Episode 35: The Empty Frame

Nathan and Eppy discuss S5E8. We finally meet Angel's brother-in-law Aaron as he's being feted as the new Police Commissioner - but a cadre of socialist revolutionaries breaks up the party and steals the art of the hosts, John & Jeff, right off the walls! Jim is hired to track down the paintings while the police conduct their own investigation, but each thing Jim discovers leads to new questions. He has to untangle a dense web of motivations to solve this one, an effort hindered by Angel's newly-found position of influence, but aided by Lt. Chapman's fall from grace... it's a great episode! Funny and emotionally impactful, well-structured and full of great characters. Recommended! In our second half, we go deep into the idea of "status" among and between characters. This is a feature of the show that we touch on often, but this episode has a host of fluctuating status plays from beginning to end, and we break down what that means for a piece of fiction, common patterns, and how to "activate" the energy of a story by using changes in status. Want more Rockford Files trivia, notes and ephemera? Check out the Two Hundred a Day Rockford Files Files! Support the podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/twohundredaday. Big thanks to our Gumshoe patrons! Check them out: Richard Hatem Victor DiSanto Jim Crocker - keep an eye out for Jim selling our games east of the Mississippi! Shane Liebling's Roll For Your Party dieroller app Lowell Francis's Age of Ravens gaming blog Kevin Lovecraft and the Wednesday Evening Podcast Allstars Mike Gillis and the Radio vs. The Martians Podcast And thank you to Dael Norwood, Dylan Winslow, Bill Anderson, Adam Alexander, Chris, Dave Y and Dave P! Thanks to: zencastr.com for helping us record fireside.fm for hosting us thatericalper.com for the answering machine audio clips spoileralerts.org for the adding machine audio clip Freesound.org for the other audio clips Two Hundred a Day is a podcast by Nathan D. Paoletta and Epidiah Ravachol. We are exploring the intensely weird and interesting world of the 70s TV detective show The Rockford Files. Half celebration and half analysis, we break down episodes of the show and then analyze how and why they work as great pieces of narrative and character-building. In each episode of Two Hundred a Day, we watch an episode, recap and review it as fans of the show, and then tease out specific elements from that episode that hold lessons for writers, gamers and anyone else interested in making better narratives.