her hair short to get it out, making her hair look exactly like Jerry's. Terrified, George flees. Sally runs into Kramer at Monk's and is happy about her new celebrity. Frustrated from being unable to voice his opinions on the recent developments in his friends' lives, Kramer breaks his vow of silence and tells her about Janet. Sally adds a bit on her show about Jerry forcing his friend to date women who look like him. Kramer renews his vow of silence. Background The episode was inspired by comedian Kathy Griffin's ridiculing Jerry Seinfeld during a stand-up comedy performance on HBO's HBO Comedy Half-Hour (airing October 18, 1996) where she stated that he was rude to her during her first appearance on the sitcom, in the episode "The Doll". Seinfeld was so amused by this that he wrote her a humorous letter congratulating her for it (reprinted in her memoir, Official Book Club Selection), added the clip of her routine as well as a clip of her being interviewed about the incident by Conan O'Brien to a video shown to audiences at Seinfeld tapings, and had it written into the series. Griffin said, given that this was one of the final ten episodes of Seinfeld, "I felt like it was part of history-making television." The episode's writer, Bruce Eric Kaplan, had himself contributed many cartoons to The New Yorker, and he drew upon some of his own experiences for this part of the plot. Kaplan said of the cartoon subplot, "To me, the most interesting part of that story was the idea of not understanding a cartoon. ... Just because I’m a New Yorker cartoonist, that story actually wasn’t as personal as it may appear." Production The table read for the episode was held on January 8, 1998. The scenes in the Peterman office and theater were filmed on January 12, followed by the exterior scenes on January 13, and finally the live audience taping of the scenes in Jerry's apartment and Monk's cafe on January 14. The filming ran well over the allotted time for the episode, surpassing 32 minutes, necessitating that some scenes be cut entirely in addition to the usual editing. During filming, the writers came up with a new closing line for a scene where Elaine argues with a co-worker who says he understands the "e-mail" cartoon in The New Yorker, which earned a big laugh