Excruciating Minutiae: How To Be A Giant 'Seinfeld' Geek

You must remember this: The cast of Seinfeld at the 1993 Emmy Awards, where the show was named Outstanding Comedy Series. Scott Flynn, Getty Images

 

by Glenn McDonald

Got a press release this week announcing the advent of Scene It? Seinfeld Deluxe Edition — a new version of the DVD trivia game focusing on the quintessential 1990s sitcom.

Quite frankly, I'm confident that I would be unbeatable. For I am McDonald, King of the Seinfeld Geeks. I watch Seinfeld reruns the way music fans listen to their old Beatles records — over and over, peeling back the layers, year after year, forever. It's a lifetime commitment, really.

As it happens, I recently finished watching Seinfeld: The Complete Series, the DVD box set released last year. All of it. Thirty-three discs, 180 episodes, and more than 100 hours (!) of extras. It took me several months, but I did it. I am not proud.

I do, however, feel an obligation to use my vast Seinfeld knowledge for good. I realize the casual fan may not want to sink several dozen weeks into mining every last bit of excruciating minutiae from the set.

And because the extras are scattered throughout the series, it's hard to know which disc to rent.

Which discs to put on your Netflix queue, after the jump...

In the interest of extemporaneous consumer advocacy, I've narrowed down the set into a few critical discs.

Season 3, Disc 4
Season 3, most fans agree, is when Seinfeld really started hitting on all cylinders. Disc 4 has six solid episodes, all with additional commentaries and trivia.

Most compelling is the 21-minute documentary "Kramer vs. Kramer: Kenny to Cosmo," a revealing look at the Kramer character, as invented by actor Michael Richards. As cast and crew discuss the character, it's clear that Richards was every bit as eccentric as Kramer: a solitary comedic technician who rehearsed physical bits for hours and demanded professionalism from everyone around him.

Icing on the cake: This is one of only a handful of individual discs that features a blooper reel.

Season 7, Disc 4
This disc features one of the collection's best commentary tracks, in which Jerry Seinfeld, director Andy Ackerman, and writers Jeff Schaffer and Alec Berg dissect the classic episode "The Calzone" and give a sense of just how hard it is to be this good, this consistently.

Also interesting: a feature on the departure of series co-creator Larry David, the secret author of the show's unique style. (Season 8 marks a significant shift in tone, and is the show's third distinct era.) But the best part of this disc is a documentary tribute to that most underrated asset of the show, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Season 9, Discs 1 and 4
Season 9, Disc 4 includes the two-part series finale, which was far from perfect but served nicely as a curtain call for the ancillary characters that so enriched the series: the Soup Nazi, David Puddy, Mr. Pitt, and many of Jerry's weekly turnover of girlfriends.

Disc 1 is a winner, too, with a stellar lineup of late-era classic episodes, including "The Voice," "The Serenity Now," and "The Merv Griffin Show" — all with meaty commentaries and extras. You'll also find here the bittersweet featurette "The Last Lap," detailing the difficult decision by the cast to end the show.

Finally, if you really want to geek out, the entire collection is littered with "Easter eggs" — special content hidden in the various menu screens. Google around — what, I should make it easy for you? — and you can find instructions for getting to the hidden goodies.