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Rob Cesternino and Akiva Wienerkur continue their journey back to recap every Seinfeld episode. This week Rob and Akiva discuss “The Deal”

A broken refrigerator and a holiday weekend delayed, but couldn’t stop Rob and Akiva from discussing the next episode in the Seinfeld series titled “The Deal”, which aired as the season two finale in 1991. As Akiva pointed out, this episode is seminal for the series due to Jerry and Elaine deciding that they could be friends with benefits. Though in today’s time the idea of having a physical relationship with someone who’s just a friend isn’t a complicated process, it was a big deal in 1991. Even though Seinfeld decided to put Jerry and Elaine together, it would only last for the one episode, then all would reset back to normal for the start of season three.

The guys were ready to jump right into the episode plot after their two weeks off. In the opening standup, Jerry is doing a bit about the differences between men and women trying on clothes. Once again, the joke does not tie into the episode plot. Both found this routine to be classic Jerry standup, though they believed it to be quite dated material.

The opening scene has Jerry and Elaine sitting on the couch in Jerry’s apartment watching TV. Rob felt like this was a particularly long scene of just them talking, which Akiva confirmed that it was over six minutes. While they are flipping through the channels, Elaine comes across “the naked channel”, which peeks both their interest. The guys wondered if Jerry just happened to have the money to get the Playboy Channel, or if the typically scrambled channel all of a sudden came in clear. Elaine and Jerry both start talking about how it’s been a while for both of them since they’ve had any sex, and Elaine notices Jerry giving her a “look”. Jerry thinks since they’ve done “that” a bunch of times in the past, why not do “that”, but just as friends. Their only concern is whether or not doing “that” would ruin their friendship. Rob thought that the only thing about this sequence that was off was that a conversation like they had would usually only come up when alcohol is involved. Akiva pointed out that Larry David, who wrote the episode, based this story off of a real life occurrence of his.

Jerry and Elaine decide to set some ground rules for venturing into their friends with benefits situation. First, they cannot call each other the day after “that”. Rob thought they could have set stricter guidelines to this, to avoid complication. Rule number two is that sleeping over is optional. The guys mentioned how this rule gets Jerry into trouble later in the episode, and noted how George told Jerry that he got “greedy” with this rule. The third rule is that there is no kissing goodnight. Akiva had a problem with this one. He thought it made it all seem more like a transaction. Rob wondered how it would work with dating someone else, but Akiva countered that dating others was not part of their deal. Rob questioned how this is any different than normal dating.

Jerry and Elaine finalize the rules and adjourn to the bedroom. The scene cuts to the next morning when Kramer comes into the apartment to find Elaine wearing Jerry’s shirt and sneakers, which Rob found quite weird for her to be wearing his sneakers. In the next scene, George and Jerry are at Monk’s, chit chatting about Aquaman when Jerry casually mentions that he had sex with Elaine last night. This floors George, saying he needs oxygen, then clamors for details. Jerry’s not in the mood to share the details, but George insists, telling Jerry he better get in the mood. Jerry recounts the situation, and George scoffs about the rules they set up, telling Jerry this has never been successfully done.