Coming up with Seinfeld's "The Contest" was easy for Larry David, but getting NBC to actually approve and air the adult-oriented episode took some serious skill. Seinfeld was co-created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, and there are people who believe the sitcom changed for the worse when Larry David left Seinfeld after season 7. There are strong points to be made for each side of that discussion, but one thing that's hard to dispute is how much of an impact the future Curb Your Enthusiasm creator had on Seinfeld's first seven seasons.

Not only was George Costanza (Jason Alexander) strongly inspired by Larry David, but other elements of Seinfeld like Kramer (Michael Richards) and entire episode arcs were also based on real people and events from Larry David's life. One such episode that was inspired by a true Larry David story was season 4, episode 11, “The Contest.” While season 4 featured iconic episodes like “The Bubble Boy” and “The Junior Mint,” “The Contest” was elevated beyond its prestigious season 4 peers thanks to its deft handling of a somewhat controversial topic.

Related: Every Way Seinfeld's Pilot Was Different From The Rest Of The Show

In lesser hands, it’s possible "The Contest" could've gotten Seinfeld canceled and ended the show. However, Larry David and the talented cast and crew of Seinfeld successfully made an entire episode about masturbation that was also deemed appropriate enough to broadcast on a major television network in the nineties. A season 4 DVD extra that took an "inside look" at "The Contest" reveals how the cast felt about the premise and how the sensitive subject was tackled, and history reveals the vast cultural impact Seinfeld's most NSFW episode had in the following decades.

Seinfeld's "The Contest" Episode Had A Lasting Impact

Jerry, George (Jason Alexander), and Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) looking shocked in Seinfeld.

Larry David had the idea for "The Contest" in his notebook for years but didn't run it by Jerry Seinfeld for a long time because he thought it would be "impossible" for a pitch to get approved by Seinfeld and NBC. Funnily enough, Seinfeld was quite receptive to the idea but "always thought that we would do it in this kind of white glove way - which we did." Jason Alexander originally disliked season 4's "Jerry" storyline, but in this case all the main cast members agreed that "The Contest" had immense potential. The real challenge was tackling the topic of masturbation without setting off NBC's watchful censors. To address that, one of the first things everyone agreed on was that the word "masturbation" would not be used in "The Contest." That was when the various creative implications were brought to fruition and one of Seinfeld's most memorable lines, "master of my domain," was born.

One of Seinfeld’s most iconic lines came from “The Contest,” but the season 4 episode also provided glory in other ways. Larry David won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for “The Contest,” and the episode would get parodied and referenced countless times in the thirty years (and counting) since its debut. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia recreated the Seinfeld episode's most famous scene in season 13, episode 7, "The Gang Does a Clip Show," and Netflix's Big Mouth would go even further by parodying "The Contest" multiple times in Big Mouth's season 5 premiere, "No Nut November."

Seinfeld’s “The Contest” is known for its mature arc, but the episode is superbly crafted overall. Jerry Seinfeld said as much in the season 4 DVD extra, noting that the “outstanding” element of the episode was the “dovetailing of the stories.” He’s not wrong, but the most memorable parts were the titular contest and all the surrounding, very NSFW, implications.