The Susie

Infobox Television episode
Title = The Susie
Series = Seinfeld


Caption = Elaine with Peggy, the woman who calls her "Susie."
Season = 8
Episode = 149
Airdate = February 13, 1997
Production =
Writer = David Mandel
Director = Andy Ackerman
Guests = Lee Arenberg
Episode list = List of "Seinfeld" episodes
Season list = Infobox Seinfeld season 8 episode list
Prev =
Next =

"The Susie" is the 149th episode of the hit sitcom "Seinfeld". This was the 15th episode for the 8th season. It aired on February 13, 1997.

Plot

Mike, the guy who once referred to Jerry as "a phony" ("The Parking Space"), has become a bookie. Kramer, who has a gambling problem, wants Jerry to place bets with Mike on his behalf. Elaine's co-worker Peggy thinks that Elaine is a different woman named "Susie". George is excited about Steinbrenner's ball because he wants to be able to show off his tall, beautiful girlfriend Alison by making a "grand entrance".

George's plans to take Alison to the ball are put in jeopardy when he finds out that she is planning to break up with him beforehand. He therefore goes to great lengths to avoid her saying that "if she can't find me, she can't break up with me".

Kramer begins to live out his gambling addiction through Jerry, by placing bets in Jerry's name. But when Jerry wins, Mike the bookie can't pay up. When Jerry accidentally closes his car trunk door on Mike's thumbs, Mike becomes afraid of him. Later, Mike tries to make it up to Jerry by fixing his trunk but gets trapped inside.

Meanwhile, Peggy starts talking to "Susie" (actually Elaine) about Elaine, making derogatory comments about her. Elaine becomes angry, partly because of the comments, but also, bizarrely, because Peggy addresses her as "Suz" rather than Susie. When Peterman overhears he wants to resolve the conflict and demands a meeting between Peggy, Elaine and "Susie". Elaine becomes so tired of pretending to be the fake Susie, Jerry tells her that she should kill her off. Mike overhears, and believing Susie to be a real person, becomes even more terrified of Jerry, thinking that he is a killer.

Elaine tells Peterman that Susie committed suicide and a bereaved Peterman organizes a memorial service for her. Elaine delivers the eulogy at the wake, but becomes confused when Peterman announces that he had slept with "Susie". Peggy is even more confused to see Elaine, thinking she was Susie. When she tells Jerry "I guess I never met Susie", he claims to have slept with both Elaine and Susie. The service comes to an abrupt end when Mike bursts in and accuses Jerry of murdering Susie, but Jerry seems unconcerned, merely commenting to Peggy "Not only that, I broke his thumbs".

Finally, when Alison can't find George to break up with him, she uses Kramer as a go-between and Kramer breaks up with George on her behalf. Kramer shows up at the Ball in Alison's place and after a scuffle in the lobby, Kramer and George burst into the main hall, making a "grand entrance" of their own.

Elaine is glad to be rid of Susie, but Peterman tells her he's establishing a foundation in Susie's honor and expects Elaine to devote all of her non-working hours to running it. Elaine screams out "SUZ!"

Trivia

* George's answering machine message is a parody of the "Greatest American Hero" theme song, "Believe it or Not", originally sung by Joey Scarbury and written by Stephen Geyer and Mike Post. When recording the message for this episode, Jason Alexander (an accomplished musical theater performer) actually sang it too well for it to convincingly sound like somebody as tone-deaf as George Costanza, and thus sang it again, intentionally only putting half the effort into it.
* The plot of inventing a non-existent person, then subsequently explaining away their "death", is borrowed from the Russian story "Lieutenant Kijé", by Yury Tynyanov.Fact|date=September 2008
* Kramer makes reference to basketball star Reggie Miller when he says that they got into a fight when he threw a hot dog at him, but they later made up and went to a strip club.
* Peggy (Megan Cole) clashes with Elaine again in the season 9 episode"The Apology".
* Elaine screaming "SUZ!" while the camera rolls upwards is an homage to Captain Kirk yelling, "KHAN!" in "". George also did this when he learned that he would have to run Susan's foundation, in an earlier episode. The same 'camera-roll' angle was later used in The Dealership, when George was cringing over Twix.