Why was the Seinfeld episode banned? NBC had to apologize publicly
Nine seasons, 180 episodes, and exactly one that NBC swore it would never run again. It aired on May 7, 1998, pulled 38.8 million viewers — the second-biggest audience the show ever got — and had the network issuing a formal apology within days. Here's what happened.
Banned Seinfeld episode, explained
The episode is "The Puerto Rican Day," season 9, episode 20. In its closing minutes, Kramer accidentally sets a Puerto Rican flag on fire with a sparkler, drops it, and stomps on it to put it out. Protests followed at NBC's headquarters, the network apologized publicly, and it never aired the episode again.
What actually happens in it
The setup is pure Seinfeld. The four leave a Mets game early, get stuck in Fifth Avenue traffic during the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and abandon the car one by one. Elaine tries to escape the crowds on foot. Jerry, George, and Kramer talk their way into an apartment open house so Kramer can use the bathroom.
Then somebody hands Kramer a sparkler. The flag catches, he stomps it out, a crowd turns on him, and a mob trashes Jerry's car.
Kramer's exit line — that it's like this every day in Puerto Rico — took nearly as much heat as the flag business itself.
The reaction, and the apology
Demonstrators gathered outside Rockefeller Center. Letters flooded NBC. Manuel Mirabal, then president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, told the New York Times the flag shouldn't be used as a Seinfeld stage prop under any circumstances — a complaint sharpened by the fact that the writers had declined to screen the episode for him in advance.
NBC president Robert Wright put out a statement saying the show's broad comedy took nothing away from "the respect we have for the Puerto Rican flag," and adding that the humor came from watching four familiar characters dig their own holes.
The episode came off the air anyway.
What the people who made it said
Writers Steve Koren and David Mandel argued on the season 9 DVD commentary that the story had nothing to do with Puerto Ricans specifically and could have been set at any of New York's dozens of parades without changing a line. Jason Alexander's read was that if the joke landed on anyone, it landed on Kramer. Jerry Seinfeld recalled asking a protest organizer how he knew the episode was offensive when he hadn't seen it:
"We assume that it's offensive," Seinfeld remembered being told, in a behind-the-scenes feature for the season 9 DVD set.
Writer Alec Berg didn't cool things down either, telling reporters the staff doesn't "consult a rabbinical council when we do a show about Jews." Protesters were still turning up outside Seinfeld's Broadway stand-up run three months later.
Can you watch it now?
Yes. NBC kept it out of rotation for four years, and in summer 2002 — the show long since finished — it returned to syndication with the flag sequence intact. It's on the season 9 DVD set and streams with the rest of the series.
Trivia worth knowing: ten writers are credited on "The Puerto Rican Day," more than any other Seinfeld episode. Larry David had come back to handle the finale, so the entire remaining staff wrote this one as a group. It was their last one — and the last episode before the finale, not counting the clip show.