Seinfeld Declassified Episode 9: What do George’s parents do?

One of the most famous episodes of the entire series was the contest so naturally I had to do a piece about that one. So our episode this week centers around George’s folks. There’s a part in the opening scene where he says they were supposed to be working. It always struck me as a weird line considering a) most of the series seemed to imply they were retired and b) she even said later on that she had just stepped out for a quart of milk. Regardless, that line made their work lives canon so today we’re going to try and figure out what they do (or did).

So, for starters, we know Frank was a cook in the war so he could have been doing something in the culinary arts (although he does later on say he was selling computers so that could be it as well) but Estelle will prove a lot harder to pin down. We know she’s a terrible cook (at least according to her husband) so we can probably rule that out.

There’s actually an episode where he hired George and Lloyd to help sell the computers and he was even selling christian relics for a while so I think that’s what his job was but, interestingly enough, despite him saying Estelle’s cooking was bad, we do have multiple instances of her making food throughout the series. She made the festivus dinner, some paella for the Seinfelds and even roasted potatoes in the statue episode. And we never hear anyone else complaining about her cooking.

So it’s entirely possible he may have been saying that as an excuse to get back into cooking (or his brain was playing tricks on him; it certainly wouldn’t be the first time). In any case, we don’t know anything else about Estelle or her talents so the only logical assumption is that she was working as a chef (or something in the food industry). However, if you go to the Seinfeld records, it does say they are both retired (& we know George is not the most reliable narrator) so it’s entirely possible he may have been lying through his teeth (or just forgot that they retired on account of his self-absorbed nature).

But in any case, I think it’s safe to assume these were their jobs prior to retirement or at least at some point in their lives (although from what we know, it does seem entirely likely that Estelle was merely a housewife, not that there’s anything wrong with that). So that’s pretty much all I have for you guys today but thank you so much for reading. Have a great week and I will see you back here next week for a brand new episode of SD. Until then, this is the x factor signing off.