The Comeback (Seinfeld)

George's coworker Reilly notices him stuffing himself with shrimp cocktail at a meeting and remarks: "Hey George, the ocean called; they're running out of shrimp." After the meeting, George thinks up a comeback: "Well, the Jerk Store called, and they're running out of you." He becomes obsessed with recreating the encounter so that he can make use of this comeback, despite Jerry, Elaine and Kramer all telling him that the comeback makes no sense.

Reilly changes jobs to Firestone in Akron, Ohio. George flies there to attend a meeting, and brings a tray of shrimp, prompting Reilly to repeat his "ocean" zinger. When George delivers the comeback, Reilly simply shoots back "What's the difference? You're their all-time bestseller." In desperation, George claims he had sex with Reilly's wife. This reduces the room to an offended silence, since Reilly's wife is in a coma. After arriving back in New York, George thinks of a new comeback: "The life support machine called...", and makes a U-turn so he can fly back to Akron and deliver it.

While browsing the staff picks at Champagne Video, Elaine becomes a fan of Vincent's picks. While Elaine is watching a Vincent pick, he calls her on the telephone. Elaine becomes romantically interested in him, but he refuses to meet her in person. On a subsequent visit to the video store, Elaine craves something lighter than the tearjerkers which dominate Vincent's picks. Kramer convinces her to try a Gene pick, Weekend at Bernie's II. Vincent feels betrayed by this, terminates their relationship, and stops making picks.

After Elaine rents Vincent's pick that she spurned in favor of Weekend at Bernie's II, Vincent agrees to meet her at his apartment if she brings some vodka, cigarettes and fireworks. When she arrives, he refuses to open the door all the way. His mother opens the door, revealing that Vincent is 15 years old. Mortified, Elaine takes the vodka from the bag and walks off.

At a pro tennis shop, Jerry is pressured into buying a high end racquet by the worker there — an Eastern European man named Miloš. While playing at a tennis club with Elaine, Jerry discovers that Miloš is a horrible tennis player. In Jerry's eyes, this undermines Miloš' credibility as a salesman. Miloš offers to do anything in exchange for Jerry not revealing his secret. While in the shop, Jerry's eye is caught by an attractive woman. The woman, named Patty, waits for him outside his apartment. She prepositions him for sex, but recoils in shame, revealing that she is Miloš' wife and was instructed to seduce Jerry by her husband. The incident makes her lose respect for Miloš.

Kramer rents a straight-to-video movie about a woman in a coma. Frightened by the movie, he has a living will drawn up. He retains a lawyer named Shellbach, with Elaine as his executor, and opts to have his life support terminated in all but the most extreme cases. Kramer finishes watching the movie, in which the woman comes out of the coma. Not having known that it is possible to awake from a coma, he resolves to get his living will annulled, but misses his appointment. He learns that he can catch up with Shellbach at the tennis club.

Miloš asks Jerry to let him win a game of tennis to regain Patty's respect. During the game, Miloš derides Jerry's tennis ability. Frustrated at Miloš' taunts, Jerry begins to play for real. He hits a ball wide of Miloš, who swings wildly at it, releasing his racquet into the air. It comes down on another tennis player, who falls on a ball machine, redirecting its aim to Kramer's head. Kramer collapses and ends up in the hospital. When Elaine visits him, looking for an outlet for her VCR, she unplugs a large plug. Kramer wakes up and, seeing the plug in Elaine's hand, thinks she just removed his life-support.

The relationship between Elaine and Vincent is a reference to The Phantom of the Opera,[1] which was in its 9th year on Broadway at the time.

The tennis court scenes in this episode were set in an indoor court, but the crew could not find an available indoor court in all of Los Angeles to use as a filming location. To compensate, they used a massive crane to drape a large tent over an outdoor tennis court, making it look like an indoor court. Unfortunately, this episode was filmed during the period when El Niño was beginning to affect the weather patterns in the United States, resulting in heavy rain in Los Angeles on the week the crew needed to shoot their tennis court scenes. The rain collected on the outside of the tent, and several large puddles can be seen on the court in several shots in the episode. The tent finally collapsed in a heap shortly after filming of the master shots wrapped, so the remaining footage was filmed back at the studio on a makeshift half-court set.

The role of Vincent was played by Danny Strong and voiced by Robby Benson. In real life, Strong was knowledgeable about films from an early age. He would rent videos from Video Archives, becoming friends with Quentin Tarantino, who worked there as a clerk. "I would just literally sit and chat with him for 45 minutes, an hour at a time about movies, and he got me turned on to all these different movies that 10 year olds don't see... He was a fantastic video store clerk, because he was such a movie buff. He had so much knowledge of films, that he would try to get people to watch really cool movies."[2]

The role of Reilly was played by character actor Joel Polis.

David Sims of The A.V. Club wrote, "Things are pretty disconnected in this episode, although Kramer, Jerry and Elaine all sorta come together by the end (just for a cheap, quick gag, but it's a decent one)... Elaine's romance with Vincent (played, oh so briefly, by a young Danny Strong) is more fun, although as a Phantom of the Opera spoof it feels very stale... But I like the communication that goes on between them through the video aisles and Vincent's battle for artistic supremacy with the more middle-of-the-road Gene (whose recommendation of Weekend at Bernie's 2 doesn't go over well with Elaine). It turns out, of course, that Vincent is a teenager leveraging Elaine to buy him vodka, fireworks and cigarettes. The connection between these episodes, actually, is how pitiful Elaine's romantic prospects have become (while the boys continue to date increasingly beautiful specimens)."[1]

Nick Suss wrote for the site StoriesHouse, "Like most episodes of Seinfeld, The Comeback wove four plots together seamlessly while connecting each of them with conversation. The episode was witty, silly, poignant and above all else laden with quotes. Most notably, this episode led us to all references to "The Jerk Store," to which we owe the writing staff a great deal of debt. (Think about it: without "The Jerk Store called, and they're running out of you!," we probably wouldn't have had the Toilet Store remark from Anchorman and we would all be much sadder as a result. Food for thought.) In other news, the show also featured Jerry getting tennis lessons from a poor tennis player, Elaine dating a teenager over the phone and Kramer filling out his last will and testament... Even if the first few episodes started off slowly as many say they did, the episodes which were easily the most enjoyable were in fact those. It just holds testament to how much we loved the show and still love the show that the idea of a comeback was so enticing."[3]

• "The Comeback" on IMDb
• "The Comeback" at TV.com