Tippy-toe! Tippy-toe!

Seinfeld

2.7: The Phone Message

The Premise

George and Jerry both have dates on the same night. Neither goes quite as planned, and in George’s case it results in him leaving an abusive message on his girlfriend’s answerphone. The only solution is to steal the tape before she plays it.

Observational

Further evidence of the gaping chasm between George and Jerry’s approaches to the world. George neurotically attacks his problems and makes them worse, while Jerry shrugs and lets them go. It’s nice to see the latter’s anal qualities announcing themselves, however; he’s so bothered that his girlfriend likes a terrible TV advert that he’s mostly relieved when she breaks things off (“To me the dialogue rings true”).

Neither Gretchen German (as Donna, Jerry’s date) nor Tory Polone (as Carol, George’s) make a huge impression, but German has more screen time and better dialogue. The main attraction is Jerry’s reactions, which include trying to impress her with his Scottish accent (“Irish, Scots. What’s the difference, laddie?”), his predilection for tan pants, and his apropos nothing account of how he has never seen I Love Lucy. Donna is outraged that he told his friends about their disagreement (“Where the Hell do you get the nerve?”) but, even though he’s on a back foot, there’s an easy-come, easy-go diffidence to Jerry’s defence (“No, I had to tell my friends. My friends didn’t have to tell you”). He’s less confident in George’s tape-swap scheme at first (“I can’t get involved in this”), until George labels him a “wuss” (a great reaction from Jerry as he has to rise to the provocation, even with such a ridiculous insult). But, when it comes to the operation, he’s as cool as a cucumber.

The tape heist involves the lamest of excuses for getting into Carol’s apartment (“He has this phobia of public toilets”) leading to Jerry’s sudden lack of bursting (“You know, it’s the damnedest thing. It went away”).

But this is George’s episode, and this is the best realisation of the character so far. Alexander is such a natural performer that you never question his timing or comic physicality. He’s hugely impressive here, as he moves from disdain at his idiocy in not recognising the invitation for sex from Carol (“People this stupid shouldn’t be allowed to live”) to a carefully strategised but idiotic plan not to call her until Wednesday (“Women don’t wanna see need”). Which meets with a classic Elaine put-down (“I don’t know what your parents did to you”; in time, we will find out).

The first answerphone message he leaves is utterly excruciating (“I don’t know what the hell I said”). Unfortunately, we only hear George’s account of the second but it’s enough to get the idea. His desperate spitballing as he attempts to distract Carol so that Jerry can make the switch involves a hilariously surreal take on the “I have to tell you something in private” confessional (“Is that what you had to tell me? Your father wears sneakers in the pool?”).

Best of the best is his never-ending ability to come up with a crappy idea that becomes legendary due to how awful it is. In this instance, it’s the signal to let Jerry know that Carol is coming back in the room (“The signal is, I’ll call out “Tippy-toe””). When Jerry doesn’t bite, we get another taste of George’s decidedly un-butch penchant for musicals (“I’ll sing, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?””)

If there’s a fault in this storyline, it’s that the pay-off doesn’t quite wash. It’s a nice idea to learn that, after all this effort, Carol has heard the messages and isn’t annoyed, but it doesn’t completely play; we don’t really believe it, other than as a gag (“You were hilarious. They were cracking me up. I just love jokes like that”).

Other George tics include his idolisation of Jerry; he’s so pleased that they have dates on the same evening, as it makes them equals and brothers. Then there’s “the vault”; George’s inability to keep a secret will frequently mess up Jerry’s plans in future. In this episode, the first thing he does when he meets Donna is gabble away about the advert (“Oh, you’re the one who likes that commercial!”). This is also an early mention of the Hamptons, a location that will feature in several classic plots.

If George hadn’t, Kramer was next in line to talk about the ad (“Cotton dockers!”), but David and Seinfeld are still getting the hang of sharing episodes between the characters. Kramer and Elaine are on the side-lines. We discover she has a brother (whom we never meet).

Jerry’s stand-up routine on soda is a bit flat (ahem), perhaps because it’s a riff that’s been heard a thousand times. But there’s also a reality poking through that, when delivered in slivers in the series, his bits often fizzle (which may be part of the reason for phasing them out). Kramer’s piss-take (although meant genuinely) suggestion for a routine is far funnier than any of the framing club sequences in the series thus far (“It’s as good as anything you do”). You have to admire how game Seinfeld is for self-mockery; it’s only his career he’s dismantling.

Quotable

Carol: Would you like to come upstairs for some coffee?

George: Uh, no thanks. I don’t drink coffee late at night. It keeps me up.

George: Coffee’s not coffee. Coffee’s sex.

Elaine: People drink coffee that late.

George: Yeah, people who work at NORAD, who are on 24-hour missile watch.

George: Tippy-toe! Tippy-toe!

Verdict:

Comments

He’s probably paranoid, high-strung, doesn’t like daylight. You know, has a lot of crumbs in his beard, if he has a beard.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) (SPOILERS) I’d like to report I had a blast with Godzilla vs. Kong . It’s lighter on its oversized, city-stomping feet than its slog of a MonsterVerse predecessor, Godzilla: King of the Monsters , and there are flashes of visual inspiration along with several engaging core ideas (which, to be fair, the series had already laid the seeds for). But this sequel still stumbles in its chief task: assembling an engaging, lively story that successfully integrates both tiny humans and towering titans.

It's Dark Age, by Jupiter!

The Dig (2021) (SPOILERS) An account of the greatest archaeological find Britain would know until Professor Horner opened the barrow at Devil’s End. And should you scoff at such “ fiction ”, that’s nothing on this adaptation of John Preston’s 2007 novel concerning the Sutton Hoo excavations of the late 1930s. The Dig , as is the onus of any compelling fictional account, takes liberties with the source material, but the erring from the straight and narrow in this case is less an issue than the shift in focus from characters and elements successfully established during the first hour.

You stink, my friend.

Mulan (2020) (SPOILERS) Let that be a lesson to Disney. It’s a fool’s errand to try and beat the Chinese at their own game, no matter how painstakingly respectful – or rather, pandering – you are. Indeed, Mulan ’s abysmal $40m box office take in the country – where it did get a proper release, so no plandemic excuses can be cited – feels like a direct rebuke; don’t try and tell us how to suck eggs. There’s an additional explanation too, of course. That Mulan sucks.

Our "Bullshit!" team has unearthed spectacular new evidence, which suggests, that Jack the Ripper was, in fact, the Loch Ness Monster.

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) Cheeseburger Film Sandwich . Apparently, that’s what the French call Amazon Women on the Moon . Except that it probably sounds a little more elegant, since they’d be saying it in French (I hope so, anyway). Given the title, it should be no surprise that it is regarded as a sequel to Kentucky Fried Movie . Which, in some respects, it is. John Landis originally planned to direct the whole of Amazon Women himself, but brought in other directors due to scheduling issues. The finished film is as much of a mess as Kentucky Fried Movie , arrayed with more miss sketches than hit ones, although it’s decidedly less crude and haphazard than the earlier picture. Some have attempted to reclaim Amazon Women as a dazzling satire on TV’s takeover of our lives, but that’s stretching it. There is a fair bit of satire in there, but the filmmakers were just trying to be funny; there’s no polemic or express commentary. But even on such moderate t

Roswell was a smokescreen, we've had a half a dozen better salvage operations.

The X-Files 1.24: The Erlenmeyer Flask The Erlenmeyer Flask makes for a fast-paced, tense and eventful ride, but does it make any sense? That less than mattered at the time, but revisiting the mythology arc (for probably the fourth or fifth time) reveals increasingly tenuous internal coherence as the various conspiracy elements begin to pile up and the situations become ever-more convoluted. This will become the Chris Carter’s signature: don’t examine the details too closely, go with the flow. Trust Chris implicitly.

UFO IN MOSSINGHAM?

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2020) (SPOILERS) One might reasonably suggest the recourse of the ailing or desperate franchise is to resort, seemingly out of nowhere, to space aliens. Even Police Academy didn’t go that far (to Moscow, yes, but not to space). Perhaps animators think kids have no skills of discernment and will swallow any old sugar-coated crap. Perhaps they don’t, and they will. Ice Age had been enjoying absurd success until Collision Course sent Scrat spinning into the cosmos and grosses tumbled. Shaun the Sheep has been around for a quarter of a century, but this is only his second movie outing and already he’s pulling an E.T. on us. Of course, this may all be part of the grand scheme, and Nick Park is simply doing his bit to familiarise the tots in time for Project Blue Beam.

Wow. Asteroids are made of farts. Okay. I got it.

Greenland (2020) (SPOILERS) Global terror porn for overpopulation adherents as Gerard Butler and his family do their darnedest to reach the safety of a bunker in the titular country in the face of an imminent comet impact. Basically, what if 2012 were played straight? These things come to test cinemas in cycles, of course. Sean Connery struggled with a duff rug and a stack of mud in Meteor , while Deep Impact plumbed for another dread comet and Armageddon an asteroid. The former, owing to the combined forces of Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, was a – relatively – more meditative fare. The latter was directed by Michael Bay. And then there’s Roland Emmerich, who having hoisted a big freeze on us in The Day After Tomorrow then wreaked a relatively original source of devastation in the form of 2012 ’s overheating Earth’s core. Greenland , meanwhile, is pretty much what you’d expect from the director of Angel Has Fallen .

Careful how much boat you’re eating.

Onward (2020) (SPOILERS) Pixar’s Bright , or thereabouts. The interesting thing – perhaps the only interesting thing – about Onward is that it’s almost indiscernible from a DreamWorks Animation effort, where once they cocked a snook at such cheap-seats fare, seeing themselves as better class of animation house altogether. Just about everything in Onward is shamelessly derivative, from the Harry Potter /fantasy genre cash-in to the use of the standard Pixar formula whereby any scenario remotely eccentric or exotic is buried beneath the banal signifiers of modern society: because anything you can imagine must be dragged down to tangible everyday reference points or kids won’t be able to assimilate it. And then there’s the choice of lead voices, in-Disney star-slaves Chris Pratt and Tom Holland.

By heaven, I’d thrash the life out of you… if I didn’t have to read the Nine O’Clock News.

The Green Man (1956) (SPOILERS) The Green movie from Launder and Gilliat starring Alastair Sim that isn’t Green for Danger. Which is to say, The Green Man can’t quite scale the heady heights of that decade-earlier murder mystery triumph, but neither is it any slouch. Sim is the antagonist this time – albeit a very affable, Sim-ish one – and his sometime protégée, a young George Cole, the hero. If the plot is entirely absurd, Robert Day’s movie wastes no time probing such insufficiencies, ensuring it is very funny, lively and beautifully performed.

Well, I’ll be damned. It’s the gentleman guppy.

Waterworld (1995) (SPOILERS) The production and budgetary woes of “ Kevin’s Gate ” will forever overshadow the movie’s content (and while it may have been the most expensive movie ever to that point – adjusted for inflation, it seems only Cleopatra came close – it has since turned a profit). However, should you somehow manage to avoid the distraction of those legendary problems, the real qualitative concerns are sure to come sailing over the cognitive horizon eventually; Waterworld is just so damned derivative. It’s a seafaring Mad Max. Peter Rader, who first came up with the idea in 1986, admitted as much. David Twohy, who later came aboard, also cited Mad Max 2 ; that kind of rip-off aspect – Jaws birthing Piranha – makes it unsurprising Waterworld was once under consideration by Roger Corman (he couldn’t cost it cheaply enough). Ultimately, there’s never a sufficient sense the movie has managed to become its own thing. Which is a bummer, because it’s frequently quite good fun.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog