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

The Jacket

A real Larry David story. The man has led a truly remarkable life.

The stand-up is about clothes, and how shows and movies about the future have everyone with the same outfit, and we should all just have one outfit now. Not bad.

We start with Jerry and Elaine shopping; the salesman goes to see if he has something in the back. Jerry and Elaine start riffing on "the back" and how there should be a store that's just the back. Jerry then starts playing with the displays and demonstrates a "tie carwash" to Elaine. It's not really funny, but it's very true-to-life as one of the inane things people do to amuse themselves. A woman then butts in to comment on the book Elaine is holding; Jerry says it's by her father, a very good author. It's an extremely clunky exposition device. Jerry is nervous about coming to see Alton Benes with Elaine; she wants a buffer, but he's intimidated by his stature as an author. "Frankly, I prefer the company of nitwits." Elaine responds that that's must be why they're not together anymore; Jerry mimes pulling a knife from his back. The superior response would have been, "No, that's why I stayed friends with you." Jerry finds a suede jacket that he loves. He's convinced it's perfect; I'm not seeing what he's in love with, honestly. The fact that he's wearing slacks that look like could double as parachute pants doesn't really help. (There's a deleted scene that actually explains this: Jerry comes out of the dressing room complaining that the pants are huge. The salesman walks by and declares, "It's a nice pant" with absolute authority. Great mockery of the ridiculous way salesmen just tell you everything looks great on you. The salesmen keeps fussing with the pants, and then keeps walking super-close behind Jerry as Jerry moves around the store talking with Elaine. Jerry asks him to back off; he moves back about half an inch. It then launches into the intro. It's too bad they didn't keep it; it's really about the strongest part of the whole opening scene.) Jerry is upset that he has to make a decision whether to buy the expensive jacket or not; he hates having to make that kind of choice. I get it. There's more in a deleted scene: Elaine urges him to buy it; he wants to know why she's so interested. "I just like watching people spend money."

We then see Jerry in his apartment, hanging out on the couch in his PJs and the suede jacket. I . . . actually just did this with an overcoat I bought. Kramer bursts in to compliment the jacket. "That's more you than you've ever been." Kramer, like Elaine, finds the pink candy-striped lining weird, and starts interrogating him about how much it costs. He finds the price tag and responds, "Whoah, Nellie." I like the fact that Kramer and Elaine both instantly freak out over the price, but we never actually get a hard number. Kramer starts asking about Jerry's old jacket and mooching his way into it before Jerry just surrenders. Kramer walks up to the mirror and starts admiring himself in the ill-fitting jacket.

We then get George wandering into Jerry's apartment for the meeting with Alton, with some song from Les Miserables stuck in his head. "You know, Schumann went crazy from that," Jerry says. "Artie Schumann from Camp Hatchapee?" "No, you idiot." "What are you, Bud Abbott? What are you calling me an idiot for?" George pretends to recognize the composer's name by pronouncing it with an accent, and Jerry explains that Schumann went crazy from getting a note stuck in his head, purely to freak out George. It works. Jerry then strides out in his jacket, impressing George. He's confident and assured now. George: "Can I say one thing to you? And I say this with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality. It's fabulous." He then starts bugging him about how much it cost. Jerry refuses to answer and just stares at him as George works himself into a frenzy, going higher and higher in price, until he's convinced himself the jacket cost over a thousand dollars based purely on Jerry's staring at him. Perfect George. Kramer then pops in and asks

 

I love, love, love when George imitates Alton's voice. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at a sitcom as when I saw that part.

 

It comes absolutely out of nowhere, but it's exactly the kind of thing a person would do.

 

Tierney was crazy. If you get the DVD of Born to Kill and listen to the commentary (after watching the movie, which is very good), you find out that he was a complete lunatic, probably the most dangerous person who ever worked in Hollywood. The stories the guy on the commentary, who actually knew Tierney, tells are alternately hilarious and sort of scary. The best one is a bit where Tierney is pursued by some reporters into a public bathroom and he goes off on them for trying to look at his privates. I mean, what a nutcase. Hilarious stuff.

But, it is a shame. He is a great character in this episode and this episode really does capture perfectly that feeling of total awkwardness when you're supposed to be interacting with someone and just utterly bombing and you know it. Great episode.

 

The Chinese Restaurant

The ultimate show about nothing episode. NBC did not get it. But they let them do it anyway. God, I miss those days.

The stand-up is about going over time on pay phones and getting away with not paying because it's a public phone and there's nothing they can do to you. Funny, but in a very abstract way; this is one of the few observational bits that hasn't exactly stayed relevant.

We then get Jerry, George, and Elaine walking into a Chinese restaurant, arguing about whether the city needs more cops or more garbagemen. No Kramer; they didn't yet conceive of him as hanging out with the group. They spend forever trying to figure out how many will be in their party because George and his girlfriend are "complicated." It'll be "Five, ten minutes." Elaine wants to go somewhere else right away; she's starving. Too starving for a five-minute wait? Good Lord. Talk about instant gratification. George tries to get the pay phone to talk to Tatiana, his girlfriend; the guy on it just ignores him when he asks how long he'll be. Jerry lied to his uncle about not being able to have dinner to get out here. Elaine wants to get menus so they can order right away; Jerry can't look at the menu unless he's at the table. Such a stickler. George is muttering to them about the nerve of this guy on the phone just chatting away. "I just can't believe the way people are. What is it with humanity? What kind of world do we live in?" That's right, George is upset with humanity because a guy doesn't get off the phone right when George wants it. Meanwhile Elaine complains to Jerry about how OCD he is.

Jerry then starts thinking he recognizes a woman. Then people walk right in and get a table. Elaine is indignant. Jerry assumes there's a reason and doesn't care. George is bugging the phone guy, who just turns his back on him again. Elaine makes Jerry come up and ask the maitre d' about why those people got seated. For a show about nothing, there's an awful lot going on. The maitre d' just talks in Chinese to another woman, then says they were here before. Now George is just plain harassing the phone guy, saying "Hey!" and having the guy turn, smile at him, and turn back around to continue ignoring him. George signals Jerry over and asks, "If anything happens here, can I count on you?" Which is just the perfect question to ask here. "What?!" "If we decide to go at it." "Yeah, I want to get into a rumble." George then starts complaining about how the guy's clothes match, and unnecessarily makes it clear that "I really hate this guy." And they cast a great guy; he really does have this vibe of just being an ass about him. Jerry then starts asking George to identify this woman he thinks he recognizes. Elaine keeps complaining about how hungry she is; she's getting really annoying. She says restaurants shouldn't be first-come-first-served; it should be hunger-based. Yeah, that'd work.

Then, one of the best exchanges of the episode: "I feel like just walking over there and taking some food off of somebody's plate." "I'll tell you what: there's fifty bucks in it for you if you do it." Jerry, of course, can't resist the chance to amuse himself by watching his friends make fools of themselves. "What do you mean?" "You walk over to that table, pick up an egg roll -- you don't say anything -- you eat it, say 'Thank you very much,' wipe your mouth, walk away, I give you fifty bucks." "What are they going to do?" George says, getting into it, while Elaine has a huge smile across her face. "They won't do anything -- in fact, you'll be giving them a story to tell for the rest of their lives." They keep going on; Jerry points out a table of old folks, Elaine demands assurances that there won't be some loophole to cheat her out of her money. "Should I do it, George?" "For fifty bucks? I'd put my face in their soup and blow." George, the man with no dignity . . . especially when he's trying to avenge old slights to his dignity.

Elaine, all huge smiles, decides she's doing it. She just stands there with this remarkably creepy smil

 

Two great episodes in a row. Aside from the psycho performance as Elaine's Dad, what will probably always stick out in my mind about the Jacket is George singing the tune from Les Mis. I catch myself doing it all the time.

As for Chinese Restaurant, what makes it so great is that it's not only ground-breaking in terms of its plot (or lack thereof) but the incredible quality of every single joke. Not a single misstep in the the entire episode, every line fits perfectly. Jerry plays his role as a sort of ring master perfectly. And George is simply out of this world. "We're living in a society!" "I know I'm not Cartwright!" Love his bit about having to go to the bathroom, too. And a great guest role by the maitre d', his description of the phone call "Yes, yes, I tell her you not here, she said curse word, I hang up." is just brilliant, with pitch-perfect delivery.

And "five, ten minutes" is the first thing that pops into my head any time I have to wait for anything.

When push comes to shove, what makes The Chinese Restaurant so great is that it's just so damn funny from start to finish.

 

The maitre d' just kills. One of the later-episode features talks about how the show used a lot of characters that they compared to a vaudeville device, I think, where you have a character who just opposes your characters for no perceptible reason. He just likes to foil them. The guy behind the counter who refuses to actually sell anything to his customers. The maitre d' and his affable, airheaded, complete detachment from reality is a perfect example of that kind of ridiculous, random antagonist character.

 

One of the greater moments in the episode is when the older gentleman comes in and gets a table right away. He's clearly Jewish, it's one of the first times the show took a jab at Jewish stereotypes, and it works really well. If you've ever been to a Chinese restaurant in New York, you've seen that guy.

EDIT: I've often said that if I, as a Catholic of German decent, had written those stories, I've been run out of town as an anti-Semite.

 

The whole Cartwright scene just slays me

 

This particular episode is painfully funny - I think one of the reasons Seinfeld was so popular was because many could relate to a lot of the events/situations going on in the show. Though I myself have never a specific experience as depicted in this episode, I have been to restaurants where I've had to wait forever to be seated.

 

This is one of those iconic Seinfeld episodes that it's very relate-able. I've really enjoyed it every time that I've seen it. It's just hilarious.

 

"OF COURSE I'M NOT CARTWRIGHT!" "YOU KNOW WE'RE LIVING IN A SOCIETY!" "Mr. Cohen always here." "He's always here? What does that mean? What does that mean?" An "impending intestinal event." I mean, this is just a masterpiece. I kind of regret Kramer's presence here; then again, the episode is consistently brilliant from start to finish, so it works fine without him too. Yes, the bit you write about the characters who are oppositional for no reason is dead on; and they were always perfectly cast too.

 

Definitely a bit odd without Kramer, but I think it works out for the best -- it's always a fine line with him in a scene, I think he could have been a bit much and pushed some scenes over the edge.

 

On the one hand, Kramer's always great and there's a lot of stuff they could have done with him here. On the other hand, the episode is already so packed full of stuff that you'd have to cut something good to fit him in. Probably the ideal solution is the approach they seem to have taken with The Parking Garage -- just do another The Chinese Restaurant-style episode but with Kramer.

 

The Phone Message

"The bad thing about television is that everybody you see on television is doing something better than what you're doing." He starts riffing on how excited people are in soda commercials. Then you realize you're drinking the same thing, "and it's like, you know, there are people spiking volleyballs, jet skis, girls in bikinis, and I'm standing there going, 'Maybe I'm putting too much ice in mine.'" One of the very good stand-up openers.

So we open with George and Jerry going into Monk's; George is reporting on having met a girl and being very nervous about asking her out, and having no idea if she's into him or what to do. Then back at the office, someone called Lloyd bugs him to ask her out. The idea of George having friends, people he talks to outside of the Seinfeld Four, is just bizarre. "For me to ask a woman out, I have to get into a mental state like the karate guys before they break the bricks." Lloyd calls him a wuss, and so then George has to call her up and ask her out. He wants to sound casual, though, so he starts eating an apple. Jerry mocks him without George picking up on it. He gets the enthusiastic hi, which is key, she agrees to go out, and then George gets off the phone right away. Jerry understand this; "Sure, it's like robbing a bank. You don't loiter around in front of the teller holding that big bag of money." Jerry and George both have dates on the same night.

Cut to George telling his date that he has forty pairs of underwear; rather than do the wash, he just keeps buying more. His goal is to have a pair for each day of the year, so he only has to do the wash once. He's being jokey and charming about it, but still, this is the George we know. Then we Jerry doing an absolutely abysmal Scottish accent to his date. George's date then asks him up for coffee. He responds that he can't drink coffee late at night. She appears confused. She awkwardly says goodnight; his response: "Take it easy." She gets out, George looks confused, realizes what just happens, and begins striking himself about the head and face. Jerry's date says she'd invite him up but the place is being painted; "Oh, that's okay." "Unless you want to go to your place." "Okay, but there's no cake or anything if that's what you're looking for." Jerry's comprehension, but absolute confidence and nonchalance, is in perfect contrast to George's feigned nonchalance, but manic attitude and total inability to perform the dating role.

We then get George driving home alone, shouting "'Take it easy'! 'Take it easy'!" to himself. Cut to Jerry on the couch with his date, drinking orange juice, holding forth on suicide notes, and how "it's just common courtesy" to leave one. "I don't know. That's just the way I was brought up." He then starts up on how much he hates his pants, and she chimes in with, "Are those cotton Dockers?" which is apparently a commercial line. This whole plotline came directly out of Jerry's real-life loathing of that commercial. It's an oddly dated reference for Seinfeld to make; not just very contemporary, but ephemerally contemporary. He tells her he hates the commercial; she likes it. He freezes. "You like that commercial?" He goes off on how terrible it is, all these guys "standing around, supposedly being very casual and witty." She likes the guys. "Yeah, they're so funny and so comfortable with each other, and I could be comfortable too if I had pants like that. I could sit on a porch and wrestle around and maybe even be part of a real bull session," he says mockingly. She says she knows guys like that and the dialogue "rings true" and then settles back against Jerry, putting his hand on her chest. Jerry almost immediately starts going off about the commercial again. It's the first truly perfect characterization of a Jerry relationship -- he's absolutely confident and absolutely indifferent, and has no trouble picking up the woman, but he immediately starts sabotaging it with his neuroses and his need to find flaws that he just can't stand. He can't stand how the dialogue has nothing

 

The execution on the last line is maybe a little flat, but I love it anyway -- the idea that he went through all those hoops to switch the tapes and she found the messages funny was just great. The episode is an absolute George/Jason Alexander tour-de-force from beginning to end, with the first inklings of his background ("I don't know what your parents did to you" "My father wears sneakers in the pool"). It's really unbelievable that Alexander was overlooked season after season by the Emmys while Michael Richards picked up 2 in the early seasons.

The other thing I love about the episode, and what really hooked me early on in the series, are the conversations in Monks and Jerry's apartment -- they always remind me of discussions my NY friends and I wuold have. As surreal as the show could be, there was always something incredibly realistic about it for me.

EDIT: Ijust checked, Alexander NEVER won an Emmy. That's a sham, take George out of the show and Seinfeld is only half the show it was.

 

This is one of my very favorite George episodes. I mean, the writing is just perfect and Alexander just nails him. The first awkward message, the one we see him leave, is one of the first moments when the show really gets ahead of itself in terms of television comedy; it sets a template for the cringe comedy of The Office and all its many imitators. I can hardly watch that scene; it's just so humiliating. And, of course, reminds us all of some fairly similar moment in our own lives. Or is it just me? Well, whatever.

I still kind of like the Dockers plot too. Like you say it's the first serious example of Jerry's total neurosis about being in a relationship. And, while the reference to the actual commercial is dated, the hook really isn't; I mean, we still have commercials like that. The dialogue 'rings true.' Yeah, right. That's hilarious, actually; the idea of a commercial's dialogue ringing true. The details on this show are just tremendous.

Yes, the "tippytoe, tippytoe, Lemon Tree!" entrance is high comedy. Tippytoe . . . so absurd and yet so perfect. I actually find the punchline kind of funny. It is, perhaps, a little more traditional sitcommy than Seinfeld usually is, but I think it works.

"Hey, everybody, the idiot's on!"

 

The idea of this woman being impressed by the dialogue in a pants commercial to the point that she passionately defends it is great. (I found a Dockers commercial here; it's not the one in question here, but it's from the same series of ads. Jerry is right to loathe it.)

And, yeah, this is really great as a George episode. There have been a lot of great George episodes, and this is one of them. The fact that Jason Alexander never won an Emmy is just a crime. He's really what makes the show work. To never recognize that is just incomprehensible.

 

The Apartment

And our stand-up is: painting his apartment. Nothing special. Then he starts on Star Trek, how the bridge of Enterprise was the ultimate living room: big chairs and a big screen, hurtling through space. "That's why all the aliens are always dropping in: because Kirk was the only one with the big screen."

Kramer moussed his hair. The first shot is just a close-up on his head, standing there. It's magnificent. Kramer loves it. "Tell me the truth: have you ever seen a better-looking guy?" "Looks . . . it's so subjective," responds Jerry. Elaine's friend is having a brunch for the New York Marathon ("I keep forgetting to enter that" says Kramer) and she can take Jerry along. Outside, we get Jerry's supers; they're arguing about cleaning the apartment of a neighbor one floor up who died. Manny is a really short Hispanic guy buried behind a ballcap, glasses, a turtleneck and jacket, and a goatee, who does nothing but shout loudly in Spanish to the other guy, and Harold is a portly, gayish white guy in a gaudy plaid shirt who does all the interacting with Jerry and is all soft-spoken and delicate. They're really a sort of broad pair (Oh, look, a pair of comically disparate gay guys, one of whom is pretty much entirely built around one gag), but I'm rather disappointed the writers didn't keep the characters around and develop them; I think they'd have been pretty good supporting characters if they were developed past being a one-note gag. They're not even that gaggy here; they're just kind of a gaggy concept dropped in to play a straight role as deliverers of exposition and argue a bit with each other. Manny's refusal to communicate with anyone other than Harold, with whom he spends the whole time arguing in Spanish, is amusing. Anyway, Harold says Elaine can have the apartment when Jerry asks. Kramer then comes out of his apartment to show off his mousse: "Manny, look, Kramer put mousse in his hair!" says Harold to the guy right next to him. Manny leans in to peer, and comments in Spanish; he clearly thinks it's terrible. Kramer thanks him for the compliment and walks off.

Jerry goes in and starts baiting Elaine with an "I've got something to say" look, and does his usual routing of toying with his friends for his own amusement and he gets her more and more excited and worked up with this whole it's-really-exciting routine. He finally starts: "Oh, Elaine, you know the way I am. Rarely ever thinking of myself. My only concern is the welfare and happiness of those closest to me. Sure, it hurts sometimes to give and give and give . . ." He finally tells her he got an apartment in the building. This whole thing is a great pickup on an actual bit of plot/character information from the first season, the kind of thing that would be a one-episode facet of the character on most other shows, immediately dropped thereafter. Elaine is super-excited. "You remember Mrs. Hudwalker, the ninety-four-year-old woman who lived above me?" "No." That would have been funny enough right there. "She died." "She died?!" "She died!" "She died!" Elaine is ecstatic. Such a Seinfeldian moment, with these characters just blissfully self-obsessed and completely indifferent to everyone else. "And the rent is only four hundred dollars a month. The response? Elaine growls out her first-ever "Get out!" and knocks Jerry back a full step. Elaine starts going off on how exciting it is that they'll be neighbors; Jerry immediately realizes what he just did and goes glum. Because the one thing he needs is another neighbor who'll be entering his apartment all the time. Plus, Elaine's going to be directly above him, so that'll make romance awkward.

We then get stand-up. "The problem with talking is that nobody stops you from saying the wrong thing." Not only is it absolutely true, it's the core idea of about half Seinfeld's episodes. He starts talking about how life would be so much better if it was like a movie, where when you screwed up someone would stop you and you'd get a do-over. "Think of the things you wish you could take ba

 

Not really anything to add on this one, Havac's last sentence nails it perfectly. I do love the Jerry-George dispute over the bigger idiot is, though. I've had similar conversations with friends.

EDIT: One interesting thing is that this may be the first episode where George somehow is able to do quite well with very attractive women, a theme that continued throughout the show.

 

The Stranded

The stand-up is about picking out cold medicine from the endless varieties. Quick-acting vs. long-lasting: "When do I need to feel good, now or later?" Then mocking drug commercials, with their representation of the generic human figure ("No face, mouth open; I think that's how drug companies see the public") suffering those random graphic representations of pain -- red wavy lines, fire, lightning. It's a pretty funny bit.

Jerry and George are in the drugstore; George got fleas from his cousin's dog. Really, why do you ask your friend to accompany you to buy flea medication? George wants to know if Jerry's going to a party; Jerry doesn't want to. Long Island is too far away; "It smacks of desperation." George tells him this woman from his office will be there. Jerry is unimpressed. George will drive. "Oh, now you're talking." George tells him it's supposed to be a good party. "What does that mean, good dip?" "There'll be girls there!" Jerry is, given his total lack of difficulty meeting girls, completely unimpressed. There are girls everywhere. Here, there, in his apartment building, on the street, in stores. George and Jerry then start comparing medicine to see if there's any actual difference, going through the ingredients. Jerry's has aloe, and isn't made in Jersey. George is going with that one. Jerry starts pointing out the existence of girls in the store to George as they go up to the counter. George walks away; he's sure he gave the clerk a twenty and only got change for a ten. "Oh boy, here we go." George starts telling the clerk she made a mistake; she's insistent that he gave her a ten, and is kind of an ass about it. The security guy forces George out of the building, while he claims "This is not over."

Cut to the party as they walk in. Elaine wants them to get into the crowd and blend in right away; Jerry wants to hold back and survey before getting involved. Perfect little bit of real-life humor. Jerry then shoots off a non-sequitur, asking who would ever actually hold a party, have a bunch of other people trash your house. George wanders off with this Ava person from his office, talking boring office crap with everybody. "Oh, this has got disaster written all over it," says Jerry. He tells Elaine to work out a signal if they get in a bad conversation. "How old are you?" "Thirty-six. What's the signal?" Jerry settles on the ridiculous head-pat as a signal; Elaine just blows him off.

We get Jerry on the couch; "You came all the way out from Manhattan for this?" says the guy next to him, just as Jerry predicted someone would. "So, what do you do?" Jerry starts head-patting. "I'm a comedian." "Are you? Let me ask you something. Where do you get your material?" He seems completely uninterested. "I hear a voice." "What kind of voice?" "A man's voice, but he speaks in German, so I have to get it translated." "Why do you keep tapping your head?" Jerry continues not to take this guy seriously.

Meanwhile, Elaine is patting her head as a guy talks to her about George Washington Carver, and how "the man devoted his whole life to the peanut. Imagine having so much passion for something." "You know, people tell me I'm a funny guy," says Jerry's buddy. This dullard could not possibly seem less funny. Jerry just nods slowly. "I've often wondered if he ever worked with the pecan." Great intercutting.

George comes over to Jerry; he's super-excited by the fact that Ava's seemed interested in him all evening, when she never showed any signs in the office. "How do you account for this difference?" "I don't know. Maybe a safe fell on her head." George's self-confidence knows no bounds. He says that he can always tell when a woman likes him, which makes no sense and is humanly impossible. It's them he doesn't let know if he likes them. "If anything, I try to make them think I don't like them, then they think, 'Oh, look at this guy, he's not even looking at me. He must have something going for him.'" Jerry wants to leave, George says he wants a half-hour to close the deal.

We then get Elaine talking to t

 

Elaine's "dingo" comment is probably my favorite part of the episode. Definitely some funny moments, but the whole package doesn't quite work.

 

The dingo thing is a more memorable gag, but I think the "Make love to me" conversation has to be the highlight of the episode. "What am I, in the circus?"

 

I recently picked up Seasons 1, 2, and 9 of Seinfeld on DVD...I should get caught up pretty soon. It's been a while since I've seen some of the early episodes.