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George Costanza

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File:George Costanza.JPG
Jason Alexander as George Costanza

"... For I am Costanza - Lord of the idiots."

George Louis Costanza (born April 1959) one of the four main characters on Seinfeld, played by Jason Alexander.

George is Jerry's neurotic best friend. He sometimes lived with his parents, Estelle and Frank Costanza, a bitter couple who are as neurotic as their son. As a teenager, he was tormented by his gym teacher, Mr. Heyman, who intentionally mispronounced George's last name as "Can't Stand Ya." George and Jerry attended public school together, setting the dynamic for their later relationship. George claims that he and Jerry met in gym class when George, climbing rope, fell on Jerry.

George has numerous psychological problems, including: narcissism, habitual lying, low self-esteem, sudden fits of anger, impulsive acts of ill-considered generosity, cheapness, selfishness, living in fantasy. Like Kramer, he would often concoct elaborate plots to weasel out of relational, financial, or legal obligations, always with unexpected and negative consequences. George's lying, however, is often seen as a gift in the eyes of himself and his friends. It is noted in some episodes that he can even beat a lie-detector test and quotes to Jerry, "It's not a lie, if you believe it."

The character of George is based partly on the alter ego of the show's co-creator, Larry David. In the first couple of seasons, George was restrained by the standards of his later actions. But as the series went on, his schemes and personality became more outlandish. Alexander related in an interview that, early in the creation of the show, he once expressed having problems acting out a scene in the script, because he felt no one would ever behave in such a way. David replied to him that the exact situation had actually happened to him, and he had reacted in exactly the same way. Alexander said that this was a breakthrough for him in portraying the character, giving him valuable insight into both David and George.

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[edit] Life

During the series, George had a number of recurring fears and obsessions, including baseball, pretending to be financially successful, contracting lupus, and trying to seduce Marisa Tomei behind his fiancée’s back.

George's professional life was unstable. He was unable to remain in any job for any great length of time before making an embarrassing blunder and getting fired. Over the course of the series, he worked for the New York Yankees, an industrial smoothing company, and countless other places. He was fired from his job at Pendant Publishing for having sex with the cleaning woman. His original job when the series started was as a real estate agent; he ended up quitting and then slipped his boss a mickey. His dream job was an architect, a job he would often pretend to have. In one episode, Jerry told a girl George wanted to impress that George was a marine biologist. The plan backfired when George was called upon to save a beached whale with a golf ball in its blowhole; he saved the whale, but the woman rejected him when he confessed that he was not, in fact, a marine biologist.

George briefly gained experience as a sitcom writer as he helped Jerry to write the pilot for the fictitious show Jerry. While pitching the concept of a "show about nothing" to NBC executives, George claimed to have written an off-Broadway play entitled La Cocina, about a Mexican chef named Pepe. In La Cocina, George claimed Pepe mimed the preparation of tamales, and it was the mime aspect that made the play so funny.

George was engaged to Susan Biddle Ross, a wealthy executive at NBC who approved Jerry and George's show-within-the-show sitcom pilot. George and Susan dated on and off for a year, during which time the commitment-phobic George was constantly trying to find ways to end their relationship without actually having to initiate the breakup with her. He proposed to her in a short-lived bout of midlife crisis, after he and Jerry had made a "pact" to move forward with their lives. When Jerry broke up with his girlfriend and declared the deal over, George panicked and again tried repeatedly to weasel out of his engagement. He got his wish days before the wedding, when he indirectly killed her by selecting the cheapest envelopes for their wedding invitations, not knowing they contained toxic glue. Susan's parents, never knowing the specifics behind her poisoning but suspecting George was somehow involved, never forgave him for this, and they appointed him to the Board of Directors of the Susan Biddle Ross Foundation to keep him trapped in their influences.

George had an unusual affinity for velvet. He was dating a woman who had velvet-covered furniture and he described being at her apartment as being "ensconced in velvet." The woman had a male roommate, Scott. George wanted to replace Scott in order to be "draped in velvet." However, when Scott moved out, he took all the furniture (complete with the velvet) with him. In several episodes, George stated that if it were socially acceptable he would "drape [himself] in velvet." He dated a woman (played by actress Christa Miller) who had absolutely no interest in physical appearances, so he started wearing a velvet jogging suit. This may be an affinity of Larry David. (See an interview with Larry David on 60 Minutes II.)

George's father Frank invented the December holiday Festivus to counter the commercialism of Christmas. When George was a child, he was forced to celebrate the holiday, and as a result George hates Festivus. George shows his feelings for the holiday when he refuses to take down Frank in the Feats of Strength (but Frank provokes him into doing it anyway).

[edit] George's Women

George's relationships with women were typically unsuccessful and frequently ended badly. His most disastrous relationship, an engagement to Susan Ross, is one of the few that ends "well" for George; he fears marriage and Susan's unexpected death saves him from the commitment. However, even this comes back to "bite him in the butt" — her wealthy parents create a foundation in her honor and endow it with the land, mansions, and money that would have been given to George and Susan upon their marriage. Despite his own flawed appearance, George periodically insists on minimum standards for the women he will date; on one occasion, he refused to accept a blind date until reassured the girl had both thick lustrous hair and skin with "a pinkish hue." On another occasion, he fell for a woman who, like he, enjoyed pastrami, though he also once spiked an Orthodox Jewish girl's Kosher breakfast with lobster as payback for her mocking his abbreviated member (the product of recent swimming). Another time he picked up a woman and brought her to a hotel, ostensibly for kinky sex, only to be robbed (while handcuffed to the bedposts) of the $8 he carried in his wallet.

Other women that George dated throughout the series:

His two dates, Loretta who refuse to breakup and Maura who won't make love in "The Strongbox" makes it hard for George to break up. In "The Cadillac" George dates a celebrity, Marisa Tomei in the park for a short time and got punched for 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 into food and he is left to explain about the mess on the IQ test. In "The Nose Job" George dates Audrey who has a big nose until himself, Jerry and Elaine is shocked when Kramer suggests that she gets 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 would be romantic, only to learn that she is going to Latvia after he completes the conversion. In "The Boyfriend" George dates Mrs Sokol's daughter, Carrie in order to get the extension on his employment. In "The Good Samaritan" George dates Robin after he says "god bless you" to her. In "The Outing" George dates Allison who's having a breakdown. He tries to show that he's gay but it fails.

On the ninth season DVD for the finale, it was stated that George had dated 62 girlfriends during the show's run.

[edit] Religion

Unlike Jerry, George is never specifically identified as Jewish - or any other religion. But according to some hints given in the show, it is most likely that he is Catholic. Larry David once claimed in an interview that George is half-Jewish/half-Italian, although that could merely be ethnicity. If this is the case, then the obvious conclusion to draw is that Estelle is the Jewish half of the equation, as the name "Costanza" comes from Frank, he hails from Tuscany and all references to the possible Catholicism of the Costanza family are due to aspects of Frank, not Estelle.

  • In the episode "The Fatigues," it is learned that Frank, George's father, is a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-Catholic fraternal organization.

It is revealed Frank has relatives in Italy, and lived in Italy for part of his early childhood. *Additionally in "The Calzone," George points out that Costanza is Italian, and that he and the Paisano's clerk are like family because of that. The primary religion in Italy is Roman Catholicism.

  • In "The Understudy" Jerry tells Elaine that Frank Costanza sold religious articles like statues of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which are obviously symbols of the Christian faith.
  • George sometimes refers to "Mother of God!" using it as an expression of being stunned (e.g. in "The Rye"), although it is probably only an expression.
  • In the episode Festivus, it is mentioned that Frank rejects all the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas. As this began after George was born it seems reasonable to suspect that before this time at least, he was raised Christian.

In one episode ("The Conversion", Season 5), George goes so far as to convert his faith to Latvian Orthodox, a Christian sect, to appease the strict parents of his current girlfriend.

[edit] Pseudonyms

Art Vandelay, George's alter ego, first appeared in the episode " The Stakeout," in which George and Jerry needed an excuse to give to a woman on why they were waiting in the lobby of the office building where she worked. Their excuse was that they were meeting Art Vandelay, an importer/exporter, for lunch. His original name, before George changed it at the last minute, was Art Corvalay. In one instance ("The Boyfriend (1)"), George tells the unemployment office he is close to getting a job at "Vandelay Industries." The characters encounter a judge named Art Vandelay on the series finale. Also used as a fake boyfriend of Elaine. Here, Art is also an importer/exporter, and used as a cover story so Susan doesn't think that George and Elaine are having an affair.

At one point ("The Maid"), George wanted to be known as "T-Bone", but his co-workers at Kruger Industrial Smoothing nicknamed him "Koko" because he flailed his arms like an ape when he demanded the nickname "T-Bone" back from a coworker. When a Jamaican woman named Koko began work there, his nickname was changed to "Gammy". George revealed that if he were to be a porn star, his name would be "Buck Naked." During a period of unemployment for George, Jerry calls George "Biff", referring to the Biff Loman character in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. George once assumed the identity of a man named Donald O'Brien in order to take his limousine ("The Limo"), only to later discover this man was the leader of the Aryan Union and was on his way to make his first public appearance, at Madison Square Garden. In "The Wink," Kramer opened his door after George knocked on it and called him with "Mr. Weatherbee."

[edit] George Costanza moments

  • Betraying his feelings of "restrained jubilation" to the doctor who gives him the news that his bride-to-be has died.
  • Peeking at the information on a video store's computer screen to find out who has checked out the video for Breakfast at Tiffany's, then showing up at that family's apartment and finagling his way in, so he can avoid reading the book for his book club. The effort backfires when he spills grape juice on the family's sofa and gets kicked out before he can finish watching the movie.
  • Being mistaken for a Neo-Nazi leader when he takes a limousine that he believes is for four passes to a Chicago Bulls-New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden.
  • Taking up Tobacco smoking so that Susan would call off the wedding, but the cigarettes caused him to cough and vomit.
  • Redipping a potato chip into a party platter after he has already taken a bite.
  • Driving Yankee player Danny Tartabull all over town as he seeks retribution for road rage victimization.
  • Inventing a fictitious company named "Vandelay Industries" where he said he had a job interview, in order to keep getting his unemployment insurance. The company was run by the fictitious Art Vandelay. Vandelay Industries is, according to George, a latex manufacturing company. In order to add legitimacy to the company's existence, George gives Jerry's home phone number as the company's phone number. Art Vandelay was also an importer/exporter as well as an architect. The judge in the final episode of the series was named Art Vandelay, which George interpreted as a "good sign."
  • Passing an incomplete IQ test through an open window to Elaine in order to cheat on it, all with his one-time girlfriend on the other side of the door. He did this so she'd think he was smarter than he really was. Elaine ends up getting a worse score than George would have if he hadn't cheated due to distractions while at Babu's restaurant (although she later scored 151).
  • Proposing an incestuous sexual relationship with his cousin to get his parents' attention, which she agreed to, and they briefly participated in.
  • Wearing Kramer's father's wedding band to get women to flirt with him (the conjecture being that women were more attracted to married men). The theory worked perfectly, but all the women were offended when George flirted back.
  • Telling Susan that he was meeting Elaine to discuss problems about her (made-up) boyfriend Art Vandelay when he actually was meeting Marisa Tomei. George and Elaine failed to fully develop the alibi, and Susan suspected George was having an affair with Elaine.
  • Calling Marisa Tomei on the eve of Susan's funeral to arrange a date: "I got the funeral tomorrow but... my weekend is pretty wide open."
  • Attempting multiple times to pass off a red-dotted cashmere sweater which he bought at a discount. Eventually, even one of Elaine's alcoholic co-workers sees the dot.
  • Leaving his car parked at Yankee Stadium so that his boss George Steinbrenner would think he was there working even when he wasn't. Other escapades while at the Yankees included: turning the space underneath his desk into an area suitable for napping, pretending to be stressed in order to avoid work, and masquerading as a Communist in order to date a woman whose personal ad appeared in the Daily Worker newspaper.
  • Getting ensconced or draped in velvet.
  • Buying a car solely on the belief that it was once owned by Jon Voight (it was actually owned by the dentist "John Voight").
  • Faking a disability so that he could get his own private bathroom at work.
  • During a fire that had been started accidentally at a child's birthday party, George ran across the house, pushing and knocking everyone and everything in his path (including an elderly woman with her walker), screaming "Fire!" as he ran to the door. Then once he got out, he held the door closed, trapping the people inside. When asked by a firefighter how he could live with himself, George responded "It's not easy."
  • Trying to get money back for a book he brought into a bookstore bathroom. He was forced to pay for it, because the book was "flagged" at all the area bookstores.
  • Recording an out-going answering machine message, and singing it to the tune of the hit song "Believe it or Not" (from The Greatest American Hero). He sang:
Believe it or not, George isn't at home
Please leave a message at the beep.
I must be out or I'd pick up the phone
Where could I be?
Believe it or not, I'm not home.
  • Trying to get the Frogger game to his house from Mario's Pizzeria, which he and Jerry frequented as youngsters. The game is running on batteries, because George wants to preserve his all-time high score on the console (the high scores would be erased were the machine to lose power). Unfortunately, while George tries in vain to get the console to the other side of the street after performing a series of maneuvers resembling the game itself, a truck destroys the machine, after which Jerry remarks, "Game over."
  • Engaging in a slow chase via handicap scooter when his claimed disability (used to obtain executive washroom privileges) is revealed to be a hoax.
  • Wearing a tuxedo many sizes too small to the opera "Pagliacci."
  • Continuing to use the name Art Vandelay until the show's final episode, when a judge by that name presides over the trial of the "New York Four," in which the defendants broke the Good Samaritan Law in the fictional town of Latham, Massachusetts. Jerry and George take it as a sign that they will be acquitted, but after a swarm of previous guest characters (from Marla the Virgin to the parents of Susan Ross) testify against the four friends, Judge Vandelay sentences George, Jerry, Kramer, and Elaine to one year removed from society.
  • Demanding that an area hospital pay for his damaged car after a man committed suicide by jumping off the hospital roof and landing on George's car.
  • Trying to convert to Latvian Orthodox in order to keep a girlfriend. George tells the priest that the reason for his conversion was the nice hats worn by the clergy.
  • Pretending to have poor eyesight so that he could get a certain textbook on tape, his reasoning being that whenever he reads a book he hears his own voice reading the words. But when he gets the tape, he realizes the narrator sounds like him.
  • Developing back problems because of his over sized wallet. The wallet finally explodes out in the street.
  • Competing for an apartment with an SS Andrea Doria survivor by telling the board about his horrifying life. He loses the apartment to a boyfriend of Elaine's who bribes the building superintendent with $50.
  • Working briefly as a hand model before he burned his hands on an iron.
  • Agreeing to play Trivial Pursuit with Donald the Bubble Boy in upstate New York. Got in a fight with Donald when George insisted the answer was "Moops" but Donald said it was "Moors" (the card was a misprint). Susan ended up deflating the Bubble Boy, and George was accused of trying to kill Donald.
  • Trying to become friends with a black man to prove to his boss that he was not racist.
  • Performing a series of stunts at Yankee Stadium, such as wearing Babe Ruth's jersey, streaking across the field in a body suit (he instead gained popularity with the fans as "Body Suit Man,") and wrecking the team's 1996 World Series trophy with his car. He does this in an attempt to make Steinbrenner fire him so he can take a job offer from the New York Mets. In the end, George's boss, Mr. Wilhelm comes in and claims he made George do those things. Wilhelm is thus fired instead, and he is the one hired by the Mets.
  • Claiming to have won "the Contest," though in the finale, he admitted to Jerry that he cheated.
  • Attending anger management sessions at the request of his friends, but the fact that the coach wanted him to hide his anger angered George too much to continue. Incited a participant at a Rage-aholics meeting by referring to him as a pinhead.
  • Asking Elaine to get him a job at Pendant Publishing. Elaine's boss, Mr. Lippman, conducted an impromptu job interview with George, asking him what authors he liked. Pressed for specifics, George mentioned he liked Art Vandelay. According to George, Vandelay was an obscure beatnik writer who wrote Venetian Blinds.
  • Crashing a baby shower to confront an ex-girlfriend who threw Bosco on his red shirt during a performance.
  • Mistakenly thinking that he impregnated a woman in the episode "The Fixup". This happened because Kramer had given him a defective condom. Referring to his sperm, George yells that "My boys can swim!" but it later turns out that the woman was not pregnant. In an uncharacteristic twist, George was more concerned with the woman's needs and offered to support her no matter what.
  • Pitching some new ideas for two other NBC shows while backstage at The Tonight Show. First, George pitches his idea for "the perfect episode of L.A. Law" to Corbin Bernsen, then makes a suggestion to George Wendt that the setting of Cheers be changed because it's "enough with the bar already." Bernsen and Wendt make George the butt of their jokes on the talk show, much to George's dismay.
  • Purchasing a Twix bar from the candy machine from a car dealership, only to see the candy get stuck, then losing it to a mechanic who buys another Twix, getting two packages. George then heads to the complaint department demanding an apology, a refund, and for "that man to be fired."
  • Being the subject of mockery after a televised tennis tournament showed a shot of him sloppily eating a sundae.
  • In an early episode titled "The Suicide," George is talking with a psychic and mentions that he has a brother. Later episodes repeatedly portray George as an only child.
  • Peeing in the men's shower at the gym because he "couldn't hold it in."
  • Having sex with a woman in his parents' bed while they're on vacation. He accidentally leaves the condom wrapper in the bed and his parents find out.
  • Telling beautiful women that a picture of Jerry's ex-girlfriend is Susan, his dead fiancée, in order to hang out with them at a secret club. After accidentally singing the picture with his blow-dryer, George clips a picture from a magazine and uses that as his Susan photo, until he makes the claim to the model pictured.
  • Asking one of his girlfriend's relatives for a death certificate at a funeral so that he can get a "bereavement discount" on an airplane ticket.
  • Pulling food out of the trash and eating it just as someone walks in the kitchen door catching him. In the same episode, spilling coffee on a man's windshield and being forced to clean it up with paper from the ground. While he does this, he still holds the empty cup, making it look like he is a poor man who is working on the street to get tips.
  • Being caught masturbating on his parents' couch by his mother.
  • Pretending to be a tough guy to impress a girl in The Little Kicks ("I'm a bad man!")
  • Eating a pastrami sandwich while having sex.
  • Pulling Kramer's golf ball from the blow hole of a whale just as he was pretending to be a marine biologist.
  • Claiming to have right-of-way deals with pigeons and squirrels.
  • Having Elaine throw his toupee out the window of Jerry's apartment.

[edit] Jobs held by George Costanza

The dates of each job indicate the air date of the episodes in which George worked those particular jobs.

  • Dairy Queen employee for one summer, from which he was fired for putting his feet in the soft serve (dates unknown; mentioned May 1, 1997)
  • Waiter for children at a fat camp (dates unknown; mentioned June 26, 1991)
  • Real estate agent (at least July 5, 1989 to April 18, 1991)
  • Parking cars (December 4, 1991)
  • Reader at Pendant Publishing (December 11, 1991)
  • Writer for a sitcom pilot called Jerry for NBC (September 16, 1992 to May 20, 1993)
  • Hand model (September 23, 1993)
  • Sales rep at a rest stop supplies company with the Penske file (November 11, 1993)
  • Assistant to the Traveling Secretary for the New York Yankees under owner George Steinbrenner (May 19, 1994 to at least May 8, 1997)
  • Play Now, a play ground equipment company (September 25, 1997 to October 2, 1997)
  • Computer salesman for for his father's computer selling scheme, "Costanza and Son" (October 9, 1997)
  • Krueger Industrial Smoothing (November 13, 1997 to at least April 30, 1998)

[edit] Jobs George Constanza falsely claimed to hold

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[edit] Links

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Seinfeld characters

Jerry Seinfeld | George Costanza | Elaine Benes | Cosmo Kramer
See also: Minor characters in Seinfeld

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