Elaine convinces George and Jerry to join her in volunteering to spend time with the elderly. Kramer and Newman try to make money selling used records. These events collide so that Jerry loses his old guy on the street.
Teleplay: Larry Charles
Story: Bruce Kirschbaum
Directed by: Tom Cherones
I was wondering this whole episode – how bad can we consider the Seinfeld gang? It’s an open question, especially because the show definitively concluded at the end that they’re bad people, which a lot of people found overstated their terribleness; we also see them try to do good things and have them blow up in their faces. This may be not just one of the most extreme examples, but one that actively explores the concept. Right when I was thinking how funny it is that Elaine was all keyed up to do good only to fall flat at the first obstacle, she said, “You try to be good, you wanna be a good person, but this is too much to ask!”
Who is worse – a person who does good and complains the entire time, or a person who kindly does nothing? Part of the reason the characters are miserable here is because they underestimate the work involved in helping people – they kind of assume they’ll just feel good doing this without any kind of negative consequences. Jerry ends up looking the least douchey specifically because he has low expectations to begin with and is fairly honest about his disinterest.
I could actually relate to this plot a lot – at one of my lowest points, I actually volunteered with a similar justification to George. If anything, that actually made me feel worse – I wasn’t particularly good at what I was doing and it didn’t make me feel like a good person. I also trained to work in aged care along similar lines, and that wasn’t great either; you’d think it was the work or the residents, but both were fine, it was the work culture that I felt would shape me into someone I disliked.
On this level, there’s an intense sadness to the concept of George Costanza – as he says, he feels a void in him that nothing seems to fill, and he does everything he can to avoid thinking about it. I found the conversation he has with his old guy particularly funny because he comes dangerously close to really interrogating the gnawing emptiness in him and where it comes from, and the guy ends up blowing him off.
Meanwhile, a big part of this watch has been amusement at how Elaine is actually kind of a terrible person – self-righteous but unable to back it up. She’s interesting to compare to Leela, who has a similar underlining to her character but is vastly more sympathetic, partially because she gets at least 75% of the way to being a good person (she’s at least competent at her job) but also because she’s more self-aware about her limitations. Elaine will dive into trying to do the right thing and then whine and give up almost immediately. The line dividing Elaine and George is much thinner than it first appears.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- Profound moments with George Costanza: “When I like them, they don’t like me. When they like me, I don’t like them.” I do enjoy him attempting to shoot his shot with a woman who doesn’t speak English and actually succeeding.
- “I think I’m pretty much like you. Only successful.” This line is more accurate than it seems. I’ll get into this in a later essay.
- This is where we first learn that Newman is a postal worker. One small element of Seinfeld is the way it developed a kind of mythology over time buy adding details like this as necessary. It’s also funny to me that George asks out of genuine curiosity.
- Tobin Bell appears in this episode – most would recognise him as Jigsaw from the Saw movies first, but he’s a reliable TV actor. My favourite performances from him are as an army recruiter in The Sopranos and a working class asshole with superpowers on The X-Files.
- Love Sid’s fistpump after asking Jerry to change his diaper.
- Jerry’s got Journey, so yeah, he has terrible taste.
- The old guys having a Jerry/George conversation is one of the funniest parts. Love that they open with a similar line but quickly shift into a different conversation entirely.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Implant”