Episode 58 - Zen And The Art Of Cab Driving

Weird way media. Nik. Misters can see that guy with it now, he's an actor. I'm a cat driver. I'm the only camp driver in his place.

Good evening and welcome tonight, mister Walters the 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? I just want to point out that courtesy is our motto and services our business. This is a Taxi season three, episode thirteen, Zen and the Art of Cab Driving.

This was written by Glenn Charles and Les Charles, The Charles Boys, The Pride of Hes. We love the Charles Boys, don't we? Are we the only ones shouting about the Charles brothers like a frequent basis? And this was episode was directed by Will McKenzie. What another non James Burrows episode.

We got to get into this. Maybe he was sent he was censured for all of his boom mic shadows in the previous episodes. This was he was, you know, doing his penance for poor technical issues in the last episode. So reminder before we get into that, we're doing these shows in broadcast order and not in order of filming. So this is the second episode of Taxi not directed by James Burrows.

But Will McKenzie was a respected director who would go on to direct, among other things, Father Alone, both the Shakespeare parody and black and white noir episodes of Moonlighting. He was a very big Moonlighting guy. He's one of Alan Arkash's compadres. Have you talked to Alan about uh Will McKenzie. No, but I've spoken about Moonlighting because he directed a whole bunch of those episodes.

No kidden? Alan Arkis directed Moonlighting. A ton of Moonlighting. Yeah, like pivotal episodes. Alan Arkis did a lot more important TV or important being you know, a subjective term.

But remember the Ally McBeal dancing baby Alan Arkish. Wow, that is, you know, because it's easy when you have somebody like Arkish, this a little sidetrack who's so well known for obviously rock and roll, High School and get crazy these big cult movies. But it's not like he didn't work in between all of these big cult projects. So I guess the majority. Of his career has been on television, and he's done a lot of amazing work on television.

Yeah, I'll say, have you ever have you featured anything any focus on that. I heard your interview with him, but I don't remember them. I don't remember you talking about TV so much. Uh No, we haven't. I haven't sort of sat down and talked with him about his TV experience other than a little bit off air about you know this and that.

But I did end up bringing up that episode of his with you and I were talking about it. There was an episode of Fame with they Don't Be Afraid of Moriarty Holmes is here and He'll be Sorry. There was a Sherlock Holmes musical. Alan Archis directed that episode. This episode title is obviously a play on the book Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Piersig, which was a sensation when it was published in nineteen seventy four.

I'm sure you've probably seen more than your share of used copies and bookstores and so forth. Maybe you've even read it. I've read it. I've not read it. I've seen it a million times.

You know, when I was trying to figure out the whole life on the road on the Road by Carawak, and this is the sort of companion piece of that book. And of course high Way sixty six, the television series that's true. It was a fictionalized account of a motorcycle trip that Piersig made with his son in nineteen sixty eight. Now, for those who haven't read it, the journey is punctuated by a number of philosophical discussions and tangents which are attempting to connect the pursuit of the pure truths of early Greek philosophers to the modern day, and according to Wikipedia, fa them alone, it has become the best selling philosophy book of all time. And like I said, I can confirm I've been to a lot of used bookstores in my time, and there was always a hefty supply of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance in every story been too, so I think it sold a shitload of copies.

Most of those copies made their way to use bookstores after the fact. But I've never read it. It's one of those books I like you. I sort of felt like I had a questing phase where maybe I was thinking of philosophy a little more, but I've never read it. It's really disposable philosophy.

That's why you're seeing so many copies and bookstores. And it's a very seventies thing right, where a lot of this pop psychology and philosophy was omnipresent in those days. So to me, it's kind of a reminder of the seventies. But anyway, that's what we're dealing with here with this particular episode. We open on a dramatic b roll shot of a plane coming in for a landing at dusk.

Same one we saw in the Ruth Gordon episode. Oh wow, you're so good at spotting these things when we've seen them more than once. I guess I just I gloss over them. You know what, I'm weird in that if I'm covering a series, I will pick up one thing and just go with that. So you know, look, I did the Night Gallery.

I focused on sound effects. Here, I'm just b roll man. M Yeah, you're keeping me honest. So we cut inside a cab. We can see Jim is driving.

Two business looking guys come in for a fair and they ask Jim to take them to the Plaza hotel. Jim struggles to think of where it is. He's fumbling around with a map to try and find that. These guys are getting very nervous about Jim, like not being able to drive them where we're I. Would have gotten out of the cab as soon as the map came out.

It would have gotten out of the cab. I would have because his whole affect. I mean, look, we love Jim because it's like a parasocial relationship with us. At this point, these guys don't know who he is. If I saw this flaky, stoner looking guy fumbling with a map, I'm with you, I'd be out of that cab in two seconds, like I'm gonna find somebody who can take me where I need to go.

The look of Reverend Jim would give me pause. But if he started behaving in a professional manner, I'd be like, cool, he's getting us there. I don't give a shit. But if he's looking like that and then going, oh, let me pull out a map to get me to the Plaza Hotel, like one of the most you know, recognizable landmarks in New York City, and. You would figure if he's picking up passengers at the airport, the Plaza is probably someplace he's been to many times as part of that airport route.

So yeah, I mean, it's a little unsettling that he's fumbling around, but he manages to convince these guys to stay in the cab. He's going to get them there. So as he's driving, one of these guys is raving to the other one about the seminar he attended, from which he attributes all of his success to this theory that he heard there called dynamic perfection. He says, it's the secret to success, to getting what you want in life, and to happiness and everything else. Sounds a little like st S.

What does S stand for? By the way, do you know extra stupid? Yeah? I don't know. Some of the tea extra stupid training.

Could be because S is what John Candy's character and stripes. That's one of the many things that he tried out to control his anger. Right right, But he didn't have enough money. He didn't have enough money. So if that's why he joined the army, it's free.

You know. He swallowed a lot of swat, a lot of sadness, well, a lot of pizzas. My favorite moment of him is when he's playing poker with that guy and he's just ripping the guy off. He's like, you know what, if it was. Me, I'd go all in.

But that's me. He's just I'm mister Vegas. I'm mister Vegas. Isn't this fun? As he's like taking this money?

You see, if you had had two of these you would have won. Are we having a good time? Jim being Jim, he ends up just driving them in a circle. He drives them back to the airport, which confuses these guys and it's not ending not ending well for Jim to drive these guys around. So we cut to the garage where Bobby, Tony, and Elaine are sitting around the card table.

By the way, Father Malone. Side note, did you notice that Elaine's hair is styled very differently than the previous bunch of episodes, not just the last episode, but pretty much every season three episode. Yeah, it's almost like a you know what, it looks like. It looks like Linda from Bob's Burger's haircut. It's that kind of Bob, like a weird sort of hybrid Bob.

But I would like to point out that this was the they finally found a complimentary shade of red to put on Elaine Nardo because she looked good. And that might be because the hair is framing her face so well, but still, you know me with red and Elaine. Now, the reason for this is probably due in part to win this episode is actually filmed. Now I'm I'm always going on about order of filming and everybody thinks it's tiresome. But what was she making at the time.

But no, this. Episode is a good example of this because this episode was filmed before the three already aired episodes that we've talked about, Elaine's old friend, the costume Party, and out of Commission. This was filmed way before all three of those, but it aired after all three of them. So just a little bit of insight into why I always hammer this idea that these these they may be filmed, but they're they're they're shown it out of order. Sometimes this is an example of that.

So a sullen Jim walks in with his bookings, he surveys the Cabby's and declares them all a bunch of losers. And then my favorite bit is that he waves them off in the most sort of like lazy manner. It's the it's it's a great dismissive move on christ. It's a dismissive thing. Yeah.

Yeah, And we're not used to seeing Jim is usually either just so out of it and wasted or he's you know, he's cheerful in his own way. This might be the first time that he's completely like you said, he's dismissive and kind of angry about something. Alex asks Jim if he's talking about them, and Jim replies, he's talking about you, he's talking about me, He's talking about all of us. But Jim says he's not going to be a loser for long. He's found the secret, which is this dynamic perfectionism that he heard these other this fair talking about earlier that night.

Tony asks what he's talking about. Jim relates the story of his airport fare and the theory they've espoused. Jim says he's learned the secret that separates successes from losers like them. Bobby presses him on this secret, and Jim says it's very simple. Everyone father Malone has something they want more than anything, a goal.

Tony asks what Jim's goal is, but Jim says, ah, he can't tell him that. He says he needs to be a doer, not a talker. Jim says he does have a goal, something he's always wanted, but he thought it impossible. His goal is big, Elaine asks, how do you reach your goal? And Jim says, do every little thing in your life perfectly.

If you do that, eventually you'll reach your goal. So Jim is committed to doing every little Monday act in his life the best that he can, and that will over time, that will add up to this ultimate success that he's searching for. Jim asks lou what a good cab he pulls in for one night, and Louie replies one hundred and fifty dollars. Jim asks what his best night is and Louis says he once broke twelve dollars. Jim asks to drive again.

He wants to go out and drive another shift. He wants a perfect shift. He leaves as we fade back into the garage. Later that evening, as Louie is frantically talking with the police officer on the phone about the apparently missing Jim. Now this is where it gets kind of fun.

Father blone. He he's talking to the officer about the He says, well, his name is, his name's Jim. But he answers to this that he's going through all these nicknames. Firster, Halloween is that one of the ones, He says, that's the second one he said that. I thought, I'm mister Howe Lleween.

How dare you what. Caught my attention? Is the last name that he gives that he says, Jim will respond to the Fog. Do you remember Father Malone? Back to the first episode of Night Mister Walters, we were going over the bios of all the actors.

Or maybe it wasn't the first episode, maybe it was the first Jim episode. We talked about Christopher Lloyd in a bit of his bio, and we mentioned for folks who want to get caught up, we mentioned that actors like Carol Caine used to call Chris Lloyd the Fog. The Fog was Christopher Lloyd's nickname that other actors gave him. I thought that was a great little Easter egg. I don't know where mister Halloween comes from.

But I'm now very curious. Is that something else he's been called in his life? It kind of called attention to itself for me because it was the I think it was the only one that was clearly dubbed in after the fact, you know they do. Sometimes they'll dub it in and it sounds totally wrong for the scene. Maybe they said something on set, knowing they were going to say the fog, and then they put it in an ADR to surprise Christopher Lloyd.

So Louis gets off the phone and tells the concerned assemblage that Jim is still out with his cab. He's been out there for almost twenty four hours, and which makes them all frantic. Where could he be? Why is he? You know?

Is he hurt? What's going on? While they're trying to figure out where he might be, Jim ambles back into the garage. Jim says he's been out there working towards his goal. Louis is beside himself with anger.

He bursts in to declare that Jim is fired. Jim asks Louis to look at his trip sheet, but Louie refuses. He's like, I don't give a you know. He doesn't say I don't give a shit, but he basically says, I don't care. You have fired.

Beat it. The other Cabby is unemployed, that's right, the other Cabby's protest, But Louie's mind is made up. Bobby asks Jim, like, why were you gone so long? Jim says he was so focused on perfect he forgot about the time. He hands his bookings to Louis and essentially says farewell, goodbye everybody, and Louis opens the envelope and exclaims three hundred and seventy three dollars before stopping Jim from leaving and declaring that he loves him.

Maybe there's something to this dynamic perfectionism followed. Alone, or maybe he should If you drive for twenty four hours in a cab, you're going to make some money. We fade the commercial. We fade back in on Jim driving the cab at night. I really like this.

We can see that he's given up his Canadian tuxedo for more traditional cabby garb. First time. Right, there is occasion where he might dress up like a party or something, but nominally he's always in this Canadian tuxedo. But now he's in a newsboy cap, Hawaiian shirt and like a light jacket. He looks like an old fashioned New York cabby.

Good for him. Fair gets in and Jim proceeds to start in with the white glove treatment. He gives this preamble that reminded me of what you set up top, which is, you know, welcome to Sunshine cab where our service is, you know, your whatever. The Fair asks to go to Carnegie Hall and they start out. Now, Jim, we should note, is no longer fumbling with a map or making mistakes.

He's way more focused. He gives updates on the traffic, the weather, even giving little sight seeing tidbits about. History of the street. Used to be six Save now it's Avenue of the America's, but you know, u sold New York are still called sixth aves. It's like half tour, half cab ride.

He offers coffee to the Fair and the thermos. He even has a selection of sandwiches in the back seat that he can he has like watercress salami. I've never had a cab ride like that, but I'd love to get in and have the guy be like, you know, we have a selection of sandwiches, sir, would you like to try some coffee? It sounds delightful. The Fair declares that it's the strangest cab ride he's ever had, which is Jim says something like, well, if good service is strange, then call me a freak, and the guy says, you're freak.

He's really not on board with Jim up to this point. But they get to where they're going. They get to Carnegie Hall. I love this bit. I love this bit, he.

Says to the guy. Jim says that I get you here on time, and the guy has this change of heart. The guy says, yeah, you did. In fact, it's a little early. You know what, I think I will have some of that coffee.

Can you maybe just take a drive around the block. He's been won over by Jim's like aggressive salesmanship in the car, and then Jim says, this might be what you're talking about. Jim says that there's a stereo headset in the back featuring a Sinatra retrospective, and the guy's like, oh, you know. He picks up the thing, puts the headfoot set on him. Jim picks up.

It's like a funnel. It almost reminds me of of a string with two cans on either side. And he puts the funnel to his mouth and Jim starts singing all the way, which is his idea of it's Notatra retrospective directly to the fair. It's hilarious. I'd like to point out that the Fair is the principal from Teen Wolves.

Hmmm. Mister larn the villain, he's the one. Yeah he He had a rivalry with teen Wolf's dad. Yeah didn't he didn't like he didn't he the dad make him pee his pants or something. That's right, their rivals for the same girl.

But because he was a wolf, he had an advantage, even though he looked like a man Chi. Chi everybody river, man Chi Chi anybody. This episode came out in nineteen eighty and if that's if you saw it, then that was the last year of Gen X. Just that's true. I don't remind everybody.

I you know, I'd love to know the breakdown of our audience, like how many are I'm sure most everybody is probably above the age of forty, but that's just guess. Do you know that? I was shocked to discover how many eighteen to thirty five year olds to listen to midnight viewing. I'm not surprised by that because you're going over current movie. These are very hot current properties like Weapons that's a very popular movie.

Now he ever, Yeah, what kid needs wants to listen to? This? Old man? I don't know anyway. You got the golden pipes, man, what can you say?

We cut to the garage and all the cabbys and Louie greet Jim like he's a conquering hero. They all want to know how much money he's pulled in. Louie confirms that the bookings that he's just brought in are a new company record, and Louis goes on to say, mister mackenzie has personally congratulated Louis on having the hottest shift in the company. Louis excitedly rushes off to McKenzie to give him the bookings. Personally, Jim has turned himself around completely.

Alex and the others congratulate Jim, who seems to appreciate being the best at something, But then he expresses some remorse at having to end it. You see, he's got everything he needs to complete his goal. Jim acknowledges that it was way too much hard work to keep up this greatest caby ever thing, and now that he's achieved his goal, he can he's just going to stop. He's going to go back to being the old gym HP. Can I just plant out one thing that I used to drive ride share for a while, I was a ride share driver and when I began my ride share journey.

I had this episode of this show in mind. Did you try to practice dynamic perfectionism? I did, actually when I started driving ride chair. If you were if I were to have picked you up in the first month or so, then you would have been treated to bottles of water and little bite sized candies and a charging port and a tissue. Do you need a tissue?

I was prepared. I had an on threatening music playing. Yeah, within a month, nobody gave a shit about any of that, and they were just wanted you to shut the fuck up and drive them wherever. And they didn't want to. They just want to stare at their phone and whatever.

And I was just like, I don't need to provide anything for anybody. They don't expect it. I'm not going to give it to him. Buck him, Yeah, what why put the effort in? Bobby asks Jim what the goal is, and Jim says, nope, you'll you'll find out tonight, and he hands out these personal, handwritten invitations to all the cabbys to come to his house tonight and he'll reveal his goal.

Even Laka, who we haven't seen much of in the last couple of episodes. He's invited they all go to Marios to celebrate as we fade out, Now we fade back in. Where at Jim's ramshackle apartment, the one with the wall full of doors that we're not sure where they all go? Would they do a subtle joke which again like he does. Here's a knock at the door, and he looks at the wall of doors, not knowing which one is which.

Yeah, he does. In nowhere. Something in the middle of this apartment is covered in a variety of odd blankets and sheets. This is the goal that Jim is going to reveal to everybody. Apparently, Jim goes to the door, lets all the cabbys in.

They're all curious about what's under the blankets. Jim starts to this oration that he says, something was missing in his life, fallen alone, but he discovered a miracle to fill this void in his life. The truth of the whole world is right here, the beauty, the ugliness, the heartache, the joy, the yin yang. He then asks the cabby's if they can guess what's under the blankets. Laka guesses that it's the statue of a spiritual leader, maybe a prophet, but Jim says Nope, that's not it.

Finally, the suspense is too much and he pulls the sheets down. It turns out that Jim Mgnatowski and my dreams are the same. He pulls the sheets down, and it's in essence, it's a big entertainment center. It's six TVs, it's got stereo speakers, VCRs, video discs, computer games, remote control, which he calls out specifically. He says he gets stations from all over, twenty four hour news, twenty four hour sports, a session of Congress is playing.

He's got cable, he's got home cinema, he's got satellite. Now, before I go on, it's important for people, maybe younger people, to remember, or even older people, that this was a time a cable TV wasn't even that prevalent at this time. He really only had three networks. That's what I had growing up. I just had three networks, right.

Networks and affiliate stations. So we had TV fifty six and you know, twenty five and Channel eleven and. Channel thirty eight, but mainly it was channels four, five and seven, NBCABC and CBS. So this reveal, we'll get into the implications of it, but everything he has is very uncommon. It's probably cost him thousands and thousands of nineteen eighty dollars.

Like we're talking like the twenty four hour news. We take for granted now because we live in a twenty four hour news cycle, but that's not the way it was. Then, brand new Totally. Everything he has said is basically cutting edge. This is basically like I've got the Internet, because he's as hooked into media from the globe as you could possibly be in nineteen eighty right.

Here, completely, even to the degree of having home he calls it home cinema, but that's essentially like HBO cable stations. When we were growing up, that was such I can't I can't overstate how much of a big deal having movies in your house, commercial free. What a revelation it was. Kids today don't know. It was so amazing.

All we had was you either see it in the movie theater and see it as it was presented originally, or you saw it on television where a bunch of nimrods had butchered it, cutting like dirty words out and then panning and scanning. Now, the panning and scanning remained, However, at least we had the dirty words. He talks about twenty four hour sports. This was a time when I think this still goes on to a degree, but you couldn't really watch games that were out of your effective radius of where you're living. That's true.

Yeah it was a national feed or nothing. Yeah, if ABC was showing you some game taking place in Seattle, then you got to see the Seattle game. Otherwise for us, it was Red Sox or nothing, or like you said, Yankees, if we picked up fucking wpix from New York. From New York, and if you wanted to catch up on those scores, like either you had to catch the late news or you'd have to read the box scores in the newspaper, the new newspaper the next day. So this I have to make clear that this it seems silly, but this was a big, big deal.

All this technology that he has in his room or in his apartment. The other cabbies they see this and they're incredulous. They think they're basically saying, Jim busted his butt twenty four hours a day, breaking all of these company records, just to buy a TV. Bobby says he expected something more important, since. This was like a religious thing to Jim, it is it is motherfucker.

Jim says, the whole world comes through these screens. He says, just this afternoon, the Delaware legislature was debating whether to go buy Delawareans or Delaware Rightes. So he's he's plugged into this global news cycle. Now the other Cabby's fagin, how late it is the kind of doing that thing where you go, oh, she's you know, it's I gotta get up early tomorrow. Jim, I think I'm gonna hit the road.

And they all start to leave in mild annoyance at this reveal that kind of like went over, like the proverbial lead balloon. And just as they leave, Jim powers on this whole system and there's something that captures each individual Cabby's attention. Bobby comes back in because he hears Apocalypse Now playing on one of the TVs. Elaine comes in because she hears the symphony, so she comes back in. Laka comes in because he hears the movie Submarine Commander with William Bendix.

William Bendix, absolutely good movie, which. Is a real thing. And Tony hears the Islander home game. Alex, of course, being Alex, he's the lone holdout. He's self righteously declares that he's not gonna waste his time watching TV when there's a whole world out there with real people and real experience.

But then he hears the adjournment of the Delaware Legislative Session, which, by the way, the Delawareans won, which then catches his attention, and he comes back in to watch. And now they all gather by the glow of the twentieth century campfire that is television. Can I just say we grew up? Look, television for the most part was very bad. Just like any medium, there's like seventy five percent bullshit and then you're dealing with twenty five percent of gradations of good, bad, best, an excellent, fucking genius, right, But it was so pervasive and so I don't know, it was always such an easy target, like television broughts your brain, you know, because yes, a lot of the programming was terrible.

But you know what, I love television. I always loved television. I always found interesting things to watch on television, even when we only had the affiliate states and we had PBS, there was always something interesting to find. And then once around now nineteen eighty when what Jim is digging right now. Once cable television came in and you could watch finally like reports from around the country at least, Oh my god, what a revelation.

Anyway, I love TV. Everyone who bagged on TV forever you can suck it. I'm with you one hundred percent. I'll go a step further and say that in the days before cable TV, I almost think the programming was better to some degree. You couldn't get the movies that had played in the theater and all that, and that was a shame.

But the movie Loft was a show on Channel thirty eight, and they would show movies that, you know, maybe aren't even that popular now, but they would have a knack for finding movies that were kind of interesting movies. There were events like I remember they would show two thousand and one, a Space Odyssey with a simulcast on the local rock station WBCN, which stereo TV was not a thing at this point, so you would literally you would turn on the radio station on your high fi setup, put the headphones on, flip the TV onto that to the station playing two thousand and one. It was like, wow, stereo in my house. Holy moly. I remember getting when we first got cable.

You would get these movie guides every month with a schedule of all the movies, what new movie premiered, And I'll never forget the episode guide. Maybe a month or two after we got cable was Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now's poster was on the cover, and as a kid, I went, that looks kind of weird. I wonder, what's up with that movie? And that was my introduction to Apocalypse Now.

And you'd look in there and it would have your little synopsis tell you what what times. A premiere on HBO for me at least, was a big deal. They would say, okay, Xanadu premiering on Thursday night at eight o'clock. There's no premieres anymore. It's no big deal for cable to have like every Howry Potter or whatever.

But then it was like a second movie premiere. But it was a second movie premiere with the promise of watching it over and over and over again over again. Yeah, that was new. Everybody watching a movie ad infinitum was a new phenomenon. I'm with you on that.

I love TV. I grew up with TV. It's just an easy target It's like it's no different than years after that. People saying video games rotted your brain, the Internet wrought your brain social media, Well that actually happened to be true. Yeah, exactly.

The sort of rotting brain thing is always prevalent, and it's it's so silly because the fact is you can say, like, you know there's a Golden age going on through streaming, you're still watching it on television everybody. Yeah. To be honest, I used to get on my kid's case when they would become obsessed with TikTok or you know, my daughter's case, Instagram and Snapchat. But the thing of it is, when we were kids, it was video games, it was our arcades, it was cable TV. So I get off my high horse a little bit because I realized that if I was their age, I'd be doing the same exact thing.

So takes a different form. It's my point. Alex has gone back in. We have this pan over the wrapped faces of all the Cabby's as you describe you, they're huddled by the television campfire. They're all watching this thing with great interest.

As the voiceover of Jim comes over. Now I thought this was actually there was something unsettling about his quote, and it's still unsettling for me even now when I think about it. We'll talk about it. He says, Alex, you know the great thing about television. If something really important happens in the world, anytime night or day, you can always change the channel.

And that's it. That's the end of the episode. We fade the black done. Let me ask you what you make of that quote. There's always another great event coming and you can't linger on one, and now you need to be more clued into the possibilities of other things occurring in your life.

And now you have that opportunity because you're given these avenues of information. See, I would buy that explanation. If he didn't include the bit about changing the channel. That's the unsettling part for me. Father below it.

If he just said everything's happening in the world, all you have to do is turn on the television, I'd be like, yeah, you're right, everything's happening. You just have to be open to it. But there's something kind of cynical in the way that quote winds up. It almost to me, it almost seems like he's saying, Look, why live life when you can watch it twenty four hours a day, and guess what. You can leave out anything you want, no matter how important or how dire or how interesting, You can just change the channel.

I would agree with you if he said, if you see something sad or troubling, you can always change the channel. But he says something great, which means to me, like I said, I think it means you can change the channel because there's more on the way. You found it here, but there's there's dozens of avenues where other greatness can come. And don't linger. I hear your interpretation, and I don't disagree, but I guess I'm taking the more cynical approach, which is which is.

Why probably you're probably right. I'm completely bullshitting here. But no, it's fine. But but I that's kind of what knocked me out about this episode. Getting ahead of myself here.

That's the episode. Now we're going to talk yellow lights. What doesn't yellow light me? A reminder, we're going to grade this episode on one to five yellow lights. One is the worst taxi episode and five is the best taxi episode, as is our custom father alone.

We're gonna throw to you what do you give zen? And the art of cab driving. It's a five to five yellow light episode, right, I mean that's it's it continued that poignancy of the other one. It's got a weird ending which troubled you. But in a good way though it made way made you think yes and uh, it's a gym episode, which are rare and a very good gym episode, and it's all acted really well.

I mean, it could use more of the other cabbies, but the way they end up being used is so perfect that I don't miss having a plot, B plot, C plot. I mean a little more Louis we could have used, I suppose, But as far as episodes that aren't catering to the ensemble, this is a five yellow light episode. I wholeheartedly agree. This is a five yellow light episode. The gym episodes in general tend to be something special, and this one really delivers.

Like I said before, I love the cynicism, my perceived cynicism of the final message of the episode. You can take it anyway you want, but I chose to think of it in those two but it makes you think either way. It's well acted, it's well written, and it's it sticks with you, just like out of commission. The last episode we discussed, and again, if someone were to ask me what's the quintessential episode of Taxi, this would definitely be in the running. This is a classic Taxi episode, no question.

I patterned my I patterned my life for a month after this episode, So how can I not give it five yellow lights? Five yellow lights from myself, five from Father Malone. That's gonna do it for this episode of night Mister Walters, Father Malone, Where can folks find you when you're not clocked into the garage? Head on over to Midnight Viewing. That's my show twice a week Mondays and Fridays, and lots of interesting stuff there.

Check it out, y'all. Indeed, in particular, I'm gonna keep advocating for the weekly roundup with Ripley Gene. If you want to know what's new and good in streaming in the theaters, that's your one stop shop. It's great, So check that out. As for myself, I am in the midst of Yaucha fest with Father Malone.

Over at Midnight Viewing. We're covering the Predator film franchise. We're up to Predator two with Alien Versus Predator available on Patreon, but that will be available more widely and a week or two, is that right, Father Malone? Next well, I don't know when this is airing. It probably by the time this airs it would have already been released to the public.

What they're going to be waiting on is Alien Versus Predator Requiem, and that's going to be hilarious. It's been a lot of fun for me and I hope you guys enjoy it, so check it out. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast and I'm an occasional guest on the Culture Cast with Kristashu the new and improved Culture Cast with Kristashho can't wait to hear that. I also have a band camp site, Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. So thanks again for listening.

Please feel free to subscribe to this podcast, view or rate us. We'd love to hear from you. You can email me at Hpmusicplace at gmail dot com. Once again, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye Ivan, Thank mister Walders.