The Pick

"The Pick" is the 53rd episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. It is the 13th episode of the fourth season, and first aired on December 16, 1992.

Plot

Elaine is humiliated when her Christmas card photo taken by Kramer accidentally exposes her nipple. Jerry has a date with Tia Van Camp (Jennifer Campbell), the Calvin Klein model he met on the plane in the previous episode. After the date, Kramer discovers that Tia is wearing the perfume he invented in "The Pez Dispenser", which she calls "The Ocean."

Tia later dumps Jerry after witnessing him picking his nose. Jerry claims that he was only scratching it because there was no "nostril penetration." Meanwhile, George visits a therapist to discuss a problem with his girlfriend Susan, but the session is unproductive as first George, and then also the therapist, obsess over the stuck zipper on George's jacket. George later reunites with Susan only to realize it was a mistake, so he uses "the pick" to escape. Kramer meets with Calvin Klein (Nicholas Hormann) to complain about "The Ocean", and is instead asked to pose for a risqué underwear advertisement, where his genitals are accidentally exposed.

Production

Newman appears in this episode for only 13 seconds when Jerry brings him in and asks if Elaine's nipple is visible in her Christmas card photo. The original title for this episode was supposed to be "The Nipple" but Larry David thought that this would be too sexually explicit for network television.

The events that occurred in the previous episode "The Airport", where George finds himself on a flight heading out of New York, are never explained as to where he went or how he got back.

In a scene where Elaine is at work discussing the picture with Fred, Larry David makes a brief cameo appearance as the voice of an office worker leaning into Elaine's office and asking if she's done with a manuscript, while addressing her as "Nip".^[1]

Cultural references

The episode alludes to Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice in Jerry's monologue defending nose-pickers: "If we pick, do we not bleed?" The actual quote is, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?". The episode also alludes to The Elephant Man (1980),^[2] when Jerry proclaims, "I am not an animal!" Another reference is to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter when Elaine blames her boyfriend for condemning her because of the photo on her Christmas card: "Because it is not me that is exposed but you. For I have seen the nipple on your soul!" When Kramer asks George what his 'little man' thinks it is an allusion to Edward G. Robinson's character Barton Keyes "little man" from Billy Wilder's 1944 film "Double Indemnity".

References

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