kramer

Cosmo Kramer is the breakout character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), played by Michael Richards. Kramer is the wacky neighbor of main character Jerry Seinfeld. He lives at 129 West 81st Street, New York City, Apartment 5B. Of the series' four central characters only Kramer has no visible means of support; what few jobs he holds seem to be nothing more than larks. He was once described by Elaine as "a tall, lanky doofus with a birdface and hair like the Bride of Frankenstein." His trademarks include his humorous upright bouffant hairstyle and vintage wardrobe, the combination of which led to his categorization as a 'hipster doofus'; his violent bursts through Jerry's apartment door; and his penchant for non-sensical, percussive bursts of noise to indicate skepticism, agreement, annoyance, and a variety of other inexplicable responses.

Name

Cosmo was known only as "Kramer" during the show's first five seasons (from 1990 to 1994), although in the first (pilot) episode his name was actually Kessler. It was George who found out his unusual first name through an encounter with Kramer's long estranged mother, Babs (played by Sheree North), on the season six episode, "The Switch." Despite this, most characters continued to call him Kramer for the remainder of the show's run although many minor characters did begin referring to him as "Cosmo".

The real-life Kramer

Kramer is based on the real-life Kenny Kramer, a neighbor of co-creator Larry David. At the time of the shooting of the original Seinfeld pilot called "The Seinfeld Chronicles," Kenny Kramer had not yet given consent to use his name, and so Kramer's character was originally "Kessler".

David was hesitant to use Kenny Kramer's real name because he suspected that Kramer would take advantage of this.^{citation needed]} David's suspicion turned out to be correct – Kramer created the "Kramer Reality Tour," a New York City bus tour that points out actual locations of events or places featured in Seinfeld. The "Kramer Reality Tour" is itself spoofed on Seinfeld in "The Muffin Tops" – when Cosmo receives money from catalog sales company owner J. Peterman for the use of his various stories in Peterman's biography; he develops a reality bus tour and touts himself as "The Real J. Peterman." Kenny Kramer also made both monetary and non-monetary demands on Castle-Rock Entertainment – all of which were met.^{citation needed]}

In the "backwards episode" of Seinfeld, "The Betrayal," it is explained (in an example of retcon) that Kramer's original name given in the pilot, "Kessler", is just a misspelling on his mailbox.

Background and family

Perhaps Kramer's first scheme was running away from home at age 17 and stowing away aboard a steamer headed for Sweden, as he tells two art patrons in "The Letter." It is unknown how he returned to the United States from Sweden, however - or whether the story is even intended to be true.

Kramer was estranged for a long period from his mother, Babs Kramer. Unlike George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld, Kramer's character does not have a well-developed network of family members shown in the sitcom.

Kramer has stated that his hero is Mickey Mantle, who is also one of Jerry's heroes.

Character

Kramer has many conflicting personality traits. Described in "The Letter" by an art patron as "a loathsome, offensive brute," he is often shallow, callous, and indifferent. On the other hand, he is often caring and friendly, going out of his way to get his friends to help others and to do the right thing even when they don't want to. Kramer is known for his extreme honesty and, correspondingly, his lack of tact; in "The Nose Job", he tells George's girlfriend that she "needs a nose job". Instead of being horrified, many characters end up thanking Kramer for his candor. Kramer never gets into trouble for it, but his friends often do. He also gets his friends into trouble by talking them into things such as parking illegally in a handicapped space ("The Handicap Spot") or urinating in a parking garage ("The Parking Garage").

Kramer is known for appropriating items from Jerry, most notably food. Jerry's apartment is Kramer's second home; he has his own key to the apartment, rarely bothers to knock, and even begins to receive phone calls there in "The Pilot, Part 1". It is revealed in "The Betrayal" that this may be due to Jerry's offer upon moving into the building (12 years earlier, about 4 years before the first episode), telling Kramer "We are neighbors. What's mine is yours."

Kramer's own apartment is sub-let from documentary filmmaker Paul Buchman from Mad About You. Kramer's apartment is the subject of numerous radical experiments in interior design, including "levels" (no furniture) in "The Pony Remark", and a reconstruction of the set of The Merv Griffin Show in "The Merv Griffin Show".

Kramer's signature on the show is entering a room sliding in, much like Art Carney's character in The Honeymooners. This reportedly first became a recurring gag when Richards was late for a cue; trying to save the scene, he burst into the room, much to the delight of the audience. His initial bursts into Jerry's apartment were fairly conventional, and became somewhat more flamboyant or physically comedic as the series progressed.

George Costanza once commented, upon hearing that Kramer had gone to a baseball fantasy camp, that Kramer's whole life was a fantasy camp: "People should plunk down two thousand dollars to live like him for a week: Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors, and have sex without dating! That's a fantasy camp!" ("The Visa").

Friends

Kramer is perhaps the most social of the four main characters, and seems to have more friends and associates than any of the others, some of whom are just as eccentric, if not more so, than himself. Kramer has a slew of never-seen friends, most notably Bob Sacamano, as well as Lomez, Jay Reimenschneider, Corky Ramirez, Len Nicademo, and Specter. In "The Frogger," Kramer's multitude of mysterious friends is joked about, with Jerry asking, "You sure have a lot of friends; how come I never see any of these people?", and Kramer responding, "They want to know why they never see you."

In the episode The Betrayal, Kramer's friend FDR or Franklin Delano Romanawski (Played by Michael McShane) wishes on his birthday candles that Kramer would drop dead, after Kramer threw a snowball at him. Kramer tried to get 100% anti-drop dead protection for life, but lost after losing a wishbone break.

Kramer is also good friends with Newman, played by Wayne Knight, and Mickey Abbott, played by Danny Woodburn. Although they seem to get into many fights, Newman often participates in many of Kramer's inventions and money-making ideas. Mickey and Kramer also fight, sometimes physically. For example, in "The Stand In", Mickey physically attacks Kramer after he is shunned by his fellow little people for wearing "lifts", an idea Kramer suggested. They seem to remain friends, however, even after such altercations.

Kramer is popular with both George's and Jerry's parents, and it is revealed in "The Blood" that he calls the Seinfelds once a week (as he explains to Jerry, "If you called them more often, I wouldn't have to!"). He even briefly moves into their retirement community in Florida, where Morty Seinfeld recruits him to run for Condo Board President.

Romantic relationships

Of the four main characters, Kramer has the fewest romantic relationships portrayed on-screen. He does not seem to have trouble attracting women, but his relationships often come to an embarrassing end and like Jerry's, are usually short lived. Some of Kramer's most notable relationships include:

• In "The Conversion", after Kramer attracts the attention of a young Latvian Orthodox nun, he learns from the priests that he has the "Kavorka", or "lure of the animal", a powerful attraction over women.
• In "The Puffy Shirt", Kramer dates a "low-talker", a woman who speaks so quietly that Jerry doesn't hear her ask him to wear a "Puffy Shirt" live on national television, which Jerry unknowingly agrees to.
• In "The Friars Club", Kramer tries to copy Leonardo Da Vinci by only sleeping for a few minutes at a time, but when he finally falls deeply asleep in his girlfriend's arms, she thinks he's dead, puts him in a sack and dumps him in the Hudson River.
• In "The Non-Fat Yogurt", Kramer's passionate encounter with a lab technician results the accidental mixup of Rudy Giuliani's blood test.
• In "The Pie", Kramer dates Olive from the Coffee Shop whose super-long nails are the only cure to his itchy back. When he loses his itch and wants to break up with her, he uses a mannequin that looks like Elaine as his pretend new girlfriend.
• In "The Wife", he gets overly-tanned after falling asleep on a tanning bed and then horrifies his African-American girlfriend and her family who think he's doing blackface.
• In "The Maid", his girlfriend moves to downtown Manhattan and Kramer cannot handle the "long-distance relationship".
• In "The Dog" Kramer has a relationship with a woman all of his friends hate, saying "if her soul was visible, it would be like one of those elephant man exhibits, when they pull off the sheet and everybody gasps."

Protégés

Kramer has on a few occasions taken someone under his wing and aggressively protected their interests.

• In "The Chaperone", he becomes the personal coach of Miss Rhode Island at the Miss America pageant. He trains her on poise, walk and even on singing technique (after her trained doves are accidentally killed by Jerry).
• In "The Understudy", Kramer becomes a super-protective bodyguard and nurse to an injured Bette Midler after she is knocked over by George at a softball game. He is so protective of her that he even prevents George and Jerry from apologizing to her at the hospital.
• In "The Voice", Kramer gets an intern from New York University (NYU) who is supposed to be working for "Kramerica Industries", but he really ends up "mending chicken wire", "having high tea with Newman" and setting up lunch appointments with Jerry at the Coffee Shop. Darren the intern becomes so loyal to "Kramerica" that he even continues on as Kramer's assistant after the internship is revoked by the university - - but later Kramer announces he "is going away for a very long time" after the failed oil ball invention.

Bizarre beliefs and philosophies

Kramer is known to embrace opposite and reverse philosophies and to reject acceptable social behaviors or established facts. For example, he insists in "The Jimmy" that you have to eat before undergoing surgery because "you need your strength," even though patients are told not to eat before being operated on for safety reasons.

• In "The Opera," Kramer wears casual clothes to an upscale opera, commenting that "People do [dress up when they go to the opera]; I don't.", Kramer also admits that he suffers from coulrophobia (fear of clowns).

• In "The Strike," Kramer is enthusiastically eager to celebrate Festivus, a holiday created by Frank Costanza.

• When he developed a severe cough, Kramer refused to see a doctor, preferring instead to be treated by a veterinarian. His rationale is that veterinarians are superior physicans because they are expected to care for multiple species.

• In "The Foundation", Kramer inspires a despondent Elaine to have greater self-confidence with the "Katra" philosophy that she thinks he learned in his karate class. As it turns out, "Katra" is a Vulcan trait that Kramer saw in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and actually, Kramer is the only adult in a karate class full of children.

• In "The Sponge", Kramer adamantly refuses to wear a ribbon at an AIDS walk for charity, causing fury (and eventually physical violence) among his fellow walkers.

Employment

Despite the failure of the majority of his schemes and his unwillingness to even apply for a normal job, Kramer always seems to have money when he needs it; in "The Visa," George makes a comment about Kramer "do[ing] nothing" but "fall[ing] ass-backwards into money", suggesting he may have inherited some money or won some kind of lottery. The only example of this demonstrated on the show was in the episode "The Subway", in which Kramer places a $600 bet on a horse at 30-to-1 odds, which amounts to winning $18,000.

The only steady job Kramer is known to have had was in "The Strike," when he went back to work at H&H Bagels after being on strike for over a decade. His union finally settled the strike when the minimum wage of New York was raised to the hourly rate Kramer had been demanding from his employer (Kramer still felt the strike was a success), and he was reemployed. He only worked there during that one episode before he was fired. During the time he was working at the bagel shop, he went on strike again because of having to work on Festivus, a holiday invented by Frank Costanza.

Kramer has engaged in a variety of short-lived jobs. He worked part-time as a department store Santa before being fired for spreading Communist propaganda to young children. In "The Bizarro Jerry," he worked at an office where he was not actually employed, describing his daily activities to Jerry as "T.C.B. You know, takin' care of business." His "boss" eventually "fires" him, commenting that his reports resemble work by someone with "no business training at all." In "The Beard," he was paid to be a decoy in a police lineup. A story arc of the fifth season included Kramer's idea for a coffee table book about coffee tables, which was eventually published in "The Fire." His success in that particular endeavor was short-lived, however, because he spilled coffee on Kathie Lee Gifford while promoting the book on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. In one episode, he became an underwear model for Calvin Klein, which must account for at least some of his income. The biggest boost to Kramer's income would have to be in the episode "The Wizard," when his coffee table book is optioned for a movie by a "big Hollywood so-and-so", earning Kramer enough royalty money to retire to Florida (although he moved back to New York almost immediately after a "political scandal" involving going barefoot in the clubhouse cost him the election for condo board president).

He is a compulsive gambler who successfully avoided gambling for several years until "The Diplomat's Club", in which he bet with a wealthy Texan on the arrival and departure times of flights going into New York's LaGuardia Airport.

A struggling (and untalented) actor, Kramer briefly lived in Los Angeles, where he accosted Fred Savage, appeared in a cameo on Murphy Brown, and was a suspect in a string of serial killings. Back in New York, Kramer worked as a stand-in on a soap opera with his friend Mickey Abbott in "The Stand In", and was given a one-line part in a Woody Allen movie in "The Alternate Side, (His line, "These pretzels are making me thirsty," became the show's first catch phrase.) but he is fired before completing his scene. Kramer has worked in various other theater projects, such as acting out illnesses at a medical school in "The Burning."

In the episode The Strong Box Kramer says one of the things in the box is his military discharge. Upon being asked, "You were in the military?", Kramer replies, "Briefly."

Kramer's financial status seems to be contradicted across episodes. For example, in one episode George asks Kramer if he can break a twenty-dollar bill, to which he replies, "I only have hundreds" ("The Mango"). However, in another episode, in which he explains to Jerry that wallets are a nuisance and that he should use a money clip, Kramer advises Jerry to "keep the big bills on the outside" and shows Jerry his own money clip as an example, to which Jerry responds, "That's a five" ("The Reverse Peephole").

Inventions, entrepreneurship, and lawsuits

Kramer showed an entrepreneurial bent with "Kramerica Industries," for which he devised plans for a pizza place where customers made their own pizza ("Male Unbonding"), a bladder system for tankers that would "put an end to maritime oil spills" ("The Voice"), and a product that would put ketchup and mustard in the same bottle.

He also came up with the idea of a beach-scented cologne in "The Pez Dispenser," but a marketing executive for Calvin Klein informed him that the idea was senseless. However, in "The Pick," it is revealed that Klein has produced a cologne called Ocean based on the same idea. When Kramer confronts him about this, his interaction with a Klein executive lands him a photo shoot in connection with the cologne as an underwear model.

In "The Doorman", Kramer and Frank Costanza co-develop a prototype for a brassiere for men called the "bro" or the "mansiere."

In "The Muffin Tops", Kramer cries foul after failing to receive due credit for J. Peterman's book success which was unduly based on Kramer's misadventures. He then confronts Peterman during a book signing, and is kicked out of the event. Kramer then declares himself to be "The Real Peterman" and initiates The Real Peterman Reality Bus Tour, charging customers $37.50 for a tour of his life.

Kramer also hatched a scheme to smuggle actual Cubans to the United States to make his beloved outlawed Cuban cigars, only to learn the Cubans are actually Dominicans ("The English Patient").

He participates in lawsuits against various people and companies, represented by Jackie Chiles, a parody of Johnnie Cochran. In "The Maestro," he settled one such suit (though he received no monetary compensation) against a coffee company whose beverages were too hot (a reference to the McDonald's coffee case). In "The Abstinence," Kramer sues a tobacco company for the damage its products caused to his appearance, and in "The Caddy," he sued Sue Ellen Mischke for causing a traffic accident that ruined his chances at becoming a professional golfer.

Kramer's other inventions and ideas

• A coffee table book about coffee tables. While on Regis and Kathie Lee promoting the book, he spits out his coffee and he is no longer allowed to tour ("The Opposite").
• PB & J's, a restaurant that only sells peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Nothing becomes of it ("The Friars Club").
• Ketchup and mustard in the same bottle ("The Voice").
• Eliminating all the pieces of furniture in his house and replacing them with levels ("The Pony Remark").
• Installing a garbage disposal as the drain in his shower, so that he could prepare vegetables while showering ("The Apology").
• A roll-out tie dispenser ("The Stock Tip").
• Redoing his entire apartment in wood ("The Junior Mint").
• Redecorating his apartment with the set of The Merv Griffin Show ("The Merv Griffin Show").
• Adding a screen door outside his apartment front door ("The Serenity Now").
• Using the homeless to pull rickshaws in New York City ("The Bookstore").
• Reversing the peephole in his apartment front door ("The Reverse Peephole").
• Owning his own chicken to obtain fresh eggs. He later discovers that the chicken is really a rooster and trains him to become a cockfighter ("The Little Jerry").
• Saving all his blood in a refrigerator ("The Blood").
• Using Newman and his mail truck to take cans to a Michigan recycling plant, where the bottle deposit return is worth 10¢, as opposed to New York's 5¢ ("The Bottle Deposit, Part 1" and "Part 2").
• Getting rid of his refrigerator so that he would only eat fresh food ("The Soup").
• Buying food only sold in bulk.
• A pizza place where you make your own pizza pie.
• Placing oil in a giant rubber bladder to prevent oil spills. However, during the test of the giant ball of oil at Play Now, it falls on the unsuspecting head of Jerry's girlfriend ("The Voice").
• A small statue of Jerry made of fusilli pasta ("The Fusilli Jerry")
• A cologne that smells of the beach. ("The Pez Dispenser")
• Blacking out 2 of the lanes in a four lane highway to make it more "luxurious."

Pseudonyms

Like the other three characters, Kramer has pseudonyms he uses in various schemes; H. E. Pennypacker, Dr. Martin von Nostrand, and Peter von Nostrand are the most popular.

Under the name "H. E. Pennypacker" in "The Puerto Rican Day", Kramer poses as a buyer interested in an apartment in order to use its bathroom. Kramer also appeared as H. E. Pennypacker to help Elaine get revenge on a store, Putumayo, by repricing all the merchandise in the store with a pricing gun ("The Millennium").

As Dr. Martin von Nostrand, Kramer tried to get Elaine's medical chart to erase the negative comments her doctor had made in "The Package." He also used the von Nostrand alias in the episode "The Slicer", posing as a dermatologist for a cancer screening at Kruger. Kruger later recognised him as Dr. van Nostrand in "The Strike". Kramer used the name Martin von Nostrand (without the "doctor" prefix) while auditioning for the role of himself on the show Jerry in "The Pilot, Part 1". Kramer posed as Professor Peter von Nostrand in "The Nose Job" in order to retrieve his jacket from another man's apartment.

Kramer was also referred to as "Assman" in reference to the license plate the state of New York accidentally gave him in "The Fusilli Jerry." Occasionally, he is called "Krame" ("The Parking Space," "The Stranded") or "the K-Man" ("The Busboy").

A derogatory nickname for Kramer has been "hipster doofus", a moniker once assigned to him by a woman in a wheelchair he once dated in the episode "The Handicap Spot," and occasionally directed at him by Elaine, as in "The Glasses." The nickname was first used in a newspaper review of Seinfeld. There have been some interpretations of the term "hipster doofus" that suggest Kramer to be "a flamboyant and sophisticated unfortunate," "a person who is learned on the ways of the world, but not learned or aware of his own physicality," as well as "the world's roughest prototype of the metrosexual male."^{citation needed]}

External links

• Kramer on Seinfeldonline.com- Learn something about Kramer.
• Michael Richards at the Internet Movie Database
• Some favorite Kramer quotes from wikiquote.org.

References

• TV.com- The Seinfeld Page on TV.com.
• Seinfeld Chronicles- Information on the Seinfeld Program.