Jerry witnesses a driver hit a parked car and drive off, only to discover a hot woman was driving – leading him to cover it up. George initiates an affair with a married woman as a result of saying “God bless you” after she sneezes. Kramer has seizures at the sound of Mary Hart’s voice. Elaine is caught between all three stories.
Written by: Peter Mehlman
Directed by: Jason Alexander
The whole conversation analysing the exact, correct moment to say ‘God bless you’ after a sneeze is one of the most Seinfeldian moments on the show – definitely, one of the most so far. It’s a little bit that it’s inherently funny to peer this deeply into the concept of a sneeze; the internet has revealed how many of these little aspects of life where people assume their instinctive reaction is universal, and at this point, Seinfeld has developed a really good rhythm for breaking down a thought process and making that funny (“What if she’s having an off night?”). It’s a little bit that, by situating this in a broader plot, we see how silly a lot of this analysis can be; as the woman herself points out later, their marriage was already on the rocks, and George is beating himself up for something he couldn’t really prevent.
And it’s a lot to do with the fact that, if George could be said to have made a mistake in that conversation, it wasn’t saying ‘God bless you’, it was the little dig at the husband afterwards. These three elements altogether – analysis, a farcical plot structure, and characters impulsively acting on emotion – make up the Seinfeld ethos; nobody would have given the ‘God bless you’ a second thought if George hadn’t felt the need to show off how nice and helpful he was compared to someone else.
And that’s barely a third of the story here! Jerry’s entire story of dating the hit-and-run driver feels like both an ahead-of-its-time parody of so-called ‘cancel culture’ and a clear demonstration that such things have been around as long as human civilisation (or at least back to 1989, which is pretty much the same thing). So many different elements feel like recurring ideas in discussion of ‘cancel culture’; the chief one – and one that also sums up this show – is Jerry declaring “I mean, I actually owe it to society to do something about this!”
This is something that drives a lot of ‘cancel culture’ morality one way and the other: your obligation to insert yourself into conflicts between other people. Jerry, George, and Elaine end up trying to act as unpaid police for the world – Jerry literally pulling over to give a criminal a piece of his mind as punishment – and are tripped over by their own impulses; Jerry can’t ‘punish’ the driver when he discovers she’s hot, but he can’t date her without feeling guilty and trying to get her to confess, and he ends up getting the worst of all possible worlds. Just think – he could have avoided the whole thing by taking down her licence and leaving a note himself.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- Speaking of things that have aged well in our internet age: “You gotta give people a chance to miss you!”
- Jerry incorrectly assumes talking on the car phone is safer. In fact, it’s worse than drink-driving.
- “Love when they touch your arm. Why is that?” / “Let’s not analyse it.”
- “On the other hand, does that mean she should never be allowed to date again?” is another line that I feel is very relevant. One thing I often ask of the “it’s called ‘consequence culture'” side of the equation is how many consequences are enough for a particular action? If somebody really hit a parked car and drove off, at what point do you forgive them, particularly if it wasn’t your car?
- Jerry going “Oh! Rightrightrightrightright,” has become a well-used GIF.
- Jerry making up the story and George making it more difficult by throwing in a detail = another scene Always Sunny has built its entire comic sensibility out of.
- Another very internet-friendly observation: Elaine’s envy over her married friends and trying to one-up them. Moments like this in the story make me very skeptical that the internet has changed much – it’s just made it impossible to ignore that this kind of thing happens.
- George rationalising an affair: “On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t cost me any money.”
- Love Angela suddenly turning into a mob boss.
- Jonathan Woff would make each use of the Seinfeld music unique to each episode, and we get a great moment of that when Jerry pauses for comedic effect and the music drops down to just the basic rhythm.
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Next Week: “The Letter”