This is standard fare, right here. This might be the platonic ideal of Jerry strips. It has it all - Mr. Givney, the owner of the train line and Jerry's employer, desires something normal and commonplace; Jerry screws it up, usually through indifference; Jerry reacts to his mistakes with . . . The Violently Ordinary Rejoinder. Givney is promptly launched, as you’ll see.


Okay. The power of the retort has hurled Givney backwards, knocking over his chair. This will happen to all of us; we’ve all fallen backwards in our chair. And perhaps if someone had taken a split-second picture of the moment in which we pitched backwards, they might have seen the object we were holding appearing to float in the air before gravity pulled it down. But for this image to work, we have to believe that Jerry’s comment made Givney drop his picture, fly up a foot off the ground and then fling himself backwards into a preexisting cloud of dust.

This, as we shall learn, is not only par for the course - this is as easy as Givney gets it.