First of all, yeah, come at me. “Seinfeld” is only kinda-sorta funny, at best. Seinfeld himself is really not funny at all. His act is perpetually stuck between the oldschool, early 1950s-style, cigar-waving “hyuk-hyuk, get a load of all my jokes about women drivers” comedians and the post-Lenny Bruce era, where everything just boils down to telling boring “slice of life” stories with mildly clever exaggerations.
Seinfeld manages to pick and choose all the worst elements of both those eras and smush them together into a tremendously boring, un-funny standup act.
Annnnd that’s what gets translated to the show. Boring, egotistical, overly-New-York-focused, pretentious nonsense.
Like I said, come at me about that. I know people disagree. I truly do not care what you want to say to me, about it. You’re simply wrong. If you like his comedy or his show, you just have bad taste. I can’t fix that. I can’t change your mind. You can’t change mine, either. But I’m objectively correct that he and his comedy material both suck.
But the whole “show about nothing” thing is what really boils my ass. You can argue that the show wasn’t “about nothing,” in the first place. And that’s, like, whatever. There are valid arguments, there. In fact, I’d like to accept those arguments, then proceed under the assumption that the “show about nothing” concept really is a “show about nothing, and therefore about everything.”
This is the important point: the thing I disagree with is this wretched and insulting notion that “Seinfeld” was somehow a PIONEERING television show, in this context of being about nothing and/or everything.
That’s my problem. The claim that “Seinfeld” did any of that shit first. The implication is that all prior television, especially all prior comedies, were somehow locked into a “this is a show about a particular topic” mentality. And, like, “nobody had the GENIUS and the GUTS to make a freewheeling show about just, like, whatever topics came to the minds of the genius writers, and their groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness comedy process.”
That’s fucking horseshit. Horseshit of the highest fucking caliber.
I suppose these turd-brained fucksticks believe that “I Love Lucy” was about a Cuban guy who had a job as a bandleader and his wife, who sometimes tried to get into showbusiness. And “The Honeymooners” would be about a guy who has a job as a bus driver. And “Taxi” was a show about cab drivers, driving their cabs.
Of course, that’s not what those shows were ACTUALLY ABOUT. They were basically shows about nothing, just as much as “Seinfeld” was. They were often about relatable problems in domestic life, they were sometimes about people trying zany get-rich-quick schemes, they were sometimes about the fears and perils and hopes that surround pregnancy and childbirth, they were often about the uncertainty and passion and sacrifice that people put themselves through, for their budding careers, or their workaday jobs. And they were about a million other things that all fit the “show about nothing” mold BETTER than “Seinfeld” ever did.
I say they did it better, because they weren’t exclusively about sad, angry, borderline-psychopathic reprobates, who seem to have no goals or aspirations, beyond smirking and talking shit about people behind their backs, swilling coffee, and occasionally trying to get laid. They were shitty people, with shitty attitudes. I know that’s part of the joke…but it wears thin very quickly, and my point is that other shows did a similar “it’s a show about nothing…but really everything” theme, but their casts of characters WEREN’T entirely populated by malignant, fundamentally worthless narcissists.
Basically, I implore people to stop worshipping that fucking show, as if it was some kind of groundbreaking, high art. There were way better classic comedy shows than that piece of shit, from its own era and the TV eras before it.
Oh, and before you point out that I accused Seinfeld of being overly New York focused, but also used three other shows set in New York as counterexamples, I realized that just now.
And I don’t give a shit. I can keep going. “Green Acres” wasn’t really about farming. “The Bob Newhart Show” wasn’t really about psychiatry, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” wasn’t really about TV production, and “WKRP in Cincinnati” wasn’t really about radio production.
The shows about nothing and everything are THE MAJORITY of all the shows. Certainly, all the good ones. It’s harder for me to think of reversed examples, where the show is just what it was supposed to be “about.”
Like, yeah, “Flipper” really was about a fucking dolphin, and “The Flying Nun” really was about a flying fucking nun. And those shows fucking sucked.
I think I can consider my point thoroughly made.
Now, all you assholes can start typing abuse at me, for daring to dislike your idol. I won’t be reading that shit. Not sorry.
The genius of Seinfeld was how they took all the different plot lines and tied them together at the end. Complete with absurdity.
But yes it was 4 antisocial and/or dysfunctional people.
Your thoughts on Frasier?
Oh shit, my dude. My thoughts on “Frasier” are MIND BOGGLINGLY FUCKING COMPLICATED, TO THE POINT THAT I AM NOT EVEN SURE WHAT I ACTUALLY FEEL, OR IF I AGREE WITH MYSELF. And it’s all modulated by shifting social attitudes since the original airing, as well as issues of separating the known views and personalities of the actors from the art itself. I mean, do you have fifteen or twenty minutes to read this? Because that’s what we’re talking about.
Seriously, there is so much contradiction and complexity with “Frasier.” On the one hand, it superficially follows the aforementioned “show about an actual premise, but it really is about anything and everything” model, to good effect.
It’s a show about a known character, with an interesting profession, made even more interesting by combining it with him being a minor media celebrity, inside the universe? That’s gold, from the very start. That can go anywhere. The writers never had to worry about having wells to draw potential plot points from.
Episodes that focus on stuff that happens on the air, on his show-within-a-show? They did those. They happened. Episodes that refer back to the aspects of practicing as a therapist? Niles did that. Those episodes were there. Ran out of ideas with that? Psych stuff getting boring? Episodes about their dad’s former police career! They happened, too! And then you throw in all the stuff about Frasier and Niles being snobs and constantly having to prove to themselves that they were really and truly “cultured and sophisticated.” If you run out of all that, you can have people stop in from Frasier’s former “Cheers” life. And THEN you throw in all the stuff with Niles and his obsession with Daphne.
Annnnd that’s where some of the cringe starts. And the “ick,” as the young people say.
That creepy shit, with Niles. It got old, as a comedic premise, first of all. And it was really pretty regressive and fucked up, on multiple levels. It’s not like the show really ever glorified Niles for objectifying Daphne. And it’s not like I’m about to get on a moralizing soapbox and cry foul, on the grounds that the show shouldn’t have presented him as a sympathetic character, despite being a married man with an obsessive crush on another woman, not his wife.
But the LEVEL of the objectification and stalker-style obsession is just gross, and I never liked it. And it certainly would be rightly controversial, today. And the fact that Niles eventually does “get” Daphne, as a reward for his patience? That really isn’t okay. It’s a repugnant and arguably outright dangerous message.
Whether they intended to or not, you can argue that this is the message they finally sent: “hey, all you lovelorn guys. Keep on smelling that girl’s hair, when she’s not looking. That’s okay, as long as you’re a nice guy. Be a good friend to her. Win her over, gradually, under false pretenses. Eventually, if you just keep on persisting in your dreams, the universe will reward you. After all that frustration and fantasizing, you deserve her.”
That’s, like, turbo-fucked. Nauseating. Again: I don’t think that was anyone’s explicit, specific intention. But it is there, when you look at the whole thing, from start to finish. Honestly, I believe it’s just laziness that brought it about. I listed all those other wells that the writers could draw from. They didn’t have any lack of potential material. And yet, they kept going back, more and more often, to this meme about Niles and Daphne and the whole love/obsession/friendzone thing. Ugh. It really did ruin the show for me, by the end.
Also, there’s the fact that Kelsey Grammer is a real jackass, on a personal and political level. Watching a known conservative doing his best impression of a “hoity toity, talk-about-your-feelings, readin’ book-smartsy books all the time Seattle liberal” is a little unpleasant, when you think about it.
And oh shit, there’s the new show. I haven’t watched it, but I am so sad that my man Nicholas Lyndhurst got sucked into that abominable shit-festival. God, I just hope they paid him really well.