Elaine Benes
Posted on 15. Sep, 2011 by admin in Characters
Elaine’s best friend is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld; she is also good friends with George Costanza andCosmo Kramer. Unlike her three close friends, Elaine is absent from the pilot episode. Previously the female role was supposed to be Claire, the waitress at Pete’s Luncheonette played by Lee Garlington, but the luncheonette was replaced by Monk’s Restaurant and Garlington was dropped from the role. Elaine is normally intelligent and assertive, but also quite superficial. She is one of the boys, and despite the troubles they go through as a group, she remains the closest female friend to the main male cast throughout the entire series. Her traits are usually edgy and neurotic and she has a tendency to easily get angry with almost everyone. She has ruined her friends’ ambitions, like throwing George’s toupee out the window after trying to explain the irony behind it in “The Beard” or revealing what Jerry said in “The Cheever Letters” about the “panties her mother laid out for her”.
Elaine is a serial dater, a trait lampooned in Season 7′s “The Sponge”, where she is desperate to buy a cache of discontinued contraceptive sponges before they are all bought up. She coins the word “spongeworthy” debating her then-boyfriend’s prospects of intimacy at the expense of her inventory.
Her neuroses often interfere with her relationships, leading to the premature end of a blossoming relationship. For example, in “The Stall”, Elaine is dating Tony, a very good-looking athletic type. After a rock climbing accident mangles Tony’s face, Elaine admits to Jerry that she can’t date someone who isn’t attractive and wonders how long she is obligated to stay with him post-accident. Later, in “The Couch” after proclaiming her love for new boyfriend Carl, she immediately ends the relationship upon learning that he does not share her opinions on abortion. Elaine also is attracted to men with lucrative jobs, particularly doctors.
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