Seinfeld (TV Series) The Sponge (1995) User Reviews

"Run down your case for me again"

[juanmaffeo · 8/10 · 10 August 2016]

What an entertaining episode. Four great story lines and a swell pace.

Although there are four stories, only three of them interconnect with each other. As you may have guessed, Kramer is the one set apart. Nevertheless his story is quite entertaining even if the good stuff only appears in the end. From the moment he goes to the AIDS walk everything clicks. Bob and Cedric make another stellar appearance and we get a hilarious, though pretty fantastical, scene concerning Kramer and his non-ribbon attitude.

But the great part of this episode is the other three stories. Although they interconnect with each other beautifully, they all are strong individually. Jerry is dating a woman that's too good for him, George is dealing with the no-secret Susan's policy and Elaine is surviving the sponge hiatus. The season's arc gets a key aspect in the long term relationship book and that is no matter what's the topic, you have to share with your wife. Elaine shines in her quest for sponges and the subsequent analysis for using them.

A great episode all in all.

No Ribbons

[Samuel-Shovel · 7/10 · 14 June 2018]

In "The Sponge", after learning that her birth control method has been discontinued, Elaine buys up as many sponges as she can find and begins to carefully consider whether her partner is "sponge-worthy". Jerry begins dating a woman whose number he steals off of an AIDS Walk list. George has begun telling Susan all of Jerry's secrets and Jerry's new girlfriend finds out about the number. Kramer signs up for the AIDS Walk but runs into trouble when he refuses to wear the ribbon.

"I don't have to wear anything I don't want to wear!" is one of the most underrated lines from this show. That whole scene is absolutely perfect and really makes the episode above average.

The other aspects of the episode are a bit more average in my opinion. The metaphor between the Sponge and the AIDS scare is clever but gets a little too on the nose at times for my taste. I would have liked to see more plot surrounding the rift between George and Jerry regarding "being cutoff". But oh well... Still a solid episode.

Don't Run Out

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 3 February 2023]

The title refers to the Today Sponge, a method of birth control at the time that was eventually discontinued because it was quite risky. Elaine is ready to hook up with a guy, but finds out that the sponges are no longer being manufactured. She finds a box of them in a drugstore and then begins to horde them, doing interviews before she will agree to go to bed with a guy (no resume, but just about everything else). Kramer signs up for a race for AIDs research and pays a big price for this. He refuses to wear the ribbon and the other runners take offense to this. Jerry does the unthinkable. He gets the telephone number of a pretty girl from the sign up sheet for the AIDs run and this leads to some real conflicts.

When death was a four-letter word

[martin-intercultural · 10/10 · 26 June 2017]

A subtle and very clever satire of the 1990s AIDS hysteria and resulting sexual politics, this story has aged remarkably well. Using a discontinued birth control item as a metaphor, we descend into the doom and gloom of an era when we were constantly hectored about 'screening' our sex partners. Needless to say, it didn't take long for this culture of fear to set in: Raunchy hookups and everything leading up to them quickly turned into job interviews. Elaine demonstrates this for us with usual aplomb.

Bang

[bevo-13678 · 10/10 · 23 June 2020]

I like the bit where Elaine buys all the sponges but won't waste one on a dud root