Two Hundred A Day - Episode 115: Love Is the Word

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

Nathan and Eppy finish the Megan Dougherty cycle with S6E5 Love Is the Word. After a lengthy absence, Jim finally returns to Megan only to find that she's gotten engaged! Fair enough, but when her fiancé is accused of murder, of course Jim is going to help find out what's going on. This episode isn't really about the mystery, but it gives us an incredible look at the complicated relationship between Megan and Jim, and how they both process it coming to an end. We find this one a great, if bittersweet, way to say goodbye to Megan. Our shirt preorder runs through early April, 2023. Click here (https://ndpdesign.com/rockford) to see if one of our two all-original designs is right for you! 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

This is Maria Liberty Bail Bonds. Your client Todd Lehman skipped and his bail is forfeit. That's the pink slip on your 79 Firebird, I believe. Sorry, Jim. Bring it on over. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidiah Ravishaw. Today we are finishing our journey through the Meganverse Finishing our journey through the Meganverse with Season 6, Episode 5, Love is the Word. Yes. So if you've just joined us now, the last two episodes of our podcast have been about – well, okay.

The previous episode to this was about the first episode that introduces the character of megan but on our podcast the introduction of megan starts two episodes behind uh with the 1990s film uh where she returns right so we were we're watching it in kind of a random order it can't even be reverse order it's's just... Right, it's random order. Yeah, because we watch the show, you know, out of order, we have just happened to not run across the character during our earlier episodes. And I realized there's two reasons for that.

One is we generally have been judicious about when we do double episodes. And the first Megan episode is a double episode. And then we also have been very sparing with our sixth season because there aren't a lot of episodes in the sixth season. Because it's kind of a half season. And her second episode is a sixth season episode. There's a reason.

Yeah, there's a structural issue about how we approach our viewing list that led to skipping this character. And in fact, last episode, the fact that it was a double episode surprised both of us. We were caught by surprise. So this will be our very first Megan episode that is not double length, right? Because the movies are double length. So that's exciting. And it's our very finalist. It's our finalist.

It is the most final. It is the most final. Yeah. It's the most final of the, of the, uh, Megan episodes. And, uh,

we will finally be able to sum up the entirety of, uh, Jim and Megan and their whole thing. I, I found that this being a standard length episode after multiple, after back to back long episodes did feel like a breeze. It was like, oh, it's over already. It's over, yes.

We'll get into it when we get into a TM. But the leisurely pace in which it deals with the actual plot. Because this episode is probably more concerned about jim and megan and their relationship uh so the leisurely pace with which it deals with the whole plot uh set me up for a double length episode as well and so it's the same thing like when we get towards the end of it uh my notes are like wait hold up this is ending oh that's it then yeah that's okay all right yeah um which both is is funny but also kind of sad because that's uh what this episode's about is is this kind of sudden sudden ending almost yeah yeah indeed we will get into it when we get into it tm tm

speaking of tm uh before we get into the production stuff, a reminder that our shirt pre-order is currently going on at the time of this episode's release. So it'll be running through the month of March 2023 into early April. We have two shirt designs. You can see them at ndpdesign.com slash Rockford. You can see them at NDP design.com slash Rockford. And if you are, uh, you know, have been enjoying the show and want to throw a little support our way,

you can clothe your torso in our, our faces or in, uh, a, a, the cool, the cool Helvetica and format of the cast. Yes.

Don't, don't get caught shirtless this summer or next summer, whenever, whenever you're, you're looking forward to wearing a t-shirt. If you want to wear a silken track jacket over your t-shirt, I'll allow it. Or perhaps a Hawaiian print shirt, both of which feature in this episode. My other note is that I, as a parent of a young child, currently have a cold. So if I'm a little stuffy or sneezy in this episode, I apologize in advance.

No one should take that personally. Right. I didn't do it because of you. Yeah. All right. Well, this is indeed season six, episode five, as we said, coming out in November of 1979. Written by, as all of the coming out in November of 1979. Written by, as all of the Megan Doherty episodes are written, by David Chase. And the director for this one is John Patterson. John Patterson has done two Rockford Files episodes. We already did his other one, which is the next episode and airing sequence in Season 6, six nice guys finish dead which is the second

lance white episode yeah uh so that was our episode 34 which we did uh in may of 2018 so i do not remember if we talked about him at all in i don't in that i i did look at my notes um and i didn't really have anything in particular. But this is near the start of this director's career. He's a working director through the 80s. He did a bunch of Hill Street Blues. He did a bunch of TV movies in the 90s. And then his credits start picking back up with Prestige TV, including what he's probably best known for which are 13 episodes of sopranos

why you may ask is this man involved with various david chase projects um apparently he was a classmate of chase's uh in grad school at stanford and so they like are friends just from that and so when chase was doing tv he started bringing in his buddy um to do these uh one of his claims to fame is so he directed the finale episode of each of the first i think four seasons of sopranos okay um one of them got him a director's guild of america award but then he unfortunately died uh earlier than one would than one would would. So anyway, I was following the thread there. There's a LA Times obituary from 2005. The writer spoke to David Chase and quotes him extensively in the obituary because they

were such good friends. So yeah, there's an even closer connection than what I think you just see from the credits, which is like, huh, he worked early on the Rockford Files and then was involved with other people who also did Rockford Files. Yeah, legitimately. Well, right before we went into this, I just checked his IMDB and I thought, oh, Chase must have liked him because he used him on Sopranos later. Of course. They're friends. They're good friends. Yeah.

So this is not a wrap on him though uh no this is a wrap this is a wrap okay so the order is he did this one then the next one in airing order and we did his next one five years ago yeah five years ago and now we're doing his final one so yes this is now a wrap on john patterson yes that's what i got off the top um epi yeah how did you find our preview montage uh well okay so we knew going into this that this was going to be a megan episode uh but right off the bat there's a good moment for audiences watching this airing the first time to see oh it's the return of megan um there is also a nice moment where it's uh we understand that there there's probably going to be a murder involved because we see a classic outline of a body and i you gotta love the

classics and what i wrote in my notes is you want steaks we've got steaks we get megan delivering the line i'm in love with two men at the same time so we got those pretty big steaks we've got steaks we get megan delivering the line i'm in love with two men at the same time so we got those pretty big steaks and then also they're gonna kill them which is also pretty big steaks so uh yeah looking forward to it now we'll find out as we watch the episode that that first set of steaks may be a little more important to the episode than the second set of stakes. Right, right. Yeah, and my notes with exciting gunshots. Yes. Blam, blam. Hey Epi,

did you know that we are a 100% listener-supported show? I did not know that. Wait, I did. I did. And it is because of our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day. In addition to our gratitude, patrons also receive exclusive episode previews and plus expenses.

That is the podcast before the podcast. And that's where we talk about other stuff going on in our lives and games and movies and all kinds of things. Yeah. We extend special thanks to our gumshoe patrons supporting this episode of 200 a Day. Brian Bernson has a Facebook page where he drives his Rockford tribute car to shooting locations from the show. Check out facebook.com slash Brian Rockford files. Join Mitch Hampton to examine all matters aesthetic and what it means to be human at the Journey of an Aesthetic podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Dale Norwood wrote a book, Find Trading Freedom,

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Bill Anderson at BillAnd88 And of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam We follow them too, at 200pod If you're interested in helping keeping us going, you can do so for as little as a dollar an episode At patreon.com slash 200 a day Thank you Thanks so much Alright, well getting into our episode

So this was a question maybe i don't know if you thought about this but as i was watching it i was i was thinking how much if any intention was given to we need to introduce viewers to this character versus oh right you can just kind of assume that they'll pick it up as we go along that that is a good question i think i felt like it was very maybe just because we just watched the other ones but i was like okay i know who this is and i know what their relationship has been like and we clearly get how their relationship is from from from the content of the episode but uh it was very naturalistic in the sense of not having a lot of exposition about their past or megan's deal like her life yes right uh so it's in contrast to the other two that we saw because

the other two spent some time explaining that she was blind or sorry not explaining that she was blind but like showing us how she navigates the world right as a blind woman they didn't like super dwell on it but they definitely got us as viewers uh comfortable with it which makes sense like one's the first one and the other one takes place a couple decades later so you'd want to reintroduce them but this one felt i mean it really felt like we're in the same position that jim is at the beginning of the episode. Jim shows up at our house and he just hasn't seen her in a while. But he's like, we're just going to pick up right where we left off.

Right. Everything's good. And you kind of have that same vibe as a viewer if you had seen Megan earlier. Like, oh, it's Megan. Yay. Let's see how they're doing, how they're getting along or whatever. Right, right, yeah. And I think they also do a good job of,

without having to explain it, these are, I will try not to use the word stakes all the time, but these are emotional stakes that I think we can all just immediately understand. Like when we watch it, we see her slight awkwardness when Jim first shows up. And you're just like, hmm.

And of course, we know from the preview montage that she's in love with two men. Right, right. So we're kind of looking for that. Yeah. Probably early. Yeah, I think that leads into something about which we had talked a little bit before recording, which is that a lot of the stuff you see on the screen in this episode is two people talking in emotionally charged situations um and a lot of the charge is carried by the the physical

acting the body language the facial expressions the way they move around each other, the little sighs, the little eye rolls, all that kind of stuff. The chemistry between these two actors is great. Now that we've done two episodes about it and we've spent four hours of TV time with them already. We've probably said this over and over. But I think this episode in particular kind of highlights that these are good actors who act well together. And we're a couple of podcasters we're not going to be able to convey you should watch this episode if you want to understand what we're saying but yeah so which also means you know i'm going to try not to

like narrate a lot of that stuff because it's not going to be particularly interesting to hear and i won't do a good job conveying um the tone too much uh but combined with the fact that this is a very light plot there may be a lot of kind of skimming over scenes that actually are fairly substantial because there's uh you know we'll hit the high points and you should watch the episode in our opening scene here uh we do establish megan on the beach she has this like beach house kind of situation jim is dropping by after not seeing her for about a month he's been working on some case he's been he's been in court uh so he has this whole rundown about uh you know how what a bear the da is and um you know how much just how how

stressful everything has been he says that his day has been black tuesday and the day of the jackal rolled into one he describes the da as uh treats his brain as a pocket watch which at first i was like is it well constructed is it like what what is he getting at? He goes, he takes it out from time to time. It was just not what I was expecting and just a wonderful metaphor. Yeah. She has a great moment where she says, because he's like, I've had a bad day. She says, oh, you must have had a bad month. Dare I say, long time no see.

So she's, for us who have just watched the other episode she's um a little more may not cavalier isn't the right word but she uses some turns of phrase very intentionally right you know in kind of this like half joking manner um kind of at her own expense but well there's been um i don't know if it's her specifically but there's been hay made about people using common site-based idioms around her, especially when the thing that they're saying, like we saw Billings. Or no, Billings wasn't even an idiom. He was just like, you can then, we'll bring him and you could identify him. Yeah, you can identify him based off their description. Yeah.

It's like, no. Yeah, I'm not going to be identifying anyone. And they're like, oh, yeah. and you could identify them yeah you can identify them based off their description yeah yeah it's like no yeah i'm not going to be identifying anyone and they're like oh yeah um anyway and this is called out a little bit i think here with her you know telegraphing like dare i say it um i think to help establish that she's comfortable enough with jim to do something that's a little bit of a joke about it as opposed to calling someone else out on it if they were to you know okay so I am definitely going to read as much as I possibly can into what's happening here why not we're a fan podcast and uh okay so right now there's a tension that isn't surface level. And it might not even be like just below the surface.

There's like a, like she has made a decision in her life that affects how these two interact with each other. And they've been out of communication for a while. So the way she says this line and what she is to some extent, it's a little bit of a humor thing, but it's also putting, trying to put Jim in an awkward spot on

yeah almost on purpose right like like hey everything's not fine right now right right yeah yeah she she you know wishes he would have called um and you know he's like oh it's just so caught up with stuff and then there's like there's a lot of traffic on the freeway or something so like he just keeps going on and on yeah it's easier to come over here than try and go home like that kind of thing he starts to explain more and she i think she's the first one who's like it's okay no explanations yeah because that's their deal like we don't need to explain things to each other like that's kind of the bedrock of their formal agreement yeah for a better term they trust each other to make correct decisions uh no explanations necessary my notes are filled with that line it happens over and over again

this is our introduction to it there's a moment where she is about to say something to jim and he kind of just talks over her because he's still on on a roll and she doesn't try again she just lets it go yeah we definitely see that she is feeling attention here that he's oblivious to we go to credits over uh the beach and then back to the porch uh jim has fallen asleep in a deck chair listening to the radio i just want to put this out there in the universe for people who make the like study and chill youtube channels jim rockford asleep in front of the TV on the beach, YouTube chill channel, please.

That's all I want. I don't want to have to go through the trouble of making it myself. Uh, but I would definitely appreciate it if somebody did. Speaking of YouTube, that just makes me think of, uh, uh,

another aspect of this episode, which is similar to the last one where we have almost no score um we have sometimes there's the transition music like when we come back from commercial break uh other than that there's pretty there's a little bit of there's a romantic swell at one point and other than that i didn't notice any other score and i think obviously that's an intention that obviously that's part of the style of these episodes because i think all of them have had this where it's like because we are in the world of megan we need to hear the environment the way that she does i think yeah i think there's a i think that's absolutely correct there's i made a note somewhere near

the end because there was like the back to back weird scoring thing. And when we come to it in my notes, I will I will get to it. But the the other thing that I've noticed in contrast to Jim's place, we've been to Jim's place so often and we never really hear the ocean. Right. Unless he's like right on it but he's probably roughly the same distance from the ocean as her places and whatever and we when we're at her place it's waves all the time and i think that that's another intentional uh thing to just be like you know this is what the this world is like for her like this or not even to place it with her but just to kind of give us like an

understanding of the the soundscape of of her home at the time yeah well when jim uh wakes up and goes to get another beer there's a knock at the door and there's a man there asking for megan his name is jeffrey smith um jim introduces himself as you know hi i'm jim and he gets oh i've heard about you we who have seen the preview montage and read the uh uh synopsis for the episode we know this is this is the other bow uh as we will get into more as we go but um megan is like getting getting dressed they're planning to go out later uh and then they basically make like semi-confrontational small talk yeah uh jim explains that he's a pi not that many foggy waterfronts are our depositions no no i'm serious i mean delving into human beings human behavior

can't see a better way to spend your days yeah i guess that really is what i do yeah yeah megan's job too same kind of thing only different i um i envy her that a little but there's a little bit of thawing when they have that conversation where it's kind of like okay now well you know so what do you do we get that he's an architect every everything from courthouses to houses and then they just kind of make small talk until megan uh appears um she's wearing a bathrobe and when she hears that jeffrey's there uh really wishes that he had called first like really wishes he had called first uh because same thing he was caught in town traffic etc etc i think jeffrey has an appropriate read on the situation yeah right uh and he's like kind of cool with it yeah so this is interesting because like the actor that they chose um anthony

herrera um so he's a soap opera guy i was you know checking it out he's on 174 episodes of how the world turns okay all right so he's he's got he's got his money he knows where he worked but you know not not a whole lot of other appearances though he was in one episode of the incredible hulk ah yes oh he played don i don't know so um okay so the thing about this actor is that this correct me if i'm wrong but this guy he could be complaining about someone handing him an ice cream sandwich right like like this is a this is an actor who's coded as a rockford villain yes i feel like uh and so i'm immediately thinking all right whatever bad business comes up he's going to be at the center of it so most of this episode both jim and i have to warm to him

and that um jim handles it better than i do but i think that's good i like i like that decision i like that uh and and i think you're right like they they feel each other out in the beginning of the conversation and then by the end of it they um they're making fun of how often both of them are complaining. I see that you two have already met. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were trying to see who could out complain the other. That could be a real battle of the all stars. Yes. She tells Jeffrey that she's going to go, you know, she's going out with Jim and walks him out. As we go through it, I have this thought have this thought which is again not a huge spoiler

but the the deal is that uh that he proposed to her at some point during this month that jim just hasn't been around and she she she said yes she's gonna marry him so at this moment they are engaged yes so when she's like i wish you had called and he's like well yeah sorry uh i've heard about jim so he knows what the deal is with jim yeah but he doesn't need to be uh he doesn't need to be weird because he's like we're engaged he knows he has the like not high ground that's not what i'm trying to say but like right He knows he has the, like, not high ground. That's not what I'm trying to say. But, like, he knows something about the situation that Jim doesn't. So that makes a lot more sense about why he's kind of like, okay, cool, whatever. Because he trusts Megan.

Yes. Because he knows what their deal is already. Yeah. Like, I hesitate to say he's being cool about it because that would indicate that, like, he would have a right to be some other way. But he's handling it correctly. Right. Like, he's like, oh, OK. If I had called, you probably would have said, hey, I'm busy and I wouldn't have come over and we wouldn't have had this thing.

And everything you were doing would have been the same. Yeah. There's a line later on that I think Randy says where he's like like you're not the only one who has to say goodbye to some people like so there's also this kind of like i mean i my notes i'm like ah the 70s right like i lived through the 70s barely like i was a i was in the single digits during the 70s so i don't i don't conceptually understand this dating atmosphere but i remember the media at the time and like this is yeah they're they just they were dating a bunch of people and now they have to go through

their rolodex they have to go through the little black book and let these people know that they can't call them yeah they're not available anymore yeah yeah and i think that kind of sense of just kind of the the sense of the fluid nature of relationships is one that we see elsewhere in the rockford files and it's clearly something that Jim not only appreciates, but takes advantage of. I mean, come on. No explanations. No explanations necessary. Exactly.

They go on their date, which is to kind of like a honky tonk bar to see Barbara Mandel and the All-Stars, which is a name I recognized. Barbara Mandel is a country music mandrell mandrell barbara mandrell and the all-stars um she's a a country music singer um i forget she had a big hit that people would know but like i just kind of knew the name just from osmosis so i was like oh and we saw it in the credits she's a big name for like an opening because he said that she was opening oh on the on the marquee okay there's a couple layers here and none of this it matters at all but um it's it's great that they got a big name for the sixth season of the rockford files like hey look at this

we're blowing it out where we got barbara mandrell um but also the place that they're at just seems like it like you said a honky-tonk it's just like a bar that she's in i don't know i've never lived in la maybe that's what happens all the time in la maybe you go in and like jenna jackson shows up and plays something but he also said that she was opening it and so like i do have some curiosity about like what who the headliner was yeah what's the headliner what's going on here like is this was she near the end of her career so she might have been opening for like something new that like jim wouldn't care about or you know um but i don't know like i honestly don't know enough

about i just know the name yeah i didn't really see anything about why she's in the episode. Like, nothing in particular about why this cameo was here. Like, I mean, I like it. It's fine. And kind of narratively, we have a moment where we get to see Jim watching Megan enjoy herself. Mm-hmm. Right. This is their last hurrah. This is kind of the last, yeah, this is the last hurrah.

I didn't really, if we listen to the song, I think the song is also relevant to the emotional situation think the song is also relevant related yeah emotional situation but uh again diegetic music this is music that she is actually listening to um so we get to hear it going to a live music thing makes sense um and for whatever reason they made this cameo happen and i'm glad they did because like it's a nice moment but it's not like um so unlike the episode with dion warwick where she was a character in the episode uh or even for that matter with isaac hayes where we get to hear some isaac hayes singing uh in while gandhi is on screen uh barber mangel just is here for this um bit and then it's gone it's just a cameo it's not so a couple things about this scene that i think are well crafted as

we um like to point out is that first of all it's a nice emotional beat for what's going on like we're already into it we already know something this is probably a sad story for jim the song is a little melancholic and because they are at a musical event she can't talk to him about what she needs to talk to him about because there's music happening. There's a scene like right after this that I just absolutely love. The song is still playing and we get the Firebird driving in the sunset. And it's just like there's something about that that was just like very I don't even want to say iconic because it's not necessarily i mean it's the firebird or you know whatever but like it's just it was just like a

nice shot and also because it's the sun setting and the music is a little sad and we know that something sad is about to happen it's a nice build up to what this conversation that's about to happen and i would say there's even a a nice button on it where as they cut from that shot which i agree is fantastic it cuts to a close-up on the firebird's headlight yeah which is visually echoing the things from the previous episode that we watched where we would start each episode with this like tight shot on like just a circular light of some kind yeah um so this is more in universe it's literally the firebird headlight but that tight shot on the light and then it just goes to black all around

the edges is um i i cannot read that as anything but a like this is connecting these two episodes yeah with this little visual flourish um so i imagine that this is probably a david chase influence says he produced both episodes uh even though he was not the director. But yeah, it's nice. Since we just saw it, I'm kind of like, oh, I see what you did there. You got to have bright circles. We need bright circles. That's my David Chase impression.

Yes, I'm sure it's 100% accurate. They're back. They're home. They're back at Megan's place in the Firebird. And Megan has something to tell jim and she finally has brought ever seen him in the show this is yeah this is a reveal that uh warrants a dun dun dun you know like this is a uh yeah this is good um again this is one of those things where maybe maybe you should watch the episode yeah so this this conversation uh the content here is you know uh she kind of fills them in about the backstory they started seeing each other

about a month month and a half ago she just felt a strong connection and when he proposed her it just all fell into place she just like it sounds like she doesn't say this but it's like she kind of saw a future suddenly appear in front of her yeah uh in a way that she hasn't i mean saw a future but yeah we're gonna stumble that yeah yeah apologies um one of the one of the things we all are continuing to work on is ableist language and this is really highlighting highlighting um this is really uh emphasizing how much cited language is in our just our our everyday vernacular um anyhow you know she can conceive of this future in a way that she could not with jim um they had seen each other in college and lost touch and then she just ran into him in a party or something like

that he says well that's a chronology but you haven't told me much about him um and she runs down all of his good qualities and then just kind of ends with, I just love him very much. We see that Jim is having trouble. Yeah, my notes start with, oh, Jim's taking this well. And then, oh, Jim is not taking this well.

And there's a nice bit here where he doesn't say anything about it. As she's describing it you're you're watching the torment on his face that he is kind of allowing himself to to reveal because she can't see it right right yeah it's it's good it's a good moment like it's very powerful i think part of it is it feels or at least my my read of it was that he is reacting even stronger than he thought he would. And the fact that he's having such a strong reaction is spiraling. Like that is making him,

you know, more upset. He's discovering stuff about himself in this moment. And like, who wouldn't like, this is a very tough moment. And, uh,

very well done. Like, I'm very impressed with this part of the episode. How I phrased it in my notes is that we see that Jim is having trouble, but he's living up to their deal. And I think he says again, no explanations. This is how your life is

going. You don't need to explain it to me. She explicitly says, you've seen other women, I've seen other men, that's how our relationship has been. And he's like, I know. No explanations. That's fine. And he's saying this with kind of a like, yeah, everything's cool tone of voice.

But we're seeing on his face that he's having that emotional spiral. And she knows it. That's why she's trying to talk through it. She specifically says that she's in a place in her life where she needs commitment and she needs to commit and she kind of sounds like she discovered that through having this proposal yeah you know happen uh and she might even want to have kids sometimes and she doesn't envision a future where jim wants to have kids yes and she does have kids we know this we know this yeah we know that this goes forward um though not with jeffrey yes so uh i i say here that jim's jim's pushing through it to to say what we had was a special relationship but i'm very happy for you and he sounds very sincere like yeah and i think

he isn't sincere not sounds like he's faking like i think he again, living up to their deal, which was this could have happened. He's having both emotions. Like, that is a thing that we can do as human beings. We're able to experience more than one emotion at a time. It's very confusing. The chemicals do weird things to us. And it is a testament to the actors that they're able to let this. I mean, the writing as well, but like to convey this complex web of oof.

We end the conversation with, you know, he's saying I'm very happy for you. And he goes in like to give her a kiss and she turns it into a hug. Yeah. All right. Cut to Jim storming around the trailer knocking stuff over he punches the wall which is again one of the most outward expressions of anger i've ever seen him have when he's not yelling at angel like this is the most dramatic joke in the cut that we have we have witnessed in you know how many years have we been at this yeah he's like i'm very happy for you. Nice hug. Cut to punching the wall. Just furious, right?

Because he doesn't have to be holding it in for anyone. Angry, not just outraged. We've seen Jim outraged all the time because he's, you know, like trying to either injustice being done to him or done to someone else. And he wants to see that resolved or whatever. But this is just anger. It's pure selfish anger. But it's not not understandable right like it is a very understandable length uh anger it's it's relatable um yeah i can access yeah that plays from having that kind of reaction to a like

a you know like a breakup or like getting bad news or, or whatever. Um, he knocks over a picture of him and Megan. He looks at it and then he puts it in one of his desk drawers and we cut to black as he closes the drawer. I just want to point out this picture is of Jim and Megan and Jim is holding a box of potato chips. And I think to myself, those are the happiest times, right? Like this this is this is a symbol of pure joy here i can't imagine it's from when we went to the

potato chip factory yeah exactly remember when we were at the potato chip factory at least we'll always have us oh nice that's very good um yeah i think there's something in the background. Were they at the state fair? Yeah. Well, we cut to a phone ringing, so we know that a plot is going to happen. I don't remember how many minutes we're into this episode right now. But my notes is, wait, is this not a two-parter?

What's happening here? So it's Megan's phone is ringing jeffrey is calling her from a phone booth uh he's been he's been jammed up with work but asks if she's seen or heard from randy and she's like what no i haven't what's going on oh it's just business don't worry but if you hear from randy get him to tell you where he is. And then he hangs up. So that's not suspicious at all. There's a bit in the filming here where the camera on her is a handheld camera, I think. It's a little unsteady. And because of the previous episode, I'm like, wait, is someone in the room with her?

Not like is she sleeping with someone, but is somebody watching her? Yeah, I think that's just more a stylistic thing. Yeah. We cut from there to Jim haranguing Megan about how she called Mitch Velasco on the sly. But good thing that Mitch knows both of them and has enough ethics to tell Jim. So, you know, she's worried, right? Jeffrey has basically disappeared since she got that call the first part of this is them arguing and then the second part gives us more stuff the arguing

is around how she doesn't want him to be involved because it's going to be too conflict-laden yeah like you're going to have too much personal interest and he's like you didn't call me i came over on my own and then he has this whole bit where he starts playing the the fake sad violin while she's telling him about all the reasons that she finds it difficult for him to be involved yeah in this argument we see how like oh yeah they spent a lot of time together like in the however long it's been like they know each other's argument tactics each other's little quirks there you see no kidding you see what i mean no money huh you can you can just consider it a wedding present hell there's that tone again i can't deal with this what tone oh what tone is that what tone

there you see all of a sudden she has nothing to say yeah yeah no this feels like a very i want a familiar argument yeah i was going to say comfortable but yeah like the these are two people who yeah have a rut when it comes to arguing they've been arguing that much to where they have the outsized like i'm gonna play the sad violin because i know this is the part where you're listing all the you know all your hang-ups or whatever and it's like since we have had this argument i'm i'm going for it it's also like not a very jim rockford it's a little mocking thing yeah and so you you kind of get this like the the situation the two of them together and the situation that they're in is is affecting his personality which is another very real thing

yeah like you just behave in ways you don't uh he's yelling she's telling him he's yelling he says he's not yelling but they're he's got a loud voice and then he and then he's like why do you always say that i'm yelling just when i'm disagreeing with you yeah anytime anyone argues with you you tell them that they're yelling like it's a whole it's again ground that's clearly been trodden yeah yeah she wants to pay him if he's going to be there, and he says, no way, absolutely not. How about just consider it a wedding present? And this, again, touches, in our

last episode, all their stuff about, like, I'm a professional. This is the only moment of that here, but I appreciate that it's in this conversation. It's a nice theme that keeps coming up. It's also indicative of Jim in general. If you want to pay Jim, he doesn't want to accept the money. If you don't want to pay him, he wants your money.

Right. And that is just how that is. She calls him on his tone and then is like, I just can't deal with this. And we have this long pause where she sits there on the couch with her head in her hands while Jim is like standing behind her. I think trying to decide where to go next with it. And then she finally does say, thank you. I am glad that you're here. She has taken this moment to kind of regroup and be like, okay,

what's actually at what, what do I actually want and what do I have to work with? And like, if I have to have Jim involved, I'm glad it's him and not someone else. Yes. Yes. And we know that Jim is the right answer for this yeah yeah mitch velasco come on come on it's not the velasco files yeah all right so we get the uh

more information um so the randy that jeff was asking about is jeffrey's younger brother they grew up like rich kids in uh laguna and uh jeffrey grew out of it and like became an adult and randy never did uh he's a hellraiser he burned down his prep school when he was 17 um not a great picture of this yeah jeffrey called like in the early morning like 2 a.m or whatever the morning after that she got another call from someone she didn't know asking for randy and then when she said asking like do you where's randy when she said she didn't know they hung up so that's when she started feeling nervous about the whole thing uh what's randy's deal uh well he deals dope he's dating

this starlet patty who played a sexpot daughter on a sitcom that got canceled. Spare tires? Oh, yeah. 13 shows and out. I think that the context for having 13 episodes of a show has really changed. Yeah. Yeah, that's a Netflix original and probably a very successful one, too. I do like the Jim.

I mean, this probably has something to do with where he lives. But that Jim would know the spare tires had 13 episodes. I have to go on IMDB and look up spare tires to know how many episodes they had. But Jim knew it off the top of his head. The phone rings, and it is the mysterious Randy. He's in bed. I think he's clipping his toenails or something. And he starts off with, hey, sis, what's the haps?

So we know he's a cool dude. He, I think it's actually a little unclear why he's calling her. Because she starts like, hey, do you know where Jeffrey is? And he's like, yeah, I might. But I don't know. I'll talk to you later. I think maybe he's calling because he know where Jeffrey is? And he's like, I might, but I don't know. I'll talk to you later. I think maybe he's calling because he thinks maybe Jeffrey is there. And then when he's there, he's like, oh, I just want to know if you have my blue jacket.

Right. And of course, she can't tell if the jacket's blue. Well, yes, as she will point out later. And then he, you know, hangs up. So more suspicion. This girlfriend, Patty, isn't in the phone book, but Jim aims to track her down via the production company for Spare Tires. Jim knows what he's doing. He's an expert. He's so much of an expert.

We don't even have to see him do anything. We see he just leaves the production company with a piece of paper. Oh, so on the phone, Randy was like, oh, I just need to talk to him about the disco. Yes. So this is a very efficient writing situation where we're getting some of the exposition split over these two scenes. While we also are seeing them tracking down the person they need so that they can find Randy. But Megan fills in that Randy got an idea to build a roller disco in Laguna with some guys he knows. And he's got Jeffrey to design and supervise the construction.

Good money in roller disco. Good money in roller disco. And Jeffrey is on board, among other things, because it's like Randy's actually interested in something for once. So it seems like it's like heandy's actually interested in something for once so it seems like it's like he's trying to encourage that um but uh she mentions that jeffrey and randy formed like a business partnership to manage the construction whatever info jim got seems to have borne out as uh we cut to randy and patty leaving some kind of cabana looking uh structure with a mannequin and some photo equipment and uh

we see he's he's just talking a mile a minute i'm wondering um if we've hit upon a david chase style character i i feel like i feel like we probably have right first of all poor megan she seems to have a lot of randy's in her life like considering what we've watched and whatnot like he reminds me of brian transon's character yeah uh her cousin he reminds me of uh one of the couple of guys from new jersey like there's a david and like sure he also has like an angel feel to him and whatnot but there's something else here there's very like uh a young ne'er-do-well probably high on something right i mean um maybe maybe we're just seeing uh the effects of cocaine or uppers as jim will will point out but yeah the uh person who plays him is oh. He doesn't really have a whole lot of stuff.

I just want to praise him on his face. David Carroll? Yeah, he's just got a good face for this. Maybe I just noticed it because I had to pause it to make a note at some point. And he had a very... Like, the whole idea of the character came through on that face that he was making. Yeah, unfortunately, he had a very short career. It looks like he died relatively early.

Oh, that's sad. 1992, yeah. So that's a shame. But yeah, he's definitely a memorable character. Yeah. I got it. You brought the old blue jacket. Outstanding.

I don't know anything about your jackets, Randy, much less which one's blue. Oh, yeah, right. That point goes to future sister-in-law again i'm sorry megan you know i love you is she not a fox jim yeah there's some banter so you know jim is immediately identified as someone who is not cool so he keeps when he makes some slang term, then he'll like turn to Jim and translate for him. Yes. Which is pretty funny. I don't even remember.

Jim says something. They just couldn't cure that slow speech defect. Metabolism. Chortle, chortle. Very inside Jim. I just love a guy who's hip. Wow. I was expecting Jim to just deck him at that point.

And I don't, yeah, it's fun um he says that he talked to jeffrey everything's cool he'll call her at home um randy and patty are going out on a photo shoot uh he has this new gig he's doing the definitive study of the california hot tub and specialty baths megan keeps trying to call like get him back to like the conversation she's trying to have she's like so you talked to jeffrey what did he say you're like oh you know what did i run my new idea by you what is everyone into these days the environment living on the natch living on the natural yeah so they live on the natch then turns to jim and goes yes natural uh so solar powered crematoriums that's his which is an angel idea if i've ever one so good i'd be angel whatever would be like jimmy jimmy need some money i got

this great investment yeah solar power crematoriums yeah so she gets him back where is jeffrey and this is when he does the uh well that's a tough one i don't want to get in the middle of you but you know he's making his goodbyes yeah just like you are and then he like looks at jim and she doesn't believe him i don't believe you talked to jeffrey i don't believe you know where he is and he just kind of begs off he's like well i gotta go to my shoot um but don't worry about it jeffrey's all right and they get in their their jeep to go and we end the scene with Jim going, shoo, uppers. Yeah. There's a great moment there where Jim is asking

for how they can get in touch with him, just in case we run into someone who has a corpse who needs a tan. Fun scene. The parallels here with Angel are nice. It feels a bit like, if we look at, um,

Jeffrey as a gym analog, which nothing in the text has told us to do that, except that they're both dating Megan. Uh, then this is probably his angel. And if something like, you know, clearly Randy's going to drag him into something that angel would have dragged

Jim into or could have dragged Jim into. And yeah, 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 Ep 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 ndpayoletta. 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. Megan still has not been able to get in touch with Jeffrey at his office or his house. And so Jim says that it is time to go down to Laguna and check out the neighbors. See if he's been around.

She says that's a lot to ask, but he's not doing anything anyway. He'll go to his trailer to get some overnight things, but most everything you need is already here. And this is actually a call back to in their you know breakup conversation when he was like oh let me get my things out of your house before i go home and she's like i don't want you to come inside yeah yeah so they're still there we go to uh an establishing shot of laguna terrace you know some office building jeffrey

smith iai jim's picking the office door lock he moves through the space we see him kind of step on something so clearly that's the first like oh something something is amiss he opens the back door to let megan in and turns on the light and then we follow him seeing the taped outline on the floor and this is he this is from the preview montage where he describes it to make and there's a there's a taped outline on the floor the kind that the police make when there's a body so we go to the police department this is in laguna i assume um none of our uh familiar faces here yeah we get some light why were you at the scene of a crime? But it gets dropped pretty quick. A man named Barry Spector was murdered in the office. Jeffrey killed him and fled the scene. And there was an eyewitness. I think that's also in the preview montage. I think so. Yeah. Megan says that's impossible. He's not capable of doing such a thing right our other uh principal is then introduced the murdered man's cousin kevin specter he's the one in the resplendent red satin starter jacket yes and

what the the this lieutenant lieutenant keffer says uh that uh barry specter was a coke dealer and uh kevin says hey now that's an allegation yes but the two cousins were in a cash heavy position and they went into business with the smith brothers with jeffrey and and um uh randy on the roller disco kevin then you know says here's what happened the bank issued a seventy thousand dollar construction draw um issued that to jeffrey he cashed the check pocketed the cash and didn't pay any of the contractors and so they're coming after as as the investors now they're coming after us so we went to talk to him about getting that money back they confronted him in his office he attacked barry slammed his head into the desk

and then ran before kevin could catch him megan reiterates he must have been provoked he's incapable of that kind of violence and jim asks about this draw couldn't someone else have cashed it and uh the cop says that jeffrey was the only one authorized to cash checks and it was his signature so there's our plot um kicking off i want to take a moment to give jim some kudos here uh he doesn't correct me if i'm wrong here but this is almost unique in the annals of the rockford files but he doesn't suggest that jeffrey actually might be guilty of any of this stuff right right he doesn't so he's trusting Megan that Jeffrey's not capable of it. And almost every other time something like this comes up,

he will entertain the possibility, right? Like he wants to prepare people for that possibility or whatever. Including the other episodes with Megan. Yes. I was just like especially with uh brian cranston's character whose name eludes me patrick cousin patrick that's right and uh yeah so and of course with she being a psychiatrist or psychologist or i can't remember which not being able to see who amongst her patients might be capable of stalking her or whatever. But in this particular case, when it is most advantageous to Jim to throw shade and doubt, he doesn't.

He doesn't even pause to do it. He just is accepting her version of the narrative and going forward and yeah and we get some some text about that in this next little little interstitial scene where he he said he tells her well at least we know jeffrey's probably all right yeah like the cops haven't caught him or whatever yes and megan says well the but the cops are wrong about him you know i and i know that you are suspicious right i told you this was the wrong thing for you to be involved with you know i knew you'd have personal feelings jim kind of uh uh intercedes with uh bad news the coffee shop is closed but good news there's a restaurant open that's close by and they cut to wine being poured yes and then this is where jim says megan uh about before about jeffrey and what i think and the fact that there's a an eyewitness and all of it let's not mention it again okay because you care for the man if you care for the man you

say he's clean and he's clean and who am i kidding that's that's all that's really all i wanted to say just like you were saying i think we saw that through the things he did not do. And then right here, he very explicitly reinforces that for her and for us, that he's like, I am going to take what you say as the truth this time. Yes, I love the callback. I didn't even catch it until you mentioned it about the, because in the previous episode uh there was this whole business about her not wanting the wine she was ordering like right the perrier or like the sparkling water and then he was like you want to get chocolate milk and then eventually they drink the wine and and i felt like this was definitely a a call back to that where it's like yeah they've gotten past

all that initial business they're just at the part where they can have a nice dinner yeah we go to the hotel that they're staying at that night. And this is a nice, again, naturalistic flow here where we watch Jim talk her through this unfamiliar space so that she can acclimate. Yeah. Two steps, this door to your right, that's the bathroom. Around this corner, that's the bureau.

Three steps, there's the bed. The phone is catty corner to the bed. And she's just, she's, this is clearly just routine. Like we're in a new space. You're going to be in here by yourself. He's given her the lay,

literally the lay of the land. And she nods like, yes, you know, got it, got it, got it. And it's just not a thing.

It's just, like I said, routine. Um, and I, I like that. Cause I think it's, we haven't actually seen that explicitly in the other episodes where she she gets she needs to get acclimated to these new spaces

jim is going to take his stuff to the adjoining room and megan stops him and we have another big conversation again feeling very much like the first part of a two-parter where it's like we're spending a lot of time watching them yes um not in a bad way but we're having another one of those scenes you're always looking after me seeing how i feel don't you ever think that i care about how you feel of course i do i know you think about how i feel but what you just really don't care or what what's the matter with you of course i do you know that the the the idea that jim needs taken care of too and part of him pushing back on things that she wants is him negating her ability to take care of

him he has not let her i might be reading too much into this but he has not let her um step into that role like i mean we see it when he's, you don't have to pay me for this. You know, like there's she is not poor. She can definitely afford to pay him for this. Jim actually probably needs money more than she does. And so he pushes back on her helping him out. And she takes that personally. She takes that as a maybe because she's blind.

He doesn't think she's capable of doing this. Right. And this has been a maybe up until this moment unspoken wedge in their relationship. I think that might be what's implied in this discussion. He does have this good line in here that's like, you want to have this conversation? Okay, we'll have it. Let's get it all out right now. Yeah.

You want to make this hard as possible? Okay, let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. It transitions to her telling him that maybe the reason that she hadn't told him up front about, you know, getting engaged to Jeffrey wasn't just that she didn't want to hurt him. It was that she didn't want to make it real by saying it, right? It hurt her to say it because when she said it, a door closed.

Yeah. Which is a great metaphor. She still has to break up with Jim. And that hurt. It still hurts. And Jim says, that hurts me too. But so what? Not so what dismissively, but like, and so what?

Yeah. Where do we go from there? And she says, i don't know there's a line that i i wrote down because i thought it sounded very much like a line from a noir all right i said if it's just smoke then forget it it's a great great line uh and i thought to myself like wow that just sounds like like one of those fast-paced noir things um and i'll bring that up again in just a moment to continue well and so the context for for this is you've never really thought that i could take care of you that i was capable of helping you dealing with your needs oh come on now hey that's a crock i mean you just throw enough smoke you

want to have this conversation okay we'll have it don't trot that stuff out look it's what i think okay right like the emotional truth matters whether you feel the way that i think you feel i still have this emotional um situation and then this leads into uh jim saying that you know this is what we wanted we left room we left space for each other room space all those words love is the word that keep you from grappling too hard with uh jim follows this up with i do love you and she says she knows but he loves a lot of other things too he loves the life of the way it is he loves his freedom and she's in love with two men at the same time so like yeah they both have a lot going on yeah yeah you know she starts having

some tears jim reaches out to her uh and she says that she's tired she just she's done with the conversation she needs to be alone now. And he has this very, I think, understanding look. Yeah. You know, like, okay, we're done. So from the preview montage, we have that line, I'm in love with two men at the same time. Right.

And in that context, like you said, it's like, oh, let's raise the emotional stakes. Like two men at the same time. In context of this conversation, it's not of this of this conversation it's not a it's not a confession right it's not a revelation it's not an escalation it's not an escalation yeah it's actually an acknowledgement that both of them have a complicated relationship with all the things that they care about yeah it's it's a step towards a better a very bittersweet closure, right? She's admitting that she loves Jim, which is great.

Uh, but also not enough. Um, we cut back and forth. We see Jim smoking a cigarette, watching TV. We see Megan trying to fall asleep and not. Okay.

So Jim is watching this guns for hire, uh, which is a noir classic. I, I know this because I could hear lines from it and I got to Google it. This is Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Well worth watching. Anytime you see those two together, go for it.

Fun trivia bit. I recognize that name just now because I recently watched a first season Columbo episode where there's a line where this woman's like, is this going to take long? I'm watching an Alan Ladd movie at 11. And Columbo asks, which one? And she says, this gun's for hire. And he says, oh, that's a line where this woman's like, is this going to take long? I'm watching an Alan Ladd movie at 11. Yes. And Columbo asks, which one?

And she says, this gun's for hire. And he says, oh, that's a good one. It is. It's a good one. In the same way that roughly 90% of all horror films have people watching Night of the Living Dead at some point, I'm guessing a lot of detective fiction from our era references at least that era of uh he's not

a detective in that one he's a like a hitman or something like that but anyways it's a good noir and i recommend um megan can't fall asleep she wants to open she she has like a door out for like a deck or something she's trying to open it and jim hears the rattling and runs in and yes you know it's just her uh fighting with this broken door so he starts fighting with it it's not opening and she has a great line you and mechanical things one of these days you're going to shoot a toaster very true he finally gets it open there's a sweep of of of breeze into the room and her hair kind of flows back in it. It's a great shot. We get the ocean waves again.

And there's the smallest of romantic swells. Yes. There's like a single instrument. It's like a hymn and organ trying to be like a glass harmonica. It's very almost new agey sounding. It's a little, it's, I liked it. So we have a little bit of romantic swell as in this moment they acknowledge that they do have

their feelings for each other. He goes in for a kiss. She accepts it, brings him in. Then we freeze frame and cut to black. End of episode. End of episode. Now, in fact, we have a transition music sting coming out of the uh coming out of the commercial break as they pull up to the police station next morning they pull up i think megan wants to to say you know restart a conversation

and jim's like not now i'm i'm tired of talking back to the case so out the window they have their windows rolled down um we see him see specter now wearing a black satin track jacket with the same little detail on the shoulders i was like okay that's nice talking to what i term in obvious goo yeah and they're saying we need to find you know have you found this guy, Sean Beck? And not yet. I'm going to track him down. Megan asked Jim, who is he talking to? Jim, I don't know, some Hawaiian guy. That was the voice on the phone the morning that she got the call asking where Randy was. And if they're looking for Sean Beck, that's a friend of Randy's. So Jim talks through the things that they know.

Okay. Even though Jeffrey is the one who supposedly killed this guy everyone is looking for randy except for the police and us i do want to say about this scene i really enjoyed this episode okay i'm gonna be very um what's the word here uh charitable about this and just say that uh this is them letting us know that the mystery, this episode is not about the mystery. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they just pulled into a parking lot and overheard the next clue.

And it's great. It gets us going. It moves us forward because we are at some point going, wait, wasn't there, isn't there an investigation? What's happening? Wasn't there a murder? Yeah. But obviously what we care about is the uh what's going on between jim and megan so that's fine i'm gonna just say this is them the creators of the show

letting us in that like don't worry we'll get you to the end of this this is the first of two without this coincidence the story would not move forward moments and that's fine whatever i think you know we we have talked before about the utility of of using coincidence and serendipity to just like keep the narrative flowing um not not throwing up walls to to what's next but you know allowing the the players to to move along if you will and uh yeah this is certainly one of those um so they go back to you know where randy said he was gonna be back home sometime and he clearly hasn't been there's like a stack newspapers at the door and they're like okay so he was doing a shoot a photo shoot for hot tubs

but he's not really the kind of guy that we would see in home magazine or architectural digest but the gym's like but what about squish it's it's a magazine for connoisseurs of bathing they do spreads on killer tubs vietnamese food elvis costello just randy's kind of periodical sorry i squish it is it's the perfect name for that magazine i should i should google it there was a digital magazine for kids uh squish magazine on mag cloud yeah i don't think this is a 70s era uh situation well i'm really glad that jim predicted squish like many of the periodicals mentioned on the rocker files i mean squish could very well be a magazine he invented like he has a business card for it like i'm here to investigate uh the hot tubs and right i'm here on behalf of squish and then and then somebody finally started it because but they're

like okay so maybe we can track him down through the publisher and off they go we cut to randy throwing dry ice and prop fish into a pool while patty is posing in a silver bikini waiting for him to get everything set up we go to a guy who basically looks like tom sellick i noted that too wearing an amazing hawaiian shirt uh telling kevin and and the goon um or as i in my notes i say uh telling specter and the goon, or as I, in my notes, I say telling Spectre and the goon. And then I thought Spectre and the goon would be a good name for something. That their friend is up at the spa, but walk on the stones. This landscaping was done by Howard Fujimoto. So I did a quick look around.

I don't think this is referring to a real person. There are landscape architects named Fujimoto. I don't know if this was a riff on something at the time or just like you know squish magazine vietnamese food killer tubs so there's some you know a japanese architect is involved with the thing or whatever um but perhaps i am wrong and this is a reference to something specific i did not do any digging yeah i couldn't find anything either. Same thing. When they drop a name like that,

I'm like, oh, they're casting some kind of shade. Randy has put a little, like a towel over his head to block out the light for his next shot. When Spectre and the goon arrive, Kevin rips the towel off of Randy's head. And I think he's tweaking even harder um in this moment uh like his eyes are just so twitchy yeah um and he's like oh hey uh this is about the money huh okay i'll straighten that out kevin says i'm here to share a tragedy with you

he tells him about how barry was murdered And then Randy says, you mean you? Oh, go ahead. What were you going to say? Randy was just thinking about how they weren't getting along too well. And you asked me about those two motorcycle guys I know, maybe to teach them a lesson. The goon pulls a gun and Kevin tells

Randy what really happened. See, what happened was, Barry and I came down on your brother Jeff in his office about the money jeff pasted barry against a desk when barry was shaking him up jeff took off but i finished the thing these things happen the cops have my brother they will and he'll go away for barry's murder see the thing works real well for me except as you tells randy he's a drooler and can't afford to have him around uh and then they uh tell patty to get her clothes on and they're gonna you know hustle them off to a another location we go to jim and megan pulling up at the front of the property just as the four of them are coming out of the gate this is what we need to uh to to get our story finished um patty just yells they're

gonna kill him and then things go wild uh jim yells at megan to stay down randy randy fights the goon for the gun we see it go off someone appears to have gotten shot kevin is tackling patty uh before jim can get there the goon intercepts him. He has the gun. And this is great. This is a wonderful, pure Rockfordishness moment. There's a moment of standoff. And then the goon runs to their car, abandons Kevin. Kevin's like, hey, wait for me. And the goon just gets in the car and takes off.

And is just like, I don't need to be involved in this. Yeah, yeah. Don't care. I appreciate that he takes the gun with him. So he takes that threat away as well. And then Jim just decks Kevin. Just huge, huge punch right across the face. He gives him like a football tackle. Yeah.

And then punches him. It's so good. It's a great, great choice. Yeah, the whole sequence is fantastic. It's also great because it follows a rule in the rock profiles where every character is a character right like at this by this point nothing about that goon sets him apart from anyone he just is just muscle or whatever but that moment he's a character right because that's the moment where he's like he's like i'm out i've weighed everything that goes into the

situation and my smart move here is to just leave um jim dispatches the manager to call the cops or whatever uh and we go to see that randy has shot himself in the foot and so he he he looks at jim and says my shoe man what's wrong with it and then jim just goes downers yeah which i don't think is true i think he's still tweaking but you know it's to fill out the gag where it's like, he's always on uppers or downers. Yeah. Uh, so the threat has been,

has been, uh, neutralized, but we still don't know where Jeffrey is. We go back to Megan's place. Uh, she's coming with Jim and they hear Jeffrey's voice, but he's already there.

He's on the phone. He's talking to someone. Megan sees him, asks where he's been. You know, they, they lay out like everyone's been looking for you. You've been wanted for murder. And he's like, someone megan sees him that's where he's been you know they lay out like everyone's been looking for you you've been wanted for murder and he's like i have yes

like he had no idea i gotta say if you're going to be wanted for murder it's nice to a not know and b have jim clean it up for you without you knowing. So, you know, the last piece of the puzzle here. So Randy forged his signature on that check. So Randy was the one who cashed the 70 grand and that put Jeffrey in the bind. So he's been running around trying to raise the money back from people he knows so he can pay it all back. And so he's just finally got that sorted out. And he's been so busy doing that that he didn't even know he was wanted for murder. Yeah.

So in this moment, Megan goes to him, hugs him, is just glad he's been so busy doing that that he didn't even know he was wanted for murder yeah so in this moment megan goes to him hugs him is just glad he's all right and we zoom over their shoulder to jim yeah just who's just been straight up just abandoned in that moment the best word i could come up with was crestfallen but it's like more resigned than that yeah i don't know what i expected but i should have expected this right right you know we don't know it faded to black at the hotel room we don't know what happened there but we can assume we can make some assumptions and uh we can think that although jim probably isn't thinking oh all of this is going to come up rockford somewhere inside he's holding on to that hope and this is where that's

just not the case and this is a great moment like just the the technique here is really nice where it's like we have the zoom over the shoulder and then we freeze frame on jim's face yeah and then we crossfade from jim's face to the wedding reception yes um I'm glad we learned that, you know, all of our friends are probably going to be okay. Patty is talking about a good role her agent got for her. So we're going to elevate her profile. Randy. Okay.

So we have a Rocky appearance. Yes. Rocky in a tie. Rocky in a tie. So I love that Rocky is at Megan's wedding. That is fantastic. Randy is talking to Rocky about chemicals they're the future is this this is this is a graduate riff right i think so yes because that's that's the

thing that they're trying to sell him on at his graduation i was just double checking the graduate was 1967 um yeah yeah uh plastics right that's from the graduate so i was just like of all the things of all the things to have just like a random like reference to that one i would not have called rocky has rocky's reaction to this is like young man you've got a lot of energy yeah yeah he has a cane you know he's still walking wounded. So, oh, it's a good bit though. We go to Jeffrey and Megan. They're talking to friends. It's clearly, you know, reception post, post ceremony.

Megan, Megan needs to sit down for a bit. Jeffrey goes off. Jim appears, comes over to her where she's sitting. And we have our last conversation with the two of them. Tells her she looks beautiful. Very sincere. Haven't heard from him recently. Well, he's been busy working on a case.

A button on this whole situation, I think. You really love your work, don't you? Yeah. He says, when I love it, I really love it. And that's a good Jim Rockford statement of purpose. Yes. They talk a little bit about, you know, what's next for you. Well,

my, you know, my mother and my sister are already talking to me about having kids. I don't know. I really like my work. Right. Getting back to her professionalism as well. And he says that if she decides to be a mother,

I think you'll do it better than anyone else in the world. She does. All right. Yeah. Her kids seem perfectly, I mean, you know, their,

their granddad isn't great, but yeah, um, they I mean, you know, their granddad isn't great. Yeah. But they, you know, they need to wrap it up soon. They have to get to their plane, presumably for the honeymoon. And so Megan has Jim walk her back to the house and tells Jim about a dream she had. This is, I don't know, this is really like poignant where she says, in my dreams I can see, you know. It's the dream starts off with there's a screen with images from her whole past. Things just got confused.

She's talking to Jeffrey in her dream and then all of a sudden Jim's there and then things get clear again. She says that they go, she went through all the things, the times they had and things they said and it wasn't all good. And I felt this physical pain. good mm-hmm and I felt this physical pain and it stopped the whole thing that the screen or whatever went completely dark and then all of a sudden the whole screen lit up with this image of you and me standing there smiling and this voice came over and said okay miss go and stand with the group that's made it and then she asks jim if they'd play that for him where would he have gone and he says no question i would have gone to the group that made it she's saying i think i made the right decision and he's agreeing with her.

Like, yes, you going and marrying Jeffrey, that is the right thing for both of us. Yeah. She's, I think, looking for some confirmation that he's going to be all right. And he's like, yes, I'll be all right. They have a final hug. And this is framed really well. They hug. And then Jeffrey comes walking up out of the frame behind Megan's back so Jim can see him over Megan's shoulder.

And when he gets close enough, he reaches out his hand and Jim shakes his hand like congratulations while hugging Megan. Goodbye, Jim. Goodbye, Megan. Megan and Jeffrey walk away, but there's like a lingering hand hold jim and megan their hands are still holding yeah until she gets far enough away that it kind of pulls out of his hand and then jim's turns in my notes i say there's a freeze frame on his face that just says it all yeah i have freeze frame on jim feeling his feelings while birds chirp in the background. Yeah. His, his feelings are tumultuous.

They're written on his features. He again is doing his best. He's not happy about it, but he is happy for her. Yeah. It's complicated, but also he knows it's the right thing. Uh,

yeah, that was a good episode. Now we should probably talk about how this wedding, uh, doesn't really jive with the the movie like yeah so the movie i mean again the movie is 20 years later yeah it's a different story um it is calling on their relationship but it plays fast and loose with things as they were established like how old she is yeah her dad isn't there at the wedding but i mean like that's fine whatever like we can assume her dad is there but off camera whatever right you know like this i

mean she mentions her sister yeah like she has sisters um but you know the biggest thing is like in the movie she's married to someone named adams yeah not someone named Smith. There's that. There's the age thing. There's we have incongruity with the previous episode of the cause of her blindness. But all of that, whatever. That's all continuity stuff. And that doesn't that doesn't matter. And also, it's not like she couldn't have gotten remarried. Like like you were saying, you may you know, your little suspicions may have been right. Maybe he's not the right match for her and it didn't work out, right? Three notes from – no, my second to last note is I don't like this Jeff and I have no reason not to. I know, I know.

He's been nothing but like straightforward and upfront. Maybe he makes some poor decisions or he's in over his head on some stuff. But that's no different from anyone else. But yeah. So we could headcanon that maybe things just didn't from anyone else uh but yeah so we could you know headcanon that maybe things just didn't work out with him and so you know she got remarried the mystery we've talked about this the mystery is like whatever they kind of stumbled through it um sorry that doesn't that doesn't characterize it correctly it's not important to the whole thing

right it's important in terms of like if you're coming to watch the rockford files and you don't get any of that stuff you're probably going to be a little disappointed and we need it to wedge jim and megan into emotional corners corners yeah and and because otherwise they just say goodbye and that's the end of it yeah uh but all of that it's great it's very bittersweet um i i enjoyed the episode uh at the very end we see rocky we talked about this a little bit uh just like yeah rocky's gonna be at our wedding in fact rocky may have been invited to the wedding before jim knew about the wedding like rocky might have mentioned it and jim was like yeah i didn't know i didn't get an invitation

yeah and rock is like oh i'm sure it just got lost in the mail. Yeah, exactly. But I would have liked to see some resolution for Rocky about this, right? Because the previous episode, before he even meets her, he's like, I feel like I'm going to really like her. And I think, yeah, and Jim in the movie says, like, Rocky always really liked you. He's a great touch of character. Yeah. jim in the in the movie says like rocky always really liked you he's a great touch of character yeah um i think maybe there's another piece of you know continuity headcanon we can make when angel said oh that shrink you were bumping in the early 80s maybe you know things don't work out with jeffrey yeah they have another go around yes yes that's possible That's very possible. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that the Megan trilogy works out.

I think it's a nice... I think it's one of the... Yeah, absolutely. I think it's probably one of the strongest continuous characters. And characters that we've seen in non-consecutive episodes that have an important role and are like the co-star right yeah she is one of the most fully realized and also one of the most consistent possibly both in both categories the most in both categories yeah i'm gonna go a little bit out on a limb here and also say i kind of appreciated the order in which we watched them in like i like ending on this one

um when this one was done it was certainly meant to be yeah there's probably not a conception of like in 20 years right we visit that character yeah so it's got a great ending note to it and also um yeah i don't know it was just kind of fun to see like oh here's a character who's from his past we're gonna deal with the now story. And then we'll go to the past. And then we'll have a short little coda, little ending. Because, you know, the other two are double length.

And also the ending of the movie is a, it leaves the door open. Yes. For something to happen next. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, again, our experience of watching them is we saw four episodes worth of continuous yes things happening and then a final episode where it just is like and they're done and they're done yeah and that is a very satisfying um that's a very satisfying way i mean we would have liked it the other way if we watched them you know in order like we would have liked that too

uh i think but uh yeah this is kind of uh this is kind of nice it was it worked out well yeah yeah pure accident purely by accident none of us organized it as accidental as pulling up to the police station and listening to just in time to hear the one conversation you need to hear yeah yeah um yeah it's uh it's really good so we don't have um we don't have time today to do a an answering machine segment to talk about feedback uh we'll do one in a couple weeks oh yeah in a couple episodes but we did have a great comment from uh patron uh jordan bockleman not brockleman um talking about the movie episode where I'm not going to pull it up right this second.

And we'll talk about it again when we do the answering machine. But he says something to the effect of, well, you know, we talk about Jim and Beth, their whole thing, their whole thing is always inferred from how we see them in the episodes. While with Jim and Megan, we actually see the thing yes the episodes are about them and in that way she's actually maybe i might be reading into what what jordan said so you know again we'll talk about it for real next time but um at least that makes me think in that way, Megan is actually a more fully realized, uh, partner, like a more feel it. I don't even want to say love interest.

Cause that's a little episodic. Uh, it's like a more fully realized, um, character to compliment Jim romantically than even Beth. I don't know if that's a hundred percent how I feel, but I think it's an interesting, I think it's worth talking about. Yeah, but... When we get to that, we'll get to that. Maybe we can chew on that while we're doing our other stuff in the next couple weeks, and then

we'll reconvene on that comment when we do an answering machine. I think it's a good comment, though. I think it's good food for thought. I think I was just, across the board, just so impressed with Catherine Harreld and her adaptation of the character. I haven't necessarily seen other stuff she's been in.

So, you know, I can't compare it to other work. But in this, in context of just the show, she's great. Fun trivia note, she plays... To the book. To the book. This is from the Ed Robertson book. So earlier in this season, we did the episode Lions, Tigers, Monkeys, and Dogs, where we, I think, extolled at length the wonderful chemistry between Garner and Lauren Bacall.

Yeah. So fun trivia note is that Catherine Harreld plays Lauren Bacall in the 1980 made-for-TV biography Bogey about Humphrey Bogart. Ah. So there's just a fun trivia note there. Yeah. Combining all of the great Garner chemistry people into one continuity. Into one. The Garner chemistry polygon.

Polygon, yes. Polyccule the garner polycule is beginning oh boy all right i don't need to get into that yeah no uh certainly an episode that's right in our wheelhouse where we're like show us character yeah show us the emotional stuff show us the relationship stuff if you if you're just here for the car chases, apologies. Right. This is not an episode for you. But I think otherwise it's just, yeah, solid television. Good stuff made even better by the context of watching all of the other episodes before it. Well, I think that except for this later conversation we're going to have that we've already telegraphed,

I think that pretty much closes the door, if you will, on Megan Doherty and her environs. Do you have anything else to add? I just wish they'd, at the end, given us a a little hint at what happened to the roller disco. Like if that was going to go through or not. But other than that, I think. Well, we can't answer every single question. Yeah. So we need to leave some things for our imagination.

All right. Well, on that note, friends, thank you for joining us on this journey. I think it was unexpectedly delightful. So that's always great. Now we have to figure out what we're doing next but fear not for we shall be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files