Episode 7 - High School Reunion

Weird being way media. Thank mister Walders. He's that guy with it. He's an actor. Fall rise by the I'm a cant driver.

I only can't driving his place. Hello again everyone, and welcome to night mister Walters Taxi Podcast. I am HP your co host, and with me as always, is my other co host, fatherom alone. How are you follom alone? Not tonight, I'm not fatherom alone tonight, I'm Stanley Tassis.

Another wonderful easter. When the weird voices, when the weird voice, Hey, I'm acting, it's a little bit of foreshadowing, and I I suspect I know how this is going to go for bottom alone. But let's talk a little bit. We're gonna get into Taxi. As always, this is a reminder we do these shows in broadcast order, and we don't do them in order of filming.

Tonight, we're covering episode seven, High School Reunion. This was written by Sy Rosen and just what It was directed by James Burrows. Thanks Jimmy Burrows. Jimmy Bowers. That guy always be money, Jimmy.

The action starts out as the last episode did. The gang is at Marios. They come in and Louis is drowning his sorrows and beer and singing feelings along with the jukebox. We can't go any further. We've got to address something.

Yeah, the aim of the bar is Marios. On the plaque outside, it says the palace palace. I've never noticed that really. Oh yes, In one of those exterior shots, there's a and All in denim who walks by, and he looked quite sinister, and I wondered what he got up to and where he is to this day? Is it Randall?

Flag could have been because you made that assertion in one of our prior episodes during Elaine's dinner party. Right, there's another man in denim. Okay, I'm tracking the men in denim. Now officially that's two episodes, two denim men in the first season of Taxi. Will there be more?

Well, yeah, one of the leads. We'll get to that. So they're they're Mary was again And like I said, Louis Is is catterwauling while singing along with feelings. Is okay? I got interrupt again.

I got to interrupt again. Oh my god. Because we start with a magical jukebox, okay, how so because the juke box starts the song Feelings with whoa whoa whoa Feelings, as if there isn't a good minute and a half before we get to whoa whoa Feelings. That's a good point, and it's not even the original. I don't even know who originally sang feelings.

I want to say Crystal Yale, but that's probably And there's a funny bit. We had just been talking about Lockin in the last episode of Mister Walters, and there's actually a funny bit where he walks in the Mario's right in the middle of Louis singing this song, and every time they get to the part, whoa whoa whoa, he kind of pa He's walking towards the Cabby's table, and every time he gets to the chorus part, he stops and sings along, well, whoa whoa, and then he goes a little further and then whoa, whoa whoa, and he keeps He does this all the way to the Cabby's table. But there's an even funnier bit where he sits down and he orders a drink at the table in his native language, and the waitress but we'll get to in a minute, says oh, I'm sorry, we're all out of that.

He does his famous line, thank you very much, and he just gets up and just just leaves Marios. And that's the sum total of everything that he does in this particular scene, which I think is great. It's a breath of Because our previous episode was a lock of free episode, we get a double dose of locker here. We'll talk about him in the moment as well, So Ron, we talk about this waitress that comes over and helps the Cabby's order drinks. Who is this mystery waitress?

Do you think that she'd be working in a place like that if she could afford a real snake? Is he always this funny or only on days when he's wanted for murder? That a rabbit in your proget Are you're happy to see me? Dolores from who framed Roger Rabbit, Zora from Blade Runner, Joanna Cassidy, ladies and gentlemen looking phenomenal. It has to be said, she looks great in this episode.

She's obviously best known or Roger Rabbit and for Blade Runner, but she was also featured. I don't know, do you remember the show Buffalo Bill with Dabney Coleman absolutely. I did, of course, that show created by Jay Tarsis, Yes, Jake Tarss, who's name inspired Louise Nemesis Stanley Tarsus. In this episode, which we will talk a little bit about momentarily, we know her with retrospection that she was in Blade Runner and all these great movies. So it's a little jarring to see her just as the waitress in a taxi episode.

And my thought was, and maybe you had a similar thing, is was she supposed to be a regular guest star or could she have been like a regular because they set it up so that Alex is sort of pining for her through the whole episode. He's constantly trying to get her on a date with him, and she keeps stipulating, I don't dig cabbies. I don't dig Cabby. I don't know what were your impressions at them alone. It was very welcome that Joanna Cassidy popped up in this episode.

She I adore her, so I always enjoy an opportunity to see her doing her thing. I don't think it's stunt casting. I don't think she was supposed to like drop in, be like a guest of the week. Other than it was another character that was dropping in, like Chuggle lug Man, like Carver's wife, like all of these minor, tertiary characters that she sort of come in and then we're supposed to care about them for thirty minutes when they're ruining my favorite show. My point wasn't that it was going to be stunt casting, like having some big star play a minor role, because she wasn't big time at that point.

I don't think she was supposed to be returring, is my answer to your question. Like, I think this character was supposed to be here for this episode. If it turned out that she had comedic timing and they had chemistry, sure, then they probably would have gone forward, because once you see her, she's so talented that she elevates what is effectively a nothing role in the show. Yeah, but it felt like, because of his sudden obsession with this waitress, like they were setting it up where she would be a foil for Alex. You know, in subsequent episodes, it's you know, it is what it is is.

It didn't work out that way, whatever the producer's intent was in bringing her own, but I agree she was you know, it was it was fun to see her in this. I love her and Blade Runner and all those other projects we mentioned, so it was it was nice to see her in this. If I may be seen through a modern lens, Reager's entire subplot is a little on the creepy side, honestly, because very forthright that she has no interest in him and does not want him to pursue her in a romantic way, and yet he persists, you're right there. There's a bit of a stalker vibe to the fact that he just won't take no for an answer. But it gets to the point where he makes a comment about like I think he makes a joke and she laughs and he says something like, oh, that's that's you know, part of my curse.

I love making women laugh. And then he actually reaches out and tickles her that kind of like tickles her on her waist. Oh yeah, And this is how I make people laugh by invading their space and touching them inappropriately. It was very inappropriate, and it just I was just kind of stunned because that is so out of character for what we believe and know about Rieger. That was a little bit jarring to see that.

So after striking out with Beverly. Alex goes and tries to see what's going on with Louie and he unplugs the jukebox. He keeps saying, I need that song, I need that song. So he's really down in the dumps about something, and Alex perhaps just not a frustration that he can't get anywhere with the waitress Beverly, he decides to hear Louis out. It's a wonderful scene for Danny DeVito because up to this point, all we've really known and scene of Louie is that he's just this kind of malevolent force in the garage.

He's a heart frick in everyone's eyes, and he revels in being just that. And yet here's Danny DeVito, y'all, who has a soul deeper than the Grand Canyon. It really is the first time they were kind of peeling back the layers of Louie a little bit and giving you a glimpse at you know, why he is what he is. He tells them that it's his twentieth high school reunion happening and he really wants to go, but he was bullied in high school by the aforementioned Stanley Tarsus and this girl, Sheila Martin. When he was younger.

It was finally senior prom, and Sheila asked Louie to come over to their table to hang out. And for Louie this was he couldn't believe his luck because he had been terrorized by them all four years and finally he felt like maybe they were coming around and they were going to be his friends. And what happened when he got to the table followed them along. What do you see? Oh, they set up a high chair like ha ha, the tiny, tiny boy, the baby's going to sit in the high chair.

I'd like to also point out that he's attending prom solo only to get a glimpse of that girl in her dress, so it's already a humiliating situation for him. And then here's this hilarious Carrie like prank where they have a high chair sent up for him, and then he tells them off. But you know, have your laugh, he says, and they all do. Yeah, And he makes a vow to himself then and there that he's going to go back to that school and he's going to shove his success back in their faces. Basically, he'll show them someday.

But he looks at himself now and he says to the Cavies, I don't think being a cab dispatcher is really going to do it. So he's depressed because he wants to go back to his reunion and show them what a success he is. But he knows that he's not a success. He's really not. You know, he hasn't really done much in life, certainly nothing that's going to impress his classmates or make them feel bad about how they treated him.

Before we get to the scheme, a couple of things about the scene we got to discuss first and foremost. I think we learn a lot about Louis. His body might operate at a higher body temperature than everybody else. Why do you say that? That's because during the entirety of the scene he is just in a shirt and a vest, whereas everyone else seems dressed in parkas in winter gear.

Everyone seems like they're on the set of the thing, except for Louis de Palma, which begs the question a it does Louie operated a higher body temperature? Or be what's going on at Mario's or the palace or whatever it is that everyone has to wear parkas while they're just having a delicious cold beer. It's funny that you mentioned this, Father Malone, because I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this, that Taxi is a show that was filmed in California, but it takes place in New York, so it and it always seems to take place in the most inclement weather in New York. It's never just a sunshiny day. It seems like when they're they're coming into the garage, they're always rubbing their hands together, wearing globes, putting their coats around them for warmth.

I think that's something that's really underrated about Taxi as a whole, because as I was watching it as a kid, I never doubted for a second that they were in New York the whole time. I could not have understood that they were filming this on a series of sound stages in California. It begs a further question, now, was it that Jimmy Burrows just kept the studio temperature like a meat locker and that's why everyone's wearing coats in there, Which, again, if that's the case, what's going on with Danny DeVito? How did he survive and under all that Latex as the penguin. I don't know, but in terms of the versimilitude of being in New York in the winter, I think, if that is James Burrows's scheme to keep the studio cold, then bravo.

That's why he is James Burrows. I suppose so of all people, John suggests that why didn't Louie just go and lie to everybody? Just go to the go to the reunion and lie. That sparks an idea in Bobby's mind. Bobby kind of perks up, and he admits to Louie that as an actor, he's been studying Louie for a long time.

He even says, sometimes, Louie, when you're yelling at me, yes, flucas on what you're saying is I'm too busy looking at you the way the spit kind of curls in the side of your mouth. And as he's saying that, Danny de Vito, the smile kind of appears on his face and it sort of widens. He's delighted. Louie is delighted to hear how horrible everyone views him. It looks to me like he suddenly feels in important because this is something that Bobby has been studying for a while how he talks, his mannerisms and everything.

So anyway, Bobby's crazy idea is that he wants to take this on as an acting job. He asks Louie if he can go attend the reunion as Louie and convince everybody that, in fact, Louie is a success, which, by the way, everyone at that table is so on board for. Even before Louie has figured out what that plan might be, everyone at the table has discerned what Bobby is planning, and they're all like, yeah, let's go full your former classmates. The fact that they're so on board with this practical joke, it feels more like you're like like something out of I don't know, like like Meatballs or something like, Hey, let's have fun and let's do this. You know, let's get behind this silly scheme and let's see how far we can get with it.

It's totally unrealistic. It's like a bar Wars episode of Cheers. It has no consequence, but boy, it's a good time. Everybody is. Even Beverly the waitress, is on board with this.

They all are suddenly so tickled by the idea that he's going to do this. Louie, of course protests, but as he's protesting, Bobby is basically mimicking him as Louie to the point where the final words they say, they say it at the same time because the implication that he's he studied Louis so intensely that now he in fact can become Louie. Get ready to be blown away by Jeff Conaway's embodiment of Louis de Palma. They cut to a great outside shot of where the reunion is supposed to take place, and it's a shot of a of a place called the Lennox. Do you recall seeing this like exterior shot?

It is so it looks so wonderfully study and old in the way that New York probably was in you know, the mid to late seventies. The texture of seeing that old Rundown hotel where this reunion's taking place. I was so delighted by it was what was your impression of it? I've contended that the b roll here on taxi is a spectacular time capsule of New York in the late nineteen seventies, which is probably the most interesting time in its history in some way at least culturally or pop culturally. We cut to inside the reunions in full swing.

I think there's there's a band playing and everybody's kind of milling around. It's it's here we go again, just like the garage, just like every interior. Just like you're saying, we're constantly fooled that we're not on the East Coast because the people we're making these sets do a fucking great job. This set is huge, and it feels it's it just goes on and on. Characters seem to be going from room to room, and it feels just like a room you would find in that sooty hotel somewhere in New York City.

Long time listeners of Night Mister Walters will recall in the episode are One Punch Band that we talked about the scene that takes place in the boxing gym. I made the same exact point about that that it just keeps going on and on and on. The set is massive. Well, that's the same thing we're seeing here. There's a bandstand where the band is playing.

There's like a place where people check in and get their name tags, there's tables for people to be mingling. There's a whole dance floor. This is how I would imagine a cheesy high school reunion would look, with all the streamers and the people walking around with name tags, Hello my name is and all that sort of thing. Certainly the high school reunion that television has been telling us, they all look like here, it's done well, phenomenal. So in the midst of all of this we see Louie aka Bobby stroll in.

It's got a bad wig, let's get that out of the way. He doesn't look much like Louie at all. He looks like lanky, but he strets in and you know what he I gotta say, Like aside from the usual, we talked about how Conaway sometimes has a tendency to get in this weird low register of his voice, and that seems to be where he's found his Louis. There's kind of you, I remember you, Sheila. For me, it worked.

It's so over the top, it's so the premise is so ridiculous, it's so sitcoming. I don't know, there's something about it that I was sort of charmed by it. When you have a large ensemble cast likeness, and sometimes you break off these characters into smaller groups that you wouldn't necessarily imagine, not that they've broken out into a small group. But there's this conversation that Louie and Wheeler have when Wheelers talking about being an actor and he wants to do this. The interplay between the two of them is so rare, and to watch it seems like they're having fun acting with each other.

There's smiles that Wheeler gives him, and I don't know, I was charmed by their exchange. It won me over the ridiculousness of the premise of this guy going to this high school reunion and trying to fool people into thinking that he is I disagree. I believe that premise wholeheartedly. You believe that if he went back to his reunion that he could people would buy the fact that he shot up in college. Now, HB like like you, I haven't gone to either or the many of our high school reunions, but I have sent people shorter than in planet and it's worked there.

You go, so you didn't shoot up in college, shrouding college. You shrank in college. To your point about this, this is a Louis episode. This entire season, we're getting introductory episodes to our lead characters they feature one or another. So this is this is our really a Louie episode, but at the same time, inadvertently, this is our Bobby Wheeler introduction, because what we get here is what Tony Danza got in One Punch Banta, which is him doing what he does best.

Jeff Conaway is not the best actor in the world, but man, he's a fucking great performer. Him portraying this horrible caricature of Danny de Vito is hilarious. And then later in the scene we get to see him what do not what he does best, but certainly what he'd been doing for quite some time, which is dancing in a fifties style. It's like magic. They should have scrapped the earlier Bobby the Actor episode entirely and just sub this in its place, and then we get to know two of our characters in a much more efficient way, and certainly playing to the strength of Jeff Conaway.

No matter what the episode was going to be about Louie Depau, that was going to be great because Danny DeVito can suss it out no matter what. But this is Jeff Conaway at his best. I concur and I think if I stopped and thought about it. I think my favorite Wheeler episodes or storylines are the ones where he's actually involved in the quote unquote craft of acting. He's acting in a bad playoff Broadway and he's going to deal with that, or he's getting a commercial or whatever.

There's something about Bobby Wheeler the actor when he's performing his craft and getting into the headspace of these weird roles that he gets that I find endear it in a way that I don't find Bobby Wheeler the Romeo, the guy who's like irresistible to women, who can be kind of callous, because I think there's more to the character, and I think there's way more to Jeff Conaway. I think Bobby Wheeler, the self centered actor is a more interesting character than this sort of wackier Jeff Conaway performance or possibility. But Jeff Conaway is so good at what we see here. It's like on Cheers, Oh my god, we're gonna compare everything with Cheers. I know, I am when they first when we first get Kiir Stanley, she's this hard ass character and does nothing for the show until somebody figured out, oh she's an she can be like a buffoon and she does that really well, and then the show came alive.

So so he comes, he makes his entrance and he's he's great. He no one's going to mistake him ultimately for for Louis, but he does capture the essence of Louis in my opinion. And he runs into Sheila Martin and he explains, as I said that that he shot up in college and that's why, you know, that's why he's tall, and he he confronts her about the senior prom incident with the high chair and all that, and she kind of admits that, well, you know, a lot of us were already drunk by the time we got to prom, and Hi, a lot of us were high by the time, she says, high. But I took that as you know, they were, you know, high in the sense of drinking, you know, because you can that used to be a term. I think they were all stoned and some of them were on heroin.

Go ahead. So so she says, some of us were high before we even got to the prom. So, you know, she essentially kind of in her own way, says, I'm sorry. You can see Wheelers starting to put on the charm through the prism of Louie. So we cut back to mark.

You're back to Marios. I swear the last two episodes have been set primarily at Marios. So theyre at Marios and Louie is sitting there drinking with Withlaca and with Alex. He's wishing he could be at the reunion. He wants to see what kind of job Bobby's doings excited, he's hopeful that he's going to put them all in his their place, but he'd love to be there just to see it.

At the same time, Alex is still frequently pining away for Beverly the waitress. It turns out she's actually very interested in knowing how the reunion is going as well. At a certain point, Louis has this great debate with Latta over whether he should go or he should stay. But the whole debate is Laca doing his foreign man jibber jabbers effortlessly funny. Just watching Andy Kaufman Babylon doing highs and lows.

It's just hilarious. They're starting to pepper him in a little bit more into these episodes, but it's a funny scene. You should stick a next to Randall Carver every opportunity. After this little debate between the two of them, Louis decides he's gonna go. He's gonna go to the reunion and just see what's happening.

See how he's doing, as you mentioned, a way too over eager to learn what's going on in the lines of these customers at a place she has to work at just to pay the bills. Suddenly Johannah Cassidy just just dying to to know what's going on, to the point where now she will accompany Rieger, who has not let up one iota in his creepy stockerness. See you left out the really creepy part. Once they decide that they're going to go. Essentially, Rieger uses this as fodder to get her to go.

Once they decide to go, he like has this thing where he's fake laughing. Soci'll come over and say what's going on. It was so weird because he did it, and I thought, why is he doing this weird pantomime laughing thing, And I'm like, oh, just to fool this girl into thinking that this plan is just happen happening organically, instead of him engineering it so that she'll be forced to come along. With him. Oh my god, creep.

Oh. When the scene begins in Marios, Alex is there wearing a turtleneck and sport coat, so she comes over. Beviley comes over and says, ah, hey, are you wearing a sport coat? And he says, yeah, you'd hardly ever know that I was a cab driver by what I'm wearing. The only reason he's wearing this outfit is to impress Beverly the waitress.

So from beginning to end of the scene, it's it's just Rieger looking for an angle to get Beverly to go out with them, under the guise of going to this reunion to see how Bobby's doing. He finally gets her to join them for the fun and games if Angela had turned him down, but if he are rad calling Bobby Wheeler's phone like Hi, Angela, or do you have a message for Bobby? Oh no, I just wanted to talk to you for a little while. We really can't do this ally. Now we go back to the reunion.

It's as if the reunion has become a scene from the movie Grease, which obviously prominently features Conaway. Yeah, the perfect guy for the scene. This scene also in addition to showcasing what a goddamn marvel, Jeff Conaway can be was a bit sober in that it means that Louis de Palma's high school graduation was in nineteen fifty eight or fifty nine, right, making him first of all, making him thirty eight years old, and then placing him into that moment of history of like, you know, he was in high school at the birth of rock and roll. Yeah, it's such a showcase for Jeff Conaway's talents because he gets out there with the actress who plays Sheila, and they're in the center of the dance floor and they're just they're going crazy.

I mean he's doing like lifts and splits and jumping around and all this kind of stuff. Those kicks, my god, kicks, huge kicks. And it's a wonderful reminder. As you said, that Jeff Conaway was and is a fantastic performer. Let's not forget that he did Greece on Broadway.

It was kind of cool to see him do his thing and show what's what he's capable of. I mean it for the character of Bob. It shows his commitment to playing Louis. But you know, at the same time, there's this parallel notion that, wow, Jeff Conaway is really really good. He's so charismatic and he's a good dancer and everything else.

So they dance and the song wraps up, and it's clear that that Sheila is kind of falling for him a little bit. He does this weird thing that this is kind of creepy too, where the song finishes and she kind of is leaning in to get a kiss with him, like in the heat of the moment, he reaches out his hand it kind of grabs her by the mouth. Did you notice this, father ballone? He kind of grabs her face as if he's gonna like pull her head up to his, and then he just kind of ends up like they don't kiss, kicks his hand away and kind of does this like kind of chin tap with his fist, like, hey, you're right kid. Yeah, I don't know, man, It kind of took me out of the moment.

I actually found that very moral on his character's part. He's playing this role. He's there to break her heart, you know, like, but he doesn't want to make out with her. No, I'm fine with that, but there's other ways to convey that without him literally grabbing her face like Jaws for Moonraker and holding it there. I don't know, he could not estimate his own charms and that this girl was going to fall for him, so in a moment of panic, he just reached out and grabbed her face, like, oh my god, no, don't kiss me.

That would be a charitable explanation for that move. I just found it a little odd. But then we have this great moment where Stanley Tarsas comes over and reintroduces himself to Louie. That sets off this light bulb over Bobby Wheeler. Now he's excited because he's heard all about the awful things like Kanley Tarsus used to do this thing that Louie complained about where and I think everybody's had it done to them once, where you go up to somebody and you say, hey, you got something in your shirt, and then when the person looks down, you kind of stepped your hand and bonked him on the nose.

That's what Stanley Tarsus used to do to Louis on the regular. Now we see Stanley Tarsus the Nemesis. Do you remember what he said? His occupation was, he's a waiter, he's a waiter swankiest of a restaurant. And the guy says, very officiously, Oh, but actually I'm working at the top restaurant in Da Da Da.

And he says that he's proud of the fact that he's making twenty thousand a year, but he only declares ten thousand on forty thousand dollars worth of tips, so in his mind he's making the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars a year. With perfect timing, Louis slash Bobby says, well, I'm not doing as well as you. I'm actually a civil servant in order for the Irs. Bobby. It's an a in his improv class today for thinking on his feet that this man just told him that he's not declaring to the Irs.

Well, okay, I'll be an IRS agent then and put the fear of God into him, which is what he does, sending Tarsi sturrying right now, the real Louis and Beverly and Alex they've made it to the reunion, but they're hanging around on the outskirts. They're French starsing it here. They are as Stanley Tarsas walks by. He says something to the effect of this is the worst night of my entire life. Because now his heads in his hands, he thinks he's going to get audited.

Louie excitedly points is that's Stanley Tarsas over there, that's him. Louie can see the full bloom of this scheme and how well it's it's worked, but he can't just let it go. His dream was always to just go over to Sheila looks so beautiful and touch her hair. He just wanted to know what her hair felt like. Now the payoff is going to be great, but like the motivation here is that he has to grab her hair.

It's really weird and it's and it's it's not encouraged by Alex. He discourages it at first, like that's gonna, you know, cause more problems. But in the end it's like, what is it gonna hurt? What's it gonna hurt that I'm gonna go up and touch her hair and the creepiest way possible. This girl I've been fantasizing about for more than twenty years.

That is rather problematic. But where does it go? Holy God? He goes over to kind of touch her hair. I think she spins she reacts in some funny way which causes a waiter to lose his thing of drinks, and then people slip.

It's a Rube Goldberg chain reaction. We have things crashing into each other and then columns going down, and this is I'm going to say this. It's one take. It's a pan around the room and then a crane up as more and more chaos rains where everything goes wrong. That like a banner comes down on the band, knocking them all over.

It continues around. Everyone on the dance floor is slipping and crashing, and then all of the balloons and the streamers come like roaring down on top of everybody to the point where everything is chaos. But standing alone in the center of the dance floor this diminutive figure, this towering figure of Louis de Palma. It's an amazing shot. It reminded me of Brian de Palma.

Never mind Louis de Palma. I love thee well said, so yes. It is the culmination of everything that Louis wanted. So not only does he get to be to come back as a conquering hero, so to speak, to his reunion, but then he just ruins the whole reunion for everybody attending it. I think that's what he says, and with glee he just says, this is the best reunion ever.

Most of the episodes we keep getting the individual character episodes tend to be aspirational, brass ring episodes, right, and the aspiration is I gotta get out of this garage, I gotta get out of this occupation. Here's an aspirational episode. I can get behind. What's Louie's aspiration? Revenge?

And what does he do? He goes and he gets it. What could be more satisfying than this? It's relatable. I'm sure there are many people who longed to go back to their high school reunions and show everybody what a success they've been.

It was great to see this bit of shading of the character of Louis so that you understand a little more where he's coming from and why he maybe is such a cruel individual. Doesn't explain everything, and certainly he's capable of a lot more cruelty than we suspect in future episodes, but it humanizes them in a very real way. The cabbies need to just set their aspirational sites lower, not in the gutter with Louie necessarily, but a little lower like maybe you know, how about in this episode one of them wants to do this thing that's achievable, and then they can achieve that, and then we can be happy with the aspirational stuff. As we've discussed that that's always your big pet peeve. Right, If there's one thing that you can point to that you dislike about to give in Taxi episode, it's usually because it's it's it's kind of like like you know, Lucy and Charlie Brown, right when Charlie Brown comes and tries to kick the football and she pulls it away.

That's how quite a few of these aspirational episodes go. Where they want something, the rudge is cruelly pulled out from under them, and that's it. They just have to move on. But it's all Gilligan's Island is the thing. It's all about getting off the island and then we're right back to where we started.

There are no stakes because we know these characters aren't going anywhere, So I don't know, this is again a modern a tank on what is actually a breakthrough television series. I think you've made the point several times where they at times have been very indebted to the early style of writing for situation comedy in television. At the same time, while they're beholding to those traditions, they're forging a whole new way of how things can be fun and how an ensembled comedy can work. And it's it's been eye opening to think about the comparisons with Cheers. It's inevitable because so many of the creatives were involved with both shows.

But it's indisputable the debt that Cheers has from Taxi. It's it's it's all over it, which is why I sometimes bristle when people say that that Cheers is the greatest TV sitcom of all time. I'm hesitant to make that claim because I think that so much of what makes Cheers work was already workshopped and made into and played to perfection by Taxi. Well, Cheers is the greatest sitcom of all time, but you're right, it does have anticedents in Taxi, which has antecedents, and Mary Tyler Moore, which has anti scedents in Dick Van Dyke, so all leading towards the platonic ideal of the sitcom, which is Cheers our opinions may differ on which is the superior sitcom, but at a certain point it's it's all academics.

The main point is we can agree that there would be without Taxi, there would be no cheers as we know it. Oh, certainly, let's talk a little bit about some yellow lights. What are you saying? What does a yellow light meet? Reminder, we're scoring on between one yellow light, which is the worst episode, to five yellow lights, which is the quintessential Taxi episode followed alone.

What do you give this episode? Okay, this episode deserves three yellow lights. It is of three yellow lights quality. However, that last sequence, the chaos at the high school reunion, is such a thing of beauty that I'm going to give this episode four yellow lights. Oh for real, for real.

I genuinely think that the choreography there is so intricate. It's like clockwork, and you rarely see in films, certainly at this point, never mind on network television. On a sound stage. That giant set that we talked about, all of those wonderful settings were all there just to come down, and they do so in a Musby Berkeley like manner. And here I thought that you were going to have the opposite reaction.

I thought you were going to say that it was too silly, too much slapstick. You know, I'm surprised that you had such a positive reaction to the dismantling of the reunion. That's cool. It was where this episode was going. So if they're going to do it, like do it in the best way possible, and that's what they did.

They elevated the sort of cliche. Well, it makes sense. They took the premise, the central premise, and they did they went. They took it as far as they could possibly take it up to and including the fact that it's Louis who sabotages the reunion at the end of the day, and he's gleeful about it. So yeah, I'm with you on that.

For me, I stuck with three yellow lights. I hear what you're saying. I do think that the final sort of sequence is a marvel of stage direction. It's a great showcase for Jeff Conaway, and I gotta say it was an intriguing his short lived romantic interest for Alex. I love the introduction of Beverly, even though I know now that it will go nowhere.

You will never see this person again, I'll say this about Joanna Cassidy, though, unlike the other characters the time Stealers, if her character had been given time to develop, Joanna Cassidy would have fit right in with the rhythms and the comedy of the show. She's a little too rigid here because she's thrown into this, but I think she could have made a definite good member of the cast. I think you're right. She is a little bit stiff here, and part of that is because she's given the character who's the nag, not the nag, but the you know, the the wet blanket. She's there, Yeah, just to deny Reager.

Yeah, and it is. It's ultimately it's probably for the best because, as we've already discussed, Riager's interest in Beverly and his pursuit of Beverly Kennedy characterized as freepee for Beverly's sake, It's probably good that she got. She probably left New York. Maybe he was calling her apartment at all hours and obsessive about it, so maybe she just said I'm out of here. So the writers wanted Joanna Cassidy, she wanted to do what the cast wanted her to do.

It but the writers knew that the reager character would not be able to leave the Beverly character alone. No matter how much they wrote against it, it would just happen. For me, this was a solid three. It's three trending to four. But at the end of the day, it's a three yellow light example of tax.

Yeah. I loved it. I again, I laughed at it. I thought the stuff with Jeff at the reunion was funny. There was some touching bits with the Palma.

I just thought it was great. It's it's not quite essential, it's rather minor in the overall cannon, but at the same time, it's our first look at the at the character of Louis underneath all of that menace and and everything else. So it's good. So that's going to do it for this episode of night, Mister Walters, follow the Malone. Where can our listeners find you when you're not clocked in at the garage?

You can hear me over on Noise Junkies. It's a music podcast I do with Heather Drain from Mondo Heather and HP here. We do that over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. And that's why you'll find half a dozen shows and I seem to be involved with for some reason or another. If you want to see some of the visual stuff I do, go to father Malone dot com and ed back that'll link you to a weirding Way and all the other nonsense I'm involved with.

And as for myself, I am also among the folks on weirding Way Media. As Father Malone said, you can hear me on Noise Junkies, which is a music podcast. As he said, you can TV on Wolf and Raisin the Banacheck podcast. Also done some stuff musically and otherwise for Father Malone's Dark Destination's podcast and yeah, so so look for both of us at weirding Way Media. Speaking for myself and for Father Malone, thank you so much again for joining us, and we look forward to the next episode of Night Mister Walters.

Good Night, n