Two Hundred A Day - Episode 59: Rosendahl and Gilda Stern Are Dead

Episode Date: October 27, 2019

Nathan and Eppy discuss the second appearance of Rita Moreno on the show, in S5E2 Rosendahl and Gilda Stern Are Dead. Jim's friend Rita is witness to a murder, and quickly blamed for it just because she's a prostitute! Jim, of course, wants to help clear her name - but things turn more serious as they uncover evidence of a string of murders, all connected to a mobster played by Abe Vigota. It's a great character study in a villain who thinks he's a victim, and as always the Rita-Jim chemistry is so fun to watch, that's worth the price of admission all on its own! We now have a second, patron-exclusive, podcast - Plus Expenses. Covering our non-Rockford media, games and life chatter, Plus Expenses is available via our Patreon at ALL levels of support. 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 Brian Perrera Eric Antener Bill Anderson Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi, and follow him on twitter @jimlikesgames Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars Jay Adan's Miniature Painting And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Dave P, and Dale Church! Thanks to: fireside.fm for hosting us Audio Hijack for helping us record and capture clips from the show spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by game and narrative designers Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. In each episode we pick an episode of The Rockford Files, recap and review it as fans of the show, and tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.

Hello? You're the guy who lost the wallet in the park theater? Well, I'm kind of like into leather. So I'll be returning the money, but I'm going to keep the wallet. Welcome to 200 a Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Pallotta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravishaw. And this time we are going back to one of our favorite guest stars. Abe Vigoda. Yes. Abe Vigoda. Was he in other episodes?

I didn't actually check. I don't know if he actually has. I just like Abe. Well, this was an Epi pick. So, Epi, which episode did you bring to us this time? All right. We're digging deep into Season 5. I don't know what deep means uh

episode two of season five so either that's deep into the season uh from the perspective of today looking back or very shallow into the season from the perspective of watching it from the beginning of that season so uh please ignore what I'm saying here. Episode two of season five, Rosendahl and Gilda Stern are dead. And I chose this one because Rita is in it, playing Rita. And we had such a fun time with Rita last time.

I thought we should treat ourselves to another Rita episode. Yeah, absolutely. So we have the return of Rita Moreno as Rita Kapkabik, who we did talk about in her first appearance in our episode 52, The Paper Palace, which was a season four episode of the show. Paper Palace, which was a season four episode of the show. And one for which Rita Moreno won an Emmy for her guest star appearance.

And we talked all about that and kind of the kind of her relationship with the people on the show and some accolades and all that stuff in that episode. So in a blatant effort to try and promote older episodes, we'll say if you want to hear more about Rita Moreno, Juanita Bartlett, and the Rockford Files, check that episode out. Yeah, sounds good. Plus, it's a great episode. Yeah, like I said, we really enjoyed it,

and I think we do better on episodes we really enjoy. So, yes, as we'll get into, this follows not only with the character, but also picks up some of the narrative threads from that episode. But not in a way that means you have to watch the previous one as the show so deftly handles continuity. It's there if you see it. If you've been watching the show, you can appreciate it. But if this is the first episode you ever tune into you're not losing anything if you haven't seen the previous episode with this character they were both written by Juanita Bartlett um who again Rita Moreno liked working with for among other reasons uh because she really

knows how to write women characters, her own words. And as she so often does with her episodes, this one does have a, I'd say, a nuanced and compassionate portrayal of a marginalized character or a character whose profession marginalizes her. Yeah. I mean, this is a lot to get to in the episode um uh this one's directed by william ward again who we've seen in many many episodes we most recently saw him in our episode on guilt um and he did lots of these late season episodes um so when do we want to talk about the title do you want to talk about that now or talk about that more at the end? We can talk about it now if you want. I mean, we don't know who Rosendahl and Gilda Stern are until we watch the episode, but we know the reference.

Right. Rosen Krantz and... Rosen Krantz and Gilda Stern are dead. Yeah, there we go. So that is the Tom Stoppard play. So this is something that, you know, coming up through a theater scene in the late 90s, early 2000s. I know about this show. Yeah. We did it in my drama program. I know people who have been in it.

And it was kind of a touchstone for theater nerd jokes and stuff like that. So I did look it up just to be like, I don't know when this actually came out. So the Tom Stoppard play came out in the late 60s. I don't know how much much of the audience one would assume would recognize this as that reference. That's a good question. Like I was tangentially theater. What's the word I'm looking for here? Adjacent. Adjacent.

Yes. Although if I'm already saying I'm tangentially, well, yeah, I was theater adjacent in, in high school, which would, uh,

and I remember it being a big thing then, but that was in the nineties for me. So that would have been 20 years later, but I guess if it, if it came out in the 60s. And here's the other thing about trends in theater, especially at the high school level. Everyone in high school is learning about theater. They start learning and getting excited about classics. I feel like if it was trendy while I was in high school, it was probably trendy while the generation before me was in high school.

Right. Like it's just, isn't a fast moving. Right. Yeah. Because this is so, so the, the play,

if you're not familiar, you're still doing Shakespeare for sake. Come on, let's move on. It only exists because of Shakespeare. Right. So it's this kind of absurdist existentialist exercise of a play where the characters rosencrantz and guildenstern are two bit players from hamlet

right they have these like very minor roles in hamlet uh they're these messengers or whatever and so uh as in my program rng was referred to so in RNG then the two main characters are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then they have kind of a waiting for good dose influenced set of action while the main characters from Hamlet come on and off stage because they're going basically from the wings out to do their parts and then like coming back. Yeah. So I think any modern to contemporary high school drama program, you do Hamlet and then you do Rose and Grants and Guilds Turn Our Dead to be like, here's the relationship between classic theater and like modernist theater.

Right. Hmm. Teach you that in theater, there's only a set of finite number of characters and we have to reuse them over and over and over and over theater criticism digression aside the title of this one because i you know i'm like okay i wonder why this title is here and i think as we learn it's mostly just for the pun feels like i don't i don't know if there's other parallels like i, I'm not intimately familiar with the play, but it does feel just like, if I had to guess, I would have guessed that they had a Dr. Rosendahl who gets killed.

And then they were like, quick, let's invent a Gilda Stern to kill off as well. And then we have a title for the episode and we're good. have a title for the episode and we're good if anything structurally with the story rosendahl and gilda stern have as much impact on our main characters as rosencrantz and gildenstern do on hamlet yeah right yes but because it is titled are dead i was like so is there some kind of like i don't know winking nod to the idea that the characters we're watching are the bit players and all the actual action is happening off camera and that is not the case it is a normal episode yeah yeah yeah i was gonna say like only insofar as that's how it is often in the rockford files right like so this episode, not to pre-do it all,

but Rita is getting swept up in something that really has nothing to do with her. Right. And so that is probably where you can draw that line. Yeah, I suppose. But that's not unusual for the Rockford Files. Exactly. That's kind of what I was saying.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to say, is that for the Rockford Files, this is a totally normal narrative setup. Yeah. It does, I guess, if you view it from a certain way, the drama that leads to these events does happen off camera. Yeah. But then we see it literally on camera at the very end. So a little bit there. But yeah, no, it's mostly the pun. I just, as a theater nerd, decided to try and overanalyze it and came to

the conclusion that, no, it's just a funny name. I appreciate the attempt. Well, speaking of appreciating attempts, Epi, how do you feel about the attempt and, I suppose, successful execution of this preview montage that's great uh i okay so we've done the preview montage for every episode and we've done how many episodes uh this will by the time this comes out will be close to 60 okay so you think at this time i would have a uh a rubric against which i could judge a montage let me just say what's in the montage that i liked uh the first off was the dennis quote like right from the beginning you wouldn't be dumb enough to mess around an active police investigation which just tells us as viewers that rockford is going to be dumb enough

to mess around an active police investigation which is wonderful as per usual yes we get some car chases so yes all right good we're going to deliver on that uh and we get rita if i weren't selecting this from imdb but instead coming home on a Friday night and turning on the TV, that would be welcome, very welcome news. The joy I would feel would be akin to when I was a child watching Scooby-Doo and they had two different opens. One open where it's the Scooby gang and the other open where Batman and Robin show up because it's the episodes of Scooby-Doo with guest stars.

Batman and Robin show up because it's the episodes of Scooby-Doo with guest stars. And I get really excited because it could be Batman or Robin or the Harlem Globetrotters. You don't know, but it always turns out to be Don Knotts. I was about to say Don Knotts. I don't know why of all the Scooby-Doo episodes that I've seen, the only guest stars I can remember are Don Knotts. Did he do lots of them? I think he probably did. Yeah, I think so. And in fact, he's the

only reference I have for Don Knotts. I don't know who he is other than as a guest star on Scooby-Doo. A professional Scooby-Doo guest star. Don Knotts. But Rita Moreno is not the Don Knotts of the Rockford Files. She is the Harlem Globetrotters or the Batman and Robin of the Rockford Files.

And then we get a callback to the $300,000 that Rita had inherited in the previous episode that she was in. Specifically, that she managed to Rock for her $300,000. Is that a verb meaning to burn into nothingness? Yes, yeah. To somehow lose a quantity of money that you required. Great, yeah. I think we are all set to see what's going on here. I will note that the car chasing, in fact, involves a J-turn.

So we are getting the highlights right here in the preview montage. Hello, listeners. We really appreciate you being here, and we want to make sure that you know that you can become a patron over at patreon.com slash 200ADay. In addition to episode previews and access to the 200ADay Rockford Files file spreadsheet, our patrons get plus expenses, a bonus podcast where we talk about movies we're

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We start our episode at the Marina Del Rey motel where there is an orthopedic surgeon conference going on. And we see Rita, your favorite, our favorite, Dennis's favorite, good friend, Rita Kapkowicz,

walking out of this conference on the arm of a very tall square jawed man. And he seems very uncomfortable but she has some dialogue with the doorman about you know he says to call his car and she's like no let's let's just walk it's a nice night I think it's great and wonderfully uncomfortable that Rita and the doorman are on a first name basis so for this guy who's walking with her okay so we know as previous viewers what rita's job is right rita is a sex worker she's a prostitute and seeing that this is a conference even before we see rita like i know what like i'm like rita's in this episode orthoped, because orthopedic surgeons, they know how to party,

is what I'm saying. So watching her walk out with him, you don't need to know this to get the context of what's happening, I think, because of the way Rita plays the character. Like, she's really chatty. The guy seems very uncomfortable with the uh, the scene that is, that is sort of that she's able to attract. And then she's chatty with Harry.

Uh, and I'm like, Harry knows what's up. Yeah. Harry definitely knows what's up. And then this is kind of, I think sealed. If you have not seen this before,

as they're walking away from the hotel and he says something about like, let's just go back to your place. Right. Right. Yeah. She keeps up a, not patter, but like she's talkative. She's a talkative,

friendly person. Right. And so she's, she's keeping up one end of a, of the conversation, uh, and saying like, Oh,

but you said you wanted to see a piano player. I know a great piano player. There's a bar. We can just walk over there. It's a nice night, et cetera, et cetera. We then see two,

two guys who are clearly goons watching them from a car as they leave the hotel area. And they have a little bit of dialogue that is extremely menacing and also sets up that there's a goon and a creepy goon. Because the goon is not sure what they should do because there's two people together. It shortly revealed that they're after the guy. They're not after Rhea. And then the creepy goon, to establish that he is both creepy and a goon. Yeah.

Already it's going sour. It's good to me. What are we supposed to do about the brood? Whacker. You ever whack the brood? I don't like it. It's great. So gross.

My notes just, in all caps. Villains. They also have good late 70s goon haircuts. Like kind of greasy, like half pompadour, half curls. Yeah. A lot of the really good goons have been in the earlier seasons. Sometime in the middle, they kind of get a little more generic. These are some good goons.

The non-creepy one, if one can be described that way, the less creepy one, actually has a little bit of an arc throughout this episode. Just a little bit, yeah. Yeah. So our goons do pull up and grab the two of them.

That's where it becomes clear they're here for him, but they grab her too because she's a witness or whatever. They take the two of them to a waiting limo where they roll down the rear window. And who's in that backseat? Oh, yeah. Abe Vigoda. Abe f***ing Vigoda.

Fish! Uh, if you've ever watched Barney Miller, he plays Fish. Anyways, the point is, is at this point in his life, the joke is that Abe Vigoda is old. And he will live for many, many more years, folks. Yeah. In fact, he just died in 2016. Yeah. Yeah.

So around this time in his life, the ongoing joke in the TV series he was in is that he is old his first tv series credit in 1949 yeah abe okay so let's just talk a little bit here his role here isn't on screen a lot right but this is a man with menace honestly you you hire the whole man but you get the the eyebrows are really all you get the eyebrows yeah the eyebrows are really really what do it here um you remember in uh the reincarnation of angie how we how there's a plot moment where the bad guy the big lebowski yes technically he works for someone and the someone is like an older guy who's ill and there's like one little scene to show us that and the fact that you know oh we have this we have the big boss and he's in charge but he's ill so he has nothing to lose or whatever and we talked a little bit about how like okay that's fine but it was a little weird that we

had a whole scene just for that one it's kind of unnecessary right this is the opposite of that where it's like abe pagoda he's the menace we see him early and we see him a couple times so he has more screen time the goons are the bad guys like the goons are the ones taking the action but the fact that we have this guy he's all motivation he motivates the entire plot and we don't actually learn what his name is

for a long time so I think we'll just probably call him Abe Vigoda for a while there's a reveal to the characters that's important. This is one where we see a lot more of what's going on before Jim does or in parallel to what Jim's saying. Anyway, so our tall orthopedic surgeon

is Rosendahl from the title. So we know what's going to happen to him. And Abe Vigoda gets a good look at him and says i'm looking at a dead man yeah before anything can happen he manages to to scuffle free of the goons and run away and the other guys run after him the goons run after rosendahl yes a pagoda stays in the limo and yells after them not to shoot because he wants to see he wants to see this this murder uh go down and rita runs the other way to get out of the situation while everyone else is distracted i'm not entirely sure but i think they let us off the hook morally speaking uh by we don't see anything yeah but also i think like whenendahl, when the scuffle begins, it looks like he's going to hide behind Rita or push Rita.

There's some business with Rita that makes you go, f*** this guy. I mean, that might be what makes the scuffle happen, is that they're next to each other and he pushes her, something like that. Yeah, but then Rita makes a run for it. So we cut from there to Jim coming home from fishing. Yeah. We can see from the copious amounts of mail on his floor that he's probably been gone for a little while. I expected looking through them and them all being Bill's gag, but no time for that. We have to keep moving on.

There's a message from Dennis on his machine and then a message from Rita. She's at the station. It's important. He really needs to come see her. She's been booked for murder. Yeah. You watch this because Dennis's message is like, I got some time off. You want to go down to Baja with me? We'll do some fishing or what have you. And I think, I suspect that you watch Rockford slowly go from Baja to Rita, right? Like you listen to Rita and he's like, well, but I mean, obviously Rita is the type of person that ends up at a police station often enough that, you know, also as far as Rockford

knows, she's wealthy, right? Like what, what, what could she possibly need his help with? And then she gets to the murder charge and you can tell he's not going to Baja. Yeah. So there is a demonstration going on inside the police station. We have a number of signs waving around and say free Rita and justice for Rita. Rita and justice for Rita and all of the women, uh, that are,

you know, in her line of business are, are there to support her, uh, and protest against this bogus charge. They've got the permit and everything. Like that was like a thing that they say, like we've got a permit. So they know what they're doing.

They're organized. There's a Sergeant who's trying to kick them out and they start saying, okay, we'll call, call the, uh, call the news, you know, get the TV cameras down here. it's starting to kind of get out of control jim arrives into this

you can get david brinkley diana don't change things nobody sees rita kapkovich sergeant i'll be right with you i'm here to see rita kapkovich you understand the word nobody she's entitled to counsel and he's her counsel the sergeant sighs and uh lets him in and and jim does his part right he's kind of like everybody calm down i'm gonna go talk to rita yeah the the crowd who has a a leader um lucille who seems to know jim is kind of like okay something's happening so that calms down the crowd a little bit. She even sends a message from Ma. Message from Ma.

I think, yes. I believe that she is the Ma in this situation, which is great. So Jim comes into Rita's cell. And at first she is... Salty. Yeah, salty. Kind of reprising how she acts with dennis in the first episode in paper palace sure you're here to quote help me but i call you know i don't see you i haven't seen you for like you know he's like what it's been you know we've been busy it's been what like six months just like

more like eight months yeah you don't have time for me and then i call you and you don't even come down here my time of need right but once j Jim gets through to her that like he wasn't ignoring her, he literally just got her message because he's been out of town fishing with Rocky. And she's like, oh, she comes around pretty quick. So, yes, according according to these cops, she killed Dr. Rosendahl since the Harry, the doorman, saw them leaving together. And he told the cops that he heard her telling him not to use his car. And they should go for a walk.

And the bar she wanted to go to is closed on Sunday. And she didn't know that. But the cops are turning this all into that she was part of a setup for him to get murdered. Which means she's part of it. Jim has the line where he says that they're making a motive out of her rap sheet which is in the montage right i think so and uh yeah so she she's uh she's in trouble um jim asks her about her look she's like you don't need me you need a lawyer and she starts talking about this public defender that she has and jim's like wait a second yeah why do you have a defender you can

afford the best lawyer and uh it's a long story she has enough to pay jim right once she gets out of there he just needs to go and find the guys who actually did it and uh once they can prove that they did the murder you know she'll be off the hook and we can kind of see from her body language and facial expressions and Jim's in reaction that like, she really needs to be out of jail. Like, it's not that she's been charged with this murder, which is bad,

but like physically being confined in prison is getting to her. And Jim goes from trying to find out what happened to the money to being like, okay, I can do that for you. I see how serious this is. We'll pick this up later. Right. And you see all this from facial expressions, or, I can do that for you. I see how serious this is. We'll pick this up later, right? And you see all this from facial expressions, or at least I do.

Yeah, it's a very good scene. We'll see this throughout this episode, but her character is, there are all these great moments where people reveal themselves to be sweet on her in ways that they normally aren't, right? I mean, Rocky is, because Rocky is with almost anyone except for Angel. themselves to be sweet on her in ways that they normally aren't right i mean rocky is because rocky is with almost anyone except for angel but like dennis like you'll you'll see dennis be like

oh right it's reedath let's let's help her out you know that kind of thing and part of that is what happens in this scene where she understandably has all of this anger because she's been set to stew in this prison uh it doesn't realize that jim has in fact been away but once she realizes it she just lets that go under i guess i'm appreciating it because i've i've i have witnessed more modern shows with characters who like they're like oh here we got grit for the mill here we we we can or grist for the mill here we can we can uh force these two characters to fight for a while and instead they're like nope that was an honest not miscommunication but like an you know it's it we're victims of circumstance in this moment it's something that reasonable friends yeah do like i'm annoyed at you about this thing

oh well here's what actually happened oh okay yeah moving on all right i still have some of that energy but i'm not taking it out on you and then we're good we uh then go to just a wonderful one of the most wonderful scenes set in a sauna that i've ever seen. Yes. Where Abe Vigoda is sitting in this full steamy sauna just with a towel over his shoulders, chewing out his goons, who are both in full suits and keep just dabbing at their faces because they're sweating.

Oh, it's so good. So there's kind of a back and forth before you kind of get the full picture of what he's worried about. Right. But essentially, sure, she's been picked up for this murder, but she got a good look at everyone. Right. He's going to be going back to court for a tax beef soon.

And that means his picture is going to be in the papers. And as soon as she sees his picture in the papers, she'll be able to tie him into the murder. And that will be, you you know that will be bad um one of the goons is like well she's already in there just let let her take the take the blame for it and he's just not willing to he just doesn't think that that's worth the risk right right uh so he wants her out of jail so that his goons can take her out on the outside. A bunch of women are taking donations to raise her bail, and so he says to make an anonymous donation. The less creepy goon...

She's hired a PI. I'll probably be sticking pretty close. This could be a problem. Leah, we all got our problems. That one's yours now. You handle it. We all got our problems. That one's yours. you'll hear it we all got our problems that one's yours and it's just like again the menace oh so good there's nothing unclear about this at all like this is if you don't handle this that's on you and uh yeah so much of how that's communicated and this show

does this a lot right but uh the way this is communicated is contrasting the physical relationship with the, you know, with the command structure, right? Right. He's an old man. He's in this sauna. He's not wearing any real clothes. He's sitting down. And then his two goons are in sharpsuits, standing up, big beefy guys, looking down at him. And they're the ones scared of him and doing what he says.

It's basic, it's straightforward, and it's very effective. We go to an applauding crowd of women as Rita is let free. They all pitched in to raise the $10,000 for her bail. She promises to pay it all back. Yep. But Lucille says that everyone looks out for each other, right? Yeah. Who says this is a loan?

Yeah. So she starts talking to reporters saying how mistreated Rita has been. Rita's public defender is there. Clearly uncomfortable. Yes. One of the low-key big villains of this piece. Yeah. He keeps on being like, don't say that. Don don't get on record don't quote her on that uh you know let's get out of here etc etc

um lucille's saying that she was rousted because she's a professional hostess and no one else would have had to go through what she went through just because of her job um jim you know just kind of smooths over everything it's like she's's like she's had a long day. We're going to go so she can relax. Gets out of the crowd. So it's Jim, her, and the attorney. And the attorney is literally wiping off his lapel where she was holding on to him to talk to him

and saying that her profession is a liability and all these you know all these prostitutes are saying things about you as a liability she needs all the friends she can get um and it's an unsavory case that he doesn't want to be on but he'll do his best because it's his job and it's like oh boy so he does not seem to be happy with him and he clearly does not want to be part of this case. It's like, great. I just because this is I think the last time these women show up in this episode. Right.

Yes. But there's just there's something very wonderful about how this community just is written and how they come together for her. I think it says it definitely says something about rita as a person right like they're getting across something that we learned in the last episode she was in that if you haven't seen it you need to get across here which is that this is a person that like everyone loves like everyone but people like this attorney right right? Like, there's the way society looks at her, but everyone who knows her just absolutely will pull out all stops for her. And also, obviously, these are all prostitutes, right?

Like, that is her community. And it's a supportive one and one that looks out for each other. Yeah. I mean, with kind of the undercurrent of because no one else will. Right. Right. Yeah, I mean, with kind of the undercurrent of, because no one else will. Right. Right. Yeah. That's good. Jim and Rita take off in the Firebird, and we see an ominous car following them.

Yeah. Ominous car. But thankfully, they're going to a different police station, the good old downtown where Dennis works, to talk to Dennis. There is a wonderful callback here, which this is just a straight up fun reference to the last episode,

I think, where they're coming in to go to Dennis's desk and he says, I would take you into the coffee room to talk, but it's too public. And in Paper Palace, their entire first chunk of that episode is in the coffee room where they're trying to talk and people keep coming in and out and interrupting them so i love that uh apparently dennis sent

her a terrific pizza while she was in the joint yeah the description of it is it's such an angel pizza i just can't see when den got back from Baja, he heard what happened. And he sent me over the most terrific pizza with mushrooms and sausages and mozzarella and anchovies even. Just hearing about it ought to give Chapman heartburn. But she had to come down here because all the cops on her who are actually assigned to her case don't believe her. They think

she's, you know, that she did it. So they make excuses and won't even bring out the mug books for her to look through to try and point out these other guys if they're in there. So Dennis is there too. He's willing to help out even though he's not on her case. We have a good Billings appearance where he brings just the A's. And Dennis asks, what, are you trying to get overtime?

Jim's response is like, well, that's good thinking. Like, clearly Billings is the omega here like they're going to pick on him but uh he actually has kind of a good presence in this episode so that's great so while uh rita takes a look at the mug books um jim's gonna go go do a couple things and then this is the uh from the preview montage where Dennis has his number. Yeah. Oh, what, you're going to run some errands? Go to the grocery store? You'd know you're not stupid enough to poke around in an open police investigation.

And listeners, yes. Jim, in fact, goes to a tennis club. And we see the goons still watching him from their car as he goes in i love this little piece of exposition it's so good because you know as a viewer it's like okay he's gonna go do some stuff then he goes to a tennis club okay great we stay with the goons for a second where they say that well we're not gonna stay watching rita because she's at a police station and what the cops are gonna ask us why we're hanging around. We know where she is, but we follow this guy.

First, he goes to the hospital where Rosendahl was on staff. And now he's here at Dr. Nevitz club. Yeah. And it's like, okay, one sentence,

all the exposition to show us what Jim has been doing and the clues he's been tracking down to get to the next important part of the narrative. And the fact he's been tracking down to get to the next important part of the narrative. And the fact that he's clearly on the right track because they know that we don't know Dr. Nevitt. But they do enough to show that he's on the right track. That they know what he is getting at. Yeah, they're like, oh crap, now he's talking to Dr. Nevitt. It also does that bit where it shows the relationship between the two goons like there's clearly uh a more experienced one the the creepy one i think it's a creepy goon who's like why don't we just stay with the woman and then the other one is like

no i'm more i'm more worried about this guy yeah like he seems like he's actually kind of a smarter goon yeah um i think i could be misremembering, but for the sake of our conversation, I think that's what happened. Once Jim gets into the club, he gets flagged down by Edie Nevitt, Dr. Nevitt's wife, as Mr. Taggart, who's there. His secretary called ahead from the insurance company. We don't really have any cons in this episode, but this is just showing us the the aftermath of a successful setup for a con. Yeah. So he's there because he's trying to he's compiling all of the information on Dr. Rosendahl's death. And he wants to just talk to the doctor that he worked with most, Dr. Nevitt, just to get the most complete picture they can have for the report or whatever.

complete picture they can have for the report or whatever uh but edie is not a fan uh says that he was a uh an arrogant grandstander jim asked something like uh oh so you weren't his biggest fan and she says no i was about three miles north of the cheering section she orders them both martinis and then as soon as they sit down first eats his olive and then about a minute later goes are you gonna drink that and just downs his martini yeah and specifically she asks if he wants anything and he's like no i'm fine and then she gets a martini for him it's just like yeah uh her kind of tirade about what a bad person dr rosendahl was is cut off by nevet who is uh played by robert loggia who we also recently talked about because he was the gangster marcon in drought at indian head river and he's isn't he the guy with the broken arm no no okay unfortunately he seems like him

but yeah uh he's in one other episode that we haven't done yet. But I saw him and at first I was like, this is the gangster. And then I was like, oh no, that's not Abe Vigoda. That's Robert Lodger. He also looks like a gangster. Yeah. So we talked about him a little bit. He played mobsters in lots of things.

He was in Scarface. You're thinking of Big. Yeah, he was in Scarface, but he was also in Big. Yes. Anyway, he's great. He's Dr. No. And I just assumed that he was a gangster. Sure, he's a doctor, but he must be crooked because he's Robert Loggia.

At this point in the story, I don't know what's going on. All I know is that these doctors somehow have gotten themselves mixed up in organized crime. Right. Yeah. It's going to be a while before we realize just how. How weirdly specific it is.

Yeah. How innocent they are of it. Right. Like they're a shady bunch. Everything about this says that they're up to their eyeballs in some like real estate scheme or uh defrauding medicare yeah something there's just there's something going on and uh it'll just it'll be very much much more happenstance i guess than than what we uh what we're thinking. But I'm definitely going down the Rockford route. Yeah. I'm assuming that this guy is crooked. Yeah.

Yeah. And his phone call doesn't help any. Right. So, yeah, he wants to know why the insurance company cares about this. And Jim has this line about, like, we need to know, you know, there's a difference between whether it's like an accidental death from a robbery versus like a gangland style execution. Right. whether it's like an accidental death from a robbery versus like a gangland style execution. Right.

And he uses the phrase like we need to know if he's involved with if he was involved with any criminal element. And we have a tight shot on Edie to see her react to the phrase criminal element. I kind of expected more from that, actually. But I think that's just to give us that feeling of like this is shady. Yeah, I think so. Edie is a gossip. Yes. Right. i think that is part of what's happening there yeah she is over the moon to just like down martinis and tell yeah jim all the dirt on this guy yeah they both overhear uh dr nevet take a call where he has a very again suspicious side of the conversation uh he wants

to discuss something before anything further happens etc etc but then he says it's just some property deal that he's part of no big deal he's going to go back and finish and have another tennis game and then uh evie complains about like oh like rosendahl is just like that forgetting everything yeah he's forgetting that we're taking someone out to dinner tonight and he's supposed to have a surgery at the hospital, that kind of stuff. And then she says, Betty is out of that at least, even with the murder and the burglary. The Rosendahl house was robbed last night.

Yeah. Just stole some stereo equipment and hi-fi and tapes and stuff. We see Jim make a mental note of that. Yeah. He's obviously surprised and she's like i'm surprised you didn't know about that or is boston casualty only into life and death no we're full service that just isn't my department did you like another martini yeah no thanks one's my limit

Would you like another martini? Yeah, no thanks. One's my limit. We get a rule of threes with the martini gag, right? Yeah. Also, I feel like, I feel very sad for Edie. She seems to not have a happy life. Nobody here is comfortable.

Yeah. You know, like, yeah. We then go to a, I don't know, schlubby? He's not disheveled, but he is kind of schlubby. Okay, yeah. We don't really learn much about this guy yet. But he has an address written down on a piece of paper and he is finding Rita's apartment. He does have

like white shoes and a white belt. I definitely noticed that. It's an interesting style choice. But he knocks on Rita's door. He says that he's from the public defender's office. She But he knocks on Rita's door. He says that he's from the public defender's office. She's talking to him through the door. Yeah.

Which I appreciate. She's no fool. But he talks his way in saying he's from the public defender's office. I just need to talk to you for a minute. It won't take very long. And then there's a very ominous cut on like, it'll just take a minute. Yeah. Like the nature of that cut made me go like oh no i i wrote down that she had good instincts not to trust him yeah but then she

went ahead and let him in and now the show is gonna with me yes from that ominous cut we go to jim pulling up in front of that apartment building in the Firebird, and he passes that guy as he comes out. And for whatever reason, something about him makes Jim suspicious. Because there's nothing overt. He just kind of brushes past him and turns around and is like, hey. And the guy makes a break for it and runs to his car. It didn't sink into me that they were at an apartment complex until after this scene. to me that they're at an apartment complex until after this scene so having the guy walk away from her house certainly would trigger suspicion in jim yeah but he's walking away from an apartment

so he could be like he could have an apartment there although probably he does not we don't know what kind of like what neighborhood this is in or whatever but something about it sets jim off and i i love that but then also i'm worried about rita exactly because where we left it yeah i'm like this guy probably needs to be caught but also maybe rita needs medical attention we need to like take care of this and jim is on that wavelength because after the guy peels out in his car jim runs into the building and up to to Rita's door and is pounding on the door and calling for her. There's a couple of beats. He doesn't hear anything. He rears back and then does a full shoulder tackle into the door, bust through the chain.

And Rita is on the other side of the room with a Danish in her hand being like, why are you trying to break down my door? Epi, I need a quick break. I'm going to grab a taco. You tell our wonderful listeners all the places that they can find you and your work on the information superhighway. I'll be right back. One way to find me is to go to twitter.com and search for at EpiDia, E-P-I-D-I-A-H. I'm usually responsive there. Otherwise, you can go to worldswithoutmaster.com where you can find my sword and sorcery fiction and role-playing games. And if you like role-playing games, maybe you want to check out digathousandholes.com

where I publish all my other role-playing games. Oh no, I dropped my calculator. Nathan, while I go pick up a spare, why don't you tell the good folks where they can find you on the internet? In addition to this podcast, I also design and publish role-playing games, including the Worldwide Wrestling,

Pro Wrestling role-playing game, among many others. You can find links to all of my games and other projects at ndpdesign.com. And of course, you can find links to all of my games and other projects at ndpdesign.com. And of course, you can find me on twitter.com at ndpayoleta. Looks like you're back. You ready to continue the arithmetic analysis for this episode there, Eppie? I'm back.

I have my DM-42 with me and I'm ready to dig down into Rockford's books again. All right. Well, I'm done with this delicious avocado taco. Well, let's get back to the show then. Rita's fine. Yeah, and Jim's response is, I like the sound of my shoulder breaking. And that whole, I was like,

okay, this might be a fake. This might be a head fake. Yeah. But I tried to just let myself go naturally with what the show was doing. So I was legitimately relieved to see Rita unharmed. And I'll be pretty psyched to hear her Danish recipe. Unharmed and bedanished.

She's like, you put this in the microwave for 15 seconds and it comes out so hot. You couldn't believe or whatever. Also, it's clearly a donut, but maybe in LA you just call donuts danishes. I don't know. I don't know how LA works. She says she talked to that guy.

She didn't believe him. She, he said he was from the public defender's office, but she would, she didn't believe him. And when he started asking a bunch of questions that she'd already answered, she kicked him out. Jim wants to know why

she's back. Didn't she look through all the mug books and she gave up because she got tired. Dennis had to leave. She was there all alone. What's it going to accomplish? There's more of them than of us. And Jim says, well, there's only three of them I'm worried about right now. So through here we see more of them than of us and jim says well there's only three of them i'm worried about

right now uh so through here we see more of her apartment and we see it is huge it is beautiful it is well appointed um she is in a much nicer apartment than she was in the last episode jim uh of course is still worried for her safety and wants to get out of there. And he takes the Danish out of her hand and takes a bite as she puts her shoes on. Good old Jim stealing food from someone else. My favorite. And I'd like to pause at this moment to just appreciate Rita's outfit. Oh, so good. It is amazing.

I would describe it to you, listener, but you should watch the show. So where do you go when you want to keep someone safe from gangsters? Rocky's house. Yes. Where he was making her coffee with cream and sugar just the way she likes it. Which is another callback to the original episode where he gives her coffee with way too much cream and sugar. Yeah. But he's worried because she's eating like a bird.

And then there's this weird gag about how much birds eat. Well, I've read somewhere birds eat 40 times their weight every day, something like that. No kidding. Well, all right. So she ain't eating like no canary. She ain't eating nothing at all. Besides, I ain't so sure I believe that. But it's just something I read.

Maybe that's why birds are always... I ain't so sure I believe that. But it's just something I read. Maybe that's why birds are always... Oh, you live near a park, it kind of makes you wonder. I had to rewind it. There's something about this scene that is in some ways very modern. Rocky is being Rocky and saying, you know, you're not eating enough to keep a canary alive. And it's a, that's a very Rocky type line. It's a thing that you would expect from the Rockford files. And then Jim drops a fact. It's not as stunning as the one Dennis lays out in the movies where he's like, you know, bees die die of loneliness but there's something about that fact

and the way it just stops everyone in their tracks like you you're expecting this to just turn right around into the discussion of the plot that's happening and it's not you have a moment where i ain't so sure i believe that you know like yeah i don't know if i believe that that some canaries can eat 40 times their weight. And then Rita has that line. Like, she says something like. I always wondered, because when you live close to a park and you see all of that, and then, like, that's it. Oh, because birds poop a lot.

Is that the joke? It's so weird. Like, it's charming, but it's strange. Like's strange and like in my head i was like is it is it a sex joke like birds and the bees yeah but like you would go with rabbits if you're gonna do that and yeah no i think it probably is a poop joke or you know people feed birds in parks so maybe it's just that they're always i don't know like it was definitely a joke we were supposed to get i i don't want to even say it didn't hit because the cadence of the scene did all the work it needed to do it was just a fun little weird moment and uh i enjoyed it yeah um

well they uh go from there somehow into a discussion of trying to figure out what, as Jim calls him, Mr. Peepers wants, the mysterious guy. Jim saw him hanging out at the jail. So maybe that explains why he noticed him. Like he passed him and then was like, oh, you were at the jail. Yeah, yeah. And she says that her read on him is that he's a salesman. She can tell because she's dealt with lots of salesmen. He has a ruby ring, which apparently is a salesman thing.

Could be. Could be. And then all these details about his clothes, like white belt, polyester pants, like whatever, you know, a whole list of things. And she says that when he opened his briefcase to take notes on what he was on, what she was saying, something fell out of it. Yeah. He said it was material evidence from a different case but it's something metal and it was sort of straight and sort of round and it looked like it fell out of a car so she thinks maybe he's a car salesman yes because car salesman

notorious for carrying around parts of cars i really thought that she was going to describe a little uh single business card printing press and jim was going to go get his to show her. Yeah. Wait a minute. Like, he's a P.I. But that is not the case. I love the bit here where she, I think her quote is, I've been on very good turns with hundreds of salesmen. Yeah.

And Rocky's reaction to that, poor, sweet, innocent Rocky. Yeah. This is a great scene. I mean, it's a great scene because Rita and Rocky are both in the scene. You can't not just love what's happening there. But also, it... It gives us a new, like, here's a new factor in the mystery, and nobody knows what's going on.

Yeah. Okay, so this is it, right? This is the linchpin. These are all the clues you need to solve the mystery right and part of why it's not working is that we're treating rita as an unreliable narrator okay because she says it's a he's a salesman and we're like probably not well jim even says like this doesn't make any sense why would some why would a salesman be involved with all of this and the fact of the matter is just to spoil a little bit here he's a salesman and once you do that and once you try and figure out what fell out of his briefcase

like almost the rest of this just falls into place right like not not entirely but like we have to wait for another scene with a pagoda think, before we get the final piece. Yeah. But it's so oblique at this point. Right. It's all necessary. It's all part of the mystery. And it doesn't make any sense to me.

And part of it is my own, like, not to get all lexury about it. It's my own inherent sexism here. Where I'm like, whatever, Rita. Rockford's the expert. Right. But Rita clearly is the expert on salesmen. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

And both because of our inherent bias and also because we have been trained to do so by the show. Right. We're taking Rockford's perspective as the correct perspective. Yeah. So I really dig this scene for what it does with that. And I don't think that that's remotely an accident. I think we need Juanita Bartlett at the wheel of the script. I'm sure it's like, ha ha.

Maybe not ha ha. But she knows what she's doing. Yeah. But yes, Jim, this whole thing Maybe not ha ha, but. She knows what she's doing. Yeah. But yes, Jim, this whole thing doesn't make sense to Jim. He's going to follow up the one thread he can, which is sticking out Nebit's place to see what he does, because clearly something's going on. Rita volunteers to go with them, even though she hates stakeouts,

because he's doing this for her and fair is fair. Yeah. And, ugh, the end of the scene. Poor Rocky. But i have pie he seems so sad that they're leaving before they he can share pie with them yes and rita calls him a pussycat and gives him a kiss on the cheek yes we could just watch this scene like let's just have the three of them at rocky's house you know know how in this day and age, at least for a while there, it was the thing to have an after show, like a post Game of Thrones show or whatever.

Right, like after The Walking Dead. Yeah, that kind of thing. An after show that was just like a half hour of no action, the Rockfords. of no action, the Rockfords. You know, them and LJ playing cards or Dennis fishing with Rocky and Jim or, like, in this case, Rita enjoying some pie with the... Yeah, that'd be so pleasant.

Well, there seems to be plenty of downtime on this stakeout as Rita is getting restless. She's being cooped up in the car. Why are we here anyway? Jim explains that he was lying about having a surgery at the hospital. He didn't. He lied about whatever he was talking about on the phone. That wasn't any property deal.

So seeing what he's going to do, he then asks Rita again. So what happened to that money? Yes. And she says that she spent it. $300,000 in one year? It's none of his business. But this is the very responsible Jim looking out for other people's welfare. Rita, it is none of my business.

But that money was your security jim what's a person like me gonna do with security well you buy a little house i don't want a little house yeah i feel that conversation because as someone who lives a life with some element of financial insecurity they just call it danger lives Lives a thrilling life. Lives a thrilling life of financial danger. The appeal of like, but you could just not spend that money. Yeah. Right? I feel that.

But I also don't want to deny Rita her life. And her life does not include, oh, I want to make sure I'm financially secure. I did some math because you know me uh i'm gonna i'm gonna put this into some perspective here because jim points out when she starts listing the different things that she has bought and most of them for other people right yeah she bought like her apartment some nice clothes yeah but then she like fixed her friend's teeth helped her friend's mother who had a gallbladder operation. Yeah.

Kidney stones. And you get the feeling she could just keep listing all these things that she's done for other people. Exactly. And then he says, what about the principle, right? Like you could have done that on the interest alone.

All right. So as you may or may not know, I enjoy calculators. And one of my favorite things about calculators are their manuals. And this already many of you have tuned out of the show. But hear me out here. I went through some old calculator manuals from around this period. And the reason why I did this, specifically business calculators, because in it they have example problems that include how much interest a bank will give you on a savings account. Which is very different than what they'll give you nowadays.

The interest rates on these things are wild. It was a different time. Yeah. So a really conservative one would be about 6%. Oh, my God. $300,000, 6%. The first year, that's $18,000. So, okay, fine, whatever. But also, if you listen to this show, you know I'm going to put this in the inflation calculator. that is 76 000 just over 76 000 for year one right that's a lot of money folks i believe that all the things that she listed could be bought for that amount of money maybe a little more right but like so there's that side of it right like so we can we can feel this pressure of like how do you go through that kind of money?

But this is the other side of it. Everyone who wins the lottery ends up broke. It's just how it is. Like if you don't, if you're not used to having that much money and you get it all right away, that's it. Like you're usually worse off than you were then before you did it. Yeah.

That's one of the sad things about lotteries that they don't really advertise, which is it's kind of horrible to win the lottery. Pro tip, always take the installments. Don't take the lump sum. Yeah. If you win the lottery out there, you'll get more money and you'll be less likely to blow it all on something dumb over time. Anyways, that was my mini little math lesson

and fiscal security lecture. I am not one who should be giving any kind of financial advice. You also live a life of financial danger. It's the principle, the interest, and the peril. Well, before Rita can respond to what she did do with that principle, Nevitt leaves his fancy house, and they have to jump back into the car and get on the case. They follow him to a random gas station,

and from across the street with binoculars that Jim, of course, has in his glove compartment, Rita can see the guy that he's talking to in the back of a limo that is also parked there, and it is, in fact, of a limo that is also parked there and it is in fact the same one from that night jim takes a look and rita's like you know okay how are we going to find out who this guy is but jim recognizes him that's phil gabriel rita's like no she knows the name but uh didn't recognize him by sight he apparently looks older now than she thought he would.

Yes. But he's apparently a dean of organized crime, well known enough that Jim knows him by sight and knows that he is a bad dude. And this is a new wrinkle because, sure, the cops are really going to go for Phil Gabriel's the one who killed this guy. You have my word for it when he's a powerful organized crime figure so now we need to talk about the name phil gabriel all right so 1978 all right so 1967 is when genesis orbs can't not be right like it's got to got to be Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel smashed together. You would think so. It's a double reference because it's that.

But also, I don't think this is stated in the episode at all. But in the credits, the character's name is Phil the Dancer Gabriel. Yes. The only other Rockford Files episode that Abe Vigoda was in was the first episode of the first season, the Kirkoff case, where his character's name was Al Dancer. So he plays Al Dancer, and now he's playing Phil the Dancer Gabriel. And that just has to be a gag to his first appearance, right? And it works on an ironic level, given what has happened to him to put him in the

situation he is now it's uh level levels and levels yeah yeah this is why you tuned in the deep cuts oh layers and layers i mean this is let's be honest this is how i name characters in role playing oh yeah so many role-playing game characters are named after designers of role playing games because those are the books that are sitting next to me when we're playing. Is it also a reference to his fish character? Because apparently that character's first name is Phil. Is it? See, I didn't know that.

All right. So, I mean, probably. How does a man named Abe get called Phil in everything? Yeah, you're right. Phil Fish is his name. Yeah, that's the character from Barney Miller. And then he had a spinoff, which I did not know. I did not know that either. All right. Jim and Rita continue their investigation by going to the hospital after hours.

Right. Jim and Rita continue their investigation by going to the hospital after hours. Rita is very nervous about all the sneaking around. And clearly Jim is in his element, including the part where he's going to pick the lock on his door. Rita says, like, what are you doing? Don't you know that's illegal? You get busted for having those. And Jim says that on my best day, I'm borderline. Yes, that's a good quote.

They go in and look around. Jim finds a folder underneath the blotter and says, I didn't know people still hid things they didn't want people to find under blotters. This is just another confluence with the reincarnation of Angie, where he finds the safe combination on a piece of masking tape underneath the drawer and says the stereotype is for people to put it on a piece of masking tape underneath the drawer and says, the stereotype is for people to put it on a piece of masking tape underneath their drawer.

I can't believe that worked. So I like that device where it's like, we'll do the obvious thing, but we'll have Jim be incredulous that this person is doing the obvious thing. That said, and I mean, I shouldn't announce this on the internet, but so much of my security is... Written on a piece of masking tape? A little password written on something that's just taped on the bottom, but so much of my security is written on a piece of masking tape, a little password written on something that's just taped on the bottom of the computer. I don't do that, but like, it's very, very close to that. So this hidden quote folder is about a surgery on someone

named Gage. And then he notices that the other doctor involved was Dr. Rosendahl. And then he notices that the other doctor involved was Dr. Rosendahl. And then he goes through the name of the anesthetician and the resident and the other people who were there, including a nurse named Gilda Stern. And then we're like, aha, I've seen the title of this episode. She's already dead. We only hear about Gilda Stern. We never see her. Jim's looking at it and asks what's arthoplasty uh while he's trying to dig through files rita is looking through a stack of tapes that are all piled everywhere

not organized well no yeah he's a funny way of filing uh these look like they're all tapes of operations um but they're not in any kind of order or organization. And they're like, why would he keep a bunch of tapes? Maybe for reviewing or teaching students who knows, but bunch of tapes. That's something that was stolen from Rosendahl's house in that burglary. Yeah. A bunch of tapes. Jim's just thrown out ideas.

And maybe, cause I guess the file is like Phil gauge. It's like maybe gauge is actually Gabriel. And then Rita turns on the light of the little X-ray viewing screen thing. Thankfully, in a piece of very important narrative convenience, there is an X-ray of a hip operation on there. And she recognizes the metal thing in there as the thing that fell out of the salesman's briefcase. And it's part of an artificial hip right or hip replacement thing i went through this narrative convenience here i

went through the whole cycle what what is it the grief cycle yeah it's like denial anger bargaining and acceptance or something anyways maybe not that but i was like oh come on, but I was like, oh, come on. And then I was like, oh, it could have been anyone's. This guy obviously does that kind of. And then I was like, no, wait a minute. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Yeah. At some point I was like, it occurred to me that he's in panic mode and would be looking for a way to fix the problem so that may actually be phil gabriel's x-ray because he would be re-examining what happened to see if he could make it right with

this uh terrifying mafioso right like that was that was my arc of my brain saying we got to make we got to bring this together it doesn't matter it was just it just did what it needed to do like or that's what he does so it's just some random hip replacement that he's currently working on right um because they have the file with the like name and stuff it doesn't necessarily come from the x-ray again yeah it doesn't matter it is there so that rita can put those two things together that the shape of that thing is a hip replacement thing that that salesman had now we know that is don't necessarily know why it's important yet but then jim goes down the i will pause it and thus tell the audience what if they're the doctors for this hip replacement

surgery and something went wrong gabriel is not going to write a letter to the AMA and that salesman is sweating. He must know what's going on. We believe he's a salesman now. Right. Nevid is running scared. The salesman is running scared. It all seems to center around this hip surgery for Gabriel. All right.

Time to track down the salesman. How hard can it be? There's got to be distributors and suppliers and only so many in the phone book. So we'll get to the classifieds in the morning. And then in just like the perfect chef kiss touch, just little detail. Camera stays in the room.

They leave, close the door. There's a beat. And then Jim opens the door again, turns off the light and then closes the door yeah no that was great i i even put that in my notes too i don't know why i love that so much but it was just like oh yeah uh it's just this perfect little like yeah jim's a professional yeah it's also very human to be excited about what's going to happen next and almost forget to turn off the light all right so we go from there to uh our non-creepy goon watching tv and then the other goon wheelsing

gabriel in a wheelchair and so we're now firm because we've only seen him sitting down so far right yeah and so this scene is establishing that he can't walk because of this surgery. That went wrong. He's watching this TV show or movie or whatever with an earpiece in so that he won't disturb anyone, which is, again, a great detail. Abe Vigodo wants to know what he's watching, and he's watching Moby Dick. It's great. There's a sea captain and this whale. They mix it up.

Gabriel knows all about it it's that captain with a tent peg for a leg that sets him off into just like how those creeps turned me into a tea cart the goon uh is saying that he didn't know he didn't even notice the leg is about the whale he just cares yeah he's just interested in the whale but gabriel clearly is obsessed with this i've been i've been crippled and right the the merest mention of something like that is setting him off which is both sad but also like you are like ahab yes not to put too fine a point on it but you are obsessed with this to an unhealthy degree um he's run out of patience uh dr nevis said that if anything happens to him that he has that tape, he's going to send it to the cops. So I want that tape, no matter what it takes. Find it, bring it to me and bring me Nevitz. I'm going to do it myself. Yeah. So I think that's all the

pieces, right? Now that we've seen his state. We know what's going on. We know what's going on we know what's happening uh i do like that this this bit is the good fellas oh i'm funny to you yeah seeing like there's the the menace that is both a portraying it but it's also this this goon's reaction to like trying to walk out of it like right trying to walk it back like it's just a movie like i didn't even notice the peg leg yeah i'm sorry i just wanted to see the whale that's good stuff yeah um so that's the little arc for this game i don't really know what the arc is i guess he's trying to do his best in a very difficult working environment. I feel like he is being pointed in a direction that says this is not the profession for you. He's being nudged in that way.

He makes no decisions on that account in this episode. But I can imagine a little further down the line where he's like, OK, you know what? This was a bad idea. I shouldn't have gotten onto Ahab's ship. but this was a bad idea. I shouldn't have gotten onto Ahab's ship. We go to Jim calling from a restaurant, calling Rockies to talk to Rita.

He has done the Jim things and tracked down this salesman. His name is D Pilmer. He's going to go talk to him now. So he's just, I guess, calling Rita to keep her in the loop and also kind of establish for us where we're at with the story. So Pilmer is having some kind of salesman business meeting

with someone and there's a bunch of paperwork and Jim just goes over and kind of quietly says, Mr. Gabriel sends his regards and then goes back over to the bar. Pilmer leaves his client to come talk to Jim and they have a bit of a, it's not really a confrontation, but they have a conversation. Pilmer says, I know come talk to Jim and they have a bit of a it's not really a confrontation but they have a

conversation. Pilmer says I know you don't work for Gabriel. You were hired by Rita. I don't have to tell you anything. And then Jim's like I know more than you think and he names all the people who were involved with that surgery. So Pilmer says that there was nothing malicious.

Nobody wanted to leave Gabriel leave gabriel uh leave him crippled as he says you know these things happen but now he's you know he's he's taking it out on the people involved right uh hunting them down one by one jim says that if there's something tangible to take to the cops like perhaps this video that seems to exist, it would solve both of their problems because they would have evidence to put Gabriel away and it would spring Rita free of

the murder charge. Pilmer says that Dr. Nevitt does have a tape and he hid it somewhere because he doesn't care about anyone else. He just wants to keep his professional standing. He'll let the rest of them all go down as long as he's insulated and safe. And Jim says that well. He could be very persuasive. So let's go talk to Dr. Nippet. This is kind of fun because it's not a big action finale, which is actually

unusual. Most Rockford episodes do end with some kind of action, and this is more of a drawing the noose closed kind of Columbo style. Just kind of establishing everything and letting it all close in. Did we skip over the chase? There was a chase. I made a note about it. It was in the montage even. Oh, we did skip over it. So there was a chase.

Yes. It was after Jim and Rita leave her apartment. After he eats her Danish. Ah, the old sales lot dodge. Right, because that's where the J-turn was. I remember mentioning the J-turn, so I thought we talked about it. Yeah, exactly. It's much earlier in the episode.

It's just that the goons see them leaving. They try to block them with their car. Jim pulls a J-turn from a stop, from a standing position, to get going the other way and evade them. Does a couple maneuvers to slow them down as they have to swerve to not hit other cars and stuff. And then pulls the old pull into a parking lot and duck routine. So they speed by and then when they pop up, the car is gone. And that's when Rita sees them.

It's like, yes, those are the two guys that I saw that night. All right, good. I just want to make sure we covered that. Again, yeah, just breezed right over that. I was so excited to talk about the bird scene. Yeah. Now, though, we go to Jim Nevitz and Pilmer leaving the tennis club. So they've already had a conversation and now they're leaving and continuing the conversation.

Nevet resents these allegations, denies everything. And Jim's like, my theory is that Rosendahl ended up with the tape. And so you stole it from him. So that's what that burglary is about. And now you've hidden it. So you're the one with the power to make this all go away. Nevet says, well, he has the most at stake because he's such a prominent doctor or whatever.

He could lose his license. I don't know if he states that, but that seems to be the implication. And Kilmer says they all have the same thing at stake. Gabriel killed Gilda Stern. Right. He's just going to kill everyone, right? So apparently she's the one who told him that something went

wrong with the operation she was the florence nightingale who blew blew the whistle on all of them so i guess that started gabriel down this path nevett says that gabriel will be too scared to move as long as that tape is still you know still safe he doesn't want to do anything but jim says that well they're just going to go to the cops with what they have pilmer's account my marita's happened what i've found out and then nevett like talks himself into it which is really interesting yeah now wait a minute how's it going to look if you go to the police without me it'll look like they have go to the police without me?

It'll look like they have something to hide. It'll look like a cover-up. Come on, let's get the tapes. Which was surprising to me because I expected him to still be part of the mafia until this moment. He's been nothing but shady up to this point. And now we know that his motivation is self-interested, but it's not because he's neck deep in any kind of corruption or anything like that. I mean, I think it takes a little work to connect the dots here, but instead of Jim spelling out for him why it's in his best interest to go to the cops he kind of realizes that if anyone goes to the cops all of a sudden it's better for him to be with them than to be on his own yeah and jim

has a big smile at the end of that scene so now we get to our our final showdown at at becker's desk uh in in just the public area at the police station. Everyone's there. I think the goons are not there, but all of our other folks who we've seen are there. Gabriel is there in a wheelchair with his lawyer, who, first I said, who looks like Magnum P.I., which is a great look for a lawyer, but he has an enormous bushy mustache. Or does he look more like Magnum T.A.,

who was a wrestler who was like referencing Magnum P.I. with his gimmick? So I think if you look it up, this lawyer is more of a Magnum T.A. because he's very beefy. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I'll represent you in the courtroom and in the ring. Tragically, he was in a car accident that ended his career and sucks because it's one of those great what-ifs of wrestling history.

Right. Anyway, there's some sniping back and forth between Gabriel and Rita. Gabriel has the wonderful line of, everyone gets to work their mouth. That's the American way. Proving it. That's something else. It's so good. He's full of wisecracks for every occasion, but he seems kind of tired.

It seems very much like he has led a life where he's had to go through these things many times. Right. Let's just get to the point. Let's just get to the point. Dennis has taken the liberty of trimming the tape to just the important part, which is just a couple, you know, like a minute or so of this tape. So we watch, everyone watch this on the little TV screen. And it's very dramatic.

To summarize, I guess the surgeons are having trouble with the replacement. It's not going in right. And we're hearing like groans from a Vigoda. It's so hard to watch. And I've never had this surgery. I'm just like, oh, it's not gruesome, right? They don't show you it. Yeah, we're just seeing like the top down camera of everyone in scrubs. Yeah.

But then they call for Pilmer because he's there and he's the one who actually puts the gets it in right. Who like gets it set how it's supposed to be. And then someone and I couldn't tell from the voices if this was supposed to be Pilmer or just someone else. But someone in the room is like, hey, this isn't Phil Gageage this is phil gabriel from genesis yeah you know the killer yeah yeah so what we should sew him up without a hit no that's not what i'm saying i just thought you should know could you tell who that was supposed to be i think that might have been rosendahl but i'm not entirely sure there's two bits of confusion because everyone's wearing scrubs, so I don't know who that's supposed to be. And maybe this is intentional, but I couldn't tell then if Phil's injury is then an accident of this struggle to get it in or like they just gave up because they realized they had a horrible person on the table. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, were they implying that at some point someone involved in the surgery made a decision they saw as ethical in not helping this guy? I couldn't tell.

I run it as an accident. Okay. Both because we hear, and I think that's Nevitt's voice who's saying, what, we should sew him up without a hip? Yeah. We're doing surgery. Yeah, yeah. This is our job. My job is not to judge this person.

Then we have the camera focus on Gabriel. And he's just like, so a salesman put my hip in? Yeah. That's the crux of it, right? Nevitt's saying, no, it was appropriate for him to be there. He's a licensed sales technician if it's in the best interest of the patient blah blah blah and uh gabriel's just like this is fanning his obsessive rage yeah nevitt says that the fact is there is no need for you to be in a wheelchair

there is no need at all you could be on crutches of course with crutches there would be a certain discomfort pain not discomfort. Pain! I ought to kill you where you stand. I ought to kill you slow. Not like Rosendahl. It was too good for him. He's so obsessed with his own pain and his own like frustration with what what the injustice done to him that he clearly isn't even really aware of where of the people around him right again like the the moby dick callback like he's he's obsessed with what's happening to him in a way that that makes his reaction to it the fact that he's going to kill everyone involved in it like oh this man's broken just

broken that's that's all that's happening he's he's not connected to reality in a way that that would make any sense so my read of like it was an accident is kind of from the combination of all of that yeah but like the secret i guess that everyone was keeping from Gabriel was that it wasn't even a real doctor who like put it in and now he's in all this pain. I mean, which sucks. That's terrible. I don't know if it's malpractice. Like I thought it was weird that the hip replacement equipment salesman was the one who was setting it in a bone. I feel like that isn't something that actually could or should happen, but I don't know about,

I don't know anything about orthopedic surgery. None of us do. So we end this with Dennis asking, so you did kill Dr. Rosendahl and Gilda Stern. And he just keeps mumbling about what he's going to do to these doctors. Like I should kill you where you stand where you stand uh yeah and dennis just quietly says take him to interrogation room three

read him his rights sorry abe yeah so we get to our last scene uh where rita is wrapping presents for everyone this is the scene that ties up so many loose ends for me yes even though they're just going to open them in a second she still still wants to wrap them because otherwise what's the fun? And Jim's like, let her do what she wants. Remember the difficulty I had in giving you your car back? That's, you know, obviously a callback to the previous episode. I think we did spend some time wondering about the fate of that car. Apparently he finally forced her to take it back.

Yeah. And here's the thing we know about Rita fate of that car. Apparently he finally forced her to take it back. Yeah. And here's the thing we know about Rita. She gives gifts. Like that's why she's in the position. She, uh, financial position she's in right now. And yeah.

Uh, so she made necklaces for Rocky and Dennis in her jewelry class. And we have an amazing pure gag back and forth of like, oh my God, Rocky opening it and pulling it out and being like, oh, it doesn't go with my shirt. And Dennis saying, oh, it's a basic. It goes with everything. And insisting that he put it on. And then he opens his and it's also a necklace. And Dennis is like, well, I'm practically in uniform.

And Dennis is nowhere near uniform. And Rocky is like, oh, come on, it'sis is nowhere near uniform and rocky's like oh come on it's basic and like gets it back immediately oh so good um but then for jim rita made him a money clip and so it's this like money clip with a big r like soldered onto it and he takes it out of the box but it pokes him because there's a wire in there that he didn't didn't have time to trim back because she made it special and had to finish it real fast. And you'll have something to put in it as soon as I pay you. Yeah.

All right. I love this money clip for a number of reasons. First of all, it just puts the button on how much Jim's earned this episode. Precisely what's in that money clip. And it's so great that she gives him a gift of a money clip for money she'll eventually put in it. That's all beautiful.

But also, it ties into the answering machine message. So it does. If you recall, at the beginning, somebody found his wallet, is really into the leather, and is going to return the contents of the wallet but keep the wallet. Nice. So Jim could really use a money clip. I didn't even think about that. Well spotted. So he takes her aside.

He thanks her for the gift, takes her aside a little bit, and is like, look, I just really need to know, what happened to all the money? Yes. And you're not going to get me any static, and I'm not going to have to hear about it from you for the rest of my life. It was this guy. Rita. yeah but jim i had such a good time spending it and freeze frame on the two of them sharing a laugh in a uh comradely side hug uh good times end of episode yeah so i i really enjoyed this episode yeah we were talking about

this a little before we started recording but like my notes were a little thin on this episode and i think part of it was just because i stopped typing yeah you know just just enjoyed watching what was happening i mean we skipped over a J turn. Yeah, right. But yeah, Rita was great. Again, I just love how different people are around her. Well, okay, I keep saying people. It's Dennis. Yeah.

I love how different Dennis is around her. And I love how Rocky is with her. The plot is, like, it's a's a great like what the hell did you get roped into yeah uh rockford plot i mean the very beginning is just like all you really need to know is just she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and there we go but then yeah but then the whole story is so i mean it's i guess it's a mystery mystery without actually having like mysterious elements like it's very straightforward. A mystery without actually having mysterious elements. It's very straightforward once you know what's going on.

The mystery of it is how we get directed towards thinking it's going to be one thing. And that it's not a big mafioso deal gone bad. Or some kind of thing about a bunch of money moving around. Or a threat to this guy's position or anything like that. It's like this super personal story about a guy who's obsessed with something that, yes, that is bad. That should not have happened to you. But, you know, that Moby Dick reference, again, it becomes,

it's very on the nose, but that is also what channels us into being like okay this is a personal crusade that this guy's in falling deeper and deeper into this obsession and like even his goons are like okay dude like that's what you want we'll do it but uh like in that conversation one of them's even like let's give it a couple days and see how it comes out with the cop or whatever and he's like no i'm tired of waiting do it now even though it's not the best way to go about it and we get that from the very beginning because he like they pull rosendahl in front of him and then when rosendahl runs he's the most worried that they're going to kill him where he can't watch yeah like don't shoot him don't shoot him. Don't shoot him. I want to see. I want to see. And at first, that feels like a weird,

that feels convenient to, like, allow Rita to escape. But it just keeps coming back in that character over and over again. I have an ongoing theory. I've talked about this probably in some early episodes. I feel like I probably haven't mentioned it in a while. I have the position that when you have you have like a movie or tv show or whatever structured around the struggle between a hero and a villain it's really only as good as

the villain yeah only in rare instances does a lackluster villain lead to a great story uh and i think this is a story with a great villain i'm gonna say not because he's particularly villainous even though he is because he's just like let's murder people right due to my own selfishness uh but it's like it's the stakes are so personal yeah his his obsession is what is creating the the drama that is clearly villainous but it has that understandable edge of like you know all great villains think that they're the hero, right? I don't think he thinks he's a hero, but you can see the path he went down. He feels that he's the victim at the very least.

Right. Yeah. And like, we've all had something that happened that was unfair and led to physical pain or led to, you know, a situation we didn't want to be in. you know a situation we didn't want to be in and it's like if you have the power to lash out like that's the villain that he's you know that he's taking that and turning that into causing more pain right it's good he's a good villain and a memorable makes for a memorable center of this story that is in a way kind of lighter than the paper palace like it has a little more air in it because like rita is less terrified in this episode than she was in the first one yeah she's under a similar threat but she's with rockford for most

of it i think until the moment of the car chase she is unaware that she is the target of a murder right before until then she just thinks she's under a murder rap and she knows she's innocent so she thinks my friends will get me out of this or you know like the truth will will come out uh and then there is a moment after the car chase where she clearly is shaken by what happens yes and and from that point on there's like a little bit of a i mean it's not like on all of her scenes but it just like okay we're dealing with an unstable element here but like logistically she stays with rockford basically for the rest of the episode which means that we get to have all of her comedic interactions with rocky yeah i guess that's what i mean when there's a little more air

like even like i find the stakes very compelling but i don't feel like they're an imminent danger yeah they're not like all this pressure yeah so it's a little more about let's see how this goes and less like how are we going to save rita uh and even worse how are we going to save rita from herself right which is not really and i mean jim wants to know what happened yeah but because he's a friend not because he's judging her. But like if this episode, if this, for whatever reason, instead of Rita with this doctor, let's say Angel was trying to talk this doctor into investing in something and was going to take him at the very beginning.

And so then this whole thing plays out as an Angel rather than a Rita episode, right? You would spend most of this energy trying to save Angel from himself. Yes. Right? Like Angel would make a bunch of decisions that would just make things worse, put him in more danger. And Rita's not doing that in this episode. And that's lovely.

And then we end the episode with jim understanding like why yeah he blew all that money because you wanted to right like that's what it comes out to in the end you didn't get cheated you didn't make a bad investment you didn't have it get stolen from you you spent it on something you wanted to spend it on yeah and like that's what else is money for uh yeah this is a good one yeah shockingly another episode it's also very good ah yay jim makes no money no but he did get a bite of danish yes uh but he doesn't wreck any cars he doesn't like so he's he's not out any particular amount of money. He doesn't even have to put up her bail. Yeah. And in a fun little twist, it's the mob that ends up bailing her out.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's one that just hangs to get everything hangs together just how it should. Everything feeds into other stuff in the episode. It's it's up there. Yeah, definitely. All right.

Well, I don't have three hundred thousand dollars to go spend on it on up there. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, I don't have $300,000 to go spend on a man, unfortunately. I don't have 300,000 pennies to spend on anything. But I do feel like we've earned our 200 for this day. What do you think? I believe so, yes. Well, then we'll leave it there. Thanks again for listening. And we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the Rockford Files.