Jerry: Oh my God, this drawer is filled with Fruit Loops!
Elaine: So what?
Jerry: And milk.
Jerry: Well, everybody is a little cranky on their birthday.
George: Oh, it's a bad day. You got everybody over at your house, you're thinking, "These are my friends?"
Jerry: Every day is my birthday.
Comment: The backward episode works. Perhaps this was the furthest stretch of Seinfeld's post-modernism: the episode really only works if you're already aware of all the conventions of the sitcom in general and Seinfeld in particular. It's generally pretty funny, and they do a lot of things to take advantage of the gimmicky format. I like that they go back two years (Nina is explaining the internet, Susan is still alive) and 11 years (Jerry meets Kramer and says since they're neighbors they can share everything).
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Have you watched this episode with the commentary on? I always wondered who the big Pinter fan was on the Seinfeld writing team that came up with this episode.
ReplyDeleteRe: The Wire. I hope you are sticking with it. The third season is when it really came together for me.
We've just about finished season one, and we'll see it to the end. It's breaking under the weight of expectations: I've heard a fair number of people call it the best show ever.
ReplyDeleteBut I like it--it's a good show.
I thought the backwards episode was absolutely brilliant, but, having seen it in syndication (I didn't start watching Seinfeld regularly until it was off the air) I've wondered how late in the series it came. As you say, it plays with the conventions of the series. When I see things like that I can never help wondering how the writers felt, since they couldn't have started the series knowing it would be so successful, or that it would someday have gimmicks they could play with.
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