Notizie

In the second season of "Seinfeld," series staff writer Larry Charles wrote an episode titled "The Bet," a.k.a. "The Gun," which revolved around the purchase of a firearm. The script's A-story involved a bet as to whether or not Kramer (Michael Richards) had sex with a flight attendant like he claimed, while the B-story had Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) declaring she wanted to buy a handgun after a neighbor in her building gets mugged. Elaine is initially very excited -- even sexually aroused -- at the thought of purchasing a gun and jokes whimsically about shooting Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) in the head. Elaine loses interest, however, when she actually starts going through the process of acquiring a weapon. Notably, she doesn't like having to get one from a shady friend-of-a-friend in his apartment, so she ends up buying a toy gun instead.

"The Bet" was never made, however, as...

In the "Seinfeld" episode "The Pie", George (Jason Alexander) accumulates a rival, an enemy he attracts over the purchase of a suit. The rivalry will culminate when George attends a job interview at a local restaurant. George, while sitting with a prospective boss, spies his rival lurking around the kitchen, becoming convinced that his rival is trying to taint his food. When George's interviewer offers him a bite of pie, George refuses. His refusal ends up costing him the job. 

George's pie refusal is the punchline to an episode-long gag where several characters refuse to eat a bite of pie. Early in the episode, Jerry's girlfriend Audrey (Suzanne Snyder) had already refused a bit of Jerry's pie without offering a reason, leading to his undying consternation. This was returned by Jerry refusing to eat her pizza when she offered, due to certain hygiene issues from the pizza's chef, only causing tensions to mount between them.

Plenty of TV directors have had hot streaks, but few have been as prolific as the one Tom Cherones experienced on "Seinfeld." The filmmaker got in on the ground level of the uproarious NBC sitcom, and stuck with the show through the end of its fifth season. By that point, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld's "show about nothing" was on its way to the top of the TV heap, climbing the Nielson ratings and taking over the cultural zeitgeist with phrases like "master of my domain" and "not that there's anything wrong with that!"

Cherones was there for it all, and he didn't just tag in behind the camera every few episodes like many filmmakers do today. Instead, the director helmed a whopping 80 episodes of the first five seasons -- out of just 86. The show's pilot, the Philip Baker Hall guest-starrer "The Library," and Jason Alexander's directorial debut...

The most notorious description for Jerry Seinfeld's and Larry David's seminal NBC sitcom "Seinfeld" is that it's "a show about nothing." The showrunners mandated that the series be free of treacly morals or moments of personal growth for the main characters; everyone had to be just as ignorant and petty at the end of an episode as they were at the start. This was seen, at the time, as an antidote to the previous generation's sitcoms, which too often skewed toward morals and sentimentality. "Seinfeld" aimed to be the anti-sitcom. 

Of course, "a show about nothing" wasn't quite the pitch when Seinfeld and David first proposed the show to NBC back in 1989. The initial premise (as previously talked about by /Film) was that "Seinfeld" would follow the daily adventures of a stand-up comedian as he traversed modern life in New York, gathering material for his stand-up routines. His...

In the "Seinfeld" episode "The Jacket", Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) and George (Jason Alexander) arrange to have dinner with Alton Benes (Lawrence Tierney), the father of Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Because of a drama involving towed cars, Elaine is running late to the dinner, and Jerry and George spend a long, painful time trying to converse with Alton, a gruff, grumpy character. Alton is a famous author, and Jerry assumes he'll be talkative and gregarious, but he is quite the opposite; he is annoyed by his companions' whiny behavior and delicate sensibilities and wears a permanent, disapproving frown. When Jerry refuses to go for a walk in the snow — to save his new suede jacket from water damage — Alton insists. Like with many "Seinfeld" episodes, everyone is uncomfortable by the end.

Lawrence Tierney gave an excellent performance, and the cast was elated to be working with him. Tierney had been acting professionally since the 1940s,...

When "Seinfeld" got controversial, it didn't do so in a socially conscious way á la Norman Lear's "All in the Family," nor did it go in for barbed political satire (which may be one reason why its infamous "The Puerto Rican Day" episode landed with such a thud in 1998). Generally, the series crossed lines alongside its hilariously self-absorbed and frequently petty characters, who might get caught up in a competition over who can abstain from pleasuring themselves the longest or worked into a panic over being erroneously outed as gay in a major publication. (Some of these episodes really haven't aged well.)

For the most part, the cast and crew knew what show they'd signed up to appear in or work on, so everyone had a sense as to what subjects might be taboo. There was one time, however, when everyone wasn't on the same page, which resulted in...

One of the greatest sitcoms, Seinfeld recently once again got into conversation after the script of a scrapped episode was leaked online. Created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, the show is known for its unique brand of humor, which often includes elements of dark comedy.

Seinfeld | Credit: NBC

However, one specific episode of Season 2 took things a bit too far, in an episode titled, The Bet. The episode follows Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Elaine deciding to buy her first gun. However, things soon take a dark turn with references to the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

The Scrapped Seinfeld Episode’s Worst Take on Presidential Assassinations

The scrapped episode of Seinfeld focused on a bet regarding Kramer’s claims about having had s*x with a flight attendant in an airplane lavatory during his return from Puerto Rico.

A still from Seinfeld | Credit: NBC

Meanwhile, a secondary plot follows Julia Louis-Dreyfus‘ character,...

Although the sitcom was known for tackling edgy subjects, Seinfeld had two episodes that were deemed too controversial by cast and executives alike. This is surprising because, generally, creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David seemed like they were able to make jokes about anything in their "show about nothing". Among some of the envelope-pushing comic situations across Seinfeld's nine seasons were Jerry being caught making out with his date during a screening of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List, and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) getting into a fight with an immunocompromised "bubble boy".

One of the most notable examples of Seinfeld pushing the envelope in terms of what network television would allow is the masturbation storyline in "The Contest" from Seinfeld's best season. To avoid the censors, writer Larry David got incredibly creative in how he discussed the subject without ever actually using the word. Given David and the...

"Seinfeld" is a show ostensibly about nothing, but a look back over its nine-season run reveals that the '90s American sitcom was everything. Most of all, among the show's creators, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the series was a strange and new blend of fiction and reality. Comedian Seinfeld plays himself on the show, but not really. True New York locales serve as backdrops for unreal characters in absurd situations. Jerry and friend George (Jason Alexander) even pitch a "show about nothing" to fictional NBC executives. 

Where the typical process for comedy shows involves enhancing audience laughter in post-production, the minds behind "Seinfeld" muse that they never needed such augmentation.

Though the show ended in 1998, its grip on pop culture has remained strong. Cantankerous masses still celebrate the consumer-resistant holiday of Festivus ("for the rest of us") on December 23, and one of the most popular "Seinfeld" phrases to catch...

Initially, Seinfeld met with a lukewarm response, a baffled network, low ratings and a volatile creator. So how did it become such a hit?

“Pilot performance: Weak”. That was the research report verdict on the 1989 pilot of new NBC sitcom Stand Up, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. The episode had excited “lukewarm reactions among adults and teens and very low reactions among kids”. The audience found it annoying that the main character, a fictionalised version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, “needed things to be explained to him”. The lead was too wimpy, the show was “too New York” (and therefore too Jewish) and worst of all, nothing happened in it. “You can’t get too excited about going to the Laundromat”, as one respondent put it. The report’s conclusion was stark: “no viewer was eager to watch the show again.”

Fast forward nine years and the Seinfeld finale...

Seinfeld certainly had its provocative moments (see: “sponge-worthy”). So it’s hard to imagine that there was any subject too controversial for the hit comedy. But one topic did manage to cross the line: guns.

The cast and crew refused to shoot what would have been the show’s ninth episode, “The Bet.” The second season episode, written by Borat director Larry Charles, followed the friends making a bet whether or not Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Elaine Benes would purchase a gun for protection. The narrative was inspired by a firearm purchase made by Seinfeld writer Elaine Pope.

Charles told Screen Crush...

Sunday (Nov. 18) is the 20th anniversary of the "Seinfeld" episode "The Contest." It's now considered one of the very best episodes of the series -- if not of any sitcom ever. Zap2it -- heck, the web as we know it -- didn't exist then. But if it had, this is how we would have recapped "The Contest" in our first ever Retro Rave. The items in parentheses are little factoids about the episode.

That's it. "Seinfeld" is king of the comedy county, lord of the laugh manor. Truly, the show is master of its domain.

The show has been on an unbelievable run this fall, and it came to a head, so to speak, this week with "The Contest," which has to be about the funniest and certainly the most innuendo-laden take on masturbation in TV history. Where to start?

("The Contest" Fact No. 1: Larry David won an...

Reaper Episode 3 "The Sweet Science" Written by: Chris Dingess Directed by: Tom Cherones Original Airdate: 17 March 2008 In This Episode… Ben tells Nina he wants to introduce her to his friends. However, he doesn't want to tell them just yet that she was the demon who tried to kill Sam. She doesn't like the lying (she was just "rebelling" and "acting out" when she tried to kill him) but goes along with it. Sam's soul is Red, a boxer who threw a fight in the 1950s. Sam is certainly no match for him. His first attempt at collecting sees Sam beaten soundly. Second attempt, Sock jumps in to help, and Sam runs...