Two Hundred A Day - Episode 106: Exit Prentiss Carr

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Nathan and Eppy go to Bay City in S1E4 Exit Prentiss Carr. An old flame hires Jim to find her husband, but he only finds the body. When the Bay City police rule it a suicide, Jim has to figure out who is lying to him and why, all while keeping one step ahead of the local cops who have it out for him personally. A very well-paced early season episode, we really enjoyed watching Jim do PI things while still settling into the character we would get to know so well! 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) * Jordan Bockelman (https://twitter.com/jordanbockelman) * Michael Zalisco * Joe Greathead * Mitch Hampton's Journey of an Aesthete Podcast (https://www.jouneyofanaesthetepodcast.com) * Dael Norwood wrote a book! Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo123378154.html) * 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) * Pumpkin Jabba Peach Pug, Dave P, Dave Otterson, Kip Holley and Dale Church! 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

It's Maury. Got a call from Davis at the IRS. You were right. They bounced your return. Call me. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidauram Shaw. And I guess I want to say welcome back, though I don't know if that's the right thing. I don't know if that's the right thing. For those who have been listening as these in order, as these shows come out,

this is our first recording post my big transnational transnational. Yeah. Trans am trans am trans am trans am move my long distance move. So thanks again for bearing with us during the kind of downtime between our last couple of episodes. We may still be on a bit of a one a month, maybe slightly less than that schedule going forward that we're going to try to get a couple of recordings done soon and pace them out. Anyway,

that's all to say that thanks for sticking with us. We are pushing off our answering machine roundup for another recording because I just didn't have time to look at things to get it together for this recording. However, we have been seeing your feedback and notes and questions and everything and appreciate those coming in. And we will be addressing them soon we've we've had we have a good a good stock of answering machine um oh good stuff that has come in over the last couple months um so even if uh you're so you're not you're not quite yelling into the void we do see it uh and we will address it in our next episode hopefully i feel that the uh well i mean i mean all right i've already talked myself out of it in my head never mind okay what i was going to say is i feel that like the podcast

listeners perspective versus the podcasters perspective is is considerably different because um people are discovering podcasts all the time and so they they're, they're catching up, right? There's a, there's a binge or, you know, so there's not the, uh, uh, but I guess if the people are in fact asking us questions and whatnot, that there is a, there has been a delay there. So I take it all back. Well, the thing is we don't, we don't get so much feedback and this is not a, please give us, I mean, feel free to send us your thoughts anytime. We're happy to hear them and feel them. But we also don't have like a mailbag segment. Like we're not. Yeah, we don't get so much that we have to have a episode by episode feedback segment. Nor do we really want to do that necessarily. Hence why we kind of round them up for our little answering machine thing.

Because calendar time elapses at the same rate over time. When we take a couple months off, we still get a couple things every so often. And that just adds up so that we have a good chunk to deal with. But yeah, so we appreciate all of that. The other thing I was going to say is that because I have moved, I'm now in a new recording environment. And as Plus Expenses listeners will have heard, we discussed the considerations and what that means. But basically, if this episode sounds different, especially on my end, it's because I'm still dialing in my situation for, you know, where my setup is and everything.

So, yeah. But if it sounds fine and you don't notice, then don't worry about it. Everything's good. Yeah. Stop your worrying. All of you. All of you stop worrying. Oh, yeah.

So with that preamble out of the way, what episode are we talking about this time, Epi? Well, we're talking about Exit Prentice Car, which is in season one. Fourth episode of season one, right? That's right. And I remember now because it's another one that I got right off the bat out of the DVD case. Nice. It was really easy to pick the very first DVD. Fair enough.

But this is your pick. So why did you make this pick? Yeah. So this episode is completing our Mills Watson round. uh, uh, round. Specifically because if you remember in our last episode, uh,

I got confused about which episode was which, and I kept calling this episode a different episode. I thought we'd finished, but we hadn't. So in order to alleviate all of that, uh, confusion, order to alleviate all of that uh confusion we are finishing our mills watson survey with the final episode that we're addressing which was the first episode that he was in um which is this one

exit apprentice car as as i'm sure we will run into more and more as we go. This is, in fact, completing multiple... Yeah, this is a wrap on many, many people. Yeah, there's a lot of wraps in this one, which is kind of fun because for us, they're wraps, but in the continuity of the show, this is so early. This is mostly first episodes, right? Yeah, so it's kind of fun to look at them with the knowledge of like how the show is going to evolve but we will get into that as we say when we get into it

speaking of raps this one is a rap on the director alexander grasshoff yeah i was just clicking on him see what he's up to so he also directed the dexter crisis which is the one that i got confused with extra exit apprentice car so there's just almost so much going on in my head yeah um so we talked about him a little bit then this is the first of those two episodes that he's directed but he directed some of toma which was the previous roy huggins project that kind of turned into the rockford files so we talked about him a little bit in our episode 95 um but looking at his stuff a little bit again i hadn't noticed the first time that he was uh he was also a documentary film director

he was nominated for three oscars for best documentary let me know what you what you think about this he had a movie called young americans which did win the 1969 Oscar for Best Documentary. But then that award was rescinded because it was actually released a year earlier than was eligible. So it was ineligible because it was actually released in 67. So it should have been a 68 entrant, I guess. Scandal. Scandal. So he technically won an Oscarcar but then it was taken away

oh my god that sucks i know right can you imagine being i mean i don't know i like these are real people who have real ambitions that you know created things but like who complains to make that happen i guess right right who what I'm asking. Who's the narc? Yeah. Like, who's like, hmm. I mean, who knows? I mean, is the situation that it was submitted under false pretenses? Right.

Yeah. Or was it submitted and somehow it just, you know, got lost in the shuffle or whatever? Who knows? Yeah. I have not looked into this event event with any with any detail but i was like huh that sucks the writer for this episode is roy huggins uh as uh credited as john thomas james his usual um pen name he had a number of pen names um he didn't like to have his name in the credits i guess guess, generally.

So the credit and the situation is it's the story by Huggins and then the tell point was by Juanita Bartlett. So he was often the story guy and then someone else would write the script. And there's a bit of a write-up in the Ed Robertson book for this episode about his use of pen names because he had a number of them. And sometimes people didn't know that they were not real people. So he would get like pitches or he would get invitations to do stuff by studios

addressed to John Thomas James. And he apparently had, I don't know, it sounds like it was a bit of a gag, but he apparently, Universal had a Roy Huggins parking spot. And then they also had a John Thomas James parking spot. So he had two parking spots at Universal, which I think is very funny. That's good. But yeah, and I would say this one definitely has that season one, some real specific hook for the story that i associate with a with a with a roy huggins um

idea i found out about this thing and now i'm going to write a rockford files story around yeah around it i think that's pretty much it to bring us into the preview montage oh that's what we do that's right oh i did have one other thing that i just wanted to throw out if you uh if you noticed the answering machine message which listeners you heard at the beginning of the episode says that the irs bounced his return which i think is a very funny concept did i miss the answering machine message listening to it i think i might have i think it's funny that the and i was kind of like huh is that even possible because that the the language is that they bounce his return so that would be they bounce their check to him

is yeah that's right which i don't think is possible unless what what's being implied there is because sometimes people refer to uh the forms that you fill out as your return sure sure uh and and you know unless they're saying oh yeah i uh you know it got kicked out of the system because of some or your check bounced yeah that would be a thing that actually happens, but I choose to believe that there's some weird scam or something where it's like, oh, yeah, you're supposed to get a return, but the check bounced. I don't know. Can build out a whole other story about that.

The IRS owes me this money. Once again, Jim is owed money, and he does not receive it. All right. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. What is going on in our preview montage um well a couple things i noted there's a nice little preview montage joke in the cut where they go from the the word murder to suicide which becomes a a an important plot point here in the story um there was not much else in it that like there wasn't

like a whole lot of car chases or uh we're on the fourth episode so they haven't honed their opening montage yeah uh there was one bit in it that i i really liked but it it teases you for something that never comes about oh yeah yeah you know the you know the bit where the cop is like, and bring along that good attorney of yours. You're going to need him. And Jim's like, her. And it's great. And you're thinking, oh, we're going to get Beth.

But we do not. But we do get that line. And that's a good line. Yeah, I also was like, oh, and we get a Beth appearance. Spoilers, we do not get to see Beth, unfortunately. We are a 100% listener-supported show, thanks to our patrons at patreon.com

slash 200 a day. In addition to our gratitude, patrons also receive exclusive episode previews and 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. Join Mitch Hampton We'll see you next time. Trade with China Defined Early America, wherever good books are sold. It's about fast ships, cheap drugs, and American political economy.

Published by the University of Chicago Press. Chuck from WhatYou'reReading.com. Paul Townend, who also recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color. At FruitLoopsPod.com. Shane Liebling. His site RollForYour.Party has all of your online dice rolling needs. Jay Adan. Check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at jayadan.com. Pumpkin Jabba Peach Pug, Dave P., Dave Otterson, Kip Hawley, and Dale Church.

And finally, we can't thank our detective patrons enough for their generous support. Joe Greathead, Michael Zalisco, Eric Antenor at Antenor on Twitter, Brian Pereira at Thermoware, Jordan Bockelman, not Brockleman, 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 so this episode takes place mostly in bay city which i sure we remember slash recognize from the girl in the bay city boys club uh yes i did not realize that bay city is not a real place oh really i didn't know that either californian um we the the theory is that the bay city is a homage to raymond chandler um because that was a the town run by cricket cops in

uh farewell my lovely uh well okay all right i did not know that but uh which means all these establishing shots with bay city like signs and are all properties, which is kind of fun. Anywho, so all you California residents can mock us for not realizing that Bay City was not for real. But we start off our episode with Jim pulling up to the Bay City motel and he's poking around. We get our suspenseful music as we see he's, you know, on the track trying to find someone. My notes right away, I'm like, because this is a nice long sequence of just Jim working. Like there's no. Yeah.

Yeah. This is early, early season, early season one. We get a lot of like Jim doing P.I. stuff. Yeah. Yeah. we get a lot of like Jim doing PI stuff. Yeah. So yeah he's you know knocking making sure

that there's no one around before he tries the door turns out it's unlocked so he just goes in. We see him scan the space and sure enough he finds a body on the floor. Yeah. This is not set up as a suspense moment. I mean there is kind of like suspenseful music

like it's a little you know what's going on here but it is not set up as a suspense moment i mean there is kind of like suspenseful music like it's a little you know what's going on here but it is not set up as kind of a jump like yeah it's not like a uh tension right there's no tension yeah we're just kind of seeing what he's saying um he checks the bathroom and again we see him doing like very straightforward but nice to see on screen pi stuff he's putting the his handkerchief on on the handle so he doesn't leave prints he kind of jumps into the bathroom in case there's someone hiding behind the door right like that kind of stuff i i noted that like now is when the handkerchief like because we do see some of the room he does a little exploring before he finds the body uh and then when he

finds the body he's like well you gotta get a handkerchief out uh if i was in some stranger's hotel room snooping around i think i would have the handkerchief out already but then again who does for prince if there's no body there right right right yeah like when does it matter once you see that there is a body there then it matters yeah but it does it does show that you should be carrying a handkerchief with you at all times in case you do come across a body i had that thought which is that like there was a time where it was much more every you know you just would be carrying a handkerchief all the time and yeah once once we just started wearing jeans and t-shirts all the time there was no

yeah there's no handkerchief pocket mm-hmm he sees a gun underneath the curtains across the room which is important later and I guess we're actually the preview montage did a good job of setting us up for knowing that this is there's going to be something that happens right because we saw in the preview

montage him being like you know the gun was 15 feet away we always said there's no tension but it's not. It's the music is very sneaky. Like this is this is snooping music and that's what all of this is. But there's no. Yeah, there's like you said, there's no shock or surprise. We're just watching as he gets to the meat of it.

And we want to get there, I guess is what it is. We see Jim pick up the gun with the pencil in the barrel technique. Yes. Give it a sniff to solidify the fact that, yes, it has been used. Puts it back where it was. And then we cut directly to Mills Watson. Yes. There's our Mills.

There's our Mills. So he is a Sergeant in this Bay city police department. Um, we get their names eventually, but basically there's a Sergeant and there's a Lieutenant and they're the ones that matter. So I'll probably just be calling them Sergeant and Lieutenant. We have been,

we, we have sung, uh, Mills's praises, uh, in our previous coverage of him as a character actor. I think we posited that he plays a very different character in each of his appearances. And I think this tracks. So I was going to say he's kind of a Becker-type police sergeant. becker type police sergeant um that robertson book mentions that both mills watson and the guy who plays the lieutenant that we'll meet soon uh warren kemerling were both in contention for the role of becker oh really that's i i think the casting choice was the right one. However, just envisioning the Mills-Watson as Becker throughout this entire show, that's an alternate reality that I wouldn't mind visiting.

Yes. But yeah, he's a long-suffering police sergeant who has to deal with the PI. And that's great. He's exactly what you want in that role. So Jim has come to the police because he, so he can't just say, Hey, I found a dead body.

Right. That doesn't look good for him. So he is saying, Hey, I was hired. I mean, he kind of implies like I was doing a favor and then it comes out. Yes,

I'm a PI. I was hired to find this woman's husband, attracted him to this motel. There was no answer. She's been calling him. There's been no answer. She's been calling him. There's been no answer. She's worried about him. You're the cops. Can you go take a look? And so he has to talk

this sergeant, this reluctant sergeant into going and investigating this hotel room without any actual evidence. Yeah. He definitely, you feel the like i need to give them as much as i can to get without incriminating myself right to get them to

overcome the inertia of not doing this right like like there's a there's a there's that has a nice tension to it we get some good money in in this scene because they talk about the license. You know, we don't get very many private investigators here in Bay City. A couple of bucks for a piece of paper. They don't buy you nothing here. It's 275 and 50 bucks the last day of May of every even numbered year. Yeah, that was great. It was beautiful.

But he then escalates to saying, well, Mrs. Carr is going to make a big stink. She's going to call the police chief. You won't believe what she did when she got a parking ticket, you know? So finally, he's like, okay, fine, I'll take a look. And then he has this great line on the way out of the scene. Just how much money are you getting paid for us doing your job for you oh well uh the rates are pretty much standardized how much well it's 200 a day plus expenses but that's not day in and day out i mean there's actual days i'm weeks i'm standing in the unemployment line oh it's like it sounds like i make more money than you do but i promise you i do not

uh the thing about this that will will kind of come out as we go a little bit further but like um because jim has to lie about his involvement in the crime scene right uh? You know, he has to not let on that he broke in or went in. It wasn't... It's probably still a break-in if the door was just open. I mean, he even says, like, I can't go in there. That would be breaking and entering. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So he's lying about that.

So I'm... In my head, I'm like, okay, so he's working for a client, but he's presenting himself as her friend, and he's saying that she's ill. These feel to me at this point like lies he's telling to situate himself so that he needs the cops to do the thing, but they can't talk to her. That turn out to not be lies they turn out to be well one of them turns out to be a lie she's telling jim but as far as jim knows these turn out to be truth and there's uh a bunch happening in these scenes where it's like who's lying here what's going on uh which i like we go

to the uh presumably the bay city police station pretty sure it's the same set as the police station that we usually see. But I think it's just shot from the opposite angle. Because I feel like he's usually in the hall on the right. And this time he's in the hall on the left. And we are shooting from behind the desk in the room instead of shooting from the other side of the desk. I mean, I could be making that up. But I had i had this sense of like well that's definitely the police set but i think they're just shooting it differently so that because it's a different i don't know

i like the uh visual indicators of the passage of time being like a cup and a half of coffee and several cigarettes later yeah because he's got like one cup of coffee that he's drinking from another just sitting there that he's clearly finished. And like an ashtray. Yeah. Yeah. He's clearly been there for a while. And then he finally gets summoned into the lieutenant's office. So this is a accidental rap on Warren Kemmerling as well.

rap on warren kemerling as well as he was also in pastoria prime pick which is going way back for us now yeah i assume i assume he was one of the crooked cops in in pastoria but he's another very recognizable character actor he was in uh he was in close encounters uh he was in godzilla 1975 uh 1980 oh i'm sorry godzilla 1985 i can't read he's he's played cops in every show you've ever seen i mean he goes back he was. He was a Bonanza guy. He was a Gunsmoke guy. There's a picture of him. His profile picture on IMDB. I'm like, I really recognize this guy. Where do I recognize him from? And when I click on it, it's from Pastoria Prime. Nice. Anyway, he is great here as a no-nonsense lieutenant no no time for rockford um so here jim is still playing out the string right of like i need you to tell me what happened because i don't know what happened

right uh so the lieutenant asks him the connection to apprentice car you know he's he's friends of friend of the family friends with miss missus car. So she's the one who hired you. And he's like, OK, fine. I was hired. Yeah. And the lieutenant tells him that they haven't been able to reach her either to tell her that her husband is dead. He's like, what happened? And they're like, suicide.

And then Jim is truly shocked because clearly that is not what he's expecting to hear. I think his shock reads like he's very surprised. And so the sergeant just asks, you have some reason to think it wasn't suicide? And so there's really good blocking here where the two of them go from kind of standing in front of Jim to kind of surrounding him so that either side of him while he has to play off his surprise. But they go back and forth saying that the door was locked, there was no forced entry, there was no sign of struggle, he had a gun in his hand and powder burns on his belly.

Jim really can't argue with that, though he goes, oh, come on, who kills themselves, you know, like, who commits suicide by shooting themselves in the stomach? And the lieutenant goes, Prentiss Carr. Yes. This is a good, I love that this is a very good sticky situation for jim right like he can't admit that he knows this is wrong so this is the other

part of this um where the lies kind of pile up because uh now i am i don't know yeah because he said she was home with the flu which is why she couldn't come herself because she lives 45 minutes away or whatever and then they can't reach her so if she's home with the flu shouldn't she be answering the phone he's like well i don't know where she is and then and then also with these cops they're describing a crime scene that is not what jim and we saw right right so are they like at this point now it's like this is a good rockford files like you're in it jim and uh we're gonna have to figure out you know no matter no matter what happens even if you get fired from the case or whatever you're gonna have to figure out what's going on like you're stuck now you got

to sort this out yeah i really i really appreciate it how it's like it's a really elegant narrative maneuver and i'm sure it's happened in other episodes too, but this is kind of like the hook here, which is like where he knows that there's something different, but he can't admit it to the cops. Right. And yeah.

Yeah. And as you say, getting him stuck in just so quickly and efficiently is like a hallmark. I think of this, um, the early era of the show, we go to Janetet carr pouring a drink and telling jim that she doesn't know who prentice was meeting uh so we get our first jim and janet

scene of which there will be there will be many he's suspicious of her so okay we we kind of get the backstory over the course of a couple of scenes, but they have a relationship from prior to her marrying this guy, Prentice. And then he's been kind of like a friend of the family since they got married, but he hasn't actually seen them since they got married. So we start off here with establishing that she doesn't know that Prentice is dead because she hasn't gotten any of these messages or phone calls or whatever from him or from the cops. So he asked her again what she knows about who he was meeting. She doesn't really know who it was, just said he was disturbed and being weird about it,

which is why she was worried about him. He asked where she was. She has this whole thing about how she went out to the drugstore to get something to read. She goes through the whole magazine rack, which is why she was gone. He's like, you know, you were gone for at least two hours that I know of. It's funny because she says, I went through the whole magazine rack. You know that I do that.

And he's kind of like, yeah, you do do that. But this is good because this establishes that he's not lying about their friendship, which is good. And that as far as he knew, she did have the flu. But yeah, yeah. That is a weird, like, I wrote that down too. I always go through the magazine next. You remember that. Yeah.

It's a nice little way to establish that. Like, yes, they do have an outside, like a prior relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when he finally breaks the news to her that Prentice is dead. He has been murdered. And he's when he finally breaks the news to her that Prentice is dead. He has been murdered. And he is now suspicious of her.

Yes. In fact, saying like, I haven't seen you in four years. I don't know how your marriage has been going. He needs to know where she was because the minute that he tells the cops it was a murder because he saw it differently. Right. Now she becomes a suspect because he was there on her you know first of all she's you know suspicion will always falls on the on the you know on the partner uh but also because she hired him etc yeah the timing is very suspicious right the

timing is suspicious but she says that if he doesn't tell the cops she will so like she does want to know you know who killed who killed prentice we end the scene with a uh back and forth where she asked him to stay because she doesn't want to be alone tonight significant pause i can make up the guest room and jim says that the cops would not understand and uh she better get rid of those travel folders that are all over the place because they wouldn't understand that either there's a there's a good enigmatic look that jim gives her when she offers the room like it's uh i mean i read it as both temptation but also like you know that that's not smart right like like you know like like come on now yeah yeah so I think we get a good bundle of mystery for us as audience here, too.

We get the sense that she has lied to Jim, but we're not quite sure why or about what. He's suspicious of her, but the motive is very unclear. And also, if she did it, why would she? Because if she did it and they're like, it's a suicide, she can just be like, be like oh no he committed suicide and it's over right yeah so her insisting that he go to the cops with what he saw implies that she didn't do it at least to me yeah and there's this angle that still fits all the clues or all the clues isn't the right word but but still fits all the, there's a puzzle piece that still fits here, which could be he's being framed for it. And I think that that's like a large part of like why he won't spend the

night or, you know, like he's not going to do things that are going to get him in the, in the frame. Well, I feel like he also won't spend the night. Cause he knows, I mean, this is giving us our first hint. And then it is later confirmed that they were together at some point before she got married so like he knows how she is i guess and he's like i'm not like i'm not interested in like comforting you tonight yeah yeah both it looks bad and i think he's kind of like i don't trust

you right now yeah yeah um yeah so there's a lot wrapped up in that. We go to another office at the police station where we have a – it's like there's another higher ranking cop here. In the credits, he's the police chief. with him summoning in the lieutenant and the sergeant and saying that rockford has accused them with serious charges uh tampering with evidence into capital crime etc and jim's like look i just laid out the facts yeah you are coming to your own conclusions and we get the recap they both both sides recap what they saw yeah and and cops are like, the door was locked. Jim's like, the door was open. So he was lying. You know, the chair was overturned.

There were no signs of struggle. So, you know, point by point, they're contradictory accounts. And then we kind of get to a point where Jim's like, look, I just want to lay this before an unbiased witness. And the chief says, oh, I'm biased. Yeah. That was a very good lie. He's on the cop side of course these are good men and they're good cops and he's never seen jim before jim wants to know why he would come here with a story like that if it wasn't true fair point but the chief has a very i don't know this

feels very like this feels like something that would happen to me yeah yeah we can get an investigation going but it's going to be bad for morale, bad for public confidence. And we're just going to end up right back here. You know, your word against theirs. And who am I going to believe? Yeah. There's a bit more banter ending with telling Jim that Prentice Carr was a suicide. And the next time he needs a change of scenery, not to come to Bay City.

a change and the next time he needs a change of scenery not to come to bay city uh we then go to jim driving and immediately getting pulled over by our two two friends the cops and uh there is a tough guy banter of between jim and the lieutenant with jim kind of running his mouth and uh them warning him a little bit of a smart ass but um i at first i was i thought he might be trying to wind them up for a reason like uh uh because you know he's he's like yeah usually you cops like i i didn't think you'd be he didn't say it this way but like i didn't think you'd be dumb enough to follow me in a squad car right right and it's hard like it's hard to tell what jim's angle is other than than maybe it's not an angle. Maybe Jim's just had enough of this.

I think he's just annoyed. Yeah. Which I think is probably the correct read at this point. They tell him directly to stay out of Bay City. And he says that he can't leave if they keep leaning on him. Yes. And the lieutenant says that... We're not leaning on you, Rockford.

Leaning means that if you're stupid enough to come back here and we pull you over for a traffic violation you reach in for your id we think you're going for a gun it's all over and too late when we find out we were wrong straight up murder threat right right and is too real yeah yeah so yeah they basically uh you know give him yeah straight up threatened threatened to to murder him if he keeps poking around in bay city and tell him to get out of here so at the end of the last scene i was kind of like you know okay there's there's clearly a third party involved you know that something happened you know to rearrange the scene yeah yeah and then at the end of this scene i'm kind of like or maybe they did it there's clearly a third party involved, you know, that something happened, you know, to rearrange the scene.

Yeah. Yeah. And then at the end of this scene, I'm kind of like, or maybe they did it. Yeah. No, this is,

this is definitely one of the like contentious as you're watching it is, is okay. One of the things I like about the writing on this, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of really good dialogue. This is, which makes sense.

We got Juanita Bartlett at the helm here. good dialogue this is which makes sense we got um Juanita Bartlett at the helm here um but one of the things I like about this is all of the suspicion between um Jim and Janet helps put us as the viewers on unsteady ground when it comes to these cops so we don't know if these cops are uh well we know that these cops are are jerks right we know that they're willing to to do extra legal stuff we just don't know if that that's what they're doing here right or no we know that they're doing it in this moment by threatening jim but we don't know if that's like if they're hapless or not in this case yeah we we don't know if they are a responsible party in the murder yeah yeah or involved in some way or whether jim has just gotten so under their skin by going to the chief

and implying that they are lying right that's kind of the crux of why they're mad do they feel that they're the injured party or are they just trying to or are they protecting something yeah yeah yeah and uh look the other stuff that's indirectly related to this like the stuff between jim and jen helps lay the ground for that a little bit because it helps make everything a little shaky and i like that well speaking of jim and jim and janet we go to janet practicing tennis uh she has a tennis machine that prentice bought for her he reports back that bay city ran him out of town and it's gonna as far as they're concerned concerned it's gonna stay a suicide but there's some i i noted it as coded banter here about the tennis machine because she says she says that uh

you know tennis it's the kind of game where you have to you have to stay in practice every day or you're gonna lose you lose your game or something like that and he says oh yeah it would be a real shame if you lost your backhand and she yeah gives him this look getting from this that he finds it inappropriate that she's like well my husband's dead i'm gonna go practice tennis yep just gonna go hang out and enjoy this wonderful day outside they you know walk together um back to the club or whatever and janet says that she's not going to pretend to have emotions she doesn't feel she loved prentice even after it was clear that he didn't love her and uh i think she has a good line uh how many tears do you think it takes to break up a marriage yeah and that they ended up with an arrangement uh

and jim says no love no hard feelings huh that's right so we're getting the story of like explaining why she doesn't seem to be more broken up or whatever right yeah you know the the the love has gone that doesn't mean i wasn't concerned about him. And I don't want to know who killed him. But like, as she says, I'm not going to pretend to feel something I don't feel. Yeah. She's not, at this point, she's not off the hook with Jim. Like Jim doesn't fully trust her. But me, as an audience member, I do.

This is weird. I do. At this point, I'm like, okay. We have a very good explanation for why she's not treating this with the gravity that we would expect. She's behaving in a way that appears suspicious to everyone, but it makes sense. i don't know if it makes sense makes sense because if anyone in your life got murdered you'd be a little you know tripped out but it makes murder mystery person yeah it makes sense yeah yeah there's also this great thing where she's like you know to jim i told you the truth and he's like you didn't even tell me a good lie and i that was good uh you should have picked somewhere where they don't know you you are not the drugstore um and he keeps pushing her on like okay where were you i need to know where you were

she they have some back and forth and she finally admits you know i was out i was out with a man that's not good enough i need a name and she gives him the name sterling parker our story is that she was considering having an affair with this guy, but changed your mind. And he says, what changed your mind? Two hours in the front seat of a sports car. I kind of thought there was going to be follow up, like,

like something to explain that at some point, but I don't know. It's just the line. Like, like I spent some time with him and I was like, no, nevermind. Yeah.

My guess is, um, okay. so cards on the table this person is invented but the situation isn't right the name is invented but my my guess is that um two hours in the front seat of a sports car it would be uh the same as like um what made you change your mind checking into a seedy mot. Like the fact that they can't go anywhere. You know, like it has to be a secret. So, you know, instead of like going to the movies or having a dinner out or whatever, she had to spend the whole time in the front seat of this sports car because they would be seen.

Maybe? I don't know. Because we cut to jim's car right after that so then maybe that's a comment about jim like maybe you sports car guys are all maybe yeah i don't know it's it's not particularly important just i i noted it as like huh i wonder what that means and then no no i same here i wrote it down. And I'm like, in fact, I wrote down two hours of the frenzy of a sports car. What does that mean? Well, we go to not just Jim's car, but Jim's trailer where he is eating Oreos and drinking his glass of milk.

And I think doing some accounting. Yeah, yeah, I think so. He has like some slips of paper and like what looks like a little adding machine or something so you love to see the little insight into his general evening have some oreos do some counting you gotta reward yourself for the hard work right well we love to see it yeah you're like i eat oreos but only while I'm doing the books. That way I have an incentive to do the books. Well, there's a knock on the door and it's Janet come by to resolve this with Jim before he goes to Tahiti. Again, suspicious.

And he says, you're not making a great picture of widowhood. Yeah. I think the line is, and your attitude makes you seem guilty as hell yes so this is kind of weird i mean the scene is fine i was having a hard time time tracking what the what her motivation here was because she comes in she says she wants to settle this with jim before she goes to tahiti so i'm like okay so she she feels some kind of guilt or something like she wants to part on good terms yeah but then she starts accusing jim or not accusing but threatening jim says if the cops change their mind about it being a suicide you look like a good suspect we had a

prior relationship and it's only our word that it ended when i got married you were in the room um you look good for it but i wouldn't do that and jim's got a good retort here where he's like sandbagging never works with me it just makes me unfriendly so that's a good good response that we don't get uh that later on well the whole series is about people sandbagging right so we know that that's the case but yeah he's like uh well it doesn't not make him unfriendly it doesn't mean it doesn't work yeah but she has i mean so plot wise she she has something else to to to give him that might point him in another direction um and it's a receipt that she found in his in prentice's stuff from a liquor store in Bay City.

Then he's like, okay, well, I'm going to need to borrow your car because the cops don't want me in Bay City, so I can't take my car again. And then I guess this is the motivation at the end here. Jim, I know I have to get used to being alone eventually, but not yet. Well, I don't have a guest room. I do. And we have a hard cut to a big office building. Yes.

So we don't know for sure what happened there, but there's clear implications. We can guess. So I guess, yeah, that goes back to okay, so that is the motivation for her going over. And all the other stuff was kind of preamble um in that conversation they also mentioned like was he still working for that insurance company yeah so this office building that we cut to is this insurance company that prentice worked for and he's talking to prentice's boss whose name is Saunders. Wallace Rooney, another good face.

Lots of good faces. Yeah, that's a good face episode. So Prentice was an ideal employee. He started with the firm and grew with it. He was the controller, in fact, which is, you know, a big, big important job. And he was about to be promoted to executive vice president. Jujuz was like okay thanks which is good like don't you want to know more well what does he say he says that something

about the model employee or too good to be true or something like that yeah there's not too much you can learn about someone who's too good to be true or yeah yeah that's what it was yeah yeah he's like well he was a practical guy flametic I like. It's a good SAT vocab work. And doesn't seem like the kind of guy to commit suicide, right? Saunders says, well, I don't understand it, but I believe it. Yeah. 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 world's plural master singular or at dig a thousand holes. 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. We now have a good, solid Jim maneuver. Oh, yeah. Where he calls the liquor store. he has this receipt for liquor store and it has uh it's like a charge account and so it has his account number on it so he's in the phone booth in the parking lot of the liquor store calls says this is p car i need i think it says like your nicest bottle of scotch and a six pack of soda right away we just hear his end but he's like what are

you new okay here's the account number just the assuming you know assuming that role is just the way he says like what are you new here yeah very funny to me he definitely puts on the uh i'm i'm in a hurry it's a classic of a Jim Conn. But here, instead of playing the working class stiff just trying to get a job done, he's the, and this will inconvenience me, the rich man whose name is Prentice. Okay, fine. I will give you the account number since you don't recognize my name. This is very good. And then he follows the delivery car when it departs. Because he says, to the usual address.

Yeah. So he follows the car to the usual address. When there's no answer to the doorbell, he gets out of his car and runs over. He's like, oh, you beat me here. You know? Yeah. It's all very, very slick. Very good. runs over he's like oh you beat me here you know yeah uh it's all very very slick very good gives

the guy what seemed to me there's a there's a moment where you kind of see the face of the bill like he gives the guy oh yeah and i was like that looks like it's a larger denomination than i would have expected but i didn't i didn't check i mean like he's playing a rich man right and also uh there's so the exchange is he hands him money and the kid is like no that's supposed to be a charge and he says that's a tip son you keep it so there's a little bit of like did jim forget he charged it so like is he offering him the money for all the alcohol and then and then is is covering for it no i think he's just giving a tip so that the guy won't question. Yeah, yeah.

Looking out for the working man. Yep. I mean, it's possible that he would expect a tip, and if he didn't get one, that would be suspicious. Yeah, that's true. But no one turns down a tip, right? Yeah. So then he just takes out the house.

We get the passage of time. It's night. We see a white sports car arrive with the top down and a blonde woman gets out. She goes into the house. Jim remains taking out the house. We go to him asleep in the front seat. And then we see the shadow of something passing over his face. And it's like, well, I think I can guess what's about to happen.

Yeah. And sure enough, our friends, the sergeant and the lieutenant, have found him and are saying, what are you doing in Bay City? The smile when he's caught is great. Like, there's just something like, oh, of course it's you guys. And his line, which is, this isn't Bay City, it's Oak Grove. Yeah. My directions couldn't be that far off. So this time

our friends our friends, these cops, are not having any of Jim's guff. They frisk him, start kind of roughing him up, keep demanding, you know, why are you back here, you know, etc. And this is great

because jim hits his limit right yeah he's like okay you guys have messed with me enough gets back in the lieutenant's face says i don't need to tell you anything there's no law that says i can't be in bay city you're like he does his you, appeal to the legal system or whatever. And they're like, we looked you up. You're an ex-con. Again, I think early season really hits this point in a lot more of the episodes about how, you know, Jim was a con. But then he's like, if you kept reading the report, you see that I have a full pardon. Yeah. I'm not on parole.

Because the implication is, you know, you're an ex-con. We can do whatever we a full pardon. Yeah. I'm not on parole. Like, because the implication is, you know, you're an ex-con. We can do whatever we want to you. Right. It's like, no, I got a full pardon.

I'm not on parole. You can't keep me out of Bay city, et cetera. And I don't have to tell you anything. Good banter, good banter. But, uh,

it kind of ends with another ultimatum to stay out of Bay City. So this is a good like final act. Like this is a rule of threes for drama, right? We've kind of had three scenes of these two guys yelling at Jim and they've been slightly different each time, but I'm glad this is the last one because it's starting to get a little repetitive. I think we get the point. These guys don't like Jim and don't want him in Bay City.

The only thing here that I was, you know, I'm kind of left with questioning as an audience member at this point is like, like, was it just chance that they saw him? Or at the are they at the specific house? Because they're involved with whatever is going on? And so is this woman that Jim has tracked down? Right? Yeah, like, did did a neighbor call the police and say, there's a stranger sitting in a car and they just, they're like, well, that might be a detective that we know. So let's go check it out. Or did they, you know, are they sticking out the same house? Are they?

Yeah. Right. I do think it's a little funny. It doesn't matter. And it doesn't really, it didn't, I didn't notice in the moment, but here also, I think what lends it feeling more suspicious is like, it's these two guys, like a lieutenant and a sergeant. It's not like they're out on patrol. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They wouldn't just be driving by. I don't think we ever get anything about why they're there now. It sounds like maybe they're just driving by. Or maybe, yeah, maybe there was a phone call and they're like, we know who that is. Yeah, I don't think this part is actually resolved now that i think about it oh it disappeared from my consciousness shortly after yeah it doesn't really matter um we go to the john reed clinic where jim is walking around and we see kids and adults talking to each other in sign language you know some kind of deaf academy or something.

And Jim finds Janet and then kind of walks by and she follows him and asks, how did you find me? It's like, I'm a detective, remember? This preamble is to establish that she does this volunteering at this clinic. He says that he checked up with the name that

she gave him about the man that she was seeing that night. And he doesn't seem to exist. So try again. And she says, well, the situation, I think, like you said, the situation is real. But that name was fake. The real name is Harry Fielding. He's married and has two kids.

And that's why I didn't tell you. He's like, okay, this one better check out. She's like, it'll check out. The liquor store tip paid off she he uh tracked it back to this woman nancy hellman now he has two good prospects for the murder this woman nancy and janet um and we kind of get back into the their the nature of their kind of relationship and how he just like can't get over the suspicion of her right right? Right, yeah.

He wants to believe her and believe in her good works, right? She's volunteering at this clinic, et cetera. But he also sees that she wants to spend all the money that she's got inherited from Prentiss since he died and run off to Tahiti. And he can't help wondering why that is. And we have a good ending exchange of i'll bet your grandfather was a preacher as a matter of fact he was a horse thief i don't know why but that is uh

that's a contender for uh rockfordishness for me there's just something about like the the sort of the colloquialism of i bet your grandfather was a preacher saying like, uh, you know, none of us have our noses clean or whatever. And then of course, Jim's retort is like, I believe that,

that, uh, Jim's grandfather was a horse thief. Like, and there is, uh, just something, I don't know.

There's just something about it that just is very Rockford files to me. I'd have to, I'd have to, you know, establish some continuity but I'd like to believe, or some timeline-ness, but I'd like to believe that this establishes Jim Rockford's grandfather as a Maverick character. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's possible, right? Will we assume that Rocky is... I mean, he's retired. Ret tired and he's 70 60 70s so rocky would have been born around the turn of the century so that seems about right it seems

plausible yeah it's plausible that's great the headcanon established jim has more business in bay city so he needs another car and this is another good rock Britishness segment. He's buying a car from the security guard at the club, who he apparently knows because why not? Yeah. And it's this real beater of a white station wagon. And the guy says, just when you get to a stoplight, put it in neutral and just give it a little gas.

Keep it running. Keep it running. We go back to this woman Nancy's house. Jim is staked out again. And here he is taking some bites out of a hamburger. And then he sees her come out to get in her car. He wraps up the

hamburger, puts away the half-eaten hamburger to follow her this becomes important again um he follows her out to this long pier there's like pan flutes in the soundtrack at this point which is a an interesting choice i just wanted to like note that there's been some fun music in this yeah there's some pan flas and in some other stretches there's some bongos or something. Yeah, yeah. There's some interesting musical instrument choices in this particular score. Oh, yes.

Actually, the bongos are involved in, I think, the centerpiece of this, which we haven't gotten to yet. Right, right. But maybe my very favorite. But we'll get to it yeah um so he follows her on the pier and then he stops halfway leans against the railing and continues eating his burger just like just someone eating his lunch just enjoying just enjoying it uh but he sees her go meet with the saunders the the boss who's fishing and he hands her an envelope, which looks like it's full of money.

It's a, it's clearly a payoff. It's clearly a payoff. And then the last third of his burger goes back in the bag to finish, to keep, to, to follow her back to her car. At which point we see a shirtless goon with a windbreaker.

Yeah. Shirtless windbreaker goon yeah my uh swg my notes i created a macro so i could write shirtless dude in a jacket over and over and over again does he does he have a name he he does uh is he terry yeah I think he's Terry. This is, in fact, a, what do we call it? An accidental rap. Accidental rap. Uh-huh. On William Jordan.

His first, our third episode of The Rockford Files that he's in. our third episode of the Rockford files that he's in. And one reason he seems fairly familiar, I think is that he is, uh, Andrew Dolan in the Becker connection, right? He's the crooked cop in, in that one.

So he gets a lot of screen time in that one. Yeah. Uh, he was also in the Italian bird fiasco. Um, I assume as a goon, he's got the physique for it. He does have,

he has a very good goonish physique. It's, it's a, it's a shame that they hid it in the police uniform in uh the back of connection just left his shirt on unbuttoned and this is a good look this look for him uh is very distinctive like we can well it's a beach bum distinctive right like it's uh in a little bit we're going to see him in a picture yeah dressed exactly the same way so that we know it's him it's so funny um yeah so we see him peel off and follow jim yeah and then we see him get a blue mustang and he follows the white station wagon which is following the i think it it's yellow, the yellow convertible. Yeah. Our friend who's filled out many of

the cars on the 200 a day files files, apparently either skipped or did not see this episode. I was not able to get any more insight into the cars. Yeah, there's a lot of cars in the episode. But yeah, shout out to whichever of our

listeners has filled in so much of the car stuff because I keep on forgetting to reference it, but it's all good. We have kind of action music as we follow this caravan back to Nancy's house. The camera follows the Mustang as it follows Jim in the white station wagon yeah jim sees that he's being followed pulls to a stop like crosswise across the uh a street to force him to stop and then he tries to confront the goon and he just turns around not a j turn just a standard three-point turn um while jim is kind of like pounding on his on his uh on his on the hood of the car which is kind of funny and then it speeds off and jim runs back to the station wagon but he can't get it started because he didn't leave it in neutral

it's good this episode has a lot of um good moment long stretches of just visual storytelling right like there's a lot of good ones where it's not jim talking to anyone or explaining the mystery but you're getting the gist of everything that's happening and the context just from, like, just well-established shots and, like, that whole thing. He doesn't talk to him at all. Like, there's no exchange there, but we know precisely, like, he's following Jim.

We can even kind of guess it to why he's following Jim, but it's still just guessing but yeah the open question is is this someone who is following jim because jim is getting involved with something right or is this someone who's like following this woman nancy and then picks up jim because jim started following nancy right like those are two slightly different yeah circumstances when we first see him i think oh this guy is sees jim following a woman and is going to be a good samaritan and confront jim about that and that's all his whole purpose in the story is to provide a reason for why jim can't follow her to the next stage or something like that. The fact that he got in the car and started to follow Jim, I'm suddenly going, whoa, this is a new player.

Right, right, right. Does he work for Saunders? Is that what's happening? If he doesn't work for Saunders, does he know, I can't think of her name now, the woman that we're following? Nancy. Nancy. Or are we, you know, like what? Yeah, what role does this new player have yeah no it's good it's a good like interjection of the the pace of this episode is

really good every there's like uh sometimes we'll call an episode a romp where it's kind of more like fun this isn't really a romp episode but the energy of it is very the pacing's very very good you're just kind of like each beat just really pulls you along and it gives you something new new to consider at all the right places yeah you know so now we have new now it's like the cop stuff we're kind of done with the cop stuff now we have this new player and this woman nancy and we're gonna see how this plays out right so uh janet is waiting for jim in a parking lot um He wants her to return this car back to the club and wonders where Rocky is. So we've established we're waiting for Rocky, which reminds me that at some point we might see Beth.

I'm very excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. But he does tell Janet that she's not a suspect anymore. Not after a long and awkward conversation with Harry Fielding. But now he's on to something. He's on to, you know, he's on to something now. He thinks that this woman, Nancy.

So when I, you know, just in the scene, I was like, oh, Saunders and Nancy are in something together and he's paying her off. He's paying her to do something or something. But Jim's read is that she's blackmailing saunders my note is the same i'm like oh jim thinks it's black like i i wasn't thinking that either i was thinking she was being paid off for something yeah which again is a kind of a distinction without really a difference i suppose but yeah but jim's read so that we know what is going on right Is that his blackmail? Rocky arrives.

Yeah, let's talk about this. We have watched one of the episodes before this, I think, right? Yeah, so we're in episode... We're on episode four. I can just look at the top of the DVD. And we've done two and three. So we've actually... We haven't done the Kirchhoff case. We haven't done one. We we've done two and three. And I cannot like, it was it was kind of fun because it was this. I don't know why, but I suddenly got giddy and excited about it while we were watching it.

And Rocky was talking about the truck and just the way he was talking about it. Absolutely. As if Jim had not seen the truck or had heard about the truck, but hadn't. Right. Like this was the first introduction of rocky's truck to jim yeah it is at the very least a very new toy to to rocky so yeah so rocky's not in episode three um so i don't and the dark and bloody ground i don't remember i don't think i don't think he is either um i mean i think he's in it but i don't think the truck's in it. I'm going to go ahead and, without going back to the tape, assume that this is the first appearance of Rocky's truck, which is amazing. Yes, yes. It's kind of fun to inject the position to the car that Jim just had, right?

Right, right. So this is the fourth vehicle that jim is is getting into and uh it is a far more capable vehicle of the one compared to the one he just had you know what really grabs the people the most those road lights up on top of the roll bar i don't want to show it in competition rocky i just want to drive it for a couple hours and then jim jim says you know thanks rocky let me know how much like you know what do i owe you for driving your car or whatever yeah and rocky says oh just just just top off the gas if you could and then jim looks at the dashboard and goes you've got dual fuel tanks in this thing that'll take me 40 gallons i don't use no regular no sir and then jim says

something and there's engine noise covering it up. Yeah. He goes like, if the cops didn't expect to see me in my car, I would. And then he's like, like cursing out Rocky, but he's revving the engine. So that it covers over the dialogue. It's, I think this is, you know, this is a little more contentious relationship about the truck, I think, than we get later, right? Yeah. But it is very fun to introduce it this way.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're still finding their feet with the series, but this is good. This is good, informative material. It does track with the episode where, oh man, the one that's kind of like the uh like the medical horror one yeah it starts off with jim getting rear-ended in the truck yeah and rocky is like mad at him for like wanting to get out of the hospital or whatever because he he can't be mad at him about hurting his truck even though he is mad at him yeah exactly like there's definitely a thread that goes all the way that to that stuff that starts here.

But yeah, I appreciate that it has dual fuel tanks. Sounds pretty rockin'. So Jim drives Rocky's truck to Nancy's house. There's no answer to the door. He goes in the back, snoops around. We see food out on the kitchen counter, which is always mysterious. Sidebar. around we see food out on the kitchen counter which is always mysterious sidebar it is much more mysterious to just randomly have fixings for something on your counter if you don't have kids

this is something i've learned i spend many of my days picking up like one piece of bread and an open can of peanut butter can an open jar of peanut butter and being like i should probably put these away and then putting them down because i have to go do something else do you do you have a uh overturned chairs all over the place too like you know what we don't not have overturned chairs is the visual shortcut for a crime scene the same as having children yeah basically of having a toddler yes yeah we have like a rocker chair with an ottoman that also rocks and uh one of simone's favorite things is to go rock on the ottoman until it turns over until she's got enough momentum that it goes up on its side so she slides off of it and then it's and then it falls over on its top

so sometimes i'll go into the living room and i'll just see the upside down ottoman and nothing else crime scene or toddler that would make a great uh twitter bot crime scene or toddler anyway back to our show where this is clearly coded as something has gone on and um tim vu. And Tim again moves through the space. And sure enough, he sees Nancy's body on the ground. This time we see blood on her forehead and he checks. And sure enough, it's another body. There is a very helpful framed black and white picture on the table of Nancy with our shirtless windbreaker goon shirtless wearing the same

windbreaker yeah it's exquisite taken day of production so they could have that prop sure was put on a shirt no thank you i mean you say that you say that but uh my brother-in-law is, is a surfer. He grew up in California and I think there are a lot of family, like, of course the windbreaker adds to it, but I think there's a lot of family photos where there's all of us wearing all of our clothing and him just shirtless. Like fair enough. That is just how he's going to look.

But yeah, I love that touch. It's very easy to tell that it's good. Yep. I appreciate it because I sometimes can't tell different faces. And so him having the windbreaker with no shirt really codes it in for me. Yeah. And so Jim, of course, sighs and very reluctantly reaches out to the phone to call the cops as is tradition we go from jim reluctantly calling the cops to the full cops at the at the

scene um with our lieutenant and our sergeant of course who have responded you know a bit of where are you going etc etc but the the core of the scene here is that they're not going to book jim now they don't have enough to to you know book him for anything like you're looking awfully good for opportunity right he's like you know what motive i don't know her right etc but this is uh where we get our promised bit from the preview montage but i want you down at the station tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. And bring along that good lawyer of yours. You're going to need him. Her. Yeah.

But as Jim leaves, we see our shirtless windbreaker goon giving him the stink eye from across the street. And he follows Jim in his Mustang. And we get the bongo-rific action music. Yes. As we get into this scene. So you said that this is the the linchpin, the center point of that for you.

OK, so this is there's a thing that happens in this. So there's a car chase. Jim leads him into a lumber yard well kind of by accident right that's one thing i like a car with like a trailer leaves a lumber yard and that cuts jim off so he swerves into the lumber yard yeah and then so they're kind of they kind of accidentally go into it which i i appreciate that i think that's a nice touch and then they they end up uh abandoning their vehicles i think uh the shirtless dude in the jacket um does his car get trashed so he so he took a couple shots at jim right before they go he's packing heat so we have that element of danger and then in the lumberyard they're cut off by a forklift that's lowering down a bunch of lumber

so he has to stop and then jim gets stuck in a dead end so he has to stop so now they're they're out amongst the lumber running around uh shirtless dude in a jacket has a gun he's taking shots at jim jim's swirling around this lumber trying to keep it on the you know keep him on the other side of it and figure out what to do and we'll get to how jim deals with him in a moment because that's fun and that's great the highlight of this story is uh jack clark lumber uh. So Jack Clark is played by Heath Jobes. This might be a rap on him. Yes, this is his only thing in the Rockford Files. He's known for Beyond the Valley of the Doll,

The Borrower, and the Rockford Files. So that should tell you. Come on, he has 21 acting credits. He has 21 credits, yeah uh i'm not here to to i actually really like him but what's great about this is that he's he works the lumber yard he hears the shots and he goes to call the police and it is an enormous amount of business yeah he's he's calling first for the number of the police i think he actually puts money in to make that call yes he definitely puts money in to call the police i i like by that

time i was paying attention and we keep cutting back and forth while these bongos are playing and we're having this action scene there's this guy in this phone booth trying to get a hold of the police to let him know what's happening. Down to the point where we get Jack's name. Yes, there's a shooting at Kellogg Lumberyard. Jack Clark. I work at the lumberyard. I'm an employee here. Yeah, yeah.

It's so great. He's nervous and scared. Yeah. We talk a lot about how incidental characters in The Rock Profiles often have, you feel that they're real. That there's a thing happening. And here's a guy whose only job it is is to do a thing that none of us would have found suspicious right like uh if the police just showed up with no one calling there was gunfire we would have known right this piece of connective tissue doesn't need to be

here like for tv conventions like we wouldn't even question like oh and then the cops show up yeah and now that i'm saying it i think i realized that his whole deal is to create even more tension because jim might be afraid of the cops showing up at this point because he hasn't quite solved what's happening i'm not entirely sure but anyways it's just great because he's he is a character he's not a buffoon or anything there's's like, there's not overplayed, but I do think it was played for humor. And I just, I just love it.

Like I said, it's this great thing to cut to every time you're something happens in the action sequence, instead of going just to the next bit of the action. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it feels like,

I mean, it kind of feels like it's a little bit of padding, but like, clearly part of the script like there's it's not like it's 80 yard like no the camera's on him we're seeing him do a bunch of stuff i i think it's meant to be like a joke not the kind of joke where you would expect the yakety sax to start playing or something like that but just enough of a in that rockford style humor it kind of diffuses the tension a little bit yeah and it also creates some texture in the action scene where maybe i'm just like backfilling right from like yeah looking at this and being like okay so they're in the lumberyard they're running around how many things can we really do here yeah right once they're

out of the cars like what do we do to keep this interesting? And it's like, instead of adding some more artificial barriers for them to deal with in the running around shooting scene, we're cutting back and forth and that's giving us the texture of, you know, the, the,

the, the kind of hit the gas at the brakes brakes, hit the gas, hit the brakes to give us that like action-y part I love it, to the point where I feel like my notes are like, are we going to get Jack's backstory? Like, is he going to start and then finally

Rockford topples a bunch of lumber on top of a shirtless dude in a jacket ending the standoff. The, I say standoff, but rocker didn't have a gun.

Right. Ending the, the, the threat. Yeah. He then kind of gets a drop on him since he's buried under a bunch of lumber, uh,

grabs his gun. So this is my note is that he mumbles for what you did to Nancy. I'm going to kill you as Jim. Yeah. It's like some random like string to start tying it to to tie him up so with that i'm like okay so maybe this would be a very rockford thing too i think he's just like her boyfriend or something yeah and like he thinks that jim killed her and now he's going after jim which is kind of, like is kind of what's going on.

They definitely, it seems that they were involved. And it seems that he thinks that Jim is perhaps Saunders' thug. Oh, sure. I think that comes out in the dialogue, but I can't remember exactly how. So it's a reversal of what, like a possible thing that I thought was going on before we saw him in the picture with nancy so now we have this kind of moment still in the lumberyard before there's cops because they still have to respond to this very long phone call that came he's like i know what's going on and then jim lays it out for for us um to talking to to to our windbreaker guy um so the story is he's put it together is that prentice and nancy like prentice was seeing nancy they were blackmailing saunders

for some reason yeah saunders killed prentice um nancy found him after jim saw him but before the cops got there right made it look like a suicide so that she could continue blackmailing saunders but now she's been killed for the same reason and our goon says that he has nothing to say and jim's like okay we'll wait for the cops yeah he's like all right let's get out of here let's go somewhere we can talk uh and so now they're in jim's uh in rocky's truck jim's driving of course and in a very like in a pattern that i think we've seen most recently from jim our goon says all right so there's a lot of money here hear me out there's a negotiation over how good negotiation

yeah yeah like so he starts at 75 25 jim talks 60-40. He keeps the 60. And he's like, all right. He spills the story. So Saunders at this insurance company was selling these big insurance policies on things that they don't insure, like the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes. and then instead of sending the policies on to corporate in new york he's keeping them and then just collecting the premiums uh for himself apprentice car was the controller found out about it and as that role rather than do anything about it decided to blackmail saunders to the tune of half a million a year and jim's like half a million a year, that is a lot of money. All right, let's go to the cops. Yeah. You said we had a deal. I lied.

We then wrap up that mystery with seeing Saunders. So we're at the station. We see Saunders, the boss, being taken away in handcuffs. So presumably justice is served. and the chief tells jim that he should apologize to the the lieutenant and the sergeant for accusing them of you know tampering with events or whatever and those two guys are like oh no it's fine it's fine we're square and then so they they leave the chief's office and then outside jim says they should buy him a drink to apologize for the way they treated him. So I guess we're getting that they all of that, all the threatening and leaning on him was all just that they were so offended over Jim impugning them in front of their boss. Yeah, right.

I think so. And the we're fine bit at the end is because they didn't want the boss to find out that they had been leaning on him so hard. That's what I, that was my read. Yeah. Like we don't want to talk about this anymore. We're all good. Yeah.

This is, this is water under the bridge. And then we have our final Mills Watson line where he says, come on, let's buy him a drink. Then run him out of town. And they both take his out elbows and he gets this really queasy smile yeah and i thought that would be a fine freeze frame ending yeah it felt like it was

going to be but yeah we have one more short scene i guess we don't find out if they have that drink i kind of feel like jim is maybe uh didn't want to do that but we we go to the restaurant by Jim's, the Sandcastle. Yeah, I think that's right. I always forget what it's called. Or is it Sand Dollar? Maybe it's a Sand Dollar. It's either the Sandcastle or Sand Dollar. Yeah, one or the other.

One of the things I should know that I just keep forgetting. Anyway, the restaurant at the beach with Jim and Janet, they clearly have, well, he seems to have coffee and she seems to have wine. So I guess maybe they had food or maybe they're just chilling. Who knows? I guess she'll be leaving for Tahiti soon, but she has some commitments first. She's going to fill in for someone at the, at the clinic for a month while they're on their honeymoon. So this scene is kind of, kind of calling back to, to Jim saying that he wants to believe in her like being good like doing good works and like a good person but he sees her being selfish and doing things for herself right and so this is kind of the the reversal here where she's like well i want to go to tahiti that's my

goal i'm gonna do it but first i'm gonna keep volunteering if i'm gonna be there for a month i might as well stay through the end of the semester but I am going to Tahiti and she takes her hand and smiles and says sure you are let's talk about it tomorrow and we cut from them holding hands and smiling at each other to our end credits the fun episode I was just looking up the name of this restaurant. And the restaurant also appears in a Columbo episode and a Murder, She Wrote episode.

That all sounds right. But I can't see the actual name of it. I will say, when I first typed it into Google, I said, restaurant near gym. As if Google would know. And did it? It did not. I had to put Rockford there Google would know. And did it? It did not. I had to put Rockford there.

I know it's come up in other episodes. I just don't remember. I think for some reason Sand Dollar is the one that I'm thinking of. But anyways, that's either here or there. I'm disappointed that we didn't get Jack's backstory, but otherwise. Right. And also we did not, in fact, get a Beth appearance. Yeah, no Beth appearance. backstory but otherwise right and also we did not in fact get a beth appearance yeah no beth

appearance and and i you know with it being the fourth beth has definitely shown up already yeah yeah yeah well yeah because she wasn't i mean the second episode is the the the one where she hires jim like establishing the hires jim they have her yeah yeah um the dark and bloody ground yeah um but yeah i really enjoyed it was a good episode to come back from a break on uh it was a very solid rockford files it's fun seeing the early uh early ones uh since we we spent so much time uh i guess sort of in the mid-range is where most of our our viewing has been but i mean you know just going by numbers the early ones being the first season that's one fifth of the total episodes yeah that's true yeah yeah um yeah yeah i i felt like it was a good i i agree that it

felt like a good one to come back on um good kind of foundational like all the solid rockford stuff the story so the i think the thing i think i was saying like kind of the the hugginsness of like having a weird little hook yeah plot of being like selling insurance on something right and collecting the premium like that feels like a very yeah hugginsy seed for for the idea yeah it definitely follows the the mystery format it's not like a complicated mystery but like we stick with jim's point of view through the entire thing right we only know what jim knows for for for most of it we follow him as he unfolds you know follows follows the clues and figures out what's going on. I was skimming the IMDb reviews and one of them says something like,

you know, it's an early episode. So we don't really see Jim's, like he has yet to develop the like sarcasm of the character. And I was like, it's not like he's not sarcastic, but I was like, you know what?

I think that's actually kind of an accurate read. there are some moments where he probably could have been more cutting or been more i don't know more yeah used language that was more colorful right like some of that stuff i mean there were some lines that you know stood out as very rockfordy lines but there are some kind of nuances to the character that have yet to really settle in i think right right um like the broad strokes are clearly all there but there's a little bit of there's there's just like a little bit of colorfulness that isn't that that will come a little more over the course of the seasons this sounds like a i't know. I can't think of a better way to describe it. And it sounds like a negative,

but it's not, it's just a descriptive, which is a little bland. Like there's a little bit of genericism, I think. Sure. Uh, like,

like this could have been popped into like another TV detectives thing. Yeah. Uh, I don't necessarily disagree. I think that there's there are the kernels of a lot of the rock traditionists like the way

he treats Janet I think is very like in line with later on how he's going to deal with things and the stuff with him and the cops definitely played into the but uh yeah i mean i could definitely i can see that one of the things i really liked about this episode was the way it

didn't um so we don't know even who the list of suspects are in the beginning uh and it sort of does this thing where like the beginning part is it's probably these cops we don't know why the cops are doing it they seem like and then that drops away and we're like well you know is it is it janet or is it this nancy person and it's some like weird he was cheating on someone or you know like you know whatever yeah which is great because like early on the exchange between jim and saunders straight up tells you that saunders is the bad guy like it doesn't come out and say it but he's just very like is he when we were uh i didn't make any notes about it when i watched it but when we were going over it in this episode i was like wow this whole exchange is very suspicious like this guy especially when he's like oh i i believe that

it was a suicide like just very like and you should too even though like again it's a very non-believable suicide like who's going to themselves in the gut you know like that's right and like why like there's no particular reason no one is like oh he lost a bunch of money or yeah you know something like it's just like oh what what a weird thing to do yeah yeah so it it was kind of nice having like these without it being very explicit there are these different segments of who the guilty party might be and then yeah yeah yeah the structure this the structure of kind of like like i said that like the pacing of yeah here's a thing to consider here's a person to consider here's a person to consider it's very uh rhythmic and really like keeps it moving along and keeps

you kind of like guessing in the sense of like where is this gonna go it's not really you've done it like which one of these people did it but more like what is jim going to discover next and how is that going to clarify or complicate what we already know i guess what i was saying it wasn't so much not so much of a criticism as the episode but more like just trying to tease out what makes this feel like what makes an early season episode feel early season and it's a strong contrast to the last episode that we did which if you remember was like three months ago but um uh the deuce uh the last you know which had again mills watson in a memorable role but how a lot of that one we talked about how the plot was kind of like the plot was kind of by the wayside and the fun of the episode was

just like watching rockford talk to people yeah it's like be the character yeah yeah it's other characters you know and that's a season five episode so then the season one episode the joy is really watching jim be an investigator and yeah do the pi things and he has his character moments but like we're watching the story unfold and we're invested in finding out what he finds out and seeing where it goes we commented on how a significant portion uh not the majority of it but like a more than normal portion of this episode was just watching jim at work without hearing anybody talking or anything like that like uh which is uh interesting yeah yeah for sure yeah like I have about uh a page less of notes than I

do on average just because there's less talking uh but not because it's any less complicated or anything I really appreciate that early bind he puts himself in i think like i said that's really elegant writing to like put him in that position where now he has to make a real decision about whether he exposes that he was there first or not um and then the balancing act of like who he suspects and why and this one has a little bit of the like, well, if like if Janet had just told him the whole thing at the beginning, he might trust her more. But it wouldn't actually change that much about the story. But you need something else after that to get the story to the next phase. Right. Like the first half of the episode, the tension and the drama is in the like, so is Janet involved or is she not? And then once that's resolved,

you get into the liquor ticket and then, you know, all the investigation and the things he finds out. So if she just told him everything up front, you need something else in that middle space. So I kind of liked that. I walked that line of who does he believe? Who does he not believe?

Why does he believe them? Why does he not believe them? And how we learn about their backstory and stuff so that's all good good efficient compelling you know writing like all that good stuff that we was the reason we started talking about this show for a podcast comes around full circle yeah but i guess again just in contrast to the later season episodes that are more like the character and more like just watching like having fun with our friends which some of those later season episodes are yeah like the the uncharitable way to describe

both sides of that is uh uh you know, you know, in the early time, they lack the full character. And in the later time, they, they don't, uh, they just rely on the characters being fun. And I, like,

I don't think either one of those are good criticisms, but they are, there's a certain truth on both sides. There's a pendulum that swings with like, yeah, both how well the audience knows the character but also how well the the the cast and crew are settled into their world yeah right yeah yeah well uh good one to come back to thank you mills watson for your service you've yes you've

given us four great episodes four great characters any other other thoughts on Exit Apprentice Carr? I've never met Apprentice. Perfectly named character though. Other than that, no. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed myself. Me too.

And one can presume he got paid. Oh yeah, it just seems she seems good for it. Before she blows all her money on tickets to Tahiti. Yeah. I'm trying to think exactly if there was like a situation where she might have hired him for only part of it. And then he was kind of forced to solve the mystery because he got stuck in it. But I'm sure she paid him.

Does he get to claim the 40 gallons of gas as an expense in Rocky's car? I mean, I'm sure he'll, I'm sure he will attempt it, but yeah. Yeah. All right. Well,

yeah, I think that that about covers it. So thanks again to Mills Watson. Thanks again to Epidae Ravishall for joining me on this adventure. You're quite welcome. Hopefully we'll have our episodes a little closer together going forward, but you know, life is life.

Life is life. Sometimes you get run out of Bay city. It's just how it goes. It just happens. But with all that in contention, we still will be back next time to talk about another episode of the rocker files. That's good.