uh uh he he's the um i forget his name now corporate steals all of his good ideas right stole any good idea yet he stole from someone else so he still stole which mirrors the whole like steering and stealing of the painting and just in general what you know what was going on but um there's these fun bits about because jim had seen wings of deceit and there was like a little thing about the uh yeah like on tv late night yeah and it was like a wings of deceit was definitely a noir like there was like a femme fatale who lured someone to doing something and in the end she

blinded herself for whatever reason and buddy is like yeah i came up with that with her blinding herself his best ideas whose do you think they were yours are back who do you think they were? Yours, I bet. Who do you think thought of the blindness gag for the end of Wings of Deceit? Who do you think thought of the flaming crash into the oil well for the bloody sky? In fact, who do you think shot the whole sequence while Corpor was off seducing teenage girls? And you could see on Jim's face face like well like weird flex but okay and uh right so if this thing i'm grasping at a at a theory here because it does feel like i lately have been watching a lot of noirs and there's a lot of good ones but there's also a lot of like any genre there's there you know there's ones that are kind of like hackneyed stereotypical they're like famously good ones

that at the end of it you're like i don't know what happened like i just don't know well i mean that's like the whole thing with the maltese falcon right like yeah there's no real conclusion there's no real there there that we ever learn right and and this episode feels a little bit like a commentary on that there's no this is real life this is but also there's just this weird thing where uh buddy is all bragging about coming up with this sort of surprise ending and we have a surprise ending in this episode uh but it doesn't buddy's surprise ending doesn't really matter because everything we learn about buddy's and and corpora's life is already more interesting than the the movies that they're doing yeah and he's in this position

where he's clearly like in the decline of a like he has he has a production company but it's like in a room at a motel where he has rented equipment yes when Jim first goes in there's a voiceover for like a like a conspiracy alien film or something it was Loch Ness at one time an awesome intergalactic watering hole where the fabled Robin Hood and his merry band actually visitors from some faraway star system c commuters of the universe excuse me richard near you commuters of the universe was the name of it and i'm like i want to watch this show so bad uh yeah no and the whole death scene where he comes in and he's been shot in the gut and he's slowly dying and his last

thing is uh i wrote this one down hey pop you tell him to be careful how they handle the moviola it's a rental and then he just slumps over and all the film shoots out of it. Yeah. Yeah. These are, yeah. So like that in particular, yeah. Dennis going through the microfilm. Yeah. Going into the crypt with the German guys or Jim being forced into the crypt with the German guys to open this coffin. Like these are, they're played a little over the top i think like so they're framed with classic noir framing right that crypt in that graveyard those are vincent price horror

like there was a there were candlesticks in that crypt i don't know i've never been in a crypt i don't know if there are candlesticks but it just they felt like a movie set and in like kind of a very fun way right yeah with jim running out into the graveyard calling for dennis's help there's the close-up on him when he's like jumped up behind like a little like hill or something and it clearly is astroturf yeah yeah those are all i think intentional nods to the movies right these are scenes from capital t capital m the movies yes the big dramatic death before you know before it can be saved uh yeah good the running out of the crypt um the conspiracy board the conspiracy board yeah so there's a

there's a send-up element but there's also a celebration element where it seems like everyone involved is like yeah we're just gonna get weird like this is just yeah yeah like let's just have fun with it there's a bit in there um with the gun in the cookie jar yes and i okay i think this is just a joke but i'm not entirely sure right so rockford's at his trailer he goes to get himself some milk and cookies right because it's a very wholesome thing for him to do well he's dressed in dark clothes he has a bag he's this is after the conversation of trying to figure out which grave yeah the the watto might be buried in and then so it's clearly implied here that he's gonna head out on to do some grave robin yeah um he picks up the lid to the cookie jar he pulls the gun up and takes a cookie out and puts the gun back down if i'm not mistaken i think that's what

happened yeah he has a glass of milk he takes out an oreo we see him take out the gun back down if i'm not mistaken i think that's what happened yeah he has a glass of milk he takes out an oreo we see him take out the gun we see him put the gun back in yeah i noted that as well all right so this is checkoff's gun right this is this is the thing we've been very deliberate the director uh james colburn has been very deliberate about showing us that there's a gun in this cookie jar. And then throughout what happens next, when the, the German goons come in, the, the guy in charge has his hand.

He's pours himself Rockford's milk and just puts his hand on that cookie jar on top of that cookie jar throughout. Nothing comes of that guy. And I'm, I'm thinking that's a joke right like i i think that that's a even so i even had a note where i was like did jim eat the oreo because he has the oreo and then he looks out the window because he hears the doors of the car slam and then there's a cut and i'm like i wonder if he ate the oreo and then later that the main german guy he picks up the oreo where jim had put it down and he twists it apart and looks at it and then puts that down.

Like you're not getting this Oreo. Everything in this scene, 100% is deliberate, right? Like all of that is deliberate. And so my, my, I can't not read that as a joke. Well, it's both a joke and it's a riff on Jim, right? not read that as a joke well it's both a joke and it's a riff on jim right because it's a riff on the gun in the cookie jar is one of the rockford things yeah and this moment where he's choosing the cookie rather than the gun like i don't need a gun i do need this cookie yeah yes um yeah so i guess the to get back to the like lens question, I think watching this episode and being like, all right,

this is like, this is a weird, crazy mystery and there's all this stuff going on, but this is the Rockford files. And at the end, they're going to tie it all up and, and you know, we'll find out what the deal was.

Um, that is an unsatisfying lens for this episode. Right. Uh, cause that's not what it's really about. But this is the thing about like spoiling it. Right. I don't know how to tell you how you should watch this episode without making it less of an event to watch the episode yourself. show for you episode where appreciating each scene for what it is is kind of a good tactic i think each individual scene has a little fun arc to it you learn a little bit you get some good jokes you kind of go like okay let's see where this is going next but you don't want to

be so invested in jim's success that you're going to be disappointed at the end yeah and i think that the point the point that i'm i'm kind of making with the cookie jar gun is that like throughout the whole thing everything is deliberate i guess yeah that's what i mean about like appreciating each scene because each scene kind of has some elements in it where like here's this reference here's this pastiche bit yeah like yeah going up to see the old house right it's this kind of decrepit hollywood mansion like mission style beautiful building but it's fallen into disrepair right and jim jim has set up a meeting with the realtor to get a walk through the house so that he can get access to the house and then karen has just been like sneaking around and so there's a bit of this like snooty like lifestyles the rich and famous vibe to this realtor guy who's like trying to give them the tour but they keep they keep

talking and walking away so he comes back to find them and he's like well uh do you folks want to look at the bathrooms or what i have another appointment sure sure go right ahead well would you follow me here i go being left alone again i wrote it down it's very funny but um but then uh this is after uh karen has been like this place is full of weird stuff and i and i know it because i have been here before and she like touches a painting and it turns and there's a hidden alcove behind it which is some like chairs or something yeah it's like so you have to like the mysterious old house full of secret passages and that's just kind of for the fun of that scene yeah they don't have to explore it is explored off screen and they they

they're like yep it's not there yeah yeah oh god i had something to say looking through my notes stupid notes written in chronological order yeah right uh oh i just wanted to another um fun thing about this episode i don't know if this plays into any of our theories or not but the german villains an ex-neurosurgeon and an olympic wrestler right oh my god yeah they're very like uh bond villains yeah right yeah they're very bond villains i think the guy the neurosurgeon guy like this is his thing is like playing old german weirdos the the whole thing about the wrestler is great because he gets the drop on Rockford three times. Yeah.

The second time, Rockford has a great line. Like, okay, Willie, we get it. You're tough. You can stop now. And the third time in the graveyard, he like messes Rockford's hand up. Yeah. So I guess the deal is these guys are former nazi security guys yeah internal or something so they're old so the i mean the neurosurgeon guy is older

and then the olympic wrestler maybe he was recruited later or something but like um they they eventually reveal that like i mean they are after the painting uh they know about it because they ran background checks on all of garing's drinking buddies which include corpor but they never met corporate they're just after the painting i guess but yeah so this wrestler guy he's clearly a physical you know physically overmatches jim and takes him down twice basically the first time in their first meeting is in this like hospital where there's a this is a really good gym moment this episode does a good job of jim being confused

without making jim dumb yeah um we get all the good jim stuff like so in this first encounter with the germans uh they put him in a wheelchair they're like sit down and you know and the the the wrestler gets him in a headlock and then like, you know, squeezes on them to get them to tell the truth or whatever. We have a shot at the very beginning where we see the little control rod under his hand, like a closeup,

like a, Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.. I'm a little bit of that to get out of this and then sure enough he he gets out by suddenly kicking the the older guy in the shin and then scooting the um chair forward to take the wrestler by surprise so he can get out and and runs away um so i appreciated that uh yeah and then the third time jim gets the drop on him, gets the wrestler in a headlock, but the wrestler is a wrestler and pulls his arm, reverses the hold and starts getting him in like a wrist lock. And finally, Dennis comes over and they arrest him. And Jim's like all messed up.

And that's when he had the advantage. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, they're very, yeah, very Bond villain-ish. So, yeah, I guess. OK, so here we are this is the trap we've laid for ourselves normally we go through this chronologically and there we have an ending uh it's the end of the episode but we're doing this uh just kind of

catch as catch can we're just kind of dissecting places as they occur to us uh where do we go with this right i guess yeah so i think we can you know kind of get into some wrapping up stuff but was there any other things you wanted to to touch on i think i'm just looking through my notes i think we kind of hit all the i think we did such as they are um there's a fun little chase scene where Jim reverses the chase on the French guys. Yes. Which again is a little Bond-ish. They're on like a dirt road on a hill and Jim notices he's being followed, kicks up a bunch of dust, drives up onto like a little rise so that he can then drop down behind them because they don't notice he's gone in the dust. And then he follows them and then they like pop a tire or something. And that's how Jim finds out who's following him.

But then once he discovers they are Securite, he gets very polite because they are national agents. Classic Jim. Classic Jim. So, okay. I guess that's roughly where I want to kind of go with a little bit of a wrap-up here. Because so much of what we've talked about is just kind of how weird this episode is with respect to the Rockford Files in general. But it's so classic Rockford Files as well, right?

Yeah, yeah. in general but it's so classic rock for files as well yeah yeah i guess i guess yeah i think that's part of like respecting jim's agency even while the situation is one that he is uniquely unsuited to parse i mean and he doesn't have all the information that's yeah that's kind of the thing is at the end you know it's a it's a parody of itself a bit where because there are many rock for episodes where like we know who the villains are and we know what they did but we don't know why they did it and then the last scene is like the confession yeah the confession or the like turns out this guy lost a bunch of money and so he came after the guy that he owed the money to like whatever the motivation is that is often

revealed to us at the very end after they're arrested. Right. And that's not an uncommon trope for TV. Yeah. Yeah. So like this is kind of a mega send up of that where like, oh, here's all the things that actually happened. And they are directly contradicting all the conclusions that you came to and puncturing your satisfaction with yourself about finally figuring out the deal so you know in that way it's a bit of a self-referential

self uh self-conscious piece yeah it's it's sorry i feel like we should have a good just like a good powerful theory to land on here or some sort of uh yeah i don't know if there's really uh strong because it's not i i guess my thing is uh when i first saw this episode uh i don't really remember my feelings when i first saw this episode but when i saw it again this time uh by the time i got done with it i i i watched it the same way i watch all of them when we do it for the podcast here where i try to figure things out as it goes along and i write them down in my notes and you know uh all of that and that is not the right way to experience this episode don't don't do a podcast about this episode is what i'm saying um but i do think that

there i do think it's a fun episode i think there are ways to experience and enjoy this episode um and the more i look at the episode the more i in contrast to say um perhaps uh the bloody sky or the wings of deceit or Hell on Wilshire Boulevard. This probably is a very deliberate and well done episode. So it makes me spend more time thinking about what was actually being said. I think there's probably some context that would be even more on like if we were of the generation of the people making this episode, I feel like it might hit in a certain way that we're trying to kind of tease

out. Like, yeah, how was this supposed to hit is something I was kind of thinking about. So I mentioned way back at the beginning about some casting choices. Um, uh, buddy Richards.

Oh yeah. Is, uh, played by Paul Stewart. Um, and Paul Stewart is like an old school Hollywood guy. Oh, yeah. and Frankie Montfort. Paul Stewart was in Citizen Kane. He was part of the old Orson Welles Mercury Theater of Players, plus he appeared in many classic noir films of the era. Paul Stewart also played Kirk Douglas' best friend in The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952,

which many consider to be one of the finest movies ever made about movies and filmmaking. So to watch Paul Stewart 25 years later playing the friend of this crazy director in Irving the Explainer, you know there's a connection there. You also have a reference to Benedict Canyon Drive, which is the scene of this crazy director in irving the explainer you know there's a connection there you also have a reference to benedict canyon drive which is the scene of another famous unsolved hollywood mystery uh the death of actor george reeves so yeah there's this very intentional i guess we've been saying this the whole time but yeah there's this like very

intentional wrapping up of like hollywood noir the movies yeah let's turn it on its head a little bit because jim rockford is a noir detective turned on its head right like that character as originally conceived and as we see um kind of living a little out of time right like in the 70s so this is in a way is like what if jim rockford had this noir era mystery come to life that he now needs to try and figure out but he's actually not the right guy for the job and so yeah you get this kind of wacky cockeyed premise this is all to say that i i mean you can obviously you can watch this and not like it you do you do you you're yeah yeah yeah we're certainly not invested in making sure everyone likes every single episode of the rock files right but i think there there is a

deliberateness to this that if you kind of be like okay this is all on purpose why yes exactly that might be more fun to watch if you're kind of asking yourself so like why are they doing this what is this about why is this scene the way it is um i think that leads you to like all these questions or all these moments of appreciation of comedic uh i don't know comedic appreciation send uppedness i don't know how to say yes i would not expect this approach to bring it all together for you right uh but then again part of what's going on at the end of this episode is that it's making fun of that expectation yes yes exactly it's not ironic which i think is why it works for me like it's not taking a step back and being like look

at all this weird stuff we do in service of the premise of our own show like it's not that yeah yeah but it is recognizing that the rockford files itself is in a tradition of a certain kind of media and then celebrating that media while also not giving itself the task of telling one of those stories because it's not a noir story no like maybe that's a conclusion that i'm coming to as a consequence of this conversation is like maybe the achievement of the writing of this or the achievement of this episode i think it's a group dynamic i think everyone involved yeah yeah you know should take equal credit on this including the direction including the writing uh the acting obviously but yeah is that it's kind of a we can

have we can have fun with all the stuff that we play with in the show in other ways in a self-puncturing way that doesn't reduce the uh what's the word i'm looking for investment that we have in this character and in this world you know like it doesn't expose the constructedness of jim's world or something like that um it gives me the sense that's like yeah we know what we're doing and we're gonna do something weird yes yeah i i would agree with that assessment the uh this so this episode has many imdb reviews and they are very polarized and i think that's kind of uh something that we kind of talked about i think before the show but like not that we go by imdb ratings and that's like for anything really but it is kind of interesting to see especially

when it's a weird episode what do other people think and this one i think the average rating is like 7.9 or something which is pretty median for most rockford files episodes most of them are like eight like between seven eight and like eight four or something like that uh but the individual reviews themselves are like 10 out of 10 2 out of 10 8 out four out of 10. Like, like there's a, there's a strong divide. Yeah. So I guess, which is to say, you know, you can't expect everyone to be on board with your weird stuff necessarily. And if you're not on board, this is one that's just like, what did I just watch? It's confusing. It doesn't come to a satisfying conclusion. hasn't come to a satisfying conclusion there's a bit of a emotional journey for karen yes but like not so much that we're really invested in it i think um so i i easily understand bouncing off

of this episode but i really like it yeah i was just scrolling through the um the reviews not reading the reviews themselves but the titles so i just want to read some of these titles because i think these are spot on um the first one that comes up is just nazi episode which is uh fair but that does remind me of another polish wedding which has one of the best nazi scenes in the rockford files right the the punching of said of said yeah exactly um but okay one of them says so what was rockford investigating that's a nine out of ten uh there's another one um brilliant pastiche all right that's a nine out of ten one all right this is the one that i saw that made me want to say this great episode explains nothing no no rating on that one um that was followed by one that says inexplicable

uh and then how did they fit it all into 49 minutes yeah i mean i'm truly in terms of like triumphs of television creation yeah there's a lot there's so much there's stuff we didn't even touch on and it's kind of like it's fine we didn't even touch on. And it's kind of like, it's fine. We watched the episode. Yeah. And it rolls along. It feels fast. It feels like things are always happening, even though it's all talking. And there's like three full movies worth of plot that could be gleaned out of this in like yeah 49 minutes it's quite a it's quite an achievement even if you're even if

as one of these reviewers says uh disappointing at first and horrible in retrospect yeah i would disagree with that um but i'm not going to i'm not going to argue with it like we said before uh you get to enjoy them how you want to enjoy them or you find it as another two out of ten says inexplicable. Yeah. And like, yeah, it's,

I mean, even though we just spent, you know, an hour and a half plus trying to explain, I think it remains, it remains a little inexplicable. As, as Irving,

the explainer parishes in our arms. Um, yeah. So definitely wouldn't recommend this as a first viewing. If someone's never seen the show before, I'm comfortable saying that, but if you're, you know,

knee deep into season four, sure. Give it a shot. Yeah. I'm just looking at the surrounding episodes. So the episode before this is quickie Nirvana, which is one of the all time greats. So you're watching.

It's fall of 1977. You're sitting down every week to watch your Rockford Files. You watch Quickie Nirvana. Then next week you get Irving the Explainer. So that one kind of ends on a bummer. This one ends on just a big question mark. ends on a just a big question mark um and then you go right into the mayor's committee from dear look falls which is a roll king romp of uh of of jim you know getting the comeuppance on uh all of the weird villains so you know i feel like that's a that's a fun little three nice

little sandwich three episodes set yeah so i have i have one final thing uh to to say about the uh answering machine message which i forgot earlier but i did want it to say about the answering machine message, which I forgot earlier, but I did want to talk about. So, but that's a bit of a coda. That's, it's not really related to the episode. Do you have anything else about Irving,

the explainer before I go off onto this tangent? We can go off on this tangent. I'm trying to remember what the answering machine message was. Actually, it's a question for you. Do you read? So I ask you because the one on my episode that i watched um and the one that's in the 30 years book because it trans it has all the answering

machine messages in each episode entry are different wow it's a mystery so the one that i watched which you heard way back at the beginning of our episode is about the goats is about a woman calling about the the goats on about a goat for sale she can't afford it but she has cheese maybe we can get together on this or something like that yes okay so i wonder if it's just an error in the book so i went back i listened to the answering machine messages and i figured out that the order they are in this book has been switched around a little bit from how they are on my episodes oh so i wonder if that's a error in the book or if they got changed at some point for some reason but the quickie nirvana one is this this is a set of punchline two episode uh two episode

answering machine message joke oh the previous one which i believe should be the quickie nirvana one hey i saw your ad in a classified classified. Three African goats for sale. I keep calling. All I get is a machine. Is that a typo on the paper or what? Hey, am I too late for those African goats? Haven't got the whole 300 cash, but like I got a lot of homemade cheese.

Maybe we could work something out. Oh, that's great. It's answering machine continuity. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I appreciated that. All hmm. So I appreciated that. All right. So here we are.

Irving the explainer. Explained. Explained. Hope you enjoy that. If you watch the episode, hope you enjoyed the episode. If you didn't, I get it. But I think it was definitely fun to revisit and remember. I think my my remembered takeaway from the first time i

watched it was you know huh what a weird episode but i really appreciated because i had been watching you know them in order like on netflix or whatever they were at the time this was you know five years ago now five or six years ago um i've been watching them in order maybe one or two episodes every couple days and i remember being like huh what a way to i was impressed by what a departure it was from a quote standard rockford files episode right but how it still managed to be a rockford files episode yeah i think that was my and i appreciated that so i had like i was, it was weird. It was doing something strange.

It was not satisfying, but it was very satisfying. Yeah. It was very rock profiles nonetheless. Yeah. And so that's, that's what I think I want to try and leave, leave on a note on that, on that note. I would leave on that note as well. Well, if we're leaving on a stack of notes of some kind, Jim got no notes, no reward

for this particular episode. So hopefully his check to Daphne didn't bounce. Yeah. But yeah, I guess we will leave it there. Thanks for hanging with us through this unique episode. And we will

be back next time with perhaps a slightly more regular episode conventional episode conventional episode of the rockford files