The Deal (Seinfeld)

Series co-creator Larry David wrote the episode in a response to NBC's continued efforts to get the two characters back together.

Critics reacted positively to the episode, and David received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.

Upon the realization that neither of them has had sexual relations in a while, they start toying with the idea of sleeping together while, at the same time, preserving their normal close friendship.

While eating at the coffee shop the next day, Jerry tells George that the future of any sustained contact with Elaine, either relationship or friendship, is in serious jeopardy.

Together they imagine the possibility of a chance meeting with Elaine, then married to someone else, five years in the future; they then humorously declare they'd have to kill the hypothetical husband, only to weigh the terrifying penal repercussions of committing such a crime.

[2] Since the start of the show, NBC executives, especially Warren Littlefield, had been pressuring the writing staff to get Jerry and Elaine back together.

[3][4] However, brainstorming for an episode idea, he remembered he had once made a deal with a woman to have a purely physical relationship,[3][5] which he thought "would make a really funny show, even if they had never [told us to get Jerry and Elaine back together]".

[3][5] David, however, believed the discussion was more of a transaction than an intimate scene and felt that Jerry and Elaine should sit farther apart.

[3] With averagely 22.6 million homes watching the episode,[3] the series was the eleventh most-watched show in the week it was broadcast, tied with NBC's The Golden Girls.

[14] Entertainment Weekly critics Mike Flaherty and Mary Kaye Schilling commented "Jerry and Elaine's circuitous verbal dance pondering the relative worth of that [sex] versus this [the friendship] is sublime.