The Marine Biologist

While having a conversation with Elaine about his favorite yellow t-shirt, “Golden Boy” (which, due to its age, is “dying”), Jerry tells her the novel War and Peace was originally called War, What is it Good For? (a reference to Edwin Starr’s hit song “War”). Kramer gives Elaine an electronic organizer. Also he has acquired a stash of two-thousand Titleist golf balls from a driving range and decides to practice his driving skills by hitting them into the ocean rather than a driving range. Jerry meets a female friend from college (Rosalind Allen), and claims that George is a marine biologist. George, who now is expecting a call from her, is upset because he prefers to lie about being an architect.

Elaine shares what Jerry told her with an eccentric Russian author, Yuri Testikov, who is being courted by Pendant Publishing, her company. Upon hearing Elaine’s electronic organizer beep repeatedly, he angrily grabs it from her and tosses it out of the window of the limousine they were sharing.

Kramer returns home in humiliation, having missed every ball except one, and becomes obsessed with getting sand out of his clothing. At the beach, George keeps lying about his job when he is called upon to use his nonexistent marine biology skills to save a beached whale. Later, Jerry receives a phone call from a woman named Corinne (Carol Kane) who sees his phone number in the organizer after it hit her in the head while she was walking down the street. The two meet at Monk’s Cafe and the woman won’t return Elaine’s organizer to Jerry until she is compensated for her hospital bill.

Elaine wants Testikov to pay for the woman’s bills, so she and Jerry go to confront him in his hotel room. Elaine carries a tape recorder in her bag, Testikov hears a noise and thinks they are secretly recording him; he reacts by throwing the tape recorder out the window, hitting the very same woman in the head while she waits outside to return the electronic organizer. Meanwhile, while trying to get sand out of his shoe, Kramer accidentally drops it out of his apartment window, hitting Newman who happens to be walking beneath.

The episode ends with George’s dramatic retelling of his struggle with the whale in coffee shop, ultimately revealing that the whale’s blowhole had been lodged with Kramer’s Titleist golf ball. Kramer responds meekly that it was a “hole in one.” George also told his girlfriend about not really being a marine biologist, and was summarily dumped. Elaine then asks Jerry what happened to “Golden Boy”, he tells her it did in fact “die”, but it’s now been replaced by a new contender, “Baby Blue.”

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