Seinfeld will always be regarded as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, and numerous episodes prove exactly why it should be. The creative team behind Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Charles, and Larry David) made some groundbreaking TV, but one of the show’s best episodes was actually created in an act of desperation to replace a storyline that had to be canceled due to controversy. And hearing the story now, it makes so much sense…
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Seinfeld was still working its way up from cult status when the show began Season 2. The first season (if you rewatch now) is a clear case of ‘finding the formula,’ with formats and staples that were thankfully ditched as Season 2 began. The central creative core of Larry David, Larry Charles, Jerry Seinfeld, and director Tom Cherones seemed to find rhythm in telling Seinfeld‘s ironic stories about mundane or topical aspects of life. But one episode split the creative team and forced a last-minute rewrite that went on to become a fan-favorite and top-ranked episode of the series… eventually.
“The Phone Message” is the fourth episode of Seinfeld Season 2, which aired on February 13, 1991. The now-famous episode’s primary story revolves around George Costanza (Jason Alexander) going on a double date with Jerry (Seinfeld) and screwing up a good thing when he refuses the girl’s invitation to “go upstairs for coffee. Neurotic George simply can’t let the blunder go: he calls the girl incessantly, leaving increasingly desperate messages on her answering machine – including a very fiery, angry, final one. However, the girl eventually contacts George, all giddy about their budding romance, and explains she has been out of town. Suddenly, the phone messages are a ticking time bomb, and George comes up with an elaborate plan to destroy the evidence of his mania.
Seinfeld‘s “The Phone Message” Was A Last-Minute Rewrite for A Cacneled Episode
“The Phone Message” was an episode written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, without Larry Charles; that’s because Charles had written a different episode entirely called “The Bet” (or “The Gun” as it was also known). The original episode had two main storylines: one where Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) makes a bet with Jerry about how easy it is to buy a gun in America; the other, a storyline where Jerry’s neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards) makes a bet with Jerry and George about whether he truly got frisky with an airline stewardess while on a flight home from Puerto Rico.
“The Bet” caused concerns right from conception, but it was pushed into production, regardless, with sets being built and guest actors being hired for the one-off roles of a gun store owner and the stewardess. However, there was major pushback from the cast and crew once the first table reads were done, with Seinfeld Season 2 commentary tracks revealing that Louis-Dreyfus even said, “I’m not gonna do this.” Director Tom Cherones was nominated to talk with Larry Charles about the potential backlash and controversy, and with agreement from NBC’s executives, the episode was ultimately scrapped. “The Phone Message” episode was written by David and Seinfeld in just two days before filming took place.
Larry Chares took the change in good stride, once explaining on commentary tracks that, “It would have been an interesting show, but… we couldn’t solve the funny problem of it. It never seemed to quite be as funny as it should be, and, because of that, the balance was off, and the darkness kind of enveloped it, and it could never really emerge from that darkness and become what it should have been. So, it was disappointing but also understandable.”
Seinfeld Missed An Opportunity to Tackle A Major Topic
There’s a lot of irony to be found in how things turned out. “The Phone Message” is now counted as a top-tier George-focused episode of Seinfeld; however, at the time of airing, it looked like a major blunder. “The Phone Message” got hit with a major slump in ratings (13 million viewers, down from an average range of 19-22 million per episode). It was a big enough drop that NBC put Seinfeld on hiatus for two months afterward and moved it back to its original timeslot after Cheers. At the time, it seemed like the creative of Seinfeld was at odds with itself – and this was perhaps one of the first foreshadowings of the creative split that would occur later.
Meanwhile, Seinfeld is one of the only modern sitcoms not to dedicate at least one episode to the issue of gun control. The Simpsons did it in the 1997 episode, “The Cartridge Family”, and TV’s longest-running sitcom, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has actually made its “Gun Fever” episodes a recurring motif. In fact, the 2013 episode, “Gun Fever Too: Still Hot”, is an even more demented version of Seinfeld‘s “The Gun”: The show’s core group is split down the middle over the issue of gun control, and competes in two teams to prove how easy (or not) it actually is to obtain a gun in America. Hilarity and social commentary ensue – so clearly, someone cracked the code on ‘gun humor’ after Charles couldn’t.
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