Seinfeld Explained.
So this is a bonus episode where we're stepping away from the show itself and talking about the people who actually MADE it—
the actors, the creators, the directors.
Season one of Seinfeld is this weird little five-episode experiment,
and it's fascinating to look at who was involved at the ground floor.
It's such a specific moment, right?
Because this is before anyone knew what the show would become.
Jerry Seinfeld is obviously playing a version of himself,
but he's primarily a standup comedian at this point—
not an actor in any traditional sense.
Right, and that's the whole gamble.
He'd been doing standup since the late seventies,
appeared on Carson and Letterman a bunch of times,
but sitcom acting is a completely different skill set.
There's a looseness to his performance that works because the show is built around that conversational rhythm he already had from standup.
And then you've got Larry David,
who co-created the show with Jerry.
He's not on camera in season one,
but he's the other brain behind the whole thing.
David had been a standup too—
actually knew Jerry from the comedy circuit—
and he'd written for Saturday Night Live and Fridays before this.
The SNL stint was apparently miserable for him.
I think he lasted one season as a writer,
and there's that famous story about him quitting,
then coming back the next week and pretending nothing happened.
Which is very George Costanza energy.
Completely! And that makes sense because George is basically Larry David's neuroses filtered through Jason Alexander's performance.
Alexander was a theater guy— he'd done Broadway,
won a Tony for Jerome Robbins' Broadway right around this time actually—
so he's coming from this very technical acting background.
Which is interesting because George is such a physical character.
Like, the way Alexander uses his body and voice to convey George's anxiety and desperation—
that's not something you'd necessarily expect from someone doing their first major TV role,
but he'd been training for years in musical theater.
Yeah, and apparently Alexander initially thought the show was going to be more like a traditional sitcom.
There's that story about him playing George bigger and more neurotic in the early days until they dialed it back a bit.
But even in season one,
you can see him figuring out the rhythm.
Then there's Michael Richards as Kramer.
He'd been around— been on Fridays with Larry David,
actually, and done a bunch of character work in movies like UHF and Problem Child.
But Kramer is such a specific physical creation.
Richards has this background in physical comedy and improv,
and you can tell he's pulling from that.
The way Kramer enters a room, the pratfalls,
the whole physicality— it's very deliberate.
And in season one,
the character's still called Kessler in the pilot because they were basing him on Larry David's actual neighbor,
Kenny Kramer, and hadn't gotten clearance yet or something.
Right, and Kenny Kramer later tried to capitalize on that with his own Kramer Reality Tour in New York.
But Richards' performance is what made the character iconic,
not the real guy.
For sure. And then Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine—
she doesn't appear in the pilot at all.
The network was worried about the show being too male-heavy,
which is wild considering how central Elaine becomes.
Louis-Dreyfus had been on SNL too,
in the mid-eighties cast that's generally considered one of the weaker eras.
But she'd been working steadily—
she was on Day by Day, this family sitcom,
right before Seinfeld. But you can tell even in season one that she's got this skill for physical comedy and deadpan delivery that's totally different from what she'd been doing.
She's also the only one of the main four who came from a wealthy family.
Like, her father was a billionaire,
which is this weird bit of trivia that doesn't connect to anything about her performance,
but it's interesting context.
It definitely didn't stop her from committing fully to the role.
Elaine in season one is still finding her place in the dynamic,
but Louis-Dreyfus is already nailing the exasperation and the way Elaine is both smarter than the guys but also just as petty and ridiculous.
So those are your core four,
and then you've got the people behind the camera.
The pilot was directed by Art Wolff,
who'd done a ton of TV— Taxi, The Jeffersons,
all these classic sitcoms.
But then starting with episode two,
it's all Tom Cherones directing the rest of season one.
Cherones had worked on NewsRadio and would stay with Seinfeld for years.
He's one of these workman directors— not flashy,
but really good at maintaining the rhythm of a multi-camera sitcom.
He understands how to shoot those long dialogue scenes in the coffee shop or Jerry's apartment without it feeling stagey.
And the multi-camera setup is important because that's part of what makes early Seinfeld feel different from later seasons.
They're still figuring out the visual language.
Later on, the show gets more cinematic,
more single-camera in feel,
but season one is very much a traditional studio sitcom in terms of how it's shot.
The writing staff in season one is tiny.
It's basically Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld creating the stories,
with Larry Charles coming in as a writer and supervising producer.
Charles had also been a standup and had written for Fridays—
there's this whole Fridays connection in the early days.
Larry Charles is an interesting guy.
He's got this reputation for being into darker,
weirder comedy. After Seinfeld,
he went on to work with Sacha Baron Cohen on Borat and Brüno,
and he did that documentary about religious extremism,
Religulous, with Bill Maher.
So he's always been drawn to uncomfortable,
provocative material.
You can see hints of that even in season one—
there's a meanness to some of the humor that's not quite like other sitcoms of the era.
It's not mean-spirited exactly,
but it's not warm and fuzzy either.
Right, and that's the Larry David influence too.
David's whole comedic worldview is about social discomfort and petty grievances.
He's mining his own neuroses and irritations for material,
and that's what makes the show feel specific.
And Jerry Seinfeld is the other half of that equation—
he's got this observational standup style that's very clean and precise.
So you've got David's neuroticism and Seinfeld's observational clarity colliding,
and that's the engine of the show.
The standup interludes in season one are interesting too because they really hammer home that Jerry's a comedian first.
Later seasons mostly drop that structure,
but in season one,
you get Jerry doing standup at the beginning and end of episodes,
and it's directly connected to the story.
Which makes sense for easing a standup into acting.
It's like, "Here's the thing you're already good at, and we'll build a narrative around it." But as the show found its footing,
they realized they didn't need that crutch.
And the early episodes are so small in scope.
Like, the pilot is literally just Jerry and George sitting around talking about a phone call.
There's no big plot, no wacky misunderstandings—
it's just two guys obsessing over ambiguous signals.
That's the Larry David influence again.
He's always said the show is about how people really talk and behave,
not about manufactured sitcom plots.
Season one is very much testing that premise—
can you make a whole episode about nothing but a phone call,
or a stock tip,
or trying to break up with a friend?
The answer turned out to be yes,
but you can tell they're still figuring it out.
The rhythms aren't quite there yet,
and the characters are a bit more grounded than they'll become later.
George isn't as pathetic,
Kramer isn't as cartoonish,
Elaine isn't as cutting.
Jason Alexander has talked about how he didn't initially understand what the show was.
He thought it was going to be more about plot,
and it took him a while to realize it was really about behavior and conversation.
And Michael Richards apparently would sometimes improvise these wild physical bits that they'd have to rein in because they were too big for the space.
Yeah, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus has said she was still figuring out who Elaine was in season one.
The character's described as Jerry's ex-girlfriend,
but what does that actually mean for how they interact?
That's something they had to discover through doing it.
And Jerry Seinfeld himself—
he's not a trained actor,
so his performance is very much just him being a version of himself.
Which works because the show is designed around that,
but it's also a limitation.
He's never going to have the range that Alexander or Louis-Dreyfus or Richards have.
But that's also part of the charm, right?
He's the straight man in a lot of ways.
Everyone else is doing bigger,
more exaggerated characters, and Jerry's just reacting with this bemused,
slightly judgmental detachment.
Exactly. And Larry David understood that dynamic because he knew Jerry's strengths.
David's writing to what Jerry can do naturally—
the observational commentary, the sarcasm,
the social anxiety disguised as casual interest.
It's also worth mentioning the executives who backed the show.
Brandon Tartikoff at NBC was the one who greenlit it,
and apparently he didn't really get it but trusted that there was something there.
The show tested terribly with audiences.
Yeah, the pilot tested so badly that it almost didn't get picked up.
And even when they ordered more episodes,
it was just four— this tiny little season.
The network had no idea what to do with it.
Which is probably why they had the creative freedom to be weird.
Nobody was paying close attention because nobody expected it to be a hit.
So Larry and Jerry could just make the show they wanted to make.
And Tom Cherones as director was willing to serve that vision.
He wasn't trying to impose some big directorial style—
he was just helping them execute what they wanted,
which in season one is a lot of long scenes of people talking in confined spaces.
The other thing about season one is how New York it feels.
Obviously the show is always set in New York,
but there's something about the early episodes that feels very rooted in a specific time and place—
late eighties, early nineties Manhattan.
Jerry's doing standup at clubs,
they're navigating the city,
the apartment has that cramped New York feel.
And the guest actors in season one are mostly just solid working New York actors.
Nobody famous, nobody flashy—
just people who can deliver the dialogue naturally.
It adds to that grounded quality.
Right, and that's a choice.
They're not stunt-casting celebrities or doing Very Special Episodes.
It's just people being annoying and petty in very specific ways,
and that specificity is what makes it funny.
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are both detail-oriented guys.
Like, David famously has all these rules and pet peeves about social behavior,
and that's all over the show.
And Jerry's standup is built on noticing tiny absurdities in everyday life.
So the show is this amplification of their particular neuroses.
And Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus,
and Michael Richards are skilled enough actors to take those neuroses and make them into full characters.
George isn't just Larry David—
he's Alexander's interpretation of David's anxieties.
Same with Kramer and Richards' physicality,
or Elaine and Louis-Dreyfus' timing.
It's a real collaboration in that sense.
The writers are creating the situations and the dialogue,
but the actors are finding the humanity and the comedy in the performance.
Alright, that's the bonus—
just wanted to give some context on the people who actually made season one happen.
Back to the episodes next time.
See you then.