Two Hundred A Day - Episode 35: The Empty Frame

Episode Date: June 17, 2018

Nathan and Eppy discuss S5E8. We finally meet Angel's brother-in-law Aaron as he's being feted as the new Police Commissioner - but a cadre of socialist revolutionaries breaks up the party and steals the art of the hosts, John & Jeff, right off the walls! Jim is hired to track down the paintings while the police conduct their own investigation, but each thing Jim discovers leads to new questions. He has to untangle a dense web of motivations to solve this one, an effort hindered by Angel's newly-found position of influence, but aided by Lt. Chapman's fall from grace... it's a great episode! Funny and emotionally impactful, well-structured and full of great characters. Recommended! In our second half, we go deep into the idea of "status" among and between characters. This is a feature of the show that we touch on often, but this episode has a host of fluctuating status plays from beginning to end, and we break down what that means for a piece of fiction, common patterns, and how to "activate" the energy of a story by using changes in status. 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 Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app 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, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P! 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, directions to the party. Left on Saugus, you'll see a rock. Left, left again, right, another left. There's kind of a hill. Keep going, you'll probably see a bunch of cars. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we explore the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. As always, I'm Nathan Poletta. And I'm Epidiah Ravishaw. I'm sorry, I am EQ Ravishaw. I am EQ Ravishaw. Today we are discussing a season five episode, episode eight, The Empty Frame. Yeah. And as one might imagine from the title involving the word frame, we will indeed see Angel Martin in this episode. Uh, yeah.

So I threw this one at you. Did you have any thoughts about the episode before you sat down to watch it? Just, uh, based on my pick, I got the email and I was like, okay, the empty frame. I don't recall Rockford file episodes based on their title, but when I read the brief review, I think, or not review, but, um, summary on either Wikipedia or IMDb, whatever. When I saw the summary, I was like, oh, this one. I just knew I was in for some delicious Angel stuff. I feel like this is... And watching it, I guess we'll probably get into this, but I'm a little surprised by how less significant to the story itself Angel is than I remembered.

I really remembered all the Angel stuff. And this time watching it, I was like, wait, this story is happening without Angel. We interact with him and he definitely is impetus for certain important parts of the story. But for some reason, I thought he was far more wrapped up in it than than um than he is but yes i was super excited about this episode yeah i i kind of remembered that too and i think that's a the big strength of this episode is actually all the character pieces yeah it's kind of a straightforward mystery with a bunch of very fun character interactions stemming out of it. It's an interesting beast. This one is written by Stephen Cannell.

So an OG script, if you will. And I think displays a little bit of his flair for the kind of hyper real villains. Sure. We'll get into it. But I feel like a lot of his scripts take a quote unquote uh realistic idea and then just turn the dial up a little bit to add a little element of kind of the fantastic or the overblown yeah in in the name of creating comedy for the most part and also a little bit of drama and this i definitely felt that in this one after we've we've had a string of uh like juanita bartlett episodes and ones written by, you know, one one off writers.

So coming back to a candle script, I kind of felt it a little bit. It's like, oh, yeah. And this one is directed by Corey Allen, who was an actor in the 50s and 60s, who then turned to direction later with many TV credits. This is the first of three Rockford episodes that he directed. He also has a pretty strong other mystery show pedigree doing Murder, She Wrote, Magnum P.I. episode and also directed the first Star Trek Next Generation episode. Really? Yeah.

Encounter at Farpoint. See, I cannot recall Rockford File episode titles, but if you give me a Star Trek Next Generation, I can do it. That's probably the only one I would remember off the top of my head. I think that's the only one that I remember too. But yeah, so we will see more of his work later in season five, but yeah pretty pretty straightforward piece of television there's a couple shots i always oh yeah harp on some of the like weird camera shots and stuff there's a couple shots in this that are like okay like let's get a little weird with it which i appreciate just

because it kind of breaks it up a little bit it's it's actually in my notes i i'm when when we encounter those i'm'm like, Nathan? And there's some fun cuts, too. For sure, for sure. But yeah, so with all of that said, let's get into our preview montage. All right. So right up, we get the angel's going to be in this episode. And that's an important part of any preview montage is to set your expectations there. I mean, I think there's a lot of exciting things going on in this preview montage is to set your expectations there. I mean, I think there's a lot of exciting

things going on in this preview montage, but it's hard to look at anything else other than Jim in his boxers laying in the back of a boat. That is a big check that this montage is writing for the episode. How do we get to that yeah uh and i think that that's brilliant yeah uh like i saw that and immediately i was ready to watch i was like shut up i'm ready i'm in but then it ends it with angel shouting that he's the man which uh again like i love angel i enjoy uh any angel moment but i i think i really love angel when he's frustrated and uh trying to exert his dominance in the world uh as feebly as that is so well you're certainly going to see a lot of frustrated angry angel in this episode the the other detail from the

preview montage uh for us to look forward to is that there are some stolen paintings that are going to be the subject of our mystery. And as we start it with Angel, towards the end, we also get a shot of Dennis. So the whole,

whole gang appears, except for Rocky. No, no Rocky in this preview montage or in this episode, unfortunately. 200 a Day is supported by

all of our listeners, but especially our patrons at patreon.com slash 200 a day. Patrons get to add to the 200aday Rockford Files files, help us pick which episodes to cover, and more. Each episode, we extend a special thanks to our

gumshoe-level patrons. This time, we say thank you to Jim Crocker. In addition to supporting the show, he also sells our games at cons east of the Mississippi on behalf of Indie Press Revolution. Follow along on Twitter at IPR Tweets. Shane Lievlin. If you play games online, you should check out his free dice rolling app,

Roll For Your Party at RollForYour.Party. Mike Gillis, host of the Radio vs. the Martians podcast, the McLaughlin group for nerds. They remain at RadioVsTheMartians.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 age of Ravens dot blogspot dot com. Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P. And finally, big thanks to Victor DeSanto and to Richard Haddam, who you can find on Twitter

at Richard Haddam. Check out patreon.com slash 200 today and see if you want to be our newest gumshoe. But yes, as you say, we start at a party, but before we get to the party, we see three, as I say in my notes, mysterious ne'er-do-wells

in a motorboat doing some suspicious stuff. There's a dude with a gun who we learn is David. Yeah. There's a dude with a mustache and a woman with hair. It's a pretty straightforward description there. We learn later that this may be one of her $50 haircuts. Just throwing that out there.

Sticking out from underneath her stocking cap. Anyway, her name is Carol. They are getting some guns loaded and motoring up on a fancy house that has a pier right out to wherever they're motoring. And it's pretty clear that they're planning some kind of incursion. David, who's kind of the ringleader, makes a whole reference to storming the Winter Palace. Implying they're politically motivated here. Yes. We'll learn more about these.

The difference between motivation and the thing where you retroactively give yourself an excuse. Justification. Justification, yes. Thank you. I know words. an excuse. Justification. Justification. Yes. Thank you. I know words. So and storming the Winter Palace, for those who are not 20th century political history nerds,

is a reference to the Red Army, the communists in Russia, toppling the czar and taking power in 1917 and eventually giving us the tom clancy novel red october yeah that was the the logical end point of uh that activity so we have some seemingly uh violent communist radicals yes giving us a giving us some tension sitting in the background as we go to our fancy party. Yeah. The whole first part of this is kind of establishing the characters that we're going to be dealing with over the rest of the episode through what I refer to as hoity-toity dialogue. There's a lot of slightly barbed comments about different people's taste and what kind of conversationalists they are and stuff like that. different people's taste and what kind of conversationalists they are and stuff like that. We have Jeffrey and John are our two hosts. It is their house and they are art people.

So they have many opinions and a collection of fine art, which we see kind of in the background as we go around this whole party. They have a conversation with Aaron, who is starting something new. For those of us who are longtime Rockford viewers, we have heard of Aaron Keel, the brother-in-law of Angel Martin, who is the publisher of the newspaper that Angel theoretically has a job at. So it is fairly quickly revealed that this is that Aaron. Yes. He there's in a nice little piece of camera work. Someone tells Aaron that there's someone that he has to meet someone with loads of police influence. And we cut to Rockford and his date coming into the party.

But then he runs pretty much directly into Lieutenant Chapman. Yeah. So I kind of like the subtlety of that cut. That's the first of many jokes in the cut that they've got going in this episode. And Rockford has a date with him. And there's a, I would say a very, not a B plot, but maybe like a C plot that involves this date. Chapman is essentially working the door. Right.

And he's checking Jim's invitation. And he wants to keep his date whose name is Cynthia out. Jim takes this just as being a, you know, Chapman giving him some sass, but before anything can come of it, angel rolls on in wearing his full cravat and, uh,

fancy dress angels cravat, which could have been the title of this episode, but is, oh, it's a thing of beauty. It is something to behold. This is definitely a watch this episode recommendation for some of the fashion choices among other things.

So, yeah, there's, so angel rolls in and he is, he's like a cat with a, with a mouse. I don't know. He thinks he has it all right now, right?

Right, yeah. He's on top. He's on top of the world. So first of all, he's the one who set this date up. Cynthia is someone who also works for the paper. And then she goes off to talk to someone that she knows. Angel rolls out that Chapman and other off-duty cops are working security because there's so many important people at this party uh police commissioners deputy mayors

etc because aaron is going to be the new police commissioner yeah so so that's why all these fancy people are here and why all these cops are here he does refer to this being a party bigger than cher's birthday and then we get into a bit where he summons Chapman and tries to get him to bring them some drinks. Lording this power he has because as the brother-in-law to the new police commissioner, he has influence. Yes. And he can just ask Aaron for favors and that will trickle down to Chapman. I think it's interesting in this exchange, Chapman's not one to be threatened by Angel, right? Right. I think it's interesting in this exchange, Chapman's not one to be threatened by Angel, right? Like he...

Right. And we'll definitely be talking a lot this episode about the different status dynamics between a lot of these characters. But Chapman doesn't release authority to Angel until it becomes obvious that Angel has influence over his sister. Right. Right. Okay, if I were married to Angel's sister, right? And I knew Angel,

there's no way he would have any kind of influence over me. I would just be like, that's your deadbeat brother-in-law. It's that clearly Angel knows how to play his sister and that's where his leverage is. And at that point, then, Chapman can see that there is some sort of threat to his own employment there. Right. And also, in the framing of the scene, Aaron is visible in the background, and Angel is like, well, I'll go have Aaron tell you to do it.

There's a moment where Chapman needs to be like, am I going to mess with Angel in front of my boss now? Make a scene at this party. Right. Or to suck it up and do it. Right. Which he does. So Angel is very excited about this influence that he's going to have as the new brother-in-law to the police commissioner. He offers to use it to help out Jimmy whenever he needs something. Jim says that what you're talking about is called influence peddling. It's not legal. And Angel downplays that, of course. I'm in a new business now. And he gives Rockford his new card, which says EA Martin discreet arrangements. And then we end this conversation. At the time, I thought it was just like business, but in retrospect, it actually has a little bit of meaning. Angel tells Jim to make sure that And then we end this conversation. At the time, I thought it was just like business.

But in retrospect, it actually has a little bit of meaning. Angel tells Jim to make sure that Cynthia, his date, sees Aaron. Yeah. You know, make sure they talk. One other bit at the very beginning of the scene that I forgot, but I have in my notes here. When Angel shows up, the first things he says is something like, you're my guest because you're my friend. Yeah. I guess I kind of just love it whenever Angel is like, Jim, we're friends. Because you have to, somebody has to remind Jim and the audience that these two are friends.

That positioning, I think, is important because Angel's about to use him. And that's what he does. He's like, we're friends and now I'm going to use you. It is also an important counterpoint to how Angel and Jim interact later in the episode. Yes. But yes, our looming threat, the Thunder, if you will, the boat pulls up to the dock outside and these three anarchists run in with stocking masks on shooting their guns in the air the guests are surprised and they get the drop on the cops right so a guy jumps in with a with a machine gun and it's right in front of jim and chapman yeah i don't know if this happened to you but like when they cut to these people on

the boat again i was like oh that's right i was i was so enwrapped in the characters of the I just I wanted to see all of the nice tensions going on at the party so much that I'd forgotten that we had this impending robbery or whatever. Yeah, no, me too. The scene is very long. Yeah. And it's kind of a continuous conversation between these characters as they come in and out. Yeah. And so when you cut back, it's like, oh, right, something's going to happen. But yeah, so they get the drop on everyone. They say, you know, do what we say. No one will get hurt.

Your capitalist booty is being liberated by the people. That is a good quote to pull. So they do two things. They have or they do three things. First, they have everyone go out onto like the lawn. Second, they have all the men take off their pants. Presumably to get us started on that opening montage. Right.

I feel like this happened in a different episode maybe where they had, where someone was ordered to pull their pants down around their ankles so that they couldn't like run after someone. In this case, they're actually taking their pants off. Yes. And they come around and just take all the pants. I guess to take their wallets? Yeah.

I mean, it's an efficient way of doing it. I think it's pretty clever. As an audience member, I'm grateful because if it weren't for this, I would never know that Angel had little pink hearts on his boxer shorts. Yep. Absolutely. Angel, I noticed, was the first person to start taking his pants off. Everyone else was like, what are you talking about? And he could not get them off fast enough. if you want to know how to survive anything watch angel

and so while uh they are collecting all the pants uh the final guy is going through the house grabbing paintings off the wall and he rips a matisse out of the frame yeah and then as he as that empty frame falls down we get our title card the empty frame over it and then the rest of our credits roll over the next uh scene essentially the very next credit is the credit for angel and it's right on his face these are on the nose credits they were synced up very well yeah the. The thieves leave with the cry of, you are the cancers that feed on the people. But as soon as they're on their boat, I like this, how Chapman takes the initiative. He immediately jumps up.

Is there another boat? Right. There is another speedboat at the dock next door. So all these men with no pants run into the boat. They jump in and they start pursuing the fleeing thieves. It turns out that there is a working gun in the boat, apparently. Yeah, a shark gun, obviously. That's what you want is a shark gun.

So one of the other plainclothes cops is taking pot shots. The guy with the mustache in the fleeing boat turns around and starts shooting back with the machine gun. So we have exchange of gunfire. And around here, I think, is when we see we get the shot of Rockford lying as low as he can in the boat with his boxers. He jumped in, but now he is clearly thinking, why did I do this? The two boats are getting closer. It looks like they're not going to get away. But then a helicopter comes into the scene, down and our three criminals manage to throw the paintings aboard and jump onto the helicopter they escape the pursuing police and we end that scene with

rockford's rueful adios enjoy mexico uh there's a great bit in here where chapman is yelling at his his men to shoot at the blades. And Rockford, exasperated, is like, shoot the motor. Always the practical one. I think if there is a deeper mystery to this episode, that helicopter is it. I don't want to give too much away, but we never find out who's flying that helicopter, why it was part of the plan or anything. There is a reference later to the helicopter had mechanical trouble and we couldn't get to Mexico. Yeah. But who was flying it? We never know. We cut from there to Aaron violently pulling Angel into an office and yelling at him. instincts aaron yeah he wants the names and

addresses of those three right now and if he gets them from angel maybe he can help him with the police off the bat aaron thinks that angel set up this this robbery right yes you know who they are i want the names it's like i have a name for you and then uh we get our our first big reveal of the episode the name that he spells out for a aaron is cynthia because apparently he knows about some kind of an affair that aaron and this woman cynthia who was rockford's date yeah had back in newport newport beach i think doesn't he wants to save his dear sister from the scandal of revealing this. This is why Aaron is going to use his new position to help Angel do stuff. Whenever Angel needs a favor, Aaron is going to be the one to provide it.

And Aaron looks terrified. It's a little unclear whether Angel is just revealing this now or whether he already knew. But now Angel's like, well, now that you are the police commissioner right i have real things i want from you because either way it's bad news for aaron uh but angel does say that he did not set up the ripoff because the last thing he wants is for aaron to look bad because that will reduce angel's ability to do things through aaron which makes sense like i at no point did i think that that angel was actually involved in the robbery i think it's good instincts to say angels involved yeah like if you're looking around the room uh there's a bit when the the robbers they first come in with their machine

guns what have you and um angel is trying to make a getaway and they stop him and he rejoins the group and when he rejoins the group, Aaron is right there. And there's a look that it's exchanged between the two of them. It's hard to tell what that look is meant to be, like whether it's Angel pleading for a way out or if it's him trying to convey to Aaron that I don't know anything about this, like this isn't my deal. Yeah. But yeah, Aaron is shook

as they say. And it says like, you're going to use that to blackmail me. And Angel has a great line. Yes. When it's in the immediate family, it's not called blackmail. It's called family spirit. So, but yeah, we see Angel being a real, real jerk. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to see more jerk angel as this episode goes on. So we cut from there to Jim's trailer where our couple, Jeffrey and John, are talking to Jim. The first thing that is of note here is all these indicators of class and status clash. Rockford is offering them coffee. One of them asks for brandy he's like well a lot of brandy there's this weird day drinking thing going on too that rockford isn't in for

i think it's part of like the status thing definitely but i think even if he asked for a beer rockford would be like how about a? Yeah. Once they start talking about art, one of them looks at the, there's like a painting of a sailboat on the trailer wall that's hanging a little crooked. And Rockford does this whole thing where like, oh, that's from a friend who was having a garage sale, getting rid of them for free. To contrast with these two guys who talk about how the paintings that were stolen meant a lot to them. It's not just the money, though they're very valuable, but collecting art and putting together a collection is like a spiritual pursuit. It has an emotional weight that's not just their value. And I think this is also the first scene where it occurred to me

that the relationship between these two, I didn't realize that there was a relationship between these two in the party scene because really all we get in the party scene was that one of them rescues another one from a conversation they don't want to be in right in that scene it's even unclear that they're both hosts like one of them is clearly the host yeah the one with the money is the host yeah and uh so john is the one who is established as like the one who's the host with the money. And Jeffrey is the other one. Yeah.

But by this scene, I'm like, oh, right. In the parlance of the episode, they are devoted friends, which is code here. This episode definitely is in keeping with the signals of the time, I guess, to signify their relationship without ever spelling it out. There's no comment made on it, but there's no bones made about it either. Like, right. Eventually it comes out they've been together for 15 years. It's not part of anything. It's just that's that's who they are.

And it's also not played for laughs, which I exactly appreciated. But yes, their their paintings meant a lot to them. They want to get them back, but they were so confident on the house's location at the end of the peninsula and the alarm system they had at the house that they never thought anyone would come in by water. And so they never actually insured the paintings. I recall one of them being responsible for that decision. And now I'm trying to remember if that was if that was jeff that made that decision oh i can't remember because okay for two reasons number one uh rockford does the rockford eye roll right not not like an actual little eye roll but

you could tell that rockford's like oh that wasn't a good choice yeah like kind of the half smile of like why did you do that and i think that the person that made that decision was Jeff and if I'm correct on that that has some other implications down the line I mean it kind of works either way and we can talk about that later yeah I would have to to watch the scene back uh but uh while they never got their paintings insured they are worth around two. Yeah. And you see Jim like eyebrow raise like at that amount of money. Yeah. So they want to hire Jim to find them. Why hire Jim when this was a huge thing with the police and the new police commissioner right there? They're afraid that the police are going to sweep it under the rug because of the embarrassment of such a thing

happening to them. Right. Which seems fair, actually. Yeah. it under the rug because of the embarrassment of such a thing happening to them. Right. Which seems fair, actually. Yeah, none of this is out of the ordinary. Or they say they'll pay anything. And he says, well, my fee is $200 a day plus expenses. John goes ahead and starts pulling hundreds out of his wallet. Making it rain.

And then as he's pulling out $100 bills, Jim says, it might take a couple of days. John goes ahead and pays him up front for a week in cash. Yeah. I did not pause to actually count the $100 bills that he hands over, but I'm going to assume it's $1,400 worth since that would cover a week. And so for Jim to get started, he wants a list of people who've been in and out of the house in the last couple of months. Well, none of our friends could have done it. And he says, well, I meant like work people, servants, if you've had any, anything repaired, those kinds. And then he ends with, you could make a list of your friends just to see if there's a clinker in among the blue bloods. It's good. Um, we get some good Jim managing people,

uh, moments in this episode. We get a great one where it doesn't work later on. Like, I need a list of everyone. And they're like, oh, our friends are all great. And then he's like, oh, I'm not talking about your friends. And then after he gets that door open for the list, he's like, but let's just just to be sure, let's add your friends to the list. We cut to Lieutenant Chapman yelling on the phone. This is another good joke in the cut, as you say, because he's yelling and it's like, oh, Chapman's on the case.

He's mad. But it turns out that he's yelling about reassigning parking places and getting office supplies to the right people. There's good physical humor going on here with like he's got a desk full of file folders that he can't control. Like they're, they're all over the place. And so Jim comes into his office to let Chapman know that he's on the case. He knows it's like a hot potato. You're going to have a lot going on. So I want you to know that I'm involved, which seems fair. But Chapman says that as of that that morning he's been taken off the case and now he's pushing office supplies around yeah jim kind of with a kind of a not my problem shrug goes to find becker but chapman calls him back and i noticed calls him jimmy and jimbo in so doing this is uh more of the

the status stuff going here where this is a intentional status dump that chapman's doing on himself this is a fun scene because obviously chapman has a lot of pride and we'll get more of that as we go along but he also needs jim's help and so he's trying to find the depths he can drop to uh without you know feeling sick to his stomach or whatever. So in many ways, it's mirroring a bit of what Angel typically does with Jim, right? But Angel has depths that no one else has. Right. His bar is so low. So yeah, I really enjoyed watching this scene play out.

Yeah, it's super fun because we get to see a side of Chapman that we never see, right? And this actually reminded me a little bit of how we got to see a little bit of him whenever he has scenes with Lance white in those two episodes. Yes. We get to see happy Chapman. Who's like, yeah, let's work together to solve this case.

I respect you as a, you know, as a fellow practitioner. And then here we get to see him as this more desperate reaching for anything he can get Chapman. So it really round rounds him out a lot, which is nice. And another delightful bit about this is that he also doesn't know how to work Rockford. He's been an antagonist to Rockford for so long, he doesn't even really know how to be

nice to him. So he's offering Rockford what he thinks Rockford's deal is, right? Like he has a vision of what Rockford is that is not the same as our vision of Rockford's deal is, right? Like he has a vision of what Rockford is that is not the same as our vision of Rockford. So he characterizes Rockford's friendship with Dennis in these like wonderfully clinical way. Dennis runs plates for you and you give him tips so he gets good collars. And you do that that way

so that Dennis can get around the suspect's rights and all of that. Like this is clearly what's going on, right? Yeah, the idea that like so that Dennis can get around the suspect's rights and all of that. Like, this is clearly what's going on, right? Yeah. The idea that like Jim and Dennis are friends is not part of the analysis. And he's like, I just want a piece of that action. That's all. I'm desperate enough to take that lousy, fraudulent action. He asks if Becker has the exclusive dealership in the Rockford department. The way that he lays it out is that he's basically, he's being scapegoated for what went down. To avoid the embarrassment to the higher-ups,

he's the one who's taking all the blame for, you know, this robbery and them getting away and everything. So he can't be on the case. He got taken off of it. So if Jim's on it, he would be, you know, disposed to help Jim out in the future if he can send him whatever info he digs up. What I like about this is I don't think it's even that Rockford doesn't believe him, but Chapman doesn't really have anything that

Rockford wants. Right. So he's like, I'll let you know. Good luck. Like he makes it clear that he understands the jam that Chapman's in. Right. But he does not commit to actually helping him do anything because they're not friends. Yeah, they're not friends. He mischaracterizes the negotiation that he has going with Dennis. And Rockford is legitimately on a job. He's trying to find these paintings regardless of what whatever the police politics of the situation are. Chapman mentions having a lot of influence and Rockford says that, well, he has angel for influence. Right.

Yeah. So Rockford goes to see the guys, Jeff and John, to ask them about this list of people. They've had the same cleaning person for five years. There aren't really any other leads. Rockford kind of pulls more out of them than they think they know, I guess. And finally, John, I think, is like, well, we did have a couple in to clean the carpets before we went to China three months ago. Jeff, you handled that. You know, where do they come from? This is all amidst more kind of class stuff in the day drinking. They

offer Rockford a bloody. Right. They offer him a bloody he says no he'll have a soft drink so ask if he wants juice he's like oh uh sure grapefruit no orange oh well we have soda like they are not speaking the same language about these drinks establishing that they're in two different worlds and it plays into your theory of rockford and food right like it is an important tool for the rockford files to show a status difference is rockford going to eat a hot dog or a cocktail wiener right he is uncomfortable enough already that he does not need to take any of their day drinking but yes we learned that uh this couple was kind of weird. John remembers thinking that the woman was very pretty. And why is she working cleaning carpets?

Which, again, is a very classist. Like, she's so pretty. Why is she cleaning things? But they had some kind of Packard conversion truck, which he remembers because it was so ugly. And blocking Mr. Benz in the driveway. But yeah, so Jeffrey, of course, was the one who found them. And he says that he got them off the bulletin board at the market. Yes.

And it's not much to go on, but it's what Rockford has to look into. So we ended this scene and I made a note to myself, a question here. My question at this point in this episode, not really remembering the plot. So are they lying to Rockford or are they just out of touch Richie Richies? Right. Because I feel like there was a tone, especially with the idea of getting them off the bulletin board at the market. I was like, when do these guys go to the market? Right. So there's something definitely in this scene between John and Jeff, right? Right. John keeps offering up information. And then Jeff is the one who would know the information.

They're definitely showing us that one of them is cooperating with Rockford. And the other is not cooperating, but just hoping that things don't get mentioned. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know if it's... It's not that blatant, but the information is all coming out of Johnny. And then they're like, isn't that right, Jeff? And Jeff's like, yeah, I'm not going to lie. But the less Rockford knows, the more comfortable Jeff seems. Right. And I think that's much clearer in retrospect. No, I think you're right. Yeah. yeah i mean it's definitely there and i think that's one of the nice things about this particular script is that there's a lot of those subtle character interactions that once you've seen it

once you can watch it again and see like oh that's what that was about but you're not missing information if you don't see those on your first watch because because that dynamic is important as we'll see later but at the time as i was watching it i assumed that whatever they were doing it was both of them. Right. All right. So our next scene is at night and Rockford is meeting up with Chapman in a slightly clandestine manner. Chapman gets into his car and insists that he drives away because they're right in front of the police station. Rockford goes ahead and starts circling the block. It was a little unclear to me how we got to here from the last scene, but whatever. It doesn't really matter. Apparently, Rockford has followed up this idea of this conversion truck and managed to find a license plate number. So he wants the address

of wherever that was registered. And Chapman wants the background of how do you know this? Where did this clue come from? They spar a little bit about chapman being uncomfortable lowering himself to rockford's level and we get the interesting tidbit here about chapman uh there was a moment where he was going to quit the force yes but then he got transferred to vice and he just looks out the window and just like winsome tone of voice goes i used to love vice and i think that hooks into when we first run in like when chapman first starts showing up in the episodes yeah i think he was like on vice squad or whatever he was busting people for like drug busts and stuff like that but i guess they agree

to exchange the information uh chapman can't believe that that's it it's just this van that's the clue but it does have an address and they go to it. It's a great detail that he does have the address to because it means that Chapman is busting Rockford after already doing what Rockford asked, right? Like, yeah, he's already done the thing. Yeah, he hates that he was reduced to this level. So he's he's holding it over him, even though he has nothing to actually hold over him. Right. Like he's already done what Rockford asked.

And yeah. They roll up to this place. Rockford just wants to sit on it and see what happens. But Chapman wants to play hardball. Plus, he has to be back in an hour for a roll call. So Rockford gives another good head shake eye roll as Chapman gets his gun out, walks up to this house that has the light on inside, rings the bell, and then he takes a position next to the door. So it's not directly in front of it and yells that it's the police. The people inside this house start firing machine guns.

As you would. There's a bunch of bullet holes through the door, through the window. They start breaking out the window to shoot through it. Chapman runs back and takes cover in the back of this conversion truck that is parked outside. There's more gunfire. And then we see our villains jump into a very nice looking car and speed off laying fire behind them. We see a bullet hit the hood of the Firebird.

So I guess that would imply that Rockford knows he can't pursue. Right. Rockford's call to just stake it out and see what happens was probably the right one. Right. After all. As it often is. Well, they go into the house. Chapman is now complaining about how difficult this is going to be to explain, basically.

Following up with this whole idea of he did a thing and now he's trying to figure out how to get out of having done it yeah rockford pages through and points out that they have a bunch of fancy lifestyle magazines like vogue and uh foreign car manuals and they drove away in a mercedes you know that doesn't really match the rhetoric of a bunch of anarchist communists uh through all this chapman is trying to justify why he was there. He tries out this whole theory of like, I didn't call in any support because I thought this was tangential. So I figured there was no harm in just checking it out myself. I didn't know that they would be here. And Ruffin's like, that's not going to work. Chapman ruefully says that, well,

I guess I need to call this in. And so the whole deal is that Chapman's going to get in trouble because he's not in charge of this case anymore. All the stuff that he's usually yelling at Becker about is now what he needs to justify for himself. And of course, the car that they drive off in is a clue. And Rockford points that out. I have one last note to talk about this scene, and that is some guy in a checkered coat, which...

Oh, right. At the very beginning of this segment, Chapman puts himself above Rockford saying, I can't just do this for some guy in a checkered coat, which I thought was a great description of Rockford, I think. And we end it with Rockford saying, I don't even remember what it was. It was like, what do I know? I'm some guy in a checkered coat or something like that then.

It's not the same high class, low class status that we're getting with him. Uh, and the art lovers, but it is all the same kind of thing, right? Like Chapman feels he's above Rockford status. And he's turning this, that signifier of like,

Oh, you think less of me into like, well, I was right all along. So, well, we do go from here to Jim, uh, I believe still wearing his checkered coat to, oh, you think less of me into like, well, I was right all along. So, well, we do go from here to Jim, I believe still wearing his checkered coat to approach the angel in his new den of EA discreet arrangements. Angel clearly has a gorilla at his desk serving as a secretary.

Before all this, we get a shot to let us know we're on the penthouse. Right. Angel is spending money that Angel doesn't have. as a secretary. Before all this, we get a shot to let us know we're on the penthouse. Right. Angel is spending money that Angel doesn't have. Before Jim and this gorilla can really get into it, Angel comes in and it's like, oh, Jim, I can spare time to talk to you. But then he has this whole thing about like, well, if the mayor calls, tell him that I'm not available till he's ready to talk turkey. And he's telling Jim about all the things that he's working on. He wants the mayor to move an on-ramp so that there's an easier way to get to his topsy-turvy world amusement park project

that he wants to push through for his developer friends, and the DA is going off on some case that Angel doesn't want him to go off on. And my note here is, well, Angel is 100% peddling influence. Rockford finally kind of settles him down and asks him like really straight, like, is this all for real? This could all just be bluster. But Angel really does seem to be treating it pretty seriously. And Angel says that, like, look, it's not my fault. As soon as Aaron became police commissioner, people start coming to me to ask me for favors.

Just a little bragging. I might have mentioned it. It's clear he hung a shingle. We see the shingle coming into the office. He's like, no, people just sought me out. That's all. Well, Jim does need a favor. Since those people were still in the city, they haven't gone to Mexico yet or anything.

So maybe they're trying to sell the paintings. So he wants Angel to find out from his street contacts if anyone's been trying to sell these valuable paintings. Angel wants to know what Jim can do for him because this is his business now. If Jim can't give him any favors, then he's going to need cold hard cash on the barrelhead. And Jim says that I can promise not to knock your head off. I am so surprised that a gorilla didn't make a move at that moment, right? Like even just to have Angel wave the gorilla off or whatever. But I think that the importance of this moment is that Jim is able to shake Angel out of his whatever's going on ever so briefly, but enough to get something out of him. Yeah, because he threatens him. And it's

kind of a moment where it's like, oh, here's Jim and Angel, as we've always known them. And Angel's like, OK, fine, we'll work it out. So Angel isn't willing to push it much farther than that with Jim for whatever reason, because they're friends, because it's not that important to him, probably. But I do want to mention the platform. Oh, how Angel's desk is up on a raised platform. Yeah, and he makes a point of having Jim stand not on the platform when talking to him. It is a beautiful Angel bit of, again, status play. So we go to Jim's trailer from there. John is there to talk to Jim.

He's worried about Jeff, who basically never came back from going out to a club that he goes to, which isn't that unusual, but he didn't come back in the morning. And also he missed an important meeting with their accountants, which is unlike him. So now he is basically missing. Jim has to ask a couple of personal questions. It turns out that indeed,

John is the one who pays for everything. He's the money in the relationship. Jim who pays for everything he's the money uh in the relationship jim has a theory that he's not going to like to hear but this is what it is that jeff was in on the plan he hired those cleaners in the first place with this whole thing already kind of planned out if he doesn't have any money of his own two million dollars in paintings that's a good moving out money stash. Yes. What car Jeff took, took Mr. Benz.

And then Rockford, you know, is like, well, was it a model? Whatever. Yeah. He starts describing the car perfectly. Of course, that matches Mr. Benz. And so Rockford says, well, I think I know we'll find Jeff and you're not going to like it. This gets grim. Which is grim and a little ominous.

I did not think it was going to where it did in the next scene. Yeah, no, I thought, I think we'll know where to find them in Mexico or with these. Right, or like with this gang of thieves. You're not going to like it. But no, we cut to the two of them holding shovels and digging in the dirt behind the house that got all shot up. After a few shovelfuls, we see a blue sleeve shirt sticking through the dirt. And then we get this shot up, like, from the perspective of the body buried in the ground, up through the hole made by the shovel to see Jim and John's faces framed against the blue sky.

Yeah. And John going, it's Jeffrey. Yeah, it's a great shot. Really dark. Yeah. And they hit the note quite well. I think that like it's not melodramatic. It's just a little bit of a gut punch in the middle of the episode kind of deal.

And it kind of raises the stakes. Yeah. It kind of brings it from being a like, oh, well, yes, they're criminals, but they were ripping money off of rich people. Right. Like whatever to like more of a morally repugnant. Yeah. Which I don't think is played up, really. It's just like as an audience member watching it, it made me want to see them get caught more.

There's something else about this too like there's a way it frees up what's going to happen next too because now they can't use jeffrey as a lead into the rest of the mystery right they have to go somewhere else to find where these criminals are and where they have hidden the paintings and whatnot so it closes down an avenue that rockford could pursue otherwise we get a quick bit as they're loading the body when the cops have come back out as Rockford's getting chewed out by Captain Salducci, perhaps, whoever's actually in charge of the case. It's not too important, except that at the end, we have a Officer Billings sighting where Rockford asks Billings what happened to Chapman. And Chapman got suspended for how he handled the previous evening's activity. And then from here, we go to see our little cadre of revolutionaries hanging out. The mustache guy whose name we eventually learn is Yazzie. Now, we've seen him before on the Rockford Files.

We sure have. Yazzie or Yossi, Yossi Hendel is played by uh jonathan goldsmith and we saw him in the aaron ironwood school of success as uh nino who wasn't the main mob guy he was the other mob guy but more importantly it was while watching that episode that we discovered that he is the most interesting man in the world right a very young most interesting man in the world. Right. A very young, most interesting man in the world. That is from a season two episode, The Aaron Ironwood School of Success, which is our episode 23. There's actually a lot of connections here.

Jeff, who will sadly no longer be appearing in this episode, he's played by an actor named Paul Carr. And he was in the season one episode, The Four Pound Brick, as Sergeant Wilson, named paul carr um and he was in the season one episode the four pound brick as the sergeant wilson the or undercover crooked cop and that was the episode written by lee bracket yes we discussed that in our episode 22 uh but yeah but um yeah so uh yazi he has to be so the three of them are like on a loading dock somewhere and he has to be back at work soon it's a condition of his parade the blonde guy whose name is david uh he starts saying that well the revolution is coming soon we won't have to deal with what the pigs want and stuff like that and uh yazzy yells at

him to knock off the stale 60s rhetoric they're all already shopping with their money basically calls out the things that they already have their eyes on we all sold out the day that she got that 50 haircut and we both said we liked yes 50 haircut that's not a cheap haircut i remember watching this episode in the beginning thinking to myself much along the same lines that john was thinking that she was too pretty you know to be cleaning carpets i i saw her hair and i was like how is she like a socialist revolutionary like what's going on here we've now connected that circuit i mean i think this is the thrust of this whole character is that he's this revolutionary in ideals but he actually isn't doing anything to actually change things and Part of the argument is he wants to buy a Jaguar. So that he can outrun the pigs. Yeah, it is a tactical vehicle.

He's like, no, you just want to buy a nice car. Yeah. If you're going to be a thief, at least be honest about it. I don't think Cannell has much sympathy for the revolutionary ideals, but they are there to try and arrange a buy for this art this episode we've been kind of skipping over a lot of the incidental characters who are all pretty good this is probably my favorite this fence he so there's like this big van that pulls up and there's a guy driving wearing sunglasses with like a chauffeur's hat basically like a red one the other guy who's

like the actual fence also in sunglasses in like a mustache and he has this great gambino accent they're just in this van i don't know it's great but he says like he doesn't want the jewelry it's too hot but he'll take the paintings they say okay how much cash he says well they're not gonna like it but 200 000 for two million dollars worth of paintings they're so hot they're smoking yeah so he can't offer any more. And we get this great shot where it's from kind of over the shoulder of the fence. So we see his face in the rear view mirror of the van in front of David's face. And David goes on this tangent about how this situation reminds him of the Long March and Mao. Right. Mao had to deal with some of the warlords in order to get the revolution to happen in

China. But then once it did, some of them changed how they worked. And then some of them ended up with their heads on Tiananmen Square. And the fence is like, all right, well, no deal. Yeah. Good luck. You guys are flakes. And he just leaves.

Yeah. Oh, so good. Our thieves are turning out to be pretty hapless. As often is in a Rockford Files episode. Like, I really appreciate the use of stress points on the people that Rockford is after. All right. So we just saw a scene or two ago that these three have killed Jeffrey, right? We didn't see it happen, but these are stone cold killers. But one of them's worried about his parole and has to get

to his day job. Another one, she's really into her haircut, right? Like she wants this $50 haircut. They're not criminal masterminds. They are people who happened into something and it's all falling apart around them. They've made choices that have put them on a path that they were not prepared to be on. If a revolution's coming, they're not going to be involved. Nobody's going to use them. So we go from there back to my favorite scene in the episode where we have Angel floating in a floating deck chair in his rooftop pool with a briefcase phone and another joke in the cut here, which is a phrase that I'm going to adopt from now on. The fence drives off and we hear him saying like, these guys are flakes.

And then immediately on that, we hear Angel saying they're from Berkeley. Right. And that's in the cut as we see him and he's talking to Rockford, but then he's also on the phone. Yeah, there was a bumper sticker on their van. It said Berkeley. And then he's switches from talking to Rockford to talking into the phone where he's threatening the district attorney. You tell the district attorney that I'm going to blah, blah, blah. This phone setup is amazing. It's a phone in a briefcase that's floating on its own little flotation pad in the middle of the pool. I think this is probably one of the reasons why I think of this episode as like an angel episode when it's really not.

Yeah, this is I mean, this is the only plot relevant point that Angel's involved with, which is Angel's telling. So he hangs up the phone after threatening the district attorney and then is telling rockford that he talked to this fence and he got the these uh the descriptions of these three and that they had a berkeley bumper sticker on their van angel puts jim on the path to berkeley and then jim is trying to talk some sense into him about threatening district attorneys uh angel just starts laughing him off. So there's a sequence where Jim says, I have advice for you. Angel comes back with, when you give advice, you don't take advice. And then Jim gets mad and just yells at him to shut the hell up.

And Angel's response to that. Well, and then he's like, you're going too fast. You can't threaten the DA and get in bed with these killers. What are you doing? Yeah, you can't do those things. And Angel has this freak out where he starts yelling about how no one tells me what I can't threaten the DA and get in bed with these killers. What are you doing? Yeah, you can't do those things. And Angel has this freak out where he starts yelling about how no one tells me what I can't do. I'm EA Martin. And he starts thrashing around in the pool to get over to the edge.

And it is a supreme piece of physical comedy. So good. I keep expecting the gorillas to do something because he's clearly agitated and it's clearly rockford that does it but what they do is they bring a robe to put on angel while he's yelling at rockford and that's it they seem to know what they've gotten themselves into yeah and not be particularly invested in angel's welfare he's a he's a meal ticket right now but he's not he's no boss yeah it's like i'm big time now and rockford's the only one who's, but he's not. He's no boss. Yeah. It's like, I'm big time now. And Rockford's the only one who's like, Angel, you're not big time.

You need to realize that this is not a permanent state and he cannot handle that because being big time is all Angel wants. Yeah. Yeah. Another good cut here. We end with him yelling, I'm EA Martin. I'm Stephen Davis. And we cut to this, to Rockford running a little con at the Berkeley Alumni Club, claiming to be this class of 47 alumnus. So he has a conversation with someone who we never learn who he is, but he's one of the club people. And I guess this is tying in,

because I think this is probably the club that John said Jeff goes to when he wants some time alone. It's like the Berkeley Alumni Club. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. This would make a connection that makes more sense than a flyer at the market. Right. So through this patter about selling aluminum siding and how it cuts down construction costs and he somehow turns this into talking about Jeffrey because he used to be an engineer and he could show him these things, but he's been hanging out with some weird people the guy that he's talking to knows jeffrey doesn't know that he's dead obviously because that doesn't come up and so rockford turns that into saying he's been hanging around with strange types people who spout revolutionary slogans yeah and we get that nice moment where the guy's like oh well i don't know anything about

that and you're like is this a dead end but But no, of course not. He then remembers, I did see him talking to that Yazi Hendel character who works downstairs. They had to have a board meeting about him. So it turns out that that guy was a 60s grad, and he was one of those, quote, free speech guys. And since he's a Berkeley grad, he's a member of the club, but he's on parole and he needed a job. It took two board votes, but he's a Berkeley grad after all. So we hired him. What did they hire him to do? Wash dishes in the kitchen. So one thing I love about this scene is that there's a moment in the middle of it where Rockford tries to feel this guy out and goes conservative. Like,

I like that we have the tie policy, but maybe we should also have like an income cutoff for who can be. And the guy doesn't bite and actually knocks him down a peg with it. It's a rare thing to see, right? Because usually Rockford just reads someone. And there's a thing going on throughout this episode with class issues. Class issues in this episode are more complex than any of the characters themselves are making them out to be. And I think that that's really kind of neat. And it plays out in this guy. Because he's like, no, this guy's a Berkeley grad.

Don't even care if that he's been arrested, right? Like he should get a job here. But he's washing dishes. He's one of those free speech guys and he was arrested. So yeah, it points to a complexity in like privilege and status. And I just love watching Rockford going fishing and coming up with a boot. Yeah, that's a good moment. But Rockford does go down to the kitchen to check him out.

Yeah, that's a good moment. But Rockford does go down to the kitchen to check him out. And as the audience, we see that, yes, this is the same guy that, you know, we last saw yelling at his compadres about how they're going to spend their money. So we go to Becker answering the phone. It is a phone call from Jim. He's at the Berkeley Club and he has eyes on one of the guys from the robbery. They need to get someone down there right away. And we get into our final bit here. We cut to a cop car with sirens coming down the street and then directly into the action with Rockford tussling with Yossi in the kitchen. They're just shoving each other around. This is such a refreshing change of pace from every other kitchen fight I've ever seen because nobody picks up a knife and nobody picks up a cast iron pan.

It is just people fumbling around trying to like one, trying to get away, one trying to hold them there. And the other guy trying to help them get away. Nobody's trying to murder anybody. It's just a kitchen fight. Yeah. We,

we hear some dishes like crashing because they're getting knocked off the shelf, but no one's using them as weapons or anything. But yeah, David runs in and hits Rockford from behind. So he stumbles away. Our two revolutionaries managed to run out of the building. They jump into the car. The car starts speeding away, but then the cop car comes in and blocks one into the alley.

By then, Rockford has made it out of the door, sees the car backing up and grabs the rolling dumpster and rolls that out into the alley, which blocks it from going backwards. And they are busted. It's so great to see what Rockford does with this throwing this trash bin in the way and then moving to get the hell out of the way of anything. Like there's no gunfight going on,

but Rockford is reacting as if that could happen at any given moment because he's witnessed this gun battle over and over again. But instead of the scene resolves without this again, it's refreshing. Yeah. I mean, he hears the sirens. He knows that they've had guns before and that they've killed a man.

Yeah. Yeah. He does what he can and then he gets out of the way. But yes, we end the scene with them being pulled out of the car and arrested with david yelling yelling at the pigs we cut from there to becker giving a press conference uh in front of the recovered paintings and announcing that they were all recovered and that there will be a an official statement made public later so that wraps wraps up and the reporters and press start filing

out and Chapman is there and getting buffeted by all of them trying to come into the room. With his tie undone a little bit. I do want to mention Becker's presence in front of the reporters. Kudos to Joe Santos, who can act as a person who can't perform in public, right? Like it's so great. Cause he's such a great character. And then like, he's got them in front of the cameras and he very clearly doesn't want to be in front of the cameras.

Yeah. He's in this episode for maybe a minute and he's still super fun. So good job. So Chapman. So we get that visual of Chapman, like basically being ignored by all this press solidifying how disgraced he's been, I guess, visually. Dennis makes his way to Rockford. He says that it was a good bust for him.

So he's sure it's more complicated than that. But also, right. Rockford helps Dennis by getting him good. But yes, like Chapman wasn't wrong about that. But he also mentioned that chapman's suspension was a political maneuver to kind of feed to the press uh but now that the case is solved he'll be hitting the streets madder than ever so watch out yeah that felt like a like a preview to the chapman movie lieutenant doug chapman is chappy chappy and lancer hitting the streets john is there as he was

probably giving a statement or something. Oh, yeah. He excuses himself. He has to get to the mortuary and make the final arrangements for Jeff. Rockford asks him, after he stole from you, you're still going to pay for his funeral? And here we get the moment where John says, well, he was my devoted friend for 15 years. Right. I'll never know why he did what he did, but I can't forget that.

Oh, it's so good. It's really good. He seems very sad forget that oh it's so good it's really good it's he seems very sad yeah it's a good moment and that's really the the emotional beat to solidify the episode for me i think yeah yeah we can't end on that downer because we've got one last loose tie or loose end to tie up but yeah but it does make it feel like meaningful right exactly um He does promise an additional reward for Rockford because he did such a good job. And it says that he'll send him a check. Right. And Rockford estimates maybe tongue in cheek, $200,000.

Is that? Yeah. He says several hundred thousand dollars, I think. I'm pretty sure he's ironically saying that to Dennis. So, OK, we can say that Rockford earned money on this one. We can absolutely say that whatever that advance was, he got that. And maybe he'll get this check. We know that the way Rockford's monies work is that anytime somebody promises him a check, it doesn't show up. But John seems like such an upstanding guy right that's like so it's hard to tell all i can say is i think rockford came out of this comfortable not rich but maybe this is the that one case a year that pays for all of the pays for all the fishing trips yeah

and now we get into our uh final beautiful scene where we have Angel making a snap inspection of the police station. He is not happy about how disheveled and dirty it is. If the police are going to be professional, they can't have their lunches sitting on their desks. Chapman is following him. You know, I know you have a lot of influence around here, but we're running an active department. So we see Chapman being exasperated at Angel's overweening approach to his influence, whatever that is. And then Becker says, I have this thing that came in a couple hours ago and I forgot about it and all of the fuss. So this is in the background while Angel's walking around and making all these declarative statements about how he's the brother-in-law of the commissioner and he'll tell

them what's happening if they don't clean up their act. Becker hands his paper to Billings. Billings hands it to Chapman, literally behind Angel's back yes chapman reads it then hands it to angel and says you've seen about 200 of these it's a warrant for your arrest he's like what but my brother apparently the da isn't too worried about it you're wanted for uh coercion of a district attorney trial tampering verbal assault that's three months in county minimum billings bust him oh so good and billings grabs his arm as angel tries to run away and we freeze frame with angel yelling jimmy jimmy as billings grabs him billings looks has a huge smile on his face becker in the background is laughing and rockford is rolling his eyes and looking up at the ceiling in the background is laughing and Rockford is rolling his eyes and looking up at the ceiling in the freeze frame. End of episode. Poor Angel. Poor Angel. It was a good episode. Yeah, it's a

good one. So I think like we mentioned at the start, the mystery is pretty straightforward. Right. I mean, it's not really a mystery for the audience. It's mostly a chase, right? Like, how do we find the people who did this? But the real joy of the episode is a real dense set of characters. Like there's a lot of interesting characters that you get to see in this episode. You can kind of tease it apart into several different stories that are running parallel to each other that are intertwined. Like John's story is a very tragic, sad story. And Angel's story is a very comedic tragic story that again like he's not responsible for any of the ups and downs of the actual uh like he didn't cue anyone into all that um all those paintings he just happened to be around while this was

happening but he is hoisted on his own petard like he does have influence but he he is so excited about it and gets so juiced on his own yeah on his own authority on his own power that he overreaches and now is in serious trouble not just for him but also for aaron right yes yes uh and chapman's uh journey is like a sad one as well like he he is disgraced uh and like quietly reinstated by the end you know dennis has handed the arrest warrant for angel and the police department like the the beat cops hand that to chapman because they're like this guy has been beaten down he deserves this yeah they're kind of looking out for him And he gets that moment where he straightens his tie, right? Like time to take out the trash. And like the only person that doesn't have ups and downs in this episode is Rockford. Like

Rockford is just on a steady incline throughout the episode. He has one down that every male character starts with in the beginning where he loses his pants and then after that it's just oh his car gets shot too i should put that in the 200 a day rockford files files minus car repairs he's kind of the eye of the storm he's our point of view character he's the one we are most invested in moving through these stories but it's all the stories swirling around him that is the action of the episode yeah one fun thing about this chat man who's played by uh james luisi apparently according to uh 30 years of the rockford files um this was one of his favorite episodes because he got to be comedic and show off more of his range he died in 2002

but shortly before that happened his nephew dug up a script for the episode and got it signed by the cast and gave it to him as a present, which is a really sweet story. But yeah, totally super fun episode worth the watch. Probably slightly more fun if you've seen a lot of these characters before, but certainly stand alone a bull. It's a well-constructed piece of TV and rewarding on its own merits, but definitely worth the watch, especially if you're kind of, I don't know if you, if you want to see more of the world around Rockford. Right.

But I think we should probably go ahead and move on to talking about the lessons that we've learned. Unless you have anything else about this episode to say, like I said before, it's a really enjoyable, I'm actually looking forward to the second part of this episode to talk about how it all pieces together. All right, well let's do really enjoyable. I'm actually looking forward to the second part of this episode to talk about how it all pieces together. All right.

Well, let's do that then. We hope you enjoyed that discussion of another wonderful episode of the Rockford Files. Here are a couple of ways to support us that will keep us bringing this podcast to you, our fellow Rockford Files fans. First, you can rate and review us on iTunes or whatever else you use for podcasts. First, you can rate and review us on iTunes or whatever else you use for podcasts. Second, you can support us directly for as little as a dollar an episode at patreon.com slash 200 a day. And of course, both of us have other projects. Epi, what do you have going on right now?

As always, I'm working on the next issue of Worlds Without Master. You can go to www.worldswithoutmaster.com or just patreon.com slash Epidaya. Or you can go to digathousandholes.com where I talk about my other projects, including non-sword and sorcery games and fiction. How about you, Nathan? What are you working on? For the year of 2018, I am doing a monthly zine project called Zine 2018. Each monthly issue is a collection of essays art

photography and a game in each one organized around a central theme based on the month so you can see more about that at ndp design.com slash zine 2018 and it is available through my patreon at patreon.com slash nd paoletta. In addition, you can check out all of my games at ndpdesign.com, including the Worldwide Wrestling Roleplaying Game and the forthcoming Trouble for Hire, which may be interesting to some of our listeners. So that's it for now. Thank you again for listening.

We very much appreciate your support. And now back to the show. Welcome back to 200 a Day. We just got done talking about the empty frame, a surprisingly complex episode of the rock profiles, not complex plot wise, but complex. If you look at the interlays of the different characters in the stories that they're in, or maybe we're about to make it more complex for you. I don't know. We may very well over complicate things where I want to do. I will say that I did may very well overcomplicate things. Yes. As we are wont to do. I will say that I did expect part of the plot to revolve around a frame job of some kind.

Right. That's a question. What does that title even mean? What is the empty frame? My read of it, just thinking about it right now, is referencing the John and Jeff relationship. That would be my guess too. All right. So clearly there's a plot that Jeff had to get this money to leave. In a long-term one, because it was at least three months. Right. Of setup.

Okay. Oh, let's talk about their plot. Yeah, because it's a little, it's one of those that when you start really digging into it, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Well, I'm wondering if it makes sense and we're not quite there yet. First of all, a thing that the characters in the story have brought up is that John and Jeff were in China for a while. Right. And the cleaners showed up before they went to China and didn't rob them until this party.

So I think the explanation for that is what they lay out to Rockford about their alarm system. They have a very good alarm system. And since they live on this peninsula and there's only one road, if they were robbed, the police could set up a barricade by the time the robbers will be leaving their property because the alarm would go off. I think with the implication of thus they had to do the robbery when people were there. Right. Which doesn't really answer the question of they could still do the robbery from a boat. So, yeah.

So there's a couple of things that we were talking about earlier about whether or not Jeff made the decision not to have the paintings insured. And it feels like if that was Jeff's decision, the reason why that would be smart, a smart decision for Jeff to make is that he is planning on stealing it. And he doesn't want that motive to cause the police to look too closely at him and John, right? If you're going to steal your own paintings and then fence them and get the money there, then don't have insurance on them because nobody would be investigating you for insurance fraud. So that's one thing. And then

the other thing that would throw people off the trail of this is that why not rob them while they're away from in China? If you know, if you have an inside edge and know they're going to be away. So since they weren't robbed during that time, clearly the robbers don't have an inside edge and didn't know when to plan their robbery. That may be reading too much into that, but I do think that that's, I think Jeff's plan here is to eventually leave with this money, but not for a while. Yeah. I think the simplest thing that fits what we see in the episode is that Jeff had this idea for a while, but he didn't decide to actually pull the trigger on it until that party was happening. Maybe the idea was, well, if you get all the jewelry in everyone's wallets, then you keep that and I'll take the painting money.

Who knows? And the connection, right, is established by the Berkeley alumni thing. Jeff knew Yazzie because they're both Berkeley grads. Right. And if Jeff is on the board of the alumni, then he would know that Yazzie had a criminal record because they had those meetings about him. So like that all kind of I kind of see that, you know, that all hangs together for me. Yeah. It's kind of like, why do it at the max, the point of like maximum danger, I guess.

And then they do have the line about how the helicopter had engine trouble. So I guess that explains why they didn't just go to Mexico. Right. But then like, why did they kill him is the last thing that I don't think is ever addressed. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Like just because they wanted to keep all the money. Right.

Because they didn't like him because he was like a class enemy? Yeah, like you get the feeling that the original plan was for the three of them to go to Mexico and then never pay him back for his inside money, you know? Right, like double cross him. So one thing we can read into Jeff that I don't think would be too much of a stretch is that we can read into second thoughts into him, right? He sees that Rockford is actually tracking down. Yeah. And, but also like we, like what we get of him, like him and John, like their relationship doesn't seem like it's having troubles. Yeah. It seems fine. I guess the

other problem is that they've been together for 15 years. Yeah. So it comes down to what John said at the end. He may never know. The text does not have an answer for this question. Right. Like, I don't think there's even anything implied about a motive for Jeff to take the money and run. Right. They don't have an argument. There's no, not even really a veneer of unhappiness.

Right. Yeah. So it's essentially to give the episode a little emotional weight with him being murdered and, you know, having that last beat with John where he still owes him a burial, even though, you know, he did what he did, which I found very effective, even in the absence of a motive. Yeah. So I think that might be one place to start talking about like some of the narrative lessons here, like as people who like everything to hang together, missing a little bit of that motivation for, for Jeff. It could be that Jeff's not the mastermind.

That he's being used by the cadre. In like a number of ways that can play out where he thinks maybe he could talk some sense into him. So he goes and sees them after realizing they're the ones who did it so yeah yeah uh i kind of like the uncomfortableness of that that there's no clean answer about that character and i think in the context of all the other characters having a lot going on it's kind of uh it feels a little real life to me where it's like people are complicated and you

don't always know what's going on in their head and you don't always know the facts about what their situation is right i think all the other characters have very strong and specific motivations so it's okay for this one to be a little like uh kind of uncomfortable feeling this is kind of a weird thing for this person to do what What was there? What was going on? I don't think that's the thesis of the episode, but I do think it's a good takeaway from it. One thing I think we've seen over and over is that a lot of these episodes do have things that are kind of dangling threads, don't really make a whole lot of sense. But if the core of it is strong, then it's easy to invent justifications like we were just doing. Well, I think that there's a difference between

something left unaddressed and something that doesn't make sense you know what i mean like sure yeah what we're experiencing right here with jeff is not that he behaved contrary to how the the story was establishing him it's that the story doesn't answer some fundamental question about him. And that's fine. Like it's it's okay to have things difficult to figure out if they're not blatantly contradicting things you're establishing. Well, perhaps turning to things that are very firmly established. I know you wanted to tease out some of the specifics about the status indicators and status play in this episode. We've talked about status in other episodes, but I don't think we've gone really into what's going on there. And I think this is a good episode to just dig in deep and see what's going on.

So just real quick for just to like establish this as a good as an opportunity to really talk about this. When we're saying status, like what is that in the story? Like what is the status we're talking about? What does it why does it matter that two characters are of different status in a story? OK, that's a very good question. Specifically, I'm talking about it in tension between two characters. Right. It is it is a social thing, not like social status as in, you know, John and Jeff have a lot of money and they have a nice

house and they can invite all these movers and shakers. But it's more of a dynamic between two characters about who has the social authority in a situation, right? So we have this moment between John, Jeff, and Jim, the three Js, as we like to call them, where they're at Rockford's trailer and they're talking about art and Rockford is suddenly self-conscious about the sailboat art he has on his wall, right? You brought this up.

It's like, oh, that was in a friend's garage. He was just going to throw him out. That's Rockford having a moment of low status because he feels uncomfortable about something that's going on, right? Like somebody else is in charge of this scene at that moment. But a little bit later on where they talk about the insurance and the fact that there is no insurance on it because they thought we don't really need it. We did pretty good with the alarm system, blah, blah, blah. Then Rockford has the high status and it's shown by John by saying that I don't suppose that was very smart, right? Like there's this gifting of, OK, you're the one with the authority in this situation. Yeah. It's not just who knows a thing more.

It's more who are the other characters looking to, in that case, the other characters look to Rockford for approval or vindication or whatever about their security setup, right? While Rockford looks to them for aesthetic judgment of art, how the character handles that. Like Rockford gets embarrassed a little bit versus I think John in that scene is he's not embarrassed about it. He's more like, oh, that's just something we didn't think about. Right. Let me make sure your expert opinion is matching the conclusion I've just drawn. Yeah. And that scene, it moves around very quickly. Where I think this is important when we talk about fiction is that it's almost like a physics

thing, right? Like the higher your status, the more potential energy there is, or the lower your status, the difference between the status. There's a tension there. The further away you pull the characters, there's a tension because you can feel feel the desire like we see it all the time in fiction when somebody gets really high status you're just waiting for them to fall you're waiting for that or uh when we watch a rockford files episode we're just waiting for that moment where he keeps getting beaten down and then he's gonna you know let up uh that's not every episode. But anyways, so that tension, that energy can drive a story forward. We've been talking about how the plot of the mystery in this one isn't super compelling because we know. We kind of know what's going on.

Instead, what we're doing is we're watching these characters trade status from where they were originally and where they're going to be and see where they're going to end up the two ways where that's most blatant are angel and chapman right in the beginning it's between the two of them it's in that scene uh at the party where angel is just beating chapman down just making him do the most menial things to prove to rockford that he can do it angel has a plan and angel thinks he's going to be on top of it. And for a while during this episode, he is certainly on top of it. He is the mover and the shaker in the world, if not in the episode itself. It's always stuff that's not related to the episode.

Yeah. And his character arc in this episode is the person who he gets this sudden boost to status and then he revels in it. And then because he reveled in it too much, he loses it. Right. That's his arc. And that is satisfying because as human beings, we're flawed people who enjoy watching people who have gotten something lose it by their own hubris. Right. And then Chapman is on the opposite trajectory where he's lost status and it doesn't seem like it's deserved, right? At least it didn't seem that way to me. And then at the end, we kind of learned that he was basically being scapegoated like he

thought he was. Yeah. Sure, it's embarrassing, but what was he supposed to do, right? Yeah. He did everything he could in the situation he was in, but now he's kicked off the case and then he's shuffled around and then he's suspended. And each time it's a, it's a punishment for something that he did that was actually kind of the right thing, given the information he had at the time, we end up having the, so he's the

sympathetic character, right? Where he's having these things done to him that he didn't deserve. And he's trying to get his way out of it while still clinging to his moral core. And we see him struggling with that. And so when he's vindicated at the end, that's another release of that pent up energy. I don't know if that's catharsis or not, but it's satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. It's certainly satisfying. One of the things that I find compelling about what's going on with chapman here so he's following a different trajectory than angel in this episode but also i think more specifically he's following rockford's usual project uh trajectory right uh rockford's trajectory with relation to chapman so in most episodes chapman looks down on rockford like he does in

this episode but has the authority to do so. Usually Rockford's doing something shady enough that Chapman can throw something at him if he needs to. He can threaten him. He just wants Rockford away from the case and not involved. And that's him throwing his status around. But what happens in this episode is that he's fallen so low that he needs Rockford's help. And so he's trying to find his footing. He doesn't know what that's like. Unlike, say, Angel. He doesn't know what that's like. Unlike, say, Angel, who really does know what that's like and could. He'll be fine.

But then again, with the reversal of their characters, Angel thinks he knows how to deal with his sudden increase in status, but he does not. Yes. So he thinks he's in control. And then when he's finally called out for not making good moves by Rockford, he has that freak out, right? Yeah, yeah.

He like can't handle that idea that he doesn't know how to handle success. Yeah. It's one of the reasons why the freak out is earned. Let's say that was an angel that was just a Minetti. And then that person has that freak out. We would think that Rockford was in physical danger. Right. But because it's angel, we're like, yeah, he doesn't belong here.

And one like subtle point that I like about that is you get the feeling or at least I got the feeling that like Rockford might be the only person who can get to Angel on that level. Yeah. Because of their friendship and their relationship, like Angel on some level knows that Jim is usually right. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing that, uh, right. So I've been on this earth for four decades and change. Uh, and during that time you gather to yourself friends from different eras in your life, uh, people that know knew you win. Now I'm not famous in any regard, but I do have, uh, an audience either that's listening to me talking about the Rockford Files or that are playing my role playing games out there.

And when I'm talking about my role playing games or talking about the Rockford Files, I can do it with a certain amount of authority by virtue of this podcast or those games that I've made. But friends that I knew before I made those games or did this podcast, when they come across this stuff, often status drop me because they're like, what authority do you have? I knew when you were just trying to get us to play in your GURPS game back in high school and nobody wanted to spend the time making characters with you all weekend long. So in some ways, I really sympathize with what's going on with Angel here. Because yes, you're absolutely right. In that room, the goons that he's hired may not fully understand where this guy got his

money and authority. But they're hired to do a job. They're not going to treat him like Rockford does. But Rockford does. And because he's in front of all these other people it's an even bigger fall it's a bigger status drop for rockford to say i'm going to knock your block off there's an audience yeah the other thing to say about uh chapman's status journey is the ending is very much a rockford ending he gets just enough at the end to recover, but not to put him on top of anything.

He regains status quo, but you don't get the sense that he's any better off now than he was before the episode started. That's a journey that Rockford goes on on many episodes. Yeah. So for looking at the idea of status writ large, So it seems like there's two kind of vectors to think about it, right? One is the difference between two given characters. And then the other is how the status of a character changes over time. And then you start getting the real juice when you map those against each other, right? When people's status goes up and down with relation to each other, that can be both the result of what's happening in the story and also drive what's happening in the story.

Yeah, I think so. And thinking about it in practical terms, right? I think that one thing to do is if you're at a spot where you're not trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B in a plot, right? You're just, how do I make this interesting? I have these characters here. I know what they're doing.

How do I make the audience engage? And one of the ways to do it is to take a close look at what you have been doing with status up till now and see if you can reverse it or move it about. I mean, so that actually reminds me that we haven't really talked a lot about the antagonist status in these episodes, because that was kind of interesting. We have a character who likes to spout revolutionary rhetoric, who is the de facto leader who loses his unit, his team, his gang. He starts as telegraphed to the audience as the leader, right? And he's spouting this rhetoric. And so we have no reason not to believe that he is giving voice to the ideology of the whole group, right? And I guess in context of the story, that's kind of median status, I guess. He doesn't really seem particularly high or low to me.

Right. But then later, once we see them having the infighting, Yossi is calling him out for the hollowness of that rhetoric. Yeah, yeah. Then you see a reduction of that idea of him being the leader. And now they're all kind of on the same playing field because they don't seem to be working together. If Yossi treated him as a leader, then he would have higher status in that moment. And there's a thing that happens, I think, in the fiction there where, at least from my engagement with it.

So David is the leader. And in the first part of it, I'm like, oh, this guy is the leader. This is who we have to keep an eye on. I mean, part of this is a little bit of Rockford Files training. So I'm like, okay, how are they going to get and bring David to justice? And then when that status exchange happens, the story switches and Yossi is the focus of the investigation from that point forward. And he's the key. So that's an interesting move at that point too. In terms of the narrative energy, I guess, in that scene,

that group becomes much more interesting once their status changes. And we've seen that in other Rockford Files episodes where we don't really see the group fleshed out like the bad guys. Yeah. So it's just like the mob boss or whatever. And he's kind of the same at the end as the beginning. It doesn't always have to be infighting. But the idea of, first of all, fleshing out Yossi as a different character who has their own agenda, that's part of it.

Yeah. And then making that. That's part of it. And then making that status shift is part of it. And then the conversation with the fence. I was just going to mention that. Yeah. That sends David's authority like through the floor, right? All of a sudden this whole plan just fell apart because David came on too strong with this rhetoric that no one else even believes in. And if we didn't have the previous scene where yasi drops his status uh the previous scene is a setup for the next scene so that he can go all the otherwise there would be more menace in his threat to the fence so it sets it up so that the fence can be like i don't even have to deal with you yeah and and leaving um yeah it all it all

works together so i think, as a practical thing, looking at your status of your characters and finding ways to either take two characters and exemplify the tension between their statuses or take a look at a character and map out just, I mean, you can easily do this on a Cartesian plane, right? You could just- On a graphing calculator?

Yeah, exactly. You can write the function required to map out your characters. I mean, this is a thing you can easily visualize. You just take out a piece of paper and say, here's the beginning, here's the middle, here's the end of the story, and draw whether they're up or down. And know that it's more interesting to have them change a few times than it is to have them not change or to have them just constantly change. Right. Yeah. There's a sweet spot there. There's a Goldilocks zone that you want to kind of go for that makes those moments have the impact that you want them to have. Right. Yeah.

have right yeah um i think it's similar to like tonal shifts which we've talked about yeah uh before where if you shift your if you shift the tone at the end of every scene it's chaos if the tone never shifts it's stasis and it's the picking your spots for when the shifts happen yeah i think it's same with status i think an additional tool you have with status changes is that you can change a single character along multiple vectors yeah of status like rockford has the measure of his status with uh john changes in an interesting way yeah and it's kind of separate from his status with angel or it's entirely separate than his status with angel uh which is kind of related but not super related to status with chatman right his relationships with those three people. Right.

How they change over the course of the episode is interesting because you're seeing his status with them go in different directions as they're all each on their own journey. Yeah. Yeah. It's sometimes if you are just playing to the status, right? Status is a really interesting tool to energize what's going on and try and build tensions that are fun to play with, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? Right.

If that's all that's happening, that works really well for like a comedic skit, a nice little short piece or something like that. But if you want to go further than that, you have to have something else happening in it. And in this case, like that something else in some part is John's emotional journey. In some part, it's just watching this horrible plan fall apart. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be this like deep emotional thing.

It can be the mystery is really intricate. And we watch, we watch Rockford tease apart all the layers and get to the heart of the matter that carries a story along just as much as, you know, the episodes where it's, you know, watching someone come to terms with grief or whatever. But in both of those episodes, the status play is energizing the individual scenes as we move from the beginning to the end of what happened. Right. I mean, I think all of these elements of narrative, you know, aren't in a vacuum. They all need to work together. But I think especially when you're

thinking about something that's semi-mechanical in this way, right? Like you can map it out, you know, you can use it to drive a scene. I need a scene between this one and this one. And it would be best if these two characters, you know, switched status about something. Right. What could they do that about? You can write a scene that way, but writing your whole story that way would probably lead to a fairly mechanical story. I feel like it would be a little, a little empty. It may even be compelling, but a little empty. Yeah. Well, I think that is all great stuff. So I think we've probably gotten through the majority of what we have to say about status. So yeah. Do you have anything else to say about the empty frame before we get out of here? I really enjoyed it. It was a

great episode. What I needed on this day. Always a pleasure. All right. Well, I guess we'll go ahead and split our week's advance for this episode. Thanks again, everyone, for listening. And we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.