Just make love to that wall, pervert!

Seinfeld

2.10: The Statue

The Premise

Jerry employs a cleaner, the boyfriend of an author whose book Elaine is editing. He leaves the apartment spotless, but Jerry is convinced he has made off with a statue.

Observational

A dazzling return to form, and one of the best episodes of the season. It also, as Michael Richards has noted, gives us a Kramer in full creative flow, so setting the tone for many of his later exploits. This should be no surprise, as the script comes from the more offbeat sensibilities of Larry Charles; there’s usually something slightly cartoonish about his scripts, which may be why they’re often my favourites.

Something we’ve seen little of so far are memorable supporting characters. Most have been other halves of the week, but here we have not one but two and both are very funny. Michael D. Conway’s Ray is an effusive English grad student so theatrical that you know something must be wrong somewhere. And sure enough, we see him return to his girlfriend’s apartment, grumbling and kicking his heels; the façade has fallen away.

Rava (Nurit Koppel) is a ravishing misery with a somewhere-in-the-vicinity Finnish accent and a commentary that can kill a convivial atmosphere stone dead. Koppel was apparently an ex of Richard Lewis, which caused a bit of tension on set with Jerry (as he had naturally been on Lewis’ side through the break-up). Both Koppel and Conway spark off the regulars and Charles seems charged by the creative possibilities; you could imagine an episode of double the length.

The best of Rava’s interplay comes with Elaine, although Jerry gets in the occasional glancing blow at her less than sunny outlook (“So what do you, write children’s books?”) Inevitably Rava and Elaine discuss the brouhaha over Ray, and inevitably they take sides. Tom Cherones stages this sequence with consummate skill, as their argument rages unseen when they enter a lift. Rava, smoking away, is causing distress to the fellow passengers and Elaine is never one to bite her tongue, even if it costs her the much-wanted editing role.

Rava: You are jealous of our love and you want to destroy us.

Elaine: Shouldn’t you be out on a ledge somewhere?

Jerry, very into his cleanliness, is incredibly impressed by Ray’s work (“He Windexed the little peephole!”), although his upbeat manner gives him pause (“Shouldn’t you be out on a ledge somewhere?”). While it’s Jerry who initiates the quest for justice against Ray, the full impassioned force comes form George and Kramer.

George, who has been studying new words to introduce into conversation (“It’s anathema”) has a vested interest; the statue (which Kramer discovered in a box of items left to Jerry by his grandfather) is identical to one he broke as a child (while pretending it was a microphone). By this point we have a clear picture of his not-yet-introduced parents (“My mother’s making her roast potatoes”), and we can all too easily see the likelihood of the sight of Frank Costanza’s naked frame scarring George for life.

But it’s George’s bout of indignant rage, directed at Ray in the diner, that really scores. As with the lift scene, the staging is superlative. George sits with his back to Jerry, who is failing to extract a confession from Ray. To each response from Ray George mutters invective, while dismissing Jerry’s attempts (“Did you call me a wuss?”) Finally, he gets up to confront Ray and his turning worm is both impressive and amusing. Until Ray starts to get angry, at which point he wilts.

The very finest scene comes right at the end, however. Kramer came away with most of Jerry’s grandfather’s items (mainly clothes, including a pair of knee socks and a hat like Joe Friday’s from Dragnet). But after his squabble with George over possession of the statue (resolved by a game of Inka-Dink, in which Jerry bends the rules so George wins) he is given to sporadic suggestions that justice should be served (“Let’s go get him”). With only three or four minutes left, Ray answers the door and finds Kramer posing as a police detective and demanding to search the premises (he accuses Ray of grand larceny, possession of stolen goods and “murder!”). Richards is a tour de force, a whirlwind of energy and limbs as he pushes Ray into the corner (“Just make love to that wall, pervert!”) and makes off with the statue.

I’m not sure Kramer ever actually ends up making things better for anyone, as well meaning as he is. So it’s no surprise that the final scene sees George show eternal gratitude, only for Cosmo (not yet known by that name) to pat him on the back. Which sends the statue flying out of George’s hands to fall to the floor, shattering.

Quotable

George: My parents looked at me like I smashed the Ten Commandments. It was the single most damaging experience of my life. Aside from seeing my father naked.

Ray: Greetings. I beg your forgiveness. My tardiness was unavoidable.

Jerry: Shouldn’t you be out on a ledge somewhere?

Jerry: Kramer, it’s Jerry. Jerry. Jerry. From next door. Jerry Seinfeld. Never mind where I am. Just dip the bread in the batter and put it in the pan. Okay, bye. My mother. She forgot how to make French Toast. You know hoe mothers are.

Rava: My mother left us when I was six years old. All seven of us. We never heard from her again. I hope she’s rotting in an alley somewhere.

Jerry: My mother’s down in Florida.

Ray: How about dinner?

Jerry: No, I can’t eat dinner. Dinner’s for suckers.

George: Who is this? I’m the judge and the jury, pal. An the verdict is, “Guilty!”

Ray: You are starting to make me angry.

George: Well… That was bound to happen eventually.

Elaine: Did you go out last night?
Rava: No, we made love on the floor like two animals. Ray is insatiable.

Elaine: There are degrees of coincidence.

Rava: No, there are only coincidences. (Turning to lift passengers) Are there big coincidences and small coincidences? Well? Well?

Man: Will you put that cigarette out?

Rava: Maybe I put it out in your face.

George: This experience has changed me. It has made me more bitter. More cynical. More jaded.

Jerry: Really?

George: Sure, why not?

Kramer: Just make love to that wall, pervert!

Ray: I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.

Kramer: Is your name Ray?

Ray: Yes.

Kramer: Yeah, you’re the punk I’m looking for.

Ray: Are you a cop?

Kramer: Yeah, I’m a cop. I’m a damn good cop. I’m a cop!

Verdict:

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

And my father was a real ugly man.

Marty (1955)
(SPOILERS) It might be the very unexceptional good-naturedness of Marty that explains its Best Picture Oscar success. Ernest Borgnine’s Best Actor win is perhaps more immediately understandable, a badge of recognition for versatility, having previously attracted attention for playing iron-wrought bastards. But Marty also took the Palme d’Or, and it’s curious that its artistically-inclined jury fell so heavily for its charms (it was the first American picture to win the award; Lost Weekend won the Grand Prix when that was still the top award).

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

The world is one big hospice with fresh air.

Doctor Sleep (2019)
(SPOILERS) Doctor Sleep is a much better movie than it probably ought to be. Which is to say, it’s an adaption of a 2013 novel that, by most accounts, was a bit of a dud. That novel was a sequel to The Shining, one of Stephen King’s most beloved works, made into a film that diverged heavily, and in King’s view detrimentally, from the source material. Accordingly, Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep also operates as a follow up to the legendary Kubrick film. In which regard, it doesn’t even come close. And yet, judged as its own thing, which can at times be difficult due to the overt referencing, it’s an affecting and often effective tale of personal redemption and facing the – in this case literal – ghosts of one’s past.

Exit bear, pursued by an actor.

Paddington 2 (2017)
(SPOILERS) Paddington 2 is every bit as upbeat and well-meaning as its predecessor. It also has more money thrown at it, a much better villain (an infinitely better villain) and, in terms of plotting, is more developed, offering greater variety and a more satisfying structure. Additionally, crucially, it succeeds in offering continued emotional heft and heart to the Peruvian bear’s further adventures. It isn’t, however, quite as funny.

Even suggesting such a thing sounds curmudgeonly, given the universal applause greeting the movie, but I say that having revisited the original a couple of days prior and found myself enjoying it even more than on first viewing. Writer-director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby introduce a highly impressive array of set-ups with huge potential to milk their absurdity to comic ends, but don’t so much squander as frequently leave them undertapped.

Paddington’s succession of odd jobs don’t quite escalate as uproariously as they migh…

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

There’s nothing stock about a stock car.

Days of Thunder (1990)
(SPOILERS) The summer of 1990 was beset with box office underperformers. Sure-thing sequels – Another 48Hrs, Robocop 2, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Exorcist III, even Back to the Future Part III – either belly flopped or failed to hit the hoped for highs, while franchise hopefuls – Dick Tracy, Arachnophobia – most certainly did not ascend to the stratospheric levels of the previous year’s Batman. Even the big hitters, Total Recall and Die Hard 2: Die Harder, were somewhat offset by costing a fortune in the first place. Price-tag-wise, Days of Thunder, a thematic sequel to the phenomenon that was Top Gun, was in their category. Business-wise, it was definitely in the former. Tom Cruise didn’t quite suffer his first misfire since Legend – he’d made charmed choices ever since playing Maverick – but it was a close-run thing.

This is very cruel, Oskar. You're giving them hope. You shouldn't do that.

Schindler’s List (1993)
(SPOILERS) Such is the status of Schindler’s List, it all but defies criticism; it’s the worthiest of all the many worthy Best Picture Oscar winners, a film noble of purpose and sensitive in the treatment and depiction of the Holocaust as the backdrop to one man’s redemption. There is much to admire in Steven Spielberg’s film. But it is still a Steven Spielberg film. From a director whose driving impulse is the manufacture of popcorn entertainments, not intellectual introspection. Which means it’s a film that, for all its commendable features, is made to manipulate its audience in the manner of any of his “lesser” genre offerings. One’s mileage doubtless varies on this, but for me there are times during this, his crowning achievement, where the berg gets in the way of telling the most respectful version of this story by simple dint of being the berg. But then, to a great or lesser extent, this is true of almost all, if not all, his prestige pictures.

You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)
The final finale of the Twilight saga, in which pig-boy Jacob tells Bella that, “No, it's not like that at all!” after she accuses him of being a paedo. But then she comes around to his viewpoint, doubtless displaying the kind of denial many parents did who let their kids spend time with Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter during the ‘70s. It's lucky little Renesmee will be an adult by the age of seven, right? Right... Jacob even jokes that he should start calling Edward, “Dad”. And all the while they smile and smile.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog