The Controversial Seinfeld Episode You'll Never Get To See
From the very beginning, "Seinfeld" was a sitcom that set out to be different from other sitcoms. While it was standard at the time for sitcoms to follow the fundamental A-B-C plot structure, "Seinfeld" would sometimes place all its main characters in the same place, facing the same problem, for an entire episode. Where a lot of sitcoms ended with some sort of life lesson or moment of sweetness, co-creator Larry David had a strict "no hugging, no learning" rule on the set.
That often meant that the subject matter on "Seinfeld" could get a bit darker than your usual sitcom fare, as well. Armed neo-Nazis, serial killers, comas, and other unsavory subjects are just grist for the "Seinfeld" narrative mill, and fans of the series wouldn't have it any other way.
There is, however, one episode of the show that made it as far as the table read but then ended up getting scrapped by mutual agreement of the cast for being too dark, even for the show about nothing.
Jerry Seinfeld talked about the episode in a Reddit AMA
The episode, which has held a legendary place in the lore of "Seinfeld" for years, was to be entitled "The Bet," according to a Screen Crush profile on the whole sordid affair. The episode's title comes from a bet between Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) and George (Jason Alexander) regarding whether Kramer (Michael Richards) really and truly managed to sleep with a flight attendant during a recent flight as he claimed. But that plot wasn't the source of the controversy among the cast and crew of the show — there was to be another bet, on whether or not Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) would really follow through on her stated intention to purchase a gun for protection in the city.
In a Reddit AMA from 2014, Seinfeld responded to a question about rejected story ideas with his memory of that fateful lost episode. "There was one episode where Jerry bought a handgun," the comedian commented. "And we started making it and stopped in the middle and said 'this doesn't work.' We did the read-through and then cancelled it." He went on to say, "trying to make that funny ended up being no fun."
A few months after the AMA, the Screen Crush piece went into a lot more detail about the infamous almost-episode. According to the piece, Elaine was scripted to joke with Jerry about using the gun, referencing a headshot as "the Kennedy," an obvious reference to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While "Seinfeld" would later riff on the Kennedy assassination, that particular joke was too dark for the cast, who decided not to do it.
Now, "The Bet" is one of the most legendary lost sitcom episodes of all time — but it's probably for the best that it never saw the light of day.