Seinfeld watchers: lend me your ears

I've had an argument with my housemate about this and decided to look elsewhere for an opinion. The episode in which Jerry gets his girlfriend to lip-read for George, whose fault is the mess-up at the end, Kramer's or Jerry's girlfriend?

Norm

I thought I should explain further. You see, the obvious answer is that the deaf lady made the mistake between "sweep" and "sleep" as she did with "six" and "sex", but a few things bothered me.

1) When Kramer was first introduced, he signed her something that she couldn't understand. I imagine that she'd be pretty good at sign language, so does Kramer know sign language really well?

2) When she signed back to Kramer, he turned to Jerry and claimed something along the lines of "she doesn't know what she's talking about." Once again, does Kramer know what HE'S talking about?

3) After Kramer's mix-up, George, being somewhat embarrassed with his friend incompetence, I assume, covers his face with his hand and shakes his head.

4) After the whole mix-up, George yells at the lip-reader and she reacts by hitting Kramer (and accidentally catching George in the eye on the back swing).

What do you all think? Am I just over analyzing it?

Norm

I've had an argument with my housemate about this and decided to look elsewhere for an opinion. The episode in which Jerry gets his girlfriend to lip-read for George, whose fault is the mess-up at the end, Kramer's or Jerry's girlfriend?

You see, the obvious answer is that the deaf lady made the mistake. Kramer obviously knew sign language, translating perfectly the deaf lady's entire interpretation of the conversation between George's friend and George's ex-girlfriend. Perfectly, that is, except that he said "sleep" instead of "sweep". I assume the sign for sweep is considerably different from that of sleep; so logically it was her error. She misread "sweep" as "sleep" as she did with "six" and "sex" earlier in the episode, but a few things bothered me,

1) When Kramer was first introduced, he signed her something that she couldn't understand. I imagine that she'd be pretty good at sign language, so how well does Kramer know sign language?

2) When she signed back to Kramer, he turned to Jerry and claimed something along the lines of "she doesn't know what she's talking about." Once again, does Kramer know what HE'S talking about?

3) After Kramer's mix-up, George, being somewhat embarrassed with his friend incompetence, I assume, covers his face with his hand and shakes his head.

4) After the whole mix-up, George yells at the lip-reader and she reacts by hitting Kramer (and accidentally catching George in the eye on the back swing).

What do you think? Am I just over analyzing it?

Norm

keepkicking

Norman Nasser wrote:

It's Kramers fault.

Jonathan

Jonathan wrote:

Well, I agree that Kramer may have been a bit confused about sign language when he signed something to her and she didn't know what he was saying, but I think it's more likely that she would confuse "sweep" with "sleep" from across the room than him mistaking one sign for another. He DID get everything that she signed correctly. It's a lot more logical to say that she was the one who messed up. As pointed out before, she mixed up "six" and "sex".

-DK

It's always Kramer's fault!

On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Jonathan wrote:

Norman Nasser wrote:

It was just repeated in syndication tonight and after an in depth study of the video tape I conclude the deaf girl was making the same sign for both "sweep" (in the conversation between George's ex & the host) and "SWEEP!" (when George joins the conversation).

This plus the fact that she gets so angry with Kramer, who acts so guilty and doesn't try to deny the blame, imply that it was all Kramer's fault.

Q.E.D.

Jonathan

What!???? I can't believe that I actually am going to analyze this, but that was a ridiculous answer so I have to respond to it. It is the Jerry's girlfriend who obviously makes the mistake. 1) The whole thing was set up earlier with the whole six-sex mixup. 2)The mixup at the party obviously comes from her mistaking sweep for sleep. For you to be right she signals to Kramer sweep but he misinterprets the sweep sign as the sleep sign. Now that would be quite a coincidence if the signs for sleep and sweep were so similar as to be confusing to Kramer. That is very unlikely. There's probably not much gray area in different signs as there certainly is with spoken words read from across the room. The only plausible explanation is her misinterpreting it.

GIRTH0519 ([email]) wrote:

Your points are absolutely logical and correct; Kramer isn't doing the lipreading so he is not going to confuse "sweep" with "sleep"--the mistake has to take place at the moment of lipreading. However, I just saw the episode too, and she definitely signs "sweep" the whole time. Apparently the writers didn't think this one through.

Paul K.

On 4 Feb 1998 07:33:55 GMT, [email] (Paul Kintzele) wrote:

Actually, his whole argument is based on the presumption that Kramer actually knows sign language. But isn't that put in doubt earlier in the same episode (there's a moment when Kramer first meets the deaf girl and he signs something she doesn't understand) ? So really, the writers did a pretty good job in concealing who's fault it was.

Paul S.

Paul Sobejko wrote:

The deaf girl consistently makes the same sign for sweep. The sign looks like is she is sweeping one palm with the finger tips of the other hand. How anybody can still think it was the girls fault? There must be some deaf Seinfeld viewers out there who can add something to the argument.

Badly written, non sequitur it may be (then again who can fathom the workings of Kramer's mind) but based on this evidence it can only be Kramers fault.

Case closed-next!

Jonathan

When Kramer meets the lip reader she doesn't understand what Kramer said, and he says that she doesn't know what she is talking about. Kramer could be the one that is wrong but maybe he was right, because of the sweep/sleep and six/sex mix-ups.