"The Glasses" is the 67th episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. It is the third episode of the fifth season, and first aired on September 30, 1993.
This is the first episode of Seinfeld written by Tom Gammill and Max Pross. This episode ends with the dedication "In memory of our friend, John Oteri," who worked as a camera operator on the show.
Plot
George's eyeglasses, he claims, were stolen at the Health Club and he needs a new pair. He goes to see Kramer's optometrist friend Dwayne (Timothy Stack), whom Kramer promises will give George a thirty percent discount because Kramer had helped the optometrist break his addiction to sugar. Elaine is bitten by a dog while with George at the optometrist's, and she becomes afraid of dogs as well as the possibility that she may have rabies. While not wearing his glasses, George thinks he recognizes, from a distance, Jerry's girlfriend Amy (Anna Gunn) kissing Jerry's cousin Jeffrey, who apparently has a "horse face". Jerry goes to Amy and tries to get her to confess her infidelity; she indignantly denies it. Jerry doesn't know what to think of George's uncanny ability to see fine details while "squinting"; however, after George mistakes an onion for an apple, Jerry wonders whether George was also mistaken about having seen Amy with Jeffrey. After trying on many pairs of glasses, George finally decides upon a new style and buys them, but is distressed when Kramer later points out that they are women's-style glasses made by Gloria Vanderbilt. The optometrist also refuses George a discounted price. George then makes a deal with an unsuspecting blind man to trade the man's uncomfortable eyeglass frames with George's, and have the lenses switched. With his vision back, George finally realizes that it was not Amy kissing Jeffrey, but a rather homely mounted policewoman affectionately petting her horse. Meanwhile, Kramer, bursting into Jerry's apartment, accidentally jars Jerry's giant new air conditioner loose from the windowsill, and it falls to the sidewalk, serendipitously hitting and injuring the same dog which had earlier bitten Elaine at the optometrist's. The episode ends as we see George's "stolen" glasses right on top of the lockers in the Health Club.
Series continuity
- In this episode, Elaine calls Kramer a "hipster doofus". Kramer was previously called this in the Season 4 episodes "The Handicap Spot" and "The Movie".
- In the scene where Jerry tries to find out if his girlfriend cheated on him, he devises a plan ending in "It's Howdy Doody time." Kramer then replies, "Right this way, Mr. Doody." This line was made popular by Larry David on the short-lived TV show Fridays, on which Michael Richards starred.
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