This thing with Kramer calling Susan Lily has been bugging me. He didn't know the name of the person:
whose parents he drove around in the hansome cab for their anniversary?
whose girlfriend he stole?
whose father's cabin he burned down?
So was the whole Lily thing just a Kramer quirk...as in Kramer decided that although he knew her name was Susan he'd like to call her Lily; or was it the writers' quick (and lazy, IMHO) way of distancing of the other characters from Susan, by trying to make us think Kramer never even knew her?
Dear Michelle,
The reason I believe that Kramer called Susan "Lily" seems to be
obvious to me! The name "Susan" means lily ( as in Black-Eyed Susan-
the human name was from the Hebrew name for the flower <not > the other
way around) ! There's a Book of the Apocrypha called "Susannah and the
Elders" about an innocent young woman who was nearly framed( and stoned)
for adultery after an attempted rape by corrupt Elders! Anyway in
Hebrew, her name was the same for lily! So I think that was what Kramer
was referring to! Walk Proud and Far,
Leon
Wasn't Kramer calling EVERYONE by the wrong names last week? Or the week before? Because he got knocked in the head or something? My memory is not so good for episodes I've only seen once, but I do recall that there was an ongoing gag in a recent episode where he called both Elaine and George by other names (as well as some other people?). Somebody check your tapes, okay?
I thought THIS was why he called Susan Lily -- his head bump (or whatever it was) was still in effect. And, since I already happened to know that Susan means Lily, I thought it was pretty darn clever of his subconscious to come up with a name that was _almost_ right.
Amazing that nobody's suggesting Kramer has latent precognitive abilities by feeling Susan "looked like" a Lily, when we all know that lilies are flowers very much associated with funerals.
Maybe Kramer calling Susan Lily is a way to bring back Susan in then next season? Her unrealated identical twin shows up and Kramer goes more insane and calls her Susan. George falls for Lily and she won't have anything to do with him?? Just a thought. The Lily thing seemed to forced to be just a throw away.
I think it was way out of character for Kramer not to remember a name. He's the original "people person" -- he literally seems to thrive on his relationships with other people and tends to use names more frequently than most people (for example, he doesn't say "I knew a guy once who..." but instead says "My friend Bob Sacamoto...").
This seems to me to be more evidence that there is something up with the last episode that will be resolved in the first one next year. Seinfeld is famous for tying up loose ends -- things that seem to be subplots throughout an episode or episodes eventually come into play. That's one of the things I admire about the writing. So it would be way out of character for the writers to have Kramer calling Susan "Lily" and then not have it come back somewhere down the line as part of a plot twist.
Elaine saying she's "had it, I'm getting out," was also out of character, as was (of course) Jerry's engagement.
Susan agreeing to get the cheap envelopes was even out of character.
*No* *one* in the episode was behaving in character except George, which makes me believe it was George's dream, or fantasy, or something.
As has been pointed out, the name "Susan" does mean "lily." It is derived from the Hebrew name "Shoshana" which means "lily" and "rose" as well. Interestingly enough, Jerry Seinfeld's real-life girlfriend was (is?) named Shoshana Lonstein, making Kramer's "mistake" something of an inside joke.
In a discussion with my cousin and aunt today, I think we may have stumbled into a possible explaination as to why Susan's face evoked the name Lily in Kramer's mind. Seinfeld often does story lines similar to other material. My relatives were discussing an old soap opera story line from As the World Turns when somone's character was slowly poisening his wife via the glue on either postage stamps or envelopes...the character name was Lilly. Does Kramer watch the soaps? I belive that he's made a reference to the Young and the Restless before.