My Top Ten Favorite "Seinfeld" Episodes

This list comes with the caveat that I first saw most of the episodes long ago, at an age when various concepts and social mores related to sexuality were totally lost on me. I prefer the later seasons to the earlier ones, the more conceptually creative episodes to the more character based ones. And my favorite character for all time is George Costanza, who ties with Homer Simpson as the best encapsulation of all the inadequacies of the 90s man. Episodes are listed chronologically. And here we go.

"The Chinese Restaurant" - Try as I might, I can't remember any episodes that aired before this one, which came near the end of the show's second season. It's surely one of the most iconic, with Jerry, Elaine, and George spending the entire length of the episode waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, a perfect representation of the "Seinfeld" mantra to be "a show about nothing." They would use this existential template again in future episodes, including a few others on this list. Finally, note that the infuriating maître d' is played by James Hong (of course).

"The Parking Garage" - Has many similarities to "The Chinese Restaurant," but differs in some important respects. First, it takes pace over a much longer stretch of time, and secondly there's no exit. The gang spends the episode stuck in a parking garage, searching for their elusive car. They have several pressing reasons to leave quickly, which seem fairly trivial in retrospect, but are all-important in the moment. And of course there's the ending, which subsequent interviews have revealed only happened by accident. It's such a wonderful little slice of surrealist purgatory.

"The Contest" - Yes, it's the masturbation episode. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what was going on the first time I saw this, except that it involved sex somehow, but the character interactions and how the story plays out completely sold it for me. "The Contest" is remembered now as a boundary pusher, even though its indelicate subject matter was never mentioned explicitly and it's probably funnier for only using euphemisms, including the priceless "master of my domain." Oh, and this was the first episode to feature Estelle Harris as Geroge's mother, one of the show's best creations.

"The Outing" - I may have been behind the curve on some matters, but I did know what being gay was, and that it was a very touchy subject back in the early 90s. So "Seinfeld" wading into the fray, being politically correct to the point of absurdity with every repetition of "not that there's anything wrong with that," came across loud and clear. It's a great reflection of the attitudes of the day, and such a typically absurd "Seinfeld" situation. If Jerry could have just let things go or if George hadn't tried to spin the situation to his advantage, things never would have escalated to the level that they it did.

"The Dinner Party" - George's coat. The cinnamon babka. The double parker. The vomit streak. I don't know why this episode is the one I remember the best, but I can't look at a black and white cookie and not think about race relations. This is yet another offspring of "The Chinese Restaurant" that finds the cast trapped by social customs and crummy customer service when they stop by a bakery and liquor store to pick up something to bring to a dinner party. Unfortunately they don't take a number before getting in the bakery line, and nobody wants to break a $100 bill. And it just gets worse from there.

"The Marine Biologist" - I vividly remember a girl at school describing this episode to me in great detail, and I'm a little surprised it wasn't from an earlier season. The episode has three separate stories. George passes himself off as a marine biologist to a potential love interest, Kramer tries to take up golfing, and Jerry and Elaine get mixed up in a drive-by battery. What follows is a series of unlikely coincidences, culminating in George regaling the others with the tale of how he saved a beached whale in one of the show's best monologues. "The sea was angry that day my friends!"

"The Pledge Drive" - The one I always seem to miss in reruns. This has my favorite silly subplot, based on one simple idea taken to extremes. Elaine sees her boss eating a candy bar with a knife and fork, and she unwittingly helps to spread the practice all over the city. This is also the one with a man who is a "high talker," who is mistaken multiple times throughout the episode for a woman. I always forget about the pledge drive of the title, which Jerry is working, but it's the odd little tangents that make this one so memorable – like George's paranoia that he's subtly being flipped off by strangers.

"The Pothole" - Poor Elaine. She just wanted Chinese takeout, and thought she'd come up with an ingenious idea – pretend to be living in an empty janitor's closet in a part of town that the restaurant would deliver to. She ends up having to pretend she's a janitor. Meanwhile George loses a keychain down a pothole, Kramer's working on a road crew, and Jerry's girlfriend puts him in a potentially unhygienic situation. It's four variations on the same theme: sometimes you have to get down and dirty in order to get what you want. Or in Jerry's case, give up what you want to stay clean.

"The Package" – Here's a story that you couldn't do in the post-digital age. George thinks a clerk at the photo store is flirting with him, by putting a revealing photo in with his order, so he decides to return the favor. This results in a hysterical set of escalating visual gags with a great punchline. Meanwhile, Elaine discovers she has been labeled a problem patient and can't get her rash treated. And I think I'll leave you to discover how a mystery package with no return address, a mail fraud scheme, and Uncle Leo getting his eyebrows burned off fit into all this. And this is the best use of Newman ever.

"The Strike" – Some claim that "Seinfeld" lost steam in its final seasons. However, there is at least one undisputed classic to have emerged from its final run of episodes. "The Strike" reveals Kramer is the striking employee of a bagel shop, introduces the concept of the "two-faced" woman who looks beautiful or horrible depending on the circumstances, and a little holiday invented by Frank Costanza known as Festivus. For the rest of us. Of all the concepts that the show introduced to us, Festivus is my favorite, a holiday for airing of grievances, feats of strength, and above all, family.

Honorable Mentions: "The Junior Mint," "The Airport," "The Visa," "The Implant," "The Mango," "The Hamptons," "The Opposite," "The Race," "The Fusili Jerry," "The Hot Tub," "The Soup Nazi," "The Checks," and "The Muffin Tops."
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