SEINFELD - Season 5, Episode 4 - The Sniffing Accountant

“The Sniffing Accountant”

First Script Read: September 8, 1993

Filmed: September 14, 1993

Aired: 9:00pm, October 7, 1993

Nielsen rating: 19.1

Audience share: 29

Directed: Tom Cherones

Writer: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry, Kramer, and Newman suspect their accountant might be stealing their money to buy drugs after the accountant keeps sniffing when Jerry runs into him. Looking for proof, they follow the accountant. Kramer, who the accountant has never met, tries to get him to admit his drug use by engaging him in conversation at a bar. The accountant admits nothing, but is still sniffing. So the trio send him a strongly worded letter closing their account. Moments after Newman leaves to mail the letter, they realize the accountant was probably sniffing from the mohair sweater both Jerry and Kramer were wearing when they ran into him. Ultimately, though, Newman's failure to mail the letter is a disaster because it turns out the accountant was cheating them after all.

Meanwhile, George has a meeting at his father's friend's business in bra sales. George aces the interview:

FARKUS: Have you ever sold a woman's line before?
GEORGE: No, but I have very good repute with women. Very good. Top form. And the first time I laid my eye on brassieres, I was enthralled.
FARKUS: Hmm. Tell me about it.
GEORGE: Well, I was 14-years-old. I was in my friend's bathroom. His mother's brassiere was hanging on the shower rod. I picked it up. Studied it. I thought, "I like this." I didn't know what way or what level, but I knew I wanted to be around brassieres.
FARKUS: That's incredible story. You have a remarkable passion for brassieres.
GEORGE: They are more than an underwear to me Mr.Farkus. Two cups in the front, two loops in the back. How do they do it?
FARKUS: Well, I think I can say, barring some unforeseen incident, that you'll have a very bright future here at E.D. Granmont.

For the second time in three episodes, George's career prospects are briefly soaring. But, as foreshadowed in a line that became a favorite on the Seinfeld set, an unforeseen incident came to pass. On the way out of the office George feels a woman's shirt, mimicking a move Elaine's new boyfriend Jake Jarmel used on her. George's attempt is a debacle. The woman is furious. She also happens to be the company's boss, so George's bra career crashes before takeoff.

Elaine's relationship with Jake is going perfectly until Jake neglects to use an exclamation point on a phone message from Elaine's friend who has just had a baby. The two get into a huge argument and the relationship crumbles. 

Elaine's pettiness costs her a healthy relationship. Jerry's paranoia leads him to draw the wrong conclusion. But the really dangerous behavior is the creepy rubbing of a person's shirt. It costs George a job, and thwarts Newman's letter mailing when he attempts it on a woman at the mailbox.

SEINFELD - Season 5, Episode 3 - The Glasses

“The Glasses”

First Script Read: August 18, 1993

Filmed: August 24, 1993

Aired: 9:00pm, September 30, 1993

Nielsen rating: 19.2

Audience share: 30

Directed: Tom Cherones

Writer: Tom Gammill and Max Pross (This is the first of 13 episodes credited to this pair, who worked as consulting producers during seasons 4-8)

Enter Tom Gammill and Max Pross. This pair worked as consulting producers and wrote many of the best episodes of the show while Seinfeld was at the height of its powers. In the 1980s, the duo cut their teeth writing for Saturday Night Live  and Late Night with David Letterman. After Seinfeld, the pair hooked up with Matt Groening and friends to work on Futurama before moving on to The Simpsons. So these guys contributed to four of the greatest and most significant comedy television shows of the end of the 20th century. 

Their first Seinfeld is a classic, treating us to George in his bathing suit dragging a blind man in his underwear out of the health club and into the street, George buying women's frames for his new glasses, and this famous line:

JERRY: I don't know what to believe! You're eating onions, you're spotting dimes. I don't know what the hell is going on!

That line has been kept alive by my beloved Bill Simmons, who uses it to refer to an athlete who can look breathtakingly brilliant in one moment and shockingly awful the next. In this episode it describes George's squinting ability. He thinks he has squinted out Jerry's girlfriend making out with Jerry's horse-faced cousin (Uncle Leo's son), Jeffrey. Ultimately, it turns out George was squinting at a policewoman kissing her horse.

Another line resonated in my life long after this episode aired. My college roommate Assad used to love exclaiming Jerry's repeated line, "Want to get some pizza?" to his girlfriend whenever she was annoyed at him. He always did it when I was in earshot, knowing I'd burst out laughing. In this episode, Jerry uses it as a clumsy attempt to change the subject after his accusations to his girlfriend are denied.

But on this most recent viewing, my favorite line, and one that I actually rewinded to watch again, came when Kramer requested a snack from the women's glasses-wearing George. Michael Richards delivers the line with exaggerated formality. It comes out of nowhere, returning attention to George's glasses after the comedy had moved from Kramer's "installation" of Jerry's new air conditioner (he merely drops it on the window sill and drops the window blinds down, as if they would hold it in place) to Elaine's rising hysterics over her possible rabies. Then, BOOM, Kramer points to the bag of pretzels and zings George with this:

KRAMER: “May I have one of those, madam?”

The line is pretty vanilla on your screen, isn't it? Within the flow of the show it's hilarious. There is perfection in the timing of Kramer's delivery and George's reaction. But there is a different sort of timing to the scene embedded in the writing of Gammill and Pross. The comedy is swirling around a number of humorous situations, zipping from one to the other.

Season five was the perfect moment for Gammill and Pross to arrive on Seinfeld. This episode picked up the pace of the show, but the show's comedy had been speeding up for a while. Also becoming typical of the show, this episode also interweaves the story lines of each character. Gammill and Pross dove into the rising insanity of Seinfeld and found themselves right at home.

SEINFELD - Season 5, Episode 2 - The Puffy Shirt

“The Puffy Shirt”

First Script Read: August 25, 1993

Filmed: August 31, 1993 (Last episode filmed on stage 19 at CBS Studio City. Moved to stage 9 for the rest of its run)

Aired: 9:00pm, September 23, 1993

Nielsen rating: 19.3

Audience share: 30

Directed: Tom Cherones

Writer: Larry David

This is a wacky episode, but its fame shows that wackiness played well in this era. (The Simpsons had also hit its stride by now, bringing wackiness to a new level.) The original puffy shirt was donated to the Smithsonian, prompting Jerry Seinfeld to muse, "This might be the first joke that is inducted into the museum."


Jerry, who can't hear Kramer's low-talking girlfriend, accidentally agrees to her request that he wear a  puffy shirt on The Today Show. The woman's attempt to launch her pirate shirt design backfires when Jerry remarks on the show, "It’s a puffy shirt. I feel ridiculous in it, and I think it’s the stupidest shirt I’ve ever seen to be perfectly honest with you." George, meanwhile, has to move back in with his parents. Out of nowhere, he finds brief success as a hand model. The experts declare his hands to be the most beautiful in hand modeling until he burns them on a hot iron.

At the beginning of the episode, we see the limits of Jerry and George's relationship. Kramer enters Jerry's apartment to find George moaning about moving in with his parents. Kramer horrifies Jerry by suggesting he let George move in:


JERRY: What's that?
KRAMER: Why doesn't he just move in here?
GEORGE: Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna move in with him. He doesn't even let you use the toilet!
KRAMER: You can move in with me, if you want.
GEORGE: Thank you. I, uh, that might not work out.

In that brief exchange, it's clear Jerry would never let George live with him. And if he can't tolerate his oldest friend, it's equally apparent Jerry would never dream of having a roommate. Jerry likes to have control of his own space. He doesn't mind his friends stopping by frequently, and he grumbles about Kramer's mooching but has given up trying to prevent it. But Jerry basks in his bachelorhood. George, as much as his parents drive him crazy, would still rather live with them than with Jerry or Kramer. He does not press the issue with Jerry, perhaps sensing that living with his friend might threaten their friendship. Kramer is just too weird for George. It is characteristically noble of Kramer to offer his apartment to George. He is a mooch, but he also frequently demonstrates that he is willing to share what he has with his friends. If the glove was on the other hand, and George's hand modeling career had taken off, I doubt he would invite Kramer to live with him.