Ponxerella

The Howard Borden/ Ellen Hartley romance, which evolved over numerous episodes from season 2-3, was always a mystery to me. Howard was certainly a quirky, even odd, character, and despite this, his attractive appearance, interesting career and general sweetness seemed to attract a lot of women, very attractive women.

Then suddenly he meets Bob's sister Ellen, and falls instantly in love with her. Ellen, who although isn't unattractive, is markedly less beautiful and sensual than every previous woman we've seen dating Howard. It might've been interesting to have cast Pat Findley, but to have written her as a more intriguing, intellectually mysterious, sensual woman. But instead Ellen's character is kind of flat, not especially charming, not especially alluring and physically sort of plain. Howard's dreamy eyed romantic feelings to her seem to be a contradiction of his character. Occasionally Bob refers to his sister as bold and independent, but the audience sees little of this. In one episode this bold independent woman is asking her brother Bob, permission to live with Howard. No woman over 30 would do this.

One of the things I did like about this long story line was dentist Jerry Robinson's remarks. As a kid growing up watching this show I did not pick up on this, but as an adult I see maybe 5/6 times Jerry mentioning that he can't see Ellen's appeal, he is bewildered by Howard's passion for Ellen. In fact he even mentions a bit of this to Bob (Ellen's own brother!) Everytime he brings this up, the other characters never really address Jerry's fairly low opinion of Ellen.

And last of all, the two actors playing Howard and Ellen, lack even the most rudimentary on screen chemistry. I don't think it's the actor's fault either. I think it's an odd casting choice, regarding Pat Findley, and some odd writing choices, the most obvious, hearing both Bob and Emily, and of course Howard, referring to Ellen as some bold adventuress, and then seeing nothing of these dramatic, charismatic traits in Ellen becomes noticeably odd, even irritating to watch. Maybe this casting stands out so strongly because the other casting choices seemed so spot on.

In general, I like almost every episode of the Seinfeld show, but it seems like the last couple of seasons possess odd moments where you feel they are really trying too hard to get a laugh...and it just doesn't work. The first thing that bothered me was an odd choice regarding Mrs. Costanza's voice in a couple of garage scenes. George, Lloyd Braun and Frank Costanza are in the garage trying to sell computers and numerous times we hear Estelle Costanza yelling loudly from outside the scene, responding to conversations occurring between the men inside the garage in a normal tone of voice. Her ability to hear these conversations and the distant sound of her yelling doesn't quite add up. It's repeated multiple times, not only does it not quite make sense, it's not funny either. At first I'd wondered if the actress who played Mrs. Costanza might've been ill and unable to be there physically on the set, and so they were reduced to using this screaming off camera voice, but that wasn't it, because she actually appears in the beginning scene before the garage scenes take place. Throughout the previous 8 seasons we've seen Mrs. Costanza yell at George, yell at her husband, but never have we seen her continue this unexplained yelling from another room, outside from the view of the audience, and never physically materialize.

The whole computer store operating out of the Costanza's garage didn't provide the laughs for me, and humor aside, I didn't find it believable or interesting.