Two Hundred A Day - Episode 105: The Deuce

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Nathan and Eppy spend some time in the jury box with Jim in S5E15 The Deuce. It looks like a drink driver hit and killed a woman, but some trouble details give Jim reasonable doubts. The driver asks Jim to keep looking into it, and each thread he pulls on uncovers another lie. The strength of this episode is seeing so much of Jim's day-to-day, and an excellent performance from Mills Watson as the accused who takes an opportunity to turn his life around! 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

Mr. Rockford, Arthur's Hi-Fi, your stereo's ready, but since your warranty expired in the two months it was in our shop, you'll have to pay the $60 on the repair. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidauravishaw. And we have a programming note, and then we'll get into our episode, and then we'll have some content notes before getting into the episode. So this is a preamble to the preambles.

Sounds good, yes. So if you, like me, don't really pay attention to how often things come out and they just show up in your podcast player, then this probably doesn't really matter but uh for those who are used to our one or are usually two sometimes one a month episode schedule this episode may be coming out more than a month after our last one um the situation is that i am moving i'm doing a cross-country move from the the the wonderful city of chicago to the equally that i am moving i'm doing a cross-country move from the the the wonderful city of chicago to the equally wonderful i am sure uh seattle area and so that has pretty pretty much disrupted our usual irregular recording schedule um so this episode may be the only episode for like a two- span. Yeah. Something like that.

It kind of depends on how things go post move also. So which is just to say we have not faded. We are still doing the show. We just are having some slightly longer than usual breaks between our episodes while my family and I pack up all of our stuff and move 2000 miles. and I pack up all of our stuff and move 2,000 miles. I don't know why this is just occurring to me now, but that move is a particularly dangerous move to make in the board game Minion Hunter. You're going to have to explain that one.

There's no reason why you should know anything about Minion Hunter. It came out, a game design workshop put it out in the 90s, I think. It was a tie-in with their role-playing game Dark Conspiracy, of course. So it is not a little yellow guy's minion tie-in. No. No, it is not. And so you'll have to say specifically not that when you go and search for it. But it had a map of the u.s and it was a

post like kind of post-apocalyptic map of the u.s and you go from these mega cities all around one of which being chihuahua which is milwaukee and chicago and probably gary indiana all swallowed up in this giant you know mess and then there is the I can't remember the maybe Seattle was just called Seattle. I kind of feel like it was Seattle and Portland or maybe Seattle and Vancouver somehow matched together. But anyways, the move from Milwaukee to that when you moved on the board, you went through i'm looking at the board right now well you would go to twin cities and then through one two you would go through two demon grounds and three outlands wow to get there so it's not it's not a safe not a safe uh not a safe move oh three

demon grounds sorry because we have to go through a demon ground no you can if you could avoid the demon ground you can go around one of the demons okay anyways the point is he said do not go on foot okay uh if you're playing minion hunter noted i think we will be able to avoid that well thank you for that but yeah so uh as as always we try to keep things more updated on the patreon uh but yeah if you are are one of our many valued, I was going to say normal, regular listeners, you just get the show, you listen to the show, we thank you. And also, we'll be back. If there's a gap after this that is also kind of extended, we'll get back on track. And so that is also to say that I've not had a chance to do a answering

machine roundup. So if you have sent us something that you were hoping that we would respond to or address, we'll get to it. Just not this time. Yeah. That's in keeping with the theme of, or at least things that were happening in this particular episode of Rock for Fire. Well, speaking of this episode, this was an EpiPic. Epi, tell us which episode we're going to be doing and why you selected it. We are going to be doing, it is called The Deuce. I am, at this moment, don't know why it's called The Deuce. We'll figure that out as we do it. Oh, no. Do you know why?

I do. I want to know now. episode 15. So this is kind of a, this is a later one. Um, and I chose it because probably between now and, uh, when our next episode comes out, I'm going to have jury duty. And this is about Jim being on jury duty to some extent. I, I think my experience will be very similar to Jim's. So I wanted to get that under my belt before. Well, you're going to take inspiration from his brave example. Yes, exactly. And that's as much a reason as we'll have from here on out, as we've mentioned several times before. We are reaching a point where we're out of reasons for watching them, other than that

we enjoy them. Yeah. And what other reason do we need? Yeah, exactly. This episode is directed by bernard mckevity mckevity mckevity mckevity is he from cats that i do not know i do feel like i recognize the name i feel like i've done this before pronouncing it different with different cadences but this is the only rockford files episode that he directed so i don't know

where else i would have encountered it however if you look at his credits it is i was starting to note titles then i was like you know what these are all of epi's favorite shows oh all right i'm checking them out right now ah yes the incredible hulk night rider yeah voyagers airwolf Hulk. Knight Rider. Yeah. Voyagers. Airwolf. Oh, Voyager. Oh, did you do some? Yeah. All right. Little Trapper John MD, you know me. Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes.

There was a TV movie, Planet of the Apes, from the 80s. Oh, man. I mean, and two episodes of the 70s Planet of the Apes show. Yeah. And a 1971 movie called The Brotherhood of satan so oh this is really hitting all of your targets what yeah why have i not i should just spend time on imdb and just grabbing all the things i should be watching yeah no i'm in i i thought the most interesting thing was was was how epi oriented his uh directorography is so there you go it's

funny as i'm going through this list i'm like oh and that oh and that and then i'm like oh and the rockford files but that's why we're here this is well he did airwolf and blue thunder i just want to say someone could do both uh highly i don't even remember if either one of them had a computer. But they're both helicopter shows. In case you don't know, they're both about sci-fi helicopters. I don't know the difference between them. This episode is written by a returning writer, Gordon Dawson, or Gordon T. Dawson. So I saw that we have talked about him before, so I just looked up my old notes.

He wrote nine episodes of The Rockford Files. This is his final one timeline-wise, but we still have two of his to do. Okay. But they include the first and second Gandhi episode, the Hammer of Seablock and Second Chance, Pastoria Prime Pick, The Competitive Edge, and the competitive edge and the trees the bees and tt flowers so high hit rate i think yeah yeah uh so the the notes that i have on him come from our tt flowers episode which was if you had not if you've joined us since then was our episode 45 back in february of 2019 the main thing that i found at that time

was that he did a really interesting podcast interview for a series called legends of film that the nashville public library did um so there's an interview with him from 2016 that i'll i'll try to remember to link to in the show notes um and in that he mentions that he broke through as a writer with the rockford files um and that's what he got his writing career off the ground and that they were great people to work with uh but he was kind of a western guy like he did lots of western stuff and he was a collaborator with sam peckinpah on a lot of um peckinpah pause projects and then i think his main stretch towards the end was uh producing as well as writing walker texas ranger so okay all right there's a lot yeah a wide range a wide range oh yeah and he actually started in the wardrobe department and then kind of broke

into writing through some rockford experience so a lot of interesting stuff there uh i think yeah like as i said i think a lot of his i think we like a lot of his episodes um yeah which when you add this one into it kind of spices up the mix a little bit because uh i think my highlevel takeaway from this episode is that for one that has such a kind of uninteresting core mystery story, it has a lot of, like, Rockford stuff. Like, it's high Rockfordishness, low narrative intensity. intensity and that's kind of an interesting mix especially for someone who's not kind of like a david chase or a you know like someone who's not necessarily a core uh production staff person i would agree with both that assessment both of those assessments i should say yeah and i guess before we get into our preview montage there are a couple notes, content warnings for this episode. There is a either certainly or almost certainly an onscreen murder, which is pretty rare for the show. It's not gory or anything, but it was just like, oh, we're seeing that, huh?

The main drama revolves around a drunk driver. So there's a lot of discussion and heavy, heavy judgment of driving while intoxicated, which I think is not unwarranted. But it is, you know, if that's a thing, you should know that it'll be a topic. And then also kind of alcoholism in general treated and kind of. It's a plot hook. It's a plot hook. It's a plot. Yeah. There's a plot element of dealing with alcoholism in a way that I actually found pretty interesting.

It was unexpected, I guess, is what I should say. Yeah. To me. But it is, again, part of the story. Oh, yeah. And there's some like mild torture played for laughs. Yeah. There you go.

That's the other one. Again, not gory or anything, but just like, huh, so this is what we're going to see on screen, huh? Yeah. All right. Did I miss anything? Nope. I think you got it.

I feel like, again, that's a lot of preamble for an episode that maybe doesn't necessarily bear like really intense narrative scrutiny. No, no. It's just a fun one. It's just kind of a a little bit of a romp yeah with all those caveats with all those caveats yes exactly well speaking of romps uh what romped out to you from our preview montage uh yeah i've got some things here um that straight off with uh somebody who will turn out to be, uh, the defense attorney

in this is like, you're not dropping the case. Are you? It was great. I like that. The preview montage was letting me know that we are definitely getting the note that, or that we're definitely going to hit that note where Rockford wants out of the job that he's doing. Um, although I will say I doesn't, he doesn't, at this point, I don't know if he's actually

hired or he was hired. So that definitely happens. um although i will say i doesn't he doesn't at this point i don't know if he's actually hired he was hired so that definitely happens uh we do see him at home where bullets shots are fired so we get we're gonna have some exciting uh thrilling uh daring escapes at the trailer uh there's a that great line that uh when we get to it i think i wrote the whole thing down about a has been has been gumshoe trying to be a two-bit ship huck homes it's good it's good uh and then finally like we we get a threat to get his pi ticket pulled and then quite literally a cliffhanger we know that we're gonna have a car chase or something to do with cars that is going to involve somebody hanging over the edge of a cliff. It's good.

I love a good ticket-pulled threat. There's always, you know, things are going to get serious when someone's going to get his ticket pulled. You can shoot at Rockford. That's fine. But if you're going to take away his PIA license, then you've got to try. He actually has a line to that effect at some point in this episode, which I thought was pretty good. 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 WhatchaReading.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 200 pod. If you're interested in keeping us going for as little as $1 an episode, check out patrion.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. We are starting off our episode at a, a bar called the ramp. And we come right into one of our low-key recent favorites

and actually uh final final consideration of mills watson oh is this are we rapping on him let me i'll double check but i'm almost certain i thought i checked that. Did we do Exit Prentice Carr? Mm-hmm. We did. We actually kind of, you know, we came to him relatively recently in our show's history. So his episodes are... Oh, no, that was the Dexter Crisis. That's what I'm thinking of.

Did we do Exit Prentice Carr? Oh, my goodness. Am I wrong? I think you might be. Dear listeners. Am I wrong? I think you might be. Dear listeners. I am wrong. I was transposing the episode Exit Prentice Carr with our episode The Dexter Crisis. That's what I was, which he is not in, but that's what I thought he was in.

I apologize. Well, I think we have our next episode lined up. I think so. Yeah. We do a wrap on Mills Watson. We've discussed him from time to time. He's definitely that guy. He was in Roundabout, which is the episode we did after Ex-Apprentice Car.

And in my mind, Roundabout and Ex-Apprentice Car are related because we talked about them kind of as too thematic. Because they were both going to Vegas episodes. Wait, you mean the other one? Sorry i'm confused okay so he is not in the episode the dexter crisis which is what i thought right yeah okay sorry you you accidentally called the uh the dexter crisis exit apprentice car just moments ago that's what happened that's okay i see i apologize all right so let me we're still confused okay okay so this is not a wrap on him because i transposed two episodes i thought he was in one but he's not and we have not done the other one but he is in our episode 96 roundabout uh where he's kind of the main he's jim's client um he's in our episode 99 the gang at don's drive-in where he is one of the main antagonists and now he is in this one where he is also kind of jim's client but in a very

different way where he is a sad sack yeah i technically the client there's definitely a thing at the end where they yeah uh but he's he's also using gun smoke sheriff lobo uh he's got a mustache you'll recognize that sort of thing no he's great um yeah again i think we're seeing a lot of range he's a real yeah real character-y character actor and we're seeing quite the range of these various episodes. Anyway, he's playing George, um, who is,

uh, at his favorite bar playing a sports trivia betting game that apparently he is the one who knows the answers to the questions he's asking. He didn't even play for the Padres. Connors was an angel. Don't you remember? The old Padres first baseman was Luke Easter. I should never bet with you, George. All right.

So he's basically asking, I'm going to say his friend, his buddy at the bar, questions about about baseball lineups from the past and betting a dollar that the guy can't say who was. I will say this betting game is very much like a few years ago a game my nephew was into, but it was not baseball lineup. It was Marvel superheroes. He was like, name a Marvel superhero that did this, this, and this. Or name a Marvel. I bet you was like name a marvel superhero that did this this and this or name a marvel right i bet you can't name a marvel superhero who just it's not that he's making up the answers he's just asking questions that he knows i don't know this is how you write trivia questions i guess right and he's writing trivia questions for his friend and charging him a buck a piece basically is what's happening yeah uh but i don't know how you play

this without wikipedia is what i'm saying i don't know well that's what i'm saying like i don't think this is any kind of like con like i think he legitimately is like i know all of this you know baseball trivia of like who played shortstop in the 1940 season of whatever right yeah and if the other guy got it you get the sense he'd be like well i can't believe you also knew that right but he very easily could be just changing the goal posts all the time so that the other person's always wrong so he's always winning the dollar anyway it's neither here nor there where does establishing that he is sloppy drunk is really what we're getting at here this is definitely one of those things that i love about the rock profiles is that like none of this baseball stuff is going to matter it's just

establishing who this character is and we see him as a human being in this moment uh but also like he's got that line one for the road which you know is just bad news someone you know asks him a question or gives him some guff about it, and he says, it's only six blocks. I could drive that blind. And so we get our intro credits as we see him stumble out to the parking lot, out to his station wagon, and then we go to the goons. Yes.

There are two goony goons, though not, again, I still cannot explain to you how, what about it makes a goon mob coded or not mob coded. Right. But these goons do not seem like mob and they also do not seem like cops. Right. So they are an alternate goon configuration. And they're radioing to another confederate saying that he's looking real good. confederate uh saying that he's looking real good so we see this sequence of kind of seeing what they're up to and then seeing george driving and he's clearly drunk and he's squinting and

uh he's kind of hitting the brakes too hard and you know at stop signs and stuff like that the uh goon prime the oldest goon i would say is in a waiting car with a woman in the driver's seat who's clearly either passed out or possibly already dead it's hard to tell it's hard to tell now there's there might be some dialogue indicating exactly the sequence later but it doesn't really matter because what happens is uh we have some drama some tension building as we see george pull out his cigarette lighter out of the dashboard which is you know uh all the 70s um and try to light his cigarette while driving but he's also trying to keep his eyes on the road so he's not quite getting it so my attention was like when does he drop that cigarette lighter? Yeah. But no, another car that's part of this scheme

flashes its headlights on and shoots out at him. So he swerves to avoid that car. And that's when this woman's body comes flying from off screen and hits his hood and then just like disappears under the car. He spins out, comes to a stop, sees the body on the road behind him. And then we have this amazing horrible shot of him just starting to shake with this look of just complete horror on his face it's difficult

it's affecting it's like i it's very visceral and it's also like a really good physical acting moment yeah this this whole sequence from from the bar to here uh there's a tension in it i'm trying to think of a way to describe this so we see him getting drunk we it's made obvious in the dialogue that we're supposed to feel tense about him drunk driving home right because you know they say he's blind drunk you know that kind of thing Everyone there knows it's a bad idea. He gets in the car and he starts driving. Then we see the goons and we're like, as Rockford fans, we're like, oh, something's going on here. Like maybe he's the target of something or, you know, what?

And I had the same thought process you did. I was like, they're not mob. Could be cops. I don't know. Like they might they might be feds or something uh and then there was bird dog to home plate which was the the their code names they radioed into another car that radioed into another car so that whole like oh this is an organized thing this is an escalation right like we've gone from this guy's gonna get himself in trouble drunk to

somebody's trying to do something to him and then we see the unconscious woman in the in the car and i'm like what is going to happen i mean like obvious it's obvious what happened right but at that moment you're just i've my blood pressure is shooting up and then like you said when the whole thing goes down and then his reaction afterwards it is i i don't know i really it is well done is what i'm saying like as far uh i could be jaded about this sort of thing and it i definitely was not while i was watching it so part of the end of the scene as we freeze frame on him as he's having this reaction and we get the voiceover of ladies and gentlemen of the jury and yeah go right into his clearly his uh his trial and this is and this is what brings jim in because jim is in the

jury for this trial uh we're established that uh george um he's had four previous arrests and two previous convictions for drunk driving he's driving on a suspended license and he has no insurance. Like it's not painting a good portrait of this guy. And so they're actually charging him with murder in the second degree, which is, you know, pretty much that the most serious thing they can do in this circumstance. Yeah. We then go to the jury deliberations where everyone is clearly ready to be done. We then go to the jury deliberations where everyone is clearly ready to be done. But Jim is the one saying that, look, there's something that's not right about this. And he specifically says, this is my business.

I'm a PI. This is my business. I know when something doesn't quite add up, which is great. The things that he brings up specifically are that her back was to the car. And that is strange considering that like so the story as constructed is that he's drunk driving she's getting out of her car and he just runs into her right that is the the situation that is being presented that no one has any reason to doubt right including george himself really but she had her back to the car that's strange it comes clear

later i forget if they mention it now but like her tire is flat so it's like if she her back to the car that's strange it comes clear later i forget if they mention it now but like her tire is flat so it's like if she's going to the yeah trunk to get her spare tire or jack or whatever she doesn't have her key with her so why wouldn't she brought her key and then a woman's like well she could have just been going to ask a neighbor to call the auto club oh she didn't have her purse with her she didn't have her auto club card with her wouldn't she have had that if she was going to go you know so there's just these little details that as jim says give him a reasonable doubt um there's no argument about like this guy was drunk he was driving and he hit this woman you know technically hit this woman's hit this woman or hit this woman's

body uh but why and how you know give j Jim the reasonable doubt that it's worth charging him with murder. And he, in fact, says in a later scene, like, it should have just been a manslaughter charge. It's like he would have been on board with that, I guess. So this is I feel like this is a weak point in the scaffolding of the story here, because, OK, so Jim is right. There is something more to this, but it's I don't – I mean he does say I have a nose for this and that's what's sitting with him wrong is that he just thinks that there's something suspicious happening. But like if they'd given us something – so it's clearly 12 angry men, right? Like this is the – everyone in this room hates Jim for holding out. We see that through the like what who's presumably the

foreman and then this woman who i love the way she just kind of goes at him um and they're all exhausted and they just they don't want to deal with it anymore and and to them it is all such an open and shut situation yeah that it's extra aggravating that this guy just won't be like okay fine he's guilty let's go home yeah and like i can understand so so jim is and as we mentioned jim is like he thinks it's a lesser charge but still manslaughter like this guy should still do jail time according to jim so it's a nuance that he's arguing about um but we know like we've talked about this but like you know jim is an ex-con that like so maybe there's a thing going on here where he doesn't feel like he can let someone go up for something that.

But there's nothing here that presents like he's presenting a case for he was framed up without really presenting a case for him being framed up. him being framed up like i wish there was just like one other clue or tidbit they had written in that uh set that up and i mean even later there's there's a stuff about physical evidence that like any of those details probably could have been brought in here as well but yeah i'm thinking even something like there were multiple sets of skid marks on the road yeah you know there was another so there was another car what about that other car you know like that kind of stuff or yeah is there more suspicion but because we're in season five we've seen jim deal with probably a dozen frame ups now right like i don't know how many but i don't have the math on that but like so we're willing to believe him but we need him to have like something a little more substantial than she was facing the wrong direction and her keys were still in the car.

I feel like those just don't quite get there. Not to turn this all into complaining about that. Well, my read is kind of like a two-step for Rockford. Not the Rockford doesn't get hired two-step, but a different one. He feels a thing. He feels a disturbance in uh, you know, he feels a disturbance situation, right?

It's not right. And so once he is, is put into the position of being the one who has to change his mind, that's when he really gets stubborn. Right. Yeah. You kind of get the feeling that if the, if the argument wasn't like,

Hey, stop holding this up. Let's just agree agree and if it was more like even even along the lines of like this guy had all these previous instances he's clearly a danger you know there's no reason he should be on the road it's there's a you know it's a loophole that he's even on like he's breaking the law just being on the road that you know like like if there was some kind of like let me talk to you about this from a different angle maybe you'd kind of get to jim but similar i'm thinking of like in

um lions tigers monkeys and dogs where he he has to be convinced to have a good time at the restaurant but then he gets hit with the door again and he's like no i'm not gonna have a good time yeah yeah exactly it's kind of the aspect of this character where he's like, no, I'm not going to have a good time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's kind of that aspect of his character where he's like, I'm... Because he even has that kind of frustrated, like... I have a reasonable doubt. And I'm not changing my mind. Oh. Tough. I'm sorry.

Yeah, and that's definitely something i'm willing to read into it uh i i don't disagree i mean i think you're right that it would be more like uh there'd be more narrative tissue if there was like something more specific that he was getting that was catching his eye but yeah we're neither here nor there yeah we're really harping on a detail that the whole point of this is just to get us into jim get us into having jim participate in the story yes so we go back to the courtroom where and i think this is this feels very tv to me but it's pretty fun we're like the you know the jury's hung so're going to have a new trial. And the judge starts calling out Jim as this irresponsible. He calls him, it's the irresponsible and unyielding decision of one juror mocking justice and decency that is making this go forward to another trial.

And he tries to defend himself from the box and the you know judge threatens him with contempt of court which i think he has enough experience with but then we see our two goons there's two main goons um and so we see our two goons uh one of which i think was the radio goon another one was one who pushed the woman out of the car they're in the audience we're watching the proceedings and quietly talk to each other and say that he's not going to like this. And they're going to have to keep an eye on things. One thing I will say about like I loved that I had everything down about that judge tearing Rockford down and then Rockford like like I'm not having it standing up like, hey, judge, you said your instructions were beyond a reasonable doubt. Yeah.

Like I've got to defend myself, damn it. But the other bit that I think is important for my own personal read of the story here is that we do get a lingering look at George's defense attorney. And in my notes, it's like, oh, this is why. She's a little Beth-esque, I would say. Yes. And I'm not going to say I'm wrong in that read because there's stuff that plays out in the text. But I'm not going to say I'm right in that read either. I think it's up to the individual.

Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of a wild episode for, like, Jim's libido. Yeah. In a way that I feel like we haven't really seen in a while. Which is. We'll get into it. So the rest of our credits.

Over a montage of Jim going home. And we hear Rocky singing. At the top of his lungs. As he's fixing Jim's doors. I literally. My notes are like is Rocky drunk? No it's just to let us know that Rocky's in the house there. Living his best life.

I've never heard that version of Clementine or whatever. But yeah, yeah, living his best life. I used to hug her. Now she's dead, I draw the line. Listen, Boy Scouts, heed the warning. This is a classic. Rocky's just trying to do something nice for Jim. Jim is in a state because of the time he's been having recently.

And also, he did not ask Rocky to do this. And also, Rocky's help is not helping. It's actually worse, making things worse than they otherwise would be. But Rocky gets offended if his help is not accepted. So, we have that dynamic going on. We get a lot of just little details establishing Jim's state, which is, because of this

jury thing, he lost a case. Well, he couldn't take any cases. He has no cash flow. He had one case on hold. But then Rocky said that he lost a case well he couldn't take any cases he has no cash flow he had one case on hold but then rocky said that he got a call from that guy and he had to drop jim because jim wasn't able to you know do what he needed in addition to that uh his answering machine is broken because the batteries leaked and rocky's like boy you know you should always take the batteries out of things before you go on a trip or something like that it's like a jury yes uh so if you're going to fix something couldn't you fix that and then rocky of course has a full-throated defense of the jury system

as a civic duty and jim saying that he takes it seriously it's his 11 peers that are the problem and then rocky what about the last three elections that you didn't vote in? So, Rocky, like, his defense of why he didn't vote, like, that one time I had the grip. Yeah. I was like, what is that? It's an old-fashioned word for the flu, apparently. G-R-I-P-P-E. I've never heard it before.

So, he had the flu. But I was like, what is the grip? I thought it was like a, I mean, just because it starts with a G, I guess. I thought it was like gout. But the flu sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. It was raining on the day of the presidential election.

And he has those bald tires. So he didn't vote then. And then you wouldn't ask me to miss LJ's birthday. Rocky. And then there's another section you know then there's a second half to the scene which we'll get to to a second but i wanted to say that this is in this scene i've started having this feeling of like this episode or at least this script cares so much more about jim and his day-to-day life than it does about the mystery yeah like we get a lot of banter in here yeah it just feels like an extended sequence one of which we will get many where jim is just

talking to someone that he knows for a while the second part of the scene begins when uh george and his wife franny fran or franny yeah. They come over to express their gratitude to Jim. If it weren't for him, you know, George would be going to jail. Something seems very inappropriate about going to a juror. Well, that's like the judge started it, right? Like if the judge hadn't called him out. Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't have the name.

None of these people would necessarily know which juror it was or whatever. Right. But yeah, he's saying you're a pi you must have seen something that would clear him uh and george s like yeah why wouldn't you convict and so jim reiterates he couldn't be the fact that george could not be shaken from his testimony that he saw her back before hitting her uh that you know stood out to him um and george explains again like what he saw which was you know she just seemed to appear out of nowhere just floated over his car right something like that here's where he gives the details that maybe we're looking for in the last scene where he's like you have this regular schedule at the bar including your you know

driving home at the same time every night like clockwork maybe someone took advantage of it and so maybe there's someone else out there who wanted to kill this woman uh whose name is betsy pruitt yeah his instincts kick in with that kind of what's it called um circumstantial evidence right yeah yeah but that's not what he brought up to the other jurors, at least that we saw. I feel like we had a good harmonica sting. Oh, yeah. As we watch Jim go to Betsy Pruitt's apartment to begin his investigation. So I guess what I kind of skipped over is that they kind of ask him to look into it. Yeah, because he knows he's the expert.

He does his moral thing. He's like, you should be in jail for manslaughter, which is, like, I got to give him kudos because it's a hard thing to say straight to someone's face. Right. Especially if they're, like, coming to you hat in hand saying thank you for keeping me out of jail um but it really seems like it's it's fran that's really pushing this effort yeah fran is a small character but um i really i like her and she turns out to be one of the shrewder characters it's like every time she's on screen she's she knows what's up and

is making the right choices uh which is great yeah so he kind of like gets guilted into saying like i'll i'll take a look yeah yeah he goes to this apartment um the door is opened as he's deciding how to get in i believe um and there is a woman with big hair already in there and so jim starts off with his cover which is uh management told him he could take a look he's in the market for an apartment and i guess this you know once this date is settled this this might be open for rental or whatever um and he has a whole thing about how expensive it's getting to buy in L.A. And so renting is going to make more sense, blah, blah, blah. And she's just kind of like looking at him and kind of letting him talk.

And he ends with, you know, do you know how expensive an apartment is on the west side? And she goes, do you know how full of it you are? He's taken slightly aback, but she's like, you're Rockford. She is orally. She is, or at least she says she is, Bonnie Pruitt, sister to the deceased. He was pointed out to her in the courtroom,

so that's how she knows who he is. And she tries to kick him out, and he flirts with her to keep this from happening. happening yeah so there's a bunch of things that are happening over the course of the next few scenes with her where i'm like none of this makes sense uh it doesn't ring true as the sister of the deceased right right dealing with rockford the way she's dealing with rockford as it turns out that's correct

that's how it should be that is correct none of it is true um but this moment is a little cringy because he's i mean especially from from uh a distance of half a century later where like his line is like you should smile more while she's in her dead murdered sister's apartment. And I bet you'd have a beautiful smile. It's a little like, oh, yeah, it's wild. My I kind of in my notes, I kind of have some like headcanon stuff where I'm like, maybe his read is like, this is what's going to keep me in the room. Like if I flirt with her because he does get it kind of back on track once she she doesn't force him to leave and like asks her about her sister or whatever and her story is that

she doesn't really know that much they weren't actually that close she didn't want their parents to go through going through her stuff so she came out she lives in tulsa and she came out to just like kind of do the due diligence um But I have my flight back soon. So I have to get, you know, get to the airport, which I think feels weird. Right. Yeah. It's not like the place is boxed up. Like it's just the apartment as, you know, a fully furnished apartment.

Yeah. But Jim offers to give her a ride to the airport. Cabs are expensive if you can even get one. And I guess during this conversation, he saw a receipt that was in the mail that she'd opened or something like that. And it's for her car. So it's for Betsy's car

that the lawyer handling her estate has sold already. And he wants to take a look at the car. Bonnie, this woman, agrees to go with him. He's like, sure, you can give me a ride to the airport and then he's like i want to check out the car first he's like oh well i guess i should see if you got a good deal on it or i should see if we got a good deal on it and okay yeah i wasn't really reading that much into this i did feel like it was a weird approach to be like i'm going to flirt with you And now you're going to accept my offer of a ride.

But also kind of like, all right, it's keeping the story going, like whatever. Before I knew what who she was and what she was doing, because once you know who she was and what she's doing, her reactions to everything make sense. Yeah. But before I knew that, I was like, I guess she's really charmed by Rockford. That's not entirely unbelievable. that i was like i guess she's really charmed by rockford that's not entirely unbelievable and there is a little text coming in in a moment that is a great detail for a con uh and also plays into that narrative but um yeah it was definitely like this like okay so are they now on a date is that what happened right is this what like is that why she's hanging out with him?

Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird, the vibe is weird. The vibe is weird. Well, and she's also, she seems really stilted. I was like, oh, like, I was just like, okay, I don't really, like, I don't think this actress is doing a particularly great job. job but then as the episode goes on i think that's actually intentional because as we learned she's making up her own stuff on the fly because she seems much more natural later in the episode um anyway we go to mac kabelkov's body shop which i wrote down because we got a big establishing shot on the sign and for some reason i thought that might be important like oh there's this like

eastern european aspect no it has nothing to do with it i think it's just a joke i think it's And for some reason, I thought that might be important. Like, oh, there's this like Eastern European aspect. No, it has nothing to do with it. I think it's just a joke. I think it's like Mac, like the most generic, you know, Kaboom. It's not like, I don't know, McGuinness's body shop or something, which would be, I don't know. Right. You know what I mean. I know what you mean.

We have our goons who are staking it out and watching or follow them or whatever and are watching Jim and Bonnie looking over the car in this body shot. This, again, is a great scene to just watch Jim doing stuff kind of out of proportion to what actually is happening in the story. Yeah. So he's he's doing like a like a reconstruction of the crime by like reading the physical evidence of the car there's a pebble in the valve stem of the car so that kind of like could have gotten in there but that indicates that it was open when the car had gotten hit and then someone closed put the stem back on or something the door is stuck open now um so it won't close which makes sense but there's this like weird burn like a rope on

the armrest i think the pebble in the stem was a way to let the air out of the tire okay i think if you if you jam a pebble in and then screw the cap on, I see it will push the stem in and let that's, that was my read of it. I know someone used to do this to me every day. Uh, I had a neighbor at one point who thought I was parking in his parking spot, but it was my parking spot. It was in front of my apartment.

Um, let the air out of your tires. Yeah. He would let the air out of my tires yeah like and he wouldn't like he wasn't slashing my tires or anything like that he was just literally letting the air out of my tires and he i wasn't the only one he was doing it to uh and at some point because it happened in the winter i saw that another car a big truck had gotten uh the air let out of his tires and walked over to look at that and

walked around to see what happened and then went back and so that person woke up came out saw that the air was let out of their tires saw footprints from my car to their truck and assumed i had let the air out of their tires and so there was like a whole thing until we all figured out that it was this guy oh no uh doing it to everyone yeah just an old guy who just didn't didn't like anyone and uh you know i i'm cool with that so that my guess is that that's what the the deal was there but the thing about this scene there's a weird thing where he's like you get in the car and you be betsy right right why would you do that to someone's sister you know like you pretend to be your sister that was just

killed that's weird and insensitive then she has that line i've been trying not to be betsy my whole life which is a magnificent line if you're playing a character right which is what she's doing like that's oh that's good yeah a little cover there yeah it's very good yeah and it makes me go oh this is why she's not so disturbed by the whole murder thing they're not close or whatever or the whole her sister dying it's it's good i really really like it um i like to also think that there's like a kernel of truth in there like this woman is involved in eventually we'll find out she's involved in this whole thing and she's got this thing where she's like i'm not a betsy right this wouldn't happen to me that's a good point so all of that is great yeah. But the thing that I really love about it is how much Rockford is into doing this part of the investigation and how much his job is not this.

You see, timing is crucial. I'd be working on a radio cue or I'd have that mirror in exactly that position. Hey, I'm getting into this thing. Yeah, well, is detective work always like this? No, as a matter of fact, it usually is not anywhere near like this. Usually I'm just sitting outside of somebody's house, and every once in a while you get one of these physical layout things, you know, you kind of recharge your battery.

But anyway, here comes George, right? And just at the right time, one of my cohorts pulled his car out from the curb, making George swerve. And that is my cue to let go of the end of the rope. The door will fly open with the weight of your body against it as I shove you out. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry i'm sorry yeah you know a

powerful man especially if he used both feet instead of his hand could push you three feet high and four feet out george couldn't have missed yeah oh it's so good so jim reconstructing the scene is extremely good and something we almost never get to see and so it's nice that we get that again textually like he never gets to do this kind of thing and it is so much fun for him and it's you know like there's an entire genre of television show now that just does this uh and uh yeah i just there's something very real about that. Like, Hey, I've got a job. Most of the time my job's a job, but I took this job because I love it. And now I get to do that one thing or like, not necessarily just that one thing, but I

get to do the thing that makes me love that job. And that's, yeah, it's very good. She's kind of like a couple of times when like, I do have to make my flight, but she's not really pushing it that hard. Um, yeah, but then we go to the airport where jim's dropping her off uh and then jim like gets flirty again and he asked her to push on a trip you could be very useful you know to the case and she gets out and kind of smiles at him and says i'll sure call you if i think of anything so it's kind of like okay asked and answered like he tries she's

not interested that's fine so we see him leave and then we go back to the airport entrance and she walks back out with her bag it's like aha there is something going on and the two goons pull up and she gets into their car he walked in on me i had to run a game on him. 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. Epi, 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 Epidiah, 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 okay this is great immediately flips everything that's happened that we've just been discussing like now all of her behavior makes sense and it makes me wonder and i i think by the end it turns out not to be true but my notes are wait was he running one on her then like was was he just a step ahead of her and that's why he was behaving weirdly but no he was just flirting yeah and if anything it's a little weird because it's like we are usually in the position of like a suit like watching or enjoying that jim is a step ahead yeah yeah in this case he's just not just not at all um yeah so she says that he doesn't know who or why but he sure knows how i guess like he didn't see

anything at the apartment because she'd already found uh betsy's diary which records the whole thing but she has that with her so we still don't know what the whole thing, but she has that with her. So we still don't know what the whole thing is, obviously. At this point in my notes, I'm using Bonnie in quotation marks, like, because that was her name. We never get another name. She's, like, no one calls her by a different name. There's even a moment where someone's like, I've never heard of a Bonnie who clearly knows Bonnie.

And I thought, oh, maybe this was a fake name. But no, I don't think it is. Oh, I just assumed that it was a fake name, that we just don't care what her real name is. But it could just because like Bonnie and Betsy seems like, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Yeah. At some point, one of her cohorts calls her Bonnie in a position where there's no reason to keep up the facade. So I assume. But yeah. Jim is going to talk to Betsy's employers. And so we go to Horvath and Horvath, a law firm, two brothers.

And his game is that he's from an insurance company and Betsy had a insurance policy that was taken out recently. And so they're doing a due diligence investigation before paying it out. So there's two, you know, the two brothers, Horvath and Horvath. This becomes more important later, but it's what, uh, okay. There's one he's first talking to who is older, I think, and smokes a pipe.

And then, yeah. And there's one that Betsy worked for, which is the other one who I think is younger and is like kind of more stout. I'd like to describe them. Yeah. And there's one that Betsy worked for, which is the other one, who I think is younger and is like kind of more stout. I'd like to describe them. Yeah, in my notes, they're described as the suspicious one and the not suspicious one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Arthur is the suspicious one. Let me check here. That sounds right.

Oh, wow. I did not recognize it. Oh, no. Okay. Hold on. Martin, I think, is the suspicious one. Yeah. And Arthur is the other one.

Martin is Frank from Return of the Living Dead, which is just putting that out there. I think that's the case. It's so hard to tell. Can't tell these brothers apart. Oh, and the other one was in the reanimator. So, yeah. No, this is good. Good horror film pedigree here. brothers apart oh and the other one was in the reanimator so yeah no this is good good good

horror film pedigree here so either way the suspicious one is one who's talking to jim first and so go you're going to want to write to my brother the non-suspicious one who's the one who actually employed betsy and i think the suspicious one is also the older brother i think so yeah um so there's this is so you know jim talks to her employer, who can't believe that the guy who killed her wasn't convicted. I still cannot accept the fact that that maniac escaped conviction all because of some has-been gumshoe on the jury trying to act like Sherlock Holmes and toot his own tin horn. Yeah, well, he does seem like a flake. on tin horn yeah well he uh does seem like a flight this is when we see how there's a microphone uh hidden behind a book on the book yes and then we see the our suspicious brother the pipe smoker listening intently in his office bonnie and the goons are also there at this point there's no

mystery for the audience they're just like like, like from the microphone, you know that, oh, the suspicious guy. And then, nope, we're all at it together. Like you were saying before, that we don't have a motivation yet, but we can see the entire conspiracy at this point. Yeah, we don't know why she was killed, but clearly these people are the ones who did it. Yeah. He has a good line where the suspicious one has a good line where he says, we better pull this guy's drapes. Yes. That one almost makes sense.

Just like you open the drapes, you know, like you expose the sunlight on the vampire or whatever. The other Horvath's phone rings. He listens. Then his eyes get real big and he goes, Rockford. And Jim tries to explain and he kicks him out of his office. So Jim is just getting identified left and right, which is kind of interesting as well. In the parking garage, he is grabbed by the two goons. And this is a real good kind of like speed run of rockford defensive mechanisms yes

hey i don't know what you're doing but you got the wrong guy and they they keep hustling him away and he's like you know i'm i'm important in this town i'm connected all the way to the police chief or something like that he's very angel-like in his just yeah and then he's like okay okay i bet you guys this has to do with Bonnie Pruitt, right? And then the guy, there's a guy with like a sawed-off shotgun, I guess. He's the one who's like, I don't know any Bonnies. And then Jim's kind of talking to himself for us, I think. We're like, ah.

Any woman who wouldn't stick around to help clear her own sister's death. Divorce or no divorce. I really have to learn to listen to those little voices i hear that's between you and them personally i don't even know what you're talking about yeah well either she was in this car you both wear the same perfume mary um yeah it's it's like jim was so i don't know blinded by his attraction to her that he didn't think too much about her weird behavior i guess is kind of the read we're supposed to get yeah we're getting we're definitely getting that he did

have suspicions but he was ignoring them uh and there's to some extent that is a something of a theme in this episode because that's the like the whole he stands against the entire jury on a vibe. Right. You know, that's what we're getting here. I love, like you were just saying, him just running the gamut of things to try and talk his way out of it. And I love how that leads into the next, I think it's the next scene? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So they're in the car car he's being abducted right and so jim this is important jim's in the passenger seat the older goon the the murder goon the guy who pushed um yeah that's the out of the car is driving and then the other one is behind him with the with this shotgun so he's still kind of keeping a patter uh jim is and says that he's going to level with them this guy bassett Bassett, turns out he's loaded. He's worth a million and a half, kind of on the DL. And he's building this story of like, that's why I took this case. You know, it could be worth a lot of money.

And I'd be willing to share, you know, what I know about him with someone else, etc. So the driver keeps glancing at him like kind of getting drawn into the story a little bit and then jim's like you know yells look out and the guy shoots his eyes forward and slams on the brakes and there is a car coming out into their lane so you know there is a bit of an actual traffic issue but he slams on the brakes and jim reaches under his seat and hits the little lever for your like back forward control. So when the brakes are hit, his chair shoots backwards into the guy with the gun, squishing him. And then Jim is able to open the door and run out of the car since they've come to a stop.

And it is a magnificent Jim get out of trouble gambit. Oh, it's so good. Part of it while it's happening, while he's spinning his yarn, I'm like, after all of the lies he's been dropping, there's no way they're falling for this. But that's not the point. This is not an elaborate con level. This is blather. This is distraction.

This is just fast talk. Yeah. Yeah. This is so they're not paying attention to what he's setting up to do here. And it's good good misdirection well done jim we go to jim talking to george's lawyer his the the public defender yeah her name is karen and we will get some more stuff with her but i uh i recognize her name from the credits and i just checked and And this is, in fact, our wrap on Sharon Spellman.

Sharon playing Karen. Sharon Spellman. Yes. All right. Profit and loss. She was in profit and loss she was in profit and loss but i remember talking about her from the reincarnation of angie because she has a wonderful scene fast talking with jim basically i don't remember the details but i remember talking about how good she was in that scene yeah and giving her shout outs um

so uh unexpected rap on sharon spellman great, great minor, but significant character in all of these episodes in profit and loss reincarnation of Angie and the deuce. Unexpected rap. I like that. Uh, but yeah, in this case, um, she kind of explains a little bit about how, uh, this is a serious matter at the da's office they kind of like picked george to be i forget the term she uses but he's like the poster child for like we're really getting them this month you know like we're gonna throw the book at him and then the prosecutor whose name is norman storms in how dare you hang my jury and then turn around and work the case and he's the one who threatens jim

with the ticket pulling if he doesn't you know drop it uh karen asked like how did you know he was here he's like oh the horvaths tipped me off or something like that because they're lawyers yeah they're a law firm yeah uh but yeah jim kind of doesn't have anything to go on he just he was trying to he wanted her to see if they could reopen an investigation into the murder because he has this mounting evidence that she was either already dead or whatever. And one problem is timing. They've already rescheduled his next trial for next week or whatever. Karen chases him out into the parking lot where he's trying to leave,

tells him not to give up on the case. She's a public defender. She sees a lot of people left behind by the system. So it was tough defending someone who seemed like such an obvious creep. She's like, I thought he was guilty. I was just doing my job. And she uses the great phrase, I. He got due process and that's all.

But if Jim thinks he's innocent, then she kind of wants to believe in that and so she wants to help yeah jim he tries to scare her off a little bit you could lose your job if i can lose my job for trying to prove my client's innocence then it isn't worth much you could lose your life with you around on one level he's like trying to get her to like look you don't want to be involved in this but also they're flirting yeah exactly uh i think this is in here where he makes a mention about his own i like either either i lose my life or i lose my license i think we mentioned this before but just the fact that like the threat he's been threatened with a gun he's kidnapped or whatever but it's the license thing that feels like a bridge too far.

Right, right, right. Oh, okay. Hold on. No. He says he really doesn't have anything to go on, but she has him to stick with it. And we have a freeze frame on his long-suffering face where it's like, we know he's going to stick with it. Yes. We then go to his trailer where our goons and Bonnie roll up.

It's the right place. 29 Cove Road. One of them, the younger one, the one who had the gun earlier, has a tool belt like he's a maintenance guy or something. And he strolls up to the trailer while Bonnie and the other one get in this bright yellow sports car where he asks her, know how's it handle and she says no guts lousy front end mechanic really worked it over good yeah i rewound that because i was like i don't know i was like did i misunderstand what they were saying because i assumed it was like oh we tuned this up but then i realized no we right we do this down like this is meant to crash later there's a thing in this episode that i i don't think they lean into but there's this fun bonnie in some ways is the uh the foil to rockford right uh

she's attractive like we get him even admitting that on on uh on the microphone at one point. She runs a game on him right after he tries to run a game on her. And then she's the car person. Right, right. Right. Like as it comes over. So in some way, she's like their Rockford, which is kind of fun. I don't know. I just really like the... They don't lean into that too heavily,

but it just kind of keeps playing out like that. So the game here now is that they're at George's house, and Bonnie is claiming to work for Rockford. She's one of his operatives. And she's picking up George to take him back to the bar to verify Jim's time-distance theory while Jim is handling some other things. Fran, his wife, is dubious about this. I think she's like, I didn't think Rockford had a secretary.

She's like, oh, I'm not a secretary. I'm an operative. And also tells George that he shouldn't be going to the bar. You know the conditions of your bail, right? And he says, I've been on the wagon a whole nine days now. So she clearly is suspicious but also cannot stop the situation i guess inside the trailer we see the goon see jim arrive and he takes up a position behind jim's uh counter with his gun with a giant silencer on it and so jim is

coming up to the trailer and we're watching from the inside. And I'm like, aha, the door is going to be important. And so sure enough, we see Jim, you know, he goes to check something like he sees something and he looks at it. And the guy's inside like, come on, come on. And then Jim starts opening the door and then it catches halfway because it's been improperly hung. Yeah. And that hesitation is enough to keep him out of the line of fire as the first couple shots hit the door frame and then you know jim runs away runs around the back of the trailer to the like little sheds that are back there this guy runs out after him and i love like kudos to

whoever constructed the sticking door because like he it also sticks when he tries to leave yes you know it is a physical property of that of that scenery it's not uh it's very it's very real high realism he tries to creep around and surprise jim but jim has the advantage surprises him and drops a trash can over his head there's there's a nice another one of those nice little touches Where it looks like Jim has gone And knocked over a line of trash cans Leading around the back So that the guy

Is basically following a bread crumb A bread crumb trail That Jim set up And then he went and hid somewhere else And I thought that was a great detail too It was just like Again, Jim When things get tight hid somewhere else and i thought that was a great detail too it's just like uh again jim when when things get tight that's when jim like it's galaxy brain right yeah he just starts like boom i got so

many ideas on how to deal with this care this is when karen arrives just like driving to see jim sees the scene asks jim what happened and he says if my dad wasn't such a lousy handyman, I'd have an air conditioned head. At the bar, Bonnie's keeping George company while he's drinking coffee. And she has this whole tale about they've broken the case and Jim and the D.A. are meeting. You know, they're going to take down this guy and they're going to need you to testify. So you should just stay here until they get here. She goes to make a phone call to her confederates. He won't drink the coffee.

He wants another bourbon. So I guess the idea is that they like drugged his coffee or something. Like that line is weird in context of the rest of the scene where it's like, I assume you're like, oh, he's a lush. He's just going to break down and drink. My suspicion is that they need him to drive sober enough to drive. Yeah, up to that point, whatever it is. Up to that point. So they don't want him drinking.

What she's trying to do is she's trying to keep him from drinking too much before anything happens. You know, there's a delicate zone in which they need to get him a little, get some alcohol in his system, but not drunk. And that's my take on that. I'm not entirely sure, though. It's weird, though, because she gets a bourbon, goes, but it's like for her. Yeah, I think that's when she realizes that they're about to set their motion into plan

yeah yeah their motion into plan they're playing into motion that's what she so she starts like teasing him with this bourbon yeah quote unquote by accident like kind of holding it right under his nose and being like oh something the da is uh opening the investigation this is something to celebrate and oh yeah oh i'm sorry i didn't think and he's like no no it's okay so i guess also we're expecting him to just be like great let's celebrate but he's actually legitimately like i am not gonna have a drink which is a little subplot through the rest of the episode um in trailer we get our uh uh light torture for yucks where jim is drumming on the trash can with the guy inside it uh we don't need

to go into detail it's pretty like it is not played dramatically it is played lightly but also it's it seems real bad like and he's like and he's like i'm gonna throw up let me out right it's like uh and karen is there um just watching this happen And we get a line about it later, but like, yikes. Yeah. Anyway, the guy finally spills. Who killed Betsy Pruitt? Al Corbett. Who is Al Corbett?

I guess we'll find out. He works for the older Horvath. Yeah. I guess that's Martin, the suspicious one. Yeah. What this guy knows is that Betsy was having an affair with her boss, Arthur, the younger one, and started blackmailing him. And he doesn't know what about.

Martin called in Corbett, who turns out is the older goon, right? The real murdery goon. So he got called in by the older Horvath to take care of Betsy so that her blackmail wouldn't go anywhere. And he says they should be dealing with George by now. They're getting him drunk at the ramp and then killing him too. This is when Karen says it's not the most admissible confession she's ever seen. Yeah. And he goes, I didn't confess to anything.

I was trying to figure out that bit. I think he didn't realize that there was an officer of the court present or anything like that i think he was just thinking i'm just talking one pi to another or what what have you one pi i attempted to kill to another yeah i mean i think it's also you know someone who generally is aware of how the law works, right? Like, yeah, you know, you immediately established like that was not a confession. I yeah. Jim pulls his gun out of the cookie jar and then gives it to Karen, says to keep him covered.

You can call the cops if he gets salty. He'll be here in five minutes or whatever. He's tied up. He's been like hogtied as well. I think he says, you know how to use one of these and she's like uh point and shoot right okay i don't know it just it's very cavalier to me the whole the whole thing yeah yeah no i agree um there's we're now kind of in the we need to wrap it up point of this this story does definitely feel a little bit like uh you know everything now let's let's have a little fun actioning and let's uh let's move on so we do go back to the bar and then george finally is like okay i can just have a sip like what harm will do

but then he has a great moment where he's like no and he kind of like spills it putting it back down and uh i guess this is the part that surprised me where he like turns to to uh uh bonnie and says i'm sorry it's just i i've i got a real problem with this and i i gotta face it and i'm not gonna face it right here so i better leave yeah he really has actually been re-evaluating his life, re-evaluating his choices in this enforced, you know, dry spell.

And this is just hooking all the way back to just his physical acting in that first scene where it's like, of all the things that have happened to him

while he has been drunk, this seems to be the one where he really is like, I did that. Like, even if he now is like, oh,

I didn't actually kill her or whatever he had the experience of killing someone while he was drunk like that experience still happened he's definitely played as someone who's like i just gotta i literally i did actually get a second it's a new lease on life yeah yeah like my wife is still by side. I'm not going to jail and I'm probably not responsible for someone's death. Like I need to change because that is as close as you can get without crossing the line. And yeah. that i've seen yeah uh like it feels like a legitimate experience that someone would have uh or i or rather if it feels like the magnitude of his response makes sense yeah given what happened or what almost happened as opposed to some kind of more like after school specially kind of thing i don't know it's good kudos to mill to Mills. Yeah. Kudos to Mills. I agree. All right.

So then that's when our other goon shows up saying that and he's apparently Jim's head operative. So, you know, Jim is on his operatives now. And he has a story about Jim was abducted and the cops can't get to where he's being held. There's a 40 car pileup on the freeway. But they're holding him up at decker's point and and in almost the complete opposite of the very real feeling character development of george george is like well i have to do something i'm gonna go save him and just like runs out to like drive and save him from unnamed goons somewhere like it's it is to get us to the end of the story but right it does

feel a little out of nowhere. It's drunk behavior. It's drunk behavior, even though he's not really drunk. Yeah, he's not drunk. Yeah. But he just, he owes Jim so much. He has to help him. And so he just leaves by him.

That's another thing, but he leaves by himself. Oh, we got to do something. What? Well, I'll tell you the truth, pal. I got a wife and a couple of kids you know oh sure i'll go myself no you stay put i'll go yeah yeah like i'm not gonna put myself into danger i have a family which okay yeah i have kids they're 35 and 28 and yeah anyway so george is like i'm gonna do something he storms out of the bar and then bonnie and i

guess corbett are following him and loudly talking to each other he's in no condition to drive we should have stopped him he's going up to deckard's point yeah you know to establish the situation for all the bar flies um he jumps in that yellow car and peels out. The goons are following him. And they all leave right before Jim rolls into the parking lot. Gets the story from the bartender, but not after a bribe. Yep. I very much appreciate it. And then he needs to give him another bill for using the phone. Calls Dennis.

There's going to be a killing up at Deckard's Point. He's going to stall as long as he can. But he needs to get some guys up there right away. this is close as we get to a dennis in this story um which is not my complaint with this scene my complaint with the scene is how did this guy get the keys uh-huh yeah i mean i guess maybe i mean it's just left on unstated maybe she had him drive like that classic. Yeah. Jim's done that before.

You drive. Yeah, that happens a lot in the Rockford Files. So cars are just available for anyone to use. That's the thing about the Rockford Files universe is that. I did not note the seatbelt wearing in this one. I'm off my game. Oh, yeah. I mean, I would assume he had one on when the brakes when he did that little break trick with uh

when he escaped i don't think he did because he runs out of the door immediately yeah i have to review the tape um all right we have our scene of car action everyone's following everyone uh there's a point of dialogue of there's a bomb in george's glove compartment uh like in that car's glove compartment so once he goes over the the cliff he'll just be another drunk in the canyon oh was i thought there was i thought that line was that there was a bottle in the glove compartment oh that makes more sense i was like are they also gonna yeah explode the thing yeah okay that makes much more sense yeah i think that's what and i think she actually pulls that bottle out that's's where it comes from. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I just, I miss, I miss that. So they tailgate him and run him and kind of like run him off the road right at this Deckard's point, like overhang. And he ends up balanced on the edge of the cliff. Yes. Really cliffhanging, as we say. Delicious. And we say, we see he has a little blood on his his forehead like he's been banged up from the impact. And yet she runs over there and starts dousing him with this bottle of bourbon, which I thought she just had with her.

That makes much more sense than he's already in the car. But before they can, you know, push him off or anything, Jim finally catches up with them. They're peeling out like they're just gonna let it fall over eventually i guess they're turning to to get out of there jim comes up behind them and bumps their rear panel so that they spin out i think they were they were setting up to ram him off the edge of the cliff and jim hit there on the rear panel just before they managed to do that. That was my read of the action that was happening there.

But I'm not entirely sure. I did watch this a couple of days ago because I wasn't going to have time yesterday. So I will go with your read because it makes more sense. OK, let me let me get my matchbox cars and I'll show you how this works. No, that's a YouTube channel. When we're done with this, we'll do the Rockford Files chases via matchbox cars. Stop motion. So they kind of fishtail, not driving him off the cliff. And then they head back down the highway.

And then there's black and whites coming up with their sirens on. They block the way. And so they're, you know, presumably captured. Jim pulls another you, uh, kind of spinning out again to get back to, uh, George's car as fast as he can to help him get him out before it goes over

the cliff. Justice presumably is served as we go to the trailer for our final scene with George, Fran, Jim, and Karen having coffee, possibly tea uh and kind of telling the rest of the story um to us in their dialogue it turns out that betsy was blackmailing her boss because he was handling legal work for a ring of professional thieves sure uh called in corbett for some preventative homicide and things

went from there uh the bassets stand to leave and george says so about your fee jim jim's like don't worry i'll get it from you but after you get your lives back together um and we have some dialogue about how george is he's staying sober he's taking it seriously one day at a time that's what they say in the meetings and uh yeah great i'm again i am slightly surprised and pleased to see a what what seems like a a uh character growth yeah a transcending addiction story that's kind of low key makes sense with what we've seen of the character. The door sticks on the way out. Um,

it still isn't fixed really after, uh, Rocky did his, his business to it. There's still bullet holes in the frame. And then we get to so much more. Um, again,

this scene is like a long lingering scene of just Jim talking to people. Yes. Yes. We get like everything that's happened happened the explanation for all of it the the rap on uh george and family and then okay what what else do we have left hanging here we got to mention the the door thing for the you know we got to get that third beat in for the door and And then, oh, right. We set up a possible romance between Karen and Jim. So let's watch that play out. But let's do that with a big elaborate joke, which I love. They start talking about juries.

Karen's talking about how she deals with them all the time, obviously, and most are vacant in the courtroom. It's like they're not they want to be somewhere else. They're not really paying attention. It's a rare thing to meet someone who takes it so seriously. Somewhere in here, Jim lights a cigarette. This is important later. Yes. He says it's only a few weeks out of your life.

And people's lives are decided in those courtrooms. So pay attention to that, Epi. Take that with you going forward. Yeah, I will. Put that right up there in the kidneys. The brain kidneys? the head kidneys yeah the old head kidneys uh would you believe how some people try to weasel out of it yeah and then this is when jim asked karen out for dinner uh and then proposes maybe going to a football game. He has tickets for this weekend. Turns out that she doesn't like football, but it might be fun.

That's when Rocky appears. He bought smoke detectors at the hardware store. The packaging, their little houses. Oh yeah. Yeah. Their little houses. Oh, that's great. It's great. And at first I was like, wow, those are enormous.

And then I was like, oh wait, that must just be the I was like, oh, wait, that must just be the box. And as we were learning, that is just the box. Jim is protesting. The place is too small. He'll cook bacon over there and it'll go off over here. Jim, you should still have a smoke detector in your house. Come on. Rocky then turns to Karen.

Did Jim ever tell you how he almost didn't sit on that jury? Oh, do go on. So Jim's trying to wave Rocky off, but Rocky is just taking so much glee in telling this part of the story. Jim here, he tried to get a note from his doctor saying it would be bad for his back sitting in a jury box. An old war injury. Oh, I old war injury. Oh, I do have a bad back from Korea. I mean, there's nothing strange about that.

Oh, how terribly awful for you. Of course, when he did find out that he was going to have to sit in the jury anyway, you should have been here to hear the yelling. He was stomping around and kicking the bureau and everything. Tim keeps trying to wave him off. Rocky's on a roll. He finds like, hey, we should go ahead and go into that restaurant. They get really busy and we don't have a reservation.

And Karen says, I wouldn't want you to suffer sitting in a booth with that bad back. And Rocky's just roasting him, just relentlessly roasting him. just roasting him just relentlessly roasting yeah of course what really turned jim around was when i explained to him how his very own ancestors fought and struggled for others to have the right to vote why do you know that josiah rockford so jim slowly opens one of the little house packages and pulls the smoke alarm out and considers it while he's smoking a cigarette finally he takes a beat and then he just blows his smoke directly into the alarm the smoke alarm beep goes off and we have the freeze frame end of episode with the beeping alarm as we finish finish our show uh it's good it's a good ending um i i really i enjoyed the episode i mean

i know like there's a few times while we were talking about it i was like this didn't hold together that doesn't but that was just more of uh uh quibbles yeah well this is like a rockford files fan episode almost like sure there's a mystery and like a plot or whatever but who cares we we're watching rocky do rocky things and jim do jim things in response to rocky and then jim gets to jim gets to be horny and it's weird because we don't really have a lot of context for it he's just kind of hitting on the women that come into his his sight line yeah and then he gets shot down so like that's fine like that makes sense uh given what we see in the episode but it's also kind of out of left field that that's what this episode has in it and we get a nice little redemption story for a guy

who maybe deserves it we don't know um yeah he seems nice enough in the end um jim gets to do some detective things we have a fun con versus con thing but none of it seems very serious even though there's a murder like it's really for something that's all over the place it's a fun episode like yeah yeah i enjoyed it a lot but it's kind of a mess. I mean, I think it's OK. So our job, obviously, is to examine things to kind of tease them apart and kind of get some ideas out of it or whatever. I don't even know what our job is anymore. And this seems like a bad thing to say about that. But this this is not this is not an episode for a podcast.

It's, you know, like it it's just, it's fun. It's fun. But, yeah, God, I don't want to, like, end it on some weird sour note about it not being up to any kind of grade or anything like that. But I think you're right. It's also fifth season Rockford Files. Right. Right. It's fifth season Rockford Files.

Right. Right. And probably like there's no aside from Rocky, there's no reoccurring cast that. It's a bit of a filler episode. I think that's probably what was happening is that they were. I don't want to say paint by numbers because it wasn't necessarily formulaic or anything any more so than, you know, whatever. Well, I think if anything, it kind of stands out because it's less formulaic or anything any more so than you know whatever right well i think if anything it kind of stands out because it's less formulaic narratively and it's more kind of like i just have fun with it exactly yeah that's exactly yeah yeah i'm a little surprised that angel isn't in it

because thematically that really would have worked but it's probably an episode where they only had so much money and some episodes they can only have so many of the cast because, you know, they have to pay them however much for their appearance. They had to take the doors off the hinges. That costs money. That costs money. Put them back on. Poorly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit of a curiosity to me, I guess, just because there are these moments that are like full 100% Rockfordishness, but they just kind of float, float free of the story and could really be in any episode. Like the, like where he's like going through the car and getting really excited about

the reconstruction. Like, yeah, it's good. That could be for anything, but it doesn't really matter. The fact that he's doing it is what is cool and fun, fun to watch all the stuff with rocky

they're like setting himself up as this kind of like ethical citizen and then just getting totally just completely demolished by rocky and having his kind of date prospects just ripped away is great you kind of feel like rocky's getting back at him for like not being on board with his handyman help earlier in the episode yes i'm looking at the season itself trying to figure out where it sits it's the latter half of the season and right after this one is the man who saw the alligators which is you know yeah oh one of the magnificent yeah yeah oh that's weird that's weird we're calling that one of the greats but the um imdb rating gives it a slightly lower rating than this current than the deuce i think our i mean i don't remember if we talked we probably talked about it in that

episode but like i think our appreciation of that episode is very specific to our what we like us yeah yeah yeah yeah uh it's interesting so it comes after guilt which i didn't care for mainly because it was too felt too real uh but it's a perfectly fine episode so it really kind of ramps up to the man who saw the alligators yeah it's wild it's a wild spot it's a wild season. Yeah, the season's pretty sweet. I forgot to bring it up after we said we would, but The Deuce, the title. Oh, yes, tell me. And people who know more about, I don't know, cop stuff probably might have been yelling at their phones, as we say. But according to the Ed Robertson book, a deuce refers to a person arrested for a DUI.

Ah, all right. So this episode is, you know, thus about one of those deuces. Yes. Well, okay. Then the title makes sense to me now. Not that interesting, just, but is an explanation. I'm glad we saved it for the end. All right.

Well, yeah, I don't know. end all right well yeah i i don't know this is this is a weird one because i'm like i would talk about this episode with anyone who wants to but i don't know if i would like really recommend anyone to watch it over any other episode of the rockford files yeah yeah except maybe for mills for some reason yeah mills mills is great and if for some reason you reason you've set the task before you that you have to watch all of the Rockford files in some random order, fit this one in. Maybe somewhere after the halfway point of your show. Well, I don't know about you, but I do have some crooked doors that I need to make sure are reh-hung before getting out of this apartment. That is not true. I don't have to do that.

I literally do have to do that. You know what I just remembered we used to say and then I completely forgot we did? Which was, we've earned our $200 for this day. Remember we used to say that? Oh, yes. I believe we have. Well, I mean, Jim hasn't made money in so long. He didn't make any money in this one.

I used to keep track of it, and I gave up. He'll get it from George eventually, once his life gets back together. Yeah, that seems like a good bet. All right, well, all that said, don't drink and drive. I want to make sure that we're clear about that part of the message of the episode. I want to make sure that we're clear about that part of the message of the episode. But, you know, if your trailer has some awkwardly hanging doors, maybe have LJ come fix them instead of Rocky. I think that's the other takeaway.

Yes. I guess that's pretty much what I have to say about this one. Anything else, Epi? Don't drink and dive. Wear a seatbelt. Maybe, you know, responsibly install. No, it's fine. We're good. We're good.

All right. Well, then I guess we will see you next time when we talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.