Two Hundred A Day - Episode 95: The Dexter Crisis

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Nathan and Eppy go to Vegas in S1E10 The Dexter Crisis. Jim is hired by the titular Dexter to find Susan, his mistress who suddenly took off, and quickly ends up partnered with her roommate Louise as they head to the only lead they have: Las Vegas. They find Susan quickly enough, but then a sudden attack, a rival PI and a mysterious suitcase complicate the story. Jim needs to find out what's going on to get paid, and the chase takes us down a number of scenic Nevada byways. A fun episode that features some foundational Rockfordishness, we enjoyed it despite a few little dangling plot threads. 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) * Dael Norwood's historical research (https://daelnorwood.com/) * 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, Dave P, 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

I staked out that guy only it didn't work out like you said. Please call me. Room 234, County Hospital. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. And we're going back to the good old days with this episode, all the way back to season one. Season one, episode 10 the dexter crisis this is um the very very end of the second disc of season one did you get it first time i did only because it was uh it was i mean it was a gamble it could have been the very beginning of disc uh three but

because it was just two i was just like we'll just pull the first one out and take a look at it so it doesn't count it's an easy one is what i'm saying because we're in season one we're in that weird territory where is sometimes episode 10 and sometimes episode 11 depending on what source because imdb treats the pilot differently than other sources do in terms of being part of the season whatever so i'm just going by the easy the easy read which is the imdb entry the the gold standard right right so yeah uh did i pick this one i picked this one you did yes okay i mean it's been we've had a we we've had a bit of gap in our recording schedule so i had to reach back into memory um yes i chose this one mainly because i was looking at the balance of our season you know what what we've recorded per season and uh

i feel like we could do a couple a couple more season one episodes it's been a while since we've done one i think and um and uh, and just to even out our coverage. So looking through what we have not done from this season, this one just sounded fun. Part of the synopsis includes Jim going out of town. So that's always fun to see. I did not really remember this one at all, so it did feel pretty exciting to start it up and see what i was

getting myself into i think i think uh just from a sort of selfish point of view i think it's a good decision too because i we're probably biased towards episodes that feature the uh character the the side characters the the the greater rockford family um And that means we will, at the end of our whole run here, just have a whole bunch of Jim on his own episodes. So it's good that we hit them earlier. Yeah, it was a very fun episode. Before we even get into any of it, it just was a very pleasant watch.

Yeah, yeah very pleasant watch. Yeah, yeah. Easy watch. Yeah, there's no risk of – although I guess recently we had the – I can't think of the name of it, but the one that – what's his name? James Colburn directed. Oh, Irving the Explorer? Yeah, that was a demanding watch. Right, right. yeah that that was a demanding watch right right um it's you know not not not with any negative connotations just like if you if you just casually watch that one you're just gonna end up scratching

your head right and then we had a bit of a more kind of emotionally engaged watch with the becker uh the becker one i was like oh no what's gonna happen to becker so yeah this one definitely uh felt a bit less. I mean, not that these are high. This is it's it's television. It's not like the stakes are high. Guess what? Everyone's OK.

Yeah. But yeah. So yeah, smack dab in the middle of season one, which I think we we see some real like foundational Jim Rockford behavior. Like, yeah, here's the character that this show is built around, and here's him doing his thing, which is always nice. We're going to go to Vegas, and we're going to see him

play the character of a professional gambler, which is fun for the Maverick fans of our audience here, even though he's not playing the games that Maverick would have played, but still, yeah. This one is directed by Alexander Grassoff. He directed another episode earlier in the first season. It seems like he may have come into the family

through previous Huggins-Cannell projects. He directed a number of episodes of Toma, projects um he directed a number of episodes of toma which was a detective show that kind of sideways turned into the rockford files but he also uh he also directed some kolchak uh the night stalker and um just looking through his credits he directed the 1977 movie the last dinosaur have we talked about that about that movie It rang a bell and I couldn't remember if it was because you were talking to me about it or something. At some point we talked about, I think Baby was the name of it, which was a dinosaur film. We must have talked about that years ago. But I do distinctly remember talking about it on this podcast.

I'm definitely gonna find this and watch this movie i i it seems like an epi joint there's nothing nothing's gonna stop me nothing but scarcity is going to stop me from uh i can see clips come on tell me tell me where i can watch this tell me where i can watch this i can can get the VHS tape for $5. This episode is written by Gloria Clark. So I did some internet sleuthing and then it turns out that there's a great write up of her in 30 years of the Rockford Files. So maybe I'll just go to that. Her IMDB credits are she's just all over my childhood here well she's she's primarily an editor right so her credits are mostly for her editing work um well i'll go ahead and just read

from uh 30 years of the rockford files here at the ed robertson book this episode was written by gloria clark who enjoyed a long association as a film editor writer and director at universal particularly on projects produced by Roy Huggins. Clark was nominated for an Emmy in 1972 for Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing on The Lawyers, which was a series produced by Huggins as part of the NBC dramatic wheel The Bold Ones. Prior to becoming a film editor,

Clark was the resident stock footage librarian at Universal Pictures. And then there's some quotes from um supervising producer joe swirling uh of the rockford files about how good she was at finding the right stock footage when they needed it for for universal projects it also mentions in her uh unfortunately in her obituary i believe she yeah she she passed away in 2014 um but she worked at disney first and then moved into working at at universal so yeah so quite a quite a career uh especially as her obituary notes for a woman working in hollywood in at that time uh she really really put her mark on a lot of a lot of stuff uh this is the only episode of the rockford files

that she wrote so so we'll talk about her here but uh shout out to to gloria clark i i was just looking through her imdb page uh and she had done some stuff with um the greatest american hero uh yeah which is uh i guess she probably edited this episode anyways. Um, you know, uh, another favorite, uh, she did an episode called wizards and warlocks. Yes. I saw that. Uh, which the, the IMDB image for it is, is I guess, uh, one of the greatest works of art that has ever existed. Uh, skull candle wizards and warlocks in a nice star Trek font.

skull, candle, wizards and warlocks in a nice Star Trek font it's amazing which is probably a part of like that whole not the satanic panic but the fear of D&D from back in that time it looks like but anyways

I just wanted to mention it because it was like a siren call to me that's all now I have to watch that episode have to find it somewhere we're just we're just giving you a whole a whole watch list out of this episode that's what i like out of a television show is more television to watch but yeah as as mentioned uh gloria clark worked on other huggins projects again including toma yeah i think that's what i was getting to with a lot of bringing some people who clearly had

worked on other projects together. You see that a lot in this season. And then, you know, a lot of those names kind of drop away after Huggins left actively being part of the show. So, but yeah, I think this is a real, a real solid one. Yeah. And I feel like we get some of those good beats right in our preview montage. Yeah, that's the segue.

like we get some of those good beats right in our preview montage yeah that's the segue so all right first off the the line private eye huh that translates to a lot of things mostly bad it's good line on my end first off the very first frame of the preview montage has jim in this amazing blue blazer yes yes it's not sky blue but it's not denim it's not like i was i couldn't maybe it's like eggshell is that a description of blue like like robin maybe yeah like the robin egg is yeah like a nice uh it's not that light but yeah no it's a good it i was struggling to find the description of the exact shade of blue but i think maybe yeah like robin robin egg yeah is probably about right anyway it's great or at least with how my tv is set up it'll look great yeah um well let me get you to the high point of of the opening montage for me which is dr hewer

the uh i'm gonna say villain of this uh this is is the actor's name is Tim O'Connor. And he plays Dr. Hewer on the first season of Buck Rogers. Okay. All right. I was going to talk about him too. So yeah. So for me,

my immediate recognition is that he's a recurring Columbo actor. Yeah. And he plays a really slimy lawyer in one episode where he's taking advantage of the murdered man's estate. Like he worked for the guy who was murdered and then he's going to, he wants to get his beak wet in the, in the state afterwards. And then there's another episode where he is the man who gets murdered.

But yeah, he's a real slimy, slimy operator in uh in that one episode of colombo in um double double shock and so i was like oh this guy he's he's bad news just right off the bat so i had the exact opposite uh because okay so dr hewer in buck rogers if you're not familiar is uh i guess the head of the earth defense directorate if i if i'm getting that correct well anyways he's you know better than me he's basically um one of the experts that earth goes to whenever they have a crisis or anything like that and he's uh a little aloof but not in a

off-putting way he's a very warm character uh and they often have jokes about things like because he's from our future he doesn't understand you know buck giving the thumbs up or common sayings and he handles those with a plum that you wouldn't expect uh because these are really bad stupid jokes that they're that they're writing into it and he just kind of gives it a gravitas that actually works um anyways he's a great character uh whose best friend is a computer that uh the little metal robot wears around his neck as a medallion so what i'm saying is tim o'connor probably a great actor we're we're already seeing his range yeah just a nice good range i mean i i would assume that everywhere he they just again as imdb it's it's monstrously long yeah yeah uh 122 things but i

assume specifically in in his later years like whether he's playing a villain or one of the good guys he also probably always plays the upper crust of whatever it is yeah he has a bit of a patrician air to him yeah yeah but yeah it was uh what's funny is that i would not have like my notes immediately i just write down dr hewer and with like a bunch of exclamation points i don't never remembered his the actor's name but the moment i saw his name i could see it on the screen in buck rogers oh really like because it's one of the first you know credits that go by and i'm like oh yeah tim o'connor so uh let me get back to these opening montage i feel like i'm but now we're ready for our spin-off the buck rogers uh podcast but well yeah which

will only go through one season because i i cannot take the second season you heard it here folks i don't uh anyways um the other notes i have professional gambler i'm excited to see uh the the whole bit about when you're trying to save someone from themselves that's called meddling that's good that's exquisite. And then classic, classic car flying off the road freeze frame. Yeah, I'm looking forward to some car chases. And I'm not disappointed on the car chase, although I thought I was. Yeah, it kind of turns a corner, if you will. Yeah.

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hats into their apartment. My first note when they went in was like, hmm, this is suspiciously similar to a Beth Davenport apartment. Yeah. I'm sure it's on, you know, Universal Studio stuff. It's just like, you know, whatever apartment interior. But there were some aspects of it that reminded me a little bit of the standard Beth set. Young professional woman apartment. Mm hmm. young professional woman apartment the important bit here is that one of them grabs opera glasses out of a drawer to peer across the street and get the license plate number of a suspicious car

that um i think is telegraphed that like has been following them or was waiting for them yeah clearly something that where she's like i want to find out about this car and uh writes down the license plate number uh opera glasses the kind of thing that I have flying around. When you were a law student, didn't you just have opera glasses in your desk drawer? Yeah, that was standard. Yeah, no, my notes here are just someone's suspicious. We go from this to Jim. This might be the most cigarette heavy episode yeah we've done

jim gets a lot of mileage out of out of smoking some cigarettes in this uh in this episode and yeah start off our shot of him lighting a cigarette um with a match importantly and he's in a a fancy study with a very uh fussy kind of a patrician. I would say, as we were just talking about, this is, uh, Tim O'Connor and he is playing the titular Mr.

Dexter of, you know, the Dexter crisis. So I believe Charles Dexter is the character's name. Um, this really made just cause I was in the mindset. This really felt like a Columbo moment so jim is lighting a cigarette dexter tells him to uh if you must smoke in here use an ashtray but there are no ashtrays so jim takes a small dish off of his

desk and no don't do that and i tried to figure out what he called it if this was a thing it's some kind of fancy he had some that's a something something dish and I couldn't really understand what the something something was uh so perhaps it is apparent or perhaps it is just meant to convey what I got which is that is a fancy piece of china I I can't stress enough how much this dish is not fancy we we do get a close-up of it and it is a seems nice it's a little berry bowl it's it you know like it yeah um and it also is nonsensical that it would be sitting on this desk uh unless this person wanted to show off that they had this antique which i believe is is is the uh is yeah is the the point here but they solve this problem by first jim ashes a cigarette into his hand and then uh dexter has his assistant come in to take jim's cigarette and so this very kind of

fastidious woman comes in has great facial expressions as jim hands her his cigarette and then empties the ash from his hand into her hand so all of the business is great yeah it's good so it's good stuff we then get into the the the premise of our episode here which is given to us through a bunch of sparring. Dexter doesn't want to tell Jim anything, even though he wants Jim's help. And Jim is not going to help until he knows what the deal is. So some solid establishment of how Jim works with clients here. So Susan Parsons disappeared two days ago,

and it's a closed case because the police aren't, aren't working on it. They haven't decided it's worth their time. I guess right off the bat, the sparring starts where Jim asks the nature of their relationship. And he says that Jim can, you can assume what it was. What a hell of a thing to say.

Jim explains that if he's going to help, he has to know the nature of you know how they knew each other and why this is important to this guy and we get the exchange of you have a very irritating matter so do you i i guess the thing that i really love about this this whole exchange is that it does have uh they're they're each status dropping the other from their own particular class. Right. So Hugh, sorry, that's just going to be a thing. Dexter, right?

Yeah. Charles Dexter feels that he's above Jim. There's a lot of lines in here and throughout about particularly him being a private detective, just being beneath dexter's station and and just kind of a blah blah you know whatever but the the thing is is that dexter is having an affair i assume right yeah i think that's made pretty clear he's looking upon jim as being the seedy person in the room when dexter is doing the seedy unsavory act. And,

uh, and so that gives Jim, like, this is just part of the sparring here is that Jim is kind of forcing, wants to force Dexter to admit to it, to say these things. And it's good. It's just a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's good stuff. Uh, so what, what we finally learned is that there's a cottage on the beach where dexter and susan or charles and susan meet twice a week but now she's disappeared and he wants to know what happened um but he has a reputation and a family and doesn't need any complications and so that's why he's being so cagey uh we have a great sequence where jim lights another cigarette

without without realizing that there's still no ashtray uh and then we get into the real meat of it which is asking how much he costs we get the classic 200 a day plus expenses and an immediate that's absurd i'll give you 50 no expenses mr dexter i don't know what you think is going on here but i sell a service now if you want service, you pay what I think it's worth. If you think it's too high, you can go down on Main Street and deal with one of those guys. You're a little touchy there. Right. I'm a little touchy. Proving yet again that rich people are not willing to pay for anything.

Yes. Yes. And also, like, good for Jim. This is a good episode for freelancers the world around. Yes, yes. To just watch it. Just take notes on Jim holding the line with his $200 a day. Yeah, it's good. And then Dexter finally says, okay, fine.

He'll pay for it for a couple of days. And he does have a picture for Jim. And then there's a final gag at the end of the scene where Jim's leaving and hands the assistant his second cigarette for her collection. Yes. The credits roll as we as Jim gets to the apartment that we've already seen heads up and knocks. So the two women that we saw earlier, one was Susan and the other is Louise. I think she's the one who who scoped out the license plate, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So Louise is there. Let's Jim in. And we have a little bit of their own banter where we learn that she's a law student. Jim admits that he's not with the police. He is a private investigator. She's not sure she wants to talk to a PI, but he just wants to talk to her about Susan. There's a fun dynamic here where Luis doesn't necessarily have Jim's number or anything, but she's just not willing to fall for his little cold reads.

Yeah, yeah. It's demonstrated that she's not a uh a rube right yeah yeah from the get-go it's demonstrated because she's reading what appears to be the unabridged oxford dictionary right right yeah this enormous book this law book while she's ironing her clothes right like so she's she's a book learned but also uh she's got this whole bit about she usually trusts her hunches about people. And she's got a good hunch about Jim, but that doesn't mean she trusts who hired Jim. And that is such an incredibly good insight. Not just for this episode, but just in general.

just in general yeah she she also theorizes that um jim must be working for her boyfriend for susan's boyfriend because she knows that susan had some boyfriend and she doesn't have any family in the area so who else would hire jim and jim neither confirms nor denies but but says like you know if that's how you want it sure i'm working for her boyfriend yeah yeah we'll just go with that and the cold read thing is great great because she asks him, did the cops tell you about the license plate or something like that? And he says, oh, yeah. And then she says, oh, so what did they say? Well, I'd like to hear it from you. And she turns back.

She's like, you didn't talk to them, did you? It's like another character would would bite on that. Right. Yeah, yeah yeah exactly but uh this is establishing that louise not only has a i think a a healthy amount of skepticism about the whole thing she also as we get to at the end of the scene sees an opportunity to actually get involved yeah the the classic uh you'll have to allow me to work with you deal. Right, right, yeah.

Yeah, it's funny. She says that we can come to some arrangement. He's like, well, $50 cover it? Yeah. But no, she wants to be involved and come along with his investigation. She has the license plate of this car that's been hanging around, but she's not going to share it with Jim unless she can come with him as he follows it up um her motivation here is that she's worried about susan she's her friend wants to know what happened to her and on the way out as jim kind of grudgingly goes along with this because he doesn't really have an option i think he asks her like what kind of you know why are you

in law school or something and she wants to be a public defender or a consumer advocate that kind of thing someone who defends the little people right that's her her whole thing i want to make note of the hanging chair um there's this uh piece of furniture that's in the foreground that's a giant is it wicker i don't know know. Yeah. No, no. Rattan? Rattan. Hanging chair. It's very 70s. It's incredibly 70s. Yeah, I don't think I noticed it. It's a chair that's probably would be egg shape if it was all filled in, but it's just this, like I said, rattan, like just lattice work kind of thing. And you just see the back of it, but it's attached probably to

the ceiling and not the floor. It's one of those decorative chairs. Anyways, I just, I had a full on flashback seeing it. I remember as a kid thinking, because we didn't have any in our house, but we had friends that had it. And I was thinking, when I grow up, I'm going to have one of those. and now as an adult i can't imagine mounting a chair to my seat like i the the nightmare of of of doing that just no no jim makes his phone call to the dmv and finds out that the car is registered to another private eye of his acquaintance kermit higby yeah kermie but they don't get on matter of fact he came to blow his lungs he broke my nose you put him in traction somebody separated us before he killed me i was recovering from the flu i was a little off my game now if we're gonna get anything out

of higby you're gonna have to get it i I do like Jim's excuse here that he was recovering from the flu and he's a little off his game. Right, right, yeah. But Kermit's not going to talk to Jim, you know, not going to get anything out of him that way. So Louise is going to have to go find out what's going on, get something out of him. She asks if he'll hit a lady. And Jim says he doesn't think so. But keep an eye on his secretary. he'll hit a lady and jim says he doesn't think so but keep an eye on his secretary she'll hit anybody we cut to a very serious uh conversation phone conversation uh a woman who

looks like she's wearing a wig i think yeah i mean i wouldn't say no to that on the phone kind of at a desk um with some strong words about taking money at the beginning of the day for the girl's services and we pan around her to see louise in the doorway kind of waiting for her to finish her call this is kind of a bit of comedy business for the most part uh this is kermit's office he shares it with this woman who runs the Hollywood escort service. And he's not there right now. Louise drops that like, well, the trust officer from the bank told me to come talk to him. But if he's not around and she gets immediately interested, he's like, well, you know, I'm sure I can get him back if it's about a trust. This has all the hallmarks of a Rockford con that makes me like i'm curious to see if this is

her doing she she thought of this on the spot or jim sent her in with this but i think she's expecting kermit to be there right so probably she's thinking this up on the spot i i think so i think from the rest of the episode i i am comfortable thinking that she improv like that she went yeah yeah you know something that she came up with so there's there's this yeah so we're getting an idea of this character being uh she has good instincts yeah she's she's a capable foil to rockford and we don't know if she's a foil to rockford yet but like she's she's on par with him in many of these respects that we uh it's not one of these episodes where somebody who doesn't have rockford's

experience and talents is tagging along and he's constantly trying to to fix their mistakes right right um she she clearly can hold her own yeah the other thing about this scene that I just, I mean, we say this all the time, but this could have been any secretary to block. But instead they made a character. There's a character here that doesn't have any influence on the rest of the story or anything like that. But it was just entertaining to watch and feels real. Like even as bizarre as it is um i don't know it's just one of those things i just really appreciate by the about the rockford that they take the time to be to say we can't just have a person here this has to be a person

with a life that's doing a thing yeah they they spend time in the dialogue where louise i think to give herself the the the air of like oh i'm someone you can probably take advantage of because i don't understand the world it's like yeah it sounds like you're running something more than a dating service and this woman has a has a comeback about uh the things that that men will spend money for or something like there's yeah there's a bit of that character building just in those exchange in those like two or three sentences that uh yeah really really adds to that fully realizedness of this character that we are soon to be gone from and we'll never see again um because she does drop that uh kermit's in las vegas right now but he he can come back.

No, she can call him and get him back. And Louis is like, oh, I really should talk directly to him. I think I've taken, like, I think, I don't think I need to talk to you about this anymore. Yeah. And she just leaves, which is great. And I noticed, so we have a shot of her leaving this little, you know, strip mall storefront or whatever it is.

And I had happened to pause it to make a note right when you can see everything that's written on the two doors because they're glass doors and they have like yeah glass paint writing on them um so it's private investigators bail bonds house cleaning and painting protection inc the hollywood escort uh service and loans and personal mortgages these are all the services offered in this building nothing shady going on here nothing and then we cut to her getting in jim's car and he's eating an ice cream cone you love to see it he wants to know what she found out but she doesn't want to tell him what she found out because she thinks he's just gonna ditch her and and you know go off on his own with

the info um she says that she will give him directions and uh you know they'll stick together as they keep on going he he's like okay okay, fine. Finishes his ice cream. Which way? I've got to pack a few things, then get on the San Bernardino freeway. Las Vegas, huh? Wiley old Jim. And then Firebird on the highway as we go to commercial and come back to Vegas.

So now we're going to get into a spot here. I don't know if this is a continuity error and it's a thing that I've been trying to, I was trying to figure out the whole episode, but it seems like they both, Jim drove them both to Vegas. Right. And then she has a car there.

Yeah. Yeah. That stood out to me as well. And normally the show's pretty careful about that kind of thing. So anyways, maybe the odd viewer who listens to our episode before watching an episode of The Rockford Files can let us know. But I think it's just an error. I think it's just...

Yeah, I mean, I guess just, I think it's just an error. I think it's just, um, yeah, I mean, I guess just, you know, I don't know. Head, head cannon wise, maybe she rented a car or maybe Jim rented her a car because he doesn't,

it's a very gym car that she has. Yeah, it's true. Um, or actually, you know what it is. Well, that also doesn't really make sense.

Okay. I mean, it's not anything we need to bust anything over but it's just no no i was just thinking maybe is that susan's car and she was just lying about flying but then why would jim have her go down to the basement to get in the car right like yeah yeah there's there's an extra car floating around that either needs to be there or needs or or didn't need to be mentioned in order to have avoided this little blip. It feels just like a thing we glossed over and it doesn't matter to the plot, so it didn't need to get fixed kind of thing. But yeah, I did think about that as well once it comes up later.

I did think about that as well once it comes up later. But we start off our Vegas segment with a good classic machine, you know, gambling machine montage and tables and cards and cash being pushed into slots, etc. Lots of background noise. Lots of background noise. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Charles. um there's a apparently little easter egg where i wasn't i didn't catch it but the rest of this scene takes place in one particular casino um and so they're on the casino floor and there's announcements being made over the loudspeaker and so the names are like production crew people oh yeah i think one of them's like charles floyd johnson like they're so there's a fun fun

little easter egg there for for real real heads but yeah i guess so basically they've jim's just been checking at the registration desk of every hotel trying to see if you know if you can luck out on finding susan that way uh they're meeting up after he has struck out again but as coincidence would have it louise sees susan at the roulette table um she has uh her smoked glasses and her hair is tied up tight so she definitely doesn't look you know the same as the first scene that we saw her like at the beginning of the episode um jim sends louise back to their motel before susan sees her because they don't want to you know blow blow the operation whatever it is and then jim being a professional makes a call to charles dexter because after all he was hired to

find susan and he has found susan he specifically makes a collect call call yeah you're very adamant about that dexter wants jim to make contact and then just kind of keep him in the loop he doesn't want to like i guess i don't know it's unclear what i mean i think as as rockford files viewers and from the title of this episode we can assume there's more going on yeah right um and this just adds to that where it's like yeah you should make contact and uh let me know what else happens yeah we'll understand more as it goes on but it's at this point i as a viewer am questioning even the nature of his relationship with her. Right, right, yeah. Which, as it turns out, is not fake or anything like that. But, like, you know, you kind of get to the point where you're like,

okay, yeah, Jim's, this guy's the villain, and Jim's being hired under false pretenses. That's my assumption at this point in the story. So we then go to Jim in his professional gambling attire with his yellow shades and his notebook. Uh, so good. Um,

so he takes a seat next to her at the roulette table and we have a little montage of him, him betting, him making notes, her kind of glancing over at him. We see that his stacks of chips are increasing and we also keep cutting over to uh a guy who is watching both of them from the slot machines throughout this whole uh the whole time this is uh this this is kermit the other pi yeah there was an oil painting in

the office that the camera showed us at the very beginning of that scene that i think is supposed to be him oh wow nice do you remember that i don't i don't recall that yeah there was like like the scene with the where louise goes in to talk to yeah like the camera started on an oil painting and then it like went down to the woman on the phone and i was like i think that's supposed to be him but i'm i don't have great facial recognition so right i was like is that the same guy but yes as we as we go on it is in fact the other pi uh the fun bit that i like about this is how this is maybe more evident in in a future scene but just how utterly mechanical he is he just puts the coin in pulls it he's not

looking at the results he's clearly staring at them and just constantly feeding the machine and pulling the the lever to to give the illusion that he's gambling and not watching someone else but he doesn't care about the results i was kind of expecting a gag where he'd like have a big hit a big payout and that would blow his cover or something. But unfortunately, that does not happen. But speaking of big payouts. Yeah, so we kind of get to it at the roulette table where Jim is, I don't know how roulette works, but he is getting more chips in front of him as the night goes on so he's clearly doing something right i'm full of questions like are these expenses that he's charging um dexter like um

like this money that he's using for gambling is this something that he expects dexter to pay for that's that was my question at the beginning and then as he's ranking it in like if that's that was my question at the beginning. And then as he's ranking it in, like if that's the case, whose money is that? Right. I can see kind of it's a win win, right? Like if he buys a certain number of chips and then he loses all of his chips, that's an expense. He spent that money. Right. But if he spends money on chips and then he wins, that's just his money.

Anyhow, it does not come up. It's just his money. Anyhow, it does not come up. Maybe in another episode we'll find out more of the details of how gambling expenses work vis-a-vis private investigation. Yeah. But Susan ends up asking him what system he's using. And he says, oh, it's too complex to explain. Then he wins another spin. If you play black and red and i'd be even bound to lose

really fun well the house percentage is gonna chip away at you until you lose it all and she kind of nods we have another little beat and then he decides to cash out and invite susan to have dinner with him uh and shehmm. And she smiles and agrees. Because he's one charming devil. He is one charming devil. So we have their pre-dining little conversation. We don't even get to them being served, so there's nothing interesting here.

But in this booth, Jim's explaining roulette percentages and like the edge that the house has and stuff. Now, you see, no roulette wheel is ever in perfect balance. All you have to do is figure out the bias and keep playing until they catch on what you're doing. That gives you a six or seven percent advantage. If you can keep them from figuring your action, you can rip them good. I hit one of the strip hotels for 50 grand last august before they got on but you sat right there in front of making all those notes that's the stage grab makes them think i'm a systems better oh they love systems betters

they always lose this is when we get the line of oh, so you're a professional gambler. I suspect a lot of this is grounded in reality because this is the sort of thing that they house gets makes sense because i don't remember how many um spots there are on a roulette wheel but there are uh around like a hundred there's no triple digit ones so they're at least a hundred or less and two of them uh are going to the the house no matter what maybe there's a i could look it up but anyways the point is uh the the whole bias wheel thing i don't know where how you calculate the percentage advantage you get from uh witnessing the bias that seems a little i mean that may just be a rule of thumb kind of thing yeah you, yeah. You essentially, I don't know. I mean, I guess it would depend on how much bias it has, too.

If it's only slightly tilted, it's going to be less. And if it has a higher tilt, you know, you're going to see more. But I guess the idea is more like you watch the table long enough to see this side hits more often than that side, right? Mm-hmm. And then when you play, you put more of your bets on the side that hits more often than that side right and then when you play you you play to put more of your bets on the side that hits more often and that's where you get your edge right like that's the idea 38 pockets okay on a roulette wheel so and two of them are um on an american roulette okay and i'm assuming that's what they're using here. So yeah, that's about a 5%.

Yeah. All right. So this has been math. Math corner with Epi. Yeah. Just apologies. Confirm the seventies roulette busting strategy. Yeah.

I'm sure that modern roulette tables are probably like magnetically leveled or something like have some kind of like wild stuff to keep that from happening i don't know i don't know how gambling works i only know it from movies and tv um we do see uh the other pi still watching them through this conversation and then we cut from them getting their menus to Jim walking Susan to her room. Her room happens to be room number 420. Yeah, I made a note

of that too and I was like, is this a thing we point out? Is that what we do on this show? But we just did. We just did. So, you know, Rockford Files, blaze it. She tells Jim that she had a good time uh she's been very lonely in vegas until tonight uh they make a date to meet at the same time same wheel the next day and she does give him a quick kiss before going into uh her room it's all very sweet jim heads back to the motel where he's sharing an adjoining room with Louise.

And we learn what he has learned throughout the evening. She's given her name. It's a fake name as Donna Weston. She claims to be waiting for a divorce to come through. And she's just killing time in Vegas until that happens. And Jim's like, not a very creative cover story. And they're done. They know where she is.

They know that she isn't being held against her will. And whatever she's doing there, it's her own business. But Louise wants to help her. And she has this whole speech. Yeah. It's a nice balance because as she's talking, I'm like, huh, this is like a whole speech. And then that is specifically called out. Yeah.

I grew up in a tenement house in Philadelphia. My parents spent their lives getting fleeced by semi-legitimate salesmen. I'm going to be an attorney and protect people against the scavengers. And I've got some commitments to myself. I don't care if they seem important to you, but they're important to me. Susan is a starting point. And I'm not going to turn my back on her or on myself. I don't care if they seem important to you, but they're important to me. Susan is a starting point, and I'm not going to turn my back on her or on myself.

I'll see you in the morning. A speech like that deserves more of a comment. Okay. This is where we get his, this is from the preview montage as well, is you can't protect Susan from herself. That's called meddling.

Again, I feel like this is an early season kind of thing where we get the moment where Jim gets to explain his view of the world a little bit to us. Yeah. His take here is like there's a difference between protecting people from others and from interfering in someone's personal journey, essentially. Like you can protect someone from someone who's out to get them, but it's not your business to meddle with someone when they're the only person that they're potentially going to harm is themselves.

Yeah. It's kind of that self-reliance thing. And I know some of the other, I wouldn't say tough guy. No, the, the, the kind of that self-reliance thing. And I know some of the other, I wouldn't say tough guy. No, the, the, the kind of,

uh, at the end of the day, you really only have yourself to, to rely on attitude. Yeah. There's a little bit of like, um, it's just,

it's more trouble than it's worth. Right. Like, like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or maybe not more trouble than it's worth,

but it's more trouble than you, you realize like it was more trouble than you realize. Like, it's more trouble than you think it's going to be. We have a crossfade to Jim pacing around while there's a plaintive harmonica. Yeah, there's good music in this episode. Before he clearly makes some kind of decision and goes to knock on Louise's door, but she's gone. Mm-hmm. Well, let's take a little break. makes some kind of decision and goes to knock on Louise's door, but she's gone. Well, let's take a little break. We want to make sure that you know where you can follow all of our other projects and interests online. Epi, where can our listeners find you?

You can Google Epidaya. I am the only one out there that I know of. You can go to dig1000holes.com. That's the number 1000. Or you can go to worlds, plural, without master, singular, dot com and find my work there. How about you, Nathan? My internet home for all things NDP is at ndpdesign.com You can find all of the links and information for all of my various games, including the World Wide Wrestling role-playing game, my zines, and

podcast projects, of which perhaps there may be more than one. You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at 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.

Back to the casino in his gambler disguise, which primarily consists of his yellow shades. And you see Susan at the roulette table yet again. So this is, I think this is kind of cleared up a little bit the timeline but this is later that same night so she went to bed he went to bed and then he comes back and she's back downstairs and you know we're going from there and we see kermit still watching her and here's here's where he's really making the really strident like pulls it's. Just not bothering looking at the machine. Jim goes up to Susan's room. It turns out it's unlocked.

And he walks in to see Louise on the floor. Oh, no. And someone comes up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head. Oh, no. And then we have an ominous freeze frame as we see it's Dexter. What have you done, Dr. Hewer? So I was at this point not expecting him to be the one to do like. Yeah, yeah. I don't know exactly the plot I was formulating in my head but I had some assumptions I guess

that this other person that will turn out to be Kermit was also working for him and that this is the thug that will assault Jim but no this is straight up Dexter Dexter doing his own dirty work which is a turn

we hit a balancing point in the episode where we now know a little bit more than jim does right yeah up to this point we've just known what jim knows yeah and now we know just a little bit more than he does and that adds i think a significant amount of interest and tension to the remainder of the episode louise wakes first and wakes up jim the place is totally torn apart uh as you were saying when we were talking about her earlier the way that she got in is she just pulled a very rockford style smooth talk where she yeah went to the desk claimed to be a donna whatever the the alias that susan's there under and she

lost her key so they just made her another key because why would someone who's not the person whose room it is ask for a key right right uh the 70s um jim thinks that whoever tossed the room didn't find what they were looking for because it's completely destroyed and usually you stop looking once you find find the thing that's just one of those delightful just uh yeah this is this is just how that works yeah yeah it just makes sense. All right. So they get in the elevator and go downstairs. Jim wants her to stay in the elevator,

go down to the basement. And as he says, get in her car and go home. And this is where we hit the, so, Oh, she, she has her car there,

but right. We already, we already talked about that little speed. It's been addressed. Then he leaves the elevator and then the camera stays on her over his shoulder, and we see her slowly get out and follow him before the doors close. He notices that she didn't do it, so he goes over to a security card. You see that red-headed girl back there? She's been following me around all night now.

I never saw her before tonight And she keeps saying that She's the divine spirit And I'm the iris of her psyche Whatever that is But either you get rid of her Or I'm going to move out of this hotel I mean come on really The rates you guys charge

I shouldn't have to play tag with some adolescent acid head We'll take care of it sir Thank you, appreciate it The episode has done a good job so far Of showing us that louise is on par with rockford for a lot of things right like because if this wasn't the case this would be kind of a mean thing for i mean it's still a mean thing for right right yeah but this that would be like a just just a ridiculously mean thing for him to do um but in this case we i at least i as the

viewer uh am confident that she can hold her own when this is thrown at her it's a bit of an acknowledgement of like okay she's kind of on my level so i have to i have to escalate my my techniques to uh yeah exactly to to get what i want out of this so the security guy says he'll take care of it and they fade into the background jim engineers running into susan he kind of just lurks outside her door until she comes out of the elevator so he can run into her um they both have a little story about like oh i couldn't sleep or jim says like i got a call about a table but then i didn't want to play with those you know it turns out there are too many people and i don't like to play with shills i think he says yeah or something so

he says good night but then he just waits a beat while she opens her door so that he can be there when she reacts to seeing the room that's torn apart very very smooth um he offers to call the desk she doesn't want him to she says it must be her husband doing some, like, doesn't know what he was looking for, but Jim offers to help. And she's like, well, I don't want to ask too much of you. Uh, he says, like, well, just ask. And she wants to go to Reno and like, get out of there. And he's like, all right, I'll give you a ride.

Uh, but first she has to stop at the airport. Um, the airline found one of her bags that hadn't made it earlier and she wants to pick it up on their way out. This is important later. Yeah. She also like that her reason for wanting to go to Reno is that she has to stay in Nevada for her residence requirement. Right. Which I think has to do with the divorce, but I'm not entirely sure. But I assume that that was a yeah, like that was part of the divorce storyline yeah um so we then go to jim and susan driving well jim's driving

they're both in the firebird jim sees that they're being followed by none other than hunter s thompson yeah doesn't he have one of the cigarettes i can't like it was a quick he has a cigar, I think. Oh, it's a cigar. Okay. But he does have the big glasses. The cigarette holder. Yeah.

Yeah. Susan says that she doesn't know who would want to follow her. Well, maybe someone, you know, wanted to rip apart your room. They would also keep following you to see where you're going. Then, yes, then we see that we get the close- of of kermit chomping on the cigar as he follows then we get a shot of louise and another car also one can assume following now i don't know the car that she's in but at some point we see that a car that she has and it it has a okay not a car guy has a silhouette it has a look very much like a just like a higher end firebird it just it reminds

me of it so i guess i assumed it was a convertible because it has it looks like it has a soft top but i that could just be a two-tone paint job we may have uh some insight onto into this from the brockford files files the primary goon car uh that kermit's driving is a 1973 Ford Custom 500. Apparently the low option. I don't know what that means. And then later, I don't think she's driving it now. But later, when we see Susan Louise, they're in a Camaro. It's a 74 Camaro.

Yeah, the IMDB says that they're in a Camaro. It's a 74 Camaro. Yeah. The IMDB says that they're in a Camaro and the close-up shots of the speedometer are of the Mopar instrument cluster and steering wheel, which I assume is not a Camaro. I would assume, yeah. Well, if you want to contribute car knowledge so that we can

look it up and read it live on the show, you too can become a patron at patreon.com slash 200 a day and both uh get the link to and contribute to our spreadsheet of ephemera about the show um anyhow in this instance jim has a fun little plan where they pull off the highway switch drivers jim gets out of the firebird susan drives up a little farther and then stops and so by the time kermit follows he sees the stopped firebird pulls up behind it and then jim runs out of the runs out of the sagebrush and uh and and jumps not jumps in but kind of gets into his face

through the driver's side window yeah we have good tough guy banter where they both remember how, you know, Kermit spread his nose all over his face last time. And then he opens the door and Jim lets him open it just far enough. They gets his arm out and then he slams the door shut on his like forearm, which looks awful. You know, ask him why he's following them,

why he knocked Jim out. And he says, I didn't knock you out and jim's like okay fine and he and he raises his fist but he just can't punch a helpless man yeah our our honorable jim rockford so this is a thing i mean this is first season so but uh i just want to point out this pattern in the rockford files which i really do enjoy which is when you're in a car and someone is on the outside they have the power like it's always the scene of like you're seated and behind the door uh they generally have the advantage on you they have like a height advantage like sometimes you can open the door quickly on them and whatnot but like i just we see this a lot in the Rockford files that like the, the first to the door kind of has the,

the upper hand. I think specifically when Jim's touching a car, right. It's his weapon, whether he's in it or out of it. Right. So like if the position's reversed, Jim is,

is it generally able to use the door to whack the guy to knock him off balance or something like that but since he's outside the car he's touching the car so the car is still his weapon but i do think we've seen moments when he's in the car and maybe he goes to open it and like the bug shoves it shut on him and he's like okay i can't can't get out this way or whatever but yeah uh no i just love the the sort of yeah maybe it's not even like uh uh one way or the other but it's always a scene where there is like someone has the upper hand on someone else there's an imbalance yeah to that positioning yeah yeah um jimmy does take his keys away always always a classic and kermit says it should have been me i would have beat you to death yeah i know but he does give him another hard squash with the door

yeah as he walks away all right and then we get to a big uh i don't know a big scene a big drama scene in reno we start off with susan calling jim in his room they're in separate rooms in a hotel or whatever calling jim and you know saying she's you know she's she's back from whatever she was doing he should come over come over to talk uh and he specifically says like i only called 10 times trying to find you this is just establishing that there's been a period of time that susan was not in jim's orbit this is important later uh he goes to talk to her she asks him if he's going to stay around in reno she has two more weeks before her divorce comes through and then jim finally drops the the truth on her tells her that uh who he really is he's a pi he's working's working for Charles Dexter. Uh, was, you know, hired to find her and that he's called Dexter and Dexter is flying out to

Reno right now. She of course is not happy to hear this, hear this news. Uh, did Dexter tell Jim that he was insane? He was getting jealous. He thought that she was cheating on him and started threatening her, but Jim doesn't buy this and ask her to tell him the truth for a change specifically because somebody else not dexter

hired kermit who's been following her someone went through her room looking for something maybe a key to a locker because he watched her at the airport and she got her bag from a locker not from the like bag claim or whatever so she's been lying to him about some stuff and things just aren't adding up. Citation needed. Citation needed. We didn't have that scene. I actually, I was like, did I miss a scene? Did I?

But yeah, go on. Yeah, we're just getting the exposition of that scene. I wouldn't be surprised if it was like, we don't need a whole other location for that yeah no that makes sense there's no need for the that bit their business gets very strained here she is clearly angry and maybe a little frightened yeah he's annoyed and is very in very like i want to find out what's really going on mode. Um, you know, she tells him where her bags are in the closet. I, for some reason, I don't know why,

but I expected when he opened the closet for someone to be in there. Oh, I had the other, I thought, I thought for sure the even more ridiculous thing would be, uh, he'd open it up and she'd shove them in and block them in it or something. Yeah. I don't know why.

There was just something about how that was shot where it felt like there was something really dramatic about to happen. Something was going to happen, yeah. But he just pulls out her bag, starts going through them. There's a knock at the door. Jim answers. And it's Louise with a cop. That's him, officer. That's the one.

And tells him to arrest Jim. Susan, of course, is shocked to see Louise. Jim is, as is his way, very cool with this sudden reversal of fortune. Tells the cop, who has an amazing mustache, that he should ask him for the charge. I think it's like kidnapping and attempted rape, I think, is what the. Yeah, yeah. You know what? What Louise told him? Yeah, pretty serious. And Jim's like, look, here's my P.I. license.

She's a missing persons from L.A. You should just take us all in and sort it all out. You sort it out with all of us because I promise you, you know, if you leave them now, you're never going to see them again. And there's a wonderful joke in the cut if you go for that officer you'll be making a big mistake why don't you let me worry about that buster and then we cut i hope you appreciate the fact that i haven't once said i told you so. I did appreciate it. You just said it.

That was so good. This cop's delivery is a delight because he is almost but not quite a stereotypical rural cop, right? Like he's – it's very like down down homey the way he delivers his lines. And so it's great. It's just you feel like he does appreciate it. And then, yeah, then, of course, Rockford had to say it. So, yeah. And also, I just wanted to point out that, like, as severe as all of this stuff is, it was Rockford who first escalated to to involving authorities.

And so, yeah, I yeah i'm like yeah what goes around comes around buddy so yes they indeed split after jim was taken downtown and are gone yeah sure enough uh they do have the missing persons report for susan parsons um and then someone named albert frost has shown up saying that he hired Jim. So the whole story checks out, uh, and Jim wants an apology. And the Lieutenant says, get lost before I book you as a troublemaker.

And Jim responds with, thank you. I accept your apology. Albert Frost, of course, is Charles Dexter. Um, Jim says it was risky to use a,

use an, uh, an alias. What if I blown blow on your cover? If Dexter still wants to employ Jim, he's going to need some fresh material. Jim needs to know what's so valuable. What is he really after? Specifically, he did lose her for about half an hour, which was at the beginning of that scene.

Long enough to get a new bag from somewhere and take whatever she'd gotten from her airport bag and put it somewhere else and now the two of them are gone after some more hemming and hawing dexter says that he'll pay jim's fee plus a 10 finders fee of whatever he returns once he tells him what it actually is jim holds out for 40 dexter holds at 10. And then Jim's like, okay, fine. Dexter's company or his corporation got into some kind of trouble and he got together $250,000 in cash to pay some guy to help with whatever that trouble was. This might be revealed later, but I think it's to keep someone from testifying something like that yeah yeah but when he went to make the handoff the guy never showed and he stashed the suitcase full of money at the beach house that he shared with susan and then the next time he went back susan was gone and the suitcase was gone jim says if that's true why was she sitting at the

roulette wheel in vegas he noticed that she wasn't gambling. She was just cashing, like she was getting chips, sitting there, then cashing her chips. Yeah. And I think he says, like, maybe was she, like, laundering the bribe money? Right. Dexter doesn't really answer that and just says, this is what happened. He doesn't want to admit to bribing someone. Yeah.

Right. Are you in or out? And Jim says that. He'll let him know what he decides. Um, so, okay. So we now come into a sequence where a small plane is landing.

So let this section of the episode, uh, okay. Uh, long time listeners might recall, uh, that I used to transcribe television shows. And this section of the show was like a holiday.

It's just this wonderful stretch where no one says anything. Even today, my stress levels just drop whenever I encounter this in a television show. I should just watch silent films is really what it should be. But I want to point out, so what's going to happen over this stretch here, their television show i should just watch silent films is really where what it should be but i want to point out so what's going to happen over this this stretch here is that if if you haven't watched the show yet or if you're just curious go back and watch this the music in here is kind of amazing because what we get here is this plane is coming in and it's a long luxurious just we're just relaxing and watching a plane land.

And it's, it's, you know, it's the seventies. It's like a little, like a little two seater plane, like a little prop plane. Yeah. And there's this soulful guitar solo going on over the top of this. It's in the, it's not out of character for the Rockford Files, but it is, it stands out. And then when it lands and the stairs come down and Rockford gets out and transfers to a car, the harmonica comes in. And this is the jauntiest version. Again, it's not specifically the Rockford theme, but it's of a piece with the theme.

I don't really know how to talk about music, but this is almost a comedic harmonica. Like you expect some slapstick something to happen. And then when he starts driving, the banjo kicks in. And the banjo is now almost tense it's almost like it's almost a scary banjo and and i it's so i'm just this is my like emotional journey that's watching all this happen and that there's no there might be a little bit of dialogue when rockford gets the car because it looks like it was a rental or something like that i can't remember but like i don't think so i think he just gets in the car i may have described 15

minutes of this episode right there like maybe not that much but like it to the point where my notes at what is happening it's kind of like like another episode just kind of starts. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then Rockford parks the, he's going along a desert road and he parks the car and then he moves over to the passenger seat and just kind of digs in ready to stake out or whatever. And the music goes into kind of a lullaby, not exactly, but just like kind of relaxing you

yeah he really settles in to to yeah scope out this the stretch of blacktop um i noticed that he took off his seat belt when he scooted over to which which is when i realized i hadn't been paying attention to the seat belt watch oh yeah from now on i am paying attention to seat belt watch um yeah from the editing we really get the sense that he's settling into wait and he waits for a while yeah um i guess he's probably on the road back to california yeah so this is my guess here is that all of this is to show this is again this wonderful aspect of the rockford files where we just sort of see the grunt work from time to time and this is just all that he has to go through to to get further down the road than they

are and wait for them to come and so that's that's what's happening and it's and yeah it's a delight it's an absolute delight so we get a couple shots of oncoming cars where Jim kind of sits up and looks and sees who's driving him and settles back down. And then we have a crossfade to seeing the, was it a Corvette? Is that what we said? Camaro. Whoa. We are receiving some voicemails about this episode. We have a crossfade to see the Camaro with Susan and Louise driving. And then we cut to see that Kermit is following with another, I think a different pair of sunglasses. Yeah.

They are all wearing their seatbelts, just now that I'm on seatbelt watch. Specifically, if you haven't heard in a fairly recent episode, there was a note about standards and practices coming down on the Rockford files for not having appropriate seatbelt use. So now I'm keeping an eye out for proper seatbelt wearing and in all of our episodes, Jim sees both of them pass. So Kermit's following the two women and pulls a big wallowing you to follow both of them. His car is no Firebird. Yes. I'll tell you what. And then we have a bit of a sequence where the women realize they're being followed.

They start speeding up. And the score has dropped out by now. And we're just getting all the good road noise acceleration as they're speeding up Kermit's speeding up, we're seeing their speedometer, we're seeing his speedometer apparently the control cluster isn't the control cluster, sorry and the pursuit continues

we see that they're hitting 90 going over 90 it's fun watching it build because at first I'm like, oh yeah I've done 70,. I've done 75. Ooh, 80. Ooh, 85. Ooh.

Like it just instead of just like instead of just showing us a high number, it really does feel like they're pushing it up each step of the way. And it just gives it more inertia. uh, uh, inertia. So Louise is driving and Susan has a moment where she looks behind and sees Jim following, you know, the car that's following them and says,

I think that's Jim. And Louise turns her head to look. And then we cut to the exterior and we see that she's just drifted entirely into the oncoming lane as she's looking behind her, behind her shoulder which is an extremely real moment you feel it like throughout your body she's going so fast that you know there's that moment if you're just kind of driving and you look over your shoulder and then you look back and you realize you've drifted a little bit and you're like huh you like yeah

pull back in if you're going 90 that little moment is taking you all the way into the oncoming traffic. So there's like a station wagon or something that honks and she realizes that she's in the wrong lane and she corrects and it over corrects. Yeah. They go shooting off the road onto the, onto the, uh, into the dirt on the side.

And there's a big rackety clash as they rumble over a bunch of terrain and finally come to a stop. Now, I will say there's a little bit of a lie in the opening montage about where they stop this because the opening montage definitely made me think they're going to

roll. Yeah, yeah. It cuts as they go up over a little hill yeah it definitely looks like they're gonna land and start rolling but they do not which is good yeah no that's good at this point i don't want him to roll when you see it in the opening montage you're hoping for a role but now i care about the characters and i don't want it yeah um jim is far enough behind that he so so kermit just keeps going straight jim is far enough behind that he so so Kermit just keeps going straight. Jim is far enough behind that he can come off the side of the road and follow them and come to their aid.

There is a bit where Kermit comes to a stop. Yeah. Saying his name Kermit. I always see the frog. But anyways, Kermit comes to a stop and then Jim accelerates into it. And I I'm like, is he going to deliberately ram him? But it's it scares Kermit off. Yeah, yeah.

I like that tactic. Jim does go to their aid, helps them out of the car and then immediately just starts taking their suitcases out of the trunk and searching them. Yes. So we get a bit of a confrontation about everything going on. You know, ask Louise, on You know ask Louise where's This money What happened to all the public defending What happened to the nice person I met less than a week ago

And She comes back at him with What do you care you have Jim Rockford hasn't Thought about anyone but himself since he was 14 Which is probably True it's a very Whatchamacallit, Beth line.

This is a Beth argument. And asks, what's he getting out of all this? Why are you even still following us? Like $25,000. Look, I'll split that with you. He looks to Susan. Susan says, Louise is my lawyer. I'm letting her handle it.

Jim says, well, they should both get a lawyer. Dexter knows that they took the money. But Susan knows Charles Dexter. He's not going to make any public charges against anybody, which seems fair. Jim doesn't turn up anything in the bags. He goes to his car. He looks back. He sees them just standing by their disabled car.

There was a moment where they were trying to, you know, start it. And like, it was just turning over without, you know, starting and everything. So we have the pregnant pause before he walks back over and it's like, okay, you're going to need a ride. We cut to Kermit pulling a U and heading back towards them as they get into Jim's car. And Louise is saying it's a rotten old world. And that makes it really easy to set aside your ethics. Asks if he was serious about splitting the reward. He was.

So she has a key taped to her leg for a bus locker at the bus terminal in Reno. And that's where the suitcase is. Jim says, all right, let's go. And that's when Kermit, with seatbelt on, rolls in and just plows into the front of Jim's car in a desperation move, I guess. But as we can immediately tell from him trying to restart his car, it's more damaged than Jim's. Jim flies out, runs back over to his driver's side and yells. So he's been calling him

we've been calling him kermit they've been calling him rigby the whole time but that's not as fun yeah it says uh rigby i couldn't hit you before but now i can and then he makes another face like ah because because kermit's kind of stuck in the in the in the driver's seat yeah kermit just gives him a smile like you know taunting him rigby couldn't hit you before, but you just changed all that. Oh, what the hell? Good, satisfying, meaty punch. But then... Yes.

There's a reason I didn't do that before. I think I broke my hand. So good. yes there's a reason i didn't do that before i think i broke my hand uh so good all right we cut from there into our finale scene of uh perhaps the most important scene of the whole thing uh where jim jim is yet again in dexter's i wanted to say dexter's laboratory in dexter's office and charles dexter is writing him a check or $200 for each day. Plus lavish expenses. Yes. Are you going to pay my bonus with a separate check? We had an agreement.

Yeah. 10% of what I recovered, which in this case is exactly $24,822. And Dexter's like, I would never pay you that much money. You only worked for a couple days. Like, well, you paid me for my service. It could have taken me a year.

Well, I wouldn't pay that for a year's work. Yeah. Jim is righteously indignant. We had an agreement. You know, you promised me this money. If you're not going to give it to me, I'll make trouble. Did you say trouble, Mr. Rockford? Let me tell you something.

The reason that fellow didn't show up for his payoff is because he decided not to go along. As a result, my corporation is going to lose a suit that's going to cost me $10 million. And that private investigator, Kermit Higbee, I found out who hired him. My wife hired him. She's suing me for divorce.

And you think you can give me trouble? And then we just get a bitter smile on Jim as he lights a cigarette and then drops the match into the fancy dish that's been on his table, on his desk this whole time and we have a horrified face on charles dexter close up on the match end of episode ah that was fun it was an enjoyable ride uh i'm going to just say right now i don't think he gets that money i don't know if louise and susan are going to hold them accountable for their shares of the money that you promised them. But it really does seem like Mr. Dexter is not going to cough up.

Right. I think we can optimistically assume that the check that he writes him for the basics, like we'll assume that that goes through. It doesn't bounce or anything. But yeah, that uh long gone long gone never coming never coming in yeah uh yeah definitely a fun one one that i i uh enjoyed very much while watching i think going back through it i started feeling it it didn't really stand up at the seams as much i think for me like there's the car thing which we talked about and i think is just a maybe a line explaining it got cut maybe it just didn't get noticed and it doesn't matter enough to do a voiceover explaining what what it was you know

right that kind of stuff happens it's it's not a big deal um i guess thinking about it from susan's perspective since we spent a little more time with her on walking through the episode, I feel like I'm a little confused. Yeah. Um, so like what, what was she doing? Is that your, yeah. So like she, she, she, she falls into the suitcase full of money and she takes it. She, she, she takes the money. She takes her bags.

She goes to vegas so susan i think is throughout the episode painted as uh a little more impulsive like from the get-go it's louise that's worried about them being followed right uh and the person that's following them it turns out is because sus Susan's boyfriend's wife hired. It has nothing to do with the money at that point. Right, right. And I like that. I like that there's this outstanding question of, like, what is Kermit doing? Like, why is he there?

Who hired him? And that's brought together at the end in a way where it's like, okay, that works. It explains why Kermit hasn't made any, like moves because there's no he's not looking for money. He's not looking for a quarter million dollars. Yeah, he's he's probably he's just he's probably just padding out his expenses, really. Yeah, yeah. You put a lot of quarters into those slot machines. Yeah.

But yeah, it doesn't sound like she has a plan. Right. She goes to Vegas. Maybe she's laundering the money. Like laundering it because she knows that it could get tracked back to Dexter's company? Yeah. Or like, yeah. So that is the question.

Like, what is, what is she doing? It does. It very much seems like she took the money and ran and then doesn't know what she's doing. Yeah. And it's just kind of in kind of a. She's just in a holding pattern. She doesn't want to gamble. She doesn't want to gamble.

Right. But she needs to do something. Yeah. Yeah. And she's just killing time. I guess there's a little bit. There are some textual stuff in the text where it's like because she says, like, I don't play blackjack or poker because they're too complicated yeah and then she says something later where she's like i'm not very smart but i'm

smart enough to know that dexter is never going to make a public charge yeah so i think the text might be trying to paint her as someone who's like not that smart yeah like louise is this the savvy room yeah yeah susan Susan is... The impulsive one. Yeah, and there's a bit in Louise's speech about that as well. That's kind of like protecting Susan from herself is a little bit of that dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I took that part as just what's going on there.

That's the internal life of Susan. Sure, it's not that there's something that we don't know. It's that she is, she literally doesn't know what to do with herself. Yeah. Yeah. That said, she keeps doing really smart things that foil Rockford,

right? Like she hides the money and the, um, but like the moment Louise shows up, she lets Louise take charge. Right. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I guess there's something where it's like in terms of the laundering, it's not because of like tracing the actual bills or anything, but it's like I can't just put $250,000 in my bank account.

Yeah. And go on with my life. So it's like, do you go to Vegas? You gamble your money a little bit at a time just to have a bunch of cash out winnings? And then you're like, I went to Vegas and I won all this money. Yeah. I guess. Like, that's maybe the goal.

Yeah. Or maybe the idea is that you go to Vegas, you gamble that money until you win more so that you come back and just return the 250 oh maybe thousand and just keep the money that you wanted maybe i think we're we're probably thinking about it more than it was thought about for the purposes of the story and then when louise gives jim the key i guess i guess what we're supposed to get from that is like she had given in because she has the line about uh you know this rotten old world yeah it'll make you go back on your principles or whatever so it's like she did that she like gave into temptation i guess it's like all right now we're on the run and we have all this money yeah but

now that they've been caught for whatever value of caught jim well i mean having them is they just went through like a very stressful crash that's true that's true uh a high speed chase i think at that point yeah it's like this money isn't worth if this is going to be the life of like yeah running around with the suitcase yeah yeah um and jim is offering them a way out that doesn't doesn't follow them for the rest of their lives right like she can go back to being uh learning to be a lawyer and just like uh just like eight thousand something dollars richer yeah yeah exactly and uh wouldn't it be wonderful just absolutely wonderful if she showed up in one of the uh the movies, like in, at the height of her lawyering career, uh,

to help Jim out of a bind or something. Yeah, that would be, that'd be pretty good. There's no way that's happening, but still that, that, that would,

that would be great. Um, but yeah, no, definitely a fun episode. We're now in the overthinking it phase. Uh, like I said,

I really, I really like how having, and I'd say this about a lot of the episodes that are kind of like this, where it's like having the multiple interests that are overlapping, but they're not, but they're not all aiming at each other. Like as a lot of richness and that's the having the, you know, Kermit hired by Dexter's wife. Like that's another interest that is involved and complicates things, but they're not aimed at the money. So it's more interesting than if they were all just chasing a suitcase. Yeah. Like, I feel when we got to that point at the end, I was the whole time when we were watching before it was revealed that he was hired by the wife.

I'm like, why is he doing the thing he's doing? But yeah, no, that's good. That's good stuff. I like the episode long joke of the, the fancy China dish. Yes. Check out, check out his fancy dish.

Um, that was a really nice button on it to give Jim just a little bit of satisfaction in the face of not getting his big payout. Uh, that was really, really nice. Um, yeah. Uh, I think those were the face of not getting his big payout. That was really, really nice. Yeah. Yeah.

I think those were the things that stood out to me. The Dexter crisis. Yeah. So no good for him. And I guess he's getting his, he's getting his just desserts because he's clearly a creep and clearly everything is falling down around him and Jim doesn't have to be involved. So that's good.

This empire that he has built up is, is no longer at his disposal. Do you have anything else to be involved, so that's good. This empire that he has built up is no longer at his disposal. Do you have anything else to say about the Dexter crisis? I'm gonna run out and watch The Last

Dinosaur and the Wizards and Warlocks episode of The Greatest American Hero. Well, then our work here is done. Well, when next we talk, you can report back about those. Because we will be

back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files. Sorry. I don't know how to do a harmonica. There you go. That's pretty close.