Seinfeld largely avoided marijuana in its aired episodes, but one of the show’s most intriguing abandoned storylines would have put Frank Costanza at the center of a medical marijuana plot.
Former Seinfeld writer-producer David Mandel “got very close to airing” an idea in which Frank Costanza, played by Jerry Stiller, would need medical marijuana for cataracts. Mandel said George’s dad high on cannabis would have been “brilliant comedy”.
The storyline was ultimately dropped after the Seinfeld writers heard that the CBS sitcom Cybill had a similar story in development. Mandel said the writers had a large focus on not repeating things or topics covered on other popular shows of the era.
If it had aired, the episode likely would have been one of the earliest mainstream network sitcom storylines centered on medical marijuana. The timing also would have made sense. Mandel worked on Seinfeld during the show’s final stretch, and California voters approved Proposition 215, the nation’s first broad medical marijuana law, in November 1996, right in the middle of Seinfeld’s eighth and penultimate season.
One interesting detail is that Mandel specifically said cataracts, not glaucoma. Glaucoma later became the more familiar pop-culture shorthand for medical marijuana and eye conditions, including in Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is possible Mandel was recalling the broader idea decades later, or that Seinfeld really did plan to use cataracts as Frank’s condition. Either way, cataracts is the version publicly attributed to Mandel.
Although Seinfeld never made the episode, a very similar premise later appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm. In Season 4, Episode 6, “The Car Pool Lane,” Larry David buys medical marijuana for his father, Nat David, who has glaucoma. The episode aired in 2004 and turns medical marijuana into one piece of a larger Larry David chain reaction involving jury duty, a Dodgers game and the carpool lane.
There is no public confirmation that Curb directly reused the abandoned Seinfeld idea, but the overlap is hard to miss: Larry David, an older father, an eye condition and medical marijuana.
For Seinfeld fans, the lost Frank Costanza medical marijuana episode remains one of the show’s great what-ifs. Unlike some abandoned ideas that sounded more experimental, this one seems unusually workable: a medical marijuana premise arriving just as the issue was entering mainstream politics, centered on one of the funniest supporting characters in sitcom history.
Sponsored
