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“Seinfeld” became “Master of his Domain” with the fourth season of the series. The cult hit finally found a massive audience during season four. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! For a show about nothing there are plenty of extras on this great boxed set. Jerry and George pitch their idea for a show about “nothing” to NBC, Kramer manages to burn down the house of George’s new girlfriend Susan. The only things to survive the fire are letters writer John Cheever wrote to Susan’s father testifying to his gay relationship with her father. Kramr manages to flip of his junior minds into a friend’s body during surgery. A college writer discovers what all that bickering is about between Jerry and George when Elaine jokingly “outs” the two friends. It’s all in a season’s work for the men who destroy the Bubble Boy’s plastic home.

First off, we get the original broadcast version of “The Handicap Spot” featuring the late John Randolph (“Seconds”,”Serpico”) as George’s father. When the role was recast for consistency sake the producers went back and reshot Randolph’s sequences with Jerry Stiller. Jason Alexander who performed with Randolph on Broadway does a touching introduction for te original broadcast version of the episode. Randolph’s take on Frank Costanza is quite different from Stiller’s. While Stiller would make the role his own and take the character to absurd new heights, it’s nice to have Randolph’s performance available again. The syndicated version features Stiller as George’s father. ***

“Inside Look” features interviews with the cast, production crew and writers discussing key episodes such as “The Bubble Boy”, “The Cheever Letters”, “The Opera” and others. A side note to writer Larry Charles—trim your beard guy you look like an escapee from a mental institution. Michael Richards comes across as a bright, articulate guy the exact opposite of his TV persona. We also get deleted scenes, outtakes with the cast cracking up or forgetting their lines during scenes and NBC’s original promo spots for the series. ***

“The Breakthrough Season” discusses the series jump from cult favorite to superstardom. Larry David mentions how his idea for a story arc that reflected the real world pitch to NBC was received with mixed feelings. Nevertheless, Warren Littlefield was supportive of the risky venture and luckily the NBC crew had the foresight to see how the show could breakthrough to a massive audience. There’s also a discussion on the difficulties that David faced with “The Contest”. Luckily, the NBC censors had no problem with the episode because masturbation is alluded to but never mentioned outright. Michael Richards also discusses on “The Opera” about Kramer’s fear of clowns and how that drove the comic elements of the story for his character. If you look very carefully at the menus you’ll also find a number of amusing Easter eggs planted throughout each disc. ---

Hands down the best commentary tracks are by the trio of Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Sadly, Seinfeld’s commentaries were recorded without the other members. It’s too bad as the synergy between the four of them would have been fun to hear on their commentary tracks. Nevertheless, the trio of Alexander, Richards, Louis-Dreyfus only speak when they want to bust each other’s chops or have something to say about the shooting of the episode. Larry Charles omes in second with fascinating tidbits about the episodes he wrote. For example, “The Trip Parts 1 & 2” features Charles commenting on how NBC approached producer/writer/co-creator Larry David about doing an episode set in Los Angeles. David wasn’t interested so he gave Charles free rein to create two episodes that represents his bizarro world take on “Seinfeld”. Jerry Seinfeld’s commentary tracks sound the least comfortable of all the ones recorded here. ***

“Notes About Nothing” offers a text commentary for the episodes. Their filled with extraneous information about the episodes, some of the jokes and some of the topical people that are referred to within each episode. They also provide interesting tidbits about the production of each episode. Although they can occasionally be annoying, they’re pretty interesting on the whole. ---