Much Ado About Nothing

Anyhow, hugging has never been a Seinfeld thing because, face it, Jerry is not what you'd call a hugger. ''There are many things I'm embarrassed to do (on the show), usually something with a woman,'' he says. Like, kiss her? ''Yeah, I'm still having a little trouble with that. I go to great lengths to keep myself from feeling at all awkward — because I hate it. Comedians are generally very self-conscious people. There is nothing like having your own show, I can't recommend it more highly to you. To be able to go nahhhh, I don't think I want to do that.''

He is trying to stretch, though. ''When something comes up now I say, 'Okay, let me try it,' instead of nixing it. Coming out in your underwear, or whatever it is. Although I look good in my underwear. But I have no desire to be seen in it.''

Seinfeld is single, thin, and neat — not that there's anything wrong with that. On the set of the show that bears his name — a Hollywood soundstage transformed into an Ur-Upper West Side Manhattan apartment — he runs lines, takes direction, even rests with concentration. He watches Richards rehearsing a Krameresque stumble. ''Heh-heh-ha-HAH!'' he laughs, a happy-to-be-here, appreciative laugh. ''That's great!'' When he is not rehearsing he is writing, testing comedy material, meditating, practicing his yoga. A New Yorker who misses his old nabe (he still keeps his apartment on the Upper West Side, as well as a big new house in the Hollywood Hills), he plays tennis, he rides his bike, he drives one of his four Porsches, he wears his sneakers. ''If someone says, 'Hey, do you want to play a game of touch football on the street?' I don't have to go home and change.''

Richards, on the other hand, now, he's more of a hands-on man. Loping backstage in one of the signature flea-market shirts he has appropriated for his character (''I thought, 'What kind of money would Kramer spend on his clothing?' I decided he shopped at thrift stores''), Richards, 43, jabs at the air and snaps his head, speaking lines to himself. Divorced after 18 years of marriage, and the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Sophia, the Los Angeles native is a grown-up who is teaching himself to cook. (''I don't believe a man is a man unless he's able to feed himself.'') Alexander wanders over to the cast's canvas chairs and chats with his wife, Daena, who has dropped by for a visit; Louis-Dreyfus sits holding a script, Gibson girl hair shining under the lights.

''Every year we just have more fun with each other, there's more trust,'' says Alexander, 33 (his George-ian accent is a short stretch; the guy's from New Jersey). But obviously there has been hugging somewhere: Alexander and Daena, a writer and actress, have an 11-month-old son, Gabriel; Louis-Dreyfus, 32, and her husband of five years, fellow SNL alumnus Brad Hall, 34, are the parents of Henry Hall, 9 months.

''These days we want to get home a little sooner,'' says Alexander. ''I remember when the four of us would never rehearse, we would just clown and clown and clown and clown. We didn't care if we got home. Now you see Julia and me going, 'Hmmm, the store closes soon, the baby goes to bed at seven...'''

Here is Jerry Seinfeld on relaxation: ''I find the most ordinary day in regular life much more interesting than the most stimulating day on a vacation. I go to a supermarket, I'm having a great time. I go down the street, I say, 'Look at this, look at that,' I'm fascinated. I don't know why I would go to someplace to have a good time, when the pressure of having to have one because I went to all that trouble to get there would just make me nuts.''

And here is Larry David, Seinfeld's lugubriously funny inspiration and chief writer, on the comforts of misery: ''Every day I pray that this show will be canceled. I'm just a simple caveman. I don't understand why people are watching us now when they didn't watch us before. I don't have good feelings about anything.''

Of course, that's not entirely true. As Seinfeld ends its season with a finale that reprises nearly every character who has ever appeared this year — and that includes the virgin, JFK Jr., Calvin Klein, Bubble Boy, the whole motley crew — David sounds dangerously close to admitting happiness. The company is tight, the writing staff is elite (regulars include Peter Mehlman and ''the other Larry,'' Larry Charles). Besides, with the season wrapped, David can take a load off and visit his hometown of New York City and watch his boys, the Yankees, play baseball.

Gloomy and spectacularly neurotic, angry and shy, and, like George, a Balding Single Guy, David, 45, will, when pressed, admit that the episode called ''The Contest'' (taken from David's plot-inspiring life), in which Jerry and his friends compete for who can refrain from masturbating the longest, ''probably gave me more pleasure than any other show I've ever done.'' Then he rails against an audience so fickle that the time-slot shift would make such a big difference in Nielsen numbers. ''As I've said before,'' he mopes manfully, ''if people didn't watch us on Wednesdays, I don't want them watching us on Thursdays.''

Seinfeld says he has fame figured out. ''All this attention that I'm getting now is very nice. But it's perfume. I smell it. I don't eat it. So I'm enjoying it, but I'm not buying it.'' He says he would like to get married and have children, but he remains a Master of the First Date. (A tabloid headline last summer sobbed, SEINFELD'S BIG PROBLEM: TOO MUCH MONEY & NOT ENOUGH LOVE.)

''I really like not dealing with people,'' he continues, eyes wide, corner of the mouth turned up for a classic Seinfeld delivery. ''Like, when I'm on a plane, I always make sure to do everything the stewardess wants me to do before it needs to be done, just so she doesn't have to come over and say anything. The funny thing about being a comedian is, you have to have this great love for humanity on a mass level, because that's why you work so hard to do something good for people you don't even know — and yet still manage to absolutely hate every single individual that you come in contact with.''

Not that there's anything wrong with that, either. (If you must have sappy romance, you can always watch Love & War.) As long as Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer keep on not learning and not hugging, Seinfeld has Nothing to be proud of.