SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 7 - The Slicer

“The Slicer”

First Script Read: October 19, 1997

Filmed: October 22, 1997

Aired: November 13, 1997

Nielsen rating: 21.7

Audience share: 32

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writers: Gregg Kavet, Andy Robin, and Darin Henry (story only)

This episode opens with the shocker of Elaine in bed with...Jerry! 

ELAINE: Hey.
JERRY: Morning.
ELAINE: Look, this is crazy, I can't go on like this.
JERRY: But why?
ELAINE: I need some space.

Is this a flashback? Or have they gotten back together since last week's episode? From Elaine's words, it sounds like this has been going on for some time. Maybe Elaine and Jerry have been seeing each other secretly for a while, keeping their romance hidden from even the television cameras. She rolls over on her side and the camera finds...George in bed too!

GEORGE: Does that mean I have to go too?
JERRY: You don't think she's just talking to me?
GEORGE: Hey, shut up.
JERRY: You shut up.
ELAINE: I hate this. 

The metaphor begins to emerge. Seasoned television viewers have by now guessed this is a dream sequence. Elaine's subconscious disgust with the way her friends dominate her life is revealed, though not for the first time. As seen in, for example, The Bizarro Jerry from the previous season, Elaine often articulates a longing to leave the group in the series' final seasons. That mean's Kramer must be here too...

[KRAMER EMERGES FROM UNDER THE COVERS.]
KRAMER: You'll get used to it. It's like a grubby scrub.
ELAINE: No, I don't want this anymore.
JERRY: We'll come to work with you.
GEORGE: And on your dates.
JERRY: And shopping.
KRAMER: And to the bathroom.
JERRY, GEORGE, AND KRAMER: Elaine! Elaine! Elaine. Elaine...[DISTANT ALARM SOUND GETTING LOUDER]
ELAINE: I can't breath...I'm sorry...[WAKES UP] You're killing me!

Elaine wakes up. She realizes her neighbor, on vacation in Paris, has forgotten to turn off his alarm. Her attention turns to the immediate problem and she forgets the message of her dream entirely. In fact, she turns to her friends for help, always. She arrives at Jerry's apartment later in the episode and commiserates with Jerry and Kramer. Ever the schemer, Kramer offers to help her short circuit the electricity on the floor. He even accepts the painful responsibility of jamming a paper clip into the outlet, costing himself a finger nail in the process. But it works, and the alarm goes off.

However, the power outage also shuts off the automatic cat feeder in the apartment. The cat begins to meow, annoying Elaine just as much as the alarm did. Once again, Kramer comes to the rescue. He brings his new meat slicer over and they cut deli meat to slide under the door. It works and somehow Elaine convinces Kramer to loan her his prized slicer. She goes a little overboard with it though, using it to open envelopes and trim her high heels. She gets the heel caught in the blade, though, and is still trying to get it out when Kramer arrives to get his slicer back. Frantically, she bangs the slicer against her front doorknob, freeing the shoe. She hands Kramer the slicer then slams the door before he can yell a her about the slicer's dinged up blade. Kramer tries to enter the apartment to confront her, but the doorknob falls off in his hand.

Later, Elaine takes a plate of sliced meat to feed the cat. Only then does she discover the broken doorknob and realized she is trapped in her apartment. Blasting music to drown out the sound of the cat (and tossing in a dance here and there, a la "The Little Kicks"), Elaine calls a locksmith to come fix her door. Her other neighbor, upset about the loud music, blows the electricity on the floor, cutting off her phone. Now Elaine is trapped and temporarily phone-less. 

(Plot note: There's some inconsistency with the timing of the power outages. It seems that the first power outage caused by Kramer was short lived, because the power is back on when Elaine is in her apartment. It makes sense that this would reset the clocks and the timer on the cat feeder in the apartment of her absent neighbor. If the circuit is thus so-easily fixed, why would the neighbor bother shorting it since he knew Elaine was home and would just turn the music right back on when the power returned? Perhaps he merely wanted a reprieve. Also, Elaine's dropped phone call with the locksmith isn't that big a loss for her, even if it takes a few hours for the building superintendent to come and fix the floor's circuits. George points out that it will take the locksmith time to come "at this hour." I guess the superintendent couldn't help her (or didn't know she needed help) while he was there. And I guess Elaine was incapable of taking the hinges off her doors. Finally, I guess Elaine doesn't keep a lot of food around her apartment AND went through the meat she cut for the cat pretty quickly.)

Luckily, Elaine gets in touch with her friends and the three come over to keep her company and to feed her slices of meat under the door. In the final scene, Elaine is unseen on the other side of her door. Kramer is working the slicer and George and Jerry are sitting on the hallway floor. It's about as touching as the show gets, the three friends apparently late at night selflessly taking the time to care for their trapped friend. In fact, Elaine has come full circle. She has trapped herself on her own and needs her friends' help to be free. And far from killing her, Elaine's friends are literally feeding her and keeping her alive.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 6 - The Merv Griffin Show

“The Merv Griffin Show”

First Script Read: October 9, 1997

Filmed: October 15, 1997

Aired: November 6, 1997

Nielsen rating: 21.4

Audience share: 32

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Bruce Eric Kaplan (This is the first of three Seinfeld scripts written by Kaplan, a well-known cartoonist for The New Yorker. The other two are The Cartoon and The Puerto Rican Day. Kaplan went on to write and produce episodes of Six Feet Under and Girls.)

Kramer finds the set from the old Merv Griffin Show in a dumpster on the street. He lugs all the pieces back to his apartment and starts acting as though he is the host of a talk show. Eventually, the gang ends up sitting with him on the set, talking about their lives. So that's television characters talking about their fictional lives on an old set from a real television show. Kramer pretends they are on TV, though the other characters know they are NOT on TV...even though they really ARE on TV! That's some nice postmodernism.

Though they play along, Jerry, Elaine, and George roll their eyes at Kramer's enthusiasm for playing Merv Griffin. However, they are just as guilty at getting caught up in nostalgia. Jerry dates a woman with an extensive antique toy collection, but she won't let him play with them. Eventually, with the help of various sleep-inducing techniques, foods, and drugs, he manages to get her napping so he can play with her toys. He invites George over and then Elaine, and all three get a huge kick out of playing with the toys from their childhoods. Of the three, its probably most surprising to see George embrace the playthings of his youth. Elsewhere in the same episode, he can't love the squirrel his girlfriend makes him rescue. But he, along with Jerry and Elaine, have a childish, innocent side waiting to come out. All it takes is drugging Jerry's girlfriend to release it.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 5 - The Junk Mail

“The Junk Mail”

First Script Read: September 28, 1997

Filmed: September 30, 1997

Aired: October 30, 1997

Nielsen rating: 20.3

Audience share: 31

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Spike Feresten

Kramer's humorous, over-the-top attack on the U.S. Postal Service was inspired by writer Spike Feresten's own annoyance at the amount of catalogs he was getting, as he explains in the DVD "Inside Look" featurette. It got him thinking about whether, even as early as 1997, mail had become obsolete. It was easy to imagine Kramer, who had often expressed anti-establishment leanings, going on his own personal mail strike. Apparently the post office won't tolerate people canceling their mail though because Newman goes to great lengths to stop him:

NEWMAN: What about your bills?
KRAMER: The bank can pay 'em.NEWMAN: The bank! What about your cards and letters?KRAMER: Email, telephones, fax machines, Fedex, telex, telegrams, holograms.

Eventually, though, with the help of the Post Master General himself, the US Postal Service applies enough pressure to intimidate Kramer into accepting his mail delivery. It's an odd, silly suggestion that the Postal Service is a sinister, far-reaching organization that will stop at nothing to preserve itself. Conspiracy theories are quite common in American culture, especially post Watergate. The films Men in Black and Conspiracy Theory, both depicting secret government agencies, had come out the summer before this season. So while the post office might have been an odd target, Kramer's anti-government action was well within the realm of popular culture.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 4 - The Blood

“The Blood”

First Script Read: September 18, 1997

Filmed: September 24, 1997

Aired: October 16, 1997

Nielsen rating: 20.9

Audience share: 32

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Dan O’Keefe

Jerry and Kramer try to take care of their health in different ways. Concerned he might be gaining weight, Jerry allows his parents to set up private training sessions with Izzy Mandelbaum (prompting a return to the show for the great Lloyd Bridges, who would die the following March after this episode premiered). Kramer, on the other hand, starts hoarding his own blood. As he admits, he is more likely than most to have an emergency requiring a blood transfusion. "I know myself," he tells Jerry. "If I'm out on the street and it starts to go down, I don't back off until it's finished." When Jerry is injured twice in the episode, he ends up with first Kramer's than Newman's blood in his body. Needless to say, Jerry is freaked out.

 Elaine, like Jerry, is concerned with other people's perception of her. In her case, she is offended when her single parent friend, Vivian, doesn't think she is responsible enough to babysit her son. Ultimately, Elaine steals the babysitting job from Kramer, but then finds the boy is handful. However, when Vivian returns home she finds her son sound asleep, worn out from tormenting Elaine. Now Elaine can't get out of the babysitting job she thought she wanted.

Unlike his friends, George is solely preoccupied with himself. After his girlfriend's vanilla scented candle makes him hungry while they make love, George tries to incorporate first food and then television into their sex lives. Distracted by these pleasures, George neglects his girlfriend and their relationship ends. Happily, he discovers Vivian shares his passion for both food and television. George has his desires satisfied, but the cost is he takes Elaine's place in helping Vivian with her son.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 3 - The Serenity Now

“The Serenity Now”

First Script Read: September 7, 1997

Filmed: September 10, 1997

Aired: October 9, 1997

Nielsen rating: 20.1

Audience share: 31

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Steve Koren

This might be the best script out of the five that writer Steve Koren was credited for at Seinfeld. It's silly and funny. It brings back a few old favorite characters in Lloyd Braun and Mr. Lippman. It operates on that now-familiar Late Seinfeld meta level, as both Jerry and George undergo temporary transformations that poke fun at their well-known character traits. And, on a third level, it critiques one of the common tenets of the late 20th century "Self Help" movement.

At the beginning of the episode both Jerry and Frank Costanza are introduced to two different but related prescriptions to aid in their physical and, primarily, their emotional well-being:
FRANK: Serenity now! Serenity now!
GEORGE: What is that?
FRANK: The doctor gave me a relaxation cassette. When my blood pressure gets too high, the man on the tape tells me to say, "Serenity now!"
GEORGE: Are you supposed to yell it?
FRANK: The man on the tape wasn't specific

Frank's physical problem is diagnosed as high blood pressure, but the doctor suspects it is related to high stress so he gives him a sort of mantra to expel his stress. It's a method designed to offer catharsis, to relieve inner stress by transforming it into a physical and vocal act and expelling the bad emotion from the body. Frank needs to just let it out and he will feel better. His emotional stress will dissipate and his physical ailment will be relieved.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work, as Lloyd attests to George:
LLOYD: You know, you should tell your dad that "serenity now" thing doesn't work. It just bottles up the anger, and eventually you blow.
GEORGE: What do you know? You were in the nut house.
LLOYD: What do you think put me there?
GEORGE: I heard they found a family in your freezer
LLOYD: Serenity now. Insanity later.

The method is flawed. Like so many misguided fixes in the self-help era, yelling "serenity now!" only works on Frank's emotions. It attempts to make Frank feel better without addressing the problems that are causing his stress. It's an appealing method for the culture of narcissism that so many of Seinfeld's characters live in, but as Lloyd knows, it will ultimately fall short of giving Frank true satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Jerry's new girlfriend (played by Lori Loughlin of Full House) also advises him to let his emotions out.

PATTY: You know, I've never seen you mad.
JERRY: I get peeved.
PATTY: Mad.
JERRY: Miffed.
PATTY: Mad!
JERRY: Irked?
PATTY: I'd like to see you get really mad.

*   *   *
 GEORGE: Why does she want you to be mad?
JERRY: She says I suppress my emotions.
GEORGE: So what do you care what she thinks?
JERRY: Good body.
GEORGE: She probably gets that impression because you're cool. You're under control. Like me. Nothing wrong with that.
JERRY: But I get upset! I've yelled. You've heard me yell.
GEORGE: Not really. Your voice kind of raises to this comedic pitch. [KRAMER ENTERS]
KRAMER: Hey.
JERRY: Kramer, I am so sick of you coming in here and eating all my food! Now shut that door and get the hell out of here!
KRAMER: Ha ha! What is that? A new bit? 
GEORGE: I told ya.

With Patty's help, Jerry does begin to let his emotions out. He seems to feel good, but everything else falls apart all around him. Patty soon breaks up with him when she gets tired of his yelling. George is uncomfortable with Jerry's expressions of affection. Jerry admits he is no longer funny, so theoretically his career is over, too. And he even asks Elaine to marry him, a request she flees from. Finally Jerry convinces George to let out his emotions. George does, revealing his darkest thoughts and fears. Jerry, horrified, is shocked out of his emotional state and quickly gets up to leave George behind until his friend has similarly cooled off.

What good is it for a man to feel good in his soul but forfeit the whole world? For Jerry, George, and Frank, not to mention Kramer who adopts Frank's mantra to destructive consequences, it's not much good at all. Their world doesn't want people who express their emotions so freely. The more Jerry expresses his emotions, the more he drives people away.

For those in the viewing audience who suspected the final season of Seinfeld would end with Jerry and Elaine getting married, Jerry's proposal to Elaine is not so much a wink as a sarcastic rebuke. Seinfeld was never interested in melodramatic emotions. "There's more to life than making shallow, fairly-obvious observations," Jerry proclaims, noting he has lost his sense of humor. But it is Jerry's - and the show's - comedic sensibility that made the show a hit.