Elaine Benes

Elaine Benes
Seinfeld character
First appearance	"The Stake Out" (1990)
Last appearance	"The Finale, Part II" (1998)
Created by	Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David
Portrayed by	Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Information
Aliases	Suzy Susie Suze Nip Paloma Nurse Paloma Laney Lois Loan Queen of the Castle Nedda Wanda Pepper
Gender	Female
Occupation	Assistant to Mr. Pitt, Copy Writer for J. Peterman, Editor at Pendant Publishing
Family	Alton Benes (father) Unnamed mother Gail Benes (sister) Grandma Mema (grandmother)
Relatives	Holly (cousin), Pete (uncle), unnamed nephew
Birth Date	January 29, 1962
Alma Mater	Tufts University

Elaine Marie Benes /ˈbɛnɪs/ is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine's best friend is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld, and she is also good friends with George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer. Julia Louis-Dreyfus received critical acclaim for her performance as Elaine, winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe and five SAG Awards. Julia Louis-Dreyfus reprised the role during season 41 of Saturday Night Live.

Elaine's debut

Unlike her three close friends, Elaine is absent from the pilot episode. Previously the female role was supposed to be Claire, the waitress at Pete's Luncheonette played by Lee Garlington, but Monk's Cafe replaced the luncheonette and Garlington was dropped from the role. Elaine first appears in "The Stake Out," but in production order she appears in a final scene eating M&Ms in "Male Unbonding." NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast as a condition for commissioning the show, as revealed in the commentary on the Season 1 and 2 DVD. In addition to the first episode, Elaine doesn't appear in "The Trip" and therefore appears in fewer episodes than George and Jerry.

Real-life inspiration

After it was discovered that Jerry Seinfeld once dated writer and comedian Carol Leifer, speculation grew that Elaine was based on Leifer, though that was later largely denied. Leifer, who wrote or cowrote a number of episodes for the show, has said only some elements of the backstory of the character—that she and Seinfeld had dated and have remained good friends since the relationship ended—relate to her.^[1] She says some elements of the character of Elaine, especially her assertiveness, intelligence and sense of humor, are drawn from the off-screen personality of Julia Louis-Dreyfus herself. According to Seinfeld's biography (written by Jerry Oppenheimer), Elaine was based in part on Susan McNabb (who was dating Seinfeld when the character was created), though eventually named after friend and fellow comic Elayne Boosler. Also, the character was partially based on Monica Yates, daughter of novelist Richard Yates, whom Larry David once dated, and they remained good friends after they broke up.^[2]

Personality

Elaine is normally intelligent and assertive, but also quite superficial. She's 'one of the boys', and despite the troubles they go through as a group, she remains the closest female friend to the main male cast throughout the series. Her traits are usually edgy and neurotic and she has a tendency to easily get angry with almost everybody, and has a habit of shoving people when displaying extreme emotion. She's ruined her friends' ambitions, like throwing George's hairpiece out the window after trying to explain the irony behind it in "The Beard" or revealing what Jerry said in "The Cheever Letters" about the "panties her mother laid out for her".

Elaine is a serial dater, a trait lampooned in "The Sponge", where she's desperate to buy a cache of discontinued contraceptive sponges before they're all bought up. She coins the word "spongeworthy" debating her then-boyfriend's prospects of intimacy at the expense of her inventory.^[3] Her neuroses often interfere with her relationships, leading to the premature end of a blossoming relationship. For example, in "The Stall", Elaine is dating Tony, a very good-looking athletic type. After a rock climbing accident mangles Tony's face, Elaine admits to Jerry that she can't date somebody who's unattractive and wonders how long she's obligated to stay with him post-accident. Later, in "The Couch" after proclaiming her love for new boyfriend Carl, she immediately ends the relationship upon learning that he doesn't share her opinions on abortion. Elaine also is attracted to men with lucrative jobs, especially doctors.

Generally, her hair was long with curls or waves, but underwent changes since Season 5. In early seasons, she had long, curly, brown hair and usually wore her hair half-up, framing her forehead with a slight bouffant. By Season 7, her hair darkened and her hairstyle matured resulting in a more modern look for the rest of the series, even wearing it straight in "The Wait Out" and "The Invitations". After cutting it short in "The Soul Mate" and growing it out in "The Bizarro Jerry", it was shoulder length again by "The Little Kicks", and straightened once more from "The Summer of George" to "The Betrayal". There are a few episodes where her hair is discussed in relation to the plot. In "The Strike", it's damaged when affected by steam. In "The Smelly Car" a valet makes Jerry's car and Elaine's hair smell like body odor. In "The Movie" George describes Elaine as having "a big wall o' hair".^[4]

Her clothes are normally quite conservative. In the first three seasons, she often wears floral, collared, mid-calf length, button-down dresses with white ankle socks and oxfords. She also often wears high-waisted, tapered black jeans or pants and a bright blazer. For work, she dresses more formally. Peter Mehlman reveals on audio commentary in "The Sponge" and "The Betrayal" that female fans favor the brown leather jacket that she wears from Season 7 onward. Occasionally, she's entirely out of her usual attire, as in "The Betrayal" (when she wears an Indian outfit and hairstyle) and "The Millennium" (where she dons Mayan dress). Elaine also wears glasses at times, usually during work hours.

Although she's friends with George, Elaine tends to be combative with him. Still, Elaine sees him as a good friend: in "The Wife", he argues with Elaine over her love interest, who's threatening to throw him out of the health club. The portrayal of Elaine as smarter and more successful than George is occasionally reversed for comic effect: In "The Opposite", George finds success and happiness doing the opposite of whatever his instincts tell him, while normally successful Elaine falls on hard times. In "The Abstinence", George becomes smarter while not having sex, but Elaine gets dumber. In a few episodes George and Elaine work together, most notably in "The Revenge" and "The Cadillac".

She sometimes goes to Kramer for help. She asks him and Newman to help her get rid of a neighbor's dog in "The Engagement". In "The Slicer", she asks him first to lose power at her neighbors' house and also feed the cat with meat. In "The Watch" she asks him to pose as her boyfriend so she can dump Dr. Reston, her controlling psychiatrist boyfriend. In "The Soup Nazi", she asks him to watch an armoire for her on the street until she can move it in the following day. The only conflict is in "The 7" over a girl's bicycle where Newman is the judge over the dispute.

Elaine is the only main character not to own a car. In "The Busboy" (off camera) and "The Pothole" she borrows Jerry's, and in "The Wait Out" her friend Elise's car. In "The Burning" she borrows then-boyfriend David Puddy's. Also, it's revealed that she's a horrible driver who slams on the brakes and wildly steers the car.

Elaine also has a very refined taste in film, citing many movies, plays and characters throughout the series. She has a particular affection for A Streetcar Named Desire. In "The Pen", Elaine shows her love for the movie when she becomes unintentionally high on muscle relaxers and repeatedly screams "Stella" at a fancy awards dinner for Morty Seinfeld in Florida. In "The Fusilli Jerry" Elaine describes David Puddy, her new on and off again boyfriend, as a man who comes home "dripping with animal sexuality" after Jerry says that dating his mechanic is "such a huge turn off." In "The Comeback" Elaine rents Vincent picks that she likes compared to Kramer who likes Gene picks. Later in the same episode, she tries Weekend at Bernie's II which is a Gene pick recommended by Kramer and which she hates. In "The English Patient", Elaine expresses her utter dislike for the film which won nine Oscars including Best Picture, and prefers a comedy called "Sack Lunch." Later in the episode, a theater outburst gets her temporarily fired until she agrees to travel to Tunisia and live in a cave in order to save her job.

In "The Boyfriend", Elaine reveals her disgust for smokers, which helps lead to a breakup with Keith Hernandez. Her dislike of smoking also leads to an argument with a fortune-teller in "The Suicide". However, in "The Calzone" and "The Foundation" she's seen smoking with a Cuban cigar. She's also seen smoking a cigar in "The Blood", but only to make herself look bad in front of the mom of the child she's babysitting.

In "The Maid", Elaine has a phone serviceman in her apartment to change the apartment's phone number (in response to receiving numerous attempted faxes meant for Kramer). While the serviceman is at work kneeling beside the phone, and holding a large candlestick, she speculates (heard via voice-over) whether it'd be discovered if she killed the serviceman (credited as "Phone Guy #1" Sam Whipple). Upon learning that the new phone number will have the 646 area code instead of Manhattan's traditional 212, she tells the man: "You know, I could have killed you and no one would have known," to which the serviceman repeats those exact words back to her.

Family

Elaine is the only main character whose mother never appears. Her father, a gruff novelist named Alton Benes (Lawrence Tierney), a character based on novelist Richard Yates, was featured in "The Jacket". He's an alcoholic veteran and very well respected in the literary community. In the same episode, Alton asks how her mom is; later, in "The Wait Out", Elaine reveals to David Lookner that Alton left her and the rest of her family when she was 9 years old.

Elaine has a sister, Gail, and nephew who are first mentioned in "The Pick". In "The Airport", it's revealed that Gail lives in St. Louis. She also makes reference to a brother-in-law in "The Phone Message".

Elaine has a cousin, Holly, who appears in "The Wink", where reference is made to Elaine's grandmother Mema, whom Holly inherited a set of cloth napkins from. It is not revealed if Mema is her maternal or paternal grandmother.

In "The Stock Tip", Elaine mentions she has an Uncle Pete. In "The Secret Code", she mentions an uncle who worked in the Texas School Book Depository with Lee Harvey Oswald. If the two uncles are the same person is not revealed.

Background and education

Unlike George, Jerry and Kramer, Elaine is not a native of New York City, having grown up in the affluent Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland, and is shown to be a fan of the Baltimore Orioles. She attended finishing school and completed her undergraduate education at Tufts University, revealed to be her safety school in "The Puerto Rican Day", as a French Literature major. In "The Dog", she tells George she moved to New York in 1986, which, by coincidence, is the year Jerry moved into his apartment across the hall from Kramer. She started dating Jerry later that year. In "The Doodle" it is stated by George that Elaine takes a drawing class at The New School with his girlfriend Paula.

Elaine's religious beliefs are never confirmed, and she appears to have no interest in religion. She expresses shock when Puddy is revealed as a devout Christian. She views saying "God bless you" as a "silly superstition" in "The Good Samaritan". On the other hand, she's seen making the sign of the cross before entering Jerry's apartment to retrieve a manuscript while it's being fumigated in "The Doodle", and crosses herself again in "The Betrayal" after turning her back on a Hindu altar. This might suggest that Elaine was raised Catholic. In multiple episodes, including "The Strong Box" and "The Wizard", she can be seen wearing a crucifix. In "The Pick", Elaine is horrified when she realizes she sent a Christmas card which features her nipple to "Sister Mary Catherine" and "Father Chelios".

In "The Chinese Woman", Elaine asks Jerry about the ethnicity of Donna Chang, whose surname was shortened from Changstein, a move not unusual for Jewish immigrants. Jerry responds to Elaine that Donna is "like you". However, Elaine is confirmed to be a gentile in "The Postponement", when she talked to a rabbi about not being herself after finding out George got engaged before her. She tells him she's not of his Jewish faith. Elaine also states that she's not Jewish in "The Fatigues." Though her ethnicity is never made clear, the name Beneš is a common Czech surname. Her ethnicity is incorrectly assumed to be Hispanic in "The Wizard". In "The Wink", her cousin Holly repeatedly mentions a "Grandma Memma" who apparently shared a mutual dislike with Elaine's side of the family. Elaine claims to have an IQ of 145 (although her scores range from 85 to 151).

Residence

Early in the series, Elaine lives with a roommate Tina. Later on, she lives on her own at 16 W. 75th St., Apt. 2G and 78 W. 86th St., Apt. 3E.

Employment

Elaine works several steady jobs throughout the show's entire run, mostly as a writer or editor.

• During Seasons 2 to 5, she works at Pendant Publishing under her boss Mr. Lippman, where she served as a copy editor before losing her job at the end of Season 5 when the company went bankrupt, and a misunderstanding resulting from her penchant for chewy, speech-impairing Jujyfruit candies thwarted a merger that might have saved the company. ("The Opposite").
• She later becomes a personal assistant to the eccentric, demanding Justin Pitt, starting in "The Chaperone", but later is fired when Mr. Pitt thinks she and Jerry are conspiring to kill him in "The Diplomat's Club". Her duties for Mr. Pitt included largely mundane tasks, like buying him socks or removing the salt crystals from his pretzel sticks ("The Mom & Pop Store").
• After her dismissal from this position, she meets J. Peterman on the street ("The Understudy") and becomes an editor at his J. Peterman Catalog, where she remains employed for the rest of the series. Starting in "The Foundation", she takes charge of the catalog when Peterman suffers a nervous breakdown and flees to Burma. She goes on a spending spree on the company account (she buys George an $8000 sable hat in "The Chicken Roaster"). Once Peterman returns to find an ineffective reshuffling of employees in "The Money" she's demoted back to her former position. Peterman also fires her twice: first when her penchant for poppy seed muffins cause her to fail a drug test in "The Shower Head" and then in "The English Patient" when she expresses her hate for the movie The English Patient. She's able to recover her job by agreeing to live temporarily in a remote cave in the desert of Tunisia.

Romantic relationships

Elaine has a string of boyfriends, most of whom appeared for only an episode or two.

Enemies

Elaine's quick temper makes her several enemies and gets her into several confrontations over the years:

Insecurities

• In "The Andrea Doria", Elaine dates Alan, a "bad breaker-upper", who makes her feel insecure about having a big head. In the episode she describes herself as a "walking candy apple" after a bird runs into her "giant, freak head."
• In "The Smelly Car", Elaine repulses her boyfriend Carl when her hair stinks of BO from riding in Jerry's car. She goes to extreme lengths to get the smell out but nothing works, and he continues to be grossed out.
• In "The Postponement", Elaine confides in a rabbi that she's jealous of George's engagement to Susan Ross because George would be getting married before her and she considers George a loser. The Rabbi proceeds to tell everybody in Elaine's apartment complex and later on his cable TV show about her insecurity.

Influence/effect on others

Elaine's charm and confidence contribute to her ability to influence others, often with disastrous consequences.

• In "The Chinese Woman", Jerry describes how Elaine has had a destructive effect on her relationship with her friend Noreen. It's revealed that over the course of their friendship, Elaine has convinced Noreen to join and go AWOL from the army and dump her "high-" and "long-talker" boyfriends. Eventually, Kramer steps in and forbids Elaine to have any more contact with Noreen.
• In "The Muffin Tops", Elaine convinces her ex-boss Mr. Lippman to start his own business selling just "muffin tops". However, they soon run into problems when no one will take the leftover stumps, and only by calling in "The Cleaner" (who turns out to be Newman) can they get rid of them.
• In "The Non-Fat Yogurt", Elaine suggests to Lloyd Braun, an advisor to Dave Dinkins, that everybody in the city should wear name tags. Lloyd Braun suggests this idea to Mayor Dinkins, who likes it so much that he adds it to his campaign, subsequently leading to his loss in the mayoral elections. In "The Gum", it's revealed that Lloyd Braun also loses his job and later had a mad fit.
• In "The Pilot," Russell Dalrymple's love for Elaine drives him to the point near the end of the show that he joins Greenpeace just to impress her and dies in the aftermath.

Physical moments

• She often shoves a person and yells "get out!" whenever she hears good news. It first appeared in "The Apartment" and goes on like a normal push. By "The Engagement", the show ramps it up as the tone of the humor changes, which lets Elaine really shove a person into another room for comic effect, most memorably "The Engagement" with Jerry and "The Soup Nazi" with Kramer. Also, the most memorable moment is in "The Bizarro Jerry": she shoves Kevin to the ground, helping end her friendship with the bizarro group.
• She's a breathtakingly poor dancer. Her performance at a J. Peterman company party, the central plot theme of "The Little Kicks", causes George to describe it as "a full-bodied dry heave set to music." The moves are repeated in her bedroom in a short scene of "The Slicer". Both clips appear in "The Clip Show, Pt. 1".^[5]
• In "The Doodle", she holds her breath looking for the manuscript she was meant to read and memorize for her appointment.
• Elaines favorite song is Witchy Woman by The Eagles
• Elaine does not appear in "The Seinfeld Chronicles". She is also absent from "The Trip", and has minimal roles in "The Pitch", "The Ticket" and "The Butter Shave" due to Louis-Dreyfus' maternity leave, making her the most absent of the 4 main characters.
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus' pregnancy is notable in Seasons 3 and 8. In production order, she hides her baby bump in some subtle ways like putting a pillow over her stomach when she sat down. Her stomach is noticeable from "The Subway" to "The Keys" in Season 3 and "The Pothole" to "The Summer of George" in Season 8. The character of CC Babcock would later reference it on The Nanny, and mentions seeing an episode where Elaine is "12 months pregnant" and trying to hide it with a large handbag, while CC's portrayer, Lauren Lane, was doing exactly the same thing since she was also pregnant herself.
• Elaine's hairstyle changed in Season 7 and remained so for the rest of the series.
• Patricia Heaton, Megan Mullally and Rosie O'Donnell also auditioned for the part, and when it was offered to Louis-Dreyfus she wasn't sure if she should accept.^[6]
• Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role while hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live in its 41st season. In the context of a Democratic debate taking place in the Bronx, moderator Wolf Blitzer announces that they will take questions from "long time New Yorkers". Benes first poses a question to Bernie Sanders, as portrayed by Seinfeld creator Larry David. The two engage in an exchange about saying "yada yada yada", reminiscent of George (who was based on David) and Elaine. Louis-Dreyfus also joined in as Elaine to deliver the show's signature line.^[7]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Elaine Benes

• Seinfeld on IMDb
• Elaine on Seinfeldonline.com- Unofficial fan website.