Stopping Short: 10 ‘Seinfeld’ Episodes You Forgot You Loved

Aired: Sep 16, 1993
Season: 5
After he gets “the tap” during oral sex, George worries that he’s not satisfying his new girlfriend Karen (House’s Lisa Edelstein). Jerry accuses Elaine of “sexual perjury” after she reveals that she faked all of her orgasms while they were dating. He eventually persuades her to “give [him] another shot,” but fails again. Kramer has Jerry and George do his produce shopping for him, after he gets banned from the fruit-stand for trying to return a bad peach. George temporarily regains his swag after a few bites of perfectly ripe mango.

Aired: Jan 6, 1995
Season: 5
George has a nonsexual crush on Elaine’s new boyfriend, a “mimbo” named Tony (played by Dan Cortese). Elaine is furious after the woman in the stall next to hers at the movie theater refuses to “spare a square” of toilet paper, not realizing she is Jerry’s new girlfriend, Jane (played by Jami Gertz). Kramer is convinced he recognizes Jane’s voice from his favorite phone sex line. Tony tells George to “step off,” following a rock-climbing accident that mangles Tony’s face. Elaine realizes that, by being stuck with a hideous version of a man she was dating purely for his looks, “maybe in some final irony, [she’ll] learn what love really is.”

Aired: Feb 10, 1994
Season: 5
Jerry gets George a date with their former Queens College classmate Diane, when he lies and tells her that George is now a marine biologist. (“Why couldn’t you make me an architect? You know I’ve always wanted to pretend I was an architect!”) Elaine embarasses herself in front of esteemed Russian author Yuri Testikov by repeating something Jerry told her in jest — that the original title of Tolstoy’s War & Peace was “War: What Is It Good For?” and that the song was inspired by the book. After her new electronic organizer starts beeping, the writer throws it out of his limo’s window and klonks a woman (Corinne, played by Carol Kane) in the head, sending her to the ER. Kramer has 600 Titleist golf balls in the trunk of his car, and goes to the beach to hit them into the ocean. Later, George has to prove he’s a marine biologist by saving a beached whale.

Aired: Feb 9, 1995
Season: 6
Elaine agrees to pose as a gay friend-of-a-friend’s girlfriend, but immediately develops a crush on him and tries to get him to “change teams.” George, who started wearing a toupee earlier in the season, is annoyed when Kramer fixes him up with a bald woman. Jerry meets Sgt. Cathy Tierney, a police officer who doesn’t believe him when he claims not to watch Melrose Place. Kramer begins posing in police line-ups.

Aired: Apr 27, 1995
Season: 6
Kramer mistakenly receives license plates that read “ASSMAN.” Estelle Costanza decides to get an eye job, now that she is back “out there” in the wake of her separation from Frank. Jerry is pissed when Puddy, whom Elaine has just started dating, uses his “move” on her. George persuades Jerry to tell him how to do the move, but needs crib notes to remember the steps. Kramer picks up Estelle from her eye job and unwittingly uses Frank’s move — “he stopped short!” — after hitting a pothole. Kramer starts making sculptures out of pasta, and uses fusilli to build a miniature statue of Jerry. (Later in the season, in “The Understudy,” he gives Bette Midler her own “Macaroni Midler.”)

Aired: Oct 3, 1996
Season: 8
Elaine decides that she and Kevin (her boyfriend from the previous episode, “The Soul Mate,” who got a vasectomy and then had it reversed) should just be friends. Jerry suggests that Kevin is the “Bizarro Jerry.” She later meets Kevin’s friends Gene and Feldman (the Bizarro George and Kramer) and, eventually, a Bizarro Newman. George takes Kramer to an office that has “the best bathroom in midtown,” and Kramer starts going in every day, despite not having a job there. Elaine sets Jerry up with her attractive friend Gillian, but Jerry can’t see past her “man hands.” George briefly gains access to “the forbidden city” of beautiful women — a private club in the meatpacking district — by pretending a photo of Gillian is a picture of his dead fiancee.

Aired: Nov 7, 1996
Season: 8
Elaine dates the pretentious Brett, who is excessively proud of working for furniture designer Karl Farbman and who gets lost in apparent reverie whenever “Desperado” plays. (She suggests “Witchy Woman” should be their song, but he refuses.) Brett gives Kramer an oversized chest of drawers designed by Farbman, and he uses it as a capsule hotel for three Japanese tourists he’s taken in as guests. Jerry gets carpal tunnel syndrome from signing hundreds of 12-cent checks he’s receiving as royalty payments for a one-second clip of him in the opening credits of Japanese comedy show “Super Terrific Happy Hour.”  George is offended that a religious cult masquerading as carpet cleaners decided to brainwash his boss, Mr. Wilhelm, instead of him.

Aired: Apr 23, 1997
Season: 8
Hearing that it’s about to go out of business, George and Jerry visit their teenage haunt, Mario’s Pizza, and discover that George (“GLC,” for George Lewis Costanza) still holds the high score on the restaurant’s Frogger game. He buys the game, to preserve his accomplishment, but Jerry reminds him that once the machine is unplugged, the score will be erased. With Kramer’s help, George recruits a “rogue electrician” named Slippery Pete (played by Peter Stormare) and Shlomo the truck driver to move the game without losing power. Elaine denounces her coworkers for having so many “cake parties,” but her four o’clock sugar craving prompts her to sneak bites of a $29,000 slice of cake she finds in Mr. Peterman’s “college boy mini-fridge.” Jerry wants to break up with Lisi, who finishes his sentences. A serial killer called The Lopper has been running around Riverside Park chopping off people’s heads. Kramer suggests changing the killer’s moniker to “Son of Dad.”

Aired: Nov 6, 1997
Season: 9
Kramer finds the old set from The Merv Griffin Show in a dumpster and sets it up in his apartment. Jerry dates a woman with an incredible collection of vintage toys that she won’t let him touch. He plies her with wine and turkey to make her drowsy, so he can play with them while she sleeps. Elaine contends with a “sidler” at work: a new Peterman employee named Lou Filerman who keeps sneaking up on her. She tells him his breath stinks and gives him Tic Tacs to make him a “human maraca,” but panics when Peterman complains that the sound reminds him of “the Haitian voodoo rattle torture.” George hits a squirrel with his car and, to appease the woman he’s with, spends a fortune on medical treatment to save its life.

See Also:

• Master of Their Domain: 10 Great ‘Seinfeld’ Episodes
• Not That There’s Anything Wrong With These: 5 ‘Sein-Fail’ Episodes