One Seinfeld Episode Changed The Show Forever, According To Jason Alexander

"Seinfeld" is the perfect example of how a show's popularity can break through the pop culture barrier in surprising ways. The groundbreaking NBC sitcom, which appears on /Film's best sitcoms of all time list, featured all sorts of hilarious weekly scenarios for its comedic ensemble to navigate, but unlike most of those other shows, these protagonists rarely ever learned their lesson by the end of an episode. This kind of approach to comedic television would eventually lead to similar shows with morally flexible characters like "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but it's easy to forget that, at the time, this was the exception, not the norm.

Like some of the best sitcoms, the best thing about "Seinfeld" is that you can turn on just about any episode and understand exactly who these characters are. There's plenty of great choices to recommend to newcomers like "The Soup Nazi," "The Parking Garage," and "The Puffy Shirt," but it's no surprise that the series' crown jewel was — and still is — "The Contest."

In the event you've been living under a rock, this is the episode where Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Kramer (Michael Richards) make a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating. The premise was considered incredibly risque for network television, even without ever saying the word itself. Series co-creator Larry David put in all his chips to get it made, as he believed the top brass at NBC wouldn't even touch it, but much like Kramer, once they saw what they liked, they slammed their money down on the table and the rest is history.

"The Contest" would not only go on to become an Emmy-winning episode, but it was also the moment that proved "Seinfeld" was a pop culture mainstay.

In an interview for the Archive of American Television, Jason Alexander was asked if he had a favorite episode of the show and while he didn't explicitly give an answer, it's clear the season 4 banger has left the longest impact on him and everyone else involved. Of "The Contest," he said:

"It's the one that really changed the fortunes of the show. We had been starting to do well that season, but when that show aired, we became what is now called a water cooler show. We were on news programs, we were being talked about on 'The Tonight Show.' I mean, it became the thing to talk about and it cemented the future of the show. We knew from that point on, we could do the show as long as we wanted to."

The idea of water cooler shows must feel like a strange concept to the current generation. It's not uncommon for people to talk about popular television shows out in the wild now, but in the '90s, everyone was watching the same thing at the same time. The closest thing we have to a collective discussion about a popular show now is through social media, although due to algorithms and people watching things at their own pace, we're mostly discussing with one another in our own echo chambers.

If you didn't happen to be watching "The Contest" when it first aired on November 12, 1992, you had missed out on what being a "master of your domain" meant until the next time it aired. It must have been a bummer to not talk about it because the episode remains one of the funniest half-hours of television in history. It was so popular that even "It's Always Sunny" did a loving tribute.

Larry David had his reservations about whether the pitch would work, but it was extremely fitting that a show about a bunch of memorable jerk-offs would result in an episode about, well, you know.

Every episode of "Seinfeld" is currently streaming on Netflix.