Julia Louis-Dreyfus Solved One Of Seinfeld's Biggest Problems Using Jerry's Fridge

I started to watch "Seinfeld" when I was fairly young, and I'm one of those people where nearly every episode has been imprinted on my brain after years of watching them over and over and over again. The show became funnier as I grew older, as I was able to grasp the topics, innuendos, and cultural atmosphere it was grappling with. My appreciation for the humor and the storytelling are not the only things that have grown over time. One element of the show that I love is Jerry's apartment.

There are a lot of television shows set in New York, and almost none of them feature an apartment I believe the characters in the show could live in. "Friends" is the ultimate example of this, where Monica and Rachel's gigantic two-bedroom seems completely out of reach for those people. Jerry's apartment on "Seinfeld" is cramped. The couch bumps up against the kitchen counter to the right and the table directly behind it. The bathroom in the back looks like it couldn't fit two people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Even in the early 1990s, rent in New York was still very high, and with Seinfeld living on the Upper West Side as a moderately successful comedian, this fairly small one-bedroom apartment makes complete sense.

The reason so many TV shows have their characters in larger living spaces is because, especially for a multi-camera sitcom with 22-episode orders, you need to continually find ways of utilizing the same space episode after episode. Jerry's apartment may be fairly realistic for the world, but it was rather impractical when it came time to actual shoot. The cast often struggled finding ways to stay busy on the set, and they often found themselves using a reliable device: the refrigerator.

In interviews about the show on the DVD, you'll learn that the actors primarily figured out the blocking of a typical scene. Because it was so small, they would typically stay in the entryway or drift over into the kitchen, as that was the area with the most props. During her recent appearance on "Hot Ones," Julia Louis-Dreyfus relayed the issues of working on that set and why the refrigerator became a go-to spot for business:

"[A]s soon as you walk into the apartment, what are you supposed to do? What business am I gonna find to do in this apartment? And you're not just going to come in and sit on the couch every time. [...] You had the couch, you had the kitchen, and then you had that, sort of the sweet spot, I think we called it 'the alleyway,' which was sort of between the counter and the couch. And that was where a lot of stuff happened. It felt like you could hold court there in a way. But you also had to figure out what you were going to do, which is why I often would go to the refrigerator and just find things, or even just go and look in the refrigerator and not do anything. [...] We were limited, but we had to be creative about it."

Looking through all of "Seinfeld," you'll see countless instances of Elaine grabbing a bottle of water, pouring herself a glass of milk, or just vacantly staring into the fridge. Sometimes it was for a purpose, such as the "Snapple?" joke in the episode "The Virgin," but usually, this was just trying to figure out how to occupy your time in a small New York apartment. Jerry's fridge was the perfect business repository.