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Seinfeld Before It Was Seinfeld

The “Seinfeld Chronicles” Pilot

If you are a Seinfeld aficionado and have never before laid eyes on “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” the show’s pilot episode, you’ll definitely be in for a few surprises. First of all, the pilot is not to be confused with a later episode in the series called “The Pilot,” in which Jerry and George’s sitcom concept—at long last—sees the light of day. It was the fictional pair’s rendering of “The Seinfeld Chronicles.”

Seinfeld in Character . . . Not Quite Yet

“The Seinfeld Chronicles” introduces us to standup comedian Jerry Seinfeld playing the part of standup comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Jason Alexander is on board as Jerry’s best friend, George Costanza. And Michael Richards is on hand, too, as Jerry’s neighbor down the hall, but his character is known as Kessler, not Kramer. This initial name discrepancy occurred because the Kessler character was so overtly based on the real-life Kenny Kramer, Larry David’s old friend. The show’s creators and the legal team at NBC were understandably skittish about naming a character after a real person without having ironclad permissions in hand. Worth noting is that, in the earliest stages of the script, the character didn’t even exist. He was originally Kramer, then Hoffman, and, finally, Kessler for the pilot episode’s shooting. Most conspicuously absent in the original casting is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes.

The female lead—for lack of a better description—in this Seinfeld opening salvo is Lee Garlington, who plays Claire, the world-weary waitress at Pete’s Luncheonette, Jerry and George’s preferred eatery and hangout before Monk’s Café. She appears in the opening scene, utters several lines of unmemorable repartee with Jerry and George, and that’s the be-all and end-all of her work on Seinfeld. The set for the luncheonette is a remnant from The Muppets Take Manhattan movie, which premiered in 1984, five years before “The Seinfeld Chronicles.”

When the show was first conceived, the Jerry and George characters were both plying the same trade, standup comedy. In fact, George was named Bennett, and the two buddies commiserated on the vicissitudes of their mercurial profession. Happily, this notion was short-lived and George Costanza was duly monikered. Rather than being a comedian, George found himself toiling in the always-unpredictable real estate business. The George Costanza character was originally described in publicity materials as “intelligent . . . more ill at ease with himself than Jerry . . . and unhappy with his current career of real estate sales.” Now, the George Costanza that we came to know and love, despite his untold character flaws, certainly merited a more lively description than that.

Most strikingly in the pilot is George’s general demeanor. He’s a whole lot more confident than the character that would evolve—or devolve, as it were—throughout the series. Despite the aforementioned publicity accounting of the George character, Jerry is plainly less secure than George in “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” and actually values his advice. George is nonetheless neurotic and comes across as blatantly Woody Allen–esque, with a decidedly whiny quality. Jason Alexander readily admitted that when he first auditioned for the part of George, he more or less played him as Woody Allen, which is very evident in the pilot episode as well. On the other hand, the character of Kessler is portrayed by Michael Richards as downright confused and almost incoherent—more a grubby airhead than manic “hipster doofus.” Jerry, George, and Kessler’s personalities would, of course, develop and noticeably change when the series was picked up and additional episodes were filmed. Kessler’s character overhaul got him a new name as well.

Character flip-flopping and major alterations like this are commonplace with television series that are sold as a result of their pilot episodes. In fact, the pilot and early episodes are frequently dress rehearsals for the finished product. Characters develop and even markedly change until it’s determined what works and what will afford writers the very best—and in sitcoms, the very funniest—storylines. In the first several episodes of the sitcom The Munsters (1964–1966)—starring Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, and Yvonne De Carlo—Herman is undeniably the respected man of the house and rather savvy on top of that. He is looked up to, which is fitting for a man who is said to be nine feet tall. It’s old Grandpa, Dracula, who is the childish one, prone to throwing temper tantrums and getting himself into hot water. To make for better (and funnier) television, Herman, the Frankenstein monster, quickly became the more foolish and juvenile of the pair. With Jerry and George, too, it fast became apparent who was better suited to assume the mantle of a self-doubting, uptight worrywart—and that was Jason Alexander’s George Costanza.

And then there’s Kessler, the Kramer of the future, in “The Seinfeld Chronicles.” He would slowly but surely evolve into the “hipster doofus” that made Cosmo Kramer a favorite character and television icon. The seedy loafer persona of the pilot would vanish altogether. Upon his initial entry into Jerry’s apartment, Kessler pulls a couple of loaves of bread out of his shirt pockets and asks if Jerry has any meat in his refrigerator. But the pièce de résistance is that Kessler actually knocks on Jerry’s apartment door. In Seinfeld’s last season—in the episode “The Betrayal”—Kramer ties up a loose end and addresses the Kessler name discrepancy. We learn, via a flashback sequence, that Kessler was the name on his door buzzer when he first moved into his apartment, and he never removed it. Jerry, who moved into the building afterwards, had no reason to think that his name was anything but Kessler.

The center of the Seinfeld universe: Jerry’s apartment. This familiar version differs from the one in “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” which had a different color scheme and, instead of the entryway to the bathroom and bedroom (left), had a door that opened directly into the bathroom.

NBC/Photofest

A couple of more particulars worth mentioning vis-à-vis Kessler-Kramer is that he had a dog named Ralph and a more traditional hairstyle and sartorial tastes in the pilot episode, all of which went by the wayside in season one. The sprightly canine’s sole appearance complemented material from Jerry’s standup. In “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” Jerry’s standup routines are given ample airtime, which was the norm in the show’s fledgling years. They were particularly integral to “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” which explained the need for Ralph in the episode. In fact, there are four separate scene breaks that feature Jerry performing in a comedy club. These scenes were filmed on a Hollywood sound stage—not, as it appears, in an actual comedy club—with an audience that included paid extras. All the laughs, however, are the genuine articles. (While the initial seasons of Seinfeld opened with Jerry doing standup, the “comedy club” stage completely vanished after season two.)

Jerry’s apartment, too, in the pilot episode is not quite like the one we all became accustomed to in the subsequent series. For starters, there is no bedroom off the bathroom—it’s a studio—and the window scheme is different. Jerry’s got a skylight. Also, the exterior shot of the apartment is not the Los Angeles building used throughout Seinfeld. Yet another glaring difference between “The Seinfeld Chronicles” and the eventual series is the music, which was written by New Orleans–born composer Jep Epstein. The theme is more along the lines of a traditional sitcom and worlds apart from the Seinfeld sound of the series. When the pilot was put into the syndication package, its original music was replaced with the Jonathan Wolff’s jazzy bass-riff compositions that Seinfeld fans had come to expect. However, with the DVD release of the show, fans can now watch “The Seinfeld Chronicles” in its virgin form, with its original theme music intact.

In the Beginning

The very first Seinfeld scene, as it were, that featured character interaction—on the heels of Jerry’s standup routine—occurs in Pete’s Luncheonette, where Jerry and George are engaged in a lively discussion about the placement of shirt buttons. Jerry notes that the second button on George’s shirt is “in no man’s land.” In one final Seinfeld irony, Jerry and George have this very same conversation—word for word—in the last scene of the last episode, “The Finale.” They are seated this time around in a jail cell, not a cozy neighborhood eatery.

“The Seinfeld Chronicles,” it should be said, contains some classic dialogue in the glorious tradition of the series. Jerry and George, while in a laundromat, engage in some scintillating banter as the latter, becoming increasingly impatient, requests that the former interrupt the washing machine’s drying cycle. George reasons that Jerry’s clothes are almost certainly dry and are at risk of being over-dried. Jerry, however, believes otherwise—that the machine knows best—and replies: “You see, once something is wet, it’s wet. Same thing with dead—like once you die, you’re dead, right? Let’s say you drop dead and I shoot you. You’re not going to die again. You’re already dead. You can’t over-die. You can’t over-dry.”

When the green light was given to shoot four more episodes after the less-than-successful premiere of “The Seinfeld Chronicles”—thank you, Rick Ludwin—changes were in the offing. A commitment of four episodes was not exactly a vote of confidence in the sitcom business. It wasn’t a season’s worth, or even a half-season’s worth. But Julia Louis-Dreyfus was in as Elaine Benes and Lee Garlington was out as Claire, the waitress, taking Pete’s Luncheonette with her. The network absolutely insisted on a strong female character in the cast—and the Elaine Benes character was arguably the strongest female character in sitcom history.

Speaking to the Huffington Post, veteran character actress Lee Garlington reflected with good humor on her one, brief shining moment on Seinfeld, and missing out on being a player in the “show about nothing” and the phenomenon that it spawned after her departure. “I think I watched two episodes in ten years just because I had friends on it or something,” she said. “It didn’t bother me the first five years. But the second five years drove me nuts. I don’t know why. I still see Jason [Alexander] regularly. He’s best friends with a friend of mine and I’ve never talked about it with him, but I’m sure for him he’s like, ‘Oh, poor Lee! Poor Lee!’ Oh, it’s funny.” On the flip side of the coin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus says that she’s never seen the pilot episode—and didn’t know one existed until after Seinfeld went off the air. She says that she has no intention of ever watching it.

Reception

Even if it wasn’t quite the show that it would eventually become, the critical consensus was that Seinfeld’s first shout struck more than a funny bone or two. It is obvious that creators and writers Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David didn’t quite have the show’s concept fleshed out. Watching “The Seinfeld Chronicles” is like watching an ongoing comedic experiment. It’s easy to see the seeds of a great show in the making. Despite the characters not yet being in character and cutting loose, and the dialogue not being nearly as pointed as it would eventually become, and, too, Julia Louis-Dreyfus not yet a cast member, the pilot episode is nonetheless a must-watch for Seinfeld fans. When the show was rerun as part of the first season of four additional episodes, its original Nielsen rating of 10.9 shot up to 13.9. “The Seinfeld Chronicles” is not to be missed or dismissed. It is, after all, where the Seinfeld phenomenon took flight.