Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

I've been nagged by the thought that it actually was the real Marilyn Manson that I saw a few weeks ago geekily going to the purolator courier in the Atrium on Bay (snootyish office/shopping complex in downtown T.O.)because that's probably the last place on earth that I would expect such a celebrity sighting to happen, so I dismissed out of hand as an arrestingly casual lookalike in a long black coat, yet then I was thinking that all that nega-evidence adds up to it probably being the real Marilyn. anyway...

I love the part in tonight's episode where Kramer is dressed like a pimp. I wish I had a walking stick.

The best was in a later episode where they BROUGHT THE DANCE back. It was only two seconds, but I was practically incontinent.

Anyone who catches the dancing episode on tape for me (NTSC, please) will be my BEST FRIEND 4-EVA.

Two nights ago me and Ramon were sitting in a bar thinking about what we could do to make ourselves look more like pimps/rapists, and his first suggestion was we could walk with a limp, but I said fuck that, I've got a barrel (literally) full of canes (I kid you not). So expect the Clockwork Orange look next time you see us, minus the fake eyebrows and makeup and girly shit.

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.

idk about best, I do think they're the funniest though

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!

Mea culpa.

(Maybe Julia Louis-Dreyfus talked some sense into him?)

Holy shit at that Lawrence Tierney wiki entry. Had no idea that guy was such a maniac

He basically was his character in Reservoir Dogs

Jerry Seinfeld angrily criticizes his children’s old private school for offering ‘distressed’ students day off after election, which he says is why he transferred them to another school.

He's this far from telling Michael Richards to hold my beer, isn't he?

Not really. I mean no. Or maybe in what way? Or what you on about because nah.

LOL at referring to Jerry Seinfeld as "The Seinfeld alum"

Mary Tyler Moore, star of The Mary Tyler Moore show,

Valuable new poster / sock “business”

Jerry Seinfeld concerned that his plan to shelter his kids is sheltering them too much

Must be hard to find a school when you have a bazillion dollars

what is the deal with school

I am so happy that I am not one of Jerry Seinfeld's children. What a horrible life to have to lead

I'm one of Jerry Seinfeld's children.

Son of Seinfeld

What if Seinfeld starred Michael Madson and James Spader...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTpqwjv615U

that pilot invents seinfeld AND reservoir dogs at the very same time.

jerry and paul must have been separated at birth. they are so close. paul was so fast! i forgot his quickness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed8z5vINHuE

I do not remember this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qucM7ANXARc

oh wait nevermind. I need to eat lunch.

"A BIIIIG salad!"

Origin of Christmas Nipple---longsplains, so I'll lift the gist:

"The Pick" is based on a real-life incident. Reality is the formation for many Seinfeld episodes, and the world around it...So it should really come as no surprise that what happened to Elaine also happened to a Seinfeld writer. Marc Jaffe, who began working on Seinfeld in the very first season, told the story in 2021 on Seinfeld - This Podcast Is Making Me Thirty, about what happened to cause him to pitch the idea for "The Pick." Jaffe's brother-in-law was taking pictures on Christmas morning with his one-year-old daughter in front of the fireplace. It resulted in a nice looking photo except for one flaw. The guy's robe wasn't tied correctly, which led to him accidentally exposing himself in the photo. "The stocking was hung," as Jaffe put it. He sent it out to his entire family, but it was Jaffe's wife who finally noticed the wardrobe malfunction.
...Jaffe then pitched what had happened to Larry David, but that created an obstacle. Jaffe told the podcast, "It was gonna be too much if it was Jerry in that kind of situation for network television," so they gave the idea to Elaine's character instead and made it her nipple. There were some weird '90s network TV rules, with it not being okay to have a man accidentally expose his member, but it was acceptable for a woman to unknowingly expose her nipple.