“Elaine’s Old Friend”
Not available for streaming on Hulu or CBS All Access; there are some pretty good deals on DVD copies of the third season on Amazon.
Though Taxi often addresses, and is indeed centered around the idea that driving a taxi is at best unglamorous and at worst incredibly dangerous work, embarrassment at driving a taxi isn’t discussed much—the characters know who they are, as do the people they love, and are (for the most part) satisfied. That’s upended when Elaine picks up Mary Parker, an old high school frenemy, from the airport. Mary has a glamorous life, owning an ad agency and taking a month in Europe every year, and Elaine invents a great guy—named Bill Board—to compensate for her, well, embarrassing job. (You can probably see where this is going.)
After Elaine comes into the garage sounding more like the burnt-out, depressing cabbies that populated the New York Magazine feature that inspired the show than her normal, more sitcom-y self, Alex volunteers himself to play Board—a Columbia professor, but not a stuffy one, who’s crazy about Elaine—and sets up a double date with Mary and her international lawyer boyfriend.
At the restaurant, the show finally gives Alex-Elaine shippers—who I imagine have to had existed at some point—a good amount of fanservice, with Alex playing his role particularly well, all the way up until the very end of the night, where the two debate over whether or not his attraction to her was feigned or not. They kiss a few times to make sure; Alex’s voice is several octaves higher than it normally is when they’re done. “Nothing there,” he squeaks.
Meanwhile, the only other noteworthy thing in the episode is perhaps the best two-minute rambling monologue that illustrates the show’s core values that it ever wrote. Latka is trying to cheer up Elaine, depressed because she’s just a cab driver.
“There’s only one thing you need in this life to make you happy,” he says. “Friends. If you have friends, you’ll be a happy…happy person.” He looks around. “You also need the food and clothes.” He piles things on until, in his ideal world, he’s just left with a nice house with a pool and a beautiful woman that makes him “foam at the mouth.” He realizes that having friends there would just cockblock him. “Forget I said anything, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Out of Commission”
Not available for streaming on Hulu or CBS All Access; there are some pretty good deals on DVD copies of the third season on Amazon.
Tony’s failed boxing career is a frequent punchline on the show, mostly for Louie, but it takes a somewhat tragic turn after the state boxing commission confiscates his license after his doctor expresses concern that he’s knocked out too often, and could sustain brain injuries. It’s a storyline it feels like the show has done before, and that’s likely why the episode feels so tired and uninspired—and that’s not even counting the “ethnic” jokes.
Let me explain: A boxer in New Jersey named Kid Rodriguez retired, and Tony bought his boxing license and set up a fight as Rodriguez, something which you are apparently allowed to do, or could in the early ’80s on TV. Sporting a giant mustache and dropping “cucaracha”s to his fighting partner—also Latino—Tony looks more like a Duke student during Cinco de Mayo than anything.
The script was written by future Simpsons creator Sam Simon, who told Hailing Taxi authors Frank Lovece and Jules Franco that he wrote the story after reading a Sports Illustrated feature on injuries sustained by boxers who are fighting on suspended boxing licenses. No word on where the racial caricatures came in, but the authors note there’s also a boxer named Kid Rodriguez in Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss. Kubrick’s Rodriguez was notably unmustachioed.
The episode ends with Tony hanging up his boxing gloves and mustache and deciding to save up money he would’ve spent on boxing to buy a suit. 🤔
