Two Hundred A Day - Episode 97: A Plus Expenses Special

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

*In Plus Expenses #40 we talk about: *Goodbye 2021, Eppy recommends The Spine of Night (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3885422/), Nathan just isn’t watching movies, the Rockford Files is still good!, the triple-edged (?) sword of making your hobby your job, Nathan recommends The Prisoner (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061287/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3), TV theme songs, Crossbow (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140731/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0), McGoohan Season continues, Be Seeing You (https://timeoftribes.itch.io/be-seeing-you) (RPG), the Columbo episode Identity Crisis (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072804/), the newest Bond film (No Time to Die (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2382320/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)), media study musings on horror movies, horror and wonder, things that are Written, acting in things that are and aren’t Written, coming up on 100 eps of Two Hundred a Day, the wood anniversary of the show, the remaining episodes, last thoughts on our last year of the show, and a Happy (belated) Epimas! 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

All right, so I've started the recording for plus expenses. Plus expenses. Check my mute. Yeah, the mute. I mean, yeah, you're muted. I can see your lips moving. Unless you're doing like a reverse ventriloquism act. Ah, yes, that famous act where you pretend to be speaking but don't say anything.

Yeah. Which sounds a lot easier than ventriloquism yeah it does ah indeed indeed uh so here we are plus expenses um i thought i had and you can let me know what you think but this is our uh final recording in this calendar year 2021 you're listening to this in the future coming to you from the past to tell you about something in our future right which is that the last episode that will be released this year in our main feed we you know mentioned that it's going to be the last one of the year and wish everyone some happy holidays and all that stuff but that was in fact recorded you know

that was the previous one we recorded that was the previous one we recorded. That was the previous one we recorded. So now this is our last recording this year. So it'll be our first recording released in 2022. Ah, yeah. So obviously what we want to do is our predictions for... No. Oh, yeah. Predictions of all the catastrophes that are going to happen between now and February. Because, yeah, again, still planning to take January off. So this will be dropping in February of 2022.

You know, knock on wood, absent catastrophe. But, yeah, I thought maybe it might be nice to do a reflection plus expenses. And kind of sit back a little bit and be like so how how has how's the year been not again not in the sense of catastrophe i feel like we all have that in our at least in my circles have that in our brains and eyes and ears all the time we can take that as read everyone should know that that it was the year 2021 yeah and let's talk about the things that were interesting or exciting interesting exciting uh anything about the show maybe since you know we're talking since this is part of our greater show in its own way um sneakily maybe this might be a good candidate to put on our public feed

as oh yeah here's what we talk about for plus expenses teaser kind of thing so that's that was kind of my thought of uh yeah that sounds good reflection retrospective in terms of watching the rockford files and and and generally other things watching things movies tv books comics games all the things that we seek to distract ourselves with yeah yeah anything what what what comes to mind how how has your year been i was i was thinking about how mushed together things uh get now uh what with streaming like the fact that now i only experience movies via streaming i can't actually tell you what movies i've seen this year i don't know which ones i can okay let me think i saw the spine of night which i think we talked about in a previous episode to the extent

of i think you said you saw it and you liked it it it does not sound like the kind of movie i would yeah like it's it's not a it's not one i'm recommending specifically for you nathan or for you the audience who doesn't think man what i really want is more heavy metal but better not heavy metal music but heavy metal the animated uh movie um i shouldn't say about that no but it is better it's better than anything um i enjoyed it but it's also like very much a like horror yeah it's it's a certain sorcery horror kind of thing like it's a um the it's gory right very very gory it's rotoscoped um so to be clear the the goriness is generally what disqualifies stuff for me not the rotoscope i don't i'm sure the rotoscope yeah the thing about that one is that i knew that that movie was coming for

years or rather i hoped that that movie was coming for years i saw the the people that made it did some stuff probably a decade ago and it showed up on YouTube and came into my feed. Uh, and I just, you know, like a little two, three minute thing.

There's, there's two of them. Um, mongrel is one of them. And then the other one is, uh, I can't remember the name of it, but they both feed into this,

this greater movie. And, uh, I just remember seeing it and thinking, this is a project I'd like to see come to fruition. Um, just remember seeing it and thinking, this is a project I'd like to see come to fruition. It's definitely my jam, but I also appreciate that my jam is not everyone's jam.

Yeah. That was the first thing that popped into my head because I was just thinking about it recently. It was kind of exciting that that came about when I didn't realize it was going to and then suddenly it was there uh yeah i also couldn't really tell you anything that i've watched in particular mainly because again as previously documented on plus expenses i just haven't watched many movies it's a whole combination it's a whole thing but it's a whole combination. It's a whole thing. But it's a combination of kind of like attention span. Yeah.

Available time. Available like desire. I don't know. I feel like when I say I don't have much like spare time, it's not that I'm always so busy. It's not that I have like every moment of my day accounted for. That's not right. But I do have a, you know, a household where we're all home all the time and a rapidly.

And by the time this has released a two year old. Yes. Who has been home all the time, her entire life. There's something about sitting down and being like, I am now going to spend two hours, which is way longer than a movie should be to watch any to watch any given movie that just feels like such a heavy lift. Yeah.

Versus sitting down and just reading for 45 minutes and falling asleep or or something. It's been so the majority of what I've watched this year has been the Rockford Files, because we have the show. Yes. I will say that I super appreciate the fact that I have an excuse to watch the Rockford Files. I mean, we make a joke of it a lot, but quite often, at some point in the week, I'm like, you know what? I have to watch the Rockford Files now, I'm like, you know what? I have to watch The Rockwood Files now. And that is an obligation I enjoy. It's the third edge of the double-edged sword of making your hobby a job. Right.

Classically, the problem with making your hobby your job is then it's no longer a hobby, it's a job. Yes. with all the things that, that attends, which usually implies there's some kind of intrinsic joy that you get out of it. That is kind of replaced by this, by this, by this need to keep it, you know, going in a certain way to survive,

to keep going. But this third edge is, is that sometimes when your hobby is your job and you have to do it, that means you have to engage in your hobby. And that's good. In this particular instance if i just given myself the project of like re-watch the rockford files i would have just first of all i would have either just done it much faster because yeah i would have watched more than two episodes a month or whatever um but also yeah so at whatever point i would have just stopped because you know yeah

that's what you do sometimes so rockford files it's good it's still good turns out show show good uh this was the year of the prisoner for you was it not yes well it was the second year of the prisoner which would be a good title for something it's the second year of the prisoner for all of us um yeah i first started watching the prisoner for the first time i'd never seen it before before simone was born so that was actually that was pre-covid yeah for those who don't know uh yeah my my daughter was born the first day of 2020. And then that year, that year is the COVID year. Technically, there's a couple of months there before we knew how bad it was. But yeah, so I get to date everything.

Everything that's pre-Simone is also pre-COVID, which is very convenient for me. So yeah, so I watched most of it. It's what, like 17 episodes or something like that? Something like that, yeah. I watched the bulk of it over, like before she was born born and then i watched a couple episodes after she was born and then it got weird because the tone of that show was just incompatible with my mental state this is like too paranoid like i need to not have this be going on in my brain so then i watched the last couple three episodes maybe four i forget exactly how many I've left.

I watched the rest of it like a couple months ago, I guess. And yeah, that that that shows good that I do. What made me think of doing a Twitter thread where I'm just sharing TV theme songs that I enjoy. And there's there's a couple couple things that go into that. One of which is that sometimes you enjoy a TV theme song not by its own virtue, but because it's associated with a show that you enjoy.

But sometimes there's a TV theme song that just straight up by its own virtue is worth enjoying. It's just a banger. Yeah, it's just a banger. My go-to example for this night rider the night rider theme song is perfection i don't think i'll ever watch another Knight Rider.

I might. I might watch another Knight Rider. Who am I kidding? I'll watch more Knight Rider. But I don't seek it out, right? Like, it's not like, oh, I was just going to say, it's not like when I wanted to rewatch a bunch of The Greatest American Hero and then I realized that I got to get that song on my Twitter thread.

But specifically, I put The Prisoner on that because right now I say The Prisoner theme song is on that thread. Can you hear The Prisoner theme song in your head? Oh, you can? Okay, good. I wouldn't say it's an instantly recognizable

theme song. It's not in that echelon. It's not The Rock Profiles. It's not Doctor Who. I'm trying to think of other super... The simpsons the simpsons yeah um but that thunder at the beginning yeah yeah oh when i hear that thunder i'm like oh i'm in for a prisoner for the drums yeah yeah yeah it's good well and it has the benefit of i mean i guess the benefit it's funny now because of how tv themes and intros have changed so much but it it it it does the thing where the intro the song is soundtracking the premise of the show which is replayed to you each at the beginning of each episode yes um so it's a little long so it's like a full piece and it definitely is uh you know from

a time where you were not planning to watch two or three episodes back to back. Right. Yeah, yeah. Though I will say my experience was first one, great. Watch it all the way through. Second one, I'm kind of like, OK, so now I have to watch this whole intro. And maybe I'd like go like, you know, get some water or like, you know, look at Twitter or something for a second. But it plays. I let it play. Yeah. And then if I was going to watch a third episode which is a lot for me then maybe i would skip through the

through the intro to get to the um to get to the real beginning of the episode i am not a number i am a free man i do i do mention in the thread that i have an appreciation uh specifically if it shows up in lyrics but it's fine if it's spoken word uh and it's i think particularly artful in the prisoner but when a theme song's job is to tell you the premise of the show you're about to watch right there's something uh like the prisoner like you said is a soundtrack for that so you don't there's no words yeah but the premise is all visual yeah but yeah it's all but um like the previously mentioned knight rider one has got like the this deep voice that goes michael knight um you know i don't even

remember how it goes but it's like it's like the 18 one is the one that comes to mind yes in 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit these men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the los angeles underground And so that's your voice. Oh, the $6 million man, which I also have to get on that list. I haven't yet. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability

to make the world's first biomic man. And then there's Land of the Lost, where they're singing it. Marshall, Will and Holly on a routine expedition met the greatest earthquake ever known

high on the rapids they struck their tiny raft and plunged them to a strange world that sent them to a strange world that time forgot. Because how else would you know? I mean, it's a, it's a classic tradition.

It's the, it's the, the intro to, you know, Romeo and Juliet, right? Like it's, let me come out and tell you what you're about to see.

Your butt's going to be in this seat for a while. So you should know what you're getting yourself into. I been uh em and i have been watching you know we do the uh weekends we watch cartoons with our breakfast because it's fun it's a fun way to break up the week uh especially for me uh because then after i'm done with the cartoons i go back to doing the thing i do right on the weekdays like there the weekdays. We've been watching the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which has another

banger of a theme song, which I should put out there, but references the older Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. That's the one that I would know. Heroes in a Half Shell. Turtle Power.

Yeah. It describes each one of the turtles. Just the very same salient points about each turtle's personality. And I love it. I love that it does that. I mean, again, this is for kids. Another good intro along those lines. Animaniacs. Yes.

Yeah. And the whole reason why I did this Twitter thread or why I'm doing this Twitter thread is because we're currently for our lunch program. Again, if you're first time, uh, um, plus expenses listeners, the lunch program is a show that you watch at lunch during the week because you want it to be entertained for a little bit, but you don't want it to tempt you to watch the next episode to draw you away from your work day.

Right. If, if like myself, you have to rely upon self-discipline to do your work. And so the show that we've been watching is this eighties show called crossbow about William tell that has this amazingly discordant. It's it's, it's wild yeah and maybe they're killing it the synthesizer well i don't know it's it's crossbow tv show theme

song look it up intro but and it's funny like the show itself i could go on and on about i could do a whole podcast about it um it's a half hour long show that deals with like i don't want to say complex plots but has to get you from a to b right away so they just they just like and then this happened and then this happened and i kind of really appreciate that. The funny thing is, is about halfway through the first season, at some point they were like, wait, there's a public domain song about William Tell we could use.

Oh, nice. It may even be, yeah, no, I think it's like in the second half of the first season where they have a triumphant moment and they're like, should we do William Tell's overture? Should we do the... And they did. And every so often it kind of creeps into the theme of the

show every so often, but it's not their primary theme and it's just really kind of an interesting choice to make, especially since like I said, there's an instantly recognizable... We all know the William Tell overture, although we all associate it with

the Lone Ranger. We should reclaim. It needs to be reclaimed for William Tell. I think William Tell deserves it. Lone Ranger has had their time. I gotta tell you this this show about William Tell uh I I really I'm curious about its production because it again they're half hour episodes there are seasons of like, I want to say like 26 episodes or something like that. Cause that's roughly what seasons were kind of like back then. It starts off each half hour was giving you like part of his journey toward

from being like a reluctant hero towards being the hero leader of a rebellion. And it had like a theme, a plot, a meta plot going arcing over these episodes and then that drops away and now we're in the third season and he's wandering the wastelands every so often he encounters things in some episodes magic is real and some other episodes it's not and he's always rightly skeptical whenever it isn't and like he just comes across like bizarre things and solves the problem that these people are having in the wasteland like we had an episode where he starts off with um seeing this feral child being hunted

by a bunch of mercenaries he helps the feral child escape and then gets separated from the feral children clan that he discovers and runs into a leftover, like these two people that were left over from like a Roman outpost that didn't realize that the Roman empire had fallen long before their lifetime. And they were protecting some sort of treasure, including possibly a magic sword, which the mercenaries were looking for. And this is the sort of treasure, including possibly a magic sword, which the mercenaries were looking for. And this is the kind of thing.

Right, right, right. And then eventually it all comes down to a big fight where the feral children come out of nowhere and help them. It's never been explained why they're feral children, what they have to do with anything. It is a wasteland. It is a wasteland, yeah. I think there was one episode

that clearly saw that someone had something not actual dog tags but something akin to a dog tag that they were wearing which again like is this wasteland sure like what's going on so anyways i love it i just have some strong recommend strong recommend um i because it was mcguinn season um oh yeah so again as plus expenses listeners may know there was this uptick in prisoner stuff because i announced on twitter that i finally finished watching the prisoner and there's also um at at that time there was a prisoner inspired game that someone was starting to do

promo for and it has since funded and it looks if you're interested in playing a heavily narrative style game inspired by the prisoner then be seeing you. Yes, yes. Be seeing you in a game by tanya flocker um and uh

funded on on on the old kickstarter um previous to to this recording so i think uh they're hoping to have it out soon ish it may be available by the time this drops but um it's a uh rotating uh role game where as you play like in one round you'll play the prisoner character and then in another round you'll play like the villagers and then in another round you'll play the oh that's control right yeah i dig that and it has all kinds of like structural stuff that's very much the prisoner um the the promo for that was spinning up as i was like hey i finally finished watching the prisoner and so those two streams kind of crossed as they do on Twitter. And people started sending me prisoner stuff just randomly,

like pictures of their, of their GURPS prisoner source book or, you know, screenshots of Patrick McGeehan. So it was McGeehan season. And so of course I decided to rewatch the Patrick McGeehan episodes of Columbo because those are all time Stone Cold classics. So that was one of my more recent media media journeys revisiting those, which leads me to one of my absolute favorite little Columbo things, which is in the episode where I don't remember any colombo titles of episodes but the the one where patrick megan is a is a spy it's from the last season of the 70s run i think i don't know

if you've seen this one but i don't think i have uh he's a he's a cia operative and uh he uses some spy stuff to construct a situation where he can where he can kill another spy. Then, you know, obscure the fact that he actually did it with all the spy stuff. And of course, that Columbo, of course, you know, figures it out. Right. But I know it's spoilers. There are two things about this episode that that I love. One is that I didn't really like it the first time I saw it because it didn't really feel like a Columbo episode. But then once I realized that it was also directed by Patrick McGeehan, I was like, oh, this is a Patrick McGeehan episode. Yes.

This is part of his oeuvre, not a part of the Columbo oeuvre. Yeah. Then it made a lot more sense and works for me a lot better. And the second thing is that it has what I consider to be incontrovertible proof that Columbo does have a wife and is in fact married. Because that is a discussion in the Columbo family about whether his wife's even real. But there's a moment, again, I don't know, I guess skip ahead a minute or so if you don't want to be spoiled

on an inconsequential plot element of this episode. Columbo spoiler alert. There's a scene, not at the big reveal, but kind of towards the end. Columbo's invited to the killer's mansion because, of course, he has a mansion. They have a a conversation about all the things that are not about what columbo is trying to find out

just always good but it is where it is it is made manifest that they both know that he is a spy like until then it's been a little bit of like who knows what about who kind of stuff right right and what happens is patrick mcguin puts on a piece of music he puts on a record and colombo's like oh oh i know this this is my wife's favorite forget what it what it is it's like a favorite favorite piece of music and and mcguin goes i know and colombo says you've bugged my house or something like that. Or you've been listening at my house. He's like, aha, that's how I know. And it is if if Columbo doesn't have a wife who listens to music, there's no way that this CIA spy would know that this is Columbo's favorite piece of music.

Incontrovertible proof. The ways you'd have to contort yourself to make that scene work if you didn't have a wife violates Occam's razor at that point. That's great. Yeah. So there's my there's my contribution to the wife, the wife discourse. Columbo's wife discourse, to be specific. Made me think of something. I can't remember what this made me think of.

Oh, the spy stuff made me think I saw the new Bond film. Oh, how was it? It was good, actually. I legitimately didn't expect to enjoy it. Sure. stuff made me think i saw the new bond film oh how was it uh it was good actually uh i um legitimately didn't expect to enjoy it sure uh like i enjoyed um casino royale and i enjoyed this one so it felt to me uh-huh like um i mean i i enjoy bond films i'm not like a like oh i really don't like Bond films, but like the more recent ones have not been my cup of tea,

if you will. The, the, the Daniel Craig ones. Yeah. And this one felt like a really, really well done. Um,

Daniel Craig film looking at the older Bond films and, and sort of like there was some double entendres, but then also the do all the stuff that has to do with his, like his sort of like there were some double entendres but then also they do all the stuff that has to do with his like his sort of sexism and things like that instead of just commenting on it they just simply made him better yeah now he they talk about consent or you know like like he actually has learned something yeah yeah exactly yeah, exactly. Unprecedented. That was the thing with the 90s ones, the, what's his name? The Pierce Brosnan ones. When Dame Judi Dench took over as M.

Yeah, and they were like, look how clever we are by just calling Bond a misogynist. Yeah. Yeah, but he still is. And then this one, I just felt like, they were like yeah here are all like they have the double entendres they had like you know obviously they were like young women in his life he's getting up there um and there's a lot of that but they just they just they were like okay but here's the thing he's not going to be this jerk anymore like he's just this and and uh i thought that was well done i don't think

it's even like the a point that they were trying to make or anything i think they just that was just part of an update um i don't know i haven't really looked deeply into it so i don't know what was going on in the minds of the filmmakers at the time sure sure but uh oh i do know that the film got like some rewrites and things like that. So that may have fixed something. Anyways, the point is it was long, which, you know, I had the quip on hand because it was like over two hours, two hours and like 15, 16, 17 minutes, something like that. And it's called No Time to Die. Clearly that leads to like, oh, there's plenty of time to die. But I enjoyed it. Took a little break in the middle of it um

em and i are old we need to get up and walk this is a one of the fun things about uh being able to watch movies from home is that you could do that you could be like projectionist if you just stop for a moment yeah i think every movie that i have watched in the last two years i have paused and taken a break yeah it's just yeah i just can't and that could be dangerous for some films like my thing with horror films is i try not to do that sure if i with horror films because i have i i found that it just you you suck all the air out of it like you you you've had all this building tension and then you pause you go and you make yourself a sandwich or whatever and then you sit down like yeah and then you're in the middle of the thing that the tension was building to you but you've lost all of it but that's not the case here that

wasn't the case here i don't think it's the case with a lot of genres i think a lot of genres are very open to that i think horror is if not probably not unique but like is specifically bad with that um that's interesting that's kind of like a i feel like that might be a way in uh if someone more conversant with horror films wanted to wanted to do some something with this idea but a way into why there's such a devoted horror fan base or why people seem at least to, it seems that horror movies have more people who are very into horror movies than most other kinds of movies. uses tension in this way means that making film is kind of like, it's like film is uniquely well-suited to creating that while like a spy thriller movie could also be a three episode series and you probably aren't really losing anything.

Right. In translation, you can put commercial breaks in and it's fine. You don't have to like, I mean, you still build around them no matter what, but like, yeah,

the thing in this household, uh, M is not into horror. Like I, I'm still enjoy it from time to time, but like, you know, uh,

so when I want to watch a horror movie, I need to schedule it. What it is, is exactly what I was just saying. I need to have a time where it's going to be dark so i can turn off all the lights uh so that i have uninterrupted like if i know i try to schedule it sometimes like if i know m's going to be out for some reason and i'm like oh that's a good two-hour window in which i can watch a horror movie then i need to know the horror movie i'm

going to watch before that happens because if i waste 30 minutes of that and then M comes home and interrupts it before the end of it, I'm not angry or anything like that. It's just, that's it. The horror movie loses its steam. And this is, I'm talking about specifically a certain, I'm not talking about Critters 2. Right, right. Like, there's a whole genre of horror movies that are, I don't even want to say

that they're they're bad horror movies or anything like that but they're they're their own kind of popcorn they're they're more suited to like a party atmosphere yeah like having people over or something yeah exactly like i can to take a good example like i could i can stop army of darkness at any point get up and get some, come back and still continue to enjoy army of darkness. Right. That is still within the horror genre, but it's not, it's not working off of the things specifically that I'm talking about.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. And it's definitely like, I'm almost as if I'm like,

I have to be in the right mood. I have to like, things have to line up for optimal enjoyment of it, which involves me sometime in the middle of it going, why am I doing this? I think that that's an intrinsic quality of, of mine that makes it so I'm not really into horror movies is that when I have that feeling of why am I doing this to myself?

I stop. Yeah. Cause I don't actually like it. Like, like, like yeah that is something i i i learned about myself over the years that like i'm not there's no corner where i'm going to be like oh no i do like this feeling of of unsettlement or dread or creeping terror or you know whatever like no once i start having it, I just feel bad.

I'm not saying there's no horror films I like. Like, you know, I don't know. It depends. Like, I like schlocky stuff more, which, again, is less serious and easier to walk, get up and walk away from stuff that's more fantastic that's like clearly like vampire stuff like you know stuff that's kind of more more from a place of of like weird stuff is going to happen but it's not really about like the tension yeah let's really create like real serious like tension and like really unsettle you and give you really disturbing imagery like i'm not that's not really i don't i don't get anything out of that my my, my theory there is that, uh, horror and wonder are siblings and they're on the same. And like the more you push it, no, wait, I might be getting this theory wrong because

they're not, they're siblings. And so you get kind of the same response out of all of them. Right. And so you could do a lot of horror that has more of the wonder aspect of it, where you're like, oh, that's interesting that vampires could do that. Like Guillermo del Toro stuff is kind of in this zone for me where like it's not all of it. It depends on the movie, but like his horror stuff is definitively horror, but it's also pretty wondrous. Yeah. I often like think about our um, our desire to build out the, the mythology of a horror film,

right? Some of them are just like, Oh, this is just a serial killer going around killing people. We don't need to know much more than that. Um, sometimes that, that need to build it out leads to sequels that get like wackier and

wackier where the first one is just like a very tight, you know, uh, here's, there's no need to know anything beyond what's what's happening here um and sometimes you got something like like a hellraiser where it's just like here are these these demons they're called centibites and they have they follow some rules that we're giving you a glimpse of and then you just spend you could spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what all the rules are and just

trying to solve that there in lamentation configuration yeah and I think that that part leads into the wonder I think that like a lot of times you look at me like what is happening here what's what's what strange world is this

yeah and I don't think that the two forces are in opposition no no it's more of a venn diagram kind of yeah situation yeah maybe put humor in there too like yeah there's your three circles there you go yeah yeah exactly that are kind of working on the same dynamic yeah the whole like slapstick thing that kind of shows up like alternating tension and surprise right yeah yeah important oh here's here's a film theory corner on plus expenses yeah yeah that's our retrospective on uh well i mean this is indicative of plus expenses that's true this is kind of how yeah this is how these things go well i guess i would say maybe as a alternate or not alternative but a a different

direction of visual storytelling would be something like the rockford files yes question for you actually coming out of this thought which is that for do you find for horror movies in this mode of the like kind of like i i give myself the block of time. So I sit down and just watch the movie and get, you know, whatever the experience is supposed to be. Do you find that those movies also are have a specific place in kind of like how written they are in the sense of written that we talked about? Right, right. I think so. I mean, like, no, that's a good question. So this is the idea. Again, we talk about this all the time on Plus Expenses and every so often on 200 a Day.

But like the Rockford Files is a written show. You watch it and you're like, someone wrote this. Like it's there's a capital W on. Yeah, these choices were deliberate. Yeah, the choices were really deliberate. And a lot of the time when we are talking about an episode, what we end up spending a lot of time on is kind of like, so this choice didn't seem as deliberate. Do we think it was a mistake? Do we think it was a production issue?

Or is there some explanation that just didn't make it onto the screen? And it's a little unfair for us to say written when it's clearly the product of somebody writing, somebody acting, somebody directing, somebody editing. You know, like, but it's our shorthand and we're sticking with it. Some shows really get along on the formula, right? Yeah. And then some shows really get along on the star power, et cetera. And some shows get along on how written they are and thankfully for the rockford files we have a combination where it gets along on all of them yes it's good on

all dimensions yeah but i think a generally for us a well-written thing will will will give a will will give give a little more be a little more worth it than something that's just as well produced and acted but is not written, is more kind of like generic or it's only there as a vehicle for watching these people do a thing or, you know, that kind of thing.

There's an example that I won't name. We try not to slam stuff because that's not really what we're here to do but uh there's a movie that's going to win a bunch of awards okay that i've just seen recently that is well acted cinematography is great uh i can't really comment on the editing because i don't really have those chops um or the directing but uh the i felt it was not written and i think like emma emma and i both agree on this and we've spent after we watched it we spent like a whole week talking about why why that is uh but what it brings up is this thing where um that doesn't necessarily ruin things because i like earlier in this very

podcast i was talking about how much i enjoyed crossbow right and i'm going to tell you right now that crossbow uh there's certain things i do appreciate about the writing of crossbow but it's not capital w written like we like we talk or not every episode or you know like there's some standouts so one of the things we were talking about is that we enjoyed all the actors in this movie and they couldn't save it for us and so i was thinking to myself like who like they're good good actors like their names people like again i'm dancing around it and i'm just trying not to say um it made me think of the actors that i know who can save underwritten things. And it's not the same thing as being a good actor.

It's a skill not entirely separate from, but its own thing. Names that come to my mind are like, Brian Blessed is one that just just like you put him on the screen. I'm like, hell yeah. I'll just watch him. Whatever. Uh, there was one else that we just saw. Oh, um, Hans Gruber. What's his name?

I swear. My brain went Hans Gruber. The, that guy from blade runner. I swear. That's what my brain did. Yeah. I don't know why. Uh, uh, yeah. Alan, Alan alan rickman yeah like he's another one

there's a bunch of them that can really like there's something about their style of acting or whatever they can can uh tim tim curry's kind of like that yeah in like for a specific value of like make something really entertaining i think a lot of these people you know they bat for the what's the phrase they swing for the fences swing for the fences no matter what and that's the thing like you can see them in things where other people aren't swinging for the fences and you're just like yeah like i don't care what how bad this is swing for the fences. Like, let's get us there. Let's, um, um, we, I think it follows some of my,

my SNL theory, my Saturday night live theory that like, why oftentimes if you have like a wrestler or a musician, they do better than actors as the guest host because they, well, they're used to live performances, but they're also used to like doing things. Yeah. Just like, just like going for it. And like, well, they're used to live performances, but they're also used to like doing things. Yeah.

Just like, just like going for it and like. Yeah. Yeah. And just like. Also like reading the audience and being responsive, like being ready to respond to things. Yeah. I think swinging for the fences is definitely a quality that does it. But there are some that don't swing for the fences and still do it.

Like they, they still managed to. I don't... I don't know how to quantify any of this. This is just a burgeoning idea in my head that I'm just barfing into the mic at this point. That's a podcast. That is a podcast. Two white men with opinions. That's all you need. That's the gestation of a podcast. That's what hatches out of the egg. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Well, to give us slightly more shape than we usually do, on our main show, we'll be at over a hundred episodes of the Rockford files of which there are only 122.

Does that sound right? Are we that close? Trying to see if the IMDb page will just give me that number. 123. 123. Yeah. the imdb page will just give me that number 123 123 yeah i haven't i haven't done done the survey to see exactly where we're at but i think oh and plus the movies so that's a total of 131 because i think there's eight movies eight movies okay all right i can do math yeah 131 if there's

eight movies um and we've done some two-parters in two episodes and some two-parters in one episode and we're not sure how that 123 number is counted right right exactly um so you know we need to do a a more rigorous survey at some point um but yeah i mean well over the halfway point for sure and yeah you know approaching, approaching retirement, approaching retirement. Uh, yeah. In the episode we're about to do preview of coming attractions, we're doing the third appearance of a particular guest star. Oh yeah. The first episode that we did that had her in it,

we released in 2017. That was a decade ago. Yeah. So do we still like the Rockford files? I mean, yeah, I'm enjoying it. Um,

yeah, that's interesting. Like, I mean, we talk about this from time to time because we are, it's a measurable thing. We have a progress bar. Oh yeah.

I should code up a little progress bar for us. That'd be kind of nice. Yeah. Our, our episodes that come out, you know, around now are essentially our five year anniversary of the show. We started,

we started dropping episodes in, right. Is that right? I think so. Yeah. Or we've already crossed the five year anniversary. Cause we started dropping episodes in, I think December of 2016.

Wow. Yep. Is that 18, 19, 20, 21. Yep. What's,

what's the five year anniversary? Is it tin? Wood. Uh, is it a bowl of chili? Uh, I know that we should start one. Um,

yeah, that was a joke, but is in fact the traditional five year anniversary gift is wood. Oh, well there you go. A symbol of strong roots and an enduring relationship. There we go. we go carve you a cookie jar out of wood and keep your your your naturally vegan oreos in it yes uh yeah i it is

interesting because we've talked about this a little bit how we we don't have um a path right like we didn't say we're gonna do them in order we didn't say we're gonna do them in reverse order or anything like that uh we just kind of pick and choose how out of what's left each time and uh some of that involved us saying i really want to do this episode this is a really good episode uh and some of that is like occasionally we're not ready to handle although i think we kind of hit almost all of those i think so there's one there's still one in the sixth season that i'm like there's the two-parter with lauren bacal that i'm like want to be ready to do that one yeah uh there's a couple

that blindsided us like uh that first gandy episode i'm glad we did it in the order we did it yeah it would have been hard to go to another Gandy episode after the first Gandy episode. And if you just joining us and don't know what we're talking about, it's not that it's a bad episode. It's that the character is particularly despicable. And then, and then is essentially rebooted in the next appearance because we all just love,

it's a case so much and wanted to see it back. Yeah. Yeah. So like he, so he's essentially rebooted and then he's a wonderful character that you want to see. And that's kind of hard

once you already know that. Anyways, but I think we're down to the ones that we don't necessarily have strong opinions one way or the other on. Except for we want to end on on the on the first and last on the pilot and finale as i like last two episodes yeah so we know that yeah so it's it's it's kind of interesting getting a point here where we're just almost just rolling the dice although now we get to do this fun game where we're like hey there's this person like we're doing in this particular episode uh jesse wells has been in two other episodes let's

close it out let's let's do the final jesse wells let's let's send them off it's a wrap on jesse yeah and we're getting and we're doing that with directors too we've done that with a couple um we have one coming up i think uh that we'll be able to finish in like two episodes uh we did that with season two we were just close we'd done almost all the season two episodes anyway so we just did all the season two episodes last year um so yeah we're we're at the point where we get to see yeah we get to make these little closures that are entirely an artifact of our non-planning yes which is kind of satisfying actually in its own way i was super excited when i realized that this was fifth season uh this episode here and for no reason like except

that i was like oh we've been dealing with the early seasons for a while we've been doing a bunch of season one stuff i think yeah and i was i was like yeah let's get into the let's get into this later season uh we do have an understanding of the characters of the the tenor of each season yeah um that we're developing but it's also kind of hard because again we're doing it out of order so it's uh yeah it's it's been kind of fun it keeps i do feel like it keeps it kind of fresh because going from a season one to season five in particular, especially with the same actor, I feel like there's like a real definitive like it's not that the show is different because it's not. And in a lot of ways, it feels more plot wise. It feels more like an early season episode than most season four, season five episodes.

But there's something about it. I think a lot of it is the aesthetic. Like this one is four years or five years later chronologically than the last episode we did chronologically yeah and i feel like the 1974 just visual world and the 1979 visual world are actually fairly different um and it gives a really it really does feel like a oh we've really really skipped some stuff uh kind of feeling and there's fun stuff with um rocky and dennis are in this one these are characters that are at this point these these are actors who with

their characters at this point just know what they are there's the writers everybody is just like yeah like there's a comfortableness with the show that you can feel instead of having to do like little introductions or like little banter to establish a relationship or anything we can just kind of get right to like yeah we just know how these people act together i don't even know if this is like a tangible transition but you like i find this with role-playing games or when i'm writing there's a spot in the beginning where you're literally defining the character as you're doing whatever creative activity you're doing and then there's like a tipping point or whatever where suddenly it's like oh no the we know what the character is good the character is a real thing that is now

telling us what they're going to do in these situations. You know what I'm saying? Like, like in early episodes, you know, we have to decide what Rocky's relationship with Jim is. And in later episodes, we know what Rocky's relationship with Jim is. We know how.

We just, we just see it evident. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's, you can kind of feel that experience or that change. Yeah. Maybe I'm having, maybe I'm reading too much in things. It's possible can kind of feel that experience or that change uh yeah maybe i'm

having maybe i'm reading too much in things it's possible i've done that just as anyone who's listened to our show for five years will know that yes people will start second guessing himself by the end of the sentence we don't have to introduce that we just know it's gonna happen it's just gonna happen it's gonna happen it's gonna happen uh yeah well i think that perhaps is a good time to uh go ahead and move into said episode yeah talk about the actual thing that we're here to talk about but yeah uh speaking strictly from the perspective of doing this podcast with you it's been a good year yeah i'm not in a position to compare like like, say, what our best episodes have been or anything,

but, like, I feel like we've done some this year that I really walked away from being like, yeah, that was really good. Yeah. That was a fun one. We're hitting a certain stride ourselves. Only two-thirds of the way through. Yeah, that's all. There was a

recent comment on our website, because people can leave comments on our website. And so shout out to this person whenever they get here, if they do, which is that they left a comment on one of our like second or third episodes or something from recently from a couple of months ago in 2020 saying, I recently discovered the podcast, really love the Rockford files. I've files been enjoying the show i don't really know much about the game stuff

but i like what you have to say you know about the episodes i'm listening to these all in order on my commute you know looking forward to it and i'm like first of all if you left that comment in 2020 whenever you got here thank you i hope you've enjoyed the ride yeah um we after about 20 episodes or so we did stop breaking out themes from the show to talk about as use for games and game design because that was our original premise but then we got to the point where we're like yeah we've covered all the high points and uh yeah don't really have anything new to say about like creating memorable characters or like narrative continuity through through character or how mysteries work like right yeah there's only so much that we could have drawn out of that but

also i think it's uh important to um note that in the beginning if we were if you and i were going to have an audience it was going to come from our games. Right, right, yeah. And I feel like our audience now, there's enough Rockford Files fans out there who are listening to us, who are just into the Rockford Files. And specifically in a way where we get really great feedback, because a lot of it is people who are fans of Rockford Files from watching it as kids or when it was originally on. This is just to say that I am significantly younger than most of our audience, I think. And I'm coming to it as, as we say, an elder millennial looking back at this show. So we get a lot of good correct.

And you're in the middle. I am. back at this show. So we get a lot of good correct. And you're, you know, you're, you're in the middle. Um, so we, but we get a lot of really good feedback from people who either have something to correct us on because we make an assumption about the world at the time that wasn't correct or, and also just people being like, Hey, I really liked the show. And it's nice to hear that other people really liked the show. I had a moment. had the the age moment thing where i was like am i going to be 50 while we're doing this because so as we're recording this we are like six days away from my birthday or something like that yes happy impending epimus yes thank you or happy past epimus by the time everyone's hearing this? I will turn 48 is what I'll be. Yes. Yeah.

You know the math where you take the current year and you subtract the year of your birth and that's your age? That's only legit for me in the last week of the year. So I always have to do it and then add one, right? But I think we have two years left of episodes it scared me because i had this like oh wait we we were just saying we only have 31 episodes left but we still have a little bit plus we have a little bit more than that and also we don't always do two a month we don't always do two a month yeah yeah so well we'll see so you're all right so you are turning by the time this is out, you will be 48.

So basically two years from now, uh, in, uh, 2023, will we be recording? Will we have recorded our final episodes before then? Or will we be right? Well, I mean, I don't know about that, but I, let's see. How old am I? Yeah. See, it's that easy. Huh?

I don't think we've ever done this math are you you're 10 years older than me yeah apparently yes well nine and a half yeah i turn 38 this oh yeah in the summer so depending on the timing we might be able to wrap this up after you turn 50 but before i turn 40 how about that that's a goal it's a goal the question is is will we will there be we're gonna look behind the curtains here will there be one two or three more 20 a day episodes that's the that's the real question. I think there's only so many that are qualified for that.

So hopefully we'll get those done before we run out of stuff to do with that. And if you don't know what we're talking about with 20 a day, stay tuned in April. Yeah. Or just look at some previous Aprils that we did.

If you must. Alright, well well as those who listen to the show know once i attempt to segue that means that we're going to talk about stuff for a little while longer before we actually before we actually finish our plus expenses episode but now i think it is time to uh move on but uh thanks uh thanks everyone yet again yet again oh I don't know. I'm trying to think what I'm trying to say here. We do Plus Expenses mainly for us. Yeah.

But it's also fun to know that it goes out to other people and you get to hear a little more of our non-Rockford specific talk. Even if people don't listen to it and it gives us a context in which to have our little conversations right right so it's worth it everyone who does listen to plus expenses which is generally available on our patreon feeds um thank you and if you don't that's you know fine i get it but uh this is the kind of stuff you're missing i wouldn't be sad if more people heard it that's true yeah agreed all right let's talk about the rockford files I wouldn't be sad if more people heard it. That's true. Yeah, agreed.

All right, let's talk about the Rockford Files. Bye.