User reviews

Season 6, Episode 23, "The Understudy"

It's possible that the terrific finales to seasons 3, 4 and 5 set the bar a little too high. After all, season 6 wasn't as strong as the previous ones, but it still had some terrific episode. "The Understudy", though, is a weak season finale by any standard. Guests stars playing themselves were used before with intelligence and creativity (Keith Hernandez) but this episode feels more like a Bette Midler vehicle than anything else.

Like any Seinfeld episode, this one has its highlights; mostly they're the scenes featuring Jerry Stiller. Everything else is pretty mediocre, and serve as a poor conclusion to the season, a conclusion that might have been better off giving some closure to the Tim Whatley or David Puddy characters. The only consequential thing it does is introducing the J. Peterman character, but at this point it feels like a one time gag. We just had to wait and see if season 7 had something more up its sleeve.

This is the season finale and it's decent, but it is too rambling and seems a little underdeveloped. Bette Midler makes a guest appearance as herself, starring in a new musical. Jerry's girlfriend is her understudy. During a softball game, George flattens Bette, putting her in the hospital. The whole world thinks it was a deliberate move to get the understudy on stage. There is hatred everywhere. Meanwhile, Kramer and Bette become really close and this is the highlight of the show. At first she is afraid of him, but soon he is doing all her bidding. It all ends with the woman starting a song on the stage, but proves she is a wacko.

This sixth season of the show marks the 100th episode milestone (which it celebrates, as was the fashion, with a clip-show) but more importantly for me it shows that it can more or less maintain the standard set in seasons 4 and 5 (both of which I really loved). I say more or less because there are episodes here that do not quite have the natural spark and wit that was so consistent and appeared so easy through the last two seasons. Season 6 opens with Jerry being Jerry, Kramer being Kramer, George working for the Yankees and Elaine unemployed and the season more or less goes from there with all the usual social misunderstandings and scenarios peppered through with imaginative excess.

Not all the scenarios are as sharp as the show at its best here. There isn't really a total episode that doesn't work but there are certainly individual threads that come over as being too elaborate or perhaps a bit too silly to really function. The best scenarios are the simplest ones where one or two really nice touches can make all the difference – the messier it becomes the less effective it is. Messy nonsense is best left to Kramer and his stuff is generally the exception because his character can carry it but the others not so much, they tend to require a base of some form of reality from which to go from.

Season 6 contains fewer "classic" episodes than the previous fewer seasons. I think for sure "The Switch" is classic Seinfeld but the rest are not quite there, partly for the weaknesses discussed already. However this is not to say that any of them are bad or even weak, just that they are coming in to my head having to compete with the previous two seasons. The finale and the clip-show were the only two episodes that didn't really do much for me, but I did still enjoy them regardless. This is to the show's credit – if you can have a season where it is clearly not quite as good as you have done before but yet still have it be really funny and enjoyable then you're doing a lot right. And so it is with season 6; it is not quite as brilliant as I have seen the show be before, but yet it is still of a very high standard.

The cast are perhaps a bit too comfortable as well and there are signs of occasional over-playing of their characters here and there, but not too much. Seinfeld and Louis-Dreyfuss continue to be funnier and more important to the comedy than they were and both actors benefit by maintaining from previous seasons. Alexander and Richards remain my favourite characters, they have the most colour and they work with it well with the only downside/risk being that they both do occasionally overplay the quirks that they normally deliver in controlled (and funnier) ways. The additional cast are mostly good. Knight continues to be my favourite second tier character but Stiller continues to dominate like he did in season 5. Although he is used sparingly, George's boss is a hoot whenever called upon to deliver a long rambling story that goes nowhere.

I have sounded a little negative here but I think that is mainly down to how strong the previous two seasons of Seinfeld have been, Season 6 is still of a very high standard, very funny and cleverly done. Some bits are a bit weaker than I would have liked but these do not really damage any specific episode and certainly not the season. Not quite as classic as 4 and 5 then, but there is more than enough to season 6 to make it fit into the high standards of the series generally.

I like the bit where he took out Bette middler at the soft ball