SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 15 - The Wizard

“The Wizard”

First Script Read: January 24, 1998

Filmed: January 28, 1998

Aired: February 26, 1998

Nielsen rating: 20.7

Audience share: 31

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Steve Lookner (This is his only Seinfeld script.)

In contrast to the previous episode, "The Strongbox," "The Wizard" feels more like a Mature Period Seinfeld script. To a large extent this is because it returns to classic Seinfeld themes: aging parents, lying, relationships, and social dynamics. For the final time, the series delves into the oddities of retirement community living in Florida. It also follows George as he spins a web of lies that ultimately collapses on him. And it examines the perceptions of interracial dating.

Outside of George's attempts in "The Diplomat's Club" to find black friends and demonstrate to his black boss that he is not racist, this episode delves as far into American race relations as Seinfeld would go. Elaine introduces Darryl, her new boyfriend (Puddy's answering machine is broken), to George and Jerry. After Darryl leaves, Elaine asks her friends what they think about her new boyfriend. Jerry thinks Darryl looks black, and Elaine realizes she's not sure what race Darryl is. The conversation is utterly harmless...except for the weight that centuries of oppression bring to any conversation about race in the late 20th century. The three characters feel this weight and it bothers them:

ELAINE: Well, what do you think?
JERRY: What? About you dating a black guy? What's the big deal?
ELAINE: What black guy?
JERRY: Darryl. He's black, isn't he?
ELAINE: He is?
GEORGE: No, he isn't.
JERRY: Isn't he Elaine?
ELAINE: You think?
GEORGE: I thought he looked Irish.
JERRY: What's his last name?
ELAINE: Nelson.
GEORGE: That's not Irish.
JERRY: I think he's black.
GEORGE: Should we be talking about this?
ELAINE: I think it's OK.
GEORGE: No, it isn't.
JERRY: Why not?
GEORGE: Well, it would be OK if Darryl was here.
JERRY: If he's black.
ELAINE: Is he black?
JERRY: Does it matter?
ELAINE: No, course not. I mean, I'd just like to know.
JERRY: Oh, so you need to know?
ELAINE: No, I don't need to know. I just think it would be nice if I knew.

At that moment their waitress, a dark-skinned person, comes over and asks if she should take their bill. The trio hurriedly reach into their pockets to give her a generous tip. Elaine spends most of the episode trying to get to the bottom of Darryl's race. Finally, Darryl refers to them as an interracial couple. Elaine is delighted. However, as she later discovers, Darryl incorrectly thinks she is Hispanic. It's not true. "So, we're just a couple of white people?" Darryl sighs. The two are very disappointed.

In her book White Guilt, Shelby Steele describes white guilt as self-congratulatory behavior intended to prove the white person's innocence of racism. That seems to pretty much sum up Elaine's and Darryls' behavior here. They both are excited at the possibility of being an interracial couple solely because of what being in an interracial relationship says about who they are. 

In a way, it's a more extreme version of George's efforts to find a black friend. As noted in my post on "The Diplomat's Club," that episode was a tongue in cheek response to critics of the show who accused Seinfeld of not having enough black characters. This episode further demonstrates that the number of black characters on Seinfeld is appropriate given the characters and the community they inhabit. When they do interact with black characters, its clear none of them are racists. They're jut a bunch of white people.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 14 - The Strongbox

“The Strongbox”

First Script Read: January 17, 1998

Filmed: January 21, 1998

 Aired: February 5, 1998

Nielsen rating: 21.1

Audience share: 31

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writers: Dan O’Keefe (story and teleplay) and Billy Kimball (story only)

I have to be honest with you. Even though I've seen this episode several times, most recently a couple months ago, I couldn't remember what the heck it was about based solely on the title. A strongbox? When was there a story involving a strongbox??

 
That's another characteristic of Seinfeld's Late Period. Some of the episodes, especially the weaker ones, are so wild and scattered in their stories that they defy a simple description. That's not to say "The Strongbox" doesn't have its fair share of funny moments - they just don't come together as well as most classic Seinfeld episodes.


Have you remembered what "The Strongbox" is about? The strongbox belongs to Kramer, who purchased it to protect his valuables after hearing of a burglary in the building. The strongbox actually rarely appears in the episode, and the focus turns to the key. Kramer hides the key in Jerry's apartment but Jerry keeps stumbling across it, forcing Kramer to find increasingly elaborate hiding places. He also takes the liberty of locking up Jerry's prized "Jerry Lewis" cufflinks, which becomes a problem when the key gets lost and Jerry can't get to his cufflinks as a conversation starter for meeting the real Jerry Lewis. The key was actually eaten by Jerry's neighbor's parrot, killing the bird, so Jerry and Kramer go dig up the parrot in the pet cemetery.


George's girlfriend won't accept his break up declaration, so he tries to cheat on her with a secretary from work who is mysteriously quite tan (my favorite running joke of the episode). This fails, first because his initial girlfriend STILL won't break up with him, second because the secretary refuses to sleep with George, and third because now the secretary won't break up with George either.


Elaine dates a man who refuses to bring her back to his apartment. Elaine suspects he is cheating on his wife, but eventually discovers the man is poor. Elaine decides to break up with him, but finds him too charming. Eventually, their romance is interrupted when Elaine discovers the man is both poor AND married.


What would you call the episode? "The Poor Boyfriend?" "The Tan?" "The Parrot?" Personally, I like "The Cufflinks," but even that falls short. The episode feels more like a bunch of distinct jokes cobbled together in the writer's room. Even when its about nothing Seinfeld is best when it does a lot with that nothingness.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 13 - The Cartoon

“The Cartoon”

First Script Read: January 8, 1998

Filmed: January 15, 1998

 Aired: January 29, 1998

Nielsen rating: 21.9

Audience share: 33

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Bruce Eric Kaplan (Kaplan, who also wrote The Merv Griffith Show and co-wrote The Puerto Rican Parade, is a cartoonist for The New Yorker.)

Elaine gets a cartoon published in The New Yorker only to realize she accidentally took the idea from Ziggy; Puddy has Ziggy bedsheets. Jerry gets into a feud with Susan's old friend, Sally Weaver (Kathy Griffin), leading Weaver to launch a hit one-woman comedy show about how Jerry Seinfeld is the devil. But the real fun in this episode comes from George's relationship with Janet, a woman who looks just like Jerry.

Before Janet shows up at the coffee shop to meet Jerry and Elaine for the first time, George starts raving about his particular attraction to her. "Aah! the minute I saw this girl, we just clicked," he says. "She's got such a nice face...her eyes...her mouth...nose." Elaine quips, "George, we know what a face consists of." Janet arrives and Elaine bites her tongue until George and Janet leave. Then she tells Jerry Janet looks exactly like him. Jerry brushes it off until Janet meets Kramer for the first time. Typical of his character, Kramer can't keep his mouth shut about awkward things:

KRAMER: And you must....look exactly like Jerry! You don't see this? You're like twins! Wowwww!
This is eerie.
GEORGE: Kramer, what are you talking about? Janet doesn't look anything like Jerry!
JANET: Well, maybe we do look a little like each other.
GEORGE: No! What do you know about what you look like?
KRAMER: C'mon George relax. Just because they look alike doesn't mean you're secretly in love with Jerry.
GEORGE: All right now we're going bye bye!

George's insecurities have been piqued, and Jerry is uncomfortable too. Later, Elaine provokes them, telling George, "Janet looks very nice. She's quite a HANDSOME woman!" Having dropped the grenade, Elaine leaves Jerry and George alone to deal with the explosion. The two have an increasingly awkward situation, culminating in both of them assuring the other of their heterosexuality. Ultimately, the tension boils down to Jerry's and George's latent homophobia, explored several times throughout the run of the series ("The Outing," "The Note," "The Jimmy," and "The Pool Guy" to name a few examples).

Of course, George is particularly vulnerable to allowing his fears to get the better of him. Kramer blabs about George's Jerry-like girlfriend to George's parents, and tells George he is dating "a new fem-Jerry friend... a perverse sexual amalgam of some girl and his best friend." The idea now introduced into his head, George is desperate to focus on anything else besides Janet's looks:
GEORGE: You know, you know what's great about our relationship? It's not about looks.
JANET: It's not?
GEORGE: No , Can't be. For instance, I remember when we first met we had a great conversation.
JANET: I remember you said I was the prettiest girl at the party.
GEORGE: But after that we really talked didn't we?
JANET: Well, you told me how familiar I looked and that you must have seen me somewhere before.
GEORGE: Na...no... This relationship has got to be about something else and fast or I'm in very serious and weird trouble!

After Janet gets gum in her hair, she cuts it and looks more like Jerry than ever. George freaks out and runs away. He tells Jerry what happened and, after another awkward conversation, they agree to never speak of it again. George announces he'll be taking a few days off and Jerry agrees that's for the best. Never before in the history of the show, after all his disastrous foibles, has George been so shook up. He is so insecure that his new girlfriend's resemblance to Jerry drives him crazy.

Then again, she really did look like Jerry.

SEINFELD - Season 9, Episode 12 - The Reverse Peephole

"The Reverse Peephole"

First Script Read: December 13, 1997

Filmed: December 17, 1997

Aired: January 15, 1998

Nielsen rating: 21.3

Audience share: 31

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writer: Spike Feresten

OK, pop quiz. Let's say all you knew about Seinfeld was my Early Period/Mature Period/Late Period breakdown (discussed most prominently in my post on "The Bizarro Jerry"). Let's say I put all the titles of Seinfeld episodes into a hat. Let's say you pulled out "The Reverse Peephole." Which period would you think that episode would fall? A reverse peephole? CLEARLY, zany, quirky, a little ridiculous...Late Period. And let's say you knew the basic traits of the four main characters. Which character do you think would have a reverse peephole? Obviously, Kramer.

Really, the reverse peephole is just a small element in a very funny episode. And you can tell how elaborate the plot is by how many clauses I have to use to explain each character's storyline. George helps buy a massaging chair as an apartment gift for the gang's mutual friend, Joe Mayo, but secretly keeps the chair for himself to help soothe his back, which is sore from carrying an extremely filled wallet. To keep his friend from being evicted, Kramer helps Newman cover up the postman's affair with the landlord's wife by pretending that a fur coat the landlord found wasn't given to the wife by Newman but actually was left in the laundry by Jerry, who is a fancy boy. The fur coat ORIGINALLY belonged to David Puddy until Elaine, disgusted with his fashion choices, threw it out the window at Joe Mayo's party, only to have Puddy mistaken Joe Mayo's fur coat for his own, leading Elaine to get in blamed for losing Joe Mayo's coat since she was responsible for the coats. And Jerry starts using a European carry-all to carry around his and his girlfriend's belongings, leaving him open to mockery.

I like the way this episode uses gender stereotypes, though not in the obvious ways that might be expected. Puddy looks RIDICULOUS wearing the fur coat, but nobody ever calls Elaine's big boyfriend a woman. Elaine just thinks he looks like an idiot. When Jerry puts on the coat and grabs his purse-like carry-all to strut around in front of Silvio, the landlord, and help Kramer clear Newman's name, no one says he looks like a woman. They do use some words that are code for referring to someone as a homosexual (dandy, fancy), but their critique is more about Jerry's fame going to his head and turning him into an effete elitist:

KRAMER: Hey, Silvio! Look at Jerry here! Prancing around in his coat with his purse! Yup, he's a dandy! He's a real fancy boy!
JERRY: Maybe this isn't my coat...
KRAMER: All right, you're not fancy!
SILVIO: No, he's very fancy! Want me! Love me! Shower me with kisses!

Silvio is hardly an astute observer of human behavior, so his critique of Jerry comes off as ridiculous. In the end, it's a funny scene, not because of Jerry is gender-bending, but because Jerry looks very funny. And ultimately, that's all the Seinfeld writers and costume department intended with the fur coat. There is no brilliant commentary on gender stereotypes. Jerry just looks like an idiot.