The Trip (Seinfeld)

"The Trip" is a two-part story (the forty-first and forty-second episodes to air) of NBC's popular sitcom, Seinfeld. Airing on August 12, 1992 and August 19, 1992, it kicked off the fourth season of the show.

Plot

The Trip, Part 1

In The Trip, Part 1, Jerry is offered two free tickets from New York to Hollywood to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He offers one to George and they decide that while they are in Los Angeles they will track down Kramer, who headed to Los Angeles in the previous episode, "The Keys", to become an actor. A dead body turns up in another part of LA and Kramer's script he had given to the woman is found on her person. George thinks he has insightful conversations with the talk show guests (Corbin Bernsen and George Wendt) but they both call him "nuts". Jerry can't remember the wording for a joke and blames the hotel maid, Lupe (Dyana Ortelli), who threw it away while cleaning the room. As Jerry and George leave The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, they see Kramer's picture on the news. He is the main suspect for the "Smog Strangler".

The Trip, Part 2

Kramer is arrested when he is mistaken for "The Smog Strangler," a serial killer roaming the streets of Los Angeles. While also in L.A., Jerry and George try to help resolve the accusation. They use a pay phone to call the police and they say they have some important information regarding the stranglings. Two policemen in a police cruiser come to pick them up and take them back to the station. On their way, the officers see a man (Clint Howard) trying to break into a car. They arrest him and put him in the back with Jerry and George. They have to stop again when they get a police call regarding to the "Smog Strangler" and happen to be close to the scene. Jerry and George want to make sure Kramer is not imprisoned, so they open the door of the car, and, in their hurry, leave the door open. The man who was breaking into the car escapes.

Kramer is taken to the police station and is interrogated by the lieutenant. He has a nervous breakdown in the interrogation room and is reduced to hysterical sobbing, making it seem like he did the stranglings. While he is being questioned, the lieutenant receives a phone call stating that the Smog Strangler has killed another victim while Kramer was in custody, and so he is allowed to leave. After Kramer is exonerated, Jerry and George decide to return to New York, but Kramer opts to remain in Los Angeles. However, by the end of the episode, Kramer has returned to New York and is once again living across the hall from Jerry. He offers no explanation of his return.

At the end of the episode, it is revealed that the Smog Strangler is suspected to be the man that was in the back seat with George and Jerry, the one they accidentally let escape. It is broadcast on a news program that his whereabouts are unknown.

Production

The scene in which the man breaks into the car was shot near the Bicycle Shack on Ventura Place in Studio City, California, a short distance from CBS Studio Center, the main studio for Seinfeld. When Kramer is confronted by the police at his apartment (about 12 minutes into the episode), Larry David and episode writer Larry Charles can be seen standing in the crowd behind the officers, at the far right of the scene. The cop riding shotgun is the same actor that would later portray Jake Jarmel. The Hotel/Apartment that Kramer is staying in while in Hollywood is in the same building that was used in Pretty Woman, in which Jason Alexander co-starred.

This was the only two-part episode of "Seinfeld" to be made as two separate episodes instead of a one-hour special.

Elaine does not appear in either part of "The Trip", and appears only minimally in "The Pitch" and "The Ticket", due to the fact that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on maternity leave. Kramer's first name is missing from the script found on the dead woman's body, a reference to how - at this point in time - no one knows his full name.

Both episodes still feature the Seinfeld opening logo that was used for Season 3 rather than Season 4 for two probable reasons. The first was because writer Larry Charles made "The Keys" and both parts of "The Trip" as a three-part story and as such is a continuation of season three. The other is because NBC made the "The Trip" two-parter as a tentpole leading up to the network's coverage of the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics.

Cultural references

As Jerry and George are walking through a corridor at NBC's Burbank offices, to the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno stage, they walk by posters of the network's major hit shows at the time on the walls. In the order they appear, Quantum Leap, Wings, Sisters, The Round Table, and Law & Order.

References

• "The Trip (Seinfeld)" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Trip (Seinfeld)" at the Internet Movie Database