George Louis Costanza is a character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998), played by Jason Alexander. He has variously been described as a "brain-damaged, short, stocky, slow-witted, ugly, old, bald man" (by Elaine Benes and Costanza himself) and "Lord of the Idiots" (by Costanza himself). George and Jerry were junior high school friends and remained friends afterwards. He is friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, and Elaine Benes. George appears in every episode except "The Pen" (third season).
The character was originally based on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David but is surnamed after Jerry Seinfeld's real-life New York friend, Mike Costanza. Alexander reprised his role in an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, reuniting with Jerry Seinfeld and Wayne Knight (also reprising their roles as Jerry and Newman, respectively).
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Early life and family
George is the son of Frank (Jerry Stiller), an Italian-American and Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris), presumably Jewish-American. Though he never made an appearance on the show, George has mentioned twice that he has a brother. Lloyd Braun is his childhood nemesis who George feels was the son his parents always wanted. George's best friend Jerry Seinfeld described Frank and Estelle as "psychopaths", and said in "The Chinese Woman" that, if they'd divorced when George was young, he "could have been normal". George also describes himself (and by implication many neuroses) as the result of his parents having stayed together.
In "The Junior Mint", he states he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he went to a public school. In a previous episode he mentions he went to high school on Long Island. He met Jerry during his youth, and they remained friends from that point on. George and Jerry both attended John F. Kennedy High School, class of 1971. During their high school years, George and Jerry frequently hung out at a pizzeria called Mario's Pizzas, where the former, having the highest score "GLC", would play Frogger. George was picked on by his gym teacher Mr. Heyman (Biff Yeager), who deliberately mispronounced his name as "Can't stand ya" and gave him wedgies.
George has three known cousins: Shelly, who appeared in "The Contest", George Howarth and Rhisa, who appears in "The Junk Mail". George talks to his parents about his family in "The Money", during which it's revealed that he had an "Uncle Moe", who "died a young man" and an "Aunt Baby", who died at the age seven of internal problems. It is also revealed that his mother has a "Cousin Henny". In "The Doll", it's revealed that Frank Costanza was born in Italy and has a cousin, Carlo, who still lives there. As of "The Robbery", George had living grandparents who he'd recently visited, although it's never made clear whether these were his mom's or dad's parents.
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Personality
George is neurotic, self-loathing and dominated by his parents, yet also prone to occasional periods of overconfidence that invariably arise at the worst possible time. Throughout Seinfeld's first season, George is depicted as moderately intelligent - at one point, he mentions an intellectual interest in the Civil War and, in some early episodes, appears almost as a mentor to Jerry - but becomes less sophisticated, to the point of being too lazy even to read a ninety-page book (Breakfast at Tiffany's), preferring to watch the movie adaptation at a stranger's house instead. However, one Chicago Tribune reviewer noted that, despite all his shortcomings, George is "pretty content with himself".
George exhibits a number of negative character traits, among them dishonesty, insecurity and neurosis, many of which seem to stem from a dysfunctional childhood with his squabbling parents Frank and Estelle, and often form the basis of his involvement in various plots, schemes and awkward social encounters. George's relationship with Frank is estranged. Episode plots frequently feature George manufacturing elaborate deceptions at work or in his relationships in order to gain or maintain some small or imagined advantage or (pretend) image of success. He had success in "The Opposite", where he starts (with Jerry's encouragement) to do the complete opposite of what his instincts tell him to do, which results in him getting a girlfriend and job with the New York Yankees. His neurosis is also evident in "The Note", where he begins doubting his sexuality after receiving a massage from a male masseuse.
George sometimes refers to himself in the third person (for example, "George is getting UPSET!"), after befriending a person with a similar trait in "The Jimmy".
George's occasional impulsiveness often gets him into trouble, like when he flees a burning kitchen, knocking over several children and an old woman in the process, so he could escape first during his girlfriend's son's birthday party in "The Fire". However, there are moments where George exhibits remarkable courage, but usually accidentally and often in support of inane lies he'd rather not confess to. For instance, in "The Marine Biologist", he goes into the sea alone to save a beached whale because his date, a woman on whom he had a crush in college, thinks he's a marine biologist and even tells her the truth about his occupation after he saves the day. However, this causes her to reject him immediately, and he's forced to take the bus home.
George often goes to impressive measures to build and maintain his relationships with women. In "The Conversion", he goes through the process of converting to the Latvian Orthodox religion as his girlfriend's conservative parents wouldn't let her date somebody outside their religion. In "The Susie", he deems it so important that he make a grand entrance at his work's ball with his attractive girlfriend Allison that, upon finding out that she plans to break up with him, George goes to great lengths to avoid her before the ball, stating "If she can't find me, she can't break up with me." Ultimately though, the one relationship he holds long-term, with his fiancé Susan, is the one about which he's seemingly least enthusiastic, as shown by his ongoing attempts to first postpone, and later cancel, their wedding and his rather nonchalant reaction when she suddenly dies. In fact, in "The Foundation", George shows greater emotion while discussing the death of the Star Trek character, Spock, in the movie, "The Wrath of Khan" than after Susan's death.
In some episodes, George aligns with both Kramer and Elaine, against whom he's also frequently pitted. With Elaine, while he gets into arguments with her, they also work together, most notably in "The Cadillac", although George states in "The Dinner Party" that he's frightened of Elaine. George and Kramer usually feel awkward around one another but find themselves working together (and against one another) in "The Busboy", "The Stall" and "The Slicer". "The Susie" is the only episode where their relationship is as prominent as the relationships between the other characters. Some episodes, like "The Raincoats", "The Money", "The Doorman" and "The Fusilli Jerry", would suggest that Kramer has a more comfortable rapport with George's parents than George.
He has an interest in nice restrooms and his personal bathroom habits border on obsession. In "The Revenge", he quits his real estate job solely because he's forbidden to use his boss' private bathroom. In "The Voice", he admits that one of the reasons he's staying at a job his boss has asked that he resign from (for feigning a disability) is that it gives him "private access to one of the great handicapped toilets in the city". In "The Busboy", he claims to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the locations of the best public bathrooms in the city. He proves this in "The Bizarro Jerry" when he directs Kramer to "the best bathroom in midtown" at the offices of Brand/Leland, even describing the layout, marble, high ceiling and toilets that flush "like a jet engine". In "The Gymnast", he told Jerry that he always removes his shirt when using the bathroom because "it frees me up... no encumbrances". It's unclear if he dropped this habit after an embarrassing incident where he walked out of a bathroom shirtless at a lunch party attended by his girlfriend, her mom and other female members of her family. When working for the Yankees, he suggested having the bathroom stall doors stretched all the way to the ground (letting people's legs not be seen while in the stalls), and, in many episodes, he shows a fascination with toilet paper and its history. He also displays a fear of diseases, like lupus and cancer. In "The Wife", George gets into trouble for peeing in the shower at a gym but defends his action with, "It's all pipes! What's the difference?" even threatening to call a plumber to back him up.
Although occasionally referred to as dumb by his friends, many signs point to the fact that George is actually quite intelligent despite his neurotic behavior. George's foolishness is displayed in "The Cafe", where he has Elaine take an IQ test for him. Apparently, George's neurotic stupidity would progress until it became one of his primary characteristics. By "The Couch", he couldn't even concentrate enough to read a ninety-page book (Breakfast at Tiffany's). In "The Abstinence", it's discovered that George actually has what'd appear to be genius-level intelligence but can never access it because his mind is always so completely focused on sex. When circumstances let him temporarily remove sex from his mind, he's able to reach his true intellectual potential, solving a Rubik's Cube, answering a string of questions on Jeopardy! and giving Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams pointers on hitting based on Newtonian physics.
George and Jerry have been best friends since meeting in high school gym class. The extreme closeness of their friendship is occasionally mistaken for gayness. "The Outing" deals with a reporter from a New York University college paper mistaking George and Jerry for a gay couple, and, in "The Cartoon", George dates somebody who Kramer insists is merely a "female Jerry". When George is forced to note to himself that the idea of a female Jerry who he can have a close personal and also sexual relationship with would be everything he's ever wanted, George, in horror, breaks off his relationship with the woman. When something goes wrong, George has been known to hold his head.
Development
Seinfeld co-creator Larry David based George largely on himself. Seinfeld and David created the character as a counterpoint to Seinfeld's character. In the first draft of the show's pilot script, called "Stand-Up" at the time, George's name was Bennett and he, like Jerry, was a comedian. In that same draft, the scene in the pilot in which George and Jerry discuss a woman Jerry met earlier, saw George and Jerry discussing their stand-up act. This idea however, was quickly abandoned and his name was changed to George, the real estate broker instead. George's last name comes from Michael Costanza, a college classmate of Seinfeld. "Louis", George's middle name is a homage to Lou Costello, whose 1950s television series The Abbott and Costello Show, inspired Seinfeld's writing style. Although he is often asked whether he wanted to play the character, Larry David has said that he was only interested in writing the show, that, not only did he not want to act on the show, but it had never occurred to him and, even if it had, he highly doubted that NBC would have approved of his being cast.
Casting director Marc Herschfield stated that, during casting for the character, "we saw every actor we could possibly see in Los Angeles", but they could not find the right actor for the part. Among the auditionees were Nathan Lane, David Alan Grier, Brad Hall and Larry Miller. The Trivia page for the Seinfeld show on IMDb incorrectly states that George Schimmel auditioned for the Costanza role. A 2011 article by Bradford Evans in Splitsider claims those considered for Costanza include Danny DeVito and Nathan Lane, while Jason Alexander himself has noted that Chris Rock was also considered for the role.
On April 3, 1989, Herschfield sent a partial script to Jason Alexander, who was in New York City at the time. Herschfield had met Alexander when he was working on the CBS sitcom E/R. Alexander enjoyed the script and felt it read like a Woody Allen film; therefore, he did a Woody Allen impression on his audition tape, and bought a pair of glasses to better resemble the character. Though Alexander thought his audition was "a complete waste of time", both David and Seinfeld were impressed; Seinfeld stated "the second we saw him, like two lines out of his mouth, we went 'That's the guy'". On April 10, 1989 at 9:00 A.M. Alexander did his first official audition and met David and Seinfeld. While in the waiting room for his final audition, Alexander saw that Larry Miller was also auditioning. Alexander was aware that Miller and Seinfeld were very good friends, and so figured that he would not get the part. After his final audition he returned to New York City, and when he landed he received a phone call informing him that he was hired.
Many of George's predicaments were based on David's past real-life experiences. In "The Revenge", for example, when George quits his job in a fury only to realize he has made a mistake, he goes back the next day as if nothing happened; this mirrors David's actions while working as a writer for Saturday Night Live, when he quit and then returned to his job in the same manner. As the show progressed, Alexander discovered that the character was based on David. As Alexander explains in an interview for the Seinfeld DVD, during an early conversation with David, Alexander questioned a script, saying, "This could never happen to anyone, and even if it did, no human being would react like this." David replied, "What do you mean? This happened to me once, and this is exactly how I reacted." After that, Alexander changed his performance from an imitation of Woody Allen to what he has called a "shameless imitation of Larry David."
In 1998, Michael Costanza sued the show for US$100,000,000, claiming that he never gave permission for his name to be used and that, because of the character's appearance and behavior, he was not treated with respect. Costanza lost the suit, as the New York Supreme Court (the trial court in the State of New York court system) decided that Seinfeld and David "did not violate Michael Costanza's privacy rights when they created the character".
Family and background
Susan
George becomes engaged to Susan Biddle Ross, a wealthy executive at NBC who approved his and Jerry's show-within-a-show sitcom pilot. George and Susan date for a year, during which time commitment-phobic George is constantly trying to find ways to end their relationship without actually having to initiate the breakup with her. In "The Engagement", he proposes to her in a short-lived bout of midlife crisis, after he and Jerry make a pact to move forward with their lives. When Jerry breaks up with his girlfriend almost immediately thereafter for eating "her peas one at a time" and declares the deal over, George panics and again tries repeatedly to weasel out of his engagement. He gets his wish about 2 weeks before the wedding in "The Invitations", when he inadvertently kills her by selecting cheap envelopes for their wedding invitations, not knowing they contained toxic glue. When notified of her death at the hospital, George displays a combination of shock, apathy and relief (later described by the doctor in Part 2 of The Finale as "restrained jubilation"). A few moments after being notified of Susan's death, he says to Jerry, Kramer and Elaine, "Well, let's go get some coffee." Susan's parents, recent divorcees, never knowing the specifics behind her poisoning but suspecting that George was somehow involved, never forgive him for this, and appoint him to the board of directors of the Susan Ross Foundation to keep him trapped under their influence and ensure that he'd never get any of Susan's inheritance.
Relationships
George is very bad at meeting women and even worse at maintaining his romantic relationships and, as a result, his relationships usually end badly. George also dated other women throughout the series:
- His 2 dates, Maura (who refuses to break up) and Loretta (who won't make love in "The Strongbox"), make it hard for George to break up.
- In "The Cadillac", George goes on a date with actress Marisa Tomei (who loves "quirky, funny, bald men"), in the park for a short time but gets punched after revealing that he's engaged.
- In "The Cafe", George dates Monica, who tests George in an IQ test. Apparently, after letting Elaine help him cheat, the end result is the test being spilled with food, and he's left to explain about the mess on the IQ test.
- In "The Nose Job", George dates Audrey, who has a big nose, until he, Jerry and Elaine are shocked when Kramer suggests that she get a nose job.
- In "The Red Dot", by accident, George dates Evie, a cleaning woman who works at Pendant Publishing by sharing Hennigans.
- In "The Conversion", George willingly converts to the Latvian Orthodox faith for his girlfriend, Sasha, after Elaine mentions that it'd be romantic, only to learn after completing the conversion that Sasha is going to Latvia.
- In "The Boyfriend", George dates Carrie, the daughter of his unemployment-office rep, Mrs. Sokol, in order to get an extension on his unemployment.
- In "The Good Samaritan", George commits adultery with a married woman, Robin, after he says "God bless you" to her.
- In "The Outing", George dates Allison, who's having a breakdown. He tries to get out of the relationship by saying he's homosexual, without success.
- In "The Cartoon", George dates Janet, who Kramer openly says looks like Jerry.
- In "The Blood", George dates Tara and tries to add food as a part of their sex life.
- In "The Pez Dispenser" George dates a pianist, Noelle who wishes to break up with George after Elaine laughs during a recital. George has a phone communication with Noelle and feels like she wishes to break up, so he breaks up with her first. Later at an intervention for an old friend of Jerry and Elaine's, Elaine laughs the laugh that Noelle will never forget and it's revealed she's the one that shattered Noelle's confidence during the recital.
- In "The Fix-Up" George refuses a blind date with Cynthia until assured she meets his intellect (low) and attractiveness (high) standards (George: Is there a pinkish hue? Jerry: A pinkish hue? George: Yes, a rosy glow. Jerry: There's a hue. She's got great eyebrows, women kill to have her eyebrows. George: Who cares about eyebrows? Is she sweet? I like sweet. But not too sweet, you could throw up from that.")
- George's childhood friend Deena repeatedly catches George acting strangely, first in "The Gum", then "The Doll" and in "The Bottle Deposit", where she finds him in a mental institution, where she thinks he is finally getting the help he needs.
In the season 7 Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "Seinfeld", George has married (and divorced) a woman named Amanda in the time since the finale. It's unclear, however, whether these events are considered canon in the Seinfeld series.
Professional life
George's professional life is unstable. He's unable to remain in any job for any great length of time before making an embarrassing blunder and getting fired, and he's unemployed for a large amount of time throughout the series. Very often, the blunder is lying and trying to cover it up, only to have it all fall apart. Most of the many short-lived jobs George holds throughout the series are in sales.
Over the course of the series, he works for a real estate transaction services firm (Rick Bahr Properties), rest stop supply company (Sanalac), Elaine's company (Pendant Publishing), the New York Yankees (his longest running job), a playground-equipment company (Play Now) and industrial smoothing company (Kruger Industrial Smoothing), and other places. He's fired from his job at Pendant Publishing for having sex with the cleaning woman on his desk in "The Red Dot" (he professes he's always been attracted to cleaning women).
His original job when the series starts is as a real estate agent; he ends up quitting and getting re-hired, but fired immediately afterward for drugging his boss. He always wanted to be an architect or least "pretend to be an architect". He first mentions this desire in "The Stake Out", and claims in "The Race" that he'd designed "the new addition to the Guggenheim". In "The Van Buren Boys", he denies his young protégé a scholarship from the Susan Ross Foundation when the young man decides he no longer wants to be an architect and wants to become a city planner instead. In "The Marine Biologist", Jerry tells a woman who George wanted to impress that George is a marine biologist. The plan backfires when George is called on to save a beached whale with a Titleist golf ball in its blowhole. He saves the whale, but the woman tells him off when he confesses that he's not, in fact, a marine biologist: "She told me to go to hell, and I took the bus home." He then gets a job working for the Yankees, where he frequently encounters a fictionalized version of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner (the voice of Steinbrenner is made by Larry David).
During Season 4, George gains experience as a sitcom writer as he helps Jerry to write the pilot for the fictitious show Jerry. While pitching the concept of a "show about nothing" to NBC executives, George dates executive Susan until "The Virgin", when she's fired. Following the only episode ("The Pilot"), executive Russell's obsession with Elaine has cost George and Jerry a shot at getting a television series.
Fashion and hairstyle
George is known for his balding hair, which is less noticeable in "The Seinfeld Chronicles" or a flashback in "The Slicer", but gets thinner as the series progresses. In "The Beard", he starts to wear a wig, until Elaine throws it out the window in disgust. He also tries to restore his hair in "The Tape", when he starts using a Chinese cream that's said to be such a great cure for baldness that it'll make him "look like Stalin". His hair is rarely seen styled. His clothing is usually very plain. He frequently wears jeans and Nike Cortez sneakers. In "The Pilot", George wears sweatpants; Jerry says that this makes George look like he's given up on life. In "The Subway", when his clothing is taken, he goes to the coffee shop with a sheet, causing a bystander to mistake him for a Hare Krishna. In "The Muffin Tops", he steals clothing from a tourist who asks him to watch his suitcase. "The Gum" has him dressed as Henry VIII, which, along with a far too small tux in "The Opera", are the only times he's seen entirely apart from his drab attire. George has, however, mentioned that his clothes are color-coded based on his mood. In "The Trip", Jerry asks him what mood he's in, and George replies, "Morning mist". Several times throughout the show, George mentions a desire to "drape" himself in velvet (if only it were socially acceptable), which he does in "The Doodle". In "The Bizarro Jerry", George can be seen styling his hair based on an Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) poster. His clothes on the show were usually a size too small for him, as opposed to Kramer, whose clothing was usually a size too big.
Pseudonyms
- Art Vandelay is first used in "The Stake Out". George and Jerry invent an excuse to explain their presence in the lobby of an office building. They explain that they're meeting Art Vandelay, an importer-exporter who works in the building. In "The Boyfriend", George tells the unemployment office he's close to getting a job at "Vandelay Industries", a latex manufacturer. George later applies the name to a fictional problem boyfriend of Elaine, part of an elaborate cover story to hide from Susan that he's also dating Marisa Tomei ("The Cadillac"). George uses the name when asked which authors he reads during an interview with Elaine's publishing house in "The Red Dot". In "The Bizarro Jerry", George asks the receptionist at Brandt/Leland for a Mr. Art Vendelay, to which she replies, "there's no Mr. Vandelay here". In "The Serenity Now", George invents fake customers, one of whom is "Mr. Vandelay", to hide his lack of sales success. In "The Bizarro Jerry", George asks to see Mr. Vandelay as part of a ruse to approach an attractive secretary. In "The Puerto Rican Day", George pretends to be Vandelay (Jerry pretends to be "Kal Varnsen", and Kramer is "H.E. Pennypacker") to take advantage of an open house to watch a Mets game on television. In "The Finale", the name of the presiding judge is actually Arthur Vandelay, much to George's amazement. George says he thinks it's "good luck" that that is the judge's name, though this turns out to be false.
- In "The Pool Guy", George reveals he has two distinct personas, Relationship George and Independent George. Relationship George, he explains, is the conscientious personality he feels forced to adopt in the presence of his fiancé, Susan. Independent George, on the other hand, is the "real" George. Independent George is composed of a subset of personalities, like Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George and Bawdy George. Independent George is the George that Jerry knows and with whom he grew up. George worries that if Susan begins socializing with the group, his 2 worlds will irrevocably collide, resulting in Relationship George "killing" Independent George. Paraphrasing Lincoln, he declares, "A George divided against itself cannot stand!"
- At one point ("The Maid"), George wants to be known as "T-Bone", but his coworkers at Kruger Industrial Smoothing nickname him "Koko" because of how he'd flailed his arms when demanding the nickname "T-Bone" back from a co-worker. George intentionally hires a woman named Coco to work there, only to be nicknamed Gammy instead.
- Biff Loman: In "The Subway", Jerry uses this name for George in reference to the character from Death of a Salesman. George is on the way to a job interview, and Jerry tells him not to whistle in the elevator like Biff in the play. Later, George arrives at the coffee shop wearing a bed sheet as a toga. Jerry asks, "What happened, Biff? Did you whistle on the elevator?" The daughter of George's unemployment agent also refers to George as Biff in "The Boyfriend", as does Jerry in "The Pez Dispenser" and "The Visa".
Reception
In a list of the "50 Greatest Sidekicks" compiled by Entertainment Weekly, George was placed third behind Robin from the Batman franchise and Ed McMahon, who co-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992. On a The Times-Union list of the 50 greatest sitcom characters of all time, George was ranked third, behind Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) from I Love Lucy and Barney Fife (Don Knotts) from The Andy Griffith Show. In 1999, TV Guide published a list of the 50 best characters in television history, on which George was ranked 10th. The People called George the greatest television character on a list of the 100 best television characters. British comedian Ricky Gervais and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde have both called George "arguably the greatest sitcom character of all time".
For his performance as George, Alexander was nominated for various awards. In 1992, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series; however, he lost the award to Michael Jeter for Evening Shade. He received nominations in the same category the following six years, but failed to win each year. In addition, Alexander was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards--in 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1998--in the Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Motion Picture Made for Television category, but never won the award. In 1995, Alexander received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series, he also shared the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series with Seinfeld, Louis-Dreyfus, and Richards. From 1996 through 1998, Alexander was nominated in the same two categories, co-winning the ensemble award in 1997 and 1998. In 1999, he was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series for the last time, but lost to Michael J. Fox for his portrayal of Michael Flaherty on Spin City. In 1992 and 1993, Alexander won the American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Male Performer in a TV Series. He was also nominated for the award in 1996 (with Richards) and 1999, but did not win again.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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