Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

that is actually the first episode I ever saw of the show in full. and I've never seen it since.

first episode i saw was the sponge, i was 11 or 12, the idea that there was a prophylactic other than a condom and that it was a sponge confused me no end

I have already mentioned my confusion at the sponge upthread lol

^ I figured you were doing a reference to the call-back they did in the last episode, with the shirt buttons.

Betrayal is the worst post-season 1 episode imo. frogbs you picked the least funny and most confusing episode.

i highly recommend checking out The Opposite if you ever want to give it another chance.

hah - meant to say I've never seen that episode since. just weird to me that the first episode I saw was arguably the strangest, then when I actually got into the show I never saw it again.

There was also one "lost" episode for me that I only saw after I got the DVDs, the one where Elaine breaks up with Crazy Joe Davola, who later dresses up as a clown. Which makes sense cause there's another episode I'd seen a million times where he asks her on a date, but I figured it was a dropped storyline. Not a particularly funny episode

Legitimately creepy episode which among the shows general tone seems really odd. Like Elaine escapes him by pepper spraying him, he represents actual danger.

Perhaps they just don't show either of those eps so often because they're bad/not funny

xpost That's such an amazing season. I think a lot of nuance is lost when you watch the episodes in isolation because it's basically all one season-long story.

xp otm about the tone of that episode being very different. Though it was Binaca, not pepper spray, and that ref comes back later in a mildly funny way. It seems odd that networks would purposefully skip that episode since, at least on my local station, they usually show the episodes in order. I think it's just chance that I never saw it. By contrast, I've seen the damn backwards episode like ten times on tv

The only one that I think was officially removed was the one about the Puerto Rican Day parade:

The episode aired one week before the two-part clip show and the two-part series finale aired. Because of controversy surrounding a scene in which Cosmo Kramer accidentally burns and then stomps on the Puerto Rican flag, NBC was forced to apologize and had it banned from airing on the network again. Also, it was not initially part of the syndicated package. In the summer of 2002, the episode started to appear with the flag-burning sequence intact.

I don't think I've seen it.

lol when Kramer has to use a bathroom and tries posing as a prospective buyer ("wealthy industrialist H.E. Pennypacker") at an open house.

yeah that was funny, especially when Jerry and George turn up and they're all playing their alias characters

SALES WOMAN: Mr. Pennypacker, this is Mr. Vandelay, And you know Mr. Varnsen

KRAMER: Uh, Varnsen.

JERRY: Pennypacker.

KRAMER: Vandelay.

GEORGE: Pennypacker. Varnsen.

first episode i saw was the sponge, i was 11 or 12, the idea that there was a prophylactic other than a condom and that it was a sponge confused me no end

I’m still confused. I’m 31.

I suppose I could Google “sponge prophylactic,” but it seems too late for me.

I was an adult before I got why "Mulva" was funny

even though I owned an album with the title of the word it rhymed with

Laura Mvula?

What always confused me about that episode is that clitoris doesn't rhyme with Delores, unless you're some kind of freak

that always bothered me too, but "Aretha" bothers me even more

Wasn't the point of "Aretha" to show how far George was reaching in trying to figure this out? Or was that "Bovary?"

Flavia LaJorra

"the betrayal" would've been a better finale for the show than the actual finale.

i rewatched all of seinfeld on hulu recently and was really amazed by how much stronger it seems when you watch it all in order. i'd always thought of the episodes as fairly stand-alone, but there are so many little call-back jokes and continuing themes that are totally lost when you just watch random episodes in syndication. like, there's an episode where jerry's dad loses his wallet and loudly accuses his doctor of stealing it, and then like six episodes later there's a moment in the middle of an unrelated scene where jerry sits on his couch and suddenly finds the wallet. i can't imagine a lot of viewers even noticed most of this stuff back when the episodes first aired; the show at its best just feels so well-constructed, internally consistent and carefully thought out.

The running gag where Costanza would just magically show up wherever Jerry was is really something special

Wow I only just found out that the Nazi girl in the "Limo" episode is also the same girl who played Jerrys girlfriend in the "Pie" episode.

(Suzanne Snyder, also one of the girls from Weird Science)

https://i.imgur.com/TxmRph3.jpg

lol

(y)

oh my god this is so amazing and hilarious. a writer named Billy Domineau wrote a spec script for Seinfeld called "The Twin Towers." I'm losing it over here, this is so fucking funny: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B50l484pDaMobXI2Wk5CX0NMbkU/view?pref=2&pli=1

Wow, it's pretty impressive thus far. The voice is spot-on.

MALE SURVIVOR

We thought you must have died in the
collapse. How did you get out?!

GEORGE

Well you see, as the ground gave way
beneath me, I jumped at a moment JUST
SUCH that as I fell I floated between
the floors, ultimately landing softly
atop the rubble. I would have said
good bye, but by then I was quite
tired.

:D

yeah I'm a little creeped out by how spot-on it is.

KRAMER:
You know he was always talking about
how evil America was? Eventually I
told him, “Why don’t you do something
about it?” I thought he’d write to his
Congressman!

JERRY
Kramer, he just crashed a plane into
the World Trade Center! He slit the
pilots’ throats with a box-cutter!

KRAMER
Not “a” box-cutter - MY box-cutter. He
borrowed it last week!

7.

ELAINE
(even more intense)
GET - OUT! You have to do something!

KRAMER
Oh, you’d better believe it! I’m
getting that box-cutter replaced.

nearly fell out of my chair at the ending

that is incredible

the estelle/frank exchange is great

That was excellent. Actual lolz throughout.

well done everybody

http://uproxx.com/tv/seinfeld-festivus-true-story/

As for the specifics of the holiday, Frank had an aluminum pole because he appreciated the “very high strength-to-weight ratio” and found tinsel to be distracting. The O’Keefe family had something slightly more… unusual. “The reality of the holiday was too peculiar to show on television,” O’Keefe says. “The real symbol of the holiday was a clock inside a bag nailed to the wall and nearby a sign that says, ‘F*ck Fascism.’ That doesn’t fly on network TV. Either Alec or Jeff came up with the idea of the pole and the strength to weight ratio.”

caught the last 5 minutes of the backwards episode "the betrayal" last night and for some reason id never seen it! i can literally recite most Seinfeld episodes, had a torrent of the complete series on my computer from my late teens to late twenties that I watched like crazy, have watched it regularly in syndication for a decade, and most notably i said to my wife like a week ago "i wish somehow there were some Seinfeld episodes i hadn't seen because ive seen them all too many times". my mind is blown.

― trickle-down ergonomics (jim in glasgow), Friday, April 8, 2016 10:23 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've just realised why I've not seen this episode on tv : the depiction of India is kind of terrible and George says that he should be able to have sex with Elaine as reparations for jerry having had sex with his current girlfriend before they met. It's an egregiously gross Seinfeld episode. Also not very funny

it's pretty memorable imo. had the reverse time gimmick, elaine telling the truth on schnopps, susan coming back for a bizarre cameo with "you can stuff your sorries in a sack, mister!"

the Kramer / Jerry relationship origin story that closes it out is pretty classic

well his netflix stand up special is about 50% hokum and not very funny. you'd think with all the time he's had he would have thought up some better jokes than 'men like to fix things' shit.

yeah i said elsewhere it's muppet level jokes - mileage may vary

The guy was only ever worth a laugh when he was playing a humanized Larry David. Now they’re both obsolete.

i know most comedians come off like assholes and probably are assholes in real life, but seinfeld seems like such an asshole

i think that mighta helped the sitcom tbqh

I think you're both right

I would like to add that thinking back on Seinfeld and saying to oneself “it wasn’t THAT funny, and Jerry is an asshole” is hopefully a lagging, rather than leading, indicator that we are living in Peak Cynicism

ill buy Seinfeld himself being obsolete but ppl still love Larry David and actively await his new stuff