Taxi (1978–1983) A Great Blue-Collar Show!
Taxi an American sitcom that mostly focused on New York City (NYC) taxi drivers will be always remembered for its sidesplitting characters from Latka Gravas, Louie De Palma to Jim Lgnatowski played by the Back to the Future (1985) legend Christopher Lloyd. But taxi was regularly known for projecting daylight on those who work for a living while earning paycheck throughout the urban backdrop which personified the early 1970s (NYC). The show was also a parody of a New York magazine (1975) article called: Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet. That told the story of a philosophy PhD student named David that worked nights; first, as an ethics teacher to rookie cops, while then holding down a cab driver job to get him through college. And so, most cab drivers like David were known to have B.A.s M.A. s and Ph.Ds.’ but they could not find a good-paying job after their years of a college education. For example, many wisecracking (university) academics had to enter the same world as the blue-collar (NYC) worker. It’s a rare flash but even liberal arts/philosophy students have to get a taste of reality from time to time. As the protestant work ethic doesn’t fall far from the tree in (NYC). And so, no matter if you’re an Irish Catholic playwriter/actor from Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan or a (Wasp) cab driver working nights from Soho, Greenwich Village or the Upper East Side to support your Ivy League (Princeton) education. Nevertheless, the show Taxi transported the middle-class American TV viewer from watching repeat showings of either Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969–1976) or The Brady Bunch (1969–1974) to the galaxy of Taxi (1978–1983); which in such a rare television moment projected class solidary/class unification among American workers and the (Wasp) bourgeois. Therefore, the Dover Driver or Coney Island cabby become one with the Wall Street/NYU elite; just like the tale of Jim Lgnatowski a (Harvard) Ivy League student from a wealthy family before doing psychedelic homemade chocolate “brownies” with “Mary Jane” ruderalis hidden inside of their inner edible core. Lgnatowski then soon finds himself dropping out of (Harvard) to earn a living by driving cabs all over (NYC). It’s a classic but rare tale just like the story of the PhD college student David as he quotes that there is a strong feeling of “solidarity forever” in the air at Dover!
Jacobson, M.. (2008). Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet. Available: https://nymag.com/news/features/50177/. Last accessed 08/04/2021.
