Jerry Seinfeld’s Least-Favorite Episode Of Seinfeld

For nine seasons, “Seinfeld” was one of the most consistently hilarious sitcoms to ever air on network television. The show about nothing bucked conventional wisdom pertaining to what a sitcom should be (which puzzled some NBC executives), but gradually won over television viewers with its peppily acerbic tone and god-tier ensemble of Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards. And the fact that its humor could get pitch dark never seemed to bother enough viewers to cause a ratings dip. Though more than a few fans of the show gasped when George’s finacée Susan died from licking cheap envelopes at the end of the seventh season, they got over their shock and returned in the fall.

The show struck its share of nerves besides Susan’s shocking demise. The “Puerto Rican Day” episode, which featured Kramer accidentally setting fire to a Puerto Rico flag and stomping on it to put out the blaze, spurred public protests. Meanwhile, members of the cast once revolted against an episode where Elaine gets a gun (the script for which sold for quite a bit of money at auction). And Jason Alexander famously took issue with “The Bris,” which he found offensive in its lampooning of the Jewish rite.

What about the man who gave the series its name? Did Jerry Seinfeld ever feel like “Seinfeld” went too far? You might be surprised to learn that he did, and it’s one of the series’ early classics.

The season 3 episode “The Alternate Side” is probably best known for launching the “Seinfeld” catchphrase “These pretzels are making me thirsty.” This is the single line of dialogue given to Kramer when he’s cast in a Woody Allen movie, from which he gets fired when he accidentally breaks a beer glass and sends a shard flying into the eye of the director. While this is going on, George lands a temporary job re-parking neighbors’ cars on the days when the other side of the street is being cleaned (a top-five George arc in my opinion).

The element of this episode that wound up bothering Seinfeld had to do with Elaine’s 66-year-old boyfriend having a stroke right when she’s about to break up with him. The man’s condition is worsened when George causes a traffic jam on the street via an accident, thus keeping an ambulance and its paramedics from reaching him.

While appearing on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” in 2012, Seinfeld told Andy Cohen, “There was one where a guy had a stroke and we were feeding him on the couch. I felt very uncomfortable with that episode.” Seinfeld didn’t elaborate on his discomfort with this scenario, but it’s possible that getting older and knowing more people who’ve had strokes played a role. It does stand out as a particularly dark episode in the series’ broadcast run, but, again, the show killed off Susan! And then it mined her death for a bleakly uproarious string of episodes in the following season. But everyone’s got their sensitive areas, and this was evidently Seinfeld’s. Solana Token Creator