New Video Evidence of Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus Breaking During ‘Seinfeld’ Has Surfaced

Contrary to Frank Costanza’s insistence, “serenity now!” can only do so much when it comes to keeping calm. Just ask Seinfeld stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander, who can be seen breaking mid-scene in a newly-resurfaced moment from the iconic ‘90s sitcom. 

Earlier this week, Redditor ExtraGlutenPlzz headed to the Seinfeld subreddit with an observation for fellow fans on Season Nine’s “The Merv Griffin Show”: What’s the deal with Michael Richards’ chip-and-burp combo making two of his fellow castmates visibly lose their shit?  

“Julia has said that when Michael Richards takes a break to eat a chip on the Merv Griffin show, she couldn’t stop laughing. She can be seen here for a microsecond laughing,” they captioned a screengrab taken about nine minutes into the episode. 

Snapped moments after Kramer grilled George on pigeons, called a fake “commercial break,” shoved a few chips into his mouth, chugged a can of definitely-not-re-branded Diet Coke and burped, the screengrab proves it wasn’t just the audience that was taken with Michaels’ comedy prowess. Alongside Louis-Dreyfus’ visible giggle, the image depicts Alexander smirking so intently that you can see his curling lips even from a quater angle of his face. 

Although this is far from the first time this clip has caught the attention of eagle-eyed viewers, several fans had thoughts. More specifically, that long before his whole career-nuking racist tirade at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory, Richards was actually a pretty funny guy. “I think he was so good it threw them all off,” observed one Redditor, while another speculated on how the series’ format conversion may have given way to this split-second Easter egg. 

“I’ve never seen it either, because I only watch in 4:3,” they wrote. “It’s another widescreen conversion artifact which was never intended to be seen.”

While the world — sans a few NBC hotshots, Castle Rock overlords, some underpaid editors and possibly Larry David — may never know if the ratio shift is to blame for this minute mistake, all we can think is that George might’ve been right all along: “Significant shrinkage” does matter.