Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is back. The third season of Jerry Seinfeld’s hit web series premiered earlier today on Crackle with a special 23-minute episode featuring Louis C.K. It was the first episode of what looks to be the show’s best—or at least most star-studded—season yet. A trailer was released late in December that teased Jerry driving around, drinking coffee and yakking it up with the likes of Patton Oswalt (in a Delorean), Tina Fey, Todd Barry, noted car guy Jay Leno and the generally pretty public appearance-averse Howard Stern. But no one can get enough of Louis C.K. these days, so it was fitting that Seinfeld started Season 3 off with a fail safe.
We saw Seinfeld pick Louis up in a small, flimsy 1959 Fiat Jolly with wicker seats. Where were they going? Not a coffee shop or diner, but to Louis’ boat, on which the stand-up titans would cruise down the Hudson and sip from cappuccinos brewed with care via an on-board Nespresso machine. But first they had to survive the streets of New York in a coral orange death wagon. They did, fortunately. Upon exiting:
Louis: “My ass hurts a lot.”
Seinfeld: “From the wicker?”
Louis: “I hope so.”
As usual, the episode was filled the comedians laughing hysterically at each other’s jokes, expressions and observations. The comments are never as funny as the participants seem to think they are, but as viewers we’re comfortable chalking it up to some inside knowledge of the nuances of “comedy” that only funny men of such lofty stature could posses. It’s fun as hell to watch two of the funniest men alive shoot the shit, though, and one of the reason the show works so well is that Seinfeld is great at riffing on things happening around them in a way that encourages joke-making. I guess he is the most famous observational comic of all-time.
Once on the boat, we learned a few things about Louis, most notably that his favorite activity to partake in when his kids are with their mother is to get high and go see 3D IMAX movies. He has the entire process down to a science of efficiency so as to limit his human interaction while stoned to a minimum. Louis does it all for the moment when the screen expands after the trailers and counts down to 3D IMAX experience. Here are his rankings of things he loves in life:
1. Sex
2. Comedy (when it’s good)
3. The 3D IMAX count down
But he admits that sex is falling in the rankings as he ages. If it ever drops below the IMAX intro, Seinfeld, says, it will be “time to pull the ripcord.”
Another solid chunk of the episode was spent by Louis detailing how he ran his boat aground in Harlem and ended up stuck on it with his daughters for almost 12 hours. The story, which is completely insane and unbelievable until you read the actualnewsstories on the ordeal, was accompanied by an animated dramatization, a new Comedians in Cars With Coffee wrinkle that we’ve yet to see and that worked really well. To hear Louis’ version of the events of the unintentional mooring, head over to the official site and watch the entire episode.