Listen to the Podcast:

After escaping the Russian gulag, Rob and Akiva’s cable guy hooked up their TV’s with illegal cable so they could re-watch the next episode in the Seinfeld series for their weekly post show recap. This week, they discussed season two’s “The Baby Shower”, which aired May 16th, 1991. Rob referred to this episode as one in the “awkward teenage years” of the Seinfeld series, with some of the more legendary episodes just right around the corner.

In his notes about the episode, Akiva shared how writer Larry Charles, along with co-creator Larry David discussed how this was the first episode that they intended to intertwine the storylines all together. He also read an article recently in the New York Post about how Friends was a more influential show to today’s TV than Seinfeld, though the writer of the article proclaims Seinfeld as the better show. No need to add Friends to the list of shows for Rob and Akiva to recap after Seinfeld, since Akiva hated Friends. Rob enjoyed it during its run, but wouldn’t re-watch it now.

In the opening credits standup, Jerry does a routine that loosely ties into the episode about how the remote control offers us a good glimpse at the difference between men and women by how they browse through the channels. Men being the hunters, flip through rapidly, while women as the gatherers, stop on each show to see what it’s about. Akiva had an interesting note about how typically the writer of the episode will write Jerry’s standup that appears in the show, but Larry Charles didn’t consider it his strong suit, so he had Jerry write it.

The first scene of the episode has Jerry, Elaine and George chatting at Monk’s Diner. Elaine is talking about having to throw a baby shower for an old college friend named Leslie, who has married a Kennedy. Rob pointed out how the Seinfeld writers have had an infatuation with making Kennedy jokes and references throughout the series. George shares how he once went on a terrible date with Leslie, where she invited him to her one-woman show she was performing about cooking dinner for God. She subsequently dumped a can of chocolate Bosco sauce on his brand new shirt as part of the show. George wanted to confront her about this after the show, but was a “groveling little worm” due to her being so intimidating.

Elaine can’t throw the shower at her apartment because her roommate has Lyme disease. Jerry thought she had the Epstein-Barr virus, and Elaine confirms that she does, but with a “twist” of Lyme disease, a joke Akiva quite enjoyed. She gets Jerry to agree to have the baby shower at his apartment while he’s gone to a show during the weekend. Meanwhile, George is getter madder and madder rehashing how Leslie spurned him so many years ago. He wants to one day confront her about it. Akiva shared a story about a distant relative he wanted to tell off one day himself. He was recently given the opportunity to do so, but, like George, pulled the groveling worm routine. The scene ends with George storming out, but not before removing one of the dollars from the tip he leaves. Akiva and Rob remark that they always enjoy the quick jokes about George’s cheapness.

The next scene is back at Jerry’s apartment, where he is trying to get TV reception with some rudimentary rabbit ears. Kramer comes in badgering Jerry to let his shady Russian friend hook up illegal cable for only $150. After much protest from Jerry about it being against the law, Jerry gives in when Kramer informs him that the Mets will have 75 games on cable this year. Rob and Akiva loved the dated reference of Kramer when he tells Jerry “Come on, it’s the 90s, it’s Hammer Time!”.

Referred to by Rob and Akiva as the craziest thing to ever happen on Seinfeld, the next scene is a dream sequence of Jerry’s. He returns home from his trip to see a group of FBI agents in his apartment,