Who is Jerry Seinfeld in Seinfeld?

Show

Seinfeld

Played by

Jerry Seinfeld

First episode

“The Seinfeld Chronicles”Season 1, Episode 1, aired July 5, 1989

Role

Lead

Network

NBC

Occupation

Stand-up comedian

Show run

1989 to 1998

Jerry Seinfeld is the title character of Seinfeld, a successful stand-up comic whose apartment is the hub for his friends George, Elaine, and Kramer. Played by the real Jerry Seinfeld, he is the group's wry straight man, picking apart life's tiny absurdities and breaking up with women for the smallest of reasons.

On Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld's story runs through George Costanza (Best Friend), Elaine Benes (Ex-girlfriend), Cosmo Kramer (Neighbor), Newman (Nemesis), and Frank Costanza.

Who is Jerry Seinfeld?

Jerry is a lightly fictionalized version of the comedian who co-created the show with Larry David. He works as a stand-up comic, the only one of the four main characters to keep the same career for the entire series, and the first seven seasons mix in clips of his act that echo the episode's story.

He lives at 129 West 81st Street in Manhattan, in apartment 5A (3A in the first two seasons), where George, Elaine, and Kramer constantly drop in uninvited. Elaine is his ex-girlfriend turned close friend, George has been his best friend since their school days, and Kramer is the neighbor across the hall who never knocks.

Personality and comedy

Jerry is the observer. He comments on everyone else's chaos with dry sarcasm and rarely gets dragged into it, which is why he so often comes out of an episode exactly where he started. He is a neat freak, a devoted Superman fan, and financially comfortable compared with his friends.

His love life is a running joke. Jerry finds tiny, ridiculous reasons to end relationships, from a woman's "man hands" to the way she eats her peas one at a time, and he almost never feels bad about it. His only true nemesis is his neighbor Newman, a postal worker he greets with icy disgust.

Key storylines

In season four Jerry and George pitch NBC a sitcom about nothing, which becomes a season-long story about the making of a pilot called Jerry. That same season, Jerry and his friends compete in the famous bet in "The Contest," one of the show's most celebrated episodes.

In the series finale, NBC finally picks up the Jerry pilot, and the four friends head off on a private jet. When the plane makes an emergency landing in Massachusetts, they mock a man being robbed instead of helping, are arrested under a local Good Samaritan law, and end up in jail after a parade of past victims testify against them.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Seinfeld began as a 1989 pilot called "The Seinfeld Chronicles" that tested poorly, and NBC only ordered a handful of follow-up episodes. Over nine seasons it grew into one of the most successful sitcoms ever, often described as a show about nothing, and Jerry is the only character to appear in every episode.

The show's stand-up segments were filmed at a real comedy club in Manhattan, and Jerry's apartment, his cereal-stocked kitchen, and his Superman statue became familiar touchstones of 1990s television. His icy greeting for Newman is still one of the show's most quoted lines.

Jerry Seinfeld: frequently asked questions

All Seinfeld charactersEssential Seinfeld episodesSeinfeld triviaMore 1980s sitcom characters

All sitcom characters A to Z