Not That There’s Anything Wrong With These: 5 ‘Sein-Fail’ Episodes
Aired: Apr 18, 1991
Season: 2
In one of the series’ few truly boring episodes, George quits his real estate job and then tries to get it back again when he realizes he has no other prospects. (“I like sports, I could do something in sports — you know, like the general manager of a baseball team.”) After his boss, Rick Barr, calls him a loser, George vows revenge, and gets Elaine to distract Barr at a company party while he “slips him a mickey.” Jerry loses money at the laundromat. Kramer worries that his friend Newman, who lives upstairs, keeps threatening to jump off the roof of the building because he has “no job, no woman.”
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‘The Trip, Part 2’
Aired: Aug 19, 1992
Season: 4
Although not as grossly absurd as the finale episodes, this was another example of the show straining the bounds of credulity beyond the point of being funny. Kramer, who left for Hollywood two episodes prior, is mistaken for a serial killer called "The Smog Strangler." Jerry and George travel to Los Angeles and attempt to clear his name. It is just dumb. At least "The Trip, pt 1" had cameos by Fred Savage and Corbin Bernsen! More proof that Elaine-free episodes are the pits. -
‘The Smelly Car’
Aired: Apr 15, 1993
Season: 4
Jerry's car smells terrible after he valet parks at a restaurant. ("This is beyond b.o.," says George. "It's b.b.o.") The smell lingers on anyone who rides in the car, and Elaine's hair absorbs so much of the stink that her new beau, Karl, refuses to sleep with her. George learns that his ex-girlfriend, Susan Ross, is now a lesbian, when he runs into her at the video store with her girlfriend Mona. He obsesses that he "drove [her] to lesbianism." Just not a very good episode, overall. -
‘The Puerto Rican Day’
Aired: May 7, 1998
Season: 9
The gang gets stuck in a massive traffic jam following the Puerto Rican Day parade. Jerry is mad because he wants to watch the Mets game. George is anxious to get to the theater for a movie called "The Blimp: The Real Hindenburg Story," so he can make the joke, "That's gotta hurt" following an explosion scene. His plan is foiled by a guy in the theater getting laughs with a laser pointer. Elaine wants to get home so she can "unwind." Kramer has to pee. The only redeeming aspect of this episode is that it includes a reappearance by the "hostile gays," from "The Soup Nazi" and "The Sponge." -
‘The Finale, Parts 1 and 2’
Aired: May 14, 1998
Season: 9
Jerry and George get called in for a meeting with a new NBC executive who wants to resuscitate the pilot for “Jerry” and give them a 13-episode commitment. Before they head to LA to start working on the show, they are offered use of the NBC jet, and decide to bring Elaine and Kramer along for a quick Paris getaway. The plane nearly crashes en route, and they make an emergency landing in Latham, MA, where they are soon arrested for failing to intervene when they witness a carjacking. The Latham prosecutor invites dozens of witnesses to build his case that the foursome’s indifference to the carjacking was “part of a pattern of antisocial behavior that’s been going on for years.” He calls everyone from Marla the Virgin and and Babu Bhatt to the pharmacist who sold Elaine a case of contraceptive sponges. Though it’s fun to see so many familiar faces, the episode as a whole feels like a bleak resolution to a show that had spent years making its four principals lovable in spite of their selfish quirks. Any finale would have been a letdown, but I always wish Larry David had let himself get a little more sentimental on this one.