Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

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

pretty quickly they establish hot women just falling into Jerry's lap every week so why would he try?

I never cared much for the first season. It struck me as one of those sitcoms--almost always the case--where the characters weren't yet developed, and everything feels a couple of beats too slow. Things got crazier and more surreal after that--to the point of being preposterous if you ever stopped to consider things--but that was what worked.

Larry Sanders might be the only sitcom I know where I can go back and feel like they knew exactly what they were doing, and what they wanted the characters to be like, from the very first episode.

(1st season?) episode where Jerry lets a woman stay over at his place thinking something's going to happen

it's the very first episode!

i think all the characters in Seinfeld are yupster flaneurs throughout the series, tbh

and yeah clemz otm, George esp is doing a p annoyingly transparent Woody Allen impression in first season

yupster flaneurs

what..?

Larry Sanders might be the only sitcom I know where I can go back and feel like they knew exactly what they were doing, and what they wanted the characters to be like, from the very first episode.

Arrested Development too, but I agree this is quite rare for sitcoms

Larry Sanders might be the only sitcom I know where I can go back and feel like they knew exactly what they were doing, and what they wanted the characters to be like, from the very first episode.

― clemenza, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 9:07 AM

first episode of Larry Sanders got bumped to air as 13th of 13 because Shandling didn't feel that confident of it.

(Sanders continued to shuffle TX order throughout the run, often causing bemusing continuity errors of you were watching regularly - it's frustrating that the DVD box didn't revert to production order, at least in those instances.)

ha yeah I was gonna bring up arrested there

there's an S1 commentary track or sth where jason alexander describes being taken aback by the audition script, to the effect of "it was so different, it didn't read like a sitcom at that time, it was like a woody allen movie, and so when i went in I really leaned into a woody allen impression and left thinking wow I really blew that audition, there's no way that's what they were looking for" or something

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.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, September 27, 2017 2:27 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What's the name of this King story

(first three eps of Sanders to air were 4, 5 and 6)

weird name

lol

It's called "the jaunt"

lol I'm as old now as George was on the first episode of Seinfeld

Now you can own a Seinfeld set replica!

https://seinfeldsetreplica.com/?%3Fcampaign=Festivus

Jerry Seinfeld and Family Visit Anti-terror Fantasy Camp in West Bankhttps://t.co/GoKMnoH8Kg pic.twitter.com/d83Ub7APye

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) January 8, 2018

"Caliber 3 is a counterterrorism and security training academy that in recent years has built on its expertise to create a new line of business: special programs for tourists seeking a taste of the Israeli military experience."

...

A friend gave me Seinfeldia for Christmas. Looks quite good.

Seinfeldia was good. Jennifer Armstrong--same author who wrote Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted a few years ago. Maybe this shouldn't have been a surprise, but the amount of material that was right out of the writers' lives--sometimes papered over, sometimes almost verbatim--must have been in the 90-95% range. Frank Sinatra died sometime during the airing of the final episode...may have actually been watching, that was a little unclear.

One example: Elaine's father, the curmudgeonly author (played by Lawrence Tierney), was based on Richard Yates, father of a writer's ex-girlfriend. Usually, though, it was just some stupid thing that had happened to a writer the day before.

i should pick that up, looks like a fun read.

i saw a clip of jerry a while back where somebody asked him why his character hated newman so much, and his response was that there really wasn't any reason, it was just funnier that way. if you think about it, there's really no rational reason jerry should despise newman while having no problem with kramer.

Sinatra died the day the finale aired. I only remember that because there was a news item about how Nancy was mad about not finding out quickly because she was so wrapped in watching the episode.

I never figured out if the joke behind Kenny Bania was that he was a terrible comedian or that him and Seinfeld were basically the same

I think it's just that he's annoying

Kenny's a McGuffin character who's always just a slave to that week's situation. Whatever was needed he was there - following in Jerry's footsteps, or he was dating Jerry's ex or using Jerry as mentor. Often didn't make sense in single episodes that he suddenly he had a cable show or whatever but it just served that week's plot.

At least one Bania episode was related to events. The one where he becomes popular riding Jerry's coattails was meant as a joke about all the bad NBC shows that got good ratings because of a time-slot before Seinfeld. (Whatever Jerry/Newman backstory there might be never came up in the book.)

It's pretty weird that Elaine's dad only appeared that once

there's really no rational reason jerry should despise newman while having no problem with kramer

I always say Kramer as well mannered and had good intentions, whereas Newman was just devious and was always out for himself.

(from wiki)

His [Lawrence Tierney] performance was brilliant, and they contemplated making him a recurring character. However, when he was caught stealing a knife from the set, and later pulling it on Seinfeld in a threatening fashion, it became clear that he would not be invited back

(that was response to Wins re Elaines Dad)

Although I recall the DVD commentary version of that being slightly different and not mentioning the threatening part at all, just that he stole cutlery and kept hiding it from Jerry.

^^ could've been the inspiration for the guy casted as Kramer for Jerry and George's pilot who stole (or didn't steal) the raisins

Wasn’t it Larry David who dated at some point Richard Yates’ daughter?

Thanks for the heads up on this being a behind-the-scenes thing, clemenza. I'm interested in reading it now that I know it isn't the instantly-clearanced quickie boilerplate pop culture cash-in that it appeared to be at first blush. I love in-depth televisual post-mortems, e.g. Bill Carter's NBC late night books and the Simpsons oral history.