Transcript for Episode 27: The Gang From Taxi Meets a Bisexual
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Taxi episode “Elaine’s Strange Triangle.” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.
Kirk: See, I'm in a tough spot. I really like Elaine.
Tony: You son of a gun, you.
[audience laughs]
Kirk: Tony, the problem is I like somebody else too.
Tony: Oh. Somebody else? Oh, man. That's a problem.
Kirk: It is a problem, Tony. I feel bad about it. I honestly never meant to get involved with Elaine.
Tony: Oh.
Kirk: Remember the night I came up to you two at the bar I said, "Are you two together?"
Tony: Yeah. I told you we weren't.
Kirk: Well, she wasn't the one I was after, Tony.
[audience laughs]
Tony: Oh, no?
[audience laughs at length]
Kirk: No.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Tony: Oh. No, no, no.
[audience laughs guffaws]
["Angela (Theme from Taxi)" by Bob James plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that happen to be very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: Hi, Glen. And if that little intro did not tip you off, today we are talking about Taxi.
Glen: Oh. Did you make them listen to that theme song?
Drew: We do it with every episode except for Murphy Brown. We're going to—we'll talk. You have feelings about it don't you?
Glen: I do.
Drew: Yeah. I have questions for you about your feelings about it. The episode we're talking about today is "Elaine's Strange Triangle," which aired December 10, 1980, and for the purposes of this podcast we're calling it "The Crew from Taxi Meets a Bisexual." Right?
Glen: Why not just "Elaine Has a Bisexual Boyfriend"?
Drew: Because Elaine actually is a very minor plot point of this episode, which is something I want to talk to you eventually about. Well, [I'll] say it right now. There's not really a main character. It shifts focus over the course of three acts. But Elaine actually has the least to do, even though it seems like it should be her story. They kind of abandon her. She didn't even show up after the midway point.
Glen: Yeah. I still feel like the naming tropes of these episodes, it would follow that "Elaine Has a Bisexual Boyfriend."
Drew: Okay. Well.
Glen: Because even when she's not in the scenes, that is the subject being discussed by every character.
Drew: This is true. That's the reason he's there. Yeah. This episode is about bisexuality, which is a word that I don't think has actually come up in any of the episodes we've talked about so far. Is that right?
Glen: Just pervert.
Drew: Not actually synonyms, Glen. Those are two different things.
Glen: I'm aware. I'm being triggering.
Drew: Glen.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: What was your experience with Taxi?
Glen: I was not a fan. That's not to say I actually remember watching it at all. I just found the theme song—much like the theme song to M*A*S*H—to be very off-putting to me as a child because it was dour or somber in a way that other TV theme songs weren't.
Drew: Not at all. Not like '80s sitcoms at all.
Glen: Yeah. And so it just gave me a strange feeling I didn't like, and the setting was very dark and brown and gray. And I get it wasn't a family sitcom. It was a workplace sitcom, but I was used to workplace sitcoms like Cheers—which, yes, full of alcoholics, but it was very colorful and bright.
Drew: Not bright. I would say Cheers is [actually clinically 00:04:06] a dark show, but the tone is rarely that somber.
Glen: Yeah. I'm just picturing the lights and the glasses hanging up above. This is a very pleasant image.
Drew: It's classed up more than the taxi dispatch office that we see in this show.
Glen: Yeah, which is like hell. It looks like hell.
Drew: So I found a TV station that broadcasts here in L.A. that runs old TV all the time. It airs two episodes of Maude a night—which, believe me, I set that DVR recording. There will always be Maude episodes for me to watch. And they do, right after Maude, Barney Miller. Is that one you ever watched?
Glen: Nope.
Drew: So Barney Miller takes place in New York. It's about cops, and it's very much like Taxi, and it is like a dingy—not even sepia toned—like a pea-green tone version of the '70s in New York, and it doesn't feel nice. And you texted me before we started: "What a depressing place New York in the '70s must have been."
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Is that really how bad—I know it was a very different place in the '70s. But also, is that just what they were filming sitcoms on that hasn't aged very well? It looks so cruddy. It always looks cruddy.
Glen: I mean, even Diff'rent Strokes, I think it looked kind of cruddy.
Drew: And Maude. Everything just kind of looks like a palette that we don't use in commercial production anymore.
Glen: I don't think any downtown was necessarily picturesque on TV in the '80s and '70s because they were trying to depict a very specific lifestyle—like, "These people's lives are hard. They are hardworking people, and this friendship they had with their coworkers is one of the bright spots in their dreary lives."
Drew: This is true. I compare it to Night Court, which started not that long after Taxi ended, but the tone is just so much less dingy looking. Night Court doesn't feel dingy even though they're people working through the night and dealing with court cases that no one else wants to deal with.
Glen: Prostitutes.
Drew: A lot of prostitutes. Yeah. If you don't know, Taxi was a show that ran for 116 episodes and five seasons, first on ABC and then the final season on NBC, which I did not know. The final season ran at 9:30 on Thursdays, immediately behind Cheers, which was in its first season. So it's a nice pairing of those two together. It ran from 1978 to 1983. It revolved around the coworkers of the Sunshine Cab Company—ironically named—in Manhattan. Do you describe it as Cheers-y? Is there Cheers-y ness to it?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah, because it's an ensemble workplace. Yeah. The series' primary director was James Burrows who would go on to co-create Cheers. The phenomenal ensemble cast includes Judd Hirsch, Jeff Conaway, Marilu Henner, Tony Danza, Andy Kaufman, Christopher Lloyd, and Carol Kane in the final seasons. There is no Carol Kane to see in this one.
Glen: No—which feels like an oversight on her part.
Drew: Some people think that her presence on the show made the show jump the shark. They think that she changed it in a way that ruined the show permanently.
Glen: Well, I know everyone loved Andy Kaufman. I don't know about their feelings about him on this show specifically. Maybe it's just because times have changed, but he was grating.
Drew: To me it doesn't feel like he belongs on this show.
Glen: No.
Drew: He feels like a weirdo. Yeah. And you and I both grew up with Balki Bartokomous, who's a very Latka-like character, and he makes sense in Perfect Strangers in a way that Latka doesn't. Just feels very weird on this show.
Glen: Yeah. I would compare Taxi to—I think our generation had Party Down, and Party Down is sort of like—
Drew: They have tough lives.
Glen: —Los Angeles Taxi.
Drew: Yeah. Their lives are not great.
Glen: Yeah. And I think that's part of the concept of Taxi I didn't grasp at first, like, "Oh. Everyone but Judd Hirsch—this is not their career. They're trying to do other things."
Drew: Right. So Tony Danza—boxer. Marilu Henner's character works in an art gallery. Jeff Conaway's an actor. They all have lives outside of there. Yeah. Just looking it up, the show has an amazing list of supporting actresses who were never billed in the credits but who appeared more than once, and that includes Rhea Pearlman; Eileen Brennan, a.k.a Mrs. Peacock from Clue; Marcia Wallace; Penny Marshall; Ruth Gordan; Louise Lasser; and Talia Balsam, a.k.a. Roger Sterling's wife from Mad Men, and a really kickass actress whom I enjoy. It was co-created by Stan Daniels—who was also a producer on Mary Tyler Moore—and David Davis, who was a producer on the Bob Newhart Show and is the long-term partner of Julie Kavner a.k.a. Marge Simpson.
Glen: Huh.
Drew: Yeah. He also was a producer on Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, which I assume is how they met. Also, Ed Weinberger co-created the "Phylicia Rashad Show." And then, finally, James L. Brooks, who is a prolific writer-producer whose greatest contribution to the world of TV, I think we can agree, is My Mother the Car. Just kidding. The thing he did was The Simpsons. That was the bigger deal for James L. Brooks. Yeah. The iconic theme song—and it's very melancholy—is called "Angela." It was written by Bob James. Not the original theme song. I sent you the original theme song, which is more upbeat—not a lot more upbeat
Glen: No. No.
["Touchdown" by Bob James plays]
Drew: But a few episodes in—this was something that was composed for a scene on the show, and they decided that it fit the tone better, and it became the theme song. Very haunting [laughs].
Glen: Also the car in the opening credits is alone on the road, and also driving over the line constantly.
Drew: I did notice that. Did you notice that it reuses footage?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. They have more song than they have footage of a car driving, which seems weirdly budge of them.
Glen: It's expensive.
Drew: I mean, it worked for five seasons. So who am I to judge?
Glen: I don't know. That's sort of the concept of this show, isn't it? We should just call it Who Am I to Judge?
Drew: The series won the Emmy for best comedy series in 1979, 1980, and 1981—won 15 other Emmys, was nominated for a bunch of them. And as far as the pop-culture world goes, the thing I can tie this closest to is that this aired a week after we found out who shot J.R. That was the other big TV event. Dallas was the number one TV show at the time this aired, and although this show was the 13th most watched show the previous season, it's not in the Top 30 this season. So it dropped, which does not match with what my understanding of the show was. I thought it was popular for a lot longer than this, but next season canceled by ABC. The final season—one more bonus on NBC, and it was done. This episode's written by David Lloyd who is the father of Christopher Lloyd, but not Christopher Lloyd who's the actor on this show. Christopher Lloyd, the guy who created Frasier.
Glen: [yells dramatically]
Drew: Right. And Christopher Lloyd also wrote for Golden Girls, Wings, and Frasier, and co-created Modern Family—not Frasier. He contributed a lot to Frasier.
Glen: Got it.
Drew: Modern Family—did I tell you that they killed off Shelley Long?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: They killed her off.
Glen: I was angry.
Drew: She's dead.
Glen: Well, Shelley Long is alive. Her character on Modern Family is dead.
Drew: DeDe is dead. Modern Family, or as I like to call [it], "Assholes Marry Idiots." The episode opens with the gang eating together in an Italian place and there is Tony, played by Tony Danza—who always plays characters named Tony.
Glen: That must be easy for him.
Drew: He is very attractive at this point. He's still attractive on Who's the Boss, but he's extra attractive in this mode.
Glen: Oh, yes. He has a Matt LeBlanc quality in this episode.
Drew: He does. He's dumber than he is on Who's the Boss, and he has what—
Glen: Let's not call him dumb. Let's just do it as the bisexual says—he has a charming simplicity.
Drew: That's also very Joey Tribbiani, too. He has a facial quality that Jeffrey McCrann referred to in the Fright Night episode of the other podcast as "fuck Muppet."
Glen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. He's a boxer. Then there's Alex, Judd Hirsch—he's like the Sam Malone of the show, basically; Latka, who is Balki Bartokomous, and I don't understand why people were nuts about him; and then, finally, Christopher Lloyd. The actor Christopher Lloyd—the one from Back to the Future—who is hot, sort of. And that's a weird thing, to be like, "Oh, my god. Christopher Lloyd's really hot in this episode." He's like a hunky, weirdo dreamboat.
Glen: Yeah. His brain is fried by drugs. He is or was a reverend. What bothered me about this scene is how they're all sitting at this table clearly staged for camera, and every time they added people to the table they'd squeeze them in, and there was this wide, empty, one-third-of-the-circle gap at the table. And I was—I mean, my OCD was just clicking.
Drew: But that's what the Golden Girls do as well, but they just never squeeze that many more people at the table.
Glen: Yeah. You don't notice it as much.
Drew: I only notice stuff like that when I'm watching it for this show. If I was just watching this as a viewer on TV, it wouldn't bother me. But that is something I immediately noticed—like when Maude was doing her makeup in front of a mirror that doesn't exist, because it's facing the audience.
Glen: Well, it's different.
Drew: Is it?
Glen: I say it's different.
Drew: Okay. Well, I trust you. And then we have Marilu Henner who plays Elaine Nardo, which is a very unfortunate last name. I love this character. She has some Diane-like qualities in the way she relates to the other people. She's easier to be around than Diane is.
Glen: She's sort of like if Rebecca and Diane had a love child because she's sort of a loveable disaster in some ways.
Drew: Mm-hmm. And she works at an art museum. So she knows nicer things than taxi driving, but maybe I just haven't seen those episodes. It doesn't seem like she's trying to lift everyone up like Diane does.
Glen: Right.
Drew: But they kind of look alike. She's a very cute redhead. I like her for a number of reasons. Do you know that she has a super memory?
Glen: Oh! That's why she can play characters not named her name.
Drew: Yeah. Suck it, Tony Danza. She has hyperthymesia, which means total recall memory, which has made acting very easy for her because it was very easy to learn scripts. But she doesn't really forget anything. You can give her a day and she'll tell you everything that happened and what she wore. And this is not from her specifically, but this is something I read about because—there was an Oprah or something with her on it, and I'm like, "This is fascinating." Those people have a hard time being friends with people because they literally cannot forget grudges like we do. Time lessens our anger about stuff that happened in the past.
Glen: Oh, does it?
Drew: Some people, yeah—for her, no. For people that have this condition, no. I think it's a superpower that has a weird flipside to it.
Glen: Biting my lip. Biting my lip because I hate everyone.
Drew: She also is part of the DC Animated universe. She played Veronica Vreeland, that redheaded socialite that—
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah, for kind of a few episodes—and is playing a very un-Elaine-like character and did a good job with it. So Elaine is bemoaning a breakup. The guys are trying to make her feel better, and in comes Bobby, who's the final part of the show—the final part of the drivers anyway—who's played by Jeff Conaway, who's Kenickie from Grease. He's very John Travolta-like, right?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: By the way Marilu Henner dated both Jud Hirsch and Tony Danza over the course of the show, and John Travolta. Apparently not Jeff Conaway, even though Jeff Conaway looked remarkably like John Travolta.
Glen: Huh.
Drew: Yeah. I don't know—
Glen: Good for her, I guess.
Drew: I mean, yeah—though [she] didn't get weirdo Christopher Lloyd, but she was busy. It was only five seasons.
Glen: I wish you could add Carol Kane to that list.
Drew: She dated Carol Kane?
Glen: I would love that.
Drew: Yeah. I think most gay men would date Carol Kane if they had the chance, just because that would be a fascinating experience. Carol Kane, if you're listening, we'll take you to dinner.
Glen: Single! [laughter]
Drew: So very shortly after Bobby—who's the actor of the group—shows up, Tony takes Elaine over to get a drink, and in walks a man in a very attractive suit. He is Kirk, we're about to find out, and he's this story's queer person.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Is he attractive enough for you?
Glen: Later on he is.
Drew: Okay. I thought he was decent. He kind of reminded me of Greg from Dharma & Greg, but in a non-bad way.
Glen: He had a little boyish quality to him. I think it's important to point out that their advice for Elaine getting over her breakup is to "not date, but just date."
Elaine: I really appreciate this guys.
Tony: Don't thank us Elaine. Seeing you cheer up is reward enough.
[audience laughs]
Elaine: Oh, I'm sorry. I know I'm not responding much, but—[sighs]. I just don't bounce back the way I used to.
Tony: Believe me. No guy is worth getting this upset over.
Elaine: No?
Alex: Elaine, you know what I think you should do? I think you should go out with someone else right away.
Latka: That's a good idea.
[audience laughs]
Alex: I'm not talking about falling in love or, you know, getting involved. I mean just go out with somebody else, but right away.
Elaine: I don't know anybody else.
Jim: Well, what about a stranger?
[audience laughs]
Latka: Maybe she don't know any strangers.
[audience laughs]
Jim: Huh. Well, you've got all the answers.
Glen: Like, "Don't get into a relationship, but basically, fuck around," is what they would have said if they could have said "just fuck around." So that's the context for them meeting Bobby at the bar. Not Bobby—that's the context for them meeting Kirk at the bar.
Kirk: Excuse me. Hi. Are you two together?
Tony: Yeah. We're together. Oh! You mean she and I? No, no, no, no. We're just friends. I'm Tony Banta and this is Elaine Nardo.
Kirk: Pleased to meet you. Kirk Bradshaw.
Tony: And we're pleased to meet you, huh, Elaine?
[audience laughs]
Elaine: We are. Right. Hi.
Tony: So Kirk, you come here often?
Kirk: Yeah. Well, my office is just around the corner.
Tony: Oh, yeah? What do you do?
Kirk: I'm an investment analyst.
Tony: Wow. An investment analyst. Small world.
Kirk: Why? Are you an investment analyst?
Tony: Nah. Cab driver.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Kirk is played by John David Carson, who retired from acting after—he was in Pretty Woman, and then he just retired. Didn't want to do it anymore. A very interesting thing about him is that he was married to a woman named Vicki Morgan. Do you?
Glen: Was she a robot?
Drew: Not everyone named Vicki is a robot.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: She was a model who had an affair with the heir to the Bloomingdale's fortune and then tried to sue him for palimony and—interestingly, in the context of this episode—ended up in a weird, quasi-relationship with a gay man who occasionally had sex with her, but then also murdered her. Which is not where this episode goes.
Glen: Oh!
Glen: And Dominick Dunne wrote a book about it called, I think, Inconvenient Woman.
Glen: I'm going to adapt that.
Drew: I have not read it. I've had the story related to me, and it's a juicy, involved story. But before any of that happened, this handsome young actor was married to her.
Glen: Hmm.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Anyway. Kirk is an investment analyst, which is a very boring thing for a gay man to be, but it explains his nice suit.
Glen: I disagree, but—
Drew: I don't want to listen to investment analysts talk. He likes art, so that helps.
Glen: Yeah. I'm sure he has other interests that he can spend his money on.
Drew: Art—it's the one other thing we learned about him. So he asks if Tony and Elaine are dating, and they're not. And Elaine kind of weasels out of there real fast, and he ends up really just talking to Tony, mostly.
Glen: Yeah. And then Tony drags him to the table.
Drew: And it's very clear that they are setting him up with Elaine.
Bobby: So Kirk, let me tell you a little bit about Elaine. She's a cab driver, but she also works in an art gallery.
Kirk: Really? I'm kind of an art buff.
Tony: Ooh.
[audience laughs]
Kirk: I'm strictly an amateur art buff, of course.
Alex: What kind of stuff you like?
Kirk: Ah, just the simple stuff, I guess. French impressionists.
Taxi Crewmen: Oh, French impressionists. Ooh-la-la.
[audience laughs]
Alex: Come on, will you? Come on, you're embarrassing her. Will you give her a break?
Elaine: No. It's okay.
Drew: Is what they're doing okay? I feel bad for him—this poor man who's just getting roped into this.
Glen: Oh. I thought you were going to say you feel bad for Elaine, who's clearly emotional right now and being forced to interact with male attention.
Drew: Okay. Maybe it is problematic that I did not think of her feelings, but that is not my first reaction. My first reaction was to think about Kirk. Sorry. Sorry Elaine. I swear I like her.
Glen: I mean, Kirk could have left.
Drew: He could have just run away.
Glen: He could have been like, "Oh. Sorry. I have to put meter money in my meter."
Drew: Mm-hmm. Meter money in my meter, classic excuse. One of the things that comes out is that he collects art. He's a bit of an art buff. At this point, do you think a gay person might suspect that this character's being coded as queer? Because he's very nicely dressed, and he's a man who has original sketches by Degas, and that is maybe not something that a straight man would have.
Glen: He could also be a serial killer.
Drew: I mean, he could also—he could be both. That happens sometimes.
Glen: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that in 1980 a gay man watching this would have picked up on that. We did because we're watching it for a podcast called Gayest Episode Ever.
Drew: Right. Everything we watch, it would be interesting if we could watch with fresh eyes and just be like, "Oh. I didn't see that coming," or "This character's clearly queer." He's okay with being set up with Elaine, and eventually Elaine is just kind of like, "Okay. Whatever," and they agree to go and get drinks or something, right?
Glen: Yeah. Well, he's bisexual not gay so—
Drew: But being bisexual doesn't mean that he's necessarily—he wasn't necessarily interested in Elaine to begin with, although she's cute.
Glen: Right. He seemed interested at the time.
Drew: Mm-hmm. They can talk about art stuff. So pretty quickly, that scene ends. In the next scene, it's 10 days later, and Elaine is—
Glen: Dancing on air.
Drew: —everyone's at the dispatch office. She's just happy. She's not sad anymore. So say what you will about them subjecting her to what [they wanted 00:21:04]. Apparently, it made her happy. But also, a man wrote the show, so whatever.
Glen: I mean, she sounded like she had a lovely time.
Drew: She did. Yeah. And everyone else is stoked on what good matchmakers they were. They think they really landed this one. We also meet Danny DeVito's character, Louie De Palma.
Glen: Finally.
[audience laughs]
Bobby: Hey, Louie. Come on, huh? Get us out of here.
Louie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here you go. Here you go. Dames. Sheesh.
Alex: "Sheesh," Louie?
Louie: Yeah. No matter how many bums a woman dates, whenever a new one comes along she thinks this one's going to be Mr. Right. You ever notice that?
Bobby: Notice it? I depend on it.
[audience laughs]
Drew: He functions so much like Carla on Cheers.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Just hostile and abrasive and chaos-causing.
Glen: Yeah. I have no idea how old he is. I don't know if I want to know.
Drew: It's hard to tell. I mean, science isn't there yet [laughs]. I would say that together they're 250 or 300 years old, and—
Drew: Yeah. His acting style is if you put a cat in a box and shook it up and then let it out and just—"Action!"
Drew: He actual does play it up bigger than Rhea Pearlman does on Cheers.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I like him. I can see why he was a breakout character. But, yeah.
Glen: Yeah. He plays, some of his later scenes especially, as if it were Broadway.
Drew: Or like Daffy Duck or something. It's a big, cartoony, sneaking-around thing. He's playing it really big.
Glen: But it works.
Drew: Yeah. I'm good with that style of big acting, and then what Andy Kaufman's doing is just very mysterious to me. So Elaine heads off, and then Kirk comes in wearing a lovely powder-blue suit that I would wear if I had the ability to—
Glen: Buy a suit? You do have that ability.
Drew: That particular suit would be very hard to find in good—
Glen: You live in Los Angeles.
Drew: [sighs]
Glen: You can buy this suit. I can go on my phone right now and find you a powder blue suit.
Drew: Okay.
Glen: Boop beep boop boop-boop-boop.
Drew: That's not how phones sound anymore. And he's asking if Elaine's there.
Glen: She's not.
Drew: She's not.
Glen: But yeah. He has come to explain—actually, no. He asked if Elaine was there, but then he was actually looking for Tony, wasn't he?
Drew: I believe so. Yeah, because he had something he needed to talk about.
Glen: Yeah. And what he needs to talk about is that when he asked Tony that night if he was with Elaine, he meant because he was interested in someone other than Elaine and that person was—who was it, Drew?
Drew: Tony.
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: He was interested in Tony. And he has not told Elaine about this because he just couldn't find a way to tell her.
Glen: Right. Even though they had ten days.
Drew: Is that realistic at all?
Glen: No.
Drew: If you're bi, you probably mention this.
Glen: I mean, he can mention it on his own timeline. But if he wanted to tell her, there was probably plenty of time to tell her. Now in terms of gay panic reactions on sitcoms, I find this one adorable.
Drew: He's not horrified. He's kind of confused. You can see it connecting in his face—and he does a really good job acting that physically, like, "Oh."
Glen: Yeah. But when he says, "Oh. No. No. No. No. No."
Tony: Oh. No. No. No. No. No. No.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Glen: It's like a puppy.
Drew: And the out there is that he could [have been] like, "Oh, no. I don't want attention from a gay man," or he's just bummed for Elaine because he knows that she's really into this, and this is going to hurt her feelings.
Glen: I think he's also just uncomfortable with having to deal with a social situation or problem that is outside of his wheelhouse.
Drew: That sounds about right. Yeah.
Glen: Which is pretty much the plot of the next half of the episode.
Drew: Exactly. And yeah, you're right. As far as gay panic goes, this does better than stuff that came after it.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: Yeah. So on that cliff-hanger, we're going to take a quick commercial break where—
Glen: We'll talk about stuff.
Drew: Yeah. Commercial break!
["Angela (Theme from Taxi)" by Bob James plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre's recurring event, Cursed by the Sagittarius Moon]
[an old promotional spot for Laverne and Shirley plays].
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes their Patreon]
["Angela (Theme from Taxi)" by Bob James plays]
Drew: Glen, are we back?
Glen: No.
Drew: No, we are. You're wrong.
Glen: Okay. I don't know why you asked me then.
Drew: I just assumed you'd know. We come back in, and Tony is—I have written it as, "Staring into the void, contemplating the horror that is gay sex."
Glen: I just wrote depressed.
Drew: Because god forbid you get you dick sucked by someone who knows what he's doing. He's too panicked to drive. Enter Louie, and he's very annoyed that Tony's not working.
Glen: Yes. But he's very excited at the prospect that Tony will treat him as a confidant for the thing that is bothering him.
Tony: I ain't going Louie. I got a problem.
Louie: Ah. Not again. The one on the left's the brake. The one on the right's the gas.
[audience laughs]
Tony: Louie, leave me alone!
Louie: Something's really bothering you, huh Banta?
Tony: Yeah.
Louie: So why haven't you unloaded it on Reiger?
Tony: Because everybody's always unloading on Alex, and it's terrible for him. And I ain't dumping this one on him.
Louie: Oh. Oh, I see what you're getting at. Well, who else in this cab company would offer the maturity, the character, and poise required to be a real confidant?
Tony: Uh—
Louie: You pick me, or your butt's fired out of here.
[audience laughs]
Drew: How would you describe what happens? It takes a while.
Glen: Yeah. It's a long scene. I don't know. I would just describe it as Lou lying to Tony to get Tony to reveal this juicy bit of gossip that he has, and does so Puckishly.
Drew: Very much so.
Glen: Yeah. He pretends to have a secret of his own that weighs on him constantly and [that] he'd only feel comfortable opening up and confiding in someone who also confided in him—so a mutually assured destruction sort of thing? I guess that's the dark reading of it. Anyway, he clearly has nothing to say to Tony and convinces him to just write it on a sheet of paper for them to exchange.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Louie: All right. But after, we'll burn the pieces of paper.
Tony: Sure.
[audience laughs tentatively]
Louie: "The guy Elaine is going out with just made a pass at me." Oh.
[audience laughs]
Tony: Now I'll read yours okay?
[audience laughs]
Tony: "Ha-ha." Ha-ha? Hey, Louie—
Louie: Ha-ha. You're my favorite, Banta. You're my favorite!
Drew: I guess it's funny. He does a good job. Danny DeVito does a good job acting this out, and so does Tony Danza. But they do take a lot of time to this, which is ultimately not a very crucial part of the episode.
Glen: No, but it's probably the most fun scene.
Drew: It is. Doesn't move the plot forward at all because the next scene is Tony back at the bar, and there's a succession of people who come in. First, Bobby comes in.
Tony: Let's say you're dating a girl and you really like her, and she makes a pass at me. Would you want me to tell you?
Bobby: How come you're asking me that?
[audience laughs]
Tony: It's just hypothetical. What are you getting so weird about?
Bobby: Well, it's kind of a strange question to come out of the clear, blue sky, Tony. You know?
Tony: Bobby, I'm just asking you because I—
Bobby: I know why you're asking me. It's Debbie, isn't it? Huh? Well, she's pulled that little trick once too often. I'm going to go tell her we're through. Thanks a lot, Tony. I owe you one.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Question. If you were in Tony's position, what would you do?
Glen: Well, I would use my cellular phone to call Elaine and tell her that her boyfriend is bisexual.
Drew: You would tell the person as soon as possible?
Glen: I mean, not as soon as possible. I'd be like, "Hey, let's go grab coffee or wine. Probably wine is better."
Drew: Wine is probably better.
Glen: And then I would read the situation, see how much she was actually into him. And then instead of coming out and saying, "Oh, he's a bisexual," I would say, "Oh. By the way, the guy you're dating made a pass at me. I don't know how serious you two are, but maybe there's a conversation to be had. "
Drew: I guess that's the difference. "Made a pass at me" versus "I know what his sexuality is," because there is a weird element of this that's like—they're going to give out this guy's personal information and that he's not given them—though that sort of consent for opening up about your sexuality did not exist back then. Today, there's probably a lot of people who would be like, "It's not your business to tell anyone about anyone's sexuality unless they are public about it," right?
Glen: I mean, Kirk would have had to have known that in revealing his sexuality to his new girlfriend's good friend there was a chance that said good friend would tell her. And spoiler alert—towards the end of the episode, that is the case. This actually resolves mostly in a very adult, respectful manner, with Kirk and Elaine having a private conversation.
Drew: I was so surprised by that. Like, "Wait. You solved it like grownups? There's no—"
Glen: Yeah. Offscreen. Offscreen, they solve it like grownups. They have a conversation. They agree to just be friends, and it's all solved. Meanwhile the straight, white men of the show are in histrionics about how to solve Elaine's problem.
Drew: It is a wacky misunderstanding in which there really is no misunderstanding whatsoever. Everyone knows all the information at all points.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: There's a wacky misunderstanding when Latka comes in and mistakes bisexual and bicycle.
Latka: What's the matter? You have the blues? Well, why don't you order some drinks and we can talk about it?
Tony: I can't. I got no money. And anyway, I don't think you'd understand my problem.
Latka: Yes, I would.
Tony: I don't think so. You know anything about bisexuals?
Latka: Oh, of course. They are very popular in my country.
[audience laughs]
Tony: They are?
Latka: Yeah. Almost everybody have them, and one of our favorite sports is racing them. And when we are not using them, we have special racks where we chain them up at night.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Tony: Latka, I'm not talking about bicycles. I'm talking about bisexuals.
Latka: So am I. Listen, I hope that you feel better, all right? Goodbye. Take it easy.
Drew: It's kind of funny. But I can't explain—
Glen: After episode after episode of that, it would just be like, "Really?" He's the mechanic, apparently?
Drew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Glen: Okay. I just got mad that he came in, in his grease covered coveralls and was sitting down on those leather stools getting his grease all over this restaurant, which I would not approve of as that restaurant's owner.
Drew: You can throw him out of your fictional, hypothetical restaurant. I agree. It's weird. I actually don't understand the phenomenon of Andy Kaufman that much. Everything I know about him, I just think, "This would be off putting and annoying," but apparently he's a comedic genius. I'm probably just stupid.
Glen: Eh. Different times.
Drew: Yeah. Get out of there, Latka. And then Alex comes in, and Alex is like, "Don't tell me your problems. Don't tell me your problems. Okay. What's your problem?" And then Tony lays it all out. And it is interesting that—they have a debate, like, "You should tell her" versus "You should not tell her." Tony wants Alex to tell her, and he's like, "I don't want to do this."
Alex: Tony. Tony, what are you worried about? We picked a winner [laughs]. That's your problem.
Tony: Yeah. Well—
Alex: And besides, who are we to decide who's right or wrong for Elaine?
Tony: Yeah, that's right—except for one thing.
Alex: Nothing.
Tony: Well, except this one thing.
Alex: What one thing?
Tony: He wants to date me.
[audience laughs]
Alex: No. No. You must have misinterpreted what he meant.
Tony: Well, he said my simplicity was engaging and that we'd be wonderful together.
[audience laughs]
Alex: Oh, no.
Tony: Well, see—now, the point is here, Alex, is that this could go rough on Elaine. I mean, if she's getting serious about him, she should know. So should I tell?
Alex: No! I say he ought to tell her. Someone's got to talk to Kirk and set him straight—as it were.
[audience laughs]
Drew: But again, in the way this episode keeps resolving in ways that are not as mean or stupid as other sitcoms might be, I like the part where at the end of this conversation he's like, "Okay. I'll go." Tony says, "I'll go talk to Kirk, but I don't want to do it alone. Will you go with me?"
Alex: I don't understand. Why can't you do this by yourself?
Tony: I can't be alone with him. I'm the one he spends tortured nights dreaming about.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Alex: He said that?
Tony: No. I'm just assuming.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Which is a very funny thing because the idea of this person being dangerous because he's queer is entirely within his head. It's something he's made up in his head. He doesn't really understand the situation and he's imagining things that aren't there, which is what all the gay panic we've dealt with this entire show is. But here, they're actually saying, "Oh. He's completely making it up in his head. He's writing his own story."
Glen: Yeah. So then there's a scene in a gay bar [laughs].
Drew: Yeah. What do you—
Glen: Well, this is where the show—where the episode sort of—
Drew: It becomes a very strange thing.
Glen: It becomes a much different episode for me.
Drew: Yep.
Glen: It's sort of a very—well, it's a very well-lit gay bar because it's a sitcom.
Drew: Did you notice there's a giant outlet on the wall?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Like, an oversized plug-in hole? That was like the only piece of décor they had in the entire bar. First of all, I get it. I get what you're doing there. Second of all [laughs], where did you find an oversized power outlet?
Glen: The only thing I found interesting about this scene before we get to the disaster that it is—I thought I read Kirk as code-switching. He acted more at ease in this scene, and he had—not effeminate mannerisms, but he had more relaxed posture.
Drew: Right. He's not doing Business Guy. He's doing "I'm in my place. Whatever. I don't care."
Glen: Yeah. But otherwise this scene was sort of a disaster, from the extras to everything that happened in it.
Drew: I looked really hard. There might be one guy in the background who might be Latino. I was squinting, but it's Dailymotion pixelization, so I really can't tell for sure. They are very attractive men.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: All white.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Actually, everyone in this episode appears to be completely white, which does not seem like a part of Manhattan that exists in real life.
Glen: No. Yeah. My notes end here, and I just wrote, "Army of dancing homosexuals."
Drew: So Kirk—before the dancing starts it's another thing of it's better than I thought it was going to be where Kirk asks Alex, " Have you been here before?" and he's like, "No," but he immediately apologizes for saying no, and he's like, "Oh. I didn't mean it in a bad way," and he's very nervous clearly.
Kirk: This your first time here?
Alex: Oh, yes. Yes.
[audience laughs]
Alex: Oh, sorry. I didn't mean by saying yes so quickly that I thought it'd be terrible if I'd been here before because—well, actually, it would not have been terrible if I'd been here before. You know, I've been meaning to—just out of curiosity, of course. I don't mean you're a curiosity. What I'm—
Kirk: Let's not chat anymore.
Alex: [stammers] I used to be such a good chatter, you know?
Glen: It's very Maude-esque. He is trying to make sure at every possible sentence that he is saying the right thing and making sure "the other" in the conversation is feeling supported and appreciated and not subjugated.
Drew: Mm-hmm, which he doesn't need to do because clearly this person—he's the only person who's uncomfortable in the situation.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: And then comes the information that we said earlier, that "Oh. Elaine knows."
Alex: Look, Kirk. I have a really terrible—difficult thing to talk to you about, and I don't even know how to start.
Kirk: Alex, I think I can guess what you're trying to tell me.
Alex: You can?
Kirk: But I've already told Elaine that I'm bisexual.
Alex: Shh! Oh, okay. It's okay here.
[audience laughs]
Alex: [laughs awkwardly] I'm sorry.
Kirk: Anyway, we're still friends, and we had a fine talk. Oh, and by the way, I understand that Tony's not interested, and that's okay too.
Drew: Okay.
Glen: Yeah. "We had a conversation about this. It's all cool. We're adults."
Drew: Yeah. That's just very progressive. Also, the entire explanation of this person's sexuality is as bisexual. They're very clear. He's not gay. He's hanging out at a gay bar, but he's not gay. There is a difference. And just because there's very few episodes of mainstream TV that deal with male bisexuality, really, it was kind of interesting that that's the direction they chose to take it. I can think one other, and there's an Ally McBeal where she dates a guy who's bi. It ends with her breaking up with him because she can't stand the idea of him having kissed another guy. It's really interesting. We should maybe do it at some point.
Glen: Let's. Does the baby appear in that one?
Drew: No, but they do have a really hot man-on-man kiss that's in her mind entirely, and that's what ultimately makes her want to break up with the guy. And also, he's hot. This hunk of beef. This ogre of a man walked—
Glen: I was going to say, he's like Ogre from Parker Lewis Can't Lose—or if Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds, and Kabowsky?
Drew: Kubiac. Larry Kubiac.
Glen: Kubiac. Thank you. Kubiac from Parker Lewis Can't Lose.
Drew: He's also kind of dressed like Tony Danza, which is confusing. He looks like a hulked-out version of Tony if Tony Danza took the Hulk Serum.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: He has that same jacket and kind of weirdly the same hair, but not as good looking. Yeah. So I thought he was going to think it's Tony—no. He's just like, "Oh, care to dance?" and Alex is like, "I don't want to do that."
Glen: But no was not an answer that would register.
Drew: No. He just grabs him and starts dancing with him. But Alex is—initially, he's holding his chair behind him, so he's protecting his bottom, which is funny.
Glen: I didn't see it as he was protecting his ass. I saw it as if he's sitting, then he can't be dancing.
Drew: You can dance in your chair. I do it all the time at concerts.
Glen: This is not a Jewish wedding.
Drew: The music that's playing, by the way, is "Boogaloo" by a German disco duo called Quango & Sparky. I have not heard of them before. That's the only time they will be mentioned on a podcast ever. Alex kind of gets into it, sort of. He's uncomfortable, but he's going back and forth.
Glen: Yeah. He keeps trying to escape but then eventually does get into it, ends up on the bar. And the thing with this dancing is it's a mix of disco, tango, and just slight gay grind, and it's all over the place. At one point, there's a conga line that enters.
Drew: He tries to escape through the front door, and then this pushy line of dancing Caucasian men push him back, and that's how he ends up dancing on the bar.
Glen: Which is when Tony enters.
Drew: Did you notice at this point that we never hear from Kirk again?
Glen: Yeah. He's out of the scene.
Drew: It's just like, "You're done. Everything we need from you is done." Also, he does not ever appear on the show again, but you probably could have guessed that.
Glen: I will say this scene is probably the best Judd Hirsch has ever looked. I think he kind of looked kind of fetching in that white sweater.
Drew: I thought so too, and if this was an interesting episode of being like, "Oh. Which of the four men are the more attractive at this point?"
Glen: I mean, it's Tony Danza.
Drew: No. I say Christopher Lloyd. Christopher Lloyd is the one who actually—because I'm so surprised by how hauntingly attractive Christopher Lloyd is. It's such a weird comparison to Doc Brown, which is the other thing I would know him from.
Glen: You didn't watch that Pamela Anderson show where she's a librarian or a bookstore owner?
Drew: Stacked?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. I did.
Glen: Okay. Well, you know him from that.
Drew: Yeah. But Tony Danza is ridiculously hunky. I saw a picture of him not too long ago. He's still pretty good looking. Makes sense. It doesn't seem like he would age badly. Remember Hudson Street? It was his follow up to Who's the Boss.
Glen: No.
Drew: It was a show he did with Lori Laughlin.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Yeah. Didn't last. Yeah. Anyway. So he's dancing on the bar, and then Tony comes in and he's very confused, and it just sort of ends [laughs].
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. And then afterwards—the only resolution we get is this weird scene where Tony and Alex are hanging out in the dispatch office, and Alex has won a trophy for dancing, which is not what you get in gay bars, really. I don't think you do. That's never—I have never gotten one.
Glen: You don't like dancing.
Drew: Oh. I was going to mention this. It's interesting that both you and I are gay men, but I think we'd both be equally uncomfortable in that situation because neither of us are fans of dancing.
Glen: Correct.
Drew: And is that something you have to come out to gay people about sometimes?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. It's a very awkward thing.
Glen: Over and over and over again.
Drew: I'd actually rather not dance. I can't explain why. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.
Glen: I can explain why.
Drew: Why do you—how do you explain it?
Glen: I'm just too hyperaware. I don't let go easily.
Drew: No. That's probably the same reason I do, and I'm just not that coordinated. I don't have a good sense of physical space, and I don't have a good sense of rhythm. There's a lot of reasons why dancing really shouldn't be my thing. Maybe at a wedding if I'm really drunk, but that's basically it.
Glen: Oh, yeah. Wedding dancing is different.
Drew: Different. But when you meet a gay man who is maybe your friend or something, they're like, "We could go dancing," and it's like, "Oh. I don't do—" It's like "I don't go fishing," I don't go dancing—there's a lot of verbs that are just not in my circle of things I do. Anyway.
Glen: We just lost a lot of listeners.
Drew: No. I think we are opening up a dialogue for other gay men who do not like dancing, and it's absolutely fine. You can be a gay man and not like Madonna. You can be a gay man and not know how to fucking dress. You can be a gay man and not know how to dance. That's absolutely fine. So you don't think it's weird that there's not really a main character of this episode? It just kind of meanders.
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. I don't know why that's problematic.
Glen: I don't know why I said that so loudly.
Drew: You were shutting me down real hard.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Also, there's no B-plot. It really is just this one story, and that's it. Not bad. Interesting take at the end.
Glen: Yeah. I thought it was fine until the gay bar.
Drew: I feel like—I am just guessing here, but maybe as a writer you could tell me what you think of the idea that perhaps this was a rewritten last part of the episode where they're like—whatever was there was subbed in by something that was written by somebody else, which is why it feels so out of character with the rest of the episode? I don't know.
Glen: I don't know. They had that set ready to go.
Drew: Well, they made it for the—
Glen: Right, but why was this last—in your world—in your fantasy, what is this rewritten portion of the episode?
Drew: I don't know. I just feel like it was going for a different direction, and then they decided that a funny dance—
Glen: It could have been a director's decision.
Drew: It could have been. What is your reaction to the way the audience reacted to the dancing scene?
Glen: Oh, my god. There were so many laughs.
[audience laughs and hoots and laughs—and laughs some more]
Glen: But I'm not shocked. It's just more typical, like, "Oh, my god. Those hilarious dancing homosexuals," like "It's so crazy Judd Hirsch has to dance with these men who are forcing him to dance," and "Oh, my god. Look, he's dancing," and "Oh, my god. Now he's loving it!" And "Oh, my god—that giant man just dipped him like he was a woman! Can you believe it?"
Drew: Right. Yeah. It's weird. I think the more generous read would be that they're laughing at Judd Hirsch's discomfort with the scene and the less one would be well they're laughing at how ridiculous it is that two men would want to dance together.
Glen: But then there was a conga line of homosexuals entering the bar.
Drew: They were on the street and they danced their way in because that's what gay people do. I don't know. Yeah.
Glen: It was odd. It was all very odd, especially because compared to the drabness of the rest of the episode of Taxi to then have this energetic outburst of physicality—
Drew: That's what gay people are for. We're like the spice in the main course of life.
Glen: We're like a cat being hit in the face with a bouquet of flowers.
Drew: [laughs] Why?
Glen: Just—it works.
Drew: A cat wouldn't like that. No. This is actually something that—in the relatively near future, we're going to be talking about an episode of Friends, and the debate between "We're laughing at heterosexual men's discomfort on homosexuality" versus "We're laughing at homosexuality" is something that's going to be a big point of that episode and something that's been discussed a lot on social media lately, and I'm pretty glad that will probably be in two episodes from now.
Glen: Okay. I'll put it in my calendar.
Drew: That is everything I have for this episode. Is there anything you want to say about this episode of Taxi?
Glen: Still don't like the theme song.
Drew: It's called "Angela." I don't know why. Yeah.
Glen: Which is strange, because Tony Danza would go on to be on Who's the Boss with a character named Angela.
Drew: Mm-hmm. I really wish we could do a Who's the Boss episode.
Glen: We'll figure it the fuck out.
Drew: Find a Jonathan episode. There's got to be a Jonathan episode that can actually work, right?
Glen: Yep.
Drew: Glen, where can people find you on social media?
Glen: Well, Drew, people can find me on Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that is "write" with a W—and they can find me on Instagram @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S-Quartz.
Drew: Is that a Steven Universe reference?
Glen: It is. Remember that show?
Drew: I do. It's coming back soon. Hey, do you own rose quartz now? Is that something you own?
Glen: I do.
Drew: Where did that come from, Glen?
Glen: A bag of mystery.
Drew: Okay. Good to know. I'm @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. You can follow this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode. You can follow us on Facebook @GayestEpisodeEver and listen to all previous episodes of the show at gayestepisodeever.com. Please subscribe to us. Subscribing is good. Please give us a rate and review. I'm actually still tabulating. There's more reviews from back then showing up, so next week we'll have a final total for how much money you guys raised by giving rates and reviews. But we did get one from someone name Sanurm Putrie. Which is think is a pseudonym for someone I know who simply gave us five stars and said, "TV nerdery at its finest. Definitely worth it if you're on the hunt for a new podcast." Sort and quick. Can't argue with that. Got her point across. Yeah, it's a girl. Are you surprised by that?
Glen: No.
Drew: Gayest Episode Ever is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. If you want to listen to the other shows we have on TableCakes go to TableCakes.com. As we said earlier, you can support us by going to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. Other than that, we wish you good luck, and we'll see you next week. Is that right, Glen? Good luck?
Glen: We've never wished anyone good luck. This is very uncomfortable. Bye forever.
Drew: Glen wishes you good luck in that he wishes you no specific harm.
Glen: That's also not true. I wish some people lots of specific harm.
Drew: Not the people who are listening to this!
Glen: You don't know. I don't know. Harm on all of you!
Drew: Episode—[laughs]. Episode over.
["Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes production