Why did Seinfeld kill Susan? Jason Alexander has already had to apologise for explaining it once

The Seinfeld writers had a problem in 1996: George was engaged, and nobody on staff could see a married George working. The fix took about nine seconds of screen time and has been generating apologies ever since.

"The Invitations" aired May 16, 1996 as the season 7 finale, written by Larry David and directed by Andy Ackerman. It was the last episode David wrote before stepping away from the writing staff. Susan Ross, played by Heidi Swedberg, had been in and out of the show since season 4 and engaged to George for most of season 7.

How Susan actually dies

George, trying to save money, picks the cheapest wedding invitations in the shop. Susan licks hundreds of the envelopes, collapses, and is pronounced dead at the hospital; a doctor explains the adhesive was toxic. George had floated using a glue instead. Susan waved it off. Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer take the news in the waiting room and visibly fail to be upset by it.

TV Guide ranked the moment No. 8 on its 2005 list of the 100 most unexpected moments in television history. NBC quietly pulled the episode from syndication after the 2001 anthrax attacks and put it back in the summer of 2002.

The real reason was chemistry, and Jason Alexander said so on air

On the Howard Stern show on June 3, 2015, Alexander explained that he had never been able to make scenes with Swedberg land. "I couldn't figure out how to play off of her, " he said, adding that "her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring."

He also described his own reaction when Larry David told him George would be getting engaged — a flat "Oh great, who's going to play George?"

"Don't you wanna just kill her?"

By Alexander's account, the thing that settled it was that Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus eventually got extended scenes with Swedberg too, and hit exactly the same wall. At a dinner afterward, Louis-Dreyfus said the line that ended the character.

"Don't you wanna just kill her?" — Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Larry David's answer, per Alexander: "Ka-bang!"

David has separately defended the ending on its own terms: all four leads are self-centered, so George reacting to his fiancée's death with relief is the only consistent thing he could have done. It also solved a structural problem no fourth option covered — the writers didn't want a wedding, a divorce, or a breakup.

The apology landed the next day

On June 4, 2015, Alexander posted a long statement to Twitter and Twitlonger. He said he'd told the story in a way that made it sound like the show was putting a heavy burden on Swedberg, called her generous and gracious, insisted the decision to kill the character had been creative rather than personal, and put the failure on his own insecurity at the time and his unwillingness to sit down with her and work the scenes out.

"I feel officially awful." — Jason Alexander, June 4, 2015

Heidi Swedberg was fine

Swedberg has said she wasn't offended by any of it, pointing out that the show's humor "is based on the fact that the main characters are not nice people." She also largely left acting — Hot Shots! and Galaxy Quest are on the résumé — and became a ukulele musician and teacher instead.

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She fronts Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band, whose debut Play! came out in 2009, followed by My Cup of Tea. She teaches beginners, mostly children, and turns the cardboard boxes ukuleles ship in into cases her students decorate themselves. She got her first ukulele at five in Hawaii; her left-handed mother taught her C, F, and G7. Her line to Ukulele magazine: "It's far more important to make music than to be good at making music."

For the record: George Steinbrenner's scenes were cut from the same episode for time. Susan made the final cut.

Earlier we wrote: At last: Frank Welker names his favorite Scooby-Doo mystery after 57 years