Two Hundred A Day - Episode 109: A Fast Count

Episode Date: November 27, 2022

Nathan and Eppy get in the ring with S5E10 A Fast Count. Jim is invested in a promising young boxer, but when his manager Morry is pulled in by the feds for a bribery charge, Jim reluctantly agrees to protect his investment by figuring out who is framing Morry and why. It seems that a rival manager and Used Car Queen "Right On Ruth" is behind it, but the more Jim digs the weirder the whole thing gets. This was a really fun episode to go into detail on, and we go to town on the math involved in the boxing industry, among other asides. Highly recommended! 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) * Brian Bernsen's Facebook page of Rockford Files filming locations (https://www.facebook.com/brianrockfordfiles/) * Tom Clancy, Andre Appignani, 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

Jim, you give Peg the 200 for the painting, she owes me 70, and I owe you the 46 for the Christmas trees. Harry's still out 60 for the dinner, but at least it'll void that check. Welcome to 200 Today, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Pauletta. And I'm Epidaeo Ravishaw. We are, are we sticking in the fifth season?

I've already forgotten. Was our last episode fifth season? I believe, yes, yes. So we are a little deeper in the fifth season? I've already forgotten. Was our last episode fifth season? I believe, yes, yes. So we are a little deeper in the fifth season. We called it audible. I think last time we were considering closing out Coop. Right. But we decided, why do Coop all at once? Yeah, I think I think that was, I,

I think I made that call mostly because we looked at the Coop episodes and the, the remaining meaty Coop episode is one that I remember being kind of a hard watch. Yeah. And like the, the subject matter is a little as dark and I just wasn't feeling it. So we decided to take a little look at the state of the state of play for where we're at with the episodes and seasons.

We could just start closing out directors and writers since we're very close on some of them. So after taking a look at who we're close on, this one actually hits on two of our near-duns. Near-duns? Is that a word? Near-duns? Yeah, near-duns. Near-s? Is that a word? Near duns? Yeah, near duns. Season 5, episode 10, A Fast Count. So this one was chosen due to being near the end

of the episodes directed by Reza Badiyi. We have one more to do after this, and our last Badiyi directed episode that we saw was a different drummer. Our episode 98, which is the very weirdly titled medical horror one. Right. That I will never remember that that's which one that was until I look it up again.

I was having a little moment where I was like okay i should remember what that one is but okay yeah um and so uh preview of coming attractions it means that his last episode that we do will be a beth episode so oh yeah that's why i chose to do this one first yeah and i think maybe we'll talk more about him in that um but he's a iranian director who i think i mention this every time just because it tickles me but among other claims to fame but he's a iranian director who i think i mention this every time just because it tickles me but among other claims to fame um he's super super prolific and uh is credited with coming up with the hawaii 50 surfing wave curl title intro that's great good good stuff um and i think he has a pretty strong suite of Rockford Files episodes under his belt.

But again, we will talk about that in our next episode. This one is written by Gordon Dawson or Gordon T. Dawson, who we talked about recently because he wrote The Deuce, our episode 105. Again, we are actually coming up on the end of his episodes. He has one more after this as well so maybe we will do a little more retrospective on him after watching this episode i want to reflect on his other episodes because i feel like this one has some peculiarities with how it's structured that i really like and i'm curious about whether that's a theme or whether or or not yeah it's wow it's interesting because his just looking at his um range of episodes because he has quite the range yeah and they're

they're um so he's got uh the trees the bees and tt flowers which is a great two-parter uh he's got both the hammer of cell block c and second chance uh Pastoria Prime Pick, which is a good one. That's one that looms large in the canons of 200 a day. Right. Because it's one of the early good, one of our earlier episodes. I think that like our earlier episodes, we keep referencing back to more because we just end up having referenced them more often than the other sure sure but i feel like that was also one of the first where we really got into um the like yo jimbo references and stuff like that so it it's it stands stands out it's it was one of the first like jim go

somewhere else episodes that we did and it's a it's a good one it's a good episode so yeah that one makes sense um yeah and also fun fun trivia fact uh this director writer combo also occurred once before for second chance oh okay or is that or is it buddy also directed that episode so which we did as our episode 49 back in may of 2019 wow were. Were we ever that young? That's a pre-pandemic episode, that is. Yes. So I guess it's a wrap on this particular combo. But, you know, if we want to get really nerdy, we could see how many director-writer...

I guess we would have to do director-writer combos that are not the staff of the show writer. Right, yeah. We really should have plotted this entire endeavor from the beginning. Right. To just. End with all the combos or something. Yeah.

End with all the combos. Combo breaker 200 a day. Yeah. If only we'd thought ahead. Yeah. If only we were the type of people who thought ahead. Yeah. So, yeah.

Again, maybe we'll talk about Gordon Dawson a little bit more. We talked about him in the Deuce, and we'll see if there's any other reflections to have on him when we do his final episode sometime in the future. But, yeah, this one, so we were, before we hit record, we had a surprising discovery where I have more notes than normal and epi has fewer notes than normal so uh we want to make sure that we hit all the hit all the high points and talk about why that is actually yeah i mean the the quantity of notes is not necessarily correlated

to the quality of the show right right right that, right. Also, there's a scene in here that makes me think, I think of specifically as it relates to, long-time listeners may know that I used to make a living transcribing television shows. And when there are sequences wherein nobody talks, this was always great for me. It was a break. And there's a wonderful sequence in the middle of this that I probably should have taken some notes on because it was a great for me. It was a break. And there's a wonderful sequence in the middle of this

that I probably should have taken some notes on because it was a great sequence. It was a tailing sequence. We will, as we say, get to it when we get to it. But it may be that I have less notes because I just stopped taking notes when people stopped talking. And that's out of habit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know you know yeah i think for my part it's there are a lot of little details in this episode and for whatever reason i was like i want to make sure i get all of the little details and i don't think all of them matter or it's not that they don't matter but uh again we'll get to it when we get to it, but I had some, I had this desire to make sure I had all the facts straight and that turned into like an extra page of notes. Yeah, it is a fun one. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, this, this is all just preamble to say, uh, this one might be longer.

It might be short. I don't actually know. We'll find out, but at the risk of it being long, let's go ahead and get right into our preview montage. All right. The preview montage, which the preview montage which i think thankfully is short yeah it is short we get uh 150 000 spandolas spandolas i'm pretty sure that's what he says uh and this is a way to draw rockford in i'm going to point out when we get to

it uh but like this is a funny way to draw rockford in in the going to point out when we get to it uh but like this is a funny way to draw rockford in in the opening montage it feels like he's offering rockford 150 000 spendolas that's not actually what's happening but uh we get the wonderful um oh man i what's her name mary fran is the actress uh doing her car commercial where she's declaring war. Just it's good. She's the used car queen. That's great. I think, though, the best part is that it ends on a peel out, which is exactly the kind of energy you want going into a Rockford Files.

You want to be like, let's get there. And also it demonstrates that there will be boxing involved. Oh, yes. Boxing. Yes. I got a question. Right. So the name of the episode is A Fast Count. Now, being who

you are, did you know what this name referred to? Because it didn't occur to me until the moment it's mentioned in the episode. And I was like, oh, right. Yes, of course. So I remembered this was the boxing one. And yeah, and a fast count is a boxing.

I mean, it's a combat sports term. Yeah. It's a boxing term and thus also a wrestling term. And we can maybe talk about that when it comes up. But yes, between knowing in advance that this was the boxing one, then, you know, that didn't surprise me surprise me i mean it's a good name for a boxing episode it is as far as i know unfortunately no wrestling episodes of the rockford yeah i think he mentions a wrestler at some point or he mentions going to a wrestling

match at some point but yeah that's unfortunately what could have been there was a person i know on the internet who does a podcast um about territory era wrestling and he mentioned uh there's a wrestler who was in the fabulous free birds called um terry bam bam gordy and he tweeted that he originally wrestled under i think his shoot name or at least his last name was his shoot name which was um terry meeker and it would have been this era would have been the early 70s and he wrestled in texas or at least his last name was his shoot name, which was Terry Meeker. And it would have been this era. It would have been the early 70s. And he wrestled in Texas.

That's wonderful. Right. So I was like, oh, so obviously there is the Rockford Files episode that never was, where Terry Meeker gets sucked into some kind of shady promoters con game. some kind of shady promoters uh con game and his manager uh or he asks angel for help or something and angel sees a piece of the action and comes to jim and so jim has to become jimmy joe meeker to go rescue his you know his nephew terry meeker from the predations of this crooked L.A. area wrestling promoter. So he has to kayfabe the relationship and pretend to be a wrestling manager. That's beautiful. Wouldn't that be great?

I will at some point have a memory of that episode. At some point in the future, I'll be like, wait a minute. We've constructed a memory just for you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. future, I'll be like, wait a bit. We've constructed a memory just for you. Yeah, exactly. Hey Epi, did you know that we are a 100% listener

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That is the podcast before the podcast. And that's where we talk about other stuff going on in our lives and games and movies and all kinds of things. Yeah. We extend special thanks to our gumshoe patrons supporting this episode of 200 a day. Join Mitch Hampton to examine all matters aesthetic and what it means to be human at the Journey of an Aesthete podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Bockelman, not Brockleman, at Jordan Bockelman, Bill Anderson at BillAnd88, and of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them too at 200pod. If you're interested in helping keeping us going, you can do so for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. Thank you. Thanks so much. Well, we know that Jim is a sports fan and that apparently extends to combat sports. As we start off our episode with Jim watching boxing on the TV. Eventually we learned this is a Tuesday night fights is the program. It gets broken in with a commercial from right on Ruth, the used car queen.

I think you mentioned the actress already, right? Yeah. Mary Fran. She's great. She seems like she has been in more Rockford Files episodes than she has, but she's only been in one other one, actually. So this is a wrap on Mary Fran. Oh, wrap on Mary Fran. She was in Counter Gambit, where she's the woman who has the pearls that the goons steal,

and then Jim pretends to like, or Jim like runs a con to get in close with her and then tries to find out if they're real or not or whatever, but they will take the whole time. And then angel does the swap with the paste. And it's a good one. It's a good one that we did a long time ago. That would explain a couple of things.

Now, first of all, I remember her from the Newhart show. I'm sorry, from Newhart, which is separate from the Newhart show or whatever. I think it's the Bob Newhart show, then the Bob Newhart show, the Newhart show, then Newhart. Anyways, the point is she plays his wife in it. But I also remember her from the the episode you just mentioned counter gambit

counter gamble uh and there's something i didn't mention during the opening montage that because of my when i first wrote my notes for the opening montage i thought i don't know if this actually exists here we don't see her and jim in the same scene in the opening montage or we do briefly we do briefly because i think it's at the table when they have their sit down there's just something about her the way she looks and maybe just being in the rockford files but i'm like oh the opening montage sets her up as the opposition yes but also you think there's gonna be a thing right there's gonna be a thing between her and jim you don't look like this on the rockford files and don't end up entwined in jim and some with jim in some way right like uh so during the first part of this i keep thinking how is this gonna work right right right yeah as this goes along but it was already like a foregone conclusion from this commercial

in my head yeah i mean and the commercial is this is the one where she's in like the little red dress on top of the car saying she has acres and acres of fine used cars yeah why don't you come down and make her an offer or come down she'll satisfy you or you know something something to that effect and then like lines and lines of used car salesmen in uniform. Red Blazers. Blazers, yes. Red Blazers.

Very important. Yes. Not just anyone can wear the red blazer, Epi. Yeah, that's true. Yes. As we learn. Also, a classic Rockford meal. This is a good eating episode my core. Jim never gets to eat observation. So yeah,

he's pulling fixings out of his, out of his fridge. We see him start to mix up a bowl. I assume it's taco fixings. It looks like he's going to put them in a folded something, but we never get to see him eat because after the commercial, they come back to the fight and they announced the next match on the card. They announced the opponent

who's oscar jones from bakersfield and jim gets this look on his face and rears back and goes bakersfield this is a moment in my notes where a lot there are a lot of question marks in my notes and that's not necessarily a bad thing this is a mystery it's gonna unfold but like i also was like bakersfield like why are we upset about that jim i want to know let's find out we get our episode credits as we are introduced to uh our other core character for the episode mori um who is a cigar chomping i don't know fire plug of a guy yeah red face his face is so red he's not in connection to anything in particular he just seems to have a very red face um he is the platonic ideal of uh boxing manager not promoter

manager which i think is a very clear distinction that we need to draw um and i can't believe he wasn't in more episodes of the show this is is his only Rockford appearance, which is wild. So he's played by Kenneth McMillan, who, among other things, was. Are you looking at the movie credits? Baron Harkonnen of the original Dune. Yeah, he's Baron Harkonnen in the. Is this the David Lynch one? Eighty four.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, he's in tons of stuff. He's in a bunch of movies like he's he was in the 74 taking of Pelham 123, which I know people. Oh, and he's Dog Day Afternoon. He's in he's all over the place. That original taking of Pelham 123 is an amazing movie. Yeah, it looks like he is a cop of some kind. Yeah, probably what he ended up being in a lot of these he's uh he's got a great face for rock for files he's got a great name his character's name is mori i can't think of a better name for this character mori hawthorne which is fantastic yeah no he's he's he's incredible and he gets a lot of screen time he's he feels like

a recurring character yeah by the end of the episode like yeah we could have seen him in other stuff but yeah so mori is a boxing manager he's uh checking in with his protege his big his new big thing jesus hernandez who's in the gym working a heavy bag um there was a deal that didn't work out um But and Jesus tells him that there's someone waiting for him in his office, some investor. So Jim, of course, is in the office sitting in Maury's chair waiting for him. We see immediately that they know each other, etc. So I think my notes, I have so many notes because I wanted to track what exactly the deal was here. And it comes through in the back and forth dialogue and it loops a couple times.

And so hopefully I can summarize because I think it is important to know. Plus, I'm just delighted by the details. They're good details. This is simultaneously a very James Rockford style investment and also a very non James Rockford style investment and also a very non-james rockford style investment like if you told me he did it he made the investment or if you told me he uh you know threw amore out of his trailer uh for suggesting the investment i would have believed both of them right right really could go either way yeah yeah so the the deal here is that mori manages jesus in order to fund his career getting him off the ground he sold shares to investors so jim has a five percent

stake in jesus hernandez as a boxing concern now he wants him to sell it back i guess what is implied and then i guess confirmed is that he was supposed to have this fight last night that Jim was waiting for. And then when they announced the guy from Bakersfield, he's like, oh, that's not my that's not his. What's going on? So he's like, look, you can't even get my guy on TV. I'm never going to see this money back. You told me you would pay me back, you know, exactly what I put in. Yeah.

Questions asked. So that's what I want. Maury, there's a there's a good gag here where mori tells him let me give it to you straight like two or three times jim uh look uh you mind if i level with you oh why not mori when all else fails okay the that opponent bobo riddell um they use the so the language is owner which i't love, but I guess is the term of art in this situation. Yeah. You can have an owner and you can have a manager and they're not, not, not necessarily the

same person. So the owner of Bobo Rydell knows that Jesus will win the fight. So she's not willing to sign the contract. And it turns out that this is Ruth beats in white, uh, the used car queen right on Ruth. She also is into boxing. She collects boxers like stamps. She'll only sign the fight if she also gets a buy-in

to 50% of Jesus, so that she makes money either way, right? Yeah, yeah. And if he doesn't sign this contract, she has the clout to keep him off TV entirely because it's due to her interest in boxing that Tuesday Night Fights is even still going. She's reinvigorated boxing in LA through her interest.

Jim's like, well, in that case, I definitely want my money because it sounds like he's never going to be on TV. And then Maury's going to level with him again. And then three guys in suits come in looking for Maury and turns out they're the FBI and they're arresting him for a bribery of a federal official charge so before mori can explain why he can't give jim his money back he is literally dragged away in handcuffs by the fbi the business with this fbi uh the scene

is played i think for definitely for comedic effect. To the point where I, in my notes, I'm like, is someone running a scam? Right, right. It seems like there's too much official dumb. Because they come in and they seize his typewriter to type up the form. They record what they are saying to him. Yeah. Like, here are your rights. Like, they record reading they are saying to him yeah like here are your right like they record reading him his rights there's a guy sitting on his typewriter typing up what the other fbi guy is

reading to him and then when he says what is this all about he like writes that in the document too and they're like you got what he said and then they take him away in handcuffs yeah yeah it's very it is very like uh i'm trying to think there's a particular style that this reminds me of. And I can't think of like, it wouldn't, it would not be this scene would not be out of place in Twin Peaks, right? It's a little surreal. whirlwind of activity that is all bureaucracy. You know what? Actually, it reminds me, it wouldn't be out of place in Brazil, right? There we go. Yeah, that's about it. Yeah, where, yeah, it just feels like a swarm of bureaucracy fell upon him and stole him away.

We're all just like left in the wind wondering what happened. Yeah, and Jim's just on the periphery like also not knowing what's going on um so they take all this so he's hauled away another of the fbi guys starts taking all the stuff out of his desk drawers and won't talk to jim jim grabs mori's coat out of the closet and runs after him with it which is a nice a nice touch yeah giving him a reason to follow them out to their car where they're stuffing mori and as they go all the boxers who are in the gym are all clustered around asking what what's happening and jesus is out in front he's wearing his boxing gloves right yeah and he is clearly agitated and jim ends up holding him back from like throwing a punch at

the fbi guy which is probably a good idea um You know, he wants to know what's happened. What are they doing with Maury? Jim says, I don't know, something about bribing an official. He's like, oh, he must have gone too far. Too far with what? Jesus's wife's grandmother is at threat of deportation back to Mexico. She's been in the U.S. illegally like her entire life. But I guess she's facing deportation.

And Maury was trying to help out and keep her from, said he would, you know, do something. And so Hazel's like, it's all my fault. And Jim doesn't want him to jump to conclusions. He asks, this is a wonderful, I don't know, this is a wonderful little move to keep Jim involved.

Yeah. I can't let him do that to Maury. Man, he's in jail for trying to save an old lady's life. How hard is it to get someone out on bail? Oh, not too hard if you know the mechanics. That's great, man. You know, Jesus. Maury's always saying what a great guy you are.

Yeah, yeah. Jesus. Uh, yeah. I like how specifically it's the mechanics of getting him out on jail because clearly that's what jim you know his expertise is going to be we go to the hall of justice where jim is having his supervised conversation with mori uh he got two counter checks from mori's bank so he can just fill out one for two thousand dollars to give to the bail bondsman and then you can fill out the other one to give to jim for his piece of jesus uh i don't think we ever find out how much jim paid for his yeah i don't think so either yeah it's a five percent stake that's what

we know there'll be more delightful information about what that means later but yeah yeah it is not five percent of the whole let's just put it that way. Mori says that he only has $2,000 to his name. So if he pays Jim, he's not going to be able to make bail. It's not cheap to bring a kid along these days. It's not just Jim time and

sparring partners. He's supporting Jesus and his whole family while they're getting him off the ground. He doesn't want him loading trucks well while this is happening while he's training and yeah yeah but he insists that he's innocent he didn't try to bribe anybody he would never do that um and jim says he checked it out he has a contact of course and the story that the fbi has what they're running with is that that the fbi has what they're running with is that maury sent a five thousand dollar five thousand dollars and like a note like thinking in advance for right for for whatever you can do to the

official in charge of this deportation um hearing with another and promising another five thousand dollars for satisfactory results in the matter and it was typed on his typewriter and sent on his letterhead. And there was even a discarded draft of it in his wastebasket. It's a lot of evidence. Real neat. Real neat. But Maury

insists that he's being framed. I think he says, so is doctoring my water. You've got to believe me. Good line. I guess Jim, you know, he accepts that the priority is him making bail. So Jim and Maury are back in his office where they find not only all the stuff has been taken, but there's a copy of an order suspending his manager's license pending resolution of the felony charges. So he's to cease and desist his activities as a boxing manager. Maurice says,

you know, obviously he's starting to spiral. This can't get out. Investor confidence will be shattered. If everyone wants their money back, he'll be ruined. Jim, of course would like his money back,

but he asked him to look into it. Um, and he offers Jim another 5% of, of Jesus. If you had 10 percent of the current light heavyweight champ that's what would be worth the 150 000 spendolas so i mean that's the thing that i mentioned in the opening montage what he's offering is a a chance at something he's estimating to be 150 000 he's not offering jim 150,000 spendal as and there's enough if on

this that jim would normally be like that's that's not an actual case thing but jim's already bought it he's he's already purchased uh five percent stake let's let's call it a five percent stake for now um and uh there's also like you say i think a clear indication that jim and maury go back you know they they do have a nice like old pal chemistry not old buddies grown up together but they know each other they're familiar with each other yeah and also jim sees i think you know he sees a situation right like if you if you game theory this out. Right. If he currently has five percent of, you know, if he if he currently has a stake that is presumably worth seventy five thousand. Right. By this math that we are presented with here, that's contingent on Jesus Hernandez competing. And if more he is framed and goes down on these federal charges, Jesus Hernandez will never compete.

So it's worth zero. So now he's being offered the extra 5% to look into, and he says, I can look into it for a day or two, which is in his own best interest anyway, because if he can't get money out of Mori right now for his stake, he's lost it all anyway.

So he might as well spend a couple days and see the increased payout. This all tracks to me. This all makes sense to me, given what we know of Jim. I'm not throwing suspicion on the motivation here. And like I said, this does feel like the kind of thing that Jim would make an investment on. Not for the money making opportunity. But more kind of the excitement.

Yeah. He does gamble a little bit. and you know we know he's into the sports and stuff it just seems like the kind of thing that jim would be like oh yeah i gotta i gotta stake in a prize fighter there is uh some business with the doorknob on the way out yeah and he's like will you get that fixed i made a note of it this is either a fun little thing that they just kept in or it's going to be important later. I seem I too like wasn't sure which way it was going to go. And not to spoil the suspense.

I think it's just a I think it's just a three beat gag. Like it's just a bit. Is it? But is there three beats? There's three. OK, I thought there were. I think two beats. I might have missed the middle

beat uh we'll see we'll see jim goes to uh he's going to start his investigation with the guy who said maury bribed him floyd blasted so he's this immigration official jim is posing as a reporter from the civil service life and times which you see that jim did his research because Floyd was written up in it last year. It's a great publication. It's, oh God, it's such, I mean, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's based on something that exists, but it's such a Rockford Files publication. A promo rag for the civil servants of the federal system? I don't know about today, but as recent as like a decade ago,

these magazines still existed. They're like trade magazines. Yeah, trade magazines. They're just everywhere for every profession that a publisher thinks they can make money from, selling them things that they already know, I guess. And clearly this guy is a, as is textually stated, he is all about the publicity, right? That's what he is looking for.

Well, Jim says that he's writing an article about the anatomy of a bribe. And so he wants to know the nuts and bolts of it. How did it happen? Who came to you? And as it turns out, a prizefighter type dropped the envelope off with his secretary. So there was no direct contact but he has been in contact with maury who's been increasingly desperate about mr hawthorne he's been increasingly desperate about the foreign national in question and seemed like he would be

willing to do such a thing plus the physical evidence is pretty yeah rock solid they're interrupted by a call to the secretary from the mailroom where his press conference from that morning made page three with a picture. And it turns out he held a whole press conference to talk about this bribery situation because bribery is an epidemic in our country today. And he intends to make a graphic example out of Mori. We go to Mori on the phone trying to convince another investor that he can't give him his money right now. He's going to stand in line with everybody else. Jesus is in there.

So from here on out, we get more and more Jesus in the scenes and we see that they're more. Again, I've seen this episode. I didn't really remember it other than being the boxing one. So it easily could have been slash. I may have expected Jesus as a character was kind of important to the plot, but kind of a, just a minor character. And I think I was pleasantly surprised to see how he actually has more presence as the episode went on. So Maury himself comes off uh a little slick he's an

operator yeah and you can go into this think of mori and thinking he's running a con on jim and the the way mori and jesus interact does great work to ground mori and make him just a decent guy like to us as the audience very familial like uh we'll see him just having family dinner with asus and his family and you know um uh yeah i like i like that interaction jim comes in with what he's found out and uh more has been saying that the investors have been calling ever since the paper hit the streets everyone wants their money back for what it's worth uh jim does think that he's innocent. Or does think he's probably innocent, I think he says.

Almost positive. Only a fool would try to bribe a gung-ho fed like that in whatever else you are. You're no fool. He runs down the description of the guy who dropped off the envelope that he got from the secretary. As they say, a scrawny... Because they described him as a prizefighter type originally. And this description does not sound like a prizefighter to me. that he got from the secretary is a as they say a scrawny i don't because they because they describe him as a prizefighter type originally and this description does not sound like a prizefighter to me which is kind of funny but he's like a scruffy beard black guy hole for an earring but

no earring and jesus clicks with that it says it could be tony malavita um there's a sparring partner that they would hire for like five bucks an hour or whatever. But then they cut him loose when it turned out that he was a junkie. And now he buffs cars downtown. So Jim goes to a auto body shop downtown and sure enough, finds him buffing a car. The prize fighter type thing, it didn't occur to me until you mentioned as we were going through it, because I remember them describing him as such and then it didn't occur to me that this tony does not fit that bill for me what i what i was imagining as the prize fighter type at all but also like i don't know anything about

prize fighters so like there's no need for me to to get involved i wonder if that was set up to be a joke just based on going through it again. But it's very slight. It's just a little thing. So this is a scene where we get to see Jim deploy his legal blather, his run his mouth with some legalese, which we haven't seen in a while. It was one of his good classic Jim Kahn typologies. classic Jim Kahn typologies. So he says he's from the DA's office and he might as well get the preliminary info

while he's waiting for the SIT, the Special Interrogation Team, to arrive. So threatening sounding. Wants to know when Maury first approached him about delivering the bribe. If he cooperates, there's a slight chance that he won't have to take the full rap for the um tony malavita denies knowing anything uh keeps keeps quiet but does look a little worried and then jim's like i'm

gonna have to call the office and find out where that team is you stay put malavita you stay put if you leave this lot you'll be a violation of section 814 title 20 subparagraph 6 and 5. You got that? You know it's important if there's a subparagraph that you're citing. But once he leaves, Tony, of course, drops his buffer, runs to a payphone to make a phone call,

and then we see Jim watching him from across the street. You get the idea that, or at least I get the idea, that there's a two-level thing here either tony tells him something from the you know the legal stuff and he gets some information great or this happens which is also acceptable yeah which i'm just going to point out in a classic 200 a day sense uh is a great way to run an investigative. Like if you're like, they need to know something for this game to continue forward. Then when they ask the question,

instead of just stonewalling them, have them either answer it outright because they want to, or they feel threatened if they don't or whatever, or do something immediately after being asked that leads to a conclusion or something. And have that be the thing that's in peril is like which way are they going to go right right there's there's still a direction to go even if the answer is i'm not talking yeah it's not it's never a closed door it's just which of these exit doors are they going to take and in this case we take a wonderfully filmed uh exit door to a sidewalk foot it's not really a chase because

it's a it's a it's a following a shadow you know this is wherever they film on location in la um lots of people on the sidewalk yeah and we have like the camera in front of tony so we're seeing him nervously moving through the crowd and then about half a block back is jim also moving through the crowd very confidently like he kind of stands out you know because james is a big guy he does you know he's kind of head and shoulders over the crowd just naturally and i also very much appreciated just watching this little sequence the music's good yeah that's great there's interesting business that happens in it that i did not write down because again as i said at the top of the show i have trained myself to just stop writing when people stop talking but uh i think my favorite bit so it leads to tony talking to someone in a car and we know we're all old

hands at this. We know that this is like, we should get a license plate or we should, you know, this person's important. This is, this is the, the,

the detail. And then a bus pulls up. Jim's waiting at a bus stop watching from across the street. And then a bus pulls up and I, it's classic. It's just classic. You just, you know, no one's going to be there when that bus pulls away jim you should have known but yeah he doesn't want to he doesn't want to tip his hand and unfortunately

sure enough the bus pulls away and the car is gone and tony's gone um i did think that there there's a white guy with a short haircut in the catalog. That must be the immigration official that Jim already talked to. A white guy with a short haircut. Yes. And it is not. It is a different person. But I thought it was.

So I was like, oh, okay. Like, that's interesting. Yeah. That's a different story where, like, the immigration guy is, like, setting this all up just for, like, self-aggrandizement. Yeah. Like, there's there's a story there that could have been told that's not this episode but i was making those notes and then uh and then in the next piece of dialogue jim says i've seen that guy in that cadillac before

but i can't remember from where and i'm like yeah okay it wasn't it was not yeah yeah it was not the immigration guy that's a good frustrated jim though well cause he couldn't get any of the things you just said. He couldn't get the plate displayed. He couldn't get anything from, you know, any more information about the guy. And then everyone just disappeared. He couldn't follow them anywhere.

Um, so Jim's frustrated. Maury is freaking out. He's pulling pills out of his desk and pounding them and moving around with a lot of frantic energy. pounding them and moving around with a lot of frantic energy. Jim says that he called Blassett to pull in Tony because the feds should be able to sweat the tooth out of him. So hopefully something is going there, you know, to clear Maury's name, right?

Jesus comes in. Maury, you seen this? Yeah, yeah, I'm busy. Not now, but... Maury, everybody in the gym's talking about the ad, huh? What gives? What does the ad say, Jesus? Nothing that concerns you, Jim. It's just an internal thing. And you, get back busy. Not now. Boy, everybody in the gym's talking about the ad, huh? What gives? What does the ad say, Jesus? Nothing that concerns you, Jim. It's just an eternal thing.

And you, get back out on the bed. Stop bumping into it every time you run out of breath! Couples it up, throws it away. Jim, of course, just picks it up. And there's an ad in the paper addressed to all investors in Jesus Fernandez to come to this, like like it sounds like a hotel, come to this hotel at this time to hear an offer to buy your shares. That's how they work.

Maury says he's talked to all the investors. Nobody's going. You're not going to go either, will you, Jim? But Jim says that he should check it out because this is a great line. Whoever is trying to capitalize on your troubles may have had a hand in them yes and uh we get to one of the most mathematically yes uh joyous scenes that we've had in in a minute so i'll set the scene here we're in this meeting room in like a hotel or whatever uh there's rows of chairs there's a blackboard and when jim walks in there's the number 190 is written on the blackboard uh our

used car used car queen uh ruth is standing up front along with a man who turns out to be her husband who's calling for order trying to get everyone to settle down and then jim comes in he sees as a crowd of people it's totally yeah right and he's like am i in the right place well how much how much of jesus hernandez do you have he says five percent and everyone groans and the guy goes over and erases a zero and updates it to 195 that i i just wanted just to say that i loved that that moment i don't believe they have a percentage sign on the chalkboard at all. So you're looking at the 190. My thought was maybe like a bidding thing going on or something.

I don't know. And then when he says 5% and everyone groans and they add it to it, like it dawns on me. And it just feels so good. It's just like, oh, right. Yeah. And as Jim says, Maury sold 195% of Jesus Hernandez. Oh, it's so good. And then Ruth has some quick math for Jim. I didn't write down the exact number, but what she did right off the top of her head is figure out if, okay, we can probably figure this out.

One second here. Right. She says a number. We'll see if your calculation and her number, we'll see who's right. The fact that she's able to do it clear off the top of her head is impressive. Basically, 195%. There's 195 shares. So you want to know what percentage of 195 is five percent that's

2.5641 zero two five six four ones but anyways the she goes your five percent is now worth 2.5641 you've been cheated mister it's an amazing calculation for someone to just uh say off the top of their head uh at some point later on i think she remembers it too she says the number again later like in a different context yeah yeah so there's there's something going on here because i think there's a point in because her husband is the accountant right uh she kind of is like i needed him because he knows like i don't have a head for number or something you know it's like you do you absolutely do yeah there's something else going on like she's but um yeah it's great it's a wonderful moment and the other

thing again kind of indicating something else going on that comes up you know will be important later is she tells her husband to start handing out the contracts and he kind of like fumbles with the clasps of his briefcase and she snaps at him like like hand him out already geez we're all waiting around like it is established for us to see that she like really rides him yeah all right so we get the good math going get the good math out of the way and she says that uh she's offering these investors 20 cents on the dollar of their investment it's the last chance that any of them are going to get their money so now we have a back and forth between jim giving us a little bit more detail and defending maury and ruth

making the case for you should just sell me these just just sell me the shares yeah he says that more is being framed uh the feds are moving on one of the conspirators now he specifically says a guy named tony malavita and i'm like jim you shouldn't say that name yeah yeah i know from the synopsis that someone gets killed in this episode and i'm pretty sure i'm starting to think i'm starting to see who's going to be yeah uh so that's a bit awkward, but whatever. It's it gets it into the into the air. And he says that he's not going to sell yet. He believes in Jesus.

He has an undefeated record. It's pretty it's really impressive. It's like 18 and 0 in amateur and 10 0 and 0 in his professional fights or whatever. Like, so it's extremely good record. And maybe more is being framed just to give a way to buy jesus at a discount so ruth her back is up what are you accusing me of i'm not accusing anyone of anything just saying what makes good sense through this we've had shots of the crowd including a very specifically framed uh a priest wearing like the collar and everything which is a good visual gag

and then he actually stands up because there's some crowd work here Ruth says that Jesus has been mismanaged from the start she can get him five figure purses within a year if you believe in Jesus you should you know I'll take him to the top or whatever yeah

and Jim says that they can't take more into bankruptcy court for 15 days. So none of this is going to change until then. Give it a couple of days to see how it ends up. A guy gets up. But he burned you too. How can you stick up for him? I agree.

To forgive is divine, but not in Mr. Hawthorne's case. Yeah. But Jim reiterates that a couple of days won't make a difference ruth says accept that this is my only offer and jim replies as bad as you want it the price is only gonna go up and he convinces the crowd yeah i feel like again in a very i don't know tabletop rpg way he he makes his his diplomacy role he right he passes the charisma check and changes the tenor of the crowd it does help that she's offering like 20 cents on the dollar everyone here is looking to save their investment but what they're going to say like 20 cents a dollar means like if they were if they had invested a thousand dollars right they're gonna get uh

200 back yeah 200 back and uh that's not nothing but that's 800 less right right so so 20 cents on the dollar is still an 80 loss right yeah exactly so i think she she thought she had this upper hand and then jim came in it's like you or you can see if it's going to work out and maybe keep your investment. Yeah, it's like at this stage, what does that $200 matter if maybe it could work out? And I was going to say it's kind of weird that she's like, he's been mismanaged. I can take him to the top. But it's important for her to say that in the heat of the moment so that jim can point out see she wants this guy because he's gonna pay off yeah exactly so like let's let the legal stuff work out because the

fighter is good so yeah it's a great great scene great scene all right we go from one very good scene to what i think is another very good scene where it is dinner with morury jesus and jesus's family it's maury and jesus jesus's wife uh her grandmother i guess who they refer to mostly as uh as a uh grandma aguilar or mama aguilar or whatever um and then there's two kids kind of in the background so you know there's a whole family um maury's saying they're gonna work it out jim's jim's working on it and worst case with the immigration thing they say they'll they can stash her with his sister in another in another city somewhere making contingency plans for yeah because she's under threat of the uh miss aguilar is under under you know threat of deportation right um there's a knock at the door mori says i'm not here

uh jesus opens the door it's jim he's looking for mori his car's outside so of course and he pulls him into the kitchen to talk to him first First of all, this kitchen. Amazing green, like, 40s fridge. Like, the real Airstream style. Oh, it's so good. And then there's, like, a gingham tablecloth that's also green. So it's a real great palette in there. So Jim, first of all, wants to know, what the hell, Maury? Great palette in there.

So Jim, first of all, wants to know, what the hell, Maury? Maury, I'd be interested to hear how selling almost 200% of anything isn't illegal. Well, for openers, no investor's allowed to own a piece of a fighter. What they own is a piece of the manager's piece. Already, I don't like it. Oh, you see, a manager's allowed to only own 33.3%, some of which he usually sells off to get things rolling. In my case, I sold 50% of my piece, which became 100%. You got in then. And then when I couldn't get decent purses for the kid, we went broke.

So I had to sell my other 50%, which became another 100%. Simple and all legal. First of all, amazing. Right. Second of all, again, for wrestling wrestling fans out there if you're familiar with steiner math yes see normally if you go one-on-one with another wrestler you got a 50 50 chance of winning but i'm a genetic freak and i'm not normal so you got 25 at best and beat me and then you add kurt angle to the mix your chances of winning drastically go down.

See, the three-way at sacrifice, you got a 33 and a third chance of winning. But I, I got a 66 and two-thirds chance of winning because Kurt Angle knows he can't beat me and he's not even going to try. So, Samoa Joe, you take your 33 and a third chance minus my 25% chance and you got an eight and a third chance of winning at sacrifice. But then you take my 75% chance of winning, if we used to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds percent, I got 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice. See, Joe, the numbers don't lie. It's a little Steiner math-y. I did look into this so i don't know boxing like at all i'm not interested in boxing really other than for its importance

kind of historically and like culture and and everything but like i'm not really interested in it as a sport i don't really follow it so but i was curious like with all the stakes and percentages and stuff like what does this actually mean like what are they actually talking about like 33 and third percent of what yeah yeah right yeah and i don't know if you already knew this no i don't i don't go for it and again any boxing fans out there and i'm sure things might have are probably different now than they were in the 70s but jesus goes to have a fight for the light heavyweight championship there's a purse uh decided upon up front, whatever, $150,000 or whatever a number is. That's going to go to the winner of the fight.

And there's usually like a loser's purse or there's a purse, but then the winner gets a bonus. So like both people are going to get paid. The winner is going to get paid more. And then whatever that purse is, that's the money that's getting doled out so if jesus wins a fight with 150 000 purse again just a random number um then mori has 33 and a third of that so he has 50 000 plus and then that's the money that's getting shared out to his investors yeah so the law it can be less than 33 and a third but there's legally a manager can be owed no more than that percentage for of the fighters winnings and then the fighters

also paying whatever other people he has working for him or whatever okay so looking at this right 33 and a third that's a third it's just a third of what what that's a third jim's stake is five percent of the first 100 of that third and five percent of the second 100 of that third which is 10 of 200 which is five percent yeah, yeah. Yeah. But more importantly, it's a 1 in 20. 1 20th, right? So he has 1 20th of 1 30th. So he has 1 60th of this, right? That 1 60th, Maury's claiming, is going to transform into 150,000 Spendolas.

Right. So what we're talking about is a prize worth 9 million spendolas. Okay. Wow. I'm just putting that out there. And for our, according to our thumbnail, our little guideline for 200 a day, we multiply that by five to see what that would be roughly worth today, even though inflation. What is that worth today? I know it's actually probably now it's probably more like times six. Yeah, let's find out. Oh, it's four point five.

That's dollars. What about spend dollars? So it's about 40 million spend dollars, a little over almost 41 million spend dollars. In today's money. In today's money would be the the prize and and one can assume that he's talking about kind of over like the lifetime of the fighter exactly yeah yeah so it doesn't feel off i don't yeah i don't know enough to say one way or the other i'm looking so this is 1978 that this episode came out so i was just looking up so 1978 the heavyweight fight

that comes up when you look for it in for this year was uh leon spinks muhammad ali two i recognize both those names so yeah i assume this was a big deal i mean muhammad of course but leon spinks i know is also a big a big deal um and the purse i again i don't know how these things work but just looking at wikipedia first of all leon spinks had a got it had a bigger purse even though ellie won so i don't know how that works maybe this is pre-bonus or something but it's 3.25 million and 3.75 million respectively respectively. Yeah. So this is in the range. Like we're saying this one fight at this era are getting $3 million purses in 1978 money.

It seems ballpark-y enough. But also it seems optimistic in a way that you would expect someone to be optimistic if they're trying to sell this, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Okay, Right. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. That's a good gut check.

Again, this is all kind of neither here nor there, except that just kind of gut checking. Like, does this number make sense? Yeah. I guess that number makes sense for Jim being like, yeah,

this is a lot of money that I could get out of this. Do you want to point out that, uh, during this scene Jim tastes the food? That was my next thing, yes. Yeah, Jim, he's taking, yeah,

I also noticed that during this scene while I was doing the explanation, yeah, he's taking bites out of a pot, so something, some kind of, you know, rice or some kind of sauce thing, and he's just slowly taking bites of it sneaking looks over his shoulder and then there's a knock on the door jesus is going to come in and jim quickly puts the cover back on the pot so again only steals his food

or has it bought for him yeah we also get a bit of an uh the emotional component to why mori's so upset and so invested he's been waiting his whole life for this kind of as he says this kind of kid like somebody who he has the skill he has the passion he can go all the way all he needs is the right break you know so what he did selling all the, you know, selling the shares twice, you know, even though it was legal, it was a little shady or whatever. But it was for a good cause because it was to get this kid to where he can win his fights. Right. That's the whole the whole deal.

But yes, Jim hardly covers up his the the ball to cover the evidence and um it turns out that there's a knock at the door door and it's dennis our good friend dennis yeah plus the fbi agent that we already met they want to talk to maury in connection with a homicide they found tony malavita with a bullet in his back. All right, let's take a little pause in the action here so that we can all sit back and catch our breaths and Epi and I can let you know where you can find us elsewhere on the internet. Because as it turns out, we do do other things than talk about the Rockford Files from time to time. Epi, where can our fine listeners find you and your work? You can find my work at www.worldswithoutmaster.com.

That's worlds, plural, master, singular. Or at digathousandholes.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. I probably will only have pictures of my dog. So, you know, that may be a plus. Now we return to the adventures of Jimbo Rockfish on 200 a Day. We go to the police station where presumably post conversation in the hallway where there's a bunch of press and a statement is being read by the boxing commissioner, I guess that's i think that's established later this is the yeah yeah he's in charge of the boxing commission i mean i guess it'd be the athletic commission but they i think they just called the boxing commission that the whole affair isn't it's an embarrassment to the sport of boxing and so mori is to sell all interest in Jesus Hernandez within 48 hours,

or Jesus will also be barred from boxing in California. And Maury is to appear before a hearing in the morning where his license is to be permanently revoked for the good of boxing. Poor boxing. I know. You wouldn't want the good name of the pure sport of boxing to be beswitched um what i was gonna say in the previous scene is that what it does in addition to you know moving the the plot along and getting all the good number stuff is it shows us that the investment that

mori has in jesus and his family is more than just financial yes yeah it's it's symbiotic like yeah he's his manager but also like they're the ones hosting him, having him come over to dinner. They're his family, really. Like, and that becomes more clear as we go on through the rest of the episode. Financially, yeah, which is not a thing you do if your motivation is financial. You don't give away 100%, 200% of 200% of your 33% and a third percent if all you want out of it is something out of that 33% and a third percent, as the old saying goes. And that becomes even more clear in this scene where jim and maury are riding back to the house in a cab and maury's saying that it's been 29 years of doing this and not one year has he made a living at it he's been looking for

the right kid all this time and uh working other jobs to you know fund you know the boxing stuff uh right now he drives forklifts at a warehouse on the weekends you gotta want it 26 hours a day and this kid wants it um it's a great sport but it's a rotten business yeah no truer things no nothing but there's nothing like working with a kid who's going to go for it and like that's what you know what he has here with jesus jim says it's not he's not down and out yet um he still 48 hours before he has to to sell and when they drop off morty he he thanks jim for being going to the meeting that day and being in his corner with the investors and then again this is kind of the the button on what i was just saying where the camera watches

mori go up to jesus's house and it opens and he gets like a hug to like bring him into the house right like he is embraced and they're you know that he's that he's back and he's okay and so we see that he has this like that yes this is also is also his his family. And they care about Maury just as much as he cares about, you know, Jesus and his career or whatever. Exactly. Jim goes to leave, but the Firebird has been parked in real tight on both ends. This is this is good. I really enjoy this bit. Nothing like ringing doorbells at four in the morning.

nothing like ringing doorbells at four in the morning now leading up to this before we get to the parked in thing uh you know i don't didn't mark why but in my notes i taught i say like this feels really ominous like they're they have been tailed or something like that there is something about that scene that feels a little like the lighting is very it's ominous lighting yeah yeah and sure enough there is an ominous element jim checks the van that's behind him and the doors open and he kind of pokes his head in and then we see just a pair of hands reach out and grab him by the shoulders and throw him against the firebird and two guys are coming up on him and he immediately is like hey it's not what it looks like i was yeah you know you locked me in or whatever but then one guy has a gun and he says tells him to stay out of the maury hawthorne thing that was just a sample choo-choo give him another small sample

jim already got punched across the face by this guy choooo Choo. Choo Choo's pulling his hand back to give him another small sample. And then he gets a sucker punch in on the other guy, the guy with the gun. And there's a good meaty scramble as they all kind of exchange some blows. Jim finally like he like rolls over the firebird and there's a tricycle on the ground so he throws it at one of the guys it's extremely good yes I'm seeing

Choo Choo is credited he is uncredited the actor his name is Fred Carson and this is a wrap on Fred Carson this is just his only episode but he's been in a bunch of things leading up to this is near the end of his career though he has a lot of his character don't have names well jim is able to get the drop on the two goons uh ends up jumping into the

firebird after the tricycle throwing hits gas, manages to push the front car forward enough that then he can back up, hitting Choo Choo with his car on the way back and drive away. Yeah, oh, it's good. Like, I love that his... So it seems very deliberate that he was parked in like that. Yeah, that was to trap him, yeah. Yeah, and I love that his method is just,

okay, we're just going to shove this car out of the way. We're just going to do it for Firebird. That's good stuff. Yeah. So now Jim's being warned to keep out of the business so you know business is picking up. Yeah. We go to Mori and Jesus cleaning out the office,

even though the feds took everything, but I guess there's more to clean out. This is established as being after his hearing, so his license has been suspended. Yeah. He has a line, they took the 32 in my bottom drawer. How am I supposed to blow my brains out? Which is very sad.

I feel like every Rockford Files episode has that dark moment. And Jesus tries to reassure him, and then Ruth and her husband show up. She knows that Maury has until midnight to sell Jesus's contract and figures the only way he's going to stay out of jail is if he pays all of his investors back, which would be $50,000 in total. And she will pay him that right now for that contract. right now for that contract. He says, well, what about yesterday? You're offering 20 cents on the dollar.

And she says, well, that was yesterday. That was a lot of people. Now it's just you and me. And then there's another little bit where she gets impatient with her husband for taking too long to pull the contract out of his pocket or whatever. And this also gives a little cover for Jim to come in after struggling with the doorknob. Oh, right. This is the one I missed then. Yeah. And he comes in

on a good line well i hope i'm disturbing something because i'm very disturbed yes all right so before going on so i guess we're establishing here that mori to make the investors whole mori will have to pay them back a total of fifty thousand dollars yeah that's what it seems like assuming that jim is only getting the five percent of the first 100%, what would Jim's initial stake have been? Well, that's hard to say because he may have sold those

different percentages at different values, right? Let's assume that it was an equal split. If it's equal, then it's $25,000 for each 100%. So 5% of $ five percent of 25 000 yeah which is uh 1250 okay so that's about right yeah so but like my guess is that that is less than what people pay my guess is that that 50 000 is a compromise uh like i i bet you he he

charged more than that for for the stuff and this is just what the court is saying you need to pay out her language here implies that this is what will make the investors whole so that you do not go to court yeah right so that probably is like this is paying everyone back for the money they have paid you and nothing else right yeah so 1250 1250 sounds uh right with the whole deal with the 2000 being the only thing he has left to his name right the two checks that jim brought uh-huh would be close enough to each other like right yeah yeah that's true and also at two hundred dollars a day that is six it's called six and a half it's six and a quarter days of work for jim yeah and it was like three years ago i

think so i can see him maybe getting a big payday and being like, yeah. Yeah. All right. So the numbers check out is what we're saying. Or the other way to put it is that Jim is currently 1250 down. And this whole episode is seeing where he gets back. So Jim has a big bruise where he got hit by, I don't recall if it's, if it's chooch or choo-choo i think it was

pronounced differently at different times yeah i had chooch in my notes but when i looked at imdb it says choo-choo okay so we'll go with that chooch for short chooch for sure yes um and there's some banter about how you know he's in someone's way and et cetera, et cetera. The important thing here is that Maury needs time to talk to Jesus about this offer. You know, Jesus, one week from tonight, you could be fighting a semi main on TV. If I were you, I'd talk to your manager. Remember he works for you. I'm sorry, ma'am, but if it weren't for more more you wouldn't even be looking at me right now it's my main man i do what he says and it's another good moment of showing the warmth between

them yeah he was showing that he cares about him as a person not just as a financial partner as uh as as ruth and her husband leave she snaps i, I want to talk to you, Rockford. Eight sharp. Like, peppies or something like that. Yeah. A restaurant of some kind. This feels like one of those things that they added in post. It definitely ADR'd. It's from offscreen.

And it's like, oh, we need a reason for him to be talking to her later. Yeah, yeah. It establishes the very next scene. Yeah. So I feel like, is this a good part to talk about Jesus? Sure, yeah. Before we go on to Rockford and Ruth and their whole deal. So Jesus here is played by Stephen Bauer,

who at the time was credited as... I think he's Cuban-American, so at the time was credited as he's, uh, I think he's Cuban American. So at the time, yeah, I'm not going to be able to pronounce it. E C H E V A R R. Echavarria.

Echavarria. Yeah. Cause that's part of his shoot name. Um, so he was in Scarface. Uh, he was, he's been in a lot of movies.

Uh, he's a big, big working actor, but he's, this is early in his career and in fact this is his first imdb credit oh rocky echeveria yeah um you know in various tv shows tv movies and then yeah and then he was in scarface and i think that was a breakout role like yeah uh then he's just been in lots of movies since then um and and then back in tv including a recurring role in breaking bad and better call saul that's two different characters i believe he was in scarface the world is yours video game and uh he's great that's all

yeah yeah this is a role again that could have been super minor. This character, Jesus is like driven, but also cares about the people. He seems like someone you would grow to love. He's charismatic. Yeah. And it was just really cool to kind of click in and be like,

Oh, look at this amazing career that this guy has had that I just wouldn't have connected to seeing this face in this TV show in 1976. Yes. There is, there is, I think a single missed opportunity with him in this episode. That's going to come up in a little while. I will point it out when it happens.

I think you probably know. Well, now that you mentioned a missed opportunity, I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So he's great. That's that is all.

Yeah. Speaking of great we cut to the jilted husband drinking alone at the bar while ruth has i guess they've been eating because they have plates of what look like pie they're fireside yeah at a table for two if this is in like a fancy restaurant or a date. It's like a date restaurant. Nothing about this scene doesn't scream she's having an open affair with Rockford in front of this guy. Like, it feels malicious. And it may be malicious.

Yeah, exactly. I think that this is... There's this whole point throughout this whole thing where her and Rockford really aren't in any scene. I mean, the last scene they're in at the same time. This is the first time the two of them have, like, literally face-to-face conversation. And for some reason, throughout the whole of it, like, when Rockford is just seeing her on TV and not reacting to her at all because he's making his meal, I'm thinking to myself, these two are going to get together. Why is this? This scene is

like, I ate it up. I just absolutely ate it up. I don't want to say this poor husband because he's one of the villains of the piece. Don, but I don't even know if we've heard a word out of him. We haven't heard a single word of out of him.

I also like that. He's nursing a drink. He's not even drinking. He just has like one glass of wine that he's barely sipping. Oh, it's so good. You just feel the, like he is not happy,

which is important, right? Like this is an important beat that we see that he's just like totally, you know, can't believe this is my life kind of situation. But yeah, Jim and Ruth. So she offers him $5,000 for his 2.5641%. Yes. And he crawls back into the woodwork, which honestly is a good offer.

But yeah, I mean, we just, we just figured this out, right? This is four times what we figured out his percentage being worth. So it's probably worth somewhere between those two extremes. But like, she's probably over offering him. Well, and I think what she's doing, what Jim has been observing through this whole thing is her upping her offer every time she makes one. Yeah. Right.

So he's seeing that she wants this she wants jesus like yeah bad right so i think that gives him the confidence to play out the string and see where this is going because he is currently under the assumption that she has framed uh manny in order to get jesus at a right? That's kind of the operational frame here. And then this whole conversation is actually really interesting because it, he's trying to confirm that and he can't. Yeah. So he,

he has the whole thing figured that she's in over her head now sending Tony Malavita was a nice touch, but if she just mailed the bribe, they wouldn't have needed to kill him. She like sits back. I'm willing to go to a lot of trouble, but not that much. Yeah. That's crazy talk.

She in fact says that he's crazy for thinking of it. And she's going to tell him where she's coming from straight. And there's a good bit of dialogue here where you sound just like a used car salesman. That's what I am. Yes. And now we get a little bit of the uh backstory to ruth to give us a fuller understanding of this character she's raised by a car salesman but he was a bad one um he couldn't sell dimes to a beggar he used to have me out there tap dancing on the sidewalk to get people

in honey i was selling cars and making loan applications when I was 16. When I was 18, he had a coronary. Demonstrating a used Edsel left me everything. Which was nothing. Nothing but headaches. But I dove in, I busted my buns, and I worked from 8 a.m. to midnight seven days a week, and that includes Christmas. I got myself some hot pants and a cowboy hat, and I kept right on dancing out on that sidewalk. And now she's the most successful used car operation in the valley or whatever.

And Jim kind of eggs her on with little quips and questions and stuff. Yeah. So we get all of this exposition. But we also kind of see Jim appreciating her style a little bit, I think. He has some good insight into her as well. Like he has this one line where he says just exactly when did it start to get

boring? Like he knows that she, she works really hard to be on top of her game. And then once she's there, she needs a new game to beat. Yeah. Or she, she got to the top in a man's game right that's

her her next thing um and it's because she figured out the secret that you meaning men make it look so hard but it's actually easy you know so once i figured that out it was i made it to the top and then he's like so when did it get boring um yeah but i love that insight like that's a great i mean she's not wrong yeah she could do a podcast she could definitely do a podcast yeah like how much of stuff is like yeah from the outside it's supposed to be hard but once you get inside it's like oh you just know that guy that's all it is yeah you just have money that's all you know or whatever and in her case it's like you just come up with a gimmick you know and hers is being like a like sexy lady on tv to sell cars hey it works um somewhere in there it comes

out that like she got big enough that she needed an accountant and then she ended up marrying him to slide in that little factoid you know now it's just easier just to stay married he's a good comptroller yeah um jim doesn't jim make a comment here about i didn't write it in my notes i'm just trying to recall it but it's something like he knows too much to or you know too much about each other to let this insinuation that like there's you each know where the bodies are buried yeah yeah yeah other to let this insinuation that like there's you each know where the bodies are buried yeah yeah yeah he does make that insinuation and her response is like it's just easier to stay married yeah he's he's like oh so that's what's going on and then she's like

not really yeah so you see jim kind of getting set back on his heels a little bit as she has very reasonable responses to his accusations. Yes. She says that she doesn't need thugs. She has lawyers. Yeah. Right. Like she doesn't need to beat people up. She can just buy them off. Yeah. And he even says, OK, it's plausible, including, OK, you can afford top dollar. So why would you go to the trouble of this whole frame to get a discount that's what doesn't add up and that's when she's

had it with him and his you know his accusations to stay out of her way and she storms off and leaves jim with the check which is the yes chef kiss at the end of the scene there. This is fun. This has got that feel of like Jim keeps revamping his theory of the crime. He keeps having to reassess what's actually happening. But it's also

a nice twist because we'll find out that she's not the guilty party, but everything leading up to it kind of points to her being the guilty party. But this is what starts shake. This conversation is what shakes his foundation, where he's like, I'm assuming that she's behind it. And now he's like, yeah, she might not be behind it. Yeah.

So what is going on? Which structurally as an episode, I think what this episode does really well, and I think in a way we haven't seen in a while, as we learn more about each character, it makes me as an audience member go, you know, I don't think they did it. Right. It's not that there's a plot thing or a text thing being like, this person did not do it. Sometimes that's effective. text thing being like this person did not do it like sometimes there might you know sometimes that's effective but in this case it's like seeing more of the relationship of mori and jesus i'm like oh mori's not a bad guy mori's not a slime ball why would he be doing that bribe but you know yeah yeah and then like seeing more with ruth i'm like there's no character motivation here like

there's no like i'm not saying she's great she probably does all kinds of unsavory things but like he's right it doesn't make sense for her to go to all this effort just to save some money when now she's just throwing more money around to get what she wants anyway uh what i like what i like about this is that uh each character's reason for why they're in the line of fire yeah where they they look guilty in the beginning and then don't uh comes out of a motivation right like so so maury wants to help jesus and his family out uh or really just wants to manage somebody with heart like jesus you know that kind of thing so maury looks like he's running a scam on the investors but he's not he looks like he's uh

very briefly looks like he's the uh would bribe an official but really what maury's motivation is is just that he wants to help out he's good right he wants to keep the family together yeah yeah yeah uh and then you got uh um ruth here where it looks like she's driven to have this prize fighter well she because she is driven now she collects dudes like her her car commercials are are her dude collection so she's collecting prize fighters like that's what she wants to do right now and that's uh and so that keeps putting her in the line of fire of looking at like the guilty person. But yeah, as,

as Jim realizes, Oh, there's nothing. Yeah. He goes, he goes to peel back the layers and goes, this doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

She can just buy it. Yeah. Sometimes it's the character, right? Sometimes it's like people shoplift all the time who can afford to buy the thing. It's, but it's something else. It's the thrill or it's

whatever right that's not the case here this isn't a you could afford to do this but you're choosing to do it this way because you're twisted or because you have some other motivation it's more like i'm following the clues i'm following what i know of you and where i'm getting is i guess it doesn't seem to fit that you would do this. For whatever reason, I think we just haven't had an episode that has this many characters this fully realized this quickly. I kept looking at the time on the thing and being like, I can't believe there's still half an hour of this episode to go.

Like I felt, you know, I kept feeling like I've seen an entire episode every 10 minutes, which is great. It's a good feeling. It's one reason why I have so many notes, I think. It's a thick episode. It is. It is. That said, to continue getting through the episode, our next scene is another commercial for Ruth's used car empire empire where she's declaring war on high prices.

And we see Jim and Dennis watching it. They're hanging out in Jim's trailer. She goes down her line of salesmen, her, her collection of dudes, as we said, yes. And giving them like,

like marching orders, like you do this, you do that. And the one at the end is sales manager skip. And Jim finally remembers where he recognizes that guy in the car from from these commercials um dennis has a line who can pay attention to the men when ruth is right there oh dennis that seems like something you would say um he tells tells Dennis to use my phone. For what?

Have him arrested. Well, Dennis does need something like a shred of evidence to go on. Plus, it's an FBI matter. It's not, he has nothing to do with it. So he asks Dennis to at least run info on Skip for me, since I'm going to have to do all this work myself. So the last couple scenes i've been like so was the husband the guy in the car right you know and i'm like okay so if it's not ruth the husband probably like we're getting the weird vibe like he's definitely jilted so

like he probably has something to do with it but he's also kind of a wet noodle so right as we see all the guys in suits i was like oh it's going As we see all the guys in Susan's like, Oh, it's going to be one of the guys from the commercial. Like, like that was, I did a good job of giving me that realization right as it happened. So it's very satisfying. So we go to Jim coming in to talk to skip. He's answering an ad for a dynamic salesman.

This is a, there's the good line where we don't let just anybody wear the red blazer. Yes. And Jim runs this great angle where he's like i know all about your unsavory past so you should give me a job oh well now come on you have sold uh siding and books uh even a little real estate till they lifted your license and then there was that consumer fraud beef back in 72 that was just before you bankrupted the dealership in San Diego. So let's can the coveted red blazer stuff, get down to business, huh, Skip?

Oh, buddy. Does your boss Ruth know all about this or something? He's like, well, Ruth wrote the book. And I kind of feel like maybe that means like Ruth like blackmailed him with this stuff or something. It's possible. Very possible. So he's asking Jim where he got all this info and they're interrupted by,

by another salesman coming in. And it turns out that he's one of the goons, the goon with the gun and they call in chooch. Jim kind of tries to pretend like they're not going to see him and then kind of gives a little wave. Chooch has his hand all wrapped up in a bandage, which I love. So this is when Jim puts it all together. Ruth doesn't know about the frame at all. It's, you know, this little group of ne'er-do-wells. But what's the payoff? And Skip says, well, that's tonight, but you're not going

to make it. Pulls out a gun. I came in and found you going through my safe. I thought you had a gun and I had to kill you. And Jim starts talking. No, you know, I don't think it's a good idea. It's bad PR. And then he shoves the table at him so hard. Skip and Choo Choo, I think, are behind the table. And he shoves it so hard that they go flying into the glass.

The camera cuts to switches to being outside and we see them come crashing through the big pane of glass as Jim runs out of the room. Shouts at another red blazer, there's been a bad accident. Go check it out. And peels out in the Firebird. It's good splashy action. There's a thing in this episode so far that this episode's about prize fighting. And we saw a little boxing on television or whatever,

but not a whole, like, we saw the good fight when Jim was parked in. But, like, you know, I don't know. I felt like there was going to be a lot of action going into this episode. You thought there'd be more punching? More punching. But this is good. This is very satisfying. We have a

brief interstitial where Jim goes to Jesus' place to find Maury. Maury went to the gym. He left about ten minutes ago and watch out, he's had some drinks. And we go to a very moody, ominous scene in the dark gym. The lights are

not on and Maury and ruth are having their final blow-off conversation is this the the missed opportunity yeah so the missed opportunity is that jim knows that there's trouble that there's lethal trouble uh and that there's lethal trouble, and that there's probably going to be some goons involved. And he's standing there next to the future light heavyweight champion of the world and does not invite him along. And that to me is the single blemish on this episode. I just want to see Jesus punch a goon. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Well, big brain,

Jim doesn't want to put Jesus at risk. No, that's like, I understand why. It is a missed opportunity. Yeah, no, you're, yeah, you're right. So there's a good business at the beginning where there's some, some boxing stuff. Ruth's been throwing all the low blows and that she has more on the ropes. There's a good business at the beginning where there's some boxing stuff. Ruth's been throwing all the low blows. She has more on the ropes, etc.

I think here we see Ruth's impatience with the whole thing. She's like, I'm not trying to scam you. I'm trying to give you money. Why are you making this so hard? She says, okay, if Jim is right and you were framed i have enough clout to get your license reinstated and then uh you can come work for me as jesus's trainer uh and she offers him twenty thousand dollars a year plus ten percent presumably of the purses or whatever uh and we can take him to the you know take him to the title together his response is like but you've always complained about his management she's like yeah

you're a lousy manager but you're a great trainer yeah she's like let me buy him from you then i'll be the manager and i'll hire you you can be the trainer and like all will be right with the world right she's like let's give everyone the right job it feels like a good deal it does feel like a good deal um we cut outside as we hear harmonica and then we see that there is a man playing harmonica on the sidewalk on this busy busy sidewalk outside the gym shout out to die diegetic. It's so good. But yeah, there's a guy standing on that corner playing the harmonica while like sailors walk around and there's like a bunch of high school guys in track

jackets or something. It's it's good little place place setting. As Jim gets out of the car, he sees the husband sitting in a car outside waiting and he runs into the dark gym as maury's saying that he doesn't understand jim was sure about this being a frame up and so jim comes in just in time to explain that it's a frame within a frame and jim fell for it like he has weights in his pockets yeah that's a good line uh we gotta get out of here and that's when Skip and his goons come in turning on the lights. So it's a fun little inversion where like all the above board stuff is like in the shadow.

And then, you know, it's good. It's good. So now they're going to stage this murder. There's a bunch of dialogue to establish what the idea here is, because a lot of the business is like ruth realizing that skip is turning on her skip showing that he has never it's implied that they had an affair maybe seems likely seems likely but he's like he's gonna get so much satisfaction out of finally shutting her up or something like that like you know he's clearly a bad man but they have the 38 that was stolen out of Maury's desk that he assumed the FBI had taken, which again,

love that little detail. The payoff here is that Maury got in an argument with Ruth, kills Ruth. Then Ruth's husband comes in. Maury threatens him. He has no choice but to kill Maury. And then, yeah,

the husband, Don, I keep forgetting his name because he's just the husband. And then, yeah, Don and Skip inherit the business, split it 50-50 and get to live their lives without Ruth, I think is the other, you know, benefit. They've been planning it a long time and finally

had this opportunity. They have to pause and wait because there's a group of Marines wandering by on the sidewalk. They have to wait until the coast is clear. Jim says there's a group of Marines wandering by on the sidewalk. They have to wait until the coast is clear. Jim says it's a big mistake. They think he walked in there without calling the cops first. And Skip says, good try.

I watched the light show. He positions Ruth where he wants her and they start kind of in the background. We hear her, Skip, don't do this. And he's explaining how great it's going to be to do this while we see jim looking around jim finds a bucket and suddenly throws it at the goons and we have a big final action scene i think he throws it at chooch i think so mori rushes in behind it someone in the scramble hits the lights again so it gets dark We have a great frame of Ruth grabbing a bottle and hitting Skip in the head with it. So that seems good.

There's a bunch of meaty punching. And then the gun wielding goon is at the window and Jim got a gun in the scuffle and shoots a warning shot. And he turns around and raises his hands. But the warning shot alerts the husband who's been waiting for the signal so he comes in and he comes through the door and he's all nervous and he's like skip what took so long thank god it's over and then ruth steps in front of him and says yeah don thank god it's over and we have this freeze frame on jim with his weird look on his face behind Don. It looks like he's about to hit him with a gun, I think.

Yeah. Like pistol whip him. But we freeze frame before there's more action. We stop on the dramatic line instead, which is probably better. I'm sure I missed some details in there. It's a good little fight. Very chaotic. Yeah, it's the scuffle you want, minus the prize fighter that you wanted there

yeah to take out chooch or whatever yeah i think you really want to see jesus just punch chooch in the face i think that's the only thing we're missing the whole thing um and then we go to the tv again where this time the boxing commissioner is broadcasting an apology which i appreciate it's an apology to mori an announcement that he's fully reinstated and that ruth is making all the investors whole as part of buying asus there's some business about accounting discrepancies or something like that like the hand waving the fact that he sold 200 right right there yeah they're saying like all the investors are going to get their money back. Yeah, yeah.

So that's great for everyone. And we have Ruth, Maury, Jesus, and Jim in Maury's office. Jim is going to get his 5% of Maury's 10% or Ruth's 33%. Yeah. So what does that end up working out to? He was going to get 10%, but now he's going to get 5% of 10% of 33%. Oh, wow. One and two thirds percent, basically. So I don't remember the dialogue, but does this mean that he got paid for his original investment and he still has a 5% stake in the new arrangement?

Oh, that's a good question. The note I wrote down was that he's down money on this one, but I might have been mixed up in the moment. I might have just been looking at the percentage of percentage of percentage that he he's end up he ended up having bought but it could be that he got paid back his five percent right because that was the condition of this whole transaction yeah to make everything good again and this other five percent is the five percent that mori promised him for i think you're right in the case i think that's what this is. I choose to believe that because then Jim gets his $1,250 back or whatever, but that's what we estimated from his original investment. And now he still has a one and two thirds percent stake. No, no, I'm sorry. I messed up with that. He has a sixth of a percent. That's what he has. It's 0.16 repeating. Oh, okay.

I misread what was on my screen here when I said that. So if a sixth of a percent of the, we're talking 9 million, right? Right, right. Yeah. So given that estimate, instead of 150,000 Spandolas, he's looking at approximately 15,000 Spandolas. But hey, that's more Spandolas than he started with. I mean, again, yeah, assuming over the lifetime of, it's not a lot, but it's not nothing. It's not nothing. Yeah. So I think we, as 200 Today, because we're the boss, this is our show, we choose to believe that Jim got made whole for his original 5% stake. interest in Jesus Hernandez's purses going forward, which may result in as much

as $15,000 over some number of years going into the future. Just passive income. Passive income. We changed the subject to mention that Mother Aguilar will get to stay in the country. Good news.

Everything is good. So Jim is seeking more assurances about this money, I think. And they keep changing the subject. He's like, okay, everything is going to work out. But right now what we need to do is focus on getting Jesus ready for Bobo Rydell. And they leave to go continue training. And the door handle sticks again. And this is the third beat in the door handle gag.

door handle sticks again and this is the third beat in the door handle gag so i stick by my my guns that it's an intentional um intentional joke yeah it was it was jim leaving then jim coming back in yeah and then mori leaving yeah the three beats so i missed the middle beat given the middle beat you know it's not like a hearty har har joke but it's a good uh i'm trying to think of like the term exactly I'm looking for here. But it returns the audience to a state where it all began, where nothing has actually been fixed. Yeah. Good point. This is good.

We won all these things. Now we're back to where we were before the FBI showed up. Right. We have regained the status quo and the status quo was shaky at best yes exactly um well what is not the status quo is our final conversation with ruth and jim she says he knows he isn't getting everything he wants out of this and then she has this whole maneuver where she starts off with well if money is your problem and then she starts telling him how much she could use a man like him, but she's like touching him and really kind of vamping a little bit, turning it on. And he looks a little uncomfortable, but he's kind of letting her talk.

As you may know, I'm always on the lookout for a good man. I've heard it said. And now that I'm going to be devoting full attention to the fight business the dealer management job's wide open i bet you'd look terrific in a red blazer not a chance so then she goes to okay well at least come have dinner with me over in my place you i'm sorry ruth but i'm uh i'm a little old-fashioned you know, I, I like to open the doors and light the cigarettes and make the passes. So she says, oh, she's sorry. They'll go to his place.

And freeze frame. Freeze frame. So I got a commentary on this because I don't think I mean, like, Jimmy is a little old fashioned, obviously. Like he does, you know, grab people by the arm. Last episode, he grabbed. know grab people by the arm last episode he grabbed no not by the arm but i i forgot to mention it on but uh coop he put his arm around coop to like guide him so uh what's really happening here is that jim knows and does not care to be a notch in her belt right right yeah like you you were just saying like her first play is come work for me

uh she definitely wants jim for something more than work but work creates the uh power dynamic she wants out of this right right and jim's like i don't want that power my read of this is he's saying i'm not interested yeah he's looking for a polite out. Yeah. And his polite out is like, I prefer to make the passes. No, thanks. Yeah. She's not going to let him get away with that,

I guess. But I think we end the scene with the freeze frame that does not give an indication that he is a hundred percent on board with moving forward with any kind of Ruth relationship, if you will. That's good. I mean, she gave it the gold college try. No shame to her.

But yeah, I think all things being equal, Jim would rather just have a higher percentage. End of episode. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I think that was a great episode. I think so too. I liked it more the more we talked about it which is always a nice outcome sometimes we can talk ourselves into a different feeling on an episode i think often when we do it the trajectory is that we end up liking it more than or we see something in the

episode that we didn't before but like sometimes you can get into like yeah picking it apart picking out the logic and stuff yeah well this Well, this one, I think, thankfully, the logic is simple. And there isn't a lot of connective tissue needed. And so that gives a lot of room for all the character dynamic stuff that we talked about. And so it ends up working even better. Yeah. It's a testament to just how much having a good situation, having characters with clear motivations set against each other in a good situation

does, like, carry enough of that. Because I feel like a lot of times, not Rock for Files episodes in particular, but just in general, like, these intrigue-style fictions will kind of crumble when they get to a spot where they're like this person has to be guilty this other person has to not know that or have a reason to suspect that even though the audience is sitting here being like obviously that person is guilty yeah yeah so you have to invent a white you know like a little lie here to throw in the middle that

doesn't quite fit anyone's motivation or anything like that uh but it's just a little um lubricant a little something to get us going forward in the story whatever but this one is just like yeah everyone uh has a clear motivation towards the things that people are going to start accusing them of uh but those are wholesome motivations that lead to something else on the other side i think even the like i noted, I noted the, I noted that it was like, Jim, you shouldn't have said that name, Tony Malavita, right? Yeah. But that actually is kind of a head fake for people like me, where I was like, Jim, you shouldn't have said that. Now she's going to know, right? But it doesn't matter because the people who kill him knew that he was the weak link as soon as he

called them as like this guy rockford is sniffing around right yeah so like they didn't need jim to reveal that information but as a person like me watching it that gave additional credence to the idea that she was one who did it because now she knows that jim knows the name of the person or like whatever right yeah that in the moment it makes sense for him to say the name because it gives the group of investors a concrete detail to hang their suspicions on, right? Like, because he says, watch the newspapers. It's going to come out that this guy, in the same way where when he does a con, he drops

little precision details about things to create the air of this is a true thing this is a truth he's not running a con in this particular case everything he says is true but but that's why you do it in a con because exactly sometimes yeah those details matter yeah yeah yeah like i said i didn't really remember this one i didn't really remember particularly like i mean i liked it fine i don't standing out, but doing the like deep read on it. I think this, this, this might be a new, a new fave for me. Yeah. It benefits from it.

It definitely does. It benefits from it primarily because the character work is all just really good and it's in support of the story. The story beats work with the character beats the character motivations make for the sticky situation that can't be simply solved just by everyone knowing everything the people who are concealing information are doing so for a very good reason because they're very bad people but their character motivations are clear even if unsavory right yeah they grow out of what we know of ruth like it all it's all just a real

solid it's a real solid piece and all those little details that i so obsessively made sure i noted um all matter running through the number i mean we do it because it's kind of a bit but like it was nice to go through the numbers and be like oh the, the numbers, yeah, these hang together. Yeah, they work, yeah. Great. The only, okay, this did occur to me while we were going. The only thing that I'm like, hmm, is I guess at some point they must have planted, they must have stolen his stationery and planted a note in his wastebasket. Yeah.

Right? Because there was that like physical evidence stuff. Now I'm wondering, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay. Hold on. Am I about to break this story wide open? Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Did we over, we might have, have we gone too far? Never mind. There are FBI agents in the credits. You know, we were talking about how that scene felt like a scam right that would have been the perfect moment to come in on his typewriter right up oh right the note like right in front of him yeah the the draft of the note and then throw it out but he was getting arrested for real yes yes yeah you're probably right i'm i mean not only was he getting arrested for real we also see that fbi guy later with Dennis and Dennis says this is the FBI investigation. Right. Yeah. No, that's all actually happening. I think so. My headcanon, what such as it is, is it's a gym. Clearly he's not in his office all the time.

Yeah. So someone just maybe they just had that guy, Tony, just like go type this on his typewriter. Right. You know, throw a note in his wastebasket he'll never notice like that that detail seems a little risky like leaving that in the wastebasket or whatever but whatever I can see that being part of this elaborate frame yeah it is not given any textual

basis but it would follow or or or have someone else do it like someone other another guy who trains there or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. All right there. We found,

so there's two flaws with this episode and we found both of them. Um, yeah, no, it's, it, it's great. I really enjoyed watching it.

I felt like it was a shame I had to take notes cause I would have liked to just watch it. Right. So I might just watch it for fun, which I do not get to do with this show anymore not that watching it isn't fun but you know i yeah i know i generally don't just put on an episode like we in our household it's come to the i'll i'll be like oh i gotta watch the rock for files for you know the recording or whatever and and like oh yeah uh do you want me to watch it with you and i'm like if you want i will be pausing and writing up notes all the time and i will not be discussing things

during it uh i mean like we do discuss things but like i have to save this content for the show yeah exactly i can't enjoy it anymore no that's a lie i'd say if anything i enjoyed this more now i'm looking forward to watching it without having to take notes and enjoying all the little things that I already know about. It's going to be great. So this has turned into a bit of a long one, so we should probably go ahead and wrap it up. I don't know if there's anything else to add. It's a good episode.

I would say it's a good recommend if you wanted to introduce someone to the Rockford Files. It's a little weird. It doesn't really have, in the sense of it doesn't, I mean it has Dennis, but it doesn't have some of the other Hallmark Rockford Files. Like, it's a little weird. Like, it doesn't really have, in the sense of it doesn't, I mean, it has Dennis, but it doesn't have some of the other Hallmark Rockford Files stuff. But, like, it's a great episode of TV, so. I agree.

Like, Dennis is in it, but not as Dennis. Well, they need him to be Dennis. Sorry, I take that back. I agree. They need him to be Dennis so that he can be there in the trailer to say, who can look at the men when Ruth is right there? Well, they need a cop friend to be in the trailer so he can ask the cop friend to do the background check. Yeah.

Yeah. My final note is that I think it's very funny. that Robertson book, the only commentary is to note that James Garner and Lewis, I assume Lewis or Louis Delgado, who plays Billings, they would play backgammon all the time. That was their like chilling on set activity in Garner's trailer. So the commentary is just a paragraph about like, they love to play backgammon. They did it all the time. Well, that's good. I guess we got to have that information somewhere in the book,

but this episode, okay. Good stuff. It's a great app to talk about with a great app. Oh, that's sweet. And I'm glad I called an audible to pick it out. And we have a selection of our next episodes already lined up, which is very exciting. Yeah.

Anything else? No. of our next episodes already lined up, which is very exciting. Yeah, anything else? No, I think that we've earned our 5% of 200% of 33%, 33 and a third percent, yeah. Well, if we're splitting 5% between the two of us, so we each have 2.5% of 10% of 33 and a third percent. How about that? That sounds good. All right. You know, I'll go figure out where Tuesday Night Fights is airing. percent of 10 percent of 33 and a third percent how about that that sounds good all right you

know i'll go figure out where where tuesday night fights is airing uh follow follow my investment in his career but don't you worry we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files but i'm a genetic freak and i'm not normal so So you got 25% at best and beat me.