- After George's parents take back the bread they gifted to Susan's parents, George makes Jerry find another loaf and tries to appease Susan's parents by taking them on Kramer's Manhattan horse tours, to disastrous consequences.
- George is nervous about an upcoming dinner he and his parents are having with Susan and her parents and with good reason. They don't exactly hit it off and Frank Costanza so upset at the end of it all that he takes back the loaf of rye bread they had brought as a gift. George is intent on returning it leading Jerry to have an interesting encounter with an old woman who buys the last loaf of rye at the bakery. Elaine has a new musician boyfriend but Jerry may ruin the relationship when he describes it as hot and heavy. Kramer gets the use of a neighbor's hansom cab and begins giving guided tours of New York.—garykmcd
- Most of the plot revolves around a loaf of marbled rye bread, with its appearance and disappearance causing repercussions that last until the very end of the Seinfeld show.
Elaine dates a jazz saxophonist named John Jermaine (Jeff Yagher) and admits to Jerry that she has reservations about their dating, because John "actually, he, um, doesn't really like to do 'everything'" (a reference to oral sex). In spite of this, Jerry incautiously tells one of the band members, Clyde (Leonard Lightfoot) that John and Elaine are "pretty hot and heavy."
When Jerry tells Elaine what he said, Elaine is alarmed and shows some uncharacteristic consideration: "I don't want John thinking that I'm hot and heavy if he's not hot and heavy. I'm trying to get a little squirrel to come over to me here. I don't want to make any big, sudden movements. I'll frighten him away!"
George's and Susan's (Heidi Swedberg) parents meet and have dinner for the first time. It is a social disaster. Mrs. Ross (Grace Zabriskie) evidently likes to drink; Frank (Jerry Stiller) displays his ignorance and social gracelessness with every sentence. Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris) says she has never heard of Merlot; George is mortified, and Susan is helpless to patch up each conversation.
The Costanzas have brought a loaf of marbled rye bread which, when it isn't served with the meal, Frank sneaks away when they leave. While George and his parents are in the car, his parents continue to complain about the Rosses: Frank and Estelle are livid that the Rosses didn't sever cake after the meal, and they had to just sit there and drink coffee without any cake.
Mrs. Ross realizes that the Costanzas brought a rye loaf as a courtesy to them and wonders where it has disappeared. The Rosses cannot find the load of rye bread and speculate that the Costanzas took it back. The Rosses find this sick.
Meanwhile, the Costanzas are obsessing on the rye as they drive home. Frank complains that he went through a lot of effort to get the bread and the Rosses didn't even serve it. So, he stole the bread and brought I back as it is his bread, and the Rosses didn't even serve it.
George wants to please his parents, but he wants to impress the Rosses. He decides that, by getting Susan's parents out of the apartment for one evening, he can get a new rye and place it in the kitchen, making it appear as though it had always been there.
Kramer has taken over a friend's horse-drawn tourist carriage for a week and agrees to take Susan's parents on a hansom cab ride in the Central Park area as a distraction for George. George plans to use the time to sneak the rye bread into their kitchen. The Rosses are having an anniversary and begin the ride with romantic feelings toward each other; but the plan falls apart when neither Kramer nor Susan's parents can bear the horse's extreme flatulence after Kramer had fed it an entire can of "Beef-A-Reeno", a fictional beef and pasta concoction analogous to the real-life canned pasta and beef dish Beef-A-Roni.
Meanwhile, John wants to try adding something "new" to his repertoire with Elaine and takes her back to his place before a performance in front of some record executives.
George persuades Jerry to go in pursuit of the loaf of rye. The plan is that Jerry will buy the rye and bring it to Susan's apartment when her parents are out with Kramer for the evening. Unfortunately, the Counter Woman (Kathryn Kates) at Schnitzer's Bakery happily sells the last rye to an elderly woman, Mabel Choate (Frances Bay), who refuses to sell it to Jerry, even when he offers her fifty dollars. Jerry follows Mabel down the street in order to get the marble rye loaf, though she still refuses to sell it. Eventually he snatches it from her, shouting the infamous line, "Shut up, you old bag!" (This will come back to haunt him in later episodes: The Cadillac and The Finale.)
By now the Rosses have returned and the only way George can retrieve the rye is by using a fishing pole to tug it out of Jerry's hands from a third story window. He is, of course, caught in the act by Susan and her parents.
John shows up late to his show with Elaine and apparently his enthusiastic "performance" has affected his saxophone playing to the point he can't play even a single bar. Elaine sheepishly sneaks out of the club as John's potential record contract goes up in smoke.
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