Since we’re beyond postmodernism at this point, meta has become the new normal. Sitcoms know they’re sitcoms. Seinfeld wasn’t the first show to embrace self-awareness, but its self-awareness has influenced subsequent TV series. The show had a whole season-long arc revolving around the characters basically making the TV show they’re in.
In Seinfeld’s HBO-bound spiritual successor, Curb Your Enthusiasm, a lot of the actors play themselves, and the show is shot in a cinéma vérité style to blur the line between reality and fiction. But the influence extends to 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny, and The IT Crowd. So, here are the 10 most self-aware episodes of Seinfeld.
The Betrayal (Season 9, Episode 8)
Told backwards in the style of Harold Pinter’s play Betrayal, Seinfeld’s “The Betrayal” revolves around Jerry, George, and Elaine traveling to India for a wedding. In the B-plot, Kramer eats a huge lollipop that gets bigger and bigger in each scene. The episode even plays its end credits at the beginning and its opening titles at the end.
There are also a couple of great flashbacks that give backstories to some of the show’s running gags, like when Jerry moved into his apartment and casually told Kramer, “What’s mine is yours.”
The Muffin Tops (Season 8, Episode 21)
Cosmo Kramer was based on Larry David’s old neighbor Kenny Kramer, and when the show became a hit, the real Kramer started a New York tourist attraction called Kramer’s Reality Tour.
In Seinfeld, Kramer sold his anecdotes to Elaine’s boss, J. Peterman, to use in his memoirs. So, Kramer bought an old bus and started the Peterman Reality Tour to capitalize on his newfound fame in the Season 8 episode “The Muffin Tops.”
The Movie (Season 4, Episode 14)
All throughout “The Movie,” the characters keep missing each other in their quest to meet up at a movie theater. As they speak to ticket collectors and cashiers, they all describe each other’s appearances in hilarious ways. George calls Elaine “a pretty woman, you know, kind of short, big wall of hair, face like a frying pan.” Elaine calls Kramer “a tall, lanky doofus with a bird face and hair like the Bride of Frankenstein.” George calls Jerry “a guy with like a horse face, big teeth, and a pointed nose.” Kramer calls Jerry “a guy who’s about five foot eleven; he’s got a big head and flared nostrils.”
Even one of the ticket collectors gets in on the fun, calling George “a short guy with glasses, looked like Humpty Dumpty with a melon head.” Of course, the most well-known descriptor of George would later be defined as “short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man,” but this was a nice start.
The Checks (Season 8, Episode 7)
This one isn’t necessarily a self-aware episode in and of itself, but it does feature one of the show’s most meta moments. As Kramer’s Japanese friends are fans of Jerry, George has the idea to sell their NBC pilot to a Japanese TV network.
Jerry tells him their pilot failed, but George counters that it just didn’t work in America: “Here, every time you turn on a TV, all you see are four morons sitting around an apartment, whining about their dates!”
The Pilot (Season 4, Episodes 23/24)
There’s plenty of self-awareness in Season 4, as Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld in Seinfeld pitches and writes a sitcom called Jerry in which he’ll play Jerry Seinfeld, but the season finale, “The Pilot,” is where this meta arc really gets to shine as it all comes together. The dialogue in Jerry and George’s fictional show is pure Seinfeld. The skeptical executives deriding the show from the bleachers are a self-aware commentary of the execs who doubted Seinfeld’s own style in the show’s infancy.
There aren’t many shows that have a montage of actors auditioning to play the characters in an in-universe TV project. Under an alias, Michael Richards as Kramer auditions to play Kramer on Jerry. It’s so meta that it’ll make your head spin.
The Raincoats (Season 5, Episodes 18 & 19)
Understanding this one requires a little behind-the-scenes information. Steven Spielberg had said that while he was directing Schindler’s List, he would get depressed during the shooting days, so he watched Seinfeld episodes at night to cheer himself up.
So, Seinfeld did an episode filled with Schindler’s List references, as Jerry’s Jewish parents are appalled to discover that he and his girlfriend were making out during the harrowing Holocaust-based masterpiece.
The Andrea Doria (Season 8, Episode 10)
In Season 8’s “The Andrea Doria,” George is passed up for an apartment because his rival survived the sinking of the S.S. Andrea Doria.
So, George goes in front of the board and tells sob stories from throughout the show’s history: “She was attractive; she was, also, in fact, a Nazi...,” “When I dropped the towel, there was...significant shrinkage,” “There I was, with a marble rye hanging from the end of a fishing pole...” etc.
The Finale (Season 9, Episodes 23 & 24)
The series finale episode of Seinfeld was controversial among fans, who expected an ending like Jerry and Elaine getting married, and instead got an ending where the four characters are sent to jail.
But the court case storyline paved the way for witnesses to be brought in from the show’s most classic episodes. “The Finale” is both a love letter and a sly middle finger to fans.
The Bizarro Jerry (Season 8, Episode 3)
When Larry David left Seinfeld after its seventh season, the absurdity and Superman references got turned up to the max as Jerry Seinfeld assumed full control of the show. In “The Bizarro Jerry,” Elaine becomes friends with one of her exes like she once did with Jerry, and remarks that he’s Jerry’s exact opposite.
Jerry jokes that he’s his Bizarro self (from the opposite world in the DC Comics universe), but as Elaine is drawn into his world, she finds eerie parallels. His neighbor, Feldman, has good business ideas that he doesn’t pursue. His friend, Gene, is generous with money. There’s a unicycle hanging in his apartment. All the episode’s gags rely on the audience being familiar with Seinfeld’s characters and universe.
The Pitch (Season 4, Episode 3)
“It’s about...nothing!” In real life, comedian Jerry Seinfeld was approached by NBC executives about writing and starring in a sitcom on their network. He pitched the show with friend and fellow comedian Larry David, and a show about a fictionalized version of Jerry got on the air.
Then, when the show was in its fourth season, the fictionalized Jerry was approached by NBC executives about writing and starring in a sitcom on their network. He pitched a show about a fictionalized version of himself with George Costanza (the character based on Larry David) that was about nothing. This just might be the most crazily meta TV episode in history.