There are 180 episodes of 'Seinfeld,' but you probably didn't know there was one more that was almost made. The script was written, guest actors cast and sets built. But at the cast read-through, everyone on set reacted strongly to the material — and not in a good way.
The episode was titled 'The Bet,' and it was intended to be the fourth episode of Season 2. It found Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character Elaine considering buying a gun for personal protection. Sounds fairly innocuous on the surface, but apparently it was far from it.
The episode took a darker turn when Michael Richards' Kramer took Elaine to meet a black market gun salesman. From there, things went in a typically "Seinfeld" direction, making jokes about anything and everything gun-related that its writers could think up.
"Seinfeld's" characters never shied away from being abrasive, which fans might argue was part of the show's charm, but in this episode things went too far. As Elaine thinks about purchasing the gun, the script had her joke about shooting herself in the head with it.
Director Tom Cherones remembers this joke referencing "a Kennedy," which means exactly what you think it does. Cherones and the cast were not amused; they were offended. The director soon reported back to NBC that he and the cast didn't want to do the episode, and that was that.
'The Bet' also featured a secondary plot about a bet between Jerry Seinfeld's character and Jason Alexander's George Costanza. Kramer claimed that he slept with a flight attendant while flying home from a trip to Puerto Rico. Jerry believed him while George didn't, so the two bet on its validity and set out to determine the truth.
Anecdotally, this was intended to be the episode that revealed Kramer's first name. Keep in mind that this was early in the show's second season. When this episode was cancelled, Kramer's first name would wait another four seasons before being spoken on screen. Fans know it was eventually revealed to be Cosmo, but back in Season 2 they'd thought maybe it would be Conrad.
The script was written by "Borat" and "The Dictator" director Larry Charles, based on real-life events that had happened to Elaine Pope, another "Seinfeld" writer. Charles and Cherones revealed to ScreenCrush that Jerry won the Kramer/airplane bet in the script, but neither of them can remember whether or not Elaine wound up buying the gun.
When 'The Bet' was nixed, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David put their heads together and quickly banged out another script called 'The Phone Message.' The new episode was about a message George left on his girlfriend's answering machine, and his attempts to steal the tape before she can listen to it.
Photo: Mikael Johansson
