Episode 8 - Paper Marriage

We're being way media. Hi, mister Walders, is that guy with it? He's an actor a fault rise by the I'm a cant driver on the only camp driving his place. Hello again everyone, and welcome tonight, mister Walters a taxi podcast. I am HP your co host and with me as always is my co host, father alone, father alone?

How are you? I'm not a hooker, I'm a call girl. That may be my favorite bit of every episode. Now it's so organic. I love this anticipating what you're gonna come up with for that little intro, So that's fantastic.

Again some foreshadowing and what we're going to talk about. And of course we are reviewing the shows in broadcast order and not in order of filming. Therefore we're going over episode eight, Paper Marriage. This is a story by Barton Dean, teleplay by your favorites Glenn Charles and Les Charles, and directed by It's directed by James Barrows. By any chance, it is directed by James Barrows, lending credence to my theory that he was kind of midwifing this show through the first season and finding its comedic footing.

So we see a lot of Jimmy Burrows, and I believe I think you had mentioned that the Charles is are. It's Henderson, Nevada's own. Yeah, it's a it's a suburb of Las Vegas. Basically, it's just like one town over. It's spend a lot of time there.

Yeah, yeah, I have visited you there. So let's so let's get into this. Let's talk a little bit about paper marriage. Exciting for me and I am assuming for you, Father Malone, because we are. We are blessed with our first lock Ga centric episode of Taxi.

This is the first of many that we'll see over the years. Not only is it a lock the centric episode, but eventually we're gonna get a an old friend. How can we have an old friend? So new to this series, you've been tracking over the past few episodes of Night, mister Walters, You've been following some suspicious men clad in denim. If I'm not mistaken, that's true.

He's an archetype, a taxi archetype, and I think they're all for telling the coming of this man who's going to appear once and then disappear and then come back and bring us salvation. We start this episode in the garage. Actually, it's kind of nice because the last few episodes have all basically been taking place in Marios primarily, so it's nice for the Cavies to get back to the Sunshine Cab Company garage and we're visited by a couple of FEDS. A couple of immigration agents come snooping around the garage and they're looking for Laca, our favorite mechanic of indeterminate origin, and turns out his visa. I think, I don't know if they clarify what type of visa.

It's a student visa. That's what they said. His student visa expired a month ago. That is that is bizarre because they never make mention of him going, you know, being enrolled in a college or whatever. And in fact, at this point in the show, his English is terrible.

Yeah, So so I don't know what kind of what, what, what kind of student visa? What? What's he doing with his student visa? Up to this point, he's doing nothing with it. He just used to get out of the country that he's from, which ominously, you know, I hadn't really considered We always knew he was he was from some foreign land, and I just figured it was some sort of check republic.

But the fact that the Czech Republic was locked down under Soviet control at the time hadn't really entered my mind until the I n ST Agent showed up here. Because Tony is just like, well, so what they're just going to send you back home, and and Wheelers like, yeah, they have the postage stamps, honor barbed wire. Yeah, right, Lifeka grew up and like, you know, the communist regime he was escaping from itself. The student visa makes sense. I imagine he applied for every visa he could get his hands on just to get out of there, and then forgot all about it.

Oh sure, I mean pretty much everything we ever learned about his country is how awful it is, and how poor it is, and how just truly backwards the whole situation is. So Yeah, to your point, I guess he's looking for any avenue out of his country. So he apparently neglected to reply. He got a notice from the government saying if you don't reply within four days, got a letter from the government the other day and said they want suckers. There's a little bit of public enemy there.

That's great. Another favorite. The Feds are looking for Louie Louise in the bathroom, so they say, well, we're gonna get a cup of coffee, will come back, which is because machine right there next to the bathroom. That's a mystery that is you know, never solved by guess. In the service of the story, they have to leave and come back, So Louis comes out after making some some crude jokes about the bathroom walls and what's written there After the situation is explained to Louie, he steadfastly refuses to lie to the Feds.

He's he's more than willing to give up Latta to the horror of everybody. You know, all of the cabbies principles and otherwise they are a gas that he would let. He would basically feed this sweet, innocent person to the Feds. I think John appeals to his love of Latka and says, you know, I think you love Laca, and that it appears to soften Louie enough. Louis actually says a Laca is like the poodle I never had, and he has apparently a renewed resolve to help out Latka, at least until the Feds return, in which case he basically flips immediately and says he's over there.

Yeah, it's great guy. It is a great gag. And and in the meantime, they know the Fens are coming back, and Tony kind of shoes Laca back under one of the cars on one of those rolling mechanic platforms, I don't know what you call them. And but Laca, being the you know, the master of surprise as a switcher route, the agents pull him out by his feet, but nothing's there except for his old coveralls. He's made he's made his escape.

Not you know what, it's not just the coveralls that would be fine. It's there are boots with like fake feet in them, and it goes up to like fake shins. Like there's that much of it. What does he just have that in the trunk of one of those cars, that's just in case. It is very convincing.

It's not like you said. It like you said it's not just like the coveralls are there with a pair of shoes. It looks suspiciously like somebody from the promps department of a major television series concocted some fake legs for Laca to get out there. This is very carton, it is. This part is certainly very cartoonish.

It's threatening yellow lights in my mind. HP We cut to our favorite poor man's process shot of Riger driving picking up a passenger. The passenger, a woman, gets in, starts to tell him where she wants to go, and then she screams like horrifying these screams, and then leaves, just runs off. And to Alex's surprise, who's in the backseat of the cab father alone. Oh, it's good old Laca.

Of course, he's hiding from the fence in the back of his cab, which leads me to believe that Riger is a bad cabby because anyone trying to get in the cab is going to freak out. That lack goes back there. Here's something else that kind of I was sort of bothered by it, or maybe a little vexed. Was she she's getting in the cab. This passenger, by the way, who looks I thought she was Nancy Allen.

I don't know if you had the same reaction when he saw her getting into the cab. She looked exactly like robot cops Nancy Allen, but it was not. I looked it up. She was off making nineteen forty one at this point, they were probably filming at the same time. That's a very good point.

So she gets in, but she screams like horrifically, which makes me wonder, what is Laca doing? How is he posed in the seat of the cab? Is he is he exposing himself to this poor woman when she tries to get in your thoughts? He is hunched down, so maybe he looks like he's about to spring out. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

Maybe she was afraid she was going to be attacked. We'll go with that. But it did seem a little bit odd that she just has such a strong reaction to somebody who's curled up in a ball in the back seat. But she got her sag card. Okay, got her one moment on taxi, Laca, you know, is exposed.

He comes out. Alex says to him, I've been thinking, Laca, and I think you're making things harder for yourself by not turning yourself in, So you really should, to which Latka actually, with a burst of inspiration, says, well, he has a solution. He all he needs to do is find a woman to marry. In typical sitcom fashion, all he has to do is find a woman to marry, and the Ions agents will have no choice but to let him reside in the country because he's married. Does this episode, did this episode of tax he give birth to this trope?

They gotta get married so the Ions doesn't deport the character because we end up seeing it a lot. It becomes a sitcom trope after this. But I don't know if there was precedent before this. I think there was. I want to say there might have been a Welcome Back Cotter that used a similar trope of somebody who's get married, or even like, you know, if I'm really stretching back, maybe like The Courtship of Ye's Father might have had an episode about that.

I don't know. Remember when flint Stone had to marry the Great Gazoo to keep him in our plane of existence? I don't remember that at all. I remember the Great Gazoo. Of course that's a great reference.

So he says to Alex he just needs to find someone to marry, and then they cut to the garage. Louie is really trying to get Lcca's attention. Laca is giving Louie the cold shoulder because he was so quick to try to turn him into the FEDS. That you know Lacca understandably is he just wants nothing to do with Louie now, and Louie is seemingly very very upset about this. Elaine comes arrives at the garage Laca with this idea of how to foil the i S agents.

He proposes to Elaine, and she is she's so kind and sweet that she's very touched by the gesture. But at the same time she says, there's no way we can't get married. I wouldn't possibly get married to you. But just at that very moment, and here's where your little teaser at the beginning of the episode comes in. Just then Alex walks in with a woman named Vivian who is apparently she is a hooker.

She's a call girl. There's a difference, true. I think they do make appointments and clients, not John's that she picks up randomly on the street. What I noticed, and we're talking about tropes and things, is there was there was a thing for a while in movies and TV shows of the time, the way that call girls would dress. They invariably had that fur coat on top of you know, I like you could look at like Nightshift with Shelley Long, the same thing, right, absolutely the same thing.

Why was that, Well, let's see, this is a signifier that these are these are call girls and not hookers, that they're high class, they're getting the big bucks, they're wearing the furs. That is a very good way of reasoning that out. The girls in Nightshift were all call girls as well. What about the women in Doctor Detroit how they dressed. Boy, that's a tough one.

I think those were call girls as well. Actually, but those girls seem more hookery. But maybe that's just because they were in Detroit. Bing zang, zoom, there go our one listener. I think there was a lot of like spandex and maybe some a lot of big hair and Nylon's big heels.

I think that's probably where I'm thinking of a Doctor Detroit. But anyway, I haven't noticed that. I went, wow, that's really familiar. And it turns out that that was a thing. But I love your theory that it's because they command a higher price so they can afford the nice furs and everything.

Apparently, this woman, this call girl, Vivian, has agreed to marry Locka, which is great news for Lockup when we talked about the episode where Alex saves this great Dane dog, I said that, I said that this series sometimes is of more morally questionable material, and I regretted saying it afterwards, And then I watched this episode in Oh no, you were right. This is this is the tale of an immigrant circumventing the law by marrying a call girl on National Vision nineteen seventy nine. This is where we were Oh yeah, no. And she she has some good lines too, we'll get to in a minute. They don't really hold back with Vivian.

She's she's a pretty funny character, very believable. I thought, I don't know the actress. I'm not familiar with her work, but she she definitely, you know, she felt authentic to me. She felt very gritty and kind of no nonsense, and I like that about her. She'll be so proud to know that you think that she made an authentic prostitute.

She made a hell of a call girl. Whoever you are, you did fantastic where Later in the episode, now and Louie is still trying to convince Laca having nothing to do with with Louie. He's just he you know, Louie's no longer his friend, so he's still trying to break through the Lacca and Elaine is getting frustrated by all the wise cracks. Now that the rest of the cabbies know that there's this wedding that's going to happen, He's gonna get married, they're making all sorts of wise cracks about her being a call girl and what the wedding night's going to be like and all of this. Elaine is so good.

She's so nice. I love the intervenes and tells them to shut their yapps. Yeah, she's great. This is another like this feels like they're really flushing that character out. We're seeing more of Elane now and I like it.

And to be honest, like her attitude and her demeanor. This is the Elane that we're going to get to know over the next few seasons. Yeah, they figured it out, and I think the first few episodes we've talked about this a little bit, but I think they leaned more on the sort of toughness that she has. But but here she's much more tender and sympathetic to lock his plight and everything that's that's sort of wrapped into that and I like that about her. Well, I think they had written.

It's not a guess on my part that character was originally supposed to be much older and much more world weary, and those scripts probably remained unchanged, and Mary lew Henna was playing to that, and then the writers start figuring out who she is and what her strengths are, and they start tailoring the role more toward her, And I think that's definitely what's happening. You know, it's very rare that we get a character just show up fully formed on a show so early. So but it's good to see Elaine has pretty much reached it here. It's wonderful to see the character developed like this. Elaine is insisting that they try to treat this like a proper wedding.

It's not just going to be a paper marriage, which is what Tony kind of throws out there. He wants she wants to make it nice for Lata. Vivian agrees to wear Elaine's wedding gown at her behest. Lane is going above and beyond now at this point. Vivian's reaction is funny because she's like, yeah, whatever, honey, And I've gotten people asking me to dress up like everything from Pocahonas to Darth Vader.

So wet gown, who cares, by the way, seventy nine and somebody is already asking prostitute addressed like Darth Vader. That's amazing. This is Star Wars is only two years old. That kink is already out there. It's a fresh reference back then, and it is nice to see the gods so fresh.

The movie still playing in theaters at this point, right, Yeah, So she agrees, and then Bobby mentions that there's a minister that's hanging around Marios and he'll try to bring him in for the wedding. Now, the fact that it's a minister that's hanging around a bar should be our first indication that this is going to be a special character. For those of you that the one or two of you have never seen this episode, who we're talking about here is, of course, Reverend jim Ignatowski in his Canadian tuxedo. The prophecy has been fulfilled. We've been seeing this man in the corner of the frame over and over again, and now it's come to fruition.

Reverend Jimmy Victowski and all this glary and by the way I mentioned that it's nearly impossible to have a character fully farmed when they walk on screen, and yet here it is. Christopher Lloyd does it. What he does when he walks on screen at his portrayal of this character will be the same portrayal for the next however many seasons. It's perfect. He's getting laughs, just nodding his head back and forth.

The hair, the like you said, the wonderful costume, which is actually his. That jacket, that jean jacket is his. Somebody literally found that in the bushes and gave it to him, and he kicked it in his closet, and when he went into audition for this character, he said, well, this is probably what they'd wear. I just think it's wonderful that this iconic piece of wardrobe it is his. And b was just kind of sitting in his closet waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect role, the perfect character to emerge fully formed.

As you said, it's it's it's chills when you see Reverend Jim take the stage because he has the audience already in the in the palm of his hand without saying a word. It's amazing. Yeah, and you know, there's a connection here with Louis de Palmer. Obviously, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd were both in the Academy Award winning feature film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest together. He was a known commodity, as I understand it.

Christopher Lloyd he actually was and is, I should say, a serious actor. What I thought was fascinating is one of the texts that I go that I rely on to do to prepare for this show is the Official Fan Guide by Frank Loves and he's got a wonderful chapter on all the actors and how you know their their histories and how they got the role. And the one on Christopher Lloyd is no exception. But I thought was fascinating is there's an interview with, of all people, mister Robe Peter Weller. This is our second RoboCop reference in one episode, by the way, very weird.

Peter Weller apparently performed in a production of Macbeth, along with Christopher Walkin, John Hurd, Dan Hadaiah, later to be on of Course, Cheers and other things, James Tolkien and Carol Kane and Christopher Lloyd. Fuck I want to see that right now. My god, what an incredible cast. And one of the funny anecdotes of this is Christopher Lloyd was known as being rather eccentric and a quiet guy and maybe not, you know, not the kind of a shy individual. And the nickname they had for him was the Fog, somebody who kind of wafts in with a presence that you can't define, but he's there, and it's just I think it's what a wonderful description of him, and what an interesting career he's had even up to this point.

He's acting alongside Christopher Walkin and Peter Weller and Hamlet or Macbeth Ruther. It's incredible. Speaking as Father Malone, I definitely approve of his like, good call. With all this build up, let's let's get back to the episode. We cut back to the garage.

It's all decorated. There's this weird wait wait, yeah, before you go there, I'm probably talking about the same thing, which is this odd shot, this introductory shot for the wedding. Right now, it is an unusual shot, but to me, the most unusual part is it starts on the upper deck, the upper floor that we never adver go to, which is ringed in chicken wire. There are two battery cables hanging from it. We do they ever explain the battery cables?

Oh, I don't think they ever do. Okay, then okay, you can continue them, because then it turns into this weird crane shot where we're look God bless. Jim Burrows is always trying to make these things more cinematic and less set bound and less stage bound unless radio drama. He's always trying to make it more visually interesting, and he always succeeds. This one was weird because it starts on battery cables hanging off of a chicken wire mesh pen, and then like swings by one of these paper bells that you would you know, these decorations you get at the at the party store and then onto to the rest of the garage.

I don't know, it was. It was very weird, I think to your point, like there's an effort to direct the show and make it a little more than your typical sitcom. But this shot I was kind of scratching my head. I couldn't remember it from watching it so many times. But yeah, it starts on this paper bell.

You see, like there's a static shot of some tires that are up on that second floor and it kind of comes down and then you're into the garage. It was very weird, but I think at a minimum, they're conveying this idea that this is a special event in the garage, the wedding. It's probably about a dozen better ways to depict that, but you know whatever, these James borrows. The whole garage is decked out for this event. They've even moved, like some of the benches to make an aisle that they can walk down.

There's a there's a rolling table that I think Lacta uses as part of his mechanics sort of duties. That now that that's become like a pulpit for somebody to for the minister to deliver the service. Right. The wonderful background texture of the of the other cabbies, it makes it feel like like a real garage. I love it.

Always lived in Jo always always lived in. So in the midst of all of this pomp and circumstance in the garage, all the decorations and everything in walks Bobby with the man, the myth, the legend. There's Reverend Jim. Now he's only introduced as Reverend Jim. They don't.

They don't address him as as Eggy or Ignatowski or any of that. He's just Reverend Jim. Interestingly, I actually think that he plays Jim as less of a space cadet now than the character would eventually become. He's a little more sort of gravelly voiced and kind of straightforward in his, you know, his manner of speaking. I attribute that to it being early, and over the next couple of years the drug use will continue and he'll become more and more dissociated from the rest of the world.

I guess that's one way of looking at it. Christopher Lloyd gets you know, huge laughs without even saying a word, and so Alex. So he introduces himself as Reverend Jim, and Alex introduces himself as Cavey Alex in a funny little bit Jim Jim. However, he insists that he's a real minister. He was ordained at the Church of the Peaceful in nineteen sixty eight, and Jim assures Alex that the church was quote investigated and cleared completely, which I love these little like because we learned this over time, these little details about Reverend Jim and his life before during and after the sixties.

So I love they throw that in there as this little backstory. I love that the mystery around the character is so much better, like when you have these little tidbits that they kind of throw out there. When he steps on that stage, he feels like a member of the cast. He doesn't this. This isn't you know, Dorothy Hamill cut, This isn't Angela.

This isn't somebody who's just there in one episode and then they're gone. It feels right when he's there. Yeah, oh absolutely, it's the missing piece. He really is the missing piece. It's only underscored by the fact that Burns is still featured and featured prominently.

But we'll get into that a little bit. John the aforementioned Burns's he muses to himself that, you know, the only thing missing from this whole thing is is music, at which point Louis comes out of the cage brandishing a violin, to which he says, you know, hey, but I'm want to pay good money for these lessons. All true, It's all true. It's funny because for me, it's a little bit of a bait and switch, because oftentimes when you see a character on a show, come out and do something that they're not known for. Like if they're going to play an instrument or sing a song, generally, you know it's because that actor is well trained in that discipline.

And they'd blow you away because you go, wow, you know, I didn't know that such and such could play the guitar. They call that the drummer pile effect. They go, oh, because they have Jim Neighbors sing. Yeah. Louie starts playing the violin, and what I love is he doesn't play He doesn't play the violin well at all.

It's rather shaky. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's probably the best Danny DeVito could do, but it's lacking. Yeah, but he and Danny DeVito is playing the violin with this kind of half mile on his face, like it gives me the impression that he was having so much fun getting out there with his violin, playing a little bit.

At one point, Vivian the call girl comes. This is my favorite joke in the show where the bride finally emerges and somebody says beautiful and Louis says thank you, as if they're commenting on his playing. It's great. I agree that that to me was was my favorite joke of this whole this whole scene, and in fact, by the way it's it's it's Burns who says, oh, it's beautiful, and he goes, thank you, good for something. I guess, yeah, well, less is more with burn much less.

The bride takes her place with with lock of the groom at the at the little would be pulpit and Jim launches into a beautiful preamble. It's really heartfelt and wonderful it is, and it's delivered with with conviction and heart and it's beautiful. He talks about why people get married. It's beautiful. But what's great is at the very very end of it, he kind of like smiles and he says, with a huge grin on his face, I bet you thought I was going to screw that up, didn't you, Which is exactly what you're thinking seeing this burnout deliver this wedding service right.

Absolutely, it's it's a wonderful moment. And to me, at that point, I as a viewer, I'm like, I want more of this character. This guy's fantastic. He's so funny, he's sweet, he's gentle, he's kind, but he's so weird. Also an interesting side note, I don't know if you notice this father alone, but all through the quote unquote wedding, you might be hearing a very distinctive honking laughter.

That's Jimmy Burrows, right, That is exactly right. That's that's that's a hallmark of all good taxi episodes that that honk belongs to. As you said, James Burrows, he would laugh and the laughter would would be so present on you could hear it over the audience. It was. It's wonderful to hear and I'm sure the cast probably thought it was wonderful to get that kind of affirmation from the director.

It's great, and the audience probably were spurred on as well by this lunatic cackling away. Yeah. No, it's because you're you know, you want to think these are professionals who you know, he's been doing this since Mary Tyler Moore and prior. But somebody who has such a love of comedy and a love of good comedy that he can't help himself. He just has to laugh and let it out.

Laca kisses the bride. The ceremonies over sadly, Vivian leaves Laca at the altar. I think she says she has an appointment at the Hilton, which is not the Lennox. I thought I was hoping she'd say the Lennox, which was the hotel that the reunion happened in episode or two ago. But so she slips out of her dress, the wedding gown, and high tails it out of the garage, leaving Laca crushed sitting there at the altar, abandoned by his bride.

Oh my god, this fake man marriage really killed him. This this high, high price prostitute that she's now married too. Yeah, but that but that to me, that like underscores the innocence of this character because he thought because he says to her before she she goes, he says something to the effect of like I love you and we're going to have a wonderful life together, and you know you make me so happy. And she's like, yeah, whatever, honey, I gotta get out of here, and she goes, leaving him with nothing but the flowers. In the memory of them will say this, and this is how you do a rube on this show with Laca instead of John Burns.

I'll also say that Alex Rieger caught that bouquet, which now means that no one in the garage is allowed to get married until Alex does. That's a that's an old that's an old rule, but that they do honor it at Sunshine he does catch the bouquet in a nice bit of choreographed you know, action at the wedding. So that's our episode. That's that's the action here. Go to break this down a little bit, let's talk about some of the good things that came out of this episode, maybe stuff we haven't already discussed already.

What are some of the things that you want to call out as being exceptional in this episode following alone, Reverend Jimmycnasowski the end, I mean, you know, I mean, there are a couple of good lines here and there, and there's some good character stuff, but the main takeaway of this episode is that Reverend jim shows up and saves the death. Oh, unquestionably, he's he It's our first real glimpse at a future Taxi MVP, and it is really a star is born. It's so clear that he meshes well and he blends with the ensemble. Of course, he's going to become a featured player. I mean, it's it's going to happen.

His presence makes me forget all about the fact that this isn't how i NS works, That you can't get married in front of them to a prostitute and then they go, okay, I was forgiven. No, you have to have been married for some time. You have to prove this entire anyway. Yeah, well that's one thing we actually I didn't mention that, so that's another I'll put this into the good category. We didn't talk about this, but now that you mentioned it, we didn't discuss these.

So the the the I n S agents come back at one point and because now the word has gotten out that that Laca is going to get married, but they have to come back and and be has to be proven to them that this is a real marriage, that that that they really love each other, what have you. And this is what gets Louis back in Lacas good graces where Luixon's out. This is the other good thing I would mention in the episode, like the not only his story, but then the button on the story is another fantastic joke. Right, so well, tell tell us what this story was and what the punch he tells him a story that that Lacca is so in love with her that when her parents offered to give him a thousand dollars to leave her alone, he denied it so so great was his love.

And after the I NSA have bought this story and left, Rieger congratulates Louis on coming up with this lie and this fabrication of this story of the money being offered for someone to leave their potential spouse behind, and he says, no, it's a it's not a lie. Like this story happened, only two things were different. They only offered fifty bucks and I took it, which is great. It's delivered well. The story is delivered well.

I mean DeVito can do this stuff in his sleep. And the timing on the joke, the punchline is impeccable, and it's one of the things that I that's that's why I bring it up now is because it's it's one of my positives. In this episode, some of the comedy is really funny. Obviously, we have Reverend Gym's introduction. It's a lacka centered episode, which is which is nice too, because this gives us a little more insight into him as a character, and frankly, we get to see more of Andy Kaufman doing what he does best.

How would that not be a big positive? Right? Absolutely? Was there anything else you want to call out as being particularly good in this episode before we move on to the bad? No, we're going to write to the bad, So let's let's go into the bad.

I guess I'll lead off. I feel like this episode took a long while to build up any steam. I feel like, actually the story that Louis tells and the lead into the wedding itself is really where it felt like it picked up, you know, momentum at that point, and I felt like the comedy really stood out to me more. I don't know if that was your impression as well. I completely concur this is just like the episode with where where John and Dorothy Hamilcutt get married, where the third act was gangbusters and the first two were just kind of limping along that.

I think this is better than that episode. The first two acts work a lot better, but it doesn't change the fact that it's this formula kind of sit plot going on here that we're watching. Yeah, exactly, and I think that you said it really well. It's the third act, you know, crushes, but it's a little bit it takes a while to get through that first and second acts that there are moments that sort of sparkle, but on a whole it felt a little bit dull until the third act when the wedding finally happens. It's it's hard to argue with this episode being you know, a decent, you know, example of a taxi episode.

I've mentioned one more thing on Yes go for it. In the midst of the ceremony, actually, as the ceremony has sort of wrapped up, but they haven't wrapped up completely, they cut to the audience where Tony Banta turns to Wheeler and says, this is heavy, which I know shouldn't be some weird opprecient remark about back to the future, but it sure feels like it because it's so featured that him and Banta saying this, what was heavy? At this point there was nothing anyway. It was very unusual, you know. I did not make the connection of that, the back to the future connection with that line.

I did think it was odd that they feature that line so prominently, and it didn't get any real laughs. It's just he kind of says, it isn't it doubly weird now that you've made the back to the future connection. Isn't it triply weird now that you're wearing a Back to the Future T shirt? Right now? It is very weird.

I happened to be wearing a Back to the Future T shirt as we speak. That is that is cuckoo. That is very very weird. But and that I you know what, I'm gonna put that in the positive category. That's that's well done.

It's the episode has grown in my estimation. So so. Speaking of which, here's the point at which we start talking about yellow lights. Thank god, Jim, give us the yellow lights. There we go.

It doesn't yellow light, thank you. There he is, there's our man father alone. How many yellow lights do you give this episode, dying to know? I give it three lights. It's funny enough, and it's well acted enough, and the appearance of Jim is good enough to elevate the things that I didn't like about it.

It's not it's not that there was anything particularly wrong with the episode. It's just that it wasn't the levels that I hope for When I watched a taxi the episode, I two gave it three yellow lights. I feel like the episode really not that it needed to be redeemed, but it was a bit middling for a while. But I feel like it totally redeemed itself with the wedding scene and with consequently with the introduction of Reverend Jim. I mean, how that Reverend Jim alone is worth one yellow light attacked on to whatever score we were going to give it, so solid three yellow lights.

This is a it's essential if for another reason that you see the first appearance of Reverend Jim. It's not a quintessential episode, but it is one that I think all casual taxi viewers should should watch. I think, so it's three from me and three from Father Belone, So that will do it for this particular episode of Night Mister Walters, fatherm Alone. When you're not clocked in at the garage, where can folks find you? You can find me at fatherom Alone dot com.

And you can find me at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. I got a lot of podcasts over there, like Midnight Viewing, the Night Gallery podcast and Dark Destinations and Astounding Tales of the Public Domain and Alone Alone Alone. I even do some with HB. I also can be found amidst all of the other great content on Weirdingway Media. You can find me on the Band of Check podcast, Wolf and Raisin with fadom Alone.

You can find me on the Noise Junkies podcast which is a music podcast with fatherom Alone and Heather Drain which is fantastic. And you can also find me here and there on Dark Destinations, which I would encourage you all to check out for myself and for Father Belone. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you all again next episode. Hi, mister Walliers.