Kramer discovers the set to The Merv Griffin Show in a dumpster and puts on his own show. Jerry discovers his girlfriend has an old toy collection and drugs her so he can play with it. George accidentally runs over some pigeons,w which leads him to taking care of an injured squirrel. Elaine has to deal with a guy who sidles up beside her at work.

Written by: Bruce Eric Kaplan
Directed by: Andy Ackerman

Now here’s an episode which was firing on all cylinders – each plot in this episode manages to hit a different quadrant of the show’s appeal. Jerry’s plot here is, in my experience, the most controversial across all nine seasons of the show. Whether you are one of those people who think it goes too far or not, two things are clear: this is one of those few times where Jerry goes so far as to commit an actual crime, and everyone is horrified by this. This really points to the goals of the show; the aim is to make you laugh, and the episode is banking on the idea that you’ll be amused enough by the petty reason Jerry is drugging a woman to roll with his actions, and to not believe that he is an admirable character in the first place. I tend to find the people who don’t like this plot don’t think a man drugging a woman at all is appropriate to use in comedy.

Meanwhile, Kramer’s eponymous plot is the most extreme example of his tendency to play-act life. This is another plot that Always Sunny ran away with; Charlie in particular would do this exact kind of thing on a regular basis, although Mac isn’t too far behind. It’s a bit different in Seinfeld because it’s genuinely new information for the non-Newman characters, and they go along with it much more awkwardly than the Gang would. It’s definitely the most extreme example of Kramer living in his own little reality, mostly unaware of what happens outside it; that does make it hilarious when he chastises Jerry for drugging his girlfriend, two childlike minds colliding.

George’s plot combines two different concepts the show plays with. The first is the magic realism element – what if pigeons just one day stopped flying away from you? I often find the pigeons where I live are so used to humans that you can practically walk right up to them, so I can see how the writers came to that. George twisting this into a ‘deal’ with pigeons (and no such deal with squirrels) is what makes this especially Seinfeldian – not just the reasoning that the world working this way means it must work this way, but specifically framing it as a ‘deal’. American fiction is generally divided between the grifters and the beautiful losers, which are two halves of the same whole – either you’re the smart guy plotting and scheming ahead of everyone, or you’re the loser. George is the loser. This shifts into the absurdism of the later seasons, of course.

Finally, you have Elaine dealing with an everyday problem that escalates and escalates in the worst possible way for her; it’s yet another nickname for an ordinary problem. This one tickles me because Brent Hinkley finds the funniest possible way to play Lou The Sidler, where his constant inane grin suggests he may actually not deliberately be taking credit for what he’s doing, and Elaine’s refusal to point-blank tell him the issue makes it worse. I suppose if Elaine tells him not to do it, there’s the risk he’ll say no, which feels worse than manipulating him into doing it.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• “You know, Cain slew Abel.” / “No, no, they were in business together! Drywall or something.”
• “Jerry, look! Merv Griffin’s cigar!”
• “Hey, your coffee stain looks like Fidel Castro.” / “You’ve been an enormous help.”
• “I thought I was alone.” / “That doesn’t make it right.”
• “Thank you very much, you two.”
• “You? Sidle? You stomp around like a Clydesdale.”
• “It’s like the pigeons decided to ignore me!” / “So they’re like everyone else.”
• “Squirrel? Well we have no deal with them!”
• “Well, this certainly is a lot of words.”
• “This is incoherent drivel!”
• “It would be costly, difficult, and we’d have to send away for really tiny instruments.”
• “What is that stuff in turkey that makes you sleepy?” / “Tryptophan!”
• “We’ve officially bottomed out.”
• “What about a guest host?” / “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
• “Jim Fowler? The Animal Kingdom guy? Is coming around to your apartment?” / “Well, I practically raised his kids.”
• “Oh, don’t look, this is the part where they change me.” / “You’re like eight years old!” / “Seven and a half!”
• “That reminds me of the Haitian voodoo rattle torture! You haven’t gone over to their side, have you?”
• “Where are the cameras?”
• “You drugged a woman to play with her toy collection.” / “It was great! I’ve done it a few more times since then!”

Biggest Laugh:

Next Week: “The Slicer”