Jerry and Elaine go to a party with George as their ride, only for him to abandon them so he can get laid. After the party, the host’s husband comes to visit Jerry and ends up hanging out with Kramer.
Written by: Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld and Matt Goldman
Directed by: Tom Cherones
I love that every description of a Seinfeld episode is either this elaborate system of interconnected weirdo actions or two sentences of the most banal activities you could imagine.
Anyway, this is one of the only two episodes of Seinfeld that I think falls under the ‘cringe comedy’ label. I’m very sensitive to that kind of comedy; I enjoyed the few seasons of The Office (US) that I watched, but I had to keep pausing every few minutes to emotionally prep myself for the next awful thing Michael would do. Neither Seinfeld nor its two main descendants, Curb and Always Sunny, make me cringe at all generally despite all three delving just as deep into social minutia. I think the main difference is that the protagonists of Seinfeld, Curb, and Sunny all try and deflect shame with aggressiveness and generally do not care about anyone’s actual feelings while The Office delves right into it, even when it’s the secondhand embarrassment of the people around Michael.
It’s not so much that this is a rare exception as it is, I think, this specific story combining with Michael Chiklis’s qualities as an actor. Seinfeld has never actually cared about its characters’ backstories, especially the one-off characters like Steve; it’s always more about the behaviours than what’s driving them. Chiklis chooses to imply a very rich (or rather, very poor) off-screen life, with an inherent neediness to everything he does. You see he’s desperately hoping Jerry will like him, a little hurt and desperately trying to hide it when he fails, and gleefully trying to force a sense of awesomeness when he’s hanging with Kramer (who is typically unaware and just naturally social). Even without the fact that we see him with an escort he can’t afford, I can feel that he has a shitty marriage that he feels stifles him.
Of course, the main setpiece here is the shitty party. This is another story you couldn’t really do in the modern day because both Uber and Google Maps have made it redundant (although I could see Kramer refusing to use any Google products). Nevertheless, I have still found myself stuck in people’s houses in a similar fashion; I had to stay at a complete stranger’s house because my key broke off in my door, and having to make conversation in a liminal space to feel comfortable is still an eerie experience. Being bored to tears by miserable people in a bad party is also always going to be a universal experience no matter how much effort you put into being an introvert. It’s hilarious to me that Elaine is so amused by Jerry’s system for escaping bad conversations and then immediately uses it.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- George is apparently employed again, though we do have the fact that he quits at the end of the episode.
- Elaine’s utterly contemptuous expression before declaring “Maybe the dingo ate your baby,” is an all-time acting moment for Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.
- Jerry backs up George when he abandons Jer and Elaine to get laid in what he basically describes as a reversal of ‘bros before hos’ before that was even a thing, and then proceeds to explain it in standup. I gotta say, I’m 100% on Jerry’s side and never understood ‘bros before hos’ at all – I thought the point of having buddies was to help each other get laid where possible.
- I’m just gonna say it: Jerry’s first mistake was relying on Kramer.
- “Have you never dated a woman in your office?” / “I never had a job.” This is true of the real Jerry Seinfeld, who started his standup career at sixteen and found regular work pretty quickly. I’ve always found this fascinating; it’s easy to be envious of guys like him or Bob Dylan or whoever, who found success in a creative field pretty early in life without having to do the shitty jobs the rest of us have to do – especially those of us who consider ourselves creatives but haven’t had the breaks. On the other hand, I do prefer the sense of perspective and humility that a lifetime of Larry David-esque failure has brought me (David being 42 when Seinfeld started and 53 when her launched Curb).
- I love George’s description of planning how and when to talk to Eva at work, because I do this too but also recognise it as insane.
Biggest Laugh: Jerry gets a lot of great lines trying to sum up George, and it says something that a line this funny isn’t even close to my favourite.
Next Week: “The Alternate Side”.