“So if anybody leaves anything here, you can just take it.
You have a license to steal. You are like the James Bond of laundry.” - Jerry
The DVD for this has two versions, the original and the
syndicated. The only difference in the two is Newman’s voice. The Revenge
introduces us to Newman, although he is only heard. He was supposed to be a one
off character until Larry and Jerry decided to cast Wayne Knight as a neighbor
of Jerry’s. So the scene with Newman for The Revenge was cut and Larry David
provides the off camera voice for him in the remaining scene. The syndicated
version replaces David with Knight.
The main thread of The Revenge is about George quitting his
job in a rage, realizing he has no other prospects, and going back to work as
though nothing ever happened. This is based on Larry David’s one season as a
writer on Saturday Night Live when he quit midway through the season and came
back the next day as though nothing had happened.
At the apartment, Jerry is gathering laundry and Kramer
enters to complain about their neighbor Newman, who is suicidal, and
threatening to jump off the roof. “I told him to jump,” Kramer says rather
casually. “At least I’d respect the guy for accomplishing something.”
Kramer also asks Jerry to take some of his clothes to get
laundered. Jerry is hesitant. “My guys don’t know your guys. You can’t just
lock them all in the same machine together, they’ll start a riot.” George meets
Jerry at the laundromat and tells him the whole story of how he quit. “What are
you going to do now? Are you going to look for something else in real estate?”
“Nobody’s hiring now, the market’s terrible.”
So what are you going to do?” To which George looks vacantly
at the floor.
Back at the apartment, the two brainstorm job ideas. “I like
sports, I could do something in sports,” George says to which Jerry politely
nods. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. In what capacity?”
“You know, like the general manager of a baseball team.”
George also suggests TV color man (They usually give those jobs to ex-ballplayers,
Jerry tells him. “That’s really not fair,” George replies), watching movies (do
they pay people to watch movies?), talk show host. It never occurs to George
how completely unqualified he is for any of these suggestions. And Jerry’s
reactions are spot on. George finally realizes he may have made a mistake in
quitting. Jerry is the one who suggests that maybe he could just go back.
“You’re an emotional person. Nobody takes you seriously.”
So George returns to work at the weekly staff meeting. But George’s
boss calls him on it and fires him leading to George enlisting the help of
Elaine to get revenge by slipping the boss a mickey.
In the Newman story, Newman jumps. Kramer told him “to wave
to me when (you) pass my window.” Jerry can’t believe it. “Did he wave?” is the
follow up question. But Newman only jumped from the second floor and he’s still
alive (obviously).
In the laundry story, Jerry remembers that he had a large
sum of money in his laundry bag and forgot about it. He realizes it was still
in the bag when he took it to be laundered. So he and Kramer return to the
laundromat to ask the owner for the money, but the owner claims he never saw
it. So Kramer decides to extract revenge for Jerry by ruining one of the
washing machines by dropping a 50 pound bag of concrete in it. Michael Richards
insisted on using an actual 50 pound bag to make the pratfalls legitimate.
METHOD ACTING!!! And we’re getting more and more classic Kramer scenes in the
second half of the season with the last three episodes.
At a bar where George’s now ex-co-workers are gathered,
Elaine springs into action by charming George’s ex-boss long enough to distract
him while George slips him the mickey (So I’m going to a nudist colony next
week, Elaine tells him). George is successful but Elaine is so successful that
the boss decides to forgive George and hires him back. Then he drinks the
spiked drink.
Back at the apartment…
“I like history; the civil war. Maybe I could be a professor
or something?”
And Jerry’s money was in Kramer’s laundry.
And Newman is on the roof again…
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