The 1978-79 Season: III

By Frank Rich

Fast TAXI, bouncy MORK, slow BEGINNING, odd KIDS

Taxi (Tuesday, ABC, 9:30 p.m. E.D.T.). When a sitcom has this title, it is easy to guess what the show will be like: a crew of crabby New York cabbies, each one more eccentric than the last, will sit around a garage and trade wisecracks. Well, Taxi conforms to those anticipations, but only up to a point. There are plenty of laughs but no wisecracks. The cabbies are eccentric but they are not caricatures. There are even moments when the laughter stops. At those times, Taxi doesn't seem like a sitcom at all: it revs up and takes the audience on unexpected emotional detours.

There has never before been a sitcom written with the dramatic depth of this one. Other shows may have serious (usually mawkish) scenes or deal with topical issues; Taxi is about serious people. Though the drivers are in some ways conventional TV characters, they are also lost souls, losers set back by life's rude shocks. They dream hungrily of finer things--of love or loftier careers--and when their dreams collapse, they turn to one another for support. In the opening episode, a surprisingly melancholy sitcom premiere, one driver (Judd Hirsch) takes off for Florida to attempt a reunion with a daughter he abandoned 15 years earlier. The outcome is not entirely upbeat.

The acting is very good, especially by Jeff Conaway as a goodhearted, struggling actor-cabbie and Marilu Henner as the one female driver of the bunch. In more standard comic turns, Saturday Night Live Regular Andy Kaufman brings a saving sweetness to the garage mechanic, who speaks his own variety of fractured English. Danny De Vito barks his way through the role of the dispatcher with a Runyonesque brio. Like the other outstanding show of the new season, WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi is the handiwork of Mary Tyler Moore alumni. Why doesn't someone give these people a network of their very own?

Mork & Mindy (Thursday, ABC, 8 p.m. E.D.T.). Were it not for one inspired stroke of casting, this sci-fi sitcom would be indistinguishable from the rest of the kiddies' drivel aired by ABC at 8 each night. Robin Williams, a new young comic, sends Mork & Mindy into hyperspace. The show casts him in the role of Mork, a friendly alien who settles in Boulder, Colo., with Earthling Mindy (Pam Dawber), after leaving the planet Ork. It's a premise more appropriate to Saturday morning TV than prime time, but Williams transforms trivia into a tour de force. He speaks in dozens of different voices that ape the sounds of computers and animals as well as other show-biz personalities. He tosses off inventive bits of mime and times his lines with a precision that rivals Johnny Carson's. Though the gags are vintage My Favorite Martian, Williams' improvisational verve makes them irresistible. In a matter of weeks, children all over the country will be imitating Mork's vocabulary of alien sounds. Otherwise rational adults may soon find themselves helplessly following suit.

In the Beginning (Wednesday, CBS, 8:30 p.m. E.D.T.). This typically combative Norman Lear sitcom might well be titled Chico and the Father or, perhaps, Sanford and Nun. Taking place in a slum storefront mission, the show sets a middleaged, by-the-Book priest (McLean Stevenson) against the activist young Sister Agnes (Priscilla Lopez). Even as they bicker about methodology and theology, this dynamic duo does its darnedest to show the light to local delinquent kids. Not that the hoods seem too terribly hard to reform: they look so cute and spiffy that it's a wonder they don't all have jobs as guides at Disneyland.

The show's jokes are coy attempts at blasphemy. ("Damn, I wish I could swear!" exclaims Sister Agnes.) Its liberal homilies sound preachy. Ex-M*A*S*H Star Stevenson has a dry style that helps mitigate some of the sentimentality, but Lopez, a talented refugee from Broadway's A Chorus Line, cannot do anything with her cloying role. Sister Agnes is just too good to be true: she speaks in street slang, fights better than Bruce Lee and knows more about psychology than Dr. Joyce Brothers. In subsequent episodes, no doubt, she will burst into choruses of Climb Ev'ry Mountain--and maybe, God forbid, Sally Field will come around and teach her how to fly.

Who's Watching the Kids? (Friday, NBC, 8:30 p.m. E.D.T.). In this bizarre series, Three's Company has been cross-fertilized with One Day at a Time, On Our Own, Sugar Time, Blansky's Beauties and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. A single TV reporter (Larry Breeding) lives a few steps away from two voluptuous Vegas showgirls (Caren Kaye and Lynda Goodfriend) who are raising their kid siblings. For good measure, there's a sardonic landlord and wacky TV newsroom types. Get the picture? Originally called Legs, the show was revamped and retitled by Fred Silverman after he arrived at NBC. No doubt the surgery was merited, but the patient has died on the operating table. --Frank Rich

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