Jerry, George and Elaine try out a massage therapy... Jerry is angry that George broke up with a woman, an accountant, before she could do Jerry's taxes... Jerry tries to help a Pakistani restaurant owner by motivating him to cook Pakistani food, but the place goes broke... George persuades his girlfriend to do a nose job, but it ends badly, so she has to go for another surgery... George finally finds a job, but gets fired for having sex with the cleaning lady in the workplace... The quartet have a bad day in a subway... At the airport, George takes a limo reserved for a certain O'Brien, who turns out to be a Neo-Nazi... After a macho neighbor falls into a coma, Jerry starts a relationship with his girlfriend... Jerry witnesses a hit-and-run car, but upon finding the driver is a beautiful woman, he begins dating her... Kramer goes to California to try to become an actor on TV...
The third season of "Seinfeld" is definitely the one where the authors found their true calling and consolidated the structure for the rest of the series. The quality of the episodes is again inconsistent: some stories are brilliant, others are bland. Admittedly, the concept of the show is 'slice-of-life' in New York, yet a fair share of its running time is spent on too trivial or obscure observations—as S. Martin's character in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" said: "Not everything is an anecdote". The first five episodes are weak, especially the rather tiresome 'filler' stories of Jerry and Elaine going to visit Jerry's parents in Florida or Jerry having to return an overdue book to the library, but the wanning impression is finally saved and fixed in episode 3.6, where the entire minimalistic story plays out only on one location, the public garage, where the four protagonists spend their entire time trying to find Kramer's car. Thanks to Larry David's tight script, said episode is able to sustain the viewers' attention through sharp and witty dialogues.
Some of the best bits appear when Jerry is sharply calling out certain flaws, nuissances or clichees in people's behavior: for instance, in episode 3.11, Jerry and Elaine go to rent a car, but it's not there despite a reservation, so the clerk says she will go to talk to her supervisor, and we see her make gesticulations behind a glass door, causing Jerry and Elaine to begin to mimic their hand movements: "You know what she's saying over there?" - "What?" - "Hey Marge, see those two people over there, they think I'm talking to you, so you pretend you are talking to me! OK, now you start talking." - "Oh, you mean like this, so it looks like I'm saying something, but I'm not really saying anything at all?" - "Now you say something else, and they won't yell at me because they will think I was checking with you!". In another, Jerry returns to his apartment with his date, and at the door, he says: "Hey, do you ever pretend like there's murderers chasing you, and you're trying to see how fast you can get your keys out and get into your apartment?", so they try unlocking the door really fast. By far, the best joke appears in episode 3.16, which is comedy gold, an insane spoof of "JFK" (also starring Wayne Knight): Kramer and Newman recalling how they were walking after a game, but baseball player Hernandez spat on Kramer behind his back, and Newman adds: "Then the spit ricochet off him as it hit me". Jerry, however, steps in, and proceeds to dispute the events using laws of physics and makes a delicious reconstruction: "The spit then splashed off the wrist, pauses, in mid air, mind you, makes a left turn, and lands on Newman's left thigh. That is one magic loogie!"
Grade:++
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