Although its hysterical take on the minutiae of daily life and its daring sense of humor were its primary selling points, Seinfeld has always endeared audiences with a wonderfully zany sensibility. The storylines were never so far-fetched that it felt like they were “jumping the shark,” but there were very few of them that were totally grounded in reality. Like The Simpsons and South Park, Seinfeld exists in a skewed, heightened, ridiculous, absurdist rendering of the real world. It’s easy to identify the idiosyncratic Seinfeld-isms in the show’s genetic makeup. So, here are Seinfeld’s 10 Most Delightfully Absurd Storylines, Ranked.
Kramer makes a pasta model of Jerry ("The Fusilli Jerry," Season 6)
In Season 6’s “The Fusilli Jerry,” Kramer starts making pasta models of all of his friends during his “spare time.” They sit on little podiums — they’re like Funko Pops made of pasta. When making each one, he paired the subject’s personality with the pasta that he used for the model. For Jerry, he used fusilli, because as a comedian, Jerry is “silly.” Kramer gives no reason for doing this, and Jerry isn’t particularly enamored by the gift. At the end of the episode, the titular pasta statuette disappeared when Frank Costanza accidentally sat on it. “It was a million-to-one shot, doc. Million-to-one.”
George sneaks a rye loaf into the Rosses’ apartment ("The Rye," Season 7)
Seinfeld’s seventh season story arc followed George’s ill-fated engagement to Susan Ross. In the episode “The Rye,” the Costanzas and the Rosses get together for a pre-wedding dinner, and it goes about as horribly as one would expect. When the Rosses forget to serve the rye loaf that Frank and Estelle brought along, Frank steals it back.
Fearing that it will tear the families apart irreparably before George and Susan have even gotten married, George concocts a plan to sneak a rye loaf into the Rosses’ apartment. It involves Kramer driving a hansom cab and Jerry stealing the bread from an old lady.
Jerry comes up with a voice for his girlfriend’s stomach ("The Voice," Season 9)
“Hellooo!!” The final season of Seinfeld is noted for its decline in quality, but what really happened was a shift in tone. The show went overboard with the silliness and lost all of its grounding in relatable everyday situations. Instead, we got storylines like Kramer cooking himself in butter, tempting Newman to eat him. It’s not that Seinfeld’s ninth season is bad; it’s just strange. In “The Voice,” Jerry invents a funny voice for his girlfriend’s stomach. When she’s offended by the voice, he has to choose between the woman and the silly voice — and he chooses the silly voice.
Elaine sells only the tops of muffins ("The Muffin Tops," Season 8)
It became clear in Seinfeld’s eighth season that the writers were running out of ideas when a whole episode was made out of Elaine’s business idea for a bakery that only sells the tops of muffins. The business is a success, but Elaine has a hard time getting rid of the “stumps.” Not even a homeless shelter will take the bottoms of the muffins. The volunteers at the shelter are outraged that only the stumps are being offered, because it’s disrespectful to the homeless people. Elaine says, “If the homeless don’t like them, the homeless don’t have to eat them!”
Kramer drops a Junior Mint inside a man during surgery ("The Junior Mint," Season 4)
The writers of Seinfeld have been forthright in explaining the factual inaccuracies in the episode “The Junior Mint.” In the episode, Elaine’s friend is getting a surgical procedure, and Jerry and Kramer go along to watch. Kramer eats Junior Mints during the operation, and while offering one to Jerry, he drops the candy inside the patient. It ends up miraculously saving his life. Sure, there would be a barrier between the audience and the surgeons, and you wouldn’t be able to just drop candy into the patient’s anatomy. But it’s still a hilarious Seinfeld episode with a gleefully ludicrous premise.
George plays real-life Frogger to get the arcade game itself across the street ("The Frogger," Season 9)
Only some arcade games will delete the players’ high scores; others will actually keep them saved. Still, this premise provided an interesting hook for a latter-day Seinfeld installment. In “The Frogger,” the pizza place that Jerry and George used to hang out in as kids is getting shut down. George still has the high score on the pizzeria’s Frogger game, and he worries that when it gets unplugged, his prized legacy will be erased. So, he buys the game from the pizza place and rigs up an intricate series of extension cords to keep the game plugged in. He ends up playing real-life Frogger to get the game across the street.
Jerry agrees to wear a ruffled pirate shirt on television ("The Puffy Shirt," Season 5)
Season 5’s “The Puffy Shirt” is one of series co-creator Larry David’s favorite episodes of the show. Kramer starts dating a “low-talker,” who speaks so quietly that you can never understand what she’s saying. Jerry accidentally agrees to wear her new design — a ruffled shirt in the style of a pirate that she’s hoping will become “the new look of the ‘90s” — on a national TV show he’s due to appear on.
The TV appearance is for a benefit that Elaine is organizing to clothe homeless people, so she objects to him wearing such an absurd shirt to promote it. Jerry ends up bouthing the shirt on TV, ruining its chances of success.
Kramer finds TV sets in a dumpster and starts a camera-free talk show ("The Merv Griffin Show," Season 9)
The Season 9 episode “The Merv Griffin Show” is most notable for being the one in which Jerry drugs his girlfriend to play with her vintage toy collection, which some viewers have seen as a disturbing depiction of date rape. But the A-plot is much sillier than that. Kramer finds a bunch of sets from The Merv Griffin Show in a dumpster, and decides to reconstruct the set in his apartment. He presents the show 24/7, with Newman as his Andy Richter-esque sidekick. Kramer even books guests to come over to his apartment and appear on the show, despite there being no cameras.
Elaine befriends Jerry’s cosmic opposite ("The Bizarro Jerry," Season 8)
After Season 7, the absurdism in Seinfeld gets ratcheted up a couple of notches, because Larry David departed from the show, leaving his co-creator Jerry Seinfeld wholly in charge of the series. Season 8’s “The Bizarro Jerry” smacks of an episode that Seinfeld had wanted to do for years and David had never let him. It’s wacky, it’s ludicrous, and it references Superman comics.
Elaine befriends a guy who is Jerry’s exact opposite, so Jerry jokingly him “the Bizarro Jerry” in reference to the Bizarro World from DC Comics in which everything is the opposite. Elaine realizes that Bizarro Jerry’s friends are Bizarro George (generous with money) and Bizarro Kramer (knocks on the apartment door, asks for food, and comes up with good business ideas that he doesn’t follow through).
The characters take part in a...contest ("The Contest," Season 4)
Often cited as the greatest Seinfeld episode — and sometimes even called the greatest thing ever aired on television, period — “The Contest” has the show’s most gleefully absurd setup. George’s mother catches him masturbating in her living room, so he vows off ever doing it again. His friends don’t believe he’ll make it, and they all end up putting down money to determine who can go the longest without doing it. What’s crazier is that this storyline was allegedly inspired by an actual event from David’s life (in real life, it was just David and one friend, and the contest only lasted a couple of days, with David winning).