Kramer enlists lawyer Jackie Chiles to sue over his coffee burn; in the process, he borrows balm from his friend the Maestro, inadvertently curing it and risking the end of the lawsuit. Jerry becomes extremely exasperated with the Maestro, particularly his claim that you can’t rent a place in Tuscany. Elaine dates the Maestro. George gets a chair for a security guard.
Written by: Larry David
Directed by: Andy Ackerman
Jackie Chiles! One great thing about Seinfeld – and something it has that descendent Curb Your Enthusiasm does not – is the very wide variety of humour. The farcical social observations are a solid basis for the show’s work, but it deals in wordplay, satire, absurdism, and parody – almost like flavours in a stew. Jackie is one of the more notable parody elements, being a riff on lawyer Johnnie Cochrane; I’m completely unfamiliar with the man outside of the jokes about him on Seinfeld, so I can’t really pass commentary there. But he definitely works as a particularly absurd Seinfeld weirdo; apparently, actor Phil Morris went to the same barber as him and had chances to observe his behaviour for a long time, so he lands with full (yet graceful) force.
I particularly like this funny little switcheroo that happens in the episode’s arc; initially, he’s so fast and so loud that he makes Kramer look normal for a change, as he (and possibly Michael Richards) struggles to keep up. But by the end, Kramer’s goodhearted naivete has screwed him over professionally so much that Jackie can do nothing but splutter. And this doesn’t feel like the joke, but rather simply the natural course of events!
Meanwhile, we get a new variation on old Seinfeld morality when everyone but Jerry loves the Maestro. I’m always tickled when every character has exactly the same emotional reaction to something, so I’m particularly tickled by everyone except Jerry loving the Maestro. I especially love that he hates him just on the principle of the thing; as George points out, Jerry doesn’t actually care about renting a place in Tuscany, he’s just irritated because the Maestro is so smug about it (which, as any Seinfeld fan knows, is deeply hypocritical). This feels like a very Elaine plot, so it’s funny seeing Jerry just bothered by this for no reason. And I love how that ends, with Jerry accidentally renting a room in Tuscany. It feels like he’s thinking, “Well, I brought this guy out all this way anyway…”
TOPICS O’ THE WEEK
- Beloved commentor Raven Wilder noted that the show gets super-serialised all at once, and that happens here, where the ending of the previous episode directly leads into the opening of this.
- “It’s her uncle’s.” / “Ah, discount?” / “One could hope.”
- “There’s a lot of women that would love to be in your position right now.” / “Name one.”
- Elaine explaining how she literally did nothing nearly made my biggest laugh.
- Kramer has some great little, needless gestures this episode. He shuts a door with his foot in a weird way, he tries walking in a room at the same time as Jackie (bumping himself against the frame), and he climbs over Jackie to get out of the car. This isn’t even counting his funny run when hopped up on cafe lattes.
- “Yeah. Everyone knows that. It was in Amadeus.”
- Even when George is doing something decent, he has to go too far.
Biggest Laugh:
Next Week: “The Wink”.