Julia Louis-Dreyfus Is The MVP Of ‘Seinfeld’

Like most children of the ’90s, I spent Thursday nights camped out in front of the TV, hand in a can of Pringles, and eyeballs glued to NBC’S Must See TV lineup. Friends was the popular favorite, but Seinfeld was the “cool” show. It was the best sitcom of its era and its jokes and plots were peppered with enough mature references to make it seem really dark and edgy to a middle schooler. As Joe Reid pointed out, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were the “authorial voices of Seinfeld,” and Jason Alexander and Michael Richards played perfect comedic foils, but even as a kid, I insisted that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was Seinfeld‘s MVP. Everyone was important, but I always thought she provided the secret sauce that made Seinfeld so transcendent.

From a practical perspective, the show didn’t work without her. Seinfeld‘s original pilot — which was called The Seinfeld Chronicles — featured a waitress character named Claire. The network didn’t dig it. Well, the network didn’t dig the pilot as a whole, but one place where the creative team and the executives could concur was that Claire had to go. Elaine Benes was introduced in the next episode and the ensemble finally clicked together.

It’s easy to say that Elaine gave the show a much-needed dosage of estrogen to the show, but I’d argue that she also brought the most range. Jerry Seinfeld’s character on the show was just an extension of the stage persona he’d honed in his stand up acts over the years. He offered endless quips about the state of everyday life, but very little depth. George Costanza was an extension (and a preview) of Larry David’s comedic curmudgeon act. Kramer was an oddball, there to provide physical comedy and to push plot lines past the point of reason. Elaine was different. Yes, she had a clearly defined comic voice — and her own stable of catchphrases — but she was often the voice of reason. She often provided an emotional tether for the group, or at the very least, exhibited the widest array of emotions. She could be wry, irate, goofy, exasperated, sentimental, sassy, grumpy, or just a calm comic straight man. Of the four, she was the most three-dimensional — and weirdly, because of that, she was the most unpredictable. This is why when she pulled out wacky stuff like, “Maybe the dingo ate your baby?” it was all the more hilarious. You expect Kramer to dance like a crazy person; you didn’t expect Elaine to dance like…this.

Yeah, Elaine had her schtick. Everyone on Seinfeld had a schtick. But some of Louis-Dreyfus’s greatest moments on the show don’t rely upon broad physical strokes or kitschy vocal modulations. The hilarity comes out of her deft delivery. For instance, the famous “You don’t have a square to spare?” scene is funny for the typical reasons that something on Seinfeld was funny. The dialogue is tightly written and increasingly absurd, and the situation re-enacts a small tragedy that can set a person over the edge. However, what I think makes the scene so memorable and so compelling is how Louis-Dreyfus did so much with subtle physicality — she had her feet and one hand to play with — and her pitch-perfect comic delivery.

However, I think the most compelling argument for why Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the MVP of Seinfeld is the fact that she’s found the most success in a post-Seinfeld world. Everyone who was on that show is doing alright for themselves, but Louis-Dreyfus has broken free of the “Seinfeld curse” and found critical and commercial success on other sitcoms. Since Seinfeld‘s wrap, she has nabbed four Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (one for The New Adventures of Old Christine and three for Veep). You could even argue that her work on Veep has lent her newfound status as an undisputed queen of comedy. She’s more relevant than ever before.

Now that Seinfeld is available on streaming, it’s easier to see just how much Louis-Dreyfus added to the show and how her work as Elaine Benes laid the foundation for Selina Meyer. While Seinfeld is considered the pinnacle of her co-stars’ comedy careers, it was really just the great Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s “early work.” 

[Stream Seinfeld On Hulu]

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[Photo: Everett Collection]