by Jon Warner
It’s hard to know where to start on an essay about Seinfeld. Doesn’t everyone already know everything there needs to be known on the show? Google greatest Seinfeld episodes and you’ll unearth a blog post or article from every corner of the globe with everyone offering up their personal take on the show about nothing. It clearly holds a place in our popular culture and remains to this day, unequivocally, the most iconic show of the 1990’s, turning “Yada Yada Yada”, “Shrinkage”, “Double Dipping”, and “No soup for you!” into everyday reference points. It was a legend in its own time, building a sizable following with 30-40 million people tuning into its broadcasts in the final few seasons. By then, it had began to lampoon (maybe not so successfully) its own tendencies and idiosyncrasies turning its simple, everyday observations into gargantuan, cartoon-like (“The Blood”, “The Bookstore”) absurdities. I had a conversation with someone the other day about Seinfeld and they feel like the show hasn’t held up very well. True, not every episode in great, and the 1st, 8th, and 9th seasons are not up to the same par as the best period between seasons 2-7. Yet the simple fact remains that when it was at its best, the exploits of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were as funny as any show ever made.
This “show about nothing” was groundbreaking at a time when every sitcom had to have a lesson to be learned or a moral to spin, not to mention the era of “the very special episode”. It’s also not as if the show was literally about nothing. I mean, waiting for a table at a restaurant and not getting a seat is certainly something. It’s just not something that until that point had been considered a worthy plot scenario for television show to focus on. In this way, it was a show about all the leftover bits of life that every other show was not interested in examining. It was about the in-between….. the nothing. In this way, it was tremendously edgy and smart. Its strong intelligence can be seen in its perfection of the “bottle episode” conceit (“The Chinese Restaurant, The Parking Garage” etc.), its treatment of taboo television topics (“The Contest”), its handling of the show-within-a-show theme (“The Pilot”). These higher concepts in each case are treated with a degree of creative writing and contextual nuance that broke new ground. However, if Seinfeld were just a cerebral experience on the existential elements of our dull lives it wouldn’t have gone very far. It was the comic gold found in those “dull” moments that gave the show its zing.
Looking back, it’s a wonder that the series was kicked off at all. Somehow NBC went along with it. Created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, it was loosely based on the general stand-up routine of Seinfeld and his comedy of minutiae, placing his observational comedy at the center of a fictionalized existence revolving around him and the lives of his friends: Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), whom Jerry used to date; George Costanza (Jason Alexander) who has been Jerry’s best friend since high school, and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) who is Jerry’s neighbor across the hall in his apartment. Most fans of the show would argue that as long as Larry David was involved in the show it was better for it. This combination of Larry David’s writing and Seinfeld’s “comedy of nothingness” are the structure in which the Seinfeld world came to life. Without David’s involvement in seasons 8 and 9, the plots and characters became more cartoonish than ever and dare I say too silly for the show’s own good. However, without George, Elaine and Kramer, the show would not have taken off. Interplay between all 4 characters is what makes the show great.
Each character is notoriously neurotic and obsessive. There’s Jerry breaking up with a woman because she eats her peas….one at a time. There’s Elaine going through a rigorous screening process to determine whether someone is “sponge-worthy”. There’s George going to extreme measures to make sure he gets a nap during a day at the office. Kramer has got to have just one more café latte. There is not a “normal” one among any of them, but we can see ourselves in all of them and the situations they find themselves in…to a degree. We understand the cosmic connections to their plights…..this way that our lives are filled with the same kind of minutiae. To see it elevated into prime time TV was a surprisingly validating experience. It’s this neurosis and zealous obsession on the details of everyday life that carries all of the best plot points and character observations. In fact, a book has been written that purports this is why the show has aged so well. It’s even been reported that Rutgers University has used episodes of Seinfeld to help teach Psychiatry students how to identify psychological disorders!
If the rule for the show was “no hugging and no learning”, then Seinfeld clearly succeeded. With an overall pessimistic harshness to it, Seinfeld still has teeth today. Everyone has got their own favorite episodes and I’d argue that if you polled 10 people you will get vastly different lists. I think the best way to celebrate the show is to recap my favorite episodes. So without further ado, I present my 5 favorite episodes in chronological order. I know I may get some flak for leaving out certain high-profile episodes. But it’s hard to nail down a list like this.
Top 5 Seinfeld episodes:
The Parking Garage – Season 3, episode 6
One of the best examples of the “show about nothing” concept takes place entirely in the parking garage of a mall. Just like “The Chinese Restaurant” the season before, the characters find themselves in an enclosed situation where seemingly nothing goes right, but the advantage that “The Parking Garage” has over it, is that it contains all four characters (“The Chinese Restaurant” doesn’t include Kramer), plus the banter and the pacing is much brisker. Kramer has bought a heavy air conditioner and is lugging it around; Elaine has bought some fish that she needs to get home to a tank; George has to get home to take his parent’s out for their anniversary; Jerry just needs to use the bathroom. And they all are in the parking garage looking for Kramer’s car.
They don’t remember which level or which section they parked the car, and the group becomes more and more frustrated and hysterical as time passes, a la The Twilight Zone (“Unbelievable, I’m never gonna get out of here. The guy goes to pee, he never comes back. It’s like a science fiction story”). Kramer convinces first Jerry and then George that they should both just “go” behind a car. And of course they end up arrested for public urination.
Elaine’s fish meet a dire end. George misses his parent’s anniversary and despite the fact that 3 of them find Kramer’s car, it’s then Kramer that they can’t find. It’s a painfully memorable and hilarious episode but “What’s the difference? We’ll all be dead eventually.”
The Boyfriend (Part 1 and 2) – Season 3 Episode 17,18
Maybe the best 2-part episode, which finds Jerry meeting one of his baseball idols, Keith Hernandez, whom he wants to spend time with, but who really wants to be dating Elaine once he meets her. Many chuckles ensue when it turns out Jerry really wants to “date” Keith with some homosexual overtones thrown in throughout the episodes.
JERRY: It’s been three days and he hasn’t called.
ELAINE: Well maybe you should call him.
JERRY: I can’t … I can’t
ELAINE: Why not?
JERRY: I don’t know. I just feel he should call me.
ELAINE: What’s the difference?
JERRY: You don’t understand, Elaine. I don’t want to be overanxious. If he wants to see me he has my number, he should call.
ELAINE: Yech, look at this ashtray. I hate cigarettes.
JERRY: I can’t stand these guys. You give your number to them and then they
don’t call. Why do they do that?
ELAINE: I’m sorry honey.
JERRY: I mean, I thought he liked me. I really thought he liked me. we were
getting along. He came over to me I didn’t go over to him.
ELAINE: No,
JERRY: Why did he come over to me if he didn’t want to see me?
ELAINE: I know.
JERRY: What did he come over to me if he didn’t want to see me? I mean here I meet this guy this great guy, a baseball player, best guy I ever met in my life.
.. Well that’s it. I’m never giving my number out to another guy again.
ELAINE: Sometimes I’ve given my number out to guys and it takes them a month to
call.
JERRY: Hu, good, good,… well if he’s calling in a month he’s got a prayer!
ELAINE: You know maybe he’s been busy. Maybe he’s been out of town?
JERRY: Oh, they don’t have phones out of town? Why do(?) people say they’re
too busy. Too busy. Pick up a phone!! It takes two minutes. How can you be
too busy?
ELAINE: Why don’t you just go ahead and call him?
JERRY: I can’t call here, it’s a coffee shop. I mean what am I going to say to
him?
ELAINE: Just ask him if he wants a to get together.
JERRY: For what dinner?
ELAINE: Dinner’s good.
JERRY: Don’t you think that’s coming on a little too strong? .. Isn’t that like
a turn off?
ELAINE: Jerry, He’s A GUY!
JERRY: … this is all .. very confusing.
It turns out Keith Hernandez was involved in a “spitting incident” at Shea Stadium several years ago with Kramer and Newman in which Jerry spoofs the film JFK with a magic loogie theory…
Meanwhile George is trying to get an extension on his unemployment and has convinced the unemployment office that he is close to a job with Vandelay industries….
In part two, more awkward relationship moments ensue
My favorite moment is during the closing credits of the first half….
The Marine Biologist – Season 5, episode 14
This may very well be the most clever and funny episode of them all. Jerry tricks Elaine by telling her that War and Peace was once titled “War, What is it good for.” Kramer gives Elaine an electronic organizer and Kramer is the recipient of 600 golf balls which he intends hitting off the beach into the ocean. Jerry meets a woman named Diane he knew in college who asks about George. He tells her that George is now a marine biologist.
Jerry: I may have mentioned you’re a marine biologist.
George: But I’m not a marine biologist.
Jerry: I’m aware of that.
Elaine meets with a Russian writer named Testikov for Pendant Publishing, where she drops the “War, What is it Good For?” line, but then her organizer starts beeping and Testikov throws it out the window hitting a woman in the head. The woman finds Jerry’s number on the machine and wants him to help her find the person who owns the organizer to make them pay for the medical bills.
Meanwhile, George has been meeting with Diane and explains to Jerry the situation…
Jerry: I did it for you.
George: Yeah, but what did you have to tell her that for. You put me in a very difficult position, Marine Biologist! I’m very uncomfortablewith this whole thing.
Jerry: You know with all due respect I would think it’s right up your alley.
George: Well it’s not up my alley! It’s one thing if I make it up. I knowwhat I’m doin, I know my alleys! You got me in the Galapagos Islands livin’ with the turtles, I don’t know where the hell I am.
Jerry: Well you came in the other day with all that whale stuff, the squeaking and the squealing.
George: Why couldn’t you have made me an architect? You know I always wanted to pretend that I was an architect.
Elaine then tries to get Testikov to pay for the woman’s medical damages, but he ends up throwing her tape recorder out the window hitting the very same woman on the head a second time. And then Diane and George are on the beach as a whale is spotted struggling in the surf and so occurs another of the series’ greatest moments…
The Hot Tub – Season 7, Episode 5
In this one. Elaine is hosting a runner for the New York Marathon from Trinidad and Tobago named Jean-Paul who missed out on the previous Olympics because his alarm clock didn’t wake him up.
Jerry begins to worry about Elaine’s abilities to make sure she can wake him on time for the marathon and begins to take over operations of finding Jean-Paul proper accommodations. Meanwhile George who works for the Yankees has decided that looking frustrated at work makes it look like you’re busy. He then gets in charge of going out on the town with members of the Houston Astros organization who take to calling everyone Bastards and Sons of Bitches. Kramer has a newly acquired hot tub to soak away his stresses but ends up losing power on his heat pump while he’s sleeping in the tub, which causes him to lose his core temperature. He then orders the industrial size pump. Jean-Paul ends up sleeping at Jerry’s apartment on the couch on the same night as he’s supposed to get up early for the marathon. Jean-Paul hears George calling everyone a Bastard and Son of a Bitch, so he takes to calling a baby a bastard in a hallway as he comes out of the apartment, much to Elaine’s detriment who promised the mother not to mention how the father ran out on her. Kramer knocks out the power to the building with his oversized pump and Jerry must rush Jean-Paul to the marathon. Meanwhile, Kramer has brought hot tea to the marathon to warm himself and Jean-Paul mistakes the tea cup for water and grabs it during the race…Youch!
The Invitations- Season 7 Episode 24
The best continuing story arc of the series comes from George and Susan’s engagement which takes place over season 7. This episode was the last one co-written by Larry David until the series finale. By the time episode 24 comes around, George will stop at nothing to try to break off the engagement with the wedding only a few months away.
George – “We ordered the wedding invitations today. Nothing can stop it now. Nothing. It’s here! It’s happening. Can I do this? I can’t do this…Look at me. Look at me I can’t do this, I can’t do this! Help me Jerry , help me”
He just can’t tell Susan flat-out that he wants to break up with her so he takes tips from Elaine and Kramer. He tries taking up smoking…
….and attempting to have Susan sign a pre-nuptual agreement all in the hopes of having her break it off.
But that’s not all. This episode also contains the delicious side plot of Jerry finding his soulmate for a brief time in Jeannie Steinman (Janeane Garofalo) who acts like him, talks like him and even order the same bowl of Cheerios as him at the café. Jerry realizes what he’s been looking for all these years is “myself”. (“I’ve been waiting for me to come along. And now I’ve swept myself off my feet!”.) However, it doesn’t last long…
Kramer gets in trouble with Susan for calling her Lily and is removed from being an usher at the wedding and Elaine feels left out because she won’t have a role at all at the wedding (“Now I’m gonna be stuck at the singles table with all the losers!”) Kramer also tries to get money from the bank that guarantees everyone will be greeted with a hello but he’s only greeted with a “hey”. His meeting with the store manager is hilarious. There’s an awkward pause while they’re waiting for the teller to come over and talk. Kramer comments on the desk….
Kramer – “Is this oak?”
Manager – “I think it’s pine.”
Kramer – “Pine is good.”
Little does George realize that his insistence on purchasing the cheapest invitations available for the wedding would do the trick of breaking off the wedding. While Susan is in the midst of licking and sealing nearly 200 envelopes, she keels over dead in the series’ most shocking twist. The brutally dark humor in the aftermath is priceless….
This episode strikes the right note at the end when George calls up Marisa Tomei to ask her out.
George – “I got the funeral tomorrow but my weekend is pretty wide open…..”
Seinfeld is the best sitcom of the last 40 years. It invented a new kind of language. It invented a new kind of sitcom. In some ways it dawned a new approach but also came at the end of an era and has cast a long shadow. Ending before the rise of premium cable television series, reality TV, and DVRs, it had a chance to find and build a sizable audience. Nearly 30 million people tuned in weekly during its heyday. Last year, according to Nielson, the top rated comedy (The Big Bang Theory) drew 20 Million viewers a telecast. There are so many niche networks now that finding a show that commands such a large slice of viewers again seems almost unfathomable as our shared experiences become more and more fractured. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d rather watch Seinfeld reruns than just about anything else on TV anyway.
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It’s a great show. One of my favorite episodes is The Subway. One of the best scenes is the first one, where the gang is trying to decide the best way to get there from here. “Couldn’t you just take the G?” asked Elaine. “Yeah” says a horrified Kramer “yeah, you could but why?”
And the damn thing is twice as funny as it ought to be if you know anything about the G train or mass transit in NYC.
The Subway is another one of those, like The Chinese Restaurant and The Parking Garage. It’s really funny. We’re really reminded in those moments how futility makes great comedy.
The writing team from beginning to the end of the running was just amazing. I think of all the scenarios, parallel plot points, everything was amazing. Watching these clips brings it all back, waiting to see each episode on a Thursday night at home. Seeing them one at a time in sequence, the full story arc, then years later watching 2 half-hour episodes back to back on various independent TV stations. In some ways it reminds me of all the Bug Bunny/Merry Melody cartoons with Jerry acting as the stand-in for Bugs Bunny. I’m sure others have drawn that parallel too, it was like a cartoon made flesh. But always those little threads of truth.
I think particularly that certain years did play out more like a cartoon, but hadn’t considered the Bugs Bunny angle. I will have to give that one some thought. Thanks for your comment!
Bugs Bunny is kind of a stretch. Jerry wasn’t much of a prankster, but as his character pointed out, he always “breaks even”.
Jon, you have done quite a magnificent job validating this brilliant work of television, one repeatedly labeled as one of the greatest television properties in history. Your individual episode choices are inspired for sure, though of course with every show of this complexity and magnitude you will have varying perspectives. “The Marine Biologist” and “The Parking Gargage” would absolutely place on my own list as well. “The Chinese Restaurant” and “The Soup Nazi” would also be on mine. Though I have played down the business of numerical placements on this countdown for some compelling reasons pertaining to what the real reasons why we staged this event in the first place, I think the #5 showing is warranted as are the four shows that will shortly be showcased finishing ahead of it. Your analysis, use of dialogue, segments, pointed list, and grasp of the show in a general sense make for a yeoman piece here, one of your all-time best.
Thanks Sammy! It’s fun to try to pair down a show to its essence but also tough work. Trying to narrow down why a series is great is a tough writing task. One that almost made my list is the 2 parter “The Bottle Deposit.” Partly it’s because I live in Michigan, where Kramer and Newman are trying to take their 10,000 bottles and cans to redeem the deposit.
Yeah, living in Michigan, I also smiled at that plot.
THE BOTTLE DEPOSIT is my favorite episode of the NON-LARRY episodes. It’s Exhibit A evidence of how the show took an ANYTHING GOES approach to create high-octane lunacy.
This is about 4 spots too low, oh well.
It’s my favorite show of all time and the one I’ve spent a bit of time writing about; I did a top 25 episodes list with an essay for each one (https://attractivevariance.wordpress.com/category/top-25-seinfeld/) and a long introduction essay to kick the enterprise off (https://attractivevariance.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/if-you-named-a-kid-rasputin-do-you-think-that-would-have-a-negative-effect-on-his-life-a-seinfeld-introduction/).
I attempted more than a mere, ‘man this is funny’, and tried to weave bits about the craft of its brilliance with its politically subversive nature that many, err, most, miss upon watching. I tried in some pieces to tackle different things; that George is a romantic, not a terrible person, how fans should be ‘Seinfeld purists’ (i.e. once Larry David left it was inferior), and how detractors shouldn’t be turned off due to the ‘ugliness’ of the characters because they weren’t in the classic sense, rather satirists of the highest order, the political environment of the 90’s it came from, its theatrical precedents etc.
I’m as proud of the ‘The Race’ piece as anything I’ve written, it’s clear and concise (it’s near capsule in length), and maps out a theme that the show showed so well: it seems post-modern and aloof, but it was in fact, exacting and used that slight of hand as a mere trojan horse. It’s a show that makes most other American ‘brilliant’ shows look limp and flabby (cough, cough All in the Family, Friends, etc) in comparison.
Jamie,
In preparation I read some of your pieces and it’s a really thorough and engaging and well thought series of essays. I couldn’t even begin to touch on the many many levels you approach the series on. I agree about the ugly aspects of the characters really can be misunderstood. It’s a key element that was used to subvert norms and expectations. What’s great is the show can be viewed in these ways, or viewed in the pure laughter sense.
Yes Jamie’s writings on this show are truly stupendous and rate among the best he’s ever done. I don’t at all blame Jamie for choosing the show as his absolute #1, and I know others who feel the same way, but knowing the identies of the four shows that finished ahead of it, for me I think #5 is just about right. The sitcom that will be seen on Tuesday at #3 was the one Allan placed as the greatest comedic show in American history, though Allan has an opinion and nothing more, much like we do. I do think that had SEINFELD finished BELOW the Top 5, the show’s adherents had a BIG reason to deride the results. But since it did make the Top 5, I’d say it is fair enough. I am still working my way through that box set, and continue to be amazed at the show’s consumate brilliance
Stellular post Jon! The writing on the show was of the highest order, and the cast was a perfect blend.
Thanks John! It definitely was a superb combo of writing and acting.
The writing was inspired, the actors at the top of their game. I enjoyed reading this informed review. I’d name several of your favorites as my own.
Thanks Frank!
John, you’ve done a superlative job encapsulating the reasons SEINFELD is one of the truest of comedy legends in long line of great television comedies.
The evolution of TV comedy kinda/sorta stopped dead in it’s tracks when Larry and Jerry put pen to paper for this one and reached all the way back to the anarchic insanity that drove THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW into the history books in the 1950’s when TV was wearing training wheels. The combination of wry social commentary mixed with over-the-top/off-the-wall/that-could-never-happen craziness, combined with four of the most iconic characterizations ever leveled at TV sitcoms, makes SEINFELD one of the most rare of TV shows; it’s a timeless work that never becomes dated or a creature of it’s time. IT JUST IS.
I’m always fascinated by it as it’s probably the only show I know of that derives its humor from the actions and predicaments of 4 of the most rotten people ever to be zoomed in on as starring characters. Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and, particularly, George, are not the type of people I think any of use would be proud of saying are our friends. However, put them up on our screens and we cheer them on for doing and saying everything we wish we could do and say to “polite” society.
SEINFELD is an entity all to it’s own. It’s like nothing that came before, and it’s never been remade or repeated (though Larry’s CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM comes pretty, pretty, PRETTY close).
Thanks Dennis for the superb comment. They are fairly rotten people, but you’re right for some reason we love them all the same!
They’re sorta not rotten though. But you gotta love Dennis’ conservative mindset: Archie Bunker is us, but the Seinfeld cast is ‘rotten’.
Well they are but they aren’t. It’s not sold out and radical rotten. It’s a benign kind of rotten set to subvert us.
Or maybe they’re lovably rotten…. we see the sympathetic humanity in their common indecency.
Yeah, it’s satire. I mean no one watches DR. STRANGELOVE and says, nearly baffled, “Why would anyone watch this, you’d never want to hand with such rotten people?!”
Why we approach TV with this idea like we do politics, “would I want to have a beer with these people” is strange to me, and perhaps some of the reason so much TV is mindless, dumb fodder.
Bravura essay for a show that ranks up there with ‘Bilko’, ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, and ‘Falwty Towers’ all of which share it’s DNA in plotting and characterisation.
Thanks.
Thanks Bobby for the support!
***It’s even been reported that Rutgers University has used episodes of Seinfeld to help teach Psychiatry students how to identify psychological disorders.***
Wow, that’s pretty amazing. One of the most intellectually wrought shows ever shown on television. Congratulations to Jon Warner on a tour de force consideration.
Peter, if you like that sorta thing, check out William Irwin’s Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing. Some of the essays are better than others, but it’s well worth checking out overall.
Thanks for this infor Jamie I’m gonna have to track that down.
Jamie, thank you. I just wrote down this volume and will see if I can get it on loan.
My wife and I happen to be going through the series on Hulu now. Up to about a quarter of the way through season 5. I’ve seen all of it before, she’s seen only some of it before. She hates everybody for their utter manipulative selfishness, I love everybody for the same reason. I’ve never watched it in order in such quick succession before (maybe average two a night for the last few weeks). It’s fun watching the writers/cast surge with confidence in the episodes they (and we) *know* were pushing the limits of what could be talked about in prime time, much less in a sit-com. Just half-way through the run of the show, it’s hit on masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality, and sex… to *save* the friendship. Unfortunately, watching so much in a short time also reveals how quickly the show descended into absurdity of the shrill kind. There were flashes of it well before season 5, but there’s no question that a hard shift downward in believability of/relatability to the characters happened in one of last night’s episodes featuring “the pig-man” and the suicide destroying George’s car. Not saying I didn’t still laugh. But there’s a shift away from reality and a growing reliance on shrillness and yelling to get to the laugh. It’s a taste thing, not an overall judgment thing – but I definitely prefer the first half of the show (esp the brilliant meta-ness of season 4, repeated in its own way in season 7 of Curb). Nevertheless, looking forward to sticking with it to the end. There’s quite a few episodes I missed in seasons 8 and 9, first because I’d lost touch with the tone of the show in its first run, and second (and more ironically) I moved to L.A. in ’98 and the act of survival took a bit of precedence.
Thanks Robert,
I consider the final 2 seasons more inferior, but still felt like up until season 8, things were still really great. As for believability, I think there are many elements that are hard to digest, but the cartoon like elements of 8,9 are what sets them apart to me.