Late Night: Jerry Seinfeld’s least favorite ‘Seinfeld’ episode

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The most reliably entertaining segment on Bravo’s hit-or-miss talk show, ‘Watch What Happens Live’ is ‘Plead the Fifth,’ in which host Andy Cohen pries his celebrity guests with invasive and potentially embarrassing questions. No matter what question Cohen asks, the guests are only allowed to pass once. It’s an ingeniously simple way to loosen up image-conscious celebrities, and it can occasionally generate some headline-worthy gossip.

On Monday night, Cohen welcomed his friend Jerry Seinfeld to the show. After reminiscing about his first ‘Tonight Show’ appearance and laughing at some terrible ‘Seinfeld’ publicity shots, the comedian submitted to Cohen’s interrogation.

Somewhat inevitably, the first question was ‘How long you personally reigned as master of your domain?’ -- a reference, of course, to ‘The Contest,’ one of the most famous ‘Seinfeld’ episodes of all time. After some hemming and hawing, Seinfeld finally answered, ‘A reasonable period of time.’ Not exactly specific, but Cohen accepted it.

Seinfeld was equally evasive in response to the next question, about which character on the series had the worst breath (his answer: many of the actresses who played his girlfriends had terrible breath because they never ate).

Happily, Seinfeld was more forthcoming with the final question. Asked to identify his least favorite ‘Seinfeld’ episode, he replied, ‘There was one where a guy had a stroke, and we were feeding him on the couch...I felt very uncomfortable with that episode.’

So, Seinfeld doesn’t like making jokes about sick elderly people. Sounds like a reasonable and surprisingly humane response, doesn’t it? Perhaps not: The episode Seinfeld was referring to, ‘The Alternate Side,’ is also the one in which Kramer made a cameo in a Woody Allen movie with the line, ‘These pretzels are making me thirsty.’

Surely, it wasn’t all bad.

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— Meredith Blake
twitter.com/MeredithBlake