Early 'Seinfeld' Episode That Could Have Changed The Series Completely

Seinfeld episode that nearly ended successful NBC comedy sitcom series because of Jason Alexander threatening to quit.

Getty Image / David Hume Kennerly / Contributor

Seinfeld ran for nearly a decade and is regarded as one of the funniest sitcoms of all-time. However, there was one early Seinfeld episode that nearly changed the comedy series forever.

Season 3 of Seinfeld had the lowest ratings of the entire series. In the episode titled “The Pen,” characters Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine Benes travel to Florida to visit his parents at their retirement condo in the Phase II area of the Pines of Mar Gables. During the visit to the home of Morty and Helen Seinfeld, Jerry is taken aback by the astronaut pen of Jack Klompus – who gifts the pen that can write upside down to Jerry. However, soon the entire retirement community finds out that Jerry took the famed pen used in space. This causes a major hullabaloo within the retirement community.

The Things reported, “Like many of the best episodes of Seinfeld, ‘The Pen; was based on Larry’s real life. More specifically, a conversation he had with George Shapiro (one of the executive producers) about not wanting to take a pen that he was being given. Larry and Jerry were also really excited about delving into the topic of retirement communities where both of their parents spent time in real life. It was an episode that heavily featured both of Jerry’s parents as he and Elaine traveled down to Florida to spend time with them.”

The episode was the first in the series not to feature Jason Alexander’s character George Costanza. Alexander admittedly did not take being cut out of the episode well.

Alexander – who had a successful career in theater before joining Seinfeld – felt disrespected by not being included in an episode.

“I went to Larry [David] when we came back to do the following episode, and I said, ‘I gotta talk to you about what happened last week. You wrote me out of the show. I only want to be here if I’m indispensable,” Alexander said, according to SlashFilm. “If you do it again, do it permanently. If you don’t need me to be here for every damn episode of Seinfeld you write, then I don’t need to be here.’ And he went, ‘Oh, come on,’ and I went, ‘Larry, I know it doesn’t make sense … But I’ve got to feel that you can’t do this without my character and my work being apart of it. Because if I do, then I just don’t want to be apart of it.'”

“‘The Pen’ was the first episode that the ego of Jason, as related to Seinfeld, reared its little head,” Alexander said. “It had already happened to Michael. Michael had sat out of an episode and here he was sitting out another one.”

Michael Richards’ character Cosmo Kramer was not included in “The Pen” episode and the classic “Chinese Restaurant” episode.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus said, “Actually, I felt kind of bad that Jason and Michael were not in the episode. I felt sort of guilty.”

Following the threat, Alexander was never written out of an episode ever again.

The Early ‘Seinfeld’ Episode That Could Have Changed The Series Forever