During a Reddit AMA from 2013, Jerry Seinfeld revealed that one of his favorite Seinfeld episodes to film was Season 8’s “The Pothole,” mainly because they got to set Newman (played by Wayne Knight) on fire. But the Newman sequence is one of many wild moments from the episode in question.
The show kicks off with Jerry knocking his girlfriend’s toothbrush in the toilet, who ends up using it before he gets a chance to tell her. This results in the girlfriend locking Jerry out of his own apartment and telling him that she stuck one of his belongings in the toilet.
Elsewhere, George realizes that he dropped his keys in a pothole that was paved over by the time it dawned on him. In order to save a little money, he decides to jackhammer the pothole open himself, but accidentally punctures a water main in the process.
Elaine runs into problems of her own when she finds out she doesn’t live within the delivery range for the Chinese restaurant she wants to order from. To get around the issue, she moves into a janitor’s closet in the building across the street, where she’s mistaken for a maintenance person.
A Seinfeld Scene Almost Went Very Badly for Michael Richards
However, it’s Kramer’s storyline that’s the wildest in retrospect, considering that one of his scenes almost cost Michael Richards his life. After running over a sewing machine on the Arthur Burghardt Expressway, Kramer adopts a one-mile section of the road via the Adopt a Highway program. He opts to clean the road himself and even alters the painted lines to include two large lanes instead of the previous four. Despite thinking this would be an improvement, it only leads to confusion and congestion.
As Kramer is removing litter from the side of the expressway early on in the episode, he spots a soda can in the road and runs into oncoming traffic to retrieve it. According to the DVD commentary, Richards completely improvised that moment without telling anybody what he was going to do.
“And he ran out, and the stunt drivers didn’t know he was gonna run out,” said Seinfeld. “Nobody knew what was happening there.” One car in particular can be heard braking offscreen and stops just short of hitting Richards as he runs back to safety.
You can check out the scene for yourself right here:
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