Weird media nis. You see that guy with it now he's an actor phone
and I only can't driver in his place. Good evening and welcome tonight,
mister Walter is a taxi podcast. I'm HP, you'r co host and with
me as always as my co host, Father Malone, Father Malone, how
are you HP? I'm excited for this episode because there is a return of
Leggy Blonde in pantsuit. Really I didn't notice that. I can't wait to
dig into the details. We are going over episode two of season two,
called Honor Thy Father. This was written by Les Charles and Glenn Charles,
the Charles Boys, not the Charles Boys, indeed, and it's directed by
the one and only what was the name he gave himself, the master director,
what was it? The director in residence resident, the resident director himself
James Burrows. Now reminder, we are doing these shows in broadcast order and
not in order of filming. We begin inside the garage. Louis is angrily
yelling on the phone to somebody who's apparently stranded somewhere, that he's going to
send somebody to pick him up. He tells Jeff to go to forty fifth
in Lexington, to pick up jimbal Jimbalvo is the person's which I love that
they're so good at picking. It's got to be like somebody in craft services
or an editor. But apparently this person, Jimbalvo is stranded somewhere and Louis
hustles over to yell at, oh my god, it's Laka. Laca is
back. It feels like we haven't seen Laca in the garage for probably five
or six episodes, going back to the first season, and there he is
Laca's back father alone with a haircut. And that haircut emphasizes how deeply blue
Andy Kaufman's eyes are, which is all I could watch for this entire scene.
I did notice something different. I didn't think of it in terms of
a haircut. That You're right, everybun he got a haircut on this show,
except Nardo, who got more hair. And of course, as we
mentioned in the last episode, Wheeler's hair has its own ecosystem. At this
point, Wheeler's hair is like a chia pet. It just keeps growing and
growing and growing. It's so thick and lustrous, right, and I wanted
to turn into like a coat that he wears like a Peltz. Louis hustles
over to yell at Laca. Like I said, he upbraids Laca for sending
out Jimbalvo with a broken gas gauge, and Louis incenses Laca so much that
this is one of my favorite parts of the episode, by the because it's
a callback to the Hollywood Calling episode. Laka demands to file a grievance and
in a simple and I wrote this in a simply delightful carryover from last season,
Louis tells Laka that the shop steward is none other than Ben Gerretzky.
Longtime listeners of Night Mister Walters or viewers of Taxi will remember that Alex in
Hollywood Calling demanded to talk to the shop steward. He was told that it's
Ben Gerretzky. You find out after some business that Ben has actually been dead
for two years. If any of our listeners are named Ben Gerretzky, could
you please get in touch with us, because we will have you on the
show. We will be giggling the entire time we're talking to you, But
please get in touch with us. Ben. I need to talk to Ben
Gerretzky since Laka is clearly not around. Like I said, for the Hollywood
Calling episode from season one, he's got no idea that Ben Garretzky is in
fact dead, So he wanders the cab full calling in vain, over and
over for Ben Garretsky, Ben Gerretsky, Ben Garretzky, Ben. This is
kind of odd. Louie insists that Gerretsky is off today. Did you pick
up on that? Do you think that was Louie misinforming Laka that Ben Garretsk
is off? Or do you think maybe in this parallel universe Ben Gretzky is
actually in fact alive for season two? That I thought was odd? Who
told us that Ben Gretsky was dead to begin with in Hollywood Calling? Yeah,
I think it might have been Bobby. I'd have to go back and
check my notes. Hell does Bobby? No? You know what, if
you're to say any character's name, my response was going to be, what
the hell does Blank know? So well, there you go. We'll leave
it up to the viewer. Maybe Ben is alive, maybe he's still dead,
who knows. But nevertheless, because the shop Steward isn't around, Louie
and we know where this is going. Louie tells Laka that he has to
report his grievance to the shift supervisor, and conveniently this turns out to be
Louis as well. Lack events to Louis about how mean and cruel Louis is
to Louie, who insists that he did the right thing by telling him,
but not before telling him to get his butt back to work. So it's
a fairly inconsequential bit of comedy business, but it gets bonus points for me
for resurrecting the character of Ben Geretzky. I love it just then A now,
I had trouble describing her. I alternately described this person as a matronly
now or classy sleek sleek that's a good. An elegant woman comes into the
garage asking for the person in charge, and of course Louie pops out of
his cage. The woman asks for Alex Riager, and oddly, I don't
know if you picked up on this as well for them at Oddly, Louis
somehow jumps to the conclusion that Alex has harassed this woman, like he broke
bricks into this thing. Like, oh, I tell you these cabbs,
I don't want them. I thought It was weird because Alex is widely considered
to be the most trustworthy of all the cabbies. I don't know why,
oh is he? Or? Do you know? We only get so many
episodes and so many glimpses into their lives. Perhaps this is not the first
woman who's wandered in with a complaint. And what happened while she was riding
with Alex Rieger. Do you think Alex was maybe going to those poorhouses with
Louis when Louis was still a driver. No, because those women wouldn't be
complaining. I'm saying Alice is harassing as passengers. It could be. I
have trouble believing it, but who knows. Oh, I don't believe it.
For one instance, Alex Riger is a decent guy. This woman tells
Louis that Alex is in fact her brother. This prompts Banta to jump up
and say, you must be Alex's sister. What are we doing this?
They got rid of burns now, Banta is double the stupid. Now Banta's
double the dummy. There's no one else to give these dummy linew so they
give him the Banta And I've always I've always been the dummy. Lane says
that they didn't know that Alex had a sister, and the woman who will
find out her name is Charlotte. Charlotte Reager. She says that Alex never
really talked about his family, and uh. At that point, Bobby stumbles
We're told that Bobby was in the can and he stumbles out and Tony introduces
him to Charlotte. Now a side note on this. I don't know if
you picked up on this sartorial choice of Bobby's, but he's wearing a black
satin jacket, a black shirt, and dark jeans, and to me,
he just he looked like Michael Knight from Night Rider because he's got the Hasslehoff
hair, you know, like the flowing kind of long hair. Oh Bobby,
Yeah yeah, Bobby, Oh yeah, he looks ridiculous here. Absolutely,
what did you think I was talking about, Tom? I thought you
were talking about Banta for a second, because I noticed Banta is prominently displaying
his fucking keep on trucking tattoo in this episode. It's like so prominently there,
and it just makes me wonder. Okay, first of all, that's
got to be Tony Dan's actual tattoo, right, he's got to keep on
Trucking tattoo. But let's for imagine for a minute that Tony Banta is the
one who went and got to keep on trucking tattoo. Now does that mean
that he likes the Grateful Dead, or he's an R. Crumb fan,
or does it mean that he was just swept up in that moment when the
whole nation wanted us just keep on trucking, baby, because the Eagles are
on the radio. I've got my Blue Jeans Society official outfit on the Canadian
tuxedo. Yeah. I think that was probably a Vietnam tattoo. He wandered
into some tattoo parlor in Saigon or somewhere, and in the book of Designs
he saw the keep on Trucking tattoo. Maybe he doesn't know he had no
connection to the Grateful Dead, but he's like, oh, it looks pretty
funny. Give you that tattoo. That's kind of how I imagine it.
Maybe I'm going to continue with this scenario your painting and say that Banta was
on leave in Honolulu and was drunk and a bunch of Navy boys and he
beat up a hippie on the Island like it was some sort of flower child,
Like they just kicked a shit out of him. And then Banta couldn't
stop talking about how much he hated psychedelic music. And when he passed out,
they brought him to a tattoo parlor and they got to keep on trucking
on him because they knew that the grateful dead were the real keep on trucking
people. I like this imaginary scenario of him on leave in Honolulu, and
look, they meant it as a joke, like, Haha, now you
have to have this hippie tattoo on you for the rest of time. But
now Banta, because he's a boxer, he uses that tattoo to punch his
opponent, like the fury of the tattoo works its way through through his arm.
Okay, I'm done. Laka is introduced to Charlotte and proceeds to lay
some kind of aphorism on her about pretty ladies in his native tongue. I
really wish, I really wish we knew what his nationality was, because I
get annoyed with myself for having to say his native tongue. Whatever it is
he's talking to her is gibberish. How about that, and Locke is but
yeah in his gibberish tongue, and to his shock, though to Laca's shock,
she responds in kind with the same language and carries on a conversation with
him in his gibberish. I like that she does it in an aerodype manner,
like she doesn't resort to the usual sort of parroting of Andy Kaufman,
the sort of highs and lows of it. She just kind of speaks the
words, which I thought was in character. Yeah, she's very smooth in
her conversation with him, and she then explains to Elaine that she spent several
years in Europe and his multi lingual and after lack of leaves, Charlotte says,
talking about him, she says, he's an interesting person, but it's
too bad his grammar is so poor, which is further selling this idea that
she's like you said, she's she's high class, she's intelligent, she's multi
lingual, she's a lot of things. You know what she is HP.
Yeah, she's a polyglot, which is something who is multi lingual would actually
call themselves. Hmm, that's an interesting word. So she uh, the
day everybody go ahead and look at up polygon. Lie got that's just another
word for multi lingual. Then, yeah, but much more concise. Okay,
that's fair multi lingual. I don't know whatever yet you spoke his language.
We know you can speak different languages. Yes, I'm multi lingual,
like you said. She's very erudite. She has this air of superiority.
She explains to the Caves that she no longer lives in New York. She
lives in the Hamptons, which is in New York. By the way,
I guess maybe New York's, you know, Manhattan. I guess she don't.
It's just funny because she counters with yeah, now, you know when
I come to Manhattan, and I'm like, why didn't they just say Manhattan
from the beginning, like you live in New York? Like, yeah,
you all live in New York. She's gotten away from Manhattan and she's there
for a fundraiser and gets called away by something and she has to leave but
Elaine, and Elaine offers to take a message. She's looking for Alex.
She's desperate to find Alex. So, lady, what was the fundraiser for?
Oh? The fundraiser for? She says, it's for starving something.
But she doesn't even know. She just she's very delivery. Is great.
Yeah, she's above it all. I The actress's name is Joan Hackett,
who plays Charlotte Rieger. And there wasn't a ton of information I found in
her. But she was nominated for an Oscar for a movie called Only When
I Laugh, which was Simon I picked. Sure. I think Marsha Mason
was in it. Absolutely. I saw that in the theater. Did you
really wow? Yeah, my grandmother strikes again. Oh interesting. I didn't
see that, but I did see Brighton Beach Memoirs in the theater. But
Jonathan, I also saw Brighton Beach Memoirs in the theater. But uh and
Biloxi Blues I did too. That was a good movie. Matthew Broderick.
I also saw not foul play. It seems like old time, old times.
Yeah, I saw that. I did not see that, but I
did see foul play in the theater. I was probably far too young.
The thing I remember being so freaked out about was the the albino killer in
that they gave him these contacts, you know, a very spooky guy and
at the very end, during the climax at the Mercado. Yeah, he
gets shop and he's falling and he falls through like the rigging ropes and he
kind of like gets caught and he's dead, but he's hanging like I'm Marryingnette.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's freaky this dead guy who's kind of hanging
there limply that made an impact on his child. Doesn't the Pope love it?
Like he starts applouding like this is he does cycle? Ever? And
you know what, I agree with the Pope for once. We're getting off
topic. But this was Chevy Chase's starmaking vehicle. He was fantastic in it.
He's so charismatic and he and Goldie Haunt had chemistry for days. It
was wonderful. There's a fun fact. Next time you watch the movie.
Goldiehan goes to the movies at one point, even though this movie takes place
in San Francisco, But when she goes to that movie theater, I used
to work at that movie theater. Was it the New Wilshire. No,
the New Wilshire has a sister theater, the much more famous New Art Theater
over Santa Monica Boulevard where I projected off and on during the nineteen nineties.
It's a great movie. I loved follow play. But anyway, getting back
to the episode at hand, we must Charlotte tells Elaine and the rest of
the cabby's that her and Alex's father had a heart attack. He's stable at
New York hospital, but she desperately wants Alex to have the opportunity to go
visit his father in the hospital, and Elaine insists that, oh, we'll
get him. He'll go over there right away, and Charlotte rather ominously kind
of laughs and makes her way out of the garage. All the cabbys are
fretting about telling Alex this awful news about his father having a heart attack.
Alex, now this is I thought this was odd. Alex kind of cheerfully
bops his way into the garage, ready to get his cab assignment. But
what's interesting is normally when the cabbys come in from the outside, they come
from a door that is basically like stage left from behind the cage, right
right towards the street. That it's the customers come wandering in there too,
so we got to figure that's the way to the street. Yeah, But
when al Bus comes in rubbing his hands, ready to start his day.
He emerges from right by where the payphone is on the far left of the
garage proper, almost as if he's coming from the bathroom or the tool room.
Right here. Is that giant sliding door there that to me says that
there's an even more sort of mechanic space and stuff back there, because when
you look at the building from the outside, there are definitely two levels because
or three maybe because we see cams going up and down a ramp. Yeah,
I just thought it was weird because I'm so conditioned. Like you said,
when customers kind of come in, they come in through that front,
I would call it the front door, but I don't know what the architecture
actually is. He comes from the far left of the garage for whatever reason,
maybe he's emerging from the bathroom too. He comes in, he's excitedly
asking Louis for his assignment so he can hit the road, and Nardo and
Wheeler come over and give Alex the bad news about his dad and Charlotte coming,
and Elaine gives him a note that Charlotte has written the father's room number
at the hospital, and Alex, not missing a beat, takes the paper,
crumples it up and throws it away. Oh my god, he's being
so heartless. There's a tale to tell here. So now the caddies are
trying to get him to say what's going on because this is very out of
character, absolutely, and it might they might. They're a little confused too,
because he looks a lot like an action figure here for some reason.
Is he wearing the red turtleneck with something over it like a jacket? What
was he wearing? Not yet, he's wearing this sort of open jacket and
the shirt. Oh yeah, I think there's a turtle neck underneath that,
right, Yeah, it's weird. Man, he looks plastic in this scene.
It's like they just opened up the box for Reager. He's all about
layers, right, He's rarely just like the last episode we saw he was
wearing the sort of a eyes od polo shirt. But he's always got like
a like a turtleneck under a sport code or a sport code under this,
or you know, he players Alex. The puffy vest he's always wearing.
He has a low body temperature that he gets belligerent when the cabbies continue to
press him for more info on his dad, and he explains that he basically
hasn't talked to his father in almost thirty years. Let me ask you follow
him alone. How old do you figure Alex Reger is in nineteen seventy five?
During this episode? I pegged him at around thirty seven years old.
Forty two? You think he's a little older, okay two. He's certainly
in his late thirties early forties, right, yeah, which means he probably
hasn't talked to his dad since he maybe he left home when he was seventeen
or eighteen years old. That tracks right, well, it doesn't he He
says it right, that I haven't talked to him in thirty years or something
like that. That's what I'm saying. But I'm imagining the circumstance behind that
that maybe he had just graduated, he got out of the house, he
left, maybe didn't go to college after that, Maybe that's when he started
driving a cap who knows, Well, we know for certain that he didn't
go to college. In this episode he says so yeah, which I found
shocking honestly, because Eager to me seems like the guy who in the early
sixties was on a campus and was the total good student and went to philosophy
class and smoked reefer with Donald Sutherland. But just as possible in my mind
is that he thought, at that age, I'm smarter than these guys.
What do I need to go to college to prove how smart I am?
For? And I don't need that. So I can see him being,
for lack of a better comparison, maybe something like a Cliff Claven, somebody
who thought he knew, you know, he was an intellectual, but he's
really not. Maybe he read a lot and that's kind of where he picked
up this air of intelligence. Well, we're certainly seeing that he didn't go
to college, but the conversation we're jumping ahead, but why not the conversation
he has with Charlotte, he seems to say it ruefully, like, no,
you got to go to college. I did. Didn't like they paid
for your college. He fade commercial. Now we're back and it's another day
at the garage. This was kind of unexpected, and I wasn't sure whether
we're going to go at this. We cut inside. Now we see for
the first time, I think, a second mechanic on the garage floor.
It's this this Puerto Rican guy who's kind of bopping around. He's singing very
loud and exuberant in the garage, and Loaca takes offense to this and starts
to jabber at him and his gibberish, And eventually these two guys are kind
of arguing loudly with each other, both in languages that the other one cannot
possibly understand, and then Louis comes in and he breaks it up, and
that's all we see of this second mechanic until the bumper. Here's what I
have to say about that. Yeah, I thought, good for you,
Charles Brothers. You figured out a new angle for Latka's gibberish, because we've
kind of seen everything. We can see whatever joy we get out of the
gibberish now is the way it's being performed by Andy Kaufman. But the scenarios
are always the same. It's the same sort of setup where he says something
in his language, or people don't understand him but they kind of laugh about
it, or you know, like he says something and then anyway, I
thought this was a clever way to set up a new scenario for him to
do this. I don't disagree, and I actually kind of liked how it's
wrapped up in the bumper. It made me think of something, and we'll
talk about that. Alex comes in and the cabves all kind of rush over
to apologize for when they got into it over his father and why isn't he
going to go visit them? Another sartorial side note. In this scene,
Elaine is wearing a blue blouse with red suspenders. Did you catch this outfit?
And I catch it. It's the greatest outfit I've ever seen Elaine.
Jesus Christ. She's like a superhero. You put a pair of rollerskates on
her and she would fit right in in Santa Monica, just going up and
down the boardwalk, Love in life, maybe a headset on her head listening
to that needs to Go west Man looking like that? Oh yeah, she's
gorgeous. But the other thing I noted. We talked about Bobby in the
last episode, and in this one, Bobby is wearing a black western style
jersey. Did you notice this with white piping? Piping piping, Yeah,
yeah, yeah, And it's like it's baggy, and the piping seems like
it's droopy, like somebody stitched it while they were really tired or drunk or
something. It's off putting. It's like I'm cashing in on this current cowboy
craze that's going on in America, but not really. You put some frills
on that shirt and a cowboy hat and maybe he could be in the Good
Old Boys or something. I don't know, but it did seem I mean,
he went basically every single episode of season one with the classic Bobby outfit,
the leather jacket, the shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, and pair
of jeans. They're changing it up a little bit in this second season,
and I'm not sure I like it. I think it's a little off putting.
Alex is resisting all attempts at talking through the situation about his father,
even Louis tries in his own way to break through and have a conversation with
with Alex about this. Then Loka comes over. This is I think Loca
has had a few speeches like this in the last season. But I love
this bit with Lotka because I know what's coming. But it's all in the
performance of Andy Kaufman, exactly what I said, right. How many times
have we seen this exact fucking joke a dozen times now? But it never
gets old as long as he's committed to it, and it ever gets old,
he's always so committed to it. We've seen this. He comes over
and he says, in my country, we have a saying your father up.
He may beat you your father, he may curse you your father,
he may take your last bit of meat, and he just lets it hang.
There's nothing after that, and Alex asks him to go on, to
which Laka kind of instantly replies, that's it. We know it's coming,
we know that. The punchline, it's an anti punchline. There is no
punchline. The whole point of it is how awful the men are in his
country, worse that you're supposed to accept it. Here's like a here's a
little rhyme to remind you that that's going to happen and you should just deal
with it. So good, the way his timing, the way he lets
it hang out there without any resolution until Alex speaks up, it's great.
So at this point Charlotte comes back to the garage and again she's asking Alex
can they go back to the hospital this afternoon. He refuses, but Charlotte
says she'll change his mind, and she insists that she's not going to leave
the garage unless he agrees. At that point, she suggests that they go
chat somewhere private, to which Elaine volunteers. Loaca's tool room, which we
saw in the Mama Gravis episode. Right, we were wondering what this odd
anti chamber was. I think you're the one who said it was a toolroom,
so you're right. So they cut inside. It's a strange tableau when
they come in, because Loca has fallen asleep. We get the impression maybe
he takes cat naps back there. Oh yeah, of course he does.
You had to deal with Louis de Palma, you'd find a nice place to
curl up. And it has the benefit. And it's born out here where
if you can manage to sleep in a position where you almost look like you're
working when you startle away, get it look like it just was messing up
something. That's a good point. Loaca wakes up and he chatters with Charlotte
and his gibberish, and she even corrects his pronunciation. She asks Loca to
leave and he says he'll grab his things. This is another great little bit.
This says no. This signifies nothing in the episode, but he says
he's gonna pick up his things. So he goes over to the locker,
which has Gravis in tape on the front. You think, oh, he's
gonna grab his lunch, maybe a thermus, and he's gonna leave. But
he goes in there, he picks up a few things. He goes to
the desk, he picks up a few odds and ends some tools. He
stops before he even leaves the room to pick up like a paint can and
something else. Like by the time, he's like the climax of the Jerk
with Steve Martin, Oh I need this. He just keeps accumulating things.
He's like that little woman in Labyrinth, the one who has all the possessions
on her back. That's what he's doing here. He's saying nothing. He's
just grabbing all of this stuff. And he just has a ridiculous number of
items that he's accrued and he leaves the room. We've been missing Locket this
whole time. This only underscores how wonderful he is. And yeah, let's
get an episode too. Sweet. Charlotte basically ends up begging Alex to go
see his father. She relates this story, I thought this was a kind
of a funny analogy. She tells this anecdote about their cat growing up,
whose name was, of all things, Shharra'sadrazad. What's funny about that is
she mentioned Shahrazad and then Alex has to remember that he has a cat named
Shaharason. Would you forget whenever you heard the word Shaharrazon, which, by
the way, when do you hear that name? Ever, if you heard
that word, you would immediately think, oh, my cat. You would
never hear that in casual conversation. The point of her story is that while
Alex was away at camp, this cat got run over, and when he
got home, he was distraught because this happened while he was gone, and
he never had a chance to say goodbye to Shaharrazad. She's trying to make
this point of, well, if your father dies, you don't want to
be regretting the fact that you didn't see him in the hospital. Alex should
have countered you noticed when you said Shaharazad, I didn't remember what you were
talking about. What's kind of cool about the scene is that you're learning a
lot of interesting little details about Alex's life that we haven't been privy to,
and she asks Alex what their father could have done to make him so bitter,
and Alex reveals that it sounds like the father left the family, left,
his wife, left his kids to start a new one, to start
a new family. But Alex basically says that when he left, the family
was on welfare while their father was making three hundred and fifty dollars a week.
Here's another side note. Uh oh, what's it translate to tell me
the modern numb? So this took a little while. So let's assume Alex
was about thirty seven years old in this episode in nineteen seventy nine. So
let's say the father left when he was about eleven years old. So he's
old enough to remember the trauma of this happening, but he's not so old
that he could do something about it. So he's about eleven years old.
So that means when the father left, the family was around nineteen fifty three.
Okay, okay, So according to the website amortization dot org, adjusting
for inflation, how much do you think three hundred and fifty dollars would be
worth in twenty twenty four? Follom alone, Oh you're going for now,
I thought you were going to go for what it would have been worth in
nineteen seventy nine. Three hundred and fifty dollars of nineteen fifty what money,
three hundred and fifty dollars of nineteen fifty three money, nineteen fifty three money.
Yeah, how much is it worth? How much would it be worth
in today's dollars? Seven thousand dollars? Not quite so much, but it
is a lot. Today it would be worth four thousand and twenty one dollars
in one cent. That's a lot for a week, it is. And
if we work the math out even further, his father, oh is his
name, and today's money, would be making the equivalent of one hundred and
ninety three thousand dollars a year in today's money back then. So it's no
wonder that Alex is so bitter because this guy was rich by any measure in
nineteen fifty three. Yeah, and he left the family in high and dry
and left the mother to raise her two kids alone. That's a very sad
thing that we're learning. Alex goes on further. He talks about times when
he would come home from school, his mother was of course working and finding
his father in the house with another woman, and Charlotte admits that she knew
about this, and she was about eleven years old, and she says it's
it's not easy to forget the indiscretions, but Alex counters it's easier for Charlotte
because he goes on to make the case that she was his favorite, and
this goes to what you were kind of saying, yes, it's exactly he
kept taking care of her and neglecting him and his mother. Alex makes a
good point, that's easy for you to say you didn't have to deal with
as harsh a reality as me because he was taking care of you. He
sent you to college. He took care of you in a way that he
didn't take care of me or a mother. He even says that his father
brought a date to their mother's funeral. But the weird detail of that is
he's very upset because the woman came in something called Torrio door pants sariodor pants.
It's so are they like Capriz? What are they? And they're like
Caprice, but they're kind of like the like they're split a little more up
the side and they're a little more hug hugging and you know they're a little
more racy. They're not they're a little sexier. They shouldn't be worn to
a funeral. It's very disrespectful. I'd be okay with it, but I
took his word for it. But I tried looking up Tory door pants and
I didn't really see what the big deal was. But unless they're talking about
actual Torrio door pants from you know, like what you would do, like
bullfighting, put on a bullfighter. Yeah, I mean even still probably not
the best look when ashes are being given to ashes and dust to dust.
It's sad situation. And like I said, we've learned a lot about Alex
and all of this, like he did not have a good childhood. Can
I just before we move on to the next scene, you mentioned Joan Hackett
being in that only when I laugh. Yep, Neil Simon things, that's
an okay movie. If you want to see Joan Hackett in a fucking great
movie, check out The Last of Sheila. It's a murder mystery from the
mid nineteen seventies with James Coburn and Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. I think
paul Apprentice, isn't it written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. This is
not a musical Anthony Perkins. Yes, Norman Bates, he was a fine
director. I didn't know he was a writer, but he was a good
director. Oh you should see if you have not seen at HPA, Last
of Sheila. I went on in the sound of my voice, check this
movie out, okay, and I will see it. In it, she's
great in it. You know who's in it, Ian McShane. You know,
mister mister Continental, mister John Wick. He must have been like like
twelve years old. Oh my god. Yes, he's like twenty something.
He's so unlined and but still tan like. He's amazing in it. Oh
my god, what a great movie. Last Is Sheila. So it's like
an Edward Albion play. They just they keep going back and forth. You
know that I you'll go, I'm not gonna go. I'm not gonna let
you not go. Well, here's all the bad, you know, it's
the It's they're back and forth between Charlotte and Alex, and he gets kind
of tiresome. Finally, Alex can't argue with her anymore, and he decides
to go to the hospital for the good of everything, he's going to finally
go. And when they arrive at the hospital, they run into a woman
who is there at the scene of Joe Rieger's heart attack. Her name and
the show is Stalwart. Do you get a good look at this woman?
Oh? Wow, yeah? What about her? Well? To me,
she looked like she walked right out of the show three's company. She could
have been like Jack Tripper's date of the week or whatever. She's weird.
Absolutely, who are you? I'm waiting for Jack right? It's and it's
because they have her dressed in it's all earth tones. She has like a
rust colored blouse with kind of a brownish skirt. She just looked to me,
she just looked right out of you know, the Roper's apartment complex.
There's something about her. She's sort of ditzy too, you know. The
word is that Miss Stalwart administered mouth to mouth on the father after he had
his heart attack. Alex is pressing Miss Stalwart for details, and it turns
out, if we didn't already hate this guy Joe Rieger enough at this point,
turns out that this dirty old man was goosing her a train station.
They're waiting for the train. The older mister Reager gooster. She screamed,
and that scream caused him to It shocked him and caused the heart attack.
He collapsed at that point. HP. In the last episode of Night Mister
Walters, we discussed trench coats and the trope that is the masher, and
I was reminded of that again in this episode, knowing that the elder Riager
is a masher. Basically he's the kind of guy who would grocal woman in
public because that's what he's doing, right. You know what's funny about that
character when you think about it, Like I remember like cartoons where women going
a mesher, Like at one point, this was just a hilarious like person
like there's the milkman, and there's the you know, the grocery store guy.
Oh in the masher. Sure, as a society, we just accepted
that there's going to be this random gross man out there, like over sexualizing
himself and voicing himself on people like that's cool. Yeah, it's played for
laughs, but it would not play for laughs nowadays for sure. To me,
like a trench coat in a sitcom is like Chekhov's gun. If it
makes an appearance, it will become crucial to the plot in some way shape
or forming. Certainly here on Taxi that is the Chekhov's trench. Go.
We're learning way too much about how despicable Alex and Charlotte's father is. They're
really making a case for what a dirtbag this guy is. After they have
this conversation, Alex insists that he wants to go in alone to confront his
father and talk to his father, And reluctantly he pads his way into the
hospital room and he sees an old man there who's resting, and Alex proceeds
to pour his heart out to this man who just listens without any interruption.
By the way, the old man, I don't know if you know who
this guy is. He's played by a man named Ian Wolfe. Where you
familiar with him at all? Fatherom alone, he seemed very familiar. I'm
more familiar with mister Rieger, but this guy did seem familiar to Yeah,
this gentleman was a character actor who has roles that go back to nineteen thirty
four. That's insane, like you know, but in this episode, he
was probably already in his seventies and he would go on I think one of
His last things he ever did was with Dick Tracy, the Warren Baty movie
in nineteen ninety. He was in that. So this guy, I think
worked until he was in his nineties. Incredible. He was also in Witness
for the Prosecution and he was in THHX one one three eight, although I
couldn't remember what he was or who he was in that. Alex pries to
tell him about all the good things that he did as a father, but
he can only come up with one ridiculous incident where Alex was so so thirsty
and the father brought him a glass of water with ice. He relates a
time when his father forgot what grade he was in in school. It just
sounds this is so depressing. Ultimately, Alex starts to break down, says,
you know, just having regardless of all the bad stuff, just having
his father in the world made all the difference to him. He breaks down
finally and crying and goes to hug his father and he says, damn it,
you're my father, and he hugs this man. The man doesn't say
anything or do anything, he just accepts the hug. And at that point,
another old man in a hospital, Johnny, opens the door and kind
of pads into the room. Alex kind of casually looks up and says,
oh, hi, Dad. Vaudeville. Fucking vaudeville. But at least it
wasn't a quick verbal Vaudeville. I think what I'm finding in this episode it
feels like the Charles brothers have recognized their own vonvillian ness and they're working against
it. In this particular episode, they had their cake and ate it too.
This preamble to the real father walking in and seeing this play out was
a little bit of a bait and switch. This is supposed to be the
big emotional climax of Alex and all the problems he's having with his father,
but really all it is is just a precursor to the joke of him having
mistaken the wrong man as his father love it. The father is played by
the amazing Jack Guilford, who is a veteran comic actor. He's got credits
stretching back again to the nineteen thirties. Nineteen thirty six, Yeah, Midnight
Melodies. It's available on YouTube right now. Midnight Melodies nineteen thirty six.
You can see that Jack Guilford was an impressionist. Was he really, I'll
have to watch that video. Yeah, he does a good Rudy Valley.
He's such a familiar face. I'm sure he did. I have a memory
of him doing maybe some commercials around that time. Even as a kid watching
this show, I recognized Jack Guildford, not having watched Save the Tiger or
Catch twenty two, which he was in. He was also in Caveman with
Ringo Star. I know him from cave It was on a loop on Home
Box Office when we were kids, and so I mainly know him. Unfortunately
from cave Man, I gotta say, vying for that title around the same
time as Holy Moses Dudley Moore. That is a terrihilarious comic terrible. The
thing about Jack Guildford, anybody who's seen him in anything, is he maybe
has the most affable, friendly, sweetest old man disposition that you will ever
run into in any form of entertainment. And now we're supposed to reconcile that
with the fact that he's been an absentee father, neglectful at best. But
yet he when he walks in and you see him and the two of them,
Alex and his father's touch a talk, you can't help but kind of
fall for this guy a little bit, right. Yeah, Okay, here's
where I like this episode overall. But when you introduce Jack Guildford here late
in the third act, it says to me that we've now been cheated of
an entire episode of seeing lovable Jack Guildford be a dick and get to see
how he treats his son. Instead, we've gotten Charlotte, the sister we've
never heard of, who occupies the majority of the episode when it should have
been Jack Guilford charming everybody but still maintaining what a cocksucker he is to Alex.
Now, it's remarkable. Within two minutes of seeing this gentleman walk in,
you see exactly why his father would be easy to forgive ultimately, because
it's Jack Guildford. The man exudes geniality and humor and all of this at
once. It really disarms Alex when he finally realizes that it's his father there.
But here's where I said earlier that the writers have their cake in their
eating it too. In this is we've seen this sort of schmaltzy embrace,
tears flowing, and the histrionics when Alex is talking to this guy that he
believes as his father, but now he's actually faced with his actual father,
the man. He's right there, but there's nothing tearful, there's no hasty
embrace at the end of it all. After a few words spoken to each
other civilly, they each kind of have a solemn so long and that's it.
I thought that was so brilliant. The button on it is as Alex
is leaving the room, the fake dad actually reaches out his arms like,
hey, can he give me alec before you go? Because I think as
a viewer you're conditioned to hoping for the happy, schmaltzy ending, and they
give you that, but in actuality, it's all like a faint to the
real climax to their particular story, which is there's nothing easy about it,
but they can at least be civil with each other, and they're not going
to adore each other immediately, even in the circumstance of having had a heart
attack. Not that I didn't like the episode all that much. The episode's
fine, but that to me elevated it the writing to a level that I
hadn't really thought about until I rewatched it. This could have been a leftover
episode of last season, given the premise, but the Charles brothers have sort
of dragged us actually into the second season here with this ending. For the
first time in several episodes, we actually get a bumper for the end of
this episode, which is it's a return of the Puerto Rican mechanic that Laka
got into it with. They have another sort of conflict. They're starting to
yell at each other in each other's language, and at this point Tony rushes
in, I think at this point to try and break it up. But
our man Jeff comes over the PA and this I thought was funny. He
yells into the PA, it's quittin time. Do you think there's something that
they do in this garage like they have It's like it's like Fred flint It's
like Fred Flintstone mister Rockwell like saying, yeah, that's quittin time, and
everybody slides off the Bronosaurus. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I know that that
would not be happening, that the old people would be leaving and the new
people would be arriving. There would be no need to announce anything. Ever,
Like by the way, everyone has a watch and they're all watching it.
It's a garage with an early and late shift, or do they are
they ever closed? There's always going to be someone leaving and coming. Right,
Yeah, I'm gonna chalk this up to they couldn't resist they they were
so restrained with their vaudeville or at the entire episode there's like fucking hit him
hard at the end here, this is so vievillion. As soon as he
goes over the pa and says it's quittin time, immediately Laka and this se
and dairy mechanic kind of very cordially say okay, we'll see you tomorrow.
And they shake hands and that's it. And that's that's the thing. Like
the whole ie. To me, what it reminded me of was that cartoon
about the sheep dog and the and the coyote who punch in every day,
Hey Fred, hey Ralph, beating each other up, and then the whistle
blows and like all right, yeah, they're like, okay, let's pick
this back up tomorrow. I thought that was I mean, it is very
sticky and vaudevillian, but it was funny. I thought it was funny.
Yeah, you just brought up a joke from the fifties that they're they're passing
off here in late nineteen seventy nine. So yeah, it's a little bit
much. It's a little much a joke from a cartoon, I should add.
I think it's an app comparison. Oh, it's definitely an a comparison
a little too app because this is Taxi we're talking about here. Yeah,
yeah, that's the episode that is honor thy father, And as is our
custom, we're going to rate this in terms of yellow lights. What does
he know light meant a reminder, we have a scale of one to five
yellow lights. Five yellow lights is the quintessential perfect episode of Taxi, and
conversely, one yellow light is this is just an unmitigated disaster of an episode
that I will never watch again. So, Father Malone, I'm gonna throw
it to you as I usually do. What do you give, honor thy
father? This might be a reaction to the previous episode, but I'm giving
it to three yellow lights. I think the writing in this episode was superior.
All the performance is really good. I liked Joan Hackett as Riger's sister.
I like that dynamic of working class guy and his sister who's like a
social lighte. And I just love the ending. I love that there's no
reconciliation. Like you said, I mean, it is a bit of cake
and eat it too. But you know, sometimes that happens in life,
and that that sort of catharsis that Rieger has about the dad he would have
had on his own anyway, it didn't the dad needn't have been there,
and that's only confirmed when he sees his dad on his feet. I don't
know. It's a lot of complex television for a twenty two minute sitcom and
Bravo, maybe I should give it four yellow lights. Jesus Christ, I'm
talking myself into a higher rating now, I'm going to stay with three.
Three yellow lights is no disgrace. That is a by definition, it better
than average episode of Taxi. There's nothing to be ashamed of there. You
know what, It can't have four yellow lights because it's two not only Riager
centric, but riger centric, with a bunch of peripheral characters who were basically
never going to see it again. I was conflicted coming into this as well,
trying to think of how I was going to rate this, and I
was also leaning towards two yellow lights. It just felt right. But then
the more I thought about it, and like I said, I gave a
lot of thought to that final scene with Rieger and his father and all of
the complexity around that, which is, as you said, was kind of
surprisingly deep for a vaudevillian thirty minutes. But the more I thought about it,
the more I really appreciated the depth there, and that was enough for
me to give it three yellow lights. I went up a grade, and
I think this is a three feels much more apt. It's got some nice
character shading of Riager. It may be lacking a little bit in overall Cabby
chemistry because they don't really feature all that much. But again, the final
meeting between Alex and his father Joe is just written and played so well,
and I applaud the fact that it is a little bit like a bait and
switch, like you think you've gotten the tiery, schmaltzy ending, but you
really haven't. Jack Guildford is obviously, he's so good that spoiler alert,
he does come back to play Alex's father in a future episode, so there's
some nice chemistry there too, I think between him and jud Hirsh Three yellow
lights from Father malone three from myself. That will do it for this episode
of Night mister Walters, Father Malone. When you aren't clocked into the garage,
Where can folks find you? You can find me over at Weirdingwaynmedia dot
com. I've got a couple of podcasts over there that you might enjoy,
like Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast Review Horror Anthology Television, right now
working our way through Tales from the Dark Side, and this season we've got
lots of interviews with cast and creators of the show, so you should check
that out. I also do a a half hour well it's a little longer
than a half hour now. It's a radio drama that I write and produce
called Dark Destinations. I just check that out, and I also have a
Patreon, so just go to patreon dot com slash Father Malone. Go to
any of those places, but especially the last one, you can find myself
and a lot of the same places as Father Malone. I'm also on the
weirding Way network. You can also hear me in addition to doing some helping
out a little bit on Dark Destinations, which I again encourage everybody. If
you love audio drama and great storytelling, please check it out. I also
do a music podcast called Noise Junkies with myself, Father Alone and Mondo Heather's
Heather Drain. So if you are a music nerd like we are, please
check it out as well. Additionally, I have a band campsite call Hpmusicplace
dot bandcamp dot com. Check that out if you so desire. Thank you
so much for listening, Please feel free to subscribe to the podcast, write
a review, rate us. We'd love to hear from you so for myself
and for Father Malone, thank you again and we'll see you guys next time.