Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

I still think season 4 (where Jerry and George are working on the pilot for Jerry's show) is one of the best seasons of television ever.

I still think season 4 (where Jerry and George are working on the pilot for Jerry's show) is one of the best seasons of television ever.

― this is ridcolus (Old Lunch), Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:29 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find season 4 a weird outlier. they've fully established the characters and they're now perfectly formed, which took at least a couple of seasons to really happen. but the narrative arc throughout the season seems odd to me, it's not really what I'm looking for out of Seinfeld. also the joe davola stuff is too scary lol

and by ever you mean since 1980

xp

I'm finally digging into Broad City and getting my own NYC-life-recognition buzz off that. Seinfeld for me was more like trying to grasp what adults did and how they lived.

thank god seinfeld doesn't have weed smoking dubstep montages

xpost Well, since tv before 1980 wasn't generally interested in constructing season-long arcs, yeah, that is what I mean.

(Plus that thing where tv wasn't even good until, what, the mid-'90s?)

yadda yadda yadda

eff arcs

stand-alone episodes forevah

pictures morbs watching the phil silvers show and sugarfoot constantly

xpost I mostly only watch Rockford Files and Alfred Hitchcock Presents these days so I am largely inclined to agree with u atm.

the 70s columbo episodes are a lot better than the 80s/90s revival episodes. maybe morbs is right

lol Sugarfoot, that's a nice one jim but i have never seen it

the past week i have been bouncing between Twin Peaks 1990 and Dick Van Dyke

George wanting his coworkers to start calling him "T-Bone" is the funniest thing to me

Speaking of Seinfeld season 4, I just saw this supercut the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvOFYCgtJY

they ended it right before it started to suck
One of my all-time favorite shows, but I've gotta disagree with that -- final two seasons sucked

i meant in the context of, say, The Simpsons, which just kept going. in a way i agree and those last seasons of Seinfeld are pretty bad but not _really bad_. certainly they were sliding in quality and getting more cartoonish. i think the tail end of "golden era" Simpsons had a lot of crap on the level of the last two seasons of Seinfeld (certainly Homer/Kramer parallel sliding further into surreal mascot status).

both were headed to the same arc, what do you do with these characters who already have hundreds of stories, whose characters have catchphrases and fans and expectations? maybe they parachuted out right as plane was starting to crash.

re "since 1980," i have seen and loved plenty of classic tv and seinfeld is right up there w/ the best of it, i'd rate it as the finest ever u.s. sitcom just behind the honeymooners. season four is glorious because the various little story arcs really do deepen the comedy and lead to incredible moments (like george's dumb story idea about the guy sentenced to be someone's butler -- and then a couple episodes later, george becomes that guy) whereas on other, lesser sitcoms it'd just be some soap-opera shit. and yes, elaine trapped in joe davola's apartment is genuinely scary and actually kind of hard to watch.

i had an eerie realization a while back: seinfeld ended in may 1998, the same month they aired the last episodes of simpsons season 9, which is probably the last gasp of "golden era" simpsons before the rot really sets in. now imagine if seinfeld were still on the air in 2017, with the same cast but all-new writers, and that's how bizarre it really is that the simpsons is still chugging away almost two decades later. puts me in mind of the stephen king story w/ the kid who gets stuck in limbo for millions of years and goes insane.

There’s a certain point where if you’re making too much money doing something you start to suck at it.

well, unless you're Spielberg

Ok, I'm on that script website, and looking over the episodes from the last two seasons "sucked" is probably too harsh -- remembering lots of decent bits and some great lines from them now, though as I replay them from memory the humor is blunted somewhat by the actors really over-doing their characters. The car dealership episode genuinely sucked.

I think I do agree they ended at the right time, noting that season 8 was fantastic.

I think the hardest thing to identify with about Seinfeld the show is how often attention is drawn to Seinfeld the character needing to spend lots of money, but never ever enough to affect him negatively.

"oh well guess I gotta buy new washing machines for the laundromat"
"installed this new kitchen but it sucks, rip it all out"
"I've got to fly to Florida like 4 times this week! Yeesh"

I honest to god never ever wondered about this. Perhaps because Jerry is the most 'cartoonish' character of the show (more so than Kramer even imo). It's part of the deal between the viewers and the creators; in order for it to be so good and so surreal at times, it's 'allowed' to not have to account for things like this. And for "a show about nothing" they spent way more time and detail on the mundane, the "excrutiating minutiae" to make up for leaving this be.

well, unless you're Spielberg

true, he sucked from the beginning

jerry is a successful comedian who appears on tv and plays lucrative club gigs. he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in a rent controlled building. within the show he is supposed to have quite a lot of disposable income. this doesn't really stretch credulity for me.

Kramer has to sit on the couch, he's so shocked.
KRAMER: My god, you're rich.
JERRY: (taking back the check) Oh yeah.
KRAMER: I didn't know you made that kinda money. (subdued) Jeez.
JERRY: What?
KRAMER: I don't think I can talk to you any more. I feel inferior.
JERRY: I never shoulda told you.
KRAMER: You know, Jerry, I think this changes the relationship. I mean, I
feel it. Do you feel it?
JERRY: No, I can't feel anything.
KRAMER: Well, what're you gonna do with all that money?
JERRY: Actually, I was thinking of donating a large portion of it to
charity.
KRAMER: (pleased) Really?
JERRY: (deadpan) No.

brutal

There's a weirdly Bojerry Horsefeldian quality when you see it written out like that.

julia louis-dreyfus has breast cancer

Just when you thought... pic.twitter.com/SbtYChwiEj

— Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@OfficialJLD) September 28, 2017

dammit

in order for it to be so good and so surreal at times, it's 'allowed' to not have to account for things like this.

The grand living quarters of Friends was more of a distraction.

Bojerry Horsefeldian

lmfao

IT WAS MONICA’S GRANDMOTHER’S APARTMENT AND IT WAS RENT CONTROLLED AND THEY WERE SUBLETTING IT ILLEGALLY

IT WAS MONICA’S GRANDMOTHER’S APARTMENT AND IT WAS RENT CONTROLLED AND THEY WERE SUBLETTING IT ILLEGALLY

― sciatica, Thursday, September 28, 2017 11:26 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huge if true

whoaa, squatter's rights

that is canon in the Friends universe

why was their apartment so huge and spacious and then joey and chandler's is just like a regular 2 bed apartment?

i am aware of different floor plans between apartments in a building obv because I'm not insane but that drastic a difference just across the hall on the same floor?

ok I started rewatching the series from the beginning on Hulu and you're right, all the stand up in the netflix special is pretty much taken from his his early standup (didn't realize it was more than two jokes, but the laundry one seemed familiar), all of which is used in the first three episodes of the series.

v sad news about JLD

There's lots of good stuff later on but it got goofier, more surreal, and more aware that any little thing they included was practically a catchphrase already. Also the ground-level parking-garage observational stuff and comedy-of-manners material started taking a back seat to high-concept hijinks.

The best episodes/seasons hit the right middle-point between these 2. 1st season can be very prosaic "so Jerry, do you tip the delivery man?" stuff and yeah like Cheers the last season or 2 was basically live-action cartoon.

the other day i overheard a young man explaining 'heLLLOOOOOOO' to a coworker, it was so quaint

JERRY: No, I can't feel anything.

haha

I thought that Netflix special was pretty good. You see music documentary/shows where an artist goes back and plays a gig in their original haunts with the material that made them, but I can't ever remember seeing a comedy special like that one. Considering it was 30+ year old material, it held up pretty well and was a unique way to do a documentary type show. Seinfeld's stand up style was always that more classic one bit into another type of comedy.

crazy the stretch of time between SNL and Seinfeld where JLD was kinda obscure!

Hope she beats this

If I may butt in on the Friends thing - is Rachel & Monica's apartment really that much bigger than Joey & Chandler's? Because it seems to me they're both a big kitchen/living space with two bedrooms off the back, the only difference being the location of the bathroom - presumably the girls' apartment is a wee bit bigger and has that wee corridor with the bathroom and that one plot-device cupboard of stuff because it has the balcony at the end of the building whereas the boys' one has the stairwell running down the back of where their bathroom is. Yeah, I watch Friends too much, what of it?

Love JLD, wishing her all the best.

We Veeps stick together. Jill and I, and all of the Bidens, are with you, Julia. pic.twitter.com/JP0c2wtrJ6

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 28, 2017

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/friends/images/a/af/The_Apartments.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170222205314

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/24/article-2192882-14AB7867000005DC-193_964x585.jpg

living room is significantly larger and also has high ceilings and loft style windows. and there's a balcony.

lol

ha

i think that outdoor space would add a lot to any rent. having that in any city let alone NYC is a luxury.

i was watching some classic episodes from the earlier seasons. in one ep George and Elaine go to a psychic and she tells him not to get on a plane. he is really freaked out about it and takes the whole tarot reading very seriously. it reminded me of another early episode where they go to a New Agey healer who tries to cure George's tonsils holistically.

anyways just sort of noticed this was almost a running theme in the early years, that they kind of hint that the Seinfeld crew were sort of NY hipsters kind of into this weird stuff (via hipster doofus Kramer). they mostly shed this in later years when they get locked into the more predictable (and funnier) characterizations as jobs-centric yuppies.

yeah, I think the early shows were more idiosyncractic, in a way that actual hip-ish people from NY (or whatever big city) are -- the characters got more solidified in later years, so they basically just played them up, and made wacky situations for them to be in.

there's a super (1st season?) episode where Jerry lets a woman stay over at his place thinking something's going to happen, but she already has a boyfriend. the self-doubt, vulnerability, angst that Jerry shows in that episode would never happen post, say, season 4

super early that is

totally. like the bit with Kramer getting Jerry to donate to a charity in order to impress Elaine on a date. he probably wouldn't even bother in the later seasons