“Sweet fancy Moses!” See that? Scooping up any random line from a “Seinfeld”
episode makes this opener about 400 times funnier than anything I could have come up with
myself.
That’s because the country’s top comedy micro-phraseologists polished those gems to create just-the-right-word paninis that defined the show and also came to define the culture
during the ‘90s and beyond. But at this point, are we also enjoying the nostalgia a phrase like “yada yada” evokes nearly as much as the line itself?
That seems to be happening in “A Little Hyper-Aware,” a recent episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,”
Seinfeld’s online Crackle series. (Sponsored by Acura, which we hear about, like an unembarrassed drumbeat, at the beginning and end of the 18 minutes. There is also a very clever product
placement embedded in the video.)
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“Hyper-Aware” features Sarah Jessica Parker and her 1976 Ford Country Squire. (Yes, she actually owns this Presidents Ford/Carter-era non-swagger
wagon, which Seinfeld says he hates and would never have picked for the show.)
For my money, this episode with Parker is the best of the series. They’re both hyper-aware control
freaks, but manage not only not to kill each other, but to feed off each other in a powerful way. Meanwhile, this old-timey monster of a family coach -- painted red for maximum ugliness, with fake
wood paneling -- serves as an instant time machine, transporting them back to Long Island, where both SJP and Jerry grew up (Levittown and Massapequa, respectively) but also to the cultural and
emotional atmosphere of the mustard-colored-shag-rug-covered time itself.
"Smell it! A little bit of gas!” Parker says, getting into the car and swept back to her childhood, when
she worked as a kid performer. Then there’s the audio reminder of another time: the loud clicking of a turn signal, like a metronome, as they analyze the differences in how kids were raised in
the late-boomer generation (getting almost no attention, and getting screamed at) versus the 360-degree style of love and helicoptering parenting so in vogue today. (Use of the word
“parent” as a verb started in the late 1970s, I think.)
Though they laugh about it, it’s serious stuff. “She never had time, and she was always in a rage,”
Parker says of her mother. Seinfeld says his mom’s big line in the car was “I’m gonna slam you!”
It’s the most thoughtful and reflective I’ve ever seen
Seinfeld, and maybe it’s because the protective bubble of the clunky car allows for it. Parker peppers him with questions about what life was like at his house: Was there music on? (No.) Radio?
(No.) Did they hug you? (No.) Hold you? (No.) Kiss you a lot? (No.)
“No one in my life has ever asked me these questions,” Seinfeld says. And I believe him. He later tells
Parker that “you’ve already run rings around your mother. This conversation is more than she thought about ever.”
The conversation is particularly curious, given that
Seinfeld recently made news in the autism community by telling Brian Williams at NBC that “in a very drawn-out scale, I think I’m on the spectrum.” He added: “You’re
never paying attention to the right things. Basic social engagement is a struggle…”
The irony wasn’t lost on anyone that Seinfeld’s career came from his expert
observation of tiny details. And in saying he had the celebrity equivalent of autism-lite, he stirred up a hornets’ nest of controversy for many of the parents of autistic kids, who thought he
was insensitively trivializing their children's very real struggles.
Then on Wednesday, he backtracked. “I don’t have autism, I’m not on the spectrum,” he told
“Access Hollywood.” “I was just watching a play about it, and … I related to it on some level.”
So he doesn’t have autism — he just watched it in a
play? Earlier in the “Cars” episode, Seinfeld had said about his kids: “I can’t escape what I feel is some level of narcissism. I want them to live my life over.”
But that also made me think of the other side of that equation — that these days, many parents learn about their own possible neuro-developmental problems through their kids’ struggles.
The difference is that now, kids are regularly tested and sometimes get a diagnosis, and various forms of therapeutic help, for their issues.
The idea that autism is not marginal, but a range
of neuro-developmental disorders that touch nearly everyone, appealed to Judith Newman, the author of a recent viral New York Timespiece about Siri being a godsend for her son.
Newman thinks that the attention
Seinfeld brought to the issue was a good thing: “The latest statistics show that one out of 42 boys, and one out of 189 girls are being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the United
States. So we better be thinking about ways to embrace the autists in our midst.”
Of course, Seinfeld went back to being his old insensitive self in the “Cars” episode with
Sarah Silverman. She was starting to tell him about a very painful time in her life when he interrupted to ask the waiter for Half and Half. They never did return to that story.
I had previously
taken a swipe at Seinfeld for what I saw as his disingenuous speech at the Clios,
when he said: “I love advertising, because I love lying.” Maybe I was too tough on him. Life is complicated. Maybe there was a lot of honesty in his riff. He probably does struggle with
sensitivity. Everybody struggles.
Or not. “Seinfeld, you magnificent bastard!” is what he notably told himself on the show in a moment of self-congratulation. No doubt he was only
half-kidding.