George Costanza
George Lewis Costanza is a fictional character on the US television sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998).
George was Jerry's neurotic, annoying, and often juvenile, best friend. He sometimes lived with his parents, Estelle and Frank, a bitter couple who were almost as neurotic as their son.
In dealing with his friends, George was usually cheap and selfish. Along with Kramer, he would often concoct elaborate plots to weasel out of relational, financial, or legal obligations, often with unexpected and negative consequences.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Some of his numerous plots included:
- Taking up smoking so that his fiancee Susan Ross would call off the wedding, but the cigarettes caused him to cough and choke.
- Inventing a fictitious company named "Vandelay Industries" where he said he had a job interview, in order to keep getting his unemployment benefits. When that failed, he dated his case worker's daughter.
- Proposing a sexual relationship with his cousin, which she agreed to.
- Wearing Kramer's father's wedding band to get women to hit on him. It worked, but none of the women wanted a married man.
- Telling Susan that he was meeting Elaine Benes to discuss problems about her (made-up) boyfriend Art Vandelay when he actually was meeting Marisa Tomei. George and Elaine failed to develop the story enough and Susan suspected George was having an affair with Elaine.
- Leaving his car parked at Yankee Stadium so that George Steinbrenner would think he was there working even when he wasn't.
- Turning the space underneath his desk into a bedroom.
- Getting ensconced or draped in velvet.
- Faking a handicap so that he could get his own private bathroom.
George's professional life was hilariously unstable and 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 one job for having sex with the cleaning woman. His original job when the series started was as a real estate agent; he ended up getting fired after he poisoned his boss.
For a brief period George was engaged to Susan Biddle Ross, a wealthy but often callous and dull woman who used to be one of the executives at NBC who OK'd Jerry and George's show-within-the-show sitcom pilot. She was indirectly killed by George, who knowingly selected the cheapest envelopes (containing toxic glue) for their wedding invitations. Susan's parents never forgave him for this, and appointed him chairman of the Susan Biddle Ross foundation to keep him trapped in their influences.
George had an unusual affinity for velvet. When he was dating a woman who had velvet-covered furniture but lived with a man named Scott who eerily resembled George, he desired to replace Scott so that he could be "ensconced in velvet." His scheme had unintended consequences, because when Scott moved out, he took all the furniture (complete with the velvet) with him. On another episode, George stated that if it were socially acceptable he would "drape" himself in velvet. He dated a woman who had absolutely no interest in physical appearances, so he started wearing a velvet jogging suit.
