Seinfeld (Series, The) (DVD)

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16) "The Beard"—Freshly toupeed George gets rankled when Kramer sets him up with a woman who turns out to be bald. Kramer ends up posing in police line-ups for $50 a pop. And Jerry has to take a lie-detector test when the cop he starts dating doesn't believe him when he says he doesn't watch Melrose Place. Meanwhile, Elaine tries to convert a gay man.

17) "The Kiss Hello"—Elaine's friend is a therapist who insists on kissing people "Hello," while Jerry hears a story about money Uncle Leo supposedly was to give his sister, and how his father wants to collect the money plus interest. Kramer puts up tenant pictures in the lobby, which encourages Jerry to give those hello kisses, while the therapist ends up leaving everyone holding the bag and goes on a ski trip with Elaine. Funny, but muddled.

18) "The Doorman"—Jerry tries to be nice, and gets on a doorman's bad side and finally figures out what to do with that soiled couch of his. George and Kramer freak when they see George's father shirtless . . . with breasts. And Kramer develops a new male undergarment, the "bro."

19) "The Jimmy"—Mel Torme guests in this funny episode which has Kramer appearing at the Able Mentally Challenged Adults benefit and leaving Torme and others thinking he's the poster child. Elaine tries to meet someone at the gym, the guys meet a man called Jimmy who talks about himself in the third person, and Jerry thinks his dentist and hygienist have been up to hanky panky while he's out cold in the chair . . . with Penthouse in the waiting room.

20) "The Doodle"—Isn't it romantic? Jerry doesn't think so. Not pecans that were in his girlfriend's mouth before his. Kramer has a peach fetish going, while Elaine has an interview at the same hotel where Jerry's parents stay, and loses an unpublished manuscript she was supposed to read. Kramer loses his sense of taste, George gets confused when he finds a doodle his girlfriend drew of him, and Jerry gets fleas from Newman. One of the more convoluted episodes.

21) "The Fusilli Jerry"—One of my favorite episodes finds Estelle getting an eye job, Frank needing an ass job, Kramer getting a proctologist's vanity plates ("ASSMAN") by mistake but making the best of it, and Jerry having it out with his mechanic who, he finds out from Elaine, stole his bedroom "move." Some very funny moments.

22) "The Diplomat's Club"—Elaine is going to quit working for Mr. Pitt, but finds out she's going to be in his will . . . and becomes a suspect when he Ods on his meds. George puts his foot in his mouth and has to prove to his boss that he's not a racist, and ends up trying to find anyone who's black to pose as his friend. Kramer meets a rich Texan who starts him gambling again, and it's Newman to the rescue. And Jerry starts off to meet a super model at an airport club, but his assistant, Katie clogs the runway.

23) "The Face Painter"—The subject is toilet paper, and George is in love. Elaine's boyfriend's rowdy behavior at a hockey game upsets Jerry, while Kramer gets upset that Jerry didn't give the necessary thank-you for those hockey tickets. And a zoo demands an apology when a banana peel throwing contest between Kramer and a monkey puts the primate in a blue funk.

Video: Remastered in High Definition, the 1.33:1 video really looks sharp, even stretched to fit a 16x9 widescreen television screen. The colors are vibrant and there isn't much in the way of bleed or pulsation. What more can I say? It looks great.

Audio: The sound quality is almost as good, with English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and what appears to be French Mono, though it's tough to tell much of a reduction in quality. Subtitles are in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Extras: Sony press releases say that Jerry Seinfeld personally approved the extras, but if you watch the bonus features you'll get the mixed message that it was all about the writing, and that Seinfeld often just said, "Yeah, yeah" when it came to other details. Which is why, if you have great expectations for the "Sein-imation" animated sequences that appear on this DVD (for "Kramer vs. The Monkey," "Seinfeld Noir," and "The Big Race") you might be disappointed. The segments are far shorter than the average cartoon short, and drawn in a rough, pencil Thurberesque style that probably befits an intelligent show about New Yorkers. It's a curiosity, at best.

The major extra for this season is "Running with the Egg," a two-part documentary that could be the best yet of the "Seinfeld" bonus features. Seinfeld compares the hectic race to produce each episode to "running with an egg," and this feature shows how each episode progresses from idea to outline to script, then table reads, rewrites, rehearsals, more rewrites, and finally production. But they hold nothing back. There are nifty segments which reveal some of the casts' nifty rituals, and great footage of table reads where you get a sense of the show's loose-but-brutal-and-exacting approach to humor. There's enough talking heads' explanations and behind-the-scenes footage to satisfy most fans' curiosity.

As with Season Five, there are also Inside looks at a number of episodes (including my favorite), and deleted scenes, with all sorts of commentary options. And there are commentaries on selected episodes that, again, as with Season Five, were taped in one sitting. That's not all bad, because you get the mood shifts in the cast. First they're polite and a bit unsure of what to say, then they grow in confidence and start to feed off of each other, and by the time they get around to watching the Season Six episodes they start to get a little of the swagger and audacity that audiences identify with their characters. Example? At one point, laughing at the sheer unbelievability of a scene's premise, Louis-Dreyfus blurts out, "This is SO asinine! I don't believe it." There are plenty of reveals, too. Another example? Alexander grumbles that the cast of "Will & Grace" got cars for the 100th episode, and, asked if he considered going with a beard in the show, says, "Jerry thinks beards are not funny." Enough said.

Bottom Line: Though "Seinfeld" finished at the top of the Nielson's this year, as it would once again it's ninth and final year, Season Six isn't the best . . . or the worst. It's scripts are more daringly cluttered with disparate elements, as if the writers were needing to up the ante and challenge themselves to tie more and zanier plot threads together somehow in a 22-minute episode. And for the most part, they succeed . . . in laugh-out-loud fashion.

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