1 00:00:05,914 --> 00:00:09,920 Seinfeld Explained. Season 2, Episode 11. 2 00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:11,900 The Chinese Restaurant. 3 00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:14,620 No Kramer. One location. 4 00:00:15,340 --> 00:00:18,100 Zero resolution. Jerry, George, 5 00:00:18,180 --> 00:00:21,080 and Elaine are waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, 6 00:00:21,620 --> 00:00:26,600 no reservation, before a one-night screening of Plan 9 From Outer Space. 7 00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:30,900 The maître d' has exactly one answer to every question: 8 00:00:31,400 --> 00:00:39,380 five, ten minutes. George needs to reach his girlfriend by payphone to explain a sudden departure from her apartment. 9 00:00:40,260 --> 00:00:45,160 Elaine is starving. Jerry lied to his uncle about being sick tonight, 10 00:00:45,700 --> 00:00:49,320 and someone from his uncle's office is already in the room. 11 00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:52,840 George's whole night depends on reaching Tatiana by payphone. 12 00:00:53,340 --> 00:00:54,960 She agreed to talk again, 13 00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:56,820 after three days of silence, 14 00:00:56,820 --> 00:01:03,180 following an incident where he walked out of her apartment mid-encounter because the bathroom had no privacy buffer from the bedroom. 15 00:01:03,920 --> 00:01:06,480 He's been building toward this call all week. 16 00:01:06,532 --> 00:01:09,360 Mid-encounter. No buffer zone. 17 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:10,920 Three days of calls. 18 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:18,200 The exit logic he's worked out involves a formal architectural audit of bathroom proximity with one conclusion: 19 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:26,140 the only departure that could have landed with actual dignity required him to be Batman and have just spotted the Bat-Signal. 20 00:01:26,140 --> 00:01:28,020 He believes this COMPLETELY. 21 00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:29,920 It genuinely holds up. 22 00:01:30,580 --> 00:01:32,500 Batman at least gives the exit moral weight, 23 00:01:33,200 --> 00:01:35,260 the situation had no good answer available, 24 00:01:35,740 --> 00:01:38,080 and Bruce Wayne had the only option that felt legitimate. 25 00:01:38,920 --> 00:01:41,840 The tragedy is that he can't retroactively be Bruce Wayne, 26 00:01:42,240 --> 00:01:44,120 so he's stuck with what actually happened. 27 00:01:44,700 --> 00:01:46,540 Before the phone, Elaine has an emergency. 28 00:01:47,160 --> 00:01:48,880 Her hunger speech goes from nostalgia, 29 00:01:49,300 --> 00:01:50,840 eating out was an adventure once, 30 00:01:51,140 --> 00:01:52,140 to her current state: 31 00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:55,080 a large animal waiting for the trough. 32 00:01:55,420 --> 00:02:01,380 Jerry offers fifty dollars to silently steal one egg roll from the elderly couple at the nearest table. 33 00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:04,640 She negotiates every loophole out of the dare first, 34 00:02:05,060 --> 00:02:08,020 pick it up, eat it, say thank you, walk back. 35 00:02:08,640 --> 00:02:10,160 Then instead of just taking it, 36 00:02:10,420 --> 00:02:12,400 she goes over and offers the table a cut. 37 00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:18,200 What did she expect hard-of-hearing diners to do with that proposition delivered through barely-parted lips? 38 00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:21,360 Complete confusion. Nobody knew what she said. 39 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:23,620 She walked back empty-handed. 40 00:02:23,620 --> 00:02:26,040 She negotiated the terms of a dare she didn't attempt, 41 00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:28,780 and her replacement plan was harder than the original. 42 00:02:29,660 --> 00:02:31,760 The whole thing is failure compounding failure, 43 00:02:32,260 --> 00:02:34,880 she ends up with nothing and hungrier than when she started. 44 00:02:35,460 --> 00:02:39,580 Then the phone. A man's been on it for ten minutes ignoring George completely. 45 00:02:40,220 --> 00:02:42,860 When he finally finishes, a woman steps ahead, 46 00:02:43,140 --> 00:02:45,500 and there's a full address on the social contract, 47 00:02:46,180 --> 00:02:47,820 sensitivity toward fellow individuals, 48 00:02:48,280 --> 00:02:50,720 and the obligations of civilized society. 49 00:02:51,160 --> 00:02:55,360 Then the man from before apologizes on his way out and George melts immediately. 50 00:02:56,140 --> 00:02:58,960 His actual antagonist, the woman who cut in, 51 00:02:59,260 --> 00:03:00,940 won the argument and kept the phone. 52 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:04,300 He needed someone to blame and then someone to forgive, 53 00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:07,060 and it happened to be two completely different people. 54 00:03:07,540 --> 00:03:09,860 He eventually gets through, answering machine. 55 00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:12,007 Leaves a message: call back, 56 00:03:12,007 --> 00:03:14,320 ask for the balding stocky man with glasses. 57 00:03:14,860 --> 00:03:17,020 Then tells the maître d' he's expecting a call. 58 00:03:17,500 --> 00:03:20,660 Does he think that description is going to locate him in a crowded restaurant? 59 00:03:21,560 --> 00:03:23,460 Balding stocky man with glasses, 60 00:03:23,900 --> 00:03:26,020 that narrows it down HOW, exactly? 61 00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:28,820 Meanwhile Jerry's been carrying a quieter problem. 62 00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:33,940 The woman who looked familiar all episode turns out to be Lorraine from his uncle's office, 63 00:03:34,460 --> 00:03:36,380 the uncle he told he had a stomachache tonight, 64 00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:40,880 the one he blew off to protect his seat at a one-night Plan 9 screening. 65 00:03:41,320 --> 00:03:44,640 He maps the relay, uncle, aunt, mother, 66 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:47,160 back to uncle, cousin, sister. 67 00:03:47,860 --> 00:03:49,720 New York, Long Island, Florida: 68 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:52,820 his family is the opposite of the Bermuda Triangle, 69 00:03:53,340 --> 00:04:00,280 nothing disappears there. He traces the whole path before finishing the thought and decides the lie is already burned. 70 00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:05,220 His defense of Plan 9 is that this isn't Plans 1 through 8, 71 00:04:05,220 --> 00:04:06,440 those were probably fine. 72 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:08,180 This is Plan 9, 73 00:04:08,500 --> 00:04:11,640 a one-night screening of the worst movie ever made, 74 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:14,400 and that distinction is the whole argument. 75 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,960 He lied to family to protect access to a film he'd describe as the worst ever made. 76 00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:22,400 And then he doesn't see it. 77 00:04:22,760 --> 00:04:25,600 The thing he covered for is the thing he never gets. 78 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:29,540 The bribe. They pool twenty dollars, George is out, 79 00:04:29,700 --> 00:04:32,580 he almost got arrested bribing a roller derby usher once. 80 00:04:33,500 --> 00:04:34,640 Elaine calls it a guy thing, 81 00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:36,340 Jerry invokes the women's movement, 82 00:04:36,740 --> 00:04:38,740 Elaine grabs the money and hands it to the maître d', 83 00:04:38,940 --> 00:04:41,300 who pockets it and seats someone else. 84 00:04:41,580 --> 00:04:43,200 Clean pocket. No hesitation. 85 00:04:43,200 --> 00:04:45,060 Dennison gets the table. 86 00:04:45,560 --> 00:04:47,660 Jerry goes back to retrieve the twenty. 87 00:04:47,660 --> 00:04:51,320 The maître d' reads it as the story of a man who can't let go, 88 00:04:51,940 --> 00:04:54,380 relationships are difficult, staying together is very hard, 89 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:56,240 he's genuinely trying to help, 90 00:04:56,720 --> 00:04:58,820 and he's not wrong about their history. 91 00:04:59,140 --> 00:05:01,060 Tatiana called back while they were occupied. 92 00:05:01,620 --> 00:05:04,300 The maître d' paged Cartwright, not Costanza, 93 00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:07,260 nobody answered because nobody there is named Cartwright, 94 00:05:07,500 --> 00:05:09,080 and she swore and hung up. 95 00:05:09,700 --> 00:05:11,760 The name is genuinely unexplained: 96 00:05:12,060 --> 00:05:14,760 George spent all night on a call that already came and went. 97 00:05:15,180 --> 00:05:18,360 She called. He paged Cartwright, she hung up. 98 00:05:19,020 --> 00:05:21,400 They give up and leave: Jerry's calling his uncle, 99 00:05:21,820 --> 00:05:23,480 Elaine's heading to Sky Burger, 100 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:25,220 George has nothing left to wait for. 101 00:05:25,460 --> 00:05:28,100 And Bruce calls the table the SECOND they're out the door. 102 00:05:29,840 --> 00:05:31,200 George never got through. 103 00:05:31,860 --> 00:05:33,920 Bruce paged Cartwright into an empty room.. 104 00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:37,740 The table was called the moment they walked out the door.