George discovers a friend did not tell him about a cancer diagnosis, causing chaos between him and Jerry. Kramer accidentally insults a cop, only to be informed of ‘the scofflaw’ that he’s been chasing. Kramer meets Elaine’s ex-boyfriend Jake and drops that Elaine said ‘hi’, enraging her and forcing her to follow up.

Written by: Peter Mehlman
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

The big thing I found myself thinking about this episode was how complex the show’s world building had gotten. One of the minor things that really attracted me to Seinfeld when I watched in in 2019 was how it constantly evolved – in this, it resembles many of my other favourite shows, like that other wildly successful American sitcom The Simpsons, as well as its descendants Always Sunny and 30 Rock. It’s distinct as well; The Simpsons evolved as it moved through different showrunners who balanced respect for the show’s ethos with personal goals they wanted to achieve; Always Sunny had almost the opposite, as it goes through these ‘eras’ that coincide with the creators trying to reinvent the show to suit the original goal of making jokes about the worst people in Philadelphia; 30 Rock has a straightforward linear progression into cartoonishness.

Seinfeld is different from all of them in that the evolution is both more organic and, more often than not, based on accumulation of worldbuilding. Within this episode, Jake Jarmel, Newman, and Mr Lipman all come back, and only Jake feels like a ‘necessary’ element here – where the premise of the story demands he show up so we can be properly understanding of Elaine’s disdain for him. The others come back simply because it would be logical for them to come back; Lipman comes back just for one scene! It’s that logical chain of events that drive individual episodes, just expanded to include random past episodes.

Anyway, Elaine’s story is my favourite one here – my favourite thing about Elaine specifically is that, unlike George or Jerry, she never quite seems to catch on to what a fool she looks like when she does things like this. Jerry does everything with an arch irony, George is neurotically self-aware (and often escalates a situation out of embarrassment), and Kramer is usually too innocent to realise what he’s doing is wrong, but Elaine barrels through as if everything she does is completely logical. Indeed, you can directly compare her with George and Jerry casually admitting George would do everything Gary does in this episode.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• “Was he on his deathbed?” / “No, he was on his regular bed.”
• Jerry teasing George into revealing what he knows is very reminiscent of George trying to figure out how much Jerry paid for his jacket in “The Jacket”.
• “I don’t even think you could do it!” / “No, I could do it.” / “Yeah, I guess you could.”
• Great moments in blocking: George and Jerry angrily turn away from each other at the exact same time.
• Jerry shutting a door before confronting Gary.
• Jon Lovitz nearly walks away with the episode as Gary. Frankly, I have an easier time seeing him as part of the Seinfeld gang than I did seeing him actually join the main cast of Newsradio.
• “You look like a pirate.” / “I wanna be a pirate.” “The Puffy Shirt” probably has the most specific references across the course of the entire series.
• It says something about how stuffed this episode is that George ends up in a misunderstanding where he believes he’s on a date and the woman doesn’t, and this is just one scene in the episode.
• Basil Hoffman is incredibly funny as the toupee salesman Tommy – it’s a rare case where you absolutely can figure out a random character’s psychology, between his terrible obvious wig and Hoffman playing up his immediate offence at Jerry’s observations.

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: Unless anyone has a reasonable objection, I’m skipping over “Highlights of 100” to get straight to “The Beard”.