"These pretzels are making me thirsty." - Kramer's single line as an extra in a Woody Allen movie in "The Alternate Side"
Seinfeld: Season 3 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Not all TV masterpieces excel right from the start. Some take a while to get going. Seinfeld is no exception. The series' first two abbreviated seasons are a bit uneven as the show's actors and creative team experiment with the series' tone and direction. Sure, several of those early episodes are funny, but when the show returned to NBC on September 18, 1991 for its first complete season, the show could easily have gone either way: average sitcom with an occasional above-average episode, or out-and-out classic. Luckily for us, Seinfeld: Season 3 finds the sitcom in top form, with nearly all of its twenty-two episodes mining comic gold.
The season is packed with memorable episodes featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld (played, in a stretch, by comedian Jerry Seinfeld), his unemployed pal George Costanza (Jason Alexander), Jerry's ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Jerry's oddball neighbor Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). In "The Note," George questions his sexuality when a visit to a male massage therapist leaves him feeling.moved. During a visit to his parents' condo in Florida, Jerry "steals" an astronaut pen and Elaine throws her back out while sleeping on the Seinfelds' uncomfortable sofa bed ("The Pen"). The "library police" contact Jerry about a library book that has been overdue for twenty years ("The Library"). The gang gets lost in a parking garage while shopping in a New Jersey mall ("The Parking Garage"). Kramer pitches a cologne that smells like the beach to an executive at Calvin Klein while Jerry sends Elaine into a laughing fit at a piano recital ("The Pez Dispenser"). As a matter of fact, there are so many strong episodes here it would probably be easier just to write about the season's two or three duds. But where would be the fun in that?
In the season one episode "Male Unbonding," Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David cleverly compared male friendships to romantic relationships by having Jerry "break up" with a friend who annoyed him. David and co-writer Larry Levin explore similar territory in "The Boyfriend," Seinfeld's first hour long episode. Jerry becomes giddy as a schoolgirl when he befriends baseball great Keith Hernandez (playing himself) in a gym locker room. As the friendship escalates, Jerry wonders when it's okay to call, whether he should shake hands after a "date," and whether it's too soon in their relationship to perform the ultimate act of male friendship intimacy - helping Hernandez move. This episode is an example of what Seinfeld excels at: taking banal plotlines and trite dialogue, putting them into a different context, and coming up with something totally new and revelatory in the process.
The actors and writers create much more consistent characters in this season. Kramer is no longer confined to the apartment building, allowing him to interact with the other characters in a wider variety of situations. Richards further hones his character's livewire physicality. If you have any doubt that Richards is a sublimely gifted physical comedian, check out Kramer's wildly funny seizures in "The Good Samaritan" (hilariously caused by hearing the voice of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart) or the way he takes the simply task of placing a box into a car trunk in "The Parking Garage" and turns it into a brilliant comic bit. Alexander's nebbishy, irascible George is in full bloom here, with one comic highlight in "The Boyfriend" when he runs from the bathroom, pants around his ankles, screaming "Say 'Vandelay Industries'!" Louis-Dreyfus gives Elaine the perfect mix of aggression, desperation, and utter incompetence. Check out the way she lamely sucks up to her boss in "The Letter" after her stubborn refusal to remove her Orioles cap at a Yankees game lands her picture in the newspaper, thus threatening to expose the truth behind why she missed her boss' son's bris. Her story about a marauding pack of wild teens in "The Parking Space" is also inspired. Perhaps the show's weakest link is Seinfeld himself. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sure, he's never quite in character and pretty much delivers all of his lines with the same emphasis. Somehow, what could be construed as a flaw actually works in the show's favor, allowing Seinfeld to help center the cast and take the edge off some of the other characters' wackier behavior.
One of Seinfeld's biggest stars isn't even listed in the credits. New York City plays such an integral part in the series that it is practically a main character. One perfect example of this is "The Subway," an episode that isn't necessarily the series' best, but one that is quintessentially New York. Set almost entirely on the subway, this episode follows the characters as they travel to different parts of the city: Jerry to reclaim his stolen car, George to a job interview, Elaine to a lesbian wedding, and Kramer to traffic court. Some of the individual moments in this episode are pure New York, like Kramer's mad dash for a seat (another inspired bit of physical comedy that practically demands to be rewound and watched again) and his subsequent slapstick battle over an abandoned newspaper. Elaine's mounting frustration (an interior monologue heard through voiceover) over the inexplicable subway delays also has a painfully funny ring of truth to it. Even Jerry's somewhat gimmicky encounter with a naked guy feels true thanks to the unmistakably realistic image of New Yorkers clumped on one end of a subway car desperately trying to ignore something terrible going on at the car's other end.
It has often been said that Seinfeld's creators set out to make a show that avoided the usual sitcom technique of having the characters learn little lessons at the end of each episode. The series goes far beyond that, however, in that it presents characters that are blindly self-absorbed and who possess a casual disregard for others, including their own friends. Jerry decides not to turn in a hit-and-run driver when he discovers that the driver in question is a beautiful woman. His morals quickly return, however, when he realizes that the victim looks even better ("The Good Samaritan"). George dates the unattractive daughter of his caseworker just so that he can continue to receive unemployment benefits ("The Boyfriend"). George enlists Elaine to help with a complicated scheme to cheat on an I.Q. test in order to impress his new girlfriend ("The Café," a classic episode that also introduces Brian George as luckless restaurateur Babu Bhatt). Jerry gives liquor to a recovering alcoholic and George buys a damaged cashmere sweater as a thank you gift ("The Red Dot"). The list goes on and on. In less skilled hands, we would hate these characters, but in the world of Seinfeld, these comic misanthropes succeed because, in a way, they are actually like us. Even when they are behaving at their worst, we can watch these characters and recognize something from our own lives. How often can you say that with a gentler (but equally likeable) show like Leave it to Beaver?
The twenty-two episodes that make up the third season are divided onto four discs. The discs are housed in slim, clear keepcases. The front covers each feature a different publicity photo of one of the show's stars. The back covers include episode numbers, episode titles, and plot synopses. The double-sided coversheets show through to the insides of the cases and feature an orange-tinted photo of the gang's hangout, Monk's Diner. Each DVD features another publicity shot of the same star depicted on its case. Overall, the design is simple and bold. The four keepcases slide into two cardboard sleeves, both of which feature the same group publicity photo of the cast members. A booklet listing the basic production credits for each episode is also sandwiched between the keepcases.
The DVD menus are just as impressive as those for Seinfeld: Seasons 1 & 2. Each disc's menu has a different theme: Jerry's apartment for disc one, Monk's diner for disc two, the subway for disc three, and the parking garage for disc four. The main menu presents a picture of that disc's locale as clips from episodes pop up in bubble-shaped windows. Subsequent menus zoom in on one aspect of the locale. The menus are witty, elegant, and nearly impossible to describe - just know that you'll be pleased.
