While I wasn’t old enough to watch Seinfeld when it originally ran on NBC, I’ve been a fan of the sitcom for well over 20 years now. So I’ve had plenty of time to think about what I consider to be the best Seinfeld episodes, and one of those is the third episode of Season 8, titled “The Bizarro Jerry.” The Elaine plot of the episode amusingly channels the “opposite” nature of the DC Comics villain Bizarro Superman, or just Bizarro. In fact, there was even a statue of the character included, and there’s a fun backstory behind that.
What “The Bizarro Jerry” Is About
At the beginning of “The Bizarro Jerry,” Elaine breaks up with Tim DeKay’s Kevin, who was introduced in the prior episode, and tells him that she just wants to be friends with him. Now for some people, and certainly more often than not with the Seinfeld characters, the interest in just being friends is hollow, and the ex-partners go their separate ways and never interact again. Kevin, however, is enthusiastic about the idea, which catches her off guard.
It turns out that Kevin is a much more reliable and considerate friend to Elaine than Jerry. This prompts Jerry to dub Kevin the “Bizarro Jerry,” referring Bizarro, who was introduced in 1958’s Superboy #68. Elaine then meets Kevin’s friends, Gene and Feldman, who are George and Kramer’s opposites. They’re just as nice as Kevin is, but those are far from the only differences between this trio and the main characters.
Kevin, Gene and Feldman eat at Reggie’s Diner, the Bizarro counterpart of Monk’s Cafe. They read instead of watch TV. Feldman knocks on Kevin’s door and asks to come in rather than barge into the apartment like Kramer does at Jerry’s. Kevin likes pasta instead of cereal, rides a unicycle instead of a bike, and he’s good friends with Vargus, the Bizarro Newman. I could go on, but one thing that caught my eye as a young DC Comics fan way back when was that Kevin had a Bizarro Superman statue in his apartment, representing the opposite of Jerry’s Superman fandom.
How That Bizarro Superman Statue Was Included
As I got older, I wondered about where the statue came from. “The Bizarro Jerry” aired on October 3, 1996, and while there were certainly comic book stores around and various ways to purchase Superman merchandise, I imagine a Bizarro Superman statue wouldn’t have been the easiest thing to find. As it turns out, the Seinfeld crew didn’t buy the statue, but rather made it… sort of.
In an interview with Cracked, Seinfeld writer David Mandel revealed that a Bizarro Superman “didn’t actually exist at the time,” so Stan Ascough, the show’s “prop guy,” found a regular Superman figurine and painted it to look like Bizarro. I admire Ascough going the extra mile to pull off a simple background joke, and I especially appreciate that he painted on Bizarro’s classic stone medallion that says “Bizarro #1.” No doubt that’s because inverting the ’S’ shield on the figurine would have been too time intensive.
Seinfeld can be streamed with a Netflix subscription for those interested in watching “The Bizarro Jerry” or any of the show’s other classic episodes. If you’d rather do a deep dive on Bizarro, use your HBO Max subscription to check out TV shows featuring him, like Superman: The Animated Series and Superman & Lois.
