What's so great about Seinfeld?

its a show that captures a certain feeling. like someones house that has a memorable smell to it.

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:34 AM, YELLOW said:

Seinfeld is my all time favorite show so I will weigh in here

 

You gotta put it into context of the early 90s. Tv was filled with such sitcom shit and then Seinfeld comes along and puts a fun perspective on real life and the situations that happen to everyone. The writing is genius, the storylines always resolve well, and the quotability is crazy high!

I don't feel the exact same way about the show but the context of the time it aired is important. They had great methods of having stories revolve around oral sex and masturbation that were pretty cutting edge for an American TV show at the time.

Even the hilarious way they played around with a PC reference to homosexuality 'not that there's anything wrong with that' has been quoted so much in the last decade that it's practically just a saying now.

part of the charm of the show too is that all the main characters are superficial borderline sociopaths. The 'marble rye' episode where George uses a fishing poll to try and plant the bread in his inlaws home is a perfect example which at one point has a scene where Jerry steals a loaf of bread from an old woman and exclaims 'you old bag', the scene ends with him running away like a purse snatcher with a smile on his face

 

Edited May 13, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

  On 5/13/2013 at 2:08 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 1:52 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Seinfeld is hands down the BEST sitcom i've ever seen. Above and beyond your average sit com's writing style. I kind of see the show as a black sheep amongst the others because i don't particularly like most sitcoms

 

IMO It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia whips Seinfeld's britches.

 

If Always had maintained a consistent level of funny and good writing like Seinfeld had it could have been a great show. Unfortunately the last 3 seasons have been spotty as shit, 'the gang gets analyzed' was a big time return to form and gave me high hopes for the rest of the season but that episode was a fluke among it's decline ever since they thought making Charlie fat would automatically make the show more funny. I think they ran out of ideas, Seinfeld never had the same problem. People were pretty pissed off at Jerry Seinfeld when he decided to end it because the show was more popular than it had been for it's entire run. Seinfeld was not well received for at least the first 4 years it was on.

 

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:27 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

  On 5/13/2013 at 3:17 AM, Lucy Faringold said:

Series 4 to 7 of Seinfeld is just the greatest shit ever.

It's a tricky show to get the feel of initially... but once you're in the zone, dayum - few tv shows have brought me such joy.

Apart from the great writing, I really enjoy the fact that folks that play Kramer, George and Elaine are all such brilliant comic actors, yet Seinfeld himself is relatively limited and is visibly corpsing in about 70% of the scenes he's in. It really shouldn't work - but it does, and creates a very unusual frisson.

So many classic secondary characters too.

I'm getting warm and fuzzy just thinking about this show.

yeah, thats why they all did SO WELL with there own shows. flol

no, all the actors sucked ass. what made the show a gold mine was the writers. specifically Larry David.

I don't agree with this at all, the stuff Larry David wrote outside of Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm has been in a large part very poorly executed. The acting in Seinfeld and they dynamics between the characters made the writing pop.
Watch 'Sour Grapes' with actors who aren't as good as the Seinfeld cast and tell me with a straight face that Larry David's writing made that movie awesome. at the same time though, any movie with that has the guy from Wings as it's lead character already has the deck stacked against it

Edited May 13, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

I honestly don't think there's every been a terribly bad Seinfield episode

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:54 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

I honestly don't think there's every been a terribly bad Seinfield episode

Probably not, although I definitely think there's a dip in quality after S7. Before that, it's just a perfect show.

It's a really solid sitcom that was pretty unique at the time and is almost always pretty funny. I always enjoy watching an episode, and it usually makes me laugh. For a show with that many episodes, it's pretty damn consistent.

Edited May 13, 2013 by dylanmcknd

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:41 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:34 AM, YELLOW said:

 

Seinfeld is my all time favorite show so I will weigh in here

 

You gotta put it into context of the early 90s. Tv was filled with such sitcom shit and then Seinfeld comes along and puts a fun perspective on real life and the situations that happen to everyone. The writing is genius, the storylines always resolve well, and the quotability is crazy high!

I don't feel the exact same way about the show but the context of the time it aired is important. They had great methods of having stories revolve around oral sex and masturbation that were pretty cutting edge for an American TV show at the time.

Even the hilarious way they played around with a PC reference to homosexuality 'not that there's anything wrong with that' has been quoted so much in the last decade that it's practically just a saying now.

part of the charm of the show too is that all the main characters are superficial borderline sociopaths. The 'marble rye' episode where George uses a fishing poll to try and plant the bread in his inlaws home is a perfect example which at one point has a scene where Jerry steals a loaf of bread from an old woman and exclaims 'you old bag', the scene ends with him running away like a purse snatcher with a smile on his face

 

Agreed. The best example of the characters t their worst though has got to be George during the S7 finale. His fiancé dies due to George's fault picking out envelops. He gets told the news, restrains happiness, and the characters all go for coffee. This is during the time in 90s tv where characters would hug and cry and resolve issues. Completely flipped the sitcom on its head.

 

The Sunny in Philly talk is interesting too. The first few seasons definitely had a Seinfeld kind of vibe to them but I'm afraid that they may have peaked around S5 or S6. Some of the latest episodes just don't do it for me

S7 Finale is the pinnacle of Seinfeld.

 

"So...I guess you're not getting married?"

its easy to take for granted just how many conventions of mainstream TV seinfeld broke at the tim. I was still young enough while it aired to find certain episodes very risque. In a lot of ways they got away with subjects even R rated comedies couldn't figure out a way to get away with. I sort of see X-files/Married With Children/Seinfeld as 3 shows that pretty much obliterated the mostly puritanical standards that network TV had up until that point.

  On 5/13/2013 at 5:08 AM, usagi said:

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:36 AM, pattern recognition said:

related to yellow's post about context, out of curiosity, how many of those posting in this thread were alive when seinfeld first aired (July 5, 1989)?

 

I was 5. so yeah, not really alive. I mean at 5 you're just an eating, pooping, yowling little nub of an human being. I could not possibly have appreciated the transcendence of Kramer's oven-heated underwear obsession at such an age.

 

point taken.

I feel like Seinfeld had the same level of absurdity, but believable absurdity, that early Simpsons episodes did. So many shows have that essence now but for the time it was quite novel. One of my favorite episodes takes place completely in a parking garage, there's a pretty interesting DVD feature about it:

 

 

That episode's ending is fucking perfect too, and completely unscripted.

greatest sitcom of all time. hands down. no question.

haha caught the one where elaine has her nipple exposed on her christmas card just the other day.

 

some of my favs are the tom gammill written ones. tom is one of my all time #1 heroes and an awesome person. I also just want him to read me audiobooks

 

http://youtu.be/qR7H9uimHLs

 

http://youtu.be/MyVpzVmzpdo

 

I think gammill and pross actually wrote the classic schindler's list episode

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLW0bM38Kks

Edited May 13, 2013 by dr lopez

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:52 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 4:27 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

 

  On 5/13/2013 at 3:17 AM, Lucy Faringold said:

Series 4 to 7 of Seinfeld is just the greatest shit ever.

 

It's a tricky show to get the feel of initially... but once you're in the zone, dayum - few tv shows have brought me such joy.

 

Apart from the great writing, I really enjoy the fact that folks that play Kramer, George and Elaine are all such brilliant comic actors, yet Seinfeld himself is relatively limited and is visibly corpsing in about 70% of the scenes he's in. It really shouldn't work - but it does, and creates a very unusual frisson.

 

So many classic secondary characters too.

 

I'm getting warm and fuzzy just thinking about this show.

yeah, thats why they all did SO WELL with there own shows. flol

 

no, all the actors sucked ass. what made the show a gold mine was the writers. specifically Larry David.

I don't agree with this at all, the stuff Larry David wrote outside of Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm has been in a large part very poorly executed. The acting in Seinfeld and they dynamics between the characters made the writing pop.

Watch 'Sour Grapes' with actors who aren't as good as the Seinfeld cast and tell me with a straight face that Larry David's writing made that movie awesome. at the same time though, any movie with that has the guy from Wings as it's lead character already has the deck stacked against it

 

 

granted, Larry David cant always make gold. but what do you want? the dude is only human. Seinfeld though, was a stroke of genius. not just by him but by everyone, even Jerry. but that still doesn't make Jerry, Julia, Jason, and Micheal great comedic actors. undoubtedly everyone here knows about the Seinfeld curse. that was my point. none of them were funny by themselves and i might add, still aren't. if the writers didn't give these people the lines that they delivered then the show never would have gotten off the ground. maybe saying that the actors didn't have a hand in its success is little foolish, yeah, but still. We wouldn't be sitting here debating what "made" Seinfeld if it weren't for David and the writers.

  On 5/13/2013 at 6:58 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

 

granted, Larry David cant always make gold. but what do you want? the dude is only human. Seinfeld though, was a stroke of genius. not just by him but by everyone, even Jerry. but that still doesn't make Jerry, Julia, Jason, and Micheal great comedic actors. undoubtedly everyone here knows about the Seinfeld curse. that was my point. none of them were funny by themselves and i might add, still aren't. if the writers didn't give these people the lines that they delivered then the show never would have gotten off the ground. maybe saying that the actors didn't have a hand in its success is little foolish, yeah, but still. We wouldn't be sitting here debating what "made" Seinfeld if it weren't for Seinfeld, David and the writers.

 

lumping jerry in with "the writers" does him a disservice, so i fixed that for you. don't forget, larry left before season 8, so jerry was the guiding hand behind the last 2 seasons (except the series finale), which were still wonderful.

I was 6 when the first episode aired...

 

 

...and I watched it! I specifically remember my father coming to pick me up and talking to my mother about how Seinfeld was premiering that night. I said "Steinfeld?" because 'Seinfeld' felt like one of those last names that's missing a letter or two.

 

I don't remember watching it but I know I did.

I need to learn this skill

 

Kramer's physical comedy is absolutely brilliant at times.

i do understand what you're saying about the seinfeld curse but i don't think the show would have worked as well without the cast it had obviously. The only person from Seinfeld that i think is genuinely still funny now is Julia Louise Dreyfuss. I would argue she's just as funny on Veep as she was on Seinfeld. In retrospect I think her acting is probably the best out of all the cast on the series.

Larry David is clearly a comedic genius but I think he's been riding his seinfeld success for far too long. Although I love curb your enthusiasm I think it's already sort of over played. I'm looking forward to his new TV movie, but I hope it's not just following the same template as Sour Grapes/Seinfeld/Curb. I'd like to see him evolve to something else eventually. Some really good comedians only have a handful of good ideas in them though, Christopher Guest & Ricky Gervais being good examples. The last few things they've created have been total rehashes (and inferior ones) with not much new happening.

Edited May 13, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

While we're at it, can someone tell me what's so great about Cheers? I just can't watch that shit, damn.

that's like asking what's great about Night Court in a thread about the Gary Shandling show

  On 5/13/2013 at 9:30 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

that's like asking what's great about Night Court in a thread about the Gary Shandling show

 

The Gary Shandling Show > Steinfeld

for some reason the most notable part to me about his nigger rant was what did he mean by the fork up your ass remark. IT seemed like he wanted to make some sort of lynching reference but went even further alluding to cannibalism, like 50 years ago people used to eat black people?