Taxi: Jim the Psychic (1981)
Season 4, Episode 1
5/10
The Oh Mighty gives everyone a special gift?
3 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
My friend drove a cab and I figured I would give it a try. The Streets of New York and the surrounding areas are the perfect challenge for a novice. I was scared but had a knowledge of the highways, thoroughfares, and back roads to get around the city that never sleeps. I chose the night shift so there would be fewer cars and pedestrians. Off I went into the concrete yonder and it didn't take long before I encounter my first passenger. I encountered this hilarious episode of Taxi that ran on the ABC Network for 5 seasons. This series launched the careers of Danny Devito. Tony Danza, Christopher Lioyd. Our Story begins at the Sunshine taxi depot where the fellow cabbies meet before going out on their runs. A verbal tussle ensues between Tony (Tony Danza) and Latka Gravis (Andy Kaufman). Tony, who has a chiseled body being is a boxer by trade and extremely emotional tries to make his point. Latka on the other hand is the Cab company's resident mechanic. Latka who has a high-pitched thick accent you could cut with a knife obviously a foreigner from some fictitious eastern block country. Latka has a pudgy frame wearing a jumpsuit and has a childish demeanor to go along with his boyish mannerisms. The two go back and forth arguing which ends up in a card bet where the loser has to be silent for a week's time. Meanwhile, Reverend Jim Ignotowski (Christopher Lloyd) a product of the 1960's drug scene who seems to be spaced out all the time. Jim enters the depot troubled and upset as he pulls our main character, Cabbie Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsch) aside. Jim tells him that he's going to die and with Alex's dry sense of humor responds, "Jim everyone dies." Jim tells everyone he has the ability to predict the future through his dreams. Jim tells Alex that precisely at 7 PM Thursday night he will die. Jim also talks about unusual events that will lead up to that faithful evening. Like the days that follow, the events, no matter how outrages, they become reality as the story unfolds. Will Alex actually die that evening? The writers wrote a comical masterpiece which had me belly laugh throughout the show. The micro underlying story of the verbal feud gets more creative as Latka using props to taunt the disgusted Tony. As for the time being, Louie tries his best to prevent Alex from certain doom claiming , "I admit your life means nothing to jump up and down about, but it means something to you." Hirsch and Devito work spectacularly well together as one is desperate and the other keeps a rational stance. The writers. Six in all produced a 21-minute masterpiece of comedy. And if you listen closely and hear the laughter of the studio audience the loudest laughs came from the head writer James L. Brooks. As for my Cab experience the work was awful with Customers complaining the cab is to hot or to cold. Dodging potholes and jaywalkers. The worst part was toward the end of my shift I was close to the depot when a woman flagged me down and had me drive her all the way to downtown Manhattan. I felt like a yo-yo.
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