S08E16 - The Pothole
No: 150 | Season: 8 Episode: 16 | Air Date: 20-Feb-1997 | Production #816
Summary
Elaine wants to have some Chinese food delivered, but lives just outside the delivery zone. In order to fool the delivery man, she pretends that the janitor closet in the building across the street is her apartment. The trouble is the landlady mistakes her for the janitor. Kramer joins the "adopt a highway" program, but his methods are a little unorthodox. Jerry's new girlfriend uses a toothbrush that had fallen into the toilet, which causes him more trouble than he could have imagined. George loses his keys, and by the time he finds them, they're buried at the bottom of recently filled pothole.
Director and Writers
Director: Andy Ackerman
Writers: Steve O'Donnell and Dan O'Keefe
Quotes
Elaine:(to the delivery boy) This isn't fair. This is address discrimination!
Newman: (crying hysterically as the paint thinner ignites) Oh the humanity!
Elaine: I'm plum out.
(in reference to Kramer asking for a gallon of paint thinner)
Jerry: (to George) You lost Phil Rizzuto's head?!
Newman: Cause you're once, twice, three times a lady.
Jerry: (in the car) She has a taint. I can't see it, but I know it's there.
Elaine: (to Jerry) So now you're finding fault on a sub-atomic level.
Jerry: (referring to George's keychain stuck in the pothole) Poor son of a bitch.
Kramer: You could've introduced me.
Jerry: I wouldn't know where to start.
Kramer: As of today I am a proud parent of a one-mile stretch of the Arthur Berkhardt Expressway.
Notes and Trivia
This episode was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series and for Outstanding Editing for a Series - Multi-Camera Production.
You can hear Newman's screams replacing the music during the Castle Rock logo at the end of the episode.
The scene where the gang all crowds into Elaine's janitor's closet is an homage to the 1935 Marx Brothers movie, "A Night at the Opera", in which fifteen people crowd into a passenger ship's tiny stateroom.
When Newman exclaims, "Oh, the humanity!" he is making a reference to WLS radio reporter Herb Morrison upon witnessing the Hindenburg disaster.
Goofs
Between cuts in the janitor's closet scene a cardboard box labeled "tortellini soup" appears among the clutter in the foreground then is seen turned round so that the writing is no longer visible.
Some of the road signs that Kramer had at Jerry's apartment, such as "Yield" and "One Way" would never be used on a highway.
When Elaine calls from Jerry's apartment to order the food, she gives the fake apartment number, but never gives the building address.
Cast
Jerry Seinfeld | Jerry Seinfeld |
Julia Louis-Dreyfus | Elaine Benes |
Michael Richards | Cosmo Kramer |
Jason Alexander | George Costanza |
Wayne Knight | Newman |
Kristin Davis | Jenna |
Jack McGee | Ralph |
George Cheung | Owner (as George Kee Cheung) |
Seraiah Carol | Mrs. Allister |
Radmar Agana Jao | Delivery Guy |
Walter Addison | Man |
Ruth Cohen | Ruthie Cohen |