Jerry accidentally causes Elaine’s secretary to quit when he complains she talks to him too long when he’s trying to call Elaine; this leads to him saying something embarrassing during sex with her. George breaks the news about the burned cabin to Susan’s father, only for the fire to reveal his affair with John Cheever. Meanwhile, Kramer looks for Cuban cigars.
Teleplay: Larry David
Story: Larry David and Elaine Pope & Tom Leopold
A lot of Seinfeld is the guilt the characters bear for things they definitely caused but also couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Indeed, much of the comedy is based around the bizarre consequences for fairly petty actions; the most spectacular within this episode is that burning down the cabin in “The Bubble Boy” leads directly to uncovering the secret that Susan’s father had an affair with author John Cheever. Jerry and George awkwardly trying to back out of the room is incredibly fucking funny knowing that they two of them are partially responsible for this happening, and they know it.
If this show is an expression of worst-case-scenario thinking, where the slightest action or mistake will always have disastrous consequences, it’s also (inevtiably) an expression of what Bob Dylan called finger-pointin’. It’s that drive you find in any PTA or town hall meeting, to work out who set these terrible thing in motion and punish them. We see here that Jerry lives by this in the guilt he feels for a woman choosing to react to mild embarrassment by quitting her job.
What makes Seinfeld interesting as well as funny is that these impulses and feelings are a little bit silly. There is no possible way George could have foreseen that driving slightly too fast to his destination would have led to his girlfriend’s father being outed as both queer and a cheater, and it’s very funny to see him sheepishly try not to think about the cause-and-effect there. The world is simply too vast to see these kind of outcomes coming.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- We get Jerry recapping the story for us in the text rather than an edited montage.
- “We could build a cabin like that!” / “Well, we couldn’t, but two men could.”
- We also get George and Jerry going through all the classic motions of trying to avoid writing. These kind of scenes are so much funnier to me now that I have, if not the income of a professional writer then at least the ethos.
- Warren Frost and Grace Sabrieski play Susan’s parents, and it feels amusing and apropos for them to be Twin Peaks alumni. There are some tonal similarities between TP and Seinfeld, especially in the more banal and comedic aspects of both. I also enjoy the semi-dramatic irony of Mr Ross explaining his attachment to the cabin in great detail as George and Susan try to explain.
- I always love how much effort Jason Alexander puts into George listening to Jerry’s stories. Wouldn’t expect George of all people to demonstrate active listening. I also enjoy him nervously eating and drinking as he explains the cabin getting burned.
- “That’s not offensive. I’s abnormal, but it’s not offensive.”
- There’s also a lot of thematic connection between the works of Cheever and Seinfeld, especially any time it goes down to the old people in Florida, which is especially great because I don’t think you could pick two otherwise less alike stories than a Seinfeld episode and a Cheever short story.
- The final line is one of Jerry Seinfeld’s all-time favourite moments in the show because it’s a rare example of the show finishing on a show-stopping line. I think his stunned, frozen reaction is just as good as Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’s delivery.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Opera”