Seinfeld (1989-1998, creators Jerry Seinfeld & Larry David) was a revolutionary sitcom of the 90s: a show about nothing. Plot was secondary to leisurely, aimless conversations about pop culture, social awkwardness, and everyday aggravations, often in coffee shops, laundromats, and grocery lines. Seinfeld’s show truly captures the spirit of his observational comedy act, snatches of which are interspersed in the show, accompanied with the signature guitar riff and acapella popping.
Jerry Seinfeld plays an anal-retentive stand-up comedian whose tendency toward overanalysis and pettiness often lands him in social scrapes, along with his sad sack best friend, George (Jason Alexander); his spitfire ex-turned-platonic-friend Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus); and his wild-haired next-apartment neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards), whose bizarre, harebrained schemes often drove the more surreal plotlines.
The show’s comedy must have particularly resonated with young singletons in New York City, but at its height, it had broad appeal, so that even suburbanites, oldsters and baby children like myself were throwing around catchphrases like “Not that there's anything wrong with that" and "yada yada." I credit Seinfeld with so desensitizing Little Laura to the norms of casual sex and serial monogamy that I was extremely perplexed when pre-marital sex was suggested to be problematic on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. (I… I may have watched too much television.)
Seinfeld’s legacy is its impact on the sitcom medium and the lexicon of pop culture in the 90s. For the key episodes, I’ll focus on the ones that introduced particularly novel, sticky, or talked-about concepts.
Key Episodes
2.11 “The Chinese Restaurant” - This episode is frequently cited when trying to explain the Seinfeld “show about nothing” concept. It takes place in real time as Jerry, George, and Elaine wait for a table at a restaurant. Each one is anxious for their own reasons, and they very quickly erupt into neurosis.
4.11 “The Contest” - Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer enter into a contest of honor to see who can abstain from masturbation the longest. “Are you still… master of your domain?” A well-known episode for its edgy (if coded) subject matter.
7.6 "The Soup Nazi" - Probably the most famous one-off character from the series, a vaguely Eastern European soup stand proprietor known as the "Soup Nazi" (Larry Thomas) punishes those who take too long to order or otherwise show disrespect in his shop with his catchphrase "No soup for you!"
Bonus Episodes
I'm listing a lot of these, but bear in mind that the show ran for nine years, so there are about 200 episodes that I've not listed. And I rewatched them all for you, reader!
1.3 “The Stake-Out” - Early Seinfeld had a slightly different flavor than golden age Seinfeld--slower paced, less manic--and it’s worth catching episodes at various points to see the evolution of the characters and relationships. In this third episode, Jerry and Elaine are still trying to work out the terms of a platonic friendship emerging from what seems to be a fairly recent relationship. With just a little too much time to plan a fib, Jerry and George come up with a fictitious friend, importer/exporter Art Vandelay. Jerry’s interactions with his visiting parents are on point; I especially love him playing Scrabble with his mother.
2.2 “The Pony Remark” - Jerry makes a disparaging remark about ponies in front of an elderly relative who, unbeknownst to him, is a pony aficionado, and Kramer has a new idea for remodeling his apartment: “Levels.” The first appearance of Jerry’s uncle Leo, a very authentic-feeling irritating uncle.
2.9 “The Deal” - Jerry and Elaine try to navigate friends with benefits (before that was a term that people used).
3.3 “The Pen” - Jerry and Elaine visit Jerry’s parents in Florida, and Jerry accepts the gift of an astronaut pen from a neighbor. A true-to-life episode about adults’ relationships with their parents, including poor sleeping arrangements, parents and children alike downplaying discomfort while visibly suffering, and those little issues that get hammered and nagged into full-blown Incidents. Like all the best Seinfeld episodes, everyone makes far too much ado about nothing, spiralling into a terrifically chaotic climax.
3.6 “The Parking Garage” - Another bottle episode has Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer wandering around a mall parking structure, desperately searching for their lost car.
3.11 “The Alternate Side” - A hodgepodge of classic bits: Jerry chats with the thief of his stolen car on his car phone, and bickers with a rent-a-car company (“You know how to TAKE the reservation. You don’t know how to HOLD the reservation.”) Elaine’s 66-year-old boyfriend has a stroke, causing her, Jerry and Kramer to freak out with half-remembered first aid. George takes a part-time job parking cars and fails utterly. And Kramer has a bit part in a Woody Allen movie, saying the single line, “These pretzels are making me thirsty.”
4.3 “The Pitch” - Jerry and George pitch an idea for “a show about nothing” to NBC executives, literally explaining the conceit of the show they are in. (They use “waiting in line at a Chinese restaurant” as an example episode.) The only downside to this as a Key Ep is that many of the storylines in this episode (particularly involving Crazy Joe Devola) don’t pay off until an episode or three later.
4.17 “The Outing” - An interviewer mistakenly reports that Jerry and George are a gay couple, confusing their friends and family. Jerry and George feel compelled to follow up every denial, no matter how angry or heated, with, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
4.20 “The Junior Mint” - While observing an artist friend’s surgery, Kramer accidentally drops a Junior Mint into the patient. Thinking the artist is about to die, George agrees to buy his terrible art. Meanwhile, Jerry can't remember his date's name, except that it rhymes with a part of the female anatomy.
5.13 "The Dinner Party" - In another classic semi-real-time kind-of bottle episode, the gang is trying to get a dinner party the whole time, with seemingly simple stop-offs to get wine and cake for the hosts turning into harrowing odysseys. A black and white cookie is featured.
5.21 "The Hamptons" - The gang visits a friend's cabin in the Hamptons and George is upset when the woman he likes sees him naked after getting out of the pool. Credited with giving a new meaning to the word "shrinkage." Meanwhile, Elaine tries to hit on a doctor (Richard Burgi of The Sentinel) who gives vague compliments.
6.10 "The Race" - Jerry runs into an old classmate who accuses him of cheating in a race in high school, goading him into agreeing to a new race to clear his honor. References to Jerry as Superman abound.
6.11 "The Switch" - Jerry and George face their most difficult scheme yet: trying to do the roommate switch (Jerry wants to date his girlfriend-of-the-week's roommate, instead of her, without upsetting the original girl). Also, KRAMER'S FIRST NAME IS REVEALED! (Which everyone knows now, but it was a big deal at the time.)
7.1 "The Engagement" & 7.24 "The Invitations" - These episodes are not adjacent, but they are the beginning and end of one of the few season arcs on the show. In "The Engagement," George and Jerry are sick of dating one woman after another and breaking up with her for bullshit reasons, and they make a pact to make serious changes in their lives. George honors the pact and proposes to his old girlfriend, Susan. Meanwhile, Jerry loses interest. George is engaged to Susan for season seven, and the show gets a lot of mileage out of the new territory of long-term relationship humor, as well as George's foot-dragging and attempts to delay the wedding. The arc ends in "The Invitations" when George's cheapness at picking out budget wedding invitations inadvertently leads to Susan's death. (Spoilers, but, it's a twenty-year-old show.) This is the point where the show's/characters' morbidness and callousness led my mother to give up on Seinfeld completely.
7.9 "The Sponge" - Elaine's favorite birth control method, the Today sponge, is discontinued and she begins hoarding them, carefully weighing if the men she dates are "spongeworthy."
7.11 "The Rye" - A sequence of events involving the last marble rye at a bakery ends up with Jerry mugging an old lady.
8.3 "The Bizarro Jerry" - Elaine dates a man who is just like Jerry, but opposite in key ways; for example, he's nice. He also has friends who are Bizarro versions of the other characters. References to Superman continue, and some nice visual gags in Bizarro Jerry's opposite apartment.
8.9 "The Abstinence" - George stops having sex and becomes a scholar and a gentleman.
8.19 "The Yada Yada" - Another episode famous for the concept or catchphrase it popularized than for the content of the episode itself. George's new girlfriend glosses over unpleasant topics with "yada yada yada."
9.2 "The Voice" - Jerry makes up a silly voice for his girlfriend's sleeping belly, a jovial "Hellooo!" "La, la, la!" It's a fun voice that's impossible to stop making, and my coworker does it daily to this day.
9.8 "The Betrayal" - The famous backwards episode. But it's pretty terrible.
9.18 "The Frogger" - George buys a Frogger arcade game from a pizza place that's going out of business because he has the high score, and becomes obsessed with the increasingly complex logistics of getting the game out without letting it lose power and reset the scores. Meanwhile, Elaine eats her boss J. Peterman's antique cake.
9.23 & 9.24 "The Finale", parts 1 and 2 - In the series finale, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer go on a trip to celebrate Jerry's show finally getting picked up, run afoul of a Good Samaritan law after making fun a man getting robbed, and are put on trial for all their various crimes against decency during the run of the series.
