Episode 33 - Elaine's Secret Admirer

Weird way media. Ni miss you see that guy with it now, he's an actor name. I'm a driver. I'm the only camp driver in his place. Good evening and welcome tonight, mister Walters a taxi podcast.

I'm HP your co host and with me as always is my co host, Father Malone. Father Malone? How are you this evening? Redhead skin? All the poetry that is that is true, We'll see it in this episode tonight.

We're talking Taxi Season two, episode eleven, Lane's Secret Admirer. This was written by Barry Kimp and it was directed by James Burrows. Reminder, we're doing these shows in broadcast order and not order of filming. Here we start in one of the more interesting b roll shots we've had in a while. We're following a Sunshine cab during the day as it rolls down the street.

But what is unique about this is that we get a really good look at the outside of the cab. It's done up in all of the Sunshine Cab decorations and accouterments. It's got Sunshine Cab painted on the side. I can see that it's Cab three twenty one, and we can even see the phone number on the side of the cab for posterity sake, it's five five five six three eight two. So anybody who wants to try to call Sunshine Cab, there's the phone number.

Of course, it's five five five. But I thought it was an interesting It was like this sort of tight shot of the upper part of the cab as it rolls along the city during the day. I like that that they obscured the driver. It just got a like Steven Spielberg's first movie Dual. We just yeah, just see the hand on the wheel, and yeah, her forearm.

I did notice that too. You don't see you can't see who's driving the cab. It's just this arm and a green jacket of some sort. It could be a man, could be a woman who knows. In a similar change of pace, Interestingly, we don't cut to the garage for our first real shot of the episode.

We're in Elaine's apartment, which I don't think we've seen in quite some time. Elaine is packing things up in the apartment. She's it looks like she's cleaning the place or just doing something, some kind of work in the apartment. And she gets to knock at the door and she answers it, and it's the rest of the cabbes, including Jim. Jim is with them for the first time and it feels like forever.

Yeah, it's been too long. They do make reference to his absence. We'll hear about that later, but yeah, he's a very welcome presence. I'm excited Jim is back. All the cabbys come in, they're toting they're all wearing like very kind of bummy clothes and they're toting paint supplies.

The bummy clothes that you're referring to. When they walked in, at first, I thought it was going to be like a fancy dress party they were going to, because Alex Rieger seems to be dressed like Easy Reader from the Electra company at that denim vest and like the bell bottom pants and this flared shirt and it's all spattered with neon looking paint. What's funny is putting aside how ridiculous the outfit is in general. That's his painting outfit. When friends call him and saying you hear hell painting something like that's just hanging in his closet somewhere, the painting outfit.

It's weird. It's because We've all had to paint rooms at some time or another, and you usually get some T shirt that's full of holes, some bummy pair of sweatpants, you know, stuff that you don't care. My first thought was that he's walked into a production of Godspell or something, because it is a kind of a dressed up outfit. It's a as you said, it's a denim vest over a nice shirt and jeans, but it's all spattered with paint, so it looks deliberately colorful in a way that I can't quite express, but but yeah, that is he's gone the extra step of wearing a vest over his paint spattered shirt. Very weird because everybody else is wearing but I think Tony has like a cap, painter's cap and his usual stuff.

I don't remember what Bobby's wearing. And of course Jim is just wearing his Canadian tuxedo, so it's part for the chorus for Jim. But speaking of Jim, I will say that my side note is even just the way Jim walks into the apartment, doing nothing but walking into the apartment, it gets a huge pop from the audience. Alex is wondering why they have to paint the apartment and realizes during his chat with Elane that she always paints her apartment every time she breaks up with the guy. Here's what I did not like about this HP, this setup for this joke.

Yeah, before we got to the setup, they all walk in and I happen to notice Banta a beeline to the wall, whereas everyone else is sort of like laying down equipment and getting shit ready and seeing what's what. Like, he just sprung into action and just started hacking up that wall and I'm like, Wow, that's weird that he's doing that. And of course it was just so that they could have this punchline here. Tony is hacking away at this wall. He's chipping away at the at the paint that's already there, and he notes that there must be twenty coats of paint on the wall, which leads to a lane enumerting each color or he goes through every color, and Elaine says, oh, that must be Richard and that must be whoever.

So every color that he's going through is connected in some way to a boyfriend that she's broken up with or something. And while all of this is happening, every Cabby that's in the room is cracking a beer while they're supposedly trying to get the room. That's the joke in this is that they're supposed to be there, ostensibly to paint her apartment, but all they're doing is drinking beer and watching the football game on TV. Just to get that out of the way, Jim suggests that in nineteen sixty five, he and some friends painted their place by dipping their heads into the paint and painting with their hair. Alex says they were thinking of using brushers and rollers, and Jim says he'll try anything once.

Now. I just want to put this note in for future episodes. He says, this happened in nineteen sixty five, But I think what we're going to find eventually is that this timeline doesn't really line up with what we'll eventually find out about Jim's prior history. I'm just putting that out there, just a little seed that we'll get back to in a future episode. Just stay tuned.

No, we're not gonna stated and we're going to have that out right now in the Collegiate episode that we eventually get the flashback episode of Jim when he's you know when he's wearing the little Letterman's sweater and he's got his hair like Hitler, and you know he's he's mister Rah Rah college boy. Yeah, that's supposed to be like nineteen sixty two or something, right, No. No, no, that that's nineteen. I think that's nineteen seventy because there's a calendar on the wall. Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, there's a calendar on the wall.

I'm pretty sure because I've watched. That reason not the one is that the one with Tom Hanks? Yes, yes, where he tries the hash brownie for the first time, and that make that that's the the inciting event to his drug problems. But it's because it can't be nineteen sixty two number one, because Hanks is playing like a textbook hippie hippie. I realize that now that it can't possibly be sixty two because he burns himself on the lava lamp, like, yeah, I mean that's got to be late sixties at least.

Yeah, But that also doesn't line up because in another future episode, we meet a former flame of Jim's and Jim is complaining that he went to Woodstock there was to meet there and he couldn't find this woman. That's nineteen sixty nine. That's still before this nineteen seventy, which at that point Jim is still supposed to be this straight laced college student with a real future. I do not believe that episode takes place in nineteen seventy, and then episode has to take place no earlier than nineteen sixty seven. I'm pretty sure it's nineteen seventy.

Because they do it SAXI man, all right, we hold on pause, wisdom in your hand, hold. On here here it is. Yeah, I was right. I was right. This is quoted from the Official Taxi Fan Guide by Frank Lovey's he says, and I quote Taxi continuity buffs might have deduced that Iggy's Harvard story takes place in nineteen seventy, specifically on Friday, October sixteenth of that year.

According to a calendar in the background. The nearest other year where October sixteenth is a Friday is nineteen sixty four, and the clothing hairstyles in Indian music rule that year out. So I'm afraid we're left with some real constinuity issues with the Gnatowski. But what are you gonna do? It is what it is.

Well, that stinks. I knew that there was something about the calendar in the back of my mind that I was remembering. So there you go. So I don't know what. Maybe it's an unreliable narrator who knows you're unreliable.

I am, I'm very unreliable. So then Elaine asks them to start painting while she go gets her mail. So she goes off and with But now the guys with every guy in this apartment has one can, one hand taken up by a beer can. So they're struggling to get this tarp place because all they have is one free hand to try and do this with. By the way, side note, another side note, did you notice that Bobby is drinking his beer with a straw?

Yes? I did notice that it was very unusual. What's up with that? I here's the only here's my only experience with drinking with a straw. I had a friend who is a side show performer.

He does like magic, but like geek type type work, like what would. Have been the Jim Rose Circus back then? Yeah, like exactly like that. Yeah, like blockhead type stuff. And he worked at an amusement park with tiny Tim, and Tiny Tim said that if you want to get more drunk with the same amount of alcohol, to drink your beer with a straw.

This is Tiny Tim tiptoe through the tulips you're talking about. Yes, he was in a side show with this guy. Yes, not a sideshow. They were performing at like an amusement park, at like a big event. My friend is a side show performer who was on the bill with Tiny tamid this one or not one performance.

I think they were actually on a tour and that was Tiny Tim's advice for getting extra drunk was to drink your beer through a straw. So you believe that's why Bobby is drinking his beer at the straw. He's following Tiny Tim's advice. No, not at all. But that's the only other instance I can think of of somebody drinking a beer through a straw.

Ah. See, the guys are just continuing to procrastinate. At some point, they're just watching TV. They're not really into the painting at all. At this point, Elaine comes back and the guys make a big show of trying to set up the tarp again, but Elaine doesn't care.

She's distracted by a letter that she's reading. Alex asks her about it, and she says someone sent her a romantic poem in the mail anonymously. She reads it out to the other caves and the poem, I'm not going to read the whole poem, but the writer mentions building Elaine a castle if he could. There's all this, it's a beautiful poem, and she's very very taken by it. Of course, Bobby and Tony react in a completely juvenile way.

They're giggling about the poem, but Jim in the back is strangely stoic in thought. While this is all happening, Alex suggests to Elaine that anyone could have written it. It could be someone from the garage. It could be someone from her art gallery. It could even be someone in the room with them right then and there.

But the idea that someone in the room is the masked poet is ruined because they all of a sudden, they get very interested in the NFL game on TV, and weh. Oh you know what, No, no, no, I don't know. She's ruling them out all out, to which they're offended. Bobby is offended, like, you know, we can be sensitive too. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, oh no, the game comes on.

Oh fuck it, we're all men. We don't do any of that shit. Bobby Wheeler is an actor. I think he's completely capable of writing a poem to a young lady, even if he plagiarized it or something like to me. When they say it might be somebody in this room, yes it might be Bobby.

That's the obvious conclusion. If it was a room full of Tony bantis, then I'd say, you know, obviously it's not one of these idiots. That is a very good point, because he could even have gribbed it from a Shakespeare play or something, you know, the flowery language. But I think off the bad we can already eliminate him because he's so unaffected by everything that's going on that like, he's not that good of an actor to play it off to Elaine in this way. So I've already crossed them off of my list.

Now here's another side note. This one is fascinating father alone. We're going back to the Frank Lovey's book that we just referenced, the Official Taxi Fan Guide. Originally, when they came to paint Elaine's apartment, there was originally going to be a druggy joke with Jim. According to Christopher Lloyd in this book, the originally filmed a piece of the scene where Jim is sniffing paint out of the can, and although they cut that from the main episode, during the end credits of this episode, when they go to Christopher Lloyd, you see a quick shot of him opening the lid of the paint can, taking a big sniff, and then closing it really quickly.

It's maybe a second or two, but it's there, so they filmed it. They filmed him doing a paint sniffing gag, and then they cut it out of the episode. I thought that was fascinating. Well, I'm shocked that they even filmed it, honestly. Well, also in this little sort of interview with Christopher Lloyd, apparently ed Weinberger was always a proponent of pushing the limits of what they could put on TV, but he reckons maybe this was a push too far.

I guess there's something they couldn't actually. Show what is effectively a cheap gag, like do you want to like incur anyone's wrath over that? Yeah? Or heaven forbid, maybe encourage someone to try sniffing paint. Maybe that's probably what the networks are afraid of.

Well, that's what the networks are afraid of, just because it'll lose them some money. I don't care about any of that shit. It just needs to be a funnier joke. And also if they're saving up their battles with the sensors to do shit like the Angela Matusa episodes, then then no, then go ahead and fight all the time, do you know? HBI was looking at the list of episodes then and realized that the previous episode, the Angela Maatoos episode, the name of it.

It never registered with me that the lighter side of Angela Metusa is in itself a fat jack. Yeah. No, I was looking at the lighter side of like the old Dave Whoever comics and oh the Al Jaffe Yeah, the old Al Jaffee comics and Mad Mad magazine, like the lighter side of Like. It didn't occur to me that they were making fun of her weight yet again, Yeah, we. Probably should have brought that up in the context, but that episode couldn't be any less regarded by us, so that's just would have been piling on and that we didn't need to do that, So look for it if you watch this episode at the very end the end credits, look for Jim sniffing paint out of the paint can.

It's there. So we cut back to the garage and Elaine is sitting at the table and she's reading what appears to be another poem. Another side note, Elaine is dressed like Dolly Parton in this scene. She's got a powder blue western shirt with dark blue piping, and when she gets up to walk around, she's wearing matching cowboy boots with light blue highlighting. I'm sure you notice this father alone.

Oh right off the bat, of course, what's going on here? They're like it's it's like it's like a pond person thing or like the thing like in various episodes, people have been taken over by this cowboy alien that forces them to I'm sure they're going to like midtown Manhattan Hodowns when the camera's away on some other b plot or something. But yeah, it had as told of Wheeler for a while, and now it looks like it's got its tentacles onto uh onto Nardo. Yeah, the cowboy parasite has jumped from Wheeler to to Lane for sure. I love the idea of of this alien that forces them to dress in a cowboy fashion.

It was so jarring to fade into the to the garage, and she looks so out of place in this outfit that they put her in. I can only assume it's because, as we've talked about previously, I think this was starting to be the dawn of things like urban cowboy and like country becoming more pop kind of accepted in mainstream circles. So it's got to be why they keep flip flopping back between Western outfits and whatever is current for the day. But it stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't believe it.

I forgot about It. Actually a terrible trend and they need to stop it. It was bad. Alex comes into the gara and Louis mentions that Nardo got what he calls a mash note in her locker, and Lane says, yeah, I did. She got another anonymous poem in her locker.

But she gets mad at Louis when she realizes somehow he knew about the note, but he you know, it was in her locker, And apparently we learned that Louis goes through everybody's locker when they're not around. So that's just another my favorite list of line reading. I love when someone is questioned about some outrageous behavior and they cop to it immediately, like it's not like they're nonchalant about it, which is what happens here. It's like, how do you know I got a love note in my locker because I went through it. Yeah, So they go through everyone's and then there's a thing where he says, well, do you want to how about a pad lock?

And she says sure, and he says, all right, I have the good and the great one and the great He says, well, you know what's what's the great one? Why what's the great about it? He says, it takes me longer to pick it vaudeville. So there's a funny button to that, the whole him going through the locker scenario. They're talking about this note and Alex theorizes that it's got to be someone in the garage because the second note was found in her locker in the garage, and Elaine admits to Alex actually that the poems aren't getting her kind of excited.

She says the thought crossed her mind that Alex might be the mystery poet, but he dismisses that completely. He says that he has some line about how he wrote his wife a love poem, and she grated it like he's not somebody who has those inclinations to write romantic poetry. While Alex and Elaine are scrutinizing the handwriting in this note, Louis saunters over and confesses that he's the one who wrote the poems, and Nardo knows that it's not him, but she plays along with him a little bit, and she asks if Louie can recite the poetry back to her, and he does this thing where he comes up with this ridiculously trite and overdone poem. Is improvising this poem while doing bad interpretive dancing right there, Nicarage.

It's like Ai doing a romantic gesture. Am I right? Ai? I'll be here all week? Tip your waiters.

Tony then comes in and Elaine tells Tony about the new poem. Bobby and Jim follow along, and Jim gets this is where this idea of Jim missing kind of gets explained a little bit. Jim gets chewed out by Louie for not coming into work, and Jim says, well, I don't work weekends, and Louie counters that he's been gone for nine days, and Tony the simplest of all the Cavies. Somehow, Tony's the one who gets to explain to Jim that a weekend is only two days, and Jim has a Jim's response is like, I didn't know we switched to the metric system or something to that effect. But I think what they're effectively doing here, Father Malone, is the kind of explaining away the idea that Jim has not really been present for so much of this season because he's such a flake, he just doesn't show up to work for days on end.

That's kind of what I'm going with. No, No, I think it was just a cheap joke. I don't think they're trying to paper over anything. I think I think when Jim's not around, they don't give a shit to tell us why he's not there. Tony then announces to Bobby and Jim that Elaine got another love note, and Alex throws.

Out, I've never hated Tony as much as I do in this episode. Really, when he's giggling when the first poem is being read, I wanted him to get shoved out of window. Kind of a reaction is that this fucking lovely poem that you know, that's making his friend happy, Like he's giggling like a fucking school kid over a sentiment. What year is this? He's a child.

We've talked, We've established this. It's very much within character for him. To me, it just rolls off my back because I'm used to him acting like a moron. That's kind of his thing. Bobby has his own theory that it must be someone named Don Reevey, who is evidently always he's probably a new Cabby who always seems to be hitting on Elaine, and Elaine admits, I think it might be him too, But she describes him and it sounds she makes him sound very shallow, so she didn't think that he was capable of writing romantic poetry like that.

She says, I always I kind of wanted to go out with him, but I thought he was kind of shallow and not really that interesting. Louis calls Narto over to his cage to answer a phone call, which is a little bit convenient. Jim goes over to Alex at this point and mentions that Elaine is enjoying these poems, huh, and Alex says, well, she'd probably enjoy them more if she knew who it was writing them to her, and Jim says back to Alex, maybe the guy's got a good re for keeping quiet. Alex is getting a little suspicious and says, like what, and Jim says, well, maybe he talks better than he looks, or he is. Alex finally puts two and two together and realizes that it's Jim.

I mean, it doesn't take a genius, but it. Finally the penny drops and he realizes it's got to be Jim writing these poems, and Alex presses him on this and Jim finally confesses. Alex asks him, why are you doing this, Jim? This is weird. The poems make it sound like he's in love with a Lane, and Jim says, well, he's in love with her in the same sense that he's in love with all living things, which I think is a very Jim thing to say.

But he goes on to explain that he just seeing a Lane really down about her latest breakup. He wanted to cheer her up, and he thought he could do it with the poem. And it worked. The poem took her mind off of the breakup. But Alex's counter as well, why didn't you tell her it was you?

And Jim says, well, she'd be disappointed if she knew it was me. Christopher Lloyd is fantastic this. I think the episode really picks up when he gets more involved with the goings on and you realize what's you know, how involved he is in the situation. But he plays things so beautifully. There's a sensitivity about Jim and the way that Christopher Lloyd is playing him that you're really rooting for him no matter what.

Well, here's the thing, He's the only thing buoying this episode because everything else is some sitcom bullshit, all the setup, all the payoff, everything we're gonna that we've already experienced and we're going to experience. The rest of this episode feels like the fucking episode of like The Courtship of Vetty's Father or something like that. It's just it's really not good. But his performance in it this sort of gentle, sort of hot between just trying to help a friend and Jim sort of a general outlook but like but also underneath that, this notion that it can only be a platonic thing because girls just don't go for him. Up to now, it's been like we've seen TV episodes and movies that involve the quote unquote secret admirer and the search for the secret admirer and all the complications that arise.

So it's nothing unique in this episode. That part of it is very rote. But the thing that everything hinges on is really Christopher Lloyd and his performance is Jim. And if we're talking about yellow lights, yellow lights are starting to brighten when Christopher Lloyd is on the screen, and we're going to keep seeing that as the episode goes along. Jim entreats Alex to keep this between the two of them.

He doesn't want to be revealed as the secret admirer. Elaine gets off the phone and she announces again this is rather conspicuous. She announces to none in particular, that she doesn't have to go into the gallery today. She seems happy about that fact, and just then this smirking hunk walks by. Elaine flashes a smile and says hello, and this is evidently this is the Don Reeve that we've heard about earlier.

In this scene, and Elayne gets a look on her eye and she asks Don to come over and chat, and she asks, among other things, about the anonymous poetry and taking a page from the Vinnie Barberino school of communication, every question that Elaine posits to Don Reevey, he answers yeah, but with a different tone, like everything she likes. You know, So, did you write the poetry? Yeah? Were you worried? Was it because you're shy and you didn't want to reveal?

Yeah? So everything is a different intonation of the word yeah. Basically their whole conversation terrible. This is something you know, It's a courtship Betty's father set up followed by a three's company payoff. Here it is very threes company.

But like I said, my mind originally went right to Vinnie Barberino where he go what where? Like everything is a single word response base. But you know what, that was funny and it makes it It makes Elaine Nardoa clown. Well, it makes her look stupid because she buys everything. She asks Louis to palmitter her site any part of it.

An he can this. She just allows the guy to say yeah a bunch of different ways, and she's like, good enough for me, because here's the thing. If she's fooling herself because she wants to fuck this guy, Okay, great, that's fine, do that, but they're making her an idiot. I guess you could make the case, like you said, that she's just she just wants to have sex with this guy. So maybe that's why she's letting herself go along with it, against her better judgment.

I don't know, but it does seem rather odd that contradictory her behavior, I think a little bit. At least she buys this completely. And Don Reevey eventually asks her out for coffee and she says yes, and they go out, and all the while Alex is getting frustrated by this guy down taking credit, but Jim is unfazed. He just doesn't want to get involved. He's not inserting himself into the situation.

So we fade the black. We fade back in. The guys are all slumped around the poke table. They seem exhausted, and Bobby says they can't possibly paint her apartment again. They've been back four times in the last two weeks, and frankly, he's hung over from all the beer he drank.

So that's a joke. These guys got no actual work done. They just go to Elaine's apartment and drink beer and watch football and that's it. Sort of silly. Elaine at this point sachets into the garage.

She's wearing a fur coat that would make doctor Detroit jealous. Did you notice? I'm sure you noticed this, so I haven't even asked her. Yeah, man, seemed like she seemed like a call girl. Yeah, it's a very cheap looking for a coat.

I mean, no one ever back then, even I don't even recall anybody on the street wearing clothes like this. Seems very odd. And Alex asks her if she's going to see Don Reevey again, and she says, yeah. They've been seeing a lot of each other over the past whatever week. And at no point in those seven days did he write her another poem or did she ask for another poet.

Well, but that actually that, in a funny way, might actually confirm that Don Reevey is the mystery poet, because if he's captured her heart as he seems to have, why would he have any reason to write another anonymous poem. So that could only confirm Malane's suspicions that it was him that part I buy. You continue to woo. It's like it's not enough that they've gone out to dinner a bunch of times now, no. See.

I think if we assume, like Elaine, that Don was the mystery poet, the whole point behind those poems was to express what he couldn't express to her in person. But now that they're dating, he didn't give a shit. Now he it's all the table. He doesn't have to use the subterfuge of being anonymous to win her home because he's already. Done, right, Which is another fucking clue for Elaine Nardo to know that this guy did not write the poems, because the kind of person who would write the poems wouldn't just drop that bullshit as soon as as soon as he got the girl.

My side note behind Elaine, as she's got this fur coat and doing her thing, apparently polishing some kind of tool or mechanism in the background. Hey, it's Captain Marvel aka Richard Sakai. Another Richard Sachai moment. I love it. He doesn't do anything else.

He just polishes this. It's like an oil thing or I don't know what it is, but he's polishing something and there he is. He's got like a watchcap on. He looks great. Elaine talks about how Don is much deeper than he seems.

But it's clear hearing her say this, that she's projecting depth through the poems that she believes that he wrote. Because he's still the same lunkheaded dude that just has no personality, but because she believes he's written these poems, she is projecting that he has a sense deep down he's the sensitive, romantic dude. Alex can't let this go. I mean Alex, for all of his protests that he will keep it a secret and he's not going to get involved in anyone's business. He can't let this go.

He's so incensed about the fact that Don Reevey is taking credit for Jim's poems that he just can't let it go. He keeps obliquely suggesting to Elaine that it can't be Don. It seems like these are two different guys, the poet and Don. He won't let it go. Then Louis calls some of the Cabby's over to give them their assignments.

Elaine goes to Louis to tell Louie that she only came in today because she's not going to be driving this weekend, and Louis says, I know you're going to go to Vermont for the weekend with Don Reevey. Louis went through his locker and found train tickets and ski rental receipts, so he's still up to his old tricks. Alex is even more upset now because now he's heard that they're going away for the weekend. I suppose, Father Malone, the implication is that the poems are Don's ticket to having sex with Elane. And I think that's the bottom line of why he's trying to prevent this romantic weekend to happen.

Do you agree exactly what's happening? It's so weird. Look, in this case, he knows that he didn't write that poem. How about he goes to Don Reevey and go and say, hey, man, I know you write that fucking poem. I know who wrote that poem.

And if you don't tell Elane that you didn't write that poem, I'm gonna tell her. How about that possibility here instead of all this bullshit, fucking sitcom stuff that keep having these hoops that keep jumping through. The thing that I keep thinking about during this scene is and I think this is a credit to Mary Lou Henner, is she should be really happy and excited. She's got this romantic weekend plan. She's been seeing this guy for a few days.

It's apparently it should be cause for celebration in her life. But I don't know if I may be projecting, but it seems like even as she goes into the garage with her fancy for code and her whatever, she seems not excited at all at the prospect of spending a weekend with this guy. Did you pick up on that? Also, there's something disconnected about her the vibe with Elaine as she talks about Don Reevey. I think it's her playing that you gree Yeah.

You think what's coming through As Elaine knows deep down that this is not the guy, and she's just going through the motions of what she would do with somebody who actually took the time to write a poem like that for her. That's exactly what I'm driving at. It seems clear to me watching the scene that she knows that Don Reeve, like you said, this isn't the guy, but she's playing along with it because no one else has really stepped up and said it's their poems. It's almost as if she's holding out hope that there will be some romantic spark or something that will happen, maybe on this weekend in Vermont. But there's something she seems very distant and cold about the whole prospect of going away with this guy that I found really in the midst of all of this silliness, I found it compelling and rather almost poignant in a way.

I couldn't really put my finger on it, But you're right. I think it's because she knows that he's not the guy. Alex insists to Jim that he's got to tell her the truth now because now there's this weekend at stake, and we can't let this pretext go on any longer. Elaine comes back, I think she's gone to her locker to get her stuff and Alex's He insists to Elaine that he don didn't write these poems. He knows don didn't write them, he knows who did.

But and at this point Elaine says, I think you're serious. She picks up on the fact that it's not just Alex positing odd theories. Alex knows who wrote those poems. So she asks him who did He says, I can't tell you, and this really upsets Elaine. But he does, and this is so, this is such a fucking cheap little like qualification to it.

He says, I didn't say that. I wouldn't nod if you tell me who you think did it. She goes through this whole litany of names, like every name you've heard and more from the garage. There's like this, it's like twenty names. This is all happening while you see Jim.

He's crouched almost behind the coffee machine. He looks almost hurt about this whole thing, because as she's going through this whole list of names, Jim is never mentioned once by Elaine as being a possible suitor in this sense. She goes through all these names, never having mentioned Jim once, and she says, that's everybody in the garage. It must be nobody. And at that point Jim walks away from walks around the coffee machines and says, yeah, it's nobody, and Alex finally nods, yes.

I think that beak from out my heart, take that form from off my door. You've wounded me, Elaine. Elaine O'Connor nardo. But the thing of it is, up to this point, Jim has made the point several times that he's done this because he simply feels bad that Elaine has had this breakup and all he wanted to do is cheer her up. But this is the first clue that maybe Jim does have romantic designs on Elane and he's just he's using this subterfuge as an excuse to write how he feels about her.

That's how That's how I took this. What did you think? I thought this episode was confusing and they should have made his intentions more clear because we're laboring under this idea that he's just doing it as a buddy to make her feel good, and now it's only slightly hinted at, and then it's going to be heavy by the end. But like, I don't know, man, this episode is not performance is aside. It's really really shakily written.

I can see your point on that because and Jim is flaky. We know that, and I wouldn't put it, but I would put past him too in his own way try to divert Alex from believing that he is genuinely interested in a laye. But I hear what you're saying, But I can't deny the power of Christopher Lloyd's performance here. It tugs at your heartstrings because he's still playing This is still early days for Reverend Jim, and he's still he isn't playing him as in complete, fuzzy brained sort of slob. Yet there's still something direct and kocient about Jim what he wants to be.

He can get his point across, and he could be very eloquent at it. So and I like that about these early sort of performances of Christopher Lloyd as as Reverend Jim. I like that, And I think that's where the problem is. The problem is the stinks in the empathy up until this point have been I did this thing for no other reason than to cheer her up, and now it's gotten out of hand. And now not only is she's confused enough that she's dating some guy that's no good for her, but it's going to destroy her to let her know that these poems were written for her with no actual romantic intention behind them.

Those are the stakes up until now. Now, if they fucking turn this into a Jim actually does have feelings for her any fears being rejected, then all the rest of the reactions in the episode are invalid, like they've changed the whole thrust of it. This isn't from dusk till dawn. You can't just suddenly turn it into a vampire movie. I acknowledge that Christopher Lwyn's performance is fucking great here, that the yellow lights I'm going to award the end of this episode are because of his performance, but it does not help the rest of the episode.

The rest of the episode is a crashing bore of an episode. See and I had the opposite feel. I thought the episode started out it wasn't that interesting, but by the end it was like I could hear a pin drop. I thought it was beautiful. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Elaine finally sees that Jim admits that he's the boat and she can't believe it. Jim apologizes to her and she asks Jim, why did you do it? All Jim can say is I thought you'd like it. She says, oh, yeah, she liked it so much she started falling in love with a guy. Jim says, it's very innocent.

He says, I just wanted to make you feel better, And she says she's getting angry. She's winding herself up now. She says, well, good job. She says, this is probably the most embarrassed she's ever been in her life. She says, it's a final dig.

She's walking out of the garage. She says she should be glad that Jim got it through her thick skull that there are no castles in her life. She walks out of the garage as Jim hangs his head in shame. We fade out, we fade back in. We're at Elaine's apartment.

It's dark. She turns on the light and she finds, to her surprise, there is a blue welded metal castle sculpture right there in the middle of her apartment, and right in the middle of it, sheepishly rising up out of the middle of this castle because he's hidden, is Jim. And Elaine is shocked by this display. Now, granted, if it were New York in the nineteen eighties or any time for that matter. And I turned on the light, there was some weird sculpture in the middle of my apartment, and some weird dude just kind of came up out of nowhere.

I think i'd be like, you know, cops help. You know I'm going to be attacked, but she goes with it. Whatever Jim says to her, well, you see there are castles. This is all callback to that first poem that he wrote about I could build you a castle if I could, Elayne is. Instead of being in fear for her life, Elayne is awestruck.

And she says it's the most amazing thing that anyone has ever done for her. And she thinks. Jim masks if she's still upset, and she smiles and says, well, you're making it really hard to stay upset at you, Jim. Jim gets up and he says, I guess I better go then, and he asks Elane where he can take the bus from here, and she says, why didn't you just drive your van over? And Jim explains that the castle has about one hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, so what he's done is he's carved up his van, taking off the roof of the van to build this beautiful welded castle sculpture right there.

Here's where gets a little bit odd. But I went with it, Jim says to her, he playfully says if he can crash there for about a year or so. So at this point he's making his intentions playing, is he not that hey, you know, maybe I can hang here for a while. A Laine sweetly begs off, you know, without saying it, she kind of says, well, Jim, you know, and Jim replies, and this is where it really gets. I meant I said the word poignant, but this is where where it really starts to get that way.

He says he doesn't. He knows that he's not every woman's dream boat. But Elaine counters and says, well, you're the most You're the dearest, most sweet, most wonderful person I've ever met. She and he turns to go, and Jim turns back to her and says, that's a funny thing. There used to be a time when that was enough.

Awkwardly, he bumps into her coat rack on the way out of the apartment. I swear this looks like it wasn't scripted. He bumps into the coat rack and it kind of wobbles and almost falls over, and he says, excuse me, And it nicely undercuts what has become really a powerful sort of bit of emotion coming from Jim, a very bittersweet moment, and he leaves, and we cut to a great outside shot of Jim exiting her building and we see his van. It kind of like it pans out eventually, and you see his van and it's parked there, and it's the roof is basically missing. It's all been cut up for him to do this sculpture, like I said, and he sadly climbs into the driver's seat as a beautiful Bob James piece.

Ends the episode. There's no button, there's no b plot. It just ends with the shot of Jim forlornly getting into his chopped up dan and we fade the black I see I see her face there. Bah bah bahlad let's hear it. Come on, let me hear the cynicism.

Let me hear it, oh man, cynicism. I don't know where to begin, how much just pure timeline. They're at the garage, she's humiliated, she leaves. He then goes somewhere, carves up his van, fucking welds it into a castle, secrets it into her apartment, and constructs it there before before she gets home. Okay, I'm gonna go with that one, right, that actually happened okay as a payoff for an episode where Elaine feels worthless and this secret admirer has been buoying her spirits, and then those are dashed.

And then it's dashed because the secret admirer doesn't exist, and it seems to be a breach of friendship because this person did this to her even though their intentions were good. And then they make up for it by proving that the thing that they were telling them is true, which is you're awesome. Right. If that was the episode we got, then that would be okay. But what they've done here is muddied up the fucking waters by making this a plea of love.

On Reverend Jim's case, they make it at the last goddamn second. They could hint at anything they want to here in this episode. That's fine. They don't have to hint at anything. They say everything pretty outright most of the time.

Here on this show, this is unearned at the end, this bittersweet thing of him walking forlornly away, and this pithy line of it used to be you know, it used to be enough to be a decent and good guy. Like it's obvious you're rejecting me because of the way I look and the way I am. That's not this episode. And we've already had that episode twice with fucking Angela Matusa. So now they've turned.

They've already turned. They've turned Reverend Jim into Angela here at the end, at the last second, because this episode has been about Elaine's humiliation from beginning to end, except now here at the end, we've twisted that all around. And what it does is the same thing it did with Rieger with fucking Angela. It lets Elaine off the hook because what this episode wants to be is he actually wants to be her girlfriend, wants her to be his girlfriend, but is fears the rejection. The rejection happens at the end of the episode.

They do it at the last second, so we don't have to deal with the fallout of it at all. It's a fucking coward's way out of the end of this episode. So this idea that I'm going to look his performance is fucking spectacular. But the idea that I'm going to feel bad for Reverend Jim amidst all the sitcom bullshit that's come beforehand is they've they've got another thing coming. That's what I have to say.

Two yellow lights. The second yellow light is for Reverend Jim's performance. But you got ahead of me there. Let's be back up per a minute. Here.

Now is the time usually where we talk about yellow lights. What does a yellow light mean? A reminder we sky we score on a scale of one to five yellow lights. One is the worst, five is the best, As is the custom, we usually throw it to Father Malone to tell us, but he's already told us his score. He gives it two yellow lights, and with a wonderful justification that I buy everything you're saying, just as I understood your criticisms up and down of the Angela Matusa saga.

This is worse to be in a way because this is These are our actual main characters involved, and this is a sign of Reverend Jim that I really want to see explored. I want to see this sweet man underneath the stoner sort of burnout exterior, that this caricature that everyone has bought into and that he's happy to play. But really there's a real guy in here, and it's fright and you've said it. It's we're early in his time here he has to become the caricature of Reverend Jim, says something outrageous and stumbles around. Yet this is still a real guy here.

So it stings more than Angela because I don't give a shit about Angela because she's only going to be there for one episode. Oh my god, she's back. Does she come back against you? Better not. I give this episode three yellow lights, And if it's not already obvious from how I've been extolling this man's performance, there's only one reason for this high score, and that is Christopher Lloyd.

He elevates a well worn sitcom premise of the secret admirer and makes it funny and point into an equal measure. The final scene in Elaine's apartment almost feels like a It's almost like a theater play in miniature. That's what I love about it. I understand all of your criticisms, and I really, frankly I can't argue with them, but I still love watching Christopher Lloyd in this episode. It's not necessarily the episode that I will go back to over the years, but I do enjoy that final third act.

I think it's good. No one. I think what we can agree on Father Malone is that no one else in the cast could play these types of notes, like Christopher Lloyd could maybe Danny DeVito in certain registers where you see the person beneath the moment, if you will, but imagine for a moment that it was actually Bobby in some way, shape or form. You cut and paste Bobby for Christopher Lloyd or for Jim in the final scene. It wouldn't have the same payoff as it does with Reverend Jim.

You have to have him. There, no, because what you see is what you get. With Bobby Waeler, there was not him revealing his true nature would just be more Bobby Reeler. I wouldn't buy it. There are certain characters who are sort of surface level to everyone.

I think Loaka could also get away with this sort of episode. Yeah, I guess Laka could pull it off too, but certainly Jim is one of the only ones who could pull it off. So for that reason and that reason alone, I'm giving this three yellow lights. I think it's slightly above average purely because of Jim and Lloyd's performance. So that's going to do it for Elaine's secret admirer.

Thanks everybody for listening. Father Malone. Where can people find you when you're not clocked into the garage. You can find me over at Midnight Viewing. That's a podcast I do.

It's on twice a week. Every Monday is Father Malone's Weekly round Up where I am my co host Ripley. We go over streaming things and newer properties. But every Friday we have a rotating show. That's the Horror Anthology Podcast, where we take a look at anthology television.

We're looking at Tell from the Dark Side right now. The other show is Anthologies Attack, where we look at anthologies of every genre, not just the horror genre. Like, for instance, we just did home Fiction. People forget that's an anthology movie, but certainly so. Check us out over there.

If you want to get any of the content that I work on earlier in commercial free go to patreon dot com slash Father Malone. You can subscribe there. And yeah, as. For myself, you can also find me on the Weirdy Way Media Network, including this Fine podcast. You can hear me on the Culture Cast occasionally with Christashu and I also have made appearances here and there on the Dark Destinations podcast.

I would encourage our listeners to check that out, and I also have a band campsite hpmusicplace not bandcamp dot com. Check that out if you would otherwise. Again, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to subscribe to this podcast, write a review, or rate us.

We'd love to hear from you in any manner that you see fit for myself and for father alone. Thanks again and we'll see you all next time. Hi,