Party of Five (TV Series)

A Little Faith (1997)

Tom Mason: Joe Mangus

Quotes 

• Bailey Salinger : This goes from bad to worse.

  Joe Mangus : Things can turn around. You never know. Hey, I'm talking from experience here. I mean is after I had my heart attack, my doctor told me, "if you keep doing the one thing you really love to do, if you keep working your restaurant, you're gonna kill yourself." So I quit. I was 50 years old. I had no job, no family. Do you think I went wondering around the world for fun? I was lost. And then I met this woman.

  Bailey Salinger : Yeah, well, that's great. You're a lucky guy.

  Joe Mangus : It's not luck. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, and I need to start making sense of this world, but I kind of like to think that it was God looking out for me. It was God saying, "I'm not gonna let you go."

  Bailey Salinger : Okay, I know what this is about. This is about me and God and not wanting to go to AA, right?

  Joe Mangus : Everybody needs something to belive in, Bailey, besides themselves.

  Bailey Salinger : Not me. I don't. I don't belive in God. I never did. My parents never did either. We're all pretty much on our own here. And there's nobody looking out for any of us.

  Claudia Salinger : Just cut it out, Bailey! Don't say stuff like that.

  Joe Mangus : Somebody was looking out for me. Somebody was looking out for your father when he stopped drinking.

  Bailey Salinger : Yeah, well it wasn't God. There is no God. Proof of that: letting my parents die in that car accident. Look, you belive whatever you want to belive in, Joe. If you're afraid of dying from your weak heart and you need to belive in God, then that's your business. I'm just saying that I don't see him in my life. I never did.

  Joe Mangus : How about the fact that your father is inside of you? This is the proof, and it means nothing to you?

  Bailey Salinger : The fact that I got this disease, this drinking problem, from him? It means plenty to me, Joe. I inherited this disease from him and he probally inherited the same from his father too since he never talked about his family or his own father.

  Joe Mangus : Why do you insist on always looking at the bad stuff, Bailey? You think I wanted to show up that day at your house and tell you about your Dad's drinking problem to make things worse with you? I told you because I thought it would give you a little hope. Yeah... maybe it's true. Maybe you did inherit your father's drinking problem. You got what your father gave you and what his father gave to him. You got what made your father start drinking. But if you look for it, you also got what made him stop.