Two Hundred A Day - Episode 104: Return to the 38th Parallel

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

Nathan and Eppy get to hear some of Jim's Korean escapades in S3E9 Return to the 38th Parallel. An old commander of his, played by the always-delightful Ned Beatty, comes calling out of the blue. Down on his luck, he takes a case that Jim turns down - but it turns out to be only the first step in a more elaborate scheme to use Jim to get to a big insurance company finders fee. A fun episode that turns from a mystery to a chase, we really enjoyed talking about this one! 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) * Jordan Bockelman (https://twitter.com/jordanbockelman) * Michael Zalisco * 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) * Greggy, 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

Tompkins at Guarantee Insurance. Bought your burglary claim? Made your loss alright. Funny you remembered to file, but you didn't remember to pay your premium. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm, as per usual, Nathan Paletta. And also, as per usual, I'm Epitite Ravishaw. I was trying to think of something cute to say there and I couldn't. I threw you off with my new cadence, my change in cadence. It's good. Got to shake it up every once in a while. Yeah. You don't want to be on autopilot the whole time.

Well, speaking of going off of autopilot, we do usually have some kind of selection scheme for our episodes, and we kind of go back and forth picking them. But this one comes to us by way of a listener request oh yeah yeah so we got an email from listener jim from maine who would like to hear us talk about season three episode nine return to the 38th parallel so that's what we're doing also a return to ned baby Beatty. Yes. And I think, I think we're, this is going to be a wrap on Ned Beatty. There's going to be a couple of wraps in this one. This is the final of his appearances. He was also in the season one two-parter, Profit and Loss. And it's a pretty fun set of episodes because, I guess, in the sense of showcasing his range, right?

Because in Profit and Loss, which we did... He's like a heavy with a firm handshake, right? He's the financially guy, right? Yeah. He's running this big financial kind of scam. But yeah, he has the real firm handshake. He transitions from trying to get one over on rockford to just straight up trying to you know preserve his his own interests and everything and he's he's like the main guy

you know he's the villain in that one i was just checking checking uh ned baby's imdb he passed away last year uh in the summer of last year yes we did profit and loss in our episode 55 so if anyone wants to go hear what we had to say about ned baby there yeah back from august of in the summer of last year. Yes, we did Profit and Loss in our episode 55. So if anyone wants to go hear what we had to say about Ned Beatty there, back from August of 2019. It's also the one where there's the great scene where Jim is talking to an accountant at a hot dog stand. Yes. Memorable moment.

One of the more classic scenes. Anyway, as we will get into in this episode, Ned Beatty is the opposite of that in most ways. He is a friend of Jim's. He's a schlub. He's down on his luck and he has an amazing creeper mustache. Yes. But we will, of course, get into that as we get into the episode. This is also going to be a rap on the writer, and this is a solo director effort,

which we generally don't consider a rap, but this is the only appearance of our director as well. This one is directed by Bruce Kessler. I had an interesting experience looking him up. So first of all, just starting on IMDb, it's like, okay, he's done some TV, some movies, some TV movies. This is his only Rockford Files appearance. But he directed a movie called Simon, King of the Witches.

And I was like, oh, let me tell you about Simon, King of the Witches. Yeah, I've been already, but go on. It's from 1971. it's from 1971 the log line is simon a young man with magic powers invokes the help of the evil forces in order to take revenge on a man who cheated him with a bad check and if you look more into it i have not seen this movie it's a andrew prine vehicle may not vehicle andrew prine's in it i would recognize him from many movies of the 70s oh yeah i feel like we may have some listeners who are like, we,

I know who that is. Um, yeah, I, I know some listeners who would know, but this movie apparently was written by a practicing warlock and is considered to be a translation of his story onto screen. This guy, Robert Tiffany.

Uh, I'm going to say the, the poster for this, that that's on IMBB is magnificent. It just speaks directly to my soul. And in the back of my head, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is playing while I'm staring at this. All right. You've convinced me. I will watch Simon King of the Witches.

And it's apparently on Tubi. All right. You've convinced me. I will watch Simon King of the Witches. And it's apparently on Tubi. So, you know, I know you have that available to you. So maybe you can report back next time and tell us about it. Yeah. Oh, man. But then going off of IMDb, I had to go all the way to Wikipedia to learn that his movie career was apparently kind of his second act. And he was before then he was a race car driver. Ah, well, hold on.

That's interesting in the context of this episode. A little bit. There is no car chase, right? There's no car chase. There is one significant car moment, which I'm sure we will both want to talk about. But yeah, there is no car chase. I mean, I don't know how big so his entry on wikipedia is entirely framed around his very minimal car racing career and also mentions he's a director so i'm not really you know so i think the car enthusiasts

might have gotten to him first yeah that's weird because he doesn't have a small IMDb. Yeah, he was a working director for sure. Yeah. You've seen shows. Like, if you've watched shows in the 70s and 80s, you've seen a show that he's. He directed, like, Chips, like, A Bunch of Chips and Greatest American Hero. And, like. Yeah.

He directed some of the monkeys. Like. Simon the King of Witches. He also did angels from hell all right i might be i might be really into this so i go he's just directed movies that would be good sabbath songs if they're not already like angels from hell killers three simon king of the witches like yeah uh another claim to fame apparently is that and this is just from wikipedia um he was on a way to a oh boy even just reading this i don't really know what a lot of this means

so he was going to a race he met for dinner with james dean and his mechanic who were also going to the race okay all right bruce kessler and his mechanic left first. And then the next thing that happened is that this was a fatal crash where James Dean was killed. So he's the last person alive who spoke with James Dean before his death. Wow. Per Wikipedia. Right? Yeah. And then after a serious crash in the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix in Pomona, he spent days in a coma and then retired from racing.

And then went on to direct Death Moon, the made-for-TV movie. So, interesting trivia about Bruce Kessler. This episode is written by Walter Dahlenbach. A rap on him. This is the second of his two rockford files appearances the other episode he wrote was joey blue eyes back in season two which we did in our episode 85 and i think we talked about him a little bit in that episode but i'll refer you again to his uh obituary from 2014 that really captures what sounds like an extremely interesting life um

that is not reflected anywhere else on the internet that i could find other than he wrote some tv uh but uh he also taught screenwriting um from uh 1990 to 2010 and i don't recall if i actually if i gave many excerpts from this in that episode uh so if so i guess apologies but there was something that struck me here rereading this a bit. In his last days, he said, you know, when good times and good work are surrounding you, it all seems like a merry-go-round.

Moving Colorado, a strange adventure in Nebraska, New York City on Universal's backlot, new friends made and gone, relationships intense, then broken. It is not real life, but it is life. I do not remember that quote, and I like that quote. I'm trying to think now if there's really much

parallel with the Joey Blue Eyes story or script. I'm trying to remember... Jim is brought in by Beth's friend whose dad is like a mob guy who is facing getting iced out of his restaurant business.

Right. He keeps like threatening people. Yeah. Yeah. There's probably some parallels between Ned Beatty's character and this guy. A little bit. Yeah. Won't take any good advice.

They refuse it. But that's a common, like we have Angel. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I was thinking they actually both have a good, like, let see jim play out an entire con on the small scale like the whole episode isn't that but like in that one they have the whole uh what's it called cackle bladder the whole thing where jim gets like shot where they stage joey shooting jim for the benefit of the like other mobsters or

whatever uh and this one again we'll get to. But there's a good soup to nuts. Con. Pretending to be from a TV station. That I feel like has kind of a similar. Let's see every element of this. So we see it all come together. In the hands of this master con man. Not that that is unique to these two episodes.

But it is definitely fun to watch. I was just thinking that any parallels we find between the two are also parallels yeah with the rockford files in general uh but they're fun i mean like i remember enjoying that one and i i did enjoy this one uh which that's a shocker i know a long time ago surprised that i enjoyed a rockford files episode but as it turns out i do occasionally enjoy them right well here we are um well speaking of enjoying the rockford files episode but as it turns out i do occasionally enjoy them right well here we are um well speaking of enjoying the rockford files was there anything to enjoy in the preview montage uh the thing is most of the stuff that i call out in the preview montage that we don't get a lot of

like reoccurring characters rocky's in it briefly and i think he might even be in the yeah he's in the the preview montage that's just yelling at jim because people are shooting at jim and and that he's angry about that um and we get a reference to dennis so we get both of them like we mentioned there's no real car chases so we don't have any car chase things there's a good dog the dog is not a major plot in the the story but i do like uh the scene around the dog yeah yeah uh and there's a really good it ends with like a just a just a nice death threat like a very solid classic yeah um i can't i just wrote down it was a nice death threat i think he's like it would it would be nothing for me to. Yeah, like it would be really easy for me to convince the cops that you were breaking and entering and I killed you in self-defense or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did feel like I ended this one with a note of I have no idea what this episode is going to be about. Yeah. Like I know it'll be about Rockford stuff. about yeah like i know it'll be about rockford stuff but in terms of you know sometimes you get a sense like oh this is like a mob one or this is one where there's it i mean it turns out that there is an insurance thing involved but like this is going to be an insurance one or this is going to be you know jim has asked for help like no idea like we have the little set piece bits but i'm like no idea what the actual story here is going to be yeah Yeah. So that's kind of fun if they just go in and just let it all unfold. Did you know that we are a 100% listener supported show? Our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day,

keep us in the podcast business and in return, receive exclusive episode previews as well as plus expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about media we're enjoying and the things going on in our lives. We extend special thanks to our gumshoe patrons supporting this episode. Dale Norwood wrote a book, Trading Freedom, How Trade with China Defined Early America. It's about fast ships, cheap drugs, and American political economy.

Published by the University of Chicago Press, find it wherever good books are sold. Chuck from whatsyoureading.com, Paul Townend, who recommends Fruit Loops, serial killers of color, at fruitloopspod.com. Shane Liebling, check out Roll4Your.party for all of your online dice rolling needs. Jay Adan, showcasing his amazing miniature painting skills

at jayadan.com. Dave P., Dave Otterson, Kip Hawley, Matthew Lee, and Greggy. And finally, a very special thanks to our detective-level patrons for their generous support. Michael Zalisco, Eric Antenor, at Antenor on Twitter, Brian Pereira, at Thermaware, Bill Anderson, at BillAnd88, Jordan Bockelman, at Jordan Bockelman, and of course, Richard Haddam, at Richard Haddam. We follow them too, at 200pod. If you're interested in keeping us going for as little as $1 an episode, check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. Our episode starts off with another in, I think, a recent trend of a short scene establishing our villains that we will get back to much later in the episode.

Where we have two guys who are clearly slime balls talking about a piece of like a big oil painting, a big piece of classical art. And we have our slime ball prime, who we will eventually learn is named John Stabila. And then he has this art dealer that he works with. I think what is established in this conversation, they're kind of like drinking wine and kind of bantering and sniping at each other a little bit. But he's he has a big art collection that he's trying to sell. And a lot of it or possibly all of it, question mark, is stolen. to sell and a lot of it or possibly all of it question mark is stolen and he's trying to get rid of some of it because there's like too much trouble from a recent there's a recent theft where a guard got killed and now he's worried he's going to get too involved or something so he's he's asked

by the dealer more specifically like what he wants to get out of it or something. And we end the scene on a, are you here for business or gossip? Like just sell my paintings. Get them out of here. I like this scene. I think there's a certain, okay, these two are everything you just said. Plus they're aficionados. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

They appreciate the art, both the art itself and the art of stealing it. They appreciate the art, both the art itself and the art of stealing it. Like that. There's like a little something about like appreciation for how they mentioned the piece and appreciation for how that piece was stolen. To me, it felt very much like, you know, just two people who are in the same business who can appreciate like something done well in that business. That business happens to be the business of stealing and reselling art uh like high art but like so i liked it it definitely takes them out of the realm of like mob or like yeah it wasn't just menace right right it's not just menacing it's more you really get the selfishness, I think. Like, these are just like selfish, selfish rich guys, which, you know.

Yeah. Our favorite villain. We cut to Ned Beatty casing Jim's trailer. He's seeing if the door's unlocked. He's looking in the window. And then the Firebird rolls up as our credits play. As Jim, I think, with his clearly been out, I don't know, working or something. He's just coming home doing his normal thing.

And then Al Brennan is this character jumps Jim from behind and shoves a pretends to stick him up. But he's using like a flashlight instead of an actual gun. Right. And there's a great beat where Jim is. This is the this is the kind of thing he's dealt with a thousand times yeah hey buddy must be a mistake uh but then he recognizes the voice and turns around and oh it turns out they're they're old buddies from their service together in korea this is a good episode that fills in one of our sub themes from i'd say probably the first three seasons it

kind of fades away as you know we go further but jim's military history yeah and the hijinks pursued therein uh we get a lot of good stories about scams and pulling one over on commanders and stuff like that but yeah i think we also get that they clearly haven't seen each other for a long time. This is a big surprise for Jim to see Bren. Yeah, big old reunion. He invites him in and then we just cut to

morning daylight. We see that someone in a van is keeping an eye on the trailer. And then we go inside the trailer and at first I was like, awfully early for them to be drinking. And then I realized, no, no,

they have just been up all night. This guy in the van is there's a classification of a Rockford character, which I'm going to a little bit of spoiler here, but there's often, there's a party who's interested in what's going on, who doesn't exist long enough to be, uh, doesn't, I'm trying to think of a good way to describe it, but like, I think, oh, this is going to be like one of the bad guys, or this is going to be, you know, he is involved, but most of what we'll get

about him is, uh, off screen. He's, I'm not sure what this typology would be but at least in this story he's used to show how dastardly the villain can be yeah so that we don't have to see the villain do anything really bad to our main characters right right but i think before we get to that point he is a big source of mystery which is also exactly also important so this is a opening opening banter scene to establish our relationship of these guys and a little bit of their history i think i guess i didn't really pick this up from their talking but just from the description in the um that robertson book brennan was one of jim's commanders um so throughout the run of the series this is actually the last commander that we hear of.

Cause we've done the other episodes where he has commanders and they're the two into five 56 won't go. And then the Hawaiian headache both involve guys who were Jim's commanders. I don't think it's specified as to who was what rank win and stuff, but it is kind of a fun uh web that one could spin with all of these uh characters yeah my notes were i couldn't tell if he was jim's commander or an mp or something like that because we get this thing about jim smuggling an entire christmas party into something yeah and how he just couldn't bust j because it was too audacious, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a good line, the 38th parallel is only a state of mind. So getting our title here. Is that the dividing line for North and South Korea? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, is the 38th parallel. Yeah, so that's calling out to our title there. We get a bit of Brennan's story since then. He worked for a collection agency for

eight years uh but then the company went bankrupt and he was out on the streets he's been doing freelancing for insurance agencies but he couldn't pay his racetrack bets so they came for his house and he was out on the streets again jim mentions him being an auctioneer at some point he's like oh is that when you were an auctioneer and i was convinced that this was going to be a thing that there was that like auctioneering was going to come up later uh but no this i mean this fits in with a thing that i really love about the rock profiles in general and jim in particular if this man was jim's superior in the military he's fallen and uh that doesn't disturb jim in the slightest jim doesn't have the respect for the hierarchy right that that that uh you would think they

would have tried to drill into him he's comfortable being friendly with him but at no point does he like there's no deference to the the rank or anything like that like he doesn't he just he's like yeah no you you've had a bunch of weird odd jobs i like i could totally i could totally believe somebody who's going from odd job to a job thinking well maybe i'll be an engineer that's a thing people do right um another key point is that brennan's been in new york this whole time that new york whitefish look yes well j Well, Jim is planning to go, uh, go, go camping and fishing with Rocky for a few days. But if Brennan needs to,

needs somewhere to hang out, he can stay in Jim's trailer. And he, he says, I owe you one. Um, which I guess is just a, again,

I was like, Oh, is this going to come up? Like what this debt is. But I think it's just a general, like you didn't bust me back in the day kind of thing. There's a reoccurring theme. I'll point it out as it keeps coming up. But there's this thing where it's not this, though.

It's more that Al here makes himself pitiable to Jim by saying, I don't want your pity. Yeah. And then making a case for why he should have Jim's pity. And I feel like this is kind of of that. It's interesting also. So I just wanted to note he has a good line in response to that of, Boy, I admire your style. I mean, any 20-year-old corporal who will smuggle in a Christmas party and disguise himself as an intelligence officer.

You can't bust a guy like that. Which I think is actually a pretty significant character note of an admiring Jim style. I think that actually will come back. But yes, I think you're I think you're absolutely right that we will see more of how al does and then tries to manipulate jim in that way but also this is an interesting point because you know jim's offering him the place to stay etc and that's when i go like i was trying to break in right it's like this whole thing is in service of something and that al didn't necessarily he wasn't actually aiming

for jim to invite him to stay over or whatever but is this what he kind of wanted like you know there's a bit of because of how it's framed like we could have just started out without seeing him at the window like just started it with jim on the stairs and him coming out of nowhere and this whole thing would have a slightly different um level of mystery where we kind of see things as we go but as it's framed we actually are suspicious from the jump and it's kind of like all right what is this guy's angle right let's put some cards on the table here i i feel like um if you're listening to us you've probably seen the episode so like let's let's uh not worry about spoilers for a moment because i think uh there are two ways for us to,

because there's what I'm thinking in the moment here, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then looking now, having seen the episode, looking back on what's going on, he's running a con on Jim. Right.

It's a little unclear in order to what he's trying to recover some stolen art, right? That much, you know, whether he's trying to recover it for the insurance company or he's going to run off with it whatever he's going to use jim to do it uh and in the in the very next scene we're going to see some stuff that plays one way and i'm

trying to think now that might actually be a fun way to talk about this one is these two what are the parallel stories here so yeah i think it is kind of explained not explained explained but kind of given mention in the end um brendan's problem is that he doesn't know the area right he's from new york doesn't have any contacts here he also has the problem of not really being of not really having the skills like he clearly has certain skills but not necessarily the ones that he needs to do this job right so his plan is to look up his good buddy from back in the day jim and kind of get jim involved to follow him to the pot of gold i think that that was my read at least like yeah i'm gonna get j on it. But then because I know what this is about and he doesn't do to the next

scene, I will be able to swoop in at the end, you know, and, and get what I'm actually here for. So, so some of the big questions here are like, why doesn't he come at Jim very directly and just say,

Hey, let's split the deal on this. Cause then he would have to split the deal. He doesn't want's split the deal on this. Because then he would have to split the deal. He doesn't want to split the deal. Yeah. All right. The stuff I'm going to say is going to make more sense when we get to this very next scene.

So should we move on? So in our next scene, we see a car arrive and we see someone wearing fancy high heels coming out. And we see the watcher in the van kind of perk up as he sees someone arriving at Jim's trailer. This is in real time. So we've been seeing Jim and Brennan in the trailer and then Jim saying like, okay,

well, we've been up all night drinking. I'm going to bed. And then there's a knock on the door and he wants Brennan to don't answer it. But Brennan insists, he's like, Oh oh it might be opportunity which again in this moment is a little like you know it's yeah when you don't know what's happening it seems weirdly insistent when you do know oh right yeah this is the next part of the con

right right jim doesn't to interact here and so the person who's come to jim's door is marcy who says that her sister is missing and she needs help um the dynamic here is that jim is trying to not work in the way that does brennan is not pushing jim necessarily but sliding in to be like well if jim's not going to do it like i can help you right which i think works on both levels um because we know why he's doing it for the con but also this is not out of character right from what jim understands of this guy who's kind of an operator right yeah uh at this point in the in my first viewing i'm I have completely fallen for this con. It makes perfect sense that this guy would want to, like, we've seen enough people try to, we literally saw someone pretend to be Jim Rockford. Right, right.

I was going to say that, yeah, in Beamer's last case, I was like, oh, this is kind of thematic pair where we get to see Brennan, like, try to become Jim, kind of. Kind of. And, uh, but, but the, the con part of it, uh, is that like Brennan has hired this woman or this woman and Brennan are

involved, which is another possibility, uh, to tug on Jim's heartstrings to try and get him into it. It's, it's two prong. So I feel like this whole, the whole thing on,

I think the whole thing on i think the whole con on jim actually demonstrates a very uh clear reading of jim's character yeah like brandon knows or at least thinks he knows and is generally right what is going to get jim to do what he wants jim to do right right yeah um so this woman, Marcy, he her sister Linda is missing. She has been missing for a couple of weeks, I guess. Marcy is getting worried because the last thing she talked to Linda about, Linda told her that her I think she says like the man he was she was seeing or her boyfriend. This guy named John Stabila, was doing something illegal. And then she hasn't heard from her since,

which is unusual because she usually calls every day and blah, blah, blah. They have moved outside to a little coffee table where they're having the morning coffee and shop talk. And Jim is explaining that most missing people don't want to be found, which is why he doesn't usually take this kind of case, but he can recommend people.

And then Brennan goes, well, my partner won't take it but i will just step right in there yeah well he gives us jim's great like just go along with me look yeah and jim's like can i talk to you so jim jim's read is that brennan being an operator who is probably broke right uh if he didn't say that outright is like look, look, she's not a score. This is a woman in trouble. Right. You know, and you're not a PI. I am.

Like, you're not going to help this. But Brendan's thing is like, look, this could be big for me. He's peeked through enough keyholes in his time. And then he asked Jim, how did you get your PI license? I got to start somewhere. Maybe I can help her. Yeah. Jim gets to seenan do a thing that

jim expects brennan to do and kind of get talked into letting him do it because at the end of the day he doesn't actually want to take this case and this i think this is another one of those scenes or maybe the first of the scenes where brennan is like don't start feeling sorry for me, pal. And then like lays all the reasons to feel sorry for, um, I dig that approach to Jim, like just the, like, no, no, no, no. I don't want to, I don't want your pity, but I mean, like someone should pity me for, for all the fact that I've lost all my money and need a job. And yeah. Uh, I, I, I think like, I,

I definitely complicate this as we talk about it now because the scene itself is not complicated it's straightforward uh and it is of a style that we are on the show at least i like i'm at a point now where i can't contextually put episodes uh in the timeline of the series because we've been jumping around so much but like you know we're used to like somebody muscling in on jim's action here yeah uh what's interesting about this is that jim doesn't want the action and it's okay for someone to muscle in on it at this point yeah he's kind of like i don't really want to take this case and i don't think you should because i think you're going to do a bad job but i guess i can't stop you right but unfortunately perhaps you should have stopped him

um so our next scene uh we have jim on the beach fishing and he seems to have gotten a good one i think on his line but then he's flanked by two guys who flash an irs badge internal revenue service and starts reeling in his line of course i'm like oh so brennan is in trouble with the irs right like i'm like okay now we're now we're getting somewhere uh we we go to this is actually again more interesting in retrospect so we start with brennan on the phone and he has a picture of the guy stabila that we could recognize from the first scene i think um yeah and on the phone he's talking to someone he says i can't get too close or he's gonna or he'll take my picture and it's gonna blow everything and then there's a knock on

the door and he hurriedly hangs up and puts it away um and answers it uh so maybe we'll get back to that in a second so i guess what happened was that brennan used jim's name and his pi license number to get some kind of information from the irs about stabila and since the irs doesn't like being used that way now they're coming down on jim and have threatened to audit audit him for the last seven years obviously they could audit you but like threatening to audit you as the threat is like very rockford files yeah you're clean aren't you brennan nobody is clean if the auditor doesn't find anything they take his pencils away but that's not really the point so he wants to you know so basically jim's like all right you're

you're already stumbling around and making my life difficult because you're incompetent yeah and brennan says that he got a thousand dollar payment from Marcy, but he's already, it's already gone, gone on the horses. He gave it to his bookie that he owes money to, or he'd end up with broken kneecaps. So Jim's like,

okay, I'm going to sort this whole thing out because I want to go on my camping trip and you're making this difficult. So he makes a call to the title certificate transfer department at the county courthouse he wants brennan to stay out of his you know not to stumble around get out from under his feet and brennan says he'll stay out of the way but he wants to learn everything he can and he's got another one of these lines where he's like you're only doing this because you feel like you owe me like not why he's doing it, but like, I want to remind you that you owe me.

And Jim's like, I'm doing it so I can go camping with my dad. Yes, exactly. I've been very upfront about. So again, with the framing of, we see Brennan doing something and then that's clearly something he doesn't

want Jim to know about for the rest of the scene. Right. So now I'm like, okay, so Brennan, he's, is he doing some kind of other investigation? Is he a cop?

Right. Like someone's going to take a picture of him. It can't be Jim. And then it turns out that this is actually relevant later. And I'd actually I'd forgotten about it by the time we get to that point. So maybe it wasn't paying enough attention or wasn't seated really at the right time. I think I probably did too. But the picture thing is relevant later.

too but the picture thing is relevant later so on the level of the con though yeah now brennan has used this tactic of calling the irs down on jim to pressure jim into essentially taking the case right yeah so he's weaponized his known incompetence yes to get jim involved okay so we're now we're kind of we're we're hitting a little bit of um all of this con that he's doing works for me if he goes to jim with the job and jim refuses the job and then he has to find a way to get jim to do the job but in the previous scene they stay up all night talking he doesn't mention the job. And then a prearranged meeting with this, I forget her name now. Marcy.

Marcy happens. So it feels like he went into it knowing Jim wasn't going to take the job. Right. And I'm not going to say anything about that. I'm just letting that exist in the universe. Well, you don't think you don't think there's like he has a couple different things he could do like if if jim takes marcy's job right he's like okay it'll be 200 a day plus expenses i'll do what i can and then

knowing what we know of brennan doesn't he have a doesn't he have a possible path of like oh i don't have anything going on let me let me tag along and learn from you like kind of what he's doing yeah i guess he says it earlier he's adapting his his whatever he's trying to do he's adapting it to what jim's doing i guess that makes sense yeah all right i i will buy it i'm not actually complaining about any of this i'm just trying to make sense of it in my brain i i feel like it's a, it's one of those, it's less that there's like a big plan that's going to operate with clockwork precision. And it's more like he's going to much like Jim.

In fact, Brennan is, is, has some tactics and he's going to improvise as needed. He's going to make his plays when he can make his plays. Yeah. Yeah. And it starts falling apart towards the end.

Right. Which is kind of interesting, like, which is, which is, I think he's not a mastermind he's not like you know he's not a moriarty right like there's a level at which he's he knows that jim is not going to have a very high opinion of him but also at the end of the day jim's not very high opinion of him is kind of warranted there's kind of a play there anyway our next scene is the good full con that we get to see where jim is a keiu tv reporter yeah or producer

somebody that's doing the preliminary work so he's at this real estate office and it's the people who it's the company that sold John Saliba his house which was $750,000 in 1970 whatever. Yeah, that's quite a bit. Our rule of thumb is to multiply by five. Yeah. So that's three million. Right. That's where we're at. You could

get a modest house in the San Francisco Bay Area for that much these days. Anyway, Jim comes in straight with like we're doing a story on this guy he's under investigation from he lists off sec sec ftc fha sba every alphabet like every everyone he can think of he'd like to see the financial report for the sale and of course we can't show you that you know confidential etc and then he says the magic words and i will tell your superior your superior that as well um so jim says oh that's fine you know what we can call him right now i'll call him for you so jim takes the guy's phone calls his own answering machine yeah well that's what he says

yeah he can't give us anything. You want to talk to him? This is Jim Rockford at the tone. Leave your name and... Yeah. Oh, hey. Last, give me a break, will you? How many stories do you want out of one day, huh?

Yeah. All right. What do I care? Right. Okay. What do I care? Right. Okay.

He first has a conversation with a secretary that he can commiserate about the boss with, which I think is a great touch. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't get in touch with the boss right away, and then you can have like a... Yeah, it's just a good detail. He play acts his side of it, and then he ends with how many stories do you want from one day and so he's acting increasingly aggrieved like okay well since my boss is such a jerk now i have to do all this extra work right yeah it's kind of a play on the like we're just regular guys let's make each other's lives easy uh thing he tells brandon to

go load up the camera and have george bring in the audio box like you know blah blah blah um and the this poor realtor is increasingly uh uh you know worried about what's going on he says well since we can't get anything about the stabila thing my producer wants me to or my editor or whatever wants me to ask you a couple questions about you know your real estate business and specifically that redevelopment project over on the you know west side about all those cost overruns they have some back and forth this kind of fun thing where it feels like jim uh he's trying to find a way to pressure him and he kind of hits a thing that doesn't right and then he just pushes it a little further and it it kind of

mirrors the irs thing like nobody's clean no no the cost overruns right right oh there's probably something there that yeah you know like yeah yeah there's cost overruns it's a good subject for the 11 o'clock news yeah i'm sure it is yeah and then he says like and if you if you don't have anything to say that's fine we'll just end the segment with and there was no you know and blah blah had no comment to make yeah with a significant look so now the real is like look i'll talk to your editor and sort this out oh god yeah so i think this is like the magic of this particular con where jim has now constructed the reality of this terribly difficult man right on the other end of the phone and jim's like all right give him a call but don't come on all righteous he's a bear with a nose for beehives not sure what that means

but it's very good the way he presents this is great because he's like let me let me help one working man to another let me help you out here yeah like if you're gonna talk to him just whatever you do don't like i've i've dealt with this guy and this is how you would i'm on your side trust me yeah yeah it's good stuff and so this gives him enough pause gives the realtor enough pause to hang up the phone and say look if i give you this tabula file in exchange for confidentiality you know will that mean you don't write this other story and then jim kind of plays like he's like oh confidentiality i don't know about that so he lets the guy talk him into the deal of like yes we won't mention your name you'll be a reliable source and so the guy goes to the um

to the door to call for the file and we see jim turn over his notepad paper where he has just been doing a busy tic-tac-toe the whole time. It's a good bit. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. It was nice because I was like, I didn't really know where it was going to go at each point. And just seeing the ice cold, like the ice in the veins of Jim as he's like watching the guy reach for the phone. Yeah. Just no sense that he was worried at all. Just like, just keep going. Yeah.

You know, keep this guy, string him along just long enough. Yeah, it's a great scene. And it's, I mean, you could really think, what's the worst that can happen to Jim in this situation? So like, I know if I were in this situation, if I was Jim, I would be terrified of being found out. But I think Jim's secret power is that he's like, well, if I'm found out, then. They'll kick me out.

Yeah, they'll kick me out. Like, yeah, then I'm no worse off than when I came in. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, so why not? You know, I think that's part of like, like Jim, the stakes for Jim are often much lower than say, like Angel. Angel, if he's found out, he doesn't make his money. With that comes this confidence that allows him to just just play it really cool and of course he's done some

high risk cons and we've seen them and he's he maintains that level of coolness throughout that but it just it's just something that i've often think about in these scenes because i am nervous for jim right right and he is clearly not nervous. The biggest, yeah. The biggest downside is like, I don't get the file here. Maybe I get threatened.

Like I'll, I'll call the cops for impersonation. I just leave and I get the file. So anyway, and Al is in the scene, right? Yeah. He was there. And then Jim,

it, it lends some credence because Jim sends him to go get his camera. Right. So it was like, yeah, yeah. He's implying that there's a whole crew outside just waiting to, you know, come start shooting footage or whatever.

But he plays his part where he's like, he goes, he has some mumbo jumbo. He's like, oh, you want me to tell him to load up the reel? Like whatever, he, you know, he uses some extra verbiage to add a little bit to the illusion. We go to them in the Firebird where Jim is sending Brennan into the uh clerk's office or whatnot to get some kind of records he says to give the guy my name and uh and fifty dollars he has his pride that is an excessive amount of pride when you think about our like i

just mentioned our rule of thumb is multiply it by five so we're talking about a 250 roughly at 250 and in fact i just looked it up on the inflation calculator and it's it is multiplied by five almost exactly multiplied by five right now so this is that is like telling someone yeah just slip a couple hundred dollars you know i'm not going to casually do that that's the whole like purchasing power thing, right? Like inflation matters more for some things than for others. Yeah. Like over time, the value of a $50 bribe may have actually stayed relatively consistent while everything else has gotten more expensive.

And then they have a good exchange about how most PI work is boring, which I know is one of our favorite themes. Yeah. Brennan is a little he's like you're sending me on errands and i thought we'd be like sticking people out and going on patrol and stuff like that he's like no this is what did you think pi work was like it's spending time in libraries and record offices looking at papers but he's sending brendan to get this thing and jim has a on in his notebook he has a

bunch of assets listed that he got from that file so like the house was 750 000 the guy's a boat that's 250 000 and then yeah it says like art like art collection 1.2 million or something like it's very specific jim wants to go check out the boat because there's a lot of boat for someone to get lost on. So we see the guy in the van watch Brennan cross the street and go into the thing. You might notice at this point this is poor man's Robert Redford.

He does look a little bit like Robert Redford. You're not wrong. Eventually we'll find out that this guy's Aaron's? Tom Stewart. Interesting. Yeah yeah no picture i mean he's an fbi agent in an awful lot of tv shows yeah google image search for tom stewart actor and there are several actors but tom stewart like the first couple that show up yeah he really has a robert redford look about him and then

they start showing me pictures of Tom Baker because Google knows that like Doctor Who um the other thing I noted here so he's he's like looking intently at parking meters like he's inspecting them or something and they have the little red white and blue tops on them so i must i'm i i'm here to to write an unconscionable wrong that we committed in oh yes one of our recent episodes which was that we talked about the red white and blue novelty phone uh and posited that it was because this that episode like this episode was shot in 1976 and thus was those kind of american flag novelty items were part of the bicentennial celebration not the centennial celebration as we uh i think spoke in that episode yeah we we accidentally we misspoke i mean i remember the bicentennial i was three years old

at the time uh yeah we we shortened american history by 100 years we regret the error um but yeah i was like uh look at those interesting parking meters and then it's like oh this came out in this in fact aired in december of 76 so there you go jim goes to check out this boat he has an amazing bit of just cold read, I think, with the skipper. I mean, the previous con was a really superb Rockford con. But this one, I think, might be one of my favorites. From Neptune Insurance onward. Yeah.

So he's Neptune Marineward. Yeah. So he's Neptune Marine insurance. Yeah. It's great because this scene is great and then it pays off later in a way that is also great. So good. So yeah, he's Neptune Marine insurance. And his line is that,

you know, the owner of the boat, Stabila has applied for additional coverage and he's an adjuster to come check it out. So he's talking to the skipper, who is a crusty old nautical man, but he gets on his good side with nothing but compliments about the boat. Yeah. I like the modification of the bridge up here. Very nice.

Yes, sir. Days like this make my job worthwhile. They're all too rare. I got twin cummins down below yeah uh it's a beautiful power plant yeah oh well some people prefer the benson but uh no comparison none not in a big blow no sir well what do you have to look at the i think the key to it is that like he he's not, they're not vagaries. They're specific. Yeah. No, I don't know if this is an indication that Jim's done research before doing

this and had this or if Jim, because he lives like near the ocean and, and he does fishing. He probably actually, this feels like pun intended. This feels like it's within Jim's wheelhouse, right? Like it's,

but it also is illustrative of like Jim's everyman thing. He will find your niche knowledge and present himself as someone sharing it. Yeah, as a fellow enthusiast. Yeah, exactly. And this is great. I really enjoyed this one. It's like if I was trying to talk my way into your house and I was like, oh, do you have all of Usagi Yojimbo?

Yeah, yeah. You have the full run? Yeah, I don't. I wish I did. And then you're in. You're already in. Right, and then if I knew two more details about that, then I could get my way all the way up to your library without you

suspecting a thing. It would be super easy to just look at anything on my shelf and just say oh you have and then yeah i mean i'm just looking at your comic rack behind you yeah you're just looking over my shoulder right oh you have wolf spell that's yep well this this whole thing so he gets the tour of the boat and we are just left with the sense that Jim finds out about the boat. There's nothing like there's not like he's doing anything with that information. He just kind of wanted to check it out at this time. All right. Let's take a little pause in the action here so that we can all sit back and catch our breaths.

And Epi and I can let you know where you can find us elsewhere on the Internet. Because as it turns out, we do do other things than talk about the Rockford Files from time to time. Eppie, where can our fine listeners find you and your work? You can find my work at www.worldswithoutmaster.com. That's worlds, plural, master, singular. Or at dig1000holes..com with the thousand being numeral one zero zero zero. I like complex URLs. You can also find me on Twitter at Epidia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. Where can we find you, Nathan? The hub for all of my stuff from games to zines to podcasts is ndpdesign.com. I recently started a new podcast called Appendix

NDP, which is a solo show where I talk about various topics in games and publishing, so I will plug that for listeners of podcasts. You can also find me on Twitter at ndpaoletta, P-A-O-L-E-T-T-A, and on Instagram at the same handle, though I probably will only have pictures of my dog. So, you know, that may be a plus. Now we return to the adventures of Jimbo Rockfish on 200 a Day. We go back to Aaron's, our watching guy, who watches Brennan come out with files.

And he gets into a very fancy looking red top cab. I don't know why I always notice the cabs when they're not just generic yellow cabs. I'm like, ooh, that's a fun cab. The music gets a little funky at this point too. Sticking with my vow to pretend the music wasn't happening. But this is like funky, I'm being chased music and he can hear it he can clearly clearly hear that he's being followed Brennan yeah yeah I didn't really notice the music myself it's the funky Rockford Files background music it's not it's not anything we haven't heard before but the shift is is fun um so Brennan realizes that they're being followed um the cabbie is like, well, I can lose him. And Brennan says, no, I can't afford the gas.

Just let me out over here. It's just, it's great. The cabbie, I don't even think we see his face, but he does spend some time trying to talk Brennan into staying in the cab, which is fun. And yeah, so his gambit is just to get out at a different place. So there's actually another clue here in retrospect, because he's like, you told me to go to the something something insurance building. Yeah.

Again, I just let that pass. I didn't really note it. But that is actually a significant detail for Brennan in retrospect. So we then have a fun little sequence where Brennan gets out. The guy following him, Season, gets out, follows him into the building. He pockets that folder in his waistline. Yeah. In his waistband.

There was just something beautifully graceful about i couldn't imagine being able to pull that off and he just he's just like just i'm just gonna tuck this folder this manila folder into a place where no one's gonna find it all right i just wanted to put that out there another al brennan superpower we have a great little gambit where we we see the old school floor indicator dial the little clock hand go up and then come down and our uh aaron's hits the same button to go up to that same floor he gets in the elevator but brendan is waiting for him grabs him has a wonderful line okay pal You got exactly 12 stories in time of yours. Yeah, that's good.

We then go to the dinner that earlier Jim was like, meet us at nine o'clock for dinner. And we're cut directly. It's not really a joke in the cut, but we cut directly to Brendan saying that he couldn't get anything out of the guy. Yes. He's following me. He wouldn't give me anything. He looked kinky. So before he could do something, I cold i cold cocked him which is i feel like a line that plays a little differently in 2022 i think he meant like he was jumpy or he might yeah but it's also a good line in both contexts i think yeah yeah and jim's response is great too i mean it's not like a cold cock. Like, who Throughout, we know enough about Rockford's old friends. There's no good old friend of Rockford. That's just how it is. Sorry, the best old friends of Rockford are the ones that we already know are criminals.

Right, sure. So I'm very suspicious of him. But at this point, I'm like, did he did he knock out a federal agent? Right. Another PI. I'm assuming another PI. But like, you know, what happened here? So I think this is where we start seeing Jim.

Jim is starting to feel that something's off about the whole thing. So was that guy like working for Stabila because he's gotten tipped off to us or something? Yeah. And Brandon's like, no, no, definitely not. He's like, well, how do you know? You know how you want me to get the files. Here's the files. He doesn't have a good answer for how he knows 100% for sure that that guy had nothing to do

with Stabila. So he has to move on. And Jim kind of gives him a look. But I guess we, I think, are also to understand that he also doesn't. Because I mean, I think that was as reasonable a guess as any for us as the audience and jim's question you cold cocked him could definitely be read as did you or did are you are you telling us that you did yeah yeah so but he hands over the files and jim has some oh you gave him the 50 and there's this great significant pause before he says yeah it's like he absolutely did not yeah we get a couple some

dialogue to establish what they know about stupio at this point he has this very expensive house that he paid for cash 50 down collateral was the boat and this and this huge valuable art collection um marcy says that she's lucky to have found them both and then she goes to freshen up and this is when jim gives brennan his thoughts on some suspicions he's starting to have like her story was that her and her sister went to switzerland for school but she uses like some kind of like street kind of slang she doesn't she doesn't have any kind of like accent or anything not that she would but you'd think that if someone went to school in Switzerland, they would have something. Brendan's explaining it all away. He's like, what do you know?

Like, so what? You know, what do you want her to sound like? The young kids these days. Young kids these days. They all want to sound tough. Yeah. There is one new thing in the file that Stabila is a Canadian citizen. This, again, is important later. I think in order to disrupt Jim

from continuing to talk about Marcy on our, you know, con level, Brennan kind of flips out. He's like, I've had it. What's the matter with you? You give me nothing but busy work to do. You send me down to the courthouse

to get the papers from Teddy. You say, wait at the motel. You say, meet me at the Paddock Club restaurant. You may be a pro, buddy, but I am no klutz. Oh, would you sit down okay okay maybe i'm nowhere professionally speaking you got a program there's there's a great line that kind of sets this off where uh brendan is like you want my opinion and jim doesn't miss a beat and it it's just like, no.

And like, I wrote it down because I'm like, that is pretty harsh, but also true. But in the face of this, Jim kind of talks him down. Brendan says, it's time for a patrol. You know, check out the place. And Jim says, OK, right idea. Wrong man. I'll stick out Stabile's place. You check out Marcy and her background maybe found out some clue

to linda's behavior something about you know their their relationship or their family or something and brennan readily agrees he's like oh that's something i could really sink my teeth into and again in the moment i'm like is that something you can sink your teeth into but right he's happy to agree to that because because jim is doing what he wants which is getting to the place to stake it out so again this is a moment where if jim was like okay cool you go on patrol you think he would have some kind either have an excuse for why he couldn't so jim would have to do it or some kind of like well you know you'd actually be better at it than me you know i was wrong i shouldn't have been mad you're you're the pro you should do it my headcanon is that he has kind of a path forward whether jim agrees with him and

says he should do it or they should do it together or he or jim or what he actually wants which is jim should go do it by himself um we go to jim on this stakeout he's fixing up a tangled reel while he's waiting, which is moi. Yeah. But then we see a video camera watching him. And the framing of this was a little weird. For a second, I thought it was showing us a video camera and then showing us that Jim was not close to it. But then it shows us the TVs and he is being recorded. So I think it just, either I misread it or the framing didn't really establish it really clearly. Are you complaining about the director of Simon the Witch King?

It's not really a complaint. I'm just sometimes I start making notes and then I have to delete them because I'm like, oh, that was wrong. That's not what was happening. Yeah. Yeah. We go inside where Stabila and his dealer, his art dealer, are talking about selling more art. We're saying he only got fair but not good money for the picasso and the matisse and he better find other buyers like the market just isn't good

find a better market yeah his goon comes in uh to tell him that this this pi rockford is hanging out outside so he tells him to bring him into the workshop or bring him out to the workshop rather we then see jim get the license plate of the fancy car that the art dealer or the the fence he's a stolen art dealer stolen yeah let's let's not put on airs before uh our goon pulls him out of the car with his gun um jim tries to talk it off oh i'm just i'm just parked here and don't try to be funny mr rockford believe me i'm not laughing this this whole scene that's going to unfold here there's this cards on the table thing that goes on throughout it where uh i just really enjoy it yeah especially in the middle of an episode that's so steeped in

deception that when jim is standing toe-to-toe with ostensibly the villain of the race they're just like this is what i know about you stop it so uh he gets brought into the workshop so this guy is stabula apparently his hobby is making duck decoys so he's like painting a wooden duck and he has his angry rottweiler with him uh we get our from from our preview montage our shots of this angry barking dog he says he won't hurt you as long as you don't move suddenly uh you're looking at a rock the pride that jim takes in his his uh his let's say caution yeah it's great i love it um they give him a punch in the short ribs to soften him up but uh jim basically just tells him he doesn't tell him like kind of the full real story but he does does tell him the

story that he is operating under if that makes sense yeah i'm looking for linda whatever her sister you know is worried about her kind of his like fiction such as it is is like i thought i'd start with the place that she was that she worked right and stabila interestingly is like linda doesn't have a sister she's the one who hired me um as you say kind of cards on the table steve was like uh yeah she you know she worked for me she took off a couple weeks ago took her suitcase and you know if you see her tell her to return my tape deck yeah uh but yeah that she just left no notice and jim's like all right well that's what i came here to find out yeah we're done we're done uh this is where we get the the the threat the coded not

even coded but the threat of like yeah it would be really easy for me to convince the police that you were uh you know that you were broken entered and i had to kill you to you know and i and i killed you in self-defense and that kind of leads to to Jim being like, okay, well, here's why I'm here. But yeah, there is an air of menace here, but it also is kind of this, in retrospect, it's this interesting moment where like, there's like a hiccup in like the gears of the story, you know? Yeah. Like, it's like, wait a minute.

If this was, if this disappearance was really the issue, then this interaction would be going differently. Even if he was telling the same story, like just this interaction would be going differently even if he was telling the same story like just the tone would be different but it really feels like why are you here i'm here for this reason that reason doesn't make sense like why are you really here i have no other reason to be here all right well don't come back yeah yeah he's got a great line he's like i'll say goodbye only once mr roford and he's like yeah all right it's like fair enough i also there's a couple things about this scene that like i like i love that the dog's

name is tristan it's just a very i'm a very rich person who owns a dog that's decided to kill people and jim's interaction with the dog is great um but yeah like the whole just Jim is coming in under a pretext that he doesn't realize is false, is walking into a criminal enterprise. They're wondering why is this private investigator researching our criminal enterprise? They find out that he's not. He's here for a completely different reason. And they're like, OK, over here is all pokey bits. It's all knives and things. You don't want to come here.

And he's like, good. I will leave. And they reinforce that at the door where the goo, and I think his name is Lindsay as we learn, but Jim is leaving. And this guy takes out his gun and takes like a full, like aiming stance, like down on his knee. And then takes a shot specifically to miss jim but hit

like the wall next to him on his way out yeah and jim like dives and rolls and he yells next time i won't miss and then he keeps taking pot shots as jim jumps into the firebird i didn't know i was thirsty for this until until my thirst was quenched as jim dives into the firebird hits the gas and then pulls a perfect j turn in the street to get out of there as fast as possible oh it's good oh it's so good we don't get a chase but we get this and we haven't had a j turn in a minute yeah yeah i can't remember the last episode where we had a j turn so i was like a j turn there's nothing else to it it's just to get out of this scene but uh it's um it's a good one the last detail is that aaron's in the van sees this whole thing unfold and we end up we

know that his name is aaron's because we hear a voice on his like earpiece going like mr aaron's will you check in please and i think that's just to establish his name for us later so jim i think is on full full suspicion his rockford sense is at full tingle after this encounter so we go to him looking uh closely at the photo that he had received from marcy of her and her sister. He's looking at it with a magnifying glass and he's really investigating. Enhance. Yeah. And he's telling Rocky that they're in different focus.

Like one of them looks sharper than the other one. So he thinks it's actually a composite photo. This is where we get Rocky saying he's not happy that Jim is being shot at when it's not even his case. Jim is going to go and try and find a photographer friend to confirm his suspicions about the photo. And Rocky says that, look, they still have their trip and he's going to leave whether Jim is there or not.

And we have a great little, I don't know, great little warmth moment. Come six in the morning, I am packed. Rifle, rod, and reel. Rocky, if you leave here without me, your truck is going to blow up in your face about two miles out. And he laughs and pats Rocky on the belly. Like, I'm going to be there, old man. Yeah.

I'm not going to let you go without me. I appreciate Jim's commitment to going on this trip. Yeah, it's so often that like he like we do see him break these trips it's also such a jim and rocky trip i feel like whenever they need to put a time pressure on jim it's that he needs to go fishing with rocky and i really enjoyed that yeah i'd had that thought at some point where i was like this is a this is actually a countdown clock for jim like he needed to solve this before he goes on the trip with Rocky. Um,

we then cut to, as I have in my, my notes, Marcy in quotation marks on the phone, he's talking to someone. It sounds like she's setting up a date, right? Um,

there's a knock on the door. It's Jim. He has important news about her sister, Linda. It's really important. Linda doesn't have a Jim. He has important news about her sister, Linda. It's really important. Linda doesn't have a sister. Dun, dun, dun. And so now Jim is confronting Marcy with what he thinks is going on.

He asks who hired her to set him up. I talked to the doorman. He told me that men hire you all the time. Between the initial framing and this, you know get the picture that you know marcy is probably a sex worker and is you know involved with all kinds of chicaneries um and he i think tells her in order to tell us that he's been you know he did the legwork uh he talked to linda's parents she doesn't have a sister you know what's what's the deal what are you why are you involved in this and that's when he gets cold cocked from behind by a half-shaved al brennan who was in the bathroom the whole time

the half-shaped bit is the the like oh okay so like he didn't hire her or he may have hired her but it seems likely that uh that what's going on here is that they have some sort of relationship like what why is he shaving in her bathroom if that's not the case yeah i think yeah it's not really explored further i guess it is implied later that they do have some kind of longer term situation that's for our companion podcast to the uh jim and beth what's their whole deal which is alan marcy what's their whole deal what is the situation yeah we end the scene with marcy sternly telling al that she doesn't know why she let him talk her into this and she wants out yeah we then have a classic jim is icing his poor sore head with a tray of ice that's in the fridge um they've left him alone and there's a bunch of

like unpacked cardboard boxes and stuff a lot of sad harmonica going on in this scene um and then he finds her appointment book on the floor which seems like a hell of a thing to leave behind but i guess i gotta get from a to b somehow um in one on one page there's a date with brennan he says al brennan's name and then on another page there's a note for brennan like plus allied insurance and jim's like uh so now we get the story starts to unravel. Jim goes to this allied insurance company, corporation, whatnot, and learns that Al Brennan has done freelance work for them, but he's not on salary and they have no legal liability for his actions. The insurance guy has no interest in their personal matters. And so Jim's like, I'm sure you have interest in some personal matters.

What about Marcy? Whoever. You might not remember her last name, but you probably remember that she looks good in pajamas. And we get the guy going like, oh, yeah. So Jim does this two or three times in this conversation where he's like, I know that you have been with Marcy and you and I know that you don't want me to reveal that right you want that to be a secret so you know there's the implicit threat there yeah there's nothing explicit but

it's yeah what he gets here is that allied insurance has some big recovery thing going on and that brennan is trying to recover it and get the 10% finders fee. Jim's take is that like, I'm a licensed PI. Why don't you let me just have the same shot at the gig? Like, it's not like it's a secret. Yeah. Between that and the implied threat, the insurance guy's like, oh, why not? After all, I never can get in touch with Brennan.

And we have another freelancer named Aaron's on it, but we haven't heard from him for 18 hours. Like, what is it with you people and jim says yeah i'm much more punctual like marcy they both have slow smiles of understanding and then the uh insurance president or whatever he is asked jim if he likes art or knows anything about art he says well i had a painted turtle once uh have you ever heard of the shangyin vase or sorry the shangyin vase yes we then go to jim driving with rocky showing him a picture of this uh particular art object and i don't know if i expected this to be a gag

or if it actually was but he shows him the picture and rocky says it's a vase and i expected jim to go it's not a vase it's a vase but he i think he actually yes i think he actually says it's the it's the shang yin the shang yin vase yeah yeah i know what i'm talking about anyway um the value it's insured at is three million dollars and it was stolen a couple weeks ago and or a couple months ago whatever and there's a 10 finders fee so we're looking at a lot of money specifically rocky's like look like we are going to that cabin i'm paying 55 a day and we are going to use it i'm leaving at six whether you're coming with me or not and jim's like 10 of three million is three hundred thousand dollars

so when i find this thing i'll buy you a lake and the cabin to go with it but he wants brennan even more than the ten percent what one thing i just want to point out about uh what we're beginning to see the the bigger picture here of what's going on uh and there is a lot of tail chasing aaron's is following brennan who's trying to get rockford to do the job right they have already have two agents pis on the job who are in competition with each other none of them are working together rockford is the only one moving anything forward right and everyone is just kind of dragging along behind him so they're they're

going back to stabilas and jim's like he's gonna go go in or something and he tells rocky that if he doesn't come out in half an hour to call the police and then they see a fire engine and rocky says what about the fire department um so now we get into more like quickly moving plot uh i guess getting back to the con our kind of parallel stories here they've now collided right now it's all one story jim now knows that brendan set him up and i think he because we've seen the whole episode like i see all the details at this point i guess i'm still a little bit like why yeah like why set jim like is brendan i had a thought at some point where I was like, has Brennan, like, flipped and he's working for Stabila? And...

Yeah. Because, like, the vase got stolen from him or something? Like, you know, is there some weird new reveal to be had? But I guess, yeah, overall, it's fairly straightforward where Jim knows that he was set up with this missing person case. And the real aim is to get is to recover this vase stabila has the vase brennan's gunning for it there's this other guy in the mix who's been gunning for it and now jim gets a gun for it yeah because he knows what's actually going on now and

and and now the house of the person who has the vase is on fire. Right. So cut to Dennis and Billings in the background, um, as they are putting the dealer, the art dealer, the stolen art dealer in a squad car. There's conversation between Billings, Rockford, and this cop from New York.

Yeah. Has to have been on this show before. Lieutenant Hayes. Yeah. There's one in every port and foul on first play, who has to have been on this show before. Lieutenant Hayes, yeah. There's one in every port and foul on first play, which I think we've done both of those, right? We've done both of those, yeah. Oh, it's a wrap. This is a wrap on John Mann.

I don't remember the characters, but I remember the face. He's a man with a face. He's a man with a face. That is one man with a face. So one thing, like this scene has a nice Becker dynamic. Oh, it's great. Yeah. Quite often when we see Jim and Becker, it's in a situation where Jim's friendship puts Becker's job in jeopardy. Right. But here's a situation where we've got an out-of-state cop kind of just shoving Becker around and he doesn't like it.

Yeah. So we get to see Dennis just take Jim's side and not even like defend him. Just like just completely. Just help him out. It's good. Yeah Just like, just completely just help them out. It's good. Yeah. It's just great. It's fun. Yeah.

The story here is that, uh, Sabila was in his workshop alone. It went up in flames. It's, you know, there's tools in there, sawdust,

that kind of thing can happen. How do they know it's him? Well, they found like his ring and something else. And then the dog's collar. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess from what we know at the end, it could go either way. That could have been a part of the plant or he could have been a real, a real bad, a real bad person. Yeah. So the cop from New York is looking for this stolen vase. It was stolen two months ago they've tracked it to the art dealer and if the dealer the dealer knows what trouble he's in because of he's getting kind of tapped for this among other things so he would tell them if he knew where it was so they're

pretty sure he doesn't know where it is um and sabila is for what they know at this time is dead so now they're searching the premises um so this is all what dennis tells jim after the cop from new york tells dennis oh i told your men to do this thing and he's like don't order my my men around yeah don't tell this guy anything and then yeah because jim asks a question and the cop responds like why are we helping you and then dennis just turns to him just turns to jim and just lays it all out it's so good it's wonderful to watch jim asks about al brennan and the cop says oh the fbi guy he was here earlier he seemed upset that the vase wasn't on the premises and jim's like oh i bet he was uh and tells dennis we have to go catch a boat so i think jim is operating on the premise

of there's no way that javila was in there and that the vase is off somewhere getting you know taken away while everyone's distracted with this fire so the cops roll up on the boat right as they're casting off dennis in fact has a warrant so they go to search the boat looking for the vase. The skipper sees Jim and goes, Who's this guy? He misrepresented himself to me as a maritime insurance appraiser. Me? You know very well you did. Hey, that's ridiculous.

Dennis, what do I know about boats, huh? You start up at the bow, the front, the pointy part, you know. It's a good callback it's so funny he's like the skipper is so offended that he was lied to from this guy who clearly knows about boats and then jim's just like yeah dennis i don't know anything about boats oh it's so good the thing about this captain that's uh that's i think really plays well is that he he simply wants to be in charge of his little ship right yeah every time we see him that's all he's doing is like he's offering him permission to go ashore so he puts up a lot of resistance he wants to leave the

dock before the cops show up he puts up a lot of resistance there is nothing illegal going on with this boat the cops search it they find nothing so why is he doing it well he's doing it because he was put in charge he's in charge he was told to leave the meeting and that is his job like and i love that like he's got this very straightforward care so yeah he's he's upset with jim for misrepresenting like he's he would have him walk the plank flog him keel haul him it's very good it's a he's a great one of our great minor characters that we've seen in a while i think um well they say you know your boss is dead where did these dead where do these orders come from he says oh they're mr lindsey the his assistant is the the goon that

we saw earlier shooting at Rockford. He has orders are cast off immediately and they're going to Mexico, I guess. With or without Mr. Stabula. Yeah. Dennis doesn't find anything. Jim's like, it has to be here. You have to tear it apart. And Dennis is like, I didn't find anything.

Thank you for your help. Bye. Yeah. And Jim's like, OK, I don't know what they're offering you. I love this. He says half of the reward for the vase could be yours that's $100,000

which is extremely funny it's a very angel move yeah it is half of the $300,000 aka $100,000 could be yours but he says I'm going to give you the same deal I gave your partner get off my boat partner Al brennan

he was there an hour earlier of course he was final question just answer me the one question and i'll leave you alone um who's taking care of the body and personal effects and he says well i i guess mr lindsey all right so we then have a brief but fun little scene at the funeral home i presume where jim again does a cold read. He asks about Stabila and the guy who's an extremely, I don't know, Vincent Price-y kind of funeral director, saying that the remains were already dispatched. You know, why do you want to know?

It's like, oh, he says that he's John's brother. He flew in from New York and he was too late for the funeral, I guess. that he's John's brother. He flew in from New York and he was too late for the funeral. I guess the remains were sent by train to Canada on the sunset special, but you're too late. It left from union station half an hour ago. So this is why Jim wants Dennis to stop a train. Um,

get the line from the preview montage about you stop the venture freeway. You can stop a train or 300 people, but, uh, in a wonderful piece of uh language down here at the station you have a great big credibility crisis going on it's like he already went on jim's ward to go search the boat and that wasn't anything so you know yeah he's all out there's also a good beat where jim keeps asking dennis and the new y York cop is listening on the other line and then finally gives Dennis a big thumbs down.

Yeah. So Dennis is like, look, I got it. So Dennis just lies. He's like, he was known to have secret panels in his walls. So I have guys searching those out. And Jim's just like, sure. Okay. Thanks, Dennis.

He gets off the payphone and Rocky has procured the train schedule. And Jim's like, all right, Rocky, well, you're going to have to come with me. We'll come back to get your truck. They just leave Rocky's truck there. They both drive in the Firebird. Or Jim drives but they both go in the Firebird. And Rocky's looking up the

schedule and we'll fill out a card of our 200 day bingo where they can't catch it at the next stop but they can probably catch it in Oxnard. Oxnard. Someday I but they can probably catch it in Oxnard. Oxnard. Someday I'm going to visit Oxnard. Oxnard.

That'd be Oxnard. Rocky's like, do you really think that it's on this train? It's a long shot. And Jim says, well, you go with what you got. But what I'm really hoping is that Brennan is on the train. Yeah. So we cut to Al Brennan searching crates on the train jim sneaks up behind him gives him a high owl and then punches him out when he turns around in surprise i did have a moment where i was like oh we don't get to see jim get on the train and then i realized

he just got on like he just bought a ticket and got on the train it's not like uh yeah like he didn't like have to jump onto it from the speeding firebird or something um so we are in our final stretch now and we have a lot of brennan trying to salvage his position by appealing to jim's to history and jim's sense of like fairness and jim just having none of it yeah it's like it's borderline mean well he did sucker punch it yeah it's not that he doesn't deserve i'm i think i figure i'm going to do to you what you did to me i can get three hundred thousand dollars from the insurance company and you can get a pogo stick i think he does ask like why like why did you set me up or why why all the bother or something brennan explains they needed jim's contacts he knows the. All he had was this one name and he needed someone to like actually do the work.

Right. We have another cut. I guess Jim. So the framing of this is a little weird, but I guess Jim is keeping an eye on Brennan. And I couldn't tell if he was like tied up or handcuffed to something. And I guess he's not as we learned. No. But like the blocking is a little i think it's meant to be a

little like unsure about who's you know in what condition but jim is uh alternating looking looking at brennan and then you know prying nails out of a crate with a crowbar and he gets the top up and sure enough in this last crate there is the vase and then our our villain, Stabila, and I wasn't sure if it was Lindsay or another goon. This all happens kind of quick, but Stabila and a goon appear. They have guns. Of course, he's not dead. And Jim fills us in. He's like, I'm pretty sure that the contents of this vase are the remains of Aaron's.

He's the one who you caught poking around and used to throw everyone off the scent. And so Stabila says something like, echoing his line to blinded gym like the man trespassed into my property and ended my workshop it was an accident i think i would take creative writing course before i gave my statement that is when brennan grabs a sack that's next to him and throws it at stabila and there's a brief scuffle with some meaty punches and uh some kirk style axe handle blows from uh from from al to take out the um our villains real meaty thwacks and then they're both down and then brennan grabs the crate with the vase and rolls the door open and goes towards the open door and then then Jim follows and grabs for the crate. And then it just shoots out.

It just falls out of their hands and just disappears. We go to our final scene where Jim and Brennan are walking the tracks, looking for the crate. They've clearly been out there for a while. And we go through a couple rounds of like, oh, I see that warehouse. I recognize that warehouse. I recognize that warehouse.

I recognize those trash cans. That's the same thing you said for the last 12 warehouses. What has to be somewhere on this 12 mile stretch of track? There, it's down there. Brennan runs down into the, into like a gutter. And Jim's like, that's the wrong side of the train, Al. We learned that if the cops sent out a team with a helicopter and they couldn't find it, there's no chance for Jim and Al to find it. Finally, Al's like, OK, I just can't look anymore.

Yeah. But they do really work well together, don't they? He says, out of conflict comes strength, which is a great rationalization if i've ever heard one right right it yeah he's still trying to get jim's good side here to to get something out of him yeah and he says jim could use a partner and brennan he's willing to be that partner jim says i'll buy a dog yeah yeah and then in a last ditch effort he brings up stealing tank, which we've heard from some other episodes where Jim stole a tank once in Korea. Brought in all the green beer for the kids' bar mitzvah or something like that. And some other escapades on the 38th parallel.

And Jim ends our episode. You should be a good old soldier. Don't die. Just fade away. Pretty harsh. But again, Al earned it. Al, harsh. Al, absolutely injured.

But fair. The ending, like I remember the ending being, there's something reminiscent, no, not reminiscent, deja vu about walking along. There's an episode where he's got his fellow PI. They end up walking along the side of the highway looking for something. Oh, I'm trying to remember. Are you thinking of the Queen of Peru where they're looking for the diamond? He's not a PI, but that's, yeah.

Yeah. So Jim finds himself in this situation more often than I do. That's what I'm do. At least twice. Yeah, at least twice. It was a very fun episode. Like I said, going back and knowing what I know that Brennan is conning Jim, it's not so much that there are plot holes because of that, but that I... You kind of have to give Al a lot of credit that he doesn't necessarily deserve from what we see on screen. Yeah.

It runs on vibes. It runs on vibes. Well, speaking of Al earning credit that maybe we don't see on screen, the email asking about this episode also posed us a question for consideration, which goes as follows. This is a fine episode with Ned Beatty, but the ending has an unclear, crucial action. Specifically, why does he do what he does in the climactic scene on the train? What was his plan? And I presume that is referring to throwing the vase out the side of the train. We talked about this before the show, whether or not you would ask me this question before

we started or like after we did it, you would ask me this question before we started or like after we did it you would hit me up with the question and literally in my notes i have what was your plan brett i'm assuming that we're on board with when given the choice between stabilo with a gun and jim rockford he takes jim's side right like that's not the question of like why he attacks the guys. And yeah, because they're both under threat. I think that makes sense.

And then in the confusion, he grabs the crate. He opens the door. It's not like the door rolled open during the fight or anything. I don't think he opens the door. That seems like what he was going to do. And my textual evidence for this is that throughout we have the the three hundred thousand dollar reward right for jim right which we all know he's not getting right like there's

absolutely no chance there's no chance he's getting that but uh every time that comes up or not every time but like most he also says i am also trying to save brennan from himself like he doesn't see it in those words i think it's seesaws between save brennan from himself and i am trying to get satisfaction for being conned by brennan right yeah yeah i would argue that brennan jumping from the trade that that's exactly the kind of stupid idea self-destructive behavior yeah that he would he would follow through on that it's up to jim to keep him from doing i think the read from from the scene like i think the read from what we see on the screen and what we know of this character is that he he has a moment where he is free to do whatever he can with three hundred

thousand dollars right like he's not thinking about a vase. He's thinking about $300,000. He can either try and get past Jim or he can go out the side of the train. And yeah, one of those sounds easier. Right, right. I think there is a question as to whether he was planning slash his impulse was to jump with it or to like push it out and come back later somehow like this isn't a plan that he thought of in advance and is executing on this is a spur of the moment reaction and then when jim goes to grab it that both makes it harder for him to

jump and also physically means that neither of them can really hold on to the crate and it goes over, right? Because it's not like Jim is throwing the crate either. It's more like they're struggling for it and it just falls. That's what I remember it looking like. It's not like Jim comes up and shoves it out of his hands or something. Right, yeah. Unless I'm misremembering.

Well, or we both are. Yeah, I don't think his plan was to throw the crate out and then recover it. Or it could be like throw the crate out and then jump or something. Like, I don't know if he was hugging the crate and leaping at the same time. Yeah, yeah. I guess that's splitting hairs. I mean, we are talking about a vase.

A vase, that's true. I don't think anything, I don't think throwing a crate out of a train is a smart thing to do no matter how well packed yeah so he's constantly desperate i think that's the thing we do get the sense of desperation where he is not only telling jim i'm broke i got laid off i'm on the street the money i do get i have to give to my bookie like i don't know if that's i mean that's part of the con like i got paid a thousand dollars and i had to but i have to give to my bookie like i don't know if that's i mean that's part of the con like i got paid a thousand dollars and i had to but i had to give it to my bookie that's why you don't see me with a thousand dollars but i mean he mentions multiple times that he's lost money betting on the horses so like he probably has had to give his bookie his money the few times he's had it right

um and like he doesn't have the money for the gas even though he just didn't give the full 50 bribe to the guy yeah timeline wise he actually has cash in that moment um yeah so yeah like i think it reads like he is legitimately desperate and this has been the focus of his entire desperation for weeks so you know his snap impulse is to like like like I can save this. Right. I can make this happen. I can make this happen. And so in that sense, Jim saves him,

right? Like there's no way you want to jump out of a moving train, holding a crate like that. Just like, that's a bad idea. Um, but yeah, I think there's no plan beyond the next moment in that ending sequence. And I don't think that i don't think

it feels weird like it feels uh it feels like it follows from the character as established yeah like that you're like what was your plan he's like oh i didn't have a plan yeah and that that's the part that doesn't that going back doesn't hang well and why we why we subsist on vibes in this is that he doesn't tend to have good plans and and the beginning of this felt slightly machiavellian right like right yeah if if this is what he was playing for but again there are ways to read it where it makes sense and i prefer to do that because i actually really quite enjoyed the episode so if you think about this as a fighting game right yeah as you should

as you should and think about the i don't know the the plan the plan meter like a like a like a break like a combo breaker or something right like right so jim his his style is that he kind of always has a constant level of plan sometimes he does a full con game and that's a different thing but like he generally you know he he has a bunch of tools in his toolbox and he always knows when the best one to use is and sometimes it goes well sometimes it doesn't go well but one of the reasons he's so good at rolling with the punches and getting what he needs to out of a given situation is he has all these tools and they're all they're all the you know when he he knows which one to use which time to be the most effective uh al brennan he has a

meter that starts that starts at full and just depletes as the episode goes on right like he has yeah he has a plan at the beginning and as long as things are tracking with the plan he seems kind of like a mastermind but right once the wheels start to come off which i think really hits in the scene where jim finally actually talks to um sabila yeah then he his meters all the way gone and he's just he's just going on instinct like he's just yeah trying to keep a step ahead of jim trying to get to the vase a step ahead of jim because he knows that if jim catches him up he's he's gonna be out that's kind of my my read i think that's a good read because that definitely plays out in how he keeps um stumbling when jim starts poking at the edges of his yeah he doesn't have a good cover he all he can do is

redirect yeah exactly so yeah i think you're probably right i'm i'm going with that that and vibes that'll get me true that and vibes yeah this is now the vibes uh era of the podcast where we get to compare things on plot and vibes yeah exactly i feel like this is a tool that we could have used much earlier but starting to feel good about it uh yeah that was a lot of fun. I want to thank listener Jim from Maine. Thank you so much for recommending that one. I mean, we ostensibly would have gotten to it at some point, but you know, and I agree with you. You do have to ask what was his plan?

What was going on here? Yeah, I would say it's unclear not because like there's no reason in the plot for it to happen but it's unclear because he himself does not have like the character does not know why he's acting the way he's acting he's just going on instinct and that's why it's a little like why would you do that because i'm out of ideas what was your plan is a question i would ask someone in irl right Right. Yeah. Like it would definitely see someone to do something and be like, well, what did you expect?

What was your plan? Exactly. Yeah. Fun one. And again, super fun to see the other end of the Ned Beatty scale. I know way. I mean,

profit and loss was really good. I really, I remember really enjoying it. Ironically, I guess i remember that the ending of that one was a little unsatisfying like the logic of why his character did what he did like he ends up oh right tracking down jim and then like shooting at him in a cul-de-sac or something like there was there was an element of like that doesn't really seem to make much

sense you've exposed yourself to additional danger for doing that and it felt a little bit like well we have to wrap up the story. So this was the best way. And here it's, again, we have a character doing like, why would you do that? But it actually grows out of the character.

Yeah. So I kind of like that as a parallel, but yeah, fun. They have fun chemistry. There's a lot of good facial, like facial acting, a lot of good body language,

like all those, all those things that we love to see so definitely definitely a fun one to put on our radar and yeah i don't i guess my last my last comment would just be there's a version of this episode that is more layered and tangled with different like again like how aaron's we're kind of like is he a fed is he another pi is he a cop like he seems like he could be from another concern and the same thing like that the irs shows up and it's like oh the irs is involved and then that's just a you know a part of a ploy um there's a version of this where those are actually other uh interested parties and it gets to be one of those really like over elaborate

yeah those elaborate like showdowns where jim has to play everyone off against each other we have plenty of those episodes this isn't a complaint but yeah yeah there is it kind of has some of the some of that structure and then and then as you go along it's like oh no the it's less of a mystery and more of a uh character confrontation kind of situation. And we get to hear about Jim's escapades in Korea, stealing tanks, stealing Christmas parties, smuggling Christmas parties, whatever he's doing. I do always enjoy those those backstories, especially just how mythic they feel. especially just how mythic they feel. There was one thing we skipped over,

but speaking of backstory, specifically the threat that Jim receives about like, it'd be easy to convince the cops because he specifically says you're a PI with a criminal record. It would be easy for me to convince the cops that you were breaking the bantering. Right. And like that, that classic misunderstanding of Jim's criminal record and trying to leverage

it against him. Uh, just a little note, just a little, yeah. Another Rockfordishness that is, uh, in here,

which is, uh, which is nice. Well, do you have anything else to, to say about return to the 38th parallel? No, I was,

uh, it's a great rap on Ned Beatty and the other two. Ned Beatty, Walter Dahlenbach, the writer, and the guy who plays... John Mann. Yeah, John Mann, the guy who plays the cop. Yes. Yes. Yeah, a lot of fun.

Indeed. All right. Well, I have to go walk the rails in search of my $300,000 payday. I don't know about you. We'll see what we find. But assuming that we do not, in fact, find huge amounts of cash just lying on the ground. Or of Oz. Or of Oz.

We will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files. That'd be Oxnard.