The Masseuse

Season 5, Episode 9, "The Masseuse" "The Masseuse" is one of the weaker episodes in the excellent season 5. Elaine's storyline makes no sense whatsoever, though it does produce a couple of laughs. George's story feels like a particularly depressing episode of Curb You Enthusiasm, but somehow doesn't quite work here.

The main thing that makes the episode memorable is the appearance of two actresses who will become very familiar faces a decade later - Lisa Edelstein and Jennifer Coolidge - as George's and Jerry's girlfriends-of-the-week. Coolidge's performance is quite weak though, so the main thing is to just be amazed at how good she looked back then.

Elaine chooses a name for people to not associate with a serial killer and that name just happens to be O.J.? A year before the murders? They may not have known that murder was going to happen, but some writer definitely knew at the very least that O.J. was capable of murder or that he'd already killed before. If putting this information in a script instead of reporting it to the police isn't evidence that there are a lot of sociopaths in the film industry I don't know what is.

There's no question about this being an enjoyable episode. The thing is it doesn't match the standard levels of Season Five.

There are three main story lines on this one. Jerry has a masseuse girlfriend and wants her to give him a massage, George needs this same woman to like him (just because she hates him) and Elaine is dating a guy with a serial killer name. Kramer just bounces around these stories.

Jerry story line is by far the best of the three. Is the only one that proudly deserves its spot in a fifth season episode. The allegories between sex and massaging are hilarious (they do these kind of mash ups very often, but here is quite on point).

Elaine story line is okay. It's subtle, nothing spectacular, almost half-cooked. It's entertaining and harmless, but it's not really funny.

And George's story is, for me, quite annoying. It reaches a point of neurosis that it's not funny anymore. Definitely the worst of the bunch and the one that drags the episode down.

As I said, it's entertaining as every episode of this season, but it's not quite there with the others.

I saw a rerun of this episode yesterday and noticed something strange. Elaine was talking with her boyfriend about changing his name because he had the same name as a local murderer. She was throwing out suggestions and said OJ for one of them. This episode was taped not long before OJ Simpson killed his ex and her friend (even though he was acquitted of the charges).

I just thought it was eerie that the writers related the name of OJ to a murderer before he even committed the act. I wonder if OJ killed those people after watching this episode and thinking, hey, my name would be a good one to be associated with a murderer.

OR, did the writers of this episode really kill OJ's ex and her friend and set up OJ as the killer?! Makes you think...

If all the names to pick that don't sound like a murderer, they picked the most distinct one that became synonymous with murderer like six months after this aired. Especially first names. Jeez, the only one worse I can think of is Hannibal, and he's a fictional killer.