These pretzels are making me … murderous?
The full script for a banned episode of comedy sitcom Seinfeld, which was supposed to form part of season 2, has emerged online for the first time after it was bought by a diehard fan.
Co-titled ‘The Bet’ and ‘The Gun’, the episode was well on its way to being made back in the early ‘90s, until US actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Elaine, and director Tom Cherones raised concerns about its gun ownership themes.
Written by famed Seinfeld screenwriter Larry Charles, one scene in particular shows Elaine pointing a gun at her head while making a joke about John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
The episode begins with Elaine deciding to purchase her first gun after she learns of a series of muggings in her inner circle.
When browsing for guns at a dodgy dealer’s apartment, she points one at Jerry (Seinfeld) and says, “Shut up wimp or I’ll blow your brains out.”
Elaine also describes feeling “aggressive” being around weapons.
“I was out gun shopping. It puts you in an aggressive mood. I have so much more energy when I’m hostile,” Elaine says.
Ultimately, she opts not to become a gun owner by the end of the episode – thanks to intervention from Jerry – but her epiphany wasn’t enough to get the episode off the ground.
As for how the script surfaced after all these years, Cracked reports Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander, who played George, sold his personal script for ‘The Bet’ at a charity auction in 2022.
Seinfeld’s axed episode has been the subject of news headlines over the years, though its exact contents have never been revealed until now.
Speaking to Cracked last year, Charles conceded the script “wasn’t funny enough” to justify the dark storyline.
“Larry (David) and Jerry were extremely supportive of me, and my episodes tended to veer into violence and darkness, occasionally,” he said at the time.
“They were super-supportive and loved that — they loved to have that aspect of the show. But in this case, I think what finally — no pun intended — ‘killed’ that episode was that it wasn’t funny enough.
‘There was no escaping the grimness of it and it wasn’t leavened by laughter. They believed — and I begrudgingly accepted this — that a fix could not be had.”
It’s not the only Seinfeld episode to have been scrapped.
Author Dennis Bjorklund’s 2013 book, Seinfeld Reference, revealed how a script about race raised concerns among executives.
In the script, George makes the observation:
“You know, I have never seen a black person order a salad.”
The episode was immediately scrapped and never filmed.