{"id":666453,"date":"2026-05-12T17:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/666453\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T17:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:33:10","slug":"33-years-ago-nbc-srapped-two-seinfeld-episodes-because-they-went-way-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/666453\/","title":{"rendered":"33 Years Ago, NBC Srapped Two \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 Episodes Because They Went Way Too Far"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the nine years that Seinfeld was on the air, there were a number of ideas that didn\u2019t end up making it from script to screen. One of the better-known examples was a story about Elaine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/the-lost-seinfeld-episode-that-was-so-controversial-the-cast-refused-to-film-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">buying a gun<\/a>. She argues with Jerry about it before getting a fake one as a gag and accidentally pulls it out at an airport. About 20 minutes into the table read, the cast decided not to do it, and a new script had to be written in just two days.<\/p>\n<p>Other ideas were similarly rejected because there were concerns that the shows might be perceived as racist. According to an article in the\u00a0New York Post, one\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2015\/03\/22\/kimmy-schmidt-shows-the-irrelevance-of-nbc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">unfilmed script<\/a>\u00a0involved George getting in trouble after saying\u00a0he\u2019d never seen a black person order a salad. Not much else is known about the story, other than that it was written <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150325162352\/https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/2015\/03\/seinfeld-episode-controversial-race-salad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">by Larry Charles<\/a>, who\u2019d also penned the axed gun episode. <\/p>\n<p>Simply put, NBC censors reportedly weren\u2019t comfortable with the salad premise and prevented it from being filmed.<\/p>\n<p>The Two \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 Episodes That Were Scrapped Before They Could Spark a Race Controversy<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.playboy.com\/read\/entertainment-culture\/the-playboy-interview-with-jerry-seinfeld\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">1993 interview<\/a> with Playboy, Jerry Seinfeld shared details about another proposed episode that never made it to air. This show was about Elaine missing her stop on the subway and realizing that the next stop was in Harlem. The writers wanted to explore her fear of having to get off there, but weren\u2019t able to make it work. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t find a way to do it without people getting the wrong impression,\u201d Seinfeld explained. \u201cIt was coming off as racist. It was too small a needle to thread, so we abandoned it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It turns out they were right to be concerned: the Season 9 episode \u201cThe Puerto Rican Day\u201d proved controversial due to a scene in which Kramer accidentally lights a Puerto Rican flag on fire. Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who\u2019s Puerto Rican, said that the episode \u201ccrossed the line between humor and bigotry.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>NBC issued <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170228185713\/https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1998\/05\/09\/nyregion\/nbc-apologizes-for-seinfeld-episode-on-the-puerto-rican-day-parade.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">an apology<\/a> the next day, saying that they didn\u2019t intend to offend anybody. The show was subsequently left out of the syndication package <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2002\/10\/30\/forbidden-seinfeld-puerto-rican-flag-burning-episode-slips-back-on-air\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">until 2002<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778607190_500_hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Play\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the nine years that Seinfeld was on the air, there were a number of ideas that didn\u2019t&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,2705,434,45271,427,7475],"class_list":["post-666453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-seinfeld","tag-television","tag-television-shows","tag-tv","tag-tv-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}