Bookshelf Battle

I’ve been on a month-long binge watch of Seinfeld, 3.5 readers. It’s funny the things you notice when a) you watch it all within the same time span and b) when time goes by and you notice actors/actresses who had bit parts on the show who later went on to hit it big.

Some observations:

#1 – Co-creator Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame is in it a lot, but you might not have noticed if you weren’t a super fan. He has bit walk on roles such as “Frank Costanza’s Cape Wearing Lawyer” (actual name of the character, the cashier who gives George back a twenty dollar bill with lipstick on the president, a mad scientist in a late-night B sci-fi movie that Jerry is watching. He also does a lot of voice over work, people yelling at the characters from off camera. Of course, his big claim to fame is that he did the voice of George’s boss, the gregariously boisterous NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

#2 – Speaking of LD, it’s eerie how much of a spot on accurate Larry David impression that Jason Alexander is doing in the character of George Costanza, who is based on the Curb star. Poor George/Larry. Their whole schtick is that they are unattractive bald men who screw up constantly who, despite their myriad of flaws, can only be happy with perfect women. They know in their hearts this is wrong and they might be happier if they could accept women with flaws the way they wish women would accept them for all their flaws but their dumb brains just won’t let them do it.

#3 – It’s a rare series that gets better the longer it goes on. You can tell the showrunners are trying to figure it all out in the first 2 seasons and then it finally hits its stride around season 3-4. Early seasons, they try to give more depth to everyone and then they eventually hit the formula where it becomes quick and snappy and everyone is a caricature every situation is a parody of some sort of social conundrum that everyone faces sooner or later. Understandably, Jerry wanted to go out on top by ending the show after season 9 rather than go on longer even though NBC offered him plenty of money to keep going. Some of the most memorable episodes with the quotable phrases that became part of the pop cultural language come between seasons 7-9.

#4 – Famous actors/actresses who were on Seinfeld and then went on to hit it big later. (Hard to make a complete list.)

Dayton Callie – You might know him as Charlie on HBO’s Deadwood but he played a cabbie in the Puerto Rican Day Parade Episode who has to put up with Elaine’s indecision over whether she wants to stay in the cab and wait for the traffic to clear up or to get out and walk.

Breaking Bad – Walter and Skyler were both on Seinfeld before Walt built his blue meth empire. Anna Gunn was on the long list of Jerry’s girlfriends dumped over comically trivial reasons (George loses his glasses but while squinting, is certain he spotted her smooching it up with Jerry’s despised Cousin Jeffrey). Meanwhile, Bryan Cranston had a recurring role as Jerry’s dentist Tim Whatley, who converts to Judaism just for the jokes and brands Jerry a rabid anti-dentite for making dentist jokes. (Sidenote a young Debra Messing of Will and Grace fame is in this episode too.)

Mariska Hargitay, Amanda Peet, Sarah Silverman, Courtney Cox, Janine Garafalo, Teri Hatcher, Megan Mullally, Lauren Graham and the list goes on and on. It seems like every up and coming 1990s actress took a turn as one of Jerry or George’s (sometimes Kramer’s) long suffering girlfriends. I say sometimes Kramer because oddly, any woman dumped by Kramer just seems to feel lucky to have had the unlikely stud in their lives.

Meanwhile, Jon Favreau (as a clown), Bob Odenkirk and a very young Patton Oswalt as a video store clerk stop by.

#5 – My last observation is how many of the premises wouldn’t exist today. So many of the episodes involve the quartet splitting up and not being able to find each other in the big city. Today, a lost friend is only a cell phone call away from being found.

Hey 3.5 readers.

Don’t you hate it when you think of the perfect comeback response to some idiot’s rude comment, only you think of it hours, days, weeks, even years later? I’ll tell you, to this day, I’ll have an epiphany of what I should said to some moron…twenty years ago.

Alas, we never think of what we should have said until it’s too late. Even then, our mind is a controlled environment. We think a response might be biting, but in reality, we might flub the execution, or the rude person might even bounce off your comeback with an even better comeback. As the old saying goes, sometimes it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Not George. Here, Costanza is feasting on shrimp at a Yankees executive meeting when a nemesis says, “Hey George, the ocean called. They’re running out of shrimp.”

On the car road, the G-Man thinks of…well, what he thinks is a witty retort. “Oh yeah? Well, the jerk store called. They’re running out of you.”

George then makes it his mission in life to deliver this comeback, going so far as to fly to Ohio to bate his nemesis into insulting him again so that he can use his jerk store line. Is it going to go as well as George thinks it will? Watch and find out.

Sideplots: Elaine becomes enamored with a video store clerk’s pick wall. Kramer wants to find someone who will pull his plug when the time comes. Jerry squares off against a tennis pro who isn’t a pro at all.

Seinfeld often poked fun at the futility of life, how we all try so hard only to eventually end up in the pine box sooner or later anyway.

Here, George’s fiance Susan dies. The cause? Toxic glue on cheap wedding invitations. George is to blame because he skimped on the invites, though isn’t the company to blame to? I mean, who sells invites with poisonous glue?

The perverse and creepily understated joke is that Susan’s death is a horrible tragedy, yet George is cool with it. For an entire season, George felt trapped. He didn’t want to marry Susan. He suffered from the delusion that if he just gave it more time, he might do better. (Briefly, he almost does as he meets a friend and mutual acquaintance of actress Marisa Tomei, who as we learn according to the show, has the hots for short, stocky, bald men.)

Susan is beautiful, charming and has a great head on his shoulders. George is a self-admitted loser. Not very bright, ambitious or successful and he knows in his heart he should be happy to have her but can’t help but feel stuck. Her death releases him from an unwanted marriage yet as the show goes on, he never does better. He’s doomed to be alone and unhappy.

There’s a secondary lesson here about how death is awful yet life has a strange way of going on. I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve lost people near and dear to me, losing them was like losing a limb and after the cries and sadness, you still keep living and it’s like, “Um, this is weird that I’m eating this sandwich while my loved one is dead. It’s weird that I’m watching a movie while my loved one is dead. It’s weird that…”

At any rate, George surely should have appreciated Susan more, though humor of the show came from George being an impression of Seinfeld writer Larry David, who has stated publicly often that his brand of comedy comes from the fact that he is aware he is a physically unattractive dum-dum and yet he longs for perfection in everyone else. He knows he can never provide it himself, but he suffers from the delusion that he can do better.

Bottomline – cherish your loved ones. If you meet a special someone, and you two love one another, do your best to make a go of it and stop worrying about what could be if you wait a little longer. Losers give up something good to wait for something that may or may not come. Winners realize they have someone great right in front of them and hold on.

A bird in the hand, 3.5 readers. A bird in the hand.