Kramer and Newman decide to install reverse peepholes into their doors. Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine all pitch in to get their friend Joe Mayo a massage chair. George and Jerry debate the merits of wallets. Elaine is displeased when Puddy starts wearing a fur coat.

I’ve talked multiple times about bonsai plots now; by this, I mean episodes that are made up of many tiny stories that interact. This doesn’t quite reach ridiculous levels, but it does have a few more plots than normal; George and Jerry are actually split between two arcs here. The Joe Mayo party plot ends up unifying most of them, especially in being an inciting incident for Elaine’s plot. The reverse peephole feels to me like the ultimate Kramer plot – he’s come up with what he believes to be a brilliant innovation on the normal way of doing things, except a) it’s clearly the first idea that popped into his head with no polish or further thought which leads to b) not actually solving any problems and creating a whole slew of new ones. It seems like the desire to innovate is at the core of the American people, particularly American capitalists; Jack Donaghy of 30 Rock defines his Republican capitalist values by the desire to improve and innovate life, and in the real world, the rise of Steve Jobs was connected to his desire to ‘disrupt’ industries, which ended up defining the culture of Silicon Valley. Kramer shows us this attitude went further back and lower class than Jobs.

And admittedly, Kramer’s attitude does flow to the other characters in different ways; George and Jerry each become convinced their particular way of dealing with money and carrying things around is actually the more efficient, and obviously it’s hilarious for them both to be wrong. George’s wrongness is immediately obvious; Jerry’s wrongness becomes twofold, as he finds he does have to carry stuff around anyway but also has to deal with the social stigma of what he does. We’ve talked often about how the characters prefer to define morality by the ‘kind’ of person they want to be (with the joke being that their actions have consequences regardless of their intentions), but they also submit to social pressure (or rail against it, depending on their moods). I’m also amused by this plot ageing in the sense that people wallets have tended to become even smaller as they become digital, with mobile phone cases now containing the few cards we carry around.

Elaine’s plot ties into her eternal search for dignity; people often find Elaine becomes more abrasive as the show goes on, especially in the post-David years, and part of that is pushing her general belief in dignity to greater extremes. From this perspective, Puddy’s fur coat (and, later, eight ball jacket) are relatively low-key. There’s an interpretation that, at this point in the show, Elaine is so frustrated and disgusted with the direction her life has gone – within this episode alone, she notes that Newman is the only man in her life who has held a steady job for several years (yet another burn against Jerry and his stand-up) – that she becomes more irritable and more prone to lashing out, and indeed plots like this can be seen as her trying to retain whatever dignity she has left.

TOPICS O’ THE WEEK

• “Is there a problem?” / “A seemingly infinite supply.”
• “You might wanna get a look at that bathing suit drawer.”
• “Cheapness… is not a sense.”
• “Our policy is, we’re comfortable with our bodies. Somebody wants to help themselves to an eyeful, well, we say, enjoy the show.”
• “Keep the big bills on the outside.” / “That’s a five.”
• Newman has a very stange idea of what homeless people do rooted mainly in old timey novels.
• “You know, the very fact that you oppose this makes me think I’m onto something.”
• “I think you know Dr Zaius.”
• “I like to think of this as my conference room. It has a more formal atmosphere, with, you know, the shelves and the… furniture.”
• “You’ve got a filing cabinet under your ass!”
• “Where did you learn to climb trees like that?” / “The Pacific North-West!”
• “It’s in… transit.”
• “You know, sometimes I get the feeling George isn’t being completely honest with me.”
• “This is very much as I imagined it to be… aside from this rattan piece, which seems oddly out of place.”
• “I never heard of this Joe Mayo and frankly it sounds made up.”
• “I’ve been lying to you for three days and now you’re screwing me!” This feels like the purest George line outside of “We’re living in a society!“
• “Kramer says you need it because you’re an entertainer and you’re desperate for attention.” / “That’s true.”
• “It’s mine. I’m a fancy boy.”
• “You got a question, you ask the eightball.” / “You’re gonna wear this all the time?” / “Signs point to yes!”

Biggest Laugh: There’s something about this that perfectly captures the perplexed reaction one can have to someone doing everything to deny responsibility.

Next Week: “The Cartoon”.