Seinfeld: The Busboy | Episode 17 Recap

Listen to the Podcast: Rob and Akiva took time away from putting out dinner table fires to gather for the recap of “The Busboy”, the final episode of Seinfeld’s season two. The episode first aired on June 26th, 1991. Rob thought this was a “sweep under the rug” episode, and Akiva agreed, thinking they shelved it until after sweeps week since it wasn’t a great one. In fact, it was the lowest rated episode of the entire series. Before discussing the plot points, Akiva and Rob went over a few overall thoughts. Rob noticed that the entire episode revolved around everyone else but Jerry, who really just added funny jabs and quips as commentary to the ongoing plot. He also pointed out it was odd that George was determined to help out this busboy without any ulterior motive. Akiva thought that being scared of the busboy might have been that motive, and that George can often be interested in the appearance of being a nice person. He agreed with Rob though that it was a bit off from how George typically is. Akiva shared that there was no current stories pertaining to Seinfeld in the news, but he did a little digging into Jason Alexander and Michael Richards’ IMDB pages to see what they’ve been up to lately. Both have made appearances on a TV Land show Kirstie, a network that Rob likened to an “Old Timers Baseball Game”, where the once greats gather. Other than a few smaller market movies and animated spots for Jason Alexander, the list was short. In the episode, Jerry’s opening credits standup has a few jokes about food, which only loosely ties into the episode. Rob and Akiva thought that his joke about stealing a roll off of the room service cart goes against Jerry’s penchant for being cleanly and germ free, while Akiva wondered if Jerry stole his story from last week’s podcast about the empanadas. Rob pointed out that the bit about “the story of the bill” was either used before, or one we’ve heard many times before. Akiva said that half of Jerry’s standup is about restaurants and planes. The episode starts with Jerry, George and Elaine in a restaurant discussing how pesto is the new trendy thing. George wants to like it, but just can’t get on board. Rob and Akiva asked for listeners to post in the comments what might be the 2014 version of pesto when they couldn’t come up with it on their own. He also felt that Jerry’s comment about the older guy wearing a baseball cap makes it obvious that he’s hiding hair plugs would not relate to 2014, since many older people wear caps regularly nowadays. Elaine starts talking about a guy from Seattle who is coming to stay with her for a week. George calls Seattle the “pesto” of cities. Rob and Akiva felt that today, Seattle is fully established, and is “crushing” pesto. The gang notices a menu on fire at a table next to them, and George quickly goes over and puts it out. Elaine makes a sarcastic comment to the manager that they’ll never eat there again, which prompts him to go over and fire the busboy. Rob shared a story about a similar experience his family had at a restaurant where the waiter was fired in the middle of their dinner for drinking on the job, leaving his dad to give a tip to him, plus another the waiter who finished the service. George becomes worried that he’s at fault for getting the busboy fired, and Jerry furthers this fear by talking about how this could lead him to doing a bunch of horrible things. Back at Jerry’s apartment, George is trying to figure out if he can get this busboy a new job. He’s worried that a new restaurant might check his references, and Jerry has a strange line about how the busboy could be one of those guys wondering the city pricking people with pins. Elaine comes in and tells them that with a bit of charm,