“Seinfeld” was twice the preferred present on tv (per the Nielsen scores) regardless of its penchant for courting controversy. The collection spared no racial or ethnic group, and hopped throughout third-wire points with relative impunity. The one time the present pole vaulted over the road in a script titled “The Wager,” which centered on Elaine shopping for a gun, the solid revolted earlier than the episode may go earlier than cameras. (The script is on-line, and the bit the place Elaine and Jerry talk about the latter’s technique of firearm-hastened demise reads like one thing that will’ve been dicey on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”)
As soon as “Seinfeld” settled into its misanthropic groove (by the top of season 2), it was randomly, unapologetically offensive (to an unlucky diploma with “The Puerto Rican Day) — which was both spot-on or bizarrely off for a present about nothing. If the collection steadfastly refused to take life significantly, why ought to anybody watching the present get their hackles up? Apparently, although, everybody has their breaking level, and Jason Alexander, who performed probably the most persistently objectionable character on “Seinfeld,” discovered his in an episode involving a sacred Jewish ceremony.
Why Jason Alexander discovered The Bris disgusting
In a dialog with the Tv Academy Basis Interviews: An Oral Historical past of Tv, Alexander none-too-fondly recalled the season 5 episode “The Bris.” (Season 5 itself, by the way, made the quantity three spot on /Movie’s rating of each season of “Seinfeld.”) That is the one the place Jerry and Elaine change into the godparents to their pals’ child, and are thus tasked with arranging the bris. They, in fact, handle to guide a wildly problematic mohel who appears not fairly as much as the duty, and it was this little bit of enterprise that upset Alexander.
“The model of it that got here to the desk, the character of the mohel was disgusting,” stated Alexander. “I believe it stays disgusting within the present that we did.” What precisely was the issue? Per Alexander:
“You have to go a protracted option to hit my Jew button. I provide you with Jews are humorous and you may be actually sacrilegious with me, and I will take each Jew joke you bought, even the borderline offensive ones. To a non-Jew, the entire apply of the circumcision, the bris is mysterious and type of distasteful. To current the determine of the mohel, the one that goes, ‘I will be the man, my life’s work is to take away the foreskin from the genitals of younger Jewish boys, that is what I’ve devoted my life to…’ to make one who’s a child-hating, self-loathing, foul-mouthed, incompetent to me was anti-Semitic in a hurtful manner. I went to [co-creator] Larry [David], and I went, ‘I will not be on this episode. This one you must take me out. I’ve to boycott this.'”
David was shocked by the vehemence of Alexander’s response, however he respectfully provided to melt the awfulness of the mohel. Alexander nonetheless thinks the mohel portion of “The Bris” is in dangerous style, however, clearly, he was mollified sufficient to look within the episode — which might be greatest remembered in the present day for Kramer’s Don Corleone imitation.