Seinfeld Season 1
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The first season of ''
Seinfeld ''Seinfeld'' ( ) is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, with a total of nine seasons consisting of List of Seinfeld episodes, 180 episodes. It ...
'', an American
television series A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming plat ...
created by
Jerry Seinfeld Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( ; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. As a stand-up comedian, Seinfeld specializes in observational comedy. Seinfeld gained stardom playing a semi-fictionalized version ...
and
Larry David Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He is known for his dry wit, portrayals of awkward social situations, and brutally honest takes on everyday life. He has received two Prim ...
, began airing on July 5, 1989, on
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
. Originally called ''The Seinfeld Chronicles'', its name was shortened to ''Seinfeld'' after the pilot to avoid confusion with another sitcom called ''The Marshall Chronicles''. The
season finale A season finale (British English: series finale; Australian English: season final) is the final episode of a season of a television program. This is often the final episode to be produced for a few months or longer, and, as such, will attempt to ...
aired on June 21, 1990. A ''Seasons 1 & 2''
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
box set was released by
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Inc. (abbreviated as SPHE) is the home entertainment distribution division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony. Background SPHE is responsible for the distribution of the Sony Pictures libra ...
in the United States and Canada on November 23, 2004, thirteen years after it had completed broadcast on television. In addition to every episode from the two seasons, the DVD release features bonus material, including
deleted scene A deleted scene is footage that has been removed from the final version of a film or television show. There are various reasons why these scenes are deleted, which include time constraints, relevance, quality or a dropped story thread, and can al ...
s, animatics, exclusive stand-up material, and commentaries. With only four episodes after the pilot, season one of ''Seinfeld'' is one of the smallest sitcom orders in television history.


Production

Castle Rock Entertainment Castle Rock Entertainment is an American independent film and television production company founded in 1987 by Martin Shafer, director Rob Reiner, Andrew Scheinman, Glenn Padnick (September 8, 1947 – February 27, 2025) and Alan Horn. Histo ...
produced ''Seinfeld''. ''Seinfeld'' was aired on
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
in the United States.
Larry David Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He is known for his dry wit, portrayals of awkward social situations, and brutally honest takes on everyday life. He has received two Prim ...
was the main
showrunner A showrunner is the top-level executive producer of a television series. The position outranks other creative and management personnel, including episode directors, in contrast to feature films, in which the director has creative control over th ...
and one of the producers. Larry David and
Jerry Seinfeld Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( ; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. As a stand-up comedian, Seinfeld specializes in observational comedy. Seinfeld gained stardom playing a semi-fictionalized version ...
wrote most of the season, with Matt Goldman writing episode three, "The Robbery". The season was directed by Art Wolff and
Tom Cherones Thomas Harry Cherones, Jr. ( ; born September 11, 1939) is an American television director, director and Television producer, producer of several TV series. He is best known for his work on ''Seinfeld'', where he directed 81 of the 86 episodes ...
. The show features
Jerry Seinfeld Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( ; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. As a stand-up comedian, Seinfeld specializes in observational comedy. Seinfeld gained stardom playing a semi-fictionalized version ...
as
himself A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its Antecedent (grammar), antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and ref ...
,
Jason Alexander Jay Scott Greenspan (born September 23, 1959), known professionally as Jason Alexander, is an American actor and comedian. Over the course of his career he has received an Emmy Award and a Tony Award as well as nominations for four Golden Globe ...
as
George Costanza George Louis Costanza is a fictional character in the American television sitcom ''Seinfeld'' (1989–1998), played by Jason Alexander. He is a short, stocky, balding man who struggles with numerous insecurities, often dooming his romantic rel ...
,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress and comedian. She has gained acclaim for starring in a string of successful comedy series as well as several comedy films. She has received List of awards ...
as
Elaine Benes Elaine Marie Benes () is a fictional character on the American television sitcom ''Seinfeld'', played by former SNL cast member Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine's best friend in the sitcom is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld, and she is also good fri ...
, and
Michael Richards Michael Anthony Richards (born July 24, 1949) is an American actor and former stand-up comedian. He achieved global recognition for starring as Cosmo Kramer on the NBC television sitcom ''Seinfeld'' from 1989 to 1998. He began his career as a ...
as Kramer. In the pilot,
Lee Garlington Ann Leslie "Lee" Garlington (born July 20, 1953) is an American actress. Early life Garlington was born in Teaneck, New Jersey on July 20, 1953. She spent her teenage years in Wilmington, Delaware. Career She has guest-starred in a number of not ...
appears as Claire, the waitress at Pete's Luncheonette, but after the pilot the "gang" started eating at Monk's Cafe. Garlington was set to appear as one of the main supporting characters. Her role was dropped when it was decided that there was no need for a regular female waitress. The character of Claire was replaced with Elaine Benes in the second episode. Jerry refers to Kramer as Kessler; however, his name was changed to Kramer for the rest of the series. Kramer was named after a real person; he was called "Kessler" in the pilot episode because of worries about the rights to use the name.


Reception

The pilot episode was met with poor responses from test audiences, and NBC decided not to pick up the show. Believing it had potential, NBC executive
Rick Ludwin Richard Adam Ludwin (May 27, 1948 – November 10, 2019) was an American television executive and former vice president at NBC Television. He is notable as the executive who backed Jerry Seinfeld's series ''Seinfeld'', which went on to become one ...
ordered four episodes about a year after NBC's rejection. The first aired on May 31, 1990. When the pilot was first repeated on July 5, 1990, it received a
rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of a metric (e.g. quality, quantity, a combination of both,...). Rating or rating system may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness ...
of 13.9/26, meaning that 13.9% of households were tuned in at any given moment; additionally, 26% of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into it. These ratings were high enough to secure a second season. NBC research showed that the show was popular with young male adults, a demographic sought by advertisers, giving NBC an incentive to continue the show. The episode " The Stake Out" was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. Retrospective reception of the season has been positive. The
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website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
reported a 76% approval rating for the season, with an average rating of 8.1/10 and based on 29 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads: "''Seinfeld''s first season lays out the template for the show's unique style, effectively outlining the hugless, lesson-free humor that would later make it an oft-imitated classic." On
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, which uses a
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
, the season has a score of 79 out of 100 based on 9 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, vi ...
ranked it the twenty second greatest television season of all time, being one of four of the series's entries on the list.


Episodes


References

General sources * * * Specific sources and notes


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Seinfeld Season 1 1 1989 American television seasons 1990 American television seasons