Two Hundred A Day - Episode 11: A Portrait of Elizabeth

Episode Date: June 11, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S2E16 A Portrait of Elizabeth. Beth brings a new client (and her new boyfriend) to Jim to get some help, but it turns out that Dave has a nefarious scheme of his own. This episode effortlessly weaves together the emotional connection of Beth and Jim, Jim's efforts to discover Dave's plot, and Beth's professional skills - it's truly a gem of an episode that's shot right to top of our "must-see" list! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Pluto Moved On Podcasts and Video Lets Plays Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars And thank you to Shane Liebling and Dylan Winslow! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Jim, it's Harry. We've been waiting on you two hours. The forks. Where's the forks? Lasagna ain't no finger food. Welcome to 200 a Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidiah Ravishaw. Which wonderful episode of The Rockford Files are we talking about today, Epi? Well, we're still wallowing in season two, which we're enjoying quite a bit. And it's episode 16, A Portrait of Elizabeth. So we're going to get a little Beth in this one. Indeed. Yeah, as we continue our side character tour of the character universe of The Rockford Files. Yeah, so as you said, this is from season two,

episode 16, written by series creators or creator Cannell. And this one is directed by Meta Rosenberg, who's the executive producer of the Rockford Files of the whole series. This isn't the only episode that she directed over the course of the series, but it is the first one. So this is her directorial debut in the series. And if you do a little bit of

research on her, this is kind of her main thing. She was involved with producing some other Hollywood stuff, but the Rockford Files was kind of her baby as a producer. I think it's interesting that the first episode of the show that she directed is one centering on Beth, who is kind of the standout female character of the show. That is interesting. And there's, I mean, we'll get into this, but this is a good episode for exploring the relationship between Jim and Beth. Because that is a complex relationship.

It interweaves the mystery of this episode with the relationship stuff in a way that doesn't really seem to detract from either yeah you could have this plot without beth really having this emotional investment in a different episode so it's kind of a has a little bit of a tonal shift in that way in spots but overall you know it's a really it's cool it's good there's a thing i'm gonna i'm gonna attempt to sound smart but greek theater way back in the day, kept violence off the stage, right? Violence would happen off stage, and then you would hear about it in the dialogue of the characters on stage. I feel like a lot of Jim and Beth's relationship takes place like that.

takes place like that. Like if this were a series done today, they would absolutely have these critical points in their relationship show up on screen instead of what happens here, where they kind of discuss what the critical point in their relationship was. Well, so we'll get into it, but some necessary context, if you haven't seen a lot of the show, Beth is Rockford's attorney. Yeah, with benefits. you haven't seen a lot of the show, Beth is Rockford's attorney. Yeah, with benefits. Right. So in addition to having that professional relationship,

they also have an on-again, off-again personal relationship that surfaces every so often throughout the show. But it's not front and center, except in a particular episode you're there, but that's it. So someone watching this, you know, as a weekly show at the time would be familiar with Beth from other episodes and know that they had some kind of relationship. And that's all you really need to know to start watching the episode and kind of understand what's going on. So that said, what do we see in our preview montage? Oh, the preview montage. There's two bits that stood out to me in the preview montage because now I'm starting to really appreciate this preview montage as a tantalizing hint of what's to come.

The first bit where he asks the federal officers what the charges are and they do the litany that ends with murder as if it's an afterthought. And then this guy, we don't know who he is, just walks out of the room. That turns out to be very funny in the episode. That is a great moment. And then the other bit that I can clearly remember from the montage is the blue paint on the windshield oh yeah which i was like i can't wait to see that happen and when when it comes up

in the episode it actually you see him pick it up and you're like oh that's gonna happen yeah well this episode starts with jim's trailer as so many of them do we see beth and a man who we don't know waiting for jim outside of his trailer we learn pretty soon but his name's dave or david they're waiting for jim he's not usually late beth is a little apologetic and you immediately off the bat see that she's uncomfortable but also there's some kind of situation where she's said jim can help whatever is happening. Yes. So sure enough, after a couple uncomfortable beats. Before we get to that, doesn't Dave ask her? Yeah. So right off the bat, we know that this is going to be a thing. They kind of have a little bit of chatting. And then

Dave says, didn't you used to date this guy? And she says, every once in a while. Yes. That's a great, just every once in a while. So again, the economy of I mean, this is, you know, the first 20 seconds of the show. And yeah, we know that her relationship with Jim is going to be something that is relevant to what's going on. The way she's acting with him is establishing this great status situation where you viscerally feel her wanting to please him. Like I seen this happen with just friendships, right? Like if you've got friends from two different circles and they come together and you're like, oh, don't worry,

you'll get along. Just where something in the back of your brain is starting to tell you, they're not going to get along. This whole opening sequence sets up this triangle between these three characters very skillfully. So Rockford arrives, He's all dirty because he was helping Rocky, his dad, like fix his truck or something. So he's all dirty and his shirt's unbuttoned. And this guy, Dave, is in a really nice suit. You know, he's well-tailored. He's very nice, but he's very unctuous, right?

He's very kind of slick. Also, Rockford forgot his keys. He left them with his dad. So he goes and gets the extra keys which are hidden kind of in the hitch of his trailer, which actually is important later. Beth has brought her boyfriend, who's this very slick,

well-dressed, well-mannered man who's also a lawyer, as we learn, or was a lawyer, to meet Jim, her dating-every-once-in-a-while PI client who's all dirty and gross and doesn't have himself together to have his keys with him, right? I feel like they even dinged up the trailer a little bit for this. And so Rockford's immediately on the defensive. He doesn't like being in this

position where he's being seen as less than. Rockford takes a lot of pride in himself and his abilities and doesn't like people looking down their noses at him i like how he's doing it here too because beth is undercutting him probably you know not conscious of what she's doing but she's she's commenting on how he looks and david hasn't said anything about it but beth does because she is most concerned with the the difference in status between these two people yeah she's hyper concerned with what dave status between these two people. Yeah, she's hyper-concerned with what Dave thinks of Jim. Yeah, and Dave isn't actually passing any judgment on Jim. It feels like it's Beth doing it for him. Yeah.

And all Jim is doing is not letting Beth get any ground that way. Yeah, they have one long, uncomfortable pause when Rockford asks, oh, are you two together? And Dave just says, yep. They do finally get down to business, which is that David was a lawyer, but is now the comptroller for a company called Biometrics. He suspects that someone is cashing bogus checks from their LA office. He hired Beth because he wanted legal advice

before deciding to go to the authorities about this because he's not 100% sure. The guy running this office, Tom Hanson, is his cousin or brother-in-law or something. They have some kind of conflicting relationship and he doesn't want to tip him off to know that he's sniffing around because then that'll cause personal problems. Family drama. So Beth brought this to Jim, because this is exactly the kind of thing that Jim does. Jim, however, already has his hackles up because of how he feels like he's being treated,

and he's jealous. In that uncomfortable pause, I think we see that he's not okay with Beth probably dating anyone, but he doesn't really like this guy off the bat. And so he's not interested. He has this great line that he's already made his payments for the month. So he's not looking for anything. Uh, to live the Jim lifestyle. Jim Rockford really is a guy who works to live. He does not live to work. And honestly, that's a, that's a survival technique in his job, right right every job is a danger

so every time he does it increases the odds of it being the last time he can do it so if you if you can stop doing it stop doing it so dave you know i was like all right well if you're not interested i'll just have to go somewhere else and beth she's like wait no i i told him you could help she's offended that uh rockford's turning this down. So she has Dave go outside so she can talk to Rockford alone. In the first of a number of great transitions, she's like, I really need you to take this case. I promised him that you could help. He's like, I'm not interested. And she says, look, you know you're going to do it.

Rockford leans back in his chair and just says, nope. Cut to the nameplate of Tom Hanson, who's the guy who has these cashier's checkbooks to be investigated. And we hear him talking to someone and the camera goes in. And sure enough, there's Jim in his disguise glasses running a game on this guy at Biometrics LA. There's two things I want to comment on here. The first is the transitions are really good in this episode.

But the other bit is that all of this so far has been a microcosm of Jim Rockford's life. Somebody comes to him with a job, he immediately distrusts the person, does it, is in the middle of a con. We've cut out all the fat. Yeah. So yeah, as the viewer, somehow she convinced him. Now he's in the hot seat talking to this guy Hanson. He's claiming that he's from an agency that designs checks and other material. And he has this elaborate, this president told this vice president to tell my boss to come here because blah, blah, blah.

To make Tom feel dumb so that he responds to feeling dumb by being like, no, no, no, it's okay. I get it. Yeah. We, at some point we're going to have to really dissect the Rockford con. He does so much all at once. And he also does like a time pressure. He's like, yeah, I have another, you know, I have another bank and three airlines I need to talk to before four o'clock. So if you're, if you don't understand what's happening, then I'll just leave now. Yeah. And there's the hint that the danger that follows is going to be more work for this other person. We can take care of it now quickly, or we have to get all of our bosses involved and it's going to take months. Yeah. It's great. And it's just part of this episode, just like every other con is just part of their episodes.

But they're all constructed in this recognizable way that that's his style and just how he does it in this case all he's trying to do is get a look at this cashier's checkbook register this cashier's register he has a list of checks that are supposed to be missing from dave all he needs to do is get the book check it out and sure enough he talks uh tom hansen into going with him to go look at them to, quote unquote, look at the current design because his company is going to come up with a better, more modern design. Right. Tom goes with him to look at the checkbook and we have a shot of him palming a piece of paper with other numbers on it so that as the audience, we know that he's comparing the numbers. So it's a nice little visual telegraph of why he's doing it. know that he's comparing the numbers.

So it's a nice little visual telegraph of why he's doing it. But when they go into the office to look at this cashier's register, there's another guy in a suit who sees them go in and then immediately goes to a phone and makes a phone call. Someone just hit our line and that he doesn't know who this person is. And the response is that they're going to put a tail on him. It's a very dark and mysterious response. Our camera angle is the same as the camera angle on Blofeld in, you know, like... It's basically so that you can't see any

identifying features. Yeah, yeah. It's like from behind the head and who is this mysterious man? As we might expect, this is not as simple as it seems. And someone was keeping an eye out for someone sniffing around. So we know there is more to this story than meets the eye, because the checks are there, the ones that he sees. Job done. A little sooner than normal. Wrap this episode up. Rockford goes to meet Dave and Beth at a fancy restaurant, because of course they're at a fancy restaurant.

Echoing one of our favorite scenes from a previous episode we've discussed, Just Another Polish Wedding, this restaurant requires a tie. Yes. They have a rack of ugly ties available for those who do not have one with them. He picks up an ugly blue tie and goes to meet them in their booth. They've already ordered, but he asks how the tuna fish salad is in this establishment. Yet again, establishing his bona fides as a man of the people who likes simple foods even in fancy places the theme here so far between rockford and delaro

yeah at some point we get his last name too so he's david delaro delaro which is an 80s rich person name but um it's uh high class versus low class it's been that like in the beginning that and they keep playing it but this is a scene where they really rub it in. He walked into a restaurant without a tie, not knowing he needed a tie, took the wrong tie. The waiters are ignoring him. He's ordering tuna fish salad where he can get something really fancy schmancy. I love that they're playing with this theme right now. There's a shot during the conversation where he pours himself it's either white wine or water but the bottle's almost empty

but it has like a napkin wrapped around it so he starts pouring it and nothing's coming out he and eventually ends it turns it all the way upside down and there's a little bit of water or wine that comes out and he just frowns at his glass he can't even just share what they have it's already gone by the time it gets there so that's all all kind of in the background while they talk. Rockford says he's already made a lot of progress. The checks are there. Since we're starting to talk more and more about fashion, which I think is good and important. I wrote this down because from Beth Davenport has laid down the law that blue doesn't go with yellow and brown and that's important to know the moment she said that because i mean this is james gardner wearing this suit and tie like he looks good

yeah but obviously he doesn't that doesn't work those those colors do not work well together but it made me want to run out and buy a bright blue tie and a yellow shirt and a brown jacket because god damn it if if you're going to complain about James Gardner wearing it, I'll f***ing wear it. I noticed about halfway through, tell me if you noticed this, but I think Beth wears all white in every scene in this episode. I haven't paid attention. That could be... I noticed it later in the episode, and then I was like,

and then I didn't actually rewind to check, but I'm pretty sure she's wearing either white or mostly white in every scene which is an interesting choice so that's another element of Rockford being thrown off his game being made made to feel uh less than in this environment and David's oh he's like oh well okay then I can go ahead and trust my cousin and talk to him about these deals and now that i know i can trust him i need to do it immediately because they're big deals i got two programs he has two computer programs to talk to him about yeah we don't know what computers do but computer programs that need to be done tonight oh but we have these tickets for this concert tonight for like a orchestra

concert well i can't go because i'm going to be so busy it'd be a shame for it to go to waste consolation prize jim you take that to the concert don't waste my expensive tickets that i know you couldn't afford on your own and right like all that subtext is very clear and weird gender dynamic too which but yeah and it's working it's getting under jim skin oh yeah so rockford's basically like, all right, that's all you needed, right? We're done. And then they go through this whole thing about the concert tickets, and Jim still hasn't been able to get a waiter.

David snaps his fingers, and a waiter runs up. That's when Rockford says, I lost my appetite. Yeah. Gets up and tries to storm out, but his napkin is stuck in his belt buckle, so he pulls it out. It's an awkward thing,

which was either a brilliant piece of staging or was such a happy accident that they just had to leave it in. Right. Like it's so perfect. He's so mad about it that he can't even get out of the booth correctly. So he storms out. Beth follows him and she's, as I think makes perfect sense.

She's mad because he's being rude. She's embarrassed because she brought him into this. And now he's making her look bad in front of david and the maitre d wants his tie back so he has to pull that off he's having trouble with that rockford says that he he thinks that david is is a little slick and that he's up to something and beth is like what are you talking about that's ridiculous that's when david finally comes in to swoop in on beth and take her out of the scene. And the maitre d' has a little, I hope it was up to your usual standard, Mr. Delarue. And he says to thank the chef, he has the best kitchen in LA.

Item after item piling on, driving this wedge between Rockford and Beth, but also between David and Jim about the kind of person that they are. Fun, fun scene. Yeah, fun scene. And also, if you had any doubts about how skeezy David was from the first scene, which I think is still left to the viewer a little bit to see whether he really is skeezy or whether Jim's just jealous. This scene establishes that he is, he's at least an operator, right? Like he's at least slick.

establishes that he is, he's at least an operator, right? Like he's at least slick. What I think they did really well here is they played that line close enough that you can imagine taking Beth's point of view still. Nobody seems unreasonable in this interaction yet. Nobody seems to be blind to what's going on. So we basically cut from David walking Beth out the door of this restaurant to seeing him seated at a table in a new setting entirely in this nice looking house. So this is another abrupt transition. There's two couples.

There's him, another woman, and then an older man and woman. Another woman who is not Beth. None of them are characters we recognize from this episode or other episodes. We don't really have any context for this. And then door opens. This woman's voice's voice says no you can't come in and then this guy who i noted first as sweaty looking goon but we shortly learned that his name is mickey comes

storming in mickey has this great off-screen quote the person that is trying to keep him out says something like she's entertaining and he goes you bet she's entertaining so he comes he comes storming in this woman gets up you can't come in here he's like this is my house the divorce isn't finalized this is still mine you know that kind of thing so we get the situation which is that david is here as as the guest of mickey's separated wife and then this other couple who they're whatever their dinner companions yeah mickey is mad about it because she's still his wife and first of all he knows his name oh i have more than just your name yeah he knows i know more than just your name you got too many silk robes and closets where they don't belong oh they must have loved writing this guy's dialogue this is good

stuff it is a plus so he's like you're sleeping with my wife basically this guy's beef who again not beth establishing another layer of yeah skeeziness to david yeah now the nail is in the coffin there's no way david's not the bad guy here and so this argument escalates forget which one says it but basically they're like well you want to settle this right now? And Mickey says, well, I don't want to bust up my own furniture. Let's take it out back. And so these two grown ass men go out back of this fancy house next to a pool to go fight. I just wanted to point out that the same culture clash, the same class clash going on between Mickey and Dave here that Jim and Dave are having. Mickey owns the house.

Mickey's got money. But Mickey doesn't act like Dave. At this point, as audience members, we're pretty sure Dave doesn't have money and he just acts rich. Yeah, we definitely know at this point that he's an operator. He's some kind of scam artist. He's two-timing on Beth, at least. Right.

That cashier check thing that couldn't have been on the level yeah and now this guy's busting his house and wants to fight him all right so this fight because oh this fight so to frame this this makes most sense with this context in mind which we I think semi-deliberately didn't bring up earlier so Dave De La Rue he's played by an actor named John Saxon you may recognize that name in addition to other other roles he was one of the american guys in enter the dragon yeah the bruce lee classic kung fu tournament movie so so john saxon apparently was a legit black belt in karate at this time he had been in enter the dragon he's been in tons of stuff. He was also, he was the cop in Nightmare on Elm Street.

Yeah. Is that right? He was in a ton of B movies through the 70s and 80s. The moment you see him, you're going to be like, oh, that, yeah, that guy. Yeah. This episode was produced shortly after Enter the Dragon was released in the early 70s.

So he was known as a karate guy. And so, even though up to this point, literally nothing about the Rockford Files or this episode have had anything to do with the martial arts, we do get to see John Saxon do some kung fu on a hapless goon. Yeah, it is beautiful. The backyard, it's nighttime. They got a pool and lots of shrubbery.

And much like our friend Rockford, this guy knows how to throw a sucker punch, but he uses his foot. Yeah, you're expecting, and I'm expecting, a kind of Rockford fight, which is pretty gritty, punching and throwing each other to the ground. But he just straight up has legit martial arts style kicks and punches. He blocks a kick from Mickey and just totally overwhelms him in front of the wife and these guests who came out to watch this fight. And he looks good doing it. Like, he really... He's in a tailored suit and it looks great. At this point, I am sympathizing with Beth.

I'm like, God damn it. Why can't this guy be the right guy it's like and he knows karate yeah come on it's not a long sequence you know it's mostly showing that in addition to whatever other talents he has david can physically take on a challenger he beats mickey up in front of his wife and friends. They're doing the the macho thing. They're walking out and taking their suit jackets off. They're preparing for fisticuffs and he just like he leans down and kicks out as if he was like going down to tie his shoe or something. It's unexpected other than you expect a sucker punch at any moment in a Rockford episode.

So it's fun to find out that the actor is a black belt and, and this is why they're doing this, but it's also fun to think about why the character would know this stuff. Suddenly he's entering a whole new realm and there's one other talent that's going to show up. Yeah. He's like a Renaissance criminal. Like,

you know, it's great. It's really interesting. I think I'll bore to say about this in the second half, he has all these interesting things about him that aren't really explained, but that's okay. So yeah, he beats up Mickey. We cut from there to Mickey and another guy in a car staking out the house waiting for him to leave. Where he keeps up this pattern of like, I'm going to kill him.

He's got what's coming to him. Including like a camera shot, like watching out their window, seeing David and the wife kissing outside David's car before he leaves. Yeah. Which is also a little unusual just to see some full on full face macking on the show. So it was definitely rubbing the salt in Mickey's wound. Right. And he does make one mysterious reference, which is that they can follow him now. They can take him out tonight because they have an airtight alibi.

Right. I have some bizarre sympathies for the guy in the car with him. We'll find out in a little bit that this guy is his bodyguard. Yeah, the blonde guy. Yeah, I feel like, especially during my teens and my twenties, I've been in that car. You had an airtight alibi and you're you were going to go with your friend to kill a man yes you know no like you know i'm with a friend who just got out of a situation that has made them angry and they're sitting in the car talking about the things that they're going to do and your your job as a friend is to be there for him but also to be like no

you're not doing that we'll see how that goes for them so we go into our next sequence it cuts back and forth a little bit between two things that are happening at the same time one is david leaves this house and then drives to rockford's trailer trailed by mickey and his bodyguard this is all happening of course while rockford and beth are at this concert that he gave him the tickets to so that's why why Beth isn't around and he can go, you know, have dinner with this other woman. David goes to the trailer,

the door's locked, but because he saw Rockford come in and, and use the spare key that's hidden in the hitch, he knows where that is. And they start rummaging around and Mickey and his bodyguard are waiting. They're like, make sure no one else is around. We'll go in,

in a little bit. Cuts back to Jim and Beth leaving this concert before intermission even because Jim was getting so bored he was falling asleep, which is another little class conscious kind of thing. I don't think we see the actual concert. We just see them in the parking garage. And they're in evening dress. She might be in a black dress in this scene.

I'd have to go look at it again. But there's a white element to it. She's in black and white and he's in like a tux beth is disappointed because they're leaving halfway through and the setting is so much about that the the parking garage is far more rockford than it is beth this is not the night that beth was expecting right it really hammers it home with every both in the narrative and also how they're telling the story by staging this not in say that the atrium of the theater where they might be having this discussion about whether or not to leave that's good i love it i really like the direction this episode and they're obviously

both angry at each other they're in that state i feel like we've all had this kind of fight where it's like we're just mad and it doesn't really matter why and we both know it and we just got to get through it yeah yeah like there's no resolution possible in having this conversation right now but we're mad so we're going to be mad at each other and this is where it comes up in the dialogue for the first time that uh rockford is jealous like jealous of this relationship jealous of him jealous of whatever's happening it's it's so good because she says you're jealous and he says you're right oh sorry the audience can't see me like gesturing in frustration this is this gesturing in frustration is that so much hay is made in television shows these days on not having people come out and discuss their feelings like

this and this show just nails it jim's like yeah you're right let me tell you why this guy looks like a catch i'm i've been up against him the whole time you know yeah he says that he doesn't like being second and then he lists all the ways in which he's second right now yeah so we're two dudes talking about this man's feelings so like obviously this probably resonates differently for people with other lived experiences. But in this moment, I was like, I've had this conversation, right? I've had this argument. I've had this feeling of even though we're being honest with each other, doesn't make me feel any better. Right. Like the thing is, is that it's not even on her,

which is a great thing too. So says you're jealous he says you're right and then the reasons why he's jealous don't involve calling her a cheat or yeah his property in any sort of way because that's not the relationship that they have and we're gonna get more of that but they're all about just the situation that he's in compared to Dave here I love this scene all these scenes that are specifically about Jim and Beth are like little pearls kind of distributed amongst the rest of the thing where they're not huge. Like this is maybe less than a minute maybe of dialogue and going back and forth with them.

But the emotional impact is just like this brilliant little oh moment. But in terms of narrative impact, what's happening back at the trailer is that Dave was looking around and he does finally find Jim's unregistered pistol in the cookie jar where he keeps it. It becomes clear that he's set this whole thing up. He knew he was going to be followed or something like that

because he's waiting in the trailer for Mickey to come in with Rockford's gun. Mickey comes in. There's a moment where you hear someone yell. like that because he's waiting in the trailer for mickey to come in with rockford's gun mickey comes in there's a moment where you hear someone yell that's when david shoots shoots mickey twice mickey falls over and the bodyguard walks in and talks to david and you realize that they were in on this the whole time in the previous scene just before the fight uh between dave and mickey i had written in my notes i just wrote down crap, this is a complex one. Because there's so many things in play

and then the show turns around very swiftly and delivers this, which answers none of the questions, but simplifies the plot line by drawing all of it together. I don't know what's happening, but I do know that all of this ties together and I'm not

floundering in the water and it literally eliminates a character to worry about so so david shoots mickey and then has this brief conversation with the second guy with this bodyguard that makes it very clear just in the language they're using and the context that there's some kind of criminal connection yeah it's establishing that the three of them know each other and have some kind of criminal association. Right. That is pulling them together. It's describing a bit of the frame up, right?

Yeah. Telling the audience, you may not know all of this, but what's happening is they're clearly trying to frame Rockford for the murder and the crime that ties all of these people together. Right. But there's one more thing that this bodyguard can do for David, which is stand over here, and then David just shoots him point blank and eliminates another loose end. That was the least savvy bodyguard. Yeah, so David has turned the tables on these two guys,

murders both of them in cold blood in Rockford's trailer and peaces out. We go to Rockford coming home, seeing that his door is ajar, coming in, tripping over the body that's right in front of the door. Again, ramming home how out of his element Rockford is right now. Right. With this whole situation. So he does go in, trips, falls, falls which is sad sees these two dead guys and the first thing he does is call beth who when she answers mistakes his voice for david's voice which is just like the final like you wouldn't believe the horrible night i had with jim

no she didn't say exactly that but but yeah, he tells her that he came home. There's these two dead guys. She's shocked, I think as anyone would be like, but both of them quickly click over to like professional mode. Yeah. Which I like that where they go from, oh, that's horrible to and how are we going to deal with this? Because this is still within the realm of what we do. Jim tells Beth that he's going to callis becker his friend uh down at the police station he knows he's gonna get brought in so he basically wants to put the wheels in motion with beth first jim knows that this is not a situation where he should run or or try to investigate on

his own like it's too yeah it's too clear a frame up and in another really nice smash cut transition he calls Dennis. Dennis answers. He says, guess what? Cut to Dennis in the interrogation room going, what? So good. I love that Jim is almost laughing when he calls Dennis. You will not believe.

You think some of these other ones have been bad. Here's a bad one. This following scene is an incredible mix up. or like so you got jim you've got dennis lieutenant deal is there beth is in the nearby or on her way i think yeah rockford becker and deal who is becker superior and a lifelong hater of private investigators who's always trying to bust rockford for something right are in the room to start they have the first of a number of rockford knowing his rights and using his knowledge of the law as leverage in these conversations so deal comes back with and give you involuntary manslaughter they came in you felt threatened you plugged them and so this is where rockford goes like

so you're going to try to pin involuntary manslaughter on me because you know murder won't stick they're at their their, like, detente. And that's when Beth and Sully, his bail bondsmen, enter. Sully is not a character I know that well. But his performance here has endeared me so much to him. So Deal's like, well, we're going to book you as a material witness until we can figure this out. Becker, go book him. And there's a moment where it's just the Rockford people in the room.

This is where Becker says something weird is happening. Deal wants him to, the term is bicycle, Rockford to a different jail and keep them buried under paperwork so they can't get them out. This is one of those things where just watching the scene probably is a lot clearer than us trying to describe the scene. One of the great things here is that you get this meeting of the minds. When it comes to choosing between Rockford and his job, Becker is, he doesn't often choose Rockford. He quite often wants to keep his job, but something really weird is happening. So he knows that Rockford is

in real trouble. He's like, I've been told to keep him moving from place to place so that you you know take forever to find him or whatever so you need to push the arraignment so that he doesn't get buried under paperwork and we don't see him for a month let's get this strategy out now because we need to do it and then i gotta go do my job so they have that little huddle and then deal comes in and he's like becker why aren't you booking him yet? And then this new guy comes in, Agent Shore from the FBI, and he rolls in like the top dog. He walks in, goes like, hey, Rockford, in a very familiar way, and says, you're under arrest.

Shore has been in other episodes, and there is a season one episode where the character is introduced, though I believe that this is the first time that we see this actor play this character but just the way that he greets rockford i think establishes that they have run into each other before this great moment where rockford feeds deal his line are you gonna let them get away with that are you gonna let them take your arrest away from you yeah deal is resisting because he wants rockford is his catch yeah which is something that rockford basically planted in his mind right like to get these two at odds rockford demands to know what the charges are and we get this wonderful litany of exotic fraud and

bank fraud and grand theft and then it ends up with and murder and that's when our friend sully what he's been in the background of this whole scene. And then he just walks to the door and just says, like, see you around, Jim. Or something like that. Yeah, that's it. He's gone. He just peaces out. The comedic timing on that is beautiful.

One of my favorite exits. Yeah, it's a good exit. And then we get a three-way power struggle between Deal, who wants to bring Rockford up on his murder charge. Shore, who wants to bring him in for all this FBI stuff. And Beth, who's like, I'm his attorney. Beth is badass in this one. This moment where I think the feds are saying what they're going to do. And then Beth, who's been quiet throughout most of this, just says, want to bet?

And that was it. And he says, I wasn't talking to you. Yes. And she's like, I wasn't talking to you. Yes. And she says, I'm his attorney. Again, I feel like this whole episode is really good with status. And that's probably something I'm going to talk about in the second part here.

Cause this also has the part where Shore turns to deal and he says, Sergeant and deal says, Lieutenant and Shore goes, whatever. Yeah. The whole thing is a big status play. Shore goes, whatever. Yeah.

The whole thing is a big status play. Rockford and Beth get deal on Rockford's side to keep Shore from doing whatever Shore is going to do. So yeah, Beth basically lists out all the technicalities that she can throw in the works to gum this up and keep this from being a case that they can prosecute and all this stuff. And Shore doesn't really acknowledge that that's going to be a problem for him but does back off a little bit but she does take jim aside to talk he's like i don't know what any of this is about but i can tell you all the ways that i see it line up with what david wanted me to do and beth is kind of like that's ridiculous and he kind of lays out each item and you see her acknowledging the logic of what he's laying out. And then he ends with, I really need you to back me up on this.

Yeah. Both as a lawyer, obviously, but I think also as a friend. In a great piece of physical acting, she has this visceral realization of something. Her face changes and she sits down and she realizes that david hired her as an attorney for her legal advice therefore because of attorney-client privilege she can't say anything that would incriminate him beth is rockford's alibi for when when the murders happened and saying why she's his alibi could incriminate david they both kind of have this moment where they realize that that was probably part of it.

Or at least as an audience member, I read that into it where it's like, well, this guy really knew what he was doing. We end with Rockford reprising how he never liked that guy in the first place. What a sequence, huh? Oh, it's so good. How this all has worked out is that uh shore is going to take rockford to to question him about all these things and he takes them to a mysterious dimly lit garage the scene is very dark but the contrast is also very high you see their faces but they're like faces in a sea of darkness practically it's very creepy it's very like what terrible thing is going

to happen in this yeah area as if the fact that he was in the hands of the feds with all these charges on top of him up against what we've just learned is a criminal mastermind playing four or five moves ahead of everyone and then they just bring it all home with this lighting he looks alone in darkness because it looks like he's about to get beat up he mentions this because shore is still with him and he says well we want to keep you where the the locals can't find you for a little while so he's playing a game to keep him out of the reach of lieutenant deal so there's a moment of tension and then we see that there's a tape recorder on the desk and then shore turns

it on and that's kind of the signal of, okay, this is still within the bounds of FBI investigation stuff. It's just a weird location. Whatever happens here, this will be by the book because it's being recorded. But yeah, so Shore has these questions for Rockford. He wants to know everything he knows.

Rockford, like us, doesn't know anything. In a nice piece of exposition, Shore's like, all right, I'll run it out for you just in case you're a patsy and you can help me fill in the details, which is a nice device. So there's this bank in San Diego, first federal bank. Someone used stolen checks from biometrics to cash them at this bank and therefore steal $2 million. two million dollars the man who did so turned out to be one of the dead guys not mickey but the bodyguard was identified as this guy who who actually cashed the checks at this bank and he was

a known associate and the bodyguard of mickey who has run bank scams in the past so since it was all in rockford's trailer they want to know what Rockford knows about this. And so Rockford comes back with, my only connection is the biometrics thing David Delaro hired me to do, so he must be the inside man and have the money. And Shore's like, or you are, and you have the money. And over the course of this, you kind of see that Shore, like, buys the story, right?

Yeah, it's very collegial. Like, I think there's a moment where he turns off the tape recorder. He says that he has an alibi for when the men were murdered, but it's his attorney who also was hired by David and therefore she can't give you the alibi. And that's when Shore turns off the tape. And it feels like when he does that, okay, so how do we solve this? Right. And that's when he offers to put him on the machine or something like that.

Yeah. Fortunately, Jim asks him for clarification. He's like, you want me to take a lie detector test? Yeah. And so Shore's like, well, how about you take a lie detector test? But he says that after the recording's off. So now they're kind of on the same side. It cuts from here to them walking out of the federal building and being like you pass the lie detector test good job jim that's when he says uh stay out of this i'm gonna come down on you like batman oh so good particularly great because the batman that they know of popular culture is adam west right so pow so that's an interesting it's an interesting sequence because it starts off very ominous, but shades over to okay by the end. I've got a thesis working on this episode here.

So we get Jim versus Dave. And we got Jim versus Dave on several levels. Dave is pretty much amazing at everything he does. He knows karate. He had those tickets ready to go. He knew that Jim was going to verify it so he was all set to put Jim somewhere where he could frame him for murders in order to do that he had to set it up so that Mickey came into

the dinner party and got all upset and had to leave we have a Moriarty here we have like a full-on criminal genius that jim's up against also he's high class he's this high class criminal genius jim isn't high class but because jim rolls around in the muck where he does he's got a stack of friends and frenemies that he can call on you know becker beth and and shore shore knows him and even deal was ready to run some interference for him. So instead of all these people piling against Jim, he's in his element, which gives him the only chance he has against Dave. He doesn't have anything at stake other than keeping from being the fall guy for Dave's plan. So he doesn't have anything to lose.

So he can use his friends as positives. Because sometimes in some episodes, because he has something to lose, he puts his friends in danger when he brings them in. Right. And that's a different kind of episode. In this episode, because he's in this web of, as you say, friends and frenemies, he can leverage those to his advantage just by telling the truth. He wants them on his side and he has no reason to lie to them because they're on the same side catching them you know the person who committed this crime no it's a really well constructed way of of using his his assets um when he's been put in a position where he's outclassed uh literally and figuratively by his opposition so we then uh kind of reset from him uh leaving

the federal building and he goes over to Beth's apartment. One of your favorite places. Right. So the last episode. Chicken Little is a little chicken, which is an angel episode, but has a plot point about Jim cat sitting for Beth. And we talked about Beth's apartment in that episode. And there were, I think, fewer plants in Beth's apartment this time. I mean, this is a different set, I think. Yes, it has lots of plants. And what it also has is this amazing

serving set. That casserole dish is something to die for. Beth is, I guess she's having him over for breakfast, for whatever that implies. I guess. There's pancakes on the table, right? I didn't notice what was on the table because I was focused on her stirring whatever was in this casserole dish, which might be some kind of cheese thing, or it might have been eggs. Not to hold you in suspense, but we don't get to see anyone eat in this scene because it gets too intense. But this is saying Beth belongs to the high class in many ways. It's expensive. It's this amazing piece.

I don't know. I loved it because I'm now obsessed with reading into everything about Beth's apartment. Really is what's happening. They're, you know, reconnecting. And he has his own theory. Rockford doesn't think that Mickey set it all up. Because why would Mickey send his bodyguard as the contact person for the bank so he did some digging and David and the bodyguard were seen

having lunches around the headquarters of the company in New York and David was fired a week before this all started happening so Rockford kind of lays out basically that David set it all up in order to make it look like Mickey set it up. But the full timeline was that the scam started a month ago when the accounts were set up. And then the company had the FBI looking into it. And they're the ones who did the positive ID of David and the bodyguard in New York. Yeah. So they ID'd him. So he got fired. He got fired after the bank got hit. And then he came out to LA to deal with the money. But the main point here is that he gets fired and he doesn't tell Beth. Right. Yeah. And her response to he was fired is he didn't tell me. Yeah. And that's when the scene moves out of recapping the motive and why David is the bad guy into being

about Beth. Right. Being about Beth and being about what's bad guy into being about Beth. Right. Being about Beth and being about what's going on with Beth and Jim. Yeah. She kind of finally allows the knowledge that she's been played by this guy to come over her. She admits that that's what's happened. And she's mad because she really liked him in a really authentic way. Rockford asked her if she loved him and she says she doesn't know. On the off chance that you're listening to this podcast and you haven't seen the episode,

we should point out that when he asks if she loved her, he's clearly caring about the answer as a friend. Yes. Not like, do you love him? Yeah, it's about her. It's great because this relationship that they have is so complex and yet so simple. I mean, she summed it up at the very beginning of the episode just every once in a while. In my notes, I say that he, that Rockford realized that this is for real.

Right. They've had the sniping. They've had the argument where they're both mad about stuff. But this is a real moment where he needs to be there for her. And he knows that. And he is willing to do it. And he's there. But he also, he's just honest about his feelings.

And he's not like, oh my god, I've been the worst because I also contributed to this. His feelings are also valid, right? Yeah. It's this great emotional ground with so much tied into everything that's happening. One of the things, he's being's being warm friendly and intimate with her he's cares about what she's feeling and what she has to say but he's also holding ground and he's not changing the nature of their relationship just because she's feeling bad at this moment that takes a certain amount of courage and will that i know as a human being i have not had in past relationships.

He acknowledges that the fact that he's been jealous of this guy can't be helpful. He's still emotionally honest about how he feels about the thing, but he can put that aside to be here for her now. And then Beth's emotional honesty is great too, because she's not accusing Rockford of anything, but she's laying out precisely how when she first met Jim, she thought this was the guy. And then she kept thinking that and it kept not happening. And then eventually she moved on and started looking for other people. And what's going on with her and Dave is that she felt like she found the one. And this comes back to Beth wearing white. This is the scene where I noticed she was wearing white and then went did she wear white the whole episode yeah coming at this as a Rockford fan

specifically Rockford I mean I'm a Rockford Files fan but I'm a fan of Rockford I have been reading this whole episode up to this point from his point of view oh him and Beth have a thing that's kind of free and open and that sort of 70s thing going on. That's great. And maybe Beth is getting a little bit too tangled up in her emotions. Let's see how they unravel them or whatever. And at this point is when I realized, wait a minute, Beth has far more at stake here than we've known. She was viewing this man as marriage material up to this point.

And even like how she wanted Jim to like him and him to like Jim, that was her. Yeah. Trying to bring those two together because they're the ones that she cares the most about still. Yeah. If she's going to move forward in this relationship, these two worlds have to meet and they have to get along. And that's so good.

Watch this damn episode. You're absolutely right that this is where if we haven't been identifying with Beth as kind of the emotional core of this episode so far, this is where that switch really happens. And shame on us for not doing it all. Yeah, seriously. Again, two dudes

watching a show mostly about a dude. Our defaults may be in a certain place but she has this line where she met him two years ago. She spent a year trying to reel him in. Yeah. And then a year ago, she decided that she would settle for a friend. And he ends the scene by saying, well, I still need a lawyer and a friend.

Yeah. Being friends with Beth is still very important to him. Yeah. And in this moment, he doesn't make any play. He doesn't try to project what's going to happen next or anything like that he's just there for her acknowledges that he still is not feeling great about the whole situation but it's not about him right now and the friendship that they have whatever else it may be the friendship they have is very very important how wonderful that this isn't the lesson that people learn in this episode And it's not like they spent the whole episode

lying to each other only to find out at the end that they should have been like this. This is something that they have been driving to in their conversation. It just takes a while to do the work and get there. Yeah, it's another step on the road. Yeah. Yeah, so that's really the emotional intensity part

of the episode. There's still a little bit to come. All right, so Rock rockford still needs a lawyer and a friend they need to track down dave before he absconds with this money is basically where uh where rockford comes to with all of this two million dollars they head down to get beth's car but there's actually a note for her in her like nameplate in her car parking spot it's from david and he says that he borrowed her car to go to the airport he's going to leave it there uh so beth immediately immediately

is like well we know where he's going and we can find out how long the car's been there and then see what flights have left and rockford says look this guy's a master of misdirection again he's a brilliant criminal as we've determined though i think this is the first part where rockford really makes this apparent for us as a viewing audience yeah why would he leave us a note telling us where he's going it's definitely to lead us on the wrong track so he says who else does he know in la and that says he doesn't know anyone else yeah rockford says who is she so rockford's keen instincts of maybe maybe, this guy might be seeing multiple women is borne out. Beth does know that Dave knows this real estate agent or knew this real estate agent named Susan Valero. And this is a weird scene.

So they go to see this woman, Susan Valero, who sold Dave an apartment. And Beth's like, wait, he has an apartment? So he never told Beth about the apartment that he has in LA. And gives him the address of the apartment, because why wouldn't she? However, during this interaction, she very pointedly hits on Jim the whole time. And kind of makes fun of Beth for not knowing that David was sleeping around or seeing multiple women or whatever. Beth gets very defensive defensive and it's both kind of funny but also kind of weird how did it strike you yeah no it's the weird spot of this

episode it's funny like i enjoy it but it comes right on the tail of that great talk also the the way it's acted is a little little stilted at times. Yeah. Jim is 100% flirting back, which is another kind of weird... Which seems like a weird choice. Yeah. But like I said, it is funny. And it plays to a cultural norm that is different from what we might have today.

We've talked about this a little bit before where this sense of like adults can have multiple relationships and it's not really a big deal. Right. I guess one of the things that I do like about this particular scene is that nobody's attempting to obscure the flirting. Yeah. The only bit that is a little obscuring is that Beth grabs onto Rockford.

Well, this whole thing, I think thematically, is just about giving Beth, giving her more reason to regret the choice that she had made. Giving us more ammunition about what a skeezy guy David is, but also being like, and he kept Beth in the dark about these other women, but didn't keep the other women in the dark about Beth because he didn't care about that. But it was important to him to lie to Beth, but not to lie to these other women.

Yeah. But it is acted a little, it's a little stilted and a little wah-wah. But it does set up some of the good stuff at the very end. Yeah. And well, she points out that it's a studio and Jim's like, what do you mean a studio? And Beth says, oh, he's a great painter. There we go.

There it is. Triple threat. This guy. This man is everything. And so sure enough, they go to the apartment. They see David's car in the driveway. So Rockford smartly blocks the drive with his car. Rockford is a master craftsman with his tools, is really what it is.

Like he's got a car. He will use it for everything. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, for sure. As they pass David's car, they see that his bags are packed, but he is still in the apartment. Beth claims that she's there alone and he opens the door and Rockford walks in and they finally have the big confrontation. There's a little bit of sparring at the beginning where David kind of keeps up this like, what are you talking about? Pretense that's dropped pretty quick when Beth is the one who says we know everything and that's when I think we see David finally let down his act a little bit he goes to the same way that we saw him when he started getting confrontational with Mickey like his eyebrows start narrowing and he kind of stops smiling as we might expect we go right into a straight-up fistfight between Jim Rockford and David De La Rue, karate master.

The beginning where Rockford's like, whoa, hold up. Yeah, they start taking off their jackets, and while Rockford's taking off his jacket, David kicks him, and Rockford's like, shouldn't we talk about the rules? The rules? There are no rules. And then Rockford just punches him in the face. Yeah. It's great. So this is in his studio where, sure enough, there's, like, paintings everywhere and easels and paints.

Of all these women. Yeah, all these paintings of all these women. And their brawl sends them each crashing through easels and things are falling all over the place. They get some shots in. Rockford gets kicked a couple times. He's clearly no match for David in kind of a, maybe a straight up fight. But David wants to get out of there. Once he sends Rockford through some paintings and kind of out of the way, he grabs Beth, twists her arm to keep her as like a hostage, I guess. And they run out to the, to his car.

Yeah. There's a little, little something there that it may not be a hostage and we'll get back to that. This is where we see Rockford grab the jar of blue paint that is conveniently at hand and fulfill our final promise from the preview montage. He picks it up and he looks and realizes that David has left. the clear intent was to use it as a weapon but then he comes running out chasing after him and uh flings himself and this bottle of blue so he's a painter he mixes his own paints right like he's so he's got this mason jar of blue paint he just comes flying down on the hood of the car and it just shatters on the windshield painting it all blue so dav David can't see out the window.

He starts driving erratically, ends up crashing the car into some bushes, and Rockford manages to get the better of him in the aftermath of the crash by slamming his arm in the door and then grabbing him in this kind of arm hold and yells for Beth to go get the police. Our last shot of David is him yelling,

no one's ever going to find that money. no one's ever going to find that money. No one's ever going to find the money. Climatic confrontation, very satisfying. Yes. Finally, Rockford managed to think one step ahead. And then with Rockford and Beth combined, they were able to bring him down. And we think it's over.

But we go to one of our nice overhead shots of the beach by Rockford's trailer, and Rockford and Beth walking down the beach together. This is clearly after David's been arrested and going to be charged and whatever. There's no question now that he's guilty. Beth's unloading her emotions about this whole thing. She really did like him and does still like him on a certain level. And that's hard to deal with because he lied to her and all that stuff uh this is where we get the line relevant to the title of the episode she says that it's silly but it's bothering her that there's all those portraits of women and there were none of her all those other girls and

there was no portrait of eliz. And you think it's over. But. Before we do the but though, another thing that I love about what's going on with the relationship here is that they don't try to dial back what has already been said and done, which happens a lot in television relationships. They'll be like, oh yeah, that was just in the heat of the moment or whatever. Let's not, let's not talk about those emotions again or whatever. But they're still continuing forward with what they're feeling and being honest about it which is great uh anyway so she has the line

about no portrait of elizabeth and then you see that rockford has an idea yeah i think during this conversation there's a line about no one knows where the money is yeah they don't know where the money is they don't know how he planned to get it out of the country. Border agents and everywhere would be looking for this money. So Rockford has an idea, and we go to the rental manager. So this is, again, kind of the well-craftedness of the writing in this. We know about this rental manager because when they talked to the woman, Susan, she mentioned, oh, I sold him this apartment. It's managed by the owner, he's yeah it's this name

and he still manages it or whatever this isn't just a random person this is a callback to a character that was slightly introduced to us earlier in the episode but anyway this rental manager is like oh yeah i heard that he got arrested that's a shame and rockford says did he leave anything with you it's like oh yeah he left me a package to send to him at some point in the future guess he won't need it now And there's this little package in brown paper, and they open it up, and sure enough, it's a watercolor portrait of Elizabeth. And then Rockford licks his thumb and starts rubbing right on her face, which I thought was a little unnecessary.

Yeah, she still has emotions about all of this. And the thing he does is perhaps the most destructive, honestly, kind of gross thing that he could do. But he's got a point to prove here. Which is that David was able to take the $2 million from the bank in the form of a federal bearer's bond. So it's a single bond certificate for $2 million. And he painted the front of it with beth's portrait and framed it and then he would smuggle it wherever he was going without anyone knowing that it was a bond this guy was going to ship it to him and it was just going to be just a painting

that he got in the mail so we have a line where rogford says this might be the most valuable portrait ever made it's worth two million dollars see you were, this might be the most valuable portrait ever made. It's worth $2 million. See, you were the most special portrait or something like that. It's a line that hits exactly how you kind of expect it to hit. Like, maybe it's sweet, but also... But it's also a little like... Yeah. And then we end on Rockford's freeze frame smiling face. I think we pan away from Beth's strained smile to Rockford's.

Right. He has the line about her being special. We see her reaction. It pans over to Rockford. End of episode. What a journey. It's an exhausting episode just to talk about it afterwards. Definitely, definitely recommend.

Yeah. There's some good stuff to talk about in the second part too yeah for sure and i think we'll we'll get to that pretty quick yeah i don't really have anything else uh about the episode other than it's great i like that it gives context for their relationship in prior episodes as well as later episodes having seen this episode watching some of the season one ones they like have a little bit more vision to them whether it was intentional or not the fact that the characters are so consistent through all of the episodes means that the later ones still reveal something

that makes sense in the earlier ones even in the context of this episode on its own, what we learn about Beth near the end changes how we look at all of her actions at the beginning of the episode. And I really like that. But that's a very dynamic way to tell that story. Each step of the way, as you go through the episode, how she's behaving makes more and more and more sense. You know, you learn something and then you go back

and you'd be like, oh, that's why she's trying to get these two to talk to each other. That's why she's so nervous when they meet. Yeah. It adds that context that really makes it feel like she's a fully realized character and a person. That is the hallmark of the Rockford Files. Yeah, it's good. I like that this has a really good example of the one-two mystery. There's the surface level, and then once the surface level is peeled back, there's the real mystery. Oh, the one thing I wanted to also say, at the end, when Dave grabs Beth and takes her into the car, the fact that she's the watercolor painting, I don't think Rockford is wrong. I think it is special. I'm not going to say that he fell in love with Beth or anything like that,

but I do think... Okay, so we get a window into two of his other relationships. Yeah. One is with this married woman that is about to get divorced from one of his criminal partners. Right. We can probably dismiss that relationship. Maybe he's even just doing it to piss off this guy.

He's maneuvering Mickey into killing him and framing Rockford for it. Right. And then Valero, the realtor. Another thing that that scene tells us is that her relationship towards relationships is very casual. So it absolutely could be that he looked to Beth as something more than just a casual, another casual relationship. Yeah, it's totally possible. We never see the two of them alone, except for the very beginning.

And she's really nervous. And so I think we'd have to see a scene or two with just seeing them interact with each other. Yeah. To really see what levels there are of how he felt about it. I'm totally willing to say that the fact that he, you know, did her portrait on the Bond, when it could be anything, it could be a sailboat, it could be a flower, like who cares, right? Yeah. That's indicative of something, but also that's the one that he knows he's going to destroy, right? Because at some point he's going to redeem that Bond. So it could go either way.

I really liked him as the bad guy. Yeah. I would love to see him get out of prison and plot vengeance. I checked. Yeah, he doesn't make a reappearance. He's James Bond, but the bad guy, right? Yeah. He's super skilled.

He has all these abilities that are weird and don't necessarily make sense, but they just show that he's this polymath, virtuoso, criminal mastermind, but he doesn't have any friends or close connections and everyone close to him, he's just using them, right? And so that inversion, like we talked about with Jim in this one, is very strong. Kudos to John Saxon for playing this character that well, like going from charming to just dead cold.

Yeah. Or sweating with rage. All right. Well, I think we should probably go ahead and take our break. Thanks for bearing with us on this one where there's just so many good things to unpack. And yeah, really, really highly recommended. Go look this one up for sure. We'll see you on the other side.

200 a Day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this month, we have six of them to thank. Thank you very much to Kevin Lovecraft. Check him out on the Wednesday evening podcast All-Stars Actual Play podcast.

Visit misdirectedmark.com to find that feed, along with other gaming podcasts in the Misdirected Mark Productions Network. Lowell Francis. Check out his gaming blog full of insights

and historical analysis of role-playing games at ageofravens.blogspot.com. Pluto Moved On. Visit plutomoveon.com to find a podcast about tabletop RPGs, video games, as well as their YouTube Let's Plays. Thank you to Shane Liebling and Dylan Winslow. And finally, a big thank you to Richard Haddam for his very generous support. Find him on Twitter, at Richard Haddam. to Richard Haddam for his very generous support. Find him on Twitter, at Richard Haddam.

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release shows more often, so it'll be more Rockford for you. And third, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now? You can check out my Sword and Sorcery fiction, and the Sword and Sor sorcery fiction of other people along with games and comics at worldswithoutmaster.com

So Nathan, what do you have going on? Well, I'm always working on designing and publishing new games. You can find my current offerings including the World Wide Wrestling roleplaying game at ndpdesign.com or check out my Patreon for process and new experiments at patreon.com slash ndpaoletta.

Thanks for listening, and now, back to the show. Well, welcome back to 200 a Day. We had just talked about the recap for episode 16 of season 2, A Portrait of Elizabeth. And I think we're now going to discuss sort of the meat of that, which is where the hell was Jim Rockford with the forks when he should have been at the potluck with the lasagna or whatever the answer machine message was at the beginning of this. The real drama is how he let his potluck crew down. No, what we want to talk about is some of the lessons that we can draw from this episode. So one of the things that I really enjoyed in this episode was all the status play. It wasn't the rudimentary versions of status play that I often see.

Dave, our villain for the piece, who is ostensibly of a more wealthy class than Jim Rockford, who has more education. He's a lawyer or was a lawyer. He knows more karate than Jim. He can paint. I mean, he's really the complete package. He's the polymath criminal mastermind. And Jim's arc for a significant portion of this episode was him dealing with where that puts him in relationship

to Beth, right? Because there's a, man, I hesitate to say romantic rivalry because it's, it's, yeah, let's say romantic rivalry. It, from Jim's perspective, is a romantic rivalry in the beginning. And then it gets more complicated as we learn more about Dave and his agenda. And then it gets more complicated as we learn more about Dave and his agenda. And so in the very beginning, we have Jim showing up at his trailer. Beth is already there with Dave and they're waiting for him. All of the status play that happens in this beginning part is actually stuff that Beth puts on Jim. She's nervous that Jim's kept them waiting and feels that that's rude.

She's upset that he's shown up filthy because he's been working on Rocky's truck, that he doesn't dress up for the occasion. He may not know what the occasion is supposed to be, but... Yeah, I think it's telegraphed to us a little bit that she has a little bit of a unrealistic expectation that he would know what was happening. Right. But she does have a line about like like, he's usually very neat. Kind of makes excuses for him because she doesn't want David to think less of her because of Jim.

So we have Jim coming into the situation, probably not consciously, in a way that could afford him more status, right? It's like a standard 80s businessman negotiation thing to show up a little late to make them wait. He doesn't have to dress up for him, which is a standard late 90s, early aughts businessman playbook thing. So all of this makes it to him feel like it's his home ground. It's his turf. He's in charge. But Beth's presence there undercuts all of that.

And she keeps elevating Dave. And I don't think that's an accident. I think unlike Jim, Dave is cultivating this sort of high class. He doesn't go overboard, but he lets Beth do the work for him, right? Right. The whole arc of this episode is that in that first scene, you're still not really sure what's going on. But then in retrospect, it's very clear. And so in retrospect, he is just letting Beth carry the load and then being kind of self-deprecating at times, but that only makes it worse.

Like it's brilliant on his part. If this is like the conscious thing that he's attempting to do, it's great because he doesn't even expose himself to it. He just gets to be the higher status person. And it kind of has to work, right? I mean, obviously, because this was written, it works, but he doesn't need to get Jim to work for him. He needs to get Beth to get Jim to work for him. That's actually part of the plan, which is really a nice piece of writing. This episode does a really good job of not having anything extraneous in the actual writing and plot of the episode and how everything kind of is there for a reason that comes back later. And even just the premise of,

I'm going to employ you for legal counsel to get your PI friend to help me do this innocuous job is actually part of the full plan. So this is an interesting status thing. And what's interesting about it is not only that it's not coming directly from the high status person, he's not specifically instigating it. He's letting Beth instigate it. But also Jim's, like you see him struggle with it in like really kind of effective ways right he doesn't feel like a low status character at all throughout any of this you you just feel kind of angry with it along with Jim yeah you feel like he's off balance and you're waiting to see how he resolves that like whoa Jim's actually really off his game for the first two-thirds of this episode.

But what's great about this is that it's set up so that when he brings up the fact that he doesn't trust Dave, it just looks petty. Right. Which is wonderful. In Beth's eyes, it's clearly some sort of jealousy thing. But then he cops to the jealousy, like, right off the bat, and moves forward with that, and sort of short-circuits this whole status thing, so it doesn't become an anchor around his neck for the whole episode. The actual issue is the emotional reality and also the narrative reality. So one of the things that can be taken from this early interaction is that if you're going to use status, which you should, like there's definitely a lot of drama to be pulled out of that, sort of the path of least resistance here would be to say okay here are two characters this character has a higher

status than that character so i'm just going to figure out how to write that to reflect that between those two characters and you can do so much more interesting things if you throw a third character into orbit there if that's just dave and jim it would just be dave trying to knock jim down a peg and jim just not taking it and that's all it would be the whole but it's that beth is there and that jim cares about what beth thinks of jim he wouldn't care if dave was like you're wearing a dirty shirt that's not gonna cause jim to go on his back foot but but he does with Beth. In fact, we've seen it in earlier episodes that we've done with the hot dog in the cellophane wrapper. It's a callback to The Countess, where we talk about status in that one as well. Yeah.

This is an interesting contrast. I was thinking about that episode because in that one, Jim keeps the moral high ground through most of the show. So a lot of the time, his interactions with people who are higher status, whether they're rich socialites or they're rich business people, he's our relatable everyman who's demonstrating how out of whack the higher status person's priorities are. And then in this episode, instead of taking that as the baseline, we discover that gap over the course of the episode. And we start off with Jim not being on the moral high ground. Like Jim is kind of whiny, right? In the first couple scenes, like he's kind of petulant. And Beth is the one that we're more like concerned about and are more worried about, I guess. The real culmination of that is in the parking garage. They've left a

concert that Beth wanted to see partway through because Jim was falling asleep and embarrassing them. And Jim reacts by saying, well, I guess we're just going to go see... I can't even remember. Well, he says that they'll keep to the sports. The look on Beth's face during that, I mean, to some extent, that's for comedic effect, but also there's sympathy there. Like, I'm like, that's a dick move, comedic effect, but also there's sympathy there. Like I,

I, I'm like, that's a dick move, Jim. You're the one misbehaving here. And he's kind of saying, well, if you want to hang out with me, we got to do the things I like and that's it. And that's not how a relationship works. And that's interesting because that's what this episode will eventually get into is their relationship and how it works. But even in that situation, it seems to me that a lot of that is driven by the fact that they're going to a fancy thing that Rockford couldn't afford to go to other than they're being gifted with these tickets. And the gifting of those tickets. So that dinner just before that, where he does that that's when dave is playing all of his status yes and he's just doing it over and over again and by now we hate him yeah from snapping his fingers for the waiter to the the maitre d wanting to know how he was doing to even like they already ate another dig at jim for being late and picking a place where jim would have to wear a tie like

that's not an accident that's not coincidence like he knew so that the opening scene and then the scene in the restaurant demonstrate a nice array of different tools to use to showcase both the character's status and also how the character is going to use it as a as a as a weapon or a leverage point, right? And so in both cases, they use clothing, obviously, the order of arrival, you know, who gets there first, who can get service versus who needs to beg for service, right? Especially in the restaurant. And then a lot of the physical, I hesitate to say physical comedy,

but a lot of the physical action in those scenes are also undermining these things, how in the restaurant jim like his bottle the bottle that he's trying to pour water or wine or whatever out of is almost empty he gets his napkin stuck in his belt while in the first scene you know he has to scramble around and find his key yeah literally get on the ground beneath them right so those things so like the physical location, the clothing that people are wearing, the order in which they appear and the order in which they speak, who does the talking, and then like who is able to control the conversation.

Like those are all individual little tools that are assembled in those two scenes to, to showcase who has the kind of social power over who. Up to Rockford storming out as finally reclaiming some authority for himself, being like, I don't need to sit here and be insulted, basically. I mean, I guess these all sound very basic, but I think the idea here is that when you package them correctly, you then can transmit all these second level dynamics about how these characters feel

about each other and who has power over who without having to have it be like a plot thing or holding a gun to someone's head or issuing threats or any of that kind of stuff. It's encoded in all the interactions. If this episode started with Dave making all the plays that he makes at the restaurant, it's a different thing going on. Dave is just a tool and we can't wait to see him to get his comeuppance. But because it's Beth that invests him with all of that status, with all that glory in the beginning, then when he uses them, he's still a tool, but now he's a dangerous tool using them he goes from generic threat to villain right he goes from being like rockford bad guy devious client who has something up his sleeve to like oh this

guy's really uh really slimy which means he's really he's really memorable he's a memorable character the fact that a sympathetic character has positive feelings towards him complicates him yeah and i think it's crucial that that comes out before he plays his hand we have beth to tell us that what rockford is doing is wrong even though we're invested because we are watching a show named after rock right we're invested in assuming he's right it unsettles us in the beginning and it unsettles us and it imbues dave with status that when he starts wielding that status as a weapon it's terrifying you worry if beth and rockford will you know make it through this what crazy stupid thing is rockford going to do in reaction to this you're there with them

you're like oh geez you can't get out from under this can you there's no way so an interesting thing about how the status plays out and i think this is again a wider theme to think about is that it's almost always contextual to the other people around you yeah so with david we see him using his status as a weapon, either subtly or overtly through the entire show until in the last scene was just the three of them again, which is mirroring their first interaction with the three. But now they're on David's home turf instead of Jim's home turf. At that point, because of the change in how Beth sees him, now he's lost the power that his status or his perceived status afforded him and that's when he has to resort to his other abilities like karate in order to try and solve the problem he is a an overbuilt kid I love I love if they if they just popped in something at the very end where he also turned out to be like a math genius or something I've been like yeah sure that makes

sense but yeah like even when he fights earlier it's in front of other people who he already has impressed that whole interaction he's in a position where he's pushed to the edge and he has to respond right this guy mickey's coming in and threatening him and he's like we can deal with this later mickey's like no we'll deal with it now and he's like all right i have no choice i have to beat you up now even then he's like, all right, I have no choice. I have to beat you up now. Even then, he's still using his status with them as a means to get what he wants, which is get Mickey so angry that Mickey's going to try to kill him later. Right. All part of the plan. And so we don't see him lose that ability to impress other people

or change other people's minds until that last scene. Yeah. And like that scene, he enters that scene having been betrayed by Beth, which is great, too. She knocks on the door and says she's alone, and Rockford is just standing there. Yeah, I think that that's great. And it's part of the fun, seeing such a character fall. Yeah, so I think maybe a final thought about this, unless you have anything else, is that part of the treatment of status is how it changes

over the course of the narrative right someone goes from high to low or low to high or how they cross in between and how it's not a static i have status five you have status three so therefore i'm able to do all these things to you until that changes right it's more what is the dynamic between two people of different status, and how do we watch someone get what they deserve, whether that's going up or down from their starting point? The other little bit that I wanted to bring into this was the scene with Becker and Deal and Shore, the feds. Everyone wants Rockford for a different reason everyone in that room so you put them all in this room and you have these moments where different people have different

powers over everyone i won't try to diagram it orally here but basically every character's got pressures pointed at every other character and they're all reacting a different way to each character right deal is a different person to Rockford than he is to Shore. And because of that, Rockford can use Deal against Shore. And it's not because Deal likes Rockford. It's the opposite. It's that he hates Rockford. It's another great illustration of how you destabilize the dynamic by adding a new character.

The Deal-Becker-Rockford triangle is pretty well established through numerous episodes. And then in this scene, it gets destabilized by Shore. Now their dynamic is different and they have to reassess who is on whose side and who wants what from who. One of the great things about the character of Beth, I mean, we've talked about this in previous episodes, but between her being kind of a brilliant lawyer and she would have to be to get Jim out of the trouble that she gets Jim out of.

But then not so good with other things, which she would have to be in order to still be around Jim. But in the same way that Jim has it together in many ways and just doesn't have it together in others, they're great mirrors of each other that way. But the way she dealt with that status, she was like, no, I'm in charge here. And this is what's happening. And that was great. Yeah, it is really a great scene. And I think the last element of that I want to tease out is that one reason why these status conflicts have so much juice is that they are embedded in a world where there's consequences for making certain choices. If this was a world where the cops could do whatever they wanted,

carte blanche, and there was never any legal recourse, then Beth wouldn't have any power in this situation. But it's a world where the judicial system matters, and the conflict between law enforcement and the legal profession right doesn't have a determined outcome it will go to court there will be some kind of case that has to be made so who has a better a better chance to win that case beth stepping up as a lawyer matters she has right power because of that she's the big gun in the scene. These characters care about things outside the four corners of the screen that they're on. They have other concerns about their careers, about doing what's right.

Like, Shore wants to do what is right. He just thinks that Rockford's involved. And then once he's convinced that Rockford isn't involved, he lets him go. Because he's not vindictive. He's just trying to solve the crime so that sense of real consequences to action i think is what makes status dynamics work and not just who has the bigger gun or who has the most money or any of that other stuff the other thing that made me think of was i guess just the previous scene where rockford calls her up and bet clicks from being Beth who thinks she's getting a call

from Dave but gets a call from Rockford to lawyer mode all of this personal stuff gets chucked aside for the moment and now I'm doing my professional job it's really effective because they're both fully realized characters they have the ability like most people do to compartmentalize that doesn't mean that we ignore all that other stuff it's still the undercurrent to their relationship but like in this moment yeah we need to do what we need to do we as frequent rockford files watchers we know that there's a lot to to these characters and that they can do this what this episode also does though is it takes one character that we are only going to see the one time and give him so many parts that as we discover them as audience over the course of the episode, we start to get this sense of this really memorable villain. Yeah, it's less subtle.

It's less realistic than watching a show a lot and seeing a bunch of different little things kind of accumulate. watching a show a lot and seeing a bunch of different little things kind of accumulate but it's kind of fun to like learn each of these new skills that david has we've half jokingly been been like oh yeah he's he's the criminal mastermind because he kind of fits into a mold it's a little bit of a trope he's super smart and he's rich or at least he can have money when he needs it and he's a karate master and he paints but since those things are each revealed to us as we go through the episode it feels a little less like at least to me it felt a little less like seeing a cartoon character and a little more like seeing more of a moriarty like you said in the first part really seeing someone who has a

complicated past i don't really want to see more of him because he's totally a scumbag who has no moral center. But the backstory to this character must be really interesting, right? Yeah. Your point about it being revealed over the course of the episode, think about it in contrast to if we had revealed all that right away. If we had just, in the very beginning, here's a painting karate master, lawyer, criminal mastermind. Now let's see what Rockford does up against him. That's a different kind of episode. What happened here, which was really great,

was that every time something got revealed, the fight, sorry, I just got to focus on this fight again. This moment where he's at the dinner party, I'm like, what is he doing? Okay, so he's cheating on Beth. The woman he's obviously cheating on her with, her husband shows up. And I'm like, oh, okay. So there's a new guy.

But he's not a new guy, right? Like, he's crucial to the story. And I don't know that yet. And they're like, well, we're going to get in a fight here. Let's go out back. And then that kick. And'm like what is i get over the what is going on just in time to be terrified of him showing up at rockford's place and then finding the gun you just you've you lose your your balance right and you're like oh wow you say something hokey like that golly gee that guy is going to be trouble yeah this it kind of reminds me of some of the stuff we talked about in the Just Another Polish Wedding episode

where we talked a little bit about set pieces and the Nazi bar. Him being a painter is kind of important to the story, if for nothing else, because of that final reveal. That final reveal could have been anything, but if it's going to be that he painted on top of a bear bond, then he might as well be a painter. Him doing karate really only matters because of the actor and part of the billing for you should watch this episode is, oh, it has the karate guy from Enter the Dragon. He's going to do karate in this show.

You should watch it. Totally legit choice in terms of marketing. So that's a pre-existing thing, right? Like, yeah, this guy's gonna have to execute some martial arts in this episode. So he's going to need to be in a plot where he needs to fight with some people. But because he's presented as this very thoughtful Machiavellian kind of character, And because the plot unfolds such that we see each element of it after the other. So it builds into a cohesive picture of the character. It doesn't feel as out of place as it otherwise might. It's a little cartoony.

It's a little tonally strange because it's the only time in the show that anyone does martial arts. But it also increases the feeling that this guy's a real threat. Like, not just because of the money, not just because of the emotional issues, he also is a physical threat as well. So that builds him into one of the more memorable single villains in the show, I think. Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's plenty of great characters on Rockford

where the entirety of the character what we need to know about the character we see in like the first two lines of dialogue with them uh I bet you're thinking about the two mob guys in uh yeah Chicken Little is a Little Chicken that's the one yeah and they're like Urban Gardner and the uh the guy in the cast yeah we get everything we need from these very short bits about them and it's enough to keep you going. But they don't feel as scummy in that episode

as David feels as scummy in this episode. Because we have more time with him and we see more of what he can do. Yeah. And we are spending the episode trying to suss him out. Rockford's rarely wrong. It'll be interesting as we watch,

if we come across a character who he's suspicious of that turns out to be... Like innocuous or innocent. Yeah. Anyways, we're suspicious of this guy because Rockford's suspicious of this guy and because we have this whole dynamic between Rockford, Beth, and Dave.

But that's it. It's just suspicion. And when we start building the tools he has available on top of him as we go along, each time something is added, it gets scarier. So this, I think, is particularly relevant

to game stuff. Maybe if you're creating a nemesis for your group of characters. Do you have any thoughts about how to do this in a way where it's not just like i need to give this guy more powers or you know i need to give this opponent more things he or she can do to counterbalance the multiple abilities of the players right or the player characters well i think one of the the important features here is

that dave is in tight with Beth at the beginning. And that's probably why he gets revealed slowly over the episode, right? You can't say, here's Beth and here's Beth's new boyfriend who is all of these horrible things. That reflects poorly on Beth. Yeah. It's important that you see why Beth likes him. At least a little bit. Yeah.

Or why she shouldn't automatically assume he's Jack the Ripper or whatever so I think that's probably a good angle have a character that is hanging out and innocuous with the player characters either connected to an important NPC or just even be an important NPC that just slowly you just start having things revealed and I think part of it is you don't even have to go over the top because he's not really over the top okay he's a criminal mastermind there's that he's running a pretty complex con that involves uh murder and frame up but that's not unusual for a Rockford villain but he's he's got two hobbies on top of that he happens to be good at his hobby that's a good point it's not like and he has a mob of goons at his beck and call

and has like the police on his payroll right like those would be things that make him harder and harder to bring bring to justice or harder and harder to get your comeuppance. What makes these things so effective is that they're so unexpected. It's having a well-dressed high society lawyer know enough karate to kick the **** out of any low-life thug he runs across is fun and it's not a thing that you're expecting. And you can do stuff like that with characters that just suddenly the guy who follows you around dragging around your trunks full of treasure is just like really good at navigation and you didn't know it. Like every time you got lost, you should have asked him. And then the question is, why didn't he tell us whenever we got lost? Does he want us lost?

What's happening there? And then you can build on stuff like that. there and then you can build on stuff like that well i think it one of the things that makes it compelling in this case uh for the painting in particular is that it's a thematic thing as well as a character thing right the idea that he paints it's part of the plot at the very end but it also showcases part of his appeal he has a creative side he has artistic ability he has a reason to invite women back to his studio right like these things all wrap up in what we already know about him so it's not like oh that's weird that he paints it's like oh of course he also paints yeah and so one can see how working backwards from this idea maybe of the way that his plan is going to work is that he

hides the the money by painting on it the way that this dungeon adventure an end point that i have is that the characters get lost at open sea with all their treasure yeah so the hireling with navigation skills that he chooses not to use that actually ends up becoming thematic on an adventure where the goal is for them to be lost or have to get out of some kind of situation when in doubt work with the material you already have if you already have these other elements you can bring that back into your your character that you're trying to complicate by giving these new dimensions and i think another fundamental thing that's happening here is that a lot of times in role-playing games,

so violence is quite often a highly endorsed solution to problems. So you look at somebody that starts suspiciously looking like a villain, then the answer is, well, let's take them out. And if we can't do that, then we'll regroup and we'll find a new way to take them out. But in Rockford, first of all, he doesn't do that. He doesn't kill and we'll find a new way to take them out but in in rockford first of all he doesn't do that he doesn't kill people but it doesn't even have to be like this moral thing in rockford there are plenty of examples of characters that could have been villains that ended up being assets the uh farnsworth stratagem it's slowly revealed to us that she's also a con person and she becomes an asset in kind of an organic way and if you have that on the table if that happens often enough then you have the ability

to like i wouldn't even set out to make dave a villain that will at all costs destroy rockford i would just make dave the character that he is and we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, those are all great points as usual. Do you have any other final thoughts on this episode, A Portrait of Elizabeth? If I haven't said it already, and I know I have, you should watch this episode. This one in particular has created quite a bit of discussion outside the podcast in my normal daily life. I don't know if that's another, another metric for measuring these episodes.

It's a good sign. It is really, really good. And one of the episodes that really, the more you get into it, the more there is to appreciate. Yeah. Even I'd say more so even than many of the ones we've talked about,

this might be one of the most cohesive episodes where the writing, the character work, and the pacing of the show, how it's shot and the transitions and everything, how they all just work together. And every time you think something's just a throwaway, it's actually not. It actually has more weight to carry in the story.

We say this every time, but highly recommended. Thanks again so much for listening to what we think about this episode of The Rockford Files, and we will be back next time to discuss another episode of The Rockford Files.