Seinfeld's Gay Crisis: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That 

The brilliant thing about "not that there's anything wrong with that!" is that it refocuses their panic into being more about maintaining their reputation than anything else. What could be a very homophobic moment becomes just another example of the same hilariously inept self-serving cynicism that the characters approach every situation with, with them trying to find a way to dodge both accusations of homosexuality AND homophobia.

I think it’s interesting to contrast the attitudes depicted in this episode with an episode that came 3 years later, “The Wig Master”. In that one, there’s a scene where Jerry is having drinks with a gay guy, and another guy comes over to the table and asks the gay guy out. Jerry is offended, saying “Are you asking him out right in front of me? How do you know we’re not together?” Jerry feels emasculated because someone doesn’t think he’s gay.

I love how Kramer was upset because he felt like Jerry was disrespecting their friendship by not telling him something so deep and personal and not because he was homophobic.

Ah the 90s, Jerry possibly being gay could ruin his carreer, but Jerry dating a 17 year old girl when he was 38 and no one batted an eye.

Jerry isnt gay, people just never saw him with his girlfriend because she was always busy attending high school or doing homework

"This is all well and good but I am still bald." One of the great comedians of history.

My favorite bit from this episode is after they say the line Jerry doubles down with a “some of my best friends are gay” claim when George in his desperation to add to this bursts out with, “My father’s gay!”

I came out to my parents as a lesbian bc they’d always said there was nothing wrong with being gay throughout my whole life… nope turns out they’re just huge Seinfeld fans and had been quoting this episode 😂

I love the "not that there's anything wrong with that" line that is repeated by everyone because it is so refreshingly self aware and honest (and funny). It was written about the exact type of people who would watch the show, progresive and "gay friendly" people who nevertheless still couldnt help have a deep uncomfortableness with being considered gay, whether true or not. It was a great wink at that audience who in turn recognized themselves in that joke and realized how silly they were being with that slight hipocrisy.

Kinda wish Matt had added the clip from this episode where Jerry says "People's personal sexual preferences are nobody's business but their own" I feel like that was very bold for the time and really touched me upon rewatch

A lot of these sitcoms from the 90s helped to change the rather barbaric treatment of gay people and that accusation of being gay was really a curse. My music teacher in grade school was said to be gay by some parents and they got him fired. Makes me so angry to this day, he was a great teacher and very nice.

The interesting thing about this episode is that I don't think it could have worked at any time other than the 90s. That was the decade when attitudes started to reach a tipping point, where a lot of people were still not completely accepting of homosexuality but overt homophobia was itself becoming socially unacceptable. Thus Jerry and George are trapped on the horns of a dilemma, afraid of the reputational damage that would come from gay rumours but also realising that being branded homophobic would be just as bad. For me the need for them to navigate their way out of this situation without upsetting anyone is where all the comedy comes from, I don't think this episode would have worked at all without that angle.

Another one that really stuck out to me, even as a kid, was the discovery that Susan's father had an affair with John Cheever, which is never referenced again simply because they couldn't figure out a way to keep it being funny and not just playing everyone's discomfort as if that was the whole joke. And his line is actually quite moving: "He was the most wonderful man I've ever known, and I loved him deeply, in a way you could never understand."

My dad said "Not that there's anything wrong with that", when speculating that John Lennon looked Jewish, back in the 60's! Damn, he should have Patented the phrase!

Reporter: And what about your parents, do they know? George: My parents? They don't know *what's* goin on! You have no idea how much I love this line and the delivery of it. Neither do George's parents

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" did have a positive impact on me. Surrounded by people who very much did think there was something wrong with that, I appreciated the idea that the default, bare minimum attitude was that there wasn't anything wrong with that.

“Within the confines of his fastidious bachelor pad Seinfeld and Costanza bicker over the cleanliness of a piece of fruit like an old, married couple.” - possibly my favorite line in the entire series.

There's always a bit of discomfort that goes with being labeled as something you're not. Whenever I saw someone point at this episode and thought it was actually homophobic I tried to come up with comparisons that were more mundane like someone thinking you had a foot fetish just because you complimented someone's shoes. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I was a closeted teenager when this episode came out. Out of the many ways I partition my life into "before X" and "after X", this episode marks the end of thinking my mom would disown me if I ever came out. When I finally did come out years later, my mom threw out another iconic Seinfeldism from "The Cheever Letters"... "I KNEW it!!"

Excellent video, although I think you might have been a bit too harsh on the WKRP episode. Although Les' friends and co-works are very uncomfortable, they all make it clear that they will support him and stand by him even if he is gay. Even Herb, the biggest homophobe in the office, stands by him. I remember seeing this as a kid when it aired and thinking it was way ahead of anything else on the air. The show made clear the persecution that gays faced (through Les' distress and appreciation that even the rumor could ruin his life) and how unreasonable this was. At the same time the episode promoted the idea that heterosexuals should be supportive of gay friends that came out or were outed.

The interesting thing is that Elaine is much more vehement in her denial of being a lesbian on the subway. "I hate men, but I'm not a lesbian!"

Of course, there's also the episode where Elaine tries to convert a gay guy who's using her as a beard. Surprisingly, the locker room analogy with the line "We're comfortable with our own equipment" didn't really take off.

I'm a little past the halfway point and wanted to say I can recall only one denial before this _Seinfeld_ episode where it wasn't saying there was anything wrong with being gay. Tom Selleck was on _The Tonight Show_ and said what bothered him about people insinuating he was gay was that he was married and that would imply that he was somehow being unfaithful to or dishonest with his wife.

i just... can’t hear jerry’s voice without thinking of animated bees.

It’s great as a catchphrase as well because people repeating that due to their love for the show likely helped change some minds like “oh right. There actually isn’t anything wrong with that.”

This episode really struck a chord with me at the time. My father had just come out and when George says "My father's gay", it was like getting punched in the gut. My father really was gay and it wasn't a joke! It had ripped my family apart and caused so much chaos and instability in my young life, and it was a punchline to them. Now, looking back, I can appreciate the humor and I think it is a legitimately funny episode. It took several more years for me to come to my truth as a queer person, and I can laugh right along with no qualms. Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

Those two executives are fantastic. Show would never exist without them. Even The Beatles and Star Trek had a tough time getting singed.

Love the fact that a rumour he was gay was an issue but nobody had a problem with him openly dating a minor.

Seinfeld is just pure gold. I like it's cynism much more than the naivity of Friends. It suits me better.

I had no idea it struggled as a show for so long. Definitely my favourite show of all time. Just finished watching all 9 seasons for probably the 5th time. Never gets old. Another interesting Seinfeld fact is that the lady who plays Jerry's mum was James Dean's greatest love in real life.

The fact that Jerry and George's conservative parents, still hide behind "not that there's anything wrong with that" and freak out anyway, I think actually captures what a lot of queer folks go through coming out. People always find a way to be mad about it, and somehow still deny being homophobic.

I remember when this episode came out. It was a game-changer for tolerance at the time (not the sole game-changer, but a big one), not only in media but in much of American society in general. I can only speak from the perspective of a straight man, but it seems like it was suddenly OK to be OK with gay people, which most of us already were but didn't really dare to vocalize it in mixed company. Homophobia immediately seemed pointless, old-fashioned, and unnecessarily cruel, much to the chagrin of a rather conservative early 90's America. It's a shame that we've had such a rise in hate in the last decade, as it truly feels like we're moving backwards, but a return to the embarrassing days where being gay was something that you hid from everyone for fear of your life being destroyed seems unlikely now.

I use that catch phrase almost every day. lol

This was the first episode of Seinfeld I ever saw, when it first came out (up until that season and its move to a different timeslot, it was more of a 'niche' show. As a newly out gay man I really appreciated how they handled it. It really was a shift from how previous shows addressed the issue.

As a longtime Seinfeldophile, kudos to you on a very accurate, well written, narrated and edited video. Seinfeld slyly managed to address, and usually skewer, many of the most divisive social issues of today, which makes them even more fun to watch now. Nice work Matt!

Being a huge fan of Seinfeld I've watched all the clips and read articles about how Seinfeld made this episode and its impact on American culture, but you went into it even deeper and presented it amazingly well. Great job!

The sad thing is there are many people today who see this episode as being homophobic and they completely misjudge the significance and impact it had on society

If I recall correctly there was also the closing scene where a young soldier who overhears Jerry comes over to him and declares that he's is going to come out to his commanding officer and takes off as Jerry halfheartedly tries to reach out to him.

George realizing his parents might have heard about it is one of the funniest things ever.

I'm gay and I personally see nothing wrong with episode. I always thought that the biggest thing that Jerry and George were worried about is 1. being called something they're not and 2. being out of women's dating pool. Like, if everyone thinks Jerry Seinfeld and George Constanza are gay...then what women in their right mind would even bother trying to go out with them? Jerry didn't have much of a problem when he said "people always think I'm gay", opposed to people now "knowing" he's gay after reading the article. Moreover, George has always felt uncomfortable with his sexuality (as seen in "the massage"). I've actually always thought George was coded to be gay because of how uncomfortable he is. Even when Susan "becomes" a lesbian, George (even though he finds her lesbianism attractive) adapts to it very quickly. When Kramer has Mona fall for him, George asks "he stole your girlfriend?" with no other remark and later tells her there's other girls for her-as he would for any straight guy friend of him. Also! as you've shown, Estelle doesn't really care about homosexuality, she mostly cares that George (as she thinks) is hiding a huge part of his life from her. Futhermore, it's not exactly the easiest being gay (and compare now to the 90's), so it wouldn't be fun to be called gay when you're not. The "not that there's anything wrong with that" also incapsulates perfectly people's "progressiveness" towards homosexuality as long as it doesn't affect them, their children, or anyone in the lives. I have a lot of people in my life who are for the most part acceptting of me, but still clearly see me as some type of other (which is also present in Seinfeld in other episodes). This is actually one of my favorite episodes! I LOVE this episode and personally have never had any issue with it.

solid video, but I do have to say something - as a Seinfeld nerd who’s watched all those behind the scenes things, however mundane they may be, it feels really weird to use clips that aren’t about the episode in question completely out of context. Specifically the Jason Alexander quote about the “network being up in arms” is actually about the Chinese restaurant, and the Larry David quote “what have I gotten myself into” is about Larry’s anxiety about writing that many new episodes when the show got picked up. While these didn’t really change much, it can call into question everything else in the vid.

I dated a couple of older guys when I lived in Florida years ago. Those two guys were snowbirds and spent the summers at their 400 sq. ft. co-op in Manhattan's Upper West Side. The younger of the two (in his 80s) recalled one time in NY when he and his partner were going to meet some friends at a straight/mixed bar in Manhattan. They got there early but had had a big argument on the way. While he was standing at the bar waiting to order drinks, a guy next to him made smalltalk, "How's it going?" My friend shouted back, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" He looked over, and it was Jerry Seinfeld.

This episode changed things so much. I was a kid, and even though I’m not gay, it showed me that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I hadn’t thought there was, I was too young before then, but I knew from that point on. Media matters.

Watching it at the time, I thought it was good because the joke was everyone's fear and concern, despite saying it was OK. It confronted the prevalent culture of "I'm not [insert bias here], but ...." that especially applied to the LGBTQ+ community. It also solidified the running theme that rather than sensible people in an absurd world, these were absurdly insecure, narcissistic people uncomfortable with both the world and themselves.

We studied this episode in my sociology class for nearly exactly this reason.

Wait - liberace tried to deny he was gay? I mean... come on. Even my grandmother knew he was. And in her favor, she literally did not care.

I’m straight but love the balanced and uplifting way in which you handle this subject matter. Best wishes.

"The night that Seinfeld was going to premiered, we bombed Baghdad" is a sentence I never thought I would heard

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” was a great tool with me and my friends, all straight, white, rural men, to be able to stand up to homophobia. It was that “transition” time… It allowed us to show acceptance. It was common to call each other slurs, but it’s not like we’d have been yelling it to men at a bar or something. It became a way to call out someone who made a homophobic comment… That’s now a phrase I’m afraid to say… It sounds dismissive, so I can understand why someone might be offended… It was a crutch. Don’t need it much any more, but boy did it help… 😉

Well researched and edited as always. As a big Seinfeld fan, I knew the behind the scenes of this story, but tying it into similar situations in Hollywood was a great take on it.

Though I was never a fan of Seinfeld, I must have youtubed clips of this episode countless times to address my own internalized homophobia when I was younger. The way you characterize it helps me make better sense of myself. Appreciate your work, Matt Baume. Being raised by older parents, I grew up with a lot of the programming you address in your pieces.

This is the sort of video that makes me love your channel. I'd always read this episode as itself homophobic--partly because Jerry Seinfeld himself isn't exactly a bastion of progressive thought in hindsight and some of the other episodes were pretty bad about it, but also because over time we grew past the era where this sort of problem existed, so it lost that context and just became 'Jerry Seinfeld is weirdly insistent about not being gay in an entire episode where the notion of him being gay is a punchline'. Learning the context that makes these stories so huge does so much to better understand them.

Just watched this episode for the first time a few months ago and it was hilarious. Crazy how it works even today

My parents really enjoyed Seinfeld, so I watched it a lot with them growing up. I didn't realize at the time that Jerry was dealing with actual rumors of being gay, but I've always loved this episode and the whole "not that there's anything wrong with that" bit. Certainly not all of Seinfeld has aged well, but I think this episode holds up!

This video has completely recontextualised Seinfeld for me. Thanks Matt and thank the algorithm for the recommendation... and Matt Colville, because I probably wouldn't have clicked on the video if he hadn't mentioned you so often.

The Outing and The Contest were taboo subjects handled expertly and now we look forward to them in reruns.

Hey Matt. I really need to thank you, as a gay man, as a writer, and as a historian. Although I absolutely love your commentary on the details of the performing arts and the entertainment industry in general, I am most impressed by the seemless and often funny and always astute way that you weave in the historic context of your work. A people cannot move forward without understanding what came before, cannot climb a ladder and reach for the next rung without standing upon the rung that was once above but is now below. Your manner of presenting your entertaining content in that context does more for the advancement of LGBTQ+ civil rights and social integration than you can know. Thank you. You are among the best of the many commentators out there, and your intellectual multi-tasking is always impressive. Sashay, shante!

It was a really nuanced episode. It was absolutely brilliant!

I’ve been hoping you’d cover this episode for a long time now, so glad you did!

Amazing research. I learned so much from this video. My English teacher used to show us Seinfeld episodes and discuss them, but she never offered anywhere near as much information.

This was a great piece! The balance between presenter and snippets was really well done. Whoever edited this video together did a banger job

Loving your videos, Matt. So much behind the scenes I never knew about.

These video essays are so well written, researched and put together . Superb.

This was a fantastic video and explanation on the episode! I really appreciated the use of cast interviews as it really helped set the context.

No filler and sensible amount of context. Best video essay I have seen in a long time.

I'm nearly 40 and this is the first I have heard about Seinfeld being rumored to be homosexual.

I am so glad you are doing a video about this phrase ! I really enjoy your channel , I learn so much

This was such an iconic episode. I remember watching it air for the first time.

❤this. Ty 4 sharing....ty 4 the laughter

I’ve seen about three episodes of Seinfeld ever and never knew “not that there’s anything wrong with that” had a pop culture source. I thought it was just a common phrase that developed along with shifting cultural norms. Which clearly it was because Larry Charles used the phrase himself, but Seinfeld then catapulted into being a pre-meme, it seems.

So happy to have found your channel . . . keep up the good work 🍿

Was halfway through clicking "not interested" just based on the title (assuming it was just one of those fan clips) when I saw it was by you and instead clicked thru to settle in for an insightful and thought-provoking video.

Now I kind of want to make a short that says "I'm not straight! Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

So many of the most iconic franchises in the world had such a rocky start, it's really inspirational when you think about it

Loved this video of yours. Your enthusiastic commentary was wonderful. Your subscriber 🙏🏽

I have seen several of your reviews and I really enjoy them. This one was top notch.

I really like your channel. Easy to watch and listen to. Very entertaining!

thank you Matt, I appreciate your inquisitive mind and how you are so good at finding the underlying messaging

Such a cozy vid, thanks matt!

I've been waiting for you to do this for years!

This is a really well done piece.

absolutely awesome episode, per usual! super excited to grab your new book when it comes out!!!

what a fantastically made video. your production quality is amazing

You are doing important work. Seriously - keep it up!

I dont remember Seinfeld starting untill mid 90s... epic show. Suprised it stared in 1989

You are such a smooth presenter. You just beam friendliness. Really enjoying exploring your content.! ❤

Great video. Random suggestion and kept my attention for almost 20 minutes - kudos.

You sustained my interest without flashy editing or theatrics. This is excellent writing!

People denying that they are gay by setting the record straight is very on the nose so to speak

This video is so wonderfully fantastic. It’s got to be one of the best video essays I’ve seen in a very long time. The pacing and history see the episode was darn near perfect. I’m a Seinfeld nut and even I learned some new stuff. However, my one criticism is that you missed the best line in the entire episode. When Jerry and George are on the phone, Jerry says, “people’s personal sexual preferences are nobody’s business but their own!”

LOVE the WKRP example. didn't know anyone younger than my father had ever seen it

Thanks Matt! Another great video!

I’m old enough to remember every one of the appearances on Carson as well as all episodes. I loved the pilot show and was bummed I had to wait a year to watch again.

I think this episode of Seinfeld was so great because it encapsulated perfectly where the country was on homosexuality in the early 1990's. We had largely moved past the outright hatred and fear, and reached a point where it was "ok" to have a gay friend or coworker. Yet most people were still uncomfortable with homosexuality and would rather just not talk about it, sort of the societal "don't ask, don't tell" phase, where now it was ok to be gay, just don't be too over the top about it.

Been looking forward to this video. Really interesting. Thanks!

this is really well researched and presented, nice video

Holy shit, the real kramer looks like i would picture an actual kramer to look like.

I'd love to see a video on Robin Williams, his gay roles and offscreen advocacy, and what gay actors like Harvey Fierstein and Nathan Lane thought of working with him.

That was a great video Matt! As always :)

Your videos are always good, thanks.