Seinfeld Reference – Page 14 – A website about nothing

The Pitch

NBC executives ask Jerry to come up with an idea for a TV series. George decides he can be a sitcom writer and comes up with it being “a show about nothing.” Kramer trades a radar detector for a helmet, and later Newman receives a speeding ticket.

While waiting to meet the NBC executives, George and Jerry meet “Crazy” Joe Davola, a writer and “a total nut” who goes to the same therapist as Elaine. Jerry, searching for conversation, mentions Kramer’s party, to which Joe was not invited. While discussing the disaster of the meeting with NBC, George focuses on starting a relationship with the female executive, Susan Ross. Kramer drinks spoiled milk and vomits on her. The helmet saves Kramer from an attack by “Crazy” Joe Davola. This attack leaves him suffering of hemispatial neglect (forgets to dress half of his body properly, forgets to shave half his face, etc). While all this is occurring, Elaine is in Europe with her therapist.

The Trip

The Trip, Part 1

In The Trip, Part 1, Jerry is offered two free tickets from New York to Hollywood to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He offers one to George and they decide that while they are in Los Angeles they will track down Kramer, who headed to Los Angeles in the previous episode, “The Keys”, to become an actor. A dead body turns up in another part of LA and Kramer’s script he had given to the woman is found on her person. George thinks he has insightful conversations with the talk show guests (Corbin Bernsen and George Wendt) but they both call him “nuts”. Jerry can’t remember the wording for a joke and blames the hotel maid, Lupe (Dyana Ortelli), who threw it away while cleaning the room. As Jerry and George leave the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, they see Kramer’s picture on the news. He is the main suspect for the “Smog Strangler”.

The Trip, Part 2

Kramer is arrested when he is mistaken for “The Smog Strangler,” a serial killer roaming the streets of Los Angeles. While also in L.A., Jerry and George try to help resolve the accusation. They use a pay phone to call the police and they say they have some important information regarding the stranglings. Two policemen in a police cruiser come to pick them up and take them back to the station. On their way, the officers see a man (Clint Howard) trying to break into a car. They arrest him and put him in the back with Jerry and George. They have to stop again when they get a police call regarding to the “Smog Strangler” and happen to be close to the scene. Jerry and George want to make sure Kramer is not imprisoned, so they open the door of the car, and, in their hurry, leave the door open. The man who was breaking into the car escapes.

Kramer is taken to the police station and is interrogated by the lieutenant. He has a nervous breakdown in the interrogation room and is reduced to hysterical sobbing, making it seem like he did the stranglings. While he is being questioned, the lieutenant receives a phone call stating that the Smog Strangler has killed another victim while Kramer was in custody, and so he is allowed to leave. After Kramer is exonerated, Jerry and George decide to return to New York, but Kramer opts to remain in Los Angeles. However, by the end of the episode, Kramer has returned to New York and is once again living across the hall from Jerry. He offers no explanation of his return.

It turns out that the Smog Strangler is actually the man that was in the back seat with George and Jerry, the one they accidentally let escape. It is broadcast on a news program that his whereabouts are unknown.

The Keys

In a montage of incidents, Jerry returns home only to find that Kramer has overstayed his welcome; he had been using the spare set of keys Jerry had left with him. Exasperated, Jerry demands his spare keys back, angering Kramer. Knowing that he has broken the “covenant of the keys,” Kramer realizes he is now free to come out of the shadows. Kramer then takes off for California to follow his dream of becoming an actor, after he is unable to persuade George to join him.

Jerry gives his spare keys to Elaine. Soon after, he desperately needs them and goes to Elaine’s apartment with George (who has the spare keys to her place), to search for his spare set. While there, they find Elaine’s writing project for an episode of Murphy Brown. As they read and laugh over it, Elaine walks in and screams at them to leave because they’ve invaded her privacy.

Jerry is unable to locate Kramer to make amends. One night, while watching Murphy Brown with Elaine, Jerry sees Kramer in a famous bit part on Murphy Brown as Murphy’s new secretary, “Steven Snell.” Surprisingly, Murphy tells Steven that she has “a very good feeling” about him.

The Parking Space

Kramer tells Jerry about something his friend Mike (Lee Arenberg) said about Jerry being “a phony.” After borrowing Jerry’s car, Elaine comes up with a wild story involving a pack of teenagers with a gun, because the car is now making a strange clanking noise.

George drives with Elaine to Jerry’s to watch a big televised fight with him. He finds a space, and decides to back into it. He spends a good deal of time positioning himself perfectly (bragging to Elaine about his ability to parallel park). When he starts backing into the space, Mike, also there for the fight at Jerry’s, enters the same space, front first.

The two argue over who is entitled to the space, all the while blocking traffic. Mike argues that he entered the space first, while George argues that he saw it first and was simply positioning himself, entitling him to the space. People on the street, including a truck driver (played by Michael Costanza, the friend of Jerry Seinfeld that inspired George Costanza’s name) also assess the situation and argue with each other over who should keep the space. To make way for the truck, George and Mike get neutral people to move the cars and position them perfectly after the truck is moved.

Jerry and Kramer also come down to try to settle the problem. Jerry inavertently tells a little boy named Matthew that his father, who owns the “fat free” yogurt store, is closing the store, and the boy gets upset. Kramer mistakenly thinks the boy’s mother is pregnant. Near the end of the episode, two police officers finally arrive to supposedly resolve the situation. However, when one tells Mike to move his car, the other argues against him, and by now, it is night time.

At the end of the episode, Jerry is seen dashing back into his apartment, just in time to see the last few seconds of the count for knockout (missing the actual knockout punch).

The Letter

Kramer poses for a portrait to be painted by Jerry’s new girlfriend, Nina (Catherine Keener), which an elderly, art-loving couple admire. George feels obligated to buy something when he accompanies Jerry to Nina’s art studio, especially when she offers George her father’s tickets to the Owners Box at Yankee Stadium. George then reluctantly purchases a $500 painting, which he tries to sell to Jerry for $10 at the end of the episode.

With Nina’s tickets, George brings both Elaine and Kramer to the Yankee Stadium’s Owners Box. In order get out of a prior engagement, her boss’s son’s bris, Elaine lies to her boss, Mr. Lippman, saying she must tend to her ill father. However, once the three are seated in the box, Elaine refuses to remove her Baltimore Orioles baseball cap and they are consequently evicted. Kramer, while attempting to climb over the dugout, is struck in the head by a baseball. At the same time, Nina and Jerry have an argument and break up.

Upon returning to Jerry’s apartment, Elaine discovers her confrontation in the Yankees’ owners box was published with a picture in the sports section of the paper. After an unsuccessful attempt at stealing the sports section of the paper from his office, Elaine fears her boss will realise and fire her. Meanwhile, a poetic and emotional letter is delivered to Jerry’s from Nina. Although he is initially moved and humbled, Jerry soon finds out that the letter was plagiarized from the Neil Simon play Chapter Two. Upon confronting Nina, the elderly couple who admired Kramer’s portrait walk in to confirm their purchase.

Elaine is summoned to her boss’s office, whose accountant is revealed to be Nina’s father. As he recites the baseball cap story over the phone, Lippman is amused and apparently does not realize that the offender was Elaine. He informs her that Nina’s father has given him tickets to Yankee Stadium and invites her to wear a Baltimore cap (which she coincidently has in her office) as a joke.

In the closing scene, Kramer is seen to be dining with the elderly couple who purchased his portrait.

The Good Samaritan

Jerry witnesses a hit-and-run driver hitting another car. He is on the car phone with Elaine at the time, who tells him he has to go after the driver. He does, but when the driver steps out he realizes that she is a beautiful woman (played by Melinda McGraw) and decides to date her.

Jerry lies to Elaine saying he went into Queens and intimidated the man with karate moves. After dating the hit-and-run driver (Angela), Jerry finds out she also hit Becky (played by an uncredited Helen Slater), another woman he has always wanted to date. He tells Becky that he will do something about the damage. Meanwhile, Kramer has convulsions from Mary Hart’s voice.

George and Elaine go out to dinner with a married couple. Elaine makes up an elaborate story that she once dated a romantic matador from Spain named “Eduardo Corrochio”, making his name up hesitantly on the spot (actually a famous person by the name of Eduardo Corrochio does exist). When the wife (played by Ann Talman) sneezes, George casually tells her “God bless you”, but her husband (played by Joseph Malone) does not say anything. When George points this out, the husband, Michael, gets mad. His wife, Robin, likes George, and they have an affair. As George and Robin are in bed together, Michael calls Elaine to find out where his wife is. Elaine does not know, but soon realizes that Robin used her as an excuse and tries to cover up. Michael doesn’t buy it and figures out Robin is with George. He then exclaims into the phone, “He’s finished! I’m going to sew his ass to his face! I’m going to twist his neck so hard his lips will be his eyebrows! I’m going to break his joints, and reattach them!”

Meanwhile, Jerry confronts Angela about Becky’s car, but unfortunately Elaine walks in at that very moment and figures out that Jerry “lied” about his story. Jerry goes to Becky’s house to write out a check for her damage and then ask her out, but Becky accuses him of hitting her car. George manages to escape from Michael by joining Jerry on vacation. Kramer uses the accident as an excuse to talk to Becky and ends up getting a date with her. But when he rings the bell at her apartment and she opens the door, Mary Hart is on the TV and Kramer has another convulsion.

The Limo

Jerry flies in from Chicago and George arrives to take him home. His car has broken down on the Belt Parkway and the two are stranded. Jerry points out a limousine chauffeur with a sign for someone named O’Brien. Jerry had seen an O’Brien in Chicago complaining to the airport staff that he had to reach Madison Square Garden. Since the real O’Brien’s flight is overbooked and he will not be arriving in New York soon, George tells Jerry that since it is such a long wait to get a cab, they should pose as O’Brien and his colleague and take the limo home. George chooses the first name Colin and assumes the identity of O’Brien, as Jerry makes up the name Dylan Murphy. The chauffeur believes them and lets them into the limo. George asks the chauffeur where he is driving to, who says Madison Square Garden and that he has the four passes. George remembers the Knicks are playing the Bulls that night at MSG, which must be why O’Brien wanted to get there. Jerry calls up Elaine and tells her to wait with Kramer for them to pick them up for the game, and also tells her to call him and George by their pseudonyms. Jerry and George congratulate each other, and George stumbles over a quotation: “I see things as they are, and I say no …” (the quotation he is searching for belongs to George Bernard Shaw — “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”), finally asking Jerry, “what do you say when you see something?”

After the call, Jerry and George learn that two of the people the passes were intended for are still coming. The chauffeur stops and a man, Tim (Peter Krause), and a woman, Eva (Suzanne Snyder, who would later play Audrey in season 5’s The Pie; and whose name could be an allusion to Eva Braun), get in with them. George feigns sleep and Jerry introduces himself. Eva and Tim tell Jerry that they are great fans of O’Brien’s newsletter and book, The Big Game, neither of which has he heard of. Luckily, the two have never seen a picture of O’Brien and have no way of knowing who George really is.

As Kramer and Elaine wait outside the apartment building, Jerry mentions that they will probably miss the tip-off, and Tim wonders if he means “someone’s been tipped off.” George, interested about the book he supposedly wrote, asks Eva to describe her view of it. She and Tim cite the book’s analysis of something called “the game,” all its major players, and how the fate of the world depends on it. Eva mentions that O’Brien is making a speech that night, and George nervously reads a faxed copy of it for the first time. Kramer mentions it strange that George and Jerry took a limo when they had the former’s car, and wonders why they insist on being called different names.

George reads O’Brien’s speech and finds to his and Jerry’s dismay that it is full of remarks expounding antisemitism, anti-Zionism and white supremacy. As he continues it, a loud bang is heard outside. Tim pulls out a pistol and exits the car. Eva tells George that she would do anything for him, even die. Tim comes back and says it was just a flat tire. He then adds if someone really were shooting at them, he would be prepared, and pulls out a briefcase of pistols. A news report reveals that Donald O’Brien, head of the regional chapter of the Aryan Union, a high-profile Neo-Nazi organization, is scheduled to make his first public appearance at the Paramount, adjacent to MSG, to deliver the speech at a rally. He is an outspoken Neo-Nazi, admirer of Adolf Hitler, and passionate fascist to the extent of denouncement from David Duke. Crowd control officers have lined up several barricades to keep away hordes of protesters.

Out on the street, Kramer and Elaine run into her friend Dan and his friends, who tell them they are going to the Nazi rally to protest O’Brien. He then mentions no one knows what O’Brien looks like. As George explains to Jerry that he is attracted to Eva, they plan to have the limo drive back to the Upper West Side and get out when they see Elaine and Kramer, who realizes that Jerry must be the O’Brien at the rally, which explains the limo. As it drives past them, Kramer sees Jerry and shouts, “O’Brien!” This attracts Dan, his friends, and other protestors across the street. As Kramer and Elaine dive through the door and they chase the limo down the street, the phone begins ringing. Kramer picks up and hands it to Eva. She listens for a few seconds and tells the others, “It’s O’Brien.” Tim pulls out his gun and demands that George and Jerry say who they really are, and Jerry and George, and later Elaine, all rapidly (and nervously) attempt to explain themselves at the same time. The car pulls up to the Paramount and the protesters begin rocking it. Dan notices Elaine as one of the passengers, and she awkwardly acknowledges him. George is placed in front of the news teams identified as Donald O’Brien, and the protesters horde around him as he frantically denies being O’Brien and shouts for Jerry.

The Boyfriend

The Boyfriend, Part 1

Jerry meets his idol, former New York Mets baseball player Keith Hernandez and wants to make a good impression. Meanwhile, George is out of time on his unemployment and he works harder than ever on his scheme to get a 13-week extension. He tells the unemployment office he was close to a job with Vandelay Industries, a company that makes latex products and whose main office is Jerry’s apartment. Kramer and Newman accuse Hernandez of spitting on them during a Mets game at Shea Stadium; however, Jerry supports the “second-spitter theory” that Hernandez was not involved. Keith asks Jerry about Elaine’s status. Keith makes a date with her and breaks a date with Jerry.

The Boyfriend, Part 2

George tries two more approaches with the unemployment officer. Kramer gets Jerry to accompany him to see a former neighbors’ new baby, “you got to see the baby.” Elaine and Keith are hitting it off until he pulls out a cigarette. George wants to sleep with a really tall woman. Keith supports the “second spitter theory.” Jerry and Elaine both break up with Keith and George might get his wish.

The Fix-Up

George says that he would never sink to fix-ups, saying that a fix up is one step away from prostitution or personal ads (however, in “The Race” he replies to such an ad). At first, George resists the efforts of Jerry and Elaine to set George up with Elaine’s friend Cynthia (Maggie Wheeler, credited as Maggie Jakobson) absent certainty she meets his (low) intellectual and (high) attractiveness standards. (George: Is there a pinkish hue? Jerry: A pinkish hue? George: Yes, a rosy glow. Jerry: There’s a hue. She’s got great eyebrows, women kill to have her eyebrows. George: Who cares about eyebrows? Is she sweet? I like sweet. But not too sweet, you could throw up from that.) They hit it off and have sex in George’s kitchen but he is horrified to discover that Kramer has given him a defective condom after the latter’s friend works at a condom factory and gave him “a gross.” Cynthia says she misses her period but ends up having it at the end of the episode.

The end of the episode sees George, Elaine, Jerry and Cynthia sitting down for dinner at a restaurant (at a table closest to the kitchen) when George begins to eat his appetizer in a way that seems to disgust Cynthia in a means that did not seem possible for as long as he was potentially the father of her unborn child.

The Suicide

Elaine needs to fast before an ulcer test, so she tries starving herself three days before the test. After his neighbor Martin (John Mousadis) tries to commit suicide and ends up in a coma, Jerry is hit on by his girlfriend, Gina (Gina Gallego), while at the hospital. A psychic warns George to cancel his vacation to the Cayman Islands. However, when Elaine rebukes her for smoking while pregnant, the psychic kicks them out before telling George why he should cancel. Terrified, George sells his ticket to Kramer.

Jerry becomes worried when Newman (a fellow resident and friend of Martin’s) sees him with Gina. Later, in the comatose Martin’s hospital room, Newman hints to Jerry that he will tell Martin what’s been going on with Jerry and Gina, while Kramer is in there to tell Martin to give him back his vacuum cleaner. Jerry attempts to buy Newman off with the extra Drake’s coffee cake that he has, however Elaine (now starving without food) takes it and devours it before he can even eat it. Meanwhile, George finds Rula the psychic in another hospital room as she is going into labor. He tries to discover from her the reason why he shouldn’t go to the Caymans, however she is taken away to give birth before she can divulge it. Amidst all the commotion Martin awakens from his coma and Newman promptly tells him everything, resulting in Jerry’s being choked.

While in the Caymans, Kramer played nude backgammon with Elle Macpherson, one of the models who was there for a shooting of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. Upon his return he explains to George that he was mildly stung on the foot by a jellyfish, and theorizes that this is why the psychic didn’t want George to go on the trip. George sarcastically agrees. The three then depart for dinner with Elaine, who must begin another fast having ruined her first one.