The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #6
#6- "TAXI" ABC-NBC 1978-1983----------------------------------
"Taxi" episodes were like perfect little 23-minute Samuel Beckett plays-- with laughs to boot. There were no extravagant sets or exterior scenes. Indeed, an overwhelming number of scenes take place on just two sets-- the garage of "the Sunshine Cab Company" and "Mario's", the come-as-you-are beer and pasta joint with checkerboard tablecloths next door. The Sunshine cabdrivers labor on the nightshift under the iron rule of diminuative dispatcher Louie DePalma, a caged-in, vindictive and amoral creature, a man another character suggested "would give you the scales off his back." He's a real little shit. His oppressed underlings are not so much drivers as they are aspiring actors and boxers, single parents, students, immigrants, or flame-outs. There is but one pragmatic lifer in the bunch who suffers from lack of ambition, but gives the best counsel in town. The stagnation of the characters' lives is symbolized right out in front by an opening title sequence that features a cab being driven continually forward on the Queensborough Bridge without ever reaching the end of the expanse, even hampered at one point by an edit that backtracks the action (because photographers hadn't shot enough footage). "Taxi" is one of television's most atmospheric programs thanks to its melancholy jazz score by pianist Bob James. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy three of its five years on the air, and made iconic characters of Danny DeVito's "Louie," Andy Kaufman's multi-personalitied foreigner "Latka Gravas," and Christopher Lloyd's drug-addled "Reverend Jim Ignatowski," who really had no business driving a cab. It was the first of several television series in which Tony Danza appeared as a character named "Tony."
posted by CM @ 9:00 PM
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