Some Drivel On...Seinfeld's Finale

The “Seinfeld” finale in which Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), George (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Kramer (Michael Richards) go to prison after violating The Good Samaritan Law could never have been what we wanted – needed – it to be. That is partially because when it comes to television conclusions, “everybody writes their own finale in their own head,” as Seinfeld co-creator and head writer Larry David said in a 2014 interview, “and often they’re disappointed, because it’s not what they wrote.” But it is also because television endings typically involve ceremony, significance, and a kind of ultimate enlightenment whereas “Seinfeld” was a show all about the quotidian, and the trivial, and a famed No Hugging, No Learning aversion to epiphanies. “Newhart’s” finale from 1990 has long been considered a paragon of the form given its twist, the eponymous character waking up to discover the entire series was just a dream of the character in “The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-1978), uproarious if revealing, returning to the way it was, sending its viewers home in the glow of cozy nostalgia. You can imagine the May 14, 1998, audience of 76.3 million wishing the “Seinfeld” finale was all a dream too. Because it wasn’t, the conclusion, despite the high concept, felt abrasively real. Seinfeld once noted that there was “nothing really likable about (the characters) except that they remind you of yourself.” If these characters were, on some level, us, rather than feeling celebratory, we were made to feel...culpable?

Perhaps because of its polarizing legacy, I found myself thinking less of The Finale’s broader cultural impact as its 25th anniversary approached than, simply, the quality of the episode itself, one in which NBC deciding to resurrect the Jerry TV pilot of Season 4 prompts the gang to jubilantly spirit off to Paris, only for the private jet to make an emergency landing in small town Massachusetts where the quartet mocking a robbery in progress lands them in jail for failing to help and then in court where their longstanding antisocial predilections are literally put on trial. It’s important to remember that David had left “Seinfeld” as head writer two years earlier, that The Finale was his return, and that in the year before it he had been writing and directing his feature film debut, a harshly received comedy called “Sour Grapes” that was released in April 1998. Indeed, it’s noticeable just how much The Finale feels like a movie. 

For one thing, it runs an hour and fifteen minutes, an eternity for a sitcom, and contains a jarring amount of dead space, meaning moments and scenes that are strictly about advancing the plot. Those later seasons of “Seinfeld” often had a lot of plot but they tore through it at a galloping pace, always cognizant that humor came first. And though the conclusion’s most predominant move in bringing back a whole cavalcade of characters, from Babu to the Bubble Boy, wronged by our anti-heroic quartet to doom them is inspired, it also has the odd effect of repeatedly reducing our anti-heroic quartet to mere spectators in their biggest episode, fascinating in theory, but straining out considerable comedy in the practical application, leaving an episode that feels unbalanced.

It’s unfortunate because when the oversized Finale sweats the small stuff, it works to some degree. George angrily proclaiming that he’s “sick of health” when Jerry points out he’s still healthy is the one line from The Finale I’ve carried with me the last quarter-century while we are treated to the final few glorious bursts of Alexander and Seinfeld’s argumentative dynamic, both in the NBC offices and Jerry’s apartment where he lectures on the Laws of Peeing with the Bathroom Door Open. Elaine’s attempted cellphone calls to a friend in need at all the worst moments, meanwhile, is a funny thread that can’t help but lose a little gas simply on account of the episode’s length. (Kramer sort of comes across as an odd man out here, maybe because his storylines often involved harebrained schemes and the harebrained scheme here is the overarching A plot.) The Finale is never better, though, than the bookends.

It opens in the coffee shop where George’s sidesplitting skirmish with a woman (McNally Sagal, dry, really funny) in the booth behind him over her refusing to lend her table’s ketchup bottle foreshadows a fellow human refusing help as he, himself, and others, will refuse to help in just a little while. Even without what’s to come, however, this scene works in and of itself, evoking the society we live in, to paraphrase George in the legendary Chinese Restaurant episode, as crumbling, teetering. If there was an arc to the series, it was that the characters – George and Elaine in particular – seemed to get angrier as it went along, neurosis collapsing into bitterness, a sense of the characters wanting to break free from this 9-season cycle of suffering. (“I can’t spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes,” Elaine confesses in Season 8, a line the incomparable Louis-Dreyfus imbued with genuine comic desperation, “to pore over the excruciating minutiae of every single daily event.”) In essence, that’s what the reboot of Jerry is meant to epitomize, breaking free from the cycle.

And while The Finale is sometimes an unsuccessful slog in seeing that anti-arc through, it’s what the end still suggests, the four characters in a holding cell that may as well be the coffee shop, still focusing on the trivial as they get set to endure their year-long sentence behind bars. That the show ends with a repeat of the first conversation from “The Seinfeld Chronicles” doesn’t feel lazy or even nostalgic, but crucial and pointedly cruel. Their cycle of suffering begins anew. 

A Forgotten Seinfeld Guest Star

In the wake of Philip Baker Hall’s death, I did what any self-respecting “Seinfeld” devotee would do and watched “The Library” for, like, you know, the 273rd time. That episode, the fifth one of Season 3, debuting in October 1991, when the show was improbably both still rounding into form and already brilliant, is famous, of course, for Hall’s aptly named library cop Joe Bookman investigating Jerry for having checked out Tropic of Cancer in 1971 and never returning it. Karen Heller deemed Hall’s turn as a “performance for the ages” in The Washington Post and quoted comedian Patton Oswalt lauding it as “hands down, the greatest guest spot in a sitcom, ever.” It’s hard to argue. Screen Rant puts him at #13, which seems low, and EW had him at #5, which feels closer to the truth. Rolling Stone rated Bookman as the 30th best character – including Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer – in the show’s history. Of course, it also listed Marcy (Suzanne Cryer) of “The Yada Yada” at #31, which is curious, if interesting and unique, an emblem of a list with some true personality rather than robotically conforming to the consensus, and leads me into what I really want to talk about here.

“The Library” is the first episode to feature Elaine’s Pendant Publishing boss Mr. Lippman. You probably remember Mr. Lippman played by Richard Fancy, memorably excoriating Elaine for her overuse of exclamation points (“I put a quarter in the machine but the Clark Bar didn’t COME OUT!”) among other flights of comedy. But that first time out in “The Library," Mr. Lippman was played by Harris Shore in a performance that was less Jewish than Fancy’s turn and more White Anglo Saxon Protestant. This sort of midstream casting change happened with other characters, of course. Both Morty Seinfeld and Frank Costanza were originally played by Philip Bruns and John Randolph, respectively, before being replaced by Barney Martin and Jerry Stiller. It speaks to the difficulty of getting casting right the first time out which speaks to how incredible it is that they got the casting of Joe Bookman so absolutely correct; Philip Baker Hall is Joe Bookman. But casting in “Seinfeld” cuts so much deeper, always did, and what I had sort of forgotten was another less heralded – nay, not heralded at all – guest star in the very same episode. 

This was Marie Barrientos. (Her IMDb profile is not all that hefty, with a few “Law & Order” episodes, one episode of “Party of Five,” and some stuff you’ve never heard of.) She plays Mr. Lippman’s receptionist, appearing in but a single scene, coming under questioning from Elaine in the episode’s D plot about her suspicions that Lippman is conspiring to fire her because the whole office has put in a lunch order without asking her what she wanted. Throughout this scene Barrientos is flipping through a People Magazine, even when Lippman briefly exits his office and stands right there, custom suggesting she should at least pretend to work, and possesses this look throughout that is less irritation or confusion with Elaine’s fears than utter impassivity. When Elaine asks point blank if there is something she’s not being told, if Lippman is getting rid of her, the nameless Receptionist replies, “I don’t know anything,” which in Barrientos’s almost Natasha Lyonne-like outer borough-ish accent is not only objectively hysterical but pushes past the point of either real innocence or feigned innocence to become something like incredulous indifference. It’s not so much that the receptionist doesn’t know as it is that she doesn’t care.

So, here we have Bookman, professionally loyal, so steadfast in his employment he criticizes the librarian for deigning to have a private life. As such, the nameless Receptionist emerges as his kind of spiritual opposite, mindlessly paging through a periodical rather than intently reading a book and totally out of tune with her own occupation, Barrientos’s all-aces dead-eyed expression and vocalization a hysterical manifestation of glorious clock watching indolence. Bookman may well be a paragon of virtue in his own mind, but you tell me, who’s the real hero? 

Ranking the 12 Funniest Things in Seinfeld’s The Doodle

Recently the tenth season of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, in which “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David plays himself, premiered. This episode, for reasons too convoluted to explain here, gradually builds to a moment when David’s Secretary, having accused him of sexual harassment, walks in on him wearing a bathrobe and a MAGA hat and sitting with his manager (Jeff Garlin) who looks suspiciously like Harvey Weinstein. David’s panicked reaction in combination with the cumulative effect from every narrative plant sprouting all at once made me laugh so hard that not only did I shed a few tears but My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife expressed concern for my well-being. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long, long time, probably since “Seinfeld” was on the air.

As if to cosmically prove the point, last week, after another especially long day in present-day America, I came home and soothed my weary soul with an episode of “Seinfeld.” Used to be, when I was much, much younger, all I did was rewatch the show. I don’t do that much now. And so, when I fired up Season 6’s “The Doodle”, it wasn’t like seeing it for the first time all over again but more akin to when I saw Neko Case live for the first time in, like, five or six years and her voice, that blessed voice, blew me away all over again.

“The Doodle” doesn’t build as well as my favorite-favorite-FAVORITE “Seinfeld” episodes, like “The Race” or “The Fusilli Jerry”, but, my God, everything else. I mean, somehow, inconceivably, I’d forgotten its dense packaging of uproarious comedy. And so. Because 2020 has already been long and bad, and seems positioned to get even worse, I thought, let’s take the edge off. As it happens, it’s been 25 years since “The Doodle” first aired; here’s to its silver anniversary.

Ranking the 12th Funniest Things in Seinfeld's The Doodle

12. George’s Hello. Enraged by the doodle his girlfriend, Paula (Christa Miller), has drawn of him, convinced it renders him as grotesque, as George, getting up from the diner booth to go to the bathroom, passes Elaine just as she enters and offers a salutation that does not so much barely conceal his rage as not conceal it at all.

11. Draped in Velvet. It says something about his episode’s immense quality that George finally living out his dream and draping himself in velvet, much to Jerry’s astonishment and horror, is this far down the list.

10. Toothbrush. Jerry’s germaphobia was legend, of course, and while there are numerous comic examples to cite, it’s difficult to top this one, made so not so much because of dialogue, as it often was, but because of Seinfeld’s acting, trying to will himself to use his girlfriend’s toothbrush after forgetting his own but ultimately, finally, as if there is an invisible force field between his lips and the bristles, can’t.

9. Elaine: “George should be relieved.” Jerry: “When he’s dead he’ll be relieved.”

8. Mackinaw Peaches. Kramer’s aria on his beloved Oregon peaches that are only ripe for two weeks a year isn’t so much funny in a fundamental kind of way as it is made funny by the conviction with which Michael Richards has his character espouse belief in this piece of fruit as an earthly miracle.

7. Kramer Runs Away. Upon learning he has just unwittingly spent an hour-and-a-half inside Jerry’s fumigated apartment, a panic-stricken Kramer flees. It begins with an as-usual ace bit of Richards physical comedy, sort of throwing his head back, as if he’s just been stabbed with an épée and then rushing forward. It ends with Jerry watching him run away, a one-of-a-kind expression of disbelief shading into disgust.

6. Kramer’s Billy Mumphrey Monologue. As grand as the Mackinaw Peach monologue is, as many times as I recite it apropos of any peach I consume, and while it is in all likelihood a Top 5 All Time Kramer monologue, it is only his second best monologue of THIS EPISODE compared to his explaining the manuscript, starring one Billy Mumphrey, to Elaine that she has to read for an all-important job interview and that has inadvertently become lost in Jerry’s apartment. For a moment, Richards renders his character as an eccentric literary critic holding court.

5. Elaine’s Billy Mumphrey Monologue. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s monologue, in which she just repeats the same monologue that Richards gives to the publisher interviewing her, is even BETTER. Because she’s builds from sheer, stalling terror to I-Got-This bonhomie.

4. Newman Has Fleas. Much of the episode hinges on a flea infestation of Jerry’s apartment, one caused, inevitably, by Newman. And when Jerry goes to confront his nemesis, it leads to a feat of hysterical blocking, the portly mailman trying to hide his incessant itching, as seen in the screenshot above, almost caught in the act, which comes across like their entire adversarial relationship distilled down to a single face off.

3. No More Nuts. As Jerry’s Uncle Leo, the late Len Lesser made extraordinary hay out of the simplest phrase – “Hello.” And yet, for all his memorable bothersome salutations, the Lesser line reading that I have always loved most was this one, after Jerry’s parents and Nana and Uncle Leo have taken over Elaine’s room at the Plaza, living like rock stars, which for a guy like Leo means binge-eating Macadamia Nuts, leading to him, in long shot, roiling in agony on the bed, moaning “No more nuts!”

2. Drawing Class. Did you know Julia Louis-Dreyfus only won a single Emmy for playing Elaine? Egregious. She should have won an Emmy for this scene alone, a scene building off George at the coffee shop asking her to find out if Paula likes him at the drawing class they take together.
“What are we,” Elaine asks, “in high school?” And that is how Louis-Dreyfus (and Christa Miller as Paula) play this scene – like high school. Indeed, it’s a sixty second tour de force in which Louis-Dreyfus turns up the vocal fry and accentuates her indolent posture. Anyone else would have made this feel too much like Steve Buscemi’s memorable moment on “30 Rock”, often shared in Internetz Memes, where as an obvious adult he briefly goes undercover as a high schooler. But Louis-Dreyfus transmutes the air in the room, not by acting like a high schooler but embodying the very damn being of one. In fact, let’s call this 1A.

1. Oh my God. When Kramer begins his Billy Mumphrey Monologue, Louis-Dreyfus has Elaine first respond with this, this resplendent look, not so much of bafflement, because she can believe it, but abject horror, recognizing the depths of her predicament, punctuating it with an all-time “Oh my God” that is a verbal manifestation of her look. In fact, she has another “Oh my God” later, and Jerry gets his own “Oh my God” too, both of which I strongly suspect are intentional, merely underlining just how good this “Oh my God” really is. JLD, a legend.

13 Best Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes Line Readings

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been having a moment for a good long while now, winning six consecutive Outstanding Lead Actress Emmys for her HBO show “Veep”, the same show on which she has apparently graduated from Veep to Prez. I say “apparently” because I admit I have never watched it, needing too much time for movies. And while she deserves this moment and while I hope it continues on into forever, I will simply never be able to separate Julia Louis-Dreyfus from “Seinfeld” so significantly does that seminal sitcom still echo in my mind. I mean, I have probably said something Elaine Benes said at least once a week for the last 20 years, often these days to the delight frustration of my girlfriend. And so when Louis-Dreyfus announced last week that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, it scorched my heart. I have no doubt she will, like this blog’s beloved Kylie Minogue, tell cancer what to go do with itself, but we nevertheless felt a celebration was in order.

As Elaine, Louis-Dreyfus got a lot of good lines, sure, incredible lines, and even more incredible monologues, but the moments of her most significant actorly luminescence were when the lines themselves were not necessarily all that much to write home about and yet she still made them sing anyway, with inflections, with off-kilter emphasis, with facial expression addendums. Everyone knows “The dingo ate your baby”, sure, and many more know her hollering “Get out!” as she shoved whatever unlucky bloke may have been present, but for my valueless money, none of her line readings bested this baker’s dozen. Stay strong, JLD.

13 Best Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes Line Readings

13. “I spoke to Tim Whatley.” We start here because this is truly evocative of how Dreyfus could take anything – literally anything – and unearth gold, both with clever vocal modulation and physical behavior. Here she emphasizes “Whatley” with great gusto while simultaneously tilting her body to an almost 45 degree angle as she looks up at Jerry, spicing up a simple declarative statement into this zany delight. If sitcoms are an actor’s medium, this proves it. (See here.)

12. “It’s a story about love, deception, greed, lust and unbridled enthusiasm.” After myriad plot machinations, Elaine, needing to analyze a book she has not read to nail an interview for a publishing job, is forced to recycle the brief two sentence review of said book given to her by Kramer. But rather than play the moment with false confidence, Dreyfus opts for fearful hesitancy, as if certain she will be called on the carpet at any second, accentuated by throat clears she adopts as some sort of ill-conceived stalling tactic.

11.  “Do you like him like him?” When George asks Elaine to ask her friend and fellow drawing class attendee Paula (Christa Miller) if she likes him, Elaine asks if they are still in high school. This is funny, but the actual scene of Elaine asking Paula if she likes George is played by the actors like high school, wtih Dreyfus dialing up the too-cool-for-school vocal fry on this line to the hilt.

10. “Well, I’ve got to get going. I’m meeting a guy with grey sweatpants.” As, of course, Jerry’s ex, there were many moments when Elaine got to needle her former beau when he expressed infatuation for someone else, none better than his babbling about “the blonde in the blue sweatpants”, which Elaine parries with this line, with Dreyfus giving “grey sweatpants” the hilarious ring of murmured ribald mockery.

9. “Why is Mr. Costanza with a man in a cape?” I’ve never quite been sure that the whole Man In A Cape business had a payoff worthy of its brilliant set-up but nevertheless, when Elaine and Jerry first spy Frank Costanza chatting with a man in a cape (played by Larry David), Dreyfus’s query isn’t so much suspicious as quizzically dumbfounded. Infinite elements in my life can trigger a “Seinfeld” quote, but this might be the one line and line reading that I can think of apropos of absolutely nothing.

8. “During ‘Schindler’s List?’” This, of course, arrives on the heels of Jerry’s infamous “Schindler’s List” make-out session with his significant other, to which Elaine initially says, “You made out during ‘Schindler’s List?’” That one is just incredulous clarification, and while it is requisitely well-delivered by Dreyfus, it is the second one, after Jerry affirms what took place, where she goes next-level, reclarifying “During ‘Schindler’s List’”? by putting the emphasis very much on “Schindler’s”, as if thinking perhaps there was another movie with the word List in the title that he must have meant instead.

7. “We need a shortstop…real bad.” Elaine’s attempts to convert a gay man, Robert (Robert Mailhouse), to whom she finds herself attracted, leads to the anaology of “switching teams.” So, when Elaine gauges his interest, Robert explains he is a “starting shortstop”, leading Elaine to make said plea, with Dreyfus turning real bad not into a comic capper or a come on but a vigorous whisper so hysterical in its naked desperation that Mike Pence wouldn’t allow himself to be alone in the room with this line reading.

6. “Yeah, that’s right.” This was David Puddy’s famous line, unwaveringness made comic by Patrick Warburton’s impressively deadpan monotone. But when Elaine is made to say it to Puddy, Dreyfus doesn’t do an impersonation so much as adopt the deadpan monotone while changing out the unwaveringness for stunned disbelief. It is just something else.

5. “Listen, Natasha.” Damn, Elaine could put you down. Remember how George once admitted being a little bit scared of her? There are all manner of great Elaine Benes shots across the bow but for my money none bested her stereotyping salvo aimed at a smug saleswoman like Elaine was suddenly in a wayward Rocky & Bullwinkle sketch and was having none of it.

4. “They’re Jujyfruits. I like them.” This is said after Elaine’s ingesting of too many chewy, fruit-flavored candies has brought about convoluted calamity, and which Dreyfus gives the air of anguish that is not so much apologetic as embarrassed; she’d eat them all again.

3. “I’m bringing cake!” This stems from Elaine and Jerry’s attempts to adhere to dinner party etiquette by getting a cake going, as it must, belly up, leading Jerry to wonder if they should just forget about the cake and Elaine shouting “I’m bringing cake!” at a frenzied decibel stricken with all the ills of social pressure.

2. “I’m George. I’m George!” This occurs at the end of “The Opposite”, when George, ignoring every instinct he has, becomes a go-getter while Elaine, in tune with this sudden shift in the universe, hits rock bottom, leading her to the obvious conclusion that she has become George, a line Dreyfus transforms into sheer comic terror.

1. “Ok.” There is no greater testament to the ability of Dreyfus then how she could take the simplest word and twist in such a way as to leave you in stitches, like this, “Ok”, which she says upon reluctantly agreeing to a date with Jerry Levine’s nameless Stationary Store Guy, and which Dreyfus makes as funny as any Groucho Marx line by draining all the life from her face and then saying it in the manner of someone who realizes they have just put on wet socks. (See here.)

Which Did It Better?

“Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation” is set to drop to drop in theaters this week and this got to us thinking, as each new “M:I” release gets us to thinking, about the not-really-immortal moment in “M:I-2” when Tom Cruise totally goes Daniel Day-Lewis and apes perhaps the most famous moment of my all-time favorite movie “Last of the Mohicans” and yells at Thandie Newton “Just stay alive!” And each time I think about Cruise yelling it at Thandie, I think about when Jerry yells “Just stay alive!” at Kramer in the 175th episode – “The Maid” – of “Seinfeld.”





It’s the hip thing these days on the Interwebs, you know, to take one thing and pit it against some other thing by positing the question “Which Did It Better?” and then proceed with a breakdown to determine the winner because this is America and in America you're either first or last. So, which did the “Just Stay Alive!” homage better – “M:I-2” or “Seinfeld”?

First things first, I haven't actually seen “MI:2” since seeing it in the theater all the way back in 2000 and so I totally forgot about this Tom Cruise expression.

Look at that! In retrospect it seems obvious he would grow up to jump up and down on Oprah’s couch and ruin his career, doesn’t it? Crazy-Eyes Tom Cruise is my favorite Tom Cruise after Maverick. Wait, wait, wait. Crazy-Eyes Tom Cruise is my third favorite Tom Cruise after Maverick and “Hippy Hippy Shake” Tom Cruise. No, no, no. Crazy-Eyes Tom Cruise is my fourth favorite Tom Cruise after Maverick, “Hippy Hippy Shake” Tom Cruise and “The goldfish are coming with me” Tom Cruise. Uh, well, actually Crazy-Eyes Tom Cruise is my fifth favorite Tom Cruise after Maverick, “Hippy Hippy Shake” Tom Cruise, “The goldfish are coming with me” Tom Cruise and the Tom Cruise that smacks his hands in “Eyes Wide Shut” (00:40 of this trailer).

Second, however, is that Tom Cruise doesn’t actually completely homage Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis, of course, yelled “Just stay alive! No matter what occurs, I will find you!” Cruise yells: “Just stay alive! I'm not going to lose you!” Jerry, on other hand, does the full Day-Lewis. I imagine Robert Towne, who admittedly cribbed from all over the annals of Hollywood for his “M:I-2” script, was afraid of getting hit with a Michael Mann right hook at some screenwriter's cocktail party. That, however, allows “Seinfeld” to score some massive bonus points.

I also like this idea of Jerry and Kramer at their most vulnerable just sort of inadvertently admitting to their 90’s-styled neighborly bromance.

“I'm infected with Chimeria.” God, does Thandie Newton sell that line. I like that line so much that I’m surprising myself and giving it a slight nod over Michael Richards’ patented and eternally hilarious through the phone Kramer-ish shriek.

Let’s be frank. It’s hard for me to say that my all-time favorite TV show paying homage to my all-time favorite movie could ever be topped by anything else paying homage to it. “Seinfeld” and “Last of the Mohicans” intersecting is an astonishing case of worlds colliding; it’s almost as good as this photo. Of course, “Seinfeld” did it better! And yet…

I didn’t really like “M:I-2” the first time around…or, at least that’s how I remember it. But was the whole movie’s tone equivalent to this scene? Because this scene has an operatic romance, so heightened in cinematic inflection, so merrily absurdist that I find myself to drawn it. Tom & Thandie are not Hawkeye & Cora because they can’t be because no one is. And so even if Mr. Cruise’s homage is still, like, a billion miles away from the impassioned yell of Mr. Day-Lewis, they nonetheless exist in the same solar system, one where the homage trends away from parody and more toward tribute. And yet...  

Jerry was never earnest. Jerry was always a horse’s ass. For a moment, though, even if it was a couple lines explicitly referencing something else, Jerry afforded himself an actual heartfelt moment. Yes, there was the episode earlier in the 9th season that found Jerry becoming briefly emotional when a girlfriend encourages him to get mad, but this is something else. This isn’t just Serious Jerry; this is Selfless Jerry. And the fact that “Last of the Mohicans” triggered it, warms my heart. Even Jerry Seinfeld, sitcomland’s pre-eminent tin man, found himself moved by Hawkeye & Cora. How can we not say “Seinfeld” did it just a little bit better?

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Minutes)

I confess, I may not have been the intended demographic for the latest episode of “Trophy Wife.” This is because “The Minutes” turns into a half-“Scandal” homage and I have not seen a single second of a single “Scandal” episode (unless Tina Fey and Amy Poehler dramatically saying “Scandal” at the Golden Globes counts). So, when the episode inevitably deviates from its “Trophy Wife”-ness to go straight “Scandal”, I had nothing to go on, nothing to gauge it against. For all I know, it was exactly like “Scandal”, though the attempts a rat-a-tat-tat dialogue seemed a little less potent than might be required. For me, it evoked memories of Harry Crumb and Nikki Downing, and I’m not certain whether that’s good or bad. Should it matter that I haven’t seen “Scandal”?

For instance, I never saw (and still haven’t seen) a single second of a single “Melrose Place” episode and yet one of my 127 favorite “Seinfeld” episodes is the legendary “Melrose Place” episode. I remember hearing about the latter all the time, and I remember it always being referred to as a “guilty pleasure”. It was something people loved to watch but didn’t necessarily admit they loved to watch because it seemed so trashy. And that’s what “Seinfeld” played to, and they played to because it was universal. We all have things we love but don’t want to admit to, don’t we? So rather than act as a straight homage, it featured Jerry denying that he watched “Melrose Place” – even though he loved it – and being forced to take a lie detector test by his policewoman girlfriend to determine the truth. It’s incredible. It’s hilarious. And it didn’t matter one iota if you didn’t know what “Melrose Place” was or who was in it because “Seinfeld” effortlessly made it relatable to everyone. That’s why “Seinfeld” was and still is the greatest.

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INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS – DAY 

NICK PRIGGE, infamous anti-Reality TV activist has been hooked up to a lie detector. A grizzly DETECTIVE stands above him. 

DETECTIVE: “Nick, have you ever watched Reality TV?” 
NICK: “No.” 
DETECTIVE: “Nick? (Clears throat.) Have you ever watched Reality TV?” 
NICK: (sweating) “No.” 
DETECTIVE: “Nick. (Dramatic pause.) Have you ever watched…… (Even more dramatic pause) ……‘Temptation Island?’” 
NICK: (Breaks down crying.) “Fine! FINE!!! I watched the first season of ‘Temptation Island!’ You wanna know why?! Because Reality TV is lewd and disgusting and EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY and ‘Temptation Island’ was the lewdest and most disgusting and EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY reality show of 'em all! And I loved it! Okay?! Are you happy?! I! Loved! It!" 
DETECTIVE: "And who was your favorite?" 
NICK: "Mandy! Mandy was totally my favorite! Yes, I remember her name!" (Falls to floor, writhing in a pool of his own tears.) 

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This isn’t to suggest “The Minutes” is an eyesore for any non-“Scandal” fanatic. Marcia Gay Harden is too good, first playing up the part of a binge-watching “Scandal” fanatic and then showing Kate how to play dirty when Kate runs afoul of the PTA and finds that her inflammatory comments about Harden’s Dr. Diane Buckley behind Dr. Diane Buckley’s back have officially been entered into The Minutes. (Scandal!!!). The idea of a PTA-related Scandal!!! is simply irresistible, but the means by which the Scandal!!! erupts – Person A saying things about Person B without Person B present only for Person A to realize Person B might hear them after all – and the follow-up – having to do with a PTA mom’s devotion to the sport of squash – come across so much less than juicy. And I suppose that’s partly the point – that in the world of the PTA, a Scandal!!! would be less than juicy. But shouldn’t it still feel juicy in spite of its non-juiciness? Like, to a bunch of PTA moms this Scandal!!! is as skandalouz as the Scandal!!! shown during the commercial for “Scandal” in the midst of “Trophy Wife” where some dude puts his hand around Kerry Washington’s throat and says “You killed the President” (Scandal!!!). I dunno. It just seems to me that aside from Marcia Gay Harden, everyone is playing Kerry Washington dress-up. It’s a cutesy homage, an aw-shucks, gee-whiz, “we’re family friendly!” scandal, and it doesn’t do much to invite non-“Scandal” watchers into the proceedings.

And the episode’s biggest problem is that the “Scandal” homage runs counter to the tale of Hillary wanting to go to the semi-formal dance with a boy who is the son of the neighbors with whom Pete and Jackie have a long-running feud involving a garden hose. There is a hint of potential Scandal!!! here involving the feud but that mostly gets ignored to instead build to a moment of fatherly heroism on account of Pete. It’s rather sweet but at odds with the other half of the episode. So too is Warren’s woebegone quest to get in on the Ask-A-Celebrity-To-The-Dance-Via-The-Internet craze by asking Vanessa Hudgens to the semi-formal by pretending to be gravely ill a misfire on a potential Scandal!!! I mean, if you’re gonna go for the fellow-ABC-drama gusto then, you know, go for it. “Trophy Wife” doesn’t quite go for it. So let’s all just watch this instead.....

 

Seinfeld Movies......Imaginary Posters

A year ago over at Anomalous Material I counted down what I considered to be the Top 10 movies that only existed within the "Seinfeld" universe. My Top 2 - which I wholly stand by - were "Ponce de Leon" (which made George cry) and "Rochelle Rochelle" ("a young girl's strange erotic journey from Milan to Minsk"). I wondered if perhaps Malin Akerman, my Official Cinematic Crush, could one day portray Rochelle.

Well, the fine folks at Next Movie have gone 4,700 better than me by creating actual movie posters for a few of the movies that only exist within the "Seinfeld" universe. Check them all out right here as they are all spectacular, but naturally two of them most stole my heart. And their casting choices - including the one for "Rochelle Rochelle", which admittedly puts mine to shame - go above and beyond.

A tip of the cap, Next Movie.