Season 3, Episode 8: The Tape

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“How did it happen?”

“I can’t say.”

“Well, why can’t you say?”

“Because I promised her.”

“I thought you just said she doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t.”

“So how can you promise her?”

“Because she asked me too.”

“What is this, an Abbot and Costello routine?” - George & Jerry

After watching a special on CNN, George is interested in a hair growth product from China, and calls, long distance, the clinic responsible.

Kramer enters with a video recorder his friend Specter gave him. “He’s becoming a minimalist.” George asks and Kramer confirms that Specter is his friend who likes fat women. “Doesn’t the fat fetish conflict with the minimalism,” Jerry points out.

Jerry, while listening to a recording of his stand up act the previous night, discovers an erotic message left by one of his audience members on his tape recorder. George and Kramer listen to it as well. George is especially enthralled by it. “This is like a Penthouse letter.”

Jerry and George meet Elaine at Monk’s. George let’s slip about the mysterious woman on Jerry’s tape recorder. Jerry gets called to another booth by a friend of his leaving Elaine to pester George about the message. “She had this throaty, sexy kind of whisper,” George tells her. He puts his menu up to his face completely obstructing his view of Elaine.

“Really? Like, uh… Jerry, I want to slide my tongue around you like a snake,” Elaine moans. George slowly peers over his menu at a grinning Elaine. Elaine tells George not to tell Jerry that it was her. George suddenly becomes attracted to Elaine (and really, why wouldn’t he? Julia was pretty sexy). “So what about this bald thing?”

“Oh, some bald thing, I don’t know,” George mutters.

George finally gets in touch with the hair restoration clinic in China but not speaking any Chinese (the episode uses the word Chinese, not Mandarin for the language) he has difficulty communicating his desire to buy the product. Luckily, Kramer has ordered Chinese food and they have the delivery boy translate. Kramer also has his camera and films the gang, pretending that he’s filming a documentary on Elaine, an adult film star. Elaine hams it up for Kramer’s camera and using her sexy voice talks about costarring in a movie with George. This both flusters and arouses George, compounding his attraction to Elaine.

George’s cream arrives but there’s one problem: it smells bad. George wears it for a few minutes (he’s supposed to wear it all day) but takes it off when Elaine says she’s coming over. A few minutes later she cancels and George rushes into the bathroom to put the cream on.

Jerry thinks he’s found the woman on the tape and arranges a meeting but comes back disappointed when she wasn’t receptive to his advances. George, wearing a ten gallon hat to hide the cream he’s wearing, eventually breaks it to Jerry and Kramer that it was Elaine on the tape after also telling him that he’s become attracted to her. Knowing this they all listen to the tape again. Elaine comes over and confesses to Jerry it was her. “I know, George told me,” Jerry says without missing a beat. George confesses to Elaine that he is attracted to her. All three guys stare at Elaine. Creeped out, Elaine leaves.