Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

I won't play the relevant clip, which probably doesn't date especially well, but when they were doing roll call for the McCarthy vote, "Cartwright?" made me laugh.

Too bad there wasn't a Congressman Constanza to ask if they said his name.

Seinfeld hints at redoing of finale (I tried to post link to Guardian article but ilx didn't like the link)

“I think the thing about finales is everybody writes their own finale in their head, whereas if they just tune in during the week to a normal show, they’re surprised by what’s going on. They haven’t written it beforehand, they don’t know what the show is,”

For me that wasn't the issue. The issue was that the finale just wasn't funny at all.

redoing? like re-editing?

From the article:

In response to a question from an audience member during his standup show at the Wang Theatre in Boston on Saturday, the comedian teased that a re-envisioned finale may be in the works.

Seinfeld was asked whether he liked the TV sitcom’s finale. “Well, I have a little secret for you about the ending. But I can’t really tell it because it is a secret,” he responded.

“Here’s what I’ll tell you, OK, but you can’t tell anybody. Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. Hasn’t happened yet,” Seinfeld said to loud gasps and applause.

Ahh maybe they shot a couple of different endings

or maybe they get released from |redacted|

Probably a Super Bowl commercial.

lol yeah duh

xpost

Upon release from jail, they run into the Close Talker, and trying to escape him, are all hit by a bus.

Cue George in his dying moments, hearing himself in his head singing "Believe it or not, George isn't alive"

what would be a funny ending for that show. not defending the ending, just saying i'm sure there are "takes" out there

It’s an inspired idea for a finale tbh, the last scene is p much perfect. The ep itself is one of the worst of the run only cause it has barely any jokes in it, just a load of flatly executed callbacks

yeah maybe they needed one with jokes

went back and looked at some of the episodes from the last season. they had the frogger episode, and the Wizard organizer one, but also the, yeck, Puerto Rican parade one

Didnt they already do this on season 5 or 6 of Curb?

Serenity Now!

I really liked the last season of Seinfeld. if anything I wish they'd gotten weirder with it. but yeah the last 2 episodes were awful, maybe the 2 worst of the series. I agree with wins the idea behind the finale is good and I guess it's understandable - expected, even - to bring back a bunch of old characters...but there just aren't any jokes in it

I liked the audio over the end credits, where Jerry is doing hacky standup in jail.

Also liked the shirt button call back, to a bit that was in the first episode, and when George starts in on it in the last ep Jerry goes "Ehh, we've done this ..." or similar. I must have seen the first episode fairly recently before watching the last one, or I wouldn't have remembered.

A finale of callbacks is fine in theory, but it didn't help that NBC ran a one-hour clip show right before the finale, which had many of those same characters. After that, the also-extended finale felt real tiresome

Apparently it was only 45 minutes but got extended to an hour in syndication haha

The extended callback/non-jokeiness finale seemed heavy-handed in informing the viewer, like, hey, "the heroes of this show are actually terrible people! Do you see?!" If that was novel at the time, it hasn't aged well.

mocking, mocking, mocking! all they do is mock!

It reminds me of the M*A*S*H finale, which was overlong at 2 1/2 hours. I've always suspected that was an executive decision so they could get a full week of reruns in syndication.

Since the episode originally aired in a highly unorthodox 75-minute time slot, when packaged for syndication it was edited down to two episodes with 30-minute time slots. This version cut several scenes from the original episode and rearranged some parts

I love the “b-plot only” packages on the YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8oItZ4wQkQ

they should make the 9/11 script

the “I love… United Airlines” joke might be the single stupidest line in the entire series.

I love that… line

Quite sure he's not the first person to draw this parallel, but I liked how Jake Tapper, talking about a short press scrum of Trump's outside the courtroom today, asked their legal expert to explain his latest "airing of the grievances."

slowly rewatching this show, I know it's been said a zillion times but all the meta stuff in Season 4 is even wilder than I remembered. kinda ballsy too. I mean obviously their standing with NBC must've been pretty good at that point but I wonder if they had any objection to how hacky they made their entire lineup look. of course it wouldn't work as well if they weren't incredibly self-deprecating as well. in retrospect Jerry telling Kramer he can't play Kramer because "he can't act" is one of the funniest bits.

last night we watched the opera episode with Crazy Joe Davola - it was genuinely unnerving, I'd forgotten how strange it was to put a character like that in a sitcom. the scene where Elaine walks into his apartment actually got my heart racing. wild that the actor who plays him isn't really in anything else, he was so good in that role.

only thing that bothers me is how effortlessly Jerry seems to pick up women, particularly the ones that don't actually laugh at his jokes

That run with Crazy Joe Davola is the best. Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Re: Jerry's dates, it's been openly discussed in at least a few articles on the show, but there was indeed a conscious decision to have Jerry constantly be with very attractive women. Granted, you see this with nearly every TV show so it's not like it was an unusual decision, but Seinfeld definitely wanted to be a "ladies' man" on his show. If anything, it's more ridiculous with George - the character is designed to be unlikeable (Jerry: "It's getting difficult for me to tell people that I even know you!") and not that attractive (see Elaine trying to sell George on a blind date) but he's constantly dating different women and most of them look like they were cast out of a modeling agency.

"I'm Victoria, hi."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y_6fZGSOQI

Re: Jerry, it's actually pretty sensible that a confident benign sociopath, without much in the way of human emotions, would have no trouble getting lots of dates (with zero lasting relationships).

ok continuing with S4 and there are some bits that have not held up well, for example George getting caught staring at a 15 year old's cleavage and Jerry hooking up with the NYU student who thought him and George were a gay couple

Don't forget Jerry was oogling her first and wanted George to join in. Elaine calls him out on this IIRC, making the specific point that she's only 15. Elaine was pretty awesome in those early seasons - on the DVD commentary, Dreyfus even points out that early on, Elaine was actually very principled and very outspoken about her beliefs, and for whatever reason all that went away by the show's end.

the reason was the ppl she was hanging out with so much imo

I guess that explains the Republican Party's continual descent.

Re: Jerry, it's actually pretty sensible that a confident benign sociopath, without much in the way of human emotions, would have no trouble getting lots of dates (with zero lasting relationships).

this is probably true but the reason it comes off so weird to me in the show is that Jerry is such a bad actor, in fact he almost certainly has to be the worst adult lead actor in sitcom history. it still works because he's funny, obviously most of what he does in the show is just a version of his standup act, but occassionally he has to actually express a real emotion and he's so bad at it you almost can't tell what the show's going for sometimes. like even when really bad things happen to him like his car getting stolen or his NBC deal getting cancelled all he can ever express is mild annoyance. Jason Alexander on the other hand might actually be the best sitcom actor ever, I think he's basically perfect in every single scene he's in.

Re: Jerry's dates, it's been openly discussed in at least a few articles on the show, but there was indeed a conscious decision to have Jerry constantly be with very attractive women. Granted, you see this with nearly every TV show so it's not like it was an unusual decision, but Seinfeld definitely wanted to be a "ladies' man" on his show

imo one saving grace here is that a massive share of jerry's girlfriends on seinfeld were also super talented and went on to have hugely successful careers. the list is insanely stacked. mariska hargitay, catherine keener, lauren graham, daphne from fraser, courtney cox, terri hatcher and marcia cross from desperate housewives, megan mullaly and debra messing, jeniffer coolidge (as the masseuse who won't give jerry a massage), sarah silverman, kristin davis

wtf is he on about

Jerry Seinfeld says TV comedy is being hurt by "the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people."

“It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, “Cheers” is on. Oh, “MASH” is on. Oh, “Mary Tyler Moore”… pic.twitter.com/IvHYO48CGp

— Variety (@Variety) April 29, 2024

weird to complain about this when the co-creator of your show just ended his *own* sitcom after like 24 years.

also none of the shows he's naming were even contemporaries of Seinfeld, they're all like 50 years old and still in reruns, also none of them were known for being edgy, just a baffling statement all around

Uh, MASH and MTM were pretty edgy for their time.

The whole interview is on the New Yorker website now and it's worth reading. (Are you surprised a tweet doesn't capture nuance?) There's a slight element of grumpy-old-man-ism to maybe three sentences, but then he talks about it as an issue of craft, not one of morality — culture changes, and as he puts it, the gates get moved like when you're skiing a slalom course, and your job is to make it through the gates, wherever they move to.

I'm not a fan of his humor — I don't find his jokes funny — but his understanding of comedy as a craft is something I always find interesting.

Uh, MASH and MTM were pretty edgy for their time.

right, but nowadays I don't think there's any element of "you couldn't get away with that now" to them

suppose I should read the full interview though

I still find a lot of his old bits very funny. He put out an album in 1998 called I'm Telling You for the Last Time that my wife and I still pull from regularly. It's kind of like Lebowski, it's been transformed into a kind of familect.

I also really admire him for throwing out all of his old material after that tour (hence the name) and starting from scratch.

Yeah, that was a good interview, even for someone who's never followed his shows or other projects. xps

Jason Alexander on the other hand might actually be the best sitcom actor ever, I think he's basically perfect in every single scene he's in.

OTMFM

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was also extremely good.

Michael Richards . . . does anyone remember him?

yeah ok the interview is good, but "the extreme left is ruining comedy" is still an incredibly dumb take, as is stuff like this:

Isn’t that what “Curb” is all about?

Yeah. Larry was grandfathered in. He’s old enough so that—“I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.” We did an episode of the series in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, “They’re outside anyway.” Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?

yes, I think you could, in fact It's Always Sunny gets away with stuff a lot wilder than that on a regular basis

I don't watch it, but it seems to me that people don't talk about Always Sunny nearly enough. It's insane how long that show has been running, and the type of things they've been able to pull off.

I did stand-up last night as "1990s Jerry Seinfeld Doing Bits About His 17-Year-Old Girlfriend" pic.twitter.com/hFKr7ie6JP

— Jeremy Kaplowitz (@jeremysmiles) October 29, 2019