What’s the deal with Seinfeld’s 23 Hours to Kill?
Jerry Seinfeld’s first new original comedy special in 22 years dropped on Netflix recently and it’s about what you would expect from his comedy: quick word play, simple societal norms being totally picked apart, and an annoyed man with a burning inclination to tell you how annoyed he is. Now, depending on who you are, this could be a good or bad thing. Seinfeld’s comedy hasn’t changed all that much since the 90s, meaning he’s just about as sharp with his efficient and clever bending of language, but he hasn’t evolved even as comedy has. Since Seinfeld’s last special in 1998, standup comedy has seen a kind of renaissance thanks to Netflix, but the sheer amount of specials to sift through on the streaming service makes having a unique perspective in the comedy world more of a necessity than it was in the past. Seinfeld takes no risks in breaking away from the stereotyped comedian that he basically created but proves to still be a master of telling jokes.
The secret agent style opening of the special that sees Jerry leaping from a helicopter into the Hudson River is delightfully eccentric and fits well with the marketing theme but doesn’t necessarily connect with anything the comedian talks about. It seems like 23 Hours to Kill is just a cool James Bond/standup pun that he thought of and ran with. It’s important to remember that this is also the guy that created a movie called Bee Movie about a bee that discovers that people have been eating honey for generations and sues humankind for theft, so coming up with a pun and running with it kind of seems like a reoccurring theme there. Regardless, the title doesn’t fit with the content of the hour but who cares, it’s a comedy special.
The first half of 23 Hours to Kill is very good, as Seinfeld displays his classic deconstruction of society. His bit about how ‘sucks’ and ‘great’ are not that different is equally fascinating and hilarious to watch, leading to his conviction that, “sucks and great are the exact same thing.” This culminates in one of the best punchlines of the special as Seinfeld bends over pretending to look at a dropped ice-cream cone. “Sucks! And what do you say?” he asks, quickly standing up in annoyance, “Great!” This type of humor may seem somewhat out of date by more mainstream standup standards, but it’s undeniably clever and will most likely hold up better than a lot of standup niches that are popular nowadays.
Some of his comedy is also quite poignant in light of the coronavirus and the quarantine efforts that are now at the forefront of the country’s mind. The simple fact that the special was filmed at the Beacon Theater in NYC, what is now considered the epicenter of the disease in the US, is kind of crazy to think about in context of how quickly things have changed. Another moment that is thought-provoking in hindsight is when Jerry gestures to the crowd saying, “The human is a social species as we can see. We tend to congregate, aggregate, and coagulate together,” going on to say that living in New York City, “makes no sense” due to how much open land is available in the surrounding areas. “Let’s pack in here tight,” Seinfeld jokes, “Uncomfortable, on top of each other, traffic, congestion,” all the while dredging up those pictures of New York’s now empty streets in the minds of the viewers. Later, Seinfeld states that “human beings like to be close together,” a now provocative idea that has actually become a point of controversy in the US. Whether this is good or bad timing is unclear but it’s hard to not notice these references to people being together now that a lot of us are separated.
The second half of the special where the comedian says he’s going to give us a glimpse of himself turns out to just be a way to segue into jokes about marriage and relationships rather than any kind of Seinfeld introspection. There’s somewhat of a missed opportunity here as the jokes are personal but not in a way that gives any kind of interesting glimpse into the mind of this master of comedy. Now, I’m sure some (including the comedian himself) would say that Seinfeld doesn’t need to deliver any kind of self-reflective bits that may bring him down to Earth more as that’s never been has thing. But maybe after 22 years and his extreme success it could’ve worked. One of the most subtly annoying things Seinfeld does in this special is make himself as close to the ‘every man’ as possible in an attempt to come across as more relatable. He references making plans to go out with friends, going to a buffet, talking to his office coworkers, and other normal activities that you wouldn’t assume a guy worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be doing. It’s clear that Seinfeld knows that he needs to be relatable to be a successful standup, but he doesn’t convincingly portray himself as such and possible can’t fully do so with the audience knowing how successful and ‘one-percenter’ he really is.
In terms of diversity, there’s isn’t too much to talk about here as the special is just Jerry Seinfeld telling jokes for an hour. He does make reference to ‘girl power’ after talking about relationships which is a nice, even if brief, inclusion amongst all the jokes.
It’s certainly nice to see Jerry Seinfeld doing a standup special again, but while 23 Hours to Kill has a lot of great laughs, it doesn’t exactly live up to some grand return of the comic that some may have been hoping for after 22 years. It’s a fun time for sure and could be a good distraction in quarantine, but it’s missing that updated sheen that could have really made it special.
