Two Hundred A Day - Episode 128: The Prisoner of Rosemont Hall

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

Nathan and Eppy head back to school in S4E20 The Prisoner of Rosemont Hall. Jim has a friend whose son is going to Rosemont College, and who seemed to come to him for help... and then denies that anything is wrong. Jim wants to get to the bottom of it, placing him in a mysterious situation involving a fraternity, a hard-nosed campus security chief, an adjust professor of journalism and middle eastern goons. Content warning: there's some central narrative beats concerning framing Jim with false rape accusations, and we parse out how those hit us as modern viewers. 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 Suffel's one-shot comic Sherlock Holmes and The Wonderland Conundrum is available at whatchareadingpress.com (http://whatchareadingpress.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

That number four you just picked up from Angela's Pizza? Some scouring powder fell in there. Don't eat it. Hey, I hope you try your phone machine before dinner. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. And we are at a inflection point in our show. This is usually the spot where we explain how we chose the episode, because we're not doing them in chronological order. Note to listeners, in case you haven't realized, we're not doing them in chronological order. And from this point out, it's unlikely that you're going to get a really good answer to this question.

Well, no, we have a very good answer to this question because well no we have a very good answer to this question which is from here on out we are how should i say this we are down to few enough episodes and movies to consider that it was worth like we didn't have a plan right um we never started the show there was no plan plan. But now there's a finite enough possibility space, if you will, that we actually could look at it holistically and make a plan. Because we, for the kind of the remainder of what we have to cover, we kind of wanted to pace it out so it's kind of like a satisfying rhythm. And we don't end up bunched up with a bunch of stuff that's all kind of the same at the end. Right? Yeah.

One end on a specific note yeah and then we worked backwards from there and we also spaced out the two-parters in the movies so that we don't end up with a situation where we're staring down the barrel of like three two-hour things that we have to do all in a row something like that not that we wouldn't be willing to do that no No, no. But it's a little bit of self-care. Yeah. And inside of that organization, we found a couple ways to prioritize episode order so that we start kind of closing things out on purpose. Because as you all have noticed over the last year or so run of the show we've been finding people or themes um to close out on and we're now in the home stretch there's only so many left yeah so we're kicking off this final phase by doing a focused look at the final episodes directed by ivan dixon who directed the last episode we did as well as many others He actually was one of the more prolific directors for the show. And we just somehow ended up not doing a high proportion of his episodes.

So we're going to do them now. And the next one on our list here is The Prisoner of Rosemont Hall, season four, episode 20. Nice. No, wait, what do you say? 420. What do you say for 420 blaze it blaze it there you go blaze it thank you thank you for being a gipper that the i didn't yep season four episode 20 blaze it the prisoner of rosemont hall exciting stuff uh so this one has a couple unique attributes production wise uh just on its own, this is another one in the long list of ones.

I don't really remember. Uh, though when the preview montage started, I was like, Oh, this scene is in this one. Cause I remembered a particular scene. So Ivan Dixon director,

um, teleplay by Stephen Cannell and David Chase. And I feel like a lot of the language is very can. Yeah. Uh, which I like, I feel like we haven't really seen is very cannily, which I like. I feel like we haven't really seen that as much in a while. So there's a lot of good phrasing that I think we'll be quoting here. So the teleplay by Cannell and Chase, story by Chaz Floyd Johnson, who was a series producer, and Marian Ray or Rhea.

Yeah, R-E-A. series producer and Marian Ray or Rhea. Yeah. A little mysterious unless you, unless you are diving into Garner lore as we tend to do, but because she doesn't have very many credits, she's not really a movie person in fact, or a TV person. This is her only writing credit. She ended up being an associate producer of the nineties movies and a producer on the final one.

She was James Garner's personal assistant uh for yes a very long time um there's a mention in uh 30 years of the rockford files that she was his assistant for like 30 years at the time of that writing i found another reference saying that she had been his personal assistant for 40 years. 14 years. 14 years. 4-0. 40 years. 40 years, yeah.

Sounds like they had a great relationship. Other than that, wasn't really able to find out much about her. So however it ended up working, her and Johnson had the story the story idea and then it went to candle and chase for writing. And here we are, uh, with, with the whole episode. It's when,

uh, when, uh, I was going to make a birds and the bees kind of joke, but when a candle and chase love each other very much, we get, we get lines like, Jake,

who are those yum yums? Yes. Uh, Hey Jake, who are those yum yums? Yes. Oh, this episode. And it's going to be right there in the preview montage. So this episode occurs on a college campus and there's a, we have a content warning up top that part of the plot are false rape accusations levels at Jim Rockford.

Yeah, they are. They come from villainous intent they i don't think they necessarily hit the same way now that they probably did at the time so i did feel some friction in those scenes of being like like i don't really love how this story telling is working right now yeah i you get the feeling that they expect the audience to be like, oh, yeah, that happens a lot, right? Like, which is not what you get to, like, today, we should know better than that.

Like, we should take people at their work when they make these sorts of accusations, which they do in this, which causes the problem, I guess is what the deal is. Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of in an environment where we know there is a problem especially in our legal system of casting doubt on women's experiences yeah leveraging that doubt for you know the the points of storytelling that it is that they use in this episode it's not like it's wrong or anything like it clearly is something that could happen. And it follows from the motivations of the characters involved. Right.

You'll see, but it's not a good look. It's not a good look. Yeah. These threats could have been made in a different way that wouldn't feed into a larger reactionary stereotype about not believing women. Yeah, exactly. So just to say that that's

in the episode and we'll probably talk about it a little bit in those scenes there's also a treatment of hazing that i think especially in the last 10 years um colleges have started treating hazing more seriously uh there have been actual cases of deaths from hazing that are you know of concern um and it's kind of treated not as a joke but kind of was like oh yeah that like i don't know it's it's kind of treated just as any other boys will be boys i don't know i mean it's all violent it's all tv violence i don't know what to say about that but yeah yeah as long as we're on the content wording thing um i think there's some brown face in this. So yeah, there was some brown face in a fake and a fake middle Eastern country.

Um, so, which again is just in seventies shows. Like there's a Colombo that has that as well. I Hector Elizondo's in brown face in that episode. Yeah. I'm like, it's a,

yeah. Again, a little, well, I guess a little bit to the show's credit here. There's a large panic involved around this, like, oh, what they do to people in those countries that turns out to be not to be true. Yeah, the show's kind of puncturing that panic as being out of step with reality, which so that's fine. Yeah.

Yeah. It just doesn't do it with actors of that of whatever imaginary nationality they've invented yes those are a lot of caveats for what's really a pretty fun episode so uh yeah i think we should go ahead and get into our preview montage right the preview montage um where i think we see all of these aspects yeah we do uh so my my notes on it are uh-oh the cops uh-oh the trailer uh-oh blood on the seat uh-oh angry mob yeah this is a uh not a preview montage that i don't think it gives us any look at like regular casts that are in this it's just dennis and and uh rocky i think uh and no hint at like a chaser or anything

like that but a lot of hints at like stakes and things are gonna go wrong yeah we get the shot of a woman staring at jim ripping her own shirt and yelling right and then that leads to the angry mob uh crowding in on him and that's the end of our preview montage so we do know we have that going in uh blood on the seat is a great um it's great claim it's a great atmospheric detail yeah uh the other detail from the preview montage is that someone's on a hellacious story so we get the sense there's some kind of something is happening that is causing all these reactions but we don't know what and we don't know who. 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 before every episode of 200 Today. 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. 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 Zuffel's one-shot comic Sherlock Holmes and the Wonderland Conundrum is available at whatyou'rereadingpress.com Shane Liebling, you know his site RollForYourDotParty

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.

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. So we start our episode at night with no music. So very naturalistic little chase scene. So a lot of this scene is like a guy does this a guy does that and then we are it is revealed later who all these people are and what their relationship is there's a guy in my notes that's just the guy with the voice yeah there's a particular deep voice it's not like a funny voice or anything like that but it was distinctive enough that i'm like okay that's the guy with the voice um. I ended up somewhere in my notes referring to them as the jersey, the button up, and the checked shirt.

Because those are what they're wearing. In my first notes, I did call them the jocks. Because that's the first guy I see is wearing a jersey of some kind. Anyway, this story is going to concern a guy named Paul. So, Paul, we will soon learn, is the one who is running away from these three guys. And they're all running out of this fraternity house. Paul manages to evade them and get in a red convertible.

I mean, this scene is a lesson in why you would want a convertible because these cars are easy to get into. Yes. Everyone's jumping across a hood to get into a car. No one's opening any doors because they're in a hurry so he's getting in his red convertible um the uh jocks as i call them uh see him peel out jump into a white convertible and that's when we first get a little bit of dialogue as one of the meals like you had a why did you let him get away and then are you all

knuckles let's go yes and then we have some rock music start and the credits come up over this little night chase of uh the white convertible after the red one i too made a note of this soundtrack it is uh it is a lovely blend of here we have an orchestrated soundtrack with rock guitar over the top well because it's the kids right yeah and and there's a later on version that's even better because it's just like it's just like a typical rocker soundtrack with somebody just noodling away on a lead guitar. Just enjoying themselves. Gotta love it. It's real posty stuff from good old Mike Post. Possibly Pete Carpenter.

Again, I'm not 100% clear on who's doing the episode-to-episode music. But I generally tend to think it's Post for some reason. I don't know if that's a reference that I remember or I'm just making some assumption. Anyway, the convertible ends up roaring to Paradise Cove and pulling up outside Jim's trailer. Love this. This is another. I think in our last episode, the Battle of Canoga Park, when I wrote it up for our preview for that one, I think I said that this was a Jim did nothing wrong episode, where he's just pulled

into a story by forces completely out of his control uh so this one prisoner of rosemont hall is also a jim did nothing wrong episode yeah though it's more of a jim's friends are in trouble episode yeah as this scene unfolds my i'm like'm like, wait, is this going to be like, this guy's going to coincidentally run into Jim or does he know Jim? And then it's resolved pretty quickly with him pounding on the door, saying Jim open up. Yeah. Yeah. So he clearly knows Jim and then he,

uh, there's no answer. And he ends up ducking underneath the trailer to hide. Um, the, uh, pursuit car, uh,

comes into, uh, comes into the Paradise Cove. They send one guy off to check the restaurant. Make sure to check the bathrooms. The restaurant would have been a great place to hide if there were people in it. Who's going to physically pull you out of a restaurant, right? I just felt like this whole thing could have been avoided.

And we wouldn't have enjoyed the episode. But then the other two see his car next to the trailer they go to check out the trailer and soon enough look underneath and sure enough there he is so our two jocks pull out paul and start roughing him up outside the trailer uh jake uh proprietor um of of the, presumably, comes out the back door with trash to throw away, sees it happening. And Paul is yelling, like, help me. The guy who went in there comes around and says, oh, he's from the fraternity. It's just hazing.

He's a pledge. It's just a little hazing. It's fine. That's when they throw him into the back of the convertible i think one of the guys literally sits on him like the the business is very good it's very rough it feels pretty serious yeah but um the the the proprietor is kind of like he doesn't like the looks of it but he's also not in a position to do anything about it and then as their convertible peels out

they nearly miss jim who's just coming in in the firebird just in the nick of too late just in the nick of too late and he pulls up and asks jake as i said uh earlier jake who are those yum yums jake explains but then says it didn't look like a hazing to him. It looked like a kidnapping. Jim goes, sees the car next to his trailer, checks it out. And we zoom in on a parking sticker for Rosemont University, Cairo Zeta parking permit. And then inside he finds the registration card. It's made out to a Paul Douglas. And Jim says, Paul, in a tone that makes it clear that he knows who this is.

He calls. He goes inside, in a tone that makes it clear that he knows who this is. He goes inside, makes a call to Valerie Douglas, leaves a message for Val, and then pulls out a phone book and ends up calling the frat. I want to point out a bit of acting from James Gardner when he gets Val's answering machine, which is he looks a bit indignant. And I'm like, Jim, you of all people. So I this episode does has a real good like zero to 100 storytelling thing where like we get right into it because Jim's calling. He calls the frat. I OK, there's a lot about the first half of this episode has a lot of business in and

around this frat house and it's pledge week it's hell week so there's pledges and they have all kinds of like things they need to do to as part of being hazed and everything and i have absolutely no conception how much of this stuff is like tv stuff and how much is like reflective of how these kinds of frats actually work. Cause I was not involved there. There was no official Greek life at my school actually. Uh, but there was off campus stuff and I was not involved with any of it. So there was at my school and because of television like this, I was like, why, why, like what, why would anyone get involved in that? Like that? And so I just never bothered. So I have, TV is and not how it actually works. Apologies. You know, a lot of people, my wife included, had very formative Greek experiences that continue to be part of their lives to this day.

So, like, it's not like it's bad. But this particular fraternity is presented as kind of an animal house situation. So they have a pledge manning the switchboard which that's a nice i love that there's a physical switchboard um in the basement or whatever jim calls he gets the switchboard operator he claims to be an uncle who wants to get who's in town and wants to get in touch with paul douglas so our pledge goes upstairs he has like a paddle that he has to hold. And he has to like make a salute and say to call everyone sir. But he announces that there's a call for Paul Douglas to Jersey, as I call him.

We learned some of these guys' names. I was a little fast and loose with faces and names. I'm not 100% sure who everyone's name is. But this is the main guy that we're going to be who's involved with the mystery or rather the main student the main fraternity guy who's involved with the mystery yeah so he turns around says what are we going to do and we have our other two guys uh on either side of paul who's sitting in a chair all beat up and an older man in a jacket uh beige not a not like a sport coat like a windbreaker yeah yeah beige on beige this guy uh this is mr killmore max killmore as we learn uh later such a name max killmore he is played by uh an actor named kenneth toby who

who's in a bunch of movies that Epi has probably seen. Oh, yeah. Like The Thing from Another World. Yes. He was in Airplane, one of my favorites. The Thing from Another World is the movie that The Thing is a remake of. Before, there was a remake of The Thing called The Thing. The Thing from Another World is fun.

It's not as good as The Thing. The Thing is one of the all called the thing the thing from the other world it's fun it's not as good as the thing the thing is uh all-time one of the all-time greats uh but there was a thing about the thing from the other world because we are recording right now on november 5th november 4th was an important date in the thing from the other world where they spoilers defeated the thing from the other world and made an announcement to the world that the first encounter with alien life in Humans 1 happened on November 4th. So you celebrate that day.

Anyways, and that's thanks in a large part to this guy. Right. We are finishing his Rockford files appearances he was also the captain in there's one in every port uh i assume that's a boat captain or not a police captain um could be i don't really remember we did that one quite a while ago though though still one of our favorites. He is extraordinarily well cast for this role. Oh, yeah. He's also a police commissioner in an episode of Columbo. That also is the brownface episode that we were mentioning. Oh, good.

So we have that connection as well. Yeah. No, he's a great face. Real wrinkly he does a really good transition in this episode from threatening to scared yes um and it's it's good stuff uh a quick aside just to mention as i mentioned one of our favorite other episodes for those of you who are patreon supporters or not but i think these are accessible whether you're on the page whether you're you pledge or not patreon has rolled out uh a a feature of collections uh where you can make collections of posts from your your patreon oh right so we've been updating some of our

collections with sets of episodes along different things and i recently went in there and just you know did a couple more and one of them i did was uh what did i call it um there's a collection called formative episodes and that's where i just put all the ones that we talk about all the time and all of the episodes on our patreon are publicly available to listen to so you can either go back through our art through our archive on your podcast listener or or you could click through on this page to find out when they were or whatever. But yeah, The Farnsworth Stratagem, Gear Jammers, Chicken Little is a Little Chicken,

Portrait of Elizabeth, One in Every Port, White on White and Nearly Perfect. We haven't mentioned in a while, but it's still a formative one, I think. The first movie that we mention a lot, The Queen of Peru, So Help Me God, etc., etc. So you can see some of our greatest hits over the years of the ones that really, really made an impression on us. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Max Kilmore is the it's a little mysterious now, but we learn soon he's the head of campus security at this university he has a he has an absolute aura of somebody who's given a little authority and has taken a lot of authority yes yeah he is the big fish in the small pond yeah yeah exactly all right so kilmore tells paul to answer phone, but don't say anything. Basically, he means business. And if Paul messes up, he's going feet first into a cement truck. All Kilmore knows is that he's not going to end up with his head on a post in Persia or anywhere else. And at this at this point that it did not occur to me that that is a plot point. I thought it was just colorful language, right?

Like feet first into a cement trunk. Check. Head on a pike in Persia. Sure. Just, you know, I didn't know. I didn't know. So they let Paul answer the phone. Jim, you know, says, you know, it's Jim.

I want to drop by and visit. Paul says it's hell week. He can't. He's not supposed to see anyone. Maybe in a week they can, you know, he's Jim. I want to drop by and visit. Paul says it's hell week. He can't. He's not supposed to see anyone. Maybe in a week they can, you know, he can drop by. And there's very noncommittal and hangs up. And I think Jim looks a little uncomforted by this conversation. Yeah.

Next morning, Jim comes out to get the paper. Rocky is there bright and early. This is mighty nice of you, Sonny, helping me with my taxes. We also had a recent, I think Claire, the episode, Claire also had Rocky dealing with some taxes. I think we talked about it a little bit. It wasn't an audit in that case, but he was just still working through it. I think it's a different season.

So, you know, that was that year's taxes. This is the next year's taxes he's always having trouble it's fun because it's a uh he's running a bit of a con on jim because he was just asking to use his calculator yes and then he's just like oh but yeah it's adding machine but i got this i got this or this i got a question about this maybe you can help me out he definitely thinks that Jim's going to help out with more than the adding machine. Right. And Jim is very definitive. I didn't say I'd help you with your taxes. I said you could borrow my adding machine.

There's a big difference. But now in the light of day, Rocky keeps talking at Jim while Jim's taking a look at Paul's car in the daylight daylight and that's when he finds the drops of blood in the front seat yes and so he's clearly distracted and tells rocky the calculator's on my desk i gotta go uh and we go to i feel like this is one of the all-time great cold reed jim in person like jim oh oh so impersonations. But like Jim cons fast, fast. Cons that we've seen that we've seen in a while. Well, this is not entirely a cold read though.

It gets revealed that it's not entirely one. Yeah. We definitely get to a point where it's like, Oh yeah, you did some research. Um, but the first part, he does some,

some, some good quick thinking to get some information that he will need later to support his story. So he goes to the fraternity house he's met by a pledge um i think maybe the guy who was on the switchboard the night before for economy of actors probably but he claims to be uh the traveling secretary from the national you know organization of the fraternity and he's here to see the high prelate yes he's escorted inside the guy is like i'll go get him and as he turns jim so jim puts on his whole like like i am too good for this

situation yeah persona like i have this chore to do that i have to deal with you people um kind of status play thing you're not gonna to make this tough for me are you because i need to you know yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not the hey we're both we're both in a jam can you just help me out i know how it is it's the like you're not gonna waste my time are you yeah appeal to you know uh kind of put that pressure on people and he's also you know twice as old as these kids so there's definitely definitely that aspect of it. He has that authority, just kind of that aura of authority he can put on. The pledge turns to leave.

Aren't we forgetting something? Don't we say something before we leave? Sir, excuse me, sir, but that's when we leave the house, not the room, sir. the house, not the room, sir. Well, now, I suppose when the traveling secretary from National says that we're forgetting something, don't you think we could humor him, Pledge Miller? Sir! Yes, sir!

Bye, officer! Bye, officer. Hiaso, while the pledge is gone, he sees a pledge book, and we see him quickly scan some of it and put it in his pocket. I read that as he thought he made a mistake about like when they were supposed to say something while they were leaving so he he uh you know we had to look up but he's like i don't know there's something about how he looked up that looked like he was chastising himself for not getting something

right about that exchange yeah it's not like really, it's not a reference that comes back. It's just kind of, I think supporting his, his play. Yeah. Yeah. And we, and we see why he knows anything. Cause he's about to,

he's about to drop word salad on us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have the grand prelate, uh, who has a great mustache, um,

and a couple other officers. They all have titles. Um, but Jim, he's, his name's Butch something. He has bad news for them. National is concerned about the academic performance of their chapter. Who's your magister?

And they're saying, well, there's no magister this year. No one wanted the job. So again, not knowing anything about frats or what this is intended to kind of be evoking, I think we get the idea here that there's some role that's supposed to make sure that the frat keeps their grades at a certain level. And that role is not being filled. And I guess apparently their GPA is low because when Jim says your GPA is 2.5 or like whatever, they all kind of look at each other. I'm like, OK, so that's an actual thing. He's not coming in being like,

your grades are low. And they're like, no, they're not. Which is what I kind of thought could have happened. They either are low or these guys are like, yeah, that's entirely possible. That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

We're not the most academic crew. We're not full of hamburgers. Right. So as Jim says, well, this house needs more than just face men and jocks. Yeah. If you've got to bring in a couple of hamburgers to raise the house grade

averages, then you bite the cookie. Yes. So I guess hamburgers are smart guys. Yeah. This is utterly new terminology for me. I have never, but he said we did bring,

you know, we do have some Alan McMillan and Paul Douglas. And so there we get to the connection that Jim is going for. That's right. We need more. And I want to talk to them. He has a, again,

a great exchange here where he talks about beaded belts and more hamburgers and a fireman's picnic. But the point here is that they don't know where paul is he's kind of independent and so jim gets to to go this is ridiculous you don't keep track of your pledges you know where's the registration sheet where's the you know the pledge information he's like i'm getting mad now i want paul douglas by lunch i want i'll be back in one hour and if he's not here, you're out of the national.

And then he just leaves on a five alpha sweeps out. Oh, that's good. It is. It gets Jim a bit of information, but as we're about to find out is that it's not a disguise that holds up for long. Right, right.

There is a version of this episode where it's all about the frat, but that's not actually what this episode is about. So all of this business is very fun, but what it's doing is telling Jim that Paul, Paul is not in the house. That's pretty much all, all it's telling him. Yeah. Yeah. We follow him outside and then we switch focus to Max Kilmore. Uh, he is on a radio. He's calling into someone and asking about a plate he wanted to run obviously he's he's keeping an eye on jim's car so we see you know he's trying to run jim's plate um whoever he's talking to says that well you know we're last on the police department's priority list for this kind of thing which is nice because it gives a sense of like okay so this guy isn't like from the fbi or something right right this

is our first hint that he's not actual pd or something like that and then i think it pans out to see the campus security on the side of his car and i'm seeing maybe a connection here with something i think we're talking about before the episode. He also says on the radio, I want it as soon as you can get it, and I want to talk to Melinda. And then it pans out, and I wonder if Melinda is one of these women that we are going to meet soon. Let me check the credits here.

Yep, absolutely. All right, see, there it is. Well, that's a mystery that took IMDB for us to solve. It did. Yeah, because I don't think she's named later. This means nothing to our listeners at the moment. We'll talk about it when we get to it. We'll get to it when we get to it. We'll get to it when we get to it.

But yes, the camera clearly shows us that it's a campus security car. So Jim, there's a nice establishing shot of Rosemont Hall from the title of our episode. And Jim is heading in with all the kids. He's looking up a directory and then finds Miss Callahan. Miss Leslie Callahan is an associate professor of journalism. We see her on the phone. She's there's a there's a lot of logistics involved with getting the yearbook together and whatever else she's uh you know on the phone with people about she is paul's advisor and jim's line here is that he's jim taggart one of our classics from a big

radio station that he names um and he wants to talk to paul douglas he sent in a job application and he's very qualified but he's having trouble uh finding him to to talk to him and she's his advisor so can you help she says she has 50 advisees i don't know what what you want from me yeah but she'll call the yearbook office she calls he's not there and then she tells jim check the frat house it's hell week so maybe that's probably where he is she i think he asked her some other question she's like i don't really know it's hard it's hard to know paul like she makes a couple mentions specifically of like not really knowing him she has so many other people that she advises uh stuff like that and she tells him to to drop his number off at the yearbook center um that would be a better way to get it to to paul

he hands her his number. Yeah. And. She gives it back. She gives it back. And we're going to find out some stuff about all this in a little bit. But that is, I think, the one bit where, like, in hindsight, I'm like, okay, that's odd that she gives it back and doesn't take it just in case. Right? But whatever. We'll get to that when we get there um jim is leaving uh there is a lightly populated hallway um that he's walking through as he does

a door opens a young woman steps out and says hey mister come help me my friend uh my friend just passed out he comes in to help and that's when she turns closes the door rips her own shirt and starts yelling rape jim has the most incredulous look on his face which yes is fair i think there's there's a thing about him where he's like uh like he knows that before she even does it he knows i'm being set up yeah yeah yeah uh she pulls the door open and there's these four guys who crowd him back into the room um as he tries to you know like hey come on guys let me explain uh as i call them four meatheads um now i don't remember if these these are not the... She's a setup, but these guys may just be bystanders. So the framing to me seems like they were waiting for the door to open.

Yeah, that could be. I think this whole thing is one orchestration. Big setup. Yeah. They back him into the room and we have a shot where we have one of the guys pulls his fist back to punch and then he punches directly into the camera and we cut from there to jim in the nurse's office saying i have a headache not a fever as she is taking his temperature yeah so i guess we should go through this scene and then

we can talk about the whole thing this nurse leaves max kilmore comes in he introduces himself says he's the head of campus security and then this line i rewound twice because i was like this line doesn't make sense to me with the rest of the scene so either i just am not hearing a critical word or something maybe my version had some weird blip in it or something because i swear he says i'm one of the people who brought you in to put your lights out is what i heard and then the rest of the scene i'm like wait that can't be what he said no i remember the line i'm one of the people who brought you in yeah i remember the line and it's it's not what you said it was but i cannot recall what it actually was because it was like

in the context of the conversation it it was basically him saying when there's trouble he's saying he's campus police right yeah yeah yeah yeah and i can't remember oh maybe i'm i'm one of the i'm on to the people who brought you in to put your lights out or something like that maybe i just once i had once i had this line in my head i couldn't hear anything else in the delivery i I know how that is. So, you know, maybe that's on me,

but this caused a lot of confusion for me in the rest of the scene. So I'm just calling it out as like, I'm sure if you're just watching it, it doesn't, you just make it work with the rest of the scene. But because I'm watching it closely, sometimes the stuff jumps out to me because Jim says, oh,

I appreciate that. And then he's like, and here's your wallet. And Jim's like, oh, you went through my wallet. I't appreciate that i'm like wait a second uh because i thought the first one was sardonic but then the second one is real like you know yeah real feeling behind it i'm like wait that can't be what he said anyway yeah it doesn't matter um right in with the answer it doesn't matter if it's the real one or not just just any answer so so kilmore is acting from a position of like a lot of assumed authority here. And he's also doing a lot of like, you know what I mean, right?

Kind of stuff that Jim is just like, just tell me what you want to tell me. So there's a little bit of talking around what he's actually talking around. But he's going to give Jim the benefit of the doubt. He doesn't think it went down the way that girl said it did or the way that the kid said it did. But let me tell you a story and he tells him a story about like a doctor who was like stalking a co-ed or something like that.

They couldn't keep it out of the papers and when it was revealed he lost his practice or maybe he was a lawyer and got disbarred. I don't know. Something like that. He lost his family and now he's a broken man. He's lost everything. And Jim's like, if you have an accusation to make, make it and I'll call my lawyer.

Yeah. Max says that the girl doesn't want to press charges. She doesn't want to disappoint her mother. So Jim's like, okay, what do you want with me? Right. I just want to tell you stories. I have another story.

And he says that there's this uh a sophomore named judy was uh was raped on campus last wednesday she's waiting for her parents to come down from the to come down and take her away and he wants jim to meet her and jim like roll jim's like okay like i see where this is going. All right. He has her come in. So this woman comes in. She's like wearing a robe, which is weird when you. Yeah. Yeah. OK.

Is this the man? And she looks at him and then looks back. She's like, I don't know. I just I can't say for sure. I don't think so. And Max goes, you don't think so? OK, you can you know, you can leave. Jim says, I get the message.

Max asks him, is this close call going to be enough to turn your life around? It's just piling on thicker and thicker over the course of... Bad ideas. Yeah. And Jim, all he wants to do is talk to Paul Douglas. Oh, that's easy. Ask at the gate. The guard will call for him.

He'll come meet you. But, you know, if you're going to come on campus, it's best not to do it under an assumed identity. Yes. You better get your aspirin at home. I think the doctor is going to take a while. OK. OK. So I looked up.

OK, so Melinda is in IMDb. And the thing that Nathan and I were talking about before is that there is some some of the dialogue in this scene from Jim. is that there's some some of the dialogue in this scene from jim i don't remember the exact wording uh but there were some implications that this woman was not a student like he asked like what is she studying the woman that accused him not not the woman that came in to look at those are two different melinda accused him judy um judy is the one who as far as we know was actually Um, Judy is the one who, as far as we know, was actually assaulted and yeah. And it's being kind of you, my read is, is being used by Max as an implicit threat. Yeah. Like I can get her to say it was you, right.

Is kind of what he's, he's pushing on Jim. But there's, there's a thing in this, in the dialogue that wasn't a hundred percent clear, this in the dialogue that wasn't a hundred percent clear but implied to me that jim thought the woman that accused him was probably a prostitute who was hired to do so there's a line a little bit later in the episode that kind of tipped it in that favor like i was like i'm not sure if that's what's going on or uh but the things that j that Jim saying are a little dismissive of this woman. And so, okay, we have this moment before that neither one of us remembered until we were

going through the, the, uh, the thing where he says, get me Melinda. He being, uh, Kilmore on,

on his, uh, CB say, get me Melinda. And that's when we jumped to IMDB and found out, right. Okay. So Melinda is this woman that accuses him. Melinda is played by a woman who is a couple years older than judy not enough

i thought maybe if this woman was like late 20s there was like a an age difference thing that maybe jim was uh picking up on or you know like why would someone this old be still in college although people go to college at all ages but anyways none of this is is vital uh as it was just not clear when i was watching the episode i didn't read it as that she was hired to set him up and so a lot of the stuff that jim was saying i was like wow like yeah, I understand that Jim's angry because he's being set up, but also like, wow. And now I'm like, he's probably in the text of the story. He's got the right of it. He knows what's happening. And so this was a read that I totally just either missed the dialogue or just wasn't paying bad attention to. So when you brought this up,

I was like, huh, I hadn't thought about that. I was just like, oh, because of his position in the university, for whatever reason, we will probably find out later. He is able to like lean on students to like do things, do stuff. Right. Yeah. So I was like, oh, she's a student that he leaned on to do this for whatever reason. Also, because my read is those guys are what like it's all one operation right like those guys were waiting for her to come out um etc but yeah but there's actually this yeah this this text of like oh okay she's the one that i mean he could be get me melinda who is a student here i mean i guess that is also possible but yeah it is not focused on it's not that important other than i guess it does explain a little bit of Jim's dismissiveness.

Yeah, maybe. Of her, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, like I think like we said when we're doing all of our qualifiers, like I just the whole plot point here of basically putting a bunch of pressure on Jim to like leave and not be on the campus anymore because you know i can really ruin your life if you come back right it leans on this stereotype that feeds into a larger thing that people feel about women that we need to fight against as a society but it is in the name of villainy so like i get it and in like it made me hate max so like yeah i got worked right like it yeah, I got worked, right? Like it, it, it did the thing. Uh, so I just wanted to kind of tease out that reaction. Um, one other, just a totally other note, uh, a fun trivia bit here is that, uh, the woman Judy, um, is played by Kathy Hilton, uh, mother of Paris Hilton and other children.

I did not know that. Neither here nor there. Just, huh. How about that? Kathy Hilton, mother of Paris Hilton and other children. Yeah. I did not know that. Neither here nor there. Just, huh, how about that? Anyway, we have that scene where Max Kilmore is extremely threatening, lays it on super, super thick. I can ruin your life, etc. One thing I do want to say is that all of the other stuff aside, watching Jim and this guy square off, it's just exquisite. Yeah, yeah.

That's good stuff. This guy's a good guy for Jim to play against. I agree. So we follow Kilmore as he is outside, sees this stretch limo with dark tinted windows. He approaches it, starts looking in all the windows, finally comes up to the front and knocks on the driver's side window. And the window doesn't even go down. There's like the little triangle windows.

All timey. Yeah, like in front of the window that would go up and down. And that pivots in the center. So that one opens. He jumps. And there are two men in dark sunglasses and facial hair uh who speak with vaguely middle eastern accents yeah and uh kilmore is terrified of them he we get some banter back and forth here mostly on his part because he has all this running kind of commentary,

and then there'll be one short little reply, and then he'll have a whole other string, but he's like, I told you last time you were here, this road is closed to auto traffic. May I ask what you gentlemen are doing here on campus? And he says, we're football fans.

Uh-huh. Stanford's our opener. But that's not until next September. We are wishing to buy our season tickets. Oh, oh, oh. Then you want the stadium box office. You go down here to Linus Pauling Avenue and hang a left and drive straight out past the quad. And you can't miss Palmer Stadium.

And so he starts giving them directions to the stadium and they just close the window on him he goes to his car he calls into hq and i guess so is this the the main guy from the i think so he's got the voice right like that so he was wearing the jersey earlier and now he's apparently like on the campus security work study or something um i guess his name is hannon getting some extra shifts in yeah burt hannon he's called a couple times too so yeah that's what we're talking about um so he's there he's alone so max's feels i guess uh comfortable in letting his panic show they They're back! They're back! They don't extradite. They just come in and take you.

Hanlon's trying to calm him down. Max is panicking, and we're getting all these lines about how terrible it will be if things go down. Over there, they cut your feet off for an illegal lane change. Can you imagine what they'll do to us? So this is that, like, Orientalist

panic a little bit. Yeah. And it establishes that there's a secret that they share. They've done something. Hannon says, we'll take the gaffe for the Paul Douglas thing. What more does he want? What more does Max want from him? Yeah.

He's like, what do you want me to do about it? There's a gag in there about like not saying over. So there's a little bit between his clearly overblown panic and this gag in the middle there is a this is played a little bit comedically yeah his side of it isn't which is i think he's the straight man and yeah yeah hannon is the has the good has a good joke there's a good bit here going where he we've seen him as with with rockford in control, throwing his weight around, very authoritative. And then we watch him with this car. He jumps when the windows open.

He's still using the same sort of verbal techniques he was using with Rockford, like trying to nail down their excuses and whatnot. But he's clearly shaken by them. And then he has this conversation and i mean we've known he's wrapped up in the fraternity somehow because the earlier scene with him in the fraternity but this is where i start to suspect that these characters are player characters in a fiasco game yeah right like where he has a bunch of frat boys working for him and they aren't taking it seriously or they aren't rising to the level he needs. Right. And so I think it's a great way of showing like what the pressures are on this guy, because this guy is the dangerous one.

Right. Like he's the one who if things start going wrong, he's going to start doing bigger and bigger things that could hurt more people. If he hasn't already. Well, we end the scene with he just wants to say they gotta contain this thing. And then the Lumo drives away and we see him visibly relax. We are gonna

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 if they want to get Maximum Nathan, where do they have to go for that? I should have gone Maximum Nathan. Maximum Nathan can be found at my website, ndpdesign.com. That's the hub for all my stuff on the internet, including all my role-playing games, zines, and other podcasts.

So if you're interested in pro wrestling detectives or zines about pro wrestling, among other things, those are all at my website. It also has links to contact me in other ways. Currently I'm still posting on Instagram at NDPayoletta. That's where I'm posting pictures of my dog. You can also find me at co-host,

co-host.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 cut to Jim coming home, and Rocky pops out of the trailer. He's glad to see him. This must have cut straight to your heart. Oh, I love this scene. Rocky was adding up his expenses expenses but then he couldn't find the clear button on the calculator so he had to do it all by hand anyway it's oh that's so rocky for most calculators you don't wouldn't need a clear button if he well hold on well as we learn it's a cheap one from taiwan yeah 8.98 but there's a thing.

Like, when you go to type something into a calculator, if it's the style that most people know, then it gives you the answer. And there's, I don't know, if he's doing like an adding machine style, he's probably doing it adding machine style. So it's a little bit of the reverse Polish notation going on. Never mind. The point. So it's a little, little, little bit of the reverse Polish notation going on. Nevermind. The point is it's great. He, he can't find the clear button. You know,

the joke that's going to happen. Like you just, it's the kind of thing where you're like, I know the payoff to this. I just want to see it. I'm just waiting. Just want to see it. Yeah.

So he keeps up, you know, some patter while, while Jim is just straight up ignoring him and doing another once over of Paul's car, which is still there. One of the things that I particularly appreciated was that he drove 12,000 miles last year and it's a six cents per mile deduction. But when I do it, I come up with $72,000 in expenses. That has to be too much. Yeah.

It's like, Rocky, you got to learn about decimals. Yes. All right. Because that's, what is that? That would be $720. Yes. Ah, Rocky. Okay.

We're going down inflation alley real quick because I'm curious. Oh, yeah. So. I always like a trip down inflation alley. This episode was 78. Okay. And we said, what, it'd be $720? Yeah.

So we're looking at $3,000. $3,400, according to this inflation calculator. Yeah. About $3,400. All right. So adjusted for inflation, the mileage deduction in 1978 would give you a $3,400 deduction. mileage deduction in 1978 would give you a $3,400 deduction. Now, the mileage deduction for 2023 is 65.5 cents a mile.

So that is then, what did you say, 12,000? I forgot a decimal. It is not $786,000. You and Rocky, I swear. I know, the two of us with our powers combined. The deduction in real terms today would be a little over $7,800. And the deduction adjusted from 1978 was about $3,400. So the rate of your mileage deduction per the IRS, you're getting double the deduction now than you would have in 1978 for your driving miles. Yes, that sounds like right. Yes.

Accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation. Yeah. Not accounting for the value of vehicles, I guess, would be the other thing. Assuming vehicles are worth about the same, it would be the other thing. Assuming vehicles are worth about the same, it would be double the deduction. I'm just saying, Rocky would be doing better as a truck driver

now than he was in 1978. I just wanted to find out if it's what the parody there was. I say it's worth it. That all said, Jim finds a little magnetic keykeeper underneath the car inside is a key for la mariposa which is probably some kind of uh uh hotel or apartment or something it's

clearly not a car key and has a room number on it um he's gonna go check that out uh asks about douglas has returned his call she has not jim tells rocky if she calls tell her to stick by the phone i'm gonna call her as soon as i can and rocky says look if you won't help me with my taxes can't you at least show me how to clear this calculator and that's when jim says oh you know it's a cheap one from taiwan 8.98 i guess maybe a more expensive calculator would have a better ui i don't know. Yeah, one would assume. So he shows him the button and he presses it. If you want to clear it, you just push that button right there, okay?

Ah, thanks. That's going to make it a lot easier for me. Do you remember what the figure was you just erased? Was it 4,319.5? Oh, yeah. So good. All right. So the room number on the key was 8A, and we see Jim going to a door that says 8A, and he lets himself in with the key.

We see an apartment that is fairly well apportioned. Like, it doesn't look like a dorm. You know, like it looks like a real person's apartment. And we see a picture of Paul on a shelf. So my, my first thought is, is this one of those situations where someone has a picture of themselves? Cause again,

that happens in Columbo all the time where like someone has a picture of themselves on the desk. It's helpful for investigations. The two most helpful things about investigations and you should strive to have a picture of yourself somewhere in your house, in case you become a murder victim, and as does not have a specific, but is in some kind of shorthand or uses some abbreviations. So it takes a little while to work out. Yeah. Also very helpful. the Columbo with Patrick McGowan that I was watching last night has it's from it's a 90s Columbo and it has a plot point involving email which email and a phone pager that receives

notifications when you get email which oh it's either very of its time or very ahead of its time yes the one that uh I'm watching from the 90s with patrick mcguin in it uh has him asking about a fax machine and how that works nice so yeah anyway the decorator for this set gets to use all of the green and yellow uh accoutrement that we have seen in beth's apartment or others other women's apartments so i'm like oh this must be a woman's apartment or other women's apartments. So I'm like, oh, this must be a woman's apartment. Exactly. And that's when we hear keys jangling and Miss Leslie Callahan is coming in. The advisor, or so we thought, I guess she is his advisor, technically,

coming in with a bag of groceries saying honey and looking disappointed that there's no response. She turns around to put down her bag of groceries jim appears in the doorway and says her name and she kind of jumps and he says i'm not i'm trying not to scare you yeah yeah i broke it into your apartment uh and i'm approaching you from behind. Please just remain calm. She's clearly angry. Not only did Jim break into her apartment, he lied to her this morning. He's a PI.

And he says that the lies were going thick and fast. You know, Paul better than you claimed. What is this all about? I'm a friend of Paul. Well, I'm a friend of his families. And she finally kind of turns from being just mad at him and just being like, where the hell is he? Yeah. All right.

So what we learn is that Leslie and Paul are in a relationship. They have to keep it secret because she's on faculty and he's a student. So this apartment is one that she keeps in her own name that they can both go to, though they both have their own. You know, he has a dorm and she has a university funded housing faculty housing that that apparently is really nice uh i feel like this is again an artifact at the time your your cushy university faculty housing uh sometimes he does this he disappears he needs time to think uh but drives her around the bend why doesn't he think of me sometimes in the conversation she makes clear if the school finds out about their relationship,

goodbye tenure, goodbye university finance house. Jim asks what happens when Paul graduates and she's like, oh, he's going to be gone. He's out of here. He's super talented. He's a great journalist. He's going to go far. He'll be leading the Paris Review

within a year or something like that. What about her? Well, those who can do, those who can't teach. I'm sure you've heard that. he'll he'll he'll be leading the paris review within a year or something like that what about her well those who can't do those who can't teach i'm sure you've heard that um jim kind of gets down to business so jim is is pretty like he's not needling her i don't think he's more kind of like all right i guess that's the situation like yeah i am more shocked by the situation than jim is yeah it's an unethical relationship that is yeah yeah yeah jim has i think bigger concerns right uh and uh yeah and so he asks leslie what has paul been working on she says she just grades his tests and like read his papers he doesn't discuss the real stuff with her jim explains why he's worried his car has been

outside his trailer for a couple of days or his blood on the seat, et cetera. And as he sits down to continue the conversation, he has to move this like portable TV that was on the, on the like seat asks if it's hers. She says, Oh,

it's Paul's he's been meaning to get it fixed. And Jim says, it's awfully light. So he pulls off the back and sure enough it has a bunch of audio tapes inside i just want to i just want to say that i mean it is awfully light but it's it's clear that the cathode ray tube is still in the tv when he pulls off the back which is most of the weight of those tvs so i i actually did just a little bit of searching because I'm not a TV repairman from the

70s, but I wouldn't put magnetic tape in the back of a TV. Yeah, maybe it's light because he took like, is there a magnet in a cathode ray tube? Yeah, maybe he took that out. That was the heavy thing. Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it's just

unbalanced. It's all in the front. And if it's really a portable tv there's something in there so that when you pick it up it's not going to tilt all over the place we're overthinking this the point here is that beyond our expertise yeah there's there's audio tapes in this tv we have a brief cut to see an ominous shot of this limo pulling up behind jim's car and then we go inside to where they're listening to the tapes there are some kind of like voice lessons for learning english they're like record like someone recording themselves saying english words with a again vaguely middle eastern well not vaguely with a stereotypically middle eastern accent but it's very halting and there's little jumps. And so Jim says,

this sounds like things have been cut out. And he looks at a tape. He's like, see, there's splices. This has been cut up. It's a clue. It must be important or Paul wouldn't have hidden them.

Jim gives it, puts in a call to, uh, Val, um, Paul's mother. She's finally home. Jim says,

I think it's time to go to the police about Paul. Like he's been missing and now there's this other evidence, et cetera. Yeah. Uh, the limo follows Leslie and Jim as they are going to meet Val at the police station. We get a little bit of talk in the firebird to give us a little more

about Leslie character. Her whole thing is that like, she wasn't a very good journalist. Um, that's why she ended up a teacher. Uh, she, she worked, she worked at a tv station briefly but only because the manager liked her when when the new girl came in her relationship ended and she got fired there's a bit in this conversation uh that comes out in a later one too where jim is a little skeptical of her she undersells what her skills are jim thinks

she's underselling what her skills are right yeah he says things to that effect and then she brings up like a oh no i'm actually not very good right like she's yeah she keeps doubling down on that and jim there's a couple spots here that are kind of like good, like Jim's view of how people should be material. Yeah, like things that should be on the Rockford a day calendar. Yeah, yeah. And also we see a little bit of how, and this is, you know, again, a Jim Rockford character trait we see in many episodes where he has little patience for people who just kind of give up and whine about their situation as opposed to take action to make things better. Right. So he's kind of on the end of like, you could be doing better.

You just have to decide to do better, which isn't always helpful. But in this context is it starts to build over the course of the episode. Yeah. She doesn't really know Max Kilmore. She thinks he was an la cop and then he worked security for a casino or something but he got canned uh which i like so we just get those we never talk about it again but i like that little string of three things it's like yeah that explains this guy's character yeah yeah there's a there's a trajectory here yeah so jim

says he thinks he was deliberately set up around. Then is when he takes a good hard look in the rear view mirror. Cause we've been seeing the limo following them this whole time. Yes. But the limo took a turn right before Jim start stops at a stoplight. And so it's gone when he starts looking, um, Leslie asked if something is wrong and he says,

I guess not. So it's like he had a feeling and now that he's actually looking, he's seeing it but it's a good uh it's a good mystery it's a good element of mystery yeah yeah he's on to something but he's not entirely on to it so we go down to the station we do get our good friend dennis becker appearance uh hunting and pecking at the keyboard on his typewriter as he so often does typing technique to fill out this missing person's report you ladies may not believe this but this is not the first missing person's report i filed for jim really oh no perish the thought in fact this is not even the first missing report i filed for jim where i had to come back early from lunch even though there was a full complement of qualified offices in the room.

There's the line, my notes have it right now, or just before now, which is the line that we get from Jim about establishing that he doesn't think the woman that accused him was a student. Yeah, maybe that was in the car and I just kind of glossed over it. Yeah, I think that was in the car. Okay, I'm sorry. The dentist stuff is great. As always, I love the dentist stuff stuff but this one is particularly good uh especially the sad bit which which we're just about to get to here dennis gets the name uh paul l douglas and then so he

starts typing it in then he picks up a piece of paper on his desk, looks at it, puts it face down, does a couple more keystrokes, and then looks at Jim and says, Jimbo, can I see you for a minute? I'm like, uh-oh. The forced casualness of picking up that paper mid-typing is – this is santos uh tour de force when it comes to acting this is a great great moment so he says jimbo can i see you for a moment the two excuse themselves they go outside the room yeah paul washed up on the beach in santa monica that morning dennis tells jim that jim who i think you know was holding out hope yeah groans and turns and kind of like puts his head on his on his arm against the wall and we get a really heartfelt i'm sorry jim from dennis and yeah that whole package is yeah really

good distilled uh joe santos doing this thing in a very short amount of time unfortunately a sad end to to paul so we got to the funeral oh god val is grieving um this is played a little comedically which is i don't know so right it's fine in the moment but looking at my notes now i'm like it's a little weird my notes are the words do not over and over again uh there's a there's a thing there's a ball we're waiting to see dropped right it's the checkoff's gun of this situation uh since we see uh valerie and leslie together at the the police headquarters like is is the secret going to come out like i don't even want to say it because it's so awkward will the secret come out that leslie and and paul have been together uh and we're at the funeral paul's mom valerie starts saying that he always

observed life he did never experienced it. And I start to sweat. The moment she says that, I'm like, oh, God. Oh, God. Like, we know it's good. Like, every single arrow has been pointing to this moment. And she literally says, I just wish he could have experienced love. Right, right. And at that point, I wanted to jump through the TV screen

and tackle Leslie. In slow motion, like, no! I mean, like, obviously, when we recount these things, we add our own little, I'm going to very generously call it humor to it. But, like, this scene is, there is a humor in that, right? You have to have a humor in that otherwise it's just unbearable to watch yeah not not because it's a bad television or anything like that it's just very awkward it's such a bad idea yeah such a bad idea and leslie's like oh okay i

i will make her feel better right by telling her that her son 15 15 years my junior, and I have been in a relationship. Oh, he knew love. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, of course, Val is outraged. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And storms away in a huff.

And Leslie just goes, I thought it would make you feel better. And then turns to Jim. Makes me feel better. So, like, at least she feels better that it's out in the open i guess which is fine maybe um yeah but yeah it's a bit of a it's a bit of a gag and yeah i don't know it's fine i didn't have quite as visceral reaction as you i was like oh i see where this is going but yeah we continue our uh wacky comedy as in the funeral procession. We see our two guys from the limo have finally made an appearance.

They just kind of walk up to Jim, just ran on either side and just go like, excuse us and just walk him out of the funeral procession. This is a really, this is a good exchange here where Jim. Yeah. Who are you guys supposed to be? We're bereaved.

Oh yeah. What are these boulders in your coat? Wet hankies. is a good exchange here where jim yeah who are you guys supposed to be we're bereaved oh yeah what are these boulders in your coat wet hankies uh so we finally get a little bit of conversation and we learn about what the deal is with these guys uh because they want to know what jim's interest is they know that he's an investigator private the othering of how they do like of these people by how they deliver their lines it's not like broken english but like there's weird inversions and stuff and i'm like yeah i don't know if this is how people actually talk it feels a little thick to me uh like laid on a little thick but like i don't know um so they pull out a newspaper the cover story is showing that there's

the three boys from the frat confessed to this uh accidental death that he it was an accident that he they're doing a hazing thing they accidentally drowned him they have admitted to that but then there's another section where he's where jim apparently is quoted as saying that that's that he's not sure that that's actually what happened all right so these two guys are police i guess security forces of some kind from a made-up middle eastern kingdom um and so the king's son went to this school and he joined the frat then later he left an irrational telephonic call to their country's embassy saying he was leaving to join a Hindu commune in Marin County,

and he hasn't been seen since. They think it's odd. Why would he leave a message at the embassy instead of just calling his father? Their investigation still isn't over, and another boy from the fraternity dies. So clearly they think something's related. And so we go from there to Jim playing them the tapes that he found. They do have one good line in there that I really like, which was, we have been unwanted presences at many communes. Yes. And I mean, that's the story of my life, honestly. So Jim plays the tapes for them.

Once they start, they start talking to each other in Arabic, presumably, and kind of ignore Jim. This is kind of a fun way to do this, where they just ignore Jim and keep talking as he tries to explain to them what he thinks happened, thus giving us the audience what he thinks happened. That the call to the embassy was fake. It was cut from these tapes that are the prints, you know, his own his tapes for learning English or whatever whatever and he thinks max kilmore the head of security must have something to do with it he seems to be under a lot of pressure for some reason and they just keep kind of like pushing him to the side and then they unplug his tape player and if you're like real to real audio tapes yeah yeah it's a big so they unplug the player wait a minute wait a minute hey i'm gonna need these for my investigation oh well hey i tell you what i trust you why don't you take them okay you just take

them with you and uh bring them back when you're through with that i'm not really in too big a hurry for them i'm sure you'll enjoy them this is all this patter as they just take all the stuff and just leave without giving him any more to go on. We go to Jim going to Rosemont Hall at night. He finds Leslie there in her office. She's crying or she's clearly been crying. She should have found out what he was working on. She could have warned him off.

She says, I could have been a leader for once, not a follower. Jim wants her help to find out who killed Paul. And she says that she doesn't know what she can do about it now. There's a bit of banter here, but there's also some Jim Rockford moralism. You're running away, Leslie. You ran away from KPPTV. You ran away from the journalism business. You're selling yourself a vacuum-packed existence.

Jim wants to know what happened to the Persian prince and why the head of security is throwing downfield blocks about it. A whole fraternity is taking the gaffe for Paul's murder when it was probably one or two people. Because that's another detail, was like the whole fraternity's on probation. He tells Leslie that she can get the story, she can turn it into a real newspaper,

she can be a real journalist. And she says, I can do that. And I can end up out on the street with no security. Yeah, and you lose the little house in College Park. But you'll still be alive, Leslie. And they're going to have to watch out for you. Oh, I don't know. Maybe you're right, man.

I used to feel so safe on this campus. It was so comforting. And here she stands, the prisoner of Rosemont Hall. Get the title? Mm-hmm. Which is good, because this whole time I was trying to figure out how this... I thought it was a reference to the Prisoner of Zenda, which is, it's not.

It just isn't. It was a lovely swashbuckling film about, and novel about mistaken identity and all that. But the point is, this scene, I think, is another one of those great Rockford scenes where, so we get, we get Rockford's offering his moral take on the situation.

Right. And honestly, like I sometimes roll my eyes at that stuff and sometimes I don't, but I always like to hear what Rockford's take is on things. So while we're doing that, we also get like just the clearest picture of these two characters and where they sit inside that whole situation. And the situation itself is restated. Because this is a mystery in which nothing – we didn't even know what was mysterious until a scene or two ago.

Or we knew what was mysterious, but we didn't know all the moving parts until a scene or two ago yeah and so this just kind of like brings it all together for us and it doesn't do it as just a we need to bring everyone together it does it by also showing us stuff about these characters about their arcs of where they're going and uh yeah i just i like it i think it's a nice well uh well scripted yeah scripted. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about it that way. Cause yeah, often this kind of bringing together might be, you know, Jim turning to Rocky and being like,

here's what I think is happening. Right. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good, uh, this is a more, uh,

nuanced way of doing it for sure. We do end the scene with Jim saying every journalist i know has a fetish for keeping their material on their stories does that sound like paul to the campus radio station apparently that's where he did his news he did a news broadcast from the radio station so that's was kind of his home base so on one hand it's a little unclear about like all the things that paul did like he's doing stuff with the yearbook and yeah with the yearbook and he's pledging for the frat and he has a news radio show yeah on the other hand it's kind of like oh this guy was like everything like he just had all

this stuff going on yeah which both makes it hard to pin him down for like yeah sometimes he just disappears like everyone's like, yeah, he does that. Uh, and also gives a sense of like, he could have found out this stuff and he really, you know,

could dig into stuff because he just had all this material, all these, all these different directions to, to discover it from. We go outside and we get kind of a, a roundup of where, uh, Max is Max Kilmore is at. And i guess the deep voice guy and one of

the other guys are in the car with him yes i think or maybe not the deep voice guy but the two other guys it doesn't matter too much yeah two of the three frat guys the what what are what are the categories there's the the fraternity lingo uh oh there's jocks there's uh hamburgers hamburgers and um there's basement and jocks and then there's hamburgers yeah all right i guess these guys are probably just jocks then i guess it's the interchangeable jocks of this fraternity right right which is not a sentence you want to hear so i think one of the guys is hannon the main guy uh the deep voice guy just because i think he's called the i heard her name a couple times i'm like oh it's that same guy

she's wearing different clothes in every scene so i was having trouble keeping track of who's who anyway he's saying look max it's gotta stop we're already going down for this douglas thing all right my lawyer says even if we separate the charges or whatever i'm probably going away for six months to a year i have enough trouble and max is kind of not listening to him and he has a really good this is a this is a real a real cannily line to me this guy won't buffalo what does it take to tie a can to this gumshoe yes it is a good good line they argue and we learn what happened to the prince um how was max supposed to know that he'd had a heart attack while you guys were holding him and they says well why were you suffocating

him with a pillow he thought that would help with his cardiac situation so he was just trying to scare the the kid to keep his mouth shut they were going to try and hold him for ransom and get like a two million dollar ransom from the king to yeah return him or something but then he died uh accidentally so to cover that up uh hannon is the one who made the composite tape and sent that in uh but now the campus is quote crawling with mustaches and sunglasses. Which is a good description of what our foreign investigators look like. I was going to say, a good description of a 70s California beach. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so this is where we learn that this is a,

it's not a brains kind of operation. No, no, this is a, uh, it's not a brains kind of operation. No, no, this is a panic. Yeah. So he says we're sticking to the plan, which is not a good plan. No, but the plan is those, the,

the, the kids take a slap on the wrist and blame and everything. It just becomes, Oh, it was just part of hazing and it fades away as better than getting cut to pieces in the middle East. So that's still his great fear yeah um okay but what about this pi and max says well maybe it's time for us to catch this rapist so

that's his whole angle on this thing max calls in backup from hq he saw a guy who broke into rosemont hall and took leslie callahan uh, cause they saw Jim and Leslie leave the hall. Max is going to try and stop him before, uh, as he says before he hurts the little Callahan girl, which is a hell of a way to frame, but he's clearly intentionally framing this so that that can be the story. Yeah.

So we go to the radio station. We see Jim and Leslie are looking around. They haven't found anything yet, but Jim remembers that Paul liked a particular jazz musician. Is there anything in that area? Because they're looking for something hidden. He would have hidden his material. Max

sneaks in quietly with his rifle. As we cut back and forth, they find a box of tapes labeled from the musician. Jim opens it, and you know, labeled from the musician. Jim opens it. And sure enough, one of the tapes has a label on it saying disappearance.

Princess Hyde. Yes. There we go. They have the tapes. And then as they stand up, Max is in the stairwell behind them and says, well, another rape stopped a moment too late. And then he takes a shot as Jim turns off the lights and they duck out, avoiding Max. He then calls in on his radio. He's armed.

He took a shot at me. Shoot to kill. Something a campus security person clearly has the authority to do. Gotta love a campus security that's got, oh, man. We go outside. It's a little night chase. Jim and Leslie are ducking and running, avoiding him. Here we get that amazing lead guitar over the soundtrack.

Well worth it. Enjoy. well worth it enjoy another campus security car cuts them off and they managed to avoid getting shot by that guy i'm just like if i work at a campus security and i get a call shoot to kill from my boss i'm not yeah i'm quitting yeah i'm quitting this is my two weeks notice two weeks ago sorry buddy i mean. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's why I'm not a cop. Anyway, so they they they duck and weave and we kind of see them cross like a like a quad area. And they're in front of another building.

And Max appears. He's done an end run around them. Cox's rifle and yells. So it ends for you now. That's when we hear a shot from off screen. Max's leg buckles beneath him and our kingdom police guys uh have arrived in the nick of time i think he goes who shot me yeah yeah he's like who shot me who shot me so they shot him in the leg one of the guys shot him in the leg and as they approach him we see him you know he into his panic. Please don't maim me.

Kill me if you want. But Lord, don't disfigure me. His weirdly racist panic is really what has fueled this entire thing. Yeah. And they're like, disfigure you. We're going to turn you over to your local authorities and then perhaps begin extradition proceedings as as according to our united nations charter agreement etc and jim says so leslie well it's your story now yeah so justice presumably is served um leslie is packing up her apartment in our final scene here jim says that her story is a beautiful

job uh i guess he's been reading it right he has like a draft he says she did a beautiful job uh she says she's going to put paul's name on the byline because it was his story and we have a reiteration she felt so safe all of these years on campus now she's almost shot outside rosemont hall by the head of campus security it's an ultimate irony she owes paul and jim thanks because she needed the kick to remind her that there's no substitute for living like if she wants to be a reporter she has to go out there and live Jim has one edit to suggest

it would be better if she shared the byline and she says well you think I'm playing it too safe keeping a foot in each pond and Jim says Paul would like it that way well then that's what I'll do uh they share a hug as we zoom in to the picture of paul still on the shelf and we freeze frame on his uh smiling face poor paul poor paul in memoriam so yeah um a troubled episode but a good one i mean like i i

think it was well written i I enjoyed it. Uh, yeah, we hit it with the content warnings at the beginning. Those exist. There's no getting around that. Uh, but, um,

yeah, I think we said, you know, we, we, we said brown face. One of, one of the actors who of the middle Eastern guys is Cuban.

Um, the other one, uh, I was not able to quickly find any particular thing. He might be, he might be middle eastern um i'm not 100 sure but yeah uh that's uh maurice sherbany could be yeah i was looking him up and i couldn't figure out but yes makhmud and kaddafi are the two characters so yeah um yeah anyway uh yeah it's like the the this was kind of interesting one as I'm thinking through it.

Cause I'm like, cause there's a lot of things about it that troubled me, but, but it's not like bad or offensive really any more than any other, any more than any other time this happens in TV, which is a lot. Right. Right.

So like, but it's not over that baseline. Like for instance, instance uh kilmore's prejudice there's no basis in in the fiction for his prejudice he's that is his that's his problem and yeah and it causes his downfall so like yeah kind of like i was saying the uh entrapment into a rape accusation comes from a place of villainy. So it makes sense to me, even though I don't really love watching it. The fact that

his racism is what leads to his defeat is classic storytelling, right? It's come up. It's appropriate for him, even though I don't love watching people be racist, right? Yeah, exactly. So that's there um yeah so like

it's interesting because it's like the all the framework stuff is really good the beat to beat storytelling yeah the structure i think as you highlighted the way that the character stuff and the plot stuff really tends to resolve at the same time efficient writing very efficient writing yeah you know um yeah the actual content that is being treated efficiently is not my favorite yeah but the way that it is done is very good so like yeah this is one of those like they're all good episodes right it's a good episode but the ways in which it is good is like puts it a little below some other episodes for me. Right.

Yeah. I wouldn't put it in the top whatever list. Yeah. Yeah. Because of the other stuff. Good. Like some really good gags and moments. I mean, I think we went on about it.

Like the whole short scene with Dennis was wonderful. Like a comedy bit written around a calculator. You can't deny. But yeah. So yeah, it's a mixed bag. But the thing about mixed bags when it comes to the Rockford files is that the peaks are great.

And that just makes the valleys a little bit of a shame. Right. All right. So, yeah, I think that pretty much covers it. We're starting our countdown to the end. We are starting our countdown to the end. With 17, T-17 episodes. Well, now we're at T-16 episodes. Yeah, so our next

couple episodes are going to be our final survey for Ivan Dixon. So we'll talk about him a little more. Probably the last episode to a roundup about him, because as we said, he did direct, I think, nine, 12, a good amount. I mean, you know, he's no he's no William Wired. Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, we're already forgetting the guy whose name we mispronounced. So many times. So many times. But yeah, he did direct nine episodes, which is in the top. I think it's like Bill Wired. And then there's like two or three directors that did like nine, 10, 11 episodes. Yeah. So Ivan Dixon's in that band.

So yeah. So we have a couple more of his episodes and those are going to be our next couple. So thanks for being here. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. We'll have some more. And these are some good, I mean, our next couple. So thanks for being here. Stay tuned. We'll have some more. And these are some good I mean some good ones. They're all good ones. We're getting into some of the really good titles that we

just somehow have not done yet for our next couple episodes. So look forward to that. That all said we will of course be back next time to talk about another episode directed by Ivan Dixon of The Rockford Files.