Tag Archives: seinfeld

Dec 11 2021
Leave a comment
TV

BQB Watches Seinfeld – Season 3, Episode 6 – The Parking Garage

What’s the deal with blogs that are only read by 3.5 readers? You’d think a blog would have 3 readers or 4 readers but how do you get .5 of a reader? It makes no sense!

BQB here with yet another Seinfeld review. I’m down the rabbit hole now and I’m going to watch them all, sadly.

I’d say this one is up there with The Chinese Restaurant episode as one of the series’ funniest/most memorable. While other sitcoms gave you special episodes and heartwarming lessons, one Mr. Jerome Seinfeld and his BFF Larry David dared to give us a comedy about nothing and yet, in the way it lampooned the ridiculous little absurdities of life, it gave us anything.

Sidenote – if you youngsters ever want to know what the world was like before everyone started carrying cellphones, this episode is your window.

The premise? Jerry and Friends take a Saturday afternoon drive to a mall in Jersey to help Kramer buy an air conditioner. Whilst there, Elaine picks out two goldfish to bring home in a plastic, watery bag. Alas, the crew can’t remember where they parked their car and go on an endless quest in search of it. Time is of the essence as Kramer can’t carry this big appliance forever, George is due to go out to dinner with his parents and if he’s a second late they’ll make his life a living hell, Elaine’s fish are going to be goners if they don’t get into a fresh water bowl STAT and damn it, Jerry has to pee!

Hard to believe we once lived in a world without instant communication. The group makes the mistake of splitting up in the hope of covering more ground. Today, you can do that and just keep in touch with your phones. Back then? Bad idea. Someone finds the car but now where the heck is everyone else? Do I leave and search for them? What if I can’t find the car again? Today you can just call everyone else and tell them where to go. Back then, not so much. Honestly, if you got separated from your group back then, the best thing you can do after searching for a while is just go home and hope they go home too and call you later.

I have also suffered the pain of getting lost in a parking garage, unable to remember where I parked. Today, I always take a photo of the level number, the space number, whatever identifying clues will help me get back there.

Another purgatory type episode that Seinfeld loved to do. Is it a metaphor for life? How long must we endure this misery before we can get where we need to be?

Tagged , , ,
Dec 11 2021
Leave a comment
TV

BQB Watches Seinfeld – Season 2, Episode 11 – The Chinese Restaurant

Hey 3.5 readers.

What’s the deal with bloggers reviewing old episodes of Seinfeld?

It’s been on Netflix for awhile now and I finally dove in. It was a rerun staple for years but it has been a long time since I watched them.

I think the funny/scary thing is it’s been so long since I watched them that Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer all seem so young to me now. Like I watch and say, “When will those young people ever get their act together?”

Anyway, this installment of the show about nothing is one of its most memorable. Jerry, George and Elaine go to a Chinese restaurant, only to end up in limbo as they wait and wait and wait only for their table to never come. Bribes, trickery, even begging are tried to no avail and like a wacky metaphor for life, the trio has to decide whether to continue investing time in the hopes waiting will pay off or if it’s better to give up and go somewhere else.

Jerry is hoisted on his own petard when an acquaintance of his uncle who he ditched to go out to eat and see Plan 9 From Outer Space spots him. Elaine debates whether to take a bet to swipe an eggroll from a customer’s table. George has a hot babe on the line but can’t get anyone off the pay phone to call her.

Almost like an early 90s version of Waiting for Godot, the three buddies are trapped in a veritable purgatory of their own design. Should they stay? Should they go? If they wait a little longer, they might get a reward. If they go now, they might find something better. And why the hell is everyone else getting a table before them? What did they do right? What are Jerry and Co. doing wrong?

Tagged , , ,
Dec 09 2017
Leave a comment
TV, Uncategorized

TV Review – Curb Your Enthusiasm – Season 9

Larry David is my spirit animal.

Bomp bomp bomp….bah bah bah…bah bah bah bah…

BQB here with a review of the latest season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

When we last saw Larry in his HBO sitcom, it was season 8, in 2011, and wow, has time flown.  Since then, Larry has found even bigger stardom playing Bernie Sanders on SNL, but he’s returned for another round of Curb.

If you’ve never seen the show, picture Seinfeld, plus jokes and/or words and/or things that can happen on cable that can’t happen on NBC.  Like the show he created with pal Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is also much ado about nothing.  No one ever grows or achieves or accomplishes, it’s just Larry, playing a parody version of himself, wasting his time on nonsensical worries.

I have to assume that bald and unattractive Larry was the inspiration of Seinfeld’s George Costanza.  You might remember George, a pudgy bald man who ironically, would get hooked up on dates with the most attractive women only to reject them over trivial matters.  Similarly, Larry is 70, fully aware of his ugliness and yet also aware of his various mental dilemmas.  He’d rather be alone than be with a woman who annoys him in the slightest way.

Larry must be a lot of himself into this role.  Recently, when he guest host SNL, he did a bit where he said he could related to Quasimodo from, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”  Surely, Quasi could have found “a” woman but no, the woman had to be the most beautiful woman in all of Paris.  Below average women who were “OK with the hump” would never do.

I might opine Larry’s women troubles probably come in part to his money and success.  If you look like Larry and say, in the real world, are a bus driver, then no, there will not be a bevy of beauties lined up for you to pick through and reject.

At any rate, this long overdue season centers around “Fatwa: The Musical!”  a broadway show Larry has written about Salman Rushdie, a writer who was marked for death by the leader of Iran for his writings.  As the season progresses, Larry teams up with none other than Lin Manuel Miranda to direct the show.  The two butt heads, and how and that’s not when Larry is arguing with star of the show, F. Murray Abraham.

Fan favorites return.  Larry’s best friend/manager Jeff Garlin as Jeff Greene, Susie Essman as Susie Greene, Jeff’s wife whose witchy tirades might send chills up the spine of any many thinking about getting married if they weren’t so funny.  1980s comic Richard Lewis is still himself.  Bob Einstein of “Super Dave” fame remains Marty Funkhauser and Larry just can’t get rid of longtime house guest Leon Black aka JB Smoov.

I give props to Larry.  His main comedic power is self-deprecation.  The whole show just dumps on him.  Everyone thinks he’s terrible.  He thinks he’s terrible.  There’s no drama or crying or tender moments its jut dump on Larry and dump on Larry some more.  Celebrity guests stop by in cameos as themselves to dump on Larry.  There are few celebrities, I think, who would allow themselves to be lampooned so vigorously, but Larry, on the other hand, is the ultimate good sport.

Have you ever had a moment where you felt you were wronged someway, so you took some action to change things, only to wince when you realize that you’ve made things so much worse, and things were so much better before you changed anything?  That’s Larry’s life in a nutshell, and when that tuba plays, he knows he’s effed up.

If you hear that tuba playing in your head, you know you’re becoming like Larry David.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.

Tagged , , , , ,
Apr 30 2016
Leave a comment
TV

BQB’s Fifteen Year Old TV Show Spoiler Rule

Hey 3.5 Readers.1378294009-800px

You know when I was a kid back in the 90’s when everyone walked around dressed like a lumberjack singing heartbreakingly depressing songs, it was customary that if you weren’t around a television during a show’s appointed airing time, you missed it.

Sure, maybe if you were lucky a pal taped it for you.  Or maybe you could buy the video cassette for an outrageous price, but by and large, if you missed it then you missed it.

Ergo, if someone who saw the show was kind enough to tell you what the hell happened to your favorite characters, you thanked him or her for doing so.

Thanks to technology, things are all different now.

A) There are more TV shows to watch than ever before.

B) You can watch them whenever you want, wherever you want – in bed on your TV, during your lunch break on your tablet, on the can on your phone.

Holy shit.  If your device gets WiFi, you can watch a TV show on it. Hell, you’re probably watching House of Cards right now on the little screen on your coffee maker, aren’t you?

Thus, the great irony:

There are more shows to watch than ever before but no one is allowed to talk about them.

Why?

SPOILERS!

Yes, spoilers. Because now, a person who missed the show when it first aired has options.  Hell, many shows don’t even have appointed airing times anymore. Streaming services like Netflix just throw them up for subscribers to watch whenever they want.

And you’d better not talk to anyone about them!

Yes, you’d really love to share your thoughts with your coworkers about Walter White’s transition from humble teacher to criminal mastermind.

You’d better not. Becky in accounting might very well want to start watch Breaking Bad while dropping a deuce on the can six years from now.

Accordingly, it is only right that you be thoroughly rebuked and compared to Hitler if you share a single solitary detail about Walter White’s journey into depravity because doing so will essentially rob Becky of the option of viewing Walter’s journey one day on her own.

It could be any show. Any show at all.

Dexter.  Holy shit the ending to that show sucked.  But everyone will say you sucked worse than the ending if you tell anyone about it.

Game of Thrones?  I swear, by the Old Gods and the New, my f%$king Facebook feed is filled with Nazis demanding blood oaths that no one reveal a word about what happens because “ooo la de da I’m a special person who goes out and has fun on Sunday nights I’m too good to stay in and watch an adult version of Lord of the Rings with gratuitous titties during its appointed airing time, I want to be able to watch it whenever I want.”

And seriously.  There’s nothing that can be done about it.

Sometimes I think about splitting the difference. Express my love of a show without revealing anything too meaningful about it.

However, like I said, social media is trolled by self-appointed spoiler police:

ME: I am really enjoying this season of Game of Thrones. Epic in scope, it fills me with conflicted feelings and I tip my hat to the writers for their quality work.

RESPONSES:

TROLL #1 – Ah, F%&K you, BQB! I was hoping that the scope would be narrow! Now you’ve flushed the whole thing down the shitter for me by spilling the beans that the scope is epic.  Thanks. Thanks a lot.

TROLL #2 – BQB you assfaced jerk clown! I assumed the show would only make me feel one or two feelings tops but now that you have told me that the show makes people feel many different feelings I will be looking for those feelings and hence, will feel none of them. I hope you get run over by a bus, you fat ugly sack of dung beetle turds.

TROLL #3 – Oh, thanks a lot Mr. Big Mouth!  Sure, just tell everyone that the writing was high quality. Ruin it for the rest of us who have ten other awesome things to do before we watch the latest installment of a damn nerd show. Maybe some of us were hoping that the writing quality would be poor.  Now I won’t be pleasantly surprised to find the quality of writing is high.  You sir, are the love child of Stalin and a rabid honey badger. Please contract syphilis from a toilet seat.

Ouch.  But no joke, people are really serious about putting the kibosh on spoilers and they will attack you with the vengeance of a mama bear who thinks you stole her cub if you even so much as think about breathing a word about the slightest, teensiest weensiest detail about a TV show.

ME: I like the font the credits at the end of Better Call Saul were printed in.

TROLL #4 – Stick your head in a toilet and flush it, jackass! I have been waiting for months to find out what level of quality the credits at the end of that show were printed in and now you sir, have ruined my life! I now have to sell all my worldly possessions and join a monastery just so I can learn to make peace with the horror show you have made my life with your vile spoiler. Good day, sir. May a colony of spiders lay eggs in your brain.

So…here’s the deal.

Everyone hates a TV show spoiler, but it can be frustrating for people who sincerely love a TV show and want to share their thoughts about it.

Since there’s no hard and fast rule about how long spoilers are supposed to last, I am, right here, right now, by the power vested in me as a guy who ponied up a few bucks to create my own blog site, going to declare the following rule:

If a show ended 15 or more years ago, everyone is free to say whatever the hell they want about it and should not feel bad if anyone gets pissed off about it.

So as of this writing, if a show ended on or before April 30, 2001, feel free to flap your gums about it.

Yes, there will still be people who will direct venom your way for destroying the possibility that they might one day stream this older show while trying to pass a kidney stone, but hey, tell them to go suck an egg, because your pal BQB said you are in the right.

You too can be like me:

BQB: My favorite episode of I Love Lucy is the one where Lucy and Ethel stomp on the grapes in their bare feet.

TROLL #5 – You monster! I was going to stream I Love Lucy while waiting for my podiatrist appointment next week. Oh, the pain you’ve caused me you animal!

BQB: Suck an egg, loser. That show ended in 1957. But you know what didn’t end? That candy factory conveyer belt. Oh those chocolates just kept coming and coming and poor Lucy couldn’t wrap them fast enough. She didn’t know what to do so she started eating them and shoving them in her bra and everything.

TROLL #5 – You are the Antichrist!!!

BQB: And Lucy and Ricky had a son that they named, “Little Ricky!”

TROLL #5 – Oh God. Stop! Please stop!

BQB: Lucy always wanted to play at the club but Ricky didn’t want her to!

TROLL #5 – The horror!  The horror!

Yup.  Go on 3.5 readers. Share your knowledge of shows that ended over 15 years ago with reckless abandon.  You have my permission.

Sometimes I toss a bunch of ’em out in rapid fire just to piss the spoiler police trolls off but good:

BQB: Corporal Klinger on MASH wasn’t really gay. He just wore that dress because he was hoping the Army would declare him crazy and send him home.

TROLL #6: Bahhh! Now I can’t stream MASH eleven years from now when I need something to watch while I’m cutting my toenails!

BQB: Though Mr. Wilson complained vociferously about Dennis the Menace’s shenanigans, the old man secretly cared for the boy very much and viewed him as the grandson he never had.

TROLL #7:  Oh God!  I can never un-see this wretched spoiler!

BQB: Lassie always runs to woof at Timmy’s parents until they figure out that Timmy has fallen down a well and needs to be rescued.

TROLL #8: Please imagine me flipping you off with both middle fingers because that’s what I am doing right now because I am so angry at you for spoiling Lassie for me you dirtbag.

BQB: Jan was always jealous of Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.

TROLL #9: I just stuffed my fingers into my ears. I’m not listening….la la la…

BQB: Archie Bunker held himself as a horrendously offensive racist yet it was hard to not like him because in the end he always came around and did the right thing anyway, albeit in a begrudging, curmudgeonly manner…

TROLL #10: And you have ruined my life.  Thanks a lot, Mr. Spoiler Pants.

So there you have it, 3.5 readers.

I have made my very first rule. If the show ended fifteen years or more from the date in question, feel free to throw caution to the wind and post anything and everything about that show on all of your social media outlets.

Tell your friends that Dick Van Dyke always trips over that damn table in the middle of the room.

Shout from the rooftops that Blanche is the sluttiest Golden Girl.

Buy a megaphone and announce proudly that Jerry and Elaine never end up together.

Because, up your butts with coconuts, spoiler trolls.

BQB has spoken and he has officially declared that it is our God given right as Americans to talk about shows that ended by the end of the first year of George W. Bush’s First Term.

  • Yes, Urkel DID do that.
  • Columbo wasn’t as dumb as he allowed criminals to think he was.
  • In West Philadelphia, the Fresh Prince was born and raised! On the playground he spent most of his days!
  • Murphy Brown took Dan Quayle on over her out of wedlock pregnancy!
  • Al Bundy started his own chapter of No Ma’am – the National Order of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood.
  • Ellen came out as gay on Ellen.
  • Sam Malone chooses the bar over Diane on Cheers.
  • Dennis Franz shows his ass on NYPD Blue.

Do you have a spoiler that’s fifteen years or older that you want to get off your chest?

Share it in the comments.

But seriously, make sure it happened before this date in 2001.

Because if you talk about a show that was still on the air anytime after that date, then you are worse than Hitler and should be flogged publicly with a wet noodle and pelted with rotten tomatoes.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Dec 23 2015
1 Comment
TV

Happy Festivus!

Did you know that December 23rd is the date that George Constanza and his family celebrated “Festivus” on Seinfeld?

Ever since that episode, I’ve always considered Dec. 23rd to be Festivus. So  perform the feats of strength then gather ’round the aluminum pole for the annual airing of the grievances.

What grievances do you have, 3.5 readers?

Tagged , , , , , ,
Newer posts →