10 Times Jerry Seinfeld Was Funny on Seinfeld

Throughout the never-ending press tour for his poorly received “Unfrosted,” Jerry Seinfeld spent as much time putting his foot in his own mouth as hyping his product, an inadvertent late career coming out as a reactionary. It was something to ruefully acknowledge before moving on with the rest of your day. That is not what many people did, however, or at least, not what many social media users did. Many people sought to tell the whole world via social media that they never thought “Seinfeld” was funny, or more accurately, that they never thought Jerry on “Seinfeld” was funny. This was less about appraising art, though, then staking out the moral high ground, or being seen staking out the moral high ground, I should say, performatively staking out the moral high ground even if they tended to stake it out on social media which just exists down there in the mud. It was wearying. The problem with a show of a piety, another American funnyman whose own dubious character was eventually revealed once said, is that it’s open to everybody. Sorry, masses, but I am not impressed. And even if some people were being 100% forthright in their opinion of an unfunny Jerry, that’s not true either. And as the kids say, I’ve got the receipts, ten of them, in fact. 

By his own admission, Seinfeld was not a good actor, and never really even became a good actor by the end of the series. Yet, he was frequently funny, albeit in a different way than his trio of gifted co-stars. The examples of Jerry Seinfeld being funny listed below are, I want to be clear, Jerry Seinfeld being funny independent of the material; this is strictly about delivery of the material or performing to accentuate or underline the material. His “second spitter” monologue, or the “Schindler’s List” make out session, things of this nature, are objectively hilarious but are not necessarily examples of Jerry Seinfeld himself being the foremost reason they are funny. No, in his own unique way, Seinfeld made the following 10 moments as much as the material. 

10 Times Jerry Seinfeld Was Funny on Seinfeld

1. If Seinfeld frequently came across on the verge of breaking during myriad one-liners, his lips curling into a conspicuous grin as he said it, or even as he was about to say it, this habit could also work to advantage. It never worked to his advantage more than the capper to the first half of the beloved Keith Hernandez-starring episode in Season 3. You know the moment, after George’s attempts to extend his unemployment benefits by claiming to have interviewed for a job selling latex and giving Jerry’s phone number as the faux latex sales office only to have it go awry when the unemployment office calls and Kramer answers, causing George to run out of the bathroom and fall to the floor, pants around his ankles, at which point Jerry enters from the hall and remarks, “And you want to be my latex salesman.” It’s a great line, that goes without saying, and is impeccably built to within the script, but Seinfeld the actor is what truly brings it home. If so much of the show was Jerry reacting to the inane behavior of his friends, this is his greatest reaction, when the character’s innate stand-up comic instincts take over. If Seinfeld smiles as he says it, that’s because in that moment he is essentially standing on a stage, observing a hapless member of the crowd, feeling the joke come to him in real-time, and then making it.

2. Was there ever a greater conceit illustrating mankind’s eternal penchant for guilty pleasures than in Season 6’s “The Beard” when Jerry is forced to take a lie detector test by the police sergeant (Katherine LaNasa) he is dating to determine whether or not he watches “Melrose Place.” And if Seinfeld was not a great actor, as previously established, well, that fact only helps him here. Hooked up to so many polygraph chords, he tries to act nonchalant, irrefutably failing.

3. Anyone submitting that Jerry was never funny because Jerry Seinfeld was revealed to be a real-life smug jerk is objectively overruled by Season 4’s “The Airport” in which his character cheerfully, quickly, selfishly accepts a first-class airplane ticket over Elaine, resigning her to coach, because Seinfeld’s innate smug jerkiness has never been deployed to greater comic effect. It’s funny because he’s an asshole; a first-class asshole. 

4. “Seinfeld’s” vision of New York was conspicuously white, a valid criticism, though the show was not entirely blind to it. Or, maybe I should say, the show was aware of a kind of blinkered white perspective that fancies itself aware as Season 5’s “The Dinner Party” illustrates with Jerry’s single greatest monologue in which he boils all of society’s racial problems down to a Black and white cookie. “You really should write an op ed for The Times,” says Elaine, a suggestion that Jerry actually takes seriously, casting his eyes around the room, drinking in this idea, and going “mmmmmmm.” That “mmmmmmm” is just hysterical. I imagine that every time Ross Douthat, or David Brooks, or Bret Stephens sits down to compose an op-ed for The Times, they cast their eyes around the room and go “mmmmmmm” just like Jerry.   

5. There were many great moments involving Jerry’s pathological resistance to germs, of course, like the one in Season 8’s “The Pothole” when he is forced to fish the toothbrush of his girlfriend Jenna (Kristin Davis) out of her toilet bowl. Director Andy Ackerman deserves plaudits for concocting a point-of-view shot from within the toilet, an impressive feat in its own right that Seinfeld the actor, nevertheless, manages to top with the side-splitting expression of a germaphobe literally staring down his greatest fear.

6. Even better, though, is another moment involving another girlfriend’s (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) toothbrush in Season 6’s “The Doodle.” Upon discovering he has forgotten his own teeth-cleaning device at home, his girlfriend insists he use hers, and Seinfeld has his alter onscreen ego desperately will himself to try and use it until ultimately, finally, as if there is an invisible force field between his lips and the bristles, he realizes he just can’t.

7. The best moment of Season 7’s famed “The Soup Nazi” occurs when George, unable to tamp down his own instincts enough to not complain about failing to get free bread with his soup, gets hit with the first “no soup for you!” and has his just paid-for soup literally taken away. It’s hilarious, of course, the shellshocked George just standing there in the wake of this unbelievable turn of events, and then that hilarity is accentuated when Jerry glares at him for deigning to disregard the rules and physically signals for his friend to get the hell out of there. In the subsequent scene, Jerry literally mentions living under a Nazi regime, but that moment before lives it. There is a hysterically exaggerated desperation and terror in Seinfeld the actor’s mannerism that lets you know he’s been cowed. 

8/9/10. My favorite Jerry Seinfeld moment is, in fact, three of them rolled into one scene in Season 6’s “The Secretary” that takes us through the three stages of agony of what we might deem Mandatory Fun. In this case, the Mandatory Fun is the second time in season 6 in which Jerry is forced to take hack comedian Kenny Bania (Steve Hytner) out to an unwanted dinner in exchange for a personal favor. In fact, this time the pesky Bania has negotiated two dinners. 

When Bania asks if Jerry if he is enjoying his soup, Seinfeld’s reply, “I’m having a wonderful time” is as thinly veiled as thinly veiled contempt can possibly get, a man reconciled to a necessary but torturous life choice.

But after that, when Bania begins pontificating on whether they should have their second meal at the same place, or try a new restaurant instead, unable to sit through the whole foregone spiel, Jerry cuts him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. This would be good, but it would be the same,” he says, the veil coming off, just leaving the contempt sitting there in the open. “But if we go someplace else, it would be different, but it might not be as good.” And as he concludes, Seinfeld the actor has Jerry lean forward, contempt giving way to pure rage. “It’s a gamble. I get it.”

The rage, though, bounces off the oblivious Bania like he’s brick wall. Then he begins telling Jerry how he has scored a date with a woman from a dry-cleaning ticket previously belonging to Kramer on which Jerry’s next-door neighbor had written the phone number for one Uma Thurman. That’s why when Bania explains his date is with “some woman named Uma...hope she’s good looking,” Seinfeld the actor has Jerry respond with that look right up there, rage now dissolving into sheer disbelieving disgust. In fact, it’s sort of the same look I get whenever someone tries to tell me Jerry wasn’t funny on “Seinfeld.”