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27-785: This episode presents a backwards narrative, running from the final scene to the first scene. Jerry and George run into Nina, an old girlfriend of Jerry's with whom he never slept, because they had such conversational chemistry that there was never an awkward pause during which something could happen. George has Jerry set him up on a date with Nina, and feels he must wear his Timberland boots every time he sees her, because they elevate him such that he and Nina are eye-to-eye. Jerry and Nina suffer an awkward pause in their conversation, leading them to have sex. When Elaine finds out, he makes her promise to not tell George. Elaine receives an invitation to Sue Ellen Mischke's wedding to Pinter Ranawat in India. Given

54-460: A Seinfeld episode. "The Betrayal" is an homage to Harold Pinter 's play Betrayal , imitating its use of reverse chronology and its central plot point of a man having sex with his friend's lover. The groom, Pinter Ranawat, was named in tribute to Harold Pinter. Having decided on the backwards chronology, Mehlman and Mandel set about coming up with the most bizarre and striking opening possible, in order to entice viewers to keep watching to see how

81-533: A TV pilot called The White Album , which he described as "a dark, comic, serialized murder mystery", but he failed to find a network which would produce it. Since May 2005, Mehlman has contributed articles for the progressive news website The Huffington Post . He has written editorial articles on such topics as O. J. Simpson , Mel Gibson and the Saddam Hussein trial and hanging. In June 2007 he claimed that, unlike Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin ,

108-667: A clump with contraception; a batch had people trying to be someone else; almost all had friends drastically at cross-purposes. My story lines were truly "about nothing." (Except when they weren't: It took me weeks to realize that my friend's experience with a valet parker's BO would make a funny episode. Too broad of an idea for me to see.). On the subject of how Seinfeld was different from all other network shows, Mehlman commented: It broke all their rules about likable characters, setup/punchline dialogue, everything. It didn't fall into one of their comfort zones, like A classic fish-out-of-water story! (FYI: Fish, when out of water, die.) And

135-493: A snowball two years before. Kramer negotiates for Newman to use his birthday wish to protect him from dropping dead, but he instead wishes for a date with a supermodel, which comes true. Newman's new girlfriend suggests Kramer counter the wish himself. Kramer and FDR try to out-wish each other by wishing on a shooting star, throwing coins in a fountain, pulling out eyelashes, and pulling a wishbone. Kramer finally persuades FDR to retract his wish in exchange for letting FDR hit him with

162-479: A snowball. Jerry, George and Elaine return to New York, all still bitter about what transpired on the trip that they refuse to speak of it when Kramer asks them how the trip was. The episode was written by Peter Mehlman and David Mandel . Mehlman had long since quit the Seinfeld writing team, but his office was in the same building as Mandel's, and one day he visited Mandel and told him about an idea he had for

189-521: Is a reference to " The Seinfeld Chronicles ", in which Richards's character was named Kessler. Many viewers vehemently objected to the episode's reverse chronology, leading to a number of fan-edited "forwards versions" of the episode being posted on the Internet. In a review of the Season 9 DVD for Cinematic Happenings Under Development, Trevor La Pay said "The Betrayal" was his least favorite episode in

216-493: Is acting bitterly towards him. George and Jerry bicker over Nina during the wedding ceremony. While lecturing them to keep quiet, Elaine mentions her affair with Pinter. Amused by the revelation, George repeats it loudly enough for everyone to hear. Sue Ellen calls her wedding off, and ends her friendship with Elaine and proceeds to exacerbate her pierced nose (that Elaine got to prepare for the wedding) in retaliation. George demands Nina choose between him and Jerry; she declares she

243-580: Is an American television writer, comedian, and producer, best known for serving as a writer and producer on the TV series Seinfeld through nearly all of the show's nine-year run from 1989–98. He also created the 1999 series It's Like, You Know... and produced the 2004 animated series Father of the Pride . Both were short-lived. Mehlman grew up in a Jewish family in New York City . He graduated from

270-486: Is not interested in either man, and only came for a free trip to India. Also, throughout the whole trip, George refused to relieve himself, on advice Elaine passed on from Pinter's parents. Kramer attends Franklin Delano Romanowski (FDR)'s birthday, and FDR gives him "the evil eye" right before blowing out the candles on his cake. FDR reveals that his wish was for Kramer to drop dead, because Kramer hit him with

297-618: The George W. Bush administration didn't even mean well to its constituency. In 2009, he wrote and produced the online comedy series Peter Mehlman's Narrow World of Sports , a series of 13 humorous interviews with sports figures such as Kobe Bryant , Danica Patrick and Tony Hawk . The series was sponsored by the Palm Pre and aired on YouTube. It was nominated for a Webby Award in 2010 for "Best Reality/Variety Host". Andy Ackerman Too Many Requests If you report this error to

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324-611: The University of Maryland in 1977. Peter Mehlman began his career as a sportswriter for The Washington Post . He made his first move from print journalism to television writing when, from 1982 to 1984, he wrote for and produced the television series SportsBeat with Howard Cosell . For the next five years he returned to freelance magazine writing in New York for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine , GQ and Esquire . In 1989, Mehlman moved to Los Angeles and

351-518: The end of last season." She pointed to important elements that Mehlman created for the series, such as: In 1999, Mehlman created, produced and co-wrote the sitcom It's Like, You Know... , which was primarily a bitter satire of life in Los Angeles and the Hollywood notables and idle rich who live there, as seen through the eyes of Manhattan writer, Garment (played by Chris Eigeman ). The show

378-426: The entire Seinfeld series, calling it "a gimmick-based farce". In a 2012 retrospective review, David Sims of The A.V. Club commented that "The Betrayal" was heavily reliant on the backwards format, making it an exciting and funny episode on first viewing, but uninteresting on repeat viewings after the viewer is already familiar with the plot. Peter Mehlman Peter Mehlman (born 1955 or 1956)

405-413: The episode, and to his surprise, was provided with one. Guest actress Heidi Swedberg , having not appeared on Seinfeld since her character Susan Ross died at the end of Season 7, had since cut her hair short, so she had to wear a custom-made Susan Ross wig for the episode. Scenes which were filmed for the episode but deleted before broadcast include George stepping in goat dung while trying to walk off

432-441: The fact that Seinfeld never had touching moments made the networks apoplectic. A writer for The Morning Call said, "Everyone talks about the damage done when Jerry's cocreator and former executive producer Larry David left the series in 1996. But Seinfeld may have suffered the death blow when writer and coexecutive producer Peter Mehlman, who helped steer the show after David left, departed for Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks at

459-421: The heavy implication that he was expected to just send a gift rather than attend. Having come up with the premises for the storylines, Mehlman and Mandel largely wrote the episode in forwards chronological order, though the last three scenes (chronologically the first three) were not conceived until the rest of the episode had been written. They added in the reverse chronology jokes afterwards. The Kramer storyline

486-582: The influence, Elaine reveals Jerry and Nina's encounter to George, prompting the latter to behave passive-aggressively to Jerry during the flight to India. Elaine, Jerry, George and Nina arrive in India, where Elaine recognizes Pinter as an ex-lover who was going by "Peter" at the time. Sue Ellen is so happy that Elaine came when none of her other invitees showed that she asks Elaine to be her maid of honor. Touched, Elaine reconciles with Sue Ellen and resolves not to let her find out about her affair with Pinter. Jerry gets Elaine drunk on schnapps to find out why George

513-472: The late arrival of the invitation, Elaine assumes it is an " un vitation" and that Sue Ellen does not want her to come. Elaine meets Pinter's parents, Usha and Zubin Ranawat, who advise her not to go to the wedding; they are not going themselves. To spite Sue Ellen, Elaine buys tickets to India for herself, Jerry, George, and Nina. Noticing Elaine's evasive behavior, George gets her drunk on schnapps. While under

540-566: The need to go to the bathroom; George putting on his Timberlands just to walk across Nina's apartment to get the wine bottle and glasses; an extension of the aftermath scene in Monk's Cafe, in which Kramer accidentally steps on a child's toy and gets the evil eye before the child blows out his birthday candles; and an extension of the plane flight scene, in which Elaine takes the pillow from the man next to her, who turns out to be Magnus from " The Butter Shave ". Jerry mistaking Kramer's name as "Kessler"

567-437: The series' first freelance episode, "The Apartment." Mehlman was hired for the first full season of Seinfeld as a program consultant (1991–92) and, over the next six years, worked his way up to co-executive producer in the show's last season after Larry David's departure. Describing the process of writing for Seinfeld and evaluating his own work on the show, Mehlman wrote in an article for Entertainment Weekly : Seinfeld

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594-447: The show was canceled commented that he "wouldn't do another show for ABC if the future of Israel depended on it." "When ABC execs gave me their first note on the script—a small plot change—I pondered it and said, No, I think it's good the way it is. What else you got? The ABC brass looked at me as if I'd announced I was pro-pedophilia. My first experience with network interference. Seinfeld had no network interference." He then wrote

621-420: The story begins. They came up with an Indian wedding, as well as an opening shot of Kramer's gravestone (with the rest of the episode revealing that he had resorted to faking his own death in order to escape FDR's wish). The manner of the wedding invite was drawn from the personal experience of another Seinfeld writer, Jeff Schaffer ; Schaffer got a last-minute invitation to a wedding in a foreign country, with

648-426: Was continually reworked throughout the process, with the writers at one point trying to adjust the plot so that Kramer would independently end up in India, and Mehlman and Mandel ultimately felt dissatisfied with how it turned out. Due to Seinfeld ' s immense success, budget limitations were virtually nonexistent by the time of this episode. Director Andy Ackerman half-jokingly said he would like an elephant for

675-475: Was offered the opportunity to write a script for Seinfeld by Larry David . As he had never written a script up to that point ("Pre- Seinfeld , I'd barely written any dialogue in my life" ), Mehlman submitted instead a short humorous piece he had written for the New York Times Magazine . Jerry Seinfeld was so impressed by the piece that he gave Mehlman a writing assignment, out of which came

702-562: Was often described as a Los Angeles version of Seinfeld . Despite being nominated for "New Program of the Year" at the Television Critics Association Awards in 1999, the show was canceled by ABC after 26 episodes, mostly to clear more time slots for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? . Mehlman commented afterward that he found the studio interference from ABC a problem during the show's production, and after

729-468: Was the only show in which you came up with your own story lines or you were gone. There was no "writers' room." You wrote and rewrote your own scripts before kissing them off to Larry David and Jerry so they could dose it with magic. I was ready to say I did bad work on " The Visa ", better on " The Sponge ", really good on " The Implant ". I was ready to argue that my episodes showed signs of a sensibility: A bunch dealt with radically changing one's appearance;

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