When I started this blog, I tended to give my thoughts on each season of whatever show I was watching. For classic television shows, that doesn't make sense, because it is only relatively recently that writers have distinguished seasons from each other. Consider these type of posts indicative of my thoughts on the show as a whole.
Seinfeld never had a chance with me. I realize that now. I think Seinfeld is a good show. I want to make that clear. It wouldn't rank particularly high on my favorite comedies nor would it rank that high if I were to make an "objective" best comedies ever list. That is to say, if I decided one day to list the ten best comedies in my opinion, Seinfeld wouldn't be on it. I actually have no idea where it would rank, but I'm guessing "shockingly low" would be the answer.
All shows are dated in some way. I happen to think time was particularly cruel to Seinfeld. This is honestly a hard argument to make. The vast majority of people who watched Seinfeld consumed it at the time or they grew up with Seinfeld. I fully acknowledge that Seinfeld at the time was definitely worthy of its distinction. The thing is though - that brilliance isn't lost upon multiple viewings once you've seen it in the time and context it was meant to be seen. If you rewatch an episode that you first saw in 1994, it puts you back in 1994 and all those great memories return. For the people around my age who "grew up" with the show (basically watched it all the time as a kid and throughout their teens), it sort of has the same effect.
To use an example from my own personal life, I grew up with Friends. I find it much funnier than Seinfeld in a way that I simply cannot explain, but I assume it has something to do with watching and rewatching the show all throughout my childhood. Friends doesn't exactly have the greatest critical reputation - to say the least. If I started watching Friends for the first time tomorrow, I might still like the show, but I really doubt I'd love it. Who knows though?
Being that Seinfeld is primarily an observational comedy, it probably wasn't ever going to age all that well, but technology has made it worse than it otherwise could have been. The things Seinfeld observes pretty much don't apply now. Some do. Not many, but some do. There are legitimately episodes that only apply to living in New York specifically in the 1990s and no other time in history. That's not a complaint, but it makes it hard for me to love the show, especially with its emphasis on never developing its (unlikable) characters.
I'm going to look at another sitcom that crossed paths with Seinfeld as a comparison point to help illustrate my point. I'm going to ignore Friends, which I've already established I cannot look at objectively given that I grew up with the show and have literally spent thousands of hours of my life watching. The show I'm talking about is Cheers, which for me, would probably make a list of top ten sitcoms of all time. (Probably is only there because I've never given serious thought to make a top ten list at all)
First off, Cheers took the time to get you invested in the characters. They are way more likable even though they aren't necessarily "good" people. For the purposes of my argument, assume Cheers ended after five seasons. Sam is a sleazy womanizer. Norm is an alcoholic who neglects his wife. Diane is a pretentious asshole. Cliff is a pontificating know-it-all who actually knows jack shit. I will not say anything bad about Coach or Woody. Everyone loves a well-meaning buffoon. I haven't seen the show Frasier yet, but Frasier on Cheers has a book-worthy amount of issues you can unpack.
I think one key element between the shows is the acting. The acting on Cheers is just better. Julia Louis Dreyfuss and Jason Alexander aren't a problem, but Jerry Seinfeld is a terrible actor and Michael Richards* plays Kramer like he's on a different show from the rest of the leads. For whatever reason, I didn't enjoy about half the guest stars' acting either. It's not limited to people who can't act either. I didn't think Bryan Cranston was very good in his episodes. One example where this is an issue with me is Elaine's boyfriends, who frequently lack any charisma and look dopey in whatever 90s haircut they have.
*I'm going to admit that it's easier to hate on Michael Richards after what's come out on him. Similarly, Jerry Seinfeld seems like a huge jackass in real life to me. That's not an issue if the actor is good enough at acting to make you ignore real life, but Seinfeld is not. He might even admit that.
As a side note to the acting, I don't really want to harp on this too much, because it's not really what my post is specifically about, but I have to talk about how minorities and gay characters are portrayed on here. It's...pretty bad. For "comedies" sake, they usually went with the exaggerated, stereotypical, and borderline offensive accent, which would be less of a problem if that wasn't the only time the characters were represented.
I hate to bash on what is essentially the premise of the show, but... yes it got pretty old seeing Jerry and George date women way out of their league, only for the two of them to break up with them for some nitpicky reason. I'm not saying the nitpicky reasons weren't sometimes funny, but that's not something that you can sustain for 173 episodes - in my opinion anyway. It obviously worked best when you could understand the reason even though it's stupid, and you can only come up with so many stupid reasons to break up with someone that you sort of get.
Secondly, the combination of the "no hugging, no learning" strategy coupled with what I find to be mostly uninteresting characters leads to the entire episode completely dependent on how funny it is. George is really the only character that feels distinct and original from the others. I'm sure Seinfeld fans could do it, but I'm having a hard time trying to define either Elaine and Jerry as characters. JLD is a strong enough actress that it's not really a huge problem with her, but I legitimately find Jerry Seinfeld to be an awful actor. Kramer's a somewhat typical sitcom character - a character broad enough that they can write just about any storyline for him and it would be plausible. You can have one of those characters, but he's just not very interesting.
Seinfeld, in addition to being an observational comedy, was sort of a trial run of sorts to what Curb Your Enthusiasm became. There's three seemingly unrelated stories that may or may not come together at the end for maximum humiliation for one of the main characters. For example, Elaine buys her ex-roommate a bra out of spite because she never wears a bra. George finds that simply leaving his car at Yankee Stadium means everyone think he's working hard. The car gets bird shit all over it so they need to drive it to a car wash so nobody at Yankee Stadium is the wiser. They walk by the ex-roommate, who is wearing just a bra, which causes them to crash George's car.
I don't think Seinfeld started as that type of show, but eventually this type of plotting happened just about every episode. And... it sure makes New York City seem like the smallest fucking place in the world. To use the above example, Kramer and Jerry are really driving by Sue Ellen walking in her bra at the exact same time? IT'S NEW YORK FUCKING CITY. Do you know how big that place is? Or how many people are in it? Again, this is something that is fine to wave away sometimes, but it happens a lot. Granted, this is also somewhat of an issue with Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it's easier to wave away because it's a bunch of show business people probably going to the same places and the plotting is much tighter and better written.
That leads me to my last point. I don't find Seinfeld funny enough to overcome these flaws (to be a great show.) As I said, the show's lack of interest in developing its characters and my lack of interest in the characters themselves mean it's all up to the episode to be funny. It would not be inaccurate to say that a large part of the show's humor is observational humor, which goes back to one of the first points I made: it's dated particularly poorly. Now, I'm being unfair because I'm not going back and watching the rest of the sitcoms that aired in 1989. I'm sure I'd have a greater appreciation for Seinfeld if torturers Clockwork Orange'd me into watching every show it was up against. I'm comparing it to the classic comedies.
In that respect, I think I've at least watched enough of the shows that aired at similar times - to be able to declare that I just will never think of this as the classic many do. It's not as good as Cheers. It's not as good as The Simpsons. It's not as good as The Larry Sanders Show. I think Curb Your Enthusiasm is vastly superior in terms of Larry David shows (which to be fair has a whole bunch of advantages over Seinfeld by virtue of being on HBO and airing in 2000).
Seinfeld holds it place for me as a good, not great show. If I gave my honest opinion to people who hadn't seen the show on whether or not they should go back and watch Seinfeld, I'd say if there's a rerun on one of the channels and nothing else is on, sure go ahead. I would not suggest going back and watching the entire show. It's just not quite good enough to justify that to me. The reruns give a good sense of what type of a show it is. If you love it, well then my answer changes. If you felt like I did: "This is pleasant, a mild distraction from everyday life, but I don't get what the fuss is about" - it's really not worth it.
To be clear, I'm grading this show against other classic, best of all time shows, because that's how it's perceived. I don't consider Seinfeld "timeless" in the way the best shows do. Obviously, you'll recognize when just about any television show was made immediately, but timeless shows have a way of maintaining their quality years later. I can't possibly explain why I think Cheers is timeless and Seinfeld isn't*, but as Justice Potter Stewart once said, "I know it when I see it." Again, Seinfeld was kind of always doomed on this front, just because the writers couldn't possibly have seen what technology was about to bring, not to mention Larry David and writers were not concerned what someone in 2018 would think about the show. But it's simply not timeless.
*Though here's a short attempt. The Diane Chamber years of Cheers covered a truly timeless sitcom staple: will they/won't they. Season two of Cheers is one of the greatest seasons of television and every episode checked in with Sam and Diane's relationship. The character-based work and focus on whether or not a relationship will work? That's always going to be present in shows. If the Rebecca Howe years were considered a separate show, however, I would not consider that timeless.
Am I judging this too harshly for what it was? Yes absolutely. But to me, a classic television show would hold up to these questions and survive. M*A*S*H was a classic (which I hope to write about one day, but I've only seen the fantastic first season so far). Cheers was a classic. The Simpsons - the show that got cancelled after 11 seasons - was a classic. Seinfeld? A good, but not great show.
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