Country of origin United States Original network NBC | No. of episodes 5 | |
Original release July 5, 1989 – June 21, 1990 | ||
Season one of Seinfeld, an American television series created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, began airing on July 5, 1989 on NBC. Originally called The Seinfeld Chronicles, the series' name was shortened to Seinfeld to avoid confusion with another sitcom called The Marshall Chronicles. The season finale aired on June 21, 1990.
Contents
Seasons 1 & 2 DVD box set was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in the United States and Canada on November 23, 2004, thirteen years after it had completed broadcast on television. In addition to every episode from the two seasons, the DVD release features bonus material, including deleted scenes, animatics, exclusive stand-up material, and commentaries. With only four episodes after the pilot, season one of Seinfeld is one of the smallest sitcom orders in television history.
Production
Castle Rock Entertainment produced Seinfeld and Columbia Pictures Television and Columbia TriStar Television distributed the series. Seinfeld was aired on NBC in the US. Larry David was the main show runner, the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operations, for this season, and one of the producers. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wrote most of the season, with Matt Goldman writing episode three, "The Robbery". The season was directed by Art Wolff and Tom Cherones.
The show features Jerry Seinfeld as himself, Jason Alexander as George Costanza, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes, and Michael Richards as Kramer. In the pilot, Lee Garlington appears as Claire, the waitress at Pete's Luncheonette, but after the pilot the "gang" started eating at Monk's Cafe. Garlington was set to appear as one of the main supporting characters. Her role was dropped when it was decided that there was no need for a regular female waitress. Jerry refers to Kramer as Kessler; however, his name was changed to Kramer for the rest of the series. Kramer was named after a real person; he was called "Kessler" in the pilot episode because of the worries about the rights to use the name.
Reception
The pilot was met with poor reviews, and NBC decided not to pick up the show. Believing the series had potential, NBC executive Rick Ludwin ordered four episodes about a year after NBC's rejection. The first of these aired on May 31, 1990. When the pilot was first repeated on July 5, 1990, it received a rating of 13.9/26, which means 13.9 percent of households were tuned in at any given moment; additionally, 26 percent of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into this program. These ratings were high enough to secure a second season. NBC research showed that the show was popular with young male adults, a demographic sought after by advertisers. This gave NBC an incentive to keep broadcasting the show. "The Stake Out" was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award.
In retrospect, however, reception of the season has been more positive. On Metacritic, it received a weighted mean score of 78/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews." TV Guide ranked it the twenty second greatest television season of all time, being one of four of the series's entries on the list.