Recently I wrote about calculating the “peak” season of Seinfeld. In that post, I ranked the seasons by computing a single metric based on the results of twenty top 10 and worst 10 episode lists that I collected from various online sources.
In this post, I use the same sources to compute the answers to who are the best performing and worst performing Seinfeld writers and guest stars?
Calculating the MVP and LVPs of the Seinfeld Guest Stars
There are tons of great one-time guest starring performances on Seinfeld, like The Soup Nazi, but there are also a number of guest stars that appear semi-regularly. In fact, there are 14 major guest stars of Seinfeld that appear in at least 7 (Mickey) and as many as 48 episodes (Newman) throughout the series. I was interested in ranking these 14 recurring guest stars.
To begin, I used the top 10 lists I collected (15 in total) from my prior post. Across these 15 lists, there are 54 unique episodes of Seinfeld. For each episode, I collected who were the guest stars of that episode. Also, for each guest star, I collected how many total episodes they appeared in across the entire 9 seasons of the show.
Knowing both the number of times a guest star appeared in one of the best episodes and the total number of episodes they appeared in, we can look at what their statistical expected performance should be and compare that against their actual performance.
For example, Newman appeared in 26.7% of all the episodes, so all things being equal, he should have appeared in 14 of the best episodes based on the 54 episodes from my lists. If he appears in more, then he’s performing above expectations and if he appears in less, then he’s performing below expectations.
By taking the difference between the actual performance and expected, we can create a single metric for ranking all the guest stars.
Below is an infographic showing the rankings of the 14 most frequent Seinfeld guest stars. They are listed from most valuable to least valuable.
As you can see, the Costanzas consistently punch above their weight, while the poor Seinfelds are bringing up the rear. The Costanzas appear in 29 total episodes, so they should appear in 8 of the best episodes, but actually show up in 13, while the Seinfelds should be in 7 of the best episodes, but are only in three.
Calculating the MVP and LVPs of the Seinfeld Writing Staff
Using the same methodology as I used for ranking the guest stars (comparing expectations against actuals), we can also rank the writers of Seinfeld.
Below is a graph showing the 25 writers of the best 54 episodes of Seinfeld ranked from highest performance to lowest performance.
Our top writer is Alec Berg, who wrote such great episodes as The Summer of George and The Calzone, wrote a total of 11 episodes of Seinfeld. Based on expectations, he should have wrote only three of the best episodes, however he is grossly over represented with six total episodes within the top 54.
On the other side of the spectrum, Jerry Seinfeld wrote 17 total episodes, so he should have wrote between 5 and 6 of the best episodes, but he is only a writer on 3 episodes, which include The Chinese Restaurant (which many people hate), The Opposite, and The Raincoats.
But since Jerry really only received writing credits early on in Seinfeld’s history, he is likely over penalized since he was not still writing once the show really hit its’ stride.
Final Thoughts
Both of these rankings are based purely on the metrics available and have nothing to do with my opinion. I personally love Uncle Leo and I’m not a huge fan of Susan, but Susan’s appearances happen to fall into more great episodes of Seinfeld than Uncle Leo’s.
There’s of course some bias towards both writing and appearances in the later seasons of Seinfeld. Arguably, the show didn’t really become amazing until Season 4, so if you wrote episodes earlier than that, you may be unfairly penalized.
As always, don’t take this stuff too seriously š and if you have a different opinion I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
s… should have wrote [written] only three of the …