The Chinese Restaurant

I made an IMDb list some time ago about the Top 10 most influential Seinfeld episodes and I placed The Chinese Restaurant in the top spot. Revisiting it today, I'm glad to say that I was right on point with that decision. It's definitely not their best episode and possibly not even perfect but the amount of ground they broke within the lapse of 23 minutes is unprecedented. Real time premise, social commentary, clever dialogue and great performances. I mean, there's really nothing else. It is an episode that solely relies on dialogue, that's it. No stories, no twists, no development. But what's most impressive about this episode is that towards the end you start feeling the anxiety for this problem to be over. On initial viewing I thought that this was that the writers just couldn't keep this episode going any longer, but now I realized that they even managed to make you relate to them in a literary way. You want it to be over, you're sick of hearing them get frustrated, the tension keeps building. They make a similar thing on The Parking Garage where you start to feel the claustrophobia of being in that situation.

The only thing I believe holds this episode from being truly perfect is the lack of Kramer and it's not just because he is a great character, but because I believe that with another character the story could've gained another dynamic.