Jerry, have you ever taken a bath in the dark?

Seinfeld

2.1: The Ex-Girlfriend

The Premise

George summons up the courage to break it off with a girlfriend. Jerry debates whether to go out with her.

Observational

If the plots haven’t yet become finely crafted jewellery, you can already see how Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David have honed their approach in the wake of the brief first season. The central premise is a solid one, but the concurrent storylines take place off-screen.

George’s worry and prevaricating is typical George, while Jerry’s blasé approach to matters of the heart (“Just do it like a band aid. One motion. Right off”) is of a piece. George’s nonchalance at Jerry wanting to go out with his ex, even given that he is surprised by his lack of concern (“You’re a fine person. You’re a humanitarian”), is probably not something the writers would have gone for in later seasons (the consequent neuroses would have proven irresistible).

And Tracy Kolis’ broad southern gal Marlene is very funny, duskily sexy and unsettling at the same time. The answer phone message she leaves Jerry is hilariously batty (“Jerry, have you ever taken a bath in the dark? I’m not talking into the soap right now. Call me back”) and her vacant delivery shows fine comic timing. If there’s a criticism it’s that the pay-off seems rather an obvious one with the benefit of hindsight; she doesn’t like his comedy act and won’t go out with someone she doesn’t respect.

If George’s casualness over his ex is a surprise, he makes up for it elsewhere, It’s his sense of his own weakness that pushes Jerry towards Marlene in the first place (George persuades him to pick up some books he left at her apartment, too cowardly to do it himself). His conviction that chiropracty is a racket provides a great running gag (“They don’t do anything!”) and then there’s his reaction to the bill (“What, am I seeing Sinatra in there?”) George’s penny-pinching will also become a series constant; he only pays half the bill for his treatment, and Jerry picks up the rest of the tab. Likewise, he will regularly be confronted with lurking doubts over the mettle his heterosexuality. He also swallows a fly (“What should I do? What can happen?”)

Elaine has an issue with a neighbour who used to say hello everyday but now ignores her (“He went from nods to nothing”), and is persuaded to confront him. The scene where she recounts what happened is a great example of the energy Julia Louis-Dreyfus brings to the show, but she and Michael Richards are definitely pulling the rear-guard action in this one. Kramer’s particularity over fruit gets an early innings as he tries to persuade Jerry of the wonders of his cantaloupe vendor. Of course, Jerry buys from his own seller (“See, that stinks!” exclaims Kramer).

Nothing much to write home about on the monologues front; discussions of road lane experts and women needing to like the job of guys they’re dating.

Quotable

Elaine: I think you’re a little afraid to sit next to a man. You’re a little homophobic, aren’t you?

George: Is it that obvious?

George: I think you absolutely have to say something to this guy. Confront him.

Elaine: Really?

George: Yes.

Elaine: Would you do that?

George: If I was a different person.

Jerry: I don’t return fruit. Fruit’s a gamble. I know that going in.

George: I left some books at her apartment.

Jerry: Did you read them?

George: Yeah.

Jerry: So what do you need them for?

George: They’re books!

George: You paid that crook? He didn’t do anything, Jerry! It’s a scam!

Marlene: I can’t be someone if I don’t respect what they do.

Jerry: You’re a cashier!

Verdict:

Comments

Oh, you got me right in the pantaloons, partner.

The Party (1968) (SPOILERS) Blake Edwards’ semi-improvisational reunion with Peter Sellers is now probably best known for – I was going to use an elephant-in-the-room gag, but at least one person already went there – Sellers’ “brown face”. And it isn’t a decision one can really defend, even by citing The Party ’s influence on Bollywood. Satyajit Ray had also reportedly been considering working with Sellers… and then he saw the film. One can only assume he’d missed similar performances in The Millionairess and The Road to Hong Kong ; in the latter case, entirely understandable, if not advisable. Nevertheless, for all the flagrant stereotyping, Sellers’ bungling Hrundi V Bakshi is a very likeable character, and indeed, it’s the piece’s good-natured, soft centre – his fledgling romance with Claudine Longet’s Michele – that sees The Party through in spite of its patchy, hit-and-miss quality.

I never strangled a chicken in my life!

Rope (1948) (SPOILERS) Rope doesn’t initially appear to have been one of the most venerated of Hitchcocks, but it has gone through something of a rehabilitation over the years, certainly since it came back into circulation during the 80s. I’ve always rated it highly; yes, the seams of it being, essentially, a formal experiment on the director’s part, are evident, but it’s also an expert piece of writing that uses our immediate knowledge of the crime to create tension throughout; what we/the killers know is juxtaposed with the polite dinner party they’ve thrown in order to wallow in their superiority.

They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

Time Bandits (1981) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam had co-directed previously, and his solo debut had visual flourish on its side, but it was with Time Bandits that Gilliam the auteur was born. The first part of his Trilogy of Imagination, it remains a dazzling work – as well as being one of his most successful – rich in theme and overflowing with ideas while resolutely aimed at a wide (family, if you like) audience. Indeed, most impressive about Time Bandits is that there’s no evidence of self-censoring here, of attempting to make it fit a certain formula, format or palatable template.

I'm an old ruin, but she certainly brings my pulse up a beat or two.

The Paradine Case (1947) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock wasn’t very positive about The Paradine Case , his second collaboration with Gregory Peck, but I think he’s a little harsh on a picture that, if it doesn’t quite come together dramatically, nevertheless maintains interest on the basis of its skewed take on the courtroom drama. Peck’s defence counsel falls for his client, Alida Valli’s accused (of murder), while wife Ann Todd wilts dependably and masochistically on the side-lines.

You must have hopes, wishes, dreams.

Brazil (1985) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam didn’t consider Brazil the embodiment of a totalitarian nightmare it is often labelled as. His 1984½ (one of the film’s Fellini-riffing working titles) was “ the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984 ”, in contrast to Michael Anderson’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1948. This despite Gilliam famously boasting never to have read the Orwell’s novel: “ The thing that intrigues me about certain books is that you know them even though you’ve never read them. I guess the images are archetypal ”. Or as Pauline Kael observed, Brazil is to Nineteen Eighty-Four as “ if you’d just heard about it over the years and it had seeped into your visual imagination ”. Gilliam’s suffocating system isn’t unflinchingly cruel and malevolently intolerant of individuality; it is, in his vision of a nightmare “future”, one of evils spawned by the mechanisms of an out-of-control behemoth: a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. And yet, that is not really, despite how indulgently and glee

Miss Livingstone, I presume.

Stage Fright (1950) (SPOILERS) This one has traditionally taken a bit of a bruising, for committing a cardinal crime – lying to the audience. More specifically, lying via a flashback, through which it is implicitly assumed the truth is always relayed. As Richard Schickel commented, though, the egregiousness of the action depends largely on whether you see it as a flaw or a brilliant act of daring: an innovation. I don’t think it’s quite that – not in Stage Fright ’s case anyway; the plot is too ordinary – but I do think it’s a picture that rewards revisiting knowing the twist, since there’s much else to enjoy it for besides.

A herbal enema should fix you up.

Never Say Never Again (1983) (SPOILERS) There are plenty of sub-par Bond s in the official (Eon) franchise, several of them even weaker than this opportunistic remake of Thunderball , but they do still feel like Bond movies. Never Say Never Again , despite – or possibly because he’s part of it – featuring the much-vaunted, title-referencing return of the Sean Connery to the lead role, only ever feels like a cheap imitation. And yet, reputedly, it cost more than the same year’s Rog outing Octopussy .

Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you ripped the fronts off houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (SPOILERS) I’m not sure you could really classify Shadow of a Doubt as underrated, as some have. Not when it’s widely reported as Hitchcock’s favourite of his films. Underseen might be a more apt sobriquet, since it rarely trips off the lips in the manner of his best-known pictures. Regardless of the best way to categorise it, it’s very easy to see why the director should have been so quick to recognise Shadow of a Doubt 's qualities, even if some of those qualities are somewhat atypical.

I don’t like fighting at all. I try not to do too much of it.

Cuba (1979) (SPOILERS) Cuba -based movies don’t have a great track record at the box office, unless Bad Boys II counts. I guess The Godfather Part II does qualify. Steven Soderbergh , who could later speak to box office bombs revolving around Castro’s revolution, called Richard Lester’s Cuba fascinating but flawed. Which is generous of him.

I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) (SPOILERS) Kubrick’s masterpiece satire of mutually-assured destruction. Or is it? Not the masterpiece bit, because that’s a given. Rather, is all it’s really about the threat of nuclear holocaust? While that’s obviously quite sufficient, all the director’s films are suggested to have, in popular alt-readings, something else going on under the hood, be it exposing the ways of Elite paedophilia ( Lolita , Eyes Wide Shut ), MKUltra programming ( A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket ), transhumanism and the threat of imminent AI overlords ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ), and most of the aforementioned and more besides (the all-purpose smorgasbord that is The Shining ). Even Barry Lyndon has been posited to exist in a post-reset-history world. Could Kubrick be talking about something else as well in Dr. Strangelove ?

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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