We're being way media think mister Walders, go with it. He's an actor.
Rise by the driver, I only can't driver in his Hello and welcome
back to night, mister Walters a taxi podcast. I am HP and with
me as always is my co host, Father Beloge. Hello, Father Belogne.
Hey, I found two thousand dollars in a cap. I just wanted
to that. I don't know what to do with it yet. Just don't
tell Louie, because it's just gonna be a thing. You know, Louie's
gonna want the money, and there's gonna be something. Maybe I shouldn't have
told you either. Now I must kill you. No, you gotta Yeah,
let's let's keep it between us. As Father Malone alluded, this is
one of the subplots to the episode that we will be discussing this episode.
The episode is called Blind Date. It was written by Michael Leeson and it's
directed by our old friend James Burrows. This is really this is a rig
centric episode. In fact, one could make the case that this is ultimately
a two hander between Reager and the person will be discussing right now. So
the basic we'll give a little bit of a synopsis of the show this particular
episode, so Bobby being a cool actor guy and this being a time before
voicemail and before cell phones, the whole bit. Bobby has an answering service
and there's a woman on the answering start. One of the operators is named
Angela, and all the cabbies love talking to Angela. She has a great
voice, she holds great conversations with them, and she's just very pleasant.
Alex comes in, he's had a great conversation with Angela, and Elaine encourages
him to ask Angela out. So he gets on the phone and he asks
her out, and all the other cavies are very interested in this because,
like I said, they've all had good conversations with her and they're really interested
to see how it goes. So Alex goes to her apartment and he discovers,
unexpectedly for him, that she is overweight, and he's immediately uncomfortable,
and she's completely hostile and really venomous and just keeps coming at him with invective.
Judd Hirsch plays it so well because you can tell how apprehensive he is,
but yet Alex being Alex and wanting to do the right thing, he
still wants to go forward with the date, even knowing I mean, there's
a part of him, I'm sure that is disappointed because she doesn't live up
to his fantasy of what she would actually look like. But despite that,
and despite the fact that she's being openly hostile to him, he continues to
try. I mean, she's giving him all of these opportunities to leave the
date and just call the quits, but he kind of prods her to continue
with the date, and they end up going to Marios and things aren't any
better there. She won't take off her coat, and she's really keeps goading
him to end the date. She's just not a happy person. And the
rest of the cabbies show up and they give Alex kind of a hard time,
even Lacta, who kind of pokes funded her and his native language.
Eventually, she throms off and leaves Alex there kind of alone in the restaurant.
The next day, everybody's still giving Alex a hard time about the date,
but he confides to Elane. Alex confides to Elane that he really can't
stop thinking about Angela and the dichotomy between their phone conversations, which went so
well and the in person experience, and the thing that he says at one
point is, I'm I feel like I'm walking away from a car wreck with
a person trapped inside. So Alex being Alex, being the sensitive alan Alda,
another in the long line of sensitive males of the time, he just
can't leave it, you know, he can't get her out of his mind.
So he decides to go buy her apartment. And there's a funny bit
where he flips a coin to decide whether he's going to go in, and
I think he says, like, all right, best of thirteen. So
clearly he's very nervous about seeing her again and wants to kind of give himself
an out to leave anyway. She opens the door, she again she's confronting
Alex, and she's coming at him with all of this sort of you know,
this negativity, and Alex finally wants you can tell Alex wants to really
break through her defenses and really try to get to the core of what her
deal is and really get to know her a little bit, and eventually she
saw offense to him. Ultimately they kind of share a tearful hug and a
commitment to be friends after all a said and done. But it's I mean,
I'm sure changing the conversation a little bit because it's clear that she's been
hurt many many times in the past, and her whole the hostility is just
her defense mechanism to keep people at arm's length so she won't be hurt again.
So Alex really kind of gives her permission to be vulnerable again and breaks
through her sort of armor of invective. And it's really kind of a beautiful
thing to observe. And at the end of the day, it's not as
if they're deciding that they're going to give themselves another shot at romance. But
all they're doing is he just promises that he'll be there for her as a
friend, be that shoulder that she can cry on if they're you know,
if she wants to just talk or what have you, which is beautiful.
This is ultimately just Alex and Angela's story. I just thought it was a
really beautiful sort of feature for Alex and his his patented brand of sensitivity.
You know, I applaud him. He had every opportunity to just sort of
say this, this I shouldn't be here. This woman is that she's got
problems and I should just leave it be, but he can't. There's something
into him that wants to be there for her and and and you know,
be be her friend. So I think that's kind of a wonderful thing.
What were your impressions of the episode. I hated this episode. I hated
it, seriously, I hate I hated this episode. Okay, all right,
let's get into this. What did you hate about it? I refute
everything you just said. Okay, I think this is the most modeling,
treakily, fucking wistful, bullshit seventies sensitive writing ever. This is every sitcoms
take on dealing with a fat person. You know it's that this here's the
thing. Yes, we know it's a defense mechanism. We know she's been
hurt. We can see her, and we more than that, we can
see the way the background characters even just look at her. When when the
gang invades Marios to to let let Rieger know that he's going to have to
hold the money. That's the ostensible reason, but really they've just come to
see what Angela looks like. Watch Tony Danz's expression when Angela looks away and
he knows that she's no longer looking at him. The eye roll. Uh
says it all. So we know that Angela's whole venom brigade, her NonStop
assault a potential suitor um is based on prior experience. I would say,
like, why go through the charade of of of of pure just unadultrated like
Scorched Earth policy with with a person who's taking you out for a fucking sandwich
or a salad at a fucking bar. None of that made sense to me.
And then okay, let me interrupt you for a minute. So it
needs to be said viewed through a modern lens. I agree there there's a
danger here that the plot and the characterization could be viewed as insensitive and un
unenlightened. Okay, but let's let's understand. Let's you know, this is
the late seventies. Okay, everyone wants to right Marty, Everyone wants to
have their own Martin. Here's this whoever wrote this episode, here's their Marty.
That's what I have to say. Two things I have to mention to
you, and they probably, knowing you father alone, they won't make a
single liquid difference, but I feel like I have to mention them. Number
one is this episode was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy
Series. That's one number two. This episode also earned a Humanitas Award,
which is given to writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced and
meaningful way. So, at least of the time, this episode was considered
very progressive. So I just want to put that out there again, knowing
that this will make no difference. That makes absolutely no difference to me whatsoever.
You know what way to go, Emmy voters, you could you sure
can recogniz you know what what is overtly um award bait. As far as
I'm concerned, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I'm
gonna say that this is one of the more for better or for worse,
more of a quintessential Taxi episode, because yes, it may be looked on
under especially under a modern lens, of being treakily and maudlin. But for
me, I think for me, it's funny and bitter, sweet and equal
measure. Okay, for me, that's that's the mark of a good episode
of Taxi. You can call it maudlin. For me, the best episodes
of Taxi are the ones about the small victories in the character's lives and how
they roll with the punches that life sends their way, like you could have
if you had the episode where you know, Alex goes to her apartment.
She's mean and just bitter towards him, and then he just walks away and
says, I think this was a mistake. There's no episode there. I
think this is so in character for reader, I agree with you. All
the taxi stuff is definitely like in keeping with the taxi stuff. It's this
outside element that they've brought in that that's faulty. The thing is, they
spend the entire first part of the first act telling us how charming and wonderful
this girl is. Everybody says in the actor saying it, the boxer is
saying it, that our lead guys saying it, like just doctor her hours.
At any point in the rest of the episode, do you get even
a scintilla an iota of charm from this person? And by the way,
stop saying that, I'm looking at it to a modern lens. This is
treakily modeling nonsense. In seventy nine, in sixty nine, in fifty nine,
in twenty nineteen, this is treatily nonsense that one of Veritas Award and
was nominated for an Emmy. Oh my god, well it must be it
must be good. Then they only give awards to really good things. How
often do they give awards to really terrible modeling overwrot things that don't deserve Evidently
all the time if they're giving it to this. But let me let me
back up for a minute. O here, Okay, So if i'm if
I'm putting myself in Angela's choose, I'm going to say that. So,
yeah, she can have all the confidence in the world when she's on the
phone and she's talking to these people. They have no idea what she looks
like. In vice versa, we have to take their word for it.
It's my point, we never get to see it in action. She might
have made this date in the heat of the moment of this conversation, right,
but then the last thing maybe she expected was that this guy was going
to call her on her bluff. So now there's this date that she's had
dates before that went horribly wrong. So I think it's it's very realistic for
her to like say, well this, I know this is going to go
well, So I'm going to own the awfulness of this date before my date
has a chance to hurt me even more. So I'm going to be the
one who's going to be the bully in this situation. I'm going to try
to take the power away from this other individual and make it easier for them
to walk away because I can't go through with this in the first place.
Oh yes, no, it all makes perfect psychological sense. It's just really
barring television for sitcom about people in this garage. I want to know about
them and their lives, not this after school special masquerading as an episode of
Taxi. But you learned so much about Alex that's exactly what this episode is
about. We knew that an episode one entirely about him racing to meet his
daughter for just for ten seconds Stamo connect him with her. If that doesn't
sum up Rigor, I don't need a reinforcement that he would continue on this
date with this horrible herod and of a human who is you know. I
don't care what or motivation is, but it's really boring and it doesn't make
for good television. And I don't know that reminder of what a good guy
Rigor is in one punch Banta, He's there with the fucking robe for Banta.
He like, he breaks up that fight that Champ is going to kill
Tony Banta in that episode, and Rigor jumps in and even says like,
I've never been so scared. So it doesn't make this episode better for me
that it reinforces what a good dude Rigor is. You raise some good points,
I guess. But but if that's the case, if we already know
what a good guy Rigor is, then why have him featured in any of
these stories at all? If it's just going to reinforce what we already understand
about the character, It makes no sense. You have to, you know,
see him in different situations to know how to see how he's going to
react. And I think his reaction here and the way it's played beautifully by
Jed Hirsh, is so believable because it's so clear from the beginning when he
arrives. You know, he shows up the apartment and the number falls off
of her door and he goes to pick it up, and then he looks
up and there she is. You see everything play across Jed Hirsh's face.
Oh my god, I didn't realize that. I thought she was this beautiful,
sexy woman, and here's somebody who doesn't fit that ideal version of her
that I've had in my head. What do I do? Okay, I
think I'm gonna try and be tactful and move forward with this and be as
nice about it as I can possibly be. But every step of the way,
you see every bit of apprehension, every bit of uncertainty about what he
should be doing or what he wants to do, and what's maybe going to
hurt this woman versus what's you know, what does he do? If that's
not brilliant acting, I don't know what is am? I am I beating
up on Judd Hirsch's performance. Absolutely not, I'm beating up on the the
episode that was written around that performance, which I still believe it's not very
very good. I think it's award bait. It's not good. It's very
obvious in its conclusions, and it's virtue signaling nineteen seventies style, like tick,
a topic that is usually not really discussed, which is like an overweight
person, and like how they're treated, and the treatment is always the same,
like the writing of that character. It's either like a crazily hostile or
crazily hostile and yes, wonderful that they've give us the reason why that might
be. But that's all that character ends up being in this episode, I
see and I disagree. In it, they talk about this charming person who
never materializes even at the end, by the way, why is she breaking
down? And like this sort of super modlin like speaking of Rod Serling this
like you know, theater from the nineteen radio drama from the nineteen thirties,
like would it be okay if we call it j other you know, just
from a friend, Like that's sort of like street ragamuffin kind of dialogue that
is passing for nineteen seventy nine, Like, uh, I don't know again,
I hear you. I understand, Yeah, where at one at any
point other than her going from like total aggression to total like like a basket
case, Like where was the charm in that character at all? I don't
know. The idea that that we understand why she's being a fucking asshole,
like does not make up for any of the other poor writing that we never
see this character as anything other than the harridan or the sort of baby.
Where's the human being in any of that? I don't know. I didn't
see it myself. And if you're going to hang the whole episode on,
aren't we being sensitive and tackling the sensitive subject, then you have to give
us a real character other than the psychological underpinnings of why they're a prick for
me, or do an episode that reinforces what a good guy Rieger is with
an interesting, well thought out plot that doesn't offend me to my car.
Everything is in service to telling us more about Rieger. Yes, we already
had an idea that he was a good guy. Yeah, we see him
rushed to his daughter in episode one, and we see him trying to help
out Banta in episode two. But I still think I liked seeing It's for
me it's worth it to be able to observe Judd Hirsch's performance because I think
it is so complex. This won't be the last time we see him romantically
involved with somebody who is either out of his league or there's some other overarching
concern that he has to deal with. So but again, for me,
I, while I can recognize that this the plot of this episode, or
at least some of the characterizations are dated, again, let's remind ourselves this
is the late seventies. We've come a long way towards understanding and being more
sensitive towards topics like this. Okay, it's for me in this case,
it's worth it to be able to experience Jed Hirsch's performance. I think he's
I think he's awesome. I think this is just a This is another good
example of why he is ostensibly the star of Taxi, because I don't know,
there's something about his ambivalence and his steadfast sort of a desire to,
you know, in the face of everything, saying to him, stay away
from this person because she's just going to just gonna make it. She's gonna
make you not want to spend time with her. But you know, there's
something in Alex that can't let it be. And I just and that seems
to your point to be virtue signaling, but damn it, Jed Hirsch makes
me believe it and makes me love the character even more. Well. I
appreciate your appreciation of this. I clearly yeah, this this is a low
point. I did not and generally watching it the first time or rewatching it
several times in preparation for this. The good part of this episode to me
is that now I never have to watch it again. Can I tell you
what I liked about the episode. I've been kicking this shit out of this
episode. I like as silly as the we found the money and we don't
know what to do with it. Like the slow sort of mirroring of Treasure
of the Sierra Madre where nobody like like trust each other in the garage.
Like if that had been the A plot and Angela had been the B plot,
I might have liked this episode a lot better. See, ultimately,
I just want to hang out with these people in this situation, and it's
too early and the writers haven't figured out that that's what's going to continue to
buoy the season or the series in general. So here's to the future.
We are in for a lot more of that. And I even if we
disagree on this particular episode, we do agree. I love it when these
the episodes where they get together as an ensemble and they're working together through the
plot. I love that because these actors are so funny, and when you
get them all in one room doing funny things, bouncing off of each other,
that's where you get to me, that's the real magic. The stuff
with the money the two thousand dollars that lack your fines, even if ultimately
they didn't do much with that sort of plot at all. They find the
money, they give the money to Alex to safe keep because they're not they
don't want it, they're afraid someone they're gonna steal it, and then they
decide to give it to Laka, and that's basically it, right, So
not much else happens there, but it's you know, it's kind of funny
in all the while, Angela hammering, hammering, hammering on poor Rieger,
enjoy your salad. No, I hate salad and I hate you. Well,
did you catch the Mets game? The metsa death and you'll be dead.
Now it's your chance to run, Alex, Now it was you a
chance to run. In your mind, this has become some sort of you
know, Edward Albion drama where they're sitting across from each other and say,
that's what it is. What I didn't imagine this. This is happening on
screen. You can see it yourself. It's rare that we can come at
something from two diametrically opposed points of view. Well startling when it happens,
it's great and it makes the review that much more intriguing to hear your because,
like I said, I'm watching this and it could be my history with
the show, and I've seen this episode a million times. I fell over
when you launched into your sort of diatribe against Angela, and by extension,
this particular episode not good. I don't recommend it. Yes, guess what,
Guess how many lights I'm giving this one? Well, hold on,
So let's let's take a moment here before we get to our rating of this
episode. I would be really remiss if I didn't mention the fact that,
so the character's name is Angela. In fact, the theme of Taxi by
Bob James is the name of the name of the song is Angela theme from
Taxi. And the reason for that is this song was originally composed with the
character in mind. This was supposed to run during this particular episode, and
I think we talked about this in episode one of the podcast. The original
song slated for the theme of Taxi was going to be a song called Touchdown
off of the album of the same name, but as things turned out,
Angela was a much more suitable theme for the show, and it's stuck and
now it's iconic. So I just wanted to mention that that this is where
the iconic theme from Taxi really comes from, which I think is another interesting
bit of trivia there. Okay, so there are two good things about this
episode. That I don't have to watch it again, and that the actual
theme for the TV series Taxi came from this episode and it is a great
theme, and we did sort of discuss it at nauseum in the first episode.
Just to remind our audience, we are going to grade this episode or
grade our episodes on how many yellow lights? What does he know? Light?
Thank you again, Jim big Natowski. One yellow light is the worst
rating. Five yellow lights are the best rating. And we are not going
by half lights. It's either one, two, three, four or five.
I think I already know what rating you're you're going to give this father
alone, But why don't you go ahead and enlighten us? How many yellow
I can't give half lights? No? And I can't give negative light?
Can I? Well, because here's the thing. Can I give it a
broken light? I give it like a lightly malfunctioning and therefore a little bit
atmospheric light. No, because because for you to if you were going to
give this a grade of a negative yellow light, let's say, would I
would push back on that because I think that means that there is absolutely nothing
to redeem this episode at all. And I refused even the worst taxi episode,
as I said in the last episode of the podcast, there is something.
It's still better than your average mediocre sitcom. So with that mine,
how many yellow lights do you get? One? Obviously one. I did
not enjoy this. I don't want to watch it again. I do not
recommend this one. I actively tell people to avoid it. Now, for
my part, I'm giving this episode five na I'm kidding, I'm giving it
three yellow lights. I'm focusing more on Alex and Judd Hirsch's performance as the
character and how he how he acts and reacts throughout the episode, And for
me, that's enough to give the episode three yellow lights, because I think
he's so good in it, and there's a few funny supporting bits that that
kind of helped bring the show along. Because because if this was just limited
to Alex and Angela's sort of back and forth, I may not be so
charitable with my review, but I do think overall, I think it's slightly
better than average. Let's put it that way. Okay, be more better
episodes to come going forward, but this is it's decent. But the good
news for you, father Malone, is that there are It can only go
up from here. So looking forward to the next episode, I think the
worst is yet to come because we still have many many We have more John
episodes and some regrettably John focused episodes of Taxi to come, and who knows,
maybe you and I will have a difference of opinion when those come along
too. I'm gonna love those just to be just to be a contrary,
I want more Randall Carver where is he? If we agreed one hundred percent
on each and every aspect of these reviews, this would be a very boring
review show. So I like that we're coming at this from two totally different
viewpoints and we can agree to disagree, and it makes for a more lively
discussion, I think, So I appreciate it. I would expect nothing less
than your unvarnished, honest opinion. Say it again, how many? How
many Yellow Life? Just one? One light? Only one? And again,
ll thank you for once again having me on, And I'd like to
say one light don't want us this episode, well, I appreciate it and
as always I love talking taxi with you follow alone. So the next episode
we will be discussing Bobby's acting career. This is the first Bobby Wheeler centered
episode, not the last, but we'll get to know our would be acting
cavvy a little bit better. Until then, I m HP and this has
follow alone and we thank you once again for listening to Night Mister Walters a
Taxi podcast. We'll see you next time. Thank you very much. Nine mister Balders