Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

Hey, I don't think I've seen the reprise. There's a reason to live! Assume everyone has seen the reference at How To Dance Properly

Otherwise, what Mitch said.

Any hot chicks out there want to get bisy just let me know. I got it all . They call me "the Mutt" and with all that implies. And that ain't dirt in my eye.

Larry

I thought this said "...and with all my nipples". I have no clue why or what that could possibly imply but that's much better than what that said.

The Simpsons, conversely, are classic.

Also, Jerry's millions got him that 17 y.o. honey (who ended up dumping his ass, btw). Not the trainers. No way was it the trainers. Please god tell me it wasn't the trainers.

Elaine had the best hair ever in the later series.

Anyway, I want to hate this show, it's the type of cultural phenomenon that normally annoys me, but every time I stumble across a rerun I end up watching it and having some good laffs. Last night I saw the one where Elaine dates a mover but breaks up with him because of his stance on abortion. And George invites himself over to a family's house to watch their rented copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's because he didn't read the book for his study group. It was funny. I'll say classic.

BBC2 didin't treat these shows like the comedy gold they were (sticking them late evening etc WTF?!) whereas crap like friends and will and grace get prime time on C4 (OK the former was funny for the first two series).

crosspost: daddino doesn't rock anymore.

I HAVEN'T EVEN BEGUN TO ROCK YET!

I'm afraid of you.

George Constanza is a brilliant character. A recognizable, even sympathetic monster.

Witness this and this. As well as this, once in a while.

Also, I'm fairly sure I would love Larry Sanders, but I've never seen it because of the stupid fucking BBC.

But I do think it's a great show, and sometimes ridiculously funny. And I think the "nihilism" (but it's not that - it's a sympathetic portrait of failed humanity) is what makes it great. Curb Your Enthusiasm does this too, but too much so - we need some real humor and niceness along with the nasty stuff. Also, the particularly New York voice of the show. Complaining about the hackneyed plot lines is like complaining that Buffy has to kill a vampire every week (well, ok, maybe there's something to that).

It's not my personal favorite tv show - I like sentimental, yuppie-sensibility stuff like Mad About You and Northern Exposure, which I won't make greatness claims for. And It's not the greatest tv show ever - whatever that is, it's probably not a sitcom - but I think a good argument can be made for best sitcom of the last 25 years

I totally disagree with this. I've come to HATE the basic attitude of Seinfeld - I watch it every night, it's the only thing on TV in New Zealand - and Jerry's whole, 'My parents love me, aren't I adorable, you all love me, and I'm just gonna be a fucking bastard because I can' thing is really wearying after a while. Seinfeld doesn't even break a sweat. He's always as cool as a cucumber, looking at everyone else - looking at girls - and the sneer is never too far away. Larry David seems much humbler - he can hardly bear to look anyone else in the face, let alone laugh AT them. This makes 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' seem much, much nicer to me.

No way. Even when I watched them on the first run they felt a bit performative.

Nothing is better than the NBC pilot. So many story lines weaving in and out all season.

yeah that's probably the best season overall, just saying the later ones make me laugh more, particularly all the bizarre meta stuff. like George just randomly popping in while Jerry is in the confessional booth, lampshading the fact that these characters are somehow always together and always know what the others are up to. or that peppy organ music Kramer and Newman are listening to while making sausages, for some reason. and then Kramer listening to the same music in his car. it reminds me of peak Simpsons humor.

First time I saw one of those articles about ‘raw digging’ on an flight, I thought about Puddy on the plane with Elaine.

I thought about the Flipmode Squidad.

I'd be hard pressed to choose my favourite Puddy line. "Feels like an Arby's night." "We don't even know what that is." "They're bacteria traps."

Sometimes Elaine seems like the only sane person in Jerry's apartment, trying to wrangle randos, and she can get pressed into service, calling the Drakette, for instance---and that works out fine, at least communication-wise: girls mature faster than boys, and keep social principals going, especially on sitcoms/
But there's a moment when she goes deeper/starker in "The Dinner Party," to which they all four must take wine and cake, cos that's what grown-ups do, but----another woman gets the last chocolate babka, and Elaine breaks off complaining to---look around, with big, scared eyes, dark as keyholes---and it's not Julia looking through the fourth wall, it's Elaine, looking around the shop, the other customers, people outside, the maze of the city, the rules and uncertainty---"The system's breaking down," Jerry says when she's going off to Bizarro World on that other ep----it's the anxiety always here, underlying the foursome's quests.
So that's the good revelation---the bad is, I finally saw that moment in "The Deal" ("this, that, and the other"), when she realizes how truly, valley of the uncanny clueless he is, when he not only can't connect the way she wants, but can't do it when he wants, doesn't know how, like a Philip K. Dick similicron struggling against/in its "nature"---and no, no they can't just go back to being friends" they realize it---and now he's appalled, and I am too: this show has entered the valley of the uncanny.where the viewer is triggered, by signs of realness, to seek more realness than can be given, generated-----so of course it snaps back into what can be salvaged of the regular framework at the end----wtf were they thinking?!

watching seinfeld is so funny bc some of the observational humor is totally alien in 2024. kramer makes a joke about how "people go to the library to read the newspaper on those big sticks" and you THINK it's just him being weird but then it cuts to this pic.twitter.com/MDO19zC1V9

— largest rodent (@capybaroness) July 24, 2024

amazing how well this works

* seinfeld theme plays*

9 year old me: pic.twitter.com/WFlZK3sMxk

— Seinfeld Current Day (@Seinfeld2000) August 9, 2024

Several years ago, when Twitter was still Twitter, Jason Alexander felt compelled to say that Heidi Swedberg, who played Susan, gave him nothing to work with, no spark, and somebody else agreed, so Larry sez "Whyn't we just kill her?" Later on Twitter, Jason was all apologies. Maybe it was the edits,writing adjustments, but she always seemed to fit in as the one for everybody else to bounce weirdness onp---like Elaine and Jerry until it was their turn to be weird. The only thing weird about her was being around all those resident randos for so long, no matter what they did to her---think she was the one who dumped George, not vice-versa---but then she came back. Although---she's one of those people, who, when you're around her actual family, more things become clear.

"bounce weirdness on," Ah meant to say.

I think Jason did have kind of a point, nothing against Heidi but she just always felt beamed in from a more generic sitcom to me. kind of made her character work though, just the idea that she was a fairly regular person that George couldn't really relate to. that said her character didn't really make sense, if anything she's the one who should be desperate to get away from George and his friends.

If she could grow up with her relatives, ugh, she's ripe for more fretful weirdos (also she got to boss George, to some extent: could be strict, could be gullible--- maybe like with her own little brother back in the family apartment).-

But also, what were they gonna do before Jason's complaint, just have them get married and him continue whining etc---that really would have been nauseous-hubby sitcom, like The Ropers and Married With Children.

So yeah, gotta do something, maybe have her go off with somebody else==="Go Lesbian" for keeps maybe, or with another George-looking dude (maybe the one from Elaine's Bizarro World, or George and Jerry's sitcom).

Seinfeld has written characters off for all sorts of nonsenscial reasons, same as they've randomly brought folks back, they would've figured something stupid out

there are definitely a few characters on the show who didn't fit the vibe, Susan probably the biggest one, probably Crazy Joe Davola too, some of the scenes with him feel like they're from a different show. a lot of Jerry's girlfriends as well though they tended not to get many lines

The best thing about Susan was Warren Frost and Grace Zabriskie playing her parents

one strange thing I just remembered was that Elaine's dad was like some gruff Russian war hero, the scene where Jerry and George try to interact with him is great, is it just me or was that never brought up again

"Dear Henry, last night with you was bliss. I fear my.. orgasm has left me a cripple. I don't how how I shall ever get back to work...I love you madly. John.

P.S. Loved the cabin."

Xp you're right, bc Lawrence Tierney was such a nightmare on set they wrote the character off

haha really??

“he’s the master of the house”

IMDb:

When he guest-starred on the Seinfeld (1989) episode The Jacket (1991) as Elaine's father, he scared the cast so badly that they never had him back on. He stole a butcher knife from Jerry Seinfeld's TV kitchen and hid it under his jacket. When Seinfeld undauntedly confronted him about it (much to the dismay of the entire cast), Tierney pretended that he was going to use the knife as a gag in reference to the movie Psycho (1960) during the episode and quickly returned it.

Haha that wasn't the half of it with Tierney:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Tierney#Off-screen_troubles

Yeah, Jason Alexander has been quoted as saying that Tierney x his character, as played and written(based on novelist RichardRevolution Raods Yates, Dad of show producer/writer Andrea Yates, according to interviews and pix in an Inside Seinfeld-type book I skimmed) was antithetical to EVERYBODY else on and behind the show, would have made a fucking awesome recurring character.

Sorry: Richard Revolutionary Road Yates, I meant.
(And yeah Susan's parents were awesome---also thinking of Mad Men Pete's parents, esp in "Old Amsterdam" ep)

I agree - I'm not surprised they fired him and he would've been a great recurring character. The one appearance alone set up so much that was left unexamined (like Elaine's mother who was presumably divorced from him). Damn shame.

Jason totally agrees, if I didn't make that clear!