George tells his fiancée Susan that Jerry actually wears size 32 and modifies the tag to a 31; this initiates a fight about sharing other people's secrets.
When Lena tells him she doesn't mind him taking her number from the AIDS walk list, he gets turned off from her being "too good", assuming she must also be chaste.
Determined that her 60 sponges must last the rest of her life, Elaine refuses to give one to George so that he can have makeup sex with Susan and puts Billy through a rigorous examination to make sure he is "sponge-worthy".
With George and Susan suffering increasing sexual frustration for lack of the sponge, she convinces him to use a condom, but by the time they get the wrapper open his erection has passed.
Peter Mehlman was inspired to write this episode when he heard that the extremely popular Today sponge was being taken off the market.
[2] His initial plan was to dovetail Elaine's hoarding of the Today sponge with Kramer and Newman trying to run a stock market scam, George and a girl agreeing to date for a week and then break up by mutual consent, and Jerry trying to conceal from Lena the fact that he got her number from an AIDS walk list.
A paper by Avinash Dixit used this episode to explore an option value problem in determining the "spongeworthiness" of potential partners.