The Mantra That Guided The Final Seasons Of Seinfeld

In the "Seinfeld" episode "The Butter Shave" (September 25, 1997), Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), George (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards) have all decided to shave the mustaches they have been fostering. Somehow, Kramer finds that butter proves to be a superior substitute to shaving cream. Everyone is baffled by this, but Kramer loves it, claiming the butter makes his skin softer. He even tries buttering up his whole body and laying out in the sun for a spell. Unfortunately, he falls asleep while tanning, and wakes up with a crispy, turkey-skin shade. 

This proves to be a problem later when Kramer goes to a diner and meets Newman (Wayne Knight). Newman thinks Kramer smells ... delicious. Newman is baffled by his appetite. He glances over at a whole, stuffed turkey being served at the diner, and he begins hallucinating. He sees Kramer's head on the turkey's body. This kind of hallucination may have been common in cartoon shorts, but on "Seinfeld," it was downright surreal. The makers of "The Butter Shave" had to film Richards' head against a blue screen and then composite it onto the turkey. For a grounded sitcom like "Seinfeld," it was a very sophisticated special effect. 

"The Butter Shave" was the first episode of the show's ninth and final season, and "Seinfeld" was one of the biggest TV shows of all time by then. The cast was getting paid hand over fist, with Seinfeld himself making $1 million per episode and his three co-stars earning $600,000. It seems that the cast and the writers had let the power go to their heads, as the final season was weirder and wilder than the eight that preceded it. 

Seinfeld said in the special features on the "Seinfeld" DVDs that he had a new mantra for later seasons of the show: Ditch believability. Reality was out the window.

On the "Butter Shave" special features, Seinfeld himself noted that "NBC gave us plenty of rope at that point, to do anything [we] want. They would cover any cost, overruns. Yeah, we were living pretty high on the hog then." Writer Spike Feresten, who would later go on to co-write Seinfeld's "Unfrosted" Pop-Tart movie for Netflix, was also interviewed, and he recalled that the stories were getting bigger and more ambitious as the show progressed, and that they were becoming increasingly unhinged. Feresten also recalled that Seinfeld was sometimes confronted about how weird his show was becoming, and as Feresten quoted:

"[Jerry would say] 'Remember the episode where George hit a golf ball, and it got lodged in the blowhole of a whale? Is this any less believable than that?' And using that rule, any story could go through. And usually did."

This is a reference to the fifth season episode "The Marine Biologist" (February 10, 1994), and it's only slightly mis-remembered. In that episode, Kramer was the one who was hitting golf balls into the ocean, as he had just come into possession of 600 Titleists. At the end of the episode, in a previously unconnected story, George finds a beached whale while strolling along the beach with an old flame. Earlier in the episode, he lied about being a marine biologist to impress her, but now has to ply his nonexistent marine biology skills to save the whale. Wouldn't you know it, the whale was ailing because Kramer's golf balls was lodged in its blowhole. George has to confess, while retrieving the ball, that he is no whale doctor.

It was, of course, meant to be a comedic coincidence, the kind that happen all the time on "Seinfeld," but Seinfeld felt it was too wild to ignore, and could serve as precedent. If Kramer could thwack a ball into a passing whale's blowhole, then everything was on the table. Reality is gone, and all is permitted. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Weird is good, after all.