Reliving Some of Seinfeld's Best Moments

Let's start with one of my favorites; the Kramerica Industries episode. In this episode, Kramer looks in the newspaper and he sees an idea that he had come to fruition. He decides to start Kramerica Industries to see through all of his quirky, funky ideas. He hires Darren to intern for him:

Kramer: "...So, that's the bedroom. Here's the bathroom. If you need to, you can familiarize yourself with the kitchen...Yeah, go ahead and look through some of the drawers". Jerry (to Darren): "And you are?" Darren: "Oh hey, I'm Darren. I'm new here". Kramer: "Yeah, that's Jerry, you don't have to worry about him. Why don't you go across the hall and get started on that mail".

In the meantime, George's boss hates him because he acted like he was handicapped to get the large bathroom. Jerry started doing a voice to mimic how his girlfriend's stomach sounds when she sleeps. Only Seinfeld can pull this off.

Kramer is developing a ball with oil to mimic an oil tanker spill. Yes, you read that right. In typical later episode Seinfeld fashion, it all comes together at the end of the episode, when Kramer and Darren are about to drop the ball of oil out of the window, but then Jerry notices his girlfriend is below the window. He uses the voice to try to get her attention, but she won't look up. Kramer describes the ridiculousness in the first few seconds before the ball drops:

Kramer: "You know Darren, if you had told me 25 years ago that someday, I'd be standing here about to solve the world's energy problems, I would have said you're crazy. Now let's push this giant ball of oil out the window!"

For me, this scene is one of those scenes that comes completely out-of-left-field, and that's why we love Seinfeld. Some context:

George breaks up with a woman because she beat him in chess, and George and Jerry reflect on their lives. Later, Jerry has this conversation with Kramer:

Jerry: "Hey, Kramer, if I killed somebody, would you turn me in?" Kramer: "Definitely." Jerry: "You're kidding!" Kramer: "No, no. I would turn you in."Jerry: 'You would turn me in?" Kramer: "I wouldn't even think about it." Jerry: "I can't believe I'm hearing this. You're supposed to be a friend of mine!" Kramer: "Well, what kind of person are you going around killing people?" Jerry: "Well, I am sure I had a good reason!" Kramer: "Well, if you'll kill this person, who's to say I wouldn't be next?" Jerry: "But you know me!" Kramer: "I thought I did!"

George later asks Susan, his girlfriend from a past episode, to marry him and of course, he soon after regrets it. Jerry ends up dumping a woman after she eats her peas one at a time.

Meanwhile, Elaine is having trouble sleeping with a barking dog. Kramer, (who else?!) kidnaps the dog. Spoiler Alert: He's a little Yorkshire Terrier. Of course, the dog tears Kramer's shirt and makes his way home to bark outside Elaine's window, to her chagrin. The police find Kramer and Newman, which leave Newman to say the classic line: "What took you so long?".

Oh lord. This episode. This is where Izzy Mandelbaum (Lloyd Bridges) makes his appearance. Jerry's out-of-shape and hires Izzy. He's kind of a lunatic and makes Jerry do things like run behind his car. Elaine babysits a bratty kid out of spite, and George incorporates food into sex with his (unknowing) girlfriend.

Jerry has an accident with a kitchen knife, and Kramer donates his blood to him. Here's how that goes down:

Kramer: “Yeah, you got three pints of Kramer in you, buddy.” Jerry: “Noooooo.”

Because of Kramer's good deed, he persuades Jerry to let him have favors. Kramer nonchalantly asks Jerry if he and Newman can watch a video at Jerry's place, to which Jerry reluctantly replies yes, because, well it's Newman. Jerry comes back to his apartment with loud music blaring and discovers Kramer didn't exactly communicate the favor completely:

Jerry: “What is this?” Kramer: “We're making sausages!” Jerry: “I thought you were going to watch a video.” Kramer: “An instructional video on how to make your own sausages!”

If you're reading this, then you probably already know that the Kramer character was inspired on Larry David's real-life imposing neighbor. He actually has his own reality tour in New York. Weird, huh?

The Festivus episode. This was actually a real holiday, invented by a Mr. O'Keefe, whose son wrote this episode:

Frank Costanza: “And at the Festivus dinner you gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year.” Kramer: “And is there a tree?” Frank Costanza: “No. Instead there's a pole. Requires no decoration. I find tinsel distracting.”

Of course, Frank Costanza is a real piece of work. He's also one of my favorites. This is one of my favorite Seinfeld quotes ever:

Frank Costanza: “Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people and now you're gonna hear about it!”

Also during this episode, we find out that Kramer has been on strike from H&H Bagels for years. Funnily enough, most of his co-workers have moved on in that time. George tries to get his office to donate to The Human Fund, a charity that he made up. When his boss calls him on it, George invites him to Festivus. His boss, Mr. Kruger is fascinated with Frank's "belief system".

Frank Costanza: “Until you pin me, George, Festivus is not over.” George: “Oh, please. Somebody stop this.” Frank: “Let's rumble!”

In this episode, Elaine tries to convert a gay man, Kramer gives food to the homeless and then asks for his Tupperware container back, and George is trying out a hair piece. Of course, Kramer thinks that George looks dashing with said hair piece. Elaine...not so much:

Elaine: “You're bald!” George: [indignantly] “No, I'm not! I... *was* bald.” Elaine: “I HATE THIS THING! AND HERE IS WHAT I’M DOING WITH IT!”

Elaine then grabs his toupee, and then throws it out the window. I think it's clear here that George's fatal mistake was that he poked Elaine on the nose while trying to make a point. You never do that!

Kramer appears in a police lineup for money and is later implicated in a crime he didn't commit because the homeless guy was ticked at him for the Tupperware incident earlier. Just another Seinfeld episode.

Oh, this one. Another one of my favorites. In this episode, George portrays himself as a tourist and basically makes up a new persona for a woman he's dating. She thinks that he's from Arkansas, so she says one of the funniest lines of the episode: "New York would eat you alive". HA! Oh Mary Ann; if you only knew. George then proceeds to tell her who he truly is and it's still a mystery why she didn't leave right then and there.

Jerry shaves his chest. Kramer is inspired to start his own reality tour. Side note: I can never get enough of Kramer's wacky ideas. This is the moment he reveals this new venture to George and Jerry:

Kramer: “Hey Jerry, I'm starting the Peterman reality bus tour”. George: “Reality tour?” Jerry: “The last thing this guy's qualified to give a tour of is reality.”

George: “I think I understand this. Jay Peterman is real. His biography is not. Now, you Kramer are real.” Kramer: “Talk to me.” George: “But your life is Peterman's. Now the bus tour, which is real, takes to places that, while they are real, they are not real in sense that they did not *really* happen to the *real* Peterman which is you.” Kramer: “Understand?” Jerry: “Yeah. $37.50 for a Three Musketeers.”

And the muffins. Elaine casually mentions to her boss that she eats only the muffin tops and throws the "stumps" away. Here, she describes her passion for the tops:

Elaine (on muffin tops: “It's the best part. It's crunchy, it's explosive, it's where the muffin breaks free of the pan and sort of (makes hand motions) does it's own thing.”

Later, she finds out that her boss started a store based on this concept called "Top of the Muffin To Ya", and this conversation references an earlier episode where she breaks up with someone over an exclamation point:

Elaine: “And one more thing, you really think we need the exclamation point? Because, it's not "Top of the Muffin *TO YOU!!!*" Mr. Lippman: “No. No. It is.”

Of course, she's not happy, but relents when her boss says that his business is failing. Elaine tells him that he's got to make the entire muffins, and not just the tops. This runs into a hilarious problem of disposing the stumps:

Jerry: “Hey, how's business?” Elaine: “Ooh, I've got stump troubles. The Sanitation Department won't get rid of them all, I can't get a truck to haul this stuff until next week. Meanwhile, I'm sitting on a mountain of stumps.”

Meanwhile, Kramer's tour kicks off:

Kramer: "And we're off!" Jerry: "You know, I never thought he'd be able to recreate the experience of actually knowing him, but this is pretty close."

Elaine's stump problem is solved when Kramer offers to use the back of his bus as stump storage. It makes sense to him, apparently:

Kramer: "We have a bonus ultra-reality stop today. We're going to be hauling muffin stumps to the local repository.” Jerry: “We're going to a garbage dump?"

When that idea fails, she enlists the help of Newman to dispose of them, to which he eats them while drinking a bunch of milk. So silly.

This is one of those episodes that you don't really remember all the goodies until you start watching. First of all, Kramer starts keeping track of what he bums off Jerry so he can pay him back for everything he uses:

Jerry: “Hey, is this your half a can of soda in the fridge?” Kramer: “No, that's yours. My half is gone.” Jerry: “What?” Kramer: “Yeah, I put my half a can here on the tab. Why, what's your beef?” Jerry: “You cannot buy half a can of soda.” Kramer: “Well, why not?” Jerry: “Well, I don't wanna get into the whole physics of carbonation with you here, but you know the sound a can makes when you open it?” Kramer: “Yeah.” Jerry: “That is the sound of you buying a whole can.”

Elaine looks at a girls' bike at a store and while she tries to get it off the wall, she hurts her neck. She says that she will give the bike to whoever will fix her neck, and of course, Kramer accepts the strange task. He literally wants the girls' bike. The problem is, his treatment works temporarily and Elaine is angry and in pain. There's a scene where he's riding the bike in Jerry's apartment, which is ridiculous enough already, and Elaine shuts the door on Kramer as he hilariously falls off his bike. Classic moment!

Because Elaine feels like the bike is hers, because the deal is off--Kramer's treatment didn't work--they visit a mediator. We find out it's Newman. Newman threatens to destroy the bike if no one can agree. Kramer says that he would rather see the bike go to Elaine then be destroyed, a la King Solomon. The bike then goes to Kramer, who is considered the rightful owner.

Meanwhile, George tells Susan that he wants to name their child Seven and as it turns out, Susan's cousin does as well. He tries to persuade them to name the child Soda, including while her cousin goes into labor. Jerry's new girlfriend wears the same dress, and Jerry takes pains to see if she has the same dress in her wardrobe. Jerry's curiosity gets the best of him, and she dumps him while he's snooping. Whoops.

This is probably one of the most recognizable episodes. There's a new soup place in town, but he likes to have things a certain way:

George: “Good afternoon. One large crab bisque to go. Bread. Beautiful.” Soup Nazi: “You're pushing your luck little man.” George: “Sorry. Thank you.”

Newman: (sniffs bag) “Hmmm…..Jambalaya!”

Elaine finds an armoire for sale on the street and asks Kramer to watch it while she gets soup. While at the soup place, she doesn't heed Jerry and Kramer's advice and gets banned for a year. She also finds out that Kramer was intimidated by two men who stole the armoire.

Jerry gets close to getting banned as he and his new girlfriend are calling each other "Schmoopie" and kissing in the Soup Nazi's domain. Jerry's girlfriend does get banned, and Jerry pretends that he doesn't know her so he can get the soup.

Kramer befriends the Soup Nazi and tells him how Elaine had her armoire stolen. He offers her his armoire, to which she thanks him and he says that he never would have given it to her if he knew it was for her. Elaine later peeks in the armoire to find the Soup Nazi's recipes. She is taking him down:

Elaine: “You're through, Soup Nazi! No more soup for *you*. NEXT!”

We find out that the Soup Nazi is going out of business and moving back to Argentina, further perpetuating his "Nazi" stereotype. Side note: Apparently, this idea came about as this guy actually existed in New York. Truth is stranger than fiction...

The episode starts out with George visiting his parents in Queens, and notices that Frank keeps saying "serenity now":

Frank: "The doctor gave me a relaxation cassette. When my blood pressure gets too high, the man on the tape tells me to say 'serenity now!'" George: Are you supposed to yell it?" Jerry: "The man on the tape wasn't specific."

Frank has George sell computers with his old classmate, Lloyd Braun, and it turns out, the Costanzas are a fan of him. Frank says that anyone who sells the most computers will get a prize and from the whiteboard in the background, it looks like Lloyd has sold quite a bit, even though George hints that Lloyd is a little "touched in the head".

For some reason, we see the Kramer has turned his part of the hallway into "Anytown USA" with a screen door (also lawn chairs and an American flag) to feel the summer breeze. Jerry can't roll his eyes enough.

I love when Jerry peeks into the screen door like a kid playing outside: "Hello. Is Kramer home?"

Elaine goes to her boss's son's bar mitzvah and brings "Boggle" to which Jerry questions her gift-giving choice. She gets forcibly kissed by her boss's son because of her "shiksa-ppeal" as she is not Jewish. The rabbi, who "Lany" asks for advice also makes an advance at her.

Jerry's new girlfriend (Lori Loughlin) encourages Jerry to show his emotions, to which he becomes needy, and frightening the gang. He even tells George and Kramer "I Love You" and asks Elaine to marry him. Yeesh. His girlfriend breaks up with him and he is surprised by his reaction:

Elaine: "Jerry, you break up with a girl every week." Jerry: "What is this salty discharge?" Elaine: "Oh my God, you're crying."Jerry: "This is horrible. I care."

Also, Kramer has picked up Frank's "serenity now" relaxation technique. Things build up inside of him instead of releasing it and he mistakenly feels his stress melting away. The neighborhood kids vandalize his hallway area as he shrieks the code phrase: "Hoochie Mama!" to a distracted Jerry to turn on the hose.

It all comes together as Kramer explodes and destroys all of George's computers (that he bought himself to beat Lloyd Braun) in frustration. As for Lloyd, it turns out that his phone wasn't even connected and that he is indeed "touched".

In the last scene, we see Estelle Costanza opening the garage door to Frank's sales office as Frank's new relaxation phrase comes to light: "Hoochie Mama!". It makes you wonder exactly how much influence Kramer has over everybody. Just a thought.

Jerry is frustrated when Jerry's parents move in with Uncle Leo and call him on a daily basis. We also find out that Kramer speaks to them on a regular basis, because, if Jerry did, "he wouldn't have to". HA! Oh, Kramer.

Jerry encourages Uncle Leo to break up with his girlfriend so his parents would move elsewhere, and away from him. They decide to move to Florida, to an association known as Del Boca Vista. George thinks this would be great for his parents (and himself) and tries to convince Frank and Estelle to move. This doesn't work until George mentions that there are supposedly no condos left, which riles up Frank and they decide to move there. For some reason, there has been some sort of mysterious rift between the Seinfelds and the Constanzas, and that is obvious when they visit Jerry at his show:

Jerry: "Can we continue the psychopath convention down the hall?"

By the way, if you've seen the outtakes for this episode, you know that Jerry Stiller, who plays Frank Costanza, has a hard time saying Del Boca Vista. This is all I think about when I watch this episode.

Elaine is excited for her trip to Africa, but her urine test reveals drugs. She begs Mr. Peterman for another one, and; same thing.

When Jerry's parents find out that the Costanzas are moving to Florida, they want to stay. They end up at Jerry's, and his apartment just changed the shower heads to a "low-flow". Jerry, his parents, and Kramer all hilariously come out with hair parted down the middle because they can't rinse. Kramer uses his underworld connections to get a better shower head.

In the meantime, Elaine begs Mr. Peterman for one last urine test. She realizes that her love for poppy seeds are causing her drug positive tests. She begs Mrs. Seinfeld for her urine, to which she looks for a clean glass. In the last scene, we see Kramer with the new shower head, which was used for elephants in the circus--as he flies around the shower.

Oh man. There are so many good Seinfeld episodes. As I was writing this article, I kept thinking of more; including the Kenny Rogers chicken episode, the Merv Griffin Show episode, and the bet. But there's a point, and I'll probably have to write another article with more. Until then, here are a few more of my favorites:

• When George Debuted Sweatpants...

Jerry: "You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up'. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable."

• When Jerry Explains Kramer to Kramer

Jerry: “Let me explain something to you. You see, you're not normal. You're a great guy, I love you, but - - you're a pod. I, on the other hand, am a human being. I sometimes feel anxious, uncomfortable, even inhibited in certain situations with the other human beings. You wouldn't understand.”

• When Kramer Shaved With Butter

Jerry: "Do I have to ask?" Kramer: "Well, I ran out of butter, so I had to borrow yours. Anything else, Mr. Nosy?"

• When Elaine Talked About Her Last Meal

(I didn't remember this episode at all until we watched it on Crackle--they have different Seinfeld episodes every month for free if you have Roku.)

Glenn: "So you would choose your last meal based on the method of execution?" Elaine: "Right. I mean if I was getting the chair, I'd go for something hot and spicy. You know, that maybe Mexican. Lethal injection; feels like pasta. You know, painless, I don't want anything too heavy".

You may or may not have heard, but beloved Julia-Louis Dreyfus has breast cancer. Here's to hoping for a full-recovery, Julia. Laughter is the best medicine.