"You think that could be a coincidence, George? Is that possible?”

Doubling pervades Seinfeld, a show that essentially revolves around the duo of George and Jerry, and the very creation of which stems from the duo of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David—from the nature of its creation to the use of doppelgangers for its characters to the very structure of its stories, every moment is in some way a multiplication of another.  Aesthetically, Kramer and Jerry are the same height, while Elaine and George stand at the same spot nearly a foot beneath them; the exterior of the coffeeshop shows two identical signs that diverge at a right angle.  Newman, the “pure evil” postman from down the hall is Kramer’s double in that he’s another eccentric neighbor of Jerry; however, he is also Jerry’s mutual nemesis putting the two in frequent antagonistic parallel.  Jerry nearly marries Jeannie Steinman, who, down to the exact initials, uncannily mirrors him; and George dates a woman who looks like Jerry causing George to freak out and break up with her because Kramer convinces him it’s a psychological way of being with Jerry in ways he wouldn’t normally allow himself to be.  Kenny Bania seems, at first, a hack doppelganger of Jerry’s, but as Jerry’s occupation becomes more of a joke the line between the two of them becomes less stable.   The less subtle final two seasons made this motif explicit by having Elaine break up with a man, the titular character of “The Bizarro Jerry,” by saying they should still be friends, and he agrees excitedly, “like you and Jerry!” referencing her continuing friendship with her one-time boyfriend.  This then leads to Elaine’s entrance into what Jerry describes as a “Bizarro world,” citing the Superman concept, in which all of the facets of the show as we know it, especially its principle characters, are reproduced in some way backward.  “Vargus,” for example, is a Fed-Ex employee and is on good terms with the Bizarro Jerry.

            As Elaine remains herself amid these “bizarro” doubles of her friends, as a sort of constant among fantastic reproductions of her friends, Jerry Seinfeld remains “himself” amid the characters of the regular, non-bizarro Seinfeld universe who are doubled in the sense that they have real life origins—George is based upon co-creator Larry David; the inspirations of Kramer and Elaine themselves are doubled: Kramer is based in the real life neighbor of David, Kenny Kramer, and is developed by the more eccentric member of the writing staff, Larry Charles; Elaine’s inspiration is contested to be Carol Leifer, a writer for the show and one-time girlfriend of Seinfeld, though is more likely based upon the one-time girlfriend, long time friend of David, Monica Yates, daughter of Richard Yates, who is considered the inspiration of the character of Elaine’s alcoholic writer father.  And then the show itself is doubled as Jerry, the sitcom pitched to NBC by George and Jerry.  Of course no character is their inspiration, not even “Jerry Seinfeld” is Jerry Seinfeld, as we can see in the pilot episode of Jerry, which is not autobiographical to the Jerry of the Seinfeld universe.  The individual writers and the actors who play these characters make their essences indefinable, and the show is successful and exists beyond its pilot, unlike Jerry, which is the basis of much of the irony that is so essential to the show. 

            In “The Pie”—which bizarrely contains the second character played by Suzanne Snider, who first played Eva the neo-Nazi in “The Limo,” and the second character played by Christine Dunford, who was the reason for “The Baby Shower” of season 2—we can see a prime example of this motif within the show: Kramer sees a mannequin “that looks exactly like Elaine” and describes it to Elaine, George and Jerry:

It's uncanny! It's like they chopped off your arms and legs, dipped you in plastic, and screwed you back all together, and stuck you on a pedestal. It's really quite exquisite. 

Obviously the two are completely different—a human being and a mannequin—but it is that “uncanny” similarity that gives the situation its gravity and makes it so unsettling, especially when George later ogles the mannequin when it is being undressed.  George’s parallel interest in the store stems from an “unadvertised sale” that will get him a “40 short” suit that looks good on his unusual figure.  However, a “fellow 40 short” appears in the form of another stocky, bespectacled bald man who wants the suit, causing troubles for George who came across the suit first, yet is waiting for the unadvertised sale.  George and Elaine are thus both preoccupied by the presence of their doubles in this store.  

            Christine Dunford reprises her presence on the show as the saleswoman, the human representative of this establishment.   I don’t really know how one would analyze this bizarre trope that the show here uses of recasting an actor in another role.  Elaine asks George, “You think that could be a coincidence, George? Is that possible?” as Dunford approaches the two for the first time in the episode.  Though Elaine asks this on a plot level about the resemblance of the mannequin, it cannot be a coincidence that she says this as someone enters the scene that looks exactly like someone else from a previous episode, just as it is not a coincidence that Dunford has been recast, just as it is not a coincidence that blonde Susan Snider, who is surreally anglo to be the daughter of the overtly-Italian Poppie, and was rather cast perfectly as a Midwestern neo-nazi: it couldn’t be that she was just too perfect for the part.  

            The comedic tradition of film has instances of an actor playing the twin of his character, and the concurrently broadcasted Family Matters had Jaleel White playing Steve along with two other Urkels, but that is not what is occurring with Elaine, George and the saleswoman who once had a baby shower, nor is that the case in the plot with Jerry and the neo-Nazi who refuses his pie without giving a reason, other than the perhaps she once played a neo-Nazi which justifies her fascist antipathy for Jerry’s pie.  Hitchcock’s Vertigo casts Kim Novak as two different characters, but it turns out that she was the same woman all along, Novak’s double-role-playing was just a twist in the mystery.      Maya Daren’s avant-garde short film At Land casts herself as various versions of herself wandering through a variety of surreal scenes, each dressed exactly the same, with every version meeting by the end.  But the European-accented saleswoman of “the Pie” is not Leslie of “the Baby Shower”—George and Elaine, the very characters who directly interacted with her in “the Baby Shower,” don’t even acknowledge the likeness.    And Seinfeld is a mainstream situation comedy not a surrealist film made by a friend of Marcel Duchamp.  What must be at work here is a subtle analogy between the two episodes, with “the Pie” somehow commenting on “the Baby Shower” and using Dunford as the thread with which to make this return.