Jerry Seinfeld And Elaine Didn't Get Together For A Good Reason

One thing that really separated "Seinfeld" from its sitcom peers was its utter disinterest in any kind of will-they/won't-they situation with main characters Jerry and Elaine. Okay, the show did include a little bit of that dynamic — Jerry and Elaine have dated before the show and do hook up occasionally within the show itself — but it always seemed clear the writers didn't care for the two as a couple. 

In a 2024 interview with The Times, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) explained that the NBC execs were pushing for a romantic storyline between Jerry and Elaine, but one particular writer on the show was firmly against it. "But Larry [David] was just immovable on that point," she explains. "The show was built on doing things that were outside the norm, so doing something stereotypical would have been atypical of the show."

When the show did give in to the network's demands for some Jerry/Elaine action, they always did so with an air of malicious compliance. In Season 2's "The Deal," Jerry and Elaine briefly became friends with benefits, and "Seinfeld" execs were apparently frustrated by how little tension was involved in the two's sex-based storyline.

Although the show never followed through on any kind of Jerry/Elaine romance, they did seem to troll the Jelaine shippers every now and again. The most egregious example is probably the series finale: there's a scene where the plane they're on seems to be crashing, which spurs Elaine to give an apparent romantic confession to Jerry. But before she can get the words out, the plane rights itself, and she realizes she's not going to die. The moment the threat of death is behind her, she never reveals what she wanted to say. 

This relationship makes for a fun subversion of audience expectations, because a common sitcom trope is to pair the remaining single characters off in the series finale. For example, "Friends" waited until the final minutes of its runtime to give Ross and Rachel their happy ending, while "Mad Men" (not a sitcom, but still a funny show) threw in a surprise romantic confession between Peggy and Stan. Even NBC's "Community," an early 2010s sitcom that shared a lot of Larry David's disdain for serious romantic arcs, at least had its will-they/won't-they couple kiss a few times before the credits rolled. 

When the first part of the "Seinfeld" finale featured a near-romantic confession between Jerry and Elaine, it was natural to expect the second half to pay off that thread in some way. Instead, Larry David and the other writers gave us the mostly absurdly cold, unsentimental sitcom finale ever made. Not every fan was happy with the results, including Jerry Seinfeld's regrets for the finale, but surely we can all respect David's stubborn commitment to his principles. The episode even haunts the finale of David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm," as Larry atones for his mistake of putting the "Seinfeld" gang in jail. David said early on that he'd never make Jerry and Elaine an item, and he stuck to his word.