Why Seinfeld Had To Shoot Two Versions Of The Non-Fat Yogurt Episode

If there's one thing you don't want to be in the world of "Seinfeld," it's a promising business. It already takes a considerable amount of money to set up a good location, let alone one in New York. Anyone who's ever worked in customer service has come across the kinds of patrons that only make your job that much more difficult, so imagine your clientele being Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George (Jason Alexander) and Kramer (Michael Richards). Together, those four have been partially responsible for shuttering places like Hot Soup, Leapin Larry's Electronics and The Mom and Pop Store. It shouldn't come as a total surprise considering they're walking forces of chaos, but sometimes they find themselves in the right.

In "The Non-Fat Yogurt," a new yogurt shop that Kramer has invested in is booming on account of its tasty treats. The "Seinfeld" characters can't get enough of it, so much so that it causes Jerry to conjure the censor bleep multiple times. The addictive nature of the non-fat yogurt is almost too good to be true though as people start to notice weight gains. Their waist expansion prompts Jerry and Elaine to procure a sample and send it off to a lab in Brooklyn to see if the shop is straight up lying.

Meanwhile, George is pulled into maintaining a lie about his twitchy shoulder to his childhood rival Lloyd (Peter Keleghan), while Kramer finds himself having a fling with one of the scientists at the lab testing the yogurt's legitimacy. In "Seinfeld" tradition, all three plots find themselves merging by the end. "The Non-Fat Yogurt" isn't one of the series' best episodes, but it is pretty notable on account of having to shoot two alternate versions in order to cater to the results of the 1993 mayoral election for New York.

The yogurt testing has a domino effect that essentially cinches the mayoral election between Democratic candidate David Dinkins, who already held office at the time, and Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani. Since the "Seinfeld" crew had no idea who would win, select scenes were shot with alternating mentions of both candidates. In either case, the Lloyd character would be the advisor to whoever lost. You can see takes of what each version of "The Non-Fat Yogurt" would have looked like in the behind the scenes featurette.

The race was considered a tight one, with Giuliani coming out on top in the end. The former ringleader of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping blunder turned out to be a fan of "Seinfeld," which made it easy to convince him to shoot a small cameo. Earlier in the episode, Kramer's lab fumbling leads to someone else's blood sample getting into Giuliani's, which shows him to have considerable cholesterol problems despite eating non-fat yogurt. Jerry calls into the campaign tip line to inform him about the results of the yogurt shop. Giuliani essentially uses the heads up to launch a task force centered on false advertising and clinches a victory in the process. Thanks, Jerry.

In the featurette, series co-creator Larry David talks about how the election created a predicament because there was a tight turn around to get the episode ready for airing in time. As it goes, Giuliani won on November 2nd, 1993, shot his scene in the immediate aftermath on the morning of November 3rd, and then the episode aired on November 4th. It must have felt like an insane case of foresight for viewers at home. Had the "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" star not engaged in voter suppression at the time, a fan favorite character wouldn't have come about (via The Washington Post)

While David was trying to put this episode together, Dinkins decided that he didn't want to be a part of it. Should he have won, the series would have brought in a spokesperson to step in for the press conference scenes. Rather than getting an actual Dinkins representative, actor Phil Morris was hired to play a fictional aide who would speak about the yogurt lies on his behalf.

"Seinfeld" fans will immediately recognize Morris as Jackie Chiles, the mustachioed parody of O.J. Simpson's lawyer Johnnie Cochran. The character made his first appearance in "The Maestro" and would pop up every now and then throughout the show's seventh, eighth and final season. Chiles not only sticks around to lose the court case against the core four in the series finale, but there were even murmurs of a spin-off series that never came to be – albeit one that NBC claims they never even knew about.

In the featurette, Jerry mentions that had Dinkins won, they would have had to use the footage Morris was a part of, and Chiles would never be. Two seasons later, Morris would get his chance to secure the recurring role that made him a "Seinfeld' staple. "If you had the title of how this whole thing happened, you'd have to title it 'dumb luck,'" says Jerry.

Every episode of "Seinfeld" is currently streaming on Netflix.