The signs were clearly displayed in the Season Three finale The Keys, and The Trip: Part 1 confirms it: Seinfeld's fourth season is the show at its most inspired, provocative and constantly, endearingly funny. It's the only time the series won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy (the remaining five seasons lost out to another NBC sitcom classic, Frasier), and it's also the year that saw Seinfeld become the ratings success it had deserved to be since 1990 (courtesy of Rick Ludwin's decision to air the show right after Cheers, which was in its final season).
Picking up from the discovery that Kramer has moved to Los Angeles and become an actor, The Trip has Jerry go to L.A. to make an appearance on The Tonight Show and George come with him to look for Kramer. What they don't know is that their friend is involved in a case of mistaken identity, and while Kramer gets in more trouble than usual, George manages to make a total ass out of himself once again by suggesting some of his crazy ideas to famous NBC stars such as Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law) and George Wendt (Norm from Cheers).
The true genius of The Trip: Part 1 lies in what can be seen as a foreshadowing of the season's now legendary story arc about Jerry and George making a sitcom. The storyline isn't actually introduced until Episode 3, but the program's willingness to make fun of its own network is already visible in most of the episode, be it when Jerry talks to Jay Leno (a parody of the comedian's real-life guest appearance on the famous talk show) or the instantly hilarious moment when George asks Wendt if they could use another setting instead of the bar (it would be like asking Larry David to stop using Jerry's apartment).
In short: the show's love for self-mockery is most evident in the fourth season, and an appetizer of some of the series' finest moments are visible in this episode. It's so good, it doesn't even matter that Elaine is absent for the first time since the pilot (in which she didn't even exist yet).
