Episode 62 - Bobby And The Critic

Weird media. Nike. Mister Walters. Is see that guy with it now he's an actor that. I'm a camp driver.

I'm the only camp driver in this 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 them alone, fallom alone? How are you this evening? It's one of my favorite parts of this episode.

We're gonna get into. It's uh, we're talking Taxi Season three, episode seventeen, Bobby and the Critic, written by Barry Kemp and directed by the one and only James Burrows. Reminder, we're doing these shows and broadcast order and not in order of filming. Of course, we opened farther alone in the garage as Bob. Oh No, we did not, sir.

We opened on the goddamn Golden Hour cabs coming out of the Cabby cabs stand b roll footage that we've been seeing for how many years now? Well, that's why I don't even take note of it. I just I just breezed through it because I can. We've established over the past couple of seasons that I have no ability to remember what b role has been used and what hasn't done? It accepts me because later on we get a like a ropodope, we get a b roll we've seen one thousand times, which immediately cuts to a whole new b role we've never seen.

Before in this episode. Mm hm oh you have to hit me before we get there. Okay, cool? Yeah, remember that. So after this b roll that we've seen probably five hundred times, we were in the garage.

As I said, Bobby is excitedly reading a new paper ad for his one man play, Charles Darwin Tonight. Like entertainment tonight. Do you think Charles Darwin Tonight has an exclamation point at the end? It just seems so emphatic Charles Darwin Tonight. It should just be called Darwin exclamation point.

That's what we call in the industry a punch up, and that's fantastic. Father Malone just at that point, Tony runs in. He's got a big paper bag. He exclaims, foods here. And I think Father Malone were meant to believe this is McDonald's without having any McDonald's iconography on the bag or anything, because Tony, well here's why, because.

First of all, they weren't they weren't doing those those prize things. McDonald's wasn't and they. Were, Yeah, sure they were, No, absolutely, yeah, like the monopo, I thought, I. Thought this was supposed to be just like a local place that was doing the thing you're you're surmizing that this was a McDonald's. There was no branding at all.

It was just a big paper sack like you would think the props would have like put some like, you know, fake logo on there or something. They didn't put the iconography on there because they it's like product placement. I don't think, uh no, a fake iconography, put a fake label, you know, big Billy Burger or like fucking you know, big Khuniberger. Why are they all big? Why are all the fake burgers big burgers?

What's a good fake burger? What's what's a fake burger that you've always wanted to have? I was gonna say, what are the burgers they have in pulp fiction? Those look pretty good? Right?

Yeah, they look really good. There's a slice of pineapple on there. You figure, probably is it. Are you going to tell me now that that's a real chain in La And. Oh no, no, no, I understand that he has been approached multiple times to have that sort of made reality, but no, it's not.

It's not real. I've had a burger very similar to that, to what what is described as a big kahunaburger. And of course there are always like cookbooks and stuff out there with you know, like Bob's Burgers has an entire cookbook, like every burger mentioned on the show. Apparently, Father Malone, you're correct, the monopoly McDonald's game did not begin until nineteen eighty seven, So I don't know. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

Maybe it is supposed to be like a local place that has these coupons. It just felt. I mean, when I think of fast food and games, I think of McDonald's, don't you. Well, I don't see. I don't necessarily think of a hamburger as fast food other than it is fast.

It is food that you can get fast. But you know, if I see a hamburger, my initial thought isn't like a processed fucking burger you'd get from Burger King or McDonald's or anything. It would be like, you know, even you go to a sub shop, you can get a burger, like everywhere has a burger, So sure, you know he might have gone to Marios for the burger, and Marios is running a fucking a tie in with a local clother. Yeah, let me let me turn this back on you. Then, we grew up in Massachusetts with our share of burger places and local restaurants like that.

Can you ever remember a local joint having any kind of contest that they would package with your meal for takeout? Ooh, I remember, I certainly remember certain raffle type things at length. The Prince Piza House in Sagas, Okay, I remember that Tower of Spaghetti or whatever the fuck that place was. Like Lenny Clark I think still still performs there regularly. Like the Giggles Room or whatever the fuck.

Yeah, the haha sha hahau chuckle hunt. You're probably right. It just made me think that it was some fast food place because they're usually the ones with the infrastructure to support one of these silly games. Plus the cokes that he hands out are all glass bottle cokes, and the burgers looked delicious, So I didn't think this was a chain. I thought it is a local joint they were going to.

I did think that was weird that they actually have real glass coke bottles that they're drinking with with lunch. That was sort of odd, and you're probably right. They would have had, you know, the wax cup with straw in it if they went to McDonald's. So I know, maybe you're right, maybe I'm wrong. Tony explains that this restaurant has given him extra contest coupons, and then Laka gets curious and he asks what that means, and Alex explains that if you get two matching coupons, you win the prize, and to everyone's surprise, Laka has done this.

He has won a men's wardrobe and this will we'll we'll see this the remn it is, but it's like, I like it. That's great. It's my favorite part of the episode. Honestly, there's not a lot of heavy lifting, but it's always reliable. It's like the.

Easiest cheapest joke in the world and it works every time. Well what it did was it made it. It's making me and and this is a little bit of a spoiler for the rest of the episode. Really, any Any Kaufman is a very very gifted physical comedian in the vein of a Charlie Chaplin. I think because he does a lot with very little and it's very funny in this episode.

So Loca won has won this men's wardrobe, and Elaine asks if he's ever won anything else, and things get a little weird here, Father. Malone, is it in the in the in the realm of Locha's home country, and what the fuck goes on there? You think this is incredibly weird. It's weird. It's not as perverse as some of the other things we've heard, but it's weird.

Nevertheless, he says he won his country's lottery. The prize was a fly swatter, and Tony says to Loca, that's not much of a prize, and Loka, in true weird oh fashion, says he was a good worker and a very nice man, So he didn't win a fly swatter plastic thing that you used to kill flies. No, he want a man who swats flies and apparently hangs around your house, which leads to the question how many flies are invading Laka's house? That he has a full time fly swatter who works really hard, Like he's working really hard all day for swatting flies. You have too many flies, Laca, you live in a dump.

I still think this raises more questions than answers, I think in a lot of ways. Yeah, but it really makes me want to go to his country. Bobby is eating his lunch with everybody. He's sitting by the coffee machine, and he's bemoaning John Bowman's bad review of On Whee's Thieves Carnival. Now, I, first of all, I thought this was another made up thing, Thieves Carnival, but it is apparently a real play Father blone that I did not want to look up any more information on.

I just wanted to tell you that Thieve's Carnival is a real thing. But apparently this guy, John Bowman is a critic in New York City. He's one of those He's a rex Read type. He's really mean, he is he's really catty. And so Bobby goes on to exposition that Bowman is one of the biggest and worst critics in New York City.

Bowman hates everything he sees, as Bobby puts it, He doesn't critique, he humiliates. Bobby gets so incensed by all of this by this review because apparently he knew one of the actors and he who was singled out in a particularly cruel way. Bobby says she didn't deserve this, so he gets so mad that he decides to write a letter to the newspaper about what an asshole Bowman is this? For some reason, we're gonna see this throughout. This excites Tony to no end.

You wouldn't believe like he's like really encouraging of this, like you fucking get him, Get him, Bobby. It's as if he's looking for any way to destroy Bobby's career. He's he's the devil on Bobby's shoulder, encouraging him to do this thing that's not good for his career. I disagree. I think this is just his unbridled bloodlust raging, and like he recognizes that this is the equivalent for Bobby of Bobby getting in the ring and pummeling the critic with his fists.

The promise of conflict gets his blood pumping, and he just can't help himself. So I think you have a point there for them alone. I bet he was spitting in buckets. Moments later, the Cabby's helped Bobby come up with the scriptors for the letter, like slimeball apprehensible, Yeah, Alex and Elaine. Still, they cautioned Bobby from sending the letter, but again Tony is raring for Bobby to just torch his career in one fell swoop.

Eventually, Bobby comes to his senses and realizes that he can't send a letter, not while he's a struggling young actor. He doesn't have the power. He could destroy his career young. It's kind of father blone, Come on now. I was looking at Jeff Conway and he said young actor, and I was just like, get the fuck out here.

I will take him saying devilishly handsome act around stage talking about me, like I'll accept that from him, but I won't get no, you can't have young Well. How old do you think he was during this episode? Thirties thirty four, thirty five, full on adult, the guy who's about to be fired from a popular television series. That's what he looks like. For me, You're so cruel, which is the episode because it had to be this season where they just divvied up his parts and realized we don't really need Jeff Conway anymore, do we.

I don't know that it was this season, but obviously next season is his final season with the show. Oh okay, see, I'm I'm misguided here because I think I thought this was his last season. No, no, he does he. I think he appears in maybe a third to half of next season's episodes and he gets You will see this. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but there is an actual farewell episode for Bobby.

Wow. Okay, that's rare, so it's not as if he's just. Written out in kind of erased. Gradually, he actually gets his final moment with the rest of the cast, but we'll get. Him becomes a porno actor and we never see him again.

His name is Dirk Diggler. Bobby crumples up the letter tosses it right in the garbage can. At that point, Louis calls the cabbys for their cabs and they all file out. Once they're gone, Louis saunters over to the garbage can and pulls the letter out. He has a brief crisis of conscience where he tries to throw it back in the garbage can, but his hand won't let it go, and he kind of does this thing and.

He bit have missed to him, damn it, that's right. He can't help himself, so he's decided to send it. We fade back into the garage where Laka jogs in wearing a purple velvet jogging suit. This is the first of his men's wear that he's. W love it.

I love that he's jogging in place. I love that he's really feeling his clothing. He comes in, he uh this. This insenses Louis for some reason, who goes over to Laca and he demands that Laca take it off. Loca unzips the tracksuit, takes it off and reveals that underneath he's wearing a gray three piece suit and die and he just goes back to work with this quoity toity look on his face.

He kind of does this little arched eyebrow thing he goes to work. That made me think that the innovation that they had going over there at the Chippendales Organization hadn't filtered out to the rest of America yet. Because he has to pull no, he has to pull off the pants like he has to pull them down and then step out of them. Whereas as soon as he pulled the top off, I thought, oh, you're just gonna yeah, pull the pants and the snaps are all going to pull off on the sides. Nope, it was just kind of slow and sad.

The full Monty right where you just whip it off and it just STAPs. Yeah, yeah, I think we all know what that image. Alex walks in and asks the other caves if they read today's newspaper. Yet, by the way, just a little side note, I think it's very quaint that everybody is this is still a time where we had a monoculture and everybody is reading the new That's how you got your news is through the newspaper or the six o'clock news, or the ten o'clock news or eleven o'clock news. Back then, the newspaper was king.

I remember even as a child, every now and again you'd get your name in the newspaper because he someone want a spelling bee at school, or somebody did some kind of like charitable thing. It was a big deal to get your name and picture sometimes in the newspaper. You know, you'd clip it out your parents. My class went to the State House when we were in eighth grade, seventh grade, and we had our picture in the Boston Globe. Really the paper record.

You got it in. Y we're on the steps of the of the State House. That's impressive, though, you remember that well. I remember it in particular because one of my best friends in the world was standing in front of me on the steps, which is an inappro or an inopportune place to be, because I'm going to give you Bunny years, because we're in seventh grade. And I remember once I went over to his house and on the refrigerator, his mother had hot out the picture from the globe and magneted it to the to the refrigerator, and I could see that he had gone in with a magic marker and blotted out my fingers.

Felt so bad. I still feel bad about it. Yeah, I can see you. You feel terrible. You're no, I'm smiling about it now because it's kind of a cherished memory and I'm thinking of my friend.

But like, but yes, I feel I felt bad as soon as I saw see I'm telling a humorous story that I found the thing on his refrigerator, but the full import of it was driven home to me there that like, it would have been nice for him to be able to hang that on his refrigerator without Bunny years and be proud of his you know, visit to the state house that day. The point is that the newspaper used to be a bigger deal. Now, I'm not talking about like the death of print. I'm just saying everybody everybody got the newspaper delivered to their house every day, and the big Boston Sunday Globe with the funnies and the arts and entertainment section. It used to be a big thing.

Anyway, Alex is asking anybody if they read today's newspaper, and Alex reveals to the rest of the Cabby's that Bobby did send the letter into the newspaper, and they all agree that, hey, took a lot of courage for Bobby to. Send My God, it gets so sick comedy here. It's it is a little sick coomy because they all go, yeah, I took a lot of guts. And then they think for a second, and they go, Bobby didn't send that letter in because they all realize that he's gutless. I mean, he would never have done that.

And then Elaine becomes fucking Nancy Drew and is like, oh, well, then somebody must have taken it out of the thing and sent it in. Who could have done that? But to his credit, Louis cops to it almost immediately. He rings a little bell and he goes ding and he kind of raises his hands like, yep, it's me. This is the worst thing he's ever done.

By the way, every time you think Louis has hit the bottom of what he's capable of, he one ups himself. So it's this odd thing where it's Danny de Vito. So he always he's always lovable to a degree, but it becomes so difficult to not excuse, but at least accept what he's what he's done, because he gets so many chances to redeem himself and to apologize and to make things right, and it's like he can't help himself. But this is bad. I was certainly, yeah, I was shocked at the level of deceit and reckless abandon with another's entire livelihood potentially.

An angry Bobby walks in to he asks to speak to Louis. Louis retreats into the cage and he crows about how he'll never get in. Doesn't he remember Alex tearing the front part of the cage in a fit of rage back in season one. Apparently the writers don't, because what's about to happen is totally unnecessary. Bobby knows Rieger riger can get him.

Bobby re emerges with a blowtorch and a welder's helmet and he screams to everybody, I'm gonna get him. Don't don't try to stop me, and he lights the thing. He's got one of those lighter things that we used to use for bunsen burners back in high school. It's called a striker. A striker, yeah, yeah, So he's about to work on this door with this blowtorch.

Just kick it in. I don't remember if it was this season or another season. There's there's one episode Father Malone where Louis they're gonna try, they're trying to track him down, and he ends up going through some weird secret passage in the garage and he intimates me. He intimates that that's only the tip of the iceberg on all the secrets that he knows in the garage, so he could probably figure out a way to get away if he had to. I would like to have seen that in action.

Tony tells Bobby that he's got a phone call to his agent. Bobby pauses his blowtorching while he answers the phone. It's pretty great though. His reactions, like we wait wait, like, yeah, my agent's called. A genuine bit of shock.

Yeah. So it turns out that the agent is calling to congratulate Bobby on sending the letter, and Bobby goes to this whole turnaround because he picks up the phone and he's ready to be apologetic about the letter and explain. But then through the conversation the one sided part that you hear, Bobby engaged and he actually is relieved because the agent says that other people are calling him and saying how great it was that he stood up to this terrible critic. Louis follows up by admitting that his little scheme backfired. He's been taking congratulatory messages all morning from people like the Actors' Union, a repertory company calls up to congratulate Bobby.

All these people are calling to say right on, Bobby, and this obviously delights Bobby to no end. Final message is from the play's producer, that Charles Darwin. Tonight play that. We talked about exclamation point. He says that the tickets for the show for tonight's show have been selling like crazy.

They also mentioned that there's a special VIP that asks for tickets tonight just to see Bobby. Bobby is beside himself, He's so excited, and he begs Louie to tell him who it is, and Louis is playing al cooy. It's a very very funny little bit with Louie. Louis. Essentially he goads him into playing charades so that he can figure out who this VIP is.

The ultimate answer. I'm not going to go through the whole charade of talking about charades, but basically he charades John Bowman. That little bing from the early is Louis mining an arrowbean shot John Bowman, this critic that is so feared in New York that Bobby knew would be incensed at the very least by this letter and is probably coming to bury him. Essentially, Bobby's the light turns to abject horror almost immediately as we fade the commercial. We knew this was coming.

Well, it wouldn't be much of a show if we didn't have a little bit. Of this is fine. No, no, no, this is fine. I'm not you know, I'm not deriding this that that this is where the plot needs to go, because it obviously needed to go. I just think it was a little silly that he goes with special VIP, and he didn't go, oh fuck, it's John Bowman, isn't it, because that like you know what I mean, Like Elaine eventually pipes up and is like Bowman when he's when he can't figure out the charade, but like she already knew.

We can make the case that Bobby was so blinded by his excitement. This is true. He just received a bunch of telegrams He's were, you know, messages from people. He said, these are a lot of famous people, like you know, we don't even. Could be anybody could be Stephen Sondheim for all we know.

It could be like, you know, any of these shining lights of Broadway. So I don't fault him for not figuring it out. You know, immediately he might have when the first word was John, that should have given him the biggest clue. But nevertheless, by the way, this next scene is my favorite part of this whole episode. Is this the play?

Yes, yeah, love this part, which by the way, includes the bit of b roll that's the transition that gets us there. They give us their standard times square shot, but as it's zooming in, it immediately smash cuts to this like random pov of a taxi driver barreling down the streets of New York City that we have not seen before. So we cut to a backstage view of a theater as Bobby is performing this Charles Darwin Tonight play. Now, I got to say, we've we've extolled the virtues of the the the the set decorators, the set team. We've given them some some knocks at some of the more lazy sets that we've seen.

I got to say, this is this is a return to greatness. This is a fantastic set. What you have effectively is it's look you and I father Malone, we did some work in high school for the High School Drama Guild. Yeah, we're those people. Where those people It would surprise to anyone listening to this.

This looked totally believable to me. And it's not an easy set to pull off because it's kind of a three quarter view where you see in the background the stage with a curtain where we come in and Bobby's performing. But you also the larger portion of this is the backstage effectively, where he's got a little makeup thing set up to do his makeup. There's a guy there, an old guy whose job it is to open and lower the curtain. There's ropes, there's lights everywhere.

It looks so believable to me, and so I don't know, I just I loved how solid it all looked to me. What did you think? I thought the perspective that they picked was genius because basically they have a stage left, were just in the wing, and so so they have like a close up of riger sort of standing backstage watching and we can see Bobby performing, but we can't see the audience because he's in profile. But then when he comes off stage, they very cleverly, we just keep dollying back and there's the dressinger. It's so economical and it all works really well.

So Bobby is out there. It's a one man play. So he's finishing his monologue as the young Charles Darwin to applause and one very conspicuous scale of laughter and this will kind of come back. I love this in this, I really loved it. Bobby walks off stage.

He has to make this. Announcement Boffy will be served in the lobby during the intermission. He like tries to disguise his voice too, So you know, I mean, it's so crazy because he's been talking for you know, pre probably forty five minutes at this point straight and like now he has to do the announcement. And I think anybody who's gone to a community theater production something along these lines can relate because it's cheesy, like the star doing the public service announcement. It's ridiculous.

Alex is very complimentary of his performance, but Bobby is in a very very dark mood. Bobby says the play stinks, and he stinks. What's more, he's certain that John Bowman is going to have a field day with this whole performance. Then Loka walks backstage and now he's wearing a captain's outfit that makes him a look. He looks like Judge Smail's kid from Caddy Shack.

Doesn't He absolutely, he's ready for the yacht man. He's ready to dive into your favorite genre of music. He's ready for yacht rock. He's got the captain's hat, he's got a blazer. I think he has a turtleneck underneath.

That and an ascott. Loka compliments Bobby on the show and tells him the length of the show is just right, you know. He says that when people tell me that the show is too long. I say it's not too long because it was just perfect. Bobby corrects him by saying, well, there's a second act Loka.

Not for me, there isn't. It's so funny. He just gets out of there. Look, I love the Laka centric episodes where he's the main focus and we're on the verge of quintessential Loatka another couple of episodes. But when you have him here like sort of sprinkled here and there, like a like a spice, he's brilliant because the whole joke is mainly that he's got all these different outfits that he keeps changing into and what's he gonna look like next?

But my god, Andy Kaufman is just so funny. I just love it. I agree. I think that's the secret formula. It's have him throughout an episode, but not the thrust of the episode.

Like if he's not involved in the B plot, he is the b plot, then it's then it's good and it's just him sort of almost. It's almost him stepping outside and just commenting on the show, which it might have been preferable for the final couple seasons. An excited Tony at this point comes backstage to tell Bobby it's going great. Jim laughed to the whole first act, which explains the laughter that we heard. It's actually when you listen to it back, it's actually Christopher Lloyd laughing.

You can hear Jim. Bobby thanks them both, but he says he knows a bomb when he sees one. Then Jim comes backstage. He's gleeful. Jim is laughing, and he calls his Charles Darwin loney, which is so Christopher Lloyd.

You can almost hear Doc Brown when he says it. This guy, this is crazy guy, this guy over here. Bobby thanks him and he excuses himself to go get ready for act two, where. I love this. I love watching an actor put on their own makeup, but like putting on old age makeup.

Yeah, because the next act is clearly the aged Charles Darwin'sho's gonna put on a bald cap. You remember a Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Kagny when he meets his future wife. She comes backstage to get advice from him because she wants to break in, but she's just seen him in a performance where he's been an old man, and she thinks he's an old man and she's getting wise advice from him, and like he's just the whole time like hamming it up until he stands up and starts dancing like a fucking crazy man. She's like, no, you'll hurt yourself anyway. Love that.

As Bobby's getting ready for Act two, Jim asks to borrow his comb and gets it stuck in his hair. I thought it was actually rather realistic. It's one of these black plastic combs that we all had as kids, you know, and he's combing his hair back and it gets stuck, and it's it's very effective because his hair looks so the bushy and unkempt. Hp To be fair, any one of us could have done that joke. You just jammed the thing in, and they go, oh, we.

Could have, but it wouldn't have been nearly as funny as Jim because what happened. He gets it stuck. Bobby says, yeah, why don't you keep it? And he goes okay, and he leaves it there, but he does this thing where before he leaves, he checks himself in the mirror one more time and almost like gives himself a thumbs up like this looks pretty good, and then he goes off. Bobby ends by telling Alex this is his this is the worst night of his entire life.

Again, Alex does his best to buck him up, and Bobby takes the stage again. And when he gets out there, what does he hear? Another gale of Jim laughter as we fade out to marry. You would think, by the way, in a situation like that, like one audience member can actually turn the tide on occasion if he because he keeps saying what a terrible play it is, and they have a sort of commiseration here in the final scene about how bad at the play is. But he's good in it.

But if somebody was laughing at all the corny bullshit going on, you could get the you know, It's like the producers for God say, they wait, this is the serious. Oh, this is ridiculous. We cut to Marios and all the cabbys are gathered there trying to make Bobby feel better. By the way, Laka is now dressed as a cowboy. Oh my god, it's the best, Like it's not a fucking cherry on the On the Sunday of Laka's plot, hair.

But what the what that means is because this is we're meant to believe that this is that evening, Like they're going for drinks and marios after his final show of the night, after he's given this performance, Laka has left the show dressed as a yachtsman. No, he left earlier. Remember he didn't stay for act too, so he went home and got changed and then drinks afterwards. So he's just trying to blow through this whole men's wardrobe, every possible outfit that he can drum up. He's going for it.

I wish they had continued this, and the season's only two more episodes, I wish they had carried it over. Not that this episode is in desperate need of laughs, but it's a fun little thread that runs through it. That's not heavy lifting, but it's funny. Nonetheless, it could have been a good runner for an entire season, honestly, if he won the in the first episode and then every episode he's in some different weirdo outfit and they never make reference of it again. Bobby is still convinced that Bowman's going to tear him the shreds, and wouldn't you know it just at that point, a gentleman, a portly gentleman, walks in from outside, and Bobby notices him.

It's John Bowman. He has come to Mario is apparently looking for Bobby. He actually goes over to Tommy your palin mind TJ. Yeah, and you see that. He's basically told him, well, you know, we're looking for Bobby.

Always over there any points. Bowman, by the way, played by John Harkin, character actor who I know primarily from a nineteen eighty two CBS television movie called Rascals and Robbers The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn starring Anthony Michael Hall as Huckleberry Finn, and he played mister Clinch in that. But John Harkin was also the other thing I mainly remember in because I saw it three times in three different fucking schools, was an American Masterpiece presentation of the Crucible from nineteen sixty eight with George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst. And he plays Judge Hathorne in that the Famous Hanging, The Famous Hanging Judge or you know.

He was very familiar to me. I looked up his IMDb, but nothing jumped out at me. But I gotta say before we even get into the scene with him, he's very good in this. He's great here. He's supremely believable as this self important critic.

So he goes over to Bobby and asks to speak to him privately, and they walk over to the bar. Bowman admits to Bobby that he went to the play tonight expecting to hate everything he saw, but although the play itself was terrible, Bowman actually thought Bobby's performance was terrific. Bowman pulls out a piece of paper from his suit jacket and says, it's all there in my review, and he puts it down gives it to Bobby. Bobby reads it and is overjoyed by the positive write up over the performance. It was something to the effect of this young actor.

Bobby Wheeler gives me hope for the future of the American theatrical experience. It's a glowing. Review, yeah and like and the future of off off Broadway, which he had written off. Bobby is humbled by this, and he apologizes for what he said in the letter. Bobby says, people will recognize your integrity when they read the review in the morning, but Bowman says, well, too bad.

It's not coming out in the newspaper, and proceeds to rip it to shreds right in front of Bobby. To his horror, Bowman says, Bobby should have ripped up the letter that he sent to the newspaper just like this. Bowman's reasoning, and this is actually rather diabolical. Bowman reasons that a bad review would make Bobby a hero, a good review would make Bobby a star, but no review will keep Bobby anonymous and struggling for the rest of his life. In church basements in off off Broadway theaters.

It's crushing, he says to him, and he just sort of drops the pieces of the review on the on the ground. Now, at this point, Bowman is gleeful. This is the best part his reaction to him being called like this cruel cruel man, Like, that's the cruelest thing I've ever seen. Thank you, It's so great, because that's what Bobby says. He says, Look, you came all the week down here with this review just to tear it up in my face.

That's the cruelest thing I've ever seen. And Bowman he almost blushes and gets kind of bashful, like, yeah, I guess it is. When he conceived it, he thought, Wow, that's the cruelest thing I've ever done. And then Bobby says it back to him. You're like, oh, you don't say ah.

I thought so. I didn't want to say it out loud. But to say that he's happy is not quite enough. He's almost embarrassed by how good the whole thing turned out for him. Let's be let's be honest.

HP. He did not write that review after the fact. He came with that folded up in his pocket. Oh you think he already had this plan in place before you went? Absolutely I think he didn't.

That is not a review of the performance he saw. If he even saw the performance, I guess. I never thought of that possibility. You're not wrong. But here's the thing.

What if he had gone to the play and it was actually as bad or worse than he expected it to be. Wouldn't he then have had all the license in the world to write a bad review. Absolutely pleasure. I just think that this type of human, as gleeful as he is when he hands it over, had this in hat As soon as he read that fucking letter in the paper. He thought, I'm gonna go and build up his fucking hopes and take them away.

That actually makes it seem even crueler, because he already knew it was a preconceived notion right from the start that he was going to try to bury this poor actor. Call fought them alone. And here's, by the way, here's what Bomby should have done in response, instead of groveling on the floor and trying to and they did the horrible eight R line of I can take it back together. It's bad. He should have had in his pocket the stack of notes from all the famous people who all hate this critic, and go, oh, here are some other notices I received.

It will also not be in the paper, or they might be. Could have been some revenge right there. As you said, Bobby scrambles on the ground to try and piece the pieces of the review back together. They loop it poorly, and him saying, oh, I can tape it, I can fix it. But he comes to it and I'm doing here, What am I doing?

It turns into a round, soiling episode. It's right, he can take it. You can take what you can force anonymity on me, but you can't take away my manhood. Not here, not at Marios. This is where I live, This is where I thrive.

He's groveling, and then he comes to his senses and he says, what am I doing? You know, I'm on I'm rooting around and the beer and the dirt and the grime for what? The only thing that matters is how I felt about my own performance and Bowman I think. He just kind of shakes his head and leaves the bar. The other cabbies come over to him, and they cheer him, except for Jim, who reminds Bobby that, hey, he thought he's stunk.

End of episode. That's a good button actually, because he kept saying how terrible I was. He was like, I don't care what you have to eye own it. All that matters is what I think. Well, you think you're terrible.

If he's being honest, he thought he was terrible, and based on what we saw, the little bit of the performance we saw, he probably was terrible. The play itself is probably terrible. So that's the end of the episode. Now father alone, we're going to talk about yellow lights. What does he yellow light mean?

Reminder, we score on a scale of one to five yellow lights. One is the worst taxi episode and five is the best taxi episode, and as is our custom, there are to you, sir, what do you give Bobby and the critic? I believe it or not, I'm giving this four yellow lights? Get the fuck out of here? Are you serious?

Yeah? Wow? I was convinced this was gonna be one of those weeks where you give it one or two and then then I go the reverse route. What is it about this that that caught your fancy. At its heart?

This is my least favorite type of episode. It's an aspirational episode. It's a dreams dashed episode, and I didn't care. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I knew it was an aspirational episode as soon as we saw Bobby with a newspaper in his hand talking about his starring role.

I'm like, Okay, well, Bobby's gonna try and get out of the karage and he's gonna fail at the end. And by the end I didn't care because the rest of the business of the episode was so funny and everyone was so charming, and then on top of that, you got Latka so and I liked John Harken as this even more villainous than the Judge character. Like joy meant the judge from the Crucible even more villainous than that. Well yeah, but no, but more than to Palma. In fact, I think Louis to Palmer and John Bowman would probably get on like a house on fire.

Probably. I agree with you. I gave this four yellow lights as well. This is a rare Bobby episode, especially in the latter part of season three going into season four, but it's very rewatchable. This is an episode that I watch all the time.

This is one of my favorites. In fact, I love, as I said, the scene that took place backstage. I thought it was stage and performed very well, a lot of laughs. Laka is the cherry on top of the Sunday, and I, ultimately, like you, I appreciate that it didn't have any kind of typical happy ending. Bobby is still going to be that same struggling actor, like as much as he tries to pump himself up to say, I thought, all it matters is how I thought of the performance, and Jim reminds him directly that hey, you said you stunk, so it kind of casts.

But at the same time he is taking away from this that stack of messages from people who were supportive of him, and he read those guys words. Even if it's my thing where he planned it cruelly beforehand, it's still nice to have heard what he heard from that critic. And if it's more in line what you were thinking, which is probably more likely that he at left the theater wrote that and meant it and then thought, oh, this is the most cruel thing ever and then dropped the boom on him. That's, you know, sure, But either way, there's like you said, the business in this episode is all really good. Everything works.

It's not necessarily the most ensemble like. This isn't like Artwork, which is one of my top three taxi episodes where literally all the cabbies get really fun stuff to do. But this is just it all. It moved oves, it's not really slow. It's great.

Four yellow lights for me for from Father Malone. That's going to do it for this episode, Father Malone. Where can the folks find you when you're not clocked into the garage? Well, check me out at midnight viewing. We just had our two hundredth episode just the other day.

Yeah yeah, yeah, so you can check us. Thank you, So check us out at midnight viewing every Monday, we do Father Malon's weekly round up. Every Friday. We either do a horror anthology like Tauns from the dark Side or a fest that is a themed group of episodes that I do with my palel HP. Here we are finishing up a Yaucha Fest, which is the Predator movies.

Next week we're going to have a on date arrival episode of the new Predator. Bad Lens. Come listen. Great stuff. Father Malone's podcasts a lot to do with horror and so forth, but Yaucha Fest is kind of stepping aside that to be a little more sci fi.

So if you're not that into horror, give Yaucha Us to try. Yeah, and if you're not into horror sci fi, we'll just wait because the fucking following week we're starting Star Trek Fest. We're busy. We're nothing if not busy, Father alone, so for myself. In addition, tonight mister Walters, I host the Noise Junkies podcast.

Check that out. Also, I have a bandcampsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. So thanks again for listening, folks. Please feel free to subscribe to the podcast, read a review, or rate us. We'd love to hear from you.

In fact, my email address is hpmusicplace at gmail dot com for father alone and myself. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time. N