Peter Mehlman (born ) is an American television writer, comedian, and producer, best known for serving as a writer and producer on the TV series Seinfeld through nearly all of the show's nine-year run from 1989–98. He also created the 1999 series It's Like, You Know... and produced the 2004 animated series Father of the Pride. Both were short-lived. Early life Mehlman grew up in Jewish family in New York City. He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1977. Career Early career Peter Mehlman began his career as a sportswriter for The Washington Post. He made his first move from print journalism to television writing when, from 1982 to 1984, he wrote for and produced the television series SportsBeat with Howard Cosell. For the next five years he returned to freelance magazine writing in New York for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, GQ and Esquire. Work on Seinfeld In 1989, Mehlman moved to Los Angeles and was offered the opportunity to write a script for Seinfeld by Larry David. As he had never written a script up to that point ("Pre-Seinfeld, I'd barely written any dialogue in my life"), Mehlman submitted instead a short humorous piece he had written for the New York Times Magazine. Jerry Seinfeld was so impressed by the piece that he gave Mehlman a writing assignment, out of which came the series' first freelance episode, "The Apartment." Mehlman was hired for the first full season of Seinfeld as a program consultant (1991–92) and, over the next six years, worked his way up to co-executive producer in the show's last season after Larry David's departure. Describing the process of writing for Seinfeld and evaluating his own work on the show, Mehlman wrote in an article for Entertainment Weekly: On the subject of how Seinfeld was different from all other network shows, Mehlman commented: A writer for The Morning Call said, "Everyone talks about the damage done when Jerry's cocreator and former executive producer Larry David left the series in 1996. But Seinfeld may have suffered the death blow when writer and coexecutive producer Peter Mehlman, who helped steer the show after David left, departed for Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks at the end of last season." She pointed to important elements that Mehlman created for the series, such as: Elaine shoving Jerry and others while exclaiming "Get out!!" for the first time; The question whether