Let me be the architect. I can do it.

Seinfeld

1.3: The Stakeout

The Premise

Jerry “stakes out” the lobby of an office building in order to contact a woman he met at a birthday dinner.

Observational

It’s true to say that Seinfeld only hits its stride during Season Three. There are a couple of standouts before that but the standard is mostly agreeable but not quite “gold dust”; it’s always watchable for the characters but rarely hits high notes in plotting.

The Stakeout features the first classic conversation between George and Jerry. Waiting in the lobby, George attempts to confabulate a narrative that will explain their presence, so giving birth to one of the series great aliases; Art Vanderlay (“He’s an importer-exporter, okay?”). His desire to pass himself off as an architect also makes its first of many appearances, and Alexander is always at his best conveying George’s childish excitement/frustration/exasperation.

The dinner party establishes Jerry’s affable social breeziness (“I didn’t bring anything”), which operates distinctly to Kramer’s straight-up lack of awareness. Jerry’s unruffled self-confidence is regularly used to reap comic dividends through commenting on behavioural norms. Unlike Kramer, Jerry is only selectively free from embarrassments or faux pas, but he still tends to emerge unconcerned by his encounters by the end credits (because he’s the optimist, things work out); this will even be the subject of an episode in a later season (The Opposite).

Louise-Dreyfus is a wonder, and the scene where she recounts her bizarre dream to a disinterested Jerry is a highlight of the episode. The dinner party scene was based on Larry David’s experience of going to a party with an ex- and not feeling comfortable hitting on a woman there whom he found attractive. At this point the emphasis on Jerry and Elaine as exs is more “current”, with Jerry concerned about what she will hear and his parents going on about her (although they will continue to do so). Their small talk during the opening video store scene takes in porno movies, but as ever with the series does so buy not directly stating them as such.

Liz Sheridan is the familiar face of Jerry’s Mom but Ron Steelman plays Artie for one time only. You can see why they recast the part, as he’s entirely affable with no edge at all. Jerry’s forthright way of changing the subject of Elaine is amusing (“And there was a little problem of physical chemistry”).

Not a great Kramer episode, but his inventive approach to Scrabble gets a few laughs (“No, we need a medical dictionary”). Lynn Clark shows great comic timing, so its little surprise that she returns a couple of episodes later (David has noted that he’s a strong advocate of continuity, which goes to explain the revisions of errors or casting changes in some of the earlier episodes to make them more unified).

Quotable:

Vanessa: What do you design?

George: Railroads.

Jerry: Do you date immature men?

Vanessa: Almost exclusively.

Elaine: You were you, but you weren’t you… You turned around, but you had these wooden teeth.

Jerry: (internal monologue, repeating the name of Vanessa’s law firm in order to remember it) Sagman, Bennett, Robbins, Oppenheim and Taft. Sagman, Bennett, Robbins, Oppenheim and Taft. Sagman, Bennett, Robbins, Oppenheim and Taft.

Verdict:

Comments

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.

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.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ 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.

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.

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.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

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.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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