Here are just a couple of nitpicks I gleaned from the show Seinfeld. They don’t annoy me; just fun to look at.
When Elaine wanted to break up with her “boyfriend” who just had a stroke, she told him how difficult it was to get to him because she had to take two subways. At 42nd Street, she had to transfer to the “double-R.”
Interesting, because unless the show is taking place in the early 80’s, there is no RR line in the NYC subway anymore. Maybe Jerry had been away from the Big Apple for too long during filming and did not have access to a subway map from the past decade. Furthermore, how annoying is it to have to take two subways? Hardly; at least not for me. Big deal. Nor do I think that most New Yorkers feel annoyed either. I think that Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was speaking for Elaine there. That is, a rich Hollywood celebrity who takes helicopters to wherever she wants to go.
2. One episode, Jerry is harassed by the “library cop,” Mr. Bookman. Jerry has not returned a book he borrowed while in high school and now must pay for it. I’m sure this happens a lot - people borrowing books and then losing them. However, how often do people who live out on Long Island (that’s where Jerry and friends grew up, no?) trek out to the 42nd Street Library to borrow a book. That’s 42nd Street in Manhattan. I’m from Queens, so I don’t know L.I. too well, but surely there are more conveniently located libraries out there for people to go to. Furthermore, the 42nd Street library, the one with the lions, isn’t a circulating library. It’s a research library. This means you can’t take books out. You’d have to go down a few blocks to the Mid-Manhattan for that purpose.
Okay, I’m only putting this obvious one in because I don’t want to leave a list with only two points: Jerry (and the others) get a new partner every week. How come no venereal disease?
Lousy comedy material, maybe?
I suppose I should confess right now that I have only seen a couple of episodes of Seinfeld. Ditto for The Simpsons. Yep. I’m the one.
RR
That library episode really annoys me every time I see it. I don’t want to over-generalize (is that redundant?), but I have never heard of a library that deals with overdue books in that way, but I think it just feeds the average person’s misunderstanding of how libraries work.
For the record, in each of the 3 libraries I’ve ever worked in and every library I’ve ever heard of, if you keep a book out long enough, you will be charged for the cost of the book. Sometimes there will be a small processing fee attached. If you return the book, you will no longer be responsible for the cost of the book itself, though, again, you may have to pay the processing fee or the late fee you accumulated before you were charged for the book (usually a month’s worth or so.
Overdue fees do not keep accumulating day after day, year after year.
Ok, that said. Jerry never ever once rode the various bikes he had on the wall- and they even set various episodes in the park. Come one ride that thing already. Also, its was just a scratch, not a pick!
I am sure there are people even today who refer to the R train as the double R. I know that when I lived in Queens in the early to mid-90’s people still did. Old habits die hard. Also, I think one of the things Elaine was doing was justifying breaking up with an old guy. But, don’t forget, Kramer didn’t want to date a girl who lived downtown and nobody wanted to call Elaine when she lost her 212 area code. It may not be true to life, but it appears to be typical in Seinfeld-land.
Actually, out here in L.A., there used to be a guy whose job it was for the LA Public Library to go out and track down people with big overdue bills. If you had a lot of material outstanding and you did not respond to the notices, this guy would come to your door and ask politely. If that didn’t work, he would ask not as nicely.
That job was eventually phased out however. It could be that the writers in L.A. had to deal with that guy.
IIRC the Mid-Manhattan branch is across the street from the 5th Avenue Library (that was the way the NYPL staff referred to it during a job interview I had with them).
But now the 5th Avenue Library only deals with the Social Sciences and Humanities.
