Besides the final show, between Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer over the course of the entire series what was the most profound ethical and moral lapse any one character had re something they did?
There was the time George knocked over a bunch of little kids to escape a fire. And the time Kramer sent his assistant up the river for dropping a giant rubber ball of oil out a window.
I don’t know that it was doing anything, but I found George’s lack of emotion regarding Susan’s death to be really shocking. I mean, it’s Seinfeld, I didn’t expect weeping or drawn-out mourning, but he didn’t seem to care at all.
There are a bunch. Elaine kidnapping her neighbor’s barking dog comes to mind. I guess because I’m a dog lover and because there’s nothing that really justifies theft. Not in that instance.
Jerry stealing the marble rye from the old lady also jumps to mind.
Jerry: Becoming a pirate movie director.
George: Stepping on all the pigeons in “Contract.”
Elaine: Blackmailing the Soup Nazi after discovering his recipes in a bureau.
Kramer: Using blood in Jerry’s overheated Saab.
Kramer knocking up his girlfriend just so that he could prove he can “slip one past the goalie.”
I think it has to be all the things that happened to Susan: Kramer vomited on her, then he burned down her cabin, then as a result of the cabin burning down her father was outed as a homosexual, then George proposes to her while seeming to actively hate her, then of course she dies because of him. The call to Marisa Tomei at the end of that episode is the real kicker.
As for one isolated incident, probably the events of The Handicap Spot, where they park in said spot which results in a woman getting into a wheelchair accident, and when they buy her a cheap wheelchair she gets into yet another accident. It’s a long story but at the end of the episode the B-plot of the episode also turns out in their favour, meaning they learnt no lessons and were barely punished for what they did.
Actually, I’ve just remembered the absolute worst, so disregard the above: it’s that time in The Hamptons when George put lobster in the eggs, tricking Jerry’s girlfriend into eating non-kosher food.
Wow. Did he actually do this or did he just try to do it?
Unclear. Kramer had been worried about his lineage dying out, and the final line in the episode has him joyfully proclaiming “[Girlfriend] thinks she’s pregnant! The Kramer name lives on!!” Then, the woman is never seen again, nor is this incident ever mentioned.
This is it for me too, maybe because the end of that episode didn’t really work as comedy. They were cavalier about so many things in a way that worked within the show’s reality and was funny, but when it involved actual human death, it just didn’t seem to fit.
It’s small-scale so not really that evil per se, but Jerry knocking down an old lady, stealing her bread and running off shouting “shut up you old bag” has to rank pretty high up there. It’s just so straight up villainous.
Another one that comes to mind is the Junior Mints incident where Jerry/Kramer accidentally drop a junior mint into a patient during surgery and then just let them sow him up as if nothing happened. Turned out ok iirc, but that’s still pretty cold.
The whole bit with Jerry and the Marathon runner was the absolute worst thing.
This is what I came to post. Why not just explain shrinkage to the girl?
I always found that scene kind of odd. And somebody brought up this point in another thread awhile back, but there was another scene where Jerry expresses surprise that Kramer had never “slipped one past the ol’ goalie,” as if accidentally knocking up a woman was a rite of passage for every guy. Then when they asked Jerry if had ever “slipped one past the goalie” he said something to the effect of “Those records are permanently sealed,” suggesting he either had a bastard son out there or had a girlfriend that got an abortion.
I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising, seeing how they went through girlfriends on this show, but still they were pretty cavalier about it.
Pardon my ignorance, for I don’t know much about kosher traditions. What makes this worse than all of the things that happened to Susan?
In my view, you’ve got it all wrong. George wasn’t apathetic. He was jubilant – Susan’s accidental death was the best outcome for his situation – and he was suppressing any overt demonstration of his joy.
Which also put George’s company out of business, laying off a whole lot of people.
They did some pretty nasty things to each other, too.
Kramer using Jerry’s towel to use benzine to clean his meat slicer comes to mind.
What they did to Mr. K_uger could be contrued as nasty, but they just had a really bad way of trying to do something good for him.
Actually, I thought it was fairly large scale and the episode that got me hooked on the show my friends had been raving about. I thought, “The title character in a show is so despicable he would mug an elderly woman? I love it!”
Most of the stuff that happened to Susan was accidental, but this was something that George purposefully did, out of spite.
They got Babu deported back to Pakistan.