Jerry dates a deaf lineswoman, and when George embarrasses himself at the tennis enough for his girlfriend to break up with him, he uses her to read the lips of her conversation with a friend. Meanwhile, Elaine annoys a driver by pretending to be deaf and Kramer tries a new career as a ball boy.
Written by: Carol Leifer
Directed by: Tom Cherones
The further I get into these essays, the more amused I am by how terrible and yet banal Elaine is. One common complaint about the finale is that these people aren’t actually that bad; aside from the fact that none of them are ‘prison’ bad, they’re closer to neutral in how they try to do good just as often as they try to be selfish, and the laws of the universe are that chaos reigns. George is the worst of all of them, and he’s more explosively embarrassing – his actions in this episode alone aren’t so much morally wrong as they are dumb, impulsive, and self-centered. One only has to compare these guys to one of their direct descendants, the Gang in Always Sunny, who actually are criminally bad.
But I look at Elaine here and I see ordinary terribleness. There’s something particularly American to me in how she can neither stand any kind of inconvenience nor delay gratification for even thirty seconds; god forbid you have a conversation with somebody. I can’t quite call it entitlement, but she does seem to have this unthinking expectation to never be uncomfortable and is genuinely shocked that people have interests outside catering to her comfort. It’s really funny to contrast that to her belief – as Jerry and George do – that we’re living in a society and we’re supposed to act in a civilised way; when she says “Alright, it’s terrible, but I’m not a terrible person!”, it comes off as the same rationalising I see every day. Is pretending to be deaf civilised?
Meanwhile, we get the different aspect of the way this show can explore controversial subjects with its nihilistic indifference. I could see another show being patronising towards Laura, the deaf lineswoman, and while this does have Jerry continually defending her autonomy, that’s because… it’s funny that he’s doing that, his increasing exasperation and eventual pragmatism is hilarious. Mainly she just comes off as another Seinfeld Weirdo, someone with a particular behaviour – reading lips – who is passing into our orbit.
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- “She’s a BL.” / “BL?” / “Beautiful lineswoman.” This is very reminiscent of my disdain for the so-called ‘spoon theory’.
- “Am I fearing AIDS? Sure, who doesn’t!”
- Great moments in staging: Jerry takes a drink from Elaine, so she drinks straight from the carton. George delivering his self-righteous speech essentially breaking up with his girlfriend and then realising what he’s done. Jerry and George’s whole conversation trying to cover their lips, only for Laura to know exactly what they said and did.
- This is the one where George claims to have invented ‘it’s not you, it’s me!’. Wikipedia reliably informs me that it was first used in a romantic context in 1976.
- “Are you sure she’s that superficial?” / “Why not? I would be.”
- “When you control the mail, you control… information.”
- “Thus ends the great ball man experiment.”
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Non-Fat Yoghurt”.