Jerry And Kramer's Hallway On Seinfeld Makes No Sense
Throughout the nine-season run of "Seinfeld" on NBC, one of the most often repeated gags was Kramer (Michael Richards) frantically bursting through Jerry's door from his own apartment across the hall.
Whether it was to raid the refrigerator and pantry, to interrupt Jerry's everyday activities with a strange story, or to clue his neighbor in on his latest half-baked scheme, the combination of physical comedy and Kramer's oddball personality provided some of the best moments featuring the character.
But while enjoying "Seinfeld" often requires viewers to ignore otherwise problematic aspects of one or more characters, the layout of Jerry's apartment makes Kramer's constant and abrupt intrusions not only socially inappropriate but downright impossible according to the laws of physics and architecture.
A sharp eye and critical analysis of the layout of Jerry's apartment and the view through the door that Kramer always seems to leave open behind him reveals that given the arrangement of the walls of Jerry's apartment, the hallway could not exist as it is shown through that open front door.
A portion of Jerry's kitchen would poke into the hallway
On the rare occasions that Kramer and Jerry's doors are shown from the hallway, the two doors are at right angles to the short wall at the end of the hallway, directly across from each other.
Views through Jerry's open door from the perspective of his living room also show Kramer's door opposite, but both doors and the segments of the wall they pass through are at sharper angles to the hallway's end.
In a post to the r/Seinfeld subreddit, viewer PixelMagic rendered an overhead view of Jerry's apartment, the two doors, and the section of the hallway connecting them. According to the illustration, parts of Jerry's kitchen, which Kramer so often targets in his raids, would protrude into the hallway far enough to prevent anyone from passing by. This makes both apartment doors inaccessible, as the walls surrounding the kitchen would effectively seal off the hallway. According to the diagram and commenter KawhiTheKing, Jerry's bathroom window would also open directly into Kramer's apartment and not to the street as his living room windows do.
The impossibility of the hallway and kitchen layout didn't prevent the show's writers from featuring the doors, hallway, and kitchen throughout the show's 173 episodes, but perceiving the hallway as it is shown still requires some suspension of disbelief; fortunately, it's one minor obstacle that doesn't have to get in the way of enjoying one of the most popular shows in television history.