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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: May 2, 1996
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Seinfeld, “The Bottle Deposit” (Season 7, Episode 20). [Stream on Hulu.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: During its peak, Seinfeld was delivering killer episodes week after week, and as the show was nearing the end of its seventh season — Larry David’s last, until the series finale — Seinfeld was as hot as it had ever been. The comedy two-parter is always a tough nut to crack, since brevity has always been the sitcom’s best friend. But Seinfeld managed to deliver a classic anyway, throwing together some of the show’s best elements: Kramer/Newman scheming, Elaine’s feud with bra-less candy-bar heiress Sue Ellen Mischke, George’s job with the New York Yankees, and Jerry’s attempts to navigate the vagaries of urban living. (Though it still makes so little sense that Upper West Side resident Jerry would own a car, the scenes with him and Brad Garrett as the over-invested mechanic do a great job of satirizing the way we often feel like we’re disappointing people who do work for us.)
The plot is typically byzantine in its foolishness. Jerry’s having car troubles, which he notices while returning from an auction, where Elaine spent too much of Peterman’s money bidding on JFK’s old golf clubs, in order to spite Sue Ellen Mischke. Jerry’s bum engine was due to shenanigans by Kramer and Newman, who are busy trying to work out a scheme wherein they could take advantage of Michigan’s unique $.10 deposit rule.
And George, bless him, is trying to decipher the project that Mr. Wilhelm assigned him while Wilhelm assumed they were both in the restroom. George’s best clue: the Petula Clark song “Downtown.”
But that one-hour boogeyman still awaits “The Bottle Deposit,” resulting in a final half-hour that is some of the strangest stuff Seinfeld ever attempted, including a car chase, a trip to an insane asylum, and an interlude in which Newman runs afoul of a kindly farmer by sleeping with his daughter. It’s kooky, and not necessarily in a good way, but it makes the episode really stand out. At least Larry David was going out with a bang.
