Two Hundred A Day - Episode 108: The Jersey Bounce

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Nathan and Eppy take a trip to the first appearance of Eugene and Mickey in S5E3 The Jersey Bounce. Our "coupla guys" rent a house next to Rocky, and after some serious threats are made, a dead body shows up. Jim is implicated and needs legal counsel, finally hooking up with disbarred attorney John Cooper to turn the tables on our two dim-witted wannabes. Don't look for continuity, but this is a very Rockford-y episode that we enjoyed quite a bit! 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) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * 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

Jimmy, Angel, here's a tip, but his handwriting's bad. Third son in the fifth race at Bell Metals. Wait a minute, could be fifth son in the third. Wait, this might be next week's race. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidaeus Rappershaw.

And for this episode, we are finishing out another survey, not of well i guess technically of the actors but uh of of these two these two characters these couple of guys that we met last time yes going back to season five episode three the jersey bounce so yeah we we chose to do this one because last episode we did season six episode something uh just a couple of guys uh and uh that one we discovered was maybe a secret backdoor pilot or something along those lines it was a backdoor pilot so i think we discovered that these characters had occurred before and we just hadn't you know didn't know um that episode was in in quick summary uh was a david chase episode and was essentially a backdoor pilot for a show that would have been called the

jersey bounce right that would have followed these two characters mickey and and eugene and you know had a lot of prototypical stuff for what turned into the Sopranos, et cetera, et cetera. We talked about that in that episode, but then as viewers or as, I don't know, I was going to say as scholars, which sounds like a elevated term as researchers. Aficionados. As people who have the internet, we discovered that these were characters that had previously occurred. And so here we are to look at the, the Genesis, the origin story, if you will,

of our couple of guys here in the episode titled the Jersey bounce. Yeah. So, um, I'm not a stickler for continuity. I'm going to say that, uh, straight out. Uh, but I do think it's interesting because I, I don't, I don't see continuity. Uh, and i don't i don't see continuity uh and i don't like i don't think this is a bad well okay so we're we're gonna have um something of a recurrence of what happened with us with gandhi right we watched the um last two gandhi episodes which may have ended or had a backdoor pilot or something like that in it yeah we watched uh uh we watched the gabby and gandhi episode first was the first yes gandhi episode that we watched and that was a backdoor pilot for their adventures yeah i believe and then we went back to see because there's like

four gandhi episodes i don't know we could go to the tape but yeah oh we may not have finished gandhi actually i don't know we did we did we did maybe there's only three okay all right all right so yeah the the gandhi saga such as it is so there's three episodes we saw just another polish wedding which is the gabby and gandhi episode first then we went yeah then we went back to see his first episode the hammer of c block ah right and we determined that between that those two episodes they kind of re reconceived the character to be a little more fun. And then we saw the last episode, Second Chance, which was more on track with his character from the second episode, but did have some, you know, a little bit of edge to it from his character from the first episode but we probably talked a little bit about continuity in that sense because it's not like these are continuous like again in our modern age of tv like yeah it's not like these are characters that have continuity in the sense of

they're not designed from the outset to have continuous character arcs from right a to z right it's more like at each instance in time we're getting kind of a different slice of what the writers at that time want to do with the character. Exactly. Yeah. But also there's this very dark element to the first, the hammer of cell block scene that then sort of gets dropped for a much more comedic and lighthearted thing. And that thematically, I think happens exactly the same way here.

There's a particularly dark moment in, in this episode, the characters as they exist in this episode, they can't become the characters. Right, right, right, right.

They're, they're two, they're like, it's parallel evolution. It's like, here are two characters and they're they're two they're like uh it's parallel evolution it's like here are two characters and they're clearly all right so this so this episode is also a david chase episode so this episode directed by william ward uh big list of episode director we're still holding off on talking about him at any point because we still have so many of his to get

through and then the credits for this one are story by cannell bartlett and chase teleplay by chase like chase yeah the as opposed to just a couple of guys which was like 100 david chase however this episode is certainly taking a swing at the same stuff right like yes these are two this is a set of characters they're separated in time by about a year in terms of the you know writing and production and whatever year plus and at no point do i think david chase ever went hmm people will remember those characters so i should make sure to build on what i already did exactly this is certainly a i liked those characters i'm going to take another swing at him right we have two characters who have a certain

dynamic he changes the dynamic a bit and i think it's interesting how he changes it yeah but specifically the idea that these two are uh ne'er-do-wells who are attempting to get in good with the mafia like in some way they want to they want a crime boss to notice them and uh they have big notice me senpai energy yeah many years before that became a thing yeah at least two you know in pop culture and uh these these are not just like uh this is not just like a little background thing about the characters like this is this is their primary motivation in both episodes this is the reason why the episodes go forward they want to be big they want to be big mafia guys and they're kind of dumb and don't really have anything to offer yeah yeah so they're both stories about them

trying to come up with something to offer yeah and both episodes feel like a character study of that right uh but gone in two different directions and these two directions are not really reconcilable but that's fine i think the thing that makes it most difficult to parse for me, because again, we're coming to this totally artificially, right? We are probably the first people in history to be like, oh, remember those guys from season six? Let's go back to season five and see what their deal was, right? If you're just watching the show, you might vaguely remember that these were characters that you saw a year ago. Yeah, exactly. But that's pretty much it so maybe if we're getting deeper

into the comparison um unlike the just a couple of guys episode this episode does is is a rock for files episode so yeah yeah exactly yes um including the debut of a new character that we actually haven't seen i think we've managed to avoid all of the coop episodes thus far. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we've mentioned him, but that's worth talking about too. So as we say, we'll get into it. Um, before we get into the,

uh, brief preview montage, uh, just some content morning notes. Uh, there is an element of domestic violence in this one with some graphic on screen evidence of such um i guess everything else is kind of standard tv tv brutality yeah yeah but that definitely is a plot point

so you know fyi uh yes so uh the opening montage uh like you said kind of brief uh well i mean they're all brief it doesn't matter um i We see an almost car-bike accident at the beginning, which is exciting. When we watched the opening montage, I didn't realize just how out of Mad Max this car is. But when we actually see it in the episode, it's just a VW that would... It's just kind of dirty. Yeah. We see Rockford being a party pooper, which I like. I can't get enough of that.

There's a great set of lines. Are you threatening us? Am I ever? And we get kind of a hint of a car chase at the end, but it's not. Yeah. Yeah, but that's the main thing. Full disclosure, I kind of didn't get a chance to actually watch this until much later than usual uh in my in my day so i was i was eating dinner

and watching and trying to not fall asleep not that that's hard um with the rockford files it's fairly compelling but just you know yeah i'm tired yeah i was a little tired so uh my notes for the preview montage are like someone hit almost hits a bike uh disparted termy uh something else happens yeah so but yeah i did perk up there because i was like oh coop yeah for those who have not been with us from the beginning um we started out our show only focusing on the first three seasons because they were what were available at the time to stream on netflix and then hulu i believe we developed a very strong relationship with all the core characters including beth but unfortunately gretchen corbett did not come back

to the show after the fourth season because of um contract contract stuff her contract was held by universal it was complicated and kind of petty and stupid yeah anyway so in this season we get this character coop who is kind of in the best slot in jim's life in terms of having some kind of legal he's kind of a he's he's part beth and part gandy he ends up having some two-fisted adventures at some point if i remember correctly yeah yeah in this particular episode it's kind of nice because you just see uh you see jim get a bud yeah right like jim makes a friend clear almost from the get-go that they're like hey we're we're good together we make a good team why don't we? And that's fun. Anyway, so I had forgotten that this is

where he appears, so my ears perked up during the preview montage. Hey Epi, did you know that we are a 100% listener-supported show? I did not know that. Wait, I did. I did. And it is because of

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This is one of those episodes that did, you know, it's been long enough since I've seen them that like I'd forgotten a lot of them. But this one, I was like, oh, this is the one. I did not remember that these were the same guys that were in just a couple of guys. Yeah, yeah. But when it starts, well, right away, we start with the Garden State license plate. So we know that if we're not in New Jersey, we've got people from New Jersey. New Jersey has invaded. Yeah.

And we start off with a real party scene. Again, kind of similar to a couple of guys where we start off hearing kind of like rock music that turns out to be coming from their car stereo. Here we start off with some kind of party rock music that they are playing at their party as they are having a big shindig at this house that happens to be right next to Rocky's house.

That's creating all of the drama of the episode uh rolling joints they're cutting a coke um there's like a whole operation and we see rocky in his house reacting to the loud music so yes establishing our place very specifically we get our our drama from the preview montage pretty much immediately with the the dirty vw almost hitting the bike in the street and we have this elderly neighbor across the street just being like you maniac rocky comes out to check on her and she's fine thankfully but uh this car did hit his mailbox giving us our real dramatic tension for the episode. Yes. Immediately we see the mailbox go over. First of all, it's Rocky's mailbox. That's one thing.

Number two, it's a piece of municipal property, which feels like the kind of thing that Jim, in both cases, Jim has to get involved. Right. Both of these are strong, attractive nuisances for for jim yes and we get right into it with jim coming over to see rocky with cops next door talking to all these kids and so this episode is a very strong entry in the just drop you right in the middle of the story um yeah kind of style. Jim is mad. Cause first of all, these kids are harassing.

Right. So kids like, so Mickey and Eugene are a couple of guys. We're going to kind of meet them by name in the next couple of scenes. But I mean, I don't know. These are people in their like twenties for the most part. Like they're not kids like high school kids.

They're kids in comparison to James Garner. Yeah, exactly. But, um, they, uh, rocky doesn't really want any confrontation he says that the cops are handling it uh even though they aren't really the this is all centering around rocky and jim trying to fix up the mailbox while jim is you know getting talked down i think rocky might drop in like don't go after them like you did last week or something like that right yeah we get the sense that this has been going on for a while oh yeah don't start anything like you did last tuesday sunny it ain't worth it there's a really

good gag where we see eugene talking to the cop he's explaining what happened and he's lying you know the whole time yeah yeah he's saying like we're inside listening to the carpenters and something something something they go back and forth and then later the the cops like how loud were these carpenters were they deliberately hammering loudly no officer the carpenters are a singing group real gentle and sweet i love the the layers to that because it he's bringing up the carpenters because he thinks this is going to make them look more mellow and angelic. You know, and even that the cop is not hip enough to get what. To get this reference.

Yeah. Yeah. Rocky says that, you know, he could deal with it if they were just loud and just had their fast cars. But they're scaring people in the neighborhood. And it's the fear that he doesn't like. And so Jim changes the subject to say that, you know, they should,

they'll take a trip. They'll go fishing. Oh, but he's going to drop Rocky off to go fishing himself. Cause he has a business that came up, but he's clearly getting Rocky out of, out of the house for a while. Well,

there's a good falling mailbox gag. We should point that out. Like the whole time they're having this conversation, they're trying to repair Rocky's mailbox and then they walk away from it and it just falls over. That's a good second out of three steps that we're going to get. That night, Jim is recording the noise,

I think for posterity, you know, so he has some evidence, including he's taping the time beep like that yes i don't what that is a name for it right time and time because i mean like where we were that's you you would call and you would get the time at the tone is blah blah and the temperature the local temperature but i don't know if that's like was that universal or just like where i was living in ohio but that you, um, when you didn't have the internet, you just had to call a little robot voice that said, well, it was a woman, but like she was recorded and saying the time at the tone will be, and the time and then, and the temperature is, and then give you the temperature, which is, you know, know really 90 of what you want from the internet so you're good so he has his little tape recorder up to that so that they're getting the time while

you're hearing the loud music coming in through the through the window so you know it's after after noise ordinance hours or whatever yeah yeah because that was another thing they're like well the noise you know there aren't any noise laws till after 10 o'clock, right? So we weren't doing anything wrong. Right. So Jim opens the door to get a better, you know, sound and sees Mickey stealing briquettes out of Rocky's grill. They're pushing all of Jim's buttons, honestly. The only thing they could do more is if they were like like scratching up his car or something right yeah like something real intentional so uh this of course enrages jim

so he he goes over there there's a big party there's all these people and in a incredible move he picks up the cooler of beer and dumps it over their grill and then makes and then tells mickey to put put all those briquettes back and put them all back in the bag and holds his uh i think the he grabs his arm and then literally twists his arm to get him to start picking the uh the charcoal back out of the grill which is very good eugene comes up and confronts jim so there's, there's a tone here where like, they're like, Hey, you know,

Jim's outnumbered, right? There's other guys. There's one specific other guy that is like that at Eugene's back. And Jim says, I'm like, Oh, you're just waiting for me to walk away so you can all jump me. Huh?

But, uh, they already had one altercation. He was Eugene, uh, broke a window at Rocky's place. And then it's unclear whether you know eugene's like oh you didn't want to fight me and jim's like well you were running away so i

couldn't fight you and he doesn't like uh you know it doesn't like the implication that he's a coward but uh we have this great exchange towards the end where we see that jim really does have the upper hand here right like he's really the adult in the room. You don't frighten me. Oh yes, I do. You keep listening to that little voice way down inside you, Eugene.

I want to keep screaming at you. Bounce back to Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a really good portrait of like, I think as, as we say often,

Jim isn't shown to be intimidating by him doing anything overly intimidating. It's by the reaction of everyone else around him. Right. So, you know, we see that Jim has the upper hand because we see everyone else at this party being like,

I don't actually want to fight this guy. And yeah. And so jim is is you know he he leaves the party with with charcoal in hand without getting into anything however the next morning he comes out of rocky's house in his bathrobe to see there's cops across the street there There's a gurney going into a, I mean, I guess an ambulance, but taking a body away. And it turns out that it's one of the goons, Mack, who is at Eugene's back. He was beaten to death last night.

And there are several witnesses. So there's a cop that comes up to talk to Jim. There's several witnesses that said that Jim was threatening him. And so it's not up to this guy to determine whether this happened or not, but he is going to read Jim his rights. Now, Mac is played by Walter Okowitz. That guy. Absolutely that guy. Oh, not Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh just recognize him from everything yeah he's a real that guy but there's there's a character i can kind of see him as maybe it is just as the twin peaks character um yeah he's he's been in a

he was in wizards and warriors oh oh as marco is that an animated show or is that a no it's a it's a live action one yes that is exactly where i'm remembering him from the servant yeah he's like a comedic sidekick in that uh there you go good i've never heard of this the legendary kingdom of cameron is ruled by good king baldorf and queen latinia looks like it's 1983 one season during. During that time, there was, yeah, that show, Manimal, about a man who turned into animals. I'm trying to think what else aired. There was like three shows that for one year I was like in heaven. I was like, this is it.

This might have been like Mischiefs of Science. No, that came a little bit later. God, I'm trying to remember what the other show is. Anyways, that is clearly where I'm remembering them from, though. It won Outstanding Costume Design for a Series. This is a primetime Emmy Award winning show. I would hazard to guess that it's not good. I'm not going to go out on a limb and recommend it but um it there's definitely it

was just you know uh high fantasy late night saturday night i think could have been a friday night um television on regular you know like on regular network television yeah some sort of a game of thrones some sort of thing ring of power right. Right. Well, speaking of that, guys, we are about to meet Jim's new lawyer for this episode, Ward. So his name is Wade Ward. So I think I refer to him as Wade or Ward, alternately throughout the episode. This character is played by Sorrel Book,

who we probably all know as boss hog among other things i did not catch that that's who it was while we were watching it um i will i will point out when we get to it but there's a spot somewhere in the third act where m or maybe not even that far down the line but ram's like that's boss hog and i was like no and i looked it was Boss Hogg. I am not a huge Dukes of Hazzard watcher, so I can't really speak to his characterization. But I know that's certainly where people would probably recognize him from. He's a very different character in this, I will say. Where I recognize him from is from the Columbo Bye Bye Sky High IQ murder case, where he is the murder victim. And that is also a very different characterization.

This guy has range. It's got range. Anyway, this is his only Rockford files appearance, unfortunately, because he's a great character that you're like, yeah, this guy is exactly what you think he is and exactly what Rockford thinks he

is. Yeah. Yes. So Jim has gone to Harcourt and Lowe, the Beth's former firm. There's some dialogue establishing that she's left the firm yeah yeah so this is the lawyer that he's gotten from her old firm he does not seem to appreciate the initial approach to the case which is ward uh spelling out how good a case the da has against jim yeah there's there's some back and forth about whether or not ward believes jim is innocent right and he just kind of definitely

doesn't answer those questions like yeah he thinks that the best thing to do is to plea bargain down to murder too and jim's like i didn't murder anyone i'm not doing a plea bargain then uh ward gets a beep i guess um there's a beeping sound and then he reveals what looks like an entire phone on his belt which i assume is a uh this is what 78 a 1978 style pager yeah to which he goes to make it to the payphone to call into the office to respond to this beep about a um he has like a real case right uh that's some kind of like big antitrust thing and he kind of tells jim a little bit about it and about how it's one of the i think hardcore or whatever it's like one it and about how it's one of the, I think, hard court or whatever.

It's like one of their firm partners. It's his big case. He's going to they've been working on it for five years and he's going to argue it before the Supreme Court. Jim does not seem confident that Ward is going to be holding his case in the same amount of consideration as what clearly is more important to him. There's a feeling that Wade here just assumes that Jim is as interested in this other case as he would be in his own case. There's a clear disconnect between the two characters, and I really dig how that's presented.

Jim is told to stay home, and that night he is indeed home reading in bed when he gets a phone call. And it is a call from John Cooper from the corporation for legal research. And I guess what has happened is he's doing some research for his case, but, uh, Ward left Jim's number instead of his own number by accident,

I guess. And so Coop is calling for his lawyer, but doesn't can't he ethically, he can only discuss the things with the lawyer of record because Jim's like, oh, just tell me what you're coming up with. He's like, I can't do that. This is a wonderful coincidental mistake to get, you know, to get our principles together. Little little thing that both tells us a little bit about how Ward isn't taking this seriously enough. He can't even give him the right number.

This guy, Cooper, does have some kind of ethical, ethical you know structure that he's willing to keep to but jim wants to keep thing you know jim wants to know what's going on so he looks up the phone number in the phone book and goes huh beverly hills yes uh there's this great combination going on in coop as we'll come to know him uh in that he's very uh congenial like he's very like friendly but holds a firm ground uh and uh he just comes off extremely knowledgeable and like this combination of three things reflect rockford in many ways yeah like it definitely even from this first phone call you're you immediately start thinking even if you don't like i already know that these two are gonna to be buds um he started thinking huh all right this guy's not just a little incidental character here something's gonna happen yeah it's a little hard to say whether because i know that he's going

to be more than that i read that into it or whether the show is giving us that even from here maybe it's because we see him like instead of just being a voice on the phone the camera goes back and forth to like show him in his like situation where he's surrounded by books and everything he clearly is perhaps just as exasperated with Ward as Jim would be, but also goes through the effort to not present that to Jim. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into his delivery, but I really do like this introduction of him.

You kind of get the sense that he doesn't mind that he got the wrong, that he got the client instead. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I can't, I can't tell you what to do here. I legally can't. Right.

But you probably shouldn't be using this guy as a lawyer. Well, yeah, that comes up a little later, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, real quick, I want to, to, uh, issue a correction for something I said earlier. Oh, you know,

we're going to come into the scene where we really meet coop, but John Cooper is played by beau hopkins um who is also with that guy uh he's like i think the proportion of movie to tv is a little higher he's a little more of a movie guy actually than a lot of the other you know incidental characters especially in the 90s he he's been working steadily for a long time i know him from this i feel like other you know there's other things that you might know him from he was in american graffiti um he's in some soap operas all kinds of stuff anyway he's great uh looking at the is rockford files credit i realize that we have in fact already talked about him a little bit

because we have done local man eaten by newspaper right i don't think he's in it all that much he's not in all that much but i think there's like one scene that he's in or something yeah i bet at the time we probably did something like oh we'll talk about him when we see him more i guess and we're not really going to see much of him now that i'm looking at i know i i really thought he was in more episodes. He looms larger. But it's really this one and then The Return of the Black Shadow, which is one that I remember and am not really looking forward to doing

because it's in my memory. I'm sure it's a good episode, but the subject matter of that episode is pretty rough. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So this might really be the main,

this and that one might be the main Coop episodes. So we'll get his whole deal in this episode as we go through it. But we have technically seen him before. I was incorrect. Well, sometimes we make mistakes on this show. Every once in a while. Give us at least one mistake every 50 episodes. Well, speaking of introducing, Jim goes to this address because he's like,

oh, I guess I'll go talk to this guy. And we immediately get the semi-expected contrast where sure the address is in beverly hills but he gets out on the street and it's like a bunch of kind of like shares a building with a karate dojo and you hear the like noises of people doing karate which is kind of funny to me and it's just an office in a big mixed-use building and jim strolls right in um and we hear the TV on and we see John Cooper laying back in his chair, kind of doing work, kind of watching TV.

She leave that door unlocked. Coffee doesn't kill me, so neighborhood junkie will. Beverly Hills, you have to expect that. Well, this is Beverly Hills. Of course, Los Angeles is across the street there. The border's that white line down the middle of the road. Legal profession is very snobbish.

Tell me you didn't let out a little sob of gratitude and you saw a Beverly Hills firm in your murder case. Which we, in fact, did just see Jim go, huh, Beverly Hills. Yeah. So, he's not wrong. I do want to point out that the TV is playing uh a horror movie i think i think frankenstein i don't think people these days know that like horror movies were always on tv all like anytime you see a tv on tv it's probably playing an old frankenstein or some universal monster horror movie on colombo they're playing old um film noir or crime, like Jimmy Cagney, like crime movies.

Good old public domain, really, is what's happening here. But like, yeah. Yeah. Or something that they'd probably own. I mean. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think this also, and you can probably speak to this more than me, but there's going to be a bit here about, well, I'll just run through this and then get back.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's the important, the interesting thing to me. So Coop is a legal researcher. So he's doing all this like legwork to give Jim's lawyer information to help him on the case. And Jim kind of lays out like, ah, after you do all that work,

it seems like the lawyer sure doesn't have a lot to do, which is fair. Um, Jim is expressing his reservations about, uh, you know, his lawyer and saying that Wade is no Beth Davenport. his reservations about, uh, you know, his lawyer and saying that Wade is no Beth Davenport.

Wade comes in, uh, bitching about yet another case that he has. I wasn't sure. I wasn't rewinding to check if this is the same. I think it's the same case. I think it's, yeah. At least that was my takeaway. It doesn't really matter one way or the other. It's not Jim.

Right. It's not jim right it's not jims and it's something it's a big like like a soda distributor case and like oh yeah old daniel boone is is the plaintiff or something which comes up again later um yeah and and there's a a good line where it's like oh go ahead you can go ahead and tell us both the information, then I don't have to hear it twice. Yes. So there's a precedent case about someone who was not, you know, who was charged with murder, but was not, but was acquitted

because it was self-defense of private property or something like that. And Wade's like, I don't know if that's a precedent you really want to cite. And then they like get sidetracked onto something else

because Wade keeps getting distracted watching this horror movie on TV. And that precedent will come back to us. There's payoff later. Right. And so what I wanted to say was that this, this trope of the, like the horror movie,

I think it's used here. And I think it's probably been used through this time. And I think it's probably changed at a certain point. This is showing that this person is unserious because they are getting distracted looking at this schlocky movie. Right. Like they're not a real professional because they're interested in this dumb movie. And I feel like that's a trope that maybe has changed. Yeah, I think so. Well, most of the time when I see horror movies playing on television over the years,

it is during the Halloween season and it's to set up some other kind of scare. Like it's like people are sitting there with popcorn and they're watching Frankenstein and you can hear like a woman on the TV screen and they jump or something. And then later on something will happen and you know they're in the horror movie themselves but like it just shows up so often that people are watching horror movies late at night together uh and again not the saw franchise but uh you know visible man or you know abedin costello meet the werewolf or something like that. I guess I just think that the tenor of like someone who's into horror movies has shifted from, oh, that means you're basically a child. Right. To like, oh, you're a cool nerd. Right.

Well, yeah. Specifically around this era, there would have been um during the uh saturday evening slots there would have been like where i grew up there was ned the dead who uh wore forbes makeup or whatever but there was like elvira right the great svengoolie yeah yeah i don't know if he's the great but the chicago area svengoolie who is still going strong and so those horror hosts are always making puns. It's clearly, like you said, schlocky. It's clearly not meant to be. The whole reason why those shows exist is because they can get public domain rights

to these old movies and just show them without having to pay anyone or anything beyond the host, I guess. And it's like somebody being wrapped up in a mystery science theater right right yeah but without the actual cast and mystery science theater involved right but now those horror same horror films are on the criterion collection so i just exactly that's that's kind of the shift that i'm you know kind of getting at but the the rest of the content of the scene is um one issue that they're having is that they have hostile witnesses

that aren't going to talk to coop about anything because he's trying to get background or whatever um but they could depose them but way it's like well it's a criminal case so we can't do that coop plays out a scenario whereby rockford could sue our couple of guys for damages as like civil damages like you're you know on our property or whatever and then as part of the civil case they can get deposed and then at any point you can drop that suit but then there's depositions can be entered into the criminal case because they're part of the public record but they'd have to act fast etc and wade that's the kind of thinking that got you disbarred buddy and but then he does walk out saying like okay i'll start i'll i'll start an action against them in the morning

all right so this is to get us to the the the next scene where jim has followed coop to the bar to talk to him further privately um jim says that coop seems to be a you know a smart guy um but he's not feeling confident about his representation from wade and wants coop's advice and so coop's like well i can't tell you not to trust your lawyer but hypothetically you could still shop around for a lawyer you know at this at this point. But don't sell Wade short. He's really smart. He wouldn't work for this law firm if he wasn't, you know, good at what he does, etc. Jim asks him why he's defending him.

He's like, I'm not defending him. Look, he preliminary is only days away. And I'll be on the thing. And I'll work with Wade and see if maybe I can keep him from derailing when we hit the junction at Centerville. If you're expecting him to derail why are you protecting him i'm not not really and i don't think he will derail and even if he does you could allege that wade was incompetent counsel and he places some sympathy on your side qualified witnesses would be forced to testify to that would you would you testify that he was

watching horror movies while we had our meeting? If it came to that. Jim asks why he got disbarred. He says, well, it's a long story. And Jim says, well, whatever it was, were you right? And Coop says that you'll notice that the law doesn't care about right and wrong, just legal and illegal. And I think that's, you know, generating an understanding here, right, Between Jim and Coop about kind of the kind of person that they each are. So we never get any details about whatever this thing that got them disbarred was, which I think is fine. Yeah, that's fine.

But creating the bond here between like men who will do what is right, even if it's not the legal thing, or men who won't do what's wrong even though they are obligated to by a legal system yeah uh that's kind of the point here they they share a sense of humor right uh because coop orders him daniel boone uh because that's the case that wade's more obsessed with and then uh there's this discussion about the Rockford's like, is that why you have your degree hanging upside down? First of all, Rockford clocks that right away.

And then Coop is like, yeah, yeah, no, that's my own little inside joke. Yeah. I really dig it to the point where I'm sad now knowing that there's only really one more episode for us to watch.

I know. I know. Yeah. I was like, well, we got done with this one i was like oh i can't wait we're gonna get a bunch of coupe ahead of us but no not much we go back to the courthouse uh where they're going to do this deposition um we have a couple of guys

talking in the corridor and so we overhear them and we see jim and coupe overhear them which is important later but eugene is talking about being just a real a real piece of work real deadbeat there's this girl that keeps on calling him and telling him that he's the father of her baby but he's not gonna admit it because he doesn't want to pay child support and he has this line where it's like and she's like you're the one who pushed me down and he's like i'm not gonna be responsible like he's a real real creep and uh and he's he's not bragging but he's like, I'm not going to be responsible. He's a real creep. And he's not bragging, but he's just telling Mickey a story. Yeah. The context here is, this isn't my problem.

Right. We cut to the active deposition in Wade's office where they're asking Eugene about this fight that he says he got in with Rockford. eugene about this fight that he says he got in with rockford um but then he gets a call about his real case and he has to leave and he tells coop to keep him warm so coop's asking the questions um so this whole thing about this the like fight in the window and whatever i got a little lost in the details but the thrust of this is that previous to when the dead guy got killed, Jim and Eugene had had some kind of altercation based around they broke one of Rocky's windows. Eugene says that Jim hit him. And Jim's like, I never got the chance to hit you because you ran away, I think. Well, I think what falls out is that Eugene started to run away and Jim clocked him and got him in the back of the head.

But what's important is that Eugene didn't tell the cops that happened or wouldn't admit that that happened so that the cops would think that the injuries on Jim's hand are from beating Mac. Right. Because, yeah, because Jim has like a sprained thumb or something, but like it's on his right hand and Eugene has a lump on the right side of his face. So it couldn't have been from punching him like squared up. Right. He says that the,

um, goose egg is in the, like he pointed to the back of his head. Yeah. He would have been hit from behind. Yeah. There's just something about this. Cause they tricked him into admitting that jim hit him right and his whole thing he

hasn't wanted to admit it because it makes him seem like a coward is yeah from the very beginning like because he wouldn't have run away he would have fought right like a real man or whatever but yeah what's important for jim's case is that it establishes that he did sprain his thumb prior to when he was supposed to have beaten this guy to death with his fists. Right. Yeah. Anyway, there's a lot of detail about it that I kind of glossed over, but I'm not sure if that's all 100 percent. It doesn't matter too much. I think we got the takeaways. But yeah. Yeah. We then go to the scariest scene of the episode. Rocky is coming home from this. Yes. or whatever. My notes are filled

with exclamation points and oh no, Rocky throughout this. We get him, he comes out of his truck with groceries, which we know is already a sign of impending doom. Yeah, you're going to get assailed if you have groceries in your hands in a Rockford Files. Ominous music cuts in as he goes

from the truck to the front door we actually don't see this does not escalate that far it could have escalated much farther right but we hear you know some of these probably mickey and eugene and these other guys singing a mocking song at him and then like calling him a chicken and stuff. And cause he's like, you guys leave me alone. And then someone, I think they throw a rock at him.

Something hits him in the forehead. He stumbles inside. And then when he turns around, he has like blood trickling out of a cut on his forehead. And that's bad. And then we hear breaking glass and I'm like, Oh no. And then we cut to the next scene so yes yeah now that we're going over it i'm trying to remember yeah because it was it's

it is full of absolute menace i don't know if any of it pans out so rocky is fine and it doesn't come up as a thing later i think it's it's a bit of a head fake, I think, storytelling wise to like raise the stakes a little bit. And it clearly could have been built on later if like Jim sees that Rocky has a goose egg or something and gets all mad or whatever. But that's just not how the story goes. There is a little something in this story that this may exist for, is uh not a plot thing but a tone thing right because what we have the the couple of guys are funny like they're not a ball of laughs to watch but like you're like these are idiots yeah yeah yeah we just had a scene where jim and coop outsmart them on on the record right that's all great and so what this scene might exist for

is to just remind us that they're also a threat right yeah they're not just idiots they're idiots that can harm rocky they're idiots that that can there's still a problem there's still something to worry about you don't need to be smart to be dangerous yeah yeah yeah i think that's right and i think that's followed up actually textually later in the episode yeah it's not like it stood out as like oh this is a weird moment like it totally fits it works with the episode just going back over it just looking at my notes i'm like oh this is a real like ominous note that is not followed up with plot wise, but does work in terms of giving us an up and down tone shift of the episode so that it isn't a lighthearted kind of rompy episode. It is a bit of a, Jim's not on the clock,

but it does feel like there are some stakes that feel like they're escalating a little bit as we go on. 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 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. 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 Rockfishfish on 200 a day they want to get some more background on this guy mac this has come up a couple times so they go to talk to the woman that he was living with his his girlfriend dawn and it's like two hours away or something so it's like a whole day to like go have this conversation um they see a car with a familiar license plate nods n-o-d-z and this is not nudes and this is a great like all right how are we going to get this into our story well jim being a private investigator and knowledgeable of the criminal element oh he knows that license plate that's arty nodzak he's kind of a big big shot vice king kind of guy uh strip clubs and runs the racetrack and stuff like that so the implication is you know he's mobbed up right

they pull up you know from this house and this whatever apart apartment building see this car leave and they put two and two together um one, not put two and two together, they ask. But the woman, Dawn, her name is also Nodzak. Oh, wasn't that your husband we just saw leaving? The reason I'm asking is we were both admiring that handsome car. Oh, that. That was my brother already. He'll be glad to hear it. That car's his whole personality.

That's good. If we were still doing, you know, to to learn from the show for your own stuff i think being like all right we're halfway through this episode we have to introduce a whole new character who's kind of a big deal how do we do that it's like just have all your characters know who this person is exactly yeah it works and and then lampshade the fact that they recognize his car by saying his car is his whole personality. Yes. Yes, definitely. Well, in line with our content warning, it is important to this scene and to the plot in general that Dawn is has clearly been worked over.

Right. She's got bruises all over her face. Yeah, she has bruises all over her face. Black eyes like the whole nine. Yeah. We do have an establishing shot of her with Mac in a picture. Right. And then through this conversation. Yeah.

So she's, she's sister to Artie Nodzak. She was dating Mac. And there's a bit of a gag. I don't know. This is an interesting scene. It's like, it's kind of a gag, don't know this is an interesting scene it's like it's kind of a gag but it's not really at her expense yeah are you talking about like the whale the whale thing yeah yeah it's like well her thing is like he's he was a gentle guy i don't know why anyone would kill him and they're like so how did you get those bruises and she says that she fell down the stairs

going to get laundry and they're like did he beat you up and she's like yeah there's a lot here that she says but basically she's like he was really a gentle guy he cared about the whales he had a an album of whale song that he would get ripped and and listen to and cry um he was a plumber by trade but he always talked about selling lyrics for songs to a band. So really he was a frustrated poet and an ecologist. That's why he would get mad. It's because like he, you know,

he had all these good things he wanted to do that he couldn't do. So when he got mad, he would beat me up. It was, yeah, she's very much making excuses for him. Like, I don't, yeah,

I don't think it's actually meant to be a gag so much as just um uh well i think it actually plays a little bit into a gag that we'll see in just a moment but um but i think it's just like just kind of the way things are where people yeah will make excuses for it has a realism ring to it where it's like yeah she's not in denial but she is trying to put the best face on a situation that is clearly not good for her because like he's also dead now right like right yeah um he did these bad things but she also is grieving and yeah it it's not like a gag like funny haha but there's a little bit of absurdity, I guess is the word I'm looking for.

There's a bit of an absurdity to the like, let me tell you about all these wonderful things about this guy in the face of this very visible violence that he would do. But the point here is that is when they ask her if her brother knew that he beat her up. Right. And I think she says yes like it wasn't a secret or something like that or maybe she doesn't say anything but they kind of look at her and just go like okay like it appears to be known that yes so she has this brother who is a underworld mobbed up crime lord and her this guy who's probably no great shakes, you know, himself knows that there's this guy who's beating up his sister.

Right. So that's the point that we're trying to get out of this situation. Um, we end with, she, she says that she liked them to leave. She needs to have her, she's leading her women's meeting.

Um, you know, it'll really help. There's some good dialogue about that. And then as they leave, they pass two women coming in for this meeting one of whom is very pregnant this is important later and she's saying i hope don likes this album like who needs heavy metal when they're experiencing grief

this guy i thought of you epi i thought of you yeah so i think that this is the gag, that she's probably asked for a heavy metal album or that she's into heavy metal, whereas Mac is into whale songs. Right, right. She's into heavy metal, right? Like that's the – now, I did spend some time trying to research what album this might be. We can't see it. There's no clue. That very much frustrated me the episode came out on october 6th of 1978 so uh if we're going by that which we

shouldn't but um just a week before that black sabbath released uh never say die i believe so it could be that album it absolutely could not be that album because they clearly recorded it before uh so i went back a little further uh and was just kind of going through like what metal albums came out in early 78 late 77 obviously we can argue about what is and isn't metal on a different podcast uh but it could be long live rock and roll which is a rainbow album which again like there's there's some good stuff that came out around that time that that but i don't know there's no way to tell on uh wikipedia they have a lot of like uh fin lizzy foreigner rush which i mean if you want to call them i don't yeah

i mean sure sure i wouldn't you wouldn't okay but again i'm not here to get into any genre uh arguments okay what about so september 1st molly hatchett self-titled okay that could be that could very well be but apparently also in september were the self-titled okay that could be that could very well be but apparently also in september were the self-titled kiss albums oh see that's more i feel more likely so i'm gonna go here's my read is that these are probably not heavy metal aficionados who are coming to the women's meeting just based on presentation right which is all we have to go on i could clue i could see someone picking up a boston album and saying here's a heavy metal album for my friend and don't look back was an august release yeah that's that's what i'm a little worried about see you're worried about

that but i think if someone is grieving giving them a boston album is a great gift because boston rules if yeah i mean i'm not saying there's anything wrong with it i'm just saying that like giving them a Boston album is a great gift because Boston rules. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm just saying that like, uh, calling it heavy metal might, might've been,

but yeah, I think you're right. Uh, these are not the year before though, a year before Meatloaf released Bad Outta Hell. Okay. That's a possibility. Do you seem like Meatloaf fans to me?

I would not disagree with that. Yeah. Anyways, here's the thing like i i clearly have my own taste in metal from that era that is not clearly delineated right uh in that like like absolutely sabbath absolutely you know like rainbow which is like the album's called long live rock and roll It's a much more rock and roll-y sounding metal. Blue Oyster Cult, again, people may not... I think I saw that Venom formed in that year, so that's a nice metal band. Yeah, this is around the time when we get into some, like,

the beginning of thrash and stuff like that. Yeah, it's a little less glam and a little... Yeah, and my tastes don't run glam, and so, like, when it's a little less glam and a little yeah and my tastes don't run glam uh and so i like when when somebody's like i mean there's some jewish priests in here yeah which would be nice in 77 motorheads till the title album came out like that would have been lovely but i don't think it's motorhead either anyway this is really the definition of neither here nor there um um thank you for joining us in epi's heavy metal corner yeah this has to do with rocky's uh he can even abide the music right sometimes

he even finds his own toes tapping right i like to think that that rocky would would tap his toes to some motorhead i feel like that's yeah i think so not outside the realm all right so the rest of this scene is is jim and coop laying out the theory that we already went over um coop says that he'll tell wade about it but they he said like strategically they should save it for the trial so that the defense doesn't have a chance to work around it. And Jim says, I don't want it to go to trial. Let's bring it up in the preliminary, which makes sense. So we go to the courtroom where they're having the preliminary hearing. We have the deposition to show that Jim's hand was already hurt.

And the DA is like, that is as may may be but that doesn't preclude any use of instruments such as brass knuckles or chains right yes and wade goes over to coop and goes coop what do i do that's all i had so this whole time coop has been kind of has been running in her has been saying like look just trust wade he's a good lawyer he'll he'll be there on the day right and now here's the day and and he is not there he does not have absolutely he has nothing you bet you're in trouble recall canigliaro and long and go after their testimony how i mean nobody's denying the threats were made get a pail and start bailing the party wade the party noise dope confusion was all that going on and jim just puts his hands uh wade does grill mickey about being on narcotics and uh there's some great just like kind of character language here yeah um but he did have one arrest for possession in new jersey

so that kind of undercuts his claim that he would never do anything like that but then he's like we were only drinking beer. You know, we split a case of beer. He's like, oh, so you had half of a case of beer, which I remember from my fraternity days was at least 12 bottles. There's some funny, like Wade is very funny. Like this character is a very like humorous character. They're celebratingugene's extension of unemployment benefits from the garden state which i think is very funny too the da calls rocky

to confirm that when their window was broken jim did did use the phrase i'd like to kill those guys and rocky under oath can't say he didn't say that yeah yeah right he's honest to a fault um wade wants to bring brings the thing with nodzak to the judge's attention and we see that nodzak had a goon that was with him and that goon is in the courtroom and so we see everyone see the goon paying attention yeah and then wade wants to bring in his point of precedent which is this case that coop had been saying hey i don't know if that's the great precedent that you want it to be. It's Utah versus Liggett or whatever. When he mentions it, Coop puts his head

in his hands because he knows how this is going to go. Yeah. This man was acquitted for because of assault on his property or whatever. And the judge is like, wasn't that a case about an attack by Comanche like raiders? They like burned the barn and an arm was severed.

Yes. And he tells Ward to give him a break. Like clearly this is not the same kind of case. Like this precedent does not have any bearing on this case. Uh, and he finds sufficient evidence for subsequent proceedings. And then we go directly outside the courtroom to coop, apologizing and saying,

wait, isn't the same man he was five years ago, but we are getting more into Jim's wheelhouse here where he says they're, they have a bigger problem. to Coop apologizing and saying, Wade isn't the same man he was five years ago. But we are getting more into Jim's wheelhouse here where he says they have a bigger problem. Nodzak's goon was in the courtroom and Coop noticed that Mickey and Eugene were trying to get that guy's attention. So like, all right, what's going on here?

So they start making connections for us so we see, you know, where things are going to go next. Did Nodzak hire them to knock off mac for beating up on his sister and then they're dumb enough to leave his body in front of their house they're like well they are pretty dumb that's not totally out of out of you know out of bounds jim is looking for more connections he remembers eugene talking about the girl that he got pregnant and when they went to see don one of the women was pregnant maybe there's a connection there uh coop reminds him that a lot of people are pregnant on any given day

but uh jim's like i'm grasping at straws here i just want to talk to her maybe there's a connection and coop's saying that the only thing that he thinks feels right is that nodzak probably was involved but he's like way too smart to hire those guys and we have a good joke in the cut where we see eugene and mickey waiting at a japanese restaurant to meet nodzak um this might be my favorite scene in the episode actually oh yeah no it's good this scene has the most connection to the characters as we see them in just a couple of guys right they act like they're in a movie um they are clearly uncomfortable in this place where they think they need to be acting in a

different way like they think that this setting is one in which they need to be comfortable because the kinds of guys that they want to be would be comfortable in this setting right that's completely incidental to the content of why they're there right like it does not matter but like they are clearly embarrassing to nodzak so they see him come in and like oh mr nodzak over here right it's like they're just not behaving appropriately they have the like over articulated language of like we are so pleased that you have chosen to come here today to meet us in this place this restaurant right like that kind of stuff invites mr nodzak to join them in a drink they're having amaretto and cream at this sushi restaurant but uh not nodzak doesn't want to you know wants to cut right to the chase you were saying that yeah

they're over exaggerating uh oh god i can never remember which one's which anymore. Mickey, I think Mickey's the more dim-witted one, right? Yeah, in this one. In this episode. Yeah. Yeah, and so Mickey is, like, does this exaggerated language thing, and Eugene is, like, embarrassed by that, and then does it. Right, right, right right right right yeah yeah so

what we learn here is that mickey and eugene on their own decided to knock off mac because they thought it would be a favor to not zach i don't know why this is a surprise to me but it is a surprise to me in this moment and again this falls in with with the characters that we know them from the other episode yeah right yeah definitely maybe more maniacal but the motivation is that like that's that's the second swing at the character right like this is one swing at it and this same kind of person is the other episode is taking a slightly different tack on this kind of person it's sort of all where you're saying hey he's a couple of guys ain't afraid to go all the way he's a couple of guys got their sunroofs down got the diamonds in

the back a couple of guys you can entrust with your whole thing there you idiots You idiots. Excuse me? Who asked you? Who asked you to croak that zero, huh? Nobody. We done it on our own. But we heard he was gonging on your sister, and that ain't right. Ah, so in other words, you did me a favor. And now I'm going to repay you by giving you a job or a piece of my action. No, no.

Not a piece of the action. Not right away. But we did... Hey, what do you think this is a movie and i'm some guy who's got cotton stuffed in his cheeks and goes around mumbling and passing out favors do you have any concept of what you guys did the understanding of the underworld or whatever the mob from these two idiots just crashing upon the the rock of you know reality such as it is of the actual, you know, boss is primo.

Like this, this feels like this is very Rockford to me. Like this whole crash of what someone thinks it might be with like how, how the show is architecting. No, this is how it really works. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's great. Now Zach is, he's played by Luke andreas who we have seen as the the buddy sill from the man who saw the alligators the anthony boy's partner yeah so he was still in

to protect and serve and in the man who saw the alligators and there's actually a rap on him because he was also one of the mobsters in the queen of peru oh okay yeah i think he's worn completely different lapel lengths in all of these episodes recognize him yeah that'll throw you off yeah but i feel like, in terms of incidental mob boss characters, I feel like Nodzak is fitting into that echelon of the urban horticulturalist. Yeah. And I forget who plays him, but the really old mobster guy. Oh, Fish. Abe Vigoda? Yeah, Abe Vigoda. Fish.

Yeah, the guy that Abe Vigoda? Yeah, Abe Vigoda. Fish. Yeah, the guy that Abe Vigoda plays. Not really the subject of the episode, but just memorable. Because this guy's just so straightforward. He's just like, no, this isn't how this works. Now you've messed it up for me, because now I look

really good for this murder if it doesn't go to Rockford. And they even say that it's an accident that the cops are putting this on rockford they didn't even plan that right it just happened and now they're just going with it so they better hope that rockford takes the rap because if he doesn't then nodzak he's like i don't care how bad it looks for me i will turn you into the police and i'm just like of course you, obviously. It's so good. This is a tall, ice cold glass of water compared to like the other episode where they were.

It wasn't that anyone was suffering them, but they were suffering them. They're like, oh, they're idiots, but they're doing their thing or whatever. Where this one's like, he just very much is like, no, they ruined their lives in this episode. They've already done that. He's just the one telling them that it's happened. They've already messed up completely. And they're living in this sort of fictional reality they built up wherein they haven't. And he's just saying, no, that's not true.

None of that's true. And it's, yeah, it's great. It's wonderful. You can watch them get deflated. After he leaves, I love how the two of them are reacting after he leaves because they're both retreating internally. We killed the guy for nothing. I ain't never going to get ahead.

What do you got to do? That ain't happening for me and Chase. You come out here, I'm still in the toilet looking out. I see it happening for the guys. What do you got to do? He should have been someone we hated. Mickey is like, we killed a guy for nothing. And Eugene's like, all of that and I get nothing from it?

Right, right. Yeah. It's dawning on them how bad it is. Right, yeah. They're regretting what they did, but for totally different reasons. Like, he's like we shouldn't have done that because not only are we not getting anything out of it but like that was just a bad call like it's just a dumb thing to do um and eugene's like we shouldn't have we

shouldn't have done that because it didn't get us anywhere yeah or get me anywhere specifically yeah exactly it's great it's great i i enjoy this episode and i like this characterization of these two characters probably more than i did the other characterization uh and i think it hinges on the fact that these are this is the beginning of the end here for them yeah yeah if there was a future for these characters i don't think this runs as uh this isn't prelude this is conclusion yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah this is yeah i just wanted to in case i hadn't emphasized it the narrative import or impact of nodzak saying if this breaks bad for me i'll just take you to the cops. Yeah. Like for some reason that just feels so refreshing and not refreshing. Like,

not that I'm like aching for realism in my, in my detective show, but like there's something about it that, that it stands out to me so starkly because it's breaking the, this kind of unspoken assumption that like, no matter what the mob is always going to avoid the cops. Right. And that's kind of this convention.

And it's kind of this like ultimate call for Rockford to be like, okay, well, you're going to threaten me. Well, I'm going to take this threat and I'm going to go to the cops. Right. And that sometimes that escalates the situation.

Sometimes it diffuses the situation. It depends on the context, but it's always me going to the cops is going to be negative for you because you are part of the underworld. And in this situation, the guy's like, I didn't do anything. You guys committed a crime, even though i'm a mob guy or whatever that doesn't mean i can't turn you in for the crime you clearly committed like sure it might look bad for my

reputation but like it's worth it because you guys are annoying me any threats to kill them but like yeah it's like but that's not the first threat that's the second threat it's also i think to the a clear um i wanted to say like class not class they're not part of his world right right yeah yeah and that this is him saying that like because it's absolutely true that like in the this fictional universe here if they were part of his world, he probably wouldn't go to the cops, right? Like if this were some other mob person. Or like they already worked for him or something.

And like, sure, he might kill them, but he wouldn't take them to the cops. Yeah. But they're making assumptions about things that like he just hasn't extended to them. And so you're not one of us. So you have to take responsibility. You are subject to the police, like all the people you're not one of us so you have to take responsibility you you are subject to the the police like all the people who aren't one of us yeah oh that's good that's good

stuff um we go to coop and jim talking to the pregnant lady celeste she's explaining that eugene's the father but because she needs help, he's not going to admit it. And the connection that Jim is looking for that turns out to be correct is that, so Celeste was in this women's group with Dawn. So she knew that Mac had been beating up on Dawn and she told Eugene about it. And so that's the connection, how Eugene would have known about the whole situation. And then Jim and Coop fill in, oh, they must have gone off by themselves. They fill in for us because it's the story that, you know, what actually happened. They decided to do this to get in good with her brother. Yeah, Jim's like, I can't believe that they killed someone on spec.

Yes, it's a great line yeah and coop has a good line that it's abbott and costello meet the godfather so right again just all the lampshades but it's good it's like it wraps it all up pretty nicely yeah um but until they have any evidence it's all just guesswork so in order to gather evidence uh they give celeste some marching orders, I suppose. She calls Eugene, Jim and Coop are listening in, to tell him that he's in danger. Don told her what happened and that Artie's really mad. And she's going to tell him more about it if he agrees to help with the baby.

He's like, okay, fine, I'll give you some money. Now what's going on? So as chance would have it, this tracks with what he knows, right? But he's saying, Artie's getting madder and madder. He's going to come to get you and Mickey tomorrow. He said he's going to do awful things to your hands and your face

and then turn you over to the police. That feels not like the actress improv bit, but that the character improv that particular line. Because I do feel like Coop and Jim react to that line a little bit like okay all right no that works wait wait celeste wait listen you you you gotta get word to to this dawn to tell her brother see i got a plan i've been thinking it's foolproof you gotta tell her plan what are you talking about i won't kill mickey What? Then you really did kill Mac?

Yeah, yeah, me and Mickey. But the important thing is you got to tell Artie not, Zach. She had been told that by things she kind of was like, it hadn't sunk in. And then it was like, oh, I'm going to kill Mickey. She's like, oh, you really did kill Mac. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not important right now.

I have a solution now. Don't worry about it. There's a little bit of drama here because he's on the phone saying i'm gonna kill mickey and then mickey comes in and he's pretending like he's on the phone with his mom from jersey and then mickey goes back out and so his plan is that he's gonna put the body near rockford's trailer maybe even plant the weapon in his car and that's the answer to everyone's problem you know rockford goes to jail like it's just another body in the feud rockford goes to jail arty knows he can trust me right like that's kind of like yeah yeah yeah he thinks he's gonna come out on top of him yeah um and so then he hangs up and then tells mickey that they should go down to

the go down to the ocean he knows a guy who has some good dust and then they can hit the bar maybe pick up a few skirts and mickey's like all right yeah let's go this idea you've had so we go to paradise cove where jim and coop are waiting in uh in the firebird sure enough mickey and eugene arrive eugene says he met someone who has great dust who lives in one of the trailers over here. So he's getting over towards Jim's trailer. He pulls out a straight razor, which is like, yikes. And we have a bit,

a little bit of a drama where he pulls it out and then Mickey turns around and he turns around real fast and holds it. So that Mickey can't see it. Oh, I'm just my zipper stuck. I have these damn zippers. You go on ahead of me while I try to figure out my zipper. Alright. But then as

he comes up behind Mickey with the straight razor, that's when Jim turns on his lights and shoots forward in the Firebird to cut him off. Everyone goes running. Coop grabs Mickey and Eugene runs away from Jim and then turns to confront him with their straight razor. And we have this confrontation where Jim pulls

out his belt. Def defensive weapon of the, of the belt technology. I mean, I really enjoyed this because it is like watching Jim chase him and think, well, this guy's got a straight razor. What's Jim going to do? Uh,

but then like the belt, like is great. Cause it's, it's, uh, it gives them some reach. It gives them some, makes him slightly more threatening

when it comes to something like the straight razor there. But this leads up to one of my favorite resolutions. Oh, it's so good. First of all, this is a man who's been in a knife fight without a knife before. That's Jim Rockford. And yeah, after a couple little tense moments, he actually knocks the razor out of Eugene's hand.

And so he turns around to run and there's like the Paradise Cove like security guy. Jim yells at him to cut him off. So he's on the he's on the pier and he's running and then he sees he's cut off on both ends. So he he looks one way and looks the other way and then grabs the rail and he leaps over the rail. and looks the other way and then grabs the rail and he leaps over the rail and then the camera cuts to a signboard that has the high and low tide written on it and as we cut to that we do it and we see low tides like 10 30 something and then we cut to jim and he looks at his watch oh it's so good he's just like hey coop i got mine it was just and we look over the side and we see the see see eugene sprawled on the sand right at the edge of the water is this yeah

ties all the way out it's very good it's one of the it's a standout a standout resolution and uh yeah so presumably the justice is served. Jim gets off the hook. And as we go to our final scene, where there's a moving truck with people taking stuff out of the house that's next to Rocky's house. So one presumes that they're no longer occupying it with all their partying ways.

Jim and Rocky are putting the mailbox back in. Nice and proper. They put it on a new like steel post and they're sinking it in real deep, like how it's supposed to be. Coop is there asking Jim, you know, OK, it makes sense that you're not going to pay Wade because he didn't really do anything for you. But, you know, I'm an independent contractor. I'm a third party.

You know, how am I going to get paid? And Jim says, like, well, you have a really good, you know, head on your shoulders. I was thinking maybe we could work out some kind of informal retainer to get legal advice going forward and in a very Rockford-y moment Coop says well how about let's pay the bill first

then let's talk about it you know going forward and Jim says let's go in the house and have a beer and we'll talk it all over so they all go in the house and after they close the door we talk it all over. So they all go in the house and after they close the door, we zoom out and we see the moving truck backing up, backing directly into the mailbox,

knocking it all the way over and then pulling away and we freeze frame on the knocked over mailbox. End of episode. Completing its destiny. So, yeah, I really, I mean, mean obviously i like the reflection back at jim uh at the very end where coop is negotiating with jim the same way that jim has to negotiate

with his clients i love the the third beat with the mailbox thinking about this episode i very much enjoyed this episode i like this take on these characters but it is it's hard to look at like how this ends and think that these could possibly be the characters with the same name and roughly the same relationship to each other running the same pie in the sky scam to try and get into the mafia that's in a couple of guys yeah when they're caught in attempted murder and murder and one of them was trying to kill the other just like yeah yeah there's there's a whole bunch here that's like okay this didn't it's been a year you probably don't remember these guys so

here we go we're gonna take another run at them definitely if if they were to be taken as the same characters it actually works without changing anything about the episodes the direction that we watch the episodes makes more sense than the direction that they actually aired in right right like because also in just a couple of guys jim doesn't know who they are right he's never met them before right and then they're they're kind of like buddies by the end even though he's kind of like he's good yeah and they even say like we'll send you a package out you know maybe you'll get a package on your door from jersey like buddies by the end, even though he's kind of like, yeah. And they even say, like, we'll send you a package out. You know, maybe you'll get a package on your door from Jersey or whatever at the end. If that's the end of their first encounter and then their second encounter, maybe there's one line where I can't believe how badly these guys have turned out or something, you know, like.

Right. Yeah. Because it's like that actually sets up fairly nicely the idea that they need to leave Jersey for some reason. So they go to L.A. and end up renting a house next to someone named Rockford. Right. Maybe they got it wrong because they thought it was Jim and it was Rocky or whatever. Yeah. And then, you know, things have gone bad. They've gotten worse. Like they are darker people.

They're a little dumber even. And their whole saga ends up with like this you know almost blood opera turning on each other thing at the end there's a thing about the two the relationship between the two of them where in this one mickey is just just thick yeah he's not seeing what eugene is was doing and in the second one, Mickey actually feels smarter than Eugene, but it's still falling for Eugene's things. Like he's a little bit skeptical of Eugene stuff. And then,

and that makes him feel a little smarter. He has an extra dimension in that one where he's kind of the one who's, who's there. They're kind of equally dumb, but like Mickey's the one who's quick on his feet in the moment and eugene's the one who has big ideas right yeah exactly and then in this one it's like neither of them are quick on their feet in the moment and eugene is the only one who has ideas yeah so the the the couple of guys versus the jersey bouncers uh the couple of guys are i think better primed to be a series right

like they're better primed to have more stories told about them whereas these the the jersey bounce guys are very this is a this is a good story about them uh and this is all you need to know about them and this is the end of them for sure yeah art artificially trying to create continuity yeah it should go the other way right yeah yeah but the reality of the situation is like we had these characters like we came up with these characters we david chase it sounds like came up with these characters found these actors who are a good match for the characters and decided to run it back when they had to do another episode and couldn't really have james garner and very much of it yeah yeah you know come come that that era of the series

you know i said it at the beginning i'm not a stickler for for continuity this actually fits in well with like a lot of my favorite fiction like i really enjoy a lot of stuff from the pulp era where you have uh they're writing for different magazines no one's thinking when they're writing these short stories that they're all going to be collected put in chronological order so no one's looking back at their older stories and making sure that they match or the characters are even from the same universe yeah it's like reading um some of the i mean some of the conan stuff obviously but like yeah some of the like dying earth stuff where it's like here's a character this this character has the same name and i guess theoretically is the same person as was two chapters when i

collected in a book or whatever as i read about two chapters ago but the context here makes it sound like no one has ever heard of this person before they were the most famous wizard in the land or whatever and it's like yeah because they were just two different stories written with like oh this is a name that i like yeah oh the dying earth one in particular is there's the a character who dies in one story and then it's a get another story and i'm like oh this must be before the that and no he dies in that one too yeah and there's no explanation there's no just like um and and like it's also something that not just in the pulpy stuff but like also in um more uh highbrow fiction and whatnot like authors will circle around a thing and just take a couple

different shots at it to see what's the one that they you know i'm not done telling a story about these two goofballs or these two ne'er-do-wells i should say they're not necessarily balls i'm not done telling a story about them so i'm going to try another one and i'm going to try another one yeah and like yeah that's just a perfectly legit way to go like i enjoy that kind of thing where i'm like oh okay we're gonna take another shot at it let's see what it looks like this time it's a it's kind of an artifact of our franchised era where everything is assumed to if not have need or if to not need have continuity um and this is the world we've built for ourselves right and so I think the two of us can be called

skeptics of this approach right generally however that doesn't mean that I don't look for it right because I do yeah yeah and so it is interesting and a bit a bit of a bop like it just feels weird right it felt like a little weird watching these characters and in my head trying to fit them into the characters I already knew I kept forgetting fit them into the characters I already knew. I kept forgetting that they were the characters we already knew. I mean, like we made, it's been about a month since we reported, I think. And I just sat down and started watching the episode like any old time. And then partway through, I'm like, oh, right, these two.

Like I didn't even really physically recognize them. Yeah, Eugene more so than Mickey. Mickey was very, because in this episode, he's very withdrawn. Like, he just doesn't have a lot to do. So Eugene's really the one that I focused on. And again, I think I felt the connection most in that scene with Nodzak in the restaurant, where it was like, oh, all of these little themes and just little character presentations. Those are all the ones that are brought into just a couple of guys it's like this is their personality like it's all in that scene it's not in the earlier stuff it's like in

that scene with nodsack that it's like oh that's who these guys are so yeah i don't know what i really expected um i mean i enjoyed this episode I think it is a... Yeah. I would recommend someone watch this episode over the other one, because this one's actually a Rockford Files episode. Yeah. And it also has Coop, which is great. I think we haven't talked about it really, but the Bo Hopkins, James Garner chemistry is very strong. They definitely seem like buddies. They seem like guys we're going to go have a bunch of wacky adventures they they feel almost instantly like old buddies too which is

which is neat and it's also refreshing to have give jim a buddy who isn't uh a grifter yeah a grifter or thinks jim's a pain in the ass. Like, there's just a very... Jim's buddy sphere is a little... Could use a little, like, just wholesome. Yeah, he does seem like a wholesome buddy, which is nice. Yeah. They both have that kind of, like, we're from somewhere else, but we also feel like we are very L.A. to me.

Like, because Bo Hawkins, he's... I don't know where he's actually from, but at least this character is, like, has a little bit of a, like, southern kind of has a bit of a draw you know that kind of thing and yeah and and and jim you know he has he is from oklahoma he is he is californian but he is from oklahoma kind of like he has that edge to him too so you just see that there's like a lot of resonance there and it's like yeah you could see coop just being in episodes not even for the plot or for just like being over because he's they're having a cookout right yeah or they go to the basketball game or like whatever just like a couple bros

just being bros he's from south carolina just look that up there you go that makes sense i think most of the characters he plays are in that vein just looking at his credits yeah but good you know as as one might expect from the core writing crew very tight script yeah very efficient use of you know various devices to get the story moving along we didn't really talk about it but the pacing was really good there's like a it just like you were saying the story just hit where it needed to hit and did its thing and kept going and was threatening when it needed to be threatening and gave the characters room to breathe when that happened too.

I, yeah, I really, really liked it. The tone shifts are really good. You can really map them. You can really map like threatening comedic, threatening comedic,

like kind of up and down and i think it would make a real regular kind of wave wave yeah yeah keep you going through the episode um very constructed in like a a good way in like a a nice you know healthy way um you know some of the like dramatic uh uh uh coincidences to keep things going along are very written, but we like things that are written. So there's nothing wrong with that. If we talk, if we talk the episode out, I think we might've,

I think, I think we've, I think we've, we've, we've run out of things to say about the episode. Um, yeah. Interestingly,

I don't know if it's that interesting, but, uh, just glancing at the episode schedule. So this is early season five which i think we've established is probably the most interesting season in terms of like risks and guest stars and like weird stuff that they do yeah so this is in between rosendahl and gilda stern are dead which is the ave pagoda one oh yes and the debut, I think, of Rita Kapkowicz, or maybe the second one with Rita. So it goes that

one, then this one, then White on White and Nearly Perfect. Oh, yeah. That's a great three-episode run. I would recommend watching those three episodes in that order. I think that would be fun. I think they're all on the same DVD, too, in the DVD set. Yeah, they're two, three, four of the first

four episodes yeah yeah yeah because i've never seen that good whoa yeah oh this is good i'm just scrolling through season five i'm like oh yeah there's a lot of bangers oh boy um is this the best season i don't know i'm not willing to say that no i'm not i'm not gonna every time i scroll through a season i'm like huh is this the best season so yeah yeah all right well i think even though this is very much a jim does not jim is in trouble jim does not get paid right in fact jim might have to pay but you know he makes it out the other the other side unscathed which is what we like to see yeah agreed that all said i suppose it is time for us to figure out what our next thing is

going to be our next our next movement for the show uh so we'll go and do that but be assured that we will be back next time with another episode of the rock for files