Two Hundred A Day - Episode 70: Coulter City Wildcat

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

Nathan and Eppy go wildcatting with Jim and Rocky in S3E6 Coulter City Wildcat. Rocky is forced to sign over the mineral rights to a oil lease he won in a lottery he's been playing, and Jim is determined to find out why his dad was roughed up and what scam is at the heart of the matter. They take a road trip to Coulter City to unravel a stubborn mystery, and we have a great time riding along with them in their efforts. While we found the mechanics of the plot to be little obscure, this is a hell of a fun episode overall! Here's the link to the economics paper about oil leasing we talk about - To Trade or Not To Trade: Oil Leases, Information Asymmetry, and Coase (2019) 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 Brian Perrera Eric Antener Bill Anderson Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app 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.

It's Shirley at the Planet Pot. There's just no easy way to tell you this, Jim. We did everything we could. Your friend died. Welcome to 200 A Day, the podcast where we talk about the 70s television detective show, The Rockford Files. I'm Nathan Palletta. And I'm Epidaeus Ravenshaw. Today we are coming to you with a, I don't know, heartwarming, back to the roots kind of feeling episode. Season three, episode six, Coulter City Wildcat. I'm bringing up the IMDb now because that's how prepared I am. And I guess a quick, quick general note up here at the top. As longtime listeners know, we often have a lot of lag time in our episodes between when we record them and when they come out.

And this is actually, as it would happen, our first regular episode that we're recording in the now time of the global pandemic. Yes. Coronavirus, COVID-19 era. coronavirus COVID-19 era. And I don't know, I guess it just feels weird not to acknowledge that even though it kind of doesn't have anything to do with our show. Well, it might. It might have something to do. But yeah, I agree. Also, I'm very glad that you said it's the COVID-19 pandemic. Life is coming at us so fast that who knows when this comes out or when people listen to this, if there's like a second or third pandemic that we have to worry about. Okay, so before the asteroid strike, but after the rise of COVID-19.

That's where we're at right now. And so, you know, thankfully, we've always done this show at a distance. Yes. And we also both are self-employed and work from home. So in a weird way way it's not as disruptive for us as it is for a lot of other people but i i don't know i want to acknowledge that uh it's a really rough and weird time and um hopefully if you can get a little a little joy or escape or fun or whatever out of our meditations on a 50 year old television show.

Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. Yeah. And, you know, stay safe. Yeah. Practice your social distancing and wash your hands and tell your parents to do the same. I think that's some of what's going to come up in this episode. Difficult conversations with elderly parents.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot in this episode. So I picked this episode. Difficult conversations with elderly parents? Yeah. There's a lot in this episode. I picked this episode. Again, as we record this, we're kind of coming at the back end of our Malibu Madness little project, which was super fun. And also, I think

in revisiting a lot of the stuff that we hadn't seen for a while, kind of reminded me of just, I don't know, some of the aspects of the stuff that we hadn't seen for a while kind of reminded me of just i don't know some of the some aspects of the show in the early seasons that since we've been doing a lot of stuff with like guest stars and two-parters and stuff from some of the later seasons recently uh i kind of just feel like i haven't really gotten to gotten to play around and gotten to soak in very much recently so i was scrolling through the episodes we haven't done trying to make a pick and i was like all right we got rocky we got oil leases uh we got driving around okay i think this seems like a a good one to to go to for a bit of a little

heartwarming fun romp of an episode uh yeah i actually uh had a lot of fun watching this. So this one, you know, we go over from time to time my memory. And this one did stick in my memory a little bit more than I think I, like, saw things coming around each corner. And I was like, oh, this is the part where this happens or this is the part where that happens. And I don't know if that's going to color my commentary or not. But I'm definitely not going into this one with refreshed eyes, if you will. There was at least one moment where I made a note about something and then it turned out to be true. And I could not tell you if it's because the episode set me up to make the realization

or because I'd seen it before and I just kind of remembered. Yeah. Not that this is like a particularly labyrinthine plot counterplot episode. There are layers, though. It's a real mystery onion kind of episode. Yeah, yeah. It's a real stubborn mystery. Yeah.

Jim keeps poking away at it and it just refuses to reveal itself, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. But as we say, we'll get into it when we get into it. This episode was directed by Russ Mayberry. As has started happening, we are reaching the full corpus of some of our directors. This is not his last, but this is the sixth of his seven Rock for Files episodes that he directed. It is also our sixth of his seven that we have done.

Not necessarily in that order. Right. So there's one, one to go after this to complete the Russ Mayberry cycle. But in addition to Colter City Wildcat, we have also seen Hotel of Fear, Feeding Frenzy, Oracle War,

Cashmere Suit, Charlie Harris at Large, and The Countess, many of which had big appearances in Malibu Madness. That is very interesting. I had not put together Russ Mayberry's name with that. I mean, I guess

that's why we're doing this. That said, I feel like these are all very competently, perfectly well-done episodes, but they don't stand out for the directing necessarily. Right. Except for the bit in Feeding Frenzy, because that's where our hostage ice rink exchange was. And that was exquisite.

Yeah. The direction. So props to Russ for that one. All right. So this episode is written by Don Carlos Dunaway, which is a great name. He wrote one other episode of the Rockford Files and he also wrote the teleplay for Gear Jammers. But other than that, not particularly well represented in the show. Apparently just poking around.

His main thing in the 70s was a TV show called Kaz. You familiar with Kaz? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know. I've never seen it. He apparently created this show. It ran for one season, and it is a former car thief turned criminal attorney, Martin Kaz Kaczynski, played by Ron Liebman. I mean, I believe it existed, and also I probably watched it.

Those are my two facts for that one. Not a detective show, a lawyer show, but one of the many fun connections. In that era, I feel like there were a lot of shows that are about lawyers that were presented almost like a detective show format, right? Like, I mean, Perry Mason's a classic example of that, but the lawyer as a mystery solver. Right. The one user review on IMDb, which is a 10-star review, does say, best lawyer show after Perry Mason. Well, there you go.

Anyway, that's all fun and good. But what we're really here to do is get into our preview montage. I didn't have a whole lot of notes here because it was short and it hit me with all the important bits. We hear first degree murder mentioned. So we know the stakes here for, for Jim and, and I gotta be honest,

like I hear it, I write it down and then I forget about it until it shows up way late in the episode, lots of Rocky and then Rocky in danger. And yeah, those my uh takeaways from it uh did you have any particular takeaways from the opening montage uh just that my note about the last shot of it was a ominous hat man with a gun oh yes there's a shot of someone wearing a hat silhouetted in a doorway which i'm not sure if that shot was actually in the episode i mean it

was i know the scene it was in yeah there was an anonymous hat man that's all i wanted to add hello listeners we're going to take a quick break to say thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash 200 a day as always we extend a special thanks to our gumshoe level patrons this time we say thank you to shane liebling if you play online, you should check out his free dice rolling app, Roll For Your Party, at rollforyour.party. Jay Adan. Check out his amazing miniature painting skills over at

jayadan.com. Dylan Winslow, Dale Norwood, Dave P., and Dale Church. And finally, big thanks to our detective-level patrons. Check them out on Twitter, Eric Antenor, at Antenor, A-N-T-level patrons. Check them out on Twitter. Eric Antenor at Antenor, A-N-T-E-N-E-R. Brian Pereira at Thermoware.

Bill Anderson at BillAnd88. And of course, Richard Haddam at Richard Haddam. We follow them, too, at 200pod. Why become a patron? In addition to supporting the show and exclusive episode previews, our patrons get Plus Expenses, a bonus podcast where we casually chat about all the media we're currently enjoying. 200 a day will remain free to all for as long as we do it,

but if you want to help support us and get access to the Plus Expenses audio feed, you can become a patron for just $1 an episode. Help out the show by leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts, tell a friend who you think would like it and check out patreon.com slash 200 a day to see if becoming a patron is right for you. As this is a very Rocky episode, we start off with Rocky getting his mail. An episode about Rocky, not Rocky, the adjective. But yeah, go on. This is a very expositiony episode.

Yeah. So there's a lot, especially at the beginning, setting up our premise. So bear with us. But a lot of this thematically is revolving around Rocky feeling bad that he's old. Yes. Not being happy with his lifestyle, I think, maybe is the way to put that. And we start right off with that, with he's getting his mail. And what's in his mailbox? Social security check, Medicare form, flyer for retirement home.

Yeah. And Rocky remembers when he got real mail, like business offers. I was deeply curious about the kind of business offers people would uh receive in the mail like i mean we're going to get into uh the whole scam thing in a moment but i could not imagine you receiving a business offer in the mail that wasn't a scam uh like i don't get well i guess i do get business offers via email but most of those are scams too like it's just yeah yeah jim is with him jim and rocky they were going to go fishing but uh rocky just doesn't doesn't feel like going via email, but most of those are scams too. Like it's just, yeah. Yeah. Jim is with him. Jim and Rocky, they were going to go fishing, but Rocky just doesn't feel like going fishing.

Maybe that's part of the whole problem. All the fishing. There's got to be a better way to spend his time. Jim has a bag of groceries that he's carrying in for him. But when Rocky says that he doesn't want to go fishing after all, Jim should go have fun. He'll just, I don't know, sit around the house with his bad mail um jim's like all right whatever you say and gives him his bag of groceries uh leaves in the firebird we follow rocky as he goes into his house and then immediately gets jumped by two goons yes in a pretty pretty sudden and and terrifying fashion

it is violent. Well, first of all, I'm trying to look this up, and I may be wrong about this. Of the two goons, one of them, the larger one. I refer to him as the sloppy goon. Yeah. So he's played by Dennis Berkley. Now, I might be mixing him up with another character, another actor. I mean, he was on My Name is Earl, and I know how you feel about that show.

Yes. I mean, he played a character on the Dukes of Hazzard called Bubba. So that gives you an accurate mental picture, I think, of this guy. So he was in two other Rockford Files episodes. If he seems a little familiar, perhaps it's because he was the Nazi bartender from just another Polish wedding. So the guy I thought he was, he's not. Mickey Jones is who I thought he was.

All right. I am way off. Mickey Jones was in V, the television series. He was Michael Ironside's buddy who just ran around with Uzis because it was the 80 series. He was Michael Ironside's buddy who just ran around with Uzis because it was the 80s. This guy does have a long and storied career in television and movies, though.

You have seen him. He is our only named goon, I believe. There's going to be a bunch of goons, but he's Howard. Howard the Goon. Howard the Goon. He's the sloppy one. There's also Yellow Hat Goon,

who is much more trim and tidy, wearing a trucker hat and has a big belt buckle. They pounce on Rocky, slam his head down on the table and shove a paper under it and make him sign this paper that we can clearly see at the top says, Assignment of Oil and Mineral Rights. Now, here's the first moment where i'm like i don't know if i'm remembering this or i'm catching this right now but my notes are signing left-handed not that i know for a fact that rocky is right-handed i don't until this episode i had no idea uh playing the odds he's probably right-handed but the the way he signs it, it's how I would struggle to sign it if I didn't. The camera shows his very shaky scrawl.

Yeah. And if you're paying attention, you can see that he's doing it with his left hand. Yeah, same. I think I remembered that this was a plot point, and that's why I made a note of it. But it is something that's going to be mentioned in the next scene, right? So it is setting up a little bit thing to pay off. So he signs, they leave. And as they leave his property, they're laughing.

And you hear one of them say like, I can't believe he did that. Or I can't believe that worked or something like that. Rocky is enraged. He chases after them. They're laughing at him the whole time. They roll up their windows. He's banging on the window of their car and then as they start to pull away he goes to their back tire and cuts the uh the valve stem off with his like pocket knife so their tire deflates as they roll away and he chases them and then they get out of the car

and it's like rocky what was your plan i okay so i hate to see rocky mad but i love seeing him enraged. Yes. You don't want this to have happened to him. But then the indignation with which. There's the moment where he's inside the house. And they're outside and they're laughing about it. And you can feel that. That it's that that draws him out.

You just see him muster it. Like just like. I'm going to deal with these young men. He's like. Alright I'll fight these two. Yeah., large men who just beat me up. And of course, he is no match for them. And the yellow hat goon pistol whips him in the head and they toss him into the bushes while they get their spare tire out. And we end with a shot on, may not end with, but we get a clear shot of his like bleeding scalp slightly gory for the rockford files actually yeah it's interesting the the way this the way this resolves

here right so uh in the very beginning of this we just have this tension that rocky is not doesn't want to fish and if you're longtime viewers of the show, you're like, oh, like something is emotionally wrong with Rocky. But then he gets jumped. You don't want something to physically happen to Rocky. And then he gets angry. And then like each step, it kind of cranks up the dial on the I don't want to say stakes here, although it definitely there is a stakes thing because this guy draws a gun. Right. And that's a very clear signal to the audience particularly in the rockford files that this is serious business now even if he's not firing it it's less stakes and more like tension yeah and so each time it's just

like it's telling you this isn't funny anymore it's like it's like it keeps grabbing you by the collar and just staring you right in the eyes like no and then we cut to right well and i will say this is actually a really good little maybe subtle use of the preview montage because in the preview montage there's a shot of rocky with a big bandage on his head talking to jim yeah when we see him toss into the bushes with his bloody scalp it's like yeah but he's gonna be wearing that bandage and talking to jim soon right right right i don't think rocky's dead yeah i like i'm not concerned about rocky like getting like killed off or whatever but it is serious but i'm waiting to see where it goes next which is dinner with jim at the lobster cuddle and now i

am concerned about rocky and Let me tell you why. That pineapple drink. Should he be drinking that right now? I'm sure that that enormous pineapple with drink umbrellas poking out of it, probably not great if you're concussed, probably. Yeah. With a big head wound. It might be a virgin one.

They brought a separate one for Jim. So who knows? But this has got to be some fancy tropical drink. But yeah. I mean, and you know it's a fancy place because they're wearing coats and ties. Well, I don't know if Jim's wearing a tie, but Rocky's wearing a tie. And they're both wearing coats. So they're there for, you know, it's dinner.

All right. So here's where our first big batch of exposition happens. Yeah. So this is all in the context of Jim is worried about Rocky, obviously, and kind of has to draw out each element of what's going on out of Rocky because Rocky doesn't seem to think that anything is weird about any of this. This all also happens both at the table and then as they go over to the salad bar and start assembling their salad courses. We never see them get whatever they're eating for their main courses. I assume it's lobsters. I do want to just point out that the salad bar, because of the lighting and everything, is the salad bar from every seventies cookbook.

There's nothing appealing about this salad bar. And then of course, uh, in the day and age we live in, there is no sneeze guards. Nope. I did have a moment of like, Oh God,

Oh God, don't eat that salad. All right. So of course, Jim is, uh, concerned. Uh,

why did you chase after those guys who could have gotten killed? Um, what were they after anyway? And so Rocky thinks they might have been after his oil leases. What? This is news to Jim. He's been buying federal oil leases as an investment. The deal is the government offers chances at oil leases for federal property

at $10 a month to file for potentially getting a lease. But it's a lottery. You put your $10 down on a plot, on a parcel, and then if you end up winning it, you get the lease to it, and then, you know,

you do whatever you want. Jim's, I think there's a good line in here where he's like, if you want to gamble, why don't you go play poker, order a card or something like that but no rocky is 1960 ahead on the deal he's made 1960 dollars uh because of parcel 334 so he won this parcel uh his share of the winnings was two2,000. Or not the winnings. It's a little, I'm a little unclear on like technically how this all goes down.

Yeah. So I think from what I understand, I'm trying to think of the guy's name. Claude's the broker. Okay. So Claude Osric is getting a bunch of people to throw. Okay. So, okay. This is what Rocky describes.

Let me put it that way. Yeah, yeah. He has this broker, Claude Orzek. Claude gets tips and good info on what the good parcels are because he has contacts at an oil company. And the oil company will pay Claude for the leases. I guess it's less than they would pay if they just wanted to buy them or something.

The government set up here, which is a legit thing. This is the thing that Nathan has done some research on. And we read a very technical paper on it. So I'm going to get it all wrong. In order to promote oil exploration on lands that oil companies weren't immediately interested in, right? Right. So this isn't necessarily a great thing for the world and the environment, but whatever.

This is the thing that the government was doing in the 70s. They would offer up lotteries for this land. To get into the lottery, it costs $10. I put in my notes, what is that in today's money? So that I could look it up. But it turns out this study told us it's roughly $45 in 2017. I don't know what it means in 2020 because by the time you hear this, money might not mean a thing. Because nothing means anything, so who knows?

Rocky's doing this once a month. He's paying out $45 roughly a month, $10 his time, but he's on Social Security. That's a significant percentage of his monthly income. What's probably happening is that Claude here has a bunch of guys like Rocky that are all doing it to increase Claude's chances of winning the lottery on that parcel of land. And Claude is either telling these guys that he has an inside edge on what ones are going to pay out. And therefore, like, he's targeting those. Or what could also be happening in this scam is that Claude is just making himself a middleman. And if they happen to pay out, he just collects a percentage.

He doesn't put any money up. He's just, you know. Either way, this is a scam. I shouldn't say it's straight up a scam. I should say that it stinks of one. and it's clear that Jim can smell that. Right, exactly. So, yeah, so from Rocky's perspective, he's been putting in his $10 a month for these lease filings. Parcel 334, he won.

He was assigned the rights through the lottery. Claude has someone who was interested in buying the lease. And so Rocky signed over the lease that he won to that person. Claude got money and paid him his $2,000 as his percentage of that transaction. So Rocky has gotten $2,000 out of this cash. He has money. And he signed over that lease. So he doesn't have the lease. Except now these guys have come in and beat him up and made him sign this blank form for assignment of rights. So what is going on?

Jim wants to know how he got wrapped up in this flaky scheme. And Rocky responds, there's nothing flaky about the United States government. Yes. I wrote that down too. Now that Rocky's signed over the rights on this blank form, anyone else can take them.

And Rocky's like, this doesn't make sense. That was two weeks ago. And he already sold the parcel to some guy named O'Malley. Jim's like, well, this stinks of a scam, as you say. Yeah. There must be something here going on. But don't worry, Jim. Rocky's fooled him.

Because guess what? He signed with his left hand. And that means that signature is no good. That, uh, yeah. Rocky got him. Well done, Rocky. This is while they're at the salad bar. There's a beat and we hear crunching noises. And then we just have this wonderful

little, just one of the things that's like the family drama that is the Rockfords just continues as Rocky warns Jim. Oh, watch them. They're stale. No, no, no. These are croutons.

They're not stale. Such a good joke. It's very good. So it's after dinner. They're going to Jim's car. And Jim's just worried that those guys are going to come back once they, you know, once they see that that signature is a bad signature and they're not going to be able to use it or whatever. Also, oh, for a time when it mattered what your signature looked like. Yeah.

This entire episode rests on the premise that Rocky's left-handed signature would somehow invalidate the scam, which is the hardest thing to swallow about this entire thing i mean later on it becomes the truth um but at this point i think it it felt to me that jim was like you know oh my sweet summer child like but it does feel like later on in the episode that it's just a thing they can depend on and Rocky's safe because he did that clever thing. But I mean, like, if you could do that, you could do that, like, anytime you write a check and then just decide which ones you want to honor. Yeah, it doesn't seem quite right. There is still a chance that Rocky's in danger, right? And so he wants Rocky to let him deal with it.

He's a professional after all. And they have a great back and forth about his professional credentials in this area and whether Rocky's going to let him do it or not. And finally, Rocky says that he'll hire Jim like anyone else. He just says, you can't afford me. Yes. And Rocky says, what are you talking about? I just got all that money from my oil lease. Yes. Yes. in it somewhere. So if they end up coming out of this whole thing, making more than $2,000, he'll take a share of those profits. He'll take a percentage. And Rocky says, all right, 50-50.

And Jim doesn't. That's way too much. But no, Rocky wants to be partners. Yeah. And in the face of all of this, Jim, what's Jim going to do? Say no? So now we have Rockford and Rockford. Yes. Detective and dad. Well, and now we have the credits rolling over the montage of them driving to Coulter City. So we've talked about this before where sometimes the credits don't, you know, come up until later in the episode. And the entry for this episode in 30 Years of the Rockford Files talks specifically about that. Oh, because I do. I have things I want to know about this. Maybe this will explain it. Go on. So this is a quote from Charles Floyd Johnson, the producer. He's a producer for

the whole time. The way the stories were written, there was often a lot of important exposition at the beginning of the show, and we felt that it might distract the audience if they had to contend with the credits flashing while there was important dialogue or action going on. In those instances, we would wait until there was a break in the action, or some kind of transition sequence, where we could put in the credits without taking away from the story. And this goes on to say that this is a Roy Huggins influence. So Roy Huggins was the original creator of the show, along with Stephen Cannell.

Apparently, Huggins always advised his writers not to bother with writing breaks, like end of act one, end of act two, into their teleplays, because he believed that if the story was strong, it could be broken anywhere and still carry suspense. Nice. Similarly, it isn't necessarily important whether you show the opening credits at the top or several minutes into the show.

What matters is that the story is good and the picture works. Nice. And I thought those were both things that would resonate with both of us. Yeah, I would agree. Not agreeing with Roy, but agreeing with what you said there. I probably do agree with Roy. I just didn't. I wasn't thinking.

I don't necessarily disagree with Roy. I like his take on that. So here's the thing. We were talking about this being exposition heavy. There's first of several moments where the exposition comes in voiceover that feels like it was added after post right or in post or whatever you know like uh and it's not uncomfortable during the this travel montage with the the opening credits but a little bit later we'll get into it but there's a moment where it's almost like a still of Rocky's face while Jim is talking.

And I'm like, okay, all right. It does definitely feel like they're like, oh, we forgot to explain that. And we have to put that in. But maybe I'm wrong about that. But what was the name of Rocky's restaurant? Are you talking about his reference to the Gear Jammer Tavern? Yeah, that's not his restaurant. No, no, no, no.

No, okay. Rocky's Summit. Rocky's Summit, yes. So he references the Gear Jammer Tavern here, but yes, his restaurant in Attractive Nuisances, Rocky's Summit. All right, I just, I was like, wait a minute, hold on. Part of the voiceover during the credits, during this montage, is Jim asks him who turned him on to this scheme. And it was Harry down at the Gear Jammer Tavern, who Jim remembers as the guy who lost $500 on an astrology chain letter. And another element is the montage of oil derricks that they pass while Rocky is excited that one of those might be his.

Yes. So they arrive in Coulter City. There's a starting a motif of Jim wanting Rocky to stay out of trouble. He wants him to check into the hotel while he'll go meet this Claude Orzek and talk to him. This is the first time I noted it in my notes, but Rocky's got an excellent hat throughout this episode. It's in contrast to the hat I'm used to him and seeing him in. Maybe that's his traveling hat. It's his doing detective work hat.

Yeah, yeah. Jim poses as a Oklahoma oil man named Lyle Sayre to talk to this Claude Orzek. And there's a bunch of good just character patter. It's not really fast talk because he doesn't really need Orzek to do anything that he wouldn't normally do. Right? Yeah. But it's just it's just good pattern yeah i hate to interrupt you mr orzac but i'll tell you what i'd like for you to

do i wish you'd make a list of all the available leases and how much you want for them and i'm gonna get my car and i'm gonna drive right out there and stand on them that's how i buy all my leases mr orzac if there's oil under there i I can feed it. And I got to say, in my years of an expert as a television transcriber, there was a show, a reality show about wildcatting. I think it might even been called wildcatting, about oil prospecting. It's a wonderful adaptation, but also it's very much like these characters. These people really do believe they have magic powers. This story here, this is a gold rush story, right? This is people trying to jump a prospector's claim

and Rocky is the prospector. And I love this sort of modernized version of it. And again, showing the perhaps maverick Western roots of the Rockford files. This feels like a very, it doesn't say anywhere that Huggins was involved with this one, but this feels like a very Roy Huggins-y story. Yeah. And the writer did some of the teleplays for Toma, which I believe, if I remember right, was Roy Huggins' kind of failed project before this, I think. I wonder if there's that connection. All right. All that said, Jim and Rocky drive out to Parcel 334. It appears to be host to a bunch of orange groves.

There's a barbed wire fence on the property line. On the other side, they can see big sets of tire tracks and Rocky assesses them with a professional eye. I love this. Just anytime you can bring in Rocky's expertise because Jim is not dismissive of it, but he's like, oh, it's probably farm equipment, right? Like Jim doesn't catch this clue.

It's Rocky that's like, like no he knows the exact rig it's too big to be a normal farm yeah like it's some kind of specific hauling rig for very heavy things and i mean i personally don't know the difference but i do know that farming equipment could be really big and heavy so like but you know there are definitely differences and i trust rocky exactly um there's a no trespassing sign which rocky automatically uh respects But, you know, there are definitely differences, and I trust Rocky. Exactly. There's a no trespassing sign, which Rocky automatically respects. But Jim says, there ain't no one around. And then as he ducks under the barbed wire and gets his clothes caught on it,

then a goon with a shotgun just appears out of nowhere. Yes. And a hell of a cowboy hat. Jim plays innocent, like, oh, we were just driving and saw these oranges, and we sure love a cowboy hat. Jim plays innocent, like, oh, we were just driving and saw these oranges, and we sure love oranges for breakfast. And, you know, we didn't see the sign and all this business. The goon is not charmed. And so, you know, Jim ducks back out and, you know,

they go back to the car. And he does get into a question about, like, about the tracks, I think. Yeah. He said, like, we didn't see the sign. we just assumed there was a lot of traffic because of these tracks there's something along those lines and the guy says oh we've been locking and uh and then and then rocky says uh i guess you've been doing a little out of season honey no season on varmint it's yes it's good uh so there's this small okay it's not it's not a theme it's a motif let's say the ethical difference is between rocky and jim here right so in the earlier scene when when jim told rocky to check in while he was gonna go talk to claude uh he basically he told

he goes i'm gonna go find out how much that that parcel is worth. And Rocky's like, I want to go with you. And he's like, no, you check in or whatever. While he's doing that, he's going through his business cards. Oh, yeah. He pulls out his deck of business cards because he knows exactly the oil man he's going to use. It's not made evident in the scene, but being a longtime viewer, to me, I i'm like that's clearly a thing that rocky's going to disapprove of right there's there's no way rocky is going to uh be cool with him pretending to be someone else and then the posted sign thing again it like rocky's like oh it's posted it just

like that's not a barrier i think this comes forward again maybe we'll get to it yeah there's definitely at least one more thing with that yeah yeah and so this is the this is the the three-part bit right like it's it's sort of like the we're gonna build you up to this moment where where rocky gets to make this claim about jim's uh ethics and they can have it It is not the point of the episode. It's just a well-crafted under bit that's going on under bit being a technical term. Uh, the Rockford's leave and our, uh,

cowboy goon goes back to his truck where he makes a call into number one about a couple of fellows asking questions and he's instructed to follow them. Uh, so we cut to night at the motel, uh, Jim and Rocky are returning. The woman at the desk has incredible hair.

Yes. Just completely distinctive. She is the 70s. And this is important, as it turns out. But she's on the phone basically having like a gossipy phone call with a girlfriend or something. Yeah. I'm sure if I went back and listened to what she was actually saying, I would pick out this thing that actually does come back later.

But in the moment, she's just like talking on the phone. I'm paying attention to Jim, who's saying, you know, we'd like a wake up call at 6 a.m. Yeah. To establish that they're not going to go anywhere, right? We see them being watched from across the street from the truck as they go into their room and then turn out the lights. The guy in the truck takes a swig out of his beer and settles the hat over his eyes for his own snooze.

And then we go to the rear window where Jim and Rocky are sneaking out the back. And Jim whispers, we got to go rent a car. Now, the fate of this car troubles me so. We'll get back to it. But as Jim's volunteer bookkeeper, I'm fretting. This is a very frenetic episode for Jim's finances, especially towards the end. Yes, it very much is. So we cut back to morning, back at parcel 334, now in a rented car.

And Jim is wearing an amazing pale yellow windbreaker that is just one of my favorite. I think he's worn it more than one episode, but it's so good. Yes. So they scoot back onto the property and then Rocky spots kind of hidden behind some trees a well, an oil well. That must be why these guys wanted this parcel. They see that it's capped, so this well must be dry. But then Jim rubs the dirt off the pressure indicator, and it is at 7,000 PSI. So either it's stuck or there's still oil.

So Jim then throws caution to the winds and turns the big crank on the side of this well, and a bunch of oil comes shooting out. I have a question. I do want to say that this is well filmed. The sound in it is amazing. The sound in this scene is really good. He says 7,000

PSI, and you don't understand how humanly impossible it is to deal with that kind of pressure. It's so much pressure, yeah. And then he opens it up, and you don't understand how humanly impossible it is to deal with that kind of pressure. It's so much pressure, yeah. And then he opens it up and you're like, holy shit. It's this huge spray of oil just shooting into the trees. And they're shouting,

Set screw on the ground! I can't find it, sonny! I don't know. Did they just open an oil well? What kind of studio magic did they just open an oil well what kind of uh studio magic did they need to do to yeah this effect like is it an effect or are they just spraying orange trees with oil i mean i don't think it would be too hard to find i you know i feel like they're probably like we need to find a hidden oil well oh this one's great it's in the grove of orange trees or whatever uh if in fact this is a legit oil well that they just in the production

opened up but even that like they opened it up and the the wheel the the crank falls off which is i don't think improv'd it's an important part it is is a wonderful classic comedy routine. Yeah, because he's opened it up and now he's got no way to stop it. He's lost the... The leverage, yeah. Yeah, there's a pin. There's a set screw. Yeah, that has fallen off and he can't find it.

And of course, this is drawing the attention of... Of the goons. Yeah. Yeah, so two cars full of goons roll up. A truck, the truck that we saw in the last scene, and another car. This is important. Yes. And then our original goons plus two more goons with guns come out and spread out to find Jim and Rocky, who must be around there.

be around there uh while our main guy the sloppy goon is yelling to you know yelling at his guys to find the set screw to get this wheel back on and etc etc so this whole scene there's no score it's just the thrumming of the oil just yeah out of the well so it's pretty great i also want to say like i grew up in rural ohio and uh semi-rural wisconsin running through a field of any sort is impossible and i think they do a good job of showing that if it's a freshly tilled field it's just a nightmare because it you you're sinking into the dirt you just can't you know this isn't but this is full of ruts and it really does feel like that they're constantly negotiating and navigating the ground while they're trying to avoid being caught in that i i appreciate that uh one of our previously unseen goons with a pistol sees the rental car and kind of posts up behind a tree to like wait for them to come out but jim

sees him do that uh and you know he has a gun don't. So he wants no part of this. Yeah, yeah. So they hustle back to the goons' cars. Jim has to hotwire the truck. The cowboy, who had gone back to the truck to get the pipe wrench that he says he has to turn this oil off, sees them, yells, takes a shot at them with the shotgun. They peel out, and then car chase is on. Yes. I want to talk a little bit about this car chase uh before i do i want to preface it again by mentioning that we did malibu madness just before this so my tastes in car chase have been honed sharpened like a knife

yes and uh there's a bit in this one that i really enjoy. But otherwise, it's not that great of a chase. If I may, I don't know how you feel about it. I think I like that it was kind of like you said, how you see how hard it is to run across a field. I think this chase, you really do see what a pain in the ass it is to drive on these rural roads. The thing that matters here is that Jim took the truck and not the sedan. My first note was, oh, the four wheel. And it seems like that's Jim's choice. He doesn't see keys in either car and decides to hotwire that one, right?

Like this is a forward thinking. And then, you know, you wait for that to really pay off. And it does at the very end. But the crates, I guess, is the part where I was like... The crates is a little... So yeah, the chase is basically... We do have a nice long shot to see all the dust getting kicked up as these two cars race down these dirt roads. And Jim's first real play is he takes a steep embankment to go down to like where that switches back or something

yeah uh that the other car can't follow so it has to take a different route but it still catches up with them again jim busts through a wooden fence which is very exciting it's a little dukes of hazard but dukes of hazard comes later so maybe dukes of hazard is a little uh coulter city wild caddy and then he just takes this turn through this, like, open barnyard? Yeah. Where there's just a big stack of empty, like, apple crates or something? Probably orange crates, right? That would make sense.

Yeah. And this is for the preview montage where we see this truck just sideswipe through this giant pile of empty crates. Yes. It is very, like, all right, let's have a dramatic moment. Let's pile up all these empty crates and you can just drive through them. You know what? Actually, now that I think about it, probably what's happening here is that I am a jaded person living in the year 2020 where anybody programming any kind of video game with any physics engine is doing that. Like just stacking up blocks and then knocking them down.

You're like, oh, yay, that was fun. I made that happen whereas probably back then you literally had to stack up crates and and drive into it with a car so if you had the production company you might as well and enjoy the the spectacle of it but it to me it felt um yeah i don't know why i'm critical of it it just felt really it felt staged staged yeah which is a little out of tune with the rest of the chase which is very naturalistic yeah but whatever it's it's an exciting moment yeah it is jim then follows up going down a steep a steep uh cliff by going up one and we can see like the

tires on this yeah four-wheel you know drive truck going like almost all the way up into the chassis like you can really see it's only because of the suspension of this particular truck that you can make this maneuver work and then the sedan tries to follow and bottoms out isn't isn't tall enough and is stuck and so that's how they they lose their pursuers so um i liked it i thought it was a a fun chase just on the watching these these cars bounce around level oh Oh, no, I definitely agree with that. I think that that was the part that was like, okay, how do we describe the differences between the way the two involved in the chase

can deal with the situation rather than them just being the same thing going through? I think that's actually why I stuck on the crate because the crate thing was just the sort of thing that you would see in any other chase. So they lost their pursuers, but this whole thing is still confusing. Jim is speaking for the audience here as well, I think, right? If Rocky sold his lease two weeks ago, why are these guys still after his signature? What about this old O'Malley guy? Who is he?

So they're back to square one. And we have a joke in the cut here where they're going to need a new car. Yes. And then we cut to the new rental, which is a fancier looking car, I would say. And Rocky's saying that for a car that costs $23 a day, they didn't even clean out the ashtray. This is where I'm supremely concerned. Let me just take just a moment with the car rental thing. I did not rent a car in the 70s. I don't know what that's like. I've rentedely concerned. Let me just take just a moment with the car rental thing. I did not rent a car in the 70s. I don't know what that's like.

I rented a car more recently, and it was a bit of a nightmare. But they crept out of their hotel room in the middle of the night to rent that first car. Right. And that car has now been left in an orange grove. Yes. As far as they know, it's just been given up um how big is culture city does it have two car rental places can jim walk into the same one 12 hours later and rent another car having not returned the first i felt like the implication was that they went

somewhere else yeah both because they went to a different they had to go to a different town for this next scene i forgot what it's called, but we had an establishing shot of the sign. And also because it's such a nicer car. Right, right. So I thought the implication was like, we had to go to the fancy rental place because we already went to the cheap rental place. Anyways, these are the things I'm worried about when it comes to Jim.

So we have a reprise of Jim getting ready to fight with rocky about staying in the hotel yes but rocky gets him first uh we went through kind of quickly but the first time rocky was like insisting on coming and jim was like no uh the logistics are important to rocky you need to check in and make sure that our hotel is good while I do this. And it's Jim trying to give Rocky something to do so that he won't stay in his way. Right. And we see Jim gearing up to have that same struggle. But Rocky undercuts him by saying, you know, I think it will be better if I stay in the hotel room this time.

It might be dangerous if I walk around and those guys see me again. Rocky's wording it like it's not about him being afraid. It's about him, you know, like he'll ruin the case by being vulnerable. That it'll mess up their whole thing. Not that he's afraid for himself. But, you know, he just went through all of this. Right. And it's just like, yeah, maybe I'll just stay behind.

And Jim is relieved. Yes. So Jim is off to talk to the u.s geological survey uh officer who is in charge of these leases whose name is uh walter walter link um who is played by yes jerry harden who also played newt one of the mayor's committee yes the one that was so excited about all the celebrities that he thought he saw in the mayor's committee from Jailer Falls. There's something about this character in particular that he just does so well that I just like, I like this guy. To the point where I was suspicious of him because I liked him.

Should I like this guy so much? No, he's well acted. And this guy, another storied actor. Plenty of stuff out there. So he, so this is another kind of exposition he's seen, but it's also kind of the crux of the plot in a way. He recognizes Jim's name, Jim Rockford. So Jim's not running anything. He's literally like, I want to ask you some questions about your job, right?

Like a new citizen. So he recognizes Rockford because he just sent out the lease to Joseph Rockford to Rocky that morning. He's been on vacation so he's just now catching up with all the paperwork. So first of all, that thing about everything being settled two weeks ago, clearly that is not true because the lease was just sent out today. Jim

asks how it all works and so the deal is the Bureau of Land Management distributes these leases and runs the auctions, but they're not official, like the sales are not official until this particular officer, Walter, signs and stamps the lease document

and then he mails it to whoever, you know, won the lease. What address did he send it to? Taraki's P.O. Box right here in town. Yes. Which, you know, is news to Jim. And I assume is part of the scam, right? Yeah. So Jim confirms.

Anyway, right now, my dad holds title to that lease, right? Sure does. Unless he's assigned it to someone else, of course. In which case, the assignment becomes valid as soon as the lease is issued, which was this morning. Jim then asks him if he knows a Gerald O'Malley, who is the person that Rocky says he sold the lease to. And Walter Link says that no, he doesn't. But there's like a weird pause. And then we cut to Jim pulling up to a guy that we shortly learned is Gerald O'Malley.

Yeah. Jim knows how to find things out, so he finds him some other way. Yeah. As mentioned, our next scene is a cut to Jim pulling up to an old guy in suspenders chopping wood. He poses as a George Wheeler with the National Credit Institute. Mm-hmm. He's running a credit check on Claude Orzek. And so he wants to ask some questions. He's under the apprehension that they've had some kind of business dealings.

So this scene is great. I mean, there's some stuff earlier in the episode also. But from here on, I feel like everything gets really tight in terms of what each scene shows us and then what is important for later reveals. Yes. This scene, when you're watching, it feels like a, a throwaway gag.

And speaking of memorable side characters, Gerald O'Malley, uh, California survivalist is, uh, a hell of a guy, but we'll get to that in a second. Here's what happens.

And again, I would skip it, except that it's actually important later jim has his business card for you know national credit institute or whatever hands it to o'malley o'malley looks at it and says my eyesight's bad i can't really make this out but if you can read it that's good enough for me then jim puts on these little half moon glasses and looks at it he's like like he kind of plays along a little yes if you go to the imdb yeah that is the the picture they've chosen for this episode and uh it's adorable that's very good so uh yeah he's running this credit check but it's not that they've done business it's that uh they're they're cousins he's my my mother's sister's boy, right? Specifically, because I wrote this down, mother's sister's boy by her third husband.

It's like, oh, so have you bought an oil lease from him? And he says, no, I won't have anything to do with oil. In fact, he's been coming around and having me sign anti-oil petitions. Interesting. But I won't even use oil products. Won't be a party to it. Oil leads to war. Yes.

And now we get into Gerald O'Malley, California survivalist conspiracy theorist. Yeah. I mean, like, it's good that conspiracy has a little question mark after it. I spend a little time on this. So Rockford is humoring him. Yes, which is what Rockford would do anyways. Or rather, that would be part of Rockford's tact to get information he'd need to get out of it. But also it plays a little bit like, almost like a wink to the audience, right? But watching it, I'm like, I don't know.

This dude's on to something yeah i mean i didn't look into the specific conspiracy that he was spinning right right i would like to talk about mr or is that i'm a little confused any graduate physics student can rig one it may not be the most efficient bomb in the world but it don't't really matter. Even if it's a low yield, say, well, 10 kilotons. All it takes is a few strategically placed. Do you think that our government is going to admit that its own carelessness is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens? Yeah, that's not a very pleasant thought, Mr. O'Malley. He wraps up to, you want to see my shelter?

He sort of whispers it and it's great. I mean, again, he's conspiratorial, right? Like, hey, you want to see my shelter? And it just, and there's a pause there before Jim responds that it's almost like, oh. I need to go. But he says he'd love to, but not right now because he is running late. Maybe some other time. O'Malley just keeps talking at him the whole time as he gets back to his car.

And I think we do see the transition from Jim humoring him in character to Jim being like, I got to get out of here. Yeah. But he says Jim should build his shelter now because charity ends where survival begins, which is a great line. Yeah, I wrote that one down, too. And then after Jim leaves, we have a slow, ominous zoom on the entrance to Gerald O'Malley's underground bunker. Yes. Eppie, 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. 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 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 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. Back in their hotel room.

It's more of a motel, but back in their lodging like okay so o'malley doesn't have anything to do with this yes but rocky's lease that he signed over to him is still floating around out there somewhere and the two guys with guns are as jim says just country beef so from now on i'll be referring to our goons as beef yes there must be someone in charge of this whole thing yeah and Jim wants to find whoever it was that sunk the well on that property in the first place so we have a Jim talking to folks montage as we cut back and forth to our country beef

ominously pulling up in front of the motel room that Jim and Rocky are staying in. Our sloppy goon breaks in, busts in through the door, but nobody's there. But there's a note on the table. Rocky went to Pete's Cafe, and we'll be back in half an hour. We then cut back and forth a little bit. Rocky wanders

over to this cafe. Jim comes back to the room, sees the broken door, sees the note, runs back out to his car. The beef pulls up to the room, sees the broken door, sees the note, runs back out to his car. The beef pulls up outside the cafe. And at this point, I know that they seem to be driving a pretty nice car. Like before this, we've seen them in like trucks and kind of like generic sedans. Not only that, I had a moment where I couldn't tell if that car was their car or Jim's rental. Yeah, same. I do want to say something about the cafe thing,

and I think that happens before they pull up. I'm not entirely sure. Listeners, when you're watching this, if you're watching this again or whatever, please note the guy sitting at the counter drinking his coffee dressed exactly like the tables. Yes. That's very good. So Rocky sees them outside the cafe.

Yeah. Then we cut outside and we see them see him notice them and duck away from the window. So they run in and yell at the woman behind the counter, where's the old man? And she says that he ran out the back. So they run out the back and are looking for him. Then Jim runs in. Excuse me, I'm looking for a gray-haired man wearing a straw hat and suspenders. Out back.

Hey! No! It's alright, honey. This is my boy Jimmy here. We fooled him, Jim. Rocky pops up from, I think he was behind the door of the telephone booth? I think so, yeah. Good old Rocky bamboozled that beef

and managed to save his own hide, which is pretty great. bamboozled that beef and managed to save his own hide, which is pretty great. Bamboozled that beef. That's a great line. I had written down well-played Rocky. Also, I wanted to note the waitress's heart-wrenching no when Jim sees Rocky. She sells it. She is invested in Rocky's safety. You believe that Rocky spending any amount of time with particularly a working class person would definitely be friends with them almost instantly that they would care

that much about him. And as we quickly find out, Rocky doesn't even care about those guys because he's been talking to Phyllis and she needs a private detective. Yes. And so Jim's like, okay, great. Let's talk about this somewhere else.

I told her you're the best there is. So this scene I think was a great job. I mean, like we always talk about how great they do with tension, but it just has these wonderful beats. The goons are at the hotel and you're like, oh dear, Rocky's in the hotel. They bust the door open and Rocky's not there, but there's a note saying where Rocky is. And now if you're me, you're thinking, is he really there or is Rocky already playing some trick on them? And then you see that Rocky's at the restaurant and you're like, oh no. And then Jim shows up

and you think, oh maybe jim will get there to save him and so it's just like these these moments of revealing these uncertainties about the future until it kind of comes to it's just i think it's just well done i think it like uh it's a the whole thing's a bit it's a little comedic but in a good way uh and it still holds this tension and it still has you, like, not necessarily on the edge of your seat, but you're definitely like, oh, yeah, what's going to happen next?

I mean, some episodes, like, they balance comedy and menace, right, really well. This episode, it's not necessarily that there's a lot of menace, but it's that the villains of our piece, which so far are just these goons, are just the beef, they are playing everything very straight.

So they're counterweighting the comedy that we are getting from the situation and from like jim not being able to turn off the oil and uh rocky you know making this uh making friends with the waitress immediately like these are comedic beats that are uh kind of float along on top of this like solid core of these like these goons who really want a thing and are willing to do violence to get it and you do feel like as long as

Jim and Rocky just stay one step ahead they're clearly smarter but they don't know what's going on still so like it's a bit of a chase in that way so yes they do go back apparently back to their hotel i'm not quite sure where they are it doesn't really matter it might be phyllis's place um she hasn't seen her boyfriend in three weeks and that's why she needs a private detective

uh to find out what what happened to him and jim kind of cuts her off and is like uh let me guess is his name al and he's a roustabout and that that's true. How did you know that? So I have a note here. Did he overhear this from the woman on the phone with the hair? Yeah, I'm thinking maybe. But we also had a montage of him going around town asking people questions. Right. And I remember thinking at the time, who is he asking what? Well, he did like he set that up by saying he wanted to find out who who sank the well on that property yes yeah and and that is also definitely a moment when he could have gotten the information about the roustabats and stuff like that so but yeah

he has these specific things and she's so impressed that he he's already figured that much out and so he says that he might be able to help but she needs to go home now and she gives him her number and says she could be found at pete's rocky is impressed too he's like how did you know that well he says that nobody in town knows that there's a drill on that land like no one seems to know about that well which means that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks perhaps including disposing of the drilling crew, because that's a whole group of guys that has to do that. I think he says the woman with the hair from the other hotel,

on the phone, she was saying that her boyfriend was also missing, and that he had run off. She thought he'd run off or something, right? So there's all these roustabout boyfriends that are missing. So that might be part of the whole deal. And at this point point he thinks they need to go try talking to orzac again because he's all they have left i was thinking uh about this

after the episode had finished so this is not the case he's on right this is definitely somebody else who needs his help uh it is definitely about what he's doing but it's not like like in other episodes when someone else gets when someone gets hired or brought to him by rocky or whatever like this is the last we hear of it until the end when things are tidied up uh this gets solved along with everything else he's dealing with right um i guess what i'm trying to say is it's it's an interesting thing because it feels to me like uh rather than this being a case this is a clue this isn't a mystery uh this is a another element to the mystery that he has here there's not a mystery of phyllis's missing boyfriend right the fact that phyllis

has a missing boyfriend is now a clue to what he's already trying to figure out which is what the hell is going on with this land yes exactly it is interesting because the way it it it kind of uh follows the pattern of like a thing that would be more towards the beginning of an episode but it's placed here towards uh i guess the third act is that where we're roughly yes yeah i mean we're we're about to get into the our third act i think not that there needs to be one written into the script. Oh, right. Yes, exactly. But, yeah, it's a bit of a, like, they're throwing this thing in now, but it is all part of the same

plot. I also want to just say, of course, Rocky knows exactly how many men you need to drill. Yeah, I think he says it's like 20 men or something. Yeah, that's another lovely Rocky deal. Well, as we know from the Farnsworth Stratagem. Yes, right? Rocky knows all about oil drilling. Well, as we know from the Farnsworth Stratagem. Yes, right? Rocky knows all about oil drilling.

All right, so we go tonight to Orzek's office where they're going around the back and breaking in, kind of, because the door is already open. This is where we get the motif of Rocky's ethical stance coming up again, where he's like, you can't just break in there. It's like, well, the door's already open yes exactly um rocky's clearly uncomfortable so he stands like 10 feet away he social distances yes uh and just watches jim so that he's not quite participating even though he's clearly participating and we see jim c orzek sitting in his chair, eyes closed. He's dead. Then we have a cut for a commercial break. We come back to Jim going through a filing cabinet and there's no folder in there for parcel 334. This is the part where we have a tight shot on Rocky's face and we hear Jim positing what he thinks is going on. Right away we this uh tension between rocky and jim where rocky wants

to leave and jim wants to keep digging and i think that's why this close-up stands out so much because then jim is starting to uncover things and then he starts positing what's going on and while he's doing that it's a close-up of almost still Rocky not reacting to him and specifically not acting like he needs to leave, but more of just like, hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, he is the blank canvas on which we can hear this supposition. I feel like what probably happened in the production here is that they filmed it all and they were done, and then they were like, oh, we need to explain something yeah like i said there a little a few elements earlier that felt a little bit like that and i think there's even one after this that happens where it just feels a

little bit like okay here's a moment where we have a camera on someone who isn't the person talking we're just going to put in more voiceover from the person talking just to get a little bit more. It's not it's not horrible. It does feel. Yeah, it feels a little like, yeah, put together in post a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah.

So Jim's supposition here is that Orzek and a silent partner must have been running a con to rip off his oil leases. That's the only thing that makes sense. And now the partner has turned on Orzek. We cut to a police car and we get a very specific call. Yes. Two x-rays, zebra, and any unit in the vicinity. Identify and handle 211-4654 McAfee.

Claude Orzek's office. First floor. Handle code three. Right. So this is more of what I'm saying. Like the voiceover stuff, maybe even to a fault. I think this is a of what i'm saying like the voiceover stuff maybe even to a fault i think this is a little like over explained not not just because of this where it goes into incredible detail about where this break-in is which i guess could make sense if like they were being set up

but they're not really it's kind of yeah an accident of timing uh but then they replay this again the next time we see the police car like just to make sure in case you haven't been paying attention they're at the place the cops are going um so we go back uh jim says that so o'malley said that orzac was always having him sign petitions but he had such bad eyesight he couldn't actually see what those papers were there were probably blank lease assignment forms so orzac has his clients sell them to O'Malley. Then he just signs his own name and gets them back, quote, from O'Malley. And then he owns the leases again.

Sure enough, he finds just such a form in another filing cabinet. So this is paying off the whole thing with the business card, right? Yeah. It's weird because it seems very loose in the way that we were just talking about with the voiceovers. But then it's also very tight with the longer running bits. Yes. So they find just such a form. So there's a blank form with O'Malley's signature on it.

So now all Rocky needs to do is sign his own name to this form. And then he'll get the rights back from O'Malley that he signed over to him originally. Right. And they'll get his parcel back. So whoever killed Orzek must not know about the O'Malley scam, because otherwise why would they be doing all this? Yeah. They're probably heading out to O'Malley's now

to get him to sign the parcel back over to them. We'll go back to that in a second. So Rocky wants to leave, and Jim's like, no, no. He goes to a phone book gets o'malley's number calls him and then claims to be from the county self-defense unit now government agencies have informed us that the che govera unit of the alf is planning to detonate a jerry-rigged nuclear device in Bakersfield unless some federal prisoners are released by daybreak this morning. Oh, wait a minute.

What's the yield, man? What's the yield? Am I in the kill radius? And he doesn't have to do much selling of this. And soon enough, O'Malley yells, Oh, shut up! I got a million things to do here! Rocky says that it's not, that wasn't very nice.

Rocky specifically says that's the dirtiest trick i've ever heard you pull and i think this is the culmination of that under bit that we were talking about where we just keep touching on the the fact that rocky is not aware of the day-to-day the everyday things that jim does as part of his business. Yeah. That, that Rocky would obviously not approve of until he got used to them or whatever, but like currently does not approve of. And in fact, we do get this moment where Jim justifies it.

He says that man built the, that bomb shelter to save his life. And that's what it's going to do. We're just helping him save his life here. And then we end the scene with, they try to leave, but there's already a police car in the back alley. They try to go out the front

and a sheriff of some kind arrives, sees the dead man in the chair behind them, and has him lay down on the ground. They have been caught, presumably, in the act. But, thankfully, we see O'Malley getting to his shelter

just as the beef shows up and they come running up to him with guns which i assume is exactly what he's afraid of so he jumps down there and closes the hatch and then we have again from from like a real kind of looney tunes cartoon kind of moment where they're banging on it with the butts of their guns yes and then the the sloppy goo and the main guy throws his hat down in frustration. It's good. Good old Mallory. He's safe.

All right. So the thing I wanted to, I don't know if we need to belabor this. Belabor away. So from the perspective of our bad guy, whoever they are, because we still don't know who that is, who this plot is being run by. Right. Because the beef is just the country beef they haven't made this plan so they knew that rocky won the oil lease so they went to rocky's to beat him up to make him sign a form to get the lease back to whoever but rocky had

already signed the lease over to o'malley so they apparently didn't know that until like now-ish. This is my guess, but I'm probably having the same trouble that you're having. So now they're going to O'Malley to get the lease that Rocky signed to O'Malley over to them, whoever they are. Yes. So they know about the oil on the land. Why or how or whatever, they know about the oil on the land why or how or whatever that's a little whatever um and then their first instinct is to go to rocky to get him to sign it over but it turns out that that doesn't yeah like you said like he had already signed it over to o'malley wait did he sign it over not o'malley but um well no he said that he said that he he sold the lease to o'malley okay and that's who he got paid that's and then claude paid him from that deal right

and then on claude's end it never goes to o'malley just goes to claude right so claude claude's the one who actually has the lease form that rocky originally signed over except that that's not in force yet because it hadn't been issued by the clerk because he was on vacation. Yes. It's tangled. It's tangled and we're overthinking it a little bit. Fundamentally, this is that Claude is running a scheme.

Right. It seems like Claude is trying to work both ends. Yeah. And now his partner in one of the ends has killed him because this particular land does have oil on it, as opposed to the others, which were just part of a scam to get money from. I guess that's the thing I'm wondering. Or is Jim wrong about the partner part? That's the thing that's up in the air for me. I ended this thinking that there was Claude and then another scam that just with the country beef that overran Claude.

I think that makes more sense in terms of what we actually see in the episode. Yeah. It's just Jim's supposition here about the silent partner. Yeah. That makes that more complicated. It does. So I don't know if that's like, no, that's the story and Jim is telling us or if that's like an assumption that Jim got wrong. This is where the layers come in because like Claude's scam is already complex in and of itself because I don't think the country beef have anything to do with Claude.

Right. We are just belaboring this. But I think what's happening here is that Claude had a scam going that was a little complex and would have been juice enough for an episode but the the instigating moment comes from yet another scam uh that will spoilers we'll find out is from a guy who works for the oil companies and it just completely barrels over Claude's scam I do want to note that in no way does this make me like this episode less. Right. Yeah. No, this isn't like, oh, God, they messed up here.

For me, I abstract it to scam A and scam B in my head so that I could just keep going. But yeah. So O'Malley is safe and Jim and Rocky are in jail. Thankfully, Beth Davenport makes it. Yay, Beth. Jim wants to know how they can possibly be facing a first degree murder charge with no murder weapon. The DA is saying they must have had an accomplice who escaped with the murder weapon and they're all equally culpable. It doesn't seem like that will really stick.

But even if they get charged with breaking breaking and entering that's still a year in county jail and you know jim doesn't want to face that either yes so he has a plan talk to the da if he bails us out on the you know sets of bail for the breaking and entering uh i will produce the murderer and the murder weapon within 24 hours he drops the charges against us and gets his real murderer this doesn't seem like it'll fly, but Jim has a very specific plan for catching this murderer. It's common practice for people who own the parcels to auction them off once they know what they're actually worth. So since no one else seems to know that there's already oil on parcel 334, the only one other than them who knows that is whoever's behind all this right whoever

has been setting the beef around to try and get these signatures and whatnot right because that's the whole point this is oil so they'll have an auction and whoever to demonstrate for us through rocky if you wanted to buy that and i said five thousand what would you bid six thousand and then i say seven i see if we both know then I'll keep bidding. That's right. That says she'll run it by the DA. And then we cut to a VFW haul. Now, I'm going to start this off by saying this is a gratuitous scene, but I love every moment of it. Yeah, this scene is super fun. There's no reason for Jim to be the auctioneer, but... that it rules that's why yes exactly and rocky and beth in the audience oh it's a this is a really fun scene jim uh announces up top that in addition in

addition to the sell price uh joseph rockford will retain a five percent royalty on you know whatever continuing worth the land has, and then the bidding begins. So it's an auction scene. We've seen this auction scene throughout television and movies. But what's remarkable about it is the timing's really good, and what it does is it gives us three people that it keeps focusing on, that keep bidding. And it's like, all right,

which of these three vaguely suspicious-looking men in different ways is it going to be? To the point of it goes to one and he bids and then Rocky goes, that's got to be the guy. And then it goes to another one and he bids, oh, that's got to be the guy. And you feel like Rocky's going to blow it. Yeah.

Like it definitely feels like Rocky's going to just say it too loud and that's going to scare the guy off. So the bidding gets up to $101,000, then $105,000, then $110,000. And Rocky this whole time is like, every bid is like $50,000, $60,000. Yeah. There's a long pause. And then finally, an older man in the back bids $120,000. Jim very slowly pulls out the going once,

anyone else want to bid, et cetera, et cetera, going twice. You know, before he can finish the auction, plainclothes police pop up out of the auction crowd and say that this older, well-dressed man is under arrest. He runs out the back and tries to jump into the truck where the beef are waiting. Yes. But the cops follow and shoot out the truck's tires.

Yeah, it's like a legit shootout. Like, I was a little surprised by that, but yeah. And then our original hat-wearing goon from the very beginning comes out with a gun and he gets shot. It's very serious. We do see an ambulance in the next scene, so apparently he, you know, survives or whatever. He can come back and swear

vengeance on right jim we don't get a single line from our villain we just see him going off in handcuffs yeah and then this sheriff going through his wallet and saying uh you know get a load of this his name's thomas snowcroft in charge of development for wesco the wesco but they got gas stations every two every two blocks i've had a credit card with him for years yeah rocky's trust in the establishment whatever it is it's i love it when it's get when it gets shook uh so yeah so he's in charge of development he must have had some kind of quota for new oil lands and resorted to strong arm tactics to fill this quota. And apparently that is the,

uh, that that's apparently who our bad guy is. Yeah. Now he's gone. Now he goes to jail and we never hear him again. Uh, we end the scene by going out to three 34 with the whole crowd where Jim demonstrates that there is in fact,

active oil on this land and restarts the bidding at five hundred thousand dollars it's uh there's a great bit right in the beginning where he's like so uh this is seven thousand pounds of pressure so i'll have to ask you not to smoke yeah and again like it's just i mean probably they probably just open an oil well it's impressive it's like you really feel it all right and now we get to our big victory celebration let me just say that for the next seven bullet points i just write down this has to go wrong when's this shoe going to fall uh so we cut from the five hundred thousand dollar bid we cut to jim pouring champagne it's a big party uh everyone's drinking champagne and we

get like a little it's almost like the uh credits montage and at the end of like a 80s like teen movie or something yeah yeah so it's like phyllis comes up her boyfriends come back they're happy yes um o'malley comes up uh he has no hard feelings even though the police cut up his bunker with jackhammers. He'll just have a new one built in a couple days. Okay. Jim wants to get a picture with his lawyer. Yeah. Just a lawyer. My special lawyer friend.

Jim and Beth, their whole thing. Yeah. So Jim and Rocky get their picture with Beth and then she runs down the numbers. Well, let's figure on a thousand barrels a day. Okay? That's reasonable. All right, at $12 a barrel, that's $12,000. You figure maybe 10 wells, $120,000.

Now, the operator gets 30%, and 35% goes to each of you, which would be $42,000 apiece. $42,000, pretty good. You know, it's funny. Some way I had the thought that it might be more the way that everybody's carrying on and everything. Dad, that's $42,000 per day. That's $42,000? For each of us. That's before expenses.

Oh, naturally, and taxes. Oh, that goes without saying. I think I need some more champagne. That's before expenses. Oh, naturally, and taxes. Oh, that goes without saying. I think I need some more champagne. I legitimately was thinking about translating that into today dollars, but $42,000 a day, whatever. Like, you all know that that's a lot of money. We have a great little heart-to-heart moment with Rocky and Jim where Rocky says that working together these last few days in this partnership, well, it beats fishing. And then Wally, the USGS officer, comes in in his uniform, and we know something is going to happen. Yeah. Again, I don't know if it's because I remember this, but it's just to me, it's like, he's got a smile on his face. He's a nice guy,

but this is bad news walking in the door here i remember the first time i watched this as the scene started yeah and as they go through how much money it is and stuff i'm like oh there's no way like yeah there's just no way so jim hands him some champagne and then he asks so when did you sink that well and jim says well the well was already there. Good bit of luck. Rocky's like, I was lucky. But here's the thing.

He didn't issue the lease until yesterday. And the well was on the property before he issued the lease. And the whole deal with these leases is that it's land that the government has determined isn't already productive. Yeah. And he must have missed the well since it was hidden when he went out to do a survey however already productive. Yeah. And he must have missed the well since it was hidden when he went out to do a survey however long ago. Yeah. So since it already has a structure on it,

I mean, he doesn't spell this out, but I guess it's like it should never have been put up for auction in the first place. It's like ineligible or something. Otherwise, why do we even have this program? That kind of defeats the purpose. And he just kind of shrugs. And then he says, thank you for the champagne and the man appears with a 192 dollar bill he's like in the background while all of this is is dawning on them you can hear him asking for rockford and

it's it's great because it just feels like the impending doom. That's it. That's the next bit. That's the capper. So, yep, they're going to need to pay this $192 bill for all this champagne. Jim reaches for his wallet and then Rocky also reaches for his. And we end with a look between them and Rocky says, partners. Freeze frame on Jim going, yeah. Yeah. End of episode. For the next Malib malibu madness and i won't remember that if we do rock perditionist this ending is supremely not not the like you were saying the

80s movie like everybody coming in and everything getting tied up by a bow but from the moment of beth running the numbers yeah to to partner's half, that is classic Rockfordishness. Yeah, it's extremely good. All right, so I think my last loop around to the actual plot here, right? Okay, let's do it. So it is never determined where that well came from. Right. At some point, someone built a well here.

So the oil guy, Snowft i guess so if he's the oil company contact or whatever that um orzek has for his lease scheme or con yeah and then snowcroft independently discovers that there's already an oil well on that parcel. That's where the conflict comes in because it's after, because it must, he discovers that it's there after. Right. They've already completed the sale where, the scam where Rocky sells his lease to O'Malley and it goes back to Orzek. The thing about what's going on is I'm trying to suss out who's making money where. Right.

Both the country beef costs money right and uh to sink that well they need 20 roustabouts and there's gear and everything else and they have to do it in quiet so they have to send them they apparently sent them elsewhere they didn't execute them um so here's the thing though i think that in the end, they're just like roustabouts. Like, I don't think the beef sunk that well. No, no, that's what I'm saying. Like, I think the beef is one section of money that you have to pay for. Right. I think the roustabouts, you would have to use them and then move them somewhere else

where they didn't tell their girlfriends they've moved. Right. But I guess what I'm saying is I don't think that Snowcroft sunk the well. Like, I think that whole thing with the Rouseabouts must have been, I think that just happened. Like, that was just a thing that coincidentally was also happening. Well, then who sunk the well? That's what I'm saying. I think that is, I think that that's the whole thing is someone sunk the well.

Right. Nobody knows who. Hmm. That's interesting. the whole thing is someone sunk the well right nobody knows who that's interesting uh because otherwise why wouldn't snowcroft just bought the oil lease when it went up for auction yeah i guess he had to i guess it went up for auction so they had to win it first it's lottery that's what i meant so they didn't win the lottery right yeah rocky won the lottery and then typically if you win the lottery you put it up for

auction right but no one knows there's a well there except for zelcro right so the question is who put the well there so because whoever put the well there took the trouble to cap it off well to cap it off and to to hide the roustabouts because that was this other mystery in the background is that these girlfriends kept losing their boyfriends. And I guess that's what I'm saying is I think that was unrelated. I think that was just a bit. Okay, that's interesting. I think the truth of the mystery

such as it is, which we're just speculating now. I'm saying like someone sunk that well like five years ago or something. Like it's been there forever. Yeah, it looks like it's an old well. And so they capped it off because it wasn't producing but now it is and they just whoever had it thought it was dry or something like yeah that's what i think i think we have to turn to our listeners for an answer on this one because i i yeah i am confused i guess that's what i'm saying is it's a stubborn mystery in the sense that like the order of events of why people are doing what they're doing is a little not synonymous with what we find out over the course of the episode.

And that's fine because I really like this episode. Like this is one of those where I'm being a little critical because this is what we do is we overthink the plot. But that doesn't mean that it's not a good episode yeah if you take everything at face value it all like it all hangs together totally fine it's just trying to figure out when exactly the motivations kicked in and who knew what when that it gets weirdly complicated i don't know it's it's good i like this one it was fun yeah no it was a lot of fun and it is like you definitely have this question afterwards. If you look too much, I don't think the scam falls apart when you look too closely at it.

It isn't solved. Right. Exactly. There's, there's still mystery there. Yeah. But overall quite enjoyable. Yeah, for sure. So, uh, yeah.

So I sent you some, not some, not homework, but a paper that i found and we mentioned it earlier but the reason i sent it to you was and i'll link this in the show notes it's a it's an academic paper from from oberlin college and also the u.s department of justice and i'm unclear on what it's for. Yeah. But it's essentially an economics paper about information asymmetry and reallocation of resources under asymmetric information, which is a very game theory kind of thing. Anyway, it's called To Trade or Not to Trade, Oil Leases, Information Asymmetry, and Coase. He's an economist. Yeah, I Googled that. i'm not a smart person don't don't mistake me for that but what i found interesting about this was that they go into the actual background about oil lease uh lotteries and it basically confirms that the premise of this

episode was a hundred percent a thing that happened yes yes and i'm not entirely sure but it feels like they're also saying that it's flawed uh that or somebody some people have figured out how to game it because oil companies managed to make more money off of it than normal they're using it as like a case like a real world case study to test these theorems, I guess. Yeah. Right. Like they're saying, if we run, if we, if we run these equations based on information symmetry and information asymmetry,

I, if everyone bidding knows what everything's worth versus if everyone bidding doesn't know what everything's worth. Right. Uh, here's what we predict the outcomes to be. And then they compare that with the historical data, uh, which they use, uh, leases in Wyoming, doesn't know what everything's worth right uh here's what we predict the outcomes to be and then they compare that with the historical data uh which they use uh leases in wyoming but it's

the same time period um it's a 1975 to 1978 which this episode came out in 1976 like yeah yeah like it's exactly this thing to the point of this entry fee was ten dollars well i mean 1975 it probably when this was written was just a new thing they had introduced yeah i guess it started in the 60s and apparently they stopped in the 80s because auctions were are better than lotteries uh yeah but yeah uh so it's super interesting just because it's like oh this is I think we've we've talked about this from time to time. I remember specifically talking about it with in Gear Jammers about the like oil shock and the trucker, like the trucker strike and stuff like that, which was referenced in the episode and was also a contemporaneous historical event. just kind of being like how deeply rooted in actual things happening in America. Some of the episodes were weird and something you'd never think about. So we'll link in the show notes.

It has a bunch of math, but the, the background section is what I was super interested in, in checking out to the point where they have a footnote referencing how the lottery system ended in 1987 in favor of auctions. One of the main reasons for this change was to combat middlemen from, quote, filing services who charge excessive fees to file entry cards on behalf of unsophisticated parties. For example, a $250 filing fee might be charged to a retiree in Florida with the middleman keeping $240 and

sending the $10 fee in to the Bureau of Land Management. So yeah, so to the point of there were scams. Yeah. And it's interesting because Claude's scam is not precisely that scam. Like Claude is charging only $10. His is a numbers game, I suspect. Yeah, his is he's brokering a bunch of people to bid.

game i suspect yeah his is he's brokering a bunch of people to bid and then no matter who wins he gets the lease by doing it through this fake o'malley assignment it's like doing a uh uh the office lottery like we're all gonna go in on lottery cards because the mega millions is so big and then not go in on it you because you're the one organizing it and then taking a percentage of it we're going to the office. Every come in on it, you buy all the tickets. One of them wins. You say, you tell everyone,

Oh, we only won this much, but you get the millions from the actual winner. Yeah. So, you know, fun times. Was there anything in there that,

that as a more, uh, Matthew individual, unfortunately I didn't see it until this morning. Uh, so I didn't have a chance to play with the number. Not that I think they got their numbers wrong or anything like that. But like it was, like I said, above my pay grade. It is by far more complicated than anything I actually can follow.

It's so intriguing that it's so exactly what this episode's about. But it definitely is looking at it from uh dealing with a particular theorem that i'm not familiar with i i have i have a thing when it comes to economics where the early economics i learned i was like this is clearly a lie and doesn't follow what i understand from game design and uh from that point on anytime an economics thing comes up i'm like is this built on a weird scaffolding that doesn't work my hope is that this paper says yes it does and that feeds my confirmation bias so that'll be in the show notes if you want to check that out but uh yeah fun stuff on the actual episode level despite the overthinking of the mystery, I really enjoyed it. I wanted it to

be a bit of a lighter hearted, back to the roots kind of episode. And even though it was, it had some weirdly graphic violence for the Rockford Files, it was very limited and I kind of forgot about it. So I feel like I got what I came for. Yeah, no, it was good. It was a fun romp. And I even, I enjoyed our little Twitter exchange. I don't know why it abused me so, but it felt very, very Twitter. I feel like a lot of the individual parts, you can kind of parse to death, but it actually holds together better than you would expect.

It's a bit of a greater than the sum of its parts episode. If you're coming to 200 a day for a review before you watch the episode, I think sometimes our dissection of the episode can come across harsher than what our actual review of the episode would be. This is definitely a case of that, right? Like my review of the episode is golden.

Like it is a lot of fun well worth watching who doesn't want to watch rocky tagging along with jim as they try to work out some kind of weird oily scam and like rural california who doesn't want to see that yeah when that bus pulls up i'm on board yeah uh but yeah because we enjoy it when then we spend some time drilling down into pun drilling down into things that maybe we shouldn't maybe we don't own the rights to yet any reminder in case you were not

aware the Rockford Files is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and IMDB TV which is Amazon Prime but you can watch it for free there if you don't have Prime. So we're back in the golden age of check out some of these episodes if our conversation about them piques your interest. Yeah, that was the thing that people kept reminding me.

When I shared the photo of the DVDs, people were like, I can watch that for free. And I'm like, yeah, please do. I think that's about all I have to say about the Coulter City Wildcat. As always, if you enjoy our conversations and want to help keep us going, the Patreon is the best way to do that at patreon.com slash 200 a day. And I know that we sadly neglect the Twitter account every couple months. Yeah.

But we are there at 200 pod for uh we'll we will eventually get back to you i i promise yes well that's it for this episode but we will be back next time to talk about another episode of the rockford files