Jerry takes George for a trip to LA so Jerry can appear on The Tonight Show and the two of them can find Kramer, who is mistaken for a serial killer.
Written by: Larry Charles
Directed by: Tom Cherones
These two episodes tend to be less popular – I don’t think they’re as reviled as “The Dog” and certainly not as much as the finale, but I tend to see fans bring them up as an annoying pair of episodes they tend to skip. I get why; they’re a very different kind of humour than what the show normally goes for. Kramer’s neighbour Elena feels like she wandered out of one of the very Golden Age Hollywood films she desperately wants to have been in, and the cops genuinely seemed to have wandered off the set of Twin Peaks (although their exchange about ‘on her person’ is very George and Jerry).
I think this speaks both to how conservative people’s aesthetic tastes can be and how conservative this show’s aesthetic goals generally are. Whole swathes of this two-parter get away from our main trio entirely (with Elaine not showing up once), with the humour based largely on the absurdity of anyone thinking Kramer is a murderer, as well as strange people we’ve never met before interacting with other people we’ve never met before.
But I deeply enjoy how much is dedicated to Michael Richards’s ability to make Kramer funny just being alone, sometimes without any props. There’s a tiny moment where he reacts with surprise at the sound of Jerry’s fridge door hitting something; there’s his sneeze gag with the shaving cream, there’s his iconic exit at the very end of the episode, keeping a thumbs up as the door closes on him.
Kramer really is a great character to have on this show. His absolute optimism and good faith reading of other people in a world of nuanced and confusing social situations is endearing, but more importantly funny – one of my favourite bits is his genuine confidence he’ll be released almost immediately, because of course he knows he’s innocent. I like to think the way his face slowly falls as he realises Jerry and George don’t believe his innocence factors into his total breakdown in the interrogation room.
Meanwhile, we get classic Seinfeld bits in Jerry and George’s half of the story. It’s amazing to me that George is almost totally extraneous to the plot and yet the source of most of its biggest laughs; their whole sequence through here feels like an extension of how many standup comics talk about airlines, because of course it’s what they know best; in fact, it goes a step further in that we see Jerry get inspiration for a bit, write a part of it, and then fail to deliver it.
(I must admit that as a writer, I’ve been in the exact problem of losing a scrap of paper with a good idea on it many times)
Embarrassing himself in front of celebrities is a great gag, but obsessing over an untucked bed – and then failing to get it! – is classic George Costanza. On top of that, I think we get examples of how Jerry is much weirder and funnier than people give him credit for; we get multiple examples of his genuine inability to shut up getting him in trouble. Though I must admit, I’m reaching an age where I, too, would make conversation with the criminal I was sitting next to just to kill some time.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- “What mood is this?” / “This is morning mist.”
- Fred Savage cameos as himself, and I enjoy both the nature of the gag and his understated performance. If it had been any adult actor, Kramer would just be uncomfortable; having it be a literal child makes him look totally deranged.
- We don’t see Kramer’s first name, but we do see that Kramer is his surname. The jokes about Kramer’s name feel like a weird middle ground between the totally episodic nature of sitcoms before the Nineties and the increasing serialisation that would come; later shows would probably have kept his name secret the entire run. This feels like an extension of the writers doing whatever seemed funniest at the time.
- “My stomach doesn’t know Kramer’s missing!”
- The chemistry between Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander is insane at this point.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Pitch”