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. Larry David resigned as executive producer, making way for his replacement by Seinfeld. Cold opens took the role of Jerry's comedy routines, as Seinfeld was too busy to write more jokes, and "the show about nothing" became more absurdist and surreal.
Seinfeld was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and aired on NBC in the United States. The eighth season was the first to be produced after Castle Rock Entertainment's parent company Turner Broadcasting System was acquired by Time Warner. The season's early episodes still have the byline "A Turner Company" for the Castle Rock Entertainment logo in the end credits, as the deal officially closed in October 1996. For the later episodes, the byline is removed.
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. 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. 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.
Throughout the season, Julia Louis-Dreyfus was pregnant with her son Charlie, who was born two weeks after the season finished airing. Her character had to spend the latter half of this season hiding her belly behind furniture and laundry baskets, since the pregnancy started to become more noticeable by that point.
<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 86% approval rating with an average rating of 9/10, based on 7 critic reviews.