Jerry Seinfeld is set to perform in Israel for the first time, with four stand-up comedy shows scheduled for December in Tel Aviv.
Thus, in the spirit of Modern Seinfeld — an always-funny Twitter feed that imagines new “Seinfeld” episodes in the age of social media and Netflix — here are some potential plots for Jerry going to Israel.
As in at least a couple of real episodes, imagine Jerry is traveling for a gig — and he brings the whole gang.
“George and the Shiva”: The favorite uncle of George’s new Israeli girlfriend dies, and hoping to earn boyfriend points, George attends the shiva. Having spent some time in the Israeli sun, however, he notices a mark on his neck and worries he is getting skin cancer. He checks the mirror every five minutes to see if the mark is growing. At the shiva, he keeps lifting up the drapes over the mirrors, upsetting the mourners. Eventually he gets into a shoving match with the dead man’s widow.
“Elaine and the Dark Side”: J. Peterman’s clothing company has a surplus of black men’s briefs and needs to unload them. Peterman has an outrageous pitch for the catalog: Dark Side of the Moon Men’s Underwear. He tells Elaine to get former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters to sign off on the idea. She meets Waters on a rainy day in London, stopping over on her way to Tel Aviv to join Jerry and company. The meeting goes fabulously — there’s a spark between them — and he insists on driving her to Heathrow. Once they’re at the airport, and Waters realizes Elaine’s destination, he earnestly starts explaining BDS to her. She thinks he’s referring to BVDs. He thinks she’s mocking him and drives off, hitting a puddle and soaking her with water.
“Kramer and the Soda Maker”: Kramer falls for a beautiful and well-known left-wing activist. When they return to the Tel Aviv apartment Jerry has rented, she notices a SodaStream machine in the kitchen. She tells Kramer she could never date anyone whose lips had touched the product of a settlement manufacturer, and he swears he knows nothing about it. But in her absence, Kramer is drawn to the machine and falls in love with the noise it makes when it pushes air into cold water. “I can’t stop pumping, Jerry,” he explains. Kramer is making himself a soda when the activist comes by the apartment for a surprise visit. She catches him in the kitchen passionately pumping.
Kramer loses the girl but can’t get over the SodaStream. He obsesses over the variety of soda flavors, trying each one and ranking them until he inadvertently mixes berry and peach, coming up with what he hopes to copyright as his own flavoring: Beach. He starts angling for a meeting with SodaStream’s CEO and finally secures it. In the middle of the meeting, the activist calls him, wanting to put the SodaStream episode behind them. Kramer pulls out his smartphone, but fumbles with it and it lands on the desk — the anti-SodaStream activist’s face visible to the CEO, who calls security.
“Jerry and the Falafel”: Jerry bonds with a model at a Tel Aviv cafe when she explains to him “hafuch” — the “upside-down” Israeli latte in which the espresso is added to the milk rather than the other way around. Jerry riffs, saying the “upside down” idea could launch a trend — two beef patties surrounding a bun would be an “upside down” hamburger, etc. They start to date, and he’s into her until she takes him out for street food. He can’t stand the way she gets sauce all over her face when she eats falafel and only wipes it off when she’s finished. “You bite, then wipe. Bite, then wipe. It’s simple,” he tells George. Jerry breaks up with the model, and she accuses him of being a “napkin Nazi.”
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