(S03E15) It's kind of interesting that many people remember this episode fondly, but most of their good memories revolve around only one sequence: the back-and-forth scene as Jerry and Elaine go over the physical attributes of Cynthia and George. Of course, Jerry is talking to George and Elaine is talking to Cynthia. It's a scene that sets up so much of what Seinfeld riffed on in future years, that to see this play out in the context of the show at the time is seeing Larry, Jerry and the writers discover comic gold.

And where does that gold come from? Physical attributes, namely Jason Alexander's. You've got to realize, at this point in time, that George was characterized mainly by Larry David's real-life neuroses. But both Jason and the DVD's "Notes on Nothing" acknowledge that this episode was the first one to make fun of George's physical shortcomings, as well: the fact that he's "stocky," the fact that he's bald (or as Elaine told Cynthia, "He's not bald! He's... balding."), the fact that he eats like a wolverine. While the eating thing was acting on Jason's part, the other two attributes were just there, and the writers would invoke those features -- especially the baldness -- in many more episodes to come.

My favorite part of that great exchange? Well, there's two parts: George scratches his bald head as he says "Thick, lustrous hair is very important to me." And the second: When George asks if Cynthia has a "pinkish hue" in her face, Jerry replies huffily, "There's a hue."

Finally, there's the blue condom from Bob Sacamano. Damn those Edison-based condom factories... always making duds.

On to the "awards":

Best line: When George overhears that Cynthia's period is late, he's overjoyed. Right before he runs out to find her, he yells, "My boys can swim!"
Best facial expression: At the end, when Jerry and Elaine look at each other with revulsion when Cynthia makes a cutsey joke to George about being at a table right near the kitchen (see, that's where they had sex...).
Best Kramerism: His role as cluleless peacemaker in fights between Jerry and George and Jerry and Elaine. In the first, he thinks they're fighting over the affections of a woman, and in the second, he thinks Jerry and Elaine are still in love with each other. Of course, right after he breaks up the Jerry-George fight, he gets into it with George and Jerry has to break it up.

Observations and DVD notes:

• We've all seen the woman who played Cynthia, even if we don't know her name. Maggie Wheeler (or Maggie Jakobson, as she was known then) is sitcom guest actor par excellence; she's appeared on Everybody Loves Raymond and Will & Grace, among other shows. Of course, she's best known as Chandler's on-again, off-again girlfriend Janice on Friends.
• The set-up plot stemmed from an incident where writers Larry Charles and Elaine Pope set up friends of theirs, felt all powerful when it worked out at first, then picked at each other when the relationship crumbled.
• The episode won the show's first Emmy, for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series. When Charles and Pope went up to get the award, they handed their acceptance speech to Jerry Seinfeld, who was presenting, so he could read it.
• There was an extended plot where Bob Sacamena was supposed to get fired from the condom factory because of the defective batch, Kramer sues the condom company, and wins $20,000. But it never came to pass.
• The scene where Jerry and Elaine discuss their friends' date on the phone -- which eventually gets interrupted by calls from George and Cynthia, respectively -- was so technically complicated that they shot it without an audience. But the actors played it out on stage during the taping, and the audience reactions were edited into the show.
• This is the first time we hear audience applause for a Kramer entrance. Since the applause would throw off the actors' timing and take precious time away from the increasingly dense episodes, Larry David instructed the warm-up guy to tell the audience not to applaud Kramer's entrances. Looks like that missive was ignored well into Season Four.
• It's assumed that the look a disgusted Cynthia gives George as he eats at the end of the episode is what leads to their downfall as a couple. It's never explained, though.
• By now, you can tell that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' pregnancy is starting to show. She's wearing very loose clothes and sitting at a lot of tables. They even had her repaint her apartment, just to give her an excuse to wear an oversized shirt. We'll see more of that as the season progresses.