Mulva? Gipple?

I've been watching Season 4 of Seinfeld on DVD. Maybe not quite as funny as Season 3, but it's hard to say. There are still a fair share of classic episodes, like the Handicapped Space, and the one where everyone thinks George and Jerry are a gay couple... not that there's anything wrong with that.

The one I watched last night was the one in which he's dating a woman, but he doesn't know her name. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Everybody must have been in the situation at least once, of being on quite friendly terms with someone and then realising you don't know what to call them.

Instead of asking, "What's your name, by the way?" Seinfeld tries to fish for it, telling of the names he was called at school. She tells him that, of course, the kids at her school were merciless, because of her name rhyming with "a part of the female anatomy."

The look on his face after she said that was genius. So he tries all these different names on her, the joy of which is that they aren't remotely close to being names. When she finally twigs that he doesn't know, she challenges him, at which point he says, "Mulva?" As she's storming out, he calls after her: "Gipple?"

I tell you this because I know a lot of people won't have seen Seinfeld in the UK, buried as it was in the late-night BBC2 graveyard. The DVDs are definitely worth a look, if only to marvel at Elaine's clothes.

Only after she's left does the penny drop for him, and he shouts out of the window: "Dolores!"

Which is even funnier, because it doesn't really rhyme with anything. Apparently, the line was supplied by an audience member: in other words, they hadn't even thought of the payoff. Which is a bit like the story of Lennon writing "A Day in the Life" and having the line, "Now they know how many holes it takes to..." without knowing the end of it, "...the Albert Hall," which was supplied by someone else (Mal Evans? can't remember).