Sitcom Tax: On April 15th Dagwood gives the mailman a bum’s rush

For reasons that will always dismay accountants, many taxpayers wait till April 15th to file their yearly returns. Chances are, none of them will have to plead with the IRS for an extension after being sent up as a substitute astronaut, like Jack Swaggart on Apollo 13. But any number of other things could happen. For example, with the increasing popularity of e-filing, taxpayers know that generally, filing is just a click away, unless the servers fail from overload, as they have been known to do in the waning hours of April 15th.

Hollywood has used the last minute filing dilemma a few times, depicting taxpayers rushing to the post office at nearly midnight to get that all-important postmark. But one of the most memorable portrayals was done on the 1950s sitcom, Blondie. Every Blondie fan has seen the fate of the poor postman who is supposed to deliver mail to the Bumstead house. No matter what day or time he approaches the house, Blondie's bumbling husband Dagwood runs out of the front door in a mad dash for ... somewhere, and invariably slams into the mailman, scattering letters everywhere.

Finally, in sheer desperation the mailman comes up with a new plan. He'll wait until just before midnight to deliver the Bumstead mail, presumably after the family is asleep. Feeling certain that this time, he'll escape Dagwood's unintended assault, he calmly approaches the house.

Unfortunately, the night he picked to implement his new plan was April 15th. With only minutes left to get his tax return postmarked, Dagwood, once again, dashes out of the house and – you guessed it – slams into the mailman, sending the letters flying. As the scene ends, the mailman runs screaming into the night, with Dagwood begging him to come back and take the Bumstead tax return to the post office. That episode was the last time on screen that the Dagwood/mailman clash occurred.

Sitcom Tax Unlike most Hollywood portrayals of tax situations, the lesson to be learned from Blondie is a good one. Life happens, and you never know what fate could befall last-minute filers on the way to the mailbox or over the Internet. The moral is... don't be that guy.