Weird Way Media Nike.
Mister Walders, you see that guy with.
It now, he's an actor. I'm a camp driver. I'm the only camp driver in his place.
Good evening and welcome tonight, mister Walters. A taxi podcast, I'm HP. You're co hosted with me, as always is my co host, Father Malone. Father Malone, how are you this evening?
Hey, Yellow paper townels. In this episode, it's very unusual.
We are talking Taxi season three, episode six, the ten Percent Solution. This is written by Pat Ali and directed by James Barrows. Of course, a reminder we're doing these shows in broadcast order and not in order filming occasionally, Father Malone. Let me let me preface. Let me start by saying, we occasionally get an email from our listeners, and I wanted to give a shout out to one such listener this episode. This goes out to Maryanne. Hello Marianne.
Apparently she spent part of this past winter Father Malone going through Taxi season by season, kind of binging it as one does, and now she found her way to this podcast and she's very happy so far. So thanks Marianne. Keep listening.
Hello, Hello mari Anne, It's time that we began let her call in everybody. No, thank you for listening obviously, thank you for reaching.
Out absolutely, and as always, folks, please feel free to write us at Hpmusicplace at gmail dot com. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, want to tell me the show is shite or it's awesome, please feel free anyway. We open this episode in the garage alone, Jeff.
And no, we didn't. We started with b roll baby. In fact, we had a skyscraper freeze for no good reason, a freeze, so doing a lot of that this season. And then then we got to almost like a taxi driver like shot of the cab, like slowly, you know, filling the whole frame and then wiping past, and it's a grimy cab and it's a grimy night beyond. I loved it.
It's harder for me to notice when these b roll pieces are new and when they're reused, because many times I've said, oh, we opened there's this great b roll and you would just kind of say, yeah, we saw that about five episodes ago, so it's no big shakes, so that's cool. I tend to gloss over them, but I'm glad that you you made note of that. That sounds cool. After this interesting bike oleesque b roll we opened in the garage, Jeff and uh oh, hey, Jeff,
Jeff's back. Everybody cohort. I love it. They're in their customary positions. In the cage, Jeff warns Louis. Cockroach at ten o'clock.
So the cockroach battle here we go.
The cockroaches back. This will not be the last time we hear about the cockroach in the cage. Louis has taken aback. He exclaims, that's a man eater. Louis tries to whack the cockroach with a newspaper, but almost immediately he and Jeff recoil At the cockroaches reaction, Louis says, did you see that? I hit him with everything I had and he just smiled at me.
You know, New York roaches. It was a joke. New York roaches. New York rats couldn't you couldn't tangle with them. They would fuck with you.
You don't hear so much. Yeah, nowadays it's more about bedbugs than roaches. Or occasionally you hear about rats, but not so much roaches.
Maybe maybe we've got the roach situation under control. Or maybe they've gone further underground and are just plotting their revenge.
Perhaps they've evolved and now they're actually they've morphed into people outwardly look at like humans. Now they've reached the next step in the revolutionary process.
Father Malone, takeover, right now, I'm with you.
You're declaring fealty to our cockroach overlords.
I have ad it. Baby, I'll give you some sugar or whatever the fuck you guys eat.
That is a men in black callback right there, Edgar, Oh, yeah, he wanted the sugar water. After some more bumbling around, Louis proclaims that the cockroach is gone. But then what I like is Jeff ominously in tones. But he'll be back, and.
Yeah, Jeff gets the laugh, he gets the line.
Here he does, and again, true to form, he's absolutely correct. We're gonna see that cockroach pop up again in a future episode. We cut to the garage payphone. Bobby is nervously pacing back and forth in front of it. Oh oh, Father Malone, I sense a job, an acting gig is on the line.
It has to be right, because he's pacing they the fucking payphone, you know, Bobby styling. It's the hair. It's a problem. And then he has this shirt. It's not a button down shirt. It's a halfway button down shirt. You can unbutton it from the collar the neck basically down to the nipples, which he has done so at least we get a splash of old Wheeler here, but everything else is gross.
The shirt is very blousy. It's like a silky material.
He looks like he's going to a He's waiting for Pirates of Penzance callback.
It's a pirate shirt, years before Seinfeld would popularize the notion. He's pacing in front of this payphone. Jim casually walks over, prompting Bobby to tell him, Hey, he's waiting on a call. Could he make this call? Short side note, by the way, before I get to the punchline of this, there's a great shot. I don't know if you noticed this father alone, but there's a great shot of the graffiti on the cement pole because it's an angle that we don't often get.
It's sort of zoomed in so that the pole is taking up about a third of the real estate on the screen, so you get a good look at the graffiti. Did you see the graffiti, Father Malone, did you read any of it?
Thank god? I was distracted in the background. What did it say?
Amongst the graffiti? I see a date seven six. I don't know.
It's somebody's birthday, obviously.
Someone on the crew, maybe like someone's birthday. The name Smitty is on the pole.
Well, that's funny, it is.
And then right next to that it says Louis is a jerk, which is to be distracted. It's true.
That's nobody drew that graffiti. By the way, the building actually just spontaneously brought that forth.
Like an Amityville horror situation where yeah.
Like in that like the Haunting with you know, tell eleanor to come home.
Good call. I love that the viewer would almost never see any of this detail, really never, because this is the first time I've even gotten a good look at it, and it's probably just because I'm watching a DVD, So I assume that the actual viewers at the time would never see it this clearly. But the details there. It's there if you look for it, but clearly it's there to give the actors on set a little more texture, a little more detail, make them feel like they're actually
in a garage. I think that's I thought that was awesome. I love when they do stuff like that.
It's texture in detail for us as well, like even if we're not reading any of that stuff, or we're aware that it's there and it would be there, so it just sort of reinforces the very similitude.
It's true. And they even I remember there's all sorts of stuff in the cheers bar, pictures and things all hung around that you would as a viewer, you can't fixate on them, but they're there. It's just kind of neat that they create this. The verse similitude of this, I thought it's pretty marvelous. Jim agrees to keep it short, but he ends up confused because the joke is he was actually on his way to the bathroom and not
making a call at all. But he does tell Bobby he's going to keep his bathroom break short too.
While Jim and Bobby are having their conversation, what was distracting me, why I couldn't pay attention to the column at all, was the the other mechanic when Laka's not around. There are several day mechanics. We only ever featured one in a plot line. But they're always there. So there's a rather older gentleman back there, and he's in coveralls and he has on what can best be described as a tom of Finland.
Leather boy did not Again, I did not notice this. It's funny the things that I noticed sometimes the things that you notice sometimes they often never overlap, which I think makes this pretty dynamic, these reviews. But I'll have to look for it now. I'll look for the leather boy in the past for.
You that you never noticed the leather boy in the background. And I did what color handkerchief? Would that be? Just a leather one? I guess right in like the back pocket, I remember that, remember cruising cruising, color coating and the handkerchiefs.
I could not tell you what any of the colors mean.
And you know what yellow means. Just think about it?
Do I have to think about it? Stop Elaine looking resplendent and a maroon blouse with gray slacks.
It was a Gingham. It was tiny, tiny gingham. Oh okay, look great.
She looked great. She asks Tony, what's with Bobby on the phone, like she's never seen him do this? She's probably seen him do this hundreds of times. This pacing, this nervous energy about getting a job. Anyway, Tony replies what we already know as viewers, that Bobby's waiting to hear back about the movie that he auditioned for. Worried, Bobby comes over and tells them that it's between him, him and one other guy, and he's really nervous.
I'm both damn pretty boy.
Both Alex and Elaine sort of fumble uncharacteristically. I have to say, they fumble over themselves trying to buck up Bobby a little bit and give him some confidence. But I guess maybe the idea is even they realize how feudile this whole exercise is, that he's probably not going to get the part.
Yeah, I guess if there are any two people in the garage going to do that to those two. So it makes sense. But at the same time, this is not new. This is not the first time on tanks, so he's been waiting by the fucking fund. But by the way, why is he giving the payphone number, give Louie's number and have a pocket full of ones.
No, he can't give Louis number because it'll it'll be disastrous if he's not in the garage when Louis it's it's not even about having to give Louis a buck. If Louie is feeling saucy that day, he's going to ruin that opportunity for no good reason.
Hey, I have an idea. Perhaps he should use his telephone service, you know, the one that Angela Matusa is that see?
I have an answer for that too.
My guest answer Vaudeville.
No, I think he probably can't afford that answering service anymore because he's obviously he's no, he's not getting many jobs now, he's getting no more jobs than he was. How can he afford an answering service. Bobby goes back over to his post guarding the phone, and Laca is now on the phone talking on it, which freaks out Bobby. Bobby implores Loatka that he's waiting on an important call.
Laca says his call is important too. He's ordering lunch from a restaurant, Father Malone, that serves food from his country. On the side note, isn't it maddening to you that we're three seasons in and they still have not given Loatka's home country a name. Father alone? Doesn't this drive you crazy, No.
I disagree with you, and I bet that it was sort of contingent in confidence contract that they never get to name it. Remember he's foreign guy or foreign man.
But I can see he wouldn't give the country a name there because it's just the silly premise for a nightclub act. This is three seasons worth of material that we're now dealing with. Anyway, I found it a little bit vexing, but maybe I'm maybe I'm the outlier. Anyway, Laka proceeds to run through this whole long litany of ordering the food on the phone in his in his native language, and it's just driving Bobby crazy. Bobby is seething in the background because he's just taking so long,
and Bobby finally says, can you make it faster? Loaka Loca says, all right, just give me the number seven. But this is after he's ordered like five or six things extra.
Yeah, this is what I'm saying. Loca knows what he's doing sometimes, Sarah Man a.
Little darkness here, because he could have just ordered the number seven at the beginning. But I think he's doing it just to fuck with Bobby a little bit.
Remember what he was saying. He does to bisexuals. We're getting a whole new side of lock in season three.
That's right, the one with with Tony, the Elaine's.
Triangle, that's right, that was a recent one. That was he's really emerging from the darkness here.
Bobby gets the call, and through just his side of the conversation, you can just hear that the other guy got beat him out for the part, and he goes over he's talking to the other caves about it. The part that really gets to Bobby, that really burns him up, is that this other guy has no experience and not much talent, but he got the part because of his looks. He wasn't better looking than Bobby. Let me make that clear.
He just had the right quote unquote right look. According to Bobby, casting goes in cycles, and the common look.
Is in right now, so common look, that's good.
Common according to Bobby. I mean, you have to understand, Bobby is a narcissist, so anything that's not his idealized perfect visage is going to be labeled as common. But as Bobby describes the current look, we see that he's basically describing Tony. As he's describing all these features Tony is just behind him, rather humorously pantomiming everything that Bobby is describing. You know, he's got kind of a smile and dumb look whatever. Bobby looks over at Tony confirms that, yeah,
this is the look they're looking for. Tony is the look that they're hiring for these days.
First of all, Tony is better looking than Bobby. So if the criteria isn't a better looking guy just to type that they're happening be looking for, then he's wrong.
This sends Bobby into one of his patented I'm through being an actor tirades.
Right, We've seen this how many times enough?
Bobby jesus this performative gesture that he makes in front of Louis and the Cabby's and the whole garage, like it's too much I have. I'm quitting. It's enough, Bobby, We get it. We cut away. We actually cut to b roll of Bobby's awesome basement apartment again, which you and I have been enamored of for some time. We cut inside as Bobby is sitting lost in his thoughts while Tony runs down the steps. We see him in
the window running down the steps to the apartment. He comes in bearing beer and fudgeticles nice, which for me, it kind of gave me Laverne and Shirley vibes a little bit, Father Malone. You remember when times were tough and the girl Milk and Pepsy hit the spot. Beer in fudgetacles just seems it actually is kind of endearing that that's their thing, right, And of course Tony is now.
I don't know that we've seen him wearing this too much, but he's wearing his patented New York Yankees jackets his uniform. Now he's trying to cheer up Bobby. Basically, he's bringing him these things, the beer and the fudgetables. Bobby doesn't feel much like talking, but Tony asks Bobby earnestly if he can teach him to be an actor, because he reasons that he's got the look that act the casting
agents are looking for. Kind of makes sense when an incredulous Bobby asks Tony if he even knows what acting is like, Tony says, he was in a grade school production of Rip van Winkle. He played the guy who woke up Rip, and he comes back to it a few times, like wake up, Rip, wake up. This is evidence of his acting, Chops which drives Bobby crazy.
Of course. Nevertheless, from the moment that Tony started puffing up in the background back at the garage, I got excited because it's a Tony Bobby episode. Tony Bobby episodes are usually fucking winners. So by the time we get here and now here's the setup, Oh my god, how delirious Bobby has to manage Tony and puppeteer him into a career in acting. Sign me up.
The Bobby Tony episodes are usually pretty good, aren't they.
Yeah. I love their friendship. I wish we spent more time with it. I wish we spent more more time with them without plot getting in the way. Like I wouldn't say no to a hangout episode with those two guys.
There is a fun dynamic between the two of them because they are so different, but there are such good friends. Even though we all know that Bobby tends to be kind of a dick to Tony, but that's all part of the dynamic and we all accept that. So yeah, I agree. I was kind of excited for this too, because we don't it's very rare. We don't get these kinds of stories that off.
Then and you know, pit with their friendship right here, and Bobby says, like, you know, you got to wipe your face. You got funch call all over it. And then he uses yellow paper towels. It's the weirdest thing.
Was it a paper towel or was it just a kitchen towel?
No. He grabs a roll of paper towels and brings them into frame that are yellow, and then he peels off a yellow piece and then hands it to to Tony.
Paper towels went through a thing for a while where I don't know if this is the case anymore, because I don't I haven't seen them. But they used to have things printed on them. You could get pictures or designs. It would look like something in.
This paper towel is straight from France.
At some point everybody figured out that all that extra ink was doing nobody any favors, at least of all the cost of these things. So maybe that's this is a throwback to that. I don't know. Bobby keeps trying to dissuade Tony about this the folly of becoming an actor,
but he won't give up. Tony won't give up. He reminds Bobby that the guy who Bobby out for the part, also had no experience, but he had the look, and after a moment or two, Bobby he's swayed by Tony's logic for lack of a better word, and he says, what the hell, I'll call my agent and I'll set it up.
No, no, no, no, no no. I don't want your agent. Listen here, Bobby boy, your agent getting you nowhere. I need a better agent.
I need you, Bobby, Tony says, and on certain terms, I don't want your agent because your agent hasn't exactly made you, and it was star Bobby. I want you, Bobby to be my agent, which is a wonderful vote of confidence for Bobby and his skills at being a manager.
And all the possibilities here HP had they allowed Bobby to pursue no longer acting, but theatrical agency, Oh my goodness, where we could have gone.
Tony shares with Bobby this fantasy that he's had since he was a kid. He said, he always out like he was going to be famous. He always thought Tony thought that it was going to be as a boxer. But hearing all of this from Bobby makes him think that maybe he's destined for fame and fortune as an actor and not a boxer.
He's he's ready for a role in the Rocky horror show, some sort of revival off Broadway as Rocky.
He could be Rocky.
He could be Rocky. Totally pull that shit off. Yeah, he could do that.
He doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't need to really do much of anything, right, No, man, Yeah, I never thought of it that way. And I'm sure it was playing in Times Square at this time, right, wasn't this for Salpiro and everybody that were at this was.
Like the the cult was born. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a.
Good call, good call for Like I said, finally, Bobby is convinced he's going to manage Tony. He says, let's give it a shot. He pulls a bunch of plays off of his shelf for Tony to study. He just picks a bunch.
Of Oh wow, I wish I could have zoomed in and gotten them. I mean I did zoom in but couldn't get any of them. They name one of them, but I don't even know if that's one of the books that was in his hand.
I think he named Long Day's Journey in tonight I think there's a monologue there that he said, you have to you have to learn that. Might I might, I might be wrong about that, but I think that's what he said. And they're gonna start tomorrow. Tomorrow is the official start of their enterprise. So Tony leaves as we fade to commercial. We come back as Louie is entering the garage. He's got his jacket on or whatever. It's probably this bid. This is what qualifies as the B plot.
Yeah, this sequence made me tackle as a child.
Louie is walking very carefully and cautiously to his cage, and Land is watching him with glee, I would say, watching him as he nervously is looking around the cage for this cockroach that's been plaguing him and just to get under his skin even more. She she well, she pokes fun at his worries about what he's doing anyway, but then she gives him like a jump scare, like she does one of these things.
It's great, like oh my god, look.
Over there, and he freaks out, and she is she loves his reaction because he does it exactly the way she wanted him to do it.
Elaine would do fucking fantastic in a haunted attraction as a scare actor, like she's she's got it. She's also acting as the interactive Greek chorus in this episode. She just shows up says, what are you doing? Stop doing that? All right? Fuck it? Buy so.
Then the Simpleton Tony comes in to the garage to show Alex and Elaine his head shots. But what they are they're not actual, professionally taking photos. They're the kind of things you get at the carnival.
The photo photo booth photos.
The photo booth rolls three poses for fifty cents. Bobby comes in and Tony, ever the Simpleton comes over and shows, hey, Bobby, look at my look at my head shots, And I actually.
Really like this.
Bobby like does I don't think he looks at them.
He takes, he does not look at them.
He rips them up right there and not even looking at them, not even caring. Bobby says that he's been busy that every casting director in New York City has Tony's photo on their desk. He's pounding the pavement. He's doing what he should do as a manager. He gives Tony a scene from Long Day's Journey into Night to practice, but he reads the lie.
Would he give Tony a dummy? Eugene O'Neill give him on the waterfront? What the fuck? Bobby?
Can I just say, I've noticed in this podcast and others for them alone, you have a special skill with the word dummy. No one uses the word tell me has a put down better than you. And I love when you describe Tony as a dummy. I don't know why. It just makes me laugh.
It makes me happy. I didn't realize that. Okay, I'm gonna be self cancious about it from now.
It's fantastic. Tony is reading his lines like do you remember in the second Rocky movie in Rocky two, where he tries to go into doing commercials but he can't read, so he gets fired from all the jobs that he gets. Tony's reading his lines like Rocky Balboa trying to read a deodorant ad in Rocky Too. It's so wooden, it's terrible. Alex Slaane and Bobby are all exchanging worried looks about what this means for his acting career, such as it
is Loca shuffles in this. I love this bit. I get to say, I'm not going to bury the lead. I love this bit with Loaca. This is another one where you get a little bit of the darkness of Loaca. I think he goes over to Bobby and asks Bobby if he could be Loca's agent too, and he It really is funny. Loca explains that an Italian director came to his country again with this country business. He came to Loca's country to film a movie called Here Come the Huns and asks Bobby if he wants to see
his performance, and Bobby kind of winces. As Loaca is setting the scene. Basically, there's this preamble that Locker goes into where the Huns have decimated everything. All the people are gone, They've been destroyed, everything is in ruins, and Loacha's character is surveying the destruction. He does that thing where he puts his hand over his eyes to shade it, like I'm surveying the land right now to see what's going on.
And it's for guests. Quirky, you know, kind of performance he would fit well and waiting for gofman here.
It is so funny. And my favorite part of all of this scene is that just as Lacka is going to launch into his part. He after he's described the scene, he has this buoyant way of saying and it goes something like this. After all this build up, Loca's character looks around and he just goes he clucks his tongue like hmm, Like like like you would do if you
saw somebody throwing litter on the ground. You think it's gonna be this deep emotional scene with you know, ringing of hands and crying and shrieking, and it's just plucking his tongue. It's really trust me, it's really good. I'm not doing it justice. It's really funny. Just after Laka does this performance for Bobby, the phone rings. Bobby answers the phone. He's flim flamming with the cast with a casting director who's getting ready to offer Bobby, make check my schedule.
Let me say always got to He's working with Barbara streisand that week and next week it's uh.
He's trying to make Tony sound like he's this big hot shot. He says, well, no, he's got the Fonda movie that week, but I think we can fit you in. And he gets an audition for Tony and Tony is excitedly watching all of this, and then Bobby gets off the phone and they're they're both literally jumping for joy. This is Tony's first audition, which is pretty good considering it's only been one day that he's been at this. Tony, ever, the simpleton, doesn't want to hear about the actual audition.
He wants to hear about the fond of film that Bobby was lying about. As we then fade out and fade into the casting director's office. For the next scene, Tony and Bobby are getting shown into this office to meet the producers. And did you notice who one of the producers was, Father Malone?
I did before I say his name. I know why Tony gets the role because one of those producers was going to commit suicide and Tony Banta stopped him. Good call, because that character then and now is played by Ed dot Weinberger, one of the original writers on this series and one of the producers, one of the creators. Do isn't he he was?
And you're referencing one of the two part episodes from from the first season, I believe.
Where Pales of ca five oh eight or whatever eight oh four? May I paint a picture for you? He's in a blue button down shirt with white cuffs and a white collar, so now you know what kind of human this is. And he's wearing sunglasses indoors that are smoky. He looks for all that he's perfectly cast. Whoever said put him down there made the right call.
Everything about this scene. We always talk about the set designers and how how they do their job well with these big, flashy sets. But one of the things I like about this is it's this looks exactly like you would expect a New York casting directors or producer's office to look, because these guys are producers. It's there's just something about it. You can see the hallway behind them
with other actors waiting for their audition. I don't know, there's something about it that feels very earthy and real to me, including Ed Weinberger as a producer.
I'm talking the reality up to James Burrows, whose father was a Broadway like writer producer, so I'm sure he knew this scene a lot.
The assistant explains that the character that Tony is auditioning for is a young New Yorker of Italian descent, eager, innocent, and a little slow, basically describing Tony to a tee. Bobby is going to play the part of his father in this, which you know is going to give him the the opportunity to act circles around Tony, right, I can see you. You're grimacing there father alone.
Well, it's very embarrassing, the whole thing, and I don't know why they let him continue when he continues the obviously they cast him. They end up casting Tony just for the look. But you know why he's allowed to go on. As long as he goes on. It's kind of crazier and is very cringey, but no more out of hand in cringey than the other producer's perm. Is it Brady Day.
Here his perm It had that mister goodboe body Richard Simmons kind of look to it.
Yes, exactly, like it's a very loose perm. It's not. It's not a Brady tight to the skull with curls. No, this is this is almost like I want an afro.
When you say Brady, you mean Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch.
Yeah, of course, if you're talking about a man having a perm, all roads lead to Mike Brady and then you can branch off in tributaries from him.
They dive into this bit of dialogue. Of course, Bobby is giving his all with his reading, and he has all the heavy lifting to do. Anyway, this like father son thing. All Tony's lines are basically monosyllabic replies, yeah, okay, that kind of stuff he never has Yeah, no, wait really it's it's totally cringey. I know what they're going for, but it's a little too over the top. And I
have to agree with you, father Malone. If if I were the producer watching this unfold, it would only take me like half of the line from Tony to say, you know what, this guy's a big dummy. You can barely read, let alone emte. But that's this being a sitcom's.
Alo that I disagree. I think they were going to cast him no matter what, and I think as soon as he opened his mouth and they went, oh he can he can actually speak, Okay, great, perfect, he's got the role, which I think I think in the middle of Bobby's thing, they should have They should have stopped him, and then they could have played that as we have to stop you because you're so great, kind of a thing that Bobby assumes. But it's actually just we don't care, We just want we want the dummy.
He's pretty, so you think that the actual line reading was just a formality. They already knew within minutes that they were going to hire him for this role because of his look.
Yeah, it's like when you hear people when they meet Lauren Michaels and they're like, I don't know what that meeting was. It's basically just to find out if you're not a gibbering lunatic.
The reading ends between Tony and Bobby, and Bobby starts hustling them out of the room. He's convinced already that it was a terrible, terrible reading, but to his surprise, the producers instead they asked Tony if he can start tomorrow. Bobby is incredulous, completely incredulous they're gonna hire Tony after that reading. It should be kind of a moment of triumph for him because he he did what he set
out to do, He got Tony a role. But then Bobby's bitterness comes out, this whole acting thing, the fact that he quit acting under these circumstances. He launches into this tirade against the producers. Basically finally stomping out of the office as we fade out. Now we fade back in to Bobby's apartment. He's sitting at the table drinking
a beer again, a little lost in his thoughts. He has a lot that is eating a fudgle at that moment too, He's still got because Tony would have left the box there to make him to cheer him up.
Right.
So so Tony comes in again and he and Bobby his credit. He apologizes for his outburst in the producer's office. He asks Tony, Hey, how is your first day as an actor? Tony says, well, he went to Long Island, he had a cup of coffee, he watched George she Scott eat a jelly donut, and then he was fired. The director at the end of the day didn't think he was right for the role. Apparently under know in certain terms. He was pretty upset that they hired Tony
at all. Bobby sympathizes and admits that despite how badly they both feel about this situation, Bobby is actually glad that he was fired. He said. This is where the moralizing comes in. He says that Bobby says the director was right. Somebody finally stood up for quality. Bobby lays this guilt trip on Tony. He says, don't you understand people sacrifice food and clothing for acting lessons, living in poverty, just to face rejection over and over and over.
Oh my god, shut up. Let me tell you something. The problem here is Bobby. This guy asked him to become his manager and asked him before any of that, can you show me how to act? So he's failed as the guy's manager because he basically torpedoed his fucking audition. He didn't teach him how to act at all. All he did was use it as a grandstand to try and leap over him and get some other fucking roll and.
A Bobby's the one who has an act to grind still in this whole thing. Bobby finishes by saying, the director firing Tony is an affirmation of these people's sacrifice in his story. Tony's story, Bobby says, will be an inspiration to all of Bobby's other loser actor friends, and then they share a laughing embrace as we fade the commercial. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, Tony really doesn't seem to have cared all that much
about getting fired. I think maybe he realizes that this was a little more This is going to be a lot more work than he had thought it was going to be, So maybe he's to some degree relieved. But I'm with you, followable, and I don't like the fact that Bobby basically used Tony as an example to prove his own superiority, his perceived superiority as an actor. And I just have a real problem with that.
Yeah, So I don't know what the motive was. Was that to prove to Tony that he's out of his depth, Was that to prove to himself that he could get a dummy into a role? Did he use it the whole thing just as a gambit to get in the room and sell himself over Tony? And if not any of those things, he's a terrible friend for not speaking plainly with Tony and saying, yes, you can potentially get a role because you're pretty and you're dumb, but you cannot act. You are going to have a problem.
The thing of it is, we were talking about all of these other Tony and Bobby episodes, and they are good episodes, but this is all well within the parameters of what goes into those episodes because Bobby has been shown time and time again to be a terrible friend to Tony, starting with the fact that he killed Tony's fish and had them Macobley mounted on the largest plaque that he could find. It's gruesome. It's like an easy comic come to life. We talked about it. So this
is all well within character for Bobby. So I'm not a bit surprised.
Well yeah, but again, I'm trying to figure out his angle here, because if he wanted to prove to Tony that Tony was out of his depth, then he should have said, yeah, i'll be your manager, but first go talk to my agent, you know, like just do an audition for him and see what he has to say, because that would have at least given Tony the knowledge that he's going to be fired from any job he lucks into this.
Probably a dozen ways that he could have proved to Tony without actually telling him right out that you're not good, You're not going to be an actor. He could have enrolled them in an acting class just so they could have been the ones to say, I don't think this is going to work out.
You have no talent, but I want you to come to my instructor I take a class. I just want you to come to the class with me, and I want you to get up and do something and then hear the critique and then decide if you want me to be your manager or not.
You're giving all of these possibilities as to what Bobby's endgame was possibly going to be, and the only thing I can say to all of those possibilities is yes, I think any and all of those things were in play on this. I think Bobby he's always playing the martyr when it comes to acting. This is just another way for him to prove to the acting world at large, to the industry that fine, you want somebody for their
look but lack of talent. Here you go. I'm going to give you the the guy with the least amount of talent that I could find and have at it. Hollywood, go for it. Let's see how you like it. You know you don't want a guy like me with talent and ability and looks then ghost to matter.
No matter the motive, it's ultimately petty.
There's something to be said for that, for that laser focus on being so petty and proving it. I don't know. I guess maybe there's something to be said for that. So now we have the resolution of the b plot here. This is a little bumper. We don't get enough of these bumpers. I don't think we got a lot in the first season, not so much second season. We fade back in as Louis is making this loud show of leaving his cage. All right, everybody, I'm going home. Everybody
have a good you know. He's obviously putting this on for the cockroaches benefit.
Oh yeah, we got a fool of the cockroas that it's going to be alone and it should emerge from its hiding place.
So Alex comes down the stairs, probably going home for the morning or whatever. He sees Louie emerge with this big fishing rod, and he casts the fishing rod into the cage. He says, I think he tells Alex that he baited it with hamburger. Alex observes all of this, and he starts talking to Louie about this crazy scheme that he's going to catch the cockroach with the fishing What he crazy? Louie And they're having this conversation and they're arguing about whether this is going to work or not.
And as they're arguing, Loui has stood up the fishing rod in the corner so that he can talk with Alex and kind of gesture with his hands. We see the fishing rod start to jerk wildly. He actually has a bite on the end of this thing. To their horror, they notice this is happening, and he tells Louie. Just as Louie grabs the fishing pole and they do this great thing. There's obviously somebody in the cage who's been
pulling on it. The person basically throws the fishing line back over to Louis, but there's nothing on the line anymore. It's just this empty line that gets that SAgs around. They both nervously run out of the garage at this tableau. As the credits start to.
Roll, Blue gills, blue gill right right through that piano ryer. Don't you go tell me my business again?
That is the episode now, as is our custom father Malone, We're going to talk yellow lights.
What does a yellow light mean?
Reminder one yellow light. This is a scale between one and five. One yellow light is the worst taxi episode, five is the best taxi episode. And as is also our custom, Father Malone, We're going to throw it back to you first. What do you give the ten percent solution?
I give it three yellow lights. I think it's a solid middling episode. It's the focus is Bobby and Tony, which I'm always interested in. The the jokes are mainly good. Everyone's in character here, particularly Bobby. Even if I don't like what he's doing, it actually makes sense what he's doing. And it's just theris in enough of you know what. There is a lot of everybody here, maybe not enough of Jim, but it's not that balance. It's not great overall,
there's nothing really wrong with it. I would I didn't object to anything like previous episodes. Just I want to give it four for that funky roach Hunt theme, but instead I think just three'll do.
I also gave it three yellow lights, Father Malone. I agree with you on many of these points. It's a rare Tony Bobby episode. It's pleasant enough to watch. There's there's no there's very low stakes, there's some good laughs. It's a perfectly average episode of Taxi's not gonna win any Emmys, but it's also one that I might recommend, you know, it's funny.
Absolutely, I would I would definitely recommend this episode. Watch this episode.
It's fun, you know, and it's got those weird bits with Laca that they don't necessarily add a ton.
Sinister bit with Laka.
Yeah, I love that they're they're they're peppering him in a little bit more here and there. So that's going to do it for this episode of night Mister Walters Father Alone. When you're not clocked into the garage, where can the find folks find you?
Well, you can always find me at midnight Viewing. That is my podcast. It's mainly a horror anthology podcast where we look at tales from the dark Side week every other week, but every week you can hear Father Malone's weekly round up. That's part of the show. And we do anthologies Attack that's another part of the show. And then we're doing Fusco Fest right now, HP and I are doing Fusco Fest. So far, well, we're working through the works of screenwriter John Fusco. So far, we've done Crossroads,
Young Guns, Young Guns to the Babe, and Thunderheart. Next up is going to be Locknest. But go back and listen to all of those episodes because they're fucking great.
Awesome stuff and like Follom alone. You can find me also on the Weirdingway Network. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast. I'm an occasional guest on The Culture Cast with Chris Dashu, and I also have a bandcampsite Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. I got some music up there. Please check it out if you will, But thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to subscribe to this podcast, write a review or rate us. We'd love to hear from you. My email address is Hpmusicplace at
gmail dot com. Please write if you liked, hated, felt good, felt bad, whatever your mood is, just drop me a line and anyway, thanks again for listening and we'll see you guys again next week. Hi,