The Stock Tip

If I liked having a rotund guy goad me into securities fraud and misunderstand Superman I'd have finished high school. I don't want your relationship advice Wesley, just let me finish my lunch

Unfunny, pointless and if you removed the laugh track, you wouldn't be sure you were watching a comedy. I know the series gets better and the actors are good. It's just a particularly lacking season. They were still finding their rhythm.

Frustratingly short it may have been (hence the combined presence of Series 1 and 2 on the DVD box set), but the first season of Seinfeld knew exactly how to make up for its brevity, with each of the five episodes crammed with memorable lines and situations. The season finale, The Stock Tip, is no exception, mostly because it contains some truly unmissable George Costanza moments (particularly when he shows how cheap he is when paying the bill in a restaurant).

As a matter of fact, George is the instigator of this show's main incident: having learned of a valuable investment to make in the stock market, he convinces Jerry and Elaine to join him in the adventure. Unfortunately, his informer winds up in a coma, meaning no one knows when to sell their shares. Meanwhile, Jerry also has to think about the weekend he is going to spend in Vermont with Vanessa (the woman he met in The Stakeout), Elaine has a problem with her boyfriend's cats and Kramer... well, he's just Kramer.

The Stock Tip is the standout achievement of Season One, especially for how it neatly weaves the opening sequence into the overall plot: generally, Jerry's stand-up monologue at the start of every episode has no relevance whatsoever to that show's events, whereas subsequent bits reflect what has just happened; this time, though, a digression on paying checks when you're eating out is smoothly linked to George's behavior later in the story, providing a perfect example of the series' "no hugs, no learning" rule. Other juicy bits include a conversation about Superman's apparent lack of humor and Kramer spying on a woman at from Jerry's apartment (the latter's comment? "Yeah, I'm sure you're what she's looking for, too: complete stranger leering through a pair of binoculars, ten stores up").

In short, a superb way to end the first year of Seinfeld and, alongside the previous four episodes, a great appetizer for the standard-length eight seasons that followed.

Hello there.

This review has been written, typed and submitting on January 8th 2023.

This episode lacked energy, however I had many funny spots and highlights. Usually George fails by the end of an episode, but in this episode he is successful. Probably the one of a couple times that an episode ends on a high note for George, excluding the Engagement or Invitations those episodes to me are very blurry and not sure if it was a fail or a success for George.

Kramer pressures Jerry into the stock market game. Jerry takes the bait and is anxious about the whole thing. This episode continues from the Stake Out episode with Jerry still dating Vanessa.

George is anxious too but ends up successful

Elaine talks about a grape and cats of her off-screen boyfriend.

Highlight: The grape bit because it has happened to me, George, in the last scene.

Overall, a mellow episode that was still pretty good. Jerry's story is the only thing carrying this episode.

Goof: this was the first on screen relationship breakup for Seinfeld. George being successful at the end of an episode.

These introductory five (four, really) episodes of Seinfeld are quite a mixed bag--and not all that great, in all honesty. Rating-wise, I'd give the bunch 4/10 stars (this coming from a reviewer watching the show for the first time in 2022).

The "pilot" episode--aired in 1989, a year before the show actually got rolling on NBC--is more a triviality than anything. Besides the very "bare bones", it isn't all that indicative of what the show would become in the summer of '90 or beyond.

The other four episodes? The characters of Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), George (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards) are certainly present and being established. The same can be said for Larry David's (show creator) observational humor. But this is a show that relies on character quirks and longform familiarity and such things don't happen overnight. From snippets of reruns and here-say, I know that the core characters--and many more--become iconic later on down the show's road--but it hasn't happened as of yet in this batch.

Basically everything I read about Seinfeld cautions that the first mini-season is the "worst"--least funny, least quirky, and least-established (obviously). I very much hope this is the case, as over this short stretch the show--while not an atrocity--simply isn't all that funny or endearing.