The Attractive Nuisance

Nathan and Eppy discuss S4E14 The Attractive Nuisance. Rocky has started a road-side restaurant, but a mysterious figure keeps prowling around the place. Simultaneously, Jim is being threatened by a lawsuit from a guy who climbed onto his trailer to look at the interesting telescope that was up there. In trying to keep Rocky out of trouble and also track down why his roof was REALLY so interesting, both Rockfords are caught up in a knotty situation with roots in the Prohibition era mob/FBI conflict. Thankfully, a smooth Cannell script keeps watching this mess unfold entertaining and rewarding. Maybe an episode that actually is better the second time you watch it, but it has a lot of fun, noir-inspired characters, witty dialogue, and a strong set of motifs throughout that keep this messy mystery engaging.

In our second half, we discuss how expertly this episode uses motifs in order to keep everything coherant and feeling like it's part of a single piece, even while the storylines don't all end up with neat endings. We also talk about the use of characters that feel like they're from a different story, and how integrating them into a narrative works to create and then resolve tension.

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, 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.