This Wednesday, Hulu will begin streaming every single episode of Seinfeld, and no doubt the resulting lost productivity will be vastly greater than the laughably small sum of $875,000 per episode that Hulu paid for the licensing rights. Everybody is going to watch all of them again, especially now that they can be watched on the subway and at your desk or on your phone in the bathroom at work. What better way are you going to find to spend 20 minutes than an episode of Seinfeld? The only question is which one to start with.
Obviously you shouldn't start at the beginning. Seinfeld became Seinfeld properly speaking in the second season, when Jason Alexander figured out that George Costanza wasn't supposed to be a version of Woody Allen but a version of Larry David. The temptation, of course, is to go to the most popular episodes. "The Contest"—the definitive "water cooler" episode. "The Chinese Restaurant"—the episode that proved you could make a show about nothing. "The Parking Garage"—when Seinfeld veered away from just being another sitcom and into a pop-culture expression of mid-1990s anomie.
I would suggest a less well-known episode, "The Opposite," as the natural spot to start re-watching Seinfeld. "The Opposite" came right in the middle of the show's run (it's the fifth-season finale) and, more than any other episode, it contains all the elements that make Seinfeld the greatest sitcom of all time.
"The Opposite" is a George episode, and George Costanza was always the greatest of Seinfeld's characters—a truly unlikable man whom nonetheless was impossible not to sympathize with. In this episode, after a trip to the beach, he comes up with a new life strategy: Since every decision he's ever made has been wrong, he will do the opposite. As Jerry sums it up, "If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right." The brilliance of this is that despite the absurdity of the premise, it makes perfect sense. Doing the opposite, in George's case, means being honest, treating women like people, speaking openly, confronting social situations directly, and having patience with others. No wonder his life improves—the opposite of George is a good person. The absurdity is totally obvious, and yet still funny.
"The Opposite" also demonstrates perfectly the technique of three interlocking plots that became Seinfeld's trademark. The two other plots are not as interesting as George's, granted, but they fit together so well. We see Elaine fall apart after she becomes addicted to Jujyfruits—"You know what's happened? I've become George," she moans at the end—because she insists on eating them instead of helping her boyfriend and her boss. Jerry discovers that whenever anything bad happens to him, something good happens right away after. He always comes out even. This discovery leads him to an entirely new level of total non-concern for the lives of others.
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The cleverness of the structure is wonderful: Not only are the plots intertwined, they seem to cause each other, even though there's no rational way they could. But the three plots are related in terms of the character traits they reveal as well: Each strand shows how awful the characters are. Jerry is elevated to an almost mystical level of social indifference. Elaine cares more about candy than other people. And George can only be a halfway-decent person if he stops being himself as completely as possible.
The first five seasons of Seinfeld were generally about how the characters, because of various missteps and accidents, looked bad. The last four seasons of Seinfeld were about how the characters were genuinely bad in themselves. "The Opposite" stands exactly at the transition point between those two distinct halves of the show. Both sides of that equation were brilliant—as good as the sitcom ever was or ever would be—but only "The Opposite" captures both of them.
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