Two Hundred A Day - Episode 29: The Queen of Peru

Episode Date: March 18, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E12 The Queen of Peru. Rockford is trying to handle an insurance company client recover a stolen diamond, but things go pear-shaped as the crooks try to pull a fast one and the diamond ends up in... the RV of a family from Indiana? The Wronkos steal Jims grill, where the diamond happens to be, and well things just spiral from there. This comedic episode combines a sparking David Chase script with some great characters, and is rightly considered a Rockford Files classic. We really enjoyed it! 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 Victor DiSanto John Adamus, The Writer Next Door 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 Dael Norwood, Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris and Dave! 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, it's Grace at the bank. I checked your Christmas Club account. You don't have $500. You have $50. Sorry, computer foul up. Welcome to 200 A Day, a podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidiah Ravishaw. We have called each other on the CB radio and gotten to a hootenanny for which episode? Uh, Roger good buddy. This is season 4 episode 12 the Queen of Peru right on

Yep, it sure is so as you may be able to tell dear listener neither of us are very good at CB stuff but it features fairly heavily in this episode you proposed this one right do you have a particular particular reasoning behind your choice for this recording well okay so i have um two reasons behind it actually uh the first is that uh and they're tied together the first is that it just kept popping into my head.

I kept thinking, you remember that episode where Jim was in an RV with that family from the Midwest? And then the second is that I keep conflating it with another episode where we have one of Jim's rival PIs.

When we hit one of those episodes, I'll be like, that's the dude. If you remember from back when we did queen of Peru, but I needed to see this episode to conceptually separate them in my head. Cause I kept thinking of the two of them together. And also I was in the mood for an episode that would make me laugh. This one delivers.

This one definitely sticks out in my mind as well. I watched it not super recently, but recently enough that I felt like I mostly remembered it. And I was like, oh, yeah, that one's great. It's very funny. But I'd kind of forgotten a lot of the premise. Like I really remembered the family and I kind of have forgotten the framing like plot around it. So it was definitely nice to revisit. This is a very tight episode.

Yeah. As one might expect, as we have a solid creative team effort here written by David Chase. As you said, we're in season four. So we're well in the David Chase era. Juanita Bartlett, story consulting and directed by Meta Rosenberg. We got all the all the greats coming into this one it definitely shows that snappy jokey what i'm associating with david chase most strongly in these scripts and overall it's i said tight earlier it's very it's all very focused there's

not anything really extraneous in this episode everything pulls together uh into one little tight nugget of a charcoal nugget if you will that turns into a beautiful diamond of rockfordness this is right in the middle of the fourth season and we haven't really talked about this uh specifically before but i thought it would be interesting to bring up that this season is the season that the show won its emmy for oh okay uh this was the fourth season that the show won its Emmy for. Oh, okay. This was the fourth season it won the Best Dramatic Series Emmy for this one. And a lot of the episodes that we've covered from this season have been some of my favorite episodes.

Quickie Nirvana. Yeah. Hotel Fears from this season. And those are definitely a couple highlights. It is kind of interesting because we're, you know, we're obviously watching them out of order. So it's hard to get a feel for the season itself. Unlike, say, if you're binging a show and you can feel the seasons that appeal to you because you're running through them as fast as you can. And then you get to the seasons that don't.

And those are the ones where you don't pause when you get up to go to the bathroom or whatever. But in this case, because we're doing it out of order, I don't really kind of contextualize each season as its own thing. Well, I think that's why I brought it up, just because with that knowledge, it's interesting to see what is in the episodes in this season that maybe weren't or are more exaggerated from things in previous seasons. season that maybe weren't or are more exaggerated from things in previous seasons yeah but other than that i see no reason not to get right into our preview montage oh yeah come on uh this is interesting preview montage um it sets the stakes right away like it tells you that there is a diamond heist it's not pulling punches we've got diamond which is uh i guess detective code for the most expensive thing uh i don't particularly find diamonds all that compelling but fine and then we get some uh a few jokes here and there and you get some scenes of chases one of which is an out and out lie and

when we get to that i'll point that out out. But we do get this wonderful moment in the RV where they're running down the highway. One guy is driving the RV. Jim is yelling at him and another car is coming up with a shotgun. Watching that, you're just like, I will sit through a thousand episodes to wait for that scene. I want to see that happen. What I thought was interesting watching it with a fairly fresh memory of the thought was interesting watching it with, with a fairly fresh memory of the episode was how much it doesn't show us. Like it shows us this kind of exciting, like, Oh, this is going to be an action packed episode, but it doesn't really show us any of the humor. I mean, there's a one-liner joke in there, but it doesn't telegraph. Like this is

actually one of the more humorous character study kind of episodes. It's always interesting with the preview montage what it chooses to emphasize. Yeah, exactly. And this one's like, you should watch this because it'll be exciting. And it might kind of trick you into sitting down on a Friday night when maybe you weren't going to or something like that. 200 a day is supported by all of our listeners, but especially our gumshoes. For this episode, we say thank you to John Adamas, the writer next door. Find his go-to resources for storytellers and creatives who want to tell better stories at writernextdoor.com.

Mike Gillis, a host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast, the McLaughlin Group for nerds, radiovsthemartians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday evening podcast all-stars actual play podcast, found at misdirectMartians.com. Kevin Lovecraft, part of the Wednesday Evening Podcast All-Stars Actual Play Podcast, found at MisdirectedMark.com. Lowell Francis with his award-winning gaming blog at AgeOfRavens.blogspot.com. Shane Liebling, Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, and Dave. And finally, big thank yous to Victor DeSanto and to Richard Haddam, who you can find on Twitter at Richard Haddam. We've recently updated our Patreon with new opportunities for sponsorship.

So check out patreon.com slash 200 a day and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. So we start the Queen of Peru with a nice slow pan over the California landscape. A lot of celebration of the beauty of California in this episode. Our credits roll just over this kind of empty scene. And then we get a pretty unusual shot of the firebird coming directly towards the camera to bring in our good friend, Jim Rockford. This scene, this shot reminds me of the opening credits to Knight Rider, which, of course, happens later.

If anything, Knight Rider was inspired by this. It actually filled me with this weird, mournful sense of loneliness based on my own nostalgia. I doubt that that's what this scene was meant to convey, but I do quite enjoy this. In the arc of the scene, we start with this kind of low-key moment that then is going to kind of turn real quick into some exciting action. The Firebird is being met by another car that's coming over a little bridge. It looks like it's an aquifer or a dam of some kind.

It doesn't really matter. But then they're suddenly blocked in by a van that pulls up behind them from out of nowhere. And guys get out of both cars with guns wearing full on thick ski masks. Rockford is not alone. Also with him is a man that we that we come to learn is Stephen Califer, who is played by George Weiner. Yes. Who we've talked about before in our episode on Feeding Frenzy. I think in that episode I mentioned that I remembered him, but in the character of this episode.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Because he's such like a memorable face and manner. But this is the last of his four Rockford Files appearances. And in my opinion, probably the best oh yeah we'll definitely get into this character this character is a good one yeah so so rockford and uh our our man calipher here are confronted by two goons and ski masks with guns and we are dropped directly into what we quickly learn from context uh is a negotiation for buying back the Borland diamond that has been stolen. Califer is a representative from Boston Fire and Casualty, the company that insures the diamond.

They, of course, have not called in the cops because they want this handled quietly. They want this handled quietly. And the whole premise here is that if they can recover the diamond for less than the $2 million that it has been appraised for, then that is a net positive for the firm because otherwise they have to pay out that value to the owner. One thing I really dig about this is that this is a Rockford case in media res, right? Quite often we see how the case comes to him. And in this case where he's clearly been involved in this case up to this point, like he's on retainer and working with Califor and we'll find out just exactly how well that does. They go through a negotiation where Califor starts at $ hundred thousand dollars and they respond by shooting out one of the tires of rockford's car he ends up going going all the way up to offering a million dollars for the return of this diamond our two uh prospective thieves agree to this and this is

where rockford comes in to negotiate this handoff this is yet another episode full of great one liners um and a lot of them are just like quick, just in the dialogue kinds of things. So I'm not going to try to recap all of them. But we see Rockford being kind of dubious about this whole thing while this negotiation of the price goes on. This seems a great scene to watch James Gardner at work. Like as everyone says something, watch how he reacts to them. You could even have it on mute and you could figure out exactly what was going down and who was suggesting something ridiculous or, you know, what have you. Once Rockford takes over this conversation, he does not give in to their immediate demands of, we'll tell you when and where to make the handoff.

First of all, he doesn't even know if they're the ones who took the diamond. They could have heard about it in the paper. What if they're just a couple of yum-yums with a fast line of patter and daddy shotgun? But they do have guns. So he talks them into saying, you choose the time, we'll pick the place. Everyone shows up in slacks and t-shirts, no guns or the deal's off. But the way that he gets to there, when they won't agree to the first thing he says, he just starts walking past them to find a phone to call for a tow truck.

Yes. He just completely ignores them. And in that moment, you totally see the dynamic shift because they don't know what to do. They don't really want to shoot anyone. And he knows it. Yeah, he knows it. And now they know that he knows it. And then they give in to his demand. But they do leave him to, you know, they say, well, you're gonna have to take the bus home. And they leave them to their own devices. Rockford, of course, has a spare tire and goes over to the to his trunk

to pull that out. And we get a little button on this where Califer says that he noticed the specific kind of shoe that one of the guys was wearing they should go to the police and get a list of all the people who have bought that kind of shoe and then rockford comes back with oh is that like a national list or california list southern california list he is clearly mocking this guy and then then we end the scene with him basically saying, are you mocking me? Yeah, this is definitely one of those moments where this is a job for Rockford. We've seen this in a few other episodes where somebody is really into the whole mystique of a detective.

Where what Rockford does is usually, and probably not while we're watching him on camera, is just the boring, tedious day-to-day work of being a detective. And he knows that this route that this guy's going is empty and not going to... You would have to have a scene where someone's going through the books and looking at individual receipts and whatnot. Well, I think as we establish later, Califord does have this kind of picker-esque attitude, right? Where he wants to be involved with things that make him feel more important than he is. Yeah, yeah. And the sense of adventure that seems very wrong-headedly romantic in a way. This button also firmly establishes that while Rockford is on retainer with this guy's company,

they don't really like each other. Califor thinks that he's too cavalier and not taking it seriously. And Rockford thinks that he doesn't know what he's talking about, basically. We cut from here to an underground garage. Two guys not wearing ski masks, but I think, you know, clearly telegraphed as the goons that we just saw. We get a shot of the guys' shoes. They do stand out with these bright white

shiny shoes. This is a chaotic scene to kind of show us what's going on with these guys, and we have to backfill some of why this is important later. But they see a car coming down into this garage area that scares them. They try to hide. One of them yells that,

you know, says like it's that it's his brother and they've come to find him. Then they decide to run for it. They're afraid of someone named Ginger who jumps out of the car. He's this big guy. He's clearly just stepped out of a Guy Ritchie film. Yeah. We'll learn more about Ginger later. He jumps out of this car, sees the two guys running, Yeah, we'll learn more about Ginger later. He jumps out of this car, sees the two guys running, shoots one of them. The other guy gets into a stairwell and manages to lock the door or something. Ginger takes the guy who he shot and puts him in the car, helps the other guy help him into the car, and they peel out.

Our diamond thieves, apparently, are in some kind of trouble of their own. We cut from there to Boston firing casualty, as we know from the window decor. We have more good banter between Califer and Rockford as he's like reviewing the case, basically. We get a printout of a picture of the diamond, which looks enormous. Rockford is saying that there's something that bothers him about this.

It was a big job to steal this diamond. It was in some museum and there were all these security precautions. He doesn't think that two guys could have done it by themselves. Where are the other guys? Do they even have it? And Califord loses his patience. He is a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard and they have a word for people like Rockford. Lollygagger. Rockford, what was his line? He was like, I can't wait to hear it. But then when he heard it, he goes, that was worth waiting for.

Yeah, Califor thinks that he's dragging his feet because he just doesn't want to do any work. Rockford comes back with that. Well, I'm on retainer to your company, so you're stuck with me again lots of good business and dialogue showing us a little bit more of why these guys don't really like each other but they're stuck with each other but caliper wants to be done with this business before the weekend because he has exercises he has national guard exercises to do at marina del rey to which uh rockford responds with more mockery but that is relatively important for our timeline. This is also where we establish that Calphor takes his National Guard service very seriously.

He has a whole line about when society breaks down, you'll be glad that the National Guard is the only thing standing between, like, you and a bunch of screaming welfare animals. Oh, boy. You know, I don't want to paint with a broad brush. I've met this guy. Not this actor, but this character. I've met this guy. Not this actor, but this character. I've met this character.

This reminds me of, in some ways, that early episode when we get into Rockford's military history. And his disdain for that command structure. Yeah. He doesn't see it as capable of getting the job done in any way. And you can see this, again again in his body language here. Not only is his general disinterest in chains of command, the National Guard is like the fake army. Right. Yeah. Let me be clear. I actually don't think that about the National Guard. There's a lot of

important things that they do, especially like disaster relief and stuff like that. But Rockford clearly is like, this is the Mickey Mouse army. Yeah. He was in Korea, right? Rockford's character. Yeah, yeah. And now we have a brief but key scene where the guy who ran away in the parking garage

drives up outside Rockford's trailer, looks around, walks towards it with a brown paper packet in his hand. Cut from there to the next morning with Rockford being woken up in bed by noises. Horrible, horrible engine noises outside. Now, this is, again, another rare shot of the interior of Rockford's bedroom.

He clearly just sleeps in this room. That's all he does. In this particular configuration, he has a window next to his bed. In other episodes, the bed has been against a blank wall i don't think there's any criminology to do about that i think it's just yeah they put together a bed set when they need it but yeah he's woken up we establish multiple times through this both between the clock and then through dialogue that it is 6.15 in the morning. Rockford comes out to see this big camper RV parked next to his trailer and someone doing something really loud with an outboard motor and a barrel

in addition to the kid riding like a dirt bike in circles around his trailer. And here's where we meet our real stars of the show. Yeah. Welcome, friends, to the Ronco family from Peru, Indiana. Our patriarch here, Carl, is played by Ken Swofford, who has made many other Rockford Files appearances. He's one of those great faced character actors. Yeah. We have already seen him in the Aaron Ironwood episode. He played the FBI agent, Agent Patrick, that comes in at the end. This is the fourth of his five Rockford Files appearances. He also has a tie-in to my other favorite show. He was in the Candidate for Crime episode of

Columbo, where he was the campaign manager that got murdered. And then later he was in 11 episodes of Murder, She Wrote. So great murder mystery show pedigree. Yes, yes. The rest of his family had very little acting credits, actually. Either the wife or the daughter. This is the only acting credit she has. And the son was like a child actor and then kind of trailed off through the 80s. Anyway, the Ronco family.

Man, I don't even know where to start with this one. Well, I think obviously you start with the same way that they start, which is the outboard motor in a barrel. It looks like it's a trash barrel that he's repurposed for this. They're in the parking lot. He's got the outboard motor set on top of that, and he's running to do something something motor related he has to like flush the tubes that this we hear a lot about this motor yeah um and yeah he has to like flush it and it's not working quite right nothing describes this family more than that image and also rockford and r Ronco having a conversation, both of them yelling over the noise of the motor because he doesn't turn it off.

Yeah. So this whole scene is basically just introducing this family to us, right? So there's not like real action that happens, but basically because there is a noise ordinance and it is a residential area. So Rockford would appreciate it if he could keep it down. They're from Indiana, so they don't understand. They're like, but this is a public beach. Well, it's California.

All the beaches are public. Yeah. But this is also a residential area. See the houses. When they actually introduce Carl's wife, Dot, makes the good call of, oh, Rockford. There's a town in Illinois called Rockford. Yes. Just true.

I've been there. I have friends from there. And she has a friend there whose husband's name is Jim. Just good small talk, Midwestern small talk. Like, I get the feeling that this family, they're meant to be a caricature of a Midwestern family, but they're not too far off. I mean, they don't strike me as too over the top for what i experienced growing up in the midwest their son is named sean and their daughter is shereen their bathroom's broken so they ask if shereen can use rockford's uh where we get some great eye rolling from her and the admonition from from her mother

to make sure to spray everywhere we get the portrait of these kind of surly and rebellious kids who have been dragged on this cross-country RV thing by their over-enthusiastic father. Yeah. So we'll be seeing this family again. Is there anything else from here that you wanted to touch on, though? I guess what is important here is how incredibly friendly Karl Ronco is without actually being friendly

right we call that midwestern nice yeah yeah like he's just completely affable he's got this body language that's just warm and inviting and he's just not listening to what rockford needs nobody there is paying any attention to what anyone needs. They're just being completely friendly. And you do also get this sort of thing about the family being at their wits end with their children who just cannot put up with them either. Like the whole bit between when Sean, the young boy, shows up on his motorbike and his dad introduces him to Jim. And then he says, say hi and shake his hand. dad introduces him to Jim and then he says, say hi and shake his hand. Like there's like four steps that he doesn't accomplish, even though clearly the negotiation between Sean and Jim is, you know, it's done. You just had to nod. There is one thing that does come back later, which is that Carl asks Sean, how bad do we blow our ETA? Right. And then Sean's like,

oh, I don't know. And then he goes into this whole thing about like, know i taught you how to calculate our eta you take the map and you look at it you divide it by our rate yeah this is something that that carl tried has tried to pass down to his son who's like i don't know 13 or 14 maybe and and this kid just does not care but this thing this this bit about the eta actually comes back later i say, and the daughter, I think she's... 15? Or even younger than that. I'm bad at judging ages. But yeah, she's definitely meant to be young.

Yeah. So these are like early teenage... With her boyfriend. Oh, we haven't been introduced to the boyfriend's name yet. Oh, we'll learn about the boyfriend later. Yeah. All right. So we get the Ronco family and then Jim gives up on getting any more sleep.

And then we go from there to this exchange for the diamond. Rockford and Califer are in this park. We get them in, as promised, slacks and t-shirts. So we get to see Rockford in his white undershirt. I have to say, when he suggested this dress code a few scenes ago, I just couldn't wait. I remember thinking that it was, that was a reference or something. Like that was like a way to say, don't bring your guns. Yeah. I didn't realize that he literally meant shirts and slacks, no other clothes.

So it was pretty good. But anyway, they pull up. Rockford doesn't like the smell of it. They don't see anyone there. And then there's a payphone that starts ringing. It's already already this is different from the deal that they'd negotiated the voice on the phone wants them to go to a different car that's already at the park and drive that to a abandoned or closed amusement park that's nearby

rockford doesn't doesn't think it's a good idea but he is being paid as a consultant yes that is his consultation it's up to caliper and uh he does want to do it because he has he has this big silver briefcase yeah with the million dollars in cash in it he just wants to get the deal done he's got uh a couple good lines here you know they get the phone call and uh because what do you think rock's like, it's a whoopee cushion. Yeah. Just a great way to just be like, it's not even a real fart. Yeah. This fart is fake. Yes.

Yeah. He's got that line where he says, I get paid as a consultant. I've consulted. You can do whatever you want. So Califord goes and gets the other car. We get a little shot of Rockford actually rolling up his window because they're leaving his car, which I think we both noticed because he usually just leaves his car unlocked and whatever. Just in case Angel comes by and needs to stuff 30 grand in the door.

This sequence follows them to this amusement park where one of the goons comes out in his t-shirt and stocking mask. show him the money rockford wants to know where his partner is and he says oh he's he's watching you through a scoped rifle just in case there's any funny business but once the money has been presented and they're like all right show us the diamond uh he's like well i don't have it with me i put it in the ashes of rockfield's barbecue last night he uh said there was a change in his personal situation and he had to add more safeguards. And so Rockford's like, yeah, so now you're working alone.

I never said that. So his whole deal is one of you stay here. The other one, go check it out, get the diamond. Then you can call me on my car phone. I'll take the money and we'll be done. I like how once Rockford starts questioning this whole scheme, what I wrote down was he gets really hard luck. He's like, come on, man. This thing's made of wool.

I'm sweating to death. Come on. That moment, that's such a... That moment's great. Because it's such a real moment. So as often happens in the Rockford Files, we actually have a couple stories happening here, right? happens in the rockford files we actually have a couple stories happening here right and one story is rockford's story which is that he's being saddled with this midwestern family right we don't know how or why or to what extent yet because all we know is that he they woke him up and they

just kind of invaded his space but it's funny and we enjoy it every interaction that rockford has with them and with calipher you know it, they're all wearing on his eternal patience. And it's fun to watch his reaction to it. However, on the other side, we have the thieves, the diamond thieves, and their story is a dark, dark story, right? You said that Ginger was like out of a Guy Ritchie movie. Their entire plot is a heist gone wrong plot. Yeah. That plot is also from a Guy Ritchie movie. Their entire plot is a heist gone wrong plot. Yeah. That plot is also from a Guy Ritchie movie.

We're going to find out that Ginger is the British crime boss that everyone fears that's at the center of a Guy Ritchie film. And this here is, this guy is at his wit's end. We've witnessed his partner getting shot. We don't know his fake. The one thing he has is he knows where the diamond is. Yeah. And it's in Rockford's barbecue. A diamond he like, he won't even carry on him.

Right. Because he knows that somebody catches up to him and takes the diamond. He's dead. So Rockford offers to stay and Califor doesn't trust him to stay with the million dollars. He's like, I have the million dollars right here. Yeah. It is signed out in my name and I am not letting that on my site. So he stays, Rockford goes, he walks up to his trailer. There's no barbecue. He looks around, the RV is gone. And he just goes, damn, something bad has happened with this barbecue. He calls the car phone.

Califor's on the phone. Rockford very specifically tells him not to react when he tells him that the barbecue is gone. Califor, of course, reacts. The other guy panics, I think. This is one of the greatest Rockford fights I've ever seen. Go on.

Califor swings the briefcase full of money at him. He grabs it and pulls it out of his hands. Califor backs up and puts his hands up and goes, watch out, I'm a brown belt.

And starts doing like a key eye. Our goon just punches him in the face and then drives away with the money. That's it. He's out. So of course,

we go from here to the police station. So we get a lot of the Rockford cast and just like, just enough to let us know that Rockford lives his life

surrounded by these people. So we have Dennis and Lieutenant Chapman asking him for a specific description of the barbecue, or what some might refer to as a grill in this day and age, in order to make the report.

It is a Cookmaster 24-inch with adjustable grill. And then we see that this room also contains Califer and Beth Davenport. We get the traditional Rockford Chapman each trying to one up each other and go to each other. This scene has a lot of good humor, but again, just better, better watched than described.

None of the people in this room like each other. Like we have the Califur and Jim, Jimim and chapman chapman and caliper because they're like oh some civilian called in to look up everyone who bought these shoes was that you he's like it could have worked but they've both been involved in an illegal activity which is arranging this payoff so they're gonna hold rockford for 24 hours but caliper gets to go free because the general called and of course chapman is also in the national guard. And we get this whole diatribe from Jim about the paper machine tanks and like all the,

which could not be calculated to piss off Chapman more, I think. Yeah. And we get, you know, Beth doing some of her legal, using some legalese to be like, you can't actually charge Jimim with anything but because of

whatever illegal activity they were complicit in apparently is enough to hold rockford for 24 hours i it's a thing that i had to put in the time schedule here because at this point i assume that jim is on he's on retainer i'm assuming it's his 200 today don't know but i was like okay he's been at this for two days and now there's a third that they may not pay him because he's been in prison. This scene has this great moment at the end where Jim tells Chapman as he's taking Califer. Tell him to turn on the lights and siren and give Stevie boy a thrill. He likes pretending he's a big boy. Oh, it's good.

We then go to the car with our, what I start calling Ginger's gang. Yeah. We have Ginger who is, as we said, this larger striking job, big boned kind of guy, very intimidating with a variably well done British accent. Yeah. Yeah. It's, he's supposed to be British. Yeah. I don't even know if the accent comes and goes, but it's more like slang comes and goes. And i can't really tell if it's in relation to who he's talking to or just the actor going in and out it doesn't really matter but he's the boss and then we have uh a balding guy who's who's the driver his name's lou and the guy who got shot was actually his brother mike ginger leaves the car and we get kind of a monologue by Lou because Mike is in the back

seat holding his stomach, having been shot and just dealing with it. Not going to the hospital, not anything. Yeah, this is kind of horrendous to witness. It's actually really sad. Yeah. Both Lou and Mike are cowed by Ginger here. The fact that Ginger can walk away from them and that they're brothers, and it clearly pains Lou that his brother is in this condition.

And Lou is clearly a big guy who can handle his own. And still, they refuse to help his brother out. That is very telling there. Yeah. Lou kind of monologues to Mike, but to us kind of filling in a little bit of the story, mostly establishing the relationship between the three of them. And also Donnie,

who's the other guy, the guy that we've last saw, uh, punching Calipher. They're the ones who stole the diamond, but then Donnie convinced Mike to double cross ginger. And that's what got mike into all this trouble and that hurts lou yeah mike did this without even talking to his brother

right double crossing his brother ginger comes back uh he confirms that rockford is being released so we have been been there for the day or whatever one of them i don't remember if he asked like shouldn't we take him to the hospital or something or maybe mike's like oh it really hurts there's some something about how mike is like in pain and needs help. Yeah. And Ginger's just like, I'm going to leave you for the circling birds. The circling birds. And we're laughing, but he is.

Yeah. He is dead serious. Yeah. He's basically telling him you're dead. But sure enough, Rockford is being released. Rocky had to raid the emergency fund behind his toaster for the bail money. Rockford is upset because that was going to be his

buy-in money for a blackjack game. And then Rocky does not feel so bad about it. Yes. Rockford makes it clear that he needs to go find his grill, find his diamond. That's like, it's not your job. Why do you need to do that? It turns out that the insurance company

canceled his retainer yes and that was a lot of money to him yeah so he needs to find this diamond or else he's still out yeah ginger's gang watches this interaction and then uh goes to to follow them as they go to recover rockford's car this also is the final appearance of Beth in the Rockford Files. Oh, no. This is the last episode that she was in before the 90s movies. Huh. Yeah. That wasn't much of a Beth episode.

At the time, they didn't know that it was going to be her last one. Yeah. Because we talked about this a little bit in the episode that we did with Emily Carabas, The Dark and Bloody Ground, which was the Beth episode. But because she was contracted with Universal, who also produced the show, the nature of her contract was such that between the fourth and fifth season,

they insisted on more money for her than James Garner's production company was prepared or able to pay. So everyone else could do independent negotiations. But Gretchen Corbett's contract was linked with the studio and they played hardball. So they weren't able to hire her for the later seasons. Jerk holes. I know. It's a real shame.

Kind of a nothing note for Beth to go out on. She's in the episode. She got her paycheck right, which is great. But plot-wise, not really an important part of it it but you know who is an important part of it the beach lifeguard skip yeah skip who has been in other episodes i think this might be the first 200 a day that he's yeah been more than just like someone we see on the beach. Skip does not look good in this particular episode, too. No, Skip is a real wannabe player. Rockford goes to Skip to find out if he knows where the Roncos went because they left with

his barbecue and he wants it back. Skip does have some information for him him but he doesn't give it up until he receives what looks to me to be a three dollar bribe i have i written down in my my notes here less than five like i i can't imagine uh but the thing is rockford comes upon skip and he is surrounded with women like seagulls that he's feeding and he shoes them off when rockford goes to talk to him uh he goes into salacious detail about how the ronco's daughter was hitting on him but his description of it it's so gross it's so gross we know that she's very young he's half his age at at least. Yeah, I can't

tell if he's supposed to be like an older teenager or like a young 20 year old. Well, he was saying something about having to retire from being a lifeguard because it's not going to be. At 35. I don't think he's actually 35 at that point, but it's just, it's bad news all around. Um, but it also sounds like he's bragging about stuff that never happened. Yeah. He was like, I was taking her up to, you know, make out point,

whatever for the coop de grass, but she decided not to go through with it or something like that. Yeah. Um, but she did start talking about her punk rocker boyfriend back home. Yes. Wears a vest covered in safety pins. And he hates to see a girl going that direction.

His line, he's like, look, I told her real punks aren't faithful to anybody. Like, oh, what a skews ball. Oh, yeah. And this thus begins my love affair for her punk rock boyfriend. All right. You'll be on Punk Rock Boyfriend Watch. But Rockford's three dollar bribe does get the information that they were going to go up to soul vang uh maybe the hertz

castle his way of getting the bribe out of rockford is telling rockford about all the stuff he does for him where he watches out he makes sure people don't back up into his car which is an important bit that comes back later you know this is all these things he goes do you think of me at christmas do i get anything from you no blah blah blah at the end of the whole thing he goes which is an important bit that comes back later. You know, all these things. He goes, do you think of me at Christmas? Do I get anything from you? No, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the whole thing, he goes, oh, I remembered you at Christmas. I just didn't do anything about it.

Right. Stone cold. Stone cold. So Rockford now has a destination to head for to try and catch this RV. Our next scene is the Roncoco family in full full splendor this is mostly a character scene yeah this is where we get to see like carl and the family and like how they interact they've pulled over the rv on they're on the pacific coast highway there's a beach we see the beautiful ocean carl and dot come around the the rv he's complaining

about the kids that they kids, that they're a couple of Martians. Like, we're doing this for them. You'd think they'd appreciate it. And she's like, this is as much for you as it is for them. Like, why are you pretending like it's something you don't want to do? And then he goes into a reminiscence about how this beautiful California beach reminds him of Japan in his Navy days and having a case of Japanese beer with his Navy buddies. And then how he ran into one of them in Columbus. And now the guy sells orthopedic shoes. And then he starts staring off into the distance.

And his wife is staring at him. And it's really somber. You can feel him feeling his mortality which is great it's a great moment it's uh in just a just a couple lines we see so much of the motivation of why these people are where they are yeah why are these people in an rv why are they in california like you know you see this this father trying to recapture that sense of adventure but he's a little resentful that he's saddled with these kids who don't appreciate the things he did like it's all in these just these couple of lines and then the kids start bringing out these plastic bags of trash and dot yells at sean because he

needs to bring out a bag like each of them are supposed to bring out one bag of trash and she goes in and starts giving orders about what they're supposed to pick up when she could be doing it herself right like and we see the kids being like surly and you know god mom this family that just does not seem to have any connective tissue yeah which is a little sad but they're also very annoying like i don't really want to spend a lot of time with this people no while they're taking out the trash um, Carl goes to find the windshield spray, opens the little hatch on the side of the RV, and what the Sam Hill is this? You didn't even empty out the barbecue before putting it away. And then as he looks through it, he realizes this isn't even our barbecue.

He was hurrying because he was getting yelled at by his dad. He broke the leg off the other one, So he just took the one that was available. And you see Carl being like, well, you stole that and that's wrong, but it's too late now. So we should just keep it. And then they just leave a pile of trash bags and dump out the ash

and just leave this pile of trash on the side of this beautiful highway, like overlooking the beach. Oh, these terrible people people so in my youth i remember there being like massive media campaigns to fight litter uh and i think while this is definitely those terrible people i also think that this probably isn't an example of them being unusual like i think that yeah in this day and age, people were just like, yeah, it's the side of the road.

Trash can go there. We're not monsters upon this earth. Yeah. I definitely think that it's supposed to say these are terrible people, but I don't think it's as bad as like a modern audience viewing it would. Sure.

Yeah, no, you're probably right. We do end with a dramatic shot on this giant diamond just sitting in a pile of ash on top of a trash bag i like that we've positively established yes that's where it is we go back to the beach where we get a brief scene of ginger beating up skip to get the same information that he gave to Rockford. Then Skip gives it up. Look, anyone who's satisfied with a $3 bribe is not going to hold back information

when a guy just starts punching you in the stomach. Right. So now they also know that there's an RV on the way to Solvang with this diamond in it. And then this is kind of interesting. So from here, we go to see Califer. So this is clearly now it's the weekend because caliper at his national guard gig talking to someone about deployment um ginger comes in

claiming to be from the insurance company it's like there's been a development in the case with the diamond they need you to come in so caliper's like oh well that's his actual job so yeah he dismisses the sergeant who's also in the tent. And once that guy goes, Ginger pulls a gun on him. We don't want any trouble, you know, with all your soldiers outside or something like that. All the boys with guns, I think, or something along those lines in a very British mobster accent. So Calphers like, look, you know, no trouble.

We don't even have firing pins. So Ginger hustles Calipher over to his car and shoves him in the back with his gut shot goon. They say they're going to go drive through every RV park on the way to Solvang and find this RV with the diamond. Now, I'm not from California and I haven't spent a lot of time in this particular area. Solvang's, you know, it's a real place. It's apparently the Danish capital of America. It was founded by Danes.

And they have like replicas of like landmarks and stuff like that and cultural festivals and stuff like that, which I did not know. But I also wanted to check. Malibu to Solvang is 100 miles on the Pacific Coast Highway. For those of us not in California, I wanted to establish how big of a task this is going to be. And it's a lot. It's literally cruising 100 miles of roadway looking for a particular RV or a particular piece of trash. And I have a question for you. Do you recall when they put Califra in the car if Donnie was in it?

I don't think so, right? It's just Lou, Ginger, Mike who was shot. Yeah, I don't think they have Donnie. No. Okay. Most of the time I saw Donnie, he was wearing that wool ski mask. Right. Even down to the moment where it got too hot for him, so he took his t-shirt off, which is a wonderful scene. I couldn't remember because I didn't think so, but then then i was like maybe he is because i would explain something later but so now we have our goons they have caliper with them and they're going to find this rv

when we go to to rockford cruising in his car making calls on the cb radio looking for hoosiers this is big 500 looking for hoosiers trying to track down this RV from Peru, Indiana. This is a wonderful strategy. It's so good. The CB con is great. There's something about Rockford being able to tie into, you know, like the common folk of the US, right? Like he does it when he does his Oklahoma thing.

He's just pulling out Indiana references left and right. He knows about lakes that are there, and he knows, like, he calls himself the Big 500, obviously, after the Indianapolis 500. You know, like, it's just wonderful that, like, part of Rockford's con repertoire is just knowing how to pretend that he's a native from like any particular state. He doesn't really put on an accent really, but it's more of an attitude or like a cadence doing these CB calls. And I like how this is a two-layer strategy. One is he's just calling for Hoosiers, right? Breaker, breaker. Calling for anyone from the great state of Indiana. But if he can't find the wrong goes that way,

he's also saying, well, we're going to have a, an Indiana jamboree at noon tomorrow at the San Simeon campground. Hope to see you all there. So you can kind of see that. Like if approach a doesn't work, maybe approach B,

someone will tell someone we'll get to them and then they'll come. Cause they're totally the kind of people who would go to a all Indiana RV tambourine. But he strikes out on the person that he raises on this particular call. And then we get a shot of him passing the pile of trash as he heads up north on the coast. We cut to him waking up at 6 a.m. bright and early as he slept in the front seat of his car.

A carton of milk on the dashboard indicating that he whatever he ate uh that's that's where it was stashed and his little travel clock with an alarm you know this is he's roughing it um trying to track the wrong goes down who we then go to as uh carl is trying to flush another flush the motor again in another barrel. And Dot's out there with her hair and curlers, spraying shoes, like with a spray that I only associate with bowling alleys. Yes. Yeah. She's like dressing him down for always messing with that motor.

It would be nice to go water skiing sometime. Right. If you ever got that working. And he's like, oh, well, there's something wrong with it. And I got to flush the tubes and, you know, defensive about his outboard motor. She even accuses it of becoming a hobby of his or something like that there's oh yeah domestic quarreling about something that's clearly a long-standing issue but then carl hears big 500 on a cv and dashes into the cab in order to answer it clearly rockford knows you know once he answers

knows who's who it is and car Carl doesn't know who Big 500 is. Right. But he's so excited about going to the Jamboree that he ignores the first couple times that Rockford's like, so where are you exactly? Yeah. Where are you right now? Yeah. But then he finally gets them to say that they're camped out in Tuna Canyon. And Rockford pulls a big U across the highway. So this is the lie

in our preview montage. Because I think we get this scene in the preview montage and you think to yourself... Oh, him pulling the U? Yeah, you think to yourself, hot damn, a firebird chase. Nope. I also appreciate how Rockford has a encyclopedic knowledge of all of the campgrounds. So he knows which one that is. Yeah. So Rockford rolls into the RV park. He sees son Sean, has him bring him to his dad. This scene is intercut a little bit with some shots of Ginger and the gang as they're also searching. And in an interesting way.

searching yes and in an interesting way so rockford comes into this campsite and then we have a shot of ginger's car going off the highway on an off-ramp to something that says campground yeah we'll see where this goes we get two shots of people passing the trash like the camera lets us know when somebody has gone beyond the objective of their mission. Yeah, we get the Rockford-Ronco showdown. Yes. Rockford just wants his barbecue. And then he wants to know where, once he sees the barbecue, he wants to know where did they dump out the ashes. And Carl's, he's a little defensive. He tries to pass it off on his son.

And his son's like, no, I told him I stole his barbecue. It's like, okay, well, that's good. It's good that you owned up to what you did. He's like, but then you said we should keep it. It's like, okay, well, that's good. It's good that you owned up to what you did. He's like, but then you said we should keep it. It's like, so Carl's being defensive. We dumped it by the highway. Why should I know? Dot tells him to don't be a Budinsky. Yes. Which sounds like an extremely Midwestern turn of phrase. Rockford wants Carl to go back with him down the highway and show him where he dumped the ashes. They go around the RV where they're a little more alone. And Carl reveals that he thinks that this is kind of suspicious, which it is. Why do you want to know where the ashes are so badly?

You know, I want you to tell me why. And Rockford threatens, you know, threatens him, threatens to punch him in the face or something. And then we cut from there back to Ginger's gang coming out of the campground and back under the highway. Yeah. It's a nice little moment of like, oh, here it comes. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, they're still searching. Haven't found it yet. Which I think is a nice little end run around our assumptions of how that framing was going to work.

But when we cut back, it's to Ronco saying the diamond, this famous diamond. And I realized that we just got a sneaky Beth cut, a sneaky version of the cut where Rockford's saying, no, I'm not going to do that to Beth. And then the next scene, he's doing what she wants. Yes.

We cut from him saying, I'm going to punch your face in. I don't need to tell you anything. Just tell me where the ashes are. And then when we come back, he's told Carl why he wants the ashes. That's good. Yeah, I had not noticed that. Turns out that Carl Ronco is in the insurance business himself.

He knows how this works. So he'll help, but he wants to split the recovery fee. And Rockford is trying to bluster his way into not agreeing to do that when another rv backs into the firebird because clearly because skip isn't around to warn them it busts one the wheels and then with a triumphant smile carl ronco offers to drive rockford back down the coast if he reconsiders the recovery deal. So, yeah, I think Rockford, out of options, then joins them in the RV and they're back on the road. Dot offers him a Jell-O mold, which he politely declines.

And we get another bit about the boyfriend here, right? Yes, this is where we find out the boyfriend's name, which is Joey Sick. It's not his real name, clearly, but he decides that he's going to be called Joey Sick. And this is the moment I truly fall in love with poor Joey Sick. The punk rocker from Indiana? Yes. The Indiana punk rocker from 1977, who I'm hoping, beyond hope, is far closer to Shireen's age than Skip is. Yeah, I mean, 1977 is basically the birth of punk rock.

This is the year that the Ramones broke and the Sex Pistols broke. And New York was a little earlier in the UK, but then New York was like the punk rock capital of the world in 1977. So I kind of appreciated a little nod to that in the Rockford Files. Because the Rockford Files is not very up on music trends, I would say. That does. I mean, we haven't talked about the other bit here, which is my heart goes where the wild goose goes. Ah, yes. Which is a Frankie Lane song that Ronco, patriarch of the Klan, says speaks to him.

And then Rocky in a later scene was like, yes, that's how men used to sing. So there's something going on there, too. There's a little bit of contrast, yeah. I looked this song up on YouTube. It's worth checking out. It's actually kind of a good song, but it's also, go listen to this song and imagine it speaking to the souls

of Karl Ronco and Rocky. That's your homework, everyone. And this whole argument is because she's been wanting to make a long distance call to talk to her boyfriend this entire trip the whole trip i'm promising her that they will now they have to go look for this stupid diamond uh kids who might be listening to this podcast on their smartphones in in 1977 first of all you didn't have a phone that you carried around with you which you probably were aware of also, if you wanted to call someone in another state, they would charge you an enormous amount of money per minute.

It would have been a treat. Absolutely not the sort of thing you would just let your kid do. You would have to schedule it and budget for it. So, no phone call for Joey Sick. Again, this is intercut a little bit with Ginger's gang. joey sick uh again this is intercut a little bit with ginger's gang um we have a bit of dialogue where one of them says it feels like we've been to 100 of these places and ginger's like we've been to 37 so he's very precise very methodical and then their car passes the rv lou who's driving that camper had a indiana plates and said peru on. I thought he was going to recognize Rockford.

Right. But he doesn't. It's actually the camper, which is more likely, right? Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of elements in this particular episode. So, for instance, they steal Rockford's grill. You could have easily done a situation where the guy comes in and puts the diamond in what he thinks is Rockford's grill, but is actually Ronco's grill. And then that happens. But then you would have to then thinks is Rockford's grill, but is actually Ronco's grill. And then that happens.

But then you would have to then explain how Rockford figured that out. Right. It makes for better business down the line to have the son steal it, but it also gets the thing. This episode does a lot of things like that, where it's like, here's a little decision that we made that helps this whole thing make more sense as it's happening. Right. This episode has almost no exposition, right?

Other than just the, like, they stole this diamond. Like, that's pretty much the only exposition in the whole episode. Everything else you either see... Lose monologue. Yeah, and lose monologue. But yeah. So yeah, because those are the only things that happen before the episode. And then everything else is on screen and we see the A to B logic.

And it also plays into the characters, like, why did they steal his grill? Because the kid broke their own grill. Why did he break his own grill? Because his dad was shouting at him. Right. Why was his dad shouting at him? Because he was angry

because the kid wasn't doing what he wanted. And that's part of their character portrait. It all flows together, right? And then why is Rockford angry? Not just because he needs the diamond, but because they stole his grill right yeah that's where he grills his steaks and his fish well in any case they recognize lou recognizes the camper so they pull their own you across the highway and give chase they start by honking and trying to wave it to pull over so carl's driving and he's

like this guy wants me to pull over go around you know he slows down and like gives him room and i think there's a moment which i read as ginger trying to get them to pull over because if they pull over that's good but if that doesn't work they're still in position for the next thing he's going to do which is the shotgun yeah kind of similar to the pretending to be from the insurance company but then actually having a gun like he actually has his own little plan about how to do things, which I liked. So this is a pretty chaotic but short action sequence where Rockford. So Rockford looks over and says, that's one of the guys from the ransom meeting.

Yeah. Which was the only thing that stuck out to me because didn't he not see their faces? Yeah. So. And wouldn't you have seen Califer? Yeah. See, that's the thing, right? Like, it could be Califer that he saw, but it's a weird way for him to say it.

Right. Except that he wouldn't say that's Califer because why would Ronco know who Califer was? And he would not see the faces of the guys at the ransom meeting. Yeah, it's a little bit of a weird it's just a little blip that i thought that californ being in the car would have been the hint would be the excuse yeah for him to know who it was but whatever maybe it was a script changed last minute maybe it's just something that no one caught but that was the only thing in this episode that jumped out to me as like wait a second it doesn't matter too much

in any case because it's also pretty natural to look at and be like they have a gun in any case he sees the gun he starts yelling at carl to try to sideswipe him and carl like doesn't really know what to do right so like we get this weird kind of jerky back and forth and then we get a great little shot of the back where the kids and dot are like bumping around and we get stuff flying at them and it's clearly being thrown from behind the camera yeah this is definitely uh a star trek model of uh physics going on here but rockford finally uh loses patience shoves carl out of the way and gets into the driver's seat and then uh lou pulls up in front of them and then turns so that they're like blocking them on the road. And Rockford just plows into the car, just plows into the back so that it spins them and sends them down the incline between the road and the beach.

So the car flips over on its hood. Rockford pulls over, runs down, grabs the shotgun out from whoever was holding it, who's clearly stunned. runs down grabs the shotgun out from whoever was holding it who's clearly stunned uh carl joins him and they start pulling guys out of the car and yell at dot to go call the highway patrol our bad guys are brought to justice yes one thing that i appreciate here kind of in retrospect uh relative to what you were saying about their story being very dark is that they pull out the guy who was shot mike and rockford yeah yeah either he or carl like supports him looks at him one of them goes like oh this guy's been shot and another one says uh he'll be okay i like that that saves it from being too dark right once they're in custody

he is going to get the medical treatment he needs yeah we're not he's not going to die in the back of this car here for such a light- episode, I liked that we didn't go full darkness with what happens with our little crew here. But yeah, so that was an exciting action sequence where Rockford just wins by the by dint of being in the bigger car. Yes. So Rockford's survival instinct is to subdue the guy with the shotgun. And in the process, subdue the guy with the shotgun. And in the process, it will do probably considerable damage to this RV. Yeah.

That may be what comes back and bites them. I just love that it's just complete disregard for this family's vehicle. You could argue that Rockford's the reason why they're in the car that's being shot at. He might be being a little more cavalier with this than he would be with, like, Rocky's truck. Yeah, yeah. Though he is willing to, like, crash his car into things if he needs to. He doesn't think twice when it's somebody's life on the line. But thankfully, no one's life is on the line anymore. Everyone comes out of this okay.

And we finish up our episode back in Rockford's trailer. Califer is on the phone and then we get a pan over and we see Carl and Dot sitting on the couch. Rockford is standing in between them. Califer is getting final instructions from Boston Fire and Casualty, which indeed

has decided to pay a recovery fee of five-tenths of one percent. Not half a percent, not 0.5 percent, but five-tenths. Which would be, Rockford does this sum in his head, $15,000. So that would have been, then, somebody's got to pull out his calculator. So half a percent of $3 is 15,000. For those playing along at home, I used the Free 42 emulator of the HP42S to calculate. That's $3 million.

So that would have been probably the appraised value of the diamond. Which I believe they told us the appraised value was $2 million. That's what I thought too. So maybe Rockford got his money wrong? I'm sure it's just a script inconsistency. Yeah. I can't remember what math they were doing because they're talking about splitting it, right?

They were going to split $15,000. So Ronco was like $7,500. So in any case, it doesn't matter. The point is, apparently they're valuing this diamond at $3 million for a $15,000 recovery fee. Ronco is excited to get his $7,500, half of that recovery fee. But, ah, Califer confirms that Ronco works for this other insurance company back in Indiana who handles the Boston Fire and Casualties Auto Division. And due to this bylaw and the section and whatever, employees and associates of the

insurance company are not eligible to recovery fees outside their normal salary. So he is not going to be able to get any of that recovery fee. And Rockford, being very generous, says that, look, you can keep the barbecue. Yes. that recovery fee and rockford being very generous says that look you can keep the barbecue yes leave and throw in half a bag of briquettes and uh some lighter fluid yep um so uh clearly disappointed carl and dot leave the trailer but then we get just this little moment of family reconciliation where Sean comes up and says, Dad, I calculated our ETA. If we leave now, we can get to wherever at this time. Well done, Sean.

Well done, Sean. This dangerous situation has brought the Roncos just a little closer together. Back in the trailer, Calipher, under slight duress, apologizes to Rockford for his rudeness and not taking him seriously. Then there's a sound outside. Something sounds like it's being dragged or broken. They go out. Something under the RV is sheared off. They're looking at a $300 repair bill, and they're going to have to stay a couple more days before it's fixed.

Yeah. And then we freeze frame on a big Rockford eye roll. Because you can't let them win. End episode. There's a bit in here, in this final scene, where we learn to our horror that Shireen ran off with Skip. Oh, yeah. And that Carl is excited about that

because he never cared for Joey Sick. Yes. Not knowing that Skip is the villain in this story. I believe he says, oh, he seems like a nice boy. Right, yeah. No, that is a scuzzbag. Parents, you want your children to date Joey Sick,

not Skip. I never heard his last name just skip wow that's clearly a bad choice on her part his response again is a little more like oh good for her right like as opposed to all the being mad at his kids the entire rest of the episode yeah so i'm still going to count that in the reconciliation pile. No, it definitely is. Even though we as the audience know that that's not. A clarification on Skip's name. And on IMDB, he has a weird pronounced last name, Spies. For one episode he's in. For the other episode, it's Spence. So my guess is that this is a typo.

One other noteworthy thing here. I was expecting after Ronco is cheated of his part of the recovery fee, there'd be some technicality to keep Rockford out of it as well. But no. Yeah. As far as I can tell from the scene, he gets $15,000. I honestly even had constructed the other shoe in my head that was going to drop. I figured he would just get $7,500 because the other half was promised to someone who couldn't receive it. But it seems like he's just going to get the money.

Or they reactivated your retainer. So you're just getting your normal retainer pay or something like that. But no, he makes it out with this full recovery fee. So this is a rarity. And we see how Rockford makes the money that lasts them through the next season. Right. But yeah, I quite enjoyed this episode.

Oh, it's a good one. Going into it, I figured I would. But watching it again, it surprised me a little bit about how much I enjoyed it. Because I didn't remember anything from it but the last 10 to 15 minutes. Because almost all of that Ronco stuff is tucked into the very end of it. You meet the Roncos early on, but hunting them down and all that doesn't happen until

the last act. And that's all that I had stuck in my head. But yeah, I really learned to appreciate the other parts of it. Yeah. It's a pretty intricate little story that's well told yeah you have your your gang of jewel thieves two of them double cross the other ones uh in order to try and just get cash for this diamond which explains why they're trying to get cash instead of trying to fence it right right but really as i realized as we went back through it and looking over my notes in addition to rockford coming out looking pretty good um the other winner here is donnie because he just gets a suitcase full of money and leaves

yeah like he got a million dollars in cash and was never seen again yes well good on you donnie yeah he either takes the briefcase where we cut there and there's no reason he wouldn't take it right and then next time we see califers at the police station yeah donnie donnie ends up winning his gambit of placing the diamond in uh rockford's barbecue pays off so great great episode the the humor is good it's less it's not that there's jokes it's more just humorous characters interacting but i like that the characters are all counterweighted with a little bit of something, either a little bit of pathos or a little bit of longing or a little bit of something that makes them not just cartoon humor and makes them a little more relatable humor. They're not all just built to serve the plot here. The Roncos have a vacation that they're on and they have an internal dynamic within the family

that you know is causing stress to everyone and and their family has an arc yeah like it's a small arc and we don't really see the end points of it but like we see them going through changes in this episode and the ginger's gang same thing you see ginger kind of going through trying to sweep it up and fix all the problems. And you have Lou and his brother Mike, and they're sort of dynamic there because Mike had betrayed them. And yeah, everyone's got a thing going on that gets swirled up in the diamond heist, but not all of it is about the diamond heist. This is a good time to take our break because when we come back for our second half, I think i want to talk a little bit about the diamond and how it its relationship to the plot yeah excellent we'll we'll go over that and more when we come back for our second half yes while we have you here there's

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That's where I have free downloads of all my fun new projects. Thanks yet again for listening. As always, we deeply appreciate your support. And with that, back to the show. Welcome back to 200 A Day, where we discuss the 70s detective show, The Rockford Files. This is the second half of our broadcast, where we talk about

the lessons that we learned in this episode, The Queen of Peru, and how we may apply them to our various fictional interactions, whether they're in role-playing games or whatever we're writing or, you know, folk

songs with a strong narrative content. Whatever we're doing here. So you had something. Do we want to start off with your thing here? Yeah. So one thing that struck me about this episode, in addition to the generally very tight nature of it, as we mentioned a couple of times,

is the use of the diamond itself. So we've talked about mcguffins before and some episodes that uh use them pretty pretty well for a little more in depth on that i believe our discussion about uh the no cut contract has a lot about that those audio tapes yeah this episode uh that diamond is a mcguffin in the classic sense, right? It is the thing that is driving the characters to action, but it's used visually, is also used to create tension in the narrative, which also strikes me as a very Hitchcockian thing. So the MacGuffin, that's a term from Hitchcock. And then this classic sense of tension tension i'm going to paraphrase here but you know

you have two people talking at a table if you just watch them talking you're just watching them talking right but if you're listening to them talking while you're looking at the countdown of the bomb that's under the table yes now you have tension yeah it's used just with a very light touch in this episode uh again because it's not a super dramatic one but first we get an image of it we see the camera through the camera we see a picture that rockford's looking at of this enormous diamond we get to see donnie holding a mysterious package that in retrospect we know is the diamond then we see the diamond itself in the trash pile and then we see the cars each of you know each of our principles passing the trash pile where we know

the diamond is which is what we know they're looking for yeah and each of those heightens a little bit of the tension around are they going to get this thing the arc of this episode is not going to be resolved until this diamond is found and the finding of it is off camera because we don't need to see it but the fact that we see it just a couple of times in all these different contexts does make a little bit of an undercurrent of it's right there it's right there right like you're so close but we only know that because we're the audience and we have the omniscience uh just that little bit of tension keeps the pace of this one up i think like it's a very quick episode.

It seems to go really, you know, the beats are really fast and the rhythm of it's pretty quick. And I think part of that is because we keep looping back to like, here's the thing. Oh, now it's farther away from our people. Now it's closer. Now it's farther away. And that's one element that I think is well handled in this episode. It's got a nice metaphorical, how it revealed is is kind of tied to what's going on because in the beginning uh the question is do they have the diamond like rockford's like i don't

even know if they have the diamond they they could just be a couple of yum yums yes with a line of patter and daddy shotgun exactly uh and we don't know that and then uh when one of these yum yums is lurking around rockford's trailer with a box. And it's just a little paper box. Like it's nondescript and it doesn't show off what it is. In fact, when I wrote in my notes, because I had forgotten how this had all played out, I wrote in my notes, nondescript package.

And then, bomb? Like I couldn't remember. Yeah, same here. I i was like is that an explosive because it definitely looked like the kind of thing that would you know a c4 or something like that you know like then uh when we find out that it's in the in the grill and the grill's been taken by this family that whole bit about it being thrown in the trash is great. We get this moment before where Rockford's talking about it being just a lump of coal that becomes this diamond. It is literally with the charcoal and the ash, you know, and it's thrown out.

And that's when it's lost to everyone. And in addition to building the tension, it also follows the sort of thought of where the story is going. It carries a metaphorical weight. Yeah. In addition to the MacGuffin nature. Yeah. And another good example of the tendency of the show for things to carry more than one message,

right. Or scenes to do more than one thing. This episode is a great example of that because almost every scene if it's not doing two things simultaneously is transitioning from carrying one kind of load to another yeah like even the scene with um where the uh the ron goes uh pull over and we start off with this kind of character piece showing us carl's nostalgia for how things were um and the greatest you know the greatest beer in japan and stuff that builds their character a little bit shows us a little more what their deal is gives us a little

more insight into why we should care about him and his family and then that transitions right into throwing out the diamond yeah yeah exactly plot wise they've pulled over because they need to get rid of their trash yeah and by way, because you just brought up this scene, kudos to Ken Swofford, who made me want Japanese beer with the way he talked about it. He was just like, Japanese beer. Oh, it's so good. I think you're absolutely right.

With the reference to having the timer under the table here, we have a scene where Jim is driving down the road on the cb trying to get somebody from indiana on the horn you know why is that so compelling aside from james gardner's acting but it's compelling because you can feel the tension it feels like it's slipping away from you how in the hell are they going to find this diamond you feel the sort of desperation of what's going on here. Right. It takes what is otherwise just a comedic moment, just a very fun, funny moment, and gives it this sort of panic that's not just the kind of panic you need for comedy. It's the kind of panic that also accompanies this thriller kind of thing going.

This is a comedic episode with the heart of a thriller. You could easily make this a very dark episode. We talked a little bit about how Ginger's gang has this very dark implication to them. Yeah. And how they interact. If the Roncos were seedy instead of Midwestern. Yeah. Or if they were junkies or something like that, or people on the run from the law in their own right.

You could start getting into a much more mystery thriller direction of like, which of these people, which of these groups of bad people is going to get to the destination first. And you wouldn't have to change much right like you still have the beat where carl is like i want in on this yeah it has nothing to do with him being uh a criminal mastermind is that he's an insurance guy who just knows what it's worth he knows yeah there's money involved and uh and is also adept at not directly addressing what's going on. So he can hold Rockford off for as long as the negotiation is required. So tell me what you think about this. A lot of the elements here feel like this could be a game of fiasco. Yeah.

Right? a game of fiasco. Yeah. Right? So that's the Bully Pulpit Games, Coen Brothers movie-inspired rule set for playing a game where everyone has poor impulse control and things end up in a fiasco. This story doesn't go that way,

but all the elements that are in the setup for a fiasco game are in this story i think so if you're not familiar with the game you start with a play set which gives you all these different elements to work with and they might be things like objects like the diamond and the grill there'll be things like relationships brothers right um or working for the insurance company you know member of the national guard may not a relationship but like background elements you know, member of the National Guard, may not a relationship, but like background elements, you know, these things that seem semi-random,

but they all kind of work together in this package in this episode. What Fiasco does is it takes a lot of those elements and then, you know, kind of guides you into making this exciting. Right. Who's going to come out on top?

Who's going to make the worst decision kind of story? If this episode appeals to you and you're not familiar with that game you might want to check it out yeah yeah where this episode veers from how like a fiasco game might go is might actually just be rockford's involvement uh yeah he's the he's the centering force. Yeah. He does have impulse control issues in other ways, but quite often he's the one who is trying to make the cautious move, which is not typical of a fiasco character. Right. Yeah, I think there's just something about how there's all these disparate elements that don't seem like they should go together. Yeah, Yeah. The British mobster guy. The National Guard insurance adjuster. One of the most valuable diamonds in the world.

And a grill full of ashes. Yeah. And a family from Indiana. And a punk rock boyfriend. Yes. Joey Sick. So that was something I wanted to ask you. Yeah.

We do a little research on the episodes. A lot of it is IMDb. And so there's the comments. And some of the comments about this episode are kind of like, what's up with this random British guy as an element that sticks out? Oh, all right. And I wanted to know if you felt like that. Or rather, I don't think either of us feel like he sticks out in a bad way. I don't think either of us feel like he sticks out in a bad way. But what do you think the role of having this character that's so not a standard Rockford villain in this story is?

Right. So there's a couple things. Like, if it was a mob boss, you wouldn't have the moment where Rockford says that he's going to find the diamond. There's a moment where, after the police get involved, where Rockford decides to go for it. And he's usually hesitant if the mob is involved. But I don't think that's why that decision was made. Like, I definitely think that this is a typical of Rockford Files where every character has got to be a thing. It's a good, you know what? I'm going to check up Ginger. Oh, so he is English. The guy who played him. I apologize for my comments on his accent.

I mean, it could be that they just had the guy, right? Like they just casted him and. Yeah. I mean, he was just a TV actor. He was just in TV shows. But this actually, this kind of segues into what I wanted to talk about. A fun thing that happens in this episode is everyone has a different speech pattern. Like, I'm looking at the cast list here

and just going down the characters that aren't our normal cast of characters, like Rocky and Beth and Dennis and Chapman. But you have Calipher, who is just nonstop $10 words. Reckonoiter and we have a word for you. It's a lollygagger. He's always going for like the bigger words, the more technical terms, because he wants to show that he's up on top.

You have Ronco, who has a very Midwestern. I don't know if he's specifically Indian in his delivery of things but his whole family has the very Midwestern feel to it, how they speak and how they, you know, Budinsky nobody in the Rockford Files would use

the term Budinsky until we got to dot Ronco and then we have Ginger, yeah he's British but it doesn't stop there. What's going on is he has these grim turns of phrases. The circling birds. The circling birds. One reason why they may have chosen someone with that accent to play this role

is that you need him to have complete authority without a whole lot in the script to tell you that he has complete authority. You know, like he's got some serious control over his crew, including Lou. And Lou's whole monologue is in this narrator type voice. It's third person.

He's like, a man's brother comes to him and says. It's great. It's melancholic. And again, it stands out against everyone else. He's got a way of speaking that's not the same as everyone else. Skip has his own way of speaking. Yeah, he's kind of this like beach bum surfer, California vibe. Yeah.

And even like Donnie, who doesn't stand out a whole lot, except Donnie's, I think of him as the guy who would have been scripted by Joss Whedon, right? Like, you know, getting down to the wool hat. Like, you have no idea how hot it is. This hat is made of wool, you know? And his, yeah, and his whole thing where he's just like, come on, like, cut me a break here. Why won't this work so i want to kind of like kind of hit upon the the neat thing about that is that all these characters stand out and are different from each other not to criticize the rockford files but we see over the course of five seasons and then the movies i would say somewhere around 2.3 million gorillas.

When it comes to thugs that are there to beat up Rockford, you see a lot of them. And some of them are even played by the same people. So you can get to a point where you kind of forget who's who and what's what and as as you're watching an episode if you've got more than one group of antagonists if they don't stand out as different in the beginning uh you can kind of forget who's doing what and where as it's going along um and one of the reasons why this stood out to me is that funny voices is often what uh kind of a derogatory way to refer to role-playing right we're we're just talking in funny voices but what's happening here is not accents right we do have one character with an accent uh but where you could have uh trouble doing this is by going with accents because then

you steer yourself right into an area where you're going to just be culturally insensitive. You're going to, you know, bring up a bunch of stereotypes, maybe that you weren't aware that you were actually harboring. Because oftentimes we do funny voices when we want to do a character that we have less respect for. And if you go into an accent to do a character you have less respect for, something needs to be examined there. What works here in this episode, it's not the accents, it's how they approach what they say. Like we don't have respect for Califer.

And part of that is because Califer keeps using these giant words when he doesn't have to. He's trying to inflate his importance. To try and put words on the words you're using. I think maybe what you're getting at here is the difference between, as you say, an accent or a funny voice. Yeah.

And a voice in the sense of what voice does this character have? Right. And that's something that I think, you know, can be done in prose as well. Because you're talking about word choices sentence architecture yeah rhythm of how someone speaks and you can even like describe how someone sounds right like if they speak you know very softly or that kind of stuff where you can give someone a picture of like what should i think this person sounds like and then you you use the actual diction and punctuation and all those things in the written word to differentiate different characters, you know, as they're

speaking to each other so that as the reader, you know, you know, who's who and whatnot. I think in a game where some people are really great at accents and doing voices and some people are not, that is not a thing that I am comfortable doing or like to do. But you can do things like use certain vocabulary or lower your voice, raise your voice, use a different cadence as you speak. Those kinds of things to not just differentiate between characters so you know who's who, but also like communicate. This person speaks this way because they're this kind of person. Right. I think that this episode is a really good example of that done well, because they go to,

like you said, they go to the word choice, the sentence structure, the rhythm and whatnot. So when Fargo came out, people were excited because they'd never experienced that accent before, because they lived on a coast and had never been to the Midwest. But people like at the time

when fargo came out i was living in uh wisconsin and uh we had a similar accent there's a wonderful spectrum of accents that goes from canada down through the upper peninsula michigan through wisconsin somewhat into illinois and out to north dakota could kind of, it's like a rainbow of the same accent. Anyways, in the area, they hated that movie because they felt like it was making fun of them for having that accent. I think that this Indiana family, they could have gone that route. They could have overdone some sort of an attempt at an Indian accent, which honestly I wouldn't be able to do.

I don't know what an indian accent sounds like but instead they just had this like a few word choices that are from the area and then like i like we talked about earlier the the friendliness that is not at all helpful yeah and is trying to kind of get in the way so that they can't be held responsible for the things that they've done. Which isn't saying that that's what Indiana people are like. What I'm saying is I experienced that throughout the Midwest. It is something that you encounter in the Chicago area, for sure. And it's done well without stumbling on to just caricature. Yeah.

I mean, I guess apologies if we are downplaying the Indiana stereotyping in this, if anyone out there is listening and it's like, wait a second, this is a caricature of us. That's, that's our bad and the show's bad. But in this case, I think it is done.

It's a bit of a caricature, but it's done with kind of a, an awareness of that. I think it's a little self-aware. Yeah. I think as we've mentioned, they it's a little self-aware. Yeah. I think as we've mentioned, they're not purely clowns. Right.

Yeah. We see Carl get smart to what's going on and make a play for getting some of this money. We see Sean kind of come around and be like, maybe I shouldn't give my dad such a hard time. Like there's a little bit of humanity there. Rockford files does this, you know, is good at giving, you know, giving these characters humanity.

But also we're going to lean on this stereotype because we only have 50 minutes and we need to communicate things about these characters. And so you get the Jersey accents, you get people from the Midwest having a certain cadence. You get Jim always going to the Oklahoma oil tycoon as opposed to any other high roller. For this short form fiction, that's the role of the stereotype. You don't want to only use stereotypes, but the reason they exist is because they communicate something. These aren't even archetypes. They are stereotypes. They're just used with like a light touch and used to introduce the character that then we learn more about and that

takes them out of being a stereotype right skip is definitely a stereotype and and the more we learn about him the worse he is yeah yeah but but yeah i think that uh that finding ways to make your characters stand out that aren't just blatant, but are more built on how they communicate with each other and with the world around. I think that's a wonderful way to do things. Maybe a technique to pull out of this is that like making sure that your character development goes away from the initial introduction of them. Like if you introduce them with some stereotypical elements, as we learn more about the character, how do we feel like they're more a part of the real world and less leaning on that caricature? Right. I wanted to do a shout out for the comedy in this episode, but I can't draw a lesson. It's hard to draw lessons from comedy, right? Like there's a certain't draw a lesson. It's hard to draw lessons from comedy, right?

Like there's a certain sort of instinct going. It's the usual stuff about Rockford being denied, usually by a character that's not listening to him or bowling over what he's saying here. I mean, we talked during the first part about how good it is to have all these characters have different pressures from their families or their... No, actually with the families, right? It's the brothers, they have pressure on each other, and then you have the Ronco family.

The only person that really doesn't have any pressure outside of the actual heist is Califor, I think. Well, he has pressure from his job. Oh, and he's got the... I'm'm sorry i forget that he's a colonel yeah he has some kind of rank in the national guards yeah i think the character that has the least pressure on them outside of just the premise of getting the diamond back is ginger yep like he's not really in danger from anyone else he's he's the motive force that's putting everyone else in danger yeah because he wants to get that diamond so in that way he's actually kind of the least interesting of the characters he he brings menace but he himself is kind of without having the accent and the turns of phrase and everything he actually probably

would not be particularly memorable right yeah so that's one role of it in this story is like here's here's how we keep our villain kind of like on top we give them these distinguishing features yeah i would agree i think those are the main things that uh i drew from the queen of per. Yeah. Come on. Yeah, fun episode. It was a blast to watch and talk about. I think it joins our other season four episodes as definitely recommended. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm not quite sure what our retainer was for this one,

but at least we got our recovery fee of $15,000. And only because we're not employed by the insurance company. We'll go do some grilling, maybe take a trip up to little Denmark, and then we'll be back next time to talk about another episode of The Rockford Files.