The Heart Attack

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seinfeld episode
"The Heart Attack"

George is rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.
Episode no. 13
Airdate April 25, 1991
Writer(s) Larry Charles
Director Tom Cherones
IMDb profile
Seinfeld - Season 2
January - June 1991
  1. The Ex-Girlfriend
  2. The Pony Remark
  3. The Jacket
  4. The Phone Message
  5. The Apartment
  6. The Statue
  7. The Revenge
  8. The Heart Attack
  9. The Deal
  10. The Baby Shower
  11. The Chinese Restaurant
  12. The Busboy
List of all Seinfeld episodes

"The Heart Attack" is the thirteenth episode of Seinfeld. The episode was the eighth episode for the show's second season. It aired on April 25, 1991.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

George thinks he is having a heart attack but actually needs a tonsillectomy, leading Kramer to recommend a holistic healer as a better alternative. Jerry warns George that the healer Kramer is recommending had spent time in prison ("The medical establishment, see, they tried to frame him," explains Kramer. "It's all politics.") After comparing the cost of an expensive operation in the hospital, and the holistic treatment he would receive, George decides to go with Kramer's advice.

Meanwhile, Elaine dates a doctor she met at the hospital. He shows off his knowledge of tongues by holding Elaine's tongue and pointing out the different parts of it. She is subsequently turned off. Jerry tries to decrypt a humorous note he wrote to himself in the middle of the night after watching a B-movie, presumably that he was going to use in one of his stand-up segments later.

George, Kramer and Jerry, who is only there for comic material, meet the holistic healer. Tor performs a number of unorthodox methods to determine George's real ailment, which he concludes has nothing to do with his tonsils, but with his imbalance with nature. Tor then concocts a tea that would remove his ailment, also prescribing that George take cold showers. George starts drinking the tea, and in the next scene he is shown being transported by ambulance with a purple face, screaming. The ambulance gets into an accident after the EMT and the driver get into an altercation over a missing Chuckle, that the driver thought the EMT ate. Later George and Jerry are found in the hospital in neck braces. George indicates that he had the tonsillectomy, and Elaine is in the hospital only briefly to give George some ice cream, indicating that she is avoiding "Doctor Tongue".

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Superman reference

  • When Jerry visits George in the hospital, to comfort him, he patronizingly asks George if he would like a Superman comic book to read.

[edit] Trivia

  • A deleted scene available on the Season 1&2 DVD contains an entire mini-subplot concerning Elaine and a magazine that the hospital staff won't let her take home.
  • This episode marks the first mention of Kramer's friend, who is never seen, Bob Sacamano.
  • In the hospital scene, Geprge deviates from the script and clearly calls Jerry a "jerk off" (a phrase usually not allowed on TV).
  • This episode features the first of Larry David's many cameos. In this, he appears as the star of a cheap science-fiction film (regarding which Jerry writes the note "Flaming Globes of Sigmund," which he found funny while half-asleep but incomprehensible while awake). David's next cameo was off-screen as the voice of an elderly diner saying "what did she say? what did she say?" Several times in "The Chinese Restaurant" three episodes later.