The Old Man

Jerry, Elaine and George volunteer to help the elderly. Jerry gets assigned to Sid Fields (Bill Erwin), a bad-tempered old man with a Senegalese housekeeper (Lanei Chapman), that he claims is trying to steal his possessions. Elaine is repulsed by the goiter problems of the woman she is visiting and George depresses his assigned senior citizen, Ben Cantwell, by questioning his outlook on dying, until he walks out, telling George that “Life’s too short to waste on you”. Later, George becomes attracted to Mr. Field’s housekeeper when he learns that she can’t speak English.

Kramer and Newman try the business of selling some of Jerry’s old records to a used record store but are not satisfied with the results. The man Jerry is responsible for tells him that he wants to get rid of some of his “junk”, including a large amount of old records which Kramer and Newman show up later to pick up. The man bites Kramer’s arm, causing him to jerk back and launch his dentures in to the garbage disposal. Jerry loses track of his man when they try to take him to the dentist to repair his dentures which were promptly destroyed after the garbage disposal was turned on, mistaken for a light switch.

Meanwhile, Elaine discovers that her old woman had an affair with Gandhi, and one of the stories she tells directly mirrors what George had said to the housekeeper about him “dipping my bald head in oil and rubbing it all over your body”.

The search for Jerry’s old man leads to everyone (including the old man’s son) bursting in on George having oil rubbed on his head by the housekeeper.

The episode ends with the two old men, in the diner, in the same booth the main characters use, having much the same conversation Jerry and George had at the beginning of the episode, during which Fields tells Cantwell about the woman he was recently “fixed up” with – mentioning both her goiter and her youthful relationship with Gandhi.

Read more…