George gets zinged at work and constructs a situation where he can zing the guy back. Elaine has a whirlwind romance with a video store clerk based on his movie recommendations. Jerry buys a tennis racket from a guy who, it turns out, isn’t good at tennis. Kramer becomes preoccupied with the possibility of falling into a coma.

Written by: Gregg Kavet & Andy Robin
Directed by: David Owen Trainor

Here we are, an all-timer of an episode. The eponymous plotline was actually conceived of by regular writer Peter Mehlman, who had been trying to get it into the show for years and rightly so – it’s almost pure George Costanza. It’s a tiny, very common social situation; everybody gets zinged at one time or another, and everybody ends up thinking up comebacks afterwards that they wished they’d said, but only George “Adjacent To Refuse” Costanza would think to try and recreate the conditions of the zing to get his one-liner back in. The smug way he starts swallowing down shrimp is another great entry in the volume of Jason Alexander’s Comedically Smug Acting, gleefully offering people shrimp and trying to set up the line. What’s funny is that this is a rare case of the show stretching out a plot; there’s really only three necessary scenes – George gets zinged, George thinks of a new zing, George goes back and gets zinged again.

The writers have the canny idea to throw in both the complication of Reilly leaving the company and the scenes of the gang trying to fix up George’s zing; the former is a simple way of making George look even more monomaniacally dedicated (i.e. stupid) than he already did, and the latter is a satire of the writer’s room approach; something typical to television, especially now, but only recently had come into effect for Seinfeld. What really amuses me is that the audience gives actual applause – not laughter, but applause – for George’s rant, which makes me suspect that the instincts towards a singular creative vision is something people feel down to their bones. This also brings me back to George’s anxiety; as a writer, I know his pain of having a great line and no context for it, but I also know you eventually find a place for it. After all, that’s what Larry David did.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• I’m intrigued by the idea that Elaine is specifically a fan of arthouse film – although I admit, it’s hard to tell whether it sits in that gap between arthouse and simply adult drama. I wouldn’t think of her as having the patience for arthouse, although her feeling superior to goofy comedies is unsurprising. That said, I’ve seen Weekend At Bernie’s II, and that manages to be so incompetently made that it accidentally becomes arthouse.
• “To a guy you’ve never met? Your screening process is getting ever more rigorous.”
• “Sometimes, in life, the gods smile upon you, my friends.” / “You got someone to take your Canadian quarter?”
• “You see?! This is why I hate writing with a large group!”
• That’s Ben Stein as the lawyer – originally cast as part of a discarded plot involving Yankee management.
• “You can eat, but machines do everything else.”
• Jerry not caring about the money, just the principle, is interesting given Seinfeld (comedian) was a millionaire by this point. Though of course, within the context of the show all of Jerry’s needs are met; once again, Seinfeld suggests we’re like this because all our needs are met and we don’t know what to do with that fact.
• “The Pain and the Yearning. An old woman experiences pain and yearning.”
• “We only wake you up for the important meetings.” The actor delivering this while looking around is very funny to me.
• Kramer’s look of shock when the woman comes out of the coma is hilarious.
• “I didn’t sleep with her!” / “Because of society, right?” / “Yes, George, because of society.”
• “I didn’t know it was possible to come out of a coma!” / “I didn’t know it was possible not to know that!”
• Eric Roberts mention!
• “We have a wide variety of Gene picks.” / “Gene’s trash!” / “I’m Gene.”
• “Look what came in the mail today. It’s the ‘play’ button off of Vincent’s VCR.” / “Boy, look how far back it goes! It’s like a tooth.”
• “It’s smart. It’s a smart line and a smart crowd will appreciate it, and I’m not gonna dumb it down for some bonehead mass audience!”
• The punchline that Vincent is fifteen years old is so good. You honestly couldn’t find a funnier punchline for the whole plot; I don’t think it was intentionally designed to undermine Elaine’s general sense of superiority about her taste, but it works from that angle.
• “How are you gonna be the executor of my estate? See, you can’t let things go!” / “Kramer. Given the legal opportunity… I will kill you.”

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: “The Van Buren Boys”