Despite the fact that most of the episode revolved around a masturbation contest, the word “masturbation” was never used in the episode. The nearly 30 million viewers who watched the rerun is like three times more than saw the Breaking Bad finale, which has to make “The Contest” the most popular rerun of all time.Ģ. In fact, the first repeat airing actually was seen by ten million more people than the original airing, which is pretty much unheard of today. The original airing of “The Contest,” was seen by about 18.5 million viewers it was the episode that really and truly helped launch Seinfeld into the ratings juggernaut it became. The episode actually garnered Larry David an Emmy Award for Best Writing, and it launched the catchphrase “Master of my Domain” as a euphemism for masturbation.Īnyway, I have no idea why I was thinking about “The Contest.” I was sitting at home alone, minding my own business, and a memory of that episode popped into my head, and I thought I’d look it up, and see if there was anything interesting about the episode I could pass along, and sure enough, there are a few fun facts about it that are worth mentioning.ġ. But, just to refresh your memory, after George is caught by his mother masturbating, the A-plot concerned a contest between the four main cast members about who could go the longest without self-pleasuring.
If you don’t recall which episode of Seinfeld “The Contest” is, then you probably have never seen Seinfeld. That episode of Seinfeld is five days older than Miley Cyrus. (Photo: Columbia TriStar Television/Courtesy of Everett Collection) Estelle Harris and Jason Alexander in “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld.If you want to feel really old, consider this: “The Contest,” arguably one of the best, if not the best episode of Seinfeld of all time is 21 years old.
#SEINFELD MASTER OF MY DOMAIN EPISODE SERIES#
It is a TV truth universally acknowledged that the classic comedy series Seinfeld mastered its domain on Nov. 18, 1992, midway through its fourth season on the air. That’s the night that unsuspecting viewers sat down to watch “The Contest,” an innocuous title for an episode that turned sexual innuendo into an art form. The titular contest pitted Seinfeld’s core four characters - Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), George (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Kramer (Michael Richards) - against one another in a fiercely fought battle for bragging rights about which of them would be the longest to go without indulging in any self-pleasure. It’s an idea that emerged from the notebook of Larry David, who made a similar bet in the ’80s and, of course, emerged as the King of the County.
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Twenty-five years later, “The Contest” remains a masterclass in how to talk about masturbation while never actually dropping the M word, a feat that has elevated the episode to the ranks of the all-time great sitcom half-hours. But longtime Seinfeld director Tom Cherones tells Yahoo Entertainment that, back in 1992, it was just another day at the office for the cast and crew. “We didn’t know about ahead of time,” he says. “Like any other week, we got the script and read it. We had been doing the show a while at that point, so nothing Larry would come up with would surprise me anymore.”Īccording to Cherones, if NBC’s Standards and Practices department had been surprised by “The Contest,” they didn’t show it. Nor did they insist on any major changes in early read-throughs or on set. In fact, the episode that ended up onscreen is more or less the episode that David wrote, minus a few lines that made the premise more explicit - though not in a graphic way - than it needed to be. “In the table read, there was a line in the opening scene in the coffee shop where George is describing what happened with the Glamour magazine,” Cherones remembers. “He said, ‘There was tugging.’ That was obviously not needed, so Larry cut it.”Īsked why he thinks “The Contest” has endured for a quarter century, Cherones chalks it up first and foremost to being a “really funny episode.” “Michael did his best work in that episode in terms of the physical stuff just the way he moved was funny,” he says.
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