You can hear a voice at the end - and I think it’s James Avery’s - say “I didn’t even get to say my line!”
So even though the clip clearly includes Reginald VelJohnson breaking character and ceasing to be Carl Winslow, I kind of think Uncle Phil really was supposed to canonically appear? But then the clip of Reginald’s reaction was just way too endearing to air anything but that instead.
Honestly kind of surprised that someone from an NBC show could show up on an ABC show in character at all, but then again there was a Seinfeld/Murphy Brown crossover too.
Reginald says in that interview above that people are shocked to find out he doesn’t have any kids of his own. He just played a dad for the biggest role of his career.
And then there’s that scene between Will Smith and James Avery that makes me sob every time where Will has once again been abandoned by his father.
I wonder if there are any good breakdowns of the best crossovers from that era
That was different, Kramer got a job as an extra on Murphy Brown, he wasn’t a character in the actual show. Murphy Brown exist on the Seinfeld universe, they aren’t both in the same universe.
Q The Winged Serpentis such a gem in the rough. Somehow this dumb kaiju movie starring David Carradine and Richard Roundtree gets completely upstaged by Michael Moriarty and his sensitive, complex portrayal of a sad, down-on-his-luck dipshit everyman. You see this Michael Moriarty character and you hate him because he’s a slimy abusive jerk but also you feel for him because he’s just this sad, broken little man. This is a kaiju movie about an Aztec death cult and a giant winged demon and it has Carradine and Rountree and somehow the movie still stops everything it’s doing to give you these weird lingering moments where Michael Moriarty plays a jazz number. This sad little guy just wants to be happy.
Available on Tubi and other discriminating outlets.
Fun seeing how Seinfeld was kind of the OG Multiverse of Madness.
30 Rock
In the prescient 30 Rock episode “SeinfeldVision,” NBC realizes they can use the hundreds of hours of Seinfeld footage they own to digitally insert 1990s Jerry into their current shows. This includes Law & Order, Deal or No Deal and the also-prescient MILF Island. Yes, 30 Rock was doing deepfake jokes in 2007. “Twitch star caught cranking it to e-girl deepfakes goes viral on Twitter” does sound like some nonsense lingo this show would use in a cutaway scene from a fake sci-fi movie.
Love & War
Love & War was another CBS sitcom that shared a universe (and a creator/producer) with Murphy Brown. Seinfeld and David returned the favor for that Kramer cameo by appearing as themselves in an episode of it in which the characters spot a famous author writing something in their restaurant. In the end, the author’s mysterious work is revealed to be an unsolicited Seinfeld script where Kramer sleeps with Elaine. Cut to Jerry and Larry seeing the script, throwing it in the garbage… and then fishing it out when they consider the erotic possibilities.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
In Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Season Seven, David agrees to put together a Seinfeld reunion, an idea he‘s always hated, but only as part of a ploy to get his ex-wife back. If watching a table read for a show within another show wasn‘t confusing enough, the layers of reality get even more mixed up when Jason Alexander quits the pretend reunion and Larry steps in to play George since the character was based on himself in the first place. Worlds are colliding!
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The It‘s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode “The Gang Does a Clip Show” says some pretty deep things about the unreliable nature of our own memories — and, therefore, our very identities — when the protagonists reminisce about that time they made a bet to see who could go the longest without masturbating. What follows is a shockingly accurate recreation of the scene from Seinfeld‘s “The Contest” in which Kramer (or, in this case, Charlie) slams the money on the table and says “I‘m out.”
Has anyone seen the movie version of We Need to Talk About Kevin?
Because I just finished the book, and it was wild–completely engrossing. I knew that Tilda Swinton starred in the movie, so she was in my mind as I read. And I can’t imagine anyone else playing that role. So I’m very curious about the movie–I’m tempted to watch it, but it seems like an incredibly challenging thing to translate to film.
I saw it quite a few years ago so it’s not fresh in my mind but I remember it as being a very good film in its own right. Can’t say I’ve read the book so I don’t know how faithful it was but I recall it as Incredibly bleak and harrowing. Lynne Ramsay’s excellent at that sort of stuff.
edit: I also think I read some reviews before I went that described it as a faithful adaptation, but I can’t quite recall the details.
Ran into a friends at the theater and one of them had the gall to say that the shark looks “so fake” today. Um, no it doesn’t. The only time it mayyyybe looks a little off is when it sticks its head in the boat. Other than that, though, it looks completely real. Elite practical effects.
I think it’s common knowledge that the mechanical shark was constantly breaking down, leading Spielberg to rely more on the suspense of not seeing the shark vs. having a scary shark in full view.
It’s incredible but also incredibly intense. You will not be good for human company that day if you watch it. Powerhouse performances from Swinton and Miller.
Probably on-topic here as much as anywhere because the release of Dial of Destiny is why Harrison Ford is doing the rounds:
Ford on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, just released overnight, is the funniest episode I’ve heard of that show since Kevin Nealon’s appearance on it late last year. The video rendition of it isn’t up on YouTube yet, but I look forward to immediately reliving it that way when it posts. Recommended listening.
Movie idea: retro-future information state, but our hero has something in his file that crashes the system every time he needs to use it for anything. Everyone he deals with is well meaning, but they just can’t fix the problem.
He gets escalated to 2nd and 3rd levels where they try weird low-level retro-manual processes that just look bizarre and make no sense (like one woman looking at a small screen, barking out numbers, letters and words to another woman, who’s running some weird thing that looks sort of like a stenographer machine, but with sliders and dials whizzing - with each rapid fire command from the first woman, she’s manipulating stuff on the machine). Every time the tech support people start out confident but end up stumped. No one can fix his problem of crashing the system.
So it just slowly builds and builds to where he can’t get a driver’s license, or get a job, and he gets pushed to the margins of society. Ultimately he finds a group of people who have the same problem, and all live in the sewer or something. Then somehow he finds a way to overcome or blow up the system or whatever.
