Jerry is annoyed when a pool guy at his gym tries to become his friend. Elaine decides to befriend Susan, to George’s horror. Kramer gets a new number, only to accidentally get calls for the Moviephone service.

Written by: David Mandel
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

“The Pool Guy” is a magnificent example of Seinfeld playing with banal social conventions. I’ve been on both sides of this conundrum; as a kid, I often found other kids desperately wanted to be my friend when I was indifferent to them, and in my lonelier days as an adult, I’ve occasionally been excited to know someone who, uh, was not flattered by my interest. The thing that gets me about this episode is that it really ties into Seinfeld morality – friendship, social cues, and gestures are inextricably bound up in sets of rules – not for a specific outcome (even feeling good about oneself) but for their own sake. As much as Jerry relishes playing out the rules, he also finds them exhausting; when you get right down to it, his goal is to play them as little as possible.

Actually, it’s an odd little thematic resonance here; there’s a gag where, in the middle of Jerry complaining about this, Kramer tries to get him to talk to a complete stranger about the movie he’d seen, which crunches his problem with Ramon into a nutshell. Even better, George’s entire plot is a different variation – perhaps even articulation – of Jerry’s problem. In his famous “WORLDS ARE COLLIDING!” monologue – so magnificently expressed by Jason Alexander, up there with Kramer’s “Now I’m driving the bus!” monologue that we saw back in season five – George is essentially describing code switching, and how exhausting that can be.

What the characters are really looking for is the bond the four of them have, where they can say absolutely anything they like without fear of chaos. This is actually one way you can separate this show from its descendent It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia – on that show, the characters are almost always coming into opposition with each other, where the comedy is who is on whose side in any given episode (even any given scene). Hilarious sociopathy aside, it’s generally the comfortable bubble these four are in and the world outside.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• Extremely funny to have the typical nerd question – who would win in a fight between these two characters? – happen in-universe, and on this show of all things. “Mano y baldo.”
• Elaine having no female friends is a funny little note. Many shows unthinkingly only have one female presence; the better examples always end up making a joke out of it (Community has three female leads, but managed to make a brilliant little episode out of Britta being unlikable to other women).
• “Pretend we’re talking.” / “We are talking.” / “Pretend it’s interesting.”
• “You’re looking up movies for people now?” / “I got time.”
• “A GEORGE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND!”
• Callback to “The Soup”, when George finds himself alone in Reggie’s again. You can also see Kramer’s pasta statues from “The Fusilli Jerry” in his apartment when he’s taking Moviefone calls.
• “He could have died.” / “Yeah, it was a gamble.”
• Chunnell is another classic Seinfeld fake movie. “Everybody out of the chunnell! It’s gonna blow!”

Biggest Laugh: George’s absolute indignation is what kills me here.

Next Week: “The Sponge”