SEINFELD - Season 6, Episode 11 - The Switch

“The Switch”

First Script Read: Sunday, November 13, 1994

Filmed: Wednesday, November 16, 1994

Aired: January 5, 1995

Nielsen rating: 23.2 (highest rated episode to date, promoted by NBC around revelation of Kramer’s name)

Audience share: 33

Directed: Andy Ackerman

Writers: Bruce Kirschbaum and Sam Henry Kass

GEORGE: Do you realize in the entire history of western civilization no one has successfully accomplished the Roommate Switch?

Just as "The Hamptons" brought the word "shrinkage" to prominence, so too did this episode vastly increase the number of Americans who knew what "menage à trois" meant. George, goaded into helping Jerry find a solution to the Roommate Switch, comes up with the idea that Jerry should suggest menage à trois to his current girlfriend. Ideally, this would repulse her while simultaneously flattering the roommate. It all backfires, though, as both roommates are into the idea. George is excited about the possibility, but Jerry, for all his promiscuity, won't do it:

JERRY: I can't. I'm not an orgy guy.

GEORGE: Are you crazy? This is like discovering Plutonium by accident.

JERRY: Don't you know what it means to become an orgy guy? It changes everything. I'd have to dress different. I'd have to act different. I'd have to grow a mustache and get all kinds of robes and lotions and I'd need a new bedspread and new curtains I'd have to get thick carpeting and weirdo lighting. I'd have to get new friends. I'd have to get orgy friends.... Naw, I'm not ready for it.

GEORGE: If only something like that could happen to me.

JERRY: Oh, shut up you couldn't do it either.

GEORGE: I know.

This is a rare circumstance where the sexual practices of the Seinfeld gang feel out-of-date almost 20 years later. Jerry's resistance to sleeping with two women at once feels quaint compared to the activities of some male characters in more recent teen sex and buddy comedies. Jerry will go through 40 different girlfriends in the first six seasons of the show, but never two at once. That's where he draws the line.