Episode 19 - Alex Tastes Death And Finds A Nice Restaurant

Weird being way media night, mister Walters is see that guy with it now he's an actor and the only camp driver in his place. Hello and welcome to night mister Walters Taxi Podcast. I am HP, and with me as always is Father him alone, Fall him Alone? How are you this evening? No fares, that's not too good HP.

This week we are talking about Taxi Episode nineteen, Alex tastes death and finds a nice restaurant. This was written by Michael Leeson and directed by James Burrows. Of course, a reminder we are doing these shows in broadcast order and not in order of filming. So for this episode, we begin in the garage as Louis is giving out the cab assignments and Bobby announces that he's going to go grab some breakfast. Hey, I have to interrupt.

I'm sorry. Oh sure, go for it, yes, necessarily. This was written by Michael Leeson, right, Yeah, he wrote The War of the Roses, did he Yeah? Obviously there's the DeVito connection right there. Divida directed that film.

Yeah, but he also wrote a classic HP, the Walter Robin Williams comedy classic The Survivors. When you said Walter Mathow. I was first thinking, oh, did he do grumpy old men? Did he do hopscotch? What did he do?

No? I, you know, And I really liked War the Roses. I remember seeing that in the theater. It was a good movie. It was very dark.

We're beginning in the garage. Louis giving out the cab assignments and Bobby announces to everybody that he's going to go grab some breakfast, and the rest of the cabby's start to follow him out. First of all, you're jumping over a bunch of stuff here. The score, the opening score is really discoie with lots of horns. We haven't heard that one before.

That's unusual. And then this is apparently a really big night at Sunshine Cab Company. They've blown their entire background performer budget here in this first scene. It's packed. Man, it's like Grand Central Station all of a sudden.

There. I have some notes about some of the background extras. You're right, they really did go above and beyond in this episode, and we'll talk about that a little bit momentarily. And you didn't bring up tough guy Tony. We've got a tough guy Tony moment.

He's sitting on the cab. Is he sitting on the cab the star? Yeah, I don't even notice it anymore because I'm so used to this, like macho posturing that is the stock in trade of the simpleton Tony Banta. This episode is actually a return to form, as we'll see from Tony and the rest of the Cabby's You know, I found to mention in the previous episode that he expanded his tough guy sitting around Patoire because at one point Banta is sitting on a bench and he can't just sit on the bench. He's sort of like half lying on it, with one foot on the floor and the other foot on the bench.

Like Jesus man, we get it. You fucking you take up space and no one can tell you different. Is it like he's playing his own version of the floor is lava and he's trying to like to something without touching it. No, he's showing how perfectly casual he is. He's like the pine Piper of Hamlet or something.

It's just like, oh, hello, there you are. On the way out, Nardo asks Louis to let Alex know when he gets back that they're at Marios, but Louis just very casually mentions to Nardo that Alex won't be in for a while, and Nardo says, well, why what's going on with Alex? And Louis just throws out Alex got shot and everybody freaks out, like, what are you talking about? Alex got shot? What happened?

Louis maintains a very nonchalant attitude. He says, Alex was robbed and he was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital, and the cabby's announced to I don't know, just to announce it exposition. Here we go that they're going to head over there right now. But just as they're leaving, Alex pads in opposite side of the garage and he has this ridiculous looking bandage over his left ear, because what we find out is that he got nicked the guy the gun went off and the bullet nicked his ear. The mountain of gauze and bandages around his just hanging by his ear just looked ridiculus.

I don't know what you thought, father Ballone. I thought it looked silly. He looked like a character from the Dark Crystal, like just some sort of head gear that they had strapped on him, and if that is supposed to be a bandage, then he was not nicked. He's gushing. Apparently it's either blood or pus or something that they would need that much gauze packed onto his ear, and very very soon after in the upcoming scenes, he will have none of these bandages at all.

If this really did nick his ear, they would have just put a couple of stitches in his ear and that would have been it. You would have had maybe a little like dressing over it, maybe a little band aid or something. But no, he's got this mass of gauze and surgical tape around his ear. It looks like it was Halloween and he decided he was going to be the Mummy, but then immediately ran out of supplies in his cloth in his bathroom. It's just it's the mummy, the mummified ear, you know, that's his costume.

He says to the cabbys. He was getting robbed. The guy shot him. The bullet nicked his ear and just a scratch, but his hearing is affected. We were talking the last episode, we say, vonville, Is that the word you were going to use for this second?

I was going to use hacky, just hacky, like there's all these hard of hearing jokes, like they'll say something and he'll reply confusedly about something that sounds like who actually my favorite one? I have to say this one kind of maybe laugh a little bit. Bobby says to Alex, boy, you read about these things, you never think it's going to happen to you. And Alex replies, what makes you think it's a jew? It works because of how the expression, which is this sort of like inquisitive like are you serious?

Are you actually blaming a jew for this? And he holds it forever. It's just on and on while they everyone's like, oh my god, everyone there knows they're in a vaudeville routine except for riger. This is actually also a really good showcase for Wheeler in this. I think he does.

He has some great line readings, and he's really funny, as we'll see to the whole like he's hearing one that he's answering one question because it sounds remotely like another thing. I hate all of that, but they did manage to enlive in it and update it and make it good and funny and relevant where three people say things to him and then when they realized that he understood none of them. Each of the characters slides to his good air and says the line again, and even the most inconsequential Bobby just said yeah at the end of his thing, so that I thought that bit worked really, really well. I think part of what got me excited about it is this. It feels like the first time in a long time that the Cabbys as a group are interacting with each other.

It may be just a silly vaudevillian conceit about losing his hearing and then misunderstanding, but it was funny that they're playing off of each other, and it gave me a warm feeling to see the Cabbys all in one place bouncing off of each other a little bit. I wonder if that's going to equal an extra light at the end of this episode anyway. Well maybe, And I want to get ahead of ourselves here. Bobby asks if he got a good look at the guy, and Alex says all he remembers is his big gun and his hand was tattooed with kill on the knuckles, and this I thought this was pretty funny. Louis declares that no one would tattoos should ever be picked up.

They're all morons, maniacs and low lifes and Bantas says, well, I get a tattoo, and then Louie responds, oh yeah, it loses. What I like is that Tony says it rather challengingly, like, yeah, I got a tattoo, what do you want to say about it? And then well, if you're a loser, that let me amend what I initially said. There are also to have tattoos. We've talked at length during the course of this podcast about Tony and the possibility of an explosion of violence.

Right, So there's always something really satisfying when Louie can get a good dig in at Tony's expense. Usually it's about what a crappy fighter he is, or what an idiot he is, or all of these things. So I'm having a little fun at Tony's expense. But that is a part of the show, like a trope in this show that I really do find especially funny is that when Louis, of all people who could Tony could just step on him like a roach, but he doesn't care. He loves giving it to Tony.

Louis is the only character I think you can get away with it and mean it because he is his employer. So at this point we cut to nighttime b roll from Alex's POV driving the cab at night. There's something. I don't know if you noticed this, but there's something in the way that the b roll point of view is shot. It feels on edge and anxious.

I don't know if it was intentional. It puts you into the headspace of Alex as he's driving his cab after this super traumatic event. Feels like he's very, very nervous and very edgy about the whole thing. I thought that was cool. It feels like the b roll is sped up just slightly.

And the score that they've chosen to use here is from Bob James. Is this like clarinet? Sort of like like that? So yes, of course it's very nerve wracking. Kudos to them because they don't hit you over the head with it, but clearly the message got across to us.

We double back for a second because you said you want to bring up the background players here, because I want to bring up some background players because over by the coffee machine there's some sort of communist meeting going on. In the last scene, there's this am I jumping ahead? Is this who you were going to talk about the coffee machine? Say that again. There's some sort of communist meeting going on over by the coffee machine.

During during the previous scene, there's this dude with a brown suede blazer and a black T shirt over bell bottomed jeans, right, and he's wearing one of those mini captain hats. You know, like half the background characters and Jaws were wearing like the Captain and Taneil cat. But his is like this deep chocolate and he's got a thermos and a folded newspaper, which is clearly a signifier that he's a Marxist. So there's something going on in the corner. And then next to him is this guy in all of drab army pants and this oversized olive drab sweater and a cream and black striped shirt and a beret.

He looks like he's standing on a Parisian street. I don't know what's going on in the corner of Sunshine Cab, but clearly they should be worried. There is a scene coming up in the garage that I did actually make note of an extra one extra in particular, I don't. I think you're jumping the gun a little bit. I think we're getting to that.

You're talking about the wrench guy right after there was lots of background performers there. I'll bring it up when we get to that point. But you really painted a picture of those background extras that can't help but make people like me want to go back and watch the episode again. I'll say the name again, Ralph tsch laying baby. We're in Alex's cab at night, and as we've described, he's very on edge about driving his cab after what happened to him.

Louis checks in with him on the radio and says, don't worry, don't pick up anybody who doesn't look right, and Alex thanks him. He's actually kind of surprised. Well, thanks, Louis. I'll do my best, and then Louie cuts in. You hear Louie over the radio say, okay, Nardo, I read your prummy speech.

Where's my five dollars? Once again, this is a Cbee radio situation, which means that Louie had to keep that button depressed in order to say that line. When I was a kid, we might have talked about this, but we had. My dad was big into CBE radios, and we had one. We had a base unit at our house in addition to the ones in the car, And you're right.

It looked like an old tiny Edward R. Murrow microphone, but it had this bar and you had to squeeze the side of the bar to open the channel and then you let go and it would close the channel, but you had to hold on to it. I remember that in the movie Diehard this at some point someone's like speaking into a radio and then somebody cuts in over them, and I'm like, that's not how that works, Like what are you doing? Not quite the same thing here, But yes, I do think of these things when radios are involved. Like as funny as the line is or the notion that he's only doing it because he's getting paid, it's still like kind of clumsy.

We saw it when in the episode where Nardo was driving Tom Selleck to the art gallery auction and then you find out that Louis has heard everything that's going on, which doesn't make sense because she didn't have the radio in her hand the whole time. But yeah, but she like rubber banded it and then like left it. They could listen in like that's yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Alex's cab is hailed and start to pull over and then pulls back and says, all right, next one, and then someone else hails his cab and he pulls away from that guy too. Finally he's hailed one to the poor Man's process guys here, which with the headlights swerving in and out behind him as if he's actually pulling in and out, they're doing some crazy good work back there.

I'm sorry. He's hailed one more time, and a man in a priest's habit gets it now. Side note, this is the priest is played by another classic That guy. His name is James Staley. Yeah, and he's appeared.

And I couldn't find anything specific that was like the role that you would know him from, but I had one that came to mind immediately you did. What was it? He's the prissy motel clerk at the Grand Canyon in National Lampoon's Vacation. Sir, the check will have to clear into three business days. That guy, rather humorously, Alex gets he's already uptight about picking this guy up, and now he's suspicious of this fair even though he's in hBN Nunsware habits priests have cassocks.

Oh sorry, Alex starts peppering him with questions. I think he asks him to name all of the apostles. It's a bet going on back at the garage. Settle this bet for He's like, really, this is too bad. The priest's reactions are great to all of them because they're totally natural, like, what what are you even talking about?

Man? Like he's having trouble coming up with every last apostle. Alex is like, oh, you missed a couple. Well, it isn't sneezy. When the priest finally admits he can't quite get all of them, like to your point, he makes a joke about sneezy, Alex can't take any more.

He immediately pulls over and it really physically gets the guy out of his cabby. He's brandishing a baseball bat that comes out of nowhere and kicks this poor priest out of the cab. Now we cut back to the garage. Here's where things got a little weird for me. This is a directorial thing.

We've talked about this in the past, where James Burrows likes to do things cinematically, we cut to the garage, but we're not on the main floor of the garage. We start on that second level where the boss's office is. Wheeler is like bopping his way down the stairs, like you know, spotting up there for who knows how long. That is a callback to the last episode. The camera follows Wheeler as he's doing his cool guy struck down the stairs.

We've talked about this podium, this mechanics podium that Lacas sometimes will stand at when he's working on a piece of equipment. There's this older guy at the mobile mechanics podium. He grabs what appears to be a ratchet, and I think there's even like a little bit of folly work, like a click a click, so that you're made to understand that he's stealing a ratchet from the toolbox, and he furtively puts it into his inside jacket pocket and he SLINKs away. But this is our first introduction back into the garage. I wrote this down am I imagining this?

This is so weird, but you come to find out there's a reason for it. I was so confused and yet intrigued by what was going on here is it lawlessness? Now? Like that since riger gunshot, people are just stealing shit like rampantly, Like I thought this was a tale of a thief. When when it came down, when when Wheeler came down the stairs, because they focused very heavily on that extra take.

In fact, when the actually stole the wrench and walked off scream, my first thought was like, oh my god, that's great. I can't wait to talk about that. What's going on here? That was precisely my reaction. I wrote this down, and I was so gleeful because I didn't remember seeing this on the last one hundred times I've seen the episode, So I was like, this is great father Malone's gonna love this part.

By the way, Wheeler struts everywhere, but you're right, he is strutting down these stairs. Do you think if you've got very close to him, under his breath, you would hear him saying we go together like Rama Lama Lama, kadingity dang down the grease callback. Probably. I mean, he's look, he's a stylish guy, he's hip. You know, he's a handsome dude.

So if I looked like that and I dressed like that, I'd probably strut everywhere. I went too. Oh, by the way, his hair is out of hand in this scene. Man, it's the main He's like a he's like a fucking anime character. It's like his own weather patterns.

It's crazy big. He is just letting it fly. He really is so free with it, and he's shaking his head so it goes all over the place. But I just thought it was odd that our avenue to this strange wrench thief is following Wheeler come down these stairs for what purpose? I have no idea.

You use the word intrigued, and that's exactly what I was feeling. I want to you know, I kind of wanted the camera to follow this wrench thief now, like what's he up to me too? I wanted to get in a cab and that just he goes out into the streets and like we follow him in his adventure. Why he needed that socket? It was just so out of nowhere.

But then Bobby walks over to Tony and Bobby this is exposition now pretty clumsy. Bobby says to Tony that everyone's paranoid about for what happened to Alex. Everyone is scared. He says, people have even stolen locked as tools for weapons, which explained our wrench thief, which kind of deflated my excitement around this me too. All they're just oh, it's just they're using them as weapon cares.

I kind of like the mystery of why this guy is taking this thing. But then Burns insists for some reason that the greatest weapon is communication, that the tongue is in fact mightier than the sword, which is precisely something that a silver tongued demon would say. Yeah, so I guess that's in character. Yes, don't put your weapons down, you don't need them. Get out there on the streets, go to the bad neighborhoods.

I command you. I didn't what. I'm sorry? Uh, do y'all want to go see a movie? Bobby then says that he heard of someone who faked a heart attack to escape a mugging and they were successful, and Burns is skeptical that Bobby could actually pull this off, and uh, Burns is skeptical because we need to see another wheeler performance.

There. Bobby goes through with it, and he collapses in a heap in front of the cage, and Louis angrily looks down at him and says, what's the matter. With you, when Bobby gasps, I'm having a heart attack, to which Louis then grumpily replies, well, of it's somewhere else. I could have tripped and broke my neck. Bonville, that's still funny.

I thought it was good. He in my notes for the whole sequence. Yes, that was along for the ride. It was fine. Alex returns to the garage and hands in his booking envelope, and Louie is incredulous that Alex booked absolutely nothing zero, which is which might be a first for Alex.

For all we know, he's been a cab driver for forever and he's booked nothing in the previous evening. That's not too good, Alex, right, And then Alex's reply to that is simply I quit, which then prompts Louis to reply, You're not used to criticism, are you. Louis pulls Alex into his cage and tries to reason with him not to quit, but Alex is steadfast finally just grabs Louis mic and announces to the entire garage that he's quit over the loud speaker, and don't we all want to quit that way? Oh, it's great if it wasn't so sad that the thread of dying prompted this? You know, it was pretty funny.

So the other cabbys rush over, and at this point Alex finally admitst everybody that he's terrified. Now here's where my side note comes in. I wonder if this is where your sort of Marxist party is going on. What I wrote down is, as Louis comes out, he tries to reverse psychology with Riager. He basically calls Rigor a coward in an effort for Reager to then go, well, I'm not a coward.

I'll work anyway. There's an older cabby extra in the background wearing what looks like a policeman's cover on his head. Oh yeah, yeah, this guy, he just seems so tickled by the proceedings. He is watching Louis and Alex interact and he is straight up laughing at their antics. Did you notice this was this the guy you were talking about?

No, no, that's not the thing I'm talking I think chronologically, I am correct. Those that communist party appeared in the previous scene before Rigor goes back out, or Rigor goes home, and then in this scene it's another cavalcade of extras because they're all stealing shit from Latka, including that guy back there. But yes, like Lumberjack Appleman before him, he's really invested in the scene going on in front of him. But it almost felt to me he was just not even acting. He was just laughing at jud hirsh and Danny DeVito doing what they do.

He looked to me like an audience member would react. You know, well, that's the best kind of acting, they say, HP when you're not acting at all. It's like, I guess, So this guy was supremely memorable. For my part, none of this reasoning with Alex works. He goes to his locker to get his stuff.

Now here's another side note I made, and we talked about this. In the very first episode of Night Mister Walters, Alex says something to the effect of dying isn't worth such and such a mile. Do you remember what he said? They get paid per mile in the cab. Uh.

Do you say it's like seventy cents, right, seventy two cents? No, he says, fifty five cents per mile. Okay, So that's the going rate at this point in New York circa nineteen seventy nine, it's fifty five cents per mile. So what I did was I went and checked out NYC dot gov to see what the standard metered fair these days is. Do you know what?

You know what the standard fare is these days? If you're going to take a cab, Now everyone does uber or lift, But if you're going to take a cab, do you know what the posted regulations per mile are? Now? I can't imagine. It's like a couple of dollars five five, No, couldn't be five dollars a mile.

You're not far off. There's a ton of surcharges. There's sur charges everywhere. It's like reading stereo instructions. You can't make sense of it.

But if you dig into it, the standard metered fare for a New York City cab in twenty twenty three is seventy cents per one fifth of a mile, which comes out to three dollars and fifty cents per mile. I mean, is that crazy? Yeah? But I guess you know in New York you're not really going all that far, are you. You're not, But that still seems like if you're comparing that, and that's so that meant be your next question, Well, what is that in nineteen seventy nine dollars?

So if you tell me, if you adjust for inflation over the years, fifty five cents in nineteen eighty would be worth two dollars and twelve cents in twenty twenty three. So that's still a huge markup. If we were factoring in only inflation over the past, you know, forty three years, it should be two dollars and twelve cents per mile. It's a whole dollar and a half above that, not to mention all the searcharges. No wonder no one takes cabs anymore because yeah, it's too fucking expensive.

Anyway, I thought that was it. They've rebooted taxi today, it would be a whole different, sadder situation, right, it'd be just instead of everyone trying to get out of the cab company, they're all just trying to keep the cab company going. It's true, there's a lot of money there. So Alex and the Caves make their awkward goodbyes. I think they even go into the thing, Oh, we'll see each other again, don't worry about it, you know, I'll see you guys more than I saw you when I was working here.

Don't worry about it, knowing full well that you know they probably won't see each other. Panta gives him a tough guy hug. Did you notice still little bit of a shoulder. I'm not going to touch you. I'm not gay.

What I wrote was, I wrote Tony the most awkward goodbye, kind of leaning into Alex, but not really hugging him like the rest of the cabvi'es too, Yeah, because he kind of like it's what a child does. Really, it's not a tough guy hug. It's a child's hug. That's what Banta's doing, and it's perfectly in character for him, because he's a simpleton. We know that.

Louis even gets in on the action. He awkwardly comes in and gives Alex a hug and then grumpily admits that he's going to hate himself in the morning for doing that. Before we go talking about costumes here, yeah, I don't know if you've got a gander, it burns in this episode here in the garage, he's wearing Okay, he's wearing his jacket, his big winter jacket. He's always wearing, right, the brown one. Right.

Yeah, But Underneath that, he's got a turtleneck, like the sky blue turtleneck, and then beneath that he has jeans, also sky blue. Now they're broken up with the jacket. But it just made me think, if you were to remove that jacket, Burns would look just perfectly at ease leaping on the rooftops of Manhattan, like like Frank Gorshan's Riddler character. Picture it there, right, I could totally picture that. The Frank Gorshon comparison is really spot on.

So that's the end of the scene. I think we fade the black is we cut to the exterior more more wonderful b roll. We cut to the exterior of a restaurant, which we will soon see looks nothing like the interior. So we're led to believe that this sati. No no, no, they matched that window pretty well.

I thought, no, no, no, no, no no, Like, the view from outside makes it look like just a modest like bistro, right, But then they cut inside and there's drapes, like velvet drapes all over the place and a chandelier and tables. Yeah no, no, no, no no, but the window itself matches the exterior. You mean the placement of the window, the design of the window, like the window is this like arched kind of pattern that you see from the outside, and then when they cut the inside that they matched that b roll and I thought, wow, that's awesome. But I do understand what you're saying. The storefront that we're seeing seems like it could be just like a tiny bodego within and instead it's this opulent French restaurant.

It is jarring. The shape of the window itself, the dimensions of it do match, and that was kind of cool. But when you look through the window and you see what the tables are set up, and it just looks like a much more modest because what we're going to discover is this is a fancy French restaurant. This is where Alex has gone to work after quitting the cab company. We cut inside, I'm not going to say this is one of the best set dressed environments that we've seen.

I mean, it's functional. It makes us believe that, yeah, this is a fancy schmancy restaurant. There's a lot of velvet and it looks a little gaudy, but at the same time it's too small and there's just something about it to me that read more fake than like a real restaurant. I mean, we've seen they recreated a high school reunion, a hotel, a function room. They could have done better with this.

I think maybe you had different res no. I totally agree with you, Like I was actually given the track record of the show for taking the whatever the third act space we're going to end up in, and like giving us an entire boxing arena and giving us a what was it like a meeting hall for the Sugar Mama episode. Even that, which was supposed to be a modest interior, was somehow more impressive than what should be massively impressive. The level of wealth that were led to believe that you need to dine here as a requisite seems like the furnishing should be a little more. It just straight up looked more like a set to me, and that was slightly disappointing.

Bobby's basement apartment should be in the set decoration Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing. If there was, you should be able to walk through Bobby's apartment and like gawk at the detail. This was just okay. We see alex Is dressed in a nice tuxedo and he's waiting on tables while he's dealing with a particular table. The Cabby's that's in this case, it's Bobby, it's Tony, it's Burns, and it's Nardo.

They all arrive at the mader D's area. They file in. They're all dressed to the nines. All the men have suits, and I don't remember exactly what Nardo's wearing, but I do remember she has her hair in kind of an updo, yeah yeah, and a nice dress wearing everyone looks great. Wheeler in particular.

I mentioned the anime here, it's blown out even more here. Somehow it's I don't know, it's a marvel. So they come in. Bobby says to the major d reservations for doctor Wheeler. He's self conscious about the reservation, so he says he's a doctor.

I found it humorous. It's a natural way to make sure you're going to get a table, and they needed to get a table right away to go bother Reger. The Cabby's get seated at their table and there's a lot of fish out of water type comedy between Tony and Bobby. Tony is coming at it again. I hate to keep saying this, but he's coming at it like a child would, and Bobby is the exasperated kind of like, well, you you're embarrassing me, like, you know, come on, get it together, because Tony is coming at it from a place of pure naivete because he's never been in a place like this before.

But at least Bobby, if he hasn't eaten at a place like this, he's an actor, so he knows how to act in a fancy restaurant. I should have sat downy with Burns. They could have continued their apple conversation here, like what's this fork for? There are too many forks? We have to use all of these forks.

Burns does announce his surprise and how much silviaware they give them here? That I actually thought was genuinely a funny line the way he delivers it, and it may be his finest comedic moment through the whole series. And I'm not exaggerating. I actually legitimately thought it was funny the way it just came up. I don't know, I agree.

You know, we've picked on Burns, and we've picked on Carver repeatedly, but ultimately that guy was talented and he could be funny. It's just that we don't like his character at all. Plus he's by giants. The waiter comes over and Elaine starts to explain in very clipped posh speak, that they'd like Alex to wait on their table. And it was at that moment I remember saying to myself and I started to write down, what's what this weird accent that Nardo put on to talk to this waiter?

And then her literal next line is she wonders aloud, like why am I talking like the Queen of England? And I thought it was fabulous. It was like, it's like the writers anticipating my consternation at this development, and they it's like they commented on it. Tony. Ever, the simpleton declares the place is so fancy.

There ain't even gum stuck under the table, which is really driving Wheeler even more crazy. Drives me crazy too. Why is he even doing that? Why is he looking under there? Alex comes over and very graciously offers to get them a bottle of wine, and when he goes off to get the wine, it's somewhere that's before we get to that.

It's somewhat awkward, as you would expect it to be because Alex is serving that. I don't know why they thought that it was a good idea to actually have him wait on them, because it can only ever be awkward. I mean, he's in a position of having to serve them, and they all admit to themselves, yeah, this is really kind of awkward. But whatever. Plus, none of them can afford to eat there.

It should be noted. I was hoping that one of them would say, oh, you know, a beef consumme for nine ninety nine. That's outrageous because I wanted to play the inflation game again because probably whatever they were going to announce is the cost of the food was probably less than what we would pay now to go to TGI Friday's or something. But they didn't do it. Though.

They didn't because they kind of look at the menu and they're like, oh, man, he must be making great tips. Even on a cup of coffee would be a great tip, But they don't see how much. I well, the fact that everyone is like, well, I'm going to have a salad. Can I split that salad with you? Like I'll have the potatoes, it felt a little more, especially with burns like his.

His dinner choice was less about how cheap it was and more about what an idiot he is. I think that was I think it was a double WHEMMI I think the sign of potatoes on grotten was the cheapest thing on the menu. And he's also an idiot because he doesn't know what potatoes are ground is. Alex comes back to the table and serves on the wine. While he's serving the wine, one of Alex's other tables, the sort of snooty looking rich couples, is trying to get his attention because he's talking with the cabbies while he's opening the wine and they're having a conversation.

Bobby kind of angrily replies to this woman, will you keep your drawers on, lady? He's got six other tables to serve. Jeff Conaway was on was really on fire through this whole scene, Like he had me genuinely laughing at some of his comments in the way he was playing this. The woman replies to him that all she wants is a glass of water, and I don't know why I found this so funny, but he was in a huff. In a huff like, Bobby gets up takes his water glass from the table and kind of slaps it down on the woman's table in front of her and says, there you happy, because we all want to do that or and we want to see it happen once.

He's doing it in service of his friend who's being pestered by these fucking idiots. And you know, if you saw one of your friends being pastored like that and they couldn't say anything back, then take the initiative for them. Here's a guy who when he walked in announced that he was doctor Wheeler, but now he's abandoning all pretense of trying to act posh and upper crust, and he's just like slapping the water down on the table. I just thought it was really a fun character bit. So Alex comes back to the table and the cabbys make a toast to Alex and then they go to order.

This is what we were talking about, and they're ordering. It's all very uncouth, right, Burns. He looks at the menu and he's like trying to be like this fine diner, like, oh, this is very interesting, So tell me, how are the potatoes all grotten prepared? Alex just says with cheese, and Burns goes, oh, very interesting, I don't have the potatoes are grotten with cheese. Then that prompts Tony the simpleton to order the potatoes are grotten without cheese.

I wanted to see that. I wanted to see that arrive by the way. I wanted to see that just to play the potatoes. Elaine and Bobby are gonna split a salad. I think there is some aspect of while this man and he was super expensive, we can't even afford it.

The odd thing is the mayer D walks by. He sort of has this funny look in his face like he's trying to catch Alex doing something wrong. I don't know why he would get that impression, but so Alex then goes, okay, let me get this order. Correct this she suis de coloe and he goes to this beautiful sounding French meal and that is enough to satisfy the Mayor D. And the Mayor D just goes back on his way.

Alex insaysts that's no big deal. The meal is going to be on him. Don't worry about it. And in Elaine admits that they came down to the restaurant hoping to talk Alex into coming back to work at the cab company, but she basically admits, well, it seems like there's really no chance of that happening. At this point.

This prompts Alex to say to her that, you know, I was actually lying awake last night thinking about whether I should go back to driving a cab. He stands there and goes over the pros and of being a waiter versus being a cab driver every pro and con elicits this sort of quick burst of conversation amongst the cabby's. This is another Bobby Wheeler moment that I liked at. One of Alex's pros about being a cabby is he doesn't have to worry about what he wears or shaving, And in the mix, like they're all like, oh, but in the mix you can hear Bobby say very clearly, yeah, you hate shaving, which it's just like his way of kind of pumping up this sort of pro you know, and in his favor. It just struck me funny.

But in the end Alex says that both jobs have their advantages and their disadvantages, but Bobby reminds him that he's forgetting one important thing, and that thing is what Father Malone. Friendship it's the perfect blendship, he says, friends, I think that would make me say no, I'm gonna say, earn some cash with no gun stuck in my face and eat delicious meal just as an employee for free. He does come up with a pretty good list of why he should stay at the restaurant. He's getting great meals, he's getting great tips. He's making I think he said he's making almost twice when he's making driving a cab, which I don't know.

Do we ever try to figure out what we figure he's pulling down per week as a cabby. No, yet, we've not yet ascertained the salary of a cabby. That'd probably be easy to find. Actually, how much beyond their bookings do they get to take home a portion of that? Or is it all tips?

No, it has to be a percentage of the bookings, right like they get ten to twenty percent of whatever the hall was that day, and then they keep their tips. Probably, but it can't be a tremendous amount. But although it has to be said, it's enough clearly to keep Alex in a pretty nice apartment in New York. He's not wanting for anything. He gets to go in these cool ski trips once in a while.

So it sounds like he's making a pretty good living, I guess, is my point. As a cab driver, he's but even beyond that, he's making a great living as a waiter at this fancy restaurant. Elaine just finally says, well, I guess that's it. I guess you're gonna stay. Alex surprisingly declares and the end that he's a cab driver, he wants to come back the freedom to make his own hours and be his own boss, because you get the sense that he's chafing a little bit under the watchful gaze of this Major D.

So that might have been the thing that tipped the scales for him. It's totally what tip the scales for him. And let me just say that Major D the actor who played him as a guy named Byron Webster, who has seventy two credits, at least five of which are Matre D. I looked him up. The thing that I might have known him best from was he was he played a priest in an episode of The Brady Bunch.

Do you recall the episode where there was somehow the family got the notion that Sam and Alice were going to Elope. Oh yeah, right, I think it's like it's not super early groovy Brady Bunch, it's still there, still kids, Brady Bunch. No, no, because Greg has the perm Oh, they're not little kids anymore. There's a scene where they the kids have to go to Sam's to pick up their meat order, and there happens to be a priest in the butcher shop picking up his order. And there's something about their interaction Sam that that kind of like, you know, it makes them believe all they must be talking about Sam and Al's getting married.

That guy played the priest in that episode. Jubilantly all pretenses has lost the Cabby's, and they're so happy that Alex has made the decision to be a cab driver instead of a waiter that they actually jump up. They shout. Tony puts Alex on his shoulders as if he's in the movie. Rudy, he just won the big touchdown, he scored the big goal.

He read sports thing. That's how Tony thinks he won the sports game here by coming back to the garage, Get on my shoulder, get the gatorade. Oh I'm sorry, the perier and it prompts the major d disapprovingly comes over and sees this happening and cancel that order. He should have said the bumper for this episode, which I actually kind of liked, but it ended up raising more questions than it answered. We cut back to b roll of a cab in the middle of the night, driving in the night.

Did you see what cab they are following? Gab Ato Fourabato four. In fact, we've seen this footage before in the Memories of Caveto four segment. The whole ending of the caveto four retrospective episodes was the Caveto four we're led to believe is no more right? That's true?

This is good ghost Cabato for I guess it was. He just can't keep a good cab down. So it's Caveto four and it's Alex driving the cab at night, and once again Louis comes on and says cautions Alex not to pick up anyone that looks suspicious, and Alex maintains he's come to the realization that it's a dangerous business, but he's going to drive the way he always has. He's going to pick somebody up. And he looks with suspicion and then says, I think He says, I'm off duty, and he starts to drive away, but then gets a hold of himself and says, oh what am I doing?

And he ends up pulling over back to where the fair that he just drove away from, and the fair gets into the cab and ha ha ha, it's a girl scout getting into the cab. But let me ask you this father alone, it's the middle of the night. We know these are the nighttime cabbies. What the hell is a girl scout doing on the streets of New York at that hour. Well, it's like Will Smith and men in black points it out during his test.

Obviously that girl is up to some really bad shit. So Rigger is actually picking up the most dangerous fair he possibly could, because who knows what she's got in those cookie boxes. His instinct was correct. His original instinct was I'm driving away. This is crazy.

What's a girl scout doing in the middle of the night, in the middle of New York. In the spirit of getting past his fear, he picked the most dangerous fair, and who knows what happened. I'd like to point out that the little girl for fans of the movie Heathers, the Courtney the character Courtney country Club Courtney, I believe is her full official title. That's the same girl. Did you recognize her or do yeah?

Instantly? Instantly, yeah, yeah, oh wow. I mean she's all close up in Heathers. As is our custom, We're gonna start talking about yellow lights. What does all light reminder?

We are scoring on one to five yellow lights. There's no half lights involved, no broken lights, no cracked lights. One is the worst episode of Taxi you could imagine, and five yellow lights is This is a masterpiece of what Taxi has to offer, the best episode ever. Father alone, what do you give Alex taste's death and eats at a nice restaurant? I, based on your criteria for judging the previous episode, am going to go with three yellow lights for this.

It is a two yellow light episode. But I agree with you that sometimes the camaraderie on screen of these characters that we love is somehow so joyous and familiar that it makes the episode better. It makes a slight episode and elevates it. This is a slight episode, but everyone's interactions are pretty sparkling. I agree, but don't base your your score on what I'm judging.

This is your scale as well as it is mine. Don't judge it solely on what you think I would pull out of the episode. No, I don't care what you would pull out of the episode. I just happen to agree with your assessment that sometimes there's an alchemical reaction when these characters get together. And that made me.

That made me reassess it so sure, and as it turns out, I agree one hundred percent. I also gave it three yellow lights. In a lot of ways, Taxi can be greater than the sum of its parts. There is some kind of a chemical reaction that takes place when you get all of these characters and all of these great actors into a room together and let them react to each other and to what's happening. And this is a great example of that.

There's some funny stuff in the episode beyond that, and it's perfectly pleasant. But for me, the scene inside of the restaurant with the caves are playing off of each other, and even some of the stuff in the garage when after Alex gets back from being shot, and some of the stuff, the bantering that goes back and forth, it really does sparkle. I love that you use that word, and this is what Taxi should be all about the scenes with all the caves work. It works so well together and they're so funny, and this is what I watched Taxi for. So for me, it's an enjoyable, funny episode all around.

Not the greatest episode, but a solid above average episode for which I give it three yellow lights, So three from me, three from you, So that will do it for this particular episode of night Mister Walters, Father Malone, when you are not clocked into the garage, Where can the fine folks find you on the Internet? You can check me out at Fathermalone dot com or you can hear me at Weirdingway Media, where I have shows like Dark Destinations it's a half hour radio drama write and produce. Or you could hear me on Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast show I do with Christashu from Culturecast and The Projection with Mike White, where we discuss horror anthology television series like Father Them Alone.

You can find me on the weirding Way Network. In addition to Noise Junkies, which is a music podcast that I do with Father Malone. And Mondo Heather's Heather Drain. You can also hear me on occasional guest spots on the Culture Cast, and as for Dark Destinations, which Father Malone has mentioned, you can also hear me occasionally doing silly little acting things, but mostly doing some of the music. All of the music.

It's a wonderful. If you love good audio, drama, good storytelling, you cannot go wrong. Check out Dark Destinations and I also have a band camp site called Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. Not a lot there now, but hoping to get more stuff up there as time permits. So once again, thank you so much for listening.

Please feel free if you like what you hear to subscribe to this podcast, write a review, a rate us. We would love to hear from you so for to night, mister Walters, for myself and for father alone, Thank you again for listening, and we will see you guys next time. Nik, mister Walders