Seinfeld and Death…

Seinfeld is one of my favorite TV shows. Most people seem to enjoy it. Every once in a while the writers seem to work something really deep into an episode. I posted a portion of script below from the episode called The Pony Remark (I recently posted all three parts of the episode in video form too). The bold part of the script is a gem and its wedged discretely between a conversation about casual sex and a baseball game (in true Seinfeld fashion of course)! It’s a conversation about death. The awkward topic of human mortality. I almost guarantee you’ve found yourself at a funeral thinking the same thing.

Apathy

I’m pretty sure that most of us ought to take our lives a little more seriously than we do, and hopefully this Seinfeld clip will get you reflecting on that. But like most people you’ll find yourself thinking the same thing at the next funeral… and the next. Never really changing. Well except now you’ll be thinking about Seinfeld too!

You’ll likely notice that after time it’ll get easier and easier to push away that nagging feeling that you ought to change. At first you’ll panic like Elaine. Then you’ll slide into the easy chair of apathy. Who knows you might even adopt a twist of Jerry’s gentle sarcasm. The show is hilarious and hopefully it gets you thinking… maybe even doing?

See the five minute mark in video number two for this part of the script.

[Setting: Coffee Shop]

ELAINE: I actually like ponies. I was just trying to make conversation. What time’s your game?

JERRY: Two Forty-Five.

ELAINE: And what time’s the funeral?

JERRY: Two o’ clock.

ELAINE: How long does a funeral take?

JERRY: Depends on how nice the person was. But you gotta figure, even Oswald took forty-five minutes.

ELAINE: So you can’t do both?

JERRY: You know, if the situation were reversed and Manya had some mah-jongg championship or something, I wouldn’t expect her to go to my funeral. I would understand.

ELAINE: How can you even consider not going?

GEORGE: You know, I’ve been thinking. I cannot envision any circumstances in which I’ll ever have the opportunity to have sex again. How’s it gonna happen? I just don’t see how it could occur.

ELAINE: You know, funerals always make me think about my own mortality and how I’m actually going to die someday. Me, dead. Imagine that.

GEORGE: They always make me take stock of my life and how I’ve pretty much wasted all of it, and how I plan to continue wasting it.

JERRY: I know, and then you say to yourself, “From this moment on, I’m not going to waste any more of it.” But then you go, “How? What can I do that’s not wasting it?”

ELAINE: Is this a waste of time? What should we be doing? Can’t you have coffee with people?

GEORGE: You know, I can’t believe you’re even considering not playing. We need you. You’re hitting everything.

ELAINE: He has to go. He may have killed her.

JERRY: Me? What about you? You brought up the pony.

ELAINE: Oh, yeah, but I didn’t say I hated anyone who had one.

GEORGE: (To Jerry) Who’s going to play left field?

JERRY: Bender.

GEORGE: Bender? He can’t play left. He stinks. I just don’t see what purpose is it going to serve your going? I mean, you think dead people care who’s at the funeral? They don’t even know they’re having a funeral. It’s not like she’s hanging out in the back going, “I can’t believe Jerry didn’t show up.”

ELAINE: Maybe she’s there in spirit. How about that?

GEORGE: If you’re a spirit, and you can travel to other dimensions and galaxies, and find out the mysteries of the universe, you think she’s going to want to hang around Drexler’s funeral home on Ocean Parkway?

ELAINE: George, I met this woman! She is not traveling to any other dimensions.

GEORGE: You know how easy it is for dead people to travel? It’s not like getting on a bus. One second. It’s all mental.

JERRY: Fifty years they were married. Now he’s moving to Phoenix.

ELAINE: Phoenix? What’s happening with his apartment?

JERRY: I don’t know. They’ve been in there since, like, World War II. The rent’s three hundred a month.

ELAINE: Three hundred a month? Oh my God.

(Scene ends)

Script from – www.seinfeldscripts.com/ThePonyRemark.htm