Boy, I hate the idea of somebody out there returning my calls.

Seinfeld

1.4: The Robbery

The Premise

Spurred on by the robbery of his apartment, Jerry looks for another place to live. But George wants the same place. Elaine wants Jerry’s place, or George’s place. Anywhere is better than hers.

Observational

This episode is probably the best of a micro first season. Whilst there is only one plot thread again, each of Jerry, George and Elaine have a vested interest in it. And Kramer is the instigator of events, so it’s a fairly even hand. There’s also no closing stand-up, which makes the closing scene is more memorable.

The star character turn this time is George, and Alexander relishes the chance to play up Costanza’s neurotic selfishness. Having found a prospective apartment for Jerry, he instantly decides he wants it for himself and becomes a whiny baby over it while professing he doesn’t want it if Jerry does. This culminates in a coin flipping (Jerry: You didn’t call, “No interference”!) and then a paper/scissors/stone game as decider. A few seasons down the line, and I doubt that George would have got to the point where neither he nor Jerry took it but gave it to someone else; he would have finagled it so that it was his in the end (and then something terribly wrong with it would have been revealed). George is definitely evolving at this point; the most remarkable thing about him is that he seems a perfectly competent estate agent.

Jerry’s anal side is to the fore as he instructs Elaine on his house rules while he is away (“No soft cheeses of any kind!”), as is his winningly blasé attitude to authority figures (he cracks wise to the policeman taking notes on the robbery). We also get to see his response to crises; he’s pissed at Kramer for leaving the door open (thus allowing the thieves access to the apartment) but he’s also stoic and not fixated (he’s a glass half full kind of guy).

We find out that Elaine has an annoying roommate who “starts rehearsing tonight on Carousel”, but more than her frustration over this, her most identifiable trait this episode is an unabashed mercenary attitude to whichever apartment she can grab. Her haggling with Jerry over his couch is amusing too (she gets a lower price but ends the episode couch-less).

Some good material for Kramer, with Richards making his first slide entrance and displaying an endearing lack of awareness and diligence (he intended to leave Jerry’s apartment for only a few seconds, but got distracted by a TV soap). His arbitrary fixations, requiring little logic or proof, come into play too, as he decides that their English neighbour is responsible for the theft. Jerry’s good natured put-downs of Cosmo’s quirkiness are quickly becoming a highlight.

The ending is a well drawn together too; a sign of things to come. With the trio of Elaine, George and Jerry all losing out, they sit on a couch at the housewarming of the couple who did take the apartment, commiserating. As per the misanthropic theme of the series, they cannot muster the goodwill to be genuinely happy for them so they lie.

Quotable

Kramer: I got caught up watching a soap opera – The Bold and the Beautiful.

Kramer: I made a mistake.

Elaine: These things happen.

Kramer: I’m human.

Jerry: In your way.

Talking to the police officer about his stolen answering machine:

Jerry: Boy, I hate the idea of somebody out there returning my calls.

Officer: What do you mean?

Jerry: It’s a joke.

Officer: I see.

Discussing the Englishman who lives down the hall:

Kramer: The last couple of days he’s been acting very strange. I think he’s avoiding me.

Jerry: Hard to imagine.

Kramer’s attempt to ensnare the Englishman:

Kramer: I said, “Oh, by the way, I know about the stuff”.

Elaine: What did he say?

Kramer: “What stuff?”

And the completely insincere congratulations at the housewarming:

George: We’re really glad for you.

Elaine: Couldn’t be happier.

Jerry: It’s wonderful.

Verdict:

Comments

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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