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Season nine starts where we left off the previous season, with George recovering from injuries he took down a flight of stairs, thus interrupting the "Summer of George" he was planning to enjoy with his generous severance check from the New York Yankees. George quickly finds another job, but his potential new boss has misunderstood his cane, and before George can explain the boss tells George about all of the benefits he will enjoy as a handicapped employee. George decides to go along with the ruse when he discovers he will have his own specially outfitted bathroom to suit his handicap - a perk George cannot resist. When George is found out by his employer and even offered another generous severance package to leave, he decides to dig in and the whole situation turns into a humorous seige. George never fails to offend and infuriate people, so later in the season when an acquaintance is working on step nine of the AA program by going around and apologizing for past transgressions George is unhappy that he is never apologized to. He agitates the acquaintance about this so badly that he does eventually get the apology. However, unfortunately now the poor fellow has an anger management problem on top of his alcoholism due to George and must enroll in still another support group.

Elaine is in a longer relationship than usual, continuing her romance with ace auto mechanic David Puddy. The mismatched couple have as tortured a relationship as you would expect and in the opening episode are bickering during a plane ride all the way back from Europe where they have been vacationing. They break up but end up sleeping together every time they see each other. This works out for Jerry and for Puddy since Jerry keeps betting Elaine that she can't stay away from Puddy - and winning - and it turns out that Puddy likes not having to stick around to cuddle with Elaine afterwards.

Although I have no idea how Kramer manages to live in Manhattan without any visible means of support, at least we finally discover why he has been unemployed. He's been waiting for the strike to end at H&H Bagels for 12 years. The strike ends when the minimum wage finally reaches what the union demanded in the first place. Of course, Kramer is the only one of the strikers who has actually been faithfully striking all these years. When he decides to celebrate George's father's version of Christmas - Festivus - he wants the day off. When H&H refuses Kramer goes back on strike because his religious beliefs are not being honored, thus ending Kramer's brief venture into the world of work.

Jerry has numerous romantic misadventures this season including a girlfriend that looks either beautiful or hideous depending on what the lighting is, another girlfriend who likes to wander around sans clothing yet still manages to annoy Jerry when he discovers there is such a thing as "bad naked", and yet another girlfriend whom Jerry throws over for the sound of his own voice imitating the noises that the girl's stomach makes.

This year has Newman making quite a few appearances, most notably in "The Butter Shave" where he discovers that he is strangely attracted to Kramer in a culinary way after Kramer uses butter as a tanning lotion and then falls asleep in the sun. That all-over butter smell is just too much for Newman to resist ending in a hilarious chase scene through the middle of Jerry's stand-up routine. Newman and Kramer are also featured in a satire of the X-Files when Kramer starts to complain about his junk mail to the post office and goes there to declare he no longer wants his mail delivered.

The last four episodes - Puerto Rican Day, the two clip shows, and the finale were a bit of a let-down to me. Puerto Rican Day didn't seem to have the same level of ensemble humor I was accustomed to seeing, the clip shows are just bits and pieces taken from prior shows that were shown on the night the finale was broadcast, and the finale just didn't live up to my expectations. But then it would be hard to wrap up in one hour a show that spent nine years focused on the minutia of life as experienced by four self-involved people and somehow managed to never disappoint. It's hard to have a satisfying conclusion to something that had no real beginning or middle to it. The following is the list of special features:

Digitally Mastered Audio and Video
Audio: English (Stereo), French
Subtitles: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
"The Last Lap" - the cast and crew reminisce about their final days making SEINFELD and share their impressions about the show's legacy.
Scenes from "The Roundtable" - Excerpts from a conversation with Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louise-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Larry David nine years after SEINFELD went off the air.
"Inside Looks" - Behind-the-scenes stories from the cast and creators
"Not That There's Anything Wrong With That" - Never-before-seen outtakes and bloopers
"In the Vault" - Season Nine never-before-seen deleted scene saved from the cutting room floor, including 15 bonus minutes from "The Finale".
"Yada, Yada, Yada" - Cast and crew audio commentaries
2 Sein-Imations - See classic SEINFELD scenes re-imagined in Sein-Imation
"Notes About Nothing" - Behind-the-scenes trivia and production notes
"The Betrayal" Back-to-Front - Watch Seinfeld's "backwards" episode forwards
Factoid Tracks on all 24 episodes