The Last Minute Script Change That Led To One Of Seinfeld's Most Iconic Moments
"Seinfeld" has its rightful place on the Mount Rushmore of the best sitcoms ever made. Few series have managed to match the show's comedic sensibilities and performances. It may have been the show about nothing, but countless people have found something worth remembering in its midst.
The show produced one iconic moment after the next. From Kramer (Michael Richards) dropping a Junior Mint into an open chest cavity during surgery to Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) dancing erratically at a work party, plenty of beats can still make viewers laugh years after they saw it originally. For the most part, the show has held up incredibly well, but when it comes to all-time most hilarious moments on "Seinfeld," it's hard to beat George's (Jason Alexander) monologue in the episode "The Marine Biologist."
In it, George pretends to be a marine biologist to impress a woman. This ends up biting him when he's tasked with saving a whale washed up on the shore, culminating in him giving an epic retelling of the event to his friends later. Fans undoubtedly remember the moment well, but according to Alexander, that monologue wasn't supposed to happen at all.
Larry David wrote George's monologue on the spot
Jason Alexander appeared on the Inside of You podcast to discuss his career at large, and naturally, they had to bring up the iconic "Marine Biologist" monologue. As Alexander tells it, that wasn't the original ending to the episode. Something else was supposed to happen, but Larry David, the co-creator of the series, wasn't happy with the audience's response. As a result, he quickly whipped up a monologue for Alexander to read, which he amazingly could memorize in a few minutes. They ran it through once without the studio audience seeing it, and as the actor goes on to tell, "What you see when you watch that episode is the first and only time we shot that new rewrite, and that became one of the most ... it's one of the big highlight laughs of the entire series."
It makes rewatching that sequence all the more fascinating because viewers can really pay attention to how the laughter truly doesn't die down throughout the entire monologue. The audience keeps going, and it's up to the cast members to find those brief moments of reprieve in order to deliver a line uninterrupted.
There's even an entire Reddit thread titled, "Seinfeld – Marine Biologist – The best joke ever told on Seinfeld." It's clear "Seinfeld" fans still can't get enough of the joke, and it remains a testament to the true comedic talent of Jason Alexander.