Amph The Seinfeld Chronicles: A Thread About Nothing (Episode-by-episode) THE MOVIE

Love this episode, Babu will always remain my favorite side character in television history.

There was an Indian restaurant around the corner from my apartment in NY that always reminded me of this episode -- tremendous food, but always empty. I only ever went there twice, always felt uncomfortable around the staff, like I felt guilty that I didn't go there on a regular basis.

 

Yeah, Leopold mentioned that feeling in the Inside Look, I think, about the restaurant that inspired him -- that if you went in, then you'd feel obligated to become a regular.

 

The waiters would look at me and I'D feel compelled to apologize to them that their families are starving on my account.

 

Of course, it was precisely because of these feelings of guilt that I hardly ever went there. Ironic?

 

The Tape

The stand-up is about hair plugs, and how weird that is.

It starts with Jerry in his apartment, listening to his last show on his tape recorder with headphones, while the fridge repair guy yammers away at him about the gaskets. It's a pretty good take on the repair guys who insist on explaining everything, despite the fact that you don't care and have no idea what they're saying anyway. The guy just won't stop, and the actor has this great doofusy intensity. George comes in and asks if Jerry did his bit on the big toe being the "captain of the toes" and the second toe launching a coup d'toe; Jerry did, and it bombed. George starts calling up this Chinese company to try to get their baldness cure. The (bald) repair guy bolts up all excited; he saw the same special last night. Kramer comes in, with one of those giant old video cameras; his friend Inspector gave it to him because he's becoming a minimalist. This is the same guy from The Parking Garage. "Doesn't the fat fetish conflict with the minimalism?" Kramer convinces George to give up calling, because of the time difference, and they're quickly caught up in Jerry's shock at the sexy message left on his tape recorder. Jerry's facial expressions during this, with his headphones on, are just great. It's the first real acting Jerry's done. George takes a listen, and Kramer immediately starts trying to pull the headphones off him, which causes this great image, since George has his hands clamped over the headphones, so Kramer ends up just lifting him up off the couch each time he tries. The scene ends with Kramer trying to turn up the volume, and jerking around spastically when he succeeds.

At Monk's, Jerry and George come in arguing about whether the baldness cure is real, and meet Elaine. Jerry tells George to tell Elaine; George starts in about the sexy message. "Not that, you idiot! The Chinese, the Chinese bald cure!" Another friend flags Jerry over to his table, and Elaine starts interrogating George about the message. George is just raving about how sexy it was: "She had this throaty, sexy kind of whisper." "Oh, really? Like, uh, like, 'Jerry, I want to slide my tongue around you like a snake. Ohhh, ohhhhhohhhhhh.'" She just leans back with this big smug smile. And she's got her hair down, not in the usual forehead poof, so it's just insanely sexy. George just stares over his menu. She explains that she stopped in the club to see Jerry, saw the recorder, and "I got this impulse." She treats it like a giant joke, while George is just staring, eyes narrowed, almost grimacing at the realization that he's now got a huge thing for Elaine. "I had no idea you were filled with such . . . sexuality." I suppose I can buy George not knowing at the time, since the gang is not tremendously tight yet, but of course Jerry obviously knows that Elaine is not exactly Miss Good Girl, so this is a pretty good example of a plot that works exactly where it is on the timeline and wouldn't work any later on it, by which point you'd expect George to be aware of Elaine's sexuality. "Oh, that was nothing," she dismisses it; her offhand attitude toward this is just making her all the sexier. George, now, refuses to talk about the baldness thing. He just sits there uncomfortably, staring at Elaine, when Jerry comes back over, and Elaine starts toying with him about it, having made George promise to stay quiet. Jerry gets to act all smug: "She went on in some detail, about certain activities, illegal in some states, for consenting adults, things you would know very little about." "This sort of thing is very common in show business," he says. Elaine starts to take off, and George tries to get her to stay, but she needs to shower. "Unless I could shower at your place." Jerry says okay, and George starts dabbing himself with a napkin.

George is now in the chair at Jerry's, listening to the tape, in awe. Jerry is upset that she didn't leave a number. Elaine comes out of the bathroom, doing up a bathrobe, while George calls China. "Why are you doing this?" "Why do I do anything? F

 

The Nose Job

The stand-up is Jerry riffing about pharmacists having the elevated counters, as if they're so much more important than any other profession in the world.

Jerry and George are at a newsstand, talking about how Jerry met a woman on an elevator. "You've got less than sixty seconds! That's like dismantling a time bomb!" Jerry was so taken with this woman he just had to try, and so said: "You know, I'm the one responsible for those crop circles in England." I love the way that, for all the women Jerry gets, he's never actually all that charming or funny; he's actually kind of terrible. It's all confidence. As acknowledged when the woman replies, "What crop circles?" By all rights Jerry out to bomb, yet he walks off with her number. It's a nice riff on Jerry's weird luck with women, and it's made even funnier by the fact that it's done in quick cutaway shots from the conversation to the elevator scene, which is a good gimmick that Seinfeld rarely ever uses. Jerry also points out that George has spinach in his teeth, leading to a cutaway to the job interview he had that day, with the off-put interviewer blowing him off. Then they start talking about George's girlfriend. "You won't think I'm a bad person?" George asks before complaining. "Too late for that." "Believe me, I would only say this to you, and maybe a psychiatrist, maybe," says George, and it's a great illustration of the weird closeness these people have, constantly dissecting each other's lives. They're each other's therapists. God help them. So, George is tremendously bothered by Audrey's huge nose. He can't stop thinking about it, and though he acknowledges that he has no leg to stand on, being no specimen himself, and only being able to land a woman like this because of her enormous nose . . . he still can't get over it. "But I really like her, I know that. But I know one other thing: I'm not getting past that nose."

At Jerry's apartment, Audrey and Elaine are over with Jerry and George, and Kramer is trying to explain why he needs Elaine to pose as the jacket guy's daughter to get this jacket from his apartment. I adore this running subplot. Kramer also insists that he has to come along with Elaine to pose as her fiance, for no discernible reason. Behold, the first appearance of Peter von Nostrand! George: "Why don't you just commit yourself already?" Kramer starts talking about this club he went to (and didn't wash his hand today, so that he can get back in with the same stamp) and the beautiful women there, and Audrey mentions how she's intimidated by all the beautiful women in New York. "Aw, you're as pretty as any of them. You just need a nose job," says Kramer. Elaine starts chewing out Kramer while Jerry just hangs his head in the kitchen, and George starts choking up pizza. Kramer can't understand what he did wrong. "See what happens when you try to be nice?" he complains to a staring George.

There's quick stand-up about how weird it would be if everyone just said what was on their mind, and how it would end blind dates instantly.

Over at Elaine's apartment, where Audrey is staying, George and Audrey are talking, and George brings up Kramer, like an idiot. She asks him what he thinks about her getting a nose job. IT'S A TRAP. George tries to act like he doesn't care while also prodding her toward it. "Peter Jennings had one." "Really?" "Probably. They all do." She says she'll get one, and Elaine runs out to chew out George. "Peter Jennings had one?" "It's possible." That's right: George's defense for saying things is that they're possibly true. When Audrey says she really wants to get one, George hops on board to agree with Elaine that it's a mistake to try to save himself . . . "unless you'd really like to get one . . ."

At Monk's: "I'm going straight to hell." Jerry starts complaining about how terrible this woman Isabelle is: she's incredibly attractive, but mentally repulsive. "It's like my brain is facing my penis in a chess game. And I'm letting him win!" "You're not letting him win. He wins til you're forty." "And

 

Rather like the Tape, mainly because of the coupling of George's baldness cure with his sudden Elaine-lust. The nose job is a mediocre episode that gets pulled up dramatically by Kramer's absolute ignorance of social decorum in telling Audrey to get a nose job. Absolutely perfect Kramer moment.

 

The Alternate Side

The stand-up is complaining about the obnoxiousness of car alarms.

Jerry and George come into the apartment, complaining that Jerry's car was stolen. He's not sure if the alarm was on: "I don't know my alarm sound, I'm not tuned into it like it's my son." Kramer slides in and is told that "they" stole Jerry's car. "Is it more than just one?" Jerry goes to call the car phone company to cancel his service, and George jokes that he should call the car phone itself -- and then realizes that he should actually do that. So he calls, and the thief picks up. Another great offscreen Larry David performance. Jerry asks if it's his number, like an idiot, and the thief goes, "I have no idea." "Can I ask you a question? Did you steal my car?" "I did." "You did?" "I did." "That's my car!" "I didn't know it was yours." "What're you going to do with it?" "I don't know. Drive around?" "Then can I have it back?" "Mmmmm, no, I'm going to keep it." It's just gloriously absurd. Kramer starts motioning to demand the phone, and the thief is just an incredibly good sport about chatting with anybody ("Yeah, this is Kramer." "Hello, Kramer."). Kramer has the thief check the glove compartment for a pair of his gloves, and gets him to agree to mail him the gloves or drop them by his building. This is just magnificent; it's this weird mix of the ridiculous and the human as they just affably chat with the thief, and Jerry vents his confusion and curiosity rather than any anger at the guy. Jerry gets the phone back and asks how thieves cross wires. "I didn't cross any wires; the keys were in it." "I gotta go," says Jerry. "Drive carefully." "Jerry, when's the last time you got a tuneup? I can't find the --" Jerry hangs up. Just a great scene. Sid, the guy who works moving cars from side to side of the block for alternate side parking, left the keys in. As Jerry and Kramer start explaining the job to unemployed George, you can see George just fall in love with the idea of a job that gives you good pay for a few hours of parking cars a day. Sid comes up, and blames it on being distracted by seeing Woody Allen filming a movie up the block. I like the way Jerry isn't even angry with him, just kind of sad at being inconvenienced. Kramer mention that he's in the Woody Allen movie as an extra. Sid mentions that he's leaving next week to visit family and won't be able to park cars, and he and Jerry get into a debate over whether "next Wednesday" is the very next Wednesday, this Wednesday, in two days, or the Wednesday next week. "If I'd meant this Wednesday I'd have said this Wednesday!" George asks who's going to move cars while he's away, and crotchety old Sid doesn't care at all about making sure his customers still have service while he's gone. "What do I care who moves 'em? They can move themselves if they wanna!" George volunteers to move them, and Jerry gets a call. "Yeah, the defroster is the one on the bottom. Just slide it all the way."

Jerry and Elaine are at the rental car place, so Jerry can get a replacement to tide him over. Elaine is talking about this writer she's dating, Owen March. "Owen March, I never heard of him." "Well, he's not a baseball player." Elaine mentions that he's 66, though, just as Jerry is called to the counter. He just stares. Jerry tells the counter lady he has a reservation for a mid-size car, and Elaine tries to convince him that March is "vibrant" and in good shape. "You'd really like him." "People always say that. I hate everybody. Why would I like him?" The woman tells him that they don't have a mid-size available; Jerry points out that he had a reservation. "Unfortunately, we ran out of cars." "But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation." "I know why we have reservations." "I don't think you do! If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation. You just don't know how to hold the reservation, and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anyone can just take 'em." It's a fantastic rant, and y

 

FTR, a vomitorium isn't where people go to vomit. They're the exits to the theatre and games, and people would vomit out onto the street.

 

I forgot that all these great scenes were contained in the same episode. The conversation with the car thief, the rant about reservations, and of course the pretzels.

 

One of my all-time favorite episodes. So much great stuff, obviously the pretzels, but my absolute favorite is "Moving cars from one side of the street to the other don't take no more sense than putting on a pair of pants. My question to you is: Who's putting your pants on?"

 

Yeah, that's probably my favorite single line too, and it gets at the great fact, kind of lost because it occurs in the background, that George has to be doing something tremendously wrong to screw up this badly at car-parking. The thief conversation and Jerry going off about reservations were fantastic scenes, too. I can't get over how great they are. I also really like the way that, as will happen with real friends, "These pretzels are making me thirsty" immediately caught on as a sort of in-joke catchphrase among the group itself. Rather than coming off like forced symmetry, it comes off like they all latched onto this goofy occurrence of Kramer getting this Woody Allen line.

 

I soemhow always forget that this is also the episode with the car rental, another great bit. I've actually used the "reservation" monologue (complete with Jerry's hand motions for "anyone can take the reservation") when my own reservation got lost once.

And Kramer's jumping in on the call with the thief is brilliant as well. Really a tour de force from each of the of the 4 in this one.

But if I ever collapse, keep all 4 of them the hell away from me. What the hell do need to get the blood to the feet for?!!!!

 

Looking forward to the next episode -- the regular cleaning lady here at work must be on vacation, her replacement is rather attractive.

"Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frouned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you peope do that all the time."

 

The Red Dot

The stand-up is about working in the knife store in the mall, and how it must be vaguely scary to have people coming in demanding giant knives.

George and Jerry come into Pendant's Christmas party, arguing about whether the Statue of Liberty was brought across the ocean whole or in pieces. Then George asks why France gave it to us at all, and finds the whole idea of countries giving each other gifts weird. Jerry points out Elaine's boyfriend, another guy from the office who she's having a secret fling with. "Who am I going to tell, my mother? Like I've got nothing better to talk about." "You don't." He's a recovering alcoholic; Jerry says that he's "off the wagon" because Jerry just can't understand the concept of on and off the wagon; the wagon must be alcohol, right? Elaine comes over and gets all excited (including a shove) that Jerry stopped by to return her watch, which he found in the couch. Elaine then tells George that she can get him a job here because a reader just quit. Dick then comes over: "Is this the guy?" he asks when introduced to Jerry. Jerry just gives a what-the-hell face to George. Elaine drags George off to talk to Mr. Lippman and leaves her drink with Jerry, who's stuck chatting with Dick, who is one.

Lippman (finally played by the right guy) is asking George questions, and George is flailing; he obviously has no actual competence in this area. "You know, book reports, that kind of stuff," when asked if he's ever done anything like this before. He offers his favorite sportswriter as who he "reads." He tries to get away without mentioning any authors, until when pressed, he finally says: "I like Art . . . Vandelay." "Vandelay?" "He's an obscure writer. Beatnik. From the Village." "What's he written?" "Venetian Blinds." When George finally starts lying, he's right at home.

"I got news for you: I'm funnier than you are!" shouts Dick as he wanders off -- grabbing Elaine's drink off the table instead of his own. Elaine quickly realizes he took the wrong one: "One drink like that and he could fall right off the wagon!" "Told you!" says George.

Jerry and George are in a store; Jerry is forcing George to buy Elaine a present to thank her for getting him the job. "I never feel comfortable in the women's department. I feel like I'm just a little too close to trying on a dress." Jerry suggests a cashmere sweater, which George rejects as too expensive -- before realizing it's been marked down over five hundred dollars. He gets a saleswoman to explain that there's a red dot on it. George is immediately in love with this, and starts trying to get Jerry to tell him that the dot isn't even visible, and Jerry starts arguing that he can't pretend he doesn't know about, because he knows about it, and so of course he can see it. "Just take an overview! Can't you take an overview?" "You want me to take an overview? I see a very cheap man, holding a sweater, trying to get away with something; that's my overview."

Back at the apartment, Elaine is telling Jerry that she thinks Dick is drinking again. Jerry says that if she can't smell it on him, he's not drinking. They argue over whether a single drink can make you smell of alcohol, and Kramer bolts in, with this great recoil when he sees Jerry right in front of the door. "Would you do me a favor?" Jerry asks. "Would you take a drink and let us smell you?" "You can smell me without the drink!" Elaine explains it, and Kramer seems upbeat at the prospect of getting to drink. It's sort of odd that we almost never see these thirtysomething singles drinking on the show. George, for all his degeneracy, evinces no real interest in alcohol. There isn't even a lot of the casual drinking-beer-and-watching-sports kind of drinking, or a beer with dinner. They may get wine with dinner at a nice restaurant, but that's the extent of it. So Jerry pulls out his one bottle of alcohol: Hennigan's scotch. He's been using it as paint thinner. Kramer bolts down a shot, and Jerry and Elaine both lean in to sniff: they can't smell it. Kramer wanders off through th

 

I don't get it, why is it so bad to get a friend a nice gift just because it happens to be on sale? I like getting expensive gifts, but receiving one does make me feel guilty. If the giver gets it on sale, that's not so bad as it's usually something that I'd like anyway. Is this how you value people? By how much money you spend on them?

 

Because, KG, Americans are obsessed with financial status. Not necessarily obsessed with having money (because we definitely are), but we're especially obsessed with the "upwardly mobile" status & self-worth that money is supposed to give you. The modest amongst us would certainly be taken aback at the idea that somebody spent a lot of money on them for a gift. But at the same time, we're often secretly impressed that people would spend so much of their money on us, whatever the reason.

We're hypocritical that way. It's considered crass to directly ask somebody how much money they earn (or in this case paid for a gift), and yet we often get offended that people wouldn't spend full price on a gift on our behalf. We don't like to think that, to friends & family, we're just not worth the full price of a gift. Elaine learns that lesson the hard way in this ep. It makes us think we're not "special" enough. Want proof? Just ask an average American woman if she'd prefer a real diamond or a cubic zirconia.

 

Note to self: never buy a present for any American.

So you don't take the price tage off even when you wrap a gift? Who cares how much it cost, the person bought you a present. If someone was like that to me when I got them a good gift for a great price, I'd take it back and reconsider my relationship with them. It's rude and ungrateful.

 

Well, yeah, of course we take the tags off.

But yes, of course it's ridiculous. And that's exactly what this episode was supposed to be lampooning. Of course, Elaine was receiving a gift from George, so it kinda stands to reason that she should have known something was off...

No offense, but it's stuff like this that has me convinced that Seinfeld doesn't really translate well overseas. Seinfeld is, in a weird way, a uniquely "American" sitcom in that it satirizes the bits of conventional American culture that baffle even ourselves. Episodes like this one resonate with Americans because this is one of those episodes where we really do see ourselves within the script. No matter how hard we try, we can't help but reflexively wonder what the monetary value of a gift is. Which is to say, we can't help but wonder what our own individual personalities are worth to our friends & family under the guise of gift-giving.

It's one of the reasons Yanks love to bitch & complain about the Christmas season every year: the social obligation of gift-giving in circumstances that aren't always perceived as sincere.

 

Drago, there are some things in Seinfeld that traslate, this is not one of them though.

Fortunately, you might say.

I for one have never wondered abouthow much a gift cost when I have recieved it, as it's the gift itself not the price that makes it good.

 

It's not that the gift is on sale, it's that it's discounted for a defect, said red dot, which is significantly large enough that every spots it almost immediately.

Alot of great stuff in this episode, especially the tremendous casting of Lipman. The cleaning lady's monologue as well.

 

Yeah, the problem is not that it's discounted. It's that it's discounted because it's damaged. George tried to pass off a flawed gift on Elaine.

 

Oh right, that's understandable as well as well as a very George thing to do, him being a cheapskate. I thought the red dot meant it was on sale or something.

I wouldn't give a damaged sweater to someone. Unless said sweater was one of mine alreadu, I didn't plan on seeing it again and the person I was giving it to didn't have a sweater.

 

The Suicide

The stand-up is about physicals. For the urine samples: "Then there's always the amount question." Then any test, you want to not just do well, but do extraordinary. "What you heard was a cotton ball touching a piece of felt."

"Let me ask you something: if you named a kid Rasputin, do you think that would have a negative effect on his life?" Jerry asks Elaine, then starts bugging her about the fact that she's eating chips right before they're going out to dinner. She says she has to stock up because she's going to fast for three days for some ulcer test. "Tell me, have you ever fasted?" "Well, once I didn't have dinner until nine o'clock. I tell you, that was pretty rough."

Jerry takes the garbage out, and out in the hall he runs into George coming up. Jerry, profoundly lazy as he is, asks George to throw out the garbage for him. It's this wonderful moment of Jerry acting like the world just revolves around him. He shouldn't have to do this; other people should do it for him. George laughs him off; he's not that pathetic. Then Jerry asks again, so George says he'll do it for two bucks. Jerry goes down to fifty cents. He says it'll be enough to get George a Drake's coffee cake. George says that's not enough, and starts up about this vacation to the Cayman Islands. "I don't get you. Who goes on vacation without a job? What, do you need a break from getting up at eleven?" Then this woman Gina comes out of the apartment next to Jerry, and Jerry starts interrogating her about Drake's coffee cake. Her boyfriend, Martin, comes out of the apartment and sees Gina with her arm on Jerry's as they're joking around, and grumbles at Jerry and walks off. I have to say, I love the look of this guy. Giant, goatee, long hair, weird hat, bandana around his neck, sunglasses inside -- scary-looking fellow. Jerry just drops the bag of trash at Kramer's door, knocks, and then runs into his own apartment. Kramer comes out, looks around, grabs the trash, and goes inside.

Back inside the apartment, George remembers that he had a dream about Martin last night. "He was doing stand-up comedy in Kennebunkport, Maine, in this really ominous nightclub. The stage was on a cliff, and the audience kept throwing all the comics off." "I think I've played there." George says he's had other paranormal stuff happening to him lately. "You're a little paranormal. Name me one paranormal thing that's happened to you." "I knew I was going to be bald." "Your father's bald." "Baldness is inherited from the mother's side, Jerry." "But your mother's bald too!" Elaine says she has a friend who goes to a psychic, and she'll get him an appointment. George goes for it. "Psychics, vacations, how about getting a job?" asks Jerry. Elaine then wonders what Gandhi ate before his fasts. "I heard he used to polish off a box of Triscuits. Gandhi loooved Triscuits."

Now it's the middle of the night, and someone is pounding on Jerry's door. It's Gina, who says that Martin ODed on pills in a suicide attempt. Jerry wants to get his robe, and he and Gina start this long argument over whether or not he's got time to get his robe, and finally she lets him get it, but he says he doesn't need it, and then they argue again as she tells him to just get the robe, and then she finally gives up and tells him to just come then, at which point he breaks away and runs to get the robe. Another reminder that you do not want these people responsible for your well-being.

Now Jerry and Gina are at the hospital, in the room with Martin, who's in a coma. She says he tried to kill himself because she broke up with him because he was too jealous. Jerry says he was just being friendly in the hall; "I wasn't," she replies. She starts trying to come on to Jerry, but Jerry is of course hugely bothered by the fact that he's sitting in the same room as Martin. "Are you sure he can't hear anything?" He starts shouting in Martin's face. Gina starts flipping out, demanding that Jerry kiss her right there. The woman does not seem quite stable. "Is this the proper venue?" She's pulling him ov

 

The Subway

The stand-up is about bumper cars, and how there's always one kid who just fails miserably, and gets stuck over in a corner. Pretty good, and I love the bumper cars, so I find it pretty amusing.

In Monk's, Kramer is listing all these hugely complicated ways to get to Coney Island by subway. "Couldn't he just take the D straight to Coney Island?" asks Elaine. "Well, yeah," says Kramer, with this wonderful "but why would you want to do that?" attitude. George has a job interview, and Jerry gives him advice from Death of a Salesman. "What, you're comparing me to Biff Loman? Very encouraging. The biggest loser in the history of American literature." Elaine is going to a lesbian wedding; George wonders how they figure out who the bride and groom are; Elaine blows him off, and George insists that it's a legitimate question. Jerry is tired. The scene's basically a great big glob of plot setup. However, we do get the great semi-sequitur from George: "I always get the feeling when lesbians are looking at me, they're thinking, 'That's why I'm not a heterosexual.'" Which actually gets audience applause, the first time I recall hearing that. Everybody takes off and sticks Jerry with the check by mutual consent.

Thankfully, they held off on Kramer's exposition until now, with them all on the subway together, as he lists off the huge assortment of tickets he's heading down to pay. "Speeding, running a red light, no license, no registration. No plates, no brake lights, no rear-view mirror. Look at that." "No doors?" "Yeah, I'm fighting that one." A street musician in dark glasses comes by playing a violin; Elaine and Kramer give him some money. George says that he can't carry change in these pants; I love the way he feels the need to explain himself, like he's constantly burdened by guilt. Jerry reluctantly drops in a few cents. "That guy's not blind!" George complains. We now get Jerry's exposition: he has to go to Coney Island to pick up his stolen car, which is a great tie back to the hilarious thief from The Alternate Side. "Not only did they find it, it was Simonized, and the front end was aligned." He sees this as an excuse to go to the amusement park, and is desperate to get somebody to go with him; of course, they all have things to do. I like the way Jerry sees this in terms of an excuse to get to do something; as an adult, you can't just go to Coney Island, but if you've got an excuse to be there, well . . . . It's the sort of justification we all use. Jerry actually flat-out calls George "Biff" too, which will be the start of a pretty subtle running joke.

They all get off the car, stare awkwardly at each other for a bit, and split up. Elaine is clutching this wedding gift to her belly, a pretty obvious pregnancy coverup when you know what you're looking at.

Jerry gets on his car, and the shots set up the weird-looking guy next to him and the fat man across from him. George gets aboard his car, and he's sitting right by this good-looking woman who keeps sneaking glances at him. Kramer pratfalls his way across a car in this great frantic search for a seat, with each one getting grabbed right before he gets there, and he just bounces all over the place before finally wedging himself in next to this fat kid who's taking up two seats, half shoving him to the side and half sitting on his lap. Great Kramer moment.

Jerry starts to fall asleep, leaning over onto the shoulder of the guy next to him. I like the little bait-and-switch, with it seeming like this sort of weird, rodent-faced guy is going to be the main storyline here, but he just gets up and moves when Jerry keeps falling asleep on him, and Jerry gets to do a bit of physical comedy as he slowly falls over into the empty space.

Meanwhile, George sees this woman start playing with her leg, meets her eyes, and they start talking. She asks if he's looking for a job because he's reading the classified, and George immediately launches into the lies with absolute assurance. He's all about the stocks page. "So you're in the market?" "O