Two Hundred A Day - Episode 126: Aura Lee, Farewell

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Nathan and Eppy say goodbye to Jackie Cooper (as a director) in S1E14 Aura Lee, Farewell. Jim is asked by sometime-girlfriend-and-previous-client Sara to look into the so-called overdose death of her friend Aura Lee. Once his investigation turns up a State Senator and a slick bunko artist, things get really intense. This is a tight episode with lots of our favs (Robert Webber! Dennis getting mad! Soup!), and we enjoyed both the story and showcase of how it's actually pretty hard to date Jim, when you get right down to it. 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. Nathan is running a Kickstarter for a new con game RPG The Big Store. You play the cons running the game on a mark who deserves what's coming to 'em! He couldn't have done it without watching so much Rockford Files. Check it out here (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ndpaoletta/the-big-store-a-con-game-ttrpg/). 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/) * David Nixon, 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

Mr. Rockford, you don't know me, but I'd like to hire you. Could you call me at... My name is, uh... Never mind, forget it. 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 Epidaeus Ravishaw. And I am still getting over a cold, so I apologize any uh weird noises as you record this time this is a we it's only been a week since last we recorded so yes we're trying to make up for lost time a little bit so the cold that was starting in our last recording is finishing in this one one quick

aside as you're listening to this episode it is likely though i'm not 100 sure that my kickstarter for a new game will also be running i could not have made that game without watching so much rockford files yes uh it's called the big store it is a con game tabletop rpg where you play the cons running a game uh so you are the the gyms and the angels and sometimes a roped in rocky and sometimes the roped in rocky's running a game on uh you know and the richie brocklemans etc yeah running a game on some mark who has a bunch of money that they don't need and also probably is a bad person and needs comeuppance yeah so it's a a role-playing game where you play the cons you build your own con game but it's very it's structured by the way that we see these cons unfold in in episodes like

never send a boy king to do a man's job or there's one in every port so yeah i'll put a link in the show notes there will be a link on my website at ndpdesign.com if uh you are listening to this after that kickstarter is over it will be available for you know the general public once it comes out in a couple months but of course uh the support from kickstarter guides me in how elaborate i can make the production and you know keeps keeps me going as a independent um creator in uh in this economy in this economy in this economy check it out yeah epi's played the game and i've enjoyed it he thinks it's okay my endorsement of this is

check it out no don't check it out this isn't for you this is something you shouldn't look at i don't want to give this up to you i see but yeah here we are to talk about season one, episode 14, RLE Farewell. This is a Nathan Paletta. You chose this, although I did, but it was an easy choice. It was a yeah. Hey, should we just do this one? Because so the last episode that we recorded, say goodbye to Jennifer. Also season one episode. Also a episode with a woman in the name episode.

Yeah. But it was directed by Jackie Cooper, which led us to, as we do, how many more Jackie Cooper episodes do we have to do? And the answer to that was one. And that's this one. So that's why we're doing this one. It's a wrap on Jackie Cooper. It's a lot of raps on uh in this episode we'll talk about those as they come up but um as we enter our final phase as we keep saying we're going to keep hitting these things it's like well rap on that rap on that because there's only

so many left if one wanted to you could probably create some kind of mathematical formula to determine how likely it is that any particular contributor is wrapped on any of our particular conversations. If IMDB were in fact a DB, there's a lot of fun we could do with this, but it's not. So it's more, I am big spreadsheet. Yeah.

Yeah, so how do we do this? It was a good episode. Yeah, it is a good episode. We're season one still. Yeah, and I think in the last one, I said that I wasn't really sure what I expected, but it surpassed expectations

in a way where like, that's not a dig. That's a celebration. Like I'm, I'm always happy for that. I feel like this one kind of hit that note for me as well. Yeah. I agree.

And I took a bite of my sandwich just before agreeing. So you can keep talking while I chew. Well, yeah. So this one is, as we said, directed by Jackie Cooper, our final of his directorial efforts.

And also we've already done both of the episodes he appeared in. So this is a full wrap on Jackie Cooper. He directed Counter Gambit, our episode 46. Say Goodbye to Jennifer, our, I believe, 125, I think is that episode number. I have not edited it yet. So yeah, I was going to say our last, our last episode in hazard number 31, the Italian bird fiasco, our episode 61. Um, and then he appeared in Claire, uh, our one episode of one 22, uh, recently. And he was also

in the house on Willis Avenue, the, uh, two-parter with the good Richie Brockleman two parter, our episode 78. I will say this one much less visually interesting than Say Goodbye to Jennifer. This is a much more straightforward episode of TV, at least visually. There's a few montage stuff. And there's a cool shot at the end when we start getting into the motorcycle sequence. There's a few montage-y stuff. And there's a cool shot at the end when we start getting into the motorcycle sequence. There's some good stuff. The motorcycle sequence.

Yeah, that's going to definitely be a standout from this episode. Yeah, I do not have a theory of Jackie Cooper director, right? Right, and he directed a lot of TV. Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit of a... I don't know. I don't, my, my experience with Jackie Cooper is very specific. It's there's episode of Columbo that he's in that I really like. There's these episodes that he's in that I like. Uh, I know he's in Superman and I've seen Superman. I don't really remember Superman. He's, he's the, uh, uh, this

is so bad. Not he's J Jonah Jameson's DC counterpart. Right. Right. He's the, this is so bad. Not, he's J. Jonah Jameson's DC counterpart. Right, right. He's the newspaper guy, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah. But clearly his career spans much past those bounds. But I don't know, that's what I associate him with. So if I see his face, I'm like, oh, Jackie Cooper from Columbo. Yes.

Yeah, he's, you know, I feel like he's one of those i don't know i feel you know he's he's primarily a character actor but he's like a famous character actor i think he's one of those guys that if you that like i'm not going to be able to summarize his his career and do it justice really um i don't really have anything novel to say he was a child actor which i didn't uh know so he was a contemporary with Shirley Temple as a kid. That is trippy because I mean, his old man face is the most recognizable part. Right, that's the iconic face. Yeah.

And this is his entire IMDb bio is about this. He did recruiting and propaganda films for the Navy and then ended up commissioned as a Navy officer. And if you want to know all the details, you can look at his bio. But he ended up only behind Jimmy Stewart, the highest ranked entertainment industry person of note. He ended up with a commissioned officership. I don't know how you say that. A commission in his role with the Navy.

And he also flew, uh, flew fighter jets apparently. Um, so he ended up a captain. He was a Navy captain by the time he, and he, he turned down an opportunity that would actually,

he would, he would gain the rank of rear Admiral, but he was concentrating on his directing. So he did not take it. I did not know that his bio, nothing about his entertainment career. Really. It's mostly someone who,

whoever wrote it was very interested in his military career. But yeah, no. I have a warm glow when I see Jackie Cooper. I think he's fun. Yeah, I agree. And I think we both, well, we just said that we both enjoyed this episode, so that'll be fun, too. Perry White.

Perry White is the name of... I only know that because I went over to his IMDb. I should know it off the top of my head. I read comics. I can see them behind you right now. Yeah. This episode is a, again, similar to our last one, story by Roy Huggins,

credited as James Thomas James, as this is want. Teleplay by Edward Laxo. Apologies in previous episodes. I think I just always read it as Lasco, but his name is in fact L-A-K-S-O, Laxo. And Laxo, I have some notes on him from our Claire episode, which are primarily about how... So he was a writer and he was a, he was a writer and TV producer. And he ended up doing,

he ended up producing Charlie's angels. So he was a big Charlie's angels creator and he has music credits for writing and performance most extensively on Charlie's angels. But I was not able to find out what that actually means. Like if he was a musician, right. Outside of TV or like like what how that process works if he wrote lyrics for one of the songs or something but this one is so he did the teleplay

and i think there are some good rockfordisms oh yeah yeah um i believe he did the teleplay on claire uh he also wrote the italian bird fiasco which was our episode 61. And he did the teleplay for Roundabout, which was our episode 96. So this is a wrap on him as well. This is a wrap on him as well. And the second Jackie Cooper, Edward Laxo collab, because they were both the Italian bird fiasco. We've said that now several times. I remember really liking that. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. Right. That one that one's yes i now remember how that one worked there's the the

art dealer scam with the bird statues yeah that was good that was a very good one it ends up with with jim almost making money and then lloyds of london uh insurance comes and claims they're due. It's a good one. A measure of like the quantity of money that Jim could make. So the time it takes for him from having made that money to it taken away. There's a formula in there that is like such a sweet spot for me that several of these episodes get like, ah, you're gone. Like you can't have that. I mean, my favorite is i don't um the oil uh it's like culture culture city wildcat that one i think that yeah yeah where yeah uh

they're gonna get rich a thousand dollars or something like it's like ten thousand dollars a day from yeah oil leases that rocky got scammed into buying. But then because of a processing technicality, he didn't actually buy them. I love the Rockford files. Well, speaking of loving the Rockford files, we should probably go ahead and talk about this episode. And as we usually do, we start off with the preview montage. It was a emotional rollercoaster for me. Let me start with Bill Mooney. Now, I saw him and thought, I recognize that guy. Literally paused it, looked him up.

Bill Mooney. This is not a rap on Bill Mooney. It's great. So Bill Mooney, people will remember from Lost in Space. He was Will Robinson. He was Danger Will Robinson Danger. People might remember him from Deep Space Nine back when it was called Babylon 5. Lanier, I think was the name of his character in that. And if you're a very special kind of person who is familiar with the Dr. Demento show

and enjoy that kind of comedic song, you might know the song Fish Heads, which is now playing in your head. Fish heads, fish heads, pony pony fish heads. Fish heads, fish heads, beat them up, yum. They can't play baseball. They don't wear

sweaters. They're not good dancers. They don't play drums. And he's part of the rock duo that wrote that song, which is amazing. A storied career along the same lines as Jackie Cooper. Didn't achieve quite the rank in the military. But otherwise, yeah. Anyways, every time I see a Bill Mooney, I'm excited about a Bill Mooney.

And this is no exception. However. He also did voice work in The Ren and Stimpy Show and Batman the Animated Series and Animaniacs. See? Yeah. A storied, storied career. So I'm excited. It's a Bill Mooney.

And then because I don't know what's happening, it looks like Rocky gets run over. It really does. And I panicked. I was like, what? And I was like, there's no way they murdered Rocky. I've seen him in later episodes. I was upset. I was like, this is not a fair trick to trick us into thinking that Rocky got run over.

At this point, I think it's Rocky. It's not Rocky. It's mostly just because there's a floppy hat. Yeah, exactly. The floppy hat and silhouette is really what does it. And it just happens really quick, bam. But I don't, like I said, I hit that nadir of like, oh no, Rocky. And then they deliver the motorcycle cliff jumping.

And I got to tell you, Bill Mooney is Rocky in trouble. Motorcycle over a cliff, I'm in. I mean, they've hooked me earlier, faster, or whatever. But this one really, it got me with three good hooks. And in the middle of that, we see Robert Weber talking about political sabotage. Yes. So I was like, all right, he's in this one. An all-star cast.

200 a Day is a 100% listener-supported show, thanks to our patrons. In addition to our gratitude and editing access to the 200 Files file spreadsheet, patrons receive exclusive episode previews and plus expenses. Our bonus Just Chatting podcast about media, work, and life. An episode of that comes out before

every episode of 200 a day. On top of that, every episode we say thanks to the gumshoe-level patrons supporting this episode. Brian Bernson has a Facebook page where he drives his Rockford tribute car to shooting locations from the show. Check out facebook.com slash brianrockfordfiles. Join Mitch Hampton to examine all matters aesthetic and what it means to be human at the Journey of an Esthete podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. it means to be human at the Journey of an Esthete podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Paul Townend recommends the podcast Fruit Loops, Serial Killers of Color at fruitloopspod.com. Dale Norwood wrote a book, Find Trading Freedom, How Trade with China Defined Early America, wherever good books are sold, published by the University of Chicago Press. Chuck from whatsyourreading.com. Shane Liebling, you know his site RollForYour.Party has all of your online dice rolling needs, Jay Adan, who showcases amazing miniature painting skills over at jayadan.com, Andre Apidnani, Tom Clancy, Pumpkin Jabba Beach Pug, Dave P, Dave Otterson, Kip Hawley, Dale Church, Colleen Kelly, and David Nixon. And finally, special appreciation for the extraordinary support from our detective-level patrons. Joe Greathead, Michael Zalisco, Eric Antenor, Brian Pereira, Jordan Bockelman, Not Brockleman, Bill Anderson, and of course, Richard Haddam.

If you're interested in keeping us going for as little as $1 an episode, check out patreon.com slash 200 today to see if becoming a patron is right for you. And we start right off with our titles over watching some traffic and then the guest star Robert Weber over Robert Weber's head as we cut to him driving his red Buick. We know it's a red Buick because later in the episode they talk about a Buick. Yeah. All right. So this is Robert Weber's first appearance in the Rockford files. His last on our show.

Oh, this is a Robert Weber rap. If you will. Weber rap. A Weber rap. Um, he was in the deep blue sleep episode, our episode 82.

Uh, he was of course, um, the Oracle, the titular Oracle in the Oracleacle war cashmere suit our episode 16 i think that would be a fun one to revisit yeah um and never send a boy king to do a man's job our episode 79 the great two-parter uh again with richie brockelman here he's i think i was saying he's a great antagonist he's he's he's the antagonist he's the villain in

the deep blue sleep and never send a boy king to do a man's job he's kind of jim's foil in the oracle war cashmere suit and here he's kind of he's important spoilers yeah yeah he's he is important but he's not dramatically uh critical does that make sense yeah he's very important for the plot and he's fun to watch but he doesn't have he doesn't really have thematic uh interaction with jim i think one of the good things about having him play this role as we'll soon find out is that uh i mean no he there's a natural menace to him. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's a bad way of saying it. But, like, so that we as the audience, or at least I as the audience, I'm suspicious of him before anything happens. Right.

Like, in this opening scene, I'm suspicious of him. Yeah, I'm coming to it informed by his other appearances on the show. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh, of course he's the bad guy. So, we will see how that unfolds but yeah there's uh so he's he's one of my low-key faves yeah so we have i think you mentioned there's some good montage work in this one uh here yes we start off with a montage as we see him see someone hitchhiking he very clearly double takes once he realizes it's the young woman who's hitchhiking, decides to pull over. She's heading to L.A.

He says that he is as well, and he's tired of talking to himself. So he gives her a ride and we get a little bit of their initial dialogue. So this is the Orly of our title orally benton weber so he is playing the character he's playing there's a little bit of a dramatic reveal but the character's name is um murdoch yeah he quotes the edgar allen poe uh stanza well it was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea where a maiden there lived, whom you may know by the name of Oralee.

My apologies to Edgar Allen Poe. The poem is Annabelle Lee and he substitutes Oralee. It's very cute. It's intended to be cute. Yeah. It's intended to be cute. Uh, there's an arc here,

uh, that I think is well done. It is. It feels, it, it feels creepy and awkward in the beginning and then they genuinely warm to each other as this passage unfolds and uh i think it's quite nice anyways go on yeah yeah no you're you're right i mean that's pretty much this whole sequence is you know we get this little bit of

dialogue where they introduce themselves to each other basically and then the rest of this is a montage of of um he but he he asked her if she wants to get a bite to eat he was planning to stop to eat in santa barbara and then we then have a a montage that continues of watching them eating warming to each other starting to touch more intimately laughing at each other's joke laughing but then having like a serious conversation uh yeah and then cutting to a sign for a for a motel with a curtain in the in the room behind the sign being drawn closed i wonder what's happening so first of all this is pretty much all we see of orally or orally depending on who's talking about her, who is played by... Melissa Green.

Yes. Who does not have extensive credits, and this is, in fact, her final credited appearance in television. Oh, she was in the... She was in Kolchak. First girl. She was in the, she was in Kolchak. First girl. Anyway, but I was going to say, I think considering that almost all of her appearance is just facial expressions.

Yeah. Great job. She does great. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, like this, this sequence here from the beginning of the episode to the closing of the curtains, it's a good arc in and of itself. It tells a little romance right like it

we know uh from the beginning that this is probably not a good idea right and in the beginning there's not like like he clearly is attracted to her but it's not like she's attracted to him right off the bat or whatever but again very few lines of dialogue and mainly like a montage thing, but they just nail it. They just kind of like show how this natural progression towards the curtains. The curtains. That's right. Well, yeah. And there's there's a set and this is kind of reinforced with the rest of the scene.

So I'll just talk about that. So we cut from that to them back in the car and her saying you're overdue somewhere an anxious wife and he kind of like hems and haws and she said that it's okay she understands and uh and holds his hand and yeah there's this sense here of like when the scene started i was kind of expecting there to be an element of like coercion or or something yeah like obligation that i would find off-putting but there's something there's something to their chemistry where you feel like if she wasn't interested it would be fine nothing would happen right and she kind of knows what she's getting herself into yeah exactly it is what it

is and none of them are holding any, even though they were pretending to hold those illusions. They were having a nice time, but neither of them is like, and this is the start of an incredible romance. Yeah, exactly. I will say, let's see here. 51, 74, 75. So 24 years old. Just doing the... Yeah, the age gap is he's not great yeah yeah it's not great i was thinking about that because there's like come i mean this comes

up in this show but it comes up in colombo a lot too where there's like yeah much older men and younger women and sometimes it's like lampshaded like I know that people don't understand but we really love each other like that kind of thing it's just this thing in TV that I think is slightly different like I think that's changed over time I don't watch enough contemporary TV to really know but this era

there's like a lot of just like oh yeah men who are twice the age of the people that they are dating or married to or seeing or whatever. That's normal. I will say. So he was. So hold on.

I'm doing a little math here. Fifty fifty one years old. You're going to tell me that like Chris Evans is 51 or something. Well, Paul Paul Rudd is older than he is in this. Yeah. Chris Evans. that's a good one how old is chris evans oh no chris evans is 10 years younger than this but paul paul rudd is the ones that okay sure paul rudd is he's in his 50s and he doesn't nobody thinks of him and he doesn't really get cast as in yeah now that said robert weber is a solid 50s. Yes.

There's an element of, yeah, people looked their age more in 70s television. Yeah, I think that's probably true. And we're going to get another one of these in a moment. Yeah. So we should just keep going. All right. So we have a sudden spike in adrenaline as they kind of see another, it looks kind of like another person like hitchhiking on the side of the road but then he just steps into the highway in front of their car and raises his hands like he's surprised and it's our shot from the preview montage it's clearly not rocky

i knew it at this moment i knew it was not rocky but man but yeah he just steps into the road and gets hit by this car they of course stop he runs he checks he he says into the road and gets hit by this car. They, of course, stop. He runs. He checks. He says that he's not dead. We need an ambulance. And then he tells R.L.E. to stay in the car because she's like, you want me to stay with him? And he says, no, go get back in the car.

Stay down so no one sees you. And then he flags down another car and tells them hey keep an eye on him i'm gonna go to the you know i'm gonna go to the next place i can call an ambulance um he tells her that in his line of work he can't afford anyone to know that they were together so he's gonna drop her off ask if she needs anything if she needs money and she you know she says she's fine she'll be okay and there's another of that little sense of like she's like i mean i don't know what else i expected right like yeah seems about right uh but then he goes into the phone booth at this restaurant she goes to go into the restaurant and they have

this significant look through the window that is more tender and kind of like well time to say goodbye to all of that yeah yeah exactly whatever fantasies we might have spun about this evening that we had, but at least they were nice while it lasted. I don't know. There's something about, again, that look and how it's framed and their facial expressions where they did not have an entirely transactional relationship. It did seem like there was something there that was like, oh, that was nice. There's another thing about this scene that like okay we're primed for a mystery and murder and all that

and it's like okay what's going to happen to her this is going to be horrible what's he going to do to her is largely what we're thinking but throughout this exchange not with her but like well i mean like she's involved in it but throughout everything that's happening he tells the guy you know the guy he asks to wait he says i hit a guy and when he calls on the phone he says send an ambulance i hit someone yeah like he admits to all of like yeah he's not trying to like downplay or pretend he's like there was an accident i hit someone yeah and i was i kept expecting this hitting of the someone to be like what sets everything up and it just it it wasn't like he was doing the appropriate thing but we do end on the sudden explanation for his behavior

where he calls the accident says where it is and it says this is state senator evan murdoch yeah and again like so that's for the audience obviously right to tell us why he's cagey about all this stuff but also says something about his character and i like that like yeah that he he's like i am a public figure and i was involved in this thing and I need everyone to know that. Like, I need there to be no sense that I'm trying to cover this up. Exactly.

Yeah. Plus you kind of get the sense that, you know, maybe they'll respond a little more, you know, like affect fictitiously or something. Yeah, no,

it's good. It's a, again, I didn't know what I was expecting, but then my expects, my expectations were subverted. Yes. So I was like, okay, cool. Let's see what's good. It's a, again, I didn't know what I was expecting, but then my expectations were subverted. Yes. So I was like, okay, cool.

Let's see what's now what. So we cut from there, did some groovy typography for Sarah's Place, which is a little boutique run by this woman, Sarah, Sarah Butler. Not just this woman, this bion this woman. This bionic woman. This bionic woman. Yes, this is Lindsay Wagner, who I can see from IMDb, was the bionic woman. I have never. This is before my time, so I did not have a visceral reaction.

I had the visceral reaction. And not only did I have the visceral reaction, but then I remembered. I had the visceral reaction. And not only did I have the visceral reaction, but then I remembered. So spoilers for what will probably be our second to last episode. We'll see her again. But this is the second time that the Rockford Files sees her. And she's playing the same character, which is fun. Yeah, she's in the pilot.

And again, I've done my best not to know about the pilot because I think it'll be fun to watch it and be surprised. Maybe I'm setting myself up for failure. I don't know. It's a fun experiment. But because of how of some of the stuff that goes on in this episode, I did do a quick check. And yeah, so the plot of the pilot is Jim helping her

like solve the murder of her father. Jim helping her like solve the, the, the murder of her father. And they mentioned that in this episode, in this episode, they mentioned it was a year ago and they also are clearly are coming off of, um, at least some kind of romantic.

It's a, it's a Rockford romance. Let's just, it's a Rockford romance. Like they clearly have seen each other sometimes, but also she owes him money. You get the feeling. It's been, you know, I don't know how many years we've been with Rockford now, but it's not the women. It's him.

Yeah. And there's some good discussion in this episode about why it's hard. Yes. Dating Rockford. Well, we start off with a very strong play where Sarah is offering Jim sardine sandwiches made to a special recipe. So we have a lot of banter in these first couple scenes as we kind of circle around the point and what's going on.

We get a little bit of the background. There's a couple components here one is that she's finally paying him the rest of what she owes him for the help that he for what for what he did for her last year um so it's a check for 125 dollars and he says that the first one she wrote bounced six times by the time that dog cleared it could get to the bank all by itself but she said this one's okay and so he's like okay why now well she wants to hire him again the other strand here is that she's made sandwiches and packed a picnic lunch to take him out to a nice fun picnic lunch not take him out to a restaurant for lunch like she kind of implied when she invited him out for lunch he

says that if she can't afford if she can't afford a restaurant lunch she can't afford to hire him yeah but she packed this whole picnic and he there's a good joke in the cut here i know a place where we can eat it okay before we get to that the other other strand here set it up right is that this is getting him back for the time that he invited her to dinner and then put a fishing pole in her hand. Yes. So you had bass and I caught a flounder. Yeah, they inhabit the very bottom. They cruise around the kelp beds like nomadic scavengers. I usually throw them back, but since it was getting late and I didn't have to eat it.

But you really qualify as an enlightened man i gotta give you that the references to flounders we'll come back later there's an implication here because like she there was something like and you didn't throw it back and he goes he said well i didn't have to eat it so like not only did he put a fishing pole in her hand but they each ate what they caught right like that that is those are the rules a lot of fun to date jim but then yes our joke in the cut is that okay he does know a place where they can eat a place he'll even enjoy eating outside uh and we cut to jim setting up fishing poles on the beach yes and yelling at the ocean come on you guys hit one of these things will you the um there's a

thing there's another bit here that's like she was going to take them to something that seemed vaguely like a work event for her too oh yeah we're going to like a runway show or something yeah she runs this like clothes boutique yeah so yeah So yeah, neither one of them is great at this. Yeah. But yes, he finally accepts a sardine sandwich as none of the fish are biting. And then you cut the crust off. I like the crust. You petulant.

But as she says, she's been very patient. Well, he listened to her. He's like, okay, fine. She asks if he remembers Aura Lee. She worked in Sarah's boutique. She was there when you picked me up for the dream date two weeks ago. And he goes, oh, come on. That was a great fight.

There was a fifth round knockout. So good. But there's this implication here where it's like they've gone on dates. Yeah, yeah. More than one. This is not her just coming to him out of the blue after's like they've gone on dates. Yeah. Yeah. More than one. This is not her just coming to him out of the blue after like not seeing him. Yeah.

Yeah. They have a good vibe. They have a good, a good chemistry. But Arlie was found dead in her apartment. The police are calling it a heroin overdose. But Sarah knows that she must have been murdered because she never used narcotics. She refers to Jim Pro proving who murdered her father. So that's,

you know, from the pilot. Well, I believe what the police believe. She's like, well, that's not the position you took, you know, when you,

yeah. Help me find out who murdered my father. Um, and she says that she can pay him. She has money and she fans out a bunch of hundreds. She found $2,600 in Orly's place when she was going through her her her effects and she also found this cigar box full of matchbooks there might be some kind of clue in there jim opens it and there's like a newspaper clipping of uh like a band like an underground railroad yeah with the

band and yeah i i totally thought this was going to be important. Right. And he's like, well, you know, if she was into this music scene, like there's lots of druggies, it's not inconceivable. But Sarah says that Arlie was good to her and good for her. She wants Jim to find out what happened. He's like, you owe it to her, don't you? And she's like, yeah.

And we end the scene with this understanding look on jim's face as he acknowledges that yes he'll take on the case but i think it helps that he sees the cash in front of him i think that's certainly i i do also love uh i wish i had paid attention to this since the beginning so it's a classic uh the matchbook right that the matchbook clue is a classic of a murder genre uh or mystery genre i should say similar to how uh it's hard to have a horror movie or thriller with cell phones yeah like without analog phones it's hard to have a murder mystery without matchbooks yeah exactly um so they show up from time to time in the rockford files and i many times it feels like it's a really good joke right like this one was like maybe there's a clue and it's a box

full of matchbooks like like yeah she collects matchbooks from every place that she goes how could there possibly be a clue yeah yeah there's there's too much here for this to be a clue um so yeah anyways i just wanted to point that out. On a show that is written, this is one of those episodes that's pretty written. Like, pretty much all this stuff is going to come up again as something relevant. So there's very little extraneous stuff in this episode. I like the comment about the employee benefit plan including catching murders good stuff so where does jim go when he needs to start an investigation of course to his good friend dennis who says

you're chasing your tail jim and jim's leaping through the folder but becker is saying there's no case here there's clearly an overdose um there was equipment uh that she used was well used and had her fingerprints on it. Jim counters with, well, she had no needle marks. That doesn't track. And this is like some maybe she decides to clean up that needle marks heal. Then she has a downswing. Yeah.

Boom goes to the big sleep or goes for the long sleep. That's what. Yeah. Yeah. The report says that the cause of death was anaphylactic shock shock which may be like if she wasn't used to drugs in her system yes and becker says you're reaching uh and asked him whose money he's wasting on this and jim says probably my own that's good this is a solid jim and dennis scene it's very good. And yet only the second best Jim and Dennis scene in the episode. Yes.

There's a montage of Jim walking around and interviewing people, showing them Arlie's picture, interspersed with gags. There's a gag where there's some, some youth who don't seem to want to talk to him until he agrees to throw the football around with them. Then he leaves rubbing his shoulder. Uh,

and then we end with a gag of him trying, like just walking down the street and this tiny fluffy dog starts biting his ankle and he can't get away. I thought for sure that dog was in some way meaningful, but no, uh, it's just good, good stuff.

One thought I had was that this is a good, like trade craft episode. Yes. Kind of in like a low key way. Like there's nothing was that this is a good like tradecraft episode. Yes. Kind of in like a low key way. Like there's nothing like, whoa, like look at that cool thing he did. But there's a lot of like, oh, this is just what he has to do. This is how he does investigations. There's comments.

We'll get to them when we get to them. But there are comments that he makes that it's just like, no, this is just like I don't have answers yet. This isn't I'm processing things that's how we work and throughout there's a lot of like um yeah just this is what we have to try we have a box full of matchbooks we got to look at all the matchbooks right like there's no magic trick here yeah but i'm now realizing that this is part of his part of that this is the point we don't see all the time where he just strikes out on just asking people about someone and occasionally gets bitten by a dog like i i love how love how persistent he is with the kids as if like you know like you would think okay we

gotta write a scene where he's investigating somebody getting a drug overdose let's go to a cd bar let's go to he's He's out in a park with kids playing a pickup game of football. And kids like 12-year-olds. Yeah, 12-year-olds. And he's like, look at this picture. You didn't look close enough. But it's great. Well, we do cut to

Jim finally striking. Well, he was striking out, so finally getting a hit, I guess. Talking to a sidewalk artist played by Bill Moomy. Bill Moomy. With an excellent 70s dropout beard and sunglasses situation. He does recognize the picture. She lived in his apartment building.

He hit on her a couple of times. Nothing happened. And that's all he knows. Jim asks if she was seeing anyone else. He mentions there's one dude with a car and then asked Jim if he's a cop. Jim's like, would it make a difference? That's good. But yeah, she's dead.

He doesn't want to get involved. So Jim has already made some cracks about his impressionist artwork. Yes. And he's like, I just paint what I feel, man. When he says he doesn't want to get involved, Jim looks at one of his big paintings and asks how much it is. 200. I'll give you 10. Deal.

And he jumps up out of his chair to get it. So good. This, of course, is in return for telling him about this dude with the car. He says he's a big guy, drove a fancy foreign car. Jim asks what model, and I felt so seen in this moment. Right, this is so perfect.

When this guy goes, I don't know, I'm not into cars, you know, materialistic crap. So he's established as the anti-Jim Rockford. Yes, apologies to our fans who are into cars nothing wrong with being into things we in fact appreciate that you keep us on our toes but uh yeah so that's a funny moment jim gives him his card tells him to give him a call if he ever sees this car again maybe you can get the license plate number. And he starts walking away and we end on a good. Oh, hey, you forgot your painting. Well, not yet.

But I'm trying. So good. So good. All right. We go back to Jim telling Sarah that she owes him $100 for his time. The gas and the shoe leather are free. She's like, what? No, you can't stop now.

He doesn't have anything to go on. He put up some feelers. He'll tell her if anything happens, but he can't take her money when he doesn't have anything to follow up. Now, I just want to point out this, this is, I'm going to attribute this to Jackie Cooper. I'm going to say that, uh, he's got a wry sense of humor here. Uh, and like maybe, maybe every, maybe this doesn't mean anything to anyone but me. But when he said I put out some feelers, there is a giant painting of a giant butterfly with giant feelers right behind. I didn't notice that.

But yeah. Nice. So I just like I thought somebody did that. Right. Like that was my like set dressing white of I don't I don't know. Anyways, I just wanted to point that out. Someone had to decide that they were standing there in that spot with that thing behind them in that shop.

Yeah, exactly. And I just want to tell whoever that is, it was appreciated. Well, Sarah has something. She has a letter that arrived for Orly that she opened, even though, you know, as Jim says, you know, it's a federal crime. Yeah, yes. Not that Jim wasn't going to do that anyways but yeah but yeah it's a letter uh thanking orally for all that money uh and saying that this person would like to see her again if she ever came there

came their way and signed oscar sarah looked it up oscars is a cafe 50 miles up the coast uh you know maybe we should uh do that jim asked if she had a car and sarah says she was saving up for one but then she said she lost all the she lost all that money like she lost oh yeah it's because she lost the money for it or something something like that yeah the upshot is there was some something strange where she was saving up for one and then she wasn't and it was odd about The reasoning didn't seem to make sense. So Orla Lisa then mentions the place that Jim can take her for lunch after they check out Oscars. Poor Oscars.

Oscars would be a great place for lunch. Well, they have the best soup, as we learned. Yeah. I do love this. This is a good scene. So they go to Oscars. Part of the Rockford Files, everybody a Character characters. Yeah. This guy's a big Everybody's a Character

character. Henry Slate. Yeah. Oh, he's in Pete's Dragon. Anyway, um, it says Fisherman number two. So, Oscar, it's like you anamorphed Rocky and

who am I thinking of? Mel mel's diner something like that yeah um it's just i don't know it's very funny um yeah so he's looking at this picture and he says um he says maybe i can help you out it all depends yeah on what you got a portrait of andrew jackson maybe i could come across with something. Hey, who knows? How about Lincoln? I'll tell you what. Make it a Hamill. What are you two talking about?

Money. If you could make soup like you negotiate, this place would be packed. Thank you. And he says, look, the reason that there's no one there is because it's places in the middle of nowhere, which reminds me of when Rocky opened his truck stop. Yes. He makes Jim taste his soup to prove how good it is.

But yes, he's willing to take a Hamilton. What's that, a five? Hamilton is a ten. Hamilton is a ten. What's a five? Lincoln. Lincoln's a five. Oh, right.

Washington's a one. I was like, Lincoln's a one. No, I don't see cash. It's 2023. I don't see cash it's it's 2023 i don't see cash yeah who sees cash anymore i for just a moment there i was like wait who's on the hundred but it's all about it's all about benjamin's yeah i was recently handed a hundred dollar bill for i sold some brag yeah i sold some will spell to to a retail store and they paid me with like a $100 bill. And I was like, how do I use this? What am I supposed to do with this?

Yeah. What do I do with it? Let's go. So I just wanted to explain that situation there. That's in the business. We call that a humblebrag. Yeah. It's a little bit of a half a day's work.

That's true. All right. rag yeah it's a little bit it's a half a day's work that's true all right so um oscar says that orally sent him 20 bucks as like a thank you after he treated her to some to soup in a sandwich because she dropped in she looked like she needed it um so they ask him you know interrogate him about the circumstances is about six months ago six months is about six weeks ago um it was night it's strange because you walked in but the turn off to the highway is like 10 miles away or something so yeah yeah you know where did she come from um he tastes his own soup and goes damn that's good i love that the the story of the soup

is this waiter comes out with two soups. And he takes one of the bowls of soup away from the waiter and brings it around to Jim. So it looks like he's giving Jim a free soup. And Jim tries it. But then like a little while later, he just picks up the spoon and eats his own soup. And it's just good. It's just great. So he got busy and she ended up leaving with Lobster Bisque.

There was a guy in the corner booth who was having Lobster Bisque. That's what he remembers. Midweek, could have been any night. Definitely wasn't the weekend. We then go to Jim's lead paying off where the artist, our street artist, has given him a call apparently. Yes. Jim gives him another wisecrack about his art. You need a permit to carry a thing like this?

I told you, I paint what I feel. You must not feel well. He says he'll sell that one to Jim for 50 bucks. Why would I give you 50 bucks for that? Out of gratitude for the license number I have. And Jim says it does have a certain gross charm. So he gets the license number, gives him the money, but he does say, and this is a chef kiss Jim Rockford line. You realize, of course, if you're scamming me,

I'll climb your easel and break all your brushes. Yes. Good one. Jim calls Becker for a favor to run down a license number. Why should he help? Because if Jim finds out who killed Oralee, Becker will feel silly reading about it in the paper. This is the third best Bart and Becker Jim.

This is the one with, I'm trying to remember, I didn't put it in my notes, but he's very exasperated with Jim at this point. But this isn't the one where he gets more and more exasperated. No, that's the next one. Yeah, yeah, that's the good one. All right so we then go to jim in a cable knit sweater um yeah something that the police wear uh i was like this this cardigan screams lapd he's knocking on this door so he's run down the license plate number uh he's claiming to be lapd lieutenant rockford and he flashes a

badge he's come to see dirk schaefer who is in a hell of a sport coat with a somehow the loudest white tie i've ever seen um i made a note that apparently he was at home alone with his jacket fully buttoned which i thought was very was a move. He does say I was about to go out. So yeah, you get the feel that he's about to take off, but yeah. But I thought that was funny. We, we know that he's some kind of operator because he immediately turns on a tape recorder behind his little car while, and then asks, who did you say you were? So we get on tape, Jim saying Rockford, Lieutenant Rockford, LAPD.

This is a reminder to all of us to keep a tape recorder within arm's reach at all times. He asks about Orly, says that Dirk Schaefer, he's the best bunko artist in city limits. What scam were you working with her? Dirk asks, what's his point? She was murdered and he's the only one they can connect her with. They have a little bit of tough guy ish banter before Dirk kicks them out. He says, if you don't have a warrant,

I have a lawyer who's an expert on police harassment. You better get out of here. Jim says, well, he better, he better do his homework on murder one charges. Cause you're going to choke on one. And then Jim leaves and we get Dirk playing back the tape so that we see that he is noting the name rockford lieutenant rockford i guess sarah's waiting in the in the firebird uh

asking what he got he says he didn't really get anything but he's your average clean cut bunco creep and then refers to him as a real brass cupcake. Oh, exquisite. Exquisite. I need to first figure out what that means and second use that. So good. Brass cupcake. So he didn't really get anything definitive but he's certain that Dirk Schaefer knew Aura Lee. Yeah.

The exchange there is a good one. They do this a few times in this episode where he says he knew Aura Lee and she goes, he said that? He goes, no, I said that. Right. What do you think about this play of the LAPD for the bunco artist? I do feel like this feels a little not the best play.

Yeah, not the best move. So there's a few things that like makes this work different in the color of or or in the shadow of later rockford's right because who would be a good bunco artist and not know about jim there's a sense that there's a lot of crime in the city he's not famous but like yeah yeah i guess it's true i shouldn't i shouldn't do that but yeah i agree like um it's heavy-handed right right you know when this guy see through it he did right but like jim would jim know that this guy would see through it and then the other bit is well what would he do right like so you know sometimes we get these things with jim where it's like is nothing is perfectly crafted it's it's just going to get

him there long enough to get something and then he leaves like i just i love those scenes where he goes in on a con and part way through it becomes obvious to the the person he's he's conning that he's not that's not what he's there for he's like that's okay i got what i need anyways it just walks out you know like that's um uh so yeah jim is just here to size him up but yeah it's not the smartest play. Yeah, I think maybe his read is like this will be intimidating because I know he's doing underhanded stuff. But it turns out that he's not an angel. If he was an angel kind of character, this probably would have been more effective.

This case would have been solved if he was an angel character. He'd have been done with it by now. Yeah. Yeah, I just it struck now. Yeah. Yeah. I just, it struck me as a little bit, I mean, it's,

it's a fun scene and it clearly gets the plot going, but, um, and it's important, I guess that he says that he's from the LAPD because as we've seen our next scene, now this guy, Dirk has a bit of a,

you know what the cops don't like is people pretending to be a cop. Yeah. Right. So he has like a threat over Jim now. Yeah. So that's kind of important, but yeah, it just struck me as a play.

I don't see him do very often. And every so often it's like, maybe this wasn't the right approach, Jim. I even wondered about it. Cause we'll certainly in a, in a bit, we're going to get one of our favorite things from the Rockford files is going

to show up a little bit later, but I was like, wow, he's got a fake badge. I wouldn't have expected that of Jim. Like, I would think that that would not be a play that he did often enough to have a fake badge on hand or something.

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 uh me at my website dig a thousand holes.com that's dig one zero zero zero holes.com or you can get my sword and sorcery fiction and games at worlds without master.com that's worlds plural master singular if you want to engage with me on the social medias the best place to go right now is mastodon at epidia at

dice.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, NDP design.com. That's the hub for all my stuff on the internet, including all my, uh, 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 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. Well, that all said, it clearly did not work out because when Jim goes home, Dirk is waiting for him on the couch with his gun out. Still with his buttoned-up sport coat. They have a little banter.

LAPD, huh? And Jim's like, so I lied. Yeah, exactly. But he says, all right, I'm going to tell you what I know, just so we're clear. You know, I picked her up on Sunset Boulevard once. I liked her, took her to dinner a couple of times, but she turned out to be a squirrel. I'm not quite sure what that means. I mean, from context, yes.

She said she had something going on that would make her a lot of bread. Then she asked me if I could get her a couple of dime bags. Said she was getting strung out in the cape, you know? You didn't sell her any. Hey, pal, she asked me for it. There's a guy who owed me a favor. He slipped me a couple of dime bags. I gave them to her.

Jim asks Dirk, why are you telling me this now? And Dirk says, I have a lot of things going on. It hurts my business to have a fake cop snooping around. So you better dummy up quick. And he has his tape recorder and he replays the Rockford Lieutenant Rockford clip. And Jim just spreads his hands with it. You made your point. So this I do feel is a nice like realism bit where it's like this guy.

I mean, we we will learn shocker. We'll learn that this guy is willing to kill. But his read of the situation is I can scare this guy off right yeah you know i don't need to go to extreme measures that will be better for me than like coming after him with a gun right now right like that kind of thing so jim and telling sarah what happened uh asked if he believed if jim believed dirk and he says that the story held together but he's a con artist so I don't really believe it some expert knowledge

it's time to go back to square one and go through all the stuff that Sarah reclaimed from Aura Lee's and specifically what's in that cigar box Jim pulls out the Underground Railroad newspaper clipping again and asks about it and Sarah's like I've never heard her mention it,

you know, mention that band or anything. But then he turns it over and on the reverse side is an obituary. And this is where we get all that good banter about what's important. Yeah. Sarah, would you stop saying, what does it mean and is it important?

I'm just thinking out loud. Why don't you just admit you don't know what it means? Because when you charge $200 a day, you don't go around admitting things like that. It's well written and well paid, too, because it's a lot of like, he'll say something and she's like, what does that mean? He's like, I don't know. I'm not giving it. I'm not James Gardner, right? Yeah, listen, watch the show. Just watch the episode. Yeah, it's good. It's good.

It feels very genuine, right? Like it feels like, yeah, yeah. Like this is what this process is like. You have to back off or not yelling at her to back off. But like, we just got to work through some things here. We don't have answers yet. I have to speculate about some things before I can know anything definitive. He also refers to himself as a qualified 200 a day expert, which is another great line.

Yeah, no, it's good. It's like he's letting her in a little bit on like how things actually work. All right. He calls Becker and asks, who's Boris? Oh, yeah. Which is the obituary. And here's here's the number one scene. Yeah.

And that's just goes, why no? And I'm like, how does Dennis just know off the top of his head? But of course, it's because it was a high profile thing because of the senator. Right. So that makes sense. But yeah, he tells him he shouldn't give this stuff out. But then he gets increasingly frustrated. Yes.

As he fills Jim in on the situation. He's the guy that the senator hit. They closed the investigation when they determined he wasn't at fault it was an accident um he tells him where it was and gets and jim gets the date june 5th thanks dennis uh listen jim you've used up this year's supply of favors and don't call for another one and hangs up so good it is such a good yeah the escalation is um it's subtle too like it's not like uh it's not like he gets up to like screaming or anything like that it's just like a nice short until he's like you know i don't know it's really good jim then asks sarah the details of when Aura Lee started working for her.

They determine that this guy, Boris Danik, was run over by this senator less than a mile from Oscar's restaurant two days before Aura Lee started working for Sarah. Seems like these things are connected. And she says, ooh, this ain't no flounder so jim slides into murdoch headquarters while there's some kind of press thing going on and just kind of sidles up behind robert weber while he's facing some cameras uh we see him get the license plate number from his red buick he just kind of sneakily starts whispering in his ear i need to i need to talk to you. This is important. And he gets brushed off. You need to talk to my secretary. I don't have time right now, et cetera. And he says, would you like me to step in front of these cameras and ask how you know

Oralee Benton? He gets a little look and then he's like, my office is upstairs. I'll meet you in a few minutes. We get a uncommon on the Rockford F. Walk and talk. Yes. Which I appreciate. I don't know. There's this, there's unintentional resonance with kind of, you know, like West wing style, like right.

Right. Political drama, walk and talk. Obviously this is presaging that, but it's, um, I think we can assume that, that,

uh, what's his face saw this episode and thought that I'm going to base an entire show on this. I think so. I think that's true. We'll have like some sort of political people and they'll just walk and talk yeah it'll be great what is his face uh aaron sarkin that is his face that's his face well so here we get this situation where jim just wants to know what actually happened and the senator is playing defense because he doesn't want to say what actually happened

for multiple reasons. But he also takes the position that Jim must be from his political opponent. So he's like, you can tell Dick Stockton that you're wasting, he's wasting his time mudslinging against me. There's a bit in the preview montage where he's like, I'm endowed dirty as the rest of them.

And Jim says, I guess he's the guy you're running against. Well, you're well informed. I love their chemistry is so fun. They're like antagonistic clashing. It's just really fun to watch. Yeah. He continues to deny that he knows Orly. Jim wants a straight answer or he's going to go take a theory

to the police of he picked her up and then hit this guy and is trying to cover it up or whatever. Jim's a little vague about like his conclusions. I think he's just trying to get something. He's going to see what pressure makes the senator respond. I mean, this is probably another reason for why, again, written, why we get all the talk about like, I don't have answers.

I'm just spitballing. I'm still thinking out loud, right? Like, yeah, because that's what he's doing. He's just like, I'm just stirring things up and seeing. Seeing, seeing what comes out. Yeah. Yeah. The senator threatens Jim with his political connections.

By the time he digs out of all the lawsuits, they'll both be too old to care. By now, Jim has gotten in an elevator. There was some business with someone coming out of the elevator and telling the senator he needed something and waiting for him later or whatever. So there's this open elevator there. Jim gets in and then goes, that might work, except for one thing. You don't know who I am. And that's as the elevator doors close. Primo moment.

Very good. Good, good. Back to talking to Sarah. Jim doesn't know what he's got, really. But the senator did drop that he was in Santa Barbara the night before it happened. Because he was like, look, all that happened, I was driving from Santa Barbara. You know, this guy stepped out in front of my car, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he dropped that he was in Santa Barbara the night before it happened.

And they look through the cigar box and they find a matchbook with a Santa Barbara address from the Seacrest Motel. We then go to them checking it out, and Jim is making business cards. Yes! There it is. It has been a minute since we've seen a business card press. Oh, so good. And a classic. The person he's with questioning him about his

tactics, and him explaining his tactics so that we know what he's doing. Yeah. Fraud tax burglary? Which are we gonna be? You really cover all the bases. I don't know. Dep's doing. Yeah. Fraud tax burglary? What are we going to be? You really cover all the bases. I don't know. Depends on the guy.

Probably taxes. People really get shook up when you mention taxes. Sarah, funny. I think I'd clam up. And he gives her her card. She's going to be his assistant. And it's like, State Board of Investigation Fraud Tax Burglary.

He's going to be the boss. So this is a good joke here right joke kind of right joke in the cut ish where she says i would clam up and then we cut to i don't talk to tax men i did that once ended up getting out of it all the way back to 1970 i think you better talk with my accountant currently we're assigned to burglary the pivot to burglary is good so he runs a line about tracking down a ring of car thieves or something and they think that they've been using this hotel as one of their uh like one of their spots when they're running their their their thievery um but they got a break on one of the cars with the license number so he wants to see if they have it on their file for the fifth or the sixth and the guy's's like, OK, you can take a look.

So we go to them looking through the registration cards at the motel. I'm trying to remember. I feel like the last couple, not that I've been in a hotel regularly, but, you know, we've been in a couple of hotels since the pandemic. I feel like they stopped asking for license plate numbers. I guess it probably depends. But the most recent one i've been in i think did but i think that's like uh we're going to tow whoever it isn't on this list

right from our parking lot more than this is for any other reason yeah i feel like it's this kind of vestigial thing for hotels that sometimes because like if you're in a rental or something, you're like, Oh, let me go get in there. Like, don't worry about it. Yeah.

Yeah. We're not going to use it for anything. Right. But at this point is very important because we need to have records for investigators to go through. Yes. A little something for your, your Jim Rockford.

Right. They have gone through, they pulled all the ones with Buicks. Sarah has called and they all check out as real people. Jim says he has these great lines about how people are creatures of habit. And so, sure, he wouldn't have used his real name, but people use their real first name and a different last name, or they use their middle name, or they transpose two letters so that they can claim it was a mistake if they're ever called out on it. You'd be surprised how often you can kind of triangulate on the the truth but they do not find what they're looking for maybe what we're looking for isn't here and jim says well maybe or maybe someone took the registration card what are we

going to do now i'm going to bluff isn't that what you just did and we leave that hanging as we cut to the senator in his buick parking in a parking garage. And then Jim just kind of appears from around a column. So one of the staffers got Jim's license number. So he knows that he's Jim Rockford. And Jim says, that was a real clever move. But Jim called him and said he had evidence and wanted to talk to him about it. So what fabrication have you come up with? and wanted to talk to him about it.

So what fabrication have you come up with? So Jim claims he has the registration card and wants him to come to the police with Jim and explain everything he knows about Oralee Banton and her murder. So our senator now goes to, I was with someone, but I don't know who Oralee is. So he's like, I still don't know who that person was. I was with a staffer. And you know, it wouldn't be good for anyone if that information came out,

but I also don't know anything about this woman and therefore about her murder. But he's like, okay, I see the shakedown here. How much do you want for that registration card? And Jim just, just snap comes back a hundred thousand.

Are you joking? I only joke with my friends. He says he can't come up with a hundred, but he can give them 10. If you didn't know Orly Benton, why are we dickering over a hotel registration card? And this is when he says, okay,

I was with one of my campaign staffers here. And then he offers Jim 10,000 now and another 10 after the election. And Jim leaves on a, I'll call you. And then he drives out. They kind of have a significant glance. And there's some good, again, a good facial acting on Robert Weber where I get the feeling where that's the moment where he's like, huh, something is going on here. Where Jim, instead of going for it, says, I'll call you.

Because if it was really a shakedown, he'd probably just go for it now, right? Yeah. And the number is too, too high. Right. Yeah. Jim, Jim says a hundred thousand, not because he thinks he can get a hundred thousand,

but because he doesn't want to get any money for a thing he doesn't have. Right. Right. He wants to set the price high enough that the Senator won't take it because he doesn't literally doesn't have the card to make the exchange. Right. And then, uh,

that's gotta be suspicious too. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah yeah so you get the sense that maybe he's starting to think about what is actually going on here yeah we have a good jim in bed another new shot of jim in bed i don't think we've ever seen this one through the doorway very good one with the phone on the ground yeah it's on the ground and what seems to be the foot of the bed and he like flops over to answer it. It's good. He's also not wearing a shirt, which is very rare. He's usually wearing like a night shirt or a pajama thing or a t-shirt or like an undershirt. I think this is the only time I've seen his unclothed upper body in the show.

But Sarah calls. It's early morning. Did you see the papers? Senator Murdoch killed himself last night. They found his clothes and his car at the beach, and they're looking for his body. We go to the beach, where I guess they're checking it out for themselves. We do see police, you know, conducting a search. Jim tells Sarah about their conversation, but says that the senator didn't seem that worried.

And I told him I'd call him, so he had an out. Why would he kill himself before I call back? Like I pushed him pretty hard, but that seems, this seems extreme. And Sarah's like, well, he must've been murdered. Jim has a soft, like, I don't want to jump to conclusions. Yeah. Yeah. And Sarah's like, we both know he must've been murdered. That's the only thing that makes sense. And Jim's like, okay,'re right i do think that yeah this is a mirror of the earlier one where the thing is like i didn't say that and she goes yeah you did okay okay i did so jim wants to go to dirk shaffer's and do something he doesn't want to do what's that break and enter and then we have a ominous motorcycle appearance yeah on the like bluff over them as they leave in the Firebird.

Been waiting, been waiting. Yeah, we go again, just a little tradecraft element where Jim makes a phone call to Dierks to make sure he's not there before he goes up, picks the lock, slowly moves through the space, looks through a box, doesn't find anything. Then he does find a pair of shoes with sand on the soles. And then he finds a Polaroid of Dirk in a drawer. So I guess the guy has a picture of himself. Awfully convenient. Okay.

I keep it in a drawer. And then he looks under the drawer and finds the registration card stuck underneath. Yeah. And has a smile of triumph. there is something about these shows and having picture people having pictures of themselves which is very funny like again this happens on kalimbo all the time where like guys will have pictures of themselves on their desk and stuff like that yeah so for us we know we can we can attach a space to a person

right like that's why we have that but i'm like in real life people have pictures of like if it's them is them and someone else generally right yeah it's like it's them and on a yacht with a friend right or them with their partner or yeah something yeah um not just a headshot of themselves yes But they need a picture of this guy for the next plot beat. But he also significantly finds the stolen registration card. We go downstairs. Our Firebird exits, pursued by a motorcycle. And then we have this great helicopter shot, overhead helicopter shot of the motorcycle following the Firebird as they go down an access road and then onto the highway.

Following the Firebird as they go down an access road and then onto the highway. And there's a little bit of voiceover about after the police arrest Dirk Schaefer, they'll find out the whole story, but there's something that they have to do first to make it all come together. But yeah, this was the kind of what I mentioned. There was some memorable motorcycle stuff. This is the beginning of that, I think. This shot is very memorable. They do go back to oscars jim wants him to to pick out uh lobster bisque out of these pictures and they haggle to haggle to a hamilton

for this one uh sarah says come on jim it's my money but yeah so he points out the guy that orally left left with and sure enough it is dirk shaffer so now they're back on the road going to the police we see the motorcycle still in pursuit and we get a good classic jim theorizes in order to tell us what happened so the senator picks up orally yeah they have the night together she's there when he hits the wino she goes to oscars she gets picked up by Dirk Schaefer at Oscars. She innocently tells him the story of like, Oh, this crazy thing happened to me. Yeah.

Schaefer sees the story in the papers about the Senator hitting, you know, being in this accident and puts two and two together, shakes down Murdoch. Um, so now he's blackmailing Murdoch about it. Probably gave her the 2,600 bucks so that she would owe him or so that she wouldn't leave town.

Something to keep him, her attached to him. Then maybe she figures out what's happening, says she'll go to the cops. He kills her. When Jim comes around, the senator realizes that Schaefer must have killed Oralee. Because otherwise, why would this guy keep asking about this woman who died? So he goes to Schaefer to end the deal because now he doesn't have the leverage anymore because she's the proof that he you know that's actually what happened right so she's dead yeah he doesn't have proof goes to shaver to end the deal and then he gets killed it seems like a bad thing to tell this guy that i'm going to the cops yes but then the

firebird starts having some problems starts slowings slowing down. Uh-oh. We know how this pans out. We have another shot of an ominous motorcycle. Jim goes under the hood. The carburetor is suddenly full of junk, right? Something like that. Yeah. And that's when the motorcycle comes by and there's a shot.

And we enter our motorcycle chase scene. For a cold, hard killer, which he probably isn't. Like, this guy's probably. Well, I guess he killed her. To make it look like an overdose, that's pretty cold. That's pretty cold, yeah. So anyways, the point is, he's taking a sloppy shot here. He's coming down pretty fast on the motorcycle. But that's fine.

So Jim's on the run. Yeah, this area is really interesting. So they're kind of on like a rocky bluff overlooking a beach so there's a lot of terrain involved with going up and down through rocks um keeping out of sight though she's biotic she can definitely handle it no surprise the motorcycle guy is dirk and he's going back and forth along the top trying to get a shot on them and they're trying to avoid him and everything. There's good cat and mouse

physical gamesmanship. There's a moment where they're underneath kind of this archway of rock and we see that Jim puts together a plan. So he has their count to 30 slowly and then starts screaming. And then he climbs up the rocks, manages to pop up behind Dirk as he's looking over the side, trying to find them to take a shot.

Then he hears the screaming. So that attracts his attention. He tries to get to where he can see her screaming. And that's when Jim sneaks up behind him. I'm expecting tackles him. Yeah. Right. You know, grabs him grabs his arms and

throws him sideways something like that but no smarter than that he reaches underneath and pulls what i i don't know how motorcycles work i assume the throttle yeah pulls something that makes the motorcycle go forward and so since dirirk is sitting on the motorcycle, he also goes forward, hurdles over this cliff, does like a flip in the air, and lands on the beach. And then we cut down his helmet.

The visor has rolled up or broken off or something. And it is, of course, Dirk Schaefer. And then we cut to, don't worry, everyone. Jim's not a murderer. Dirk Schaefer's gonna live huh yeah if you call 20 to life living oh this final scene first of all the incredible crew neck sweater that he's fishing in yes remember in our last our last episode i think i mentioned that there was a lot of red shirts, like a disproportionate amount of men wearing very bright red.

I guess that one happens after this one. Yeah. So this was just the entree. Yes. If I can share this with you. Oh, good. It is a long-sleeve crew neck red sweater. Loading, loading.

Oh, yeah. loading. Oh yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. As Jim is casting, they're at like a river or something. He's fishing. Sarah's sitting with a picnic basket. So we're circling back to third, you know,

our first, our first scene here. Um, she is telling him that he missed his calling. He should be on a tuna boat and they have some banter about catching tuna is too easy. And then she says, do you want to eat these sandwiches or break them up and use them for bait? This must be her sandwich. There's no crust.

And then Jim pulls out the other sandwich. Also, no crust. But he likes the crust. She must have forgot. These two. These two. Sarah says that they make a good team. They're two for two that must

improve jim's average and jim says well on his own sometimes he gets lucky and solves something we uh segue into the more romantic part of our scene where jim says that he's ready for dessert and sarah leans over and gives him a what i term a juicy kiss in my notes. It's not bad. It's not bad at all. Not exactly what I had in mind. Oh, I want to get back to that, you understand. Just I think we ought to square up accounts. It's not that I don't trust you, sweetheart.

It's just, well, in the past, we have had our little problem, right? Yes. So she hands him like an envelope and he smiles because it looks thick. And then he takes out a card, which is one of my new all-time favorites. I'm going to send you these. One of those, sorry, I missed your birthday cards. It is, yeah, this little angelic cherub that says, I'm sorry.

And thenim opens it and i forgot your birthday is crossed off and i don't have your money is written so good oh so good and jim just says cute card the police took the money turns out if something was gained by extortion it doesn't you know you can't keep it yeah and she has a good line it's kind of like finders keepers losers weepers and we're the losers how are we going to pay me installment plan like last time and then she leans down and they have another passionate kiss they separate and jim has a big smile on his face and says, I want the pink slip to your car. Freeze frame, end of episode.

Oh, perfect. Perfect ending. I know why these two don't get together. Yeah. Though I would, I'm kind of like, I wouldn't, I mean, I guess we'll see them again for the first time eventually. Yes. But I wouldn't have been surprised if she ended up coming back a couple more times.

There's a trivia bit on IMDb that suggests that they were looking to make her a reoccurring role throughout the series. But her contract with Universal was soon to expire. Then she did The Bionic Woman and that took off. Yeah. So if trivia sections on imdb are to be believed right it would have been interesting i they probably i don't know if they would have done beth like if that were the case right because this is parallel that's in the show like yeah we also have beth so there's there's only room for multiple recurring love interests

um but uh yeah i just i think their chemistry is really nice and a little different than jim for multiple recurring love interests. Um, but, uh, yeah, I just, I think their chemistry is really nice and a little different than Jim has with Beth or that Jim has had with anyone else. There's a little bit of depth to it that I appreciate. The, the age gap, it's not as bad as Robert Weber and Aura Lee, but it's,

it's like only, it's like five years young, like five years less than, or something like that. I did the math early on, but, um, I'm not sure how different that is from any of the other. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We haven't we haven't been doing that with any of them, so it doesn't doesn't quite matter. But yeah, I yeah, they have very good chemistry.

I like the antagonism is too strong of a word because he's definitely had more antagonistic relationships, um, with people in general and with, with love interests in particular. But like, you know, the fact that she can't pay him, uh,

and that she's kind of like playing for becoming a partner in his, his job. Yeah. That would have been fun to see that play out like in another episode or two, right? Like something just a little more of like, um, I can see there being another episode where like,

she ends up either like getting like married or something, or she ends up moving or like she ends up in a state where it's like, and now she's out of the picture for some reason, or she ends up being like Rockford. I can't do this with you anymore. Yeah. I can see there being kind of a little trilogy kind of like with Megan. Yeah.

Yeah. A bit of a, and now we're done vibe that we're not going to get here. And obviously it's not going to happen, but that's all just extrapolating out stuff that is not in the show. Yeah. This is, I think,

like I said before, this was a surprisingly fun episode. Again, not because I have low expectations of the show, but because I didn't really know what to expect. Nice and tight for the most part. Very tight, yeah. There's a couple things where they make sense for the narrative that they're telling. But my sense of Jim as a character is a little, there's a little discontinuity. But again, early, like first season.

Yeah, yeah. Early Rockford. characters a little there's a little discontinuity but again early like first season yeah yeah early rock but yeah it's very tight i think without feeling uh without feeling artificial yeah yeah but there's uh like maybe one or two spots there's a man if i if i knew more about this mathematical theorem i could make this draw this very nice parallel but there's this there's this mathematical theorem that's uh about you know what let's ignore it for now maybe maybe i'll learn more about it and then come up again bring it up next time it's just this thing like if you have a ball if you have a sphere and you have a bunch of hair on that sphere uh you can't brush all the hair in one direction like one hair has to stay out of place it's there's just something and i can't remember what i'm this is why i'm i'm i'm hesitant to use it because i like i can't explain what the exact thing is but it's like it's proven that it cannot

be perfect there's no shape that you could sweep around a sphere that would put everything in the same direction. Right. Or something like that. And I feel like murder mysteries are the same. Like there's you could do everything you can, but there's going to be a moment of convenience. Yeah. Just to make it work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To snap things into place. For sure. It's just how those moments are handled. And as per usual in the show, they're handled well, generally. Yeah. Yeah, the soup guy, Oscar the soup guy is... Oh, so good.

...is fun. Robert Webber was great in it. So he, so a little trivia on his, so his character, well, it's not really trivia. So he's in this episode, he dies in the third act, right? And then he's in the deep blue sleep where he's kind of the, he's like the crooked business guy. He's not really mobbed up, but he's like, he's running his own kind of business, like underhanded business empire. And he gets killed in the third act. And so in the Oracle War of Kashmir suit, they were actually going to originally cast the guy who ended up being the prosecutor in.

Oh, yes. So help me, God. Yes. The voice of Kit. Can't remember his name now. Anyway, he was originally cast for that role. He got injured on the first day of shooting, apparently. And so they recast it into Robert Weber.

And that broke his streak of being murdered in the third act of the show. That's good. Yeah. It's a little fun thing there anyway yeah he's great i love his chemistry with jim um good dennis stuff yeah yeah good episode good episode a little less unique on its own merits versus um say say farewell to jennifer i think just because we were doing them kind of as a thematic pair yeah yeah um because that one has that whole noir influence that's very strong and memorable and also jim goes out of town and like yeah hector alessandro's in it like there's a lot of stuff on that one that like really is sticks it in my memory and then this one is like real solid i i was surprised with how much i liked it but it's not as much of a departure from the overall

rockford files deal since its first episode we can call it foundational foundational i mean this is probably a little more in line with later episodes than some of the other first season ones. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. In fact, if you showed it to me and asked me what season it was in, I would, I would not guess first. Yeah. I don't think,

I don't know if I would be good at that game anyways. So it doesn't really, I would, I would have to go by like, like costuming cues. Right. Yeah. Cause he has his, his like red and his red and blue striped shirt that he wears a lot

in the first couple of seasons is in this episode, a couple other things. Anyway. I mean, if we were car, if we were car people, we would be able to nail it on which fire bird he has. It's a good one. If it popped on, I'd be like, oh yeah, we should watch this one. Exactly. All right.

Well, goodbye, Jackie Cooper. Goodbye. Edward Laxo. Goodbye. Robert Weber. on i'd be like oh yeah we should watch this one exactly all right well goodbye jackie cooper goodbye edward laxo goodbye robert weber goodbye lindsey wagner and and oralee farewell and oralee farewell i guess it's time to really start digging and finding those last uh finding out what we're gonna do it feels like there's only a couple left. So we're getting there. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll do a status report probably in our next episode or two to, to, so that everyone knows what we're in for over the next,

I don't know, year. Yeah. Somewhere. Something like that. Depends on how much life intercedes. Right. But that all said,

we will of course be back next time with another episode of the Rockford files. Rockford. Lieutenant Rockford. said we will of course be back next time with another episode of the rockford files rockford lieutenant rockford