A Word of Thanks for Funny ‘Seinfeld’

Do Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving? Do they set out a big spread to happily note Europeans landing on this continent, filling the wide open spaces and changing things irrevocably? To say thanks lots for strip centers, gridlock, the Super Bowl, graffiti and Martha Stewart?

Or instead, perhaps like me, they give thanks for “Seinfeld.”

Yes, yes, it’s a sneaky way to get into a column. But isn’t “Seinfeld” as sneaky? Doesn’t it creep up from odd angles, then blindside you?

If you showed someone a “Seinfeld” script, the response might be, “In what asylum was this conceived?” Or “Doesn’t the FCC bar psychotics from writing sitcoms?” Or “Wouldn’t it work better with a plot?”

Hardly.

George, who works for the New York Yankees, keeps his car parked at Yankee Stadium to make his bosses think he’s always on the job? But while taking the car out to get bird droppings washed from it, Jerry and Kramer crash it while gawking at Elaine’s statuesque nemesis, Sue Ellen, walking on the street with her jacket open to expose the bra that Elaine gave her as a gesture of contempt for jiggly Sue Ellen always going braless? Then Jerry and Kramer return the dented car to the Yankees lot? Then Kramer sues Sue Ellen, claiming that the crash ruined his golf swing? At the trial, Sue Ellen is forced to try on the bra, but it doesn’t fit, a la O.J. Simpson’s infamous courtroom glove test? Yankee officials note George’s battered car and, believing he’s dead, owner George Steinbrenner gives someone else the promotion meant for George? To Elaine’s dismay, Sue Ellen’s exposed bra becomes a powerful fashion statement?

Works for me.

And obviously for others.

Seinfeldkies can be as fanatical as Trekkies. Just the other night I was on the phone, having an in-depth schmooze about “Seinfeld” with my cousin, Lynn Cohen, a New York actress. We were reciting story lines and having whopper bicoastal laughs when suddenly she became almost incensed when I couldn’t recall an episode she thought was especially funny.

“You don’t remember ‘The Puffy Shirt’ episode?” I was humiliated. You’d think I’d forgotten the name of the president.

So much to learn, yet so little time. Thank goodness for reruns.

That “Seinfeld” reruns remain so strong in syndication, even as new episodes are created, affirms the timelessness of trivia and that crow’s feet are never visible on the best TV comedies, regardless of age. Here the enormously skilled supporting players (Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine, Jason Alexander as George and Michael Richards as Kramer) orbit around a stand-up comedian (Jerry Seinfeld) playing a fictional comic with the same name.

“Seinfeld” is in its eighth season, having spent the last several years in the heady upper regions of the Nielsen Top 10, and this season it is again excelling in a huge Thursday night for NBC, usually ranking No. 2 among all shows, behind “ER.” So in publicly swooning over “Seinfeld,” I remind myself of Jack Paar, who, many years ago, as host of “The Tonight Show,” rambled endlessly one night about a great Manhattan restaurant he’d come across. He just had to tell the world about this place.

Paar, it seemed, had discovered the Stage Delicatessen, such a venerable New York institution and tourist stop that even the Pilgrims had gone there for bagels and cream cheese. He seemed hopelessly out of touch.

In his defense, though, when you like something a lot, you can’t resist spreading the word periodically, even if the word’s already been spread. And even, as in the case of “Seinfeld,” there’s grumbling by some of its stalwarts about it being not quite what it used to be.

Laugh-wise, “Seinfeld” is in and out this season, its first without co-creator Larry David on board. Other comedies should be as inconsistent, however, for it still ranges from sort of funny to so excruciatingly funny that I’m compelled to spread the word here about one of this season’s early episodes, “The Bizarro Jerry,” written by co-producer David Mandel.

It was typically “Seinfeld,” the comedy glory equally apportioned among the regulars. Elaine had acquired a set of new friends who were clones of Jerry, George and Kramer (they even had a pal named Vargas who looked like Jerry’s nemesis, Newman), the difference being that the new friends were as pristine--reliable, considerate, meticulous, interested in substance--as her old friends were hideously flawed. Jerry drew the “bizarro” Superman analogy: “Up is down, down is up. He says hello when he leaves, goodbye when he arrives.”

Meanwhile, Jerry was dating a gorgeous dish with “man hands,” whose photograph made George irresistible to a warren of super models when he showed it to them and claimed she was his “dead fiancee.” And Kramer entered the men’s room of a large corporation to take care of business, only to emerge an executive with the company, heading to work each day in a three-piece suit, filing sales reports and working so hard that Jerry nagged like a spouse about his long hours.

“What are you starting with me for?” a frustrated Kramer exploded. “You know this is my crazy time of year.”

It was sidesplitting, surely as funny as “The Puffy Shirt,” and only mildly funnier than “The Package,” a recent episode written by Jennifer Crittenden that found Elaine getting blacklisted by doctors she was seeing for an itchy rash and Jerry getting accused of mail fraud by Newman, the postal worker (Wayne Knight).

And that was only a little funnier than “The Abstinence,” last week’s episode by Steve Koren in which having no sex turned George into a Portuguese-speaking intellectual and made Elaine a dullard, Jerry got bumped from his old junior high school’s career day and Kramer turned his apartment into a smokers’ lounge. Then he sued tobacco companies, claiming the smoke had ruined his looks.

This trio of episodes was as good as comedy gets anywhere.

For comparison, I again watched “The Contest,” a famous episode from the 1992-93 season in which Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine bet money on who could go the longest without masturbating. It was still hilarious, still outrageous, yet affirmed that the cast is now even better at its craft.

Seinfeld generously and wisely shares the spotlight with actors who elevate him: Richards, more magnificently weird than ever as Kramer, Alexander refining his mastery of pseudo-smugness as hapless George, and the remarkable Louis-Dreyfus, whose Elaine is now a primer on feathered comedy moves and precision timing.

Thursday nights at 9, still a crazy time of year.

* New episodes of “Seinfeld” air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on NBC (Channel 4). Reruns air weeknights at 7:30 and 11 on KTLA-TV Channel 5.