It sometimes beautifully worked across seasons as in "The Puffy Shirt" (where George becomes a hand model). I think this was mostly Larry David's work. Jason A

It sometimes beautifully worked across seasons as in "The Puffy Shirt" (where George becomes a hand model). I think this was mostly Larry David's work. Jason Alexander once mentioned in an interview that after David left, this "dovetailing" of story lines kind of stopped, and I tend to agree. David continued it (even more pronounced) in "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Even the golf ball twist was kind of repeated - in extreme form and with a baseball - in "Curb". Side note: another early TV show that often pulled this off to great effect was "The Honeymooners". I think this is the show that had the most influence on Seinfeld. Ed Norton is basically Kramer, Ralph Kramden is basically George, Alice is Elaine, and Alice's mother is Newman (you can also map "The Honeymooners" characters, and even entire plot lines, to "The Flintstones", but that is another story, and AFAIK Jacky Gleason, the creator of "The Honeymooners", considered suing Hanna-Barbera in the 60ies). Jerry Seinfeld himself once said that we should wait and see if "Seinfeld" is still funny in 50 years like "The Honeymooners" (that was 20 years ago). "Fawlty Towers" also did this very well.