Taxi (TV Series) Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey (1979) User Reviews

One Of The Best Episodes In Sit-com History

[ccthemovieman-1 · 10/10 · 13 January 2010]

This is one of the funniest episodes I've ever seen not only on this show, but ANY television situation-comedy, ever. It is Christopher Lloyd as "Rev. Jim" officially becoming a member of the "Taxi" family.

"Jim," the denim-clad spaced-out druggie of the '60s, is just amazing, delivering one incredibly-funny line after another. He elevated "Taxi" from an excellent TV show into a fantastic one. For many people, me included, he was our favorite character in this series.

The "Rev. Jim" (from some hippie cult) had appeared one time in the series' first season as the man who officiated a marriage of "Latka" so he could stay in the country and work as a mechanic in the Taxi garage. It is this episode, however, in which "Jim Ignatowski" is befriended by the group and helped to become one of them: a taxi driver, that made Lloyd a star.

I wrote down some of the funny lines but writing them here just won't do them justice. You have to hear "Rev. Jim" deliver them for the real impact. His "slow down" scene at the Motor Vehicle Department when he's taking a test has to be one of the all-time classic comedy routines ever - really!

Danny DeVito ("Louie") also has a very humorous scene in here, where he takes a tranquilizer (dumped into his drink by Jim) and winds up dancing to "Moonlight Bay."

This episode alone was worth the price of the DVD which, by the way, you can obtain pretty cheap these days. It's money well-spent.

The episode that made Reverend Jim a regular character.

[TxMike · 16 August 2008]

This was the 3rd episode in the Second season of Taxi.

The cab drivers are hanging out at Mario's when Christopher Lloyd as Reverend Jim Ignatowski wanders in. They recognize him but he doesn't recognize them, even though they remind him he performed a wedding for Latka 8 months earlier. But when Latka started talking to him in his gibberish language, Jim remembered.

The cabbies want to get Jim to have a job, make something of himself, but what can he do with no skills and no education? Drive a cab. At first Louie will not hear of it, until Rev Jim slips a tranquilizer into Louie's coffee. Louie becomes mellow, starts singing show tunes in the garage, and gladly accepts Jim.

The big hurdle of course was to have Jim pass the driver's test. They go down to the DPS office with him, help him fill out forms, his name, his weight and height, color of eyes. Finally one of them says, "OK, Jim, now you are ready to take the test." "What?", says Jim, "I thought that was the test."

All of the characters in Taxi are memorable, but Christopher Lloyd as Reverend Jim Ignatowski became my favorite. But this episode has a mistake of sorts, Jim is asked what his father's last name is (for the forms) and he says "Ignatowski", but in a later episode we find out that in fact is NOT his real last name. Ignatowski is a name Jim, a flower child of the 60s, picked "because it is flower child spelled backwards."