Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer visit their friends in the Hamptons. Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer see George’s girlfriend topless when he hasn’t yet had sex with her. Jerry and Elaine’s friends have an ugly baby, and Elaine is initially attracted to their paediatrician until he uses the same word to describe her and the baby. Kramer poaches some lobsters from a fishing trap. Jerry’s girlfriend sees George naked after he gets out of the pool.

Written by: Peter Mehlman and Carol Leifer
Directed by: Tom Cherones

I always love when an episode is this dense, and I assume it’s because of the fairly limited space the characters are operating in. There’s so much opportunity for plots and characters to collide in interesting ways that escalate the farce; the most obvious being when Rachel walks in on George after he’s suffered ‘shrinkage’. I’m given to understand this episode gifted that phrase to the world, naming not just the concept but the deep shame and frustration men associate with it. I generally assume women know about it, so it’s very funny to have Elaine have never heard of it.

George’s descent into insecurity is another case where the show walks a fine line without becoming offensive; any other show might be on his side and focus on him trying to see her naked, and others might double down on his humiliation (Family Guy would probably do both). Seinfeld, blasting through plot as it does, goes past this and into a much more surreal revenge scheme that riffs on the lobster plot. The callousness of this show that comes from simply blasting through beats without lingering on them has comic, political, and tonal effects.

You also see this with Jane; her walking topless across the screen is about as sexualised as the episode gets, because we’re not here to get off, we’re here to laugh (Kramer’s extremely pragmatic take on the whole thing slays me: “Show’s over!”). Jerry ends up MVP of this plot, knowing exactly how George is going to react and responding appropriately as the whole thing falls apart. Speaking of pragmatism, this is where Jerry is a necessary comedic counterpoint to George; as he points out, nobody actually gives a shit about this sort of thing.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• “Is it possible they’re just having babies to get people to visit them?” I sped right over the ugly baby subplot, but it’s killer. One of the small elements of Seinfeld was the tiny, elaborate world it developed and the way characters could fill out a section of an episode.
• “Maybe she’s trying to create a buzz.”
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys plays in the montage of Kramer fishing, which shows how much money the show was playing with by that point.
• “Boy, there’s too much chlorine in that gene pool!”
• Ben the pediatrician is such a great tiny plot for Elaine this episode. Only in something this dense could you get away with a subplot about a character peeved because someone called her a slightly wrong word.
• “Any time you want, you can visualise her naked?” / “I guess that’s true.” I love this line because Jerry is simultaneously messing with George, and realising the upside of all this for himself.
• This episode ends with a rare moment of Kramer getting negative consequences.

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: “The Opposite”. If memory serves, that’s a good one.