After one too many incidents with Kramer barging into Jerry’s apartment, Jerry takes his keys back, causing Kramer to move to Los Angeles and a fight to break out between the three remaining friends over swapping keys.
Written by: Larry Charles
Directed by: Tom Cherones
Here we have a spectacular showcase for Kramer. In discussing how different pairs of artists can end up creating a new voice, distinct from either of them – my big and obvious example being Lennon/McCartney – a friend of mine brought up Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. The latter brought his discipline, organisation, and insane life experiences, obviously, but he considered Seinfeld to push David to try many more different kinds of humour than just ‘dumb shit I did’, and Kramer feels like the biggest example of that.
Obviously, he began as an output for stories about David’s weirdo neighbour, but this episode manages to cover so many different kinds of humour. In the context of social banalities, he’s the guy who will always do everything wrong. He’ll point out things everyone is trying to ignore and he’ll either ignore or not know things everyone takes for granted. When it comes to the social contract, he didn’t have his lawyer present.
But the show pushes it further than that, especially here. On one level, we have humour that comes from the fact that Kramer repeatedly bets big on long shots, like trying to bank on Jerry not being present when he takes his girlfriend to Jerry’s apartment. On another, there’s the simple fun the writers have in making up strange things for Kramer to say. I like that sometimes he looks silly (“I broke… the covenant of the keys.” or especially “You think these hands, they’ve been soaking in ivory liquid, huh?!”) and sometimes he looks weirdly profound, like that brilliant scene in which he interrogates everything about George’s life.
And then there’s what Michael Richards is doing with him. I love that Richards takes every chance he can get to slip in as much slapstick as he can fit; it would be exhausting if he didn’t find so many degrees of it! My favourite example is the absolute smallest, where the motorcyclist he hitches a lift from leans over, and Richards moves his head around trying to see past him and frowning. It’s tiny, undoubtedly unscripted, and completely unnecessary, but it completely fits Richards’s vision of Kramer as never quite fitting in the world properly. And that all makes it funny as hell!
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- I can’t believe that great story of the rest of the friends playing musical chairs with their spare keys gets pushed to the back of all this! It’s a classic case where the joke is the very complexity of the plot (“You’re right. How did I miss that?”). This too has such a great variety of humour, including slapstick – the guys tossing Elaine’s script between themselves is such a great bit.
- Jerry pretending to be chased by a murderer is a cute bit.
- George’s scene with Kramer is the highlight of the episode and really demonstrates the respective strengths of each actor. Richards has a brusque masculine physicality to him – love that little finger-rubbing gesture. Conversely, Jason Alexander makes the whole scene deeply profound on top of being funny with each ‘no’ he gives to another of Kramer’s questions, his soul crumbling a little more as he realises how little he has in life, setting up that brilliant capper: “I like to get the daily news.”
- Newman shows up for one scene and gets a mini-showcase of why he works – he’s Kramer, only pushed to even more absurd. I always liked how there was absolutely nothing to Newman’s character aside from the fact that he talks like a cross between a noir character and a supervillain – no personality, no character, just the funniest possible line for the moment.
- Interestingly, I’ve read recently how correct Elaine actually is about TV writers making bank back then. It’s my understanding that the freedom and protections for women and minorities that came with the streaming era also led to a crumbling of the institutions that allowed writers to make comfortable livings and move up a clear career ladder (which is certainly not the fault of the women and minorities – rather, predatory producers and executives looking to save money in ways that undermine the people at the bottom).
- “Let me tell you something about show business, Elaine…”
- Murphy Brown! There’s a relatively forgotten sitcom. I’ve been watching Candace Bergman’s later series, Boston Legal, which has made me consider going back to it.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Trip”. I’ll cover both parts in one essay.