Two Hundred A Day - Episode 114: Black Mirror

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

Nathan and Eppy go to the first appearance of Megan Dougherty (Kathryn Harrold) in S5E9 Black Mirror. This double-length episode, split into two for syndication, gives us plenty of time to learn about Megan and see exactly why she and Jim have such a unique connection. Despite the length, this one flys by as the story turns from discovering a mysterious stalker to handling a serious psychological case, all while showcasing one of the most memorable relationships we've seen on the show. The chemistry on screen, the tight script and the deft handling of complex characters gives us a lot to talk about! We have shirts! Check out the presale at ndpdesign.com/rockford and consider supporting the show by picking up one of our two original designs! We have another podcast: Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday) at ALL levels of support. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files (http://tinyurl.com/200files)! We appreciate all of our listeners, but offer a special thanks to our patrons (https://www.patreon.com/twohundredaday). In particular, this episode is supported by the following Gumshoe and Detective-level patrons: * Richard Hatem (https://twitter.com/richardhatem) * Bill Anderson (https://twitter.com/billand88) * Brian Perrera (https://twitter.com/thermoware) * Eric Antener (https://twitter.com/antener) * Jordan Bockelman (https://twitter.com/jordanbockelman) * Michael Zalisco * Joe Greathead * Mitch Hampton's Journey of an Aesthete Podcast (https://www.jouneyofanaesthetepodcast.com) * Dael Norwood wrote a book! Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo123378154.html) * Chuck from whatchareading.com (http://whatchareading.com) * Paul Townend, who recommends the Fruit Loops podcast (https://fruitloopspod.com) * Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app (https://rollforyour.party/) * Jay Adan's Miniature Painting (http://jayadan.com) * Brian Bernsen's Facebook page of Rockford Files filming locations (https://www.facebook.com/brianrockfordfiles/) * Tom Clancy, Andre Appignani, Pumpkin Jabba Peach Pug, Dave P, Dave Otterson, Kip Holley and Dale Church! Thanks to: * Fireside.fm (https://fireside.fm) for hosting us * Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) for helping us record and capture clips from the show * Spoileralerts.org (http://spoileralerts.org) for the adding machine audio clip * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Jim, I leave London 4 o'clock, arrive LA 9. I guess that's London time. Yeah, 4 to 9 is 5, minus 12 hours flying. No, plus 12 hours. Ah, but then there's a time change. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epi Dyer-Ravishaw. Right off the bat, I need to apologize to you, Eppie, because when I proposed this as our next episode, I did not check and did not realize that it is in fact a two-parter. Yes. So I hope that did not throw off your viewing schedule like it kind of did to me, because I did not realize until I was loading it up for my own note-taking sesh. For our listeners' sake, I should just maybe paint a little bit of a picture of what, well, actually, basically, watching a Rockford Files episode takes a bit longer if you're taking a bunch of notes, you're stopping and rewinding and trying to figure out what happened, not trying to figure out what happened, but like, write down what you need to do and, you know,

all that. But I will say, despite the fact that this was a two-parter, it flew by. Oh, yeah. This was deliciously paced, I think. And so, yeah, going into it, I had a little like, oh, no. Signed up for twice the amount of time, but it turned out it didn't feel like that. I mean, it did take longer to do, obviously, but yeah, same. I was kind of by the end of the first episode, I was like, wow, that just flew by.

The first episode in particular, like the ending of it, I was like, wait, what? We're, oh yeah, I guess we are at the end of this. So before getting any farther, I suppose I should say that we are talking about season five, episode nine, or in syndication, episodes nine and ten, Black Mirror. This is one of those double length episodes when it originally aired and then was split into two episodes with a, you know, next time on, previous time on, you know, little splice for syndication. Which is how I have it on my Blu-ray set it's in the two the two halves yeah the dvd set is the same uh which is my first clue that something might have been wrong well so the imdb entry is the single one which is why i didn't realize because i did not look

at the runtime i did not realize that it was the uh the double length but that is But that is an apology, but I'm not sad that we did this one because, spoiler alert, it's really good. It is. So we are doing this one in particular because our last episode was on the 90s movie, Punishment and Crime, featuring the return of the character of Megan Doherty, played by Katherine Harreld. the return of the character of Megan Doherty, played by Catherine Harold. And as it so happened, we had not seen any of the original series ones with that character. So now we're going back to fill in that background. And this is the first appearance of Megan Doherty. This is a little bit of a pattern with us. I mean, it happened with Gandhi as well, but we'll watch the final episode

with the character and then be like oh right we should go back and watch the previous ones um and i'm not saying that i recommend that in particular for anyone but i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing and it's it was very interesting watching this uh and kind of noticing the the call outs or allusions to it in in the in reverse order if if you will. Yeah, there were moments where I was like, oh, that is very much like the movie. And then obviously for the movie, it was a callback to this moment in this episode, which are separated by about 20 years of time, almost.

Yes. That movie was 1996, finished in 1995. This episode is 1978. But they clearly had the movie in mind when they did this one. Well, I think a lot of that continuity probably can also be attributed to the fact that this episode and that movie

were both David Chase, productions by David Chase, for David Chase. This one is written and produced by, the movie was written, produced and directed by chase. And I guess we will see on the second appearance of, uh, Megan, if that is also a David chase, um, uh, production.

But I think that continuity of character makes total sense when you consider the, you know, having the same writer, et cetera. Yeah. This episode is directed by Arnold Lavin. I think that is how it was pronounced or lavin only rockford files um appearance for this director but seems like kind of an interesting guy um he was a producer and then a director starting in the 50s and he was directing tv all the way into the 80s he's of the generation of movie people that came out of the air force first motion picture unit in world war ii oh wow so that that's that's the the generation of movie people that came out of the air force first motion picture unit

in world war ii oh wow so that that's that's the the cohort that includes uh reagan but also like clark gable oh and william holden uh this guy met two other guys there and they made a production studio post-war levy gardner lavin Gardner, as far as I could tell, has no relation to James... Well, Gardner, it's not the same name. Not Bub Gardner. No. And so they produced movies through the 50s

and TV through the 50s and 60s. You know, he ends up directing a lot of TV. Two episodes of Ritchie Brockleman, P.I. Oh, nice. Two episodes of Ten Speed and Brown Shoe, most oh nice two episodes of ten speed and brown shoe most relevant to our uh to our interests but looking through his credits i thought it was interesting because you could really kind of see the trajectory of popular shows because it really just goes from like westerns and he produced a big a couple big western shows in like the the late 50s early 60s um westerns to to crime and detective and police

stuff to like action his last couple credits are like the a team and stuff like that um it was an interesting view a little deeper into the past of most of the uh production staff that we see there's there there'll be some uh i presume directorial flourishes in this episode that uh are pretty interesting it's a little opaque to me who makes decisions about like cinematography or music or you know what what have you uh whether it's the director or the cinematographer or you know whatever but there's definitely things going on um visually and and with the soundtrack in this episode that very much so yeah yeah the soundtrack in particular and we'll talk about it

for sure but um also some of the some of the camera work which i would describe as cinematic kind of in the same way as and i think this episode has a lot of similarities to uh crackback which we did a couple episodes ago, which is kind of a similar premise where Beth is the target of some kind of creepy stalking. This episode of Megan Doherty is the target of some creepy stalking in a different way. It's a very different episode, but thematically, they're kind of a thematic pair. Some of the camera work reminded me of crackback because in crackback it reminded me of like a suspense movie like a like a hitchcock or something yeah yeah so i think we uh can get right into it uh i will go into the opening month i don't actually

have a lot of notes on the opening montage there's not much it's very it's very spare. Yeah. There's just the wonderful exchange about, you know, two zillion. I don't remember what Rockford's line is, but Dennis's response was like, that must account for the two zillion happy relationships I see all the time, which is great. But it's a dark one. That is definitely what you get, is that this is not going to be uh i don't want to say goofy it's not it's not going to be a light-hearted episode no there's a little more context in the show but they use the cut of jim saying like what you were being subjected to is called psychological rape oh yeah and that's in the preview montage yes be be aware i mean listener

but be aware of you are this one's going to be a little darker one. Yeah. It's as close as 1978 gets to a content warning, right? Like that. And it's interesting. I don't remember if this is in the preview, but like there's a lot going on in this episode that is, first of all, when I say this episode, I'm smashing them both together because that's just how I experienced them. This is definitely a single story.

Yeah, it's not like Gear Jammers where there are two separate halves that you can kind of just talk about separately. This one, we will talk about the break when it happens. But a lot of things in this feel, for the time, very sensational. Like, we're going yeah talk about things that are like everyone's talking about and um i really enjoy how this subverts that and we'll get into that as we go along but like uh yeah we'll get into it when we get into it as As we say. Yeah, I'll just say, so content warning wise, you know, it is a darker one. It is, there is stalking. There is a lot of language about mental illness that may have not aged particularly well, but it's not like horrible.

It's more like, I feel like we don't talk about it that way anymore kind of stuff. But I'm also not really qualified to say what a more appropriate, you know, set of terms would be or something like that. But there are definitely those moments where I'm like, I don't think we say that that way. Yeah. There's a lot of menace,

but there isn't any like serious violence or gendered violence, which is, which is good because it is very tense without having to. I would say, in fact, it is a wonderful example of how to create menace and tension without using physical violence. Hey, Epi, did you know that we are a 100% listener-supported show? I did not know that. Wait, I did.

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ndpdesign.com slash rockford to check out the shirt designs and see if you would like to support the show by picking one up. They're gorgeous. You're just going to look good in them. That's all. That's the only thing I can say about that. Even though this is going to be a darker show, we do start off very

light with what I term a jaunty version of the theme over a slow zoom into a bright light which i'm sure is just a studio light but it's kind of like looking at the sun or something right yeah it's a big bright circle it says black mirror right in the middle of it and then we get the titles over some very uh pastoral shots of the beach in paradise cove everyone it's very busy everyone's hanging out it's a beautiful day yeah we pan across people jogging and playing ball and just having a good time until we get to jim and angel and the first piece of dialogue. It's a definite no, Angel.

Angel is trying to borrow Jimmy's car, but the last time he did, he returned it with no reverse, chili on the seats, and different tires. Angel is offended. Yes, Angel's response is, wrong, wrong, they were the same tires.

I love that he says, like the other part, no reverse, chili on the seats, that happened. But I wouldn't sell your tires. As they're walking, Angel sees a football that's been abandoned on a beach towel. He picks it up. He wants Jim to go deep. He remembers throwing around the old pigskin in the prison yard.

And Jim is like, I don't want to do this uh but angel throws it anyway and it arcs over jim and roll hits and rolls right over a woman who is sunbathing uh jim almost runs into her trying to get the ball and we have a me cute i would say yeah as this is who we are anticipating and who we recognize from having seen the movie that comes out 20 years later um but we will you know soon find out that this is uh megan doherty sunbathing on the beach they just have a bit of a chat i would say it's a little charged like i think we're we're supposed to absolutely read it as this is like a flirty thing. You start to forget that angels there to your detriment. She asks about the,

um, the, the seafood place up by the highway. And Jim is like, no, don't go there. Um, he has a,

a great line about the lobsters rumbling with the rats every night and the lobsters aren't winning. So, yeah. Yeah. So that place is bad, but the one on the beach is good. So she should go because she's like, where should my friend, me and my friends go to eat?

The Sand Pebble is the restaurant on the beach. I was looking through this episode's entry in Ed Robertson's book, and he clarifies something that I always, always have trouble remembering, which is the deal with the restaurant. The Sand Pebble is the actual restaurant and it's called the sand pebble it was referred to as the sandbox in a six season episode um and then it's called the sand castle in the movies so i think we've talked about what was that place called again so this is all the same place um the sand pebble is the place that is now Bob Morris's Paradise Beach Cafe. Hey! We are both wearing memorabilia. A generous gift from one of our patrons who hooked us up with some merch.

You can't see us, so I had to say it. Yeah, yeah. We're wearing our uniforms. We're representing. Anyway, this conversation ends with Jim asking her if she'd like to skip lunch with her friends and get dinner with him instead and she shoots him down she has to work yeah well about tomorrow i'm working tomorrow too i work all the time and jim kind of gives the like all right well you know he tried um and as he leaves to go rejoin angel uh we we see a guy who's in extremely good shape rejoin Megan on the beach towel.

Angel is walking away with the football stuffed up the back of his shirt. And Jim makes him give it back and throw back towards where it came from so he does not steal the football right off the beach. Angel's plan, like he mentioned that he had like a nephew's birthday coming up. Yeah, yeah. So Angel. which angels plan. Like he mentioned that he had like a nephew's birthday coming up. Yeah. Yeah. So angel. So I,

I would notice in the, not notice in the notice. So I didn't keep a hard track, but we start with the, the jaunty version of the theme through the credits. And then for pretty much the rest of the episode, there is no score except when there's tension music which we'll talk yeah and when there's some romantic music yeah but i think there's like no other like little variations of the score little harmonica stings this particular moment uh when when uh the the younger man shows up

the music goes sad and i think that's the end of my notes on that. Like, I think that was like, I just was like, I noticed that it was almost the, you know. Almost like womp womp. Yeah, the price is right, Trump. You know, just like a little, oh, Jim, you're not going to compete with that. Right.

But yeah, once that goes away, we get almost no music. And it is you don't notice it till you notice it. And then it's very effective. Yeah. There's really interesting things going on with that. Yeah. The other thing I'll mention is that Megan is wearing these frosted isn't the right word. She's wearing these tinted sunglasses that are like really dark at the top and fade down to light at the bottom, which are totally beach appropriate.

We know because we've watched the earlier episode that she's blind. The episode teases this out for us over the next couple scenes, though. I was wondering a little bit about it. Like, OK, I can I suspect that we're not supposed to know. We're definitely Jim's not supposed to know she's blind. Right, right, yeah. That whole interaction was, that part was clear. I don't think the preview montage really reveals that.

Maybe if you were paying attention you would. But I think in general the viewing audience, because there was a moment a little bit later on. There's a moment where it establishes, I think, for you the the viewer like, Oh, she's blind. And I'm trying to figure out,

yeah. If this is like supposed to be a, Oh, or if it's just like, okay, now we've given up on that pretense, you know, let's move on.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I don't think it's supposed to be like, Whoa, can you believe it? It's more of like a slow fade into the character. Right.

I think. Yeah. And I think it's important that the character is not initially given to us on her first appearance first thing as like she's blind right like i think it's important to her as a character that that is actually a lower key part of her personality than what we see first which is she's you know a little spiky can be a little definite is open to flirting but isn't necessarily willing to go farther than she wants to go right yeah stranger on a beach yeah so we do go to megan doherty phd nameplate uh she is a clinical

psychologist a group meeting is breaking up in her office. She's on the phone and we see she's wearing the same sunglasses. And these are the ones she wears all the time pretty much, right? But that's, I think, our first little cue. We watch the group leave. They get in an elevator.

We see a shot of the empty floor outside her office. When we go back to Megan, she's finished her call. She gets her coat and then we see a shot of the empty floor outside her office when we go back to megan she's finished her call she gets her coat and then we see her get her the white um stick i don't know what those are called it's a cane get the white the white cane with the red the assistance yeah and so that is the like reveal for lack of a better word um we have a perspective shot through a doorway crack of her leaving her office so establishing a little tension right away uh there's still no music as we see a pair of red sneakers and then as she's waiting for the elevator a hand reaches out from out of frame and helps her put

her coat on yeah um there's a close-up of a cigarette, and then smoke starts getting blown into her face. And then this is when the... The wah. The anxiety music, I think, is when I end up calling it in my notes. The anxiety music starts, and we'll put a clip of it in here. Maybe it's phased? I forget what the term is. Yeah. maybe it's phased i forget what the term yeah there's a very certain sound to it that if you know audio editing you probably know what it's called but it's kind of like the the

endlessly rising tone but yeah very deep it's uh very creepy what it reminds me of because it's used this kind of thing is used almost exactly the same way it's one of my favorite parts of uh the dark knight nolan movie where part of the joker's soundtrack whenever the joker's doing stuff they have this kind of tone in the soundtrack and it's like really it's a little higher pitch it's more tinny but like i notice it every time and it's actually one of my favorite parts of the movie so i'm like oh okay innovating on that technique here in the 70s. We have that rising in volume as these hands, still from out of frame, we're not seeing the person at all, start rubbing her face and kind of groping at her shoulders.

She starts yelling, yells to stop it, and starts cringing away from the hands. And then we just see the motion of this man just walking away in silence. He hasn't made a sound. She's freaked out. She doesn't know if this guy is still here or not. The elevator still isn't opening. She finds her way to the stairway. And she's getting down the stairs as quickly as she can.

And ends up kicking a bucket that's on the stairs. And that's when our anxiety music cuts. And we see a man below her who's the janitor. Who's like, like oh is everything okay there's there's a moment just before this i think now i i may be misremembering a little bit but i think there's a moment where she comes down at least one flight of stairs and she stops for lack of a better term to look around but like she's blind so she's listening right like she's and the music stops in that moment so that we as the audience hear the empty stairwell along with her and then it pops back

i think it's i think that's right yeah it's really effective because it it gives you the like you're also listening more carefully than than you would have, because this this noise that had been, you know, blocking things out disappears. And you're just like, what are we supposed to hear? And there's nothing. And it's it's good. I like it. So the tension is broken with this janitor in his bucket. Now, she's obviously upset.

She's like, I think there's someone behind me chasing me. He goes up to check. We hear a door close, but he doesn't see anything she's like the elevator wouldn't come he's like oh i was cleaning it out has to happen sometime like just a coincidence kind of thing he asks if she's all right and she's saying yes while she's like crying and hunching over herself clearly not all right that's where we cut to jim looking down the telephone listings looking for the name doherty this is interesting i wonder if this is a callback right because in the movie in the movie yeah i thought this too we get a close-up of her nameplate in the movie as well and then we i don't remember the exact order but he definitely like looks her up in the phone book afterwards i guess the only reason why that stood out to me is that um we

don't normally see him looking people up in the phone book i mean occasionally like if he's at like a public phone or something like that but we usually don't see the text of the book as he's looking down yeah like we see him with the phone book but we don't necessarily always see the page also as this is about to uncover for us he he's looking her up with no intent to do anything with that information, which is very grade school-y. Like, I just want to make sure this woman still exists or something. It's the 70s version of Instagram stalking. Yeah, exactly. I'm just going to look at this person's profile.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to friend them, but I'm just going to take a look. See what they put out there in the world. Rocky is watching over his shoulder and sees apparently her listing has PhD. So he sees that she's a PhD. Ain't you going to phone her? No. Well, why are you looking in the phone book then?

Just idle curiosity. An idle mind is the devil's workshop. Am I in time warp or something i don't believe this i haven't heard dialogue like this since i was in short pants i just had a passing interest in her and rocky doesn't think it sounds very passing he wants him to call her thinks he would like her um i love that about rocky he's like i think i'd like her yeah jim explains how he got shot down once already and rocky i feel like this is a uh i don't know a view into rocky's past when your mom first met me she swore she would never date me but she came around jim ends the scene with i got the definite impression this one doesn't need anybody cut to a ringing phone where we're with megan in her bed at night and it is a harassing phone call that starts out saying it's from the

building management for like her office building as saying they're repainting the hallway and what color would she like and starts listing off you't. Yeah. We see that that also freaks her out, as it should. We cut from her hanging up to another ringing phone, which is Jim's phone, where he is snoozing in his chair, but he picks it up, and it is in fact Megan calling him when they met on the beach. You know, he said, like, I live here, I'm a PI, right? Yeah. So she knows that he's a pi that was established for us so that she calls him and says i think i need a private

investigator i do like this uh series of scenes where they keep the cuts the the switching back and forth are all on the phone yeah um you know we make the joke and the cut kind of thing. And this is kind of that, although the material, well, on Jim's side, this schoolboy crush business is kind of a joke. When she says, like, this is Megan Doherty, and he's like, oh. He's like, ah, calling back, I see. Yeah.

There is one good, true joke in the cut, actually, at the end of the next scene. But it's yeah. The transitions are very crisp. Yeah. Yeah. We go to Jim getting out of the elevator to go, you know, to go to Megan's. There's another guy in the elevator and he kind of stumbles past Jim and we see that he's drunk.

This is important later. You know, he knocks Megan. Let's let him in. We watch Jim like she's like, you know, come in. Would you like some coffee? He says, yes. So we watched Jim watch her move around the apartment,

you know, establishing her in the same way that we see her in the movie. Yeah. She can get around her own environment just fine, but she does have some little, like, like she uses her hands to guide herself around stuff. Um,

you know, uses her finger to check the level of liquid in the coffee, like that kind of stuff. That one, the using the hand to check the level of the liquid, it's interesting that in the movie she had a device to do that. And yeah, she had like a little thing that she hung on it that beeped. I think it made like a, it played like a little tune when the liquid reached the level of it. And I wondered if there was something deliberate about that. Like, did somebody like did they do use the hand to check if the coffee reached the high enough level of somebody was like, you know, we don't do that. We could burn ourselves. Right. Right. Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. It was just the thing that i just i noted the device in the movie because i thought it was kind of a neat device and then uh yeah this is the this is the analog version yeah i was like oh she's gonna use it here and she didn't and i was like oh oh that so i i don't think there's like a lot of deliberateness in it no no no i think that i noticed yeah this is just how this character lives in this time yeah then he looks and sees her cane and we see jim realize that she's blind yeah we cut from there to she has obviously filled him in on what has just happened and they're moving on with the conversation um you know i have a couple obvious questions uh do you have any enemies you know that kind of thing uh no she doesn't have any

enemies she lives alone she has no idea who would want to do this jim floats going to the police but she doesn't want to do that and there's a very specific chain of of reasoning here which is if she goes to the police what they're going to want to do is look at her patient files and listen to her tapes from her patient uh interviews she can't do that because it's a violation of of uh doctor patient confidentiality and they're you know they're just going to assume it's one of my patients and i can't let them like look through all the stuff so it's not going to you know it'll not be effective jim says well there's a certain logic to could it be one of your patients?

And she is very resistant to this idea. Um, she says that she works with conflicted people, depressed people, not psychotics or psychopaths. I think one of the reasons that this goes by, it's such a nice clip is that these scenes that are mostly conversation, talking about things that are happening,

also revealing character. Yeah. That are an extremely natural language yes uh james garner and katherine harold have really good chemistry uh both on-screen chemistry and then also romantic chemistry so like it's fun to watch it's just it's just an engaging thing to to to have enter your eyes and your brain. And I think you really hit it when, like, the amount of load that the dialogue is kind of effortlessly carrying because it's doing it naturally, but it's, like, laying out all of these things that we need to know to go forward.

Yeah, it definitely helps it. Like, nothing feels like you're like, well, let's ingest this. Let's sit down and go through the details um this whole episode has a lot of like really great dialogue that we're not going to break down because it does not sound good when we just repeat it yeah so this is a very watch the episode um episode but the the high points here um is they talk about uh uh even if they're not like psychotic there's still conflict in the process she admits sometimes a patient might be fighting for control maybe that's gone outside of the therapy room and this is where jim has the line again with this

little additional context where she's where she's like i can't violate confidentiality and jim says he understands but the criminology term for what you're going through is psychological rape. I was like, that's an interesting way to phrase it. I don't know if that's an actual thing. Yeah, I don't know either. But it is a strong statement that really sets the tone for what's happening.

If he's going to help, he would need the same disclosure. Like he would need to look through her files and she's not willing to do that. So she says she's just going to have to get through it herself. Ask how much she owes him. He says it's on the house and they have a great exchange here that I think is a good Rockford files moment, uh, where she says, I insist your time is valuable. And he replies, well, not to you.

There's nothing I can do for you. So she's looking for a way to, you know, pay him. Uh, there's a lot about professionalism. They're both professionals. They have conflict over what being a professional means to each of them. Right. It's her professionalism that's keeping the cops and, to some

extent, him out of the situation here. But she also understands that as a professional, she should pay him. How much do I owe you for the consultations? It's on the house. No, I insist. Your time's valuable. Well, not to you, because there's nothing I can do for you.

I did think that maybe you could check the hallway. Maybe something fell out of his pocket or came off his shoe. Oh, like maybe sand found only in one tiny coastal town in Argentina, and I track him down that way. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way. I guess people have seen too many movies. And there's a good moment of both of their faces, because it's just a thing you say,

but he realizes, oh, see movies, you don't see movies. And she kind of has a bit of a look of like, I get that you did not say that in a hurtful way. Right. Like, come on. His version of trying to solve this conundrum is, how about you can buy me dinner? And he re-extends his invitation. You know, she says she's not interested. He's like, oh, now you're angry.

She talks about she hates being voxed in, which, again, is a core character thing. Feeling like she can't move anywhere. They have a bit back and forth about whether she's angry. And then as he's leaving, she says, if you think I'm angry, maybe it's because you feel a little bit guilty. I won't charge you for that. Yes. That one's on the house. Jim looks at her and he's like, I don't feel guilty.

And that's the joke in the cut where it goes directly to Jim saying, I feel so guilty. It's good. That whole scene, like, very good. Like you said, lots of good banter, lots of good just, you know, back and forth. The characters are revealing a bunch of stuff to us, explaining why we can't just have the police solve the problem. What are the constraints that we're going to see going forward and why those make sense in this world? But also, we do see the two characters explore their relationship, right? relationship right like it is great that she rejects him because in this moment where she's vulnerable and he just takes another shot at like asking her out and it's like ah jim it's like

while i'm over here yeah like like this is a really bad time to do that and she just she very firmly and just is like nope and that's it and And I dig that. But it all, like, yeah, like, it just, it establishes what's going on between the two of them in addition to, like, everything else we need to know for the plot. The, you know. The story. The story. Jim's line, I feel so guilty, is being delivered to Dennis. Yeah. Who is now Lieutenant Dennis Becker.

Going up in the world. yeah he's now lieutenant dennis becker this occurs after the episode where he's taking his lieutenant's exam i would have to go back back to the tape to see if this is the first episode where he's a lieutenant it's possible just because first of all there's an establishing shot with a mug that says lieutenant becker on it yeah and second of all he he's writing, he's working on his remarks to the Academy class breakfast. He's an administrator now. So he has a different set of responsibilities. Yeah, it feels very much like it's his debut for us as a detective. As a lieutenant. A lieutenant, sorry. And even if it isn't it's you know the nature of broadcast television it's definitely going to be for someone right right like like you know

you're not going to get every episode in a row kind of thing i do appreciate that he has his own office now as lieutenant as opposed to being out on the floor at a desk so this whole scene is two friends who are both having issues and need the other one as a sounding board, but is not actually listening to the other person. He's working on his remarks. Jim can't shake this thing with Megan. Dennis is like, is it because she's blind? He's like, no, it's not because she's blind. She's fierce.

She's independent. But I forget the term he uses, but my note is they just don't have they just don't vibe yes he says hello she says goodbye he says cat she says dog do you know anyone like that yeah but you don't want to hear about it peggy yeah which i feel like is unfair i think peggy and dennis are yeah they always get along yeah i think they um could try and get her to hire a bodyguard that's expensive he could hang around her without her knowing but that's unfair he was thinking that maybe dennis could pull the telephone records of you know to find out who made this like harassing call and that's like i can't do that

uh not only has nothing actionable happened i have to put on that's like i can't do that uh not only has nothing actionable happened i have to put on my administrator hat i can't jeopardize the relationship this department has with the phone company i would love a super cut of every time dennis has refused to do police work for rockford i think that would just be wonderful followed by a super cut of all the times that he does do please work for us. We end with a gag where Becker has some tortured prose in his remarks and Jim tells him, no, don't change it. Sounds perfect. Yeah.

There is a line in here. I think it's Rockford's line where he's like, I just wanted an ear. Like you were saying, this is the thing that they all want out of this conversation. They just want someone to listen to what they're saying. And none of them are listening to each other. And I dig it. We go back to Megan with a patient, Danny. This is Danny Green.

We see. So this sequence, we see her with a couple of patients and we see her general approach um with danny we see that clearly they've they're kind of going over a lot of stuff that they've been going over for a long time he was like working doing like haircuts but now he's leaving that because as i think he says like all the like all the all the fey guys yeah to women better and they get the better jobs and that leads into saying like well maybe you need to you know you need to separate your feelings about your absent mother from your feelings towards other women

you need to find a job that you enjoy and you do something for you this is one of those things where I'm like oh this is important later or at least this is a relevant piece of dialogue right upon where when he leaves he's like you know see you next time dr doherty and she says we've

known each other for over two years you can call me megan and he says i'll try he does have this thing in there which uh is not relevant and doesn't come up but he's got a line on a job at a racetrack for a bookie or something and he's like I bet I'll meet a lot of women there what? what's going on? and she calls him and she's like what from behind

the signboard something like that and he's like yeah she then has her next patient norman yes norman who is a a big nordic fella he's he's uh he's about he's like a big old bounty like bounty the quicker picker-upper like he's the uh yeah he's lubber jackie So this is a pretty intense scene where I think in addition to showing us that Megan is having trouble separating what's been happening to her from her therapy persona. It's also giving us a little bit of a head fake like, oh, this is a dangerous guy.

Yeah, it's it's both like a misdirect, but it relates to the tension that she's experiencing in her life. Right. And it reveals to us that she, despite the fact that she as a professional does not want to be doing this. She's committed to her patients. Well, she's committed to her patients, but she's also like she is underneath it all investigating which ones could be responsible. Right. Like there's a little bit of like she doesn't she's not buying her own line she's a little bit paranoid that or not paranoid because somebody is out to get her but like um yeah i hadn't seen that read but i think i see it

now that you say it whether it's kind of intentional or not it might even be a little like subconscious because so what happens here so this so norman he's evidently has anger issues yeah you know it starts right off with like how are you feeling i feel like blowing my brains out okay he's very confrontational and she says why do you have this hostility towards me and he says i don't have any special hostility towards you like this is his normal average baseline hostility. Right? Yeah.

There's nothing special about you. I hate everyone. So she goes through an imaging exercise where she says, imagine that you're an animal. Imagine that I'm, I'm an animal. We're going down the road. What happens?

And I won't go through all the details, but he imagines himself as a wolf and her as a cat. They play a game of wolf spell. They play a game of wolf spell. And it has this kind of visceral edge to it where he's like the cat feels, you know, looks down on the wolf because the wolf has fleas and, you know, stuff like that. And the cat wants to kill the wolf. But the wolf realizes and bites the cat. But the cat has a special stinger. Stings the wolf. Right.

And while he's telling his imaging story, the camera's mostly on her. And we're seeing her reactions, which seem very visceral. But she's kind of like regaining control of herself, but then having another reaction and says, why would the cat want to kill the wolf? I don't know. So, yeah, again, a very compelling scene where we're kind of getting drawn into her emotional turmoil. Yeah.

Because of the situation she's in, it's hard for her to keep this space. Like you get the impression that while Norman probably isn't an easy character to deal with she's adept at dealing with him except for the things that are now happening in her life make that more more difficult he notices that she's having some kind of reaction and like yeah checks in with her which i think is what gives me the sense like oh this is this isn't that guy like this isn't yeah yeah which it is not uh for the record but spoiler spoiler um as she leaves we see jim watching her my notes are all like you're gonna freak her out jim you're gonna freak her out yeah he does not he does not but yeah he i guess he goes with the like i could watch her myself but she wouldn't like that to like well i'm just gonna do it anyway yeah so he's keeping

an eye on her he sees her go into the elevator we see him go down the stairs and then he kind of huffs and puffs getting out of the stairs in her building like racing the elevator to get up there first and kind of holds his breath as she walks by so she won't notice that he's there but he watches her go home, right? So he keeps an eye on her to make sure she gets home okay. I did have this thought, and now this is, there's no text here to say one way or the other.

I'm just going to present this to you and our audience. I do not want to characterize her as having her other senses are super powered because she can't see or anything like that the the there's a little mention of that in this episode but for the most part these past two episodes that we've been watching have been pretty good about not doing that right right yeah all of that said and this is maybe reveal something about me more than anything else i have to think that jim has like an aftershave like i think jim has a scent right

i'm just saying that like jim rockford has to have a distinctive aroma i don't i don't know how i was to pleasantly put this right right and he gets pretty close to her at moments during this perhaps a musk of some kind a musk yeah some sort of you know not saying a bad smell well like an appealing smell but a discernible one yeah that seems like the kind of guy he is yeah yeah so i just kept expecting her to just be like i know you're there jim like that was the thing i kept expecting and it didn't did not occur it did not happen i think that is uh yeah i think that is alighted in the in the text here i think it is not sandalwood yeah sound off in the comments what do you think jim rockford smells like oh boy well we see jim see her go into her apartment and he leaves he goes down

the elevator yes she goes into her apartment and then takes a step in and immediately stumbles over a chair. And our anxiety music rises as she starts bumping into things. Her furniture has been moved. It's been moved to all kinds of different places, knocked over in weird spots. She's panicked, as one would be we see her fall over her like end table and she's looking she's sweeping her arms looking for her phone looking for her phone trying to find her phone and we end with a shot of her lying over the table crying as the phone is just right next to her on the floor. Like, yeah, so close. Yeah, it's it's very it's scary.

At the beginning of the scene, I think she she blames her. She has like a cleaning like someone who cleans. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, oh, they must have left something in the way. Yeah. And then she takes another step and falls over like an armoire like something that's not

supposed to be in the living room so she gets you know she gets disoriented and she panics i think this is also kind of a character thing and also something we see in the movie yes it is natural that she panics in this kind of situation but i get the sense that she has she has an even stronger response than one would expect because she spent so much of her life constructing her ability to be independent yeah and then when she is suddenly in surroundings that she doesn't know what they are and is suddenly disoriented she completely falls apart yeah it's kind of both sides of that coin um she doesn't really have coping mechanisms for like getting around this place this unfamiliar place especially when it's her place.

Right. Yes. We do cut from there to Jim in the apartment, helping her straighten up. Now she's directing him as to where things go and says that he never thought there'd be someone in her apartment. He didn't see anyone while following her. And she,

she gives us all an out by saying, I can't thank you enough for following me that's just about the nicest thing anyone's done for me so fair enough but i think it's you know it comes from a place of concern and turns out he should be concerned this also plays into the professional narrative right like this is a thing that jim does professionally and he did it for free. Like he, he did it with that rather than, uh, Jim doing the thing that the creepy guy who's following her is doing. Right.

Yeah. Um, they go back and forth about her professional ethics again, uh, revealing her patients. Jim finds a matchbook on the floor with her name and address written in it. Such a classic clue. It's a classic clue.

I think this is a bit upon reflection. It's a classic clue. I think this is a bit, upon reflection, it's a bit of like, okay, we need something. Yeah. A bit of a headcanon might be the stalker sends someone else to mess up her apartment and so needs to give them the information because why would he write her name? Right.

Like, he knows who she is. Yeah. In addition to the address, but like, whatever it's, I guess it doesn't, it doesn't matter too much. It just struck me going through it right now. I'm like, huh?

Yeah. Though on the other, other hand, as we learned, there's an element of wanting to be found. Yes. There there's, I don't know if this actually plays into that plot.

Right. Yeah. I don't know early or not but yeah there is something there yeah anyway he says he can take it to a handwriting expert and get a profile yeah present her with the profile and she will she tell him if it matches with one of her patients and she's not sure there seems to be an in to trying to get an end run around her ethics with this thought. She shouldn't feel hungry right now, but she does. She wants to get something to eat.

Jim also wants to get something to eat. Maybe they could get something to eat together. And she's like, something simple, hamburgers and hot dogs. And so we cut to a sit-down restaurant. It's clearly not hamburgers and hot dogs. So we cut to a sit down restaurant. It's clearly not hamburgers and hot dogs. However, he does say you were in the car with me when I circled Hamburger Hogan's three times without finding a parking spot.

Now, a couple of things. Number one, hamburgers and hot dogs. She's talking Jim's language. Right, right. I don't understand why he doesn't take her up on that. Well, I think this is legit. They tried to get hamburgers at the good hamburger place and he couldn't find parking. but we have to take jim's word for that we don't see it and she doesn't see you know like that's true there's that um and this plays into that that jim the angle here where jim is a is an inexperienced young man trying to impress. This feels like a joint where you're trying to impress someone on a first date where you don't know how to impress someone on the first date.

That's fun. I like that. It's having it entangled with what's going on in her life right now is a little tough. But I think what's happening in the story is that they're just trying to find moments of levity or moments to release this tension and whatnot and as he says it's not exactly maxine's like it's not yeah yeah a really fancy place and i think that is also coded to us by the the waiter with his extremely jersey accent as he offers a wine pairing to uh whatever jim is ordering got a david chase joint here it's a very david chase joint in here not for me thanks i'll just have a mineral water or something oh

i'm sorry hon i sold a supply man he missed his delivery today we got no carbonated beverages at all well how about some chocolate milk you know anything just so long as we don't have to have a good time while we're here so jim he does have a uh a point he comes back to which is like how about we just have a bad time yeah like you don't need to keep making this a bad time except that you want to yeah this scene goes through a bunch of time jump cuts uh we have just the diegetic music like whatever music they're playing at the restaurant there's still no score coming up so that leaves by the end of the scene because they end up shutting down the restaurant yeah so we go to jim he has a bottle of wine all to himself they she eventually allows him to pour her a glass but she says she's going to pick up the tab and jim's like how about we wrestle for it best two out of three falls um there's a moment where the waiter asked jim if megan wants like

parmesan cheese he's like why don't you ask her yourself and we get the uh good uh you know character line being blind has nothing to do with making decisions or liking cheese and no i don't want any they also have some kind of banter about like shooting him down and he's still sore about that but they kind of seem to work through that with the aid of these bottles of wine um they're putting the the chairs on the other tables as she starts telling him about her psycho imagination technique yes and we have some flirty banter going through this sequence jim says his trouble is he has nothing to hide why don't we do one just just to fill time ask him to imagine a can and they go through a whole thing what's in the can you know where is it etc and he ends up

just like a normal can it's just a can of i don't know vegetables peas just like the expression let's not open that can of peas which is that an expression yeah I don't what can of peas don't you want to open and what's it got to do with me you'll have to come and get me warden you'll never take me alive so flirty flirty banter really getting more levity and also seeing there that they do have attraction they do have chemistry yeah yeah it's fun they head back to her apartment they're arm and arm and she kind of starts bringing us back to reality saying she had a great time on what should be the worst night of her life she literally says back to the grim reality and gives jim her keys to go in first yeah there's nothing amiss um i will say i was expecting jim to get cold cocked in this this moment but that's just jim going through

doors right anytime anytime i guess i didn't anticipate anything because we didn't have the anxiety music that's true yes they do tend to telegraph with this one it's a effect. She has kind of a moment when she goes into the kitchen to make coffee. Jim goes to her side. It's taken her years to get to the place where she can live independently. And now it's all shot. You know, she can't trust her surroundings, right? Jim says it's just temporary. You're going to be back to normal.

Through this and through the whole evening and everything, she finally has come around to saying, let's try the thing with the handwriting i'll allow that to happen jim doesn't want her to be alone while he's on the case so he's going to get her a bodyguard and she says oh what some meatloaf and a double-breasted suit jim says that the guy he has in mind isn't like that he's uh very discreet and that's a stereotype about the double-breasted suits megan then bumps into jim by accident and then he's like you don't make mistakes like that there's a romantic swell of music as they do embrace and then go in for a big old smooch uh i think they have a couple you know more flirty

lines in there and then she lets jim take her glasses, which he has been wearing the whole episode before going in for more, uh, more smooshy smooshy, more smooshy smooshy. There are some full on. Yeah. Let's watch these people kiss and well deserved. I say cut to a meatball in a double breasted suit.

Here we go. Oh man. So before going into this, I don know i guess you know this is all telegraphed a little bit and it does seem inevitable especially since we know they get together from this other episode but uh yeah i felt like this made sense with what we know of them so far yeah yeah it worked and um uh there's a bit in this about the professionalism again that more than anything else i think is is the textual barrier that they're trying to present here she would not date a client so she would not expect jim to date a client or like you know what i mean like there's

there's uh i guess I guess I'm, I'm like leaning on that rather than the, she's in a vulnerable situation. Like the reason why she would not date a client is because that client is vulnerable and in a, you know, a horrible situation. Uh, the power dynamic is not appropriate. Yeah. And I would say that the power dynamic here probably isn't great either, but that's not what the story is about. So I'm just going to let it go. Yeah. I think Jim is perfectly happy to be like, let's see where this goes.

Right. Right. I think what we're shown is that she's, it's not that she's letting her guard down, but it's that she is in allowing herself to have a good time. She's, she's allowing herself to, to to to feel this attraction right yeah where before she was just like i'm not gonna even bother like i'm gonna actively work against being attracted to this man because i just don't want to bother yeah yeah so there's an element of like oh your true feelings are coming out but i think it's more a function of her you know feeling more comfortable and feeling less vulnerable right like she doesn't need to have her guard up as much i don't know if we're talking too much about this because it's kind of like it's

kind of a trope that seems like it could be troubling but it doesn't trouble me right right with how our characters have been given to us in this episode and like we the actors have great chemistry in this like it it's from the football right you knew this was gonna happen right right yeah it just it wasn't uh yeah there's no tension in whether or not this is this is going to happen uh there's just there's a bit of like okay okay, finally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, so we go to... Charlie. Poor Charlie. What's his last name?

Martel. Poor Charlie Martel. So he's our meatball in a double-breasted suit. He is speeding to get Megan to her first appointment. The thing is, see, when I saw Eddie come on during a TV commercial last night saying they had a special on double-breasted suits, I just had to get down there and pick up on the sale. They're all I wear.

You can't find them my size like you used to. How come that is, I wonder? We've actually seen Charlie before. Yeah. Though this is his first appearance. We saw his second appearance, which was in... It was in Lions, Tigers in lions tigers monkeys and dogs because yeah because he gets uh taken down by the the the garment mob yeah the garment union guy yeah yeah so in that episode

they do a call back to this episode so we already know that he's going to end up in the hospital but this is um leo gordon who was uh garner's co-star in Maverick. He's the actor. So it's a bit of a, for the real Garner heads, it's a fun throwback. He was in the first episode of season five, which of the Rockford Files, as a different character. I don't think we've done this one. Heartaches of a Fool? Heartaches of a Fool?

I don't think we've done that one. No. fool heartaches of a fool i don't think we've done that one no so i guess we have to finish out his uh yeah um but honestly like the moment when she i didn't i did not pay attention to imdb closely enough to know that he was in this episode but uh when when she mentions the meatloaf in the double-breasted suit, and I think to myself, well, I remember Jim hiring one bodyguard once. And this describes him. And then boom, there he is. There he is, yeah. He's a little nervous working with the psychologist, but she says, don't worry. I don't, you know, my meter's off.

Right. I don't do that for free. Which, again, is great. And he has a terrible, just the worst joke. Joke. Oh, yeah. At the end. I bet I know who your favorite musician is.

Stevie Wonder. Ugh. Ugh. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, ugh. Yeah. I mean, it's to show us the character of Charlie, which is that he's dense.

He's not all there reliable guy though we now have kind of an extended scene here with jim's handwriting expert buddy who is an old pal from san quentin and this is one of those memorable side characters that will never come come up, but it's fantastic. Okay, to preface it, everything that this guy's an expert in is BS. None of this is real. And, oh, yeah, he's only been in one episode. I mean, I've seen him in a thousand things.

Yeah, he's one of those guys who's all over the place. He was in M.A.S.H. Oh, right, yes, he was the CIA guy, right? Isn't it the... I'm not familiar enough with M.A.S.H. to tell you. Sidney Friedman? Yeah, but yeah, he's been in a lot of things. Great actor. This whole sequence where they are doing the whole,

like, nope, they're dead. Nope, they're, you know, like the old friends are missing. I saw Tommy Marchetti's sister at the mall a couple of weeks ago, matter of fact. Good old Marchetti. I tell you, that guy could make me laugh just walking in that room. How's he doing? He's dead. Hot.

44 years old. Can you believe it? Live for today, I say. Oh, boy, Angel's really going to be upset to hear that i mean he's crazy about marquette he should worry he's still alive just goes to prove my point what point only the good die young catch his catch can i say so handwriting analysis as a discipline is is nothing it's there's no science behind it it's not really a thing um but you know as a discipline is is nothing it's there's no science behind it it's not really a thing um but you know as a storytelling crutch sure fine um and really here it's not like it leads to

anything in particular it's one of the the many little chipping away of the armor she has around suspecting her own uh clients but yeah it's great he starts off with even even within that context this is misha gus to work with yes like he just has this tiny little sample and everything but so he has to do all the things to like blow it up so he can see it bigger and everything so they're having their conversation during it recalling good times and then everyone's yeah dead or sick and he says like 30 times i can't stand behind this right like right you have to sign a release to that effect i cannot be held responsible you know because there's not enough etc it's a fun scene it's a good tone shift gives us a little lightness and

otherwise a pretty dark episode and also is a benefit of the two-parter structure because like we get an extended period here. Like this story in a single episode would have been, a lot of the stuff would have just been compressed out. Like just wouldn't have time to be in it. But I enjoyed this scene quite a lot. And I think there's a joke here. I'm going to read it as a joke because he spends his whole time saying he can't yeah this isn't enough material i can't stand by this or anything like that he has like a whole

soliloquy yeah yeah yeah the most detailed character analysis you can imagine and he's dead dead to rights right right yeah like he like when we get into it later? He nailed it. But, like, it just feels like a Rockford-style joke. Yeah, for the wrong reasons. He's right, but not for the wrong, you know. Yeah. So he has a whole talk through a strong personality. I would say, in general, we're talking about a very defensive person here. Smart.

Feels the world owes him a living, maybe. Some deep emotional scars and conflicts. He could lie like a rug, this one, then go off jaunty jolly. He could do anything. He has little love for his fellow man, i.e. the rest of us. How he got this way, I don't know, and I could care less. He very intelligent though very intelligent this and his lack of remorse i would say he'd make a great con man or worse we cut from there to our anxiety music as charlie is coming into megan's office and we see her patient danny green yes leaning a coat rack against her door with like the heavy end up so it'll fall in.

Relax, creepo. This will go as smooth as banana daiquiris. But Danny pulls a knife on him. And then we cut inside where Megan's bidding farewell to a patient. And the patient asks her, how are you doing? To be honest, I haven't had one of my best weeks. Her patient says, well, what do you do when you feel depressed like I do? Who do you talk to?

Which is, you know, cutting right to the core, right, of her issues. Who watches the watchman? Who shrinks the shrink? We see her hear something. And then she opens her door and the coat rack falls in, barely misses her. Yeah. And she reaches out yelling, Mr. Martell. And then there's like a beat and she's like, oh no, we don't see anything.

We just see her reaching out and not knowing what's happening. Right. This is the end of the first syndicated episode we cut to, to be continued. We are going to take a little break in the middle of our episode here so that we can stretch, maybe get a beverage or a snack and talk about the other places that you can find us on the Internet. Epi, if our listeners want more Epi, where can they go to get maximum Epi? You can find me at my website, dig1000holes.com.

That's dig1000holes.com. Or you can get my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worldswithoutmaster.com. That's worlds, plural, master, singular. If you want to engage with me on the social medias, the best place to go right now is mastodon at epidia at dice dot camp. Nathan, if they want to get Maximum Nathan, where do they have to go for that? I should have gone Maximum Nathan. Maximum Nathan can be found at my website, ndpdesign.com.

That's the hub for all my stuff on the internet, including all my role-playing games, zines, and other podcasts. So if you're interested in pro wrestling detectives or zines about pro wrestling, among other things, those are all at my website. It also has links to contact me in other ways. Currently, I'm still posting on Instagram at ndpeoletta. That's where I'm posting pictures of my dog. You can also find me at cohost, cohost.org slash ndp.

That is a fun, small-scale social media site that I'm enjoying quite a lot. And now we return to the continuing adventures of Jimbo Rockfish. I wasn't watching the clock, so when it happened, I was like, oh, what? God, I love Charlie. Smooth as banana daiquiris.

The best part of this, in context with the other episode with Charlie in it, is just the buildup and then nothing. Just both times. He's just like, I'm going to get myself a bodyguard. I'm going to get you a bodyguard. Here's this big guy. And he just.

Boom. Can't do it. He's just sucker punched or whatever. He just like is out. Yeah. It's good stuff. And I definitely have the sense of like, okay, now we're really. Now the plot's kicking in.

Right? Like we've had all this. We've had this nice luxurious time to see all this character stuff, get all this background, see character development. We're invested. We're ready to see where this goes. Now it's going to start. Yes. Which is nice, which is a good feeling. We know the guilty party.

Like there's no question. Like I think when Charlie came upon him, I did have this one moment of going. Like, is this a mistaken? Yeah. How are they going to explain this behavior? Yeah. But not anymore. So we come back in our second episode or back from our commercial break.

Rockford, Jake at the Sand Pebble. Sorry, old buddy, but there have been gunshots around your place once too often the neighborhood association wants to have a talk with you to an ambulance coming into a hospital and we go to jim and megan waiting waiting to hear something um they're sharing a cigarette and i just mentioned it because up till now there's been a bit of business about like he occasionally has a offers her a cigarette but she's quit she quit smoking and so now they're sharing one and it's you know sign of her agitation anxiety etc however just the entire thing of smoking in a hospital i'm

just like yeah wow that is a moment in time huh so we learned that charlie was cut up pretty bad and he's like it's not your fault he's a he's a pro right he took the risk he knew the he knew what could happen it's not the first time he's been cut up right and it won't be the last well lieutenant becker and officer billings yay yay they arrive um they're hoping charlie can identify the attacker but looks like he's going to be out for a while there's kind of a formal like well we're involved now like so becker asks megan about her patients and her patient files she can't give up confidentiality jim backs her up and becker's like hey you've been carping at me about her attitude for two days

and jim says well if you want to carpet me i'll understand it's good it's a good exchange jim runs the handwriting thing past everyone to be like what about this if he identifies the profile as one of her patients then we can look into the patient whatever becker doesn't like it because it's like going to take too much time and he wants to go buy the book and buy the book would be like let me see all of your files and then billing steps in i think i think this is the most dialogue we've ever gotten from him i think the premier billings episode this is like an unexpected pleasure yeah look at it this way lieutenant it's only a day and maybe it'll never come up maybe martel will regain consciousness

and describe this fellow to dr doherherty here, and that's it. We go and throw the cuffs on him. Sure, we could get lucky with Martel. If Charlie makes it, that's great. But he will not be identifying anyone for Dr. Doherty. Yes, we were thinking sometimes it kind of... It's all right. Believe me, it happens all the time. Another one of those little moments. So these are I mean, I guess these are these are microaggressions, right?

Like, yeah, here's here's the thing that we just say in day to day life, not thinking about how it is. It is an ableist thing because it does not apply to everyone because not everyone is sighted. Just call that out specifically as maybe how we would yeah talk about that now but we also see that she has a whole mechanism for being like yeah dealing with it yeah i i know how people are i've lived in this world there's there's a great bit as dennis and billings are leaving where dennis is just tearing into billings about it like quietly quietly under his breath. We end here with Becker saying that Jimbo has one day. Megan thanks Jim for helping her out of the toughest spot she's ever been in. And he quotes something and says, you know, Henry Clay, the great compromiser.

And this is good. You don't compromise. You make deals. You don't compromise anything. Yeah. In the parking garage, she's clearly still not doing too well. It's tired, sad, but also just having a bit of a, I don't know, pining a little bit. He asks her and she's like, okay, it's stupid.

But she had a convertible in college. And when things got too stressful, she'd gun it down the highway, wind in her hair, fueling life at its fullest. And we cut to Jim gunning a convertible down the highway, wind in her hair, feeling life at its fullest. And we cut to Jim gunning a convertible down the highway, top down. Your cousin would die if he knew you were doing this in his car. So, apparently

Jim has a cousin with a convertible. Let's talk continuity. I got no problem with continuity. But, uh, yeah, this is the first we've heard of the cousin that I know of yeah i think so with the convertible though i think he's gotten a phone i think there's been a phone message oh there could have been yeah from a cousin at some point i mean i i it's not that i

don't believe jim has cousins uh but the other bit that we learn about i don't think in the timeline presented in the movie she could see when she was in college. Right. Yeah. I think so. It's not given specificity in this episode. Yeah. Obviously this implies that she did not lose her sight until after she had a

convertible in college. Right. Yeah. But whatever. They never say exactly when or exactly why. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

lost her sight. I guess here is the first time we get the indication that she wasn't born without sight um but yeah in the movie they give there's a as as discussed there's a much more detailed timeline that doesn't really actually match up with how old she is in these episodes and stuff yeah whatever it's not uh this is all stuff that isn't really that important it'll be resolved in the uh rockford multiverse right crossover movie that that we're all dying for that will that will absolutely have the rockford lou grant team up that i have been desiring all this year all right sorry Go on. Finally stop. They pull over somewhere. This is night.

This is all happening at night. Night shots, night scenes. He asks if that was close to the original and I think she says it was better or something. She gives him a big hug. This has really touched her. This has really meant something. He went to this effort and did this for her.

Jim proposes getting dinner before they get back to work, but we can just do this for a while. And we have a bit of, and we have a romantic sting in the romantic swell in the soundtrack and pull away shot from the car. I always just leave them in their embrace in the front of this convertible. And then we do get a good traditional Rockford files, harmonica sting yeah as we cut to

rocky watching megan put on chapstick in the trailer and he's telling her about what a good living jimmy makes being a pi rocky rocky has an angle it's very clear oh you mean the part where he says i do wish you would have some kids. I wouldn't mind being a grandfather. Very subtle. Right at it. He asked her what she wants to do. She says, oh, I thought, you know, Jimmy said you were going fishing. And I like at this point, she's calling him Jimmy, which is which is nice.

You're going fishing. It's like, oh, I go fishing all the time. Well, there's a big fishing championship on the pier. They were looking forward to. Oh, I win that all the time. Every year. I've won that so many times. It's getting to me same old talk same old fish but megan's like okay i'll be okay by myself she's like you don't need to stay here and babysit me right yeah there's another little moment where

he's like i showed you around and she's like well he's like well he didn't show me anything right something like that she kind of gives him a little She, she rags on him a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, okay, okay. You have the same sense of humor as Jimmy peculiar. We cut to a completely new character. We quickly find out what's going on. I just want to point out that this scene has been probably around 48 hours

since I've seen this scene. And like three times, this scene has popped into my head and i'm like where is that from what is like i'm trying to remember where i remember the guy describing the frog man you get in the cereal box it's it's from this episode i don't know why that this scene just stuck in my skull. But anyways, go on. Yeah, so it's a voice actor doing a commercial for kids cereal. And he's having trouble with motivation.

Yeah. So this is another scene that benefits from having time because it is fun and funny and a nice break. And would definitely be cut down to like three lines if this was a full, if this was a standard episode. Yeah. Do we need that demolition with nature's children? I'm having trouble making the transition. I can't find a motivation. How's the $2.50 for the day for motivation, huh? Now can we go, please?

Roll tape. Hi, I'm Sammy Seal. roll tape hi i'm sammy seal and you kids are gonna flip when you see the neat demolition frogman offer inside each family-sized box of nature's children whole wheat and grain cereal yeah we see jim come into the like the recording booth and say something to the director and then he breaks in again he's like apparently we have a steward from the actors guild here who's coming in on an unannounced spot check we've broken the lunch time so we're facing a penalty are you really going to hold us to that and jim like gives him a look he's like all right lunch we'll get back at one they leave the actor comes out of the booth he's like thanks so much

i've never heard of these spot checks but you know i really appreciate it i gotta go call my agent he has this other thing, blah, blah, blah. And Jim immediately goes like, oh, I'm not from the guild. I just that was just my little joke. But I have a deal for you to buy my silence. So this is one of those in plus expense or no earlier where you're talking about just Jim throwing out. Was that in plus expenses?

Yeah, in our Plus Expenses. I remember bringing this up because this is a way that Jim will work a person. He comes at this guy as if he's going to shake him down because he's trying to see how he's going to react to the shakedown to determine if this guy is involved in any way, right? He just knows he could have been in the building at the time or near the building yeah he says like i you know i was at a dentist appointments across the hall and i saw you run out of the run out of the dr doherty's place right when that stabbing happened yeah and the guy's like i don't know anything about that he's like ah but you do know about the stabbing um how about 50 bucks how about 40 bucks just 40 bucks and I won't tell the cops. And this guy, I guess Roger is the guy's name.

Roger's like, I wasn't there. I'm not giving you anything. Yeah. This has nothing to do with me. He was downstairs at the cafe eating lunch. He is one of the patients. So I got an appointment at two. I was downstairs at the cafe.

That happened at one. And the waitress will remember me because I made a joke to her and she laughed about another guy I saw there, a guy that I know. He's like, oh, what guy? Oh, one of the other patients. He says he's a guy who couldn't cut it in group and he's in private therapy now. His name is, and we cut from there to Megan on the phone saying, Danny Green? Boy, that just doesn't fit. We can imagine how Jim decided, found slash decided to talk to this guy. But, you know, maybe he just tried this on all of the patients that were there

that day. And this is the one that gave him something. Who knows? Yeah. I have to assume that Megan doesn't know that he's doing using this tactic on her patients because there's no way this is approved. The other little thread that I can think of is like – because we don't actually talk about the personality profile from the handwriting sample. Yeah. But like did he give it to her and she's like, oh, well, this is the only one of my patients I would describe that way and it's this guy, Roger. Yeah. Poor Roger.

Poor Roger. But this is – again, this is another great – like you said, this is just like, yeah, we've got a character. We're going to let you enjoy a character for a bit. It runs the story along. It moves everything forward. But like, enjoy Roger and Roger's situation because it feels real and it's just there. All right. But yeah, it says Danny Green doesn't fit the profile.

He's chronically depressed. He's unemployed. He has issues relating to women. But Jim says, well, he wasn't there. His appointment's at like three on Wednesdays or whatever. And it's like, well, that wasn't anywhere near his appointment time. What was he doing in the building? She's resistant to this idea.

I just couldn't have assessed Danny so wrong after a year and a half of therapy. Maybe you did. It's okay. You're allowed three mistakes in any one career. Uh-oh. I guess we just hit on the one subject that isn't funny. But they can get Danny's address from his checks because he pays by check. So Jim checks it out.

And it's a nice apartment building. He knocks on the door to the condo that this guy lives in. And the door is not locked. It opens. And my first note is like, oh, this is a nice apartment for a chronically unemployed guy. Yeah. So that moment I'm like, OK, so it is Danny Green. Like, I think there was still a little bit like.

Right. Maybe this is like a like storytelling wise, like maybe this is a head fake and there's some other reason that Danny Green was being violent but there's some other character like no no once we see that this does not match with his persona as presented i was like okay this is our this is our guy it's also telling that his stereo is tuned to the WOM channel. Jim comes in, sees mail on the counter, checks it. The mail is all addressed to a Jack Tuteska. I write his name down in different ways because his credit is for Danny Green. So I'm like, I'm not.

Yeah, I could have. I could be mispronouncing it, but I think it's Tuteska. I think that's how I ended up writing it. And then we see I'm going to keep calling him Danny because that's kind of how we we know him. That's to Tesca. I think that's how I ended up writing it. And then we see, I'm going to keep calling him Danny because that's kind of how we, we know him. That's easier to say. We see Danny appear in the doorway behind Jim,

you know, and surprise him. He's like, Hey, what are you doing? And he's like, Oh, I knocked on the door,

just swung in. I'm blah, blah, blah. I'm from the IRS. I'm looking for Danny green. I have this address in our computer. He's like,

there's no one here by that name. Well, there's actually a mistake in his favor we owe we owe him money we just need him to answer a couple questions well i've lived here for two years by myself there's no one here by that name no one in the building and he's like getting closer and closer to jim and kind of backing him out the door yeah in a very kind of threatening manner and so jim kind of allows himself to be pushed out while assessing that yeah this guy is not gonna be like oh danny green okay you won't if he's getting money then i'll talk right like that's not gonna work here we go back to jim's trailer where megan is saying that that does not sound like the danny green she knows not at all and then a wild angel appears when jim's like hey

you ready to earn your 20 bucks but he wants to talk to jim privately this is a good little i don't know angel moment yeah yeah it i think it it has a uh thematic setup for something this isn't like uh in other detective shows there might be this moment where he's like oh but this this didn't happen here but this will echo a little bit later and also i feel like there's actually a moment there's a bit in the movie that i think calls back to this little bit yeah so angel's like okay what's your angle you can drop the act i can see that she's just pretending to be blind for like some con you're doing so what is it, she front phony charities, goes around all these big corporations

and you come along as the packager of the telethon. I love it. Love it. Let me in on it, Jimmy. I could be the research doctor. I'll take a painless 2%. You'll get in for what I give you. Get in.

So, angels calling green. Megan and Jim are listening in on the other two lines this is actually the staging here is important because megan listens in on the i thought jim has at least three telephones so the kitchenette line or whatever yeah angel's calling from his desk phone megan's listening from the kitchen phone and jim's in his bedroom on the bedroom phone so he can't see angel because while angel is calling he's taking megan's purse and then waving it around to see if she'll react and start taking money out of her wallet once he's like okay she's not gonna crack she's not gonna break which is extremely angel so uh he's he does he he has a

bit where it's like i'm the condo association accountant and your accounts in arrears uh to tesca it's like what are you talking about i pay that's the first bill i pay every month and condo association accountant and your accounts and careers to Tesco. It's like, what are you talking about? I pay. That's the first bill I pay every month. And and furthermore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so the whole point here is so that Megan can hear her voice, hear his voice. Yeah.

Rocky comes in and sees Angel holding the bills. So Angel kind of like winks at him and puts them back in her wallet. It's so bad. Angel, Angel. But yeah, sure enough, it's him bad angel angel but yeah sure enough it's him it's danny green and if this is right then it's a major error in her diagnosis and he has two distinct personalities in one body this is a very serious split personality psychological condition jim says well you're not gonna like this but the condo he lives in is good for a grand a month.

So I ran him, and his name was familiar, Jack Duteska. And Angel goes, Jackie Duteska? I know him. And he's like, shut up, shut up, shut up. Turns out he's a gangland assassin. And there's a whole, there's a recent hit where this guy, this lawyer got killed and his girlfriend could potentially testify,

but she's disappeared. And so she's in hiding and he he's uh been walking around free and then he's gonna like ask angel something and he looks back and angel is gone yeah he's heard that name he's out of here without getting his 20 bucks even which is how you know it's serious yeah so now we're we're we're hitting all the highs here uh we've we've got the 70 zeitgeist of the multiple personality disorder but we'll we'll really hit that in just a moment here but we also have like a highly paid or uh i guess not highly paid but like a like a highly regarded mob assassin i mean probably highly paid yeah oh yeah yeah a thousand dollars that's

a five thousand dollar adjusted for inflation he's paid five thousand dollars a month for his condo so um yeah what i'm just saying here is that yeah this is a two-parter this is right where the plot is continuing to thicken we throw all the juicy stuff into the two-parter here so we're downtown where we're meeting a police psychologist who's going to sit in on this questioning session of Danny, of Jateska. This guy is like, oh, I know this guy. He was in another Rockford Files, The Big Cheese, which I don't really remember who he was in that.

The actor's name is Alan Manson, but he's in a Columbo that I recently rewatched. It's the first William Shatner one. Oh. Where he's in a Columbo that I recently rewatched. It's the first William Shatner one. Oh. Where he's an actor. This guy, Alan Manson, plays the studio head, Sid Daly. I just remember that name for whatever reason. And it has a very specific affect to him. So I was like, this guy, where do I know this guy from?

So I had to do the digging. Anyway, that's my Columbo connection for this episode. The Columbo connection. A good episode of Columbo, I'd say. Even grading on the Shatner curve for, you know, how well you like him and other things. But I think it's pretty good. Anyhow, so the three of them, Jim, Megan, and this police psychologist, meet in Becker's office to talk to Danny slash Chiteska and his lawyer.

We start right off with him asking if he's under arrest. Well, no, you're not. It's like, then what am I doing here? Megan asks if he recognizes her. I met you through Danny Green. It's like, I don't know anyone named Danny Green. So he's very spiky and combative, but he is not quite just storming out yeah becker asks him where he was during the stabbing of charlie and he has the whole thing about i was

eating a lunch peaches and cottage cheese and then i took a nap and megan asked him where he woke up he's like in the park where i fell asleep are you sure you didn't wake up somewhere else and he starts to seem nervous and agitated he gets up to go becker says well we're gonna find the girl who's gonna put you at the shooting of the you know the lawyer or whatever the thing that he's still under suspicion of he says well you find the girl then you call me back but you still don't have anything on me megan asks him some more questions before he leaves about some other names maybe some kid a kid he would know growing up in New York, a kid he would know through Danny Green.

And he goes off on a rant slash, I don't know, soliloquy? Yeah, yeah. About, I know what you're all thinking, but I don't have a brain tumor. Sure, I black out sometimes, but it's just my diet. It's nutrition, that's all. It's just, it just my diet. It's nutrition, that's all. It's just, it's my diet. But I do not have a brain tumor and I am not a mental.

I may be a lot of things, but I am not crazy. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to discredit me with my business contacts. You're trying to make my associates think that I'm sick, that I've lost my mind.

But it won't work because I am sane saying you better believe i am saying and then he's like i don't have to put up with this and he leaves the end of our scene is our police psychologist and megan agreeing seems like a true case of multiple personalities uh highly unusual you know but like seems very serious uh jim asked becker if the fbi really does have a line on this witness. And Becker says, yeah,

they, they say they should have her in two or three days. And then he acknowledges that two or three days might be a long time because they don't have any reason to hold to Tesco. They, there's no proof of anything, et cetera. Maybe this is a good time just to mention Danny green slash John to Tesco is

played by John plushette and we saw him in another rockford files episode where he is jay rockfelt in um uh i believe that's dwarf with a helium hat yes i don't even know why i didn't look this up because when i first saw him i was like this guy is so familiar to me uh but also like sometimes you're like they're so familiar but like you remember when they were younger or you know like or they're older or anything like that and i was like no like kim like like in that moment in time visually he's the same guy it's one year apart yeah that's the one where he's yeah where jim is subject to threats because his name is one his name is next to to rock Rock Feltz in the phone book.

Yes. So he gets drawn into this whole thing. And this one with Rick Springfield is the, the rock star. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely a fun one to talk about.

I don't recall exactly what the plot was, but it was weird. Like I remember there was that party where you like the winners of the party. Yeah. We're going to like Paris or something. Yeah. Rock Feltz was the character. Anyway, weird yeah like i remember there was that party where you like the winners of the party yeah we're going to like paris or something yeah rock felt was the the character anyway um so this is a very different character obviously which i bring up because i think it's uh this is this is a guy with range because this is a very convincing character yeah he is and i'm just looking at his imdb the very next year, he directs Rocky 2.

So he's got talents. Lots of talents, yeah. I don't know why I didn't look him up. But hey, sometimes you save that for the episode. So we get to a big turning point in our story here where Jim is at Megan's. He's watching the game while she's cooking she nicks her finger which motivates jim to come ask if she needs help yeah she says you know get that wine out of the fridge um she's clearly no mood for for banter jim has a line should i go get boxing gloves now or you just want to punch the heavy bag for a while? He's been thinking, what if the multiple personality thing is an act?

Suppose you're a top flight, intelligent, professional killer. You're smart enough to know that you can't be perfect. And someday there will be some mistake. There'll be some evidence to get you. What's a fallback cop out? Not guilty by reason of insanity megan's like what are you talking about uh but yeah he lays out this whole thing um you set up a whole life for this other guy you start seeing a shrink 50 bucks a week is good insurance for this you

know happening someday you make fine you know you make good money and then if you're facing a dead to rights charge like there's a witness who can place you at the scene watching you murder murder someone you're definitely going to jail well you bring it to the attention of the cops you know subtly so that they discover that you have have these multiple personalities and then instead of going to jail for life you he says like you you go to the lollipop factory or something like yeah yeah all right so this is the this is angel theory right this this is the same thing the theory the angel was just doing uh oh saying like megan isn't like you know drop the act yeah she's on your con right and so okay there's a couple things about this that i

like and a couple things about this that i like and a couple things about this that i'm like oh okay one thing that i like is that we're no longer doing the cessational multiple personality story like i like that too you know like let's let's step away from yeah you know step away from that yeah the the tv and movie i have split personalities so one person's this way and the other person's that way jekyll and hyde style like yeah yeah yeah just a complete like fabrication of it like it would just we're just imagining what it might be but instead they go with this and there's some great moments when he's at the police station that we just saw where he does the things that we now know cons do he almost leaves yeah he

yeah and he's like no you don't want this money no it's good he's he's doing the thing where he's trying to make them come to him right you know like i'm not insane blah blah blah all of that is is good uh i like that this angle is going this way. And I really like that. Again, this fits into that gym thing where one of the, what he brings to, uh, the genre of murder mystery is that he's a con,

uh, he's a, you know, a con artist, uh, has a history of being a con artist or, you know, and so he can look at things and be like,

Oh, this is a con. Some, some really interesting things that, um, we got the matchbook, right like, oh, this is a con. Some really interesting things. We got the matchbook, right? Maybe the matchbook was a plant. That makes sense, right? You would want them to know.

You'd want them to start thinking about you having a different set of traits, of personality traits. one of the things that would make that work is if your danny green character uh wrote down the name and phone number and then your jack to tesca uh character found it and went to confront that person or something so like maybe that's nothing in our text brings us to that point but like that's a possibility um leaving his door open the leaving his door open. Maybe the bit that doesn't fit, though, is where were you during the stabbing? Oh, I just took a nap. Like implying that this was one of my blackouts that I did. But he's the character of the assassin, not the character of the troubled young man while he's telling them he took the nap. troubled young man while he's telling them he took the nap.

Like the theory would be that the troubled young man falls asleep and the assassin comes out and does the stabbing. But while he's at the police station, he's like, he's presenting the character of the assassin. He doesn't remember. Oh, sure. Sure.

I see. He's the, the logic here is that Danny green, the troubled young man is the one who decided who took it upon himself to stalk and harass well i think but that's like now as a psychologist she gets to explain it right she's like well yeah his true nature is the assassin so his character his danny green character still has the impulses he's you know the impulses and urges are being realized through the pathetic character, but that has nothing to do with his work. So he's blacking out or whatever. I think like a con, once you really start digging into it, some stuff doesn't quite add up. Right.

Yeah. I mean, like, that's the part of it that I like. I like it just being, it feels juicy. Yeah. Yeah. Emotionally here with our characters, what's happening is Megan saying, like, wait a second, you are the one who got me to come around on the multiple personality theory. And now that I've agreed, yes, I think me and another qualified psychologist both agree that that's what we saw. Now you're saying that's not what's happening. It's like, what are you doing? And so this is where Jim's like, look, it's a con. And he, I love, this is just like straight up the text. This is the language. He's like, yeah, you's a con. And he, I love, this is just like straight up the text. This is the language. He's like, yeah.

You see, in a con, you just don't dump out all the information for the mark. You make him come and get it while you look like you're holding something back. That way the mark does all the work. He thinks he's the smart one. That's when he's hooked. So what you're telling me is I've been had not once, but twice. This is a very Jim Rockford thing where he's like, my concern is your physical safety.

So I'm kind of not paying attention to the emotional situation. He's going to come to you as Danny green, let the police catch him, do the wake up act. And as he says, end up on a valium holiday, like this is all part of the act. Like this is why this is happening now.

He thinks they're going to find this witness. And so, you know, he's going to keep escalating. Yeah. So she just doesn't accept that. She throws a bowl. Look,

you wanted me, you got me. This is the reality. Knocking over dishes, banging into furniture, victim to just about everything. All right. Don't.

How do you like it? It's a whole other look. And you better get used to it if you want to stick around here, because this is reality. Enough anger to kill, and it never goes away, ever. Is this some kind of ugly secret, Megan, that you're an angry person? Hey, come on, you've been through more than most people can ever handle. You're allowed.

Don't you pull that stuff on me. Stuff? Oh boy, that is rich coming from you. My notes are just like, here's an amazing argument. Yeah. I'm at the mercy of my environment and I can't change that. And I'm angry about it all the time.

And Jim's like, you have achieved amazing things despite your environment. I don't understand why you need to do better. You don't need to be perfect. And she's like, you think I'm trying to be perfect? And he doesn't understand how that isn't enough for her. Like all her achievements and living independently and all that stuff. How's that not enough for you?

And I think she says like, well, finally, something about human nature you don't understand. Yes. And if I recall in our movie discussion, they had an argument where we talked about how it felt like a very mature, like these are two like adults who are having an argument. This kind of had that overtone to me as well. This is more, this is more sharp. this is about something more important i think but like they get to an impasse and it's like okay i guess we're just on different sides of this yeah yeah you know there's a beat and then he's like well how are you going to deal with it like we don't need to solve this problem between us we're not going to solve it right now but what are what are you going to do and megan says that he's my patient i I'll get through to him. That's my job. And Jim ends on a, you're wrong.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. It's good scenes. Good scenes. Good scenes. This is a long episode because there's good scenes to talk about. We do have an interstitial scene here. We see Jim take a long moment outside before he leaves.

Yeah. Very reluctant. We cut to a thunderstorm. This wakes her up. Good old-fashioned pathetic weather uh she checks the windows to make sure they're shut we see her hear something the window in her living room is open she shuts it and this whole time i think we're like okay where is he you know yeah this is very monster movie why are your windows opened like what yeah and we get very

pointed here are the things that she is hearing, right? Yes. Like we see the fridge and then we see her listening and we kind of hear a slight whine like the fridge compressor. Then we see the AC vent and we hear a faint blowing noise as we watch her like listenings. I felt like it was a very effective like bringing us into her world where she's just like totally on edge trying to pick out if there's anything unusual from all these usual noises there's a thump at the door and she she yells out and it's her drunk neighbor who's just wandering down the hall and tried to go into the wrong door all the way back from the first episode where jim got out of the hallway with the drunk neighbor um he wanders away singing like apologies apologies or something he's he's singing apologies

to you to the tune of happy birthday happy apologies to you i like it i at some point i'm gonna use that in my life i don't know when but it's a good one and then we focus on her as she just sits on her couch curled up on herself clearly freaked out just trying to keep control and the the camera pans away from her pulls away from her leaving her there alone in the dark like i said it's a downbeat she is she has pushed away her one her one support and now she's all alone i i have i have a theory about the purpose of this scene right okay so first of all, we have to two episode. So you do have time to relax and do these sorts of things with it. The fact that it's storming out and that is a direct parallel to the argument that they just had. Right. Right. Like I feel like this is a I don't want to say artsy, but I think it's a very artsy scene what's gonna happen i'm gonna spoil just a little bit because

we're getting close we're getting there is she is going to agree with jim and work with him and they do a little bit of an audience misdirect with that uh that i'm not like it's fine it works out i'm just not a fan of those kind of audience misdirects and in general but yeah it doesn't really seem to have much purpose but like whatever yeah. Yeah. But this, this is, this scene is like a nice externally showing us her hitting rock bottom and deciding that it's not a problem she can resolve. She needs Jim and Jim comes with Jim's theory. Yeah. I think that's the, I don't want to say the use of the scene because I don't want to like

characterize it as it is just a utility scene or anything like that. But I think that's the the i don't want to say the use of this scene because i don't want to like characterize it as it is just a utility scene or anything like that but i think that's that's what it does there's an opportunity afforded by the length of this episode to do this kind of thing and it is it is taken yeah yeah i i think that's all well well said well put oh thank you we transition into our last sequence here with another shot of glowing light, like our original title. I think it's like a headlight. And then we go to seeing Megan getting out of a cab to go to work. We see Jim in the lobby wearing a little hat as his disguise. We then see Danny looking through a door crack, again, echoing our first thing.

But this time we see him as opposed to just having his perspective yeah we see more than his tinnies megan gets in the elevator to go to her office there's another passenger they get off and then danny just slips in at the last moment whispers in her ear that she looks awfully pretty and then grabs her and pulls her to the side so that when they stop at her floor and the doors open, it doesn't look like there's anyone in the elevator. We see Billings in the uniform of a janitor doing some janitorial duties in the, you know, in the hallway.

Good old Billings. And I think that's our sign that we're like, they've set up a whole thing. Like, sure, Rockford was there, but like, oh, there's Billings. Okay, the cops are here. Our question is, are they working with her or not? At least at least that was my question yeah that's the audience misdirective like she's just going to work and they're like staking her out yeah or not in the elevator danny is very creepy he's holding on to her saying he doesn't want to hurt her but he has a place all set for them to be alone and then he hits the emergency stop on the elevator and gets out on like the top floor

which is like a machine you know like a machine floor with like hvac and and stuff yeah downstairs jim arrives on the floor s billings if megan came came up she's he says he didn't see her but the elevator opened it was empty uh becker comes out of another door he's like what's going on so becker will go down jim will go up um and they will find uh find danny and this is where jim says it took me all night to convince her to try this yes so it's a very brief audience fake but it is resolved quickly and it adds to the tension yeah it's fine there's plenty of tension there anyways but like it you know yeah so he's pulled her into this machine room uh he starts unbuttoning her blouse which is very creepy as it's supposed to be and she she keeps repeating don't hurt me you don't need to hurt me and then she says the police are going to catch you anyway and he reacts to that he's like

what are you what are you saying you push that emergency button on purpose you want them to come find you um you don't need to do anything to me it doesn't make any sense you want them to catch you he realizes that they're on to him yeah yeah jim comes into the machine room he finds her cane that was uh you know fall fell on the floor so he knows she's there so this is all with all this like heavy like machine noise going on so there's not soundtrack noise but there's the diatonic noisy broom noise but then she goes a little deeper she's like danny you chose to come to a therapist for your cover that was the con you chose because you need help and you know you need help and that's when jim comes in he has his pistol and he shouts you know to tes to Tesca. So Danny to Tesca shoves Megan away, pulls his knife.

And then we have a tense cat and mouse stalking game of Jim and Danny in the going around all these machine elements. It's pretty, pretty good. Danny gets the drop on Jim. He kicks the gun out of his hand and then they struggle over his knife and that's when our tense music comes up along with the machine music uh it's very very exciting we have a meaty brawl but i think in this we really see like they are like the size mismatch is really apparent yeah danny needs the knife yeah this is kind of like you know who would win a fight spider-man or wolverine kind of thing it's like you know the fact that

we have jim taking down this like pro mob assassin in fairly short order is like ah jim's a badass but he does get a cut he has been cut on his shoulder at the end of the struggle but he finally gets a good stomach punch in on danny and after a couple more body blows wins the fight our last tension here is jim and megan shouting for each other with megan getting increasingly panicked as she's disoriented doesn't know she is he finds her you know she feels that he's has a cut he's like are you okay says, no, but I'm sure not complaining. And they have a kiss and an embrace. And presumably from here, justice is served. We come to our last scene in the trailer.

Jim has received a letter from Charlie. Charlie wants to return his fee. There's a humorously written letter along with it. They laugh about, oh, Charlie. And they they laugh about oh charlie um and they you know imitate his accent and stuff it's pretty funny jim asks if she has a cigarette she says no they all went down the garbage disposal last night she's quitting again so they're you know he's on the couch she's in the little kitchenette she brings a couple beers over he says something about how she finds she's finding her way around his place really well and she's like well how do you feel about that he says that he likes it he likes it a lot

there's some flirty banter um her getting used to having him around but she thinks that he likes that she can't see him she thinks that if he she could see him he she'd see a little red in his face uh because it makes it easier for him to say what he really feels. You know what's going to happen, don't you? Like you said in the restaurant. I'm going to be the warden. I'm going to be coming to get you. Oh, yeah?

Well, you just keep coming. I'll probably go quietly. And then they have a big kiss, and they embrace, and we see Jim's face, and he's smiling, content, happy. And we see Megan's face over his shoulder, same, and we freeze frame on her smiling face as the end of our episode. End credits, and you hear the, wah! Yeah, my final note here is, aw, these two.

Aw, these two. I love the Charlie bit at the end where he's like, I didn't actually save you from anything, so it reflects the earlier part where Megan was trying to pay Jim for not doing his job. There's lots of nice motifs throughout this whole thing where they tie things neatly together. It had a nice break moment in the middle, but it felt like an entire episode and not like a like, we'll be back next time for another exciting episode of rockford files yeah

there's like a tiny bit of dialogue in the first scene after you know the first scene of this the second episode that i think is probably there because they're like we know this is going to get broken up for syndication right so there's a little bit of as you know this is what just happened but it's very minor and it's just just, you know, it goes by really quick. I ended this, you know, I went in, I was like, oh, it's a two-parter. Okay. I was like, I'll get myself ready. Let's do this. And then when, when it was over, I was like, what a great two-parter. Yeah. Yes. I feel like listening to our episode, it probably will feel more of a slog than actually watching this yeah and watching this show because the the pacing's so good their chemistry is just really yeah i mean we knew that from the movie as

well right yeah yeah i am just checking now i think we're in agreement that the next episode we're gonna we're going to do her her other appear her final yeah love is the word all right clicking on that we're gonna find out that is an hour-long episode okay good uh i mean i don't mind i don't mind her being in exclusively two hour long rockford file stuff but like um yeah actually i think if i remember correctly uh imdb had the length of the movie listed wrong yeah it said it was like two hours and it was yeah like 135 or 140 yeah uh so the last one ended before i thought it was going to end in this one well i mean i knew when this one was going to end this time yeah i mean you know uh i will

always miss beth but this is a good love interest for for rockford for sure i think we mentioned this when we talked about coop but that's kind of the line on this so this is the fifth season and it's like they kind of split what beth does in the show into two characters and the legal, the legal part is coop and the romantic slash entanglement part is Megan. Um, and I think even while I do think this is kind of thematically very similar to crack back, as I mentioned, the characters are very different.

Like I do not feel like this is a Beth stand in. Yeah. Like every so often there's a character and we'll talk about like, well, if Beth was in the show in this episode, this would be Beth instead of, like, whoever this, you know, character is. But, yeah, no, this, she's, I guess just what, I don't know, impresses me. What I'm taking away, I'm not quite sure how to explain it. I'm a little awed by how fully realized this character is yeah and that's you know to the credit of the writing obviously but it's also like huge credit to katherine harold for just like yeah just doing a great job i mean i don't really you know know

her from other stuff but if i saw her name in credits i would be excited like just based on this i'd be like oh great she awesome. She's great in the movie, obviously, but in the movies, I often say it feels like these characters just picked up right where they left off. The character in the movie just feels 100% in continuity with this character as we have met her

in this episode. If we had done all of this stuff in order, right? Well, it would have been season five, so it would have been pretty close to when we were about to start watching the order right uh well it would have been season five so it had been pretty close to when we were about to start watching the movies but i definitely would have had like because again that movie opened up with him walking by her and like seeing her and her not well obviously not seeing him but like you know him having like oh this blast from the past i i would have remembered her right like i would have been like, oh, oh, wow.

All right, she's going to be in this, you know. Very memorable character. I like how she doesn't take Jim's guff the same way Beth doesn't. But it's, again, like you said, she doesn't feel like a replacement for Beth. The Rockford Files will often have, like, a romantic thing happening with Jim in one of the, you know, one of the characters. And a lot of them, you just think, oh, that's just gonna, that's just the thing that's happening right now. This doesn't have like, this isn't gonna last. This relationship is given to us with, yeah, with the implication that like,

yeah, she's going to be around. Yeah. Like you generally don't get Rocky. I mean, like occasionally you do get Rocky like interacting with the women that Jim has to interact with and him being very like, are you are you going to be my daughter in law? Yeah. But there's just from the I think I'm going to like her to I need grandchildren. Yeah. It's a good episode yeah but i think we also see how there are things that you know are going to drive them apart right yeah like they do have some core personality conflicts that just as we will see come up again later yeah yeah i am really curious about this next one because uh i don't even know if I actually saw it because I did. When we started the podcast, I don't think I had gone through all of the episodes.

And so I stopped like we talked about in our plus expenses, stopped watching them for fun. It's a good way to put it. I don't know if I've seen this season six one. I don't recall if I have either. It's centered directly on the stuff we're talking about. The premise is that she is now engaged to someone and Jim needs to help her. It's like, okay, well, that's right in the zone of all the stuff that we've been seeing from these two episodes or the movie in this episode. So, yeah.

So we'll do that one next. Yeah. But yeah, I think this is another big chunk, but I'm glad we did it. I think we're probably ready to sign off now. Yeah. We just got to burn through the rest of these two at a time. That all said, unlike Jim, who did not earn any money, we hopefully earned our $200 for today. That's something we used to say that sometimes I remember to say still.

We already know which one we'll be talking about next time, but we will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford File.