Cinnamon Babka
S5 E13: The Dinner Party
Season 5, Episode 13 of Seinfeld — known to devotees of minutiae as "The Dinner Party" — is the platonic ideal of awkward, carbohydrate-fueled comedy.
Written by Larry David and directed by Tom Cherones, this episode aired on February 3, 1994, and revolves around a simple premise that metastasizes into full-blown chaos: the gang is on their way to a dinner party, and social protocol demands they bring something. Easy enough, right? Wrong.
At the heart of the episode lies a Shakespearean debate over the supremacy of the babka. Elaine and Jerry, stranded in a bakery, seek out a chocolate babka—a spiraled loaf as rich in cocoa as it is in symbolic meaning. Yet when another customer swoops in to nab the last chocolate variety, the duo is left to settle for cinnamon babka. Elaine famously dubs it "a lesser babka," a sentiment that ignites a debate so impassioned, it could fuel a thousand graduate theses. Cinnamon is great! Who doesn’t love cinnamon?
Meanwhile, George and Kramer embark on their own ill-fated errand to procure a bottle of wine. Their journey is less about vino and more about existential frustration. Kramer insists on double-parking, George begrudges spending money on a gift for people he doesn’t like, and a chilling encounter with a fur-clad man renders Kramer briefly speechless—a rarity worth savoring. By the time all four reconvene, they’ve endured enough indignities to rival Odysseus, from bakery queues to parking fiascos to the dreaded specter of a cough ruining the babka.
Larry David, in his infinite wisdom, crafted this episode as a pressure cooker for everyday absurdities. Fun fact: David drew inspiration for the babka discourse from his own experiences in New York bakeries, where minor problems could spiral into operatic tragedies. The meticulousness of the script mirrors the show’s obsessive dissection of minutiae. Tom Cherones’ direction keeps the pace taut and the performances razor-sharp; Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jerry Seinfeld’s earnest distress over the babka is nothing short of artful, elevating this humble pastry to near-mythic status.
The Dinner Party" encapsulates Seinfeld at its best: a comedy of manners that dares to ask the hard questions. What do we owe to social conventions? Why is there always a draft in the bakery? Is the cinnamon babka truly "lesser," or is it the underdog we should be rooting for?