It’s hard to imagine Seinfeld without Elaine Benes, as played by the great Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In addition to her iconic bad dancing and overly-aggressive “get outs,” Elaine obviously provided a crucial female perspective to the core character dynamic. Without Elaine, the show just flat-out wouldn’t have worked. I mean, would anybody want to watch the masturbation contest episode if it was just about three creepy dudes?
But Elaine wasn’t in the pilot episode of Seinfeld. In fact, The Seinfeld Chronicles boasted a number of glaring discrepancies that sets it apart from the rest of series, including Kramer’s name (it’s “Kessler” in the pilot), his pet dog, and instead of Monk’s, there’s a whole different coffee shop called Pete’s Luncheonette.
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What Jerry and George did to get banned forever from this establishment remains a mystery.
The resident server at Pete’s, Claire, was supposed to be a series regular, and the lone female lead of Seinfeld. Judging from the first episode, Claire, played by actress Lee Garlington, would have acted as a droll sounding board for Jerry and George’s relationship issues. Hopefully they tipped extra.
Following a less-than-ideal screening for NBC executives, the show was overhauled. A big complaint was that it was too “male-centric.” After all, the only female character, in accordance with the show’s setup, wasn’t afforded any sort of dimension or interior life, and only appeared in the story as a function of her less-than-glamorous job. And even in the first episode she already seemed pretty tired of Jerry and George’s bullshit.
So a new character, Jerry’s platonic ex-girlfriend pal Elaine, was introduced in the next episode, and Claire the server and Kramer’s dog were presumably sent to live on a nice farm upstate.
When Louis-Dreyfus was cast, she had never actually heard of Seinfeld or seen the pilot. And, surprisingly, she’s never gotten around to watching it since then. “Not only was I not aware of the pilot episode of the show,” Louis-Dreyfus admitted in an interview for the show’s DVD release, “but to this day I’ve never seen it. And I think I’m never gonna watch it. I don’t know why, it just feels superstitious.”
Her co-stars haven’t given her much encouragement to check out the episode, which feels so weirdly disconnected from the rest of the series. Jerry Seinfeld likened the experience of re-visiting the pilot to putting on old home movies: “It’s like watching yourself as a kid just running and falling and spinning around in circles.”
This doesn’t mean that The Seinfeld Chronicles shouldn’t be required viewing for fans. Later episodes make reference to the show’s false start, including when Elaine reads the pilot for Jerry and complains that her character is nowhere to be found.
And, of course, the controversial finale ends with a reference to that very first scene, set in Pete’s Luncheonette:
And really, would it have killed them to bring Claire back for a cameo?
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