‘Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi Was Almost Literal, And More Abandoned Plots
Seinfeld was no stranger to discarded episodes, but at least a few ideas were probably better off on the scrap heap. Writer-producers David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer reveal a few Seinfeld concepts that never made it past the writers room, including skeletons, a trip to Mexico, and a pretty literal twist on the Soup Nazi.
Entertainment Weekly spoke to the current Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm writers, who laid out five Seinfeld episodes that never got to NBC airwaves. In some cases – like transplanting the apartment and coffee shop dynamic to Mexico – the ideas were cut off by Jerry Seinfeld ending the series in Season 9. Another would have seen the Soup Nazi’s return, but with an over-the-top twist:
We joked a whole bunch about an end scene that would take place in the jungles of Brazil, à la The Boys From Brazil, where the Soup Nazi [Larry Thomas] would return to the other Nazis — the actual former Nazi war criminals — with his soup recipes. It was sort of half-serious, half ‘Should we do this?,’ half ‘We’re never going to do it.’ But it was much discussed. Going down a river and seeing lots of young boys with blue eyes from experimentation with the soups — it was a full coming together of soup and Nazi. Probably just as well that we didn’t do that one.
Certainly, one could imagine the turn landing poorly with “Original Soup Man” character inspiration Al Yeganeh, who famously derided the character and its impact on his business. Other abandoned tales from the Seinfeld pair included Frank Costanza taking up medical marijuana, or Kramer going into business refurbishing human skeletons for model use.
You can read the full story at the link above, and catch all Seinfeld episodes on Hulu.
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