Jim Ignatowski

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The Reverend Jim "Iggy" Ignatowski, played by Christopher Lloyd, was a fictional character in the 1970s television series Taxi. A gentle soul, Jim was, in his own words, "the living embodiment of the sixties". His most noticeable character trait was his extreme "spaced-out" behavior as a result of extensive 1960s drug use.

[edit] Background

Ignatowski was born James Caldwell. He claimed to have been born in Spokane, Washington, although his often-unreliable memory makes this quite open to question. However, he was definitely raised in Boston, Massachusetts as one of three children in a very well-to-do family.

Jim's mother died when he was quite young, leaving Jim's father to raise the family. Being busy with his business, Mr. Caldwell left much of this task to various family servants. This seemed to affect all the Caldwell children in some way: Jim was an extremely uptight and humorless person before he became a drop-out; his brother Tom remained humorless and somewhat mean-spirited throughout his adulthood; and his sister Lila exhibited marked nymphomania.

Jim was his father's favorite child. An excellent student, he attended Harvard. Then a girl he was going out with introduced him to "funny brownies" -- containing marijuana. (Upon returning to his childhood home as an adult, it was also revealed that he had used up all of his model airplane glue, leaving viewers to ponder his past use of inhalants.)

After ingesting these brownies, the transformation within Jim was virtually instantaneous. His term paper on "Plutarch's Lives" was thus forgotten, neglected. In fact, by his second semester at Harvard, he was writing his term papers in fingerpaint. ("The typewriter seemed so impersonal", he explained.) Jim would become part of the counterculture, and was ordained as a minister with the Church of the Peaceful ("investigated and cleared of all charges"). Around this time, Jim changed his last name to Ignatowski, believing it was "Starchild" spelled backwards.

Jim was thrown out of the Democratic Convention in Chicago for stealing decorations, and attended Woodstock ("500,000 people...lucky for them I went or it would have only been 499,999"). He said he kept finding God everywhere--"he kept ditching me". He also spent a year of his life making a macrame couch, and was once traded from his commune to another commune for a goat and a Donovan album (although which Donovan album was never specified). Jim once claimed that the only negative thing leftover from his 1960's experiences was that it left him with recurring flashbacks of the original Mouseketeers (especially Cubby) appearing as visions out of seedpods.

[edit] On the show

Reverend Jim's first introduction to the crew at the Sunshine Cab Company was a guest appearance in a Season 1 episode, when he presided over a "paper marriage" between Latka Gravas, the immigrant cab company mechanic (played by Andy Kaufman) and a prostitute, so Latka could stay in the United States. Jim would become a regular starting in the second season. The driving test he took is now the stuff of comedic legend, especially the "What does a yellow light mean?" bit. As the series progressed, the "Reverend" aspect of the character was less frequently referred to.

Jim was a treasure trove of eccentricities, most of which could be traced to after-effects of his 1960s drug intake. He lived in a condemned building; bought a racehorse he renamed Gary (to erase his "slave name") and kept him in his living room; spent a considerable period of time trying to become the "perfect" cabbie only to spend all his earnings on a wall of TVs; and dismantled his van to build a castle for Elaine Nardo (played by Marilu Henner). He screamed in his sleep, and thought weekends were nine days long because "we switched to the metric system." His drug expertise also allowed him to not only identify the coca leaves (from which cocaine is made) in Latka's cookies, but also the precise region they came from and the year they were harvested (much like a wine taster describing a vintage). His heroes were St. Thomas Aquinas, Mahatma Gandhi, Alan Alda, and Louie De Palma (played by Danny DeVito), who ironically treated him quite poorly and took advantage of him at every opportunity. Jim also admitted to being a fan of the original Star Trek series, although he strongly believed that the Romulans were portrayed incorrectly.

At one point, his last known address was a 1963 Volkswagen. As such, when his father died and left him $3,000,000, his family stepped in to keep him from receiving his inheritance. Ultimately, he was able to get his money, and (in the series' last original episode) wound up buying the cabbies' favorite hangout, Mario's, and renaming it Jim's Mario's. Jim also received a compact cassette in his father's will. It contained Stevie Wonder singing You Are the Sunshine of My Life.

Jim as a character was not as one-dimensional as one might think. Lloyd was able to add considerable humanity to the part, so that what could have been a one-note caricature of a 60s burnout instead was shown to be a warm caring person with a heart of gold. He also occasionally surprised everybody (especially himself) by exhibiting unexpected talents; for example, he could play the piano masterfully (though he couldn't remember taking lessons).