Jerry is dating Bette Midler’s understudy, and during a friendly softball game, George accidentally injures Midler, causing him, Jerry, and the Understudy to become outcasts and Kramer to take care of Midler. Jerry is irritated by his girlfriend crying easily. Elaine is concerned the women at her favourite nail shop are talking badly about her, so she enlists Frank Costanza – who speaks fluent Korean – to spy on them.

Written by: Marjorie Gross & Carol Liefer
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

Man, I know I say this a lot, but I love the sheer variety of humour this show has. The central plot is a classic Seinfeld farce, with a simple action that explodes into the social environment around it; the funniest is the taxi driver, of course, but even the guy showing up at the end is great. One of my all-time favourite comedy gags is a lot of people agreeing about one stupid thing – Homestuck had a great version of this where everyone immediately agreed they loved the Mayor – and Seinfeld often runs under the idea that the crowd can turn on you at any point, and indeed this often drives the terror of the characters.

You also have a classic inexplicable behaviour Seinfeld plot, as Jerry is surprised at the sheer number of things that can make Denise cry; it actually got funnier and funnier every time he had to comfort her, because it really can be as simple as ‘get a character to do something they clearly do not want to do’, like a Gilligan cut without the cut. It’s even classic Seinfeld in how it climaxes with her not crying at the one point you would anticipate her doing so.

On top of this is some character-based humour; Elaine and Frank’s plot starts out as straightforward Seinfeld social problem story (people possibly talking shit about you in a foreign language being something that haunts a lot of English speakers, to my confusion), but so much of it is driven by Elaine being a relentless solver of minor irritations and Frank being insane. It’s incredibly amusing to me that Elaine talks in a way that she must think looks casual and friendly when she wants something, and of course, Frank is barely listening to anybody.

Then there’s the sheer absurdity of Kramer; once again, we have a plot that would take up a whole episode of another show and barely three scenes of here when Kramer goes on his journey to find Bette Midler a pineapple drink, and from there he introduced her to his weirdly hostile friendliness. The basic element of humour is something incorrect happening, and Kramer tends to suck up the creativity of the writers to present the most incorrect behaviour possible.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• This is the first episode with no standup sequences, because the one they had for an intro was cut for time.
• The plot was conceived by Marjorie Gross, but was developed into a parody of the Tonya Harding scandal, with the final scene being specifically a parody of an incident at the 1994 Olympics.
• “When you’re talking a movie like Beaches, from the chair to the couch… that’s quite a voyage.”
• Loving this continuing development of Rochelle, Rochelle, from famed movie to theatrical adaptation.
• I watched this on Netflix and it translated the Korean in the subtitles, which made the plot even funnier – they’re actually roasting her for being a princess, which makes Elaine’s fear they’re calling her a dog a clear misunderstanding.
• “No one’s touching my feet. Between you and me, Elaine, I think I got a foot odor problem.”
• “This guy… this is not my kinda guy.” This is the second reference the show has done to the Buddy Rich tapes, and it’s by far my favourite.
• “He was an unusual man. Quick-tempered, with a strange, halting way of speaking.”
• This has quite a few callbacks – most subtle with Midler ordering a black-and-white cookie, but also Kramer making another pasta statue, Frank stopping short, and Jerry pushing Elaine the way she always does.
• J Peterman makes his first appearance! I’d never even heard of him when first watching the show in 2019.
• “So you don’t cry when your grandmother dies, but a hotdog makes you lose control?”

Biggest Laugh: The specificity of this line killed me.

Next Week: “The Engagement”.