Elaine and Jerry fix up George with a friend of Elaine’s. They have sex using a defective condom, causing a pregnancy scare.
Written by: Elaine Pope & Larry Charles
Directed by: Tom Cherones
In my entire life, I’ve never known anyone who met their partner through ‘getting fixed up’. I’m sure it’s a thing that did happen and continues to happen – I’ve read meeting people through friends is something like the third or fourth most common way to meet your partner these days – but as far as I’m concerned, it’s as much a TV sitcom cliche as working as a sports columnist. Seinfeld, of course, makes its complete lack of connection to my reality irrelevant via its attention to detail.
I think my favourite detail in a constellation of great details is how Jerry and Elaine are clearly doing this for the sense of power – there’s that great button to the scene of them deciding to do it where Jerry is downright amused by the idea that the relationship will work. They’re not doing this because they care about George in any real way, they’re doing it because it’s funny and makes them feel big. Certainly, a lot of things I do are motivated by them making me feel like a big man, at least on some level.
Of course, we dive heavily into George’s neuroses here; it’s great to me that George sounds so much more shallow and stupid than Cynthia, partly because of the order he says things in (she starts off asking what he does for a living and moves onto his appearance) and partly because he goes into a truly disturbing amount of detail. I love Jerry’s slight exasperation when George asks if you can get your hand stuck in her hair; a normal person would shrug and irritably ask how they would know, but Jerry goes to the effort of asking what he actually wants.
This is fundamentally what is so funny about George Costanza. He doesn’t really know what he wants beyond being the most comfortable he can be, so he fixates on these little details as obsessively as he can. I love that little throwaway line about him throwing out his notes on his call with her – a person without anxiety doesn’t need a system of notes for talking on the phone, and I know this because I always need notes for talking on the phone.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- Jerry and Elaine’s place in the plot is just as great. I love how they backtrack on literally every promise they make. I also love Jerry’s use of the word ‘vault’ as a verb.
- Poignant moments with George Costanza: “I don’t want hope. Hope is killing me. I dream of being hopeless.”
- This is a tiny thing but it bothers me that the characters wear jeans with no belt.
- Love that George is completely indifferent about eyebrows on a woman. Women are 100% held to a ridiculous standard of beauty, and it leads to them being preoccupied with these random (if you like, George-like) details that I think most men would overlook.
- Kramer breaking up fights is so funny on principle, even without the fact that he totally misunderstands whatever fight he’s breaking up. I like using a screengrab of him saying “Now, don’t you two see that you’re in love with each other?” to break up fights between strangers on the internet – it always gets a laugh.
- The concept of George being a parent is horrifying. Would make sense that he’d be overjoyed because it means his boys can swim.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Boyfriend”