YMMV / Taxi

Series

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Louie really the despotic dispatcher for he is known, or a Jerkass Woobie who wants to erase any tracks of his high school years? Maybe even, as hinted in a few episodes, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold?
• Anvilicious: Everybody knows that friendship is very important, but in a few occasions it gets quite exaggerated.
• Awesome Music: One of the best, smoothest and catchiest of the 70's TV show themes.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In "Honor Thy Father" a Very Special Episode of the second season, Latka tangles in two occasions with a Puerto Rican man (who wasn't mentioned afterwards) who spends the rest of his screentime singing "El Jibarito". It's hard to know if he was intended to be an interim between John Burns and Jim Ignatowski ^note Iggy didn't become a regular until "Alex's Romance", or he was just thrown in as either a comic relief or just to make time.
• Critical Dissonance: Taxi was known for having a comic style which was a far cry from Fanservice-driven shows like Three's Company or cynical, socially-relevant fare as Good Times, which was emphasized from the second season which caused ratings to drop quickly from the top 10 in 1978-79 to the bottom 10 in 1981-82 and 1982-83. However, critics certainly did not overlook the quality of the show, which earned 18 Emmy Awards (out of 31 nominations), 4 Golden Globes (out of 25 nominations) and an Humanitas Prize (the TV equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • One first-season episode had Latka marrying a call girl so he could remain in the US. The "minister" who presided over the ceremony, Reverend Jim Ignatowski, proved such a hit that he became a cast regular the following season.
  • Jeff, the guy who stood next to Louie in the "box", was originally just an extra who also served to stand in for Andy Kaufman in rehearsals (Kaufman had arranged in his contract that he only had to work two days a week; luckily because he had a photographic memory, he was easy to work with when he did show up), but over time he was given lines, some of them even significant. During the final season, he got A Day in the Limelight.
• Growing the Beard: The show was well-regarded from the start but the beloved ensemble cast didn't crystallize until Season Two, when "Reverend Jim" Ignatowski became a regular (while John Burns left with the end of Season One).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When Latka was convincing his mother he would be better off in America, he showed her a People magazine and explained "In America, a man can become another O. J. Simpson!"
  • In the earlier "Latka's Revolting", Latka intends to return to his homeland to fight a revolution. Taking that his fictional country is much a spoof of Eastern European countries, it lost much of its hilarity some twelve years later when these countries faced general unrest.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Once, Alex told Jim that he didn't see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial because he didn't like sci-fi. Years later, Judd Hirsch was in Independence Day, one of the most successful science fiction flicks of all time.
  • In one episode Jim mentions that he loved Star Trek: The Original Series. A few years later Christopher Lloyd played the villain in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The Star Trek franchise was at that time owned by Paramount, which also produced Taxi.
  • In another episode, Louie is watching TV, and the program is playing a public-domain song called "Temptation Sensation", which is better known these days as the theme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which of course also stars Danny DeVito. Amusingly, both shows also have an intro sequence that consists of footage filmed from a car while a cast member drove.
  • Ted Danson, later of Cheers fame, guesting as a snooty hairdresser, and in another episode, George Wendt, aka Norm Peterson, making a cameo as an exterminator.
    • Taxi and Cheers were both produced by Paramount Television. Danson's long-running relationship with the studio actually began two years before his Taxi appearance with a guest role on Laverne & Shirley.
  • Meta example: The show become one of the Trope Namers for The Danza (the other being Who's the Boss?) when they gave Tony Danza's character the name Tony. They did this because they were afraid he wouldn't be able to respond to someone else's name. Their fears became justified in Cannonball Run II when Danza's character introduced himself as "Tony". The character's name was Terry. ^note  Ironically, Terry himself was an example of The Danza as he was played by Terry Bradshaw in the first film.
• Jerkass Woobie: Louie had his emotional moments, too, particularly one episode in which he confides to Elaine that he has to shop in the children's section for his clothes.
  Louie: The last time, one of the mothers said, "You're lucky. At least you won't outgrow it in six months." The worst moment... all the parents tell their kids not to stare.
• Once Original, Now Common: That joke in which Danny DeVito gets off his elevated platform of a dispatch station and reveals just how short he really is was met with outrageous laughter because a lot of people didn't know just how short DeVito really is.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Zena, (Rhea Perlman), is best known as Carla Tortelli these days.
  • Ted Danson and George Wendt both made guest appearances on the program prior to Cheers.
• Strawman Has a Point: In "Call Of The Mild", Elaine thinks that going to a week's retreat from civilization would be too much for a group of New York cabbies. And being trapped in a cabin in the middle of a mountain for a week without either food or electricity just before an snowstorm isn't a nice experience.
• Tear Jerker: Louie describing the humiliating ordeal of having to get new clothes from children's stores due to his size, clearly Danny DeVito speaking from his own experience.
  The hardest part is when they tell their kids not to stare.
• Unintentional Period Piece: This series was made in the late 1970s-early '80s, years before rideshare apps, like Uber and Lyft, have become increasingly popular, affecting taxicab industries, like one in New York City, the series' location setting.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In "The Unkindest Cut", Louie's Crowning Moment of Awesome, dumping goop over Elaine's stuck-up tormenter (Ted Danson), is somewhat undone when he decides to top off his revenge by assaulting the man's receptionist as well. Made even worse by showing the woman clearly traumatized by the incident immediately afterward.
  • "Men Are Such Beasts" gets hit particulary hard with this. In a single episode, an obsessed stalker is treated as a mere inconvenience and source of cringe comedy, Hilarity Ensues when Alex unknowingly takes methamphetamine, and the concept of bisexuality is considered so absurd in-universe that a character is insulted that others actually thought she might believe it.
  • The show's treatment of what was already starting to be called sexual harassment. Louie's harassment of Elaine is usually Played for Laughs except in "Louie Goes too Far," and in "Thy Boss's Wife," it's Played for Laughs that the owner's wife routinely coerces male employees into having sex with her.
• Values Resonance: In one episode, Elaine starts dating a man she and the others meet at a bar, but it turns out the guy is bisexual and was trying to ask Tony out instead of her. The awkwardness doesn't come from gay panic or Tony feeling threatened by a guy hitting on him, but everybody wondering how to break the news to Elaine (the guy ends up being honest and they stay friends). Considering even in the 21st Century it's hard to get representation for bisexual people, the fact Taxi did it very naturally while still being funny in the late '70s is remarkable.

French Films

• Awesome Music: Plenty of it in the Hip-Hop soundtrack of the first film. Most famously, songs of the band IAM and Patrick Abrial's reprise of "Misirlou". There's a divide in France between those who recognize "Misirlou" from Dick Dale's version in Pulp Fiction and those who think of the opening of Taxi.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans of the previous films consider Taxi 5 as an heresy, to say the least. Mainly because the humor is anywhere between gross and pathetic, and because producer Luc Besson flat out refused to have Samy Naceri in it, not even in a cameo.
• First Installment Wins: The first film is still unanimously considered as the best.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A group of criminals drive three slightly tuned black Japanese cars in Taxi 2. The movie was released one year before The Fast and the Furious (2001).
  • In the first film, Émilien has the idea to shoot a Tracking Device on the German gang's car when watching an American series on TV. Said series' hero is dubbed by Alain Dorval, aka the French dubber of Sylvester Stallone. Comes Taxi 3, Sly himself appears in the film, dubbed by Dorval.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Richard Sammel as the chief of the Mercedes gang. He's most well known outside Germany for his later roles in OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, Inglourious Basterds and The Strain.
  • For international audiences, the first three films had Marion Cotillard years before she became an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Both Taxi 2 and Taxi 3 had tie-in games. And both were bashed by the critics, who saw these games as rushed cashgrabs made just to surf on the popularity of the franchise in France.
• Sequelitis: Granted the first film wasn't particularly a darling with critics, but it just got worse with each sequel (the latest one, 2018's Taxi 5, being no exception and perhaps the nadir). Fans meanwhile generally agree that the First Installment Wins.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The first four movies are shaping up into this as The '90s and early 2000s are getting further and further away. Of particular note: the cars, old police radars, the presidency of Jacques Chirac, people paying things in francs (France has adopted the euro currency since), Daniel's "Zinedine Zidane #10" soccer jersey (Zinedine Zidane was the then-biggest star in French soccer, especially after helping the French team win the FIFA World Cup in 1998) and soccer player Djibril Cissé playing at the Olympique de Marseille (he has retired since).

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