What is the Greatest Seinfeld Episode of All Time?
Statistically ranking the best-ever episodes for “The Show About Nothing”
by Vikas Satyal
The Primetime Emmy Awards were held yesterday. Veep — starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a gone-rogue yet detached Sarah Palin-esque Vice President — was crowned Best Comedy Series for the second consecutive year. Veep has solidified its credibility among television’s current best shows, anchored by its strong writing and Dreyfus’ pitch-perfect performance as Selina Meyer, for which she has now won 5 consecutive Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Emmys.
While Veep may be Dreyfus’ crowning achievement of what has become a rather decorative career, it was her nine-season arc as Elaine Benes — Pendant Publishing editor-turned J. Peterman catalogue author, and confidante to Jerry, George, and Kramer — in Seinfeld that helped established her and the series as a comedic tour-de-force. It may have been “The Show About Nothing,” but according to its syndication contracts — which have generated over $3 billion over the past 20 years — Seinfeld is still the most popular sitcom of all-time. In addition, the show still ranks a subjective #1 in terms of pop culture vernacular: Date someone where the end didn’t go so well? “He’s a Bad Breaker-Upper.” Skipping over the details of a story? “Yadda Yadda Yadda.” Have a friend that isn’t getting any action? “Are you still Mastur of Your Domain?”
Strike up a conversation about the most iconic show of the 1990s and it’s only a matter of time before someone in your circle of friends begins to list his or her favorite episodes.
So what is the greatest Seinfeld episode of all time? Below is a list of the Top 25 episodes based on a composite rank I created using multiple KPIs:
To rank every Seinfeld episode, I combed through a list of pop culture sites that include subjective rankings — Vulture and Vanity Fair — and balanced them with the IMDb.com rating, U.S. viewership at the time of first air, Emmy nominations, and Emmy wins to develop a composite ranking.
The result? While both Vanity Fair and Vulture declare the best episode to be “The Contest” (in which Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine enter into a pact to see who can go the longest without pleasuring themselves), the episode that ranks highest according to these metrics is “The Opposite” (in which George — in the most Larry David-esque of experiments — sees his downtrodden life magically catch fire by doing the reverse of every natural instinct he’s ever had). “The Opposite” has the highest IMDb user rating — 9.6 out of 1,700+ individual user votes — while its U.S. Viewers also strongly outperform “The Contest,” suggesting that it not only won over the hearts of Seinfeld viewers, but did so at the height of the show’s maturation and popularity, as Season 5 is the midway point of the series.
The composite rankings also prove that the Top 10 Seinfeld episodes align to some of the most popular quotes in the show’s history. For example, ask in a crowded room “Is anyone here a Marine Biologist?” or declare “I can’t spare a square!” and you’re sure to receive quite a number of chortles validating the popularity of, respectively, “The Marine Biologist” (in which, appropriately, George pretends to be a marine biologist to win over the heart of a love interest) or “The Stall” (in which Elaine encounters a stingy toilet paper hoarder). It should be noted that “The Marine Biologist” did not crack Vulture’s Top 50, and “The Stall” didn’t enter into either list until #34 on Vulture despite both episodes’ having received at least an 8.9 rating on IMDb.
Ironically, the episode that performed most consistently across all KPIs but did not crack the Top 10 is “The Subway” (in which each cast member gets stuck on New York’s mass transit en route to a routine errand). “The Subway” cracked the Top 10 for both Vulture and Vanity Fair, but slid a couple of spots in the overall composite rankings due to a slightly comparatively-lower IMDb user rating and U.S. Viewership.
If you’re wondering which is the greatest Seinfeld season of all time, it may depend on the lens you would like to use: three Season 5 episodes fall under the Top 10 list but Seasons 5, 7, and 8 each have five episodes in the Top 25. If you take a more statistical approach by collapsing the aggregated rankings into each season instead of by individual episode, Seasons 5 remains on, followed by Season 9 and Season 4.
So — Serenity Now! — what are the worst Seinfeld episodes of all time?
“The Ex-Girlfriend” — in which Jerry finds himself dating the woman with whom George has recently broken up — ranks dead last (a disappointment in the eyes of yours truly). In addition, four of the bottom ten episodes all fall within Season 1 of the series. This is validated not only by the IMDb user ratings, but also the comparatively low U.S. viewership by episode (it’s been well-documented that NBC renewed the then-titled The Seinfeld Chronicles despite these low ratings primarily due to its appeal to the upper-class, wealthy segmentation of viewers in the 9:30pm time slot). However, it could be argued that since earlier episodes of Seinfeld aired prior to the show’s really taking off and achieving a higher popularity through a traditional process of increasing viewership, it’s simply lack of awareness and not particularly lack of quality that causes these episodes to rank lower on the overall list.
And there you have it. Now when someone at the party asks “What do you think is the greatest Seinfeld episode?,” resist the temptation to dive into a full-blown, hour-long conversation. Instead, refer them to this list and — in the words of Elaine Benes — “stick with ‘The Opposite!’”
Vikas Satyal lives and works in New York City. His favorite Seinfeld episode is “The Race.”
For the full Seinfeld rankings list, please scroll below.
