New York. After Elaine tells him she faked all her orgasms during their relationship, Jerry asks her to give him another try... George is approached to be a hand model... Elaine is annoyed that her new boyfriend has the same name as a serial killer, so she wants to change his name... Jerry dates a deaf woman, Laura, who can read lips from other people... George decides to convert to the Latvian Orthodox church for his Latvian girlfriend... George is annoyed that he has nothing to talk about with his new girlfriend Daphne... Elaine spots a mannequin that looks exactly like her... Jerry is accosted for kissing his girlfriend during the entire screening of "Schindler's List"... Feeling each instinct he had was wrong, George decides to do everything the opposite he would usually do...
Season 5 of “Seinfeld” is, together with season 4, definitely ‘peak Seinfeld’, marking an era when comedian Jerry Seinfeld could touch whatever he wanted and make it funny, crafting a hugely inspired set of episodes that exploits all their comedy potentials to the maximum. It's not that these episodes do not consist out of trivial observations; rather, the authors managed to make them appear consequential. These are small 'slice-of-life' humorous vignettes, yet they were restructured and reassessed to make them look funnier and more engaging than some epic "high stakes" stories. There is no story or character arc—the stories in episodes are so random that the viewers could watch them randomly and not miss a thing, and all the characters always stay the same, including the legendary George Costanza (excellent Jason Alexander) who is a slob and remains a slob, refusing to learn any new lessons—yet so many moments ring so true that the viewers can easily identify with them. Some jokes are simply hilarious: for instance, in episode 5.6, during a live broadcast of a tennis match, the camera randomly zooms in on George in the audience who is all besmirched across his face from eating a sundae, and the TV commentators randomly poke fun at him: “Hey buddy, there’s this new invention. It’s called the napkin.”
In 5.11, George decides to convert to Latvian orthodox church for his Latvian girlfriend, but, naturally, his parents accost him for it, claiming that this is how "sects lure people" into their membership, whereas many can identify with episode 5.12 in which Elaine is in a pinch in the public toilet, and asks a neighboring woman if she can borrow "at least three squares of toilet paper", but said woman refuses: later, in a typical "Rashomon" moment, both women lament to Jerry, Elaine claiming that a selfish woman wouldn't share, and the woman that Elaine was intruding on her privacy, which is a great satirical jab at "both sides are the same". Michael Richards is again overacting as Kramer, since his sudden "jolts" feel like forced humor (except in episode 5.4, where he somehow manages the trick of drinking beer while still holding a cigarette in his mouth), yet the remaining three characters have pleanty of scenes that spotlight their talent, from George's lines (“You’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented the ‘it’s not you, it’s me!”) up to Jerry's stand-up comedy lines (“We never should have landed a man on the Moon. It’s a mistake. Now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. Now we go: I can’t believe we landed a man on the Moon, and taste my coffee!”). Despite a weak start, the episodes just get better and better, as one gets used to their frequency of humor, reaching a momentum in at least three episodes that are simply perfect: "The Marine Biologist", "The Raincoats" and "The Opposite". In the "Biologist" episode, Jerry lies to a woman from high school that George is now a marine biologist, she agrees to go on a date with him, so George goes into full "bullshit" mode when they walk on the beach: "Then, of course, with evolution the octopuss lost the nostrils and took on a more familiar look we know today. But if you still look closely, you can see a little bump where the nose used to be..." "Raincoats" are a stunning two-part episode with endless highlights, but one must single out Judge Reinhold as Aaron the "close talker". Finally, in "The Opposite" George decides to do everything the opposite of what he would usually do, and unexpectedly experiences a perfect day where he practically becomes a "Superman", in an episode so magnificent, so brilliant, so genius and so legendary that it echoes to this day.
Grade:+++
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