Elaine Benes

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes

Elaine Marie Benes is a fictional character on the US television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. From the series' back-story, the audience learned she had dated Jerry Seinfeld, and remains close friends with him, as well as with George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer.

Elaine was the only character, of those mentioned above, missing from the pilot episode (episode one). She would make her first appearance in the second episode, "Male Unbonding." Her character was added because NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast, or the show would not be renewed.

She is supposedly based on comedian Carol Leifer, Seinfeld's real-life ex-girlfriend, and Monica Yates, Larry David's real-life ex-girlfriend. It is thought that she is a composite of the two women.

Family

Unlike the families of Jerry and George, Elaine's relatives never had large parts on the show. Her father, gruff author Alton Benes (a character based on the novelist Richard Yates and played by Lawrence Tierney), was featured in the episode "The Jacket" and a cousin, Holly, was featured in "The Wink." In "The Wink," reference is made to Elaine's Grandma Mimma, from whom Holly inherited a fancy set of napkins.

"The Jacket" also revealed that Elaine has a sister in St. Louis (later called Gale in "The Pick"). In the same episode, Elaine's father asks how her mother is, suggesting her parents are divorced. In "The Secret Code," she reveals that she has an uncle who worked in the Texas School Book Depository with Lee Harvey Oswald. In "The Pick," Elaine mentions she has a nephew.

Orioles and education

Unlike the other characters, she was not a native of New York, having grown up in the upscale Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland. In "The Letter," she revealed herself a die-hard Baltimore Orioles fan to the point of wearing an Orioles cap while seated in the owner's box at a New York Yankees game. She is the best-educated of the group of friends, and considers herself the most intelligent, having an IQ of 151 and having completed her undergraduate education at Tufts University, which she claims was her safety school in "The Puerto Rican Day".

Employment

Elaine was the only character who worked steady jobs throughout the show's entire run, working mostly as a writer or editor. During the first five seasons, she worked at Pendant Publishing with her boss Mr. Lippman, where she served as a copy editor before losing her job at the end of the fifth season when the company went bankrupt, and a merger that would have saved the company was thwarted by a misunderstanding stemming from her own bumbling ("The Opposite"). In "The Chaperone", she became a personal assistant to the wealthy, eccentric, and demanding Mr. Pitt, before finally meeting J. Peterman on the street in "The Understudy" and becoming an editor at the J. Peterman Catalog, where she would remain employed for the rest of the show's run. Starting in "The Foundation," she took charge of the catalog when Peterman took a short "retirement" (nervous breakdown) in Burma, suffered a streak of bad business decisions, and was demoted back to her former position upon Peterman's return. She was fired in "The English Patient" by Peterman for voicing her extreme disdain for the movie The English Patient: only by agreeing to travel to, and live in, a remote cave in the Tunisian desert for a specified time was she able to recover her job.

Romantic relationships

Elaine had a string of boyfriends, most appearing for only an episode or two. One of the few that had a recurring appearance was David Puddy (Patrick Warburton), her slow-witted steady. Like Jerry, Elaine's relationships usually ended over shallow, superficial reasons. In "The Butter Shave", Elaine repeatedly ends and renews her relationship with Puddy during the course of an international airplane trip.

In "The Sponge," Elaine found herself short of her supply of favored contraceptive sponges (the sale of which had been halted by the government) and pondered whether certain men were "spongeworthy"—that is, worthy of sex at the cost of using one of her limited number of sponges.

Pet peeves

In an early episode, Elaine expresses disdain with the world's interest in the Kennedy family, but in Season Four's "The Contest", Elaine crosses paths with John F. Kennedy, Jr. at her gym and becomes so infatuated with him (and the fantasy of becoming the next Mrs. Kennedy) that she loses her self-control as well as the contest. Elaine is crushed to learn JFK Jr. is dating Jerry's ex, Marla "the virgin" (Jane Leeves).

Physicality

Like Kramer, Elaine was very physical. Her signature move was to express incredulity by frontally shoving people while yelling: "Get out!" She was also a notoriously poor dancer, as evidenced in the episode entitled "The Little Kicks" in which she dances at a J. Peterman company party. George described her dancing as "a full-bodied dry heave set to music."

Character

Elaine is mostly a victim of fate throughout the series. Her storylines see her caught up in the machinations of the other characters, or coming into conflict either with inadequate boyfriends or the arbitrary requirements of her eccentric employers. Many episodes end with Elaine ruining something for someone (Jerry's sitcom, Soup Nazi's business etc.) She grew progressively more cynical and acid-tongued as the series progressed.

Pseudonyms

Like the other main characters on Seinfeld, Elaine used a pseudonym in order to get herself out of various sticky situations. Elaine's pseudonym was Susie, after a co-worker mistakenly calls her that. Susie was then pawned off by Elaine as a different person so that complaints against Elaine appeared to be against this (non existent) employee Susie. Susie was "killed off" when the situation with her co-worker became too complicated. Elaine said that Susie had "taken her own life," and a funeral was held.

In the episode "The Pick", Elaine is given the nickname 'Nip' by her work colleagues after she mistakenly sent out a Christmas card picture, taken by Kramer, that revealed one of her nipples.

Classic Elaine moments

• Refuses to remove her Baltimore Orioles cap while sitting in George Steinbrenner's private box at Yankee Stadium. ("The Letter")
• Laughs uncontrollably during a piano recital when Jerry puts a Tweety Bird Pez dispenser on her leg. ("The Pez Dispenser")
• Performs her notoriously awful dancing at a J. Peterman company party. ("The Little Kicks")
• Overdoses on muscle relaxants, and does an impersonation of Stanley Kowalski ("Stella!!!") from the play A Streetcar Named Desire. ("The Pen")
• Upon learning that her boyfriend has been in a car accident, stops to buy Jujyfruits before visiting him in the hospital, resulting in their breakup. Later in the episode, Elaine is unable to deliver a crucial message to her boss because her mouth is full of Jujyfruits, setting off a chain reaction leading to the company's bankruptcy. ("The Opposite")
• Once befriended an opposite version of the Seinfeld gang, including mild-mannered Kevin, whose apartment was the reverse of Jerry's (directions in the apartment were reversed, there was a hanging unicycle instead of a bicycle on the ground, and there was a Bizarro Superman statue.) Kevin's friends included a skinny bald man called Gene, a less-kooky across-the-hall neighbor named Feldman who always knocked, and a portly FedEx employee named Vargus. Unfortunately Elaine's ways didn't gel with the bizarro world, where the gang was into reading and preferred people ask before "eatin' olives straight from the jar". After she gave Kevin a trademark "Get out!" shove, she was asked to leave. The final glimpse of Bizarro World showed Kevin and Gene expressing genuine emotion toward each other and crying. ("The Bizarro Jerry")

Inconsistencies

Elaine hates the film The English Patient, preferring the comedy Sack Lunch. However, in the episode "The Comeback," she disparages the Weekend at Bernie's series, and professes to enjoy such "art-house" movies as The Pain and the Yearning.

External links

• Seinfeld at IMDb
• Elaine on Seinfeldonline.com- Unofficial fan website.