Seinfeld was the show that made the nothingness of life completely and hilariously everything
A look at possibly the greatest television show of all time and it’s groundbreaking formula
Jerry: Hey what are you to?
Kramer: Nothing.
Jerry: Do you wanna go up with me to the Bronx to see if there’s any flyers on George’s car?
Kramer: Sure
Jerry: I could have said just about anything there, couldn’t I?
We’ve all had a moment. You know the one, where a slight inconvenience spirals out of control into a bigger slight inconvenience that you have no choice but to deal with for however excruciatingly long it takes. It doesn’t alter your life dramatically nor it doesn’t cause you to rethink who you are as a person. It could be literally anything, that’s blown out of proportion and now you’re having to quell whatever flames were caused from it. It usually becomes an anecdote to tell a friend (or an unfortunate polite fellow at the bar later that evening) and then eventually cast onto the pile with the rest of those moments.
But when you look back on it, you realise how much of that, how much of those daily dealings, that nothingness of life just rolling along, actually makes up most of our lives. This month is 20 years since Seinfeld aired its finale. 20 years since the viscerally comedic and blindingly unique show ended a run that took up most of my own life. There has been no show before or after that’s come close to touching the genius of making the everyday at once so ridiculously funny and universally relatable. The peerless character continuity feels like family you watch evolve and never cease to praise, love and admire.
The stories are delivered so bejeweled and ridiculous that you just don’t care about the facts, as this comedic fantasy world where anything can and will happen is much more fun. It’s a glamourous version of when your friends spin a yarn — baffling, funny and entirely relatable. But also absurd, embellished and questionable in authenticity, but who really gives a damn when you’re having this much fun? What other show can make such mundane moments like getting soup, picking your nose or eating peas so inviting.
Everything on the show felt like lightning in a bottle — even as we watched and exclaimed, god that could totally happen to me. It made things like the credit music and the freeze frame — both staples of classic sitcoms — iconic and dynamic, as if the show had unlocked a hitherto unfound well of perfection to draw from. Hell even the episode titles — used because Jerry didn’t want the writers being forced to come up with funny names for the episode titles — read like line’s from a magical haiku
It’s the built in history, the organic growth through each season. The development, the naturalism, the callbacks. This rolling coverage of life. The nothing is not without substance. Of consequence and without consequence, as life keeps moving along. The daily minutiae. That can be transplanted from time period to time period. The house in Tuscany. The pie. The raisins. The Fardman. The Opera. The Secretary. The Engagement. The Opposite. The Switch. The Old Man. Events spiralling out control into ever more hilarious and futile situations. Like the characters were stuck on a rocket powered train careening toward a cliff without brakes or a barrier to mercifully end it all.
But around all the events is the constant thrum of normalcy. The situations may be different and transform over the years but we’ve all found ourselves in social situations that recall an episode of Seinfeld. It could be a whole day or a split second but we’ve all been there.
Sure, during its run the show was given the misleading log line that it was ‘about nothing’. And in television terms it kind of does. There’s no real hook. It’s not set anywhere specific, nor does it have characters or setups that are based in a narrow set of parameters. Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer and the greatest, deepest bench of supporting players ever were just there, in media res. They had no ultimate goal, no changing of life’s circumstances. We were watching them like we were watching ourselves. But when Jerry and George come up with the pitch for a show to take to NBC in ‘The Pitch’ it solidified in pop culture what the show was about.
To be honest using that sort of shorthand, which when you look at the scene above and pretty much any meta reference the show does throughout, it’s a basically making fun of it. It’s a disservice to the show. Plus it’s such a lazy overused term now that when said kind of gives off the whiff that the people who are talking about it are just reading off a script about what pop culture says makes the show so great. It’s less of a genuine appreciation and more of an opportunity to terribly retell a joke or a one liner from the show (usually ‘No soup for you’). Jerry Seinfeld has said a few times now that the real pitch of the show that he and Larry David brought to NBC was how a comedian gets his material. And watching the show from that perspective offers up such a rewarding experience. It’s not about complicating or reaching for deeper meaning within a particular episode but it frees one from the idea that we’re watching nothing because what we’re really watching is everything.
Newman: Well he really seemed to have his hands full if you know what I mean.
Helen: I’m afraid I don’t.
Newman: Him and his little buxom friend Rachel were going at it pretty good in the balcony.
Morty: What?
Newman: What, do I have to spell it out for ya? He was moving on her like the stormtroopers into Poland.
Helen: Jerry was necking during Schindler’s List?
Newman: Yes! A more offensive spectacle I cannot recall.
The series is essentially a parade of asides. What would normally be a B or C story in a typical sitcom is the meat of a Seinfeld episode. This was to it’s detriment in its early seasons. Season one was basically five episodes of Jerry and Larry trying to figure out what to fill for twenty two minutes. You can feel each episode stretching to extremes. Elaine was barely around, Kramer had nothing to do besides act weird. Season two brought a little more narrative focus, the lines and pacing were tighter, the interplay a little more natural, more seemingly off the cuff. They were getting an idea of how to play the characters off each other. It was still rough around the edges but there was something golden buried in the center of it. What’s more episodes like The Stakeout, The Apartment, The Stock Tip and The Deal all have the characters with a semblance of feeling and empathy for the actions going on around them. They’re almost like how you would usually expect characters in a sitcom to behave when faced with those situations. On the periphery though, you could see that that MO of no hugging and no lessons learnt was coalescing at a rapid rate.
What’s interesting about these first two seasons, and parts of season three is that the show feels incomplete yet already so different to what’s come before. The fact that it’s not fully formed is such the opposite of new sitcoms these days, where it arrives with enough polish and spark to feel like it’s had a few test runs before driving off the lot.
Elaine: I can’t spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes to pore over the, excruciating minutiae, of every, single, daily event.
Seinfeld was evolving as it aired. The stories in the early going focused too much on the characters as people (too much is a relative term here), instead of throwing all the randomness and absurdity of life at them, not to learn anything but to endure and try to extricate themselves from it. Unlike pretty much every other show, it had no agenda. It wasn’t about issues or topics that were in the zeitgeist. It existed as antithesis to shows such as that. Instead we got an extensive rundown of the ordeal that is the human experience. Jealousy, achievement, desire, selfishness, intent, ambition, lying, it all came hurling out.
Family, friends, enemies. It showed how non-dramatic and relentless life is. It’s innate hilarity. Annoying little chores. No lessons learnt rings more true than if there was. Yet at the same time a lot the stories were given an air of grandiosity, in farcical sense. Like the trumped up fantasies of Don Quixote transplanted to Manhattan.
As season four brought in the meta aspects of it, the show found it’s groove. Essentially each episode was a bottle episode, with overarching narratives bubbling away in the background. The supporting cast expanded and deepened, the writers picking and choosing their spots when to bring them in. The season felt more like a complex network of in-jokes, meta humour, show within a show, slights and dangerous threats somehow, impossibly fitting into a twenty two minute episode week to week.
George: Why is it that every time we go out there’s an annoying little chore that goes with it?
Jerry: You know you’re becoming an annoying little chore yourself.
Season five and six, arguably the show’s peak, stripped away the overt season long or multi-episode narratives, instead playing subtle and richly detailed story beats that every now and then burgeoned to life over the course of each season. It distilled the show all the way down to it’s raw essence. Doing things that would simply not happen in any other show. It felt less like a sitcom and more like a stage to project all of life’s mishaps. Sure, George got a job with the Yankees which provided the universe with the rants of then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and Elaine had her ordeal working with Mr. Pitt (doing…whatever) but they were never the driving force of a season arc, nor for much of the time, Elaine or George’s arc.
Episodes like The Secretary, The Big Salad, The Dinner Party, The Hamptons, the one two punch of The Switch and The Label Maker, The Raincoats, The Doodle and The Race (I really could have listed more if not all of the episodes) were astoundingly written and constructed. A closer look reveals the intricacy and complexity with each line, each reading, each look, each expression, each movement, each pause and beat. It was unconscious and indefinable. One of the reasons why twenty years later it’s still shockingly as fresh and relatable.
George: Well why couldn’t you include me in your excuse?
Jerry: Why didn’t you come up with your own?
George: I froze. I think I’m losing it.
Jerry: Ah, c’mon. Maybe you’re just in a slump?
George: No, no. I reached down and there was *nothing* there!.
It helped that the show had no agenda outside of the lives of four New Yorkers and who and what they interacted with. It wasn’t about something or had issues to push that would normally provide colouring for emotional resonance. Even when episode covered a topic ( like being mistaken for being gay in The Outing) it’s executed in a way that isn’t about the topic but the miscommunication and misinterpretation that the main characters have to navigate just to get back to square one. It’s like the apple cart shook violently of its own volition despite the characters standing by innocently while it happened.
In keeping that element firmly on the outside looking in, the show had a unique freedom to pursue whatever the writers could bring to the table. In a way the show existed in a vacuum as an entire entity, becoming universally relevant. The plots were fantastic and dense, but in the best possible way they were what got in the way of just seeing everyone do their thing. The Shower Head episode from season seven is a great example of such non event, a premise that is barely one. And yet it to an extent, it becomes this existential crisis for Kramer and Newman, and somewhat of an annoyance for Jerry . It’s a digression that becomes the episode. At the same time, who among us hasn’t been disheartened with low flow showers at one time or another?
It can’t really be replicated, infused as it was with such specificity and a chemist level attention to joke crafting — there’s so much work that goes into the creation of each gag and riff that it circles around to an effortless, floating experience. Spare a square, where to get fruit, eats her peas one at a time, helping a friend move house, raisins, dealing with overly cheerful people, Jerry’s uncle stealing books, bad watches, annoying relatives, unemployment, employment, co-workers, inter-office politics, tipping, lunch, treating people, sexual moves, clothing choices, unable to get pants off, unable to find your car, waiting for a table, the dry cleaner wearing Jerry’s jacket, going to the movies. These are…things you know? Sketched out by the hands of the show, these things suddenly become so inexplicably funny as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
George: She’s got a bit of a Marisa Tomei thing going on.
Jerry: Too bad you’ve got a bit of George Costanza thing going on.
Season seven brought back the season long arc with George in a prolonged and arduous engagement to Susan. The show was branching out even further, filming at CBS Studio Center provided it with a more expansive set of tools to work with. Naturally it was the season that felt most like George was the central figure in it, and indeed he had some of his most memorable moments (how Jason Alexander never won Emmy is beyond comprehension). There was a distinct sense that the show was approaching a finality, even if Susan death’s and the restoration of the status quo was set by the end of the season.
With Larry David leaving before season eight, the show leaned heavily into more outlandish and deeper meta plots. The characters morphed into more bitter, cynical and at times exhausted versions of who they are. You could tell that the end was near, despite it being still so consistently impressive. The show never hid from it either, regularly referencing going through the motions or how long they’ve been doing this. It was if they were done with each other and they were only seeing each other out of convenience.
There were still some all time classics — The Bizarro Jerry, The Chicken Roaster, The Yada Yada, The Serenity Now (Don’t blame the mechanism!), The Butter Shave (“Knicks? Mets?” “Playground equipment!” “Welcome back to the show”), The Strike (a festivus for the rest of us!), The Slicer (if you buy that much meat down there they’ll give you anything) and The Merv Griffin Show (Jerry we’d love to have you back any time).
Relationships become about a particular thing that one of them is after. The selfish and self centered ideology. Or it becomes an existential crisis as they try to figure out whatever peculiarity the person they’re dating has. Which eventually backfires. Getting on the speed dial, getting a massage, forbidden city, if she’s she’s bulimic, lip reader, the move, his or her physical features, shaving, figuring out a name (Dolores),whether she wears the same dress every day — all the descriptors they use. George becoming aroused by food during sex, or avoiding a breakup just so he can bring his date to the Yankee ball and make a great entrance.
Newman: Damn you Seinfeld. You useless pustule.
Good intentions inevitably backfire by their own shortcomings or lack of foresight. Oft times they’re the ones that are the reasonable ones in those situations but perspective never really agrees with them so they end up looking like the ones to blame.
Go beyond the catchphrases and terms that have ensconced themselves in the pop culture lexicon. Beyond the episodes that by name alone bring to mind some of the greatest moments in television history. Go beyond and you’ll find a vast wonder of comedic delights and perfection that not only haven’t aged day, but continue to grow in stature.
Buckles: But Jerry we’re riffing!
Jerry: No we’re not riffing, I’m ignoring! Can’t you tell the difference?
Buckles: …..can you get me on the tonight show?
Kramer: You’ve got to mulch, Jerry. You got to!
I can’t remember when I first watched Seinfeld, whether it was during its initial run or after it was over. I don’t want to remember a time when Seinfeld wasn’t in my life. It feels comforting to know that it sprung up, fully formed and waiting for me to soak in its splendour. I didn’t turn 10 til 1999, a year almost a year to the day after the show finished it’s run, so what genius I could have picked up from watching it when I barely knew anything, would have been limited to say the least. I know my parents loved it, especially my dad (he is relentless in quoting a few choice lines from it regardless of context)— so that could have been an in. Even my grandparents knew the show to the extent that they knew who was who and what type of characters they were. it was so joyously pervasive in my young life and I didn’t even know it really.
And so here I am, nearly 30, and it’s like I grew up with the show. It’s ideology and point of view, the absurdity and futility of it all even while we laugh at it spoke to me in ways that have resonated with me all my life. As I’ve deep dived into each episode and every season, extracting what the show is offering and appreciating on all kinds of levels how fucking smart it is to an alost mathematical degree of detail, I’ve come to understand, or at least hope to understand, how much the shows reflects the general innui of life in that now millennial age bracket. I can’t quite fully explain it since it’s more of a feeling than a tangible state. I watch it and I get it, like the core of my being is being projected onto the screen in a way that I could never full grasp until that moment.
To me the show is so hilarious that I can read parts of an episode, instantly conjure up that scene in my mind, shot for shot, each detail in its rightful place and burst out laughing uncontrollably. I’ve seen every episode hundreds of times and it never ceases to make me laugh wildly. The anticipation adds to it now, watching the build up, the little notes of movement and action, the reactions and expression of the characters, and knowing how it all pay-off. Again, like old friends telling a story you’ve heard a thousand times before but laughing like maniacs all the same. Maybe it’s because it feels like there’s no way you can replicate it, so watching masters at work repeatedly never tires. You may try to tell the joke or expression or one of Kramer’s iconic sounds or tics, but it’ll never measure up to the real thing, and there’s a warm comfort to that. It never gets old. So much of it comes down to execution — Kramer’s stuff especially. Michael Richards injected so much into a single word that the world threatened to tip off its axis.
He makes a gardening tip sound like spun comedy gold. You can’t replicate that. (Also extra points for the wind chime pull. And also, extra, extra points for the second wind chime pull just to make sure. It’s such a suburban thing to do.)
The show was at its funniest (which was pretty much all the time) when it took the most mundane, almost non-existent parts of life and take them to extremes that still remain breathtakingly available. It was an indescribable mix of scripting, execution, chemistry, timing and a cultural landscape that seemingly was in need of a show that didn’t have really anything to say. In a way the show is even more perfect for this world now. The detachment, the strain of connection, the constant stream of minor issues that batter our daily lives while nothing really changing.
