Two Hundred A Day - Episode 120: The Return of the Black Shadow

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

Nathan and Eppy go back to their old ways in S5E17 The Return of the Black Shadow. This was a hard one for us, folks! After a biker gang assaults Jim and abducts and sexually assaults his date, Coop's sister Gail, Coop relives his past as a biker to infiltrate the Rattlers and get revenge. Content Warning: this episode hinges on Gail's rape, and we talk about that as well as all the Rockfordishness that we do like in this episode. 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/) * Colleen Kelly, 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 * Freesound.org (https://www.freesound.org/) for other audio clips

Jim, this is Florence Boyle. You worked for my husband last month in Glendale. You were so helpful then, and, well, I have a problem of my own I'd like to discuss. Confidentially, of course. Welcome to 200 Today, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Paletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. We have a doozy of an episode today as we come to you to discuss Season 5, Episode 17, The Return of the Black Shadow. Yeah. We should probably do a content warning right up front here. There's rape and sexual violence. And that is what this episode is about. Yes.

We're going to talk about it. We're not entirely sure how we're going to talk about it Yes. We're going to talk about it. We're not entirely sure how we're going to talk about it, but we're going to talk about it. And so this might be an episode to skip. If you're listening and you're like, I don't want to hear about that, then skip this episode in the Rockford Files and maybe move on to our next episode. Yeah. on to our next episode yeah this this one is is coming up now as it is part of our um exploration of the uh of the wire diverse and i have a little news on that front which is okay good after reviewing um actually this episode's entry in the ed robertson book 30 years of the rockford files he does include a note in that text that the last name is

pronounced Wired. So William Wired. Apologies to Ward or however we've been saying it thus far. Yeah, we've just been making our best attempts at it, but it is Wired. Well, that's good. That's easier to remember. And if you spent the last three episodes yelling at us about mispronouncing his name, we got your email.

But because of the time lag between when we record and when these drop, yes, exactly. We are, we, we may be discovering it in advance of when that email, uh, was sent to us,

but good, good on you. Good year. So yeah, this is one of the, uh, of our remaining William wired episode directed episodes to consider. Uh,

it was chosen by making a list of them, sending them to Epi and saying, Hey, pick one. Yeah. And my decision process was, uh, we have a two parter in the,

in that list and we figured we should close out on the two parter. That seems like it's also in season six. So yeah, it's like, yeah. Uh, and the return of the black shadow is a title that is specifically designed to draw my attention so i i went with

that un unaware of what we were stepping in but we were gonna have to step in this anyway so yeah yeah this is also our final episode with the character of Coop, John Cooper. Yeah. Bo Hopkins played a semi attorney who joined Jim for some adventures earlier in season five. This is not his final episode in the rock fires. We just done his final episode beforehand.

Right. Or am I, this is his final appearance on the show. Mm-hmm. His earlier appearances in order. Oh, so, yeah, okay. We most recently talked about him in our episode 108, The Jersey Bounce, which was the first couple of guys. Yes.

Our second, but the first appearance of our couple of guys in which he has a fairly major role uh he appeared in local man eaten by newspaper which we did long ago long ago our episode number 28 back in february of 2018 um I think he has kind of a minor appearance in that one. And then he has a he's in like a phone call or something in an episode. He has an uncredited per IMDB voice credit in

with the French heel back, can the Nehru jacket be far behind, which we haven't done yet. But that I think has not been on my list of the john cooper episodes yeah yeah um so we'll go ahead and put a put a star on that but yes this is his final appearance um in the return of the black shadow And in many ways, this is a John Cooper episode. This is a Coop episode. Yeah.

Similar to how... Another Polish wedding. Another Polish wedding was kind of a backdoor pilot. Yeah. For Gabby and Gandhi. I saw some speculation about whether this was a backdoor pilot. I didn't see any evidence. Definitive.

That it was supposed to be. I mean, bo hopkins was like doing fine like he's yeah like he was a a known um actor uh he was on everything everything but he ended up in dynasty um for a while there's something where he has like a million credits i can't find it now there's there's a real good chemistry between him and jim and uh i like the french i would like i would love to have seen more episodes that i one of the things about this episode well there's a couple things about this episode but one of the things uh about what i just said about this episode was that it's just it's a lot of just him yeah in in the same

way that gabby and gandhi was you know j Jim was just kind of in the back in this episode, Jim spends most of it in the hospital. Right. So, uh, yeah, it's, it really feels a lot like they were setting up for more coop. It feels like a combo of that with Gabby and Gandy,

where Jim kind of fades into the background and then comes back. And also with just a couple of guys where Jim is like the framing device for an episode about someone else. Yeah. It's kind of in that territory as well. Yeah. This one's written by Stephen Cannell and is directly going for, as far as I can tell as a viewer, going for a 70s. I mean, it's in the 70s, what am i trying to say here the vibe is one of those like 70s like movies that's kind of yeah vengeance vengeance yeah it's a bit of a vengeance

story it's a bit of a road story yeah um with the motorcycles and everything it's about a motorcycle gang yeah and the vibe that i have for it and i have seen the episode before which is how i knew i wasn't particularly excited to watch it again but the vibe was kind of like when i uh watched easy rider a couple a couple years ago god i feel like i talked about that on one of our first plus expenses but i want you know i watched easy rider which came out in 69 as you know an adult an adult in the 2010s, possibly early 2020s. And I was struck by the level of casual violence in it, which I think is part of the point. gritty movies that are like kind of shockingly violent um in a way that movies aren't necessarily uh designed to be you know post that era this movie or this movie this episode isn't violent

in that way but it is about sexual violence in a very on-screen way that yeah hit me in that same kind of like oh they don't do them like this anymore. There is stuff in this that is similar to horror movies from the 70s. But like, I would say hits better in the horror movies because in the horror movies, it's not surround. The point is how shocking or bad

the violence is. And in this one, it's a little bit like, here it is, here's the shocking and horrible bit of it it you start off really kind of like i don't really remember this episode uh well we'll get to it we get to it i guess or maybe we won't maybe we'll see how this conversation works but the beginning

part of it um when things start to go south it's really well done in that same style of like there's menace and threat in the air and it kind of comes out. But you're also watching a Rockford Files episode, right? So you're expecting Jim to do something to make it better. And then he can't. He can only deal with the situation that exists. And that's good. But then the show goes into the normal Rockford files uh tenor right the normal rocker files tone uh which feels a little whiplashy compared to how yeah very horrible things are

at the very beginning of it well and it even kind of whipsaws a little bit because we start off we start off in rockford file zone yeah look really good rockford file so yeah yeah like that that opening discussion in the car is oh it's good stuff let's go ahead and get in and get into it since we are gonna talk about the back and forth of the the tonal shifts as we so often do but in this one they're quite uh quite quite um large they are of great magnitude there's one other note i had from again reviewing um the entry in that robertson book i think i mentioned this in our last episode but i actually found the quote again so there's there's a quote here from jack garner bill wired had been a film editor before he became a director and that was reflected in his approach to directing

when he was directing he was always cutting was reflected in his approach to directing. When he was directing, he was always cutting the film in his own mind. He always seemed to know exactly the shot he wanted when he filmed it. And because of that, he never needed to shoot a lot of unnecessary film. He was really efficient and extremely effective as a director, and he was just marvelous to work for. Yeah, literally all we have on Wired. I mean, like like that makes sense like oftentimes in creative endeavors the the most skilled person the most technically proficient person is the overlooked person like they're the ones who who make you realize that they're they do their job so well you don't think about their job

right right that kind of thing and we'll we'll get into our preview montage in a moment but i do think there's an aspect of this episode which is one maybe one reason why we have both stumbled a couple times and said this movie is yeah especially when there's stuff happening in motion on the road there is a very cinematic filmic quality that again reminds me of easy rider like reminds me of a road movie of the likes or 70s. And I think it's clearly inspiring how some of that stuff is shot in almost too good of a way. And I'll talk about that, I think, maybe after we talk about our preview montage. Well, okay. So the preview montage is a microcosm of what we're about to experience.

Which, I mean, is kind of what you want in a preview montage. But what I got here is we're going to get biker gangs, which is the big selling point. We're going to see Jim in trouble and then Jim in the hospital. Lots of menace about that. And then the closest you get in the 70s for a content warning, like they straight up say that there's going to be rape or there was rape or rape happened. Yeah. The line is something something.

Your sister was raped. Yeah. The line is something, something, your sister was raped. Yeah. Uh, and then we get coop undercover, which looks like it's going to be fun, but that immediately follows the fact that we know that coop sister is going to get raped. So that's,

you know, like, like this whole episode, there's fun bits, but it's tucked into this. Yeah. Coup undercover would be a good name for his. He's been off though.

it's tucked into this. Cooper undercover would be a good name for his. You've been off though. 200 a day is a 100% listener supported show. Thanks to our patrons. In addition to our gratitude and editing access to our 200 files, files spreadsheet, patrons receive exclusive episode previews and plus expenses. Our bonus just chatting podcast about media work and life.

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how should we do this in our not pre plus expenses conversation, but our between plus expenses and recording conversation so we now have four separate conversations when we hang out uh we we both were putting off starting the recording because it was like okay this one's going to be kind of rough um so we're gonna we're gonna probably hit this from a different angle we're not gonna go blow by blow i think i think we'll do a little more high level and then maybe drop into anything in particular we want to explore. Because there is a lot of good stuff.

It is the Rockford Files. This is the problem I'm going to have discussing this episode because there are two things happening here. There is a really pretty decent Rockford Files episode, right? Like this is just a well done Rockford Files episode

that also is dealing with a topic that Rockford Files episode, right? Like this is just a well done Rockford Files episode that also is dealing with a topic that Rockford Files episode needs to be absolutely catered towards to deal with it. You can't just throw it into a normal, decent Rockford Files episode. Yeah. And I think that that's the problem here. Is it like they should just not done the sexual assault uh and they would have had like so i think that's like the question right like why is this episode like this and there's kind of a danger here in the sense of i don't want it to sound like we're saying you can never put something bad on tv right right like that's not i mean i don't like that's not what i'm trying to say and i don't

think it's what you're trying to say um so so i agree that i find like i found the super upfront focused on driver for action uh not just rape but multiple rape great gang rape of you know a character that we meet right at the beginning um to be just like just off-putting just like i like the first time i watched it i was like oh god like even though i'd seen the preview montage i knew there's going to be a little more serious or whatever this is not a it's just not something i want to watch like i just don't want to spend my free time being in this story i guess but is that a product of the show not handling it well? Or is that a product of like, this is just the kind of thing that I'm not interested in seeing

in my fiction? Yeah. I mean, so, okay. Let me, let me complain about it for a little bit and we'll decide. There's a couple of things wrong with it. Uh, how the show handled it. So the big thing here is that the show is about Coop, right? And he's not the victim of the rape, but that's sort of how it plays out, right? Like he's getting vengeance for what happened to his sister. We've never met his sister before now. She has a great introduction in this episode. The whole...

Yeah, so let's go ahead and frame what we're actually talking about because we're still kind of talking about a thing without actually talking about it um our episode starts with jim uh taking coop's sister gail on a date yes and it actually so it starts starts it visually we start seeing a biker gang at a gas station and then the uh firebird drives past behind them and our credits are playing over them and they're they're they're hooting and hollering and you know being rambunctious and then the firebird drives past them in the background and then we switch to being inside the firebird and we you know uh learn a little bit about gail and this date and so gail's coop sister she's a little insecure

she's a little insecure she's and kind of the gag here or the bit here is that she's like you must really be a good friend of coop to agree to take me out on a date yeah like you he put you up to this kind of thing right and she's a bit of a bookworm. She works in like a physics department and tells like a bunch of physics jokes. Yes. Which are pretty good. Yeah. She's played by Laurie Jefferson, who you probably won't remember from anything. She wasn't in a – she was like in seven things around this time.

I just brought it up because I thought she did. I really enjoyed this character in this moment, right? This is a fun bit of her rattling off the different kinds of physics. We used to think it was all one, but now it's these different physics departments. And these are under this and under that. Yeah, there's a joke the theory of relativity you must know about that one yeah einstein no silly the theory of relativity is all about in-laws oh that's an old physics joke and a good one too And a good one, too.

Waka waka. And you kind of watch and you, like, Jim is trying to reassure her that he wants to be on this date. Yeah. And you see her sabotaging it, not on purpose. Like, just the way that she's, like, constantly trying to get Jim to admit that he's just doing Coop a favor or something like that. And I love Jim's handling of it. It's great. He's not humoring her. Right.

But he is kind of like, well, Coop is a good friend. He's not denying that, yes, that may be the source of why we're going out on this date. But he's also finding ways to interact with her. He doesn't really get the physics stuff. He's not really interested but you know she says well i've never been deep sea they're going to go deep sea fishing apparently he's like i've never been deep sea fishing and jim says that like he hasn't done it either like it's going to be something new for both of them so there's there's something where

he's like we're gonna have a fun time yeah he's gonna give it a the old college try right like right yeah he's he's there He wants to spend time with her. He's going to find the ways that they can connect. Neither of them are there going like, this is our next big romance. Like that's not right. You know, on the table. Like, yeah, they're just out to have a little fun. Yeah.

And, and yeah. Um, and then, yeah, the, the, the story, uh, catches up to them. The gang that we saw earlier hits the highway and they end up surrounding the firebird and just like harassing they like to harass civilians right so they're just like harassing jim through the through through the open window and he just starts honking and it's like wait like okay guys yeah you've had your fun you know cut it out you know leave us alone right just like wave them on and that prompts a little bit of discussion with gail she's clearly nervous but they they the gang takes off and jim's like okay they're gone

now everything's fine uh she tells him that coop used to be like them and this is news to jim after their parents died he went a little crazy for a few years and he was in a biker gang called the vincent black shadow which apparently is named after a motorcycle. Assuming we see this motorcycle in, in the, uh, the episode. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's Coop's motorcycle. Yeah. Um, and, it was the biggest moment of her life when he, he stepped up to become an attorney and left that life behind. And she says that when,

when he got his, I think she says his like certification or something diploma. Yeah, she was so proud of him and she cried right there in front of everybody. And Jim gives her a great warm smile with a you're all right, Gail. She says, you're just saying that. That's right. But I mean it too. Just a good garner delivery hard agree jim hard agree our our story escalates uh after jim stops to get gas the gang rolls into this gas station and then recognize him as the the horn honker um and so we we get the menace pretty much immediately so it's like it's like 20 guys like it's a yeah it's a group um we've seen at this point we've like seen their jackets let's say the rattlers on them there's kind of three actual characters in the gang there's uh animal there's animal there's uh whispering willie who's kind of the leader um animal who's kind of the muscle and uh there's a a real tall guy that i think is lenny lenny yeah these are all like character actors that you have seen be

bikers and thugs and goons in other things both animal and willie have been in other rockford files episodes yeah animal was the bartender in another Polish wedding in one of the greatest Rockford Files scenes of all time. Both his and Coop's IMDb page starts off with his butt. But yeah, they're bullies, right? And they see some easy prey easy prey as uh they start off giving jim a hard time about like oh your your horn works your animal check out his lights and he gets into the firebird and starts messing around and they see gail and they kissy faces and all

kinds of you know they're they're they're gross biker guys yeah this is the appearance of jack garner in our episode as he's the gas station attendant who oh yes uh bullied up to for for for willie to ask him hey you have a problem he's like no problem i see no problem this scene is is a um is a great it's just a well done scene of like that sort of when when the villain, it's very clearly villain or villains have control of the situation. And then they just kind of delight in making people grovel to them. Yeah. Yeah. Whispering Willie is, you know, pontificating. You know, he's he's he's a he's preening.

Yeah. He has control of the situation. He's enjoying that. And everyone else is like, we don't want trouble. We won't do control of the situation. He's enjoying that. And, uh, everyone else is like, we don't want trouble. We won't do anything that you don't want us to do that kind of thing. And Jim does,

you know, try to deescalate. He's like, okay, you've had your fun, you know, let us go. And then they just jump him.

Yeah. There's just too many guys. He gets taken down. He's, he gets beat up. And then he does, this is all very much in, you know, in character.

He tries to deescalate. It doesn't work. He then is like, okay, you've had your fun. And that leads to another round of, you know, getting beaten up and stuff.

And then he does go to be like, like, please leave us alone. Like what is going to get us out of this situation? If it means me begging, then I i'll beg right yeah but um it's not enough they're taking the car and they're taking his mama they're gonna run a train on her in the canyon um we see gail's clearly terrified of course and they

give jim a couple more kicks in the gut before animal you know drives the firebird out and they all fall out on their motorcycles and then jim to his credit immediately gets the keys to the tow truck from the from the attendant to follow them and tells him to call the cops um as he is going to try and try and save gail so uh we're getting up to one of my my questions here right now we have the threat of what's going to happen uh it's going to happen and one of the things that i think that where this episode falls down particularly i think in the writing is that jim he gets the keys he gets in the the the pickup truck and he or not pickup um tow truck and he chases after him. Now I get that a

tow truck is not going to catch up with these things with these, uh, motorcycles by the time he catches up with them, he gets ahead of them, uh, and, and parks across the road to block them. The, uh, Firebird is now gone and Gail has has been raped. Right. Like that's how this story works. So we have a we have a weird time situation. And this shows up again later in this episode where stuff happens off screen, thankfully. But the stuff that happens off screen, like there's no there's nothing in how it's filmed to indicate that there was time for something to happen off screen, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, because this sequence is kind of a back and forth montage of seeing the bikes and then seeing Jim in the truck kind of going through like the same spots kind of indicating the chase. Yes, exactly.

And then it just cuts from seeing the bikes to seeing the truck come around the other way and confront the bikes. Yeah. Yeah. bikes to seeing the truck come around the other way and confront the bikes yeah yeah so so we have our first like off-ramp if you will that they could have just been like there was the threat but jim interceded and people just got beat up you know that this i'm not saying that like i'm just just offering this to this this show that they could have gone this route. I think one of the reasons why they didn't, and this is, I think, the criticism, a general criticism for this kind of story, like this sort of trope of this story, is that then we don't properly motivate Coop. Right, right.

And it's really, really unfortunate that we need to have this tale to motivate Coop, right? Like, that's, I think, one of the big problems with what's going on here. I'm with you on that. I mean, I think clearly that off-ramp was not taken because this is the story they wanted to tell. Right, exactly. So the question is, is this a story that needed to be told in this way? Right. So there has been some kind of time lapse.

I guess the implication is like him figuring out how to get ahead of them or him overshooting them realizing that he did and turning around or whatever is like the time in which he was assaulted but jim he he jumps out with a tire iron he you know he yells at them he says come come eat some iron but again there's too many and they swarm him and give them a couple more kicks before they hear uh sirens and so the the sirens of the approaching police cars drive off our our bad bikers and they literally dump gail is shove her off the yeah bike and we see we've seen a couple shots of her and she's there's blood on her face her hair's all messed up and she has this like

fixed stare and she we we are being shown that they have followed through on their on their threat. So that's all our inciting action. Right. Coop arrives. He's coming into the hospital. And from here on, this is the Coop episode. Yes. We get the dialogue with the doctor.

Gail was sexually assaulted multiple times. She's okay physically, but mentally in deep emotional trauma. And she's mostly unresponsive and is in psychological intensive care. Jim apparently has a punctured lung in addition to his other injuries. Not in good shape. And we have made the most like appreciative the scenes that i most appreciate as a rockford files fan are these ones where we now have coop talk to jim and then later we have uh some another interaction with gail and like those are like the real like okay this is the

show that i'm that i'm here to see kind of resonance but uh yeah like as you say this is kind of here to motivate coop and part of that is is picks up on a gym thing because jim's like leave it alone i told the cops everything i know they're gonna handle it you know so jim gets to be the guy trying to talk down a friend right doing something dangerous but what gets to him is when coop asks him if it was rocky in there jim suppose that's rocky line in there and they got him looking at little boxes and triangles and he's staring right past them at a wall you gonna let the cops handle it you gonna let the cops handle it i don't know you never lied to me jim what would you do i get that the this is the emotional corollary like as important as rocky is to you you know my sister is to me but it's also kind

of a weird false equivalence because of the nature of the assault yeah um there's a thing in here i'm gonna criticize it again which i like but in the context of what was just said uh because the other thing that this does is that this removes gail from the story until the end right yeah we don't see gail anymore until the end uh she's she's not an active participant in anything that's happening after yeah there's a brief button on this so after he talks to jim he goes to see gail and it is a very emotional right moment because she is unresponsive as yeah and he kind of breaks down sitting with her and yeah the acting here is good there is nothing wrong with the with the acting uh in these scenes they it hits it seems yeah that it feels

right i see why he has this response part of my problem with this episode is that this hits and then uh the rest of it also works very well but not when you slam them together that you know uh but the rocky thing like my complaint was going to be then we remove gail from the story and then we have the story of the dudes in gail's life which is again part of that trope that that's the problem yeah uh but you know he brings up rocky and if this had happened if rocky had been beat up by a bunch of biker and then we didn't see him until the end of the episode i wouldn't have thought twice about it it just would have i would have been like yeah of course he's in the hospital he's he's recovering or whatever we don't need uh rocky's input for what jim's going to do for the rest of this so yeah thinking out loud um but yeah so we're we hit like sort of this emotional point uh where

we've now we've pushed coop forward and uh we've also set it up so that Jim is hospitalized and cannot participate in a meaningful way. Uh, and we're about to have the Cooper files. I mean, that's my, that's my trouble with, that's my problem with this episode is that I actually enjoy the Cooper files.

I, I, I, I'd like, uh, seeing Cooper do what, uh, the stuff that comes up next or whatever. I just really don't like how they handled the motivation.

It's not even that I don't like the first part of it. It's just that, like I said before, these feel like two different episodes. Like this, the first part motivates the second one. But then the second one's tone is, it got menace in it but it's it's got lots of comedy it's a lot of um uh just kind of a rollick a little bit of a romp yeah and you consider who all these villains are and what they had done right yeah the overall tone of the episode is not a straight up revenge movie right which also not a movie it's not a straight-up revenge movie. Right. Which, also not a movie, it's not a kind of movie I particularly want to watch personally,

but, like, I get that that is a bit of a genre, but those movies tend to be the victim gets, you know, the victim taking their revenge on the perpetrator, whether it's sexual assault or, like, whatever, you know, many of them are, right? And so this, I i guess in a way and i i probably wouldn't have liked watching that episode very much either but like in a way falling back to coop is motivated by the assault of a woman in his life like it's almost a half step like if it's if it's a going after the biker guys who did this and he has to go back to his roots to like because that's the thing right he has to go back to his to his life as as a black

shadow to infiltrate the gang right that's to seek revenge like that's a cool story like that's a fun thing that we get to watch him do but the reason he's doing it is just so like aren't there other reasons he could be doing this and it would be and it would mesh yeah it would have been it would have been easy to have them just beat up rockford and have that be like like i'm not saying that gail isn't i like i said i really enjoyed the gail stuff in the beginning but like if she wasn't in the story if rockford was just driving back from a case or something he still would have been motivated. We could have gotten Coop in and Coop doing it.

It would have been a little off, like like. But you might have like more of like Coop and Dennis talking about how to deal with this thing that happened to Rockford. Right. I mean, I would have enjoyed. I mean, and we do get some fun Coop and Dennis stuff. Yeah. I mean, so how he goes about this is Coop talks to Dennis because Jim has now given them both the same information. Yes. There's like one license plate he remembers.

There's the name Animal that he heard. He knows the gang's called the Rattlers. Yeah. And so Dennis is saying, well, we followed up on all this. Our gang database doesn't have the rattlers as an active gang they disbanded 10 years ago maybe some other gang from up north but um there's nothing there for us to look into they just aren't you know um and then that the license plate is registered to a dirt bike that's owned by a catering company. It's an above-board, normal business.

Jim must have just gotten the plate number wrong. Rockford sells the plates, and Rockford doesn't make mistakes. Rockford makes mistakes all the time. He got busted up pretty bad. He misread the plates, pure and simple. Yeah, it's good stuff. Dennis tells Coop, we haven't had any run-ins in the past,

and I don't want to start or something like that. Yeah. It's like, so stay out of it. Coop's like, I'm out of it, which again feels like a great starting point for,

you know, the, the, the Coop mysteries where Dennis ends up having to be like, you know, you're, you're getting in our business again, Coop,

right? Like Dennis and Coop could have a dynamic in a way that Dennis and Jim have a dynamic. Um, yeah, which is nice. Uh, but yeah, Dennis and Coop could have a dynamic in a way that Dennis and Jim have a dynamic. Yeah. Which is nice. But yeah, clearly he's not going to stay out of it. And we have the good little scene of him going into his garage and pulling the drop cloth off of his old bike and putting his aviators on. And it's the, you know, the meme that's like Bugs Bunny and Bugs Bunny, like praying with the gun.

And it says, Lord, forgive me. Time to go back to the old me. Yeah, that's that's that's this scene. Yeah. Yeah. I saw this scene and I couldn't help but like lament that we didn't get a late 70s, early 80s Bob Hopkins ghostwriter.

Yeah, Bo Hopkins. Sorry. That would be really good. He looks like Johnny Blaze, right? Bob Hopkins, ghost writer. Uh, yeah. Bo Hopkins. Sorry. That'd be really good. He, he looks like, uh, Johnny blaze, right?

Like he looks like the, the comic book character before the flaming skull bit. Um, but I'm trying to think if there was a ghost writer, cause like this would have been around the time of red Brown's, uh, captain America. Right.

Yeah. And, uh, I don't know, but anyways. So, yeah. So the,, uh, I don't know, but anyways. So, yeah.

So the actual story here is the most, this is written by Stephen Cannell. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, part and it gets right. It like, this is a very straightforward episode plot wise.

And I guess it kind of has to be, yeah. It's using the emotional way to carry the investment through the, you know, through the story. Right. The way I see this episode of my head is that there's the, the beginning part.

And then like coop at with Dennis, I think would be like the, then where we shift into the next part. And then we'll come back to Gail at the end. But this, this middle chunk here is lacking a lot of of rockford but otherwise a very rockford it's it's full of rockfordishness without having jim in it yeah again like it's it's fun so i'm going to you know i'm going to try to just let the guard down and enjoy this part of this while

we talk about this and then we'll come back to like the bigger problem uh when we get to the end because i feel like there's another bit at the end that's a little bit of a trouble. But yeah, definitely love seeing him embrace it. It's also kind of fun because it's not entirely out of character. We don't have much character for Coop to say that this is out of character for Coop, but it does feel like, oh, yeah, OK. This is out of character for Coop. But it does feel like, oh, yeah, okay. So this next part reminded me of a similar scene in The Gang at Don's Drive-In, which we did back as our episode 99 just about a year ago, actually.

We meet our villains and they tell us a little bit of why they are the villains. So it's like these guys in suits at Billy Bob Catering Company. Oh, yes. And they are talking about how after 10 years, they're still scared of someone named Billy. And he's still in their business for 30% because they were too scared to cut them in for less all those years ago. But the catering business is doing really well. They're up 25% in the last quarter. The donut shops are ready to franchise they have a really good thing going here but whispering willie has brought his his gang down from up north to to load trucks and they're causing trouble now now this year

this setup is so rockford fire exactly yeah former biker gang members have become caterers and their past is catching up with them and like it's all gonna come to a head and i like yeah this is this is uh this is good good rockford files uh set up here yeah this is where we learned that the i guess i'm just now connecting i guess willie whispering willie i guess he's the son of this other guy, Billy, who we never meet. That might be. It's kind of implied. It doesn't matter that much. There's a bit where when Rockford's describing the characters he knows, he might be the same guy.

Because when Rockford says specifically that he was 39 or 40 where all the other kids were 20, right? Yeah. I couldn't. I couldn't tell. Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't tell. Yeah. Yeah. I got like an age blindness going on here, but so that set up for him being the actual guy from this other gang.

Oh, and he's just continuing to do. I think that was animal with a younger. No, no, no. I think he was talking about Willie. Oh,

was he? Yeah. Cause I think the idea is that this is the same Willie, uh, same Billy or whatever. oh okay he's now got a younger gang that he's recruited underneath him he's the one who wouldn't go away from the like wouldn't leave this old way behind yeah so they're they don't they're you know this gang is making runs and it's gonna yeah cause the the authorities to look into it and they don't want to, uh,

they say, suppose they find out this whole company is put together by us. Um, and so they say, we're going to, we need to stop him. We'll tell him to get out of town or we'll feed him his spurs. Yeah.

Coop, uh, has a very easy time infiltrating the gang. I guess he just hangs out by a mechanic or something until he... Looks at his bike? Yeah, until he can talk to a guy who's starting to look at his bike, because he hasn't seen one of these in over ten years. It's got an

antique plate. I know, I noticed that too. I thought that was pretty good. He's wearing this sheepskin jacket and his cool sunglasses. I have to say that in the very beginning i was not buying his tough guy act uh but it it grew on me and it started to work yeah but in the beginning i was like he's sticking out it feels a little bit like he kind of like has to regress like he has to get

into it yeah yeah like he's acting at first until he kind of re-internalizes how this world works. One clue is they call people civilians, people who aren't bikers. So he uses some terms to sound legit to this mechanic and asks if he knows a guy named Animal. Six guys answer to that handle. But he does this thing and he does this over and over this is kind of his this is coop's thing where he gets to a point where the person's like i have nothing else to say to you and he's just like okay fine and he like turns to leave and then the person's like but i have something else like yeah he's so cool that he can't other people can't let him walk away without finishing

their thought um he kind of he kind of negs him it's kind of yeah his approach uh which is it works for him i don't know it's it's kind of good it fits very well with the character and it reminds me of that first episode with him and rockford that just the way they kind of got along where jim was like wait you have more to tell me about this legal situation i'm in he's like i'm not I'm not at liberty to tell you that. And he goes, you've got to tell me that. It has a similar vibe. But he gets tipped to a bar called Kilroy's.

Kilroy's? Trying to be funny or something? I'm not kidding you. I think the guy that owns it is named Kilroy. 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, dig a thousand holes dot com. That's dig one zero zero zero holes dot com.

Or you can get my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worlds without master dot com. That's worlds plural master singular. If you want to engage with me on the social media, the best place to go right now is mastodon at epidia at dice.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 uh so if you're interested in pro wrestling detectives or zines about pro wrestling among other things um those are all at my website it also has links to contact me in other ways currently i'm still um 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. We go to Kilroy's where we see the gang is there. Whispering Willie is playing dumb pool tricks with animal there's kind of a main corporate guy in a tan suit i think it's phil uh he he rolls in with uh one of the other corporate guys so they're wearing suits and

everyone else in this bar is you know a biker now i want to say like this this scene that's coming up is is a lot of fun and like the is, I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't think, wow, all of these people are rapists, right? Sure, yeah. That's one of the problems with this framing, is that it's just like, I want them to be villains, but I don't want them to, you know, I want to see their interaction. And well, anyways, I'll, I'll let it go for now. I know what you mean. Um,

yeah, this is kind of one of my favorite tropes though, where it's like the bad guy gets out. Bad guide. Yes, this is great. There's this, there's this very ominous note where Willie picks up the eight ball from the

pool table and is like playing with it while he's talking to the two guys. Chekhov's eight ball. And they're saying, you're causing too much trouble. You need to get out of town. We get a little bit here. He's like, is this from the same guy? He used to be called Zorro. There's a guy in the tan suit.

He's, you know, Willie is dressing down. Took a couple of kids into the Badlands and snuffed them. But that was back when you were interested in the Rattlers instead of ham and cheese on rye which is a good line they say he has to leave town in a day or less or they'll see he leaves feet first and then he walks away and then he turns like he's gonna whip that eight ball at him but there's a shot they brought their guns yes phil shoots willie in the arm and willie just goes like you shot me which is pretty pretty good you got it willie now you get out of town or the next one goes through your head so yeah it's like willie's a bad guy but these are hard guys right yeah yeah

they are matured villains yes i guess it's what it is and yeah and yeah they're the real trouble yeah and so like that's one of my favorite dynamics uh it's one reason why uh it's it's it's my favorite moment in star wars uh which is when the emperor arrives and vader is like he kneels everyone who's been terrified of vader the entire time is now even more terrified of the worst guy who just showed up and it's like such a wonderful shift um so it's good stuff i i like that a lot um it's not really paid off because we don't really nothing about this has to do with the catering company no where it comes back again these uh very hardened suit criminals will be with their family and definitely not the same they're not putting on the same face that they're putting on right now

yeah but it's also great because the whole of the biker bar who i've been delighting in in terrorizing people are terrified yeah of these two that like shot their leader right like they like it was a moment of like oh whoa wait a minute yeah we're not as immortal as we think we are those two guys they they take off as cooper rolls up and he sees their car drive off and i thought there's a good moment for like something but that doesn't end up being relevant inside willie's busting up the bar and anger and frustration with the old gang watching coop comes in and sits behind him at the bar where he's already trashed it, which is pretty good.

And then he turns and sees this guy and raises his uninjured arm to, like, swing on him. And Coop pops a switchblade in his face. Yes. He goes, I won't if you won't. It is fast. It stunned me. It was well done.

Animal takes Willie out of there. The rest of the gang surrounds Coop. There's a greaser guy who says, we're the Rattlers, and you pulled a blade on our number one. They ask if he has colors, and he shows them his tattoo on his shoulder, which is from the Black Shadow gang, which uh which has a you know it's dated it says 1962 on it yeah yeah they know they knew when he was out of the gang like it was like a tombstone it said from this year to this year something like that but then our our our big guy uh lenny lenny but lenny seems to reckon and he he also seems slightly older. So he's taller than everyone else. He has the big handlebar mustache and a red bandana.

And he seems to be kind of the, like, when Willy and Animal aren't around, he's the one everyone else kind of follows his lead. So he's like, Black Shadow, huh? West Virginia, right? That's right, Ace. No kidding. You get the sense that he knows that gang was, that was a good gang. Yeah.

He gives a little bit of respect to Coop based on that in a way that the other guys probably just don't, you know, don't know who that is. Right. So Coop can ride with Lenny. That's, that's where we get from here. We get a party scene. They're going to go, they're going to go on a run tomorrow. First, we get the confrontation with Animal. Animal's the gatekeeper

right into the gang and so Animal hassles Coop Black Shadow, huh? Hey, I'm talking to you Yeah, I can tell cause your lips are moving Now you wouldn't be looking for more than just kicks, would you?

I'm looking for trouble. Maybe you're it. Maybe you ain't. They end up by spitting on each other's shoes. Yeah. And that seems to give him enough cred to let Lenny take him in under his wing. I had to rewind the spitting on each other's shoes because I couldn't tell. It is on each other's shoes.

Like, Animal spits on his and then he spits on Animal's. But I had this thought, like, when I first saw it, I thought Animal would spit on his boots. And then Coop just spit on his own boots. Like, I could spit better than you buddy uh but that is not what happened no he's he's doing all the preening that he has to do to you know show that he wants to be part of the gang i guess yeah i can ride with them yeah uh it's time to party uh coop gets hand some pills he asks what they are and lenny says who knows brother you either fly or you crash so now he's taking random pills with a bunch of bikers and it is like you

know he's a good 10 years older than everyone else yeah also is part of the the dynamic here um coop uh regains consciousness amidst a bunch of passed out bikers and crawls his way to a payphone outside and calls jim he's still high yeah i really expected the scene that shows he pocketed the drugs and pretended to take them but he did not he absolutely took the drugs that's kind of the the part where he's like yep this is what this is how this goes like yep this is this is the life i gotta i gotta turn that or turn off that part of my brain that's like this is a bad idea right and just go with it but he manages to to to have enough control of himself to tell jim that he he got into the rattlers and they're

gonna rip billy bob caterers tomorrow he's gonna ride with them and he's trying to tell jim something that he needs and he can't quite get it out. And then Animal, who's also strung out, appears. He takes the phone. You know, who is this? And Jim thinks fast and is like, you biker guys, stop harassing my daughter. Right. Yeah. Covering for Coop.

Right. They, you know, Animal gives him some vague threats and laughs and hangs up and then tells Coop that nobody calls out. Mm-hmm. They are both giddy and leaning on each other as they threaten each other. Animal, you and me, we gonna tango. Yeah. We are sure gonna do that this is maybe my favorite exchange of the whole and i i wrote this down because this line is is so wonderfully awkward he just says yeah we are sure going to do that

like it was very like very stoned very like uh i have to think through each word in this sentence yeah and then there's a beat and then he gives koopa gut punch yeah lays him out and then rips the payphone out so that i guess no one else can call out we do go back to jim

where he apparently has gotten discharged and is painfully putting on his clothes um and we get a little bit of rocky back at the trailer telling jim that this is a bad idea there is humor in the episode but usually you know often jim is the straight man creating comedy right yeah a lot of the time like he's not telling jokes a lot of the humor is coming from him his responses to things and his wryness. Yeah.

This episode, he doesn't really have any of that. He's past being jokey or being sarcastic. So these are actually the most serious scenes with the ones that Jim is in, which is another kind of strange aspect, like just a tonally strange. Yeah. the kind of strange aspect like just a tonally strange yeah there's much i liked about that the the phone conversation uh especially like jim being fast on the draw and whatnot but the tone problem i made a note of that as well jim's situation reminds us of why we're here and what we're we're dealing with uh which i'm not saying it can't be done i just don't think this episode did it right yeah i don't think it mixed that well.

Again, this feels like two, two different episodes with two very different feels slammed together in a way that doesn't mix well for me. But the upshot is that Jim, he's like, you know, I feel responsible.

And Brock, he's like, it's not your fault. Like you didn't, you can't be irresponsible for what other people do. Right. He's like,'s not your fault like you didn't right you can't be held responsible for what other people do right um he's like but i do feel responsible uh and i can't just sit around and wait to hear it on the news he needs dennis's help apparently he's already reached out because dennis calls uh at this point and tells him to leave the caterers alone they're an upstanding company there's no indication they're into anything coop said you

know coop is convinced that there's going to be you know a run on them tomorrow or whatever and dennis says is this a joke and jim says just show up in the morning you can die laughing but it's not delivered with any humor yeah so we do have dennis and jim in rocky's truck uh keeping an eye on billy bob caterers as the staff is loading into a bus to go on a company picnic. Coop said the Rattlers are going to rip this place. Maybe they're waiting for everyone to leave. And Dennis says that maybe Coop is wrong.

Maybe he read the situation wrong. Um, he has a full morning without this. It's a waste of time. He's leaving and he thinks Jim should check himself back into the hospital. So Dennis leaves while Jim follows the bus. Cause he doesn't have anything else to go on, I guess. Yes.

I wasn't looking forward to doing the notes for this one. Right. But I did keep looking at the timeline and be like, oh, this is moving along pretty quick. Like, yeah, we're basically at almost at the end. Yeah, yeah. The pace is snappy. And there's a lot and a lot of it is watching motorcycles ride around, which is a good amount of screen time, which again, I'll talk about that again in a second. It is one of those episodes where if I were transcribing it, I'd be like, yeah, that's great.

Nobody's saying anything. This whole company picnic scene again, like would be just a ton of fun. picnic scene again like would would be just a ton of fun there's so much fun in the middle of this episode that i wish was out in a different episode i guess is what i'm saying you know we're left with a minor question of like maybe coop got it wrong but then we uh cut to see the rattlers putting on their colors revving up their bikes including a shot from the preview montage where coop pulls down his shades and they go riding out. And then we have a back and forth montage of Jim watching the picnic, watching the cookout get going. They're playing volleyball in a park, cutting back to the Rattlers on the road.

And then we see we come back to Jim and we see him hear the motorcycles. And then we see the corporate goons also hear the motorcycles and realize what it means and start yelling specifically get the kids inside because it's like people's families and their kids are there and then the gang arrives and there's just havoc havoc ensues uh there's a little action with the pick with rocky's pickup here it's very hard to tell what Jim's... A lot of my notes right now are like, what's the plan, Jim? Yeah. Because he drives into the chaos.

There's a lot going on in this scene. And I think technically, you know, there's probably a lot of wrangling to do. Yeah. And it's fine. It is confusing in terms of who is what, where, and when. And maybe that's intentional because it is supposed to just be chaos. Bikes are going through tables. Coop jumps off a bike and punches another guy before he can grab someone.

The corporate-y goons are trying to swing with... They have makeshift weapons and they're trying to swing at guys. swing with they have like makeshift weapons and they're trying to swing at guys um and these are all just kind of like shot to shot cuts of seeing like stuff happening and then in all that jim is driving the truck in and it's like i guess just to get in the way like maybe to block them from getting to the bus like slow things down there's one shot where the truck kind of goes through and then two bikes wipe out and i thought okay i think maybe they're at least implying that jim driving through there caused them to lose control um coop jumps into the car with jim i mean my notes are a little confused too i mean i guess

again it's just i was at a certain point it's just like yeah this is just like chaos and bedlam but willie yells to get out of there. And like five or six of the Rattlers all go off in a group and Jim and Coop pursue in the truck. Yeah. And so that gets into our final sequence here where. We're unlucky enough to catch up with these dudes. You got any brilliant plans on how we should play it? I don't know.

I'll have to give it some thought. Yeah, please. I don't know. I'll have to give it some thought. Yeah, please. I do very much appreciate that Jim took a look at my notes and was like, I need to let the audience know that we don't have a plan. Like, that was good. So the gang is down to like these, yeah, like six motorcycles.

They're pursuing in the truck, and then the bikes start slowing down, which is ominous. And then when Jim gets too close, the guy in the back throws like a maybe mortar oil or something um something that breaks on the windshield and covers it in sludge so he can't see there's a really good sense of again and they had this in the beginning too and this is part of like uh this wired is doing a great job here and uh building this tension uh jim and cooper like let's let's go chase him and save the day and then as they're approaching this is doing a great job here and building this tension. Jim and Cooper, like let's, let's go chase them and save the day. And then as they're approaching this,

they're like, what are we, what are we going to do? And then they're slowing down. They're like, Oh no, they're slowing down. And they're starting to panic about that.

Right? Like there's this, it's, it's the balance of control is not in their favor. Yeah. And so once he can't see, they do have to stop. And then that's when the

bikes turn around they surround the truck uh tells coop to stay in the truck they have flashlights they start rocking the truck but then before the remaining gang can do anything our boys in blue uh do make their arrival dunnis comes through to save the day so you know the the gang standing around with their hands up the cops are arresting them and whatnot jim and coop get out of the truck coop runs over to willie he's gonna punch him jim grabs him he's like don't hit him don't hit him like yeah you know the cops are gonna take care of it right that exertion hurts him and he bends over to the side where presumably his lung is his ribs or lung is so he lets go of coop and

coop is like okay okay and it gets one good punch in on willie's on willie's jaw um tells dennis about the picnic site picking says he has it covered uh he got back to the station and was worried about what was going to happen he apparently ran a deep check on the catering company and it turns out a bunch of retiredattlers own it and they have outstanding like outstanding warrants or something. So I guess that will all get worked out. So this is this is the other the other spot. Like, OK, so before I mentioned Jim in the very beginning, Jim chases after him in the tow truck. And then we're not sure how the assault happens in the amount of time it takes Jim to catch up to them. This one, it really is kind of like, yeah, it's possible that Jim spent enough time alone at this picnic.

But it just feels like a ton of stuff that Dennis did off screen after leaving Jim. I don't know. It's just another one of those, like, when did all of this happen? Was it this morning? Yeah, it all happened at the speed of plot. It all happened so that we could finish it here. Yeah, yeah. Jim isn't looking too good,

but Coop turns to Dennis and says, you've never looked better, Lieutenant. And he says, that's right, Coop, and don't forget it. And then they do the 80s hand clasp. Yeah. The two bros broing down. Dennis kind of points the finger at Coop out of the hand clasp. So that's good, I guess.

I don't know. Again, it's triumphant in a way that feels a little like... Wrong for this episode. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just keep harping on it but like there's so much in this episode i would love if it removed itself from from this and now we're going to get into a thing that i i another problem i have with this episode so and i apologize yeah we have our final

scene where we get we get back to gail uh gail is feeling much better she's recovered to where you know she's able to talk. So she's better. It's Coop, Jim, and Rocky are visiting her. She wants to talk to Jim alone. Coop and Rocky leave. She thanks Jim. She says that she's decided to testify against the Rattlers, even though it's dangerous.

Right. But she wants them to be put away. And Jim's like, me too. He's also going to do that. And then we go to a final exchange. We never had our date. Oh, now that was my line. You jumped it. But you probably don't want to go out with me.

I mean, you just did it because Johnny made you. That was last time. I got to tell you something. You're something special I'd be so happy to take you you just name it I'll be gone it ends with them both having you know

smiles on their faces hope for the future right some kind of there's a positive note Both having, you know, smiles on their faces, hope for the future. Right. Some kind of, there's a positive note on which we end our episode. Yeah. And I'm not going to complain that there's a positive note, but I'm going to complain that there's a positive note. The problem with this ending for me is that it's very clean for what it was, right? Like, she thanks him for his part in giving vengeance and this

seems to have fixed her trauma i she's that she doesn't feel like completely fixed or anything like that but like um she was not responding to coop last we saw her and now she's they're flirting yeah i mean presumably time has elapsed, right? Yeah, yeah. It's not like this is the next day. Yeah. But I guess the thing that kind of, it just kind of troubles me that this wraparound story, the motivation, and when we come back to it, just follows this really kind of played out trope. Now, it's a played out trope that existed pretty prominently in the 70s.

it's a played out trope that existed pretty prominently in the 70s and uh you know we are now 50 years later when did this episode we're we're coming on a half century later so i'm not gonna like you know take what my modern understanding of all of this is and like 79 so yeah yeah 44 years yeah i guess the thing is is that what really bugged me about this episode was that there was plenty of really good good rock furnishness that i want to celebrate i want to enjoy and i couldn't let myself enjoy because yeah uh the the nature of the motivation but uh as we were doing this, I was thinking, because you and I have been at this, this is something that we keep kind of going on and on. Somebody, a fan of the show and local friend,

alerted me that there were a few other Rockford Files podcasts out there now and said that he had trouble finding us on a particular podcasting platform. And I was like, yeah, we'll look into that. That's fine. And then I was like, but we only have like a year left. Like, that's where we are right now. And when I think back on it from a television show of this era, the number of episodes that left me feeling uncomfortable are three, two. I don't I can I can name two off the top of episodes that left me feeling uncomfortable are three two i don't i

can i can name two off the top of my head and i bet you there's a third one which is really good like when you think about it right like considering all of it yeah yeah the the hit rate i mean there's one reason we have continued to do the show is because the hit rate is high um like i think i i mumbled it may i don't know if it made the edit or not but uh flipping through the the fifth season entries in the book uh to find this one to look at that quote i was like oh yeah these are there's a lot of bangers like like i'm just going through i'm looking at episode titles i'm like yeah that's a good one that's a good one too yeah that was a good one you know um we have an elevated baseline of like yes we're gonna enjoy this episode right right yeah um and

yeah this one just there's something i guess i continue hedging because i really don't want to sound like you can't put problematic things on tv right it's not what i'm trying to say but but you got to be intentional about it i think is the thing i guess that's the thing though this is intentional like this is a super intentional episode um you don't have multiple lines of dialogue about running a train on on a mama from your uh villains and then having that be followed through on you know that's not an accident right yeah yeah so it's not it's less that it doesn't seem thought through and more that it just seems and again maybe this is just the distance maybe it's just that it doesn't seem thought through and more that it just seems, and again, maybe this is just the distance. Maybe it's just how times have changed or maybe it's just my personal, what I enjoy interacting with in my fiction,

but like, it just seems clumsy. Yeah. It's a little cake and eat it too, I guess is, is what I, they're like, let's do this,

but let's also make it a fun Rockford Files episode. I guess that's what I was trying to get to earlier with, um, uh, was saying it was almost like not quite dire enough yeah like for a revenge story there's not really any revenge they go to they're gonna go to jail or whatever which is like the same consequences for any villain in a rockford files episode when you think about this punch like at the end right coop gets a punch in right and you think about um i cannot remember the name of the episode but the one where dennis lets jim punch it's the movie where oh yes he lets yes yeah where he gives jim some time alone

with the russian like torturer guy yes right and it. And this torture. Yes. And, um, that, that is more satisfying. And I think that, um, I think partly because it's not Coop's punch, right? Like,

yeah, like Gail, he's not getting, he's avenging. He's not getting vengeance. Right. To split a hair. And is that what Gail wants? guess yeah maybe i don't know right

we don't get enough gail like we don't it's not gail's story she's just there to motivate it and that's that's fundamentally the problem yeah i'd agree with that one thing i kept on saying i'm going to talk about this and then i did oh yeah it was about the motorcycles and how another issue that i had tonally was that the way that the motorcycle gang is filmed and the way that we see them move through the space and move on the screen at least to me felt very let's look at these cool motorcycles. Yeah. It was very, um, uh, celebratory, uh, visually of like the gang in a way that I would associate with,

you know, I don't know, like Mad Max or something where it's like, yeah, that's not the first one. Cause that one's much darker, but like the road warrior where it's like, here's a bunch of cool,

weird stuff. Sure. They're bad, but they're in a bad world. So we get to kind of celebrate some of the aesthetics. And I get that everyone likes, you know, everyone likes motorcycles. I'm not saying they're not cool to film because they are. And I guess that's part of it.

I'm like, yeah, those are cool motorcycles. Yeah. Look at all those rapists riding cool motorcycles. Like, just that particular jar was... With their swastikas on their helmets. Yeah, Willie has a swastika helmet in the first scene. And I was like, oh boy. I mean, fine, that's accurate, I guess.

And it doesn't show up again later. I think it's just kind of establishing. But there's no holding back about the bad things and bad opinions in addition to bad actions that these guys have. And having that feel like it's being celebrated on the screen in a little bit, in a way, also added to my discomfort with wanting to continue sitting with the episode. So I guess that's a backhanded compliment to our boy Wired. Like, go hook some cool-ass motorcycles that that you showed us yeah do not disagree with that i mean like this is this is a this is a far larger problem than anything the rockford files we we already brought up one meme uh there's that meme

the the version of it that i see is judge dread uh shooting over someone's the cartoon of someone and the cartoon of someone is staring at judge going what a cool outfit you know like look at this neat weapon or whatever and the the bullet is going over and it's saying like uh commentary on fascist police force you know it's going over your head it's like when um uh when like conventions back when we would go to conventions would be like yeah there's a we've got a bunch of people here in uh stormtrooper outfits why don't we have them do security it's like oh yeah all right so do you know who they were in the movies do you know what they were a metaphor for like yeah oof oof uh and and in the end stormtroopers are just disney characters now

it doesn't matter but um that's not the case here though and uh yeah exactly yeah that's that's just a problem with media in general it's hard not to glorify cool stuff yeah i mean maybe to kind of start start wrapping up there's a yeah you know i was looking at the IMDb reviews on this episode and the rating is not particularly high. It's not particularly low. Most of the, most Rockford file IMDb ratings are between like 6.9 and 7.6, something like that.

Like, and this is solidly in that range. But the written reviews, I thought they were going to be more critical and they're mostly positive along the line of of like the rockford files has a serious side here's an episode that shows the range of the show how they could take on a serious topic and and have that be you know part of the series and and i guess i don't disagree with that sentiment i just maybe that's a function of the time that's elapsed i but i yeah

it's not like a nuanced look at how the ripple effects of sexual violence can affect a family right or something that is where i would probably be more right yeah this would be resonating with me more as as an exploration of a topic i don't enjoy if it's more like that it's a little more surface of like bad thing happens to make hero go get revenge for bad thing and like i think the fact that it could be jim got beat up real bad and we could have the same episode yeah makes it makes that that high that really high stake here's the motivator here's the motivation event here's what happens to this person it feels out of scale almost because what happens after didn't have to be that serious to motivate right yeah i think to tease out why

i don't really feel like this is actually doing a great job of like treating a serious topic. It's like, it's portraying a serious topic. And I think that is, that is a strength. The show has, it can portray serious topics just fine. But yeah,

I don't know if that's a distinction without a difference. No, I think, I think you're right. I mean, we could take up more airtime than we don't want to, that we want to. But we can contrast it with ones

where we do think uh it tackles a serious topic and does it does it well like uh i mean obviously things like so help me god or house on willis avenue a tackle like bring things to light that we don't normally do i do think there's like the nature of it being sexual assault does differentiate it. And so I'm thinking like, is that, are there, is there another episode that I feel like handles.

There's like some mental health issue episodes that I think kind of fly or fly closer to this than, um, and I think for the most part do okay. Like, especially given what they, what they understand in the time but yeah like that's

the thing like we I don't think this episode stands up well if you look at the seriousness of it I think it does do okay when you look at like if you're able to shut that out and put that on the side

then like you know there's a lot of like we said there's a lot of good cinematography in it there's a lot like it's made of good parts yeah yeah it's just when it was put together it just these parts weren't meant to be put together yeah i'm i'm just scrolling through our episodes to see if there's like something that i would compare it to to try and be like here's where we had a better conversation about this yeah i mean um one that comes to mind uh is the first gandy one right which was pretty dark uh hammer c block yeah and i think they handled it well the the the thing about the gandy one was just that they then they went on and uh made gandhi into the character we love right yeah

i was thinking maybe like in terms of like a tonal variation um way back our third episode sleight of hand which is the one that's that's based on a on a short story or a novel or something and is where jim is like seeing a woman who, who just like disappears. Right. And then he tries to track her down. Yes. It turns out that she's murdered.

I think there's something about that one, just as I'm kind of trying to think through what we've talked about before. There's something about that one where like the tone of that one is very dark. It's in a way that's similar to this where like the humor feels a little out of place and that yeah that's first season right like that's when they're like drawing on other material because they don't quite have the character yet yeah but yeah i think maybe you're right that some of the some of the episodes that are touched more on like mental illness are

probably in a closer yeah range and it's not like it can't like this show has tackled a lot of serious issues. Yeah. Uh, Rita Moreno's, uh, she, you know,

plays this sex worker that they very, they humanize and, uh, you know, and then there's like, like larger topics that like, you know, we kind of need to be aware of,

uh, like I said, the, the, uh, very prophetic house on Willis avenue uh this it's a totally different episode structure wise but requiem for a funny box where it has that like hard shift with the the mobster who puts out a hit on his own gay son for being gay like that's

kind of in a similar realm uh it's a very different episode the structure of it's totally different it's not an exploration of that but right in terms of kind of something with a similar weight to it i guess that one um comes to mind so yeah i don't know this is this is all to say that clearly this uh was was a bit of a a bit of a conflicted watch. Yeah. A little bit of a bummer for us. A little bit of a bummer. It's fine. We can get them every so often. Yeah.

I'd rather have the show have the occasional episode where they try for something and it just doesn't work than be watching the umpteenth Jim Gets Stiff by a Client episode. Right, right. I mean, they're all, which are also good episodes, but, you know, the variety is important. And part of the DNA of the show is, like, they did try stuff. Yeah. Right, right. kind of my takeaway also i'm very i'm very glad that we have uh at least two more of our episodes to do of wired so we don't end the wired uh run on this one which i i gotta admit i was tempted to do just based on the title alone it does have one of the best titles i was like i like that

title let's end on that yeah the return of the black shadow is a is a good title yeah well i think i think we've we've gotten we've we've gotten what we're going to get out of this one um yeah obviously we're always interested to hear uh what you have to say about our episodes hopefully this one made some sense through all the uh hemming and hawing and qualifications uh yeah because i know i do that uh and and we're done with coop that was uh you know that's our last except for except for a vaguely uncredited voice appearance we'll get to that one so we'll get to that one we'll wrap him that way yeah but yeah i guess one one one positive takeaway is certainly would have watched a Coop drama. Yeah, Coop Undercover.

Yeah, Coop Undercover, where he has to infiltrate all kinds of different gangs and things in pursuit of justice. Would watch. I would absolutely watch it. All right. Well, we do have, what, two more episodes before we get to our conclusion yeah um so we have plenty of the summer the summer of wired is uh unfolding apace before us so we will be back next time to talk about another episode directed by william wired of the rockford files