Festivus
Festivus Pole
Type	Seasonal
Significance	A holiday celebrated by those frustrated with the commercialism and pressure of other December holidays.
Date	December 23
Celebrations	Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, the aluminum pole, Festivus miracles.

Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 as a way to commemorate the holiday season without participating in its pressures and commercialism.^[1] Festivus became part of worldwide^[2] popular culture after being featured on an episode of the American TV show Seinfeld in 1997.^[1][3]

Festivus was conceived by writer Dan O'Keefe and was celebrated by his family as early as 1966. The holiday was later introduced into popular culture by O'Keefe's screenwriter son Daniel on an episode of Seinfeld. The holiday's celebration, as it was shown on Seinfeld, included an unadorned aluminum "Festivus pole", practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength", and the labeling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles".

Celebrants of the holiday sometimes refer to it as "a Festivus for the rest of us", a saying taken from the O'Keefe family traditions and popularized in the Seinfeld episode to describe Festivus' non-commercial aspect. It has also been described as a parody and as playful consumer resistance.^[4]

History[link]

Although the first Festivus took place in February 1966, as a celebration of the elder O'Keefe's first date with his future wife, Deborah,^[1] it is now celebrated on December 23, as depicted on the December 18, 1997 Seinfeld episode, "The Strike".^[3] According to O'Keefe, the name Festivus "just popped into my head".^[1]

Traditional practices[link]

The holiday, as portrayed in the Seinfeld episode,^[1][5] includes practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", which occurs during the Festivus meal and in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. After the meal the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned.

The original holiday featured more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O'Keefe's book The Real Festivus. The book provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O'Keefe family, and how O'Keefe amended or replaced details of his father's invention to create the Seinfeld episode.^[6]

Some people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld,^[1] have subsequently begun to celebrate the holiday with varying degrees of seriousness. Allen Salkin's 2005 book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us^[7] chronicles the early adoption of Festivus.

[edit] Summary of the Seinfeld episode and the holiday's rituals

Festivus is introduced in the Seinfeld episode "The Strike," which revolves around Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) returning to work at H&H Bagels. He does so after learning that a 12-year strike in which he participated has ended (because the minimum wage has risen to the level of the wages demanded by the workers twelve years earlier). Kramer becomes interested in resurrecting the holiday when, at the bagel shop, Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller) tells him how he created Festivus as an alternative holiday in response to the commercialization of Christmas.

Frank Costanza: "Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way."

Cosmo Kramer: "What happened to the doll?"

Frank Costanza: "It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!"

Kramer: "That must have been some kind of doll."

Frank Costanza: "She was."^[8]

Frank Costanza's son, George (Jason Alexander), creates donation cards for a fake charity called The Human Fund (with the slogan "Money For People") in lieu of having to give office Christmas presents. When his boss, Mr. Kruger (Daniel von Bargen), questions George about a $20,000 check he gave George to donate to the Human Fund as a corporate donation, George hastily concocts the excuse that he made up the Human Fund because he feared persecution for his beliefs—for not celebrating Christmas, but celebrating Festivus. Attempting to call his bluff, Kruger goes home with George to see Festivus in action.

Kramer eventually goes back on strike from his bagel-vendor job when his manager tells him he cannot have time off for his new-found holiday. Kramer is then seen on the sidewalk picketing H&H Bagels, carrying a sign reading "Festivus yes! Bagels no!" and chanting to anyone passing the store: "Hey! No bagel, no bagel, no bagel..."^[8]

Finally at Frank's house in Queens, New York, Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George gather to celebrate Festivus. George brings Kruger to prove to him that Festivus is real.

Festivus pole[link]

In the episode, the tradition of Festivus begins with an aluminum pole. Daniel O'Keefe credits fellow Seinfeld writer Jeff Schaffer with introducing the concept, which was not part of the original O'Keefe family celebration. During Festivus, the pole is displayed unadorned. The basics of the Festivus pole are explained by Frank in two separate situations:

Cosmo Kramer: "And is there a tree?"

Frank Costanza: "No, instead, there's a pole. It requires no decoration. I find tinsel distracting ... [I]t's made from aluminum. Very high strength-to-weight ratio."

When not being used, the pole is stored in the Costanzas' crawl space.

Festivus dinner[link]

In "The Strike", a celebratory dinner is shown on the evening of Festivus prior to the Feats of Strength and during the Airing of Grievances. The on-air meal was shown to be some sort of meatloaf. The original holiday dinner in the O'Keefe household featured turkey or ham followed by a Pepperidge Farm cake decorated with M&M's, as described in detail in O'Keefe's The Real Festivus. In the Seinfeld episode no alcohol is served at the dinner, but George Costanza's boss, Mr. Kruger, drinks from a hip flask.

Airing of Grievances[link]

The celebration of Festivus begins with the "Airing of Grievances", which takes place immediately after the Festivus dinner has been served. It consists of lashing out at others and the world about how one has been disappointed in the past year.

From the Seinfeld episode:

Frank Costanza: "And at the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!"

Frank Costanza: "The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're gonna hear about it. You, Kruger. My son tells me your company stinks! You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe...I lost my train of thought."

Feats of Strength[link]

The Feats of Strength is the final tradition observed in the celebration of Festivus, celebrated immediately following (or in the case of "The Strike", during) the Festivus dinner. The head of the household selects one person at the Festivus celebration and challenges that person to a wrestling match.^[7] Evidently, the person may decline if they have something else to do, as Kramer did in the episode. Tradition states that Festivus is not over until the head of the household is pinned in a wrestling match. The Feats of Strength are mentioned twice in the episode before they actually take place. In both instances, no detail was given as to what had actually happened, but in both instances, George Costanza ran out of the coffee shop in a mad panic, implying he had bad experiences with the Feats of Strength in the past. What the Feats of Strength entailed was revealed at the very end of the episode, when it actually took place. Failing to pin the head of the household results in Festivus continuing until such requirement is met.

From the Seinfeld episode:

Jerry Seinfeld: "And wasn't there a Feats of Strength that always ended up with you crying?"

George Costanza: "I can't take it anymore! I'm going to work! Are you happy now?!"

Frank Costanza: "I've brought one of the cassette tapes."

Frank Costanza (on a tape recorder): "Read that poem."

George Costanza (on a tape recorder): "I can't read it, I need my glasses."

Frank Costanza (on a tape recorder): "You don't need glasses! You're just weak, weak!"

Estelle Costanza (on a tape recorder): (shouts) "Leave him alone!"

Frank Costanza (on a tape recorder): "All right, George. It's time for the Festivus Feats of Strength!"

George Costanza: "No! No! Turn it off! No Feats of Strength! I hate Festivus!"

Frank Costanza: "We had some good times."

Festivus miracles[link]

Cosmo Kramer twice declares a Festivus Miracle during the Festivus celebration in the Costanza household.

Miracle 1:

Sleazy Guy: "Hello again, Miss Benes."

Elaine Benes: "What are you doing here?"

Sleazy Guy: "Damnedest thing. Me and Charlie were calling to ask you out, and, uh, we got this bagel place."

Cosmo Kramer: "I told them I was just about to see you. It's a Festivus Miracle!"

Miracle 2:

Gwen: "Jerry!"

Jerry Seinfeld: "Gwen! How did you know I was here?"

Gwen: "Kramer told me!"

Cosmo Kramer: "Another Festivus Miracle!"

Jerry Seinfeld: (gives Kramer a murderous glare)

Etymology and origin[link]

The word Festivus in this sense was made up because it sounded funny to Dan O'Keefe. The English word "festive" derives from Latin "festivus", which in turn derives from festus "joyous; holiday, feast day".^[9][10][11]

In the original O'Keefe tradition, the holiday would take place in response to family tension, "any time from December to May".^[12] The phrase "A Festivus for the rest of us" also derived from an O'Keefe family event, the death of the elder O'Keefe's mother.^[12]

The elder O'Keefe wrote a book, Stolen Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic (1982), that deals with idiosyncratic ritual and its social significance, a theme relevant to Festivus tradition.^[13]

In popular culture[link]

"Happy Festivus" embroidery on a yarmulke.

• "Festivus" was the name of a seasonal Ben & Jerry's ice cream made in 2000 and 2001.^[14][15]

• "Festivus" was a term used by the 2000 Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL) and their fans to denote the NFL Playoffs. During the season, Ravens head coach Brian Billick, wanting his players to focus on every game, banned the word "playoffs". Players substituted the term "festivus" for playoffs and "Festivus Maximus" for the Super Bowl. The Ravens eventually won the 2001 Festivus Maximus, Super Bowl XXXV.^[16]
• In 2005, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle was declared "Governor Festivus" and during the holiday season displayed a Festivus Pole in the family room of the Executive Residence in Madison, Wisconsin.^[17] Governor Doyle's 2005 Festivus Pole is now part of the collection of the Wisconsin Historical Museum.^[18]
• In 2006 The Intelligencer, in an article titled "Festivus comes to town..." reported that eight young men from Brockville, Ontario, Canada set forth on a pilgrimage to Belleville, Ontario carrying a Festivus pole which was erected inside a local pub/pool hall, where they began "airing grievances" and performing "feats of strength". This annual tradition is celebrated on the third Saturday every December.
• In 2007, a Wisconsin man requested permission to erect a Festivus pole next to Green Bay City Hall's nativity scene as a response to public religious and secular displays.^[19][20]
• In 2007, the first Festivus Pole Lot opened ^[21] in downtown Milwaukee.
• Beginning in 2008, the Festivus film festival is held in Denver, Colorado.
• In 2008 and 2009, a Festivus pole was erected in the rotunda of the Illinois Capitol building located in Springfield, Illinois. In 2008, the handle of a pool cleaner was erected by 18-year-old student, Mike Tennenhouse, who along with then Governor Rod Blagojevich began "airing grievances" on behalf of the people of Illinois.^[22][23] The 2009 display was an unadorned aluminum pole.
• In 2008 the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. held an "airing of grievances" on bulletin boards attached to a kiosk. These grievances were then aired by a town crier in a jester hat the following weekend.^[24]
• In 2010 an inmate at the Theo Lacy jail in Santa Ana, CA received Kosher meals for his Festivus "faith". Malcolm King was given non-salami meals for two months while the county was getting the order thrown out, arguing that kosher meals and religious observances were not a part of Festivus.^[25] The issue became moot on October 5, 2010, when King was released from county jail and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.^[26][27]
• In 2010 a CNN story featuring Jerry Stiller detailed the increasing popularity of the holiday, including US Representative Eric Cantor's Festivus fundraiser.^[28]
• In 2010 the Christian Science Monitor, in an article titled "Festivus becomes worldwide holiday," reported that Festivus was a top trend on Twitter.^[29]
• The punk rock band Titus Andronicus named their debut album after "The Airing of Grievances."
• In 2011, the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Chattanooga, TN detailed citizen Benjamin Fleet's celebration of Festivus.^[30]

See also[link]

• Festivus film festival

• List of winter festivals

References[link]

External links[link]

• Festivusweb.com - Festivus quotes and the script from "The Strike"

George Louis Costanza is a character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), played by Jason Alexander. He has variously been described as a "short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man" (by Elaine Benes and Costanza himself), "Lord of the Idiots" (by Costanza himself), and as "the greatest sitcom character of all time".^[1][2] He is friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, and Elaine Benes. George appears in every episode except for "The Pen" (third season). The character was originally based on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, but surnamed after Jerry Seinfeld's real-life New York friend, Mike Costanza.

Early life and family[link]

George is the son of Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller) and Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris). Though he never made an appearance on the show, George has mentioned twice that he has a brother, but also often says he is an only child. Lloyd Braun was the other son his parents wanted.^[3][4] George's best friend Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) described Frank and Estelle as "psychopaths",^[5] and said in "The Chinese Woman" that, if they had divorced when George was young, he "could have been normal".^[6] George also describes himself as the result of his parents having stayed together.^[7]

In the season four episode "The Junior Mint", he states he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he went to public school.^[8] In a previous episode he mentions he went to high school on Long Island.^[9] He met Jerry Seinfeld in a gym locker room, and they remained friends from that point on.^[10] George and Jerry both attended John F. Kennedy High School, class of 1971.^[11] During their high school years, George and Jerry frequently hung out at a pizza place called Mario's Pizzas, where George, having the highest score 'GLC', would play Frogger.^[12] George was picked on by his gym teacher Mr. Heyman (Biff Yeager), who intentionally mispronounced his name as "Can't stand ya" and gave him wedgies.^[13]

George has three known cousins: Shelly, who appeared in "The Contest",^[14] George Howarth, and Rhisa, who made an appearance in "The Junk Mail".^[15] George talks to his parents about his family in "The Money", during which it is revealed that he had an "Uncle Moe", who "died a young man" and an "Aunt Baby", who died at the age of 7 of internal problems.^[16] It is also revealed that his mother has a "Cousin Henny".^[16] In "The Doll", it is revealed that Frank Costanza was born in Italy and still has a cousin, Carlo, who lives there.^[17] As of the first-season episode "The Robbery", George had a living grandmother and grandfather whom he had recently visited, though it is never clarified if these were his mother's or his father's parents.^[18]

Personality[link]

George is neurotic, self-loathing, and dominated by his parents. Throughout Seinfeld's first season, George was portrayed as a moderately intelligent character – at one point, he mentions an intellectual interest in the American Civil War and, in some early episodes, appears almost as a mentor to Jerry – but gets less sophisticated, to the point of being too lazy even to read a 90-page book (Breakfast at Tiffany's), preferring to watch the movie adaptation at a stranger's house instead. However, one Chicago Tribune reviewer noted that, despite all of his shortcomings, George is "pretty content with himself".^[19]

George exhibits a number of negative character traits, among them stinginess, selfishness, dishonesty, insecurity, and neurosis. Many of these traits stem from a dysfunctional childhood with his squabbling parents Frank and Estelle, and often form the basis of his involvement in various plots, schemes, and awkward social encounters. Episode plots frequently feature George manufacturing elaborate deceptions at work or in his relationships in order to gain or maintain some small or imagined advantage or (pretend) image of success. He had success in "The Opposite", in which he begins (with Jerry's encouragement) to do the complete opposite of what his instincts tell him to do, which results in him getting a girlfriend and a job with the New York Yankees.

George's occasional impulsive bouts often get him into trouble, such as when he flees a burning kitchen, knocking over several children and an elderly woman in the process, so he could escape first during his girlfriend's son's birthday party in "The Fire". However, there are moments where George exhibits remarkable courage, but usually accidentally, and usually because of inane lies which have brought trouble to George. For instance, in "The Marine Biologist", he goes into the ocean alone to save a beached whale because his girlfriend thinks he is a marine biologist, and even tells her the truth about his occupation after he saves the day. Sadly, this causes her to reject him immediately.

George aligns with both Elaine and Kramer in some episodes, but is also frequently pitted against them. With Elaine, while he does get into arguments with her, they also work together, most notably in the episode "The Cadillac". George and Kramer usually feel awkward around each other, but started working together (and against each other) in episodes "The Busboy", "The Stall", and "The Slicer". "The Susie" is the only episode in which their relationship is as prominent as the relationships between the other characters. Some episodes, such as "The Raincoats", "The Money", "The Doorman", and "The Fusilli Jerry", would suggest that Kramer has a more comfortable rapport with George's parents than with George.

He has an affinity for nice restrooms and lush work facilities. In "The Revenge", he quits his real estate job solely because he is forbidden to use his boss's private bathroom. In "The Busboy", he claims to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the locations of the best bathrooms in the city. When working for the Yankees, he suggested having the bathroom stall doors stretched all the way to the floor (allowing people's legs not to be seen while in the stalls), and, in many episodes, he shows a fascination with toilet paper and its history. He also displays a fear of diseases, such as lupus and cancer. In "The Wife", George gets into trouble for urinating in the shower at a gym but defends his action with, "It's all pipes! What's the difference?"

Although occasionally referred to as dumb by his friends, many signs point to the fact that George is actually quite an intelligent man despite his neurotic behavior. George's foolishness is displayed in the episode, "The Cafe", in which George had to take an IQ test and had Elaine take it for him. Apparently, George's neurotic stupidity would progress until it became one of his primary characteristics. By the season six episode "The Couch", he could not even concentrate enough to read a 90-page book (Breakfast at Tiffany's). In "The Abstinence", it is discovered that George actually has what would appear to be genius-level intelligence, but that he can never access it because his mind is always so completely focused on sex. When circumstances allow him to temporarily remove sex from his mind, he is able to reach his true potential but Elaine, who also swears off sex (in an attempt to increase her boyfriend's IQ) in the same episode, gets dumber.

George and Jerry have been best friends since meeting in high school gym class. The extreme closeness of their friendship is occasionally mistaken for homosexuality. "The Outing" deals with a reporter from a New York University college paper mistaking Jerry and George for a homosexual couple, and, in "The Cartoon", George dates someone whom Kramer insists is merely a "female Jerry". When George is forced to note to himself that the idea of a female Jerry with whom he can have a close personal relationship and also a sexual relationship would be everything he has ever wanted, George, in horror, breaks off his relationship with the woman.

In the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "Seinfeld", we learn that in the aftermath of their release from prison, George had both gotten married and made millions in the ten years since being locked up in "The Finale". His fortune resulted from selling an iPhone application called the "iToilet", which utilizes GPS technology to direct the user to "acceptable" public restrooms closest to them, wherever they are. In this episode, his wife had left him, and he had lost his money in the recession, having invested it all in Bernie Madoff's now-notorious Ponzi scheme. His wife, however, bailed out her half of the investment after the divorce, before the scheme collapsed. At the end of the episode, George and his wife reunite, though his wife insists he sign a prenuptial agreement, meaning he will have to keep their renewed marriage going to keep him from losing the remainder of the money he made on the iToilet, much to his annoyance.

Development[link]

Seinfeld co-creator Larry David based George largely on himself.^[20][21] Seinfeld and David created the character as a counterpoint to Seinfeld's character.^[22] In the first draft of the show's pilot script, called Stand-Up at the time, George's name was Bennett and he, like Jerry, was a comedian.^[20] In that same draft, the scene in the pilot in which George and Jerry discuss a woman Jerry met earlier, saw George and Jerry discussing their stand-up act.^[20] This idea however, was quickly abandoned and his name was changed to George, the real estate broker instead.^[20] George's last name comes from Michael Costanza, a college classmate of Seinfeld.^[23] "Louis", George's middle name is a homage to Lou Costello, whose 1950s television series The Abbott and Costello Show, inspired Seinfeld's writing style.^[24] During the show's run David was frequently asked why he did not play the character himself, he replied that he was only interested in writing the show, that, not only did he not want to act on the show, but it had never occurred to him and, even if it had, he highly doubted that NBC would've approved of his being cast.^[22]

Casting director Marc Herschfield stated that, during casting for the character, "we saw every actor we could possibly see in Los Angeles", but they could not find the right actor for the part.^[22] Among the auditionees were Nathan Lane, Steve Buscemi, David Alan Grier, Brad Hall and Larry Miller.^[20][25] On April 3, 1989, Herschfield sent a partial script to Jason Alexander, who was in New York City at the time.^[22] Herschfield had met Alexander when he was working on the CBS sitcom E/R.^[22] Alexander enjoyed the script and felt it read like a Woody Allen film; therefore, he did a Woody Allen impression on his audition tape, and bought a pair of glasses to better resemble the character.^[22][26] Though Alexander thought his audition was "a complete waste of time", both David and Seinfeld were impressed; Seinfeld stated "the second we saw him, like two lines out of his mouth, we went 'That's the guy'".^[22] On April 10, 1989 at 9:00 A.M. Alexander did his first official audition and met David and Seinfeld.^[20] While in the waiting room for his final audition, Alexander saw that Larry Miller was also auditioning.^[22] Alexander was aware that Miller and Seinfeld were very good friends, and so figured that he would not get the part. After his final audition he returned to New York City, and when he landed he received a phone call informing him that he was hired.^[22]

Many of George's predicaments were based on David's past real-life experiences. In "The Revenge", for example, when George quits his job in a fury only to realize he has made a mistake, he goes back the next day as if nothing happened; this mirrors David's actions while working as a writer for Saturday Night Live, when he quit and then returned to his job in the same manner.^[22] As the show progressed, Alexander discovered that the character was based on David. As Alexander explains in an interview for the Seinfeld DVD, during an early conversation with David, Alexander questioned a script, saying, "This could never happen to anyone, and even if it did, no human being would react like this." David replied, "What do you mean? This happened to me once, and this is exactly how I reacted!" After that, Alexander changed his performance from an imitation of Woody Allen to what he has called a "shameless imitation of Larry David."

In 1998, Michael Costanza sued the show for US$100,000,000, claiming that he never gave permission for his name to be used and that, because of the character's appearance and behavior, he was not treated with respect.^[27][28] Costanza lost the suit, as the New York Supreme Court (the trial court in the State of New York court system) unanimously decided that Seinfeld and David "did not violate Michael Costanza's privacy rights when they created the character".^[29]

Family and background[link]

Susan[link]

George becomes engaged to Susan Biddle Ross, a wealthy executive at NBC who approved Jerry and George's show-within-a-show sitcom pilot. George and Susan date for a year, during which time the commitment-phobic George is constantly trying to find ways to end their relationship without actually having to initiate the breakup with her. In "The Engagement", he proposes to her in a short-lived bout of midlife crisis, after he and Jerry make a pact to move forward with their lives. When Jerry breaks up with his girlfriend almost immediately thereafter for eating "her peas one at a time" and declares the deal over, George panics and again tries repeatedly to weasel out of his engagement. He gets his wish about two weeks before the wedding in "The Invitations", when he inadvertently causes her death by selecting cheap envelopes for their wedding invitations, not knowing they contained toxic glue. When notified of her death at the hospital, George displays a combination of shock, apathy, and relief (described by the doctor in part two of The Finale as "restrained jubilation"). A few moments after being notified of Susan's passing, he says to Jerry, Kramer, and Elaine, "Well, let's go get some coffee." Susan's parents, recent divorcees, never knowing the specifics behind her poisoning but suspecting that George was somehow involved, never forgive him for this, and they appoint him to the board of directors of the Susan Ross Foundation to keep him trapped under their influence and to ensure that he would never get any of Susan's inheritance.

Relationships[link]

George is very bad at picking up women and his relationships usually end badly.^[30][31] George also dated other women throughout the series:

• His two dates, Maura (who refuses to break up) and Loretta (who will not make love in "The Strongbox"), make it hard for George to break up.
• In "The Cadillac", George dates a celebrity, Marisa Tomei, in the park for a short time and gets punched after revealing that he is engaged.
• In "The Cafe", George dates Monica, who tests George in an IQ test. Apparently, after letting Elaine help him cheat, the end result is the test being spilled with food, and he is left to explain about the mess on the IQ test.
• In "The Nose Job", George dates Audrey, who has a big nose, until he, Jerry, and Elaine are shocked when Kramer suggests that she get a nose job.
• In "The Red Dot", by accident, George dates Evie, a cleaning woman who works at Pendant Publishing by sharing Hennigans.
• In "The Conversion", George willingly converts to the Latvian Orthodox faith for his girlfriend, Sasha, after Elaine mentions that it would be romantic, only to learn after completing the conversion that Sasha is going to Latvia.
• In "The Boyfriend", George dates Carrie, the daughter of his unemployment-office rep, Mrs. Sokol, in order to get an extension on his unemployment.
• In "The Good Samaritan", George commits adultery with a married woman, Robin, after he says "God bless you" to her.
• In "The Outing", George dates Allison, who is having a breakdown. He tries to get out of the relationship by saying he's gay, but it fails.
• In "The Cartoon", George dates Janet, who Kramer openly says looks like Jerry.
• In "The Blood", George dates Tara, and he attempts to add food as a part of their sex life.
• In "The Pez Dispenser" George dates a pianist, Noelle who wishes to break up with George after Elaine laughs during a recital. George has a telephone communication with Noelle and feels like she wishes to break up, so he breaks up with her first. Later at an intervention for an old friend of Elaine and Jerry's, Elaine laughs the laugh that Noelle will never forget and it is revealed she is the one that shattered Noelle's confidence during the recital.
• In "The Fix Up" George refuses a blind date with Cynthia until assured she meets his intellect (low) and attractiveness (high) standards (George: Is there a pinkish hue? Jerry: A pinkish hue? George: Yes, a rosy glow. Jerry: There's a hue. She's got great eyebrows, women kill to have her eyebrows. George: Who cares about eyebrows? Is she sweet? I like sweet. But not too sweet, you could throw up from that.")

In the Curb Your Enthusiasm Seinfeld Reunion, George has married (and divorced) a woman named Amanda in the time in between the finale and the reunion.

Professional life[link]

George's professional life is unstable. He is unable to remain in any job for any great length of time before making an embarrassing blunder and getting fired. Very often, the blunder is lying and trying to cover it up, only to have it all fall apart.

Over the course of the series, he works for a real estate transaction services firm (Rick Bahr Properties), a rest stop supply company (Sanalac), Elaine's company (Pendant Publishing), the New York Yankees (his longest running job), a playground-equipment company (Play Now), an industrial smoothing company (Kruger Industrial Smoothing), and other places. He is fired from his job at Pendant Publishing for having sex with the cleaning woman on his desk in "The Red Dot" (he professes he has always been attracted to cleaning women).

His original job when the series starts is as a real estate agent; he ends up quitting and getting re-hired, but fired immediately afterward for drugging his boss. He always wanted to be an architect; he first desires to be one in "The Stake Out", and he claims in "The Race" that he had designed "the new addition to the Guggenheim". In "The Van Buren Boys", he denies his young protégé a scholarship from the Susan Ross Foundation when the young man decides he no longer wants to be an architect and wants to become a city planner instead. In "The Marine Biologist", Jerry tells a woman whom George wanted to impress that George is a marine biologist. The plan backfires when George is called upon to save a beached whale with a Titleist golf ball in its blowhole. He saves the whale, but the woman tells him off when he confesses that he is not, in fact, a marine biologist: "She told me to go to hell, and I took the bus home."

During the fourth season of the series, George gains experience as a sitcom writer as he helps Jerry to write the pilot for the fictitious show Jerry. While pitching the concept of a "show about nothing" to NBC executives, George dates executive Susan until The Virgin, when she is fired. Following the first and last episode ("The Pilot"), executive Russell's obsession with Elaine has cost George and Jerry a shot at getting a TV series.

According to the Curb Your Enthusiasm Seinfeld Reunion, George has become a multi-millionaire by inventing an iPhone application called "iToilet," which would point the user in the direction of the nearest accessible toilet, wherever they were in the world. He trusted his entire fortune to Bernie Madoff, and after his divorce, lost his half of the money. However, his ex-wife Amanda withdrew her half of the money before the scandal, having been creeped out by a quilted jacket with a popped collar that she spotted Madoff wearing one day, and after she offers to reconcile, he gets it back, but their new prenup agreement means that George will have to be a good husband in order to keep it.

Fashion and hairstyle[link]

George is known for his balding hair, which is not as noticeable in the pilot episode "The Seinfeld Chronicles", but gets thinner as the series progresses. In "The Beard", he begins to wear a toupee, until Elaine throws it out the window out of disgust. He also attempts to restore his hair in "The Tape", when he begins using a Chinese cream that is said to cure baldness. His hair is rarely seen styled. His clothes are usually very plain. He frequently wears jeans. In "The Pilot", George wears sweatpants; Jerry says that this makes George look like he has given up on life. In "The Subway", when his clothes are taken, he goes to the coffee shop with a blanket, causing a bystander to mistake him for a Hindu. In "The Muffin Tops", he steals clothes from a tourist who asks him to watch his suitcase. "The Gum" has him dressed as Henry the Eighth, which, along with a far too small tuxedo in "The Opera", are the only times he is seen entirely apart from his drab attire. George has, however, mentioned that his clothing is color coded based on his mood. In "The Trip", Jerry asks him what mood he is in, and George replies, "Morning mist". Several times throughout the show, George mentions a desire to "drape" himself in velvet (if only it were socially acceptable), which he does in "The Doodle". In the episode "The Bizarro Jerry", George can be seen styling his hair based on an Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) poster.^[32]

Pseudonyms[link]

• Art Vandelay first appears in the episode "The Stake Out", in which George and Jerry need an excuse to give to a woman as to why they are waiting in the lobby of the office building where she worked. Their excuse is that they were meeting Art Vandelay, an importer-exporter who works in the same building, for lunch. In one instance ("The Boyfriend"), George tells the unemployment office he is close to getting a job at "Vandelay Industries," a latex manufacturer. The name is also used as a fake boyfriend of Elaine. Here, Art is an importer/exporter and used as a cover story for when George is going on a date with Marisa Tomei, claiming that George and Elaine are meeting to discuss a problem with her boyfriend so that Susan does not think that George is having an affair ("The Cadillac"). George also uses the pseudonym when interviewing for a job with Elaine's boss in "The Red Dot". When asked which authors he reads, the answer is "Art Vandelay" from New York. In "The Serenity Now", George calls up fake customers, one of whom is "Mr. Vandelay", pretending to get computer orders. In "The Bizarro Jerry", George goes to an office and asks for Mr. Vandelay as part of a setup to approach an attractive secretary. Finally, in "The Puerto Rican Day", George pretends to be Vandelay (along with Jerry as Kel Varnsen and Kramer as Pennypacker) to try to sneak into an open house to watch a Mets game that they had left because the team was getting blown out. In the episode "The Finale", the name of the presiding judge is actually Arthur Vandelay, much to George's amazement. George says he thinks it is "good luck" that that is the judge's name.
• During the seventh season ("The Pool Guy"), George reveals he has two distinct personas, Relationship George and Independent George. Relationship George, he explains, is the conscientious personality he feels forced to adopt in the presence of his fianceé, Susan. Independent George, on the other hand, is the "real" George. Independent George is composed of a subset of personalities, such as Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, and Bawdy George. Independent George is the George that Jerry knows and grew up with. George worries that if Susan starts socializing with the group, his two worlds will irrevocably collide, resulting in Relationship George "killing" Independent George. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, he declares, "A George divided against itself cannot stand!"
• At one point ("The Maid"), George wants to be known as T-Bone, but his co-workers at Kruger Industrial Smoothing nickname him Koko because of the way he had flailed his arms when demanding the nickname "T-Bone" back from a coworker. George deliberately hires a woman named Coco to work there, only to be nicknamed Gammy instead.
• Biff Loman a character from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" appears for a reference to George in the episode "The Subway". George is on the way to a job interview and Jerry tells him not to whistle in the elevator like Biff did in the book. After a series of events throughout the episode George arrives at the coffee shop wearing only a bed sheet in a toga like fashion, to which Jerry says, "What happened, Biff? Did you whistle on the elevator?" George is also referred to as Biff in "The Boyfriend" by the daughter of his unemployment agent and both "The Pez Dispenser" and "The Visa" by Jerry.

Reception[link]

George, along with the three other main characters of the show, were ranked sixth on cable television channel Bravo's list of the "100 Greatest TV Characters".^[33] In a list of the "50 Greatest Sidekicks" compiled by Entertainment Weekly, George was placed third behind Robin from the Batman franchise and Ed McMahon, who co-hosted The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992.^[34] On a The Times-Union list of the 50 greatest sitcom characters of all time, George was ranked third, behind Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) from I Love Lucy and Barney Fife (Don Knotts) from The Andy Griffith Show.^[35] TV Guide published a list of the 50 best characters in television history in 1999 on which George was ranked 43rd.^[36] The People called George the greatest television character on a list of the 100 best television characters.^[37] British actor Ricky Gervais and British newspaper The Guardian have both called George "the greatest sitcom character of all time".^[38][39]

For his performance as George, Alexander has been nominated for various awards. In 1992 he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series;^[40] however, he lost the award to Michael Jeter for Evening Shade.^[41] He received nominations in the same category the following six years,^[42] but failed to win each year.^[43] In addition, Alexander was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, in 1993,^[44] 1994,^[45] 1995^[46] and 1998,^[47] in the Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for Television category, but never won the award.^[48] In 1995 Alexander received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series, he also shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series with Seinfeld, Louis-Dreyfus and Richards.^[49] From 1996 through 1998 Alexander was nominated in the same two categories,^[50] co-winning the ensemble award in 1997 and 1998.^[51][52] In 1999 he was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series for the last time,^[53] but lost to Michael J. Fox for his portrayal of Micheal Flaherty on Spin City.^[54] In 1992 and 1993 Alexander won the American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Male Performer in a TV Series.^[55][56] He was also nominated for the award in 1996 (with Richards) and 1999, but did not win again.^[57][58]

References[link]

Explanatory notes

Citations

External links[link]