#9 Omitted Contestants

SEINFELDS episode "The Contest" was winner of two Emmys and scored the highest ratings of the show's history when it aired for the second time. Over a decade since its premiere, this episode of SEINFELD is still seen as one of the funniest episodes of the sitcom. What makes this episode so humorous that it's still watched today? Looking at the episode, it is evident that certain writing techniques helped "The Contest" gain its popularity.

SEINFELD was not able to say the word "masturbation" on air when producing this episode. This led to constraints in word choice and dialog, but ended up to benefit the episode - humor by omission. The topic the episode was covering was obvious, and even though "masturbation" was never used, the audience knew the meaning behind the phrase "master of your domain." The audience had the pleasure to watch the episode knowing what could not be said and saw and heard the character build the story by using clever phrases to disguise the forbidden word. Each main character in the episode had their own self-describing phrase in which the put in place of "masturbation." Each time the characters dialog came close to saying "masturbation", I, and I heard others in my class, laughed when Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer all came on screen and said "lord of the manor," "queen of the castle," etc.

While camera techniques, blocking, and mise-en-scene also provided some humor for this episode, I believe most of the hilarity came from the inability to say "masturbation" and the humorous techniques used to make sure it was avoided.