Although he was initially based on series co-creator Larry David, George Costanza developed into the most deceitful, vindictive, self-centered character on television throughout Seinfeld’s nine-season run. When George got himself wrapped up in a web of lies, there was no limit to how far he’d take them, which led to increasingly hilarious storylines.
A lot of Seinfeld’s greatest episodes revolved around George. Even season 4’s “The Contest,” widely regarded to be the series’ best installment, is incited when George’s mother catches him “treating his body like an amusement park.” He was the focus of some of the show’s funniest storylines.
The Parking Space
This is one of the rare times that George is actually in the right. He pulls up ahead of a parking space right in front of Jerry’s building, ready to reverse into it, and prepares to show Elaine how a textbook parallel park is done.
However, as he goes to reverse into the space, another car tries to pull into it front-first. George and the other driver spend the rest of the episode with their horns locked in an intense parking standoff.
The Conversion
George realizes he’s in love when he doesn’t mind buying his girlfriend lobster, but she tells him they can’t be together because her religiously devout parents don’t want her dating anyone who doesn’t belong to the Latvian Orthodox Church.
So, George decides to convert and cheats on his conversion test. Complications arise when one of his mother’s friends sees him at the church and tells her about his conversion.
The Hamptons
This is the episode that introduced the world to the term “shrinkage.” George takes his new girlfriend up to his friends’ place in the Hamptons, hoping to consummate the relationship, but then Jerry’s girlfriend walks in on him after he’s been in the pool.
She tells George’s girlfriend about the shrinkage, and she decides to drive back to the city in the middle of the night. George gives Jerry’s kosher girlfriend lobster in retaliation and ends up getting a Hampton tomato thrown in his face.
The Engagement
George isn’t the kind of person to get married, so it might’ve seemed like an odd idea for a season-long story arc when Larry David wrote the season 7 premiere “The Engagement,” in which he gets engaged to his ex-girlfriend, Susan Ross.
However, “The Engagement” makes it work spectacularly. By the end of the episode, George already regrets proposing to Susan — and he resents Jerry for reneging on their imaginary “pact.”
The Opposite
In “The Opposite,” season 5's hilarious finale, George has an epiphany that every gut feeling he's experienced has been totally wrong, and resolves to do the exact opposite of everything his brain ever tells him to do.
Shockingly, it works wonders, as he lands his dream job with the New York Yankees, starts a relationship with a beautiful woman, and manages to move out of his parents’ house and back into his own place.
The Rye
George and Susan’s parents finally meet in season 7’s “The Rye,” as Frank and Estelle take a marble rye over to the Ross’ house for a dinner party. They forget to serve the rye, which Frank sees as a slight against the Costanza name, so he decides to steal it back and take it home.
Worrying that this will lead to burning resentments between a family that isn’t even united by marriage yet, George decides to sneak another rye into the apartment. But this proves to be more difficult than expected, involving a hansom cab, a robbery, and a fishing pole.
The Fire
In season 5’s “The Fire,” George dates a woman with a kid. At the kid’s birthday party, a fire breaks out, and George pushes his way through a crowd of children and seniors to get to the door. He later claims that he was trying to lead the way.
George’s cowardice is contrasted with Kramer’s heroism when he hijacks a bus and fights off a mugger to get his girlfriend’s severed pinky toe down to the hospital.
The Boyfriend
In Seinfeld’s first two-parter of many, “The Boyfriend,” Jerry drums up a friendship that may or may not have a romantic element with baseball legend Keith Hernandez.
The B-plot has one of George’s most hilarious storylines as he goes to extreme lengths to maintain his unemployment benefits without actually looking for work.
The Comeback
We’ve all been there. After being zinged in front of a room full of people and thinking of nothing to say, you think of the perfect comeback a couple of hours later. In season 8’s “The Comeback,” while George is scarfing down shrimp in a meeting, one of his co-workers says, “Hey, George, the ocean called — they’re running out of shrimp.”
On the drive home, he comes up with what he thinks is the perfect comeback: “Oh, yeah? Well, the jerk store called — they’re running out of you!” He travels across the country after his co-worker gets transferred just to use the comeback.
The Marine Biologist
George is perfectly comfortable in his own web of lies, but when Jerry tells his college crush that he’s now a marine biologist, he has to adapt to a lie he didn’t come up with. He manages to convince her that he is a marine biologist until one day, they’re on the beach and George is called upon to save a beached whale.
Jason Alexander’s delivery of this monologue (“The sea was angry that day, my friends...”) is one of the greatest displays of acting in sitcom history.