The Seinfeld Episode That Cost $1 Million To Make
As Shakespeare once wrote, nothing will come of nothing — although, evidently, the Bard had never seen "Seinfeld." The little show about nothing turned into a very big something indeed. "Seinfeld" has remained popular nearly 25 years after going off the air and even maintained its status as a cultural icon by launching its very own lexicon into the zeitgeist. "Seinfeld," after all, was the series responsible for such hits as "close talkers," "double-dipping," and "yada yada yada." Shakespeare, respectfully, could never.
For a show that focused on the banal minutiae of everyday life, one might think that "Seinfeld," with its humble wardrobes and love of bottle episodes, would be relatively inexpensive to produce. In reality, expenses cropped up in unexpected places, like the famed episode "The Parking Garage," which was shot entirely on a constructed set (via Vulture). One episode, in particular, came with a surprisingly high price tag.
At $1 million, The Rye was worth stealing
On paper, the Season 7 episode "The Rye" is no more lavish than a typical "Seinfeld" outing. There are no high-speed chases or high-wire acrobatics — unless you count rigging a loaf of rye bread up a brownstone using a fishing pole. However, according to series writer Carol Leifer, the episode's budget clocked in at $1 million, "an OUTRAGEOUS amount of money at the time to spend on an episode," the comedian wrote in a Reddit AMA.
In her book "Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything," Jennifer Keishin Armstrong points to the specific expenditures behind the episode's hefty price tag. For one, the scene at Susan's parents' apartment was shot at an outdoor set at Paramount Studios, one big enough to be used for movies.
It was Kramer's plotline, which involves his one-time gig as a hansom cab driver, that set the episode over the edge. In addition to budgeting for the horses and carriage, the show had to supply the California studio with fake snow. Reportedly, they got enough for the cast and crew to partake in a snowball fight. In retrospect, the $1 million budget makes a $50 loaf of bread look like chump change.