Listen to the Podcast:

Rob Cesternino and Akiva Wienerkur gathered once again to discuss “The Statue”, the next episode in season two of the Seinfeld series. The episode, which aired on April 11, 1991 was not a favorite for either, where there were many things out of character from a typical episode. Their off-the-cuff analysis was that too much time was spent on the unlikeable characters of Rava and Ray, neither of whom Akiva and Rob found to be funny.

Other points they noted throughout the podcast were the many plot holes, and questions left unanswered, most importantly, whether or not Ray stole the statue. Rob found some of the Kramer scenes funny, and enjoyed the playing of inka-dink, but other than that, deemed this episode 11th out of the 11 so far. Akiva found it better than a few episodes from season one, but mentioned several times that many of the jokes were far too “sitcomy”.

Akiva also shared some of his research on the episode before the plot breakdown. The episode was written by Larry Charles, who would be a major writer on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and also was a writer for Sasha Baron Cohen’s movies, Borat and The Dictator. He also learned that Nurit Koppel, the actress who played Rava was a girlfriend of comedian Richard Lewis, a longtime friend to Jerry and Larry David. She had apparently broken up with Richard shortly before the guest-starring role.

In additional research, he learned that the actor playing Ray, Michael D. Conway had done nothing for 15 years after this episode, but nowadays is a regular working actor. Rob had read some production notes that talked about how this episode was really where the writers started to develop the Kramer character.

Their summary of the show was more a factual recount for them, with less debating of their opinions than previous recaps, since most of their insight was about the clunky storyline.

Jerry’s standup in the opening credits once again did not tie into the episode plot. The bit was about mail in sweepstakes, which both Rob and Akiva found very dated. The episode begins with Jerry dragging a filthy box from his storage unit that Kramer saw earlier and wanted to dig through. Kramer finds a statue in the mix, which George is dying to have, since it’s exactly the same as one his mother had that he had broken when he was a kid. He refers to the statue breaking as one of the worst experiences of his childhood.

Kramer doesn’t want to give the statue up, and after some wrestling for it between him and George, Jerry tells the “numskulls” to break it up, and they’ll decide it with a round of “inka-dink”. George is picked as “it”, which they argue over if it means he wins or loses. Jerry confirms George gets to keep it, though he tells George after the fact that it meant he lost, so George owes him one.

In the next scene, Elaine and her new friend Rava are in Jerry’s apartment, and Elaine is hoping to edit the book of Rava, who is a Finnish bookwriter she’s been working with. She’s a strange character, smoking in Jerry’s apartment, acting very depressed. Her boyfriend Ray shows up, who is a pretentious grad student that Jerry describes as verbose. He moonlights as housekeeper, and is there to clean Jerry’s apartment. Jerry marvels at how well Ray does with the cleaning when he returns.

In the second stand up spot, Jerry’s bit is about the guilt he feels when a housekeeper cleans his house. Rob and Akiva both related to how Jerry feels, as they feel guilty when their wives are cleaning around them. Rob suggested to the listeners that a good plan is to save money and just do the housework while listening to podcasts.

Jerry and Elaine both head over to Rava’s place soon after. They are all talking, and we get the first mention of Elaine’s boss Mr.