Every Seinfeld Season Ranked Worst To Best

Seinfeld is a titan of the sitcom genre, but with 180 episodes across nine seasons, it can be hard to maintain a consistency of quality. While a weak episode or season of Seinfeld has a lot more to offer than most other shows, there are clear peaks and troughs across Seinfeld seasons 1 to 9. Sometimes these dips were due to Seinfeld still working out its format, while other times it was due to lead creatives stepping away from the show.

The quality of the show noticeably dipped when co-creator Larry David left after Seinfeld season 7, but it was still one of the funniest shows on network television. When it finally ended with season 9, the Seinfeld finale was deemed to be one of the worst TV finales of all time. However, it’s not reflective of the final season which still contains some classic episodes like “The Serenity Now”, “The Cartoon”, and “The Frogger”. Here are all nine seasons of Seinfeld ranked from worst to best.

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9 Season 1

Seinfeld season 1 is rough around the edges, containing the germ of what would make it one of the great American sitcoms. There are only four episodes in the first season, which doesn’t include the very different Seinfeld pilot entitled “The Seinfeld Chronicles”. The storylines focus on Jerry Seinfeld as the lead character with George, Elaine, and Kramer as supporting characters. As Jerry Seinfeld is, by his own admission, the least capable actor in the cast, it can often be difficult to engage with him as a protagonist.

The plots of the four episodes in Seinfeld season 1 veer from stock sitcom tropes like competing for a desirable new apartment to more Seinfeld-style stories of social awkwardness like breaking up with a male friend or staking out a woman’s workplace instead of just asking an ex-girlfriend for the woman’s phone number. It’s clear that there’s something fresh in season 1, but it needs more time to come through.

8 Season 2

The standout episode of Seinfeld season 2 is “The Chinese Restaurant” which marked a real turning point for the show. Written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, it revolves around Jerry, George, and Elaine waiting for a table at a busy Chinese restaurant. Larry David famously threatened to quit when the network objected to the thin premise, so NBC scheduled it for later in season 2. The episode was received positively by critics who identified it as a turning point for Seinfeld, and the sitcom genre as a whole.

The rest of Seinfeld season 2 sadly doesn’t reach these heights, but it’s clearly working toward this major turning point. Another standout moment is when Jerry and Elaine’s romance is rekindled, and then never returned to. The will they/won’t they romance was a staple of network sitcoms from Sam and Diane in Cheers to Ross and Rachel in Friends. By dropping this subplot, Seinfeld established its credentials as an anti-sitcom, something which reaches a crescendo with “The Chinese Restaurant”.

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7 Season 8

Seinfeld season 8 is the difficult transitionary season after Larry David’s departure at the end of season 7. Without David as a creative force, Seinfeld occasionally leans too far into sitcom tropes. The episode “The Bizarro Jerry” which aired on October 4th, 1996 is a fairly derivative episode about Elaine finding a new group of male friends who are exactly like Jerry, George, and Kramer. For example, almost exactly nine months earlier on January 3rd, 1996, Seinfeld‘s sitcom rival Friends did a similar story with season 2’s “The One With Russ”, in which Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) dates a guy who looks just like Ross (David Schwimmer).

Seinfeld season 8 is the first time since season 2 that the show feels slightly directionless. It’s hardly surprising, their “no hugging no learning” mantra had reached its zenith with the death of George’s fiancée Susan (Heidi Swedberg), a tragedy that had no impact on the central characters. After that, it’s hard to know where to take things, so it’s completely understandable that Seinfeld season 8 lost its way slightly.

6 Season 9

The Seinfeld finale casts a long shadow over season 9, but even within that there are flashes of the brilliance that made the sitcom such a game-changer. From teasing audiences with a romantic reconciliation for Jerry and Elaine during a turbulent airplane fight to the whole cast being put on trial for their awful behavior, it was true to the anti-sitcom spirit of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld’s original vision. It was hated, but it’s unclear how a “show about nothing” could ever deliver a definitive finale given that a lack of character growth was the show’s whole mantra.

Like the finale itself, Seinfeld season 9 contains some strong material such as Elaine accidentally plagiarizing a cartoon for The New Yorker or George’s Dad using “serenity row” as a mantra to reduce his blood pressure. However, it’s also clear that Seinfeld is starting to cannibalize some of its high points. “The Puerto Rican Day” is essentially another version of those episodes where the characters struggle to successfully get to an event such as in season 4’s “The Movie” or season 5’s “The Dinner Party.”

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5 Season 3

Reportedly, Seinfeld faced being canceled toward the end of season 2, but the network decided to give it a season 3 if the writers made more of an effort with storylines. If anything, Seinfeld season 3 doubled down on what made “The Chinese Restaurant” so popular. Season 3, episode 6, “The Parking Garage” is centered around the fact that nobody can remember where Kramer parked his car in a multi-level parking garage. Season 3 also marked the first full season of Seinfeld where it was very much an ensemble show, with each character getting their own storylines.

For example, “The Pez Dispenser” saw Elaine inadvertently ruin a piano recital given by George’s new girlfriend, Jerry host an intervention for a friend whose battling drug addiction, and Kramer is inspired to invent a cologne with the smell of the sea. All these storylines converge via Jerry’s Tweety Pie Pez dispenser. “The Pez Dispenser” demonstrates Seinfeld season 3’s more sophisticated approach to narrative structure and plot mechanics and contains considerable promise for the show’s golden years.

4 Season 6

Of Seinfeld‘s excellent run of seasons 4 to 7, season 6 is the weakest because it lacks the memorable episodes of the other three seasons. There are fun episodes like “The Chaperone” in which Kramer becomes a personal coach to a prospective Miss America contestant that Jerry is dating. However, they don’t live as long in the memory as the standout episodes of Seinfeld season 4, 5 and 7.

However, what season 6 may lack in memorable episodes, it makes up for in memorable characters. Seinfeld season 6 introduces Elaine’s relationship with Puddy (Patrick Warburton) which would be on and off up until season 9. It also introduces Bryan Cranston as dentist Tim Whatley, and hack comedian and thorn in Jerry’s side, Kenny Bania (Steve Hytner). All of these characters would further flesh out Seinfeld‘s rich fictional New York City and became fan favorites.

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3 Season 5

Seinfeld season 5 is full of memorable episodes and iconic moments, such as Jerry accidentally agreeing to wear a pirate costume in “The Puffy Shirt” or George pretending to be a marine biologist and coming face to face with a beached whale. It’s also the season that includes the episode “The Fire” – guest starring Jon Favreau as Eric the Clown – which sees George Costanza flatly refuse to let women, children, and the elderly go first when escaping a house fire.

It’s also the season in which Jerry makes a wildly insensitive purchase of a Native American stereotype from a local cigar store. By this point, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were incredibly comfortable with how unlikable their lead characters were. They had also realized how much they could get away with on NBC after the success of “The Contest” in season 4, and continued to tackle NSFW topics like Jerry being unable to give Elaine an orgasm and Kramer plotting to stop a baby being circumcised at a Bris.

2 Season 7

Larry David’s final Seinfeld season is the sitcom equivalent of an orchestra building toward a crescendo. It marks the pinnacle of the mantra of “no hugging, no learning” and arguably, the season 7 finale “The Invitations”, in which Seinfeld‘s Susan was killed off, could have been the best ending for the show. The overarching plot of season 7 is George’s increasingly futile attempts to get out his engagement to Susan, and his ambivalence toward wedding planning is exactly what leads to Susan’s death from sealing cheap, and toxic, envelopes. Of course, George learns absolutely nothing from this tragedy.

Seinfeld season 7 heavily featured the fan-favorite supporting character, and Elaine’s eccentric boss, J. Peterman (John O’Hurley). It’s also the season that made The Soup Nazi a pop culture icon, who still features on Seinfeld-related merchandise to this day. Add to that the ridiculous image of Kramer atop a fire engine in “The Secret Code”, and it’s one of the very strongest seasons of Seinfeld.

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1 Season 4

Few sitcoms could get away with something as meta as Seinfeld season 4’s “Jerry” plot. Building on the increasing popularity of the series, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld decided to have their fictional counterparts Jerry and George also work on a sitcom together. Brilliantly, this storyline never feels smug or too knowing, and season 4 is so full of classic episodes that the “Jerry” arc hardly matters. There are so many classic moments in Seinfeld season 4 such as George fighting the Bubble Boy, Kramer flipping a Junior Mint into an open torso, and the fictional erotic movie Rochelle, Rochelle.

It’s a show that is at the peak of its power and its popularity. Nowhere is this more obvious than in “The Contest”, Larry David’s favorite Seinfeld episode which was a masterclass in talking about taboo subjects on network television without using any words that would upset executives or censors. Seinfeld is one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, and season 4 is its greatest run.

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