Jerry dates a gymnast. Kramer suffers a kidney stone. George looks foolish in front of his girlfriend’s mother multiple times. Elaine accidentally interferes with the merger of Mr Pitt’s company when he gets distracted by a 3D painting.

Written by: Alex Berg and Jeff Schaffer
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

Almost all episodes of Seinfeld past the first season are great, but sometimes you get lightning in a bottle, where inspiration just strikes and the experience is elevated. Anyone who has seen Curb Your Enthusiasm knows that Larry David really did eat an éclair out of the trash; even so, this feels like a perfect action to summarise the weird, specific quality of George Costanza. Multiple readers have noted that George eating food out of the trash is the kind of thing that might cross our minds, if we saw one sitting there, but we wouldn’t eat it; George exists to do the random thought, that we may see how stupid it is in practice. I’m particularly struck by the way Jerry’s exasperation with him later feels so much bigger than it should be – not just in that he’s hit his limit, but in that he manages to summarise the George Costanza condition in a few sentences. There’s a few times in life where you can insult someone simply by describing the things they did with no commentary, and they always hit the hardest.

This same episode also has a great scene where Jerry ends up summarising his own morality, even unintentionally capturing his immoral aspects. He sits Kramer down and tries explaining the concept of a conscience to him, and he talks about it as an active inconvenience he willingly undergoes to be a good person. Goodness to Seinfeld characters (or at least to Jerry, Elaine, and George) isn’t something you want to do – it’s a burden you willingly undertake. We’ve talked often about how the main characters aren’t really bad people – more morally neutral, capable of decency or selfishness basically at random. You look at it from this perspective and it makes a lot more sense – if being a Good person, even in the sense of mild social niceties, is an exhausting thing, of course you’ll slip up when you’re tired or otherwise not concentrating.

Elaine ends up articulating that idea very well this episode, much more than Jerry – it’s hilarious to me that she’s effectively played as the adult to Mr Pitt’s childish obsession with the 3D print, but as soon as she’s given even the slightest bit of power, she basically regresses because she has no idea how to work with it; she instantly becomes preoccupied with the name of the company after the merger, and she’s not exactly wrong but she’s not exactly right to have brought it up, and when it gets down to brass tacks and she has to rush, she pretty much immediately turns violent. Goodness isn’t something you do when facing even a single actual obstacle.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• “I think she finds my stupidity charming.” / “As we all do.”
• George taking his shirt off to poop is such a great beat, just barely exaggerating what actual people do. Most shirtless poops I’ve heard of have been based around the specific needs of an extra-strength poop. Between that and Elaine spilling her fountain pen in her bag (thus causing Mr Pitt to look like Germany’s least favourite national leader), this is a good episode for Seinfeld call-back plotting.
• Kramer having a kidney stone feels like something the show would always inevitably come to, though giving him a box of popcorn when it strikes is an inspired touch.
• George being charming to old ladies implies he’d probably have functioned better in an older, less nihilistic time than middle-class New York circa 1994.
• Incredible acting from Lois Nettleton as George’s girlfriend’s mother. She even has a rather Seinfeld name.
• Jerry’s plot is the least interesting here. Though Elaine poking holes in his belief that a gymnast would be more interesting at sex is great.
• “Adjacent to refuse is refuse.”
• Great moments in blocking: Jerry sitting next to George on the phone, giving sympathetic hand gestures.

Biggest Laugh:

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