Line #130 Headscratchers/Seinfeld


1	* Jerry is implied in-universe to be extremely well-off financially. He seemingly has unlimited money, and is shown making $50,000 for one gig. So WHY is he living in an old, dilapidated one-bedroom apartment for the duration of the series? I love the apartment because it's the primary set for the series, but if you take it out of the Seinfeld universe, it looks like a starter flat for a broke 20-something. I find it hard to believe that a near-millionaire wouldn't be living in a condo on Park Avenue, or at least a house in the suburbs.
2	** NYC rent for starters. Jerry’s tiny apartment right in the heart of Manhattan probably would cost a lot more than it looks like realistically. Another reason is it’s not unexpected for somebody in show business to live well below their means. So yes, Jerry does make $50,000 for one gig, but he probably chooses to live in a cheap apartment just in case that one gig is all he has to survive in for a year.
3	** Also, "well-off financially" is relative. Fictional Jerry's probably doing okay for himself, but that doesn't mean he's a millionaire or anything close. Just because his real-life equivalent rakes in the big bucks doesn't mean that Fictional Jerry is as successful.
4	** And we don't know how many of those well-paying shows he does in a year. The episode implied that a fee like that was unusual.
5	** Essentially all the time that Jerry is at home is depicted in episodes. He's off-screen, on the road doing comedy for the majority of the character's in-universe time. Spending money on a fancy apartment would be a waste.
6	* Why did George want reparations in "The Betrayal"? Seriously, he got to go to India and sleep with a beautiful woman who he barely knew before going. She was also a "great conversationalist" so it wasn't like it was a chore dealing with her when he was out of the bedroom. When Jerry fooled around with her it was before he even went out with her, and the only reason he got to meet her was because of him.
7	** I'm not quite sure if it was ever stated outright if Nina slept with George or not. Anyway, the whole "Betrayal" was once again George's neurotic tendencies making something out of nothing. A good amount of his desire for Nina came from the fact that Jerry never slept with her. Once he found out that he had (and at the exact same time he introduced her to him) he felt "betrayed". You could also make an argument that George was concerned that the two would get back together, but his actions (and Nina's total lack of desire for Jerry in the rest of the episode outside of that one scene) suggest that George felt cheated because Jerry slept with her before him. This isn't the first time this has happened either; in "The Hamptons" George threw a fit because everyone saw his girlfriend topless before he did. In fact one of his lines from that episode perfectly sums up his actions in both cases:
8	--> '''George''': It's like I'm Neil Armstrong. I turn around for a sip of Tang, and you jump out first!
9	** Also... it's George. He has a sense of entitlement that's incredibly out-of-whack.
10	* In "The Strongbox," George attempts to break off his current relationship by having an affair. So why in hell's bells didn't he use the same tactic in "The Cadillac" and just let Susan find out he was cheating on her with Marisa Tomei? He spends the whole season looking for a way to get out of the engagement via SUSAN breaking it off, and he obviously would have been much happier with Tomei anyway. Granted, he wouldn't win too many morality awards for doing such a thing, but that was never exactly a problem for GLC anyway.
11	** If you remember Part 2 of "The Cadillac", Susan does eventually find out that George is having an affair (though not with Marisa Tomei). Also considering that in the very next episode they're still engaged suggests that ultimately Susan forgave him, or at least put it behind her. Also George isn't exactly the brightest bulb, so it may not have crossed his mind. Alternatively he was so star struck with the thought of being in a relationship with Marisa Tomei that he gave little to no thought about ending his engagement to Susan.
12	** Also, Susan might have treated Marisa Tomei as a kind of "celebrity freebie" -- namely, letting it slide because a chance to sleep with a beautiful and famous celebrity would be a near-impossible opportunity for an otherwise mundane nobody like George to refuse. Chances are, if it was Susan and (say) George Clooney she would also have succumbed to temptation.
13	* In "The Pothole" episode, why in the crap does Elaine go to so much trouble to have some supreme flounder delivered to her, when she could just go to the restaurant and pick it up? At one point in the episode, Jerry questions her about the trouble she's going to, and Elaine answers "it's better than eating it alone in the restaurant like some loser!" But everybody just pretends that the concept of ordering takeout doesn't exist.
14	** Laziness on Elaine's part, probably. She wants the food brought to ''her''; having to go to the restaurant to pick it up is too much hassle.
15	** Going to the restaurant would be far less work than going to the trouble of sneaking into a neighboring apartment building and pretending that the storage closet is "Apt. 1-Q." Then again, maybe she's just THAT stubborn.
16	** The trope is LaboriousLaziness. A lazy character unwittingly engaging in more effort to take the "lazy" route rather than the supposedly hard option is common in comedy.
17	** She doesn't understand why they won't step outside the maximum area that they deliver food to. This is positively infuriating to her, and she refuses to give up before she succeeds in making them deliver.
18	** As the Troper above points out, all logic and reason went out the window immediately when the restaurant refused to deliver the flounder to Elaine's apartment. It became a challenge for Elaine to get them to deliver it to her, whatever it took.
19	* Why are George and Jerry, two grown men, so absolutely petrified of Alton Benes? He is just a gruff, elderly man with an eccentric way of speaking. Then, to add insult to injury, Jerry had to ruin a $2,000 jacket because Alton said he "Wouldn't be seen on the street with a man wearing that." In any other episode, Jerry and George (especially Jerry) would be making endless jokes about a character so goofy. This whole episode is one big MindScrew.
20	** EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, probably. In the earliest episodes, Jerry was rather meek (this was even mentioned by a focus group, who claimed that Jerry wasn't strong enough of a main character). Obviously, this changed as he developed into a DeadpanSnarker.
21	** The inside looks featurette states that the cast was ''outright terrified'' of the actor who played Alton Benes (Lawrence Tierney). He was a very intimidating man who even stole one of the knives from Jerry's apartment set. Their terrified mannerisms were part script, and part actual fear.
22	** Also, it's not like he was some weak-looking, svelte old man like Uncle Leo. He was a Korean war veteran, carried himself with confidence and was physically intimidating.
23	** The partial irrationality of it is literally the joke. On the other hand, this is a REALLY old episode and Alton is depicted as having grown up in the 30s and 40s. A guy like that choosing to actually beat the hell out of Jerry for something like sleeping with Elaine without being married is not outside the realm of possibility in 1991.
24	* Why are the characters seen as being bad for what they did to Babu Bhatt? While everyone else who appeared in the finale were people they legitimately wronged out of selfishness, Babu was just someone they tried to help, and his getting deported was an honest mistake.
25	** You're right, and its probably meant to be ironic that even the one instance where they meant to do good was stacked against them in trial. But also, if you remember the episode, they were patting themselves on the back for all the good they did him, which basically amounted to giving him advice. Its like telling a fat person he should eat less and exercise more and then congratulating yourself for helping him lose weight (or given the quality of the advice given, its more like telling a fat person he should take an ancient Chinese weight loss herb you saw an ad for on the internet.)
26	** Frankly, the finale itself is a Just Bugs Me... not because it's just stupid to send your main characters to prison as a finale, though it is, but because so much of what was being used as evidence for their horribleness was misunderstandings. Generally speaking, the assholish things the characters do are as a result of crazy confluences of events and not outright malevolence. They didn't mean to get Babu deported, they actively tried to save him from that. George didn't mean to get toxic envelopes that killed Susan. Kramer didn't mean to get a wheelchair for that woman that would be unable to brake. Were the characters, generally speaking, selfish? Yes. But they were not the sociopaths they were made out to be in the finale ''until'' the finale, and the mocking they did of the fat guy being robbed at gunpoint would have been wildly out of character for them for most of the run.
27	*** I think the concept of the trial and jail could have been really funny, had it been written well. Sure, it might not have been deserved and been ridiculous in a legal sense, but it could have been classic tv comedy, had it not fallen flat. So many of the episodes are ridiculous if you really think about them, but because of good writing and acting, you can suspend your disbelief. Because there is something off about the finale, be it the writing, acting, editing, pacing, directing, or whatever, the flaws outshine everything.
28	*** I never saw them as bad people or being aware that they were bad people, to say the least. Comics (snarky observors of the world around them) are usually never portrayed as a bad force, but usually admirable because they cut through the BS.
29	*** I had thought George had bought the wedding invitations ''because'' they were slightly toxic as a sort of last-ditch-will-never happen-but-worth-a-shot way to get out of marrying Susan... Haven't seen that episode in a while though.
30	*** No, he just buys them because they're very inexpensive. George is guilty of being cheap, he's certainly not a murderer.
31	*** If anything, the stationary store is to blame for selling toxic envelopes in the first place. They were discontinued, and it's likely it's because of toxicity of the glue, so if they were taken off the market for toxicity, what were they doing still selling them?
32	*** That's not even getting into the fact that the use of character witnesses in the trial was ''incredibly'' illegal. When people are put on trial, the court's supposed to go out of its way to ''prevent'' the jury from learning those sorts of irrelevant, character-defaming acts.
33	*** The judge says this... [[HandWave then allows it anyway]], on the basis that [[KangarooCourt the lawyers went through a lot of work to get these people]].
34	*** There's also the fact that this was the first case of this law being broken and it would be largely publicized, so it was said that they ''had'' to win this case, no matter what.
35	*** You're assuming that this is a normal court with normal rules. But what if the characters died in the plane crash, and this is the afterlife where their souls are being judged? Consider the final scene--what earthly jail would place a woman in a cell with three men? I like the idea (which isn't my own) that they're in a kind of hell forced to listen to one another's neurotic rambles through eternity.
36	*** [[InferredHolocaust That would mean everyone else in the courtroom is dead.]] [[FridgeHorror What killed all of these different people, all over and outside of New York City, all at once?]]
37	*** But isn't that how they'd choose to spend eternity anyway?
38	** Babu being deported is mostly pure bad luck, since no one knew Babu's renewal papers were delivered to Jerry, but it's partly Babu's fault for not inquiring when he didn't receive his renewal forms so close to his visa expiration. Just because he doesn't receive the papers by mail doesn't mean he is no longer responsible for renewing his visa. After all, mail gets misplaced all the time.
39	*** It wasn't just bad luck. George's girlfriend Cheryl was a lawyer who tried to keep Babu from being deported. When she find out George and Jerry had been lying to her, she dropped Babu's case, causing him to get deported. Presumably she told Babu exactly why she wouldn't help him anymore, explaining why he blames them for it.
40	*** The finale is a deconstruction of karmic justice, and the series as a whole deconstructs the very notion of evil. Real-life harm is generally done not by Snidely Whiplash villains, but by oblivious selfish people who, to the limited extent they think of their behavior at all, have shallow rationalizations by which they think of themselves as essentially decent people. Because this evil is so petty, so banal, so unconsidered, it's absurd to punish it - but it's also morally untenable to just let such an accumulation of evil go without consequences. So when you have a reaction along the lines of, "well they were assholes but didn't really deserve how they were treated in the trial" ... that's the reaction you're supposed to have.
41	** Plus, when Jerry and Elaine visit Babu in custody to explain to him what happened, they, characteristically, find humor and levity in the entire situation, which causes them to laugh and chuckle as they explain it to him. In his shoes, of course, he fails to see the humor in his situation, and because they're seemingly laughing at him, he jumps to the conclusion that they're mocking and belittling him, which is what he testifies to in the finale.
42
43	* In "The Doll," Kramer and Frank (and later, [[InsistentTerminology The Maestro]]) play billiards on a table that's too large for the room they're in (the cues keep hitting the walls). How did they get the table in there in the first place?
44	** [[WatsonianVersusDoylist In-universe]], the pool table disassembles. Out-universe, the set disassembles.
45	* Why do they call him "the Bubble '''Boy'''" when he talks like a 42-year-old man?
46	** AlliterativeName?
47	** That was the joke. I think the implication (maybe they said it, maybe this was WMG that I assumed was canon) was that he had been famously a bubble boy as a boy, but he had gone on and lived his life and now was a bubble man. But everyone still remembered him as the "Boy in the Plastic Bubble" (a real movie) even though he was all grown up. So Elaine talked Jerry into what she thought was a favor for a sick little kid, but of course, the dad is asking him to visit his adult son.
48	* Why do we just accept that Seinfeld is a show about nothing? It has two episodes about nothing. I realize that was innovative at the time, but besides "The Chinese Restaurant" and "The Parking Garage," there's a lot going on in your average episode. I mean, a show where they have an episode where George meets Castro or Jerry reveals fattening yogurt that destroys the David Dinkens reelection campaign is not about nothing.
49	** The thing is it was one of the first sitcoms without a wacky hook like a sarcastic butler or a talking cat or a genie or a large wacky family or incompatible neighbors. [[OnceOriginalNowCommon It was a totally original concept at the time but by now has become passé]]. That's why by our standards it doesn't feel like a show about "nothing". They lampshade this with "Jerry", which is just ''Seinfeld'' with the wacky hook about a sarcastic butler being thrown in.
50	** That's a good explanation, and it's probably what people mean, but I'm not sure I agree with it completely. Sure, Cheers has the hook of, "It's a sitcom, but in a bar!" but lots of other pre-Seinfeld sitcoms don't really have anymore of a hook than Seinfeld. The Cosby Show is about the ordinary day to day life of a Brooklyn family. Is that any more of a hook, or any more "about something" than the life of a comedian and his three friends? Or All in the Family is about the politically incorrect observations of Archie Bunker. Is that any more "about something" than Jerry's observations?
51	** I think the other major aspect of the "nothing" is the fact that there's basically no CharacterDevelopment. Like they say, No Hugging, No Learning. Pretty much every other sitcom before that point was more family oriented and made some sort of attempt at having morals so that the characters would mature and develop to some degree. Seinfeld was different in that it forgoes that completely, basically showing four people just living their lives without really growing at all.
52	** ^That. Even {{Dom Com}}s like ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' would have a theme, usually illustrated through PlotParallel so you couldn't miss it, and a moral at the end accompanied by a SentimentalMusicCue. And of course ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' was "about something" -- it was social commentary largely about race relations, which is about as "about something" as you can get. There's a reason this show is the TropeNamer for SeinfeldianConversation and formerly for Sein Language (now TheCatchPhraseCatchesOn) -- its distinctive style of comedy is mainly about discussions of completely inane questions like the placement of buttons on a shirt or the vagaries of social interaction like "the stop-and-chat" and "the kiss hello," which everybody can identify with but nobody had yet commented on, and not only commenting on them but talking them to death because these are characters who don't care about their jobs, don't have families and know perfectly well their current relationships will probably be over within the week. "About nothing" doesn't mean nothing happens in the episode, it means there's no ''point'' to anything that happens in any episode.
53	** According to [[WordOfGod Larry David]] himself, the show is about where comedians get their material. That's hardly "nothing" -- the "show about nothing" business came only much later.
54	*** I always assumed it was the above entry; it has no obvious moral or PlotParallel attached to every episode. There's no intentional morals (aside from lying only makes things worse) and no real point to the plot.
55	** The producers are probably being a bit glib about the show literally being about 'nothing' (since, as it's not a Dadaist [[JustForFun/TheTropelessTale Tropeless Tale]], clearly it's not literally about nothing), but in addition to the points raised about the lack of clear cut moral lessons, the show's also about 'nothing' in the sense that what does happen is usually kind of mundane and banal. In a lot of sitcoms around the time (not all of them, but a lot of them), in each episode there's usually some kind of meaningful central event that informs the entire episode -- this week the characters are going to the prom; next week the characters are hosting a dinner party; the week after that the characters are going on vacation; and so on. Admittedly, ''Seinfeld'' isn't ''entirely'' free of these kind of things, but (particularly in the early seasons), most of the time episodes involve them just kind of dicking around fixating on things that are kind of trivial. This week, George plans a perfect comeback to someone who insulted him; next week, Jerry worries about the size of his girlfriend's hands; the week after that, Elaine gets into a petty feud with the guy who runs the soup restaurant she goes to for lunch; and so on. It's about 'nothing' in the sense that what happens in most of the episodes by most standards isn't really that important or significant.
56	* Whatever happened to the woman who was impregnated by George due to a defective condom?
57	** She turned out not to be pregnant at the end of the episode. Then she disappeared like every other girlfriend of the week, presumably because they broke up in between episodes.
58	*** I do believe she broke up with George upon seeing his rather odd eating habits (gobbling up some pasta like a pig) at the end of the episode. Her face says "Wow, even if he did care for me...would I want this hog as the father of my children?"
59	*** She wasn't pregnant, since she mentioned she got her period. A better question is what happened to the woman Kramer got pregnant.
60	*** They never said she was pregnant. Kramer said that she was late with her period.
61	* [[WhatDoesSheSeeInHim What did Susan see in George anyway?]] She was a successful NBC executive, he's a perpetually unemployed loser. [[UglyGuyHotWife She's even much better-looking than him.]] Did he have a great sense of humour or something? And why did she want to marry him when it was obvious he didn't want to go through with it? Was she just settling for the first decent guy to come along? Maybe she really was a lesbian, and George was TheBeard.
62	** By the time Susan and George were to be married, she was no longer employed at NBC after she was fired because George kissed her in the meeting. It's not hard to imagine that her self-confidence was crushed by her losing that very prestigious and very well-paying job.
63	** Just going by "The Engagement" here, but George said it took a few hours to convince her, and she didn't seem to love George so much as have a "Okay, I'll marry you, but only if you bend to my every whim" deal with him.
64	** Heidi Swedberg, the actress who played Susan, has pointed out before that Susan came from a very dysfunctional family, including two parents who openly hated each other the same way Frank and Estelle Costanza did. She points out that while that doesn't ''completely'' answer it, knowing she has that kind of background does make her poor taste slightly more understandable.
65	* [[RuleOfThree Another one about George]]: so, is he like the adult version of [[Franchise/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]]? I ask and put it that way because the happiness and confidence he gained from doing the opposite only seemed to last for that episode.
66	** My guess is that George was too insecure, self-destructive and generally petty to keep it up. Doing the opposite for George would eventually involve having to forgive minor (probably non-existent) slights and acting emotionally mature, and he just couldn't pull it off for long.
67	** By the end of the episode George had landed a new apartment, a job with the Yankees, and a date with a good looking woman; my guess is it went to his head and he figured he didn't need to expend the mental effort to figure out what the "exact opposite" of his regular reaction to every single decision was anymore (after all, a previous episode showed that roughly 90% of his mental faculties are focused on obsessing about sex anyway).
68	* What bothered Sally Weaver about Jerry, hence the way she purposely sabotaged his Charles Grodin appearance in "The Doll"? Was she just being a bully, or was she out for revenge? Second, how does she know Jerry when she was Susan's college roommate????? The hatred only grew two years later in "The Cartoon".
69	** Sally didn't intentionally sabotage Jerry (at least the episode makes no suggestion it's intentional). She's just aggressively friendly and thinks she knows better than Jerry.
70	* I don't get why Deena refuses to pay for the repairs to or replacement of George's [=LeBaron=] ("the John Voight Car") when it burned down after her father messed around with it in "The Gum". Her father does who knows what to George's car, it catches fire. Pretty obvious that his messing around caused the fire, so why does she refuse to pay for it?
71	** 1) Karma.
72	** 2) She herself didn't cause the damage.
73	** 3) She was a bitch.
74	*** As for her not causing the damage, since her father was no longer capable of taking care of himself or running his auto shop, she was still responsible for his actions.
75	** Because her father's just an innocent, confused old man. It's not his fault that he destroyed George's car some how. In her opinion, anyhow.
76	* How come Elaine had to wait for the Rabbi to talk to the dog's owner before the problem with it could be fixed? Surely the other tenants in that apartment were also bothered by the dog's barking. On the other hand, the Universe probably rearranged itself to make Elaine the ButtMonkey.
77	** I've been in many "noisy neighbor" situations in my life, and I've learned that most people are either (a) genuinely not bothered by stray noises, (b) annoyed by it, but not willing to confront the source for fear of reprisal, or (c) bothered by it, but never complain because they actually believe that they have a "right" to make whatever noise they want because they pay rent, too. (Please note: no, they don't. There's no constitutional "right" to annoy your neighbors. It's called "Disturbing the Peace.")
78	* If the real-life Soup Nazi was so angry over his portrayal, angry enough to ban anyone associated with ''Seinfeld'' from his soup stand, why is he perfectly okay with bragging about his Seinfeld connection on the packages of his soup products? Hypocrite, much?
79	** Yes.
80	*** No. That's like saying it's hypocritical for a victim of slander to collect on a judgment against his tortfeasor, or on a Son of Sam suit (confiscating the proceeds of a work of art a criminal has produced with the intent of profiting from the notoriety of his crime). It's not hypocrisy to make the best of a bad situation by getting compensation for bad publicity, just because in an unattainable alternate universe you would never have suffered the bad publicity at all. You can't unring that bell, but you can get some of your own back.
81	* What is the Soup Nazi's ethnic background? In the original episode, he is offended when someone speaks Spanish in his line, yet in the finale we learn that after Elaine ruined his business he returned to...Argentina. (??) His name ("Yev Kassem"), revealed in the finale, sounds more Middle Eastern (Lebanese? Palestinian?) to me. Then again, if he is literally a Soup ''Nazi,'' taking refuge in Argentina makes perfect sense!
82	* Why did Puddy suddenly become really religious in one of the last episodes? There was never any reference or mention of him being religious before (or hardly any afterwards, for that matter). Not only that, but if he is so religious, how did he not know that he was living in sin by sleeping around with Elaine?
83	** The joke is his suddenly self-declaration as a Christian comes out of left field (not convinced that it's a funny joke, mind). And I'm sure we've all met people who profess to be part of a religion, yet seem strangely ignorant of basic features of it.
84	*** Or, it's just not the centre of their lives and the only thing they talk about.
85	*** Or he's just not a straw representation of a religious person.
86	*** The fact that he never brought up his Christianity before, in itself, could suggest that he considers religion a private matter and doesn't talk about it much. But the fact that he lacks the information that fornication is a sin under his faith demonstrates that he is a really lousy Christian. But this is Puddy we're talking about -- should this be surprising?
87	*** Also a lot of Christians in real life do have extramarital sex. They do know is a sin but a) they don't think they're going to hell for it (specially if they're from a branch that allows to just repent) because they see it as a "minor" sin, b) they believe they can reduce the "sinfulness" of it by different means or c) they don't care and really thing God will bath an eye specially if is not something "big" like homosexuality or abortion. Also notice how Puddy is Catholic and is surprise to here that he will "go to hell" when the priest tells him, so he probably was in the a or b (as Catholics believe in alternatives like cofessing your sins to be forgiven or going to the purgatory for a while).
88	* What was up with Tim Whatley? I mean, he completely changes his looks with each of his appearances on the show: first he had shaggy hair and a beard, then he shaved off the beard, then he cut his hair really short and grew the beard again, then he shaved the beard off again. Was that intentional, and if so, on whose part (was it the actor's decision, or the writers or producers)?
89	** It was probably just Watley/Brian Cranston going through phases or figuring out a style. Since Cranston grew the beard for ''Series/BreakingBad'', I'd lean more towards it being his decision. We've all gone through phases and changed images, after all.
90	** Out-of-universe, Cranston could also have been required to wear particular styles or facial hair for other roles that he had; actors are sometimes contractually obliged to develop or keep a particular look for a character (if they're doing a nightly theatre production, or a feature film where they might be called to set at irregular intervals over a period of months, and so on) that they'll have to wear in other, smaller roles that they might also get during the production -- as a somewhat infamous illustrating example, the poor CGI on Superman's face in the initial release of ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'' is largely because Henry Cavill was contractually required to wear a moustache for his role in ''Film/MissionImpossibleFallout'' and wasn't able to shave it off when the prior film needed reshoots. So on some occasions Cranston might have had another role which, say, required him to have a beard and the ''Seinfeld'' producers were okay with him keeping it since, hey, who cares if Jerry's dentist has a beard this time? In-universe, as above, Tim's probably just one of those people who's constantly trying out a new look.
91	* It's been a long time since I've seen the episode so I might be missing something, but in the one where George gets in trouble with his boss for comparing him to another African American and having it misinterpreted as the "all black people look the same" racial remark, and resorts to getting his black exterminator to tag along and [[NWordPrivileges agree about his boss's resemblance]], why does he need to hide the fact that he's an exterminator? When the exterminator lets that slip George makes up a hasty excuse that that's just his nickname, and when his boss finds out the truth he realizes George's ploy simply because of the lie making it obvious. Why not just say "Yes, my friend works as an exterminator" the first time?
92	** George is shown to not be the brightest bulb.
93	** The fact that George has no black friends in his social class and has to recruit someone he met doing a blue-collar service job for a ruse is exactly what he's trying to cover up.
94	* Does stand-up comedy pay really well? I'm trying to figure it out: earlier episodes were book-ended with Jerry's standup routines, but the rest of the series were "Day in the Life Of" style episodes, where Jerry seems to have a ridiculous amount of free time for a grown man... plus, there was even an episode where his parents flew in because they assumed he was in a financial rut after reading an article about how standup as a business wasn't as good as it used to be. I'm just wondering if, in a realistic scenario, Jerry was able to afford living in a decent, rent-controlled apartment in NYC just on his standup alone?
95	** Well, Jerry Seinfeld actually did it. But yes, a single gig at a reasonably sized club can easily bring in over $50,000, and larger clubs in the hundreds of thousands, just one of which would easily pay for a year's rent in an apartment like Jerry's. Plus, standup comedy does leave a decent amount of free time during the day.
96	** He does his act Thursday through Sunday nights, usually travelling out of town and sometimes at clubs in New York. During the week he spends some time on writing jokes at home, but he's free to structure this around his friends' schedules so that he can socialized with them. Jerry's "free time" is inverted - the daylight hours during the early part of the week are his weekend. As the show became less and less about the life of a standup comedian, this was de-emphasized, but you can trust that you're basically seeing the interesting part of Jerry's life and his work is happening off-screen.
97	* I think I may have found something of a plothole in "The Mom and Pop Store": Kramer is concerned that Mom and Pop's might have to go out of business, because apparently some gourmet coffee and cookie shop wants their spot, so Kramer tries to boost business by bringing in Jerry's sneakers to be cleaned, right? Even Mom and Pop comment that if it wasn't for Kramer, they'd have to close up because he keeps them in business. Then, later, after Kramer points out all the loose wiring sticking out of their ceiling, prompting them to call an electrician who cites them for the error and says if they can't fix the problem, he has to report them to his supervisor... by this time, Mom and Pop are outraged that they can't afford to fix the problem, "48 years, Mom! And now we have to close, all because of that idiot, and his bloody nose!" Then later, when they do, in fact, close, Kramer is dumbfounded. So did the writers end up forgetting about the gourmet coffee and cookie shop? Because it suddenly seems apparent that Mom and Pop were doing so well all these years up until Kramer pointed out their loose wiring, and that he was practically responsible for them closing.
98	** Given that they were apparently just scraping by, it's entirely possible that the inspection issues were what finally pushed them over the edge. Kramer ''is'' responsible for them shutting down because either they have to pay for the repairs (which they can't afford), or close because of the inspector. The coffee shop is still looking to buy, it's just that the Mom and Pop shoe store was doing well enough to keep them at bay until Kramer screwed them over.
99	*** And at that point, presumably the coffee shop was willing to pay a good amount in order to purchase the business. But now that they're aware of a wiring problem, that deal wouldn't be as lucrative for the mom and pop owners, as the coffee shop wouldn't want to pay full price for a store that needs to be fixed anyway.
100	* Also, from "The Voice", why exactly did Darrin go to jail, and not Kramer? The whole oil bladder idea was Kramer's, and he was the one who dropped it out the window and unwittingly onto Jerry's GirlOfTheWeek, while Darrin went along with the whole idea because Kramer was his mentor (and because he obviously couldn't think for himself). So yeah, I just never understood why Darrin was the one who was, "Going away for a long, long time", yet Kramer got off scot-free.
101	** Kramer probably got into some wacky shenanigans offscreen that wound up with Darrin getting all the blame and him getting off. A better question might be why Darrin never showed up in the finale, but Kramer's stranger adventures all seem to occur where we can't see them. The show said it best;
102	-->'''George:''' He doesn't have any running water?
103	-->'''Jerry:''' I don't ask those kinds of questions.
104	*** [[FridgeBrilliance Maybe Darrin was still in prison during the finale?]]
105	** Kramer and Darrin had some odd ideas about what exactly an intern is supposed to do. It's possible that lying to the cops and taking the fall for his boss's crimes are among Darrin's responsibilities.
106	* If the waitress in the pilot was meant to be the show's female lead, why would the producers decide the show needed one?
107	** I don't believe the waitress was meant to be the actual female lead, but rather, just a female character who was going to have a strong presence on the show (like certain recurring characters who may have only appeared in a small number of episodes, but are so memorable and popular, you feel like they've been in a hundred). Also, it wasn't the producers who decided the show needed a female lead, NBC ''forced'' them to include a female in the main cast because they thought the show was "too male" and needed to reach out to the female demographic as well. IIRC, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld felt the waitress in the pilot was too much of a DeadpanSnarker to put up with on a weekly basis, so they created Elaine as the new female lead.
108	* In The Bris, why ''didn't'' the hospital compensate George for the cost of his car repairs? The whole thing was their fault! They let a mentally ill patient walk around without security, and apparently have lax roof and window access in a hospital that cares for the suicidal. George was fully within his rights to ask them to pay for their mistake. Their insurance policy should have covered the costs.
109	** And George's insurance should have covered it as well.
110	*** Maybe he only had state-minimum insurance, which wouldn't cover something as random as a suicide. George Costanza having crappy insurance makes sense. A busy NYC hospital? Not so much.
111	** In all probability the hospital would (or did, off-screen) compensate George for the damage to his car either through an out of court settlement or agreement between their insurer and George's. The point of the scene however was to show how shocked the administrator was at George's callous attitude toward the recently deceased.
112	* When Jerry is given a van and Kramer responds to the ad, Jerry acts like he has no idea who called, even though he's talked to Kramer over the phone before.
113	** Maybe Kramer used a fake voice and name over the phone?
114	* In "The Finale", why exactly was Newman pretending to be a bum, by acting like he was sleeping in a car, under scraps of newspaper?
115	** It didn't look like he was "pretending", and it's not entirely beyond Newman's characterization to be unwilling to pay for a hotel room. Plus, most of the hotels were probably booked up by the other characters.
116	** I think the implication is that Newman is ''so'' desperate to see Jerry finally receive his comeuppance that he is willing to reduce himself to the status of a bum if he can be there. As mentioned above, Newman is probably unable to get other accommodation for whatever reason.
117	* Why are Kramer and Newman afraid of calling the police in "The Bottle Deposit"? The police would have no reason to inventory Newman's mailtruck, nor would they have any right, reason or even probable cause to search the truck; they're the one's who would have called them, not the suspects.
118	** Jerry mentioned something to Elaine about Kramer's "record"; remember, after the whole dognapping incident, Kramer was spazzing out over it being a blemish on his permanent record, so I guess he and Newman both have a criminal history because of it, and are afraid the cops would see that, and then they would have possible reason to believe they're up to something suspicious.
119	** They may also fear that their "bottle scheme" would get them in trouble. It probably wouldn't, and is in fact completely harmless, bu they tend to exaggerate for comedy.
120	* Has absolutely nobody ever noticed that the exterior and the interior of the Costanzas' condo don't match? From the outside, they appear to live in the left unit of their particular building, but inside, they clearly live in the right unit. Didn't anybody on the production staff even notice this error?
121	** Not only that, but it's impossible for the kitchen to be where it is, because that would mean the kitchen is in the unit next to them.
122	** Similarly, in Jerry's apartment, something you'd never notice until someone points it out is that his kitchen should cut out into the hallway of the apartment building, but it's been established that the hallway is perfectly straight.
123	*** The floor plan of the apartment is triangular, not rectangular. The hallway is on an angle.
124	* Admittedly, it's hilarious, but seriously. How does a figure made of fusilli penetrate through Frank's pants AND underpants, to the point where he has to visit the proctologist to have it removed? Either that's some really strong fusilli, or Frank has ''really'' flimsy pants.
125	** Well, he was pushed down, so maybe there was enough force/velocity to his fall that something like that could very well happen, albeit a "million-to-one" shot like they say. I once tripped while carrying heavy boxes, and fell onto my knees, and even though I was wearing pants, my knees somehow were still scraped, so go figure.
126	** Here's how I would've done it: At some point it would've been set up that Frank wasn't wearing underwear that day (Maybe Estelle put them all in the wash that day) and he tore the back of those pants right before coming into Jerry's apartment.
127	*** So in your scenario Frank would be walking around with his anus exposed? That takes the creepiness up a notch, even if it's only done via discretion shot.
128	*** Doubtful, the others characters would have reacted accordingly to see such scenario, and they were acting normally around Frank.
129	*** Maybe the pants weren't torn, but did tear when he tripped, due to the sudden motion - I know, not too realistic, but, nothing else in that scene is, either.
130	* If "Eric the Clown" doesn't know who Bozo is, or never heard of him before, then how does he know that George is, "Hung up on some clown from TheSixties"?
131	** Eric might've just taken a wild guess at what era Bozo was from, figuring in that George would've been a boy during the sixties.
132	** George did bother Eric a lot offscreen - first we see George upset about Eric not knowing Bozo, then the time we cut to the party again, George is going on and on about it until Eric gets fed up. It's possible George mentioned Bozo's era offscreen.
133	* At the end of one episode, Jerry confronts his girlfriend with the fact that she's a phone sex operator. She gets angry and says she sells paper goods and tells Jerry not to call her any more. But then she goes right to Kramer and says in her sexy voice "you either," confirming she was the woman he was talking to on the 976 line. Why would she lie about her job and pretend to be indignant only to admit Jerry was right seconds later?
134	** Because they hadn't "officially" broken up at that point where she tells him that she sells paper goods, it wasn't until after Elaine gets back at her in the bathroom for not sparing her a square earlier, and realizing not only was that Elaine who kept hounding her for a square, but that Elaine is one of Jerry's friends, that was the final straw for her, which is why ''then'' she tells him not to call her anymore... or Kramer either.
135	* Whatever happened to Ping's lawsuit against Elaine? It was addressed in two episodes and it looked like Elaine was going to get sued for a lot of money, but then it's never addressed again.
136	** George meets a pretty lawyer named Cheryl who turns out to be Ping's cousin and representing him in the case. Elaine meets her through George, they find their connection and they get along so well that Cheryl manages to convince Ping to drop the suit.
137	** No, I'm referring to the end of "The Visa", when Cheryl re-opens the lawsuit after finding out that Jerry and co. are big liars. We never hear the results of that lawsuit after that episode.
138	** At that point in the series, Elaine wasn't making much money and thus was effectively judgment proof. Once Cheryl figured out Elaine didn't have any money, she probably gave up the law suit as a waste of her time.
139	* Is anyone else besides me just sick and tired of the way ''Seinfeld'' on TV keeps getting cropped, recropped, squished, resquished, letterbox, pillarbox, etc... ''why'' do they keep doing that? Why can't they just leave the show alone?!
140	** Changing television formats, I would assume.
141	* How come Elaine's family was never explored? Both Jerry and George's parents were {{Recurring Character}}s (and Jerry's Uncle Leo also appeared frequently), and we had AVerySpecialEpisode where Kramer faces his mother again for the first time in years (and we learn his first name is Cosmo). So how come we never saw Elaine's parents? We know that her father had collected Dixieland records, and he apparently left when she was really young (''that'' may or may not have been a lie since she was trying to hold onto her GuyOfTheWeek), but other than that...
142	** We did meet Elaine's father; in fact a full episode was essentially devoted to him. But Lawrence Tierney proved so difficult an actor that they nixed making him into a recurring character.
143	** Still doesn't explain why they didn't just get another actor to play Elaine's father, like they did for Jerry's and George's fathers.
144	*** Larry David was a stickler for detail, and would never want to re-cast a character with another actor if he could avoid it. They had already re-cast Jerry's father by that point, and would later re-cast Newman as well as George's father (although in both cases, the original scenes ended up being re-shot with the new actor for syndication). They probably figured on letting Elaine's dad just be a one-off character, since no other actor could ever be as memorable as Tierney.
145	** Even though Tierney was a terror to work with, the actors on the show all admitted he was absolutely hilarious and that if he wasn't such a hassle they would've certainly brought him back. Maybe they just felt no other actor could replicate that role; his one episode is listed as a OneSceneWonder.
146	** Also, remember that Elaine is not a NYC native as Jerry, George, and Kramer were. George's parents and Kramer's mom were still in NYC, and Jerry's parents were probably still in NYC until shortly before the series began. It stands to reason that your family will be a bigger part of your life if they live locally. It is possible that Elaine occasionally visits her parents in Baltimore but otherwise just isn't very close with them.
147	* Another question regarding "[[GrandFinale The Finale]]": why is it when they were found guilty, the Rabbi started cheering with everyone else in the courtroom, but then afterwards, as the courtroom empties, he sits there sulking alongside Jerry's folks?
148	** He might have just gotten caught up in the moment.
149	* Was it every explained just ''how'' Kramer, "Falls ass-backward into money"? We know his mother was a matron, which I can't imagine would make you a millionare, so are we to assume his father invented or patented or did something significant that left him independently wealthy?
150	** It's shown that he does just fall into cash throughout the series, like when he overhears a tip about a race horse and wins $18,000, or the coffee table book about coffee tables, which someone bought the rights to make a movie of and he made enough to briefly retire to Florida, or when he sold the rights to his life experiences to J. Peterman, while the real Kenny Kramer invented some sort of electronic jewelery and was able to live off that for most of his life.
151	** Going into WMG territory here, but it's entirely possible that Kramer owns the building.
152	*** Nah, because there have been instances where Kramer's concerned about getting thrown out of the apartment (see "The Reverse Peephole"). He wouldn't be worried about that if he owned the place.
153	** The canonicity is dubious, but in an episode of ''Mad About You'' it's revealed that Paul sublets the apartment to Kramer because he doesn't want to let it go; could be the apartment is rent-controlled or he's renting at below market. That'll make for a much more affordable lifestyle.
154	* With so many people on this show - both on and off camera - being Jewish, how is it this show never did a Hanukkah episode? This show seems to be just before [[PoliticalOvercorrectness networks really went overboard with political correctness]], but I find it a little interesting with so many Jews involved with the show, there's never any celebration of Hanukkah.
155	** For the most part the Jewish faith of the characters was downplayed, only really being referenced as part of a joke (it should be noted that Jerry Seinfeld the character is ''considerably'' less orthodox than the real Seinfeld). FWIW though the opening scene of "The Strike" took place at a Hanukkah party.
156	** They did Festivus instead.
157	** Also, non-Jewish troper asking: isn't Hanukkah actually a relatively minor celebration in the Jewish holiday calendar? IIRC it's kind of been inflated a bit because of its close proximity to Christmas and gentiles assuming it has the same significance or just kind of lumping it into the overall holiday celebrations in an attempt to be a bit more inclusive. So in that sense it might almost be a RealityIsUnrealistic thing; most of the characters don't make a big deal of it because Jewish people as a whole don't make a big deal of it (or at least not as big a deal as non-Jewish people assume they do).
158	** It's established in an early episode that the main cast are non-practicing if not outright non-religious.
159	* Realistically, what exactly would happen to someone if they accidentally had butter cooked into their skin like Kramer in, "The Butter Shave"? I've always been curious about that.
160	** They would get severe burns if they sat out in the sun like Kramer did.
161	* In "The Checks", why was George so insistent about being brainwashed by the carpet-cleaning cult? Why did he ''want'' to be brainwashed?
162	** He didn't, he was just insulted that they didn't even bother to try, like he wasn't good enough for them. See: ArentYouGoingToRavishMe
163	* In "The Glasses," George is under the impression that he saw Jerry's girlfriend kissing Jerry's cousin. George doesn't have his glasses at the time he ostensibly sees this, so he squints. Jerry later tells a skeptical Elaine (in a scene where George isn't present, so there was no reason to avoid hurting his feelings) that George spotted raccoons on a road trip just by squinting. Later, when George brings up the same story, Jerry reveals to him that the raccoons were actually mailboxes. If Jerry already knows that George really can't see even when he squints, why does he believe George's claim that his girlfriend is cheating and why does he bother telling the raccoon story to Elaine as if it were true?
164	** George was also spotting dimes from across the room, he wasn't certain what to think.
165	* In "The Hot Tub", why did Jerry feel it necessary to leave the hotel? His excuse was that he thought he offended the wake-up guy and thus might not get a wake-up call for Jean-Paul, but the hotel room still had the alarm clock. The wake-up guy was merely a back-up.
166	* I know it's not the biggest problem concerning "The Finale", but I've always been puzzled by ''Poppy'' being brought in as a "character witness". Granted, we never see him put on the stand to rant about Jerry & Co., but I'm trying to imagine exactly what he would have said if he had been.
167	-->"Seinfeld is a horrible person! He got me fired from my restaurant because he caught me [[NeverMyFault using the bathroom, and then preparing food with my bare hands, without having washed them, thus violating several health codes, and risking spreading contagious, and possibly deadly germs and bacteria to innocent customers!]] Seinfeld is a monster!"
168	** In a deleted scene, his testimony focused on how Elaine started an argument about abortion in his restaurant that caused half his customers to leave.
169	** Also, he could've blamed Jerry and Elaine for giving him 5-alarm chili that aggravated his gastrointestinal condition.
170	** Also, RuleOfFunny: it's just a CallBack to illustrate how dedicated the prosecution has been to find people who have been screwed over by the main characters somehow to testify.
171	* Why was Marla so disgusted by the titular concept of "The Contest?" Wouldn't a thirty-something virgin have an inimical response to masturbation, and welcome abstinence from it? Or was she so pro-masturbation that she was disgusted by the lack thereof? Either way, it barely seems like enough to leave in a huff over.
172	** Furthermore, it's brought up in "The Finale" as means to shock the small town jury. Again, wouldn't they be appeased by this knowledge? Even if just the mere THOUGHT of a character discussing masturbation at all was enough to upset them, it still seems like a small offense. Perhaps this was RuleOfFunny alone, but it's always bugged me.
173	** It wasn't so much the concept of masturbation that Marla found offensive; it was that Jerry and his friends were betting on how long they could go without doing it, which implies that they do it a ''lot''. Marla probably thought this preoccupation with sex made Jerry and the gang seem like deviants, so for someone so shy about sex, this creeped her out. Plus, Jerry didn't exactly help his explanation by saying [[ItMakesSenseInContext the contest started with "George and his mother".]]
174	** Also, let's be honest, she wouldn't be the first conservative/puritanical-leaning individual to get a bit self-righteously indignant over someone else's sexual appetites.
175	* In "The Fusilli Jerry", why was George's girlfriend so offended by the fact George had notes on his hand for performing a sexual move? I mean, she said after sex she really enjoyed it. What's the big deal?
176	** I think most women want to be with an experienced man on bed who knows by heart what he's doing, having a man-child reading notes may not be offensive but certainly will shock a lot of women.
177	* Hardly the biggest issue with the finale, but why is Newman so jubilant at the verdict? I guess his hatred of Jerry counterbalances his friendship with Kramer, attraction to Elaine and relatively neutral attitude toward George.
178	** Pretty much. It begs another question, though: Why was Newman never brought to the stand? Surely he could've dished some dirt about Jerry and the gang.
179	*** Perhaps the prosecution thought him too unhinged and unpleasant to be an effective witness. Not to mention that he was involved in a couple of the cases.
180	** This episode is on as this Troper types this, so there's the scene in the first episode of the two-parter where Jerry refuses to take Newman to Paris with them. Newman then goes on a somewhat maniacal rant about how Jerry's 'day' was coming where that his 'smug smirk' would be wiped off his face. He concludes this rant by saying that he would be there on this day, watching with jubilee as Jerry got what he had coming to him.
181	** Newman's kind of a dick himself, remember. He's simply the kind of person who would rather feel glee over a hated rival receiving a comeuppance than feel sorrow at a friend (and two people he's more or less neutral towards) receiving the same punishment.
182	* In "The Red Dot", George has sex with a cleaning woman on his desk and when he doesn't pursue a relationship with her and gives her a defective sweater, she reports him to their boss and has him fired. But if having sex in the workplace was a fireable offense then shouldn't she have gotten fired too?
183	** It's quite possible that the woman was employed by a cleaning company that is completely seperate to the company George works for. For example, the owners of the building hire the cleaning company to clean all floors of the building, while George's company simply rent a floor in said building. That way George and the cleaning lady interact in the same office but have completely different employers.
184	** She also likely exaggerated the nature of the relationship to portray herself as an innocent victim and George as a scheming predator. WoundedGazelleGambit and such.
185	* In "The Little Jerry", Kurt is mistaken for George, who had been aiding and abetting Celia, an escaped convict. Kurt is sent to prison for a year for punching the cop who arrested him. But now that they were aware Kurt is not George, shouldn't the cops have gone after George?
186	** Maybe Kurt was blamed for the aiding, after all, is easier to sentence someone who already has another charge.
187	** Even if they did, Kurt could still be charged with assaulting a police officer, which is a separate crime.
188	** It was probably sorted out that George ''wasn't'' aiding Celia, since she had just showed up at his place when Kurt came to talk to him.
189	* In "The Engagement", Kramer warns Jerry about getting married, claiming it's like being in prison and you have to fill it with banal small talk. Based on this conversation, are we to assume that Kramer was married himself at one point and speaks from experience?
190	** Kramer is a bit of a KnowNothingKnowItAll throughout the series. It's not out of character for him to confidently hold forth on things that he doesn't really know much about.
191	** He might've been speaking based on his parents' marriage, which was implied to be pretty bad, since he spent several years without speaking to his mother.
192	* Who played Mario (of Mario's Pizza) in "The Frogger"? Nobody is listed in the credits so whoever played the character was uncredited, but I have no idea who it is. Anybody know?
193	** Answered my own question: The character's name isn't Mario (despite what George calls him), but Sal, and is played by Sam Shamshak.
194	* Does anyone else find it a bit implausible that the vast majority of Jerry's girlfriends are totally cool with him spending so much time with his ex? For all the women Jerry has dated, there is a surprising lack of jealousy throughout the series of this woman he used to sleep with hanging around his apartment all the time. I understand the plot device would've gotten worn out if every one of Jerry's girlfriends had a problem with Elaine, but it seems odd that almost none of them had the slightest problem with her friendship with Jerry.
195	** This actually does come up in Season 3's "The Letter". Jerry's artist girlfriend actually asks Kramer why Jerry's ex-girlfriend Elaine is always hanging around, and points out how weird that is.
196	* "The Glasses": Jerry and Elaine are baffled by how George can be so blind towards objects that are close to him but can supposedly spot things that are really far away. Are they not aware that far-sightedness (hyperopia) is a thing?
197	** Intellectually, probably, but they've probably never seen it in practice to this extent before.
198	* In "The Frogger", George and Jerry go to the pizza place they used to frequent and discover that George's high score on ''VideoGame/{{Frogger}}'' has never been beaten. Since the pizza place is closing, George decides to buy the machine so that his achievement will last forever, but Jerry points out that the score will be lost when they unplug the game to move it. So, this pizza place has never had a power failure since George racked up his high score? [[note]] Furthermore, it's established on ''Series/MadAboutYou'' that it takes place in the same universe as ''Seinfeld'' and that show had an episode where Jamie blacked out the entire city. [[/note]]
199	** The building might've had a generator - besides, it was established that the machine only resets the scores after a certain time (I don't know if that's realistic or not, but George is trying to save an unplugged machine when it's accidentaly destroyed in traffic).
200	*** The machine doesn't have a fail safe for resetting the scores, they'd rigged it up to a battery and had run it out playing the game, so he needed to find another outlet before the macguivered battery ran out.
201	** Simple answer - unplugging the machine probably doesn't delete the scores. Jerry came up with that off the top of his head, and then went along with it for his own amusement when he saw the misery it was causing George.
202	* Why was George making fun of the fat guy being robbed, if he's a bit stocky himself?
203	** Hypocrisy is scarcely out of character for George. It may be that he even thinks that his being fat gives him the right to mock someone else's weight.
204	** Might also be a case of: "I may be stocky but I'm not as big as ''that'' guy!"
205	* In "The Muffin Tops", George starts wearing the clothes in a tourist's suitcase he was asked to watch, and suddenly everyone thinks he's not from New York. What was so special about those clothes? They didn't look all that special.
206	** The clothes are a little tacky, which is a pretty common trope unto itself that almost all tourists dress really tacky when they travel. Plus, it was more than just the clothes; if you recall, he also was walking around the streets looking at maps and not knowing where he was going (for a league meeting), both of which supported the misconception that he was an out-of-towner.
207	* In "The Maid", when Kramer was lost downtown (on 1st and 1st), couldn't he have just taken the subway home?
208	** If he's lost and doesn't know what he is, how is he going to know what trains to get on to get him back home?
209	* What "female body part" does "Dolores" rhyme with? It's apparently so obvious that it doesn't need to be explained and provokes a near instantaneous response from the studio audience, but the name doesn't seem to rhyme with any nouns at all except for "torus".
210	** Okay, update: [[http://wikirhymer.com WikiRhymer]] suggests "clitoris", but that only works if you [[AccentUponTheWrongSyllable stress the second syllable instead of the first]]. It strains suspension of disbelief to imagine that Jerry, Dolores, and all of Dolores's childhood classmates pronounced this word the same way when every dictionary insists on another pronunciation. Is it something else?
211	*** It's clitoris for sure. As much as it's properly "CLI-tor-is," I've heard "cli-TOR-is" plenty as well.
212	* In "The Movie", why did the ticket taker harass George about his ticket stub and not Kramer?
213	** RuleOfFunny
214	** Well obviously, but in-universe, what was the reason? Was he slightly intimidated by Kramer's persona so he let him through? And conversely didn't feel threatened by the nebbish, stout George and thought he could get away with being a stickler towards him? That's the only explanation I can come up with.
215	*** Is implied that in-universe George just causes a lot of people to naturally and without discernible reason dislike/hate him and try to make things as difficult as possible to him just out of spite. Kramer on the other hands seems to have mostly the opposite effect, so bottomline the ticket taker just wanted to annoy George but liked Kramer for no real reason.
216	* One thing that has always bothered me about the finale. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer are never given the opportunity to go on the stand to offer a rebuttal to any of the testimony against them. Jackie Chiles never cross examined any of these character witnesses either. Their word is just taken as gospel and never questioned. As we know many of these incidents were really not the result of malicious behavior on the main characters' parts and if given the chance to explain this could very easily be made clear.
217	** Yes, it's very much a KangarooCourt. Just one reason why the finale is disliked by many.
218	** I think even if they had been allowed on the stand to explain themselves, [[CassandraTruth nobody would believe what they had to say anyway.]] Also, some of the testimonials would be difficult to explain anyway, such as the incident when Jerry stole the rye from the elderly woman. No amount of context makes that look good.
219	** Yes..the marble rye would be tough to explain...but other things could be challenged. The virgin for example...Jackie Chiles could say something like "You were so appalled by this so called "contest" but you had no problem jumping into bed with JFK JR. within five minutes of meeting him."
220	*** How would he know who she slept with after she parted ways with Jerry?
221	** As noted above under a similar entry, the joke / point is that the gang have such an appalling track record of being utter jackasses to other people that the prosecution are able to utterly swamp the court with witnesses to testify against them. In the "real life" trial, Jackie Chiles would get to crossexamine them and probably raise some of these points, but since this isn't an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' we don't need to see it to get the idea that they're utterly boned, and that the numerous petty sins they ''are'' guilty of committing are coming back to bite them. It's the sheer quantity of witnesses that are going to bury them, not just their testimony.
222
223	* In the episode where George runs over the squirrel (We had a deal!) he goes to great lengths to spend money on the medical care of the squirrel in order to appease his girlfriend. Why?? Why doesn't George just break up with her? He's obviously not in love with her and we as the audience already know that they won't even be together by the next episode anyway. He doesn't stay with her because the sex is great because if that was the case he surely would have mentioned it to Jerry. So...why stay with this woman ( who treated George pretty badly in this episode by the way) and cater to her like that?
224	** I don't think the episode ever implies that he doesn't enjoys to be with her. Quite the opposite. He's unemployed and yet manage to have a beautiful girlfriend which is difficult and he knows it, and considering how neurotic George is it's also a matter of not wanting to look cheap/unsensitive even if they break-up. In general he does want the relationship to survive even if only for selfish reasons.
225
226	* If Jerry hating reading so much, why did he always have books in his apartment? He not only had a whole case of them in his living room, he would also have a couple on the night stand next to his bed. Or, were they meant to be like the bicycle he always had hanging up on his wall: just for show?
227
228	* In the season 7 two-parter George is assigned a mysterious task by his supervisor: Mr. Wilhelm, but it's never revealed what the task is and the episode does later imply there's something mentally wrong with Mr. Wilhelm that if he doesn't take his medication regularly his mind slips. Okay, funny I love that makes the episode funny and I love the twist, but what actually was the assignment? Wasn't it revealed there was some assignment? The head boss received something from an unhinged Mr. Wilhelm, but what was it? Apparently, it was so bad that when the boss thought it was George he straight up had him committed (which involuntary committing someone is legal). Then the reveal is George in the ward which leads to my second headscratcher which is funny to think about, but... how did George convince the head psychiatrist he was mentally fine enough to be released? George is a great character, but also insane in his own way. I know most wards can keep a patient there for two weeks, but I feel like George needed a few more months especially to get away from Susan. No, but seriously what was the assignment?

Context Headscratchers / Seinfeld