Teri Hatcher Riffed That Her Old ‘Seinfeld’ Catchphrase Is Still True — On One Condition

By the way, they’re still real, and they’re still spectacular — but, at this point, they’re probably a little old for Jerry’s taste.

In recent years, TV legend Teri Hatcher has been taking some work as a professional stand-up comedian, a surprising but welcome pivot for the actress that stands in stark contrast to the recent career choices of a certain other star from Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. The Desperate Housewives great first began performing her version of story-based comedy at charity shows in the late 2010s, and, upon the urging of Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein, Hatcher decided to start taking the stand-up medium seriously, leading to a spot on the Showtime comedy showcase “Even More Funny Women of a Certain Age” in 2021.

In recent weeks, online interest in Hatcher’s comedy career has surged as a clip from her Showtime set went viral, partially because of her comments on the culture of cosmetic surgery in women, but also for how she referred to her appearance in the 1993 Seinfeld episode “The Implant” that discussed such sensitive and definitely-not-silicone subject matter.

Joked Hatcher, “Now, they’re still real, and, I would argue, still spectacular — if you’re attracted to tube socks filled with sand hanging from a scarecrow.”

As Seinfeld fans will remember well, in “The Implant,” Hatcher played Jerry’s new girlfriend Sidra, whom he dumps after Elaine convinces him that she must have had breast augmentation surgery to achieve her desirable figure. After an accidental groping incident at a sauna, Elaine changes her mind about Sidra’s Boutros Boutros-Ghalis, and Jerry attempts to win her back in order to see them for himself. But when Sidra learns that he and Elaine are friends, she assumes that the sauna incident was no accident and storms out, declaring to Jerry, “By the way, they’re real, and they’re spectacular.”

From a modernist perspective that Seinfeld himself would consider a hate crime against comedy, the events of “The Implant” are beyond misogynistic for a number of reasons, first of which is that Jerry would consider a woman whom he’s already dating to be beneath him if he ever found out she had any cosmetic surgery done. Elaine’s aiding and abetting in Jerry’s superficial assessment of a woman’s value is worthy of its own B-graded undergrad gender studies essay about how women side with the patriarchy against other women, and even Sidra’s own iconic and victorious closing line comes with the implicit assumption that, if her breasts weren’t natural, Jerry wouldn’t miss her as much.

Ultimately, Hatcher isn’t only in a position to comically opine on American culture’s toxic relationship with aging, beauty standards and cosmetic surgery because her chest was the star of a Seinfeld episode, but also because she’s a 60-year-old actress who has felt the effects of such superficial assessments of a woman’s worth firsthand. 

Hell, every woman will eventually feel the wrath of society’s scorn for older women, even Jerry’s other girlfriends, once they reach middle-age in about 30 years.