George discovers Elaine is a bad dancer, and it ruins her reputation at the office without her knowing. Elaine accidentally convinces a woman that George is a bad boy, which he immediately tries to take advantage of. Kramer pulls Jerry into the world of bootlegging films.

Written by: Spike Feresten
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

Jerry’s adventures as a bootlegger feel like a moment of making the subtext of the show into text. All this time – right from the first season – there’s been this anxiety about fearing judgement from professionals who bring pedantic correctness down upon you; just a few episodes ago, we had a mechanic run away with Jerry’s car out of outrage at how he treated it. I’ve argued that this is projecting one’s own pedantry onto other professionals; the real Seinfeld is famously pedantic and exact about his comedy act, and brings that to the show’s dialogue and editing, trying to find the funniest expression of a joke, and the fear that one is being judged the same way comes into the show’s comedy. This balloons that out into a joke on Jerry, when he ends up bringing that pedantry to the concept of bootlegging films. It’s so funny watching him try and blow it up into a production and walking away because it can’t meet his standards.

This does get at something universal that Seinfeld locks into. The interesting thing about the show is how it feels like it’s made by a bunch of weirdos despite both the action and the principles driving it largely being amusingly banal; one of the major principles relevant here is a need for pedantic correctness that Seinfeld also correctly assesses as unnecessary and ridiculous. It’s a normal human desire to be pedantically correct and have good numbers about something; in a specific and personal sense, I know I have a habit of trying to get the time I spend doing chores down to the fewest number of seconds (I’ve gotten my route to work down to the minimum necessary), and my sister has a habit of over-precisely working out the electrolytes she has a day. In a broader sense, one criticism of Western culture from Eastern ones is that we chase hard numbers and data over spiritual satisfaction; at its most absurd, you get trends like looksmaxxing, trying to get the ‘attraciveness’ number up as high as possible. Seinfeld is that criticism turned inward.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• I love the way the tone of the whole show changes with the cold opens over Jerry’s standup. They make the whole thing feel more laid-back.
• “You know, revulsion has become a legitimate form of attraction.”
• “Here’s to those who wish us well, and those who don’t can go to hell.”
• “Death Blow! When someone wants to blow you up, not for you are, but for different reasons altogether!”
• “It’s more like a full body dry heave set to music.” Elaine’s horrifying dance is the best way possible to undermine her dignity, because it seems so plausible that she’d have developed a horrible dance and nobody told her. Speaking of things you have anxiety about. Although it took me forever to find a good frame for the header, and I’m still not satisfied.
• “Sometimes you can’t help these people til they hit rock bottom.” / “By then, you’ve lost interest.”
• “People with guns don’t understand! That’s why they get guns, too many misunderstandings!”
• “But I really enjoy dancing!” / “And that’s not helping either!”
• George impotently yelling on the phone kills me. You really couldn’t get more George than him begging someone on the phone not to hang up.
• “I could do hard time for this! AND community service!”
• “My George isn’t clever enough to hatch a scheme like this!” Famously, this scene took forever to film because JLD couldn’t stop laughing.
• “I’m still big. It’s the bootlegs that got small.”

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: “The Package”