Bobcat Goldthwait vs. Jerry Seinfeld

imo Bobcat made Shakes the Clown, ergo he wins

love Seinfeld but true story, there's one person in the world who knew outside of my wife and I what our kid's name would be before he was born and it was Bobcat Goldthwait so he wins.

only one of these men dated a 17-year-old when they were 39

jerry s co-created what is probably the best sitcom of all time and his current show is pretty good too, so i'm going with him

bobcat g seems like a solid guy though

I mean I love Seinfeld the Show, but he's clearly a complete misanthrope (which can be amusing too). Bobcat seems like a sincere & nice individual. I saw him in a comedy club a few years ago and it was good (he no longer does 'the voice'). Would probably rather see that than an overpriced Seinfeld stand-up set.

I get the impression Bobcat struggled with self-loathing, whereas Seinfeld struggled with his utter contempt for absolutely everybody else.

Like, Seinfeld's current show, he often seems as or more interested in whatever rare luxury car he is driving than in his guest.

I find his show intermittently entertaining but it is weird how comfortable he is with being a total asshole

being cruel to wage slaves, making offhandedly racist jokes, making fun of poor people, crowing about not having any feelings or inner life etc.

Bobcat no question

It's weird to go back to old Seinfeld episodes and realize that he brought the contempt for humans & Larry David made it funny, at one point I would have thought it was the other way around.

what's the rubric here?

seinfeld is obviously a total asshole. but seinfeld the show towers above the creative output of bobcat.

Seinfeld wasn't in One Crazy Summer so it's not really a fair question

jerry s co-created what is probably the best sitcom of all time

hmmmm, no

^^^otm

saw a bobcat show about 20 years ago where he just sat on a stool and complained about people wanting him to be BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT. every once in a while he made a joke. it was riveting, best show i've seen at a comedy club. vote bob.

Bobcat all day but I hated Seinfeld the show so Seinfeld the person has done absolutely nothing of value in his entire life IMO, plus he's a creep and misanthrope.

(and Seinfeld, the sitcom... kinda sucks)

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT9yEHOjYjU

Seinfeld's whole personality as presented in "Comedians in Cars..." constantly reinforces that for him (and, as he likes to explore, presumably other comedians) making people laugh is the only measure of value. This is the only thing that is important to him in his life. It's dedication to the craft, and nothing is more important than making people laugh. And if that makes him something of a psychopath, he's okay with that, even proud of it. It doesn't seem to bother him that that criteria might excuse or even enable a lot of loathsome, damaging behavior.

jerry s co-created what is probably the best sitcom of all time


shit I didn't know he was a producer on Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

hmmmm, no

Please list every sitcom you think is better so I can shit on them

I mostly like the ~14 episodes of Seinfeld i've seen, but several from the '70s and earlier are better, along with Larry Sanders.

Have always liked Bobcat, never caught him live. Takeaway quote from the Robin Williams bio: "We were comedians; we talked about suicide every day."

(Bobcat and Robin were close)

morbs:

best sitcom: the honeymooners, the andy griffith show, i love lucy.

best sketch show: the colgate comedy hour.

This is the only thing that is important to him in his life. It's dedication to the craft, and nothing is more important than making people laugh.

comedy is his job. If a chef talks about how they just really care about making delicious food, I don't assume that's all they care about in life.

this isn't about which show is better than Seinfeld (I'm pretty sure there are other threads where this is covered) it's about whether BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT is better than Jerry Seinfeld.

If a chef talks about how they just really care about making delicious food, I don't assume that's all they care about in life.

it's not an assumption, Jerry actually says this repeatedly.

To be fair, Seinfeld has had a very long, successful, storied career, but that's one reason I find his "fuck you, pay me" Chuck Berry-esque attitude so off-putting. It's one thing if he knew he was great and struggled and got shit to show for it, but ... he made it. On his own terms, as far as I know. And made a ton of money. Yet he has this huge chip on his shoulder, this arrogance, this ... yeah, contempt. Like, he happily recycles jokes from tour to tour, because they "work." He doesn't give a shit if he seems lazy or if people hear the same jokes over and over, they "work," and repeating jokes is not his problem, it's everyone else's.

I like a couple of Bobcat's movies. I think he got a really good performance out of Williams in "World's Best Dad," which sort of preempts "Dear Evan Hansen."

The best sitcom was The Jack Benny Show, on the radio, which was ostensibly a variety show but was really a sitcom version of that.

Maybe a good analogy would be fellow car buff Jay Leno? He also had a sterling reputation as a comedian, afaict, but ran it into the ground with sheer bad mojo.

Also, Our Miss Brooks.

Jerry really does have an inflated sense of his own importance and brilliance tho huh. His standup has always been mediocre, and Larry David was prob 90% of what made Seinfeld funny. Post Seinfeld he hasn't done shit.

eh i mean jerry has kids, i have to assume he's being partly facetious/misleading when he says comedy is literally all he cares about

one of the weird things about Jerry's misanthropy is that there's no real identifiable source for it - he didn't grow up poor or abused or discriminated against, didn't struggle against insurmountable odds, didn't endure crushing tragedies or defeats, etc. He's not exactly Richard Pryor or Rodney Dangerfield or whoever. It's strange.

xp

Jerry actually says this repeatedly.

Yes in context. While talking about comedy. "I don't care about anything other than whether something is funny". "I don't care about anything other then whether the food is tasty". Jerry doesn't care about trends, ppl getting offended, ppl thinking he's a jackass. Chef doesn't care about trends, whether their food reads as "gourmet" etc.

xps. Jack Benny met his wife Mary Livingstone in my neighbourhood at a passover seder at her family's house

Josh otm few posts ago

I knew some people who worked with Leno on a car related thing for a video game and they said he couldn't have been nicer

The Jack Benny Program was def a prototype sitcom, and a brilliant one.

being cruel to wage slaves, making offhandedly racist jokes, making fun of poor people, crowing about not having any feelings or inner life etc.

idk... there's a particular sequence that struck me where he's discussing his relationship with his wife and how he has no thoughts/feelings outside of whether something will work as a joke or not, and tells her she shouldn't ask him about stuff like that cuz she won't like the answer. I forget what season this was in or who the guest was though.

xpa

Jerry really does have an inflated sense of his own importance and brilliance tho huh. His standup has always been mediocre, and Larry David was prob 90% of what made Seinfeld funny. Post Seinfeld he hasn't done shit.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 9:18 PM (twenty-four seconds ago)

from watching the dvd extras it's pretty clear that jerry was pretty deeply involved with his show from start to finish, approving and often rewriting every script. i don't think the "it was all larry david" take really holds up.

J Seinfeld is obviously horrible but all of these things are what makes Seinfeld classic, especially when you have talented actors portraying these monsters

I'm talking about him doing those things irl in real time on "Comedians in Cars..." It's galling to watch!

the thing abt Seinfeld is he's not that funny as a standup imo, but at the same time his particular style worked extremely well at the center of the universe in that particular TV series. that bemused sociopathic contempt was so perfect for it.

like eating some asian food and making a joke about how stupid asian people are for still using chopsticks when forks exist IN FRONT OF THE ASIAN CHEF

that is just FUCK YOU levels of famous assholishness

I found Gilbert Gottfried's riff on Seinfeld's paper-thin standup act to be much funnier than Jerry's act.

WHYYYYYY... AHH THERE SHOOOOELACES?

fwiw either jerry or larry said at some point that seinfeld was modeled after the abbott and costello show, it's very consciously much more in the tradition of classic comedy than a lot of post-70s sitcoms were

that's also a joke from seinfeld like 25 years ago

lol that only makes it worse!

would anyone pick Jerry if it was him vs Larry David?

someone who saw Fridays?

Seinfeld is the far better show imo

both misanthropic jerks (or at least that's their public schtick) but with Larry it's endearing & relatable

I wonder what Jerry think of "Shakes the Clown". Would he hate it because how brutal it's take on standups is?

Re:misanthropy, Bobcat's Falling Down ripoff movie God Bless America was so dumb I couldnt even bother being offended. Would def classify the writer/director of that shit as a uniquely angry misanthrope.

feel like Seinfeld could not have worked if Jerry was anything but a total asshole

Seinfeld is a great sitcom, several of Bobcat’s movies are good & fascinating, Jerry Seinfeld is a creepy asshole, Bob Goldthwait is a creepy mensch

Jerry talks a lot about how hard he works (at writing 2-3 minutes of his own material a year), Bobcat keeps working hard (directing hours & hours of other ppl’s material a year)

Like, Seinfeld's current show, he often seems as or more interested in whatever rare luxury car he is driving than in his guest.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 20:56 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I find his show intermittently entertaining but it is weird how comfortable he is with being a total asshole

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 20:57 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

being cruel to wage slaves, making offhandedly racist jokes, making fun of poor people, crowing about not having any feelings or inner life etc.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 20:59 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

voted seinfeld

can anyone seriously claim Seinfeld has ever had 45 seconds as glorious as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFOXs5HfQTc

(directing hours & hours of other ppl’s material a year)

Or I guess last year’s TV show may have been all written by him? Eight half-hour stand-alone satire/horror films >> making fun of homeless ppl while someone pays you to drive an expensive car past them (although I watched the latter & will probably never see the former, #partoftheproblem)

This was 1986!

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-stand-ups/n9409

is Bobcat's Seinfeld impression on the internet?

I think I just learned that Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee stars Jerry Seinfeld, not Jay Leno

leno was only in one but insisted on equal billing iirc

Seinfeld is probably better than anything Bobcat has been involved in (the latter's episode of The Larry Sanders Show notwithstanding), but I am pretty sure I like and am far more interested in Bobcat Goldthwait as a person than Seinfeld, so I dunno.

bobcat because of nirvana unplugged, i guess

Bob Goldthwait is a creepy mensch

I dont even see whats creepy about him tbh. "Worlds Greatest Dad" is a really great movie imo, so Bobcat all the way

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I dont even see whats creepy about him tbh.

only one of these men dated a 17-year-old when they were 39

― (Appears only as a corpse) (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:38 AM (three hours ago)

I'll allow that dating a 19-year-old when you are 35 is less bad, but it's not ideal

Jerry Seinfeld saying what he said about Bobcat on his show was terribly classless and petty. He could easily have edited it out, but he didn't because he's a little bitch.

Seinfeld was one of the best stand-up comics of his generation, and his sitcom is a classic.

Bobcat Goldthwait has directed two outstanding comedies, Shakes the Clown and World's Greatest Dad, which is two more than Jerry Seinfeld has ever directed, or probably ever will.

Goldthwait is a very funny stand-up comedian, so Seinfeld calling him unfunny is straight up slander.

I still watch and love “Seinfeld” to this day and will assert that the DNA of that show is at least 80% Larry David judging by Curb and various other things.

I don’t know Bobcat’s comedy super well, but he seems like a genuinely decent and interesting human being with artistic vision while Jerry irl seems awful and like the worst caricature of a rich person.

Bobcat.

The one character that Jerry played vs the one that Bobcat always ended up cast to play = Bobcat in a landslide

six voters jinxed Bobcat: hospitalised with broken ribs & a concussion from a car crash before (not) taping a new special last night.

I gotta be honest, I just kind of assume that Jerry Seinfeld is some sort of living embodiment of "superdickery". Like one day he'll come out to us all and say "I've been behaving like an insufferable asshole for all these years as part of a convoluted and highly implausible scheme to foil an alien invasion!" It makes me feel better, at least.

Strikes against bobcat, IMO:

- sent some super creepo Instagram messages to a very young female comedian friend of mine
- worst goatee in show business
- still asking people to refer to him, in his late 50s, as “Bobcat”

Would you prefer Robertcat?

something more adult like that, or BobLion

why is seinfeld being an asshole such a big topic in yer lives

feel like his unapologetic approach to it is refreshing and ought to have neutralised or countered in advance the usual wetness like

'Unapologetic' isn't so convincing when you spend your time whining about college kids not finding you funny.

I dunno it seems of a piece tbh he complains about lots of things

'Unapologetic' isn't so convincing when you spend your time whining about college kids not finding you funny.

― Bidh boladh a' mhairbh de 'n láimh fhalaimh (dowd)

also old men who are obsessed about what college kids think about them tend to have more than a little al capp in them

its def true that both have been 'obsessed' with college kids over the years, in a couple different ways

the only way to decide this important question is to ask jerry seinfeld and bobcat goldthwait to sprint at each other and collide at full speed. whoever makes the most sense at the end wins

The best sitcom ever was Barney Miller.

Goldthwait wins this for the cover of his only (I wonder why) album:

https://img.discogs.com/4leSOQ-eMRCPx1dMAmlk5nl2A0o=/fit-in/600x578/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1768359-1394571808-2955.jpeg.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/40/71/8c407184039ca3c35016a03f81f3dd18.jpg

Unlike the meandering Rogan Deathcult video, Elephant Graveyard's take down of Grandpa Seinfeld is fish-in-barrel short comparatively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6692U1AD54

Thought this might have been about him comparing the free Palestine movement the KKK

"worse than the Ku Klux Klan"

the sad thing is i start watching this video and think wow there's almost a kernel of truth in there

jerry seinfeld... i just think of him as the comedy equivalent of hillary clinton. i mean i fuckin' hate liberals, but am i gonna go out of my way to hate hillary clinton? not really. what i hate is the people who for some reason think she has anything meaningful or relevant to say in 2025. i was talking to a zoomer friend of mine about how the younger generation, _nobody_ is a fucking liberal. they're either leftists or fascists. why would anyone who doesn't already "have theirs" be a liberal? liberalism promises nothing and delivers less. the only _possible_ response to liberalism is something like "ok boomer" if you're a millennial or "whatever" (cue sarcastic eyeroll) if it's 1995 and you're "gen x". liberals are people who genuinely live under different material conditions from most of us, and believe, somehow, that everyone lives under those same material conditions. liberals are people who hate trump and are buying a winter home in florida.

but the thing is, i mean, i feel like i _can't_ fucking say anything. not because of the "woke left". but because we live in a state of _misrule_, where there's no justice, where the people in power and control exist only to traumatize and hurt other people. where fucking everybody has cPTSD and nobody acknowledges that. i mean cPTSD isn't even in the DSM, it's probably something that was made up by the "woke left", right? i feel like i "can't fucking say anything" because the world is filled with people who seem cool, they seem like they have your back, but when the shit hits the fan they make up all kinds of bullshit excuses as to why they're siding with the people who want to kill us rather than with, i mean, us. who, if i tell them i'm suffering, will explain to me, patiently and at great length, why i'm wrong. because yeah this "wall" the beginning of the video talks about, the people defending comedy talk about it like it's a two-front war, talk about "both sides", they want to keep out extremists on "both sides", but somehow in practice it only seems to keep out _us_.

and when your world is filled with "allies" who stand around and do nothing while we're suffering and dying, you know, it's hard to trust that someone _really_ has your back. does the left eat itself? yeah, kind of. because when i deal with bullshit, it's not from the fascists who think i'm, like, an existential threat to freedom. those people don't fucking _talk_ to me. there's a line, there's me, and there's them, and as long as they want me to not exist... i mean, there's nothing to say, is there? i have nothing to say to them, they have nothing to say to me. so that's the world you want, huh? good luck with that. vaya con dios, my friend.

liberals, though? the shitty thing isn't that they pretend to be our friends. the shitty thing is that they keep insisting that WE ARE LIKE THEM. that the left are some kind of "super-liberals". to them, there are Two Sides. there's them, and there's the crazy people. the people who don't believe that we can all talk this out like reasonable people. the people who get angry, upset, _political_. uncle eddie is my friend! what's wrong with uncle eddie? we sent you to stay with your uncle eddie all the time when you were a kid! what do you mean he said racist stuff all the time? oh, c'mon, you can't take that seriously, he's a good guy, he's family! he just says dumb things sometimes, he... he did WHAT? no he didn't. no, he wouldn't do something like that. he's family.

that's life, i mean, life is having relatives for years who suddenly come out in favor of genocide and get mad at you and try to argue with you when you say that you personally object to genocide, people who get really really mad at you when you don't want to vote for their candidate just because they endorse genocide, i mean come on, if you don't support genocide TRUMP will win! do you want TRUMP to win?

so ok. most of us have no money (i personally have health insurance and enough money to keep from being out on the street, cuz i'm white and privileged, but no property, no car, no job, and little hope of finding one), we have no power, and we're very used to people who say they're our "allies" but who aren't, really. so yeah. i do feel like i can't fucking say anything, because unlike jerry seinfeld, who, no matter what bullshit he says, will continue to be popular and rich until the day he dies, a lot of my ability to survive is based around who my friends are. who i'm in community with. so i gotta be very, very careful, to the point of hypervigilance, about who my friends are. hypervigilance. yeah. it's a PTSD thing.

happy 24th anniversary of Freedom Day, BTW. or is it Too Soon for me to bring that up?

anyway, i'm going with bobcat goldthwait, partly because i'm an '80s kid and i grew up with bobcat goldthwait in the '80s police academy sequels. that is, objectively, a stupid and dumb and wrong reason to support bobcat goldthwait, because the police academy movies were fucking terrible and homophobic and god i do not ever want to see them again, but sometimes, sometimes i have subjective personal experiences that aren't rooted in consensus reality.

mostly the reason, though, is that when bobcat goldthwait went on space ghost in 1995 space ghost asked him "do you think i'm pretty?" and bobcat thought about it and said "yeah, space ghost. i think you're pretty. you're a pretty man." that kind of humor would maybe be a little bit too "edgy" or "woke" for a guy like jerry seinfeld, but i liked it at the time, and when i look back on the '90s, which was filled with all kinds of awful shit, and i see bobcat goldthwait just straight up telling space ghost that he's a "pretty man", that it's ok to be a pretty man... i look back on that fondly.

jerry seinfeld? i don't think he was ever even fuckin' ON space ghost. fuck him.

Bobcat’s an actual good guy. Will he defend you when the chips are down? I don’t know, but his current political opinions and attitude towards others are far more righteous than Jerry’s.

I think Bobcat lives in the Chicago burbs now, there have been sightings.

I'd rather watch One Crazy Summer 45 times than binge watch Seinfeld once.

I think I have seen One Crazy Summer 45 times.

I'm definitely already somewhere in the 30s

Certainly the two big Bobcat showcases, the Godzilla sequence and him talking about the fat kid in school that everybody made fun of, I've seen those both dozens of times.

the commentary track is also hilarious!