George inadvertently gets a busboy fired, and in trying to apologise for the situation, ends up losing the busboy’s cat. Elaine invites a guy over for the week and finds it miserable.

Written by: Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld
Directed by: Tom Cherones

Pretty much every time I’ve talked about what the show is saying, I’ve clarified that I don’t think the show is setting out to actually say anything – it’s just being funny. When I talk about what the show is ‘saying’, I’m really pointing out how cause-and-effect work within this specific, weird little world Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld have made for us. They find very specific things funny, and they choose not to show other very specific things they don’t find funny. In this episode, we finally get full expression of a major element of the comedy of Seinfeld: the universe is random and unpredictable, and the social rules we make up give us no control over anything.

Last week, beloved commentor Glyph observed that the characters are less concerned about being good people and more concerned about being seen as good people; I think that’s something that’s often true – we see George flip tactics to save face quite frequently – and in this case, it’s very hard to tell if George is genuinely upset about getting some guy fired or if he’s more concerned about that guy hating him for the rest of his life.

Regardless, this whole plot is George trying to do right by someone. This is the kind of thing people point to when they say Seinfeld characters aren’t actually bad people (usually, in the context of discussing whether they deserve the finale); they are just as apt to try to be helpful as they are to be selfish, and they’re just as apt to be punished for it as they are to be rewarded. It’s hard to decide whether George is being brave or chickenshit all through this episode, putting himself in these unbearably uncomfortable situations to try to make amends, and the end result in which he technically gets what he wanted in the weirdest, least predictable way possible undermines any sense of control he actually has over the world.

(It’s also where the show’s influence doesn’t affect how funny a johnny-come-lately like me finds it – many shows have taken on the ‘character fails their way into success’ plot, but few have the weird details this episode does)

This is also, oddly enough, where Jerry really flowers as the show’s comic foil. I think he’s severely underrated as an element in this show; he’s infamous as the least interesting character of the quartet, which I think both ignores and is because of the fact that he represents the show’s quirky worldview. His total lack of sympathy is both a keen awareness that none of this is actually worth stressing too much about (he accurately points out that the firing wasn’t actually George’s fault) and incredibly funny (“He’ll probably kill his whole family over this.”). You pull Jerry out of this show and put him in, I dunno, Green Acres and he comes off way stranger. It’s only the fact that he knows exactly what world he’s in that makes him ‘boring’.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus gets a lot more to work with here. I like her one-take desperation to get that guy out of her apartment, but my favourite part is her monologue about driving to the airport. I’ve never been to New York City, so I don’t know what this ‘vanwick’ is, but it sounds aggravating.
• Great moment in blocking: in an early scene, you can see Jerry has clearly been working on his act – he’s holding a pen with a yellow pad sitting in front of him, and there are half a dozen screwed up balls of paper. He even gestures with the pen.
• I always love the implication early on that George can’t stand Kramer but can’t bring himself to say so.
• This is the first mention of George’s deep knowledge of the public toilets of New York City (“Mention my name. She’ll give you a key.”). It’s made me notice which public toilets I prefer in my own home city (the one at the library is the all-time best).

Biggest Laugh:

Next week: “The Note”.