My Review of "Seinfeld: Season 5"

Seinfeld: Season 5 was hotly anticipated since I loved season 4 so much. It's taken me away from a lot of movies and TV shows lately. I forgot TV seasons used to be 22 episode seasons. Even for a half hour TV show that amounts to five and a half hours. Still they're quite enjoyable and when I'm binging, I don't realize the time passing by so quickly.

This season is a continuation from the last season however there isn't as much continuous stories like in the last season. There are a lot more self contained episodes in this season and it's quite remarkable. It's impressive because they can pack a ton of stuff in one little episode. Yes there are some continuation in some episodes but they are brief.

There are quite a few notable episodes in this season. Some of the jokes in this season have pretty interesting pop culture references. That's what happened with the episode with "The Masseuse". In this episode Elaine goes out with a man named Joel Rifkin who at the time was a serial killer at the time. The joke was that Elaine convinces Joel that he has to change his name. One of the names that Elaine suggested was O.J as in O.J Simpson. The time this episode aired was sometime in 1993 and 1994. Who knew that only a couple years later O.J would be an even worse name.

The season was very much a product of its time. There are episodes with questionable content by today's standards but you can tell that the show comes from a joking background with no ill intent. One of the episodes that deals with race relations was "The Cigar Store Indian". Jerry has to curtail a ton of racial sayings as he navigates a culturally sensitive city. Little does he know thirty years later we would be even more culturally sensitive than they were back then.

Some of the most laugh out loud episodes I had with this season were "The Opposite", "The Fire", "The Marine Biologist" and "The Non-Fat Yogurt". "The Non-Fat Yogurt" episode had me in hysterics as everyone is addicted to this new non-fat yogurt store run by their friend. When Jerry and Elaine start picking up some weight they start to question the guarantee of non-fat. There's also a hilarious side story of Jerry trying to apologize toe the yogurt store's son for swearing.

"The Marine Biologist" is funny nonsense. I don't even know how they even thought up of this story. This is when Elaine has to deal with a horrible old Russian novelist. He starts up a lot of trouble while Jerry lies about George to an old classmate. His lies get George chummy with this old classmate but this is hilariously called out because of something Kramer does at the start of the episode.

"The Fire" is so much fun because they really paint George to be a disgusting coward. When there's a bit of a fire he basically bolts for the exit pushing down everyone in his way. In the meantime we have a really funny side story with Kramer rescuing Elaine's co-worker.

Finally, "The Opposite" is one of my favorites because we see George as a Charlie Brown character throughout the show. He's down and out though he deserves all his problems because of what he's done in the past. Meanwhile we have Elaine who is highly successful. Jerry on the other hand is even Steven when it comes to luck. Here we see George changing his luck when he does everything the exact opposite than he normally does things. The result is so funny you'll bust a gut laughing. Of course you won't get as much of an impact if you haven't been watching the series.

Throughout these episodes you can tell things are starting to get bigger as well. We start to see more cameos and bigger stars showing up. They're really digging more into the pop culture of society and playing around with it here too.

Overall, I really liked this season. Even though it's a step away from the continuous storytelling we had in the previous season it was really well cone. You still have some on-going stories but you can technically watch each episode by themselves and keep up with what's going on. I have to give this season a 9 out of 10. They kept up with the fun and I can't wait to go to season 6.