When coming home from a flea market, George backs into a parking space, only to nearly collide with Kramer’s friend Mike, provoking four arguments at once: Kramer’s offence that George and Elaine didn’t invite him to the flea market, Jerry’s offence that George and Elaine damaged his car and lied about it, Jerry accidentally upsetting a child by telling him his father’s store is closing, and, of course, who deserves the parking space between George and Mike.

Written by: Larry David & Greg Daniels
Directed by: Tom Cherones

What I admire most about Seinfeld is its pragmatism; as I’ve frequently noted, its goal is nothing more and nothing less than making the viewer laugh. Larry David had that famous edict, ‘no hugging, no learning’, which works as a way of reminding the writers to make sure they only write funny things – or, to put it another way, to not waste our time with things that are unfunny. This gives the series a professional feel – we are here to do exactly one job and we’ll do it quite well and then we’ll go home – and it makes moments like this, where it feels like we’re reaching into some higher plane of existence, really strange. Also: really funny, seeing as it’s about a guy failing to park a car.

I’m not American, but I find American culture fascinating. Obviously, it’s absurdly big country with dozens, maybe thousands of cultures within, and obviously every American is different, but there is definitely a collective American identity and morality that seems to carry from New York to Bismarck to Austin to Los Angeles. One of the strangest things about it is the collision between the American ideal of personal freedom and the fundamental human need for society to be ordered and the world to be fair. As you might imagine, I believe this conflict to be the heart of Seinfeld‘s comedy and particularly this episode.

George is operating with absolutely no actual authority here. He’s technically got the advantage in that reverse parallel parking, if correctly executed, is safer than forward parking, but that’s of absolutely no help here. He’s trying to use the moral high ground in a situation where that confers no actual power, and the less that works the louder he gets. This is what makes the final scene with the cops a good resolution, even if we never see how it all technically ends; they should be an authority that can finish this, but even they can’t agree on who is right or wrong.

What we’re really seeing is two people in a zero sum game with no leverage and no willingness to back down; it’s like an absurdist expression of the Logical Donkey paradox. It ends up giving us one specific example where personal freedom perhaps might need to be curtailed; to riff on an old line, nobody ever succeeded by appealing to the personal responsibility of the American public, and George vs Mike is a case where two individuals are going to keep escalating a conflict and burn themselves and the collective up in the process unless they get what they want.

The fact that George is doing this entirely for the principle of the thing is what makes this so interesting (and of course funny) to me. I don’t know for sure if a need for order in the world is genuine basis of human nature, but there really are people who want it and one of those people is definitely George. I suppose if you make a society with no social rules, you end up generating Georges.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• I love how helpful and curious Kramer is. Jerry deliberately withholding an explanation for his car just because it bothers him is 100% something I would do.
• George stating another aspect of the American condition: “Why should I pay when if I can apply myself, I can get it for free?”
• It’s only occurred to me in writing these essays how whiny Elaine can be – instantly complaining in response to George wanting to park the car outside a garage – and how funny JLD can make that. She also gives us a great moment of a joke told through blocking: Elaine knocking pretzels off a bench as part of faking her downing a drink in one go.
• Lee Arenberg is a great casting choice as Mike. Aside from the fact that he’s one of those great actors who never quite managed to break into a lead role (outside of Once Upon A Time), having a short stocky bald guy with glasses up against a short stocky bald guy with glasses is visually very funny.
• We also get an unintentional demonstration of the internet in how not only do bystanders comment heavily on what’s happening, they nearly get into fistfights. I have a deep skepticism that ‘holding people accountable’ is a particularly worthwhile goal, and watching violence nearly break out as people stubbornly spend hours breaking down who is exactly at fault is a very funny demonstration of why.

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: “The Keys”