Two Hundred A Day - Episode 21: Hotel of Fear

Episode Date: November 12, 2017

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E10 Hotel of Fear. Angel gets into serious trouble when he witnesses a murder, and Jim needs to look sharp to keep him out of the literal line of fire! This episode deftly handles multiple mysteries while showcasing all of the things we love about both Jim and Angel, giving us a lot to talk about in our second half about crafting characters in fiction. A solid recommendation from us! Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars Mike Gillis and the Radio vs. The Martians Podcast And thank you to Victor DiSanto, Dael Norwood, Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow and Bill Anderson! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Jim, this is Manny down at Ralph's and Marl's. Some guy named Angel Martin just ran up a 50 buck bar tab. Now he wants to charge it to you. You gonna pay it? Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Pleta. And I'm Epidio Ravishaw. We have a spine-tingling tale of terror today, don't we, Epi?

Yes. We are watching season four, episode ten, Hotel of Fear, which could have easily been named The Martin Files, or Witness for the Prosecution, or Jaws.

It's one of the greatest running gags I was going to say in this episode. It's obviously in this episode, but it's one of the longest running gags in an episode. Right, yeah. That I really appreciated. Which we may expect just because at this point on the show, David Chase has become a producer. He, as we've covered in some of our previous episodes, he became kind of a signature writer for the show and his scripts often have this kind of uh humorous nature to them right this kind of

punny or kind of running joke kind of nature to them even when they're more serious so i kind of associated that with him even though the writer for this one was uh juanita bartlett one of our favorite writers absolute favorites yeah and the actual director for this episode is Russ Mayberry, who is a 200-a-day stalwart as he directed three previous episodes that we've covered, including

The Countess, Charlie Harris at Large, and one of our favorites, Oracle War, Kashmir Suit. Oh, he did The Countess. That's interesting. Because that one had some pretty interesting directorial decisions and i'm trying to think well we'll have to as we recap here yeah i don't know if you caught any specific ones that you you enjoyed in this one this one had a lot of good uh smash cut voiceover things right but uh yeah this one i think it's a lot of really just

good solid scene setting i think yeah for especially some of the smaller scenes. But we'll we'll get to that as we go. But yeah, so this episode is 100% a Angel episode. The entire plot revolves around our friend Angel Martin witnessing a murder. And then I think the hijinks that ensue. I don't want to disagree with you, but I think the Cobra features a little more. I'm sorry. Evelyn, the Cobra Martin. We're really jumping ahead with the jokes here. Well, I mean, obviously you should have seen the episode before you listened to us and you would really think we're super funny. We'll put a couple of our normal caveats up front that definitely apply, which is a lot of the joy of the episode

is watching Jim and Angel bounce off each other. There's a lot of great facial expressions and body language and sighs and exasperation throughout. So this one's definitely on the, if you have a chance, give it a watch list.

Should I start with the preview montage here i just wanted to say that uh in perhaps an intentional move the answering machine message sets up the episode pretty well i think we can definitively say now that the answering machine messages are canon uh-huh the answering machine here is that somebody at a bar is calling Jim because Angel had left a bar tab, a $50 bar tab there that Jim was supposed to pay for. Typical Angel and would have worked in any episode. But with this one in particular, because Angel features so prominently, it feels like that guy is calling rockford as angel is heading home from the bar and the opening scene of the episode begins and later on it's established that angel was at a steakhouse but not drinking right uh prior to the events that start the episode so yeah that could

just be part of the continuity so this might be our second episode where the message while this one doesn't actually impact the plot seems to be directly relevant to the episode. But anyway, we are already hyped, I'd say, after watching our preview montage. Yeah, the preview montage, of course, lets you know that the cobra will feature prominently in this episode. There's an interesting thing they do with this preview montage where the way it's cut together creates a scene that's different than what we see in the episode, which I like. Angel comes running away from danger and jumps into Jim's car headfirst. And those two scenes are very far apart in the episode. And they're not quite the exact same thing. And I like that they do that. And then, of course, we get Angel described in the preview

montage as that squirrely guy. Perfect encapsulation. And that there's a hit out for them. That's what we know. That's what we learn. And at the very end, we see Lieutenant Chapman saying that Del Cain is a professional killer. The word professional is an interesting word in this episode. Maybe go into that a little bit as we go along.

200 a day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this episode, we have nine of them to thank. Thank you to Mike Gillis, a host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast. It's the McLaughlin Group for nerds. Radio vs. the Martians dot com. Thanks Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday Evening Podcast All-Stars Actual Play podcast found at MisdirectedMark.com. Lowell Francis, with an award-winning gaming blog at AgeOfRavens.bdirectedmark.com. Lowell Francis with an award-winning gaming blog at ageofravens.blogspot.com. Thank you Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Victor DeSanto,

and Bill Anderson. And finally, a big thank you to Richard Haddam for his very generous support. Find him on Twitter at Richard Haddam. If you want to get a shout out for your podcast, blog, or anything else you do, check out patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. Well, we start off Hotel of Fear at, as you might imagine, a hotel where Angel is picking up his mail. I'm just going to run through this quick, but the whole first half of the scene is just establishing who Angel is in case this is the first time you've ever watched the Rockford Files. Right. Not only is he checking his mail and then putting some of it back, like, I don't need that,

he's also taking handfuls of free soap that's in, like, a little trough underneath the mailboxes. Yeah, it was, like, free samples that were sent to every person in the hotel or whatever. Just stuffing them in all of his pockets and down his shirt taking as much as he can of this free stuff i made a note of the sign over the mailboxes which oh i think had to be intentional for this episode it says whatever makes men good christians makes them good citizens all right that's good but yeah so we uh see angel getting all you know

coming in for the night activities, heads over to the stairs. And then in a very dramatic sequence of events, we hear a shot. We see a woman wearing a dress come stumbling out of a door. She falls down the stairs, lands at his feet, and he looks up. We see a stone-faced man with a little gun. He has a glove on his hand, a visual indication of his nature. And then he takes a shot at Angel as Angel flees, dropping his mail everywhere and running out of the hotel. One of my favorite things about these sorts of stories is when you gather all the treasure you have found and then lose it in a moment of panic.

That was great. Yeah, all of the free samples scattered across the floor. But most importantly, a piece of mail that this gentleman can then pick up and find out that he's dealing with Evelyn Martin. I just want to point out that that piece of mail is from a collection agency. In case we haven't put a button on who Angel is, right there. That's what you get. But yeah, sure enough, Angel goes to his friend Jim's as he is in trouble,

waking Jim Rockford up in the middle of the night. Tells him what's happened in kind of broad strokes. And I love how at first Rockford responds like you would to any of our friends that came to us with a story about seeing a woman murdered directly in front of them. Like, oh, that's awful. That's hard for anyone to watch. And Angel's response is basically, I don't care't care about her right i was being shot at too it was

me he shot at me and so when jim says well it must have been awful talking to the cops and we learned that angel did not go to the cops what would that accomplish he has this whole spiel about she's dead there's nothing i can do about it and maybe i should just get out of town for a while and then this guy will know that i'm not interested in fingering him and everything can go go back to normal jim rockford having a moral center is like you have to tell the cops it's a murder and uh angel goes well i can't bring her back can i what am i Yeah. What I like about this is that Jim bringing up the cops is very much like that really horrible line in a bar. Oh, that's interesting.

What does your boyfriend think of that? Oh, sure. Just like try and figure out if somebody's dating someone or, you know, like it's a casual thing, but I get the feeling that Jim deep down knows that Angel didn't go to the cops. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He needs to bring the cops up to just have that discussion we also learned here that the woman's name was muriel uh and that she

was a prostitute by trade pro but yeah angel what he's really there for is that he needs some money not advice yeah to get out of town and lay low for a couple of weeks as as uh angels talking we hear tires outside being rockford viewers it can be two things it can either be goons right or it can be cops but as it turns out in this case it is in fact the police uh rockford stumbles over in his bathrobe opens the door yawns goes he's in here, officer. And Angel is incredulous. How did they know where to find me? This is where we get one of our good cut to new scene with voiceover to kind of bridge some time gap. As we cut to Lieutenant Chapman with Angel in his office telling him that Rockford is all over his known associates file. So it wasn't that hard.

I think as viewers, it's obvious that the cops could probably found the mail yeah i think somebody even says off screen to call the cops when the gunshot goes the second gunshot goes off and then in the next scene we get a line about we tracked you by your mail right but i just like how because we've been watching these first couple scenes it's obvious to us how the cops got involved we saw all the details we needed to see, and then they put a button on it later to make sure we know. But yeah, Lieutenant Chapman wants to know what Angel saw. Angel says he didn't see anything.

And then in a stroke of extreme good fortune, they stopped someone for a broken taillight, I guess. Yeah. And it turned out to be, drumroll, Del Cain. Yes, good old Del Cain. This is someone the cops are already looking for. Right. Chapman has a line that's like,

you never know where you'll get your breaks. And he's looking at Angel when he's saying it. You can just tell us and we're done. Episode over. Yeah, so we go to police lineup. I think this is the first time i've seen this thing in the rockford files yeah i love this lineup though not only do we get some plot stuff and some good angel stuff the suits being worn the suits and ties yes lieutenant chapman's tie

in this scene it's a paisley pattern and there's a diagonal cut and then there's like a stripe pattern. It's so weird. It's a tie for all occasions. But yeah, they pull in this lineup and we see the guy, Del Cain, the one who shot at Angel in the lineup when Chapman asks him, so do you recognize anyone? Angel proceeds to point out all the different cops, name them, and ask whether they've been transferred to other departments. So, right. So the lineup is Delcaine and then a bunch of cops that look somewhat similar to him. All of them wearing regular suits so that they could just say,

out of this lineup of men, Angel picked the right one. But Angel is systematically ruining any chance the prosecution can use this because he's showing that he knows every single person in that lineup except air quotes for del cane oh it's so good he's like i know you brought in that guy because i recognize all four cops around him and this is such a angel tactic so angel will talk your ear off just to buy time to keep the inevitable at bay. Like that's a thing that he'll do. You know, it's him and Jim are used, use the same skills to accomplish two different things.

Cause Jim will use his sort of con man skills to get to what he needs, where he needs to go. And angel will use it to make sure nothing happens for as long as he can make sure nothing happens. Stall, stall, stall. Well,

as he stalls Chapman, we have a new, a new guy come into the scene who's like oh is this your witness angel's like i'm not a witness what are you talking about and he goes into why they're trying to bring down this guy del cane he's killed 18 people that they know of mural makes 19 yeah this is the guy who says that uh they traced angel through his mail why does he think del cane wouldn't be able to do the same thing if he doesn't give evidence against this guy and put him away then del can's going to come after him because he knows that he was witnessed killing muriel not only do they want him for all these murders that he's suspected of he's done those murders because he's syndicate he's mobbed up and if they can bring him

down maybe they can bring bring down some of his superiors essentially this da that came in he's played by gerald mcgraney who is from simon and simon if you watch uh later 80s detective tv shows you'd recognize him and major dad and the dad from The NeverEnding Story. And did you realize that this is not his first 200 a day appearance? Oh, it isn't. He was the hotel manager in the Farnsworth Stratagem. Yes. Okay. We've probably gone through all of this before.

I'm not sure if we did, but I was looking him up as well. And I vaguely remembered that. And then he also has a credit in Sleight of Hand. And I think he's also the hotel manager that Rockford like roughs up. Right. Yes. Is he? I can't remember.

I didn't go back to double check, but there weren't that many characters in that one. So yeah. Anyway, so his third 200 a day appearance. This is definitely a thing with the Rockford Files where when they have a character or they have an actor that they like, they use them in multiple roles throughout the series. Yeah, he has one other appearance. So maybe we should do that episode and we can have our Gerald McRaney quartet. Yes.

Yeah, not a huge role in this one. I mean, he plays these minor characters. But yeah, definitely probably his most significant of the episodes that we've talked about. The reaction I had when I saw him because I recognized him. I expected this character to play a much larger role at that point. Because I recognized him and I was like, oh, so is this DA dirty? That was my first thought. I was kind of thinking it would go into the mold of the local and federal officials are having a beef.

Like there's a lot of that in other episodes. But in this case, he's more of a the story requires there to be a federal da so that's why he's there we get this in a later scene but adele kane's from jersey as all mobsters are from new york new jersey or chicago in this episode they're from new jersey and so this is uh the new jersey cops are involved in state lines. And so it's a federal case and whatnot. But we end that scene with Angel looking shifty. And then we start the next one with a beautiful panning shot of lovely swans in a pool of water outside an extremely fancy hotel.

We see Rockford knocking on the door and Chapman affirming who it is before letting him in. Right. Angel has turned state's evidence and is under police protection in this extremely fancy hotel. And he is, as I noted, milking it for all it is worth. This is a long scene with a lot of stuff in it, but we go through a sequence of Angel talking about the room service and wanting to know where his eggs are at. He ordered eggs over easy. He's also drinking champagne.

There's also a ghostwriter there who's helping him with the book that he's writing about his experience. The ghostwriter who's holding a page of text and is like, there's no punctuation. This is all one sentence. There's a he in the middle here. And who's that referring page of text and it's like there's no punctuation this is all one sentence there's a he in the middle here and who's that referring to that's good stuff it's good uh so so angel has already decided to uh you know try and make some money off of this whole situation so he's going to write a book about his experience his book is going to be called hotel of fear and he shows rockford the title page and it says Evelyn the Cobra Martin

on it there's just so many eye rolls just eye rolls and put upon size from Jim Rockford throughout this whole sequence he also has a whole bit about depending on how the rest of the trial goes yeah whether it becomes more of a memoir or not possibly calling it witness for the prosecution and they have a whole bit about that already exists that is well it's a 1957 film i'm sure it's based on a book so witness for the prosecution for those of us who had to look it up like myself was a agatha christie story that got turned into a 1957 film by the same name that is pretty well known and definitely would be known in the 70s.

I haven't seen the movie. I am, as one might imagine, a fairly strong Agatha Christie fan, so I can't imagine that the Cobra would be writing anything I'd rather read over the Agatha Christie story. This is bookended by at the end of the episode, Angel says that he wanted to call it Jaws. The movie would have come out a year or two before this episode. Uh, 75.

Also based on a book that came out the year before. I love Angel's argument here. He's like, what? Because somebody used it, no one else can? He makes a great argument against the notion of copyright. Right. Which is, what? So some people confuse mine for this other guy's? Right. And then they buy mine instead? What's the harm in copyright. Right. Which is what? So some people confuse mine for this other guy's

and then they buy mine instead. What's the harm in that? Exactly. I have some personal experience with that, actually. You sure do. But the other bit in this scene that I really want to focus on is the physical bit between Rockford and Angel. I feel like over the course of this entire series of podcasts that we're doing, we're going to eventually come down to a thesis for Rockford's self-preservation versus Angel's self-preservation. They both have a very highly tuned sense of self-preservation. Angel's causes him to do wrong things. And Rockford causes him to do the smart thing. Rockford causes him to do the smart thing. What I'm coming down to here is that there's this moment where as Angel's talking, he wanders to the window and Rockford just takes him by the arm

and pulls him away from the window. Clearly, like, don't be an idiot. Don't get yourself shot right now. When Rockford first came in, Chapman was like, yeah, now remember, don't go by the window and stay off the porch. The whole reason that Rockford's there is because Angel is worried that Del Cain's going to have some kind of alibi that the prosecutor doesn't know about. Some kind of trumped up thing. Right. He says that he's made, he's cut Rockford a good deal. He's going to get him $300 a day from the DA to check on Cain and his movements and you know be able to uh bolster their story in court this is also where we hear that the cops from jersey want to pin him on a union beef

so there's a lot of money involved so like the state has a lot of interest in this it's not just about angel this is the first that rockford's been made aware that this is a mob related thing so with his usual avoidance of involvement with the mafia he says that he'll think about it he he makes his exit and then we have this stinger with angel walking around clearly pleased with himself for making this all come up angel yeah and then he lifts his glass to toast himself and he's standing in front of the window and we hear a shot and the glass shatters and he just stares at it in terror and then faints hotel of fear which following up on what you said rockford steers away from the window as soon as rockford leaves he goes over and stands by it

yeah there's a quick follow-up scene they have to move him somehow came found out where he was murder is a bailable offense so he's been bail out, but this hasn't been in the papers or anything because Chapman wants to keep it quiet because they don't want to blow the case. What I thought was interesting about this was that at the end of it, so Angel's in bed and he has like a thing on his head and he's all distraught.

Angel realizes that Jim doesn't know that Kane is out because this hasn't been in the papers. And he starts going, oh, I have to get ahold of Jimmy. And this is one of the moments where we see that Angel does have some kind of true, friendly feelings for Rockford. He doesn't just use him for things. He does genuinely care about him on some level. And our continual coverage of the Angel-Jim relationship, I think, is a strong moment to highlight.

Agreed. It's also important to note, as viewers, we know much more about the situation than Rockford does, and that'll soon become evident. But it's one of those things, if you're watching the Rockford Files, and Angel has hired Rockford to do something, you need to then assume that Angel's not told Rockford anything that's important about what he needs to know about what he's been hired to do. All right. So Rockford is pursuing his investigations and he's found this friend of Muriel's, a woman looking at a clothes rack outside, you know, some kind of discount store down on the strip somewhere. I heard you were a friend of Muriel's.

Can you, you know, I'm not a cop. I just want to ask some questions about her. Super friendly. And this woman who I missed her name. Teddy. So Teddy responding well to someone just being friendly to her is perfectly willing to give some information. She was a friend of Muriel's and says that Muriel had started seeing Del Cain, but he was jealous and possessive, would fly off the handle about stuff and that she was going to break it off. They'd seen each other that day and she said, I was going to break it off.

And then that's the night that she was murdered. They'd seen each other that day and she said, I was going to break it off. And then that's the night that she was murdered. Right. She also mentions that Muriel had her own gun, but she'd gone with Kane to roach for him to get one. Right. This kind of triggers like a huh in Rockford. And I think Rockford just asked some questions, get some answers, show some empathy.

Yeah. And compassion. And there's just a great little human moment at the end of the scene where Teddy says that, you know what they put in the papers? Right. Prostitute murdered. What would it have hurt to say something nice? Yeah. A dog gets run over, they get more regard.

Rockford tells her that the dress that she's holding would look good on her. It's an interesting scene because we don't know how close Teddy is to Muriel. We know that they're friends, that they know each other. They're probably co-workers. Right. It's a flirty scene talking about her friend's recent death. But that doesn't come across as bad or weird. It comes across as comforting.

I get the feeling that both Rockford and Teddy have had quite a few friends that have died. You know, Rockford was in the military and he was also in prison. Like he definitely has had his fair share of... Every third episode is someone that he knows has been murdered. Yeah. Teddy, as made clear by this very episode, is in a profession where they're, you know, they're considered disposable by society at large, right? Like that's sort of what that comment is. So it's a little bit about the two of them just trying to get around that

to find some distraction from the very sad center of all this i think yeah like i didn't even really read it as that flirty other than just the general like he's a charismatic guy she's a pretty woman they just have on- screen chemistry a little bit, but more of like there, there is some, some real acknowledgement of this is a bad thing, but it's also not the only time that this has happened. Right. This interaction communicates that Teddy probably doesn't get a lot of friendliness and warmth herself. You know, what does it hurt Rockford to say something nice? Nothing. And he does. And she seems to appreciate it. Yeah. And then the other thing that should be noted is that this is when the name Murray first shows up yes she just knows that uh Del has a friend named Murray and no last names yeah you're

in the wrong neighborhood if you're asking for last names well she also mentioned this guy Roach so we go to the park to meet Roach long time listeners and the fans of Rockford Files will know how much we love our incidental characters. And this is an incidental character to love. I really like the framing of this where we have a long distance shot of Rockford walking through this park. And then kind of coming up to a bench where Roach is already sitting, throwing bread to pigeons. And they start off with long time no see. So one can assume that this is someone that Rockford knows from his criminal days, perhaps, or his prison stay. Could be where Rockford got his illegal gun.

I didn't even think about that. So Roach deals in cold pieces. Yes. He knows Kane. Kane wanted a silenced.22, but he didn't sell it to him because he's wigged out he's sold kane guns before when he's had business in la but this time with something was different he was acting weird and he wasn't willing to to sell him a gun so we get the the reveal of which i think we've all kind of known slash assumed which is that this guy kane is a

professional killer clearly has a circuit for his business interactions. We see Rockford respecting Roach's, what he's willing to talk about and not talk about. Because in addition to whatever connections they've had, this is a resource that Rockford doesn't want to tap, right? Like if he doesn't have to. So it's a limited resource. You probably can only ask him about guns so many times. Right, yeah.

And this is one of them, but he doesn't want to push too far. So, I mean, I'll get into this in the second half a little bit, but the scene ends with Rockford getting ready to leave, and Roach gets a little anxious and tells Rockford to keep clear of the pigeons that he's feeding and just goes on about how they're filthy birds filled with lice. Just this tirade that I'm used to from my days living in New York. And I think the science on it is that they're not.

They're called flying rats in New York and everyone's like, they spread disease. And it turns out they're not a vector for disease at all. But the point is that Roach here feeds the birds, but has this disdain for it, which reflects precisely what he's doing

with the killers. He sells them weapons only if they're going to kill professionally. Like there's this interesting moral line that he's drawing. In the second half, we're going to talk about ways to use this to help make our fiction better. Yeah, for sure. I think for the sake of the story also, this is where we first get this idea of something's wrong with Del Cain. Right. He's not acting like he usually does. We get that there's something wrong with him because he killed a woman.

Right. But this is where we get that all sides of the story think that there's something wrong with him right now. That he's his behavior has changed. We go to a new hotel where Angel is in disguise as a cop. Rockford has returned. No one told him that Kane was out, which I appreciate because even though earlier we saw that Angel was worried about it, apparently he never made the actual effort to get the word to him. The intent versus the effect of Angel is always a step behind. Angel never got his eggs from the last place,

so he's still waiting on room service. Wait a minute. I think we're missing a very important element of this scene here, and that is Angel in a cop uniform. Oh yeah. He is in disguise as a cop. I guess that's all I had to say about that was that I just love seeing Angel in a cop uniform. I can't imagine the argument that had to go into making that happen. Yeah. But yeah, Angel's waiting on his room service. He ordered a BLT and a club sandwich because in a quote that will come back multiple times, fear gives me an appetite. Yep.

And then there's just this great bit of physical business. The room service comes in, arrives. Chapman brings it in. He checks all the plates before letting angel go to the one he they're like little chafing dishes yeah so he like opens one lid and then puts it down and it's like oh no this is the wrong order angel's like but i saw my sandwich give me my food chapman's keeping him away and saying we're sending it back rockford looks puts it down says angel leave. Like you would tell your badly behaving dog.

Yes. Angel understands that as much as a badly behaving dog would. Goes for it, takes the lid off, and there's an Angel Christmas ornament with its head broken off on the dish. Clearly, their effort was for naught, and Kane knows where he is again. Angel's freaked out. Chapman thinks that they must have bought the information. They'll check out the hotel staff. But the key line here is, don't worry. Once you get in that courtroom, you'll have nothing to worry about. Cut to

the courtroom. Angel's hiding in the bathroom before he goes in to testify. Our DA, this is the second appearance of our DA talking to Rockford outside the bathroom. Apparently, Kane elected to a trial by judge. So this makes the DA more confident.

Makes the viewer less confident. But the DA has good reasons to be more confident because he says that the judge knows about Dell's priors and can't not know about them. Right. No matter what, that's going to sit in the back of his head. Angel comes out of the bathroom in a mask that he's made out of a pillowcase. He doesn't want anyone to say anything about it, but the DA points out that he has to take it off as the accused has a right to face his accuser in court.

And of course, Rockford's the one who pulls it off of his head. Yeah. And we go to the cross-examination of Angel by Del Cain's lawyer, who paints a picture of Angel didn't go to the police after so-called witnessing this so-called crime, and then went into police protection at extremely expensive hotels. And he has photostatic copies of his room service bills. Yes. So this has all been cooked up by Angel for his own personal gain by dragging this poor innocent man's name through the mud. I like this because he's not wrong.

It's literally what Angel's been doing. I mean, he didn't cook it up, but he's definitely been playing it for all it's worth. I guess that's the examination. Then we get the cross-examination. The DA just simply asking, what did you see? And Angel declaratively says, I saw the murder. I saw him kill Muriel with these own two eyes. Right.

I like how this scene kind of gives the case for him equivocating, showing us the Angel that we know him to be. But it does give us a solid Angel, straight up, tells the truth, tries to do the right thing when the chips are down moment. However, cut to the judge coming back from his deliberations he declares that the the state has not uh shown that there's a prima facia case a on its face case and therefore he has to rule not guilty and we get an extremely significant glare from del cane across the courtroom so let's take take a moment here because Del Cain is about to become an amazing villain, I think.

So far, he's been not physically present with all the threats, right? Like in the very beginning, he takes some shots at Angel. And then after that... Yeah, it's just shots through windows. Yeah, or like a message delivered via page boy or whatever, you know, like the room service. And now he gives this look and the actor is great. The actor is perfect for this character. You know,

right away he's guilty by looking at him. I'm mainly saying this because of what's going to happen next. What happens next is so stone cold. It's amazing. So at this point, once the not guilty comes down, right, how did you react to that? I had something in my mind when this happened, once the not guilty comes down, how did you react to that?

I had something in my mind when this happened, because as poetic as Angel's account of the events were, it didn't seem like what we saw as audience, right? He doesn't witness the murder. He sees her come out of the hotel room. Yeah, he hears the shot and sees her body, but that's technically different. tell yeah he hears the shot and sees her body but that's technically different so what was going on through my mind was are we as audience supposed to think angel lied on the stand and and then i then i was thinking like but who would know that he did right like you couldn't say oh we didn't get a scene earlier where angel describes what happens and then he's changed his story or

anything like that. So I originally was going through my mind trying to figure out if this was a legal loophole. I have to admit, I was too dumb to make the assumption that this judge had been bought. I was strung along the same way the DA and I had a whole bunch of other red herrings I was chasing in my mind. So I didn't quite catch what was happening until later when it was spelled out for me. Yeah, I think the first time I watched this, I'm trying to remember because I have seen this episode before. Actually, pretty recently. I think I was half and half between because it was kind of set up by the opted by trial by the judge.

So it's like, okay, either this was a mob payoff. Right. Or this judge has some kind of personal relationship to someone involved. Not to keep anyone in suspense, we do learn that he was paid off by the mob. So the simplest explanation is correct. Or actually, he was probably paid off by Del Cain. Oh, sure, yes. And the mob had nothing to do with it.

But yeah, so from here we go into the next exciting cycle. The show kind of changes at this point. It goes from, are we going to put Del Cain away to, oh no, what is Del Cain going to do? Angel runs up to him while he's waiting outside the elevator and tries to apologize and tell him that he has no ill will, that he was being leaned on by the prosecutors, but he's not going to go blabbing to anyone. There's no grudge. Everything's cool, right? And then he even mentions me and my friend here, Jim, Jim Rockford. He's a PI and he knows that you didn't do anything. And Kane just looks at them and then just leaves without a word. And then Rockford, I think appropriately so, I think he says, what jackass thing did you just do? You just told a professional hitman that both of us know that he killed someone. So now we're going to be target. Angel realizes what he's done,

goes to Chapman who's coming up the hall and is like, okay, I still need protection, but now he doesn't have any levers left. Right. So Chapman's like, well, I have a jail cell for you.

There's no deal. If you want protection, you're going to jail. And Angel says that he'd rather be dead. Yeah. And then Chapman just gives the absolute greatest eye roll pat on the shoulder. All right, well, that's what you're going to be. Yeah.

And walks away. This is a literal choice you're making. Mm-hmm. This is great. Again, this plays into my attempt to suss out the difference between Rockford and Angel and their survival tactics. Because we've seen Rockford use this very tactic in the Farnsworth Stratagem. Oh, yeah. He comes up and just goes right up to the mob and says, this is a scam.

I just want to let you know up front. I want no part of this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it works. And Angel is doing the same. Like, we're not going to tell anyone. Just let you know. We're just trying to, you know. And one gambit is clearly smarter than the other yeah but angel doesn't have

the capacity to know that and rockford does right like there's something in there uh they go out to rockford's car and this is just this great stone stone cold moment you were talking about they go to his car and then they see del cane just slowly walking through the parking lot towards them. Looks at each of them. Goes around to the back of the car. Pulls out a notebook. Slowly writes down Rockford's license plate number. Puts the notebook back in his pocket and walks away without saying a word.

So good. I love that scene. This is definitely a status scene, right? Because both Angel and rockford are just dead quiet throughout all of it just watching what he's doing terrified of what he's about to do and we hear throughout the episode about how he's out of control but he's so in control here yeah just knows what he can and can't get away with and just does what he can do and leaves you know that this guy is a problem from this scene.

I mean, we already saw him kill someone, but just his whole attitude here is the effect of it is intended to be like, there is no way you can stop me. Yeah. We go from here to two guys walking a dog. New characters introduced halfway through this episode. These two guys, there's an older guy and a younger guy. The older guy is Mr. Nova, and we learn soon that he's a mob guy. He's a family head or whatever. And then the other guy is Murray, who we heard referenced by Teddy when Rockford talked to her.

And they're talking about how Kane is a menace. He should be locked up and Nova doesn't want the contract anymore. Right. And then so we kind of learn through the course of the conversation that Mr. Nova had ordered some hit and Murray was going to back up Kane. But now that Kane killed this woman and has all this heat on him, he doesn't want that hit anymore because he's gone. As he says, he's a cuckoo bird.

He doesn't want to hit from no cuckoo bird. He thinks that now he's going to mess it up. Yeah. That's the problem here. He just wants to call it off. But Kane has this professional pride. And so he's like, oh, no, he's still going to do it. He's just going to do it for free.

Yeah. So now Nova has a hit that he doesn't want that's going to happen that he can't stop. He says, who would have thought it? It was a crime of passion for Mr. Deep Freeze. So here's the second indication that something's changed. Kane's gone crazy. And there's also a line in here that we got the best judge money could buy to get him off and he still won't leave. Oh yeah, I guess it was. I misinterpreted that line because I thought that line was... I might have misinterpreted it too. I don't remember the context about whether he was saying he got the best judge money could buy or Kane got the best judge his money could buy.

I think he said, I knew he had the best lawyer money could buy, but I didn't know he had the best judge money could buy. Oh, okay. Sure. Either way. People here, viewers can let us know. I think it's still a little unclear about, you know, who this hit is and who Murray is at this point. Yeah. know who this hit is and who murray is at this point yeah but murray does say maybe it'll work itself out because kane wants to kill angel and rockford because they know about him that might

work real good and then the scene ends yeah not a lot of information given to the viewer about why that would would work out all right so rockford knows that they're on Kane's list. So Rockford and Angel are hiding out at an extremely pastel-colored motel. I love the look of this hotel. The doorknobs are like how a hobbit door is described with the knob in the middle, except there are these giant plates with the knob in the middle of them. It's beautiful. Like a 70s hobbit. Yes.

Rocky has brought them food at their hideout. It's beautiful. Like a 70s hobbit. Yes. Rocky has brought them food at their hideout. He just brings all this food out of bags and every single thing is for Angel. Because as we know, fear gives him an appetite. Right. So these things include pork sausage on raisin bread, some french fries, and a ham and swiss sandwich.

But he forgot Rockford's coffee. Pork sausage on raisin bread. I don't know. To me, that is the weirdest sounding sandwich. Never had it. Never will. But I would not think of that. But I can kind of understand that to the 70s palette,

that that might be something or whatever. Then french fries, coleslaw, and then the ham and Swiss on onion roll. And he says on onion roll, Rocky and Jim give each other a look like who is this heathen yeah to me of the two sandwiches there's no sin there that's onion rolls tasty like i mean i just love the gag because there's two bags too so you keep expecting one bag to be for angel and one for rockford but everything out of both bags is for angel it's it's beautiful but yeah rockford won't tell rocky why you know why they're hiding out and rocky says well i have a couple things he went by his trailer to get clothes and a toothbrush and rockford's like i told you not to go to the trailer so rocky

with the best of intentions as per usual has messed up again because the trailer was probably being staked out uh by del cane angel's like how would he know that and jim's like i advertise right in the phone book it's not hard to find me if there's one thing we know is that people can always find jim yeah so he tells rocky to to you know go ahead and get out of there and then he's like we need to leave now because we don't want del cane finding us at night which makes total sense this is where we get the scene from the preview montage where Rockford walks out, gets in his car, looks around, goes, Angel! And then backs up to the door. Angel runs out of the hotel

and dives through the open window into Rockford's car. What, were you waiting to see if I made it? Which, yes, he probably was. Yes. And sure enough, Kane was waiting outside their hotel and pursues in a short but sweet car chase for our episode. Angel spends the whole car chase face in the floor mat. Yes.

Feet in the air. Rockford manages to turn under like an overpass bridge and then kind of hide while Cain goes past. So he turns the tables on him and then starts following Cain. And then Cain starts to weave around and stuff. And there's a moment where it's like he's going to kind of run him off the road, but they blow past a cop. And so the cop sirens go on. Rockford just pulls over and Kane is still speeding away. And so the cop pursues Kane. And that's how Jim and Angel get out of that one. Kane speeds away against traffic.

Yeah. He goes down the wrong off ramp. The whole point of that maneuver was that Rockford got Kane's license plate number, or the car that he was driving at least, because they're gonna need to find him before he finds them again. Angel says that he's never been this car sick, and Rockford's like

not on the car, and shoves him away before he can throw up on the car. We go to a restaurant. You can just see a sign that says it's called Ralph and Maria's Bar, but it just has two giant signs that say lunch on either side. Rockford and Angel are in there with some peanuts and some beer, waiting for Dennis, who comes in and joins them. He's run that license plate number. That car is registered to Murray Riddle. waiting for Dennis who comes in and joins them. He's run that license plate number. That car is registered to Murray Riddle.

So we finally have a Murray Del Cain connection for our heroes. I think Angel recognizes the name. Someone recognizes the name that he's a top guy, a major domo to a bookie named Louis Gaydel, and that they had some kind of falling out.is knows that they had some kind of falling out but he doesn't know the details rockford hypothesizes based on what he's heard so far including a couple things from teddy earlier that if kane's driving murray's car and murray works for a day dell and they had a falling out and kane's a hitman then perhaps that is who

he's gunning for and now angel wants that cell yes i love this part of the scene because angel he starts by saying essentially oh good let's run away and both rockford and dennis cut him off right because that's not the thing that they can do and angel's like hear me out let's run away hear me out kane kills gay dell and leaves he's gone who cares about a bookie and we're all safe yeah like he goes exactly where dennis and rockford knew he was going and he's like no no no you don't just hear me out and then just goes there yeah and they just look at each other and look at him and look at each other no we're not gonna let some guy die just because you're scared i wrote down a note about this because this is this glimpse into angel's mind where he thinks everyone he's not aware that everyone doesn't think like him yeah i think

that that's what's happening he thinks they're going to object because he's got a bad plan. And that's not it. They're going to object because he's got an immoral plan. Yeah. But this is kind of a callback to how he talks about Muriel in the first scene with Rockford. Right. I'm not upset because I saw someone die. I'm upset because I got shot at.

Yeah. I love how conspiratorial Dennis is in this scene too. Yeah. They're outside where the cops have any chance of doing anything right now and his friend's lives are in trouble. So he's just kind of like, here's what I know, here's how I can help. And there's no resistance or guff from Dennis. Like you would normally expect when Angel and Rockford show up with a problem. Yeah. He's kind of like, this is what he can do to help. Yeah. And it's kind of all he can do to help at the present time.

All right. So in another demonstration of what you've been saying about similar tactics with different outcomes, Rockford brings Angel to go to Gaydel's office to warn him that he has a hit out on him. And he is presented, so Gaydel is presented as like every tell for a wise guy, right? Like he has a big bodyguard. He's getting measured by a tailor when they walk in and he's holding a cigar. There's a great camera thing that happens. Rockford comes in and is like, this is a private conversation.

So they get rid of the tailor and then they pan over to see that he has another guy who we know who we've met but like i just like no no this is like a really private conversation like as if he's got all of these attendants that he right just needs to dismiss one by one i do want to note about that big goon at the beginning or the big one that's at the door that is james whitworth and horror fans will recognize him as Jupiter from The Hills Have Eyes. I didn't recognize him, but I was like, that is a big boy. Yeah, he is horrific in that movie. There's a great little callback here. Gaydel says, Ken Hollywood said you're okay. Kenny Hollywood, we saw in one of our previous episodes, there's one in every port where he's one of Rockford's ne'er-do-well

team of con men so i like this little in-universe connection yeah anyway uh so once the tailor's gone uh and he says that you know murray is cool to stay rockford and i didn't realize this i think until the end of this scene but rockford doesn't know who murray is right like he doesn't know that that guy is murray so he says i have information that del cane has a contract on you that's why he's here and we just get these significant camera shots of murray as gay dell's like why would that be he's like no he knows a guy who used to work for you uh murray riddle that's murray riddle these rumors they go out of proportion and they kind of laugh it off and rockford's like okay so this is the part where i apologize and leave and they're like oh no apologies necessarily except i'm not going to apologize because i know i'm right right and

i've told the cops do with that what you will yeah to uh gaydale's credit he's affable throughout like he's like and next time don't involve the cops. But that's it. You know, it's not a threat. I just like how this one, I think this scene might be the one with the most interesting kind of camera work and stuff. Not because it's weird or experimental or anything,

but just because all of the information that you need to know about Murray is communicated by how the camera cuts to him and the expressions on his face during this interaction. There's no dialogue about it. We don't get a button where they confront each other or anything like that.

Yeah. We just see Murray sitting there having to listen to Rockford tell his boss the thing that he was trying to keep from his boss. I remember watching the scene when the camera first panned over to him. I was like, is that the guy? Yeah, because he's not wearing glasses. Because he wears glasses in some scenes and not another so he is wearing glasses here and completely superman clark kent's me yeah no me too actually and it's the camera work that reveals i'm like oh that's got to be the guy because of how significant they're making him in the scene

where rockford's talking to someone else and then eventually it's revealed through the dialogue. But I remember thinking to myself, that's got to be him. Oh, Rockford, what are you doing? It's really good. It's easy to miss if you're just kind of watching. Right. It's really smart when you're like attentively watching.

As he collects Angel to leave, Angel is giving the goon $30 to put on the fourth horse in the sixth race. If it wins, you can call, call my friend Rocky at this number and leave him a message. Oh man. Another little irritating little nip at Rockford there. Cause yeah, Rockford's reaction to that is upset, right? Like he's like, Rocky, what are you doing?

I also like how when we left Angel, he was awkwardly sitting in the bodyguard seat and then like looking at him all kind of scared. And then when we come back, they have a business transaction that has occurred. Yeah. We go back to Mr. Nova and Murray. They're talking about the situation. It is revealed that this is indeed the hit that was called in because Nova knows that Gaydel has been skimming, you know, because he's a bookie. He's supposed to be kicking back money and he's been skimming some portion of it. But now it's all going out of control because since Rockford told the police if Del Cain actually makes the hit, then it could rebound on them.

And then Murray says, but if he goes after Rockford and Angel, then he'll take himself out of the picture. And then we get a shot of Nova's face kind of frowning. And then the scene ends. So I was a little confused about whether, about what that idea is. I was thinking about that too. Because I'm also suspicious of Murray now. Yeah. Also, Nova tells Murray, the plan was we get rid of Gaydel and then you become the new Gaydel.

Right. That's what I wanted. Yeah. So we know that Murray was selling out you become the new gay Dell. Right. That's what I wanted. Yeah. So we know that Murray was selling out his boss in the first place. Right. And briefly, it looks like Rockford, Rockford's gambit is working,

right? Rockford says, well, I told the police, make of that what you will probably assuming that Murray who's overheard this is going to be like, well, now the police know this won't look good.

And so we just get that spelled out here, right? So this is Rockford's plan working. And then I think Murray wants that spot. This is what I'm reading into this that's never actually spelled out. Yeah. If Kane takes out Rockford and Angel, those are the people who know that Kane and Murray were connected. And then if Kane also takes out Gaydel and then gets taken down by the cops,

that all wraps itself up. Kane killed these people, now he's put away. But maybe that's the intention? It's a bad plan for Nova because the whole point to keeping Kane under wraps is that he knows too much about a bunch of other stuff. So I think that that's sort of what we're getting there is that Murray has a plan for Kane

that Nova doesn't agree with. Right. And what happens next is probably Murray moving against the wishes of both his bosses. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable read. It's not really telegraphed. It's also part of it is just that Kane is such an agent of chaos at this point

that I think Murray's like, of chaos at this point that yeah i think murray's like where can i direct him that will do the least damage right right uh but before we get to that uh we go to rocky's uh where angel's making a sandwich and rockford wants rocky to go to his friend lj's for a couple days sure enough they get a phone call. Rocky answers. He takes a message. Number five and the six. I'll tell him. Hangs up. Angel, your horse came in. Pays 30 to one.

Rockford immediately remembers that he put his money on the number four, not number five. Right. This has to be a setup. But Angel now has a 30 to one stake. And he put $30 down. He has $900 coming to him.

Right. If he goes back to Gaydel's office and picks up his, his winnings. And then in the most, I think interesting kind of maneuver here, Angel's like, he's like, okay,

I won't do it. You know what? We've been spending too much time together. We should hide out separately. I'll go to my brother-in-law Aaron's. Yeah. But I won't be able to get you. He won't put you up. He'll barely put me up. Yeah.

So, you know, maybe you should go do your own thing. And Rockford almost visibly rolling his eyes. All right. Yeah. No, you're right. I agree. We should split up. Just don't do the thing that I told you not to do. Do you want me to give you a ride to Aaron's? Like, no, no, I'll hitch a lift. He's like, okay, well, good luck. See you you later they're both going through the motions here yes i mean rockford certainly knows what's on the angel's mind i think angel thinks he's pulling one over

on rock exactly and rockford's just putting up the mildest amount of resistance and it's it's obvious that he's doing it at least to us to the audience and i think that rockford has a plan that he's now hatching that Angel would not like. Like, I think that's the important thing. Yeah, I think Rockford's like, okay, now I just need to use what I know Angel is going to do to make this work rather than try to convince Angel to do things. Right, exactly. His body language communicates this to us so readily in this scene. It's really great.

Because you do spend the scene going, okay, I see what Angel's trying to do, but Rockford's obviously letting him do it. What does Rockford have planned? And yeah, sure enough, Angel goes back to Gay Del's and he demands his money. And then Del Kane comes out, grabs him by the lapels and wants to do him right there. But first he wants to know where Rockford is. This is the first dialogue from Del Cain for the whole episode. He doesn't have any lines until this scene, which is kind of great. Murray is able to talk him into taking him out of the office because if he doesn't, like, just don't do it here. Right.

And this is where I think we see him doing his best to direct the chaos. Yeah. Angel immediately, like like breaks down and. What angel does best. We go to, we're under an overpass bridge and angel is tied to the support, spread eagled on this column. It's very grim. Yeah.

Kane wants to know where Rockford is. And he has this whole spiel about essentially fast or slow makes no difference to me, makes a lot of difference to you. And we get these reverse shots where we see that he has this huge bald spot on the back of his head. This portrait of this like middle-aged, balding, professional hitman who's gone crazy. It's good. Angel's bargaining chip here is the same bargaining chip he has always in his back pocket, which is, I'll find Jim for you. You need his known associates file. Correctly, Del Cain says, well, I don't have access to that.

And Angel's like, I'm his known associates file. I know everyone. Just bring me along. And again, it's him trying to just say anything he can to put off the inevitable. Right. He's stalling as hard as he can. And it is apparently just hard enough, because just as Del Cain is about to take a shot, we hear a shout at another gunshot.

He turns and we see our friends Jim Rockford and Dennis Becker who've run up behind their car. It looks like Becker takes a shot and takes down Cain. And then the cops show up and Murray's there. And so Murray's caught red handed and Angel down Kane. Yeah. And then the cops show up and Murray's there. And so Murray's caught caught red handed and Angel is saved. Rockford goes up to Angel and basically just mocks him for being so predictable. Yeah. There's great business where he's about to untie Angel and then thinks thinks better of it and walks away. Just leaves him tied up there. I think this is, we see that Rockford is mad at Angel for putting Rockford in the position

where he had to go to such lengths to save Angel's stupid life. Right. And of course, he also gets to witness this part where Angel sells him out. Yeah. We ran through it pretty quick. The scene is a pretty exciting conclusion. Yeah, it's well paced, dramatic, has a good good kind of flow to it. That is mostly the visual nature of what happens. And it's good as often happens in Rockford file episodes. And I feel

like this is because those that write or have control over the story itself realize that in order for Rockford to stay alive, the mob needs to reach stasis. Yeah. So the cops don't just have Del Cain, they have Murray too. Everybody who was disrupting what was going on with the syndicate is now neatly boxed up. Right. So now Rockford's back to, least for another week sleeping in his trailer and fishing with his dad. And we end our episode in Rockford's trailer where Becker and Rockford are sharing some celebratory beers. Everyone, strangely enough, came out really well. Becker

says that he got a commendation. Yeah. He asks Rockford what he got out of it, and Rockford won't give a dollar amount. He got some kind of unspecified bonus. Right. Which leads me to believe that when Angel said, I'm going to get you working for $300 a day, that actually happened. Well, his specific description of the amount is, I won't tell you because you'd eat your badge. This indication that working on Rockford's side of the law, because where does that money come from? Because Angel doesn't have that money. I don't know if that came from the police. From the DA? Or if it's coming from

the bookie who's like, okay, you saved my life. Oh, baby. It's never explained where it came from, but the statement statement you'll eat your badge, I feel like puts a little emphasis on either they're not paying you enough or, uh, working this other side of the law is more profitable. I read it as they're not paying you enough. Right. Cause then he's like, well, I got accommodation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, ha. But yeah, the, the feds, uh, got Kane and Murray and everything is tying up nicely. Angel's on the couch smoking a cigarette out of a cigarette holder, which is a weird little affectation. He's doing a Hunter S. Thompson, I think.

That's what's going on here. He's working on his manuscript again. And Thompson Wells, the ghostwriter, comes in. So, first, this is where we get the line about because kane was such a barracuda i'm thinking of calling it jaws right and then his ghost writer comes back in to say that he got picked up by two mob guys who said that they're going to break his knees and uh yeah gay dell and nova don't want this published which i think back to your point about the the mob stasis right yeah so uh yeah his book's probably not going to come out because we know Angel's not going to make it happen by himself.

He's like, well, how come you guys got all this stuff and I don't come out of this with anything? Rockford's like, you know, you came out of it with something. He's like, yeah, what? What did I come out of it with? Your life? So, I don't know if it's worth anything, but. And then Rockford and Becker eat some what what I called in my notes, victory chips. I didn't call them victory chips, but I was like, potato chips.

This is, I believe, the first bit of nourishment that Rockford gets the whole episode. He had some nuts at the bar. Oh, you're right. He had some nuts and now he has some chips. They're eating it and Angel is not, and that's important. And then we freeze frame with angel looking sadly down end of episode excellent very i really enjoyed this episode it's a i mean whatever it's an angel episode i'm gonna enjoy a cobra episode the cobra please yeah sorry the

cobra how does it fit in your um scheme here what do you think? So I like how it's my scheme. It is the Nathan D. Appiletta catalog of Rockford genres. This one is pretty squarely a Rockford's friend gets him into trouble one, right? The focus of it character-wise is on Angel. He's the co-headliner, if you will. Though I think I have a thought about that. I think we'll be good for a second half about whether he's really the protagonist or not. We can get into that after our break.

But in terms of the Rockford scheme, as we saw in that last scene, he may have gotten paid, which is good for him. But he was not brought in for a client. He was brought in because angel was in trouble because even though angel promises him money you're never getting money from angel so yeah i think this is a good solid up the middle angel got jim into trouble i think we we mentioned this last time but like almost all of them have a little bit of something from the other ones and i feel like this one has a little bit of the special issue flavor in the rockford interaction with teddy uh talking about how disposable uh prostitute lives are and i don't want to be too kind of essentialist about this but i feel like a lot of the juanita bartlett

episodes have that edge to them yeah just like a little i think she as a writer was interested in highlighting social content in her episodes. So yeah, I'd agree with that. This is an interesting one too because we get the introduction of the backstory halfway through and it's like a full complicated set of interactions that doesn't occur until after the halfway point of the episode there's a lot of really great craft in this episode about integrating all of those characters in a way that didn't feel like it was overloaded or overweight which i thought was really nice that's something we may want to talk about in the second half because i as we were talking through this i took some notes down about it because you brought it to my attention and then once that happened yeah the neurons were like well since we have so much to

talk about in our second half let's go ahead and take our break and then we'll we'll come back and go over all of those thoughts that we've had sounds good all right while we have you here there's three ways you can support us first rate and review on itunes or whatever service you use for podcasts second you can support us directly for as little as $1 an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. If you want to help us shape the direction of 200 a day, the Patreon is the best place to go. And finally, both of us have other projects going on

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with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We were just going over the episode Hotel of Fear. And now is when we normally talk about how we take the lessons we learned in that and uh incorporate it into our own fiction whether it's a short story or a novel or i guess a screenplay

or just playing role-playing games at the table which you should all be doing we had a lot of things at the end there where we're kind of like, this is something to talk about for the second half. So maybe we should roll through some of those. Yeah. You mentioned that you had some insights perhaps about this adding in all these characters halfway through the story. Right. So, you know, it's clearly an act break right there, right? We lead up to the trial.

Everything's about getting Angel to the trial. We get Angel to the trial and it doesn't work to no one's surprise. And then there's a tonal shift and the focus moves to the mob and we get more about the backstory because up to that point, the story is just a psycho killer. Here's a guy who's gone crazy and in a crime of passion, slays woman and then is after the witness, who happens to be Angel, and his friend Jim. After that is when we start getting more of the real nitty gritty about why he's in town, what he's supposed to do, how he's all mobbed up and everything like that. But this tonal shift, obviously it's a structure as old as structure. Acts go all the way back to the beginning of theater and then all the way back but uh it reminds me of that what happens when you've got a role-playing game going and you end one session on that cliffhanger you end it on the trial not going the way everyone

was working towards making the trial go and then everyone goes home for a week and they have their regular daily lives and they come back and you don't have the same weighty presence that was there that you had built up at the table the previous session because you've gone and lived a real world life and you've come back. And so you have this space to build yourself back up again. Right. I think that that is very interesting because I think that being conscious of that, you can do interesting things like they did here in this fiction where they kept it clean and relatively uncomplicated in the beginning. I shouldn't say that because it, I mean, there definitely were twists and turns throughout it,

but they allowed them to open up a whole new set of twists and turns. This episode could have been structured with the kind of mob backstory first, and then we don't actually see Angel or Rockford until a third of the way through with the Delcaine thing. And then the drama comes from, how are these two things going to run into each other? Yeah. Well, in this, the drama came in like waves almost, right? Like it had a nice little interior cycle of the first act. What's going to happen to Angel? Because Del Cain keeps finding him. And then what's going to happen to Del Cain because he goes to trial? Those two things are actually resolved in a way after that. And then the next thing is, how is what Del Cain's agenda is going to run up against what these mob guys' agenda is? And then how is that going to impact Angel and Jim?

Not only are they internal cycles, but they also snowball. Like each of those questions snowballs into the next question in a way that kind of keeps you in the story and you're like, okay, what's going to happen next? Because there's a lot of individual elements that could be very confusing that end up making sense as you watch it, at least to me. Yeah, we're past the seasons that are available on Hulu, right? So we're watching them on DVD and Blu-ray. So we don't have a commercial break. But I would place a $30 bet that there was a commercial break after what happened at the jail or at the courthouse. Yeah.

Like from the moment of writing down the license plate. I think there's a commercial break after that scene on the Blu-ray. It's like it goes to black and then it comes back. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's another interesting thing that the medium has that kind of plays into what I was thinking about where the medium of role-playing has as well is where you can have these moments you had this arc of the story and you have a moment to digest it the commercial break is a minute minute and a half long so it's not a whole long thing but you're

not paying attention to the commercials anyways and it gives you a chance to uh maybe not reflect but like let out whatever that arc was and make room for this next arc. The same thing can happen playing a role-playing game, and you can see that effect when you go back and look at the sort of arcs of the tales that you've been telling at the table. When you have those breaks, it gives you a moment to breathe a little and then start up and build the tension again. I like what you're saying about using the break as an opportunity for the next session as opposed to this is an annoying interruption.

Right. Yeah. That's something that I do because a lot of my play is short games or short sequences of games. So we usually try to play two good breaks. Yeah. So that those sync up in the way that you're saying. But if that's something that maybe you're not as familiar with, a thing is to say, all right, so we finished this session and this is what happened. When we meet again, we don't have to pick up right at the minute that we left off. We can take that time to think, where do we want to go next?

Where does my character want to go next? Where does the story want to go next? And set up the next act. Well, what if we dive into why Del Cain is there in the first place? Right, right. What is the groundwork that we now need to lay if we've into why delcaine is there in the first place right right what is the groundwork that we now need to lay if we've gotten this far because if he spent the rest of the episode just being this single-minded stone cold killer who just wants to kill angel we saw enough of that we

didn't need to see that for the rest of the episode it was more interesting to see why is he there and how his actions are going to impact all these other surrounding characters, not just Angel and Jim, which I thought was what made this feel like a nice weighty kind of meaty episode. And that actually kind of plays a little bit into one of the other things I want to talk about, which is if you look at this at the characters in this episode and you look at their lives and what's going on in their lives. the characters in this episode and you look at their lives and what's going on in their lives uh and it's reflected in the very first scene where angel's just coming home just checking his mail doing the most mundane thing possible stealing soap stealing soap yeah as as you do then there's a gunshot and that gunshot comes from this one character delcaine who in this act is going to end one life and stir up so many other lives. Now the mob, they had a plan that was going to, you know, come to fruition and get the thing done that they needed. Like Murray had a

plan. Murray's plan is now screwed. Nova had a plan. Nova's plan is now screwed. Goodell is fortunate that this happened. Rockford was sleeping. Everyone was leading this normal life that had like a sequence of events that were going to happen. And then something snapped in one person and we just see it all domino out. Yeah. I like that kind of fiction. And one of the things about this episode that's so good about that is that you don't know in the beginning that that's what's happening here. You don't realize that this is ruining everyone's lives.

First, it just looks like it's just Angel and obviously the victim, Muriel. what's happening here. You don't realize that this is, this is ruining everyone's lives. Yeah. First, it just looks like it's just angel and, uh, obviously the victim Muriel. I didn't realize it while we were watching, but I like how, the focus of the,

of the episode kind of effortlessly slides from person to person. Who's being affected by Kane's choices. Yeah. We start off, you know, hard on angel. And then we kind of slide over and we see how Jim's being affected by Kane's choices. Yeah. We start off, you know, hard on Angel, and then we kind of slide over and we see how Jim's being affected.

And we kind of get the ancillary, this is why it's important for the DA and all this other stuff. And then we go over to Nova and Murray, and then we go over to Gaydel. The scoping out of the impact of Kaneane's choices is really nicely handled i like that it's handled in a way that doesn't ask a lot of us as viewers to get really invested in all these different characters i think that's why it works actually like we're invested in in rockford

and angel to a degree and chapman maybe but like we're not invested in mr nova right yeah and well i think it's generally great writing advice to you know make characters that people can relate with or empathize with identify with in this case trying to put words to this it's not that we we care so deeply about what's going to happen to murray but we just see we see murray's motivation we see the pressures on him and we see how that's being changed by kane and so we're invested in how it comes out even if we don't really care about murray necessarily that's i guess that's why i'm trying to get out with the idea that this is a high level of craft i feel like in this episode because it yeah introduces all these characters it doesn't ask us to be like

okay now you have to identify with all these people and get where they're coming from it's more like here they are here's what they care, and here's why what they care about is getting pooched. Part of why I think that works is that we do have Angel and Rockford at the center. So we could, like you were saying, we have them to care about. And then we can just assume that we're going to care about, at least to the effect where, can Rockford use that? Right. To give people a little bit of like a concrete thing that they can do. One way to look at this would be to just be like, okay, here we have a plot to kill a

bookie and we need to get Rockford to stop that plot to kill a bookie. How do we get Rockford into it? What if, I mean, we've got a bookie, so let's get Angel involved. Right. And, you know, what if the guy who's supposed to kill the bookie kills someone in front of Angel? And then you can see maybe how this works its way towards what it is. But you can go about the other way and just say, let's assume we have normal lives and all this is going to happen. And then we're going to pick one of these characters to just spin out of control.

to just spin out of control. By starting the episode with the characters that we care about, it makes it easier for us to just transfer that over to the characters we don't know that much about. If the episode is structured the other way and we see the tension between Murray and Gaydel and Nova and then Del King gets a phone call and then they meet at the track and we're watching this stuff and it's like, okay, so who do I care about here who's the yeah who am i investing in who's the who's

the good one who's the bad one you have to do all that work up front and that's harder than just seeing angel and seeing jim and then getting this later we're already by the time we get halfway through the episode we're in we're ready we want to see how this comes out that's why i think introducing these relatively complicated characters, or at least this kind of complicated situation, ends up working because it's not so complicated that we can't follow it. Right. But it's complicated enough that we see that there's multiple angles of motivation.

That's why Del Cain stands out so much because his motivation is unmoored from most people's. His motivation has become this internal these people piss me off so now i want to kill them taking in a vacuum is kind of a boring motivation like i'm a psycho who just wants to kill people that's not interesting but because that's presented to us by these other people who have worked with him before and have context for why why that's different and notable, that makes it more compelling.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, this is definitely one of those things where it's not like any one piece of that is going to make it work. Yeah. We're putting all of the pieces together that make it work well in this episode. Not saying that this episode was in danger of not working, but this is good television here. Yeah. And one of the reasons why is that it's so well crafted and entangled like that one of the key pieces to that is roach where he tells us about how there's a break between how kane used to be and how he is i think you had some other some

other observations about roach and his portrayal here okay so there's a really neat trick going on here we've gone on and on in many episodes about how much we love these little incidental characters and how they all seem to have an internal life that's separate from the show right i was i was just thinking the other day about how stephen king can do this quite well with his fiction too one of the things about a stephen king story is that if you sit down to read a stephen king story and you're two paragraphs in and you've already got like three very distinct characters that you can visualize and see, you know, that's how you know you're in a Stephen King story. He writes local color characters really well.

He also does horror really well. So this trick here with Roach, which I think is a really clever trick, is that Roach behaves a certain way. He sells guns to people who are going to use those guns to do criminal acts. And he drew a line, like he sold to Del Cain before, but he will not sell to him now because Del Cain has gone off the rails. This is important because we as audience have an inkling, but this is where Rockford finds out that he was a professional and is now acting unprofessional. So that's important information to have this character convey. But then you get the character played by an actor who can really do a good character like

that. That's helpful too. This guy is fun to watch. But the other bit is this bit at the end with the pigeons where he tells Rockford in almost a panic. He's been feeding the pigeons, but Rockford shouldn't go near him because they're filthy. They're covered in lice and whatnot. That's the sort of like incidental color that makes the character feel real or something separate from what's going on in the story. But if you just throw a random thing in, it's just going to feel random. And while this sounds random, it's not. It feels natural because it reflects exactly how he's dealing with the criminal. He's feeding the pigeons, but he doesn't want anything to do with them. Like, don't go near

them. They'll give you diseases. He's giving the criminals guns, but he doesn't want anything to do with anything messy. Yeah. As long as they're staying far enough away from him. Right. It reflects what he's doing and how he's doing it, but it's also tangential to what's actually happening. So it gives you this moment that makes it feel like this character is a real character. And I think that that's a neat trick to use, like to just think of an odd thing you can have the character do and then figure out how that odd thing reflects what the character is doing for you in the story. Yeah, we've talked before about, you know, give the side characters a motivation or two motivations. Right.

And this is kind of like adding another layer of something you can make apparent that follows from those motivations that isn't necessarily about the plot or about providing a tool or something like that that's more illustrative i also particularly like this one because it's a little at odds with the whole that whole bit where you're like if you want to make sure people like your protagonist even though they're a jerk you have them be nice to dogs or cats or old people or kids and here's this guy who's being nice to these birds that he hates. The other little trick I like in this scene is just using the phrase, it's been a long time to establish the relationship between them. Yeah.

It could not be there. They could just be talking and we just assume that Rockford knows him because Rockford knows underworld people. Right, right. But between that and the way that Rockford's like, I have to ask you this thing. You don't have to tell me. I just have to ask.

And he kind of treats him kind of gently. Yeah. Nothing is ever stated, but we can just kind of read a background between the two of them into that that makes Roach feel part of the lived-in world. There's like a set of rules around how he can be interacted with.

Yeah. And Rockford knows those rules and is obeying them, which is really neat. And they don't spell them out or say like, back when we did this thing. Right. Which you can also do. Like, there's no reason not to do that if you need more backstory or something. Right. I think that's something that I've done in games.

I've done this as a player and as someone running a game where it's like like oh here's a new character well back when we did this thing yeah i think just make some reference to something in the past and just wait for them it's a very yes and kind of technique yeah to us as the players this is a new character we don't know anything about them but in order to make sure that we have an easy on-ramp to integrating them into our story how do you know this character? What did you used to do together? When was the first time you met? You know, like those kinds of questions that can be answered with one sentence and then

give you the fertile ground to grow the character out of. I've even seen it happen at the table going the other way, where the player suddenly decides that they have a backstory for the character. There's times where that's really neat the character there's times where that's really neat and there's times where it's like i see what you're doing here oh i know this prison guard we're old friends he's gonna let me out you know that but i don't think that's particularly a danger because you can just say okay i see what you're doing here let's not do that but uh i do like that other where it's really kind of neat when you have let's not use the term holes but

hooks in your backstory like empty spaces for characters to fit in one great thing about the character of jim rockford is that that's his whole character yeah this is going off on a bit of a tangent but in a way jim rockford is kind of a lone wolf archetype right but then everything about him as a character is a bunch of elements that counteract the worst tropes of the lone wolf. Yeah. He has a father that he has a strong relationship with. He's surrounded by friends. He has this backstory that gives him reasons to always know, know someone either because of military service, because of in jail or uh because he has a friend that knows them so he's kind of a character that is built entirely out of hooks in that way even

though he has a lot of the personal attributes of that kind of character where he's very self-sufficient he's very good at getting out of trouble he's good at leveraging you know his options when he's when he's alone, that kind of stuff. This is a comment, like we were just commenting about this before, when we were talking about how often an episode might involve someone Rockford knowing dying. Yeah. He just knows so many people in the same way the angel does too, right? Like we get that in this episode when the lineup, that wonderful lineup scene where he's just like, oh, and I know that cop and I know that cop. It's fruitful because it offers resources like we do get in this one where he knows who Roach is and he can go to Roach and get as much information as he can without pressuring Roach in ways that he doesn't want to be pressured. And it's also ways to pull a character into the story.

ways to pull a character into the story. Like we get again in this episode when Angel's in trouble, the first thing he does is he comes to Rockford for money, not for advice or help. And I think that that's the other neat thing that kind of goes a little bit against the lone wolf trope is that you can always depend on Rockford for comfort. When Angel shows up, his first thought is like,

well, that's horrible. Let me get you a drink. When he's talking to Teddy about her friend dying, he doesn't know her, but he still offers this sort of warm comfort. And I like that. It both gives you a reason for why he has characters that he knows and why those characters might reach out to him or be welcoming him or helping him. Yeah, he genuinely cares about other people. Right. And we see that in lots of episodes where he even has sympathy for the criminal or the villain at the very end once they're no longer a danger. And then he can kind of safely express some kind of sympathy for whatever their story is, even if he caught them or put them away.

He's more likely to be sympathetic with them than he is with Angel at the end of an episode. That is true. So I had a question for you. Oh, yeah. For discussion. I had this thought as we were prepping for this about whether Angel is really a protagonist

in this episode or not. Angel keeps on making poor choices, which we know as Angel he is want to do but there's these moments or there's a particular moment when he gets the call about the the bet it is so obvious both to us as audience but also because rockford spells it out for him that this is a setup yeah and in that moment what we're seeing is angel's two conflicting character traits he has self-preservation which is extremely strong and he has desire for money preferably for no effort on his part which is also very strong his decision to go for the money instead of go for self-preservation there felt to me that it did more service in making the plot happen than it did in showing Angel the Angel. Am I underestimating the effect of $900?

No, I was actually thinking about that value when we were watching it. Because I mean, it's a lot, but is it a lot for Angel? Because that's like essentially like $5,000-ish in today's money. It's not something to sneeze at. Okay, so the concept of the antihero, which is, you know, a protagonist that is not heroic, right? And I think a lot of people mistakenly think of like Batman or, you know, like the grim hero is the antihero. But the antihero is kind of a broad umbrella. And some of my favorite characters who are cowards fall under it. like the grim hero is the anti-hero but the anti-hero is kind of a broad umbrella and some

of my favorite characters who are cowards fall on under it and angel is a coward the deeper question that you're getting at are his actions what's driving the story or the story driving his action yeah and i think you're onto something here it's a rockford files rockford is obviously a protagonist but that doesn't mean that there can't be another one standing side by side with him. This is a real like edge case, I feel, right? Contrast this with Chicken Little is a Little Chicken, where I think Angel is a protagonist. I mean, it's another Angel focused episode. It's the same model. Angel gets Jim into trouble. Jim has to get Angel out of it. But every step of the way there, Angel's actions came out of his motivations, his deep cowardice, and also his like fear for his own life. If we're going to talk

about Chicken Little is a little chicken, we should talk about the fan theory. The Sean cut? Yeah, yeah. So in our second discussion special, we fielded a question from a listener that posits a deeper read um where angel is kind of conning jim along with everyone else to work with little to scam all this money right we call that the sean cut it works beautifully except for one character thing that that seems not to to code to us right that absolutely puts Angel in the driver's seat. Yeah. The only reason why I brought it up is because I think the Sean cut, just taking the parts that I am comfortable with, through the lens of the Sean cut,

that I can see that he's the protagonist of that episode. In this one, I think if you did a rework of this to make Angel the protagonist here, I think there are scenes that would actually literally have to be rewritten. I guess the counter read to that is that angel he only he only considers what's directly in front of his face right so because there's not anyone literally pointing a gun at him in that moment is that money outweighing the potential of the thing that he doesn't want to believe like he doesn't want to believe that kane is going to kill him yeah. And he definitely like all of his schemes risk his life.

Like that's not against his own characteristics. So yeah. No, it's interesting because, okay, I guess the main question is, would he keep running around with Jim if he was in charge of his own destiny or would he have left Jim sooner? Well, he doesn't have any money, right? Like that's been established by he went to Jim to get money to leave town. And Jim even goes, where'd you get $30? Right.

So in that sense, it's kind of like this is the opportunity to get some money and then he can do his own thing. He doesn't need to stick with Jim. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I think I'm talking myself back around to not being weird. Jim. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm talking myself back around to not being weird and just that

Angel is such a short-sighted person that he kind of will twist in the wind. But the hook that made me interested about that was this idea of these competing character traits that win out at different times because of the context. So sometimes his cowardice

wins out. Sometimes his avarice wins out and those are both like character flaws angel is a character built only of flaws so yeah yeah those are the two main ones and it's funny because this episode had a lot of moments like the fear gives me an appetite yeah where he's in those two vices and they're feeding each other when he gets afraid he gets hungry and so he does things that are stupid that put him in danger that get him free. Yeah. It's his downward spiral.

There's a great line. I think it's when Rockford has him up in the 70s Hobbit motel. Angel's like, I'm sorry. And Rockford's like, you're always sorry. I'm scared. You're always scared. In case we haven't figured out who Angel was by this time in the episode, we're just going to state it out loud. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if there's a good answer to that. No, it's a good open question, I think. Yeah, I guess it's interesting to consider also, obviously, if you're building a protagonist, your protagonist doesn't have to be heroic. That's not groundbreaking to say. But what keeps us interested in Angel and what makes him sympathetic, I think, is this we're never quite sure which of his vices is going to win out right which way is he going to go we know the way that he's going to go is going to be a poor decision but which poor decision is an interesting thing

and you know keeps them relevant throughout the whole series coming from the generation of indie tabletop game designers that we are we know about the moral quandary as a thing that you throw at at a character and this is the immoral right angel's moral problem is do i exploit this situation to get the cops to feed me high-priced food while staying in a high-priced hotel or do i hide and save my own skin what did i like like? You know, I like that that's the quandary put before him. It's a testament both to the writing and also to Stuart Margolin, to the actor, that Angel is such a reprobate and cares so little about anyone that's not directly in front of his face. But we still are happy when he makes it out the other side. Okay.

Well, it makes it out the other side okay well it makes it out but with nothing more right we don't want him to be rewarded for what he does yeah yeah exactly but we also still want him to be in the show yeah yeah good episode excellent yes going on the recommended list for sure it's my favorite the cobra episode um yeah do you have anything else to say about hotel of fear no other than i loved the title from the get-go uh and i adore the fact that it's this cheesy title that angel comes up with yeah that it's an in-universe title the hotel of fear all right well i think uh with that then unlike angel we have earned r200 for the day We will be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.