| Bgcolor: |
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| Season Number: | 8 |
| Network: | NBC |
| Num Episodes: | 22 |
| Prev Season: | Season 7 |
| Next Season: | Season 9 |
| Episode List: | List of Seinfeld episodes |
The eighth season of Seinfeld, an American comedy television series began airing on September 19, 1996, and concluded on May 15, 1997, on NBC.
The eighth season marked a turning point in the series. It is the first season where Seinfeld himself took creative control of the show after co-creator Larry David left. It also marks the beginning—other than a few episodes from the sixth and seventh seasons, such as "The Understudy"—of the use of cold opens for the episodes, which would continue through most of the ninth season. Seinfeld states that this is because he was too busy writing episodes to create additional stand-up material.[1] As a result, the show began to remove itself from the 'show about nothing' format it had begun life as, and took a far more absurdist, surreal stylistic turn.
Seinfeld was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and aired on NBC in the United States. The executive producers were Jerry Seinfeld, George Shapiro, and Howard West with Tom Gammill and Max Pross as supervising producers. Bruce Kirschbaum was the executive consultant.[2] This season was directed by Andy Ackerman.
The series was set predominantly in an apartment block on New York City's Upper West Side; however, the eighth season was shot and mostly filmed in CBS Studio Center in Studio City, California.[3] The show features Jerry Seinfeld as himself, and a host of Jerry's friends and acquaintances, which include George Costanza, Elaine Benes, and Cosmo Kramer, portrayed by Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards, respectively.[4]
Due to Julia Louis-Dreyfus' off-screen pregnancy, her character had to spend the latter half of this season hiding her belly behind furniture and laundry baskets.
See also: List of Seinfeld episodes.