The queen of the castle really didn't like living there by the end of the show.
When Seinfeld went from a pilot of dubious viability to a series, NBC had just one firm note for Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld: they needed a woman as a full-time member of the cast. It was the note that proved the old proverb about the broken clock. The woman David and Seinfeld created to meet the demand was Elaine Benes, and as played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elaine was indispensable to Seinfeld for seven of its nine years.
She gives the show luster," Seinfeld said of the actress and the character on the 2000s DVD release of the series, quoting from comments David had made during production. In the early to middle years of the show, Elaine acted as a superficially prim and elegant counterpoint to the three male boors that were her friends. But that counterpoint - that luster - wouldn't survive David’s departure.
With this classy look came a pretense of good citizenship. In the early seasons, Elaine was very outspoken about her opposition to real fur and tuna that wasn’t dolphin safe, and she hated those who didn't recycle. A potential relationship with baseball legend Keith Hernandez fell apart over his smoking.
Elaine’s the one who first volunteered with senior citizens in “The Old Man” (and wouldn’t shut up about how good it made her feel about herself). She was proud to be the “best man” in a lesbian wedding, held a seat on the Goodwill benefit committee, and enlisted Jerry, and later Kramer (Michael Richards) for a charity bachelor auction in “The Barber.” When put alongside a hipster doofus, a perpetual loser, and a comedian dead to sentimentality, Elaine gave every appearance of being an elegant and responsible woman ticking every box on the “good progressive New Yorker” checklist. It was an appearance that was inevitably tarnished once the events of any given episode got underway.
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