First of all, yeah, come at me. âSeinfeldâ 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 âhyuk-hyuk, get a load of all my jokes about women driversâ comedians and the post-Lenny Bruce era, where everything just boils down to telling boring âslice of lifeâ 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 thatâs 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. Youâre simply wrong. If you like his comedy or his show, you just have bad taste. I canât fix that. I canât change your mind. You canât change mine, either. But Iâm objectively correct that he and his comedy material both suck.
But the whole âshow about nothingâ thing is what really boils my ass. You can argue that the show wasnât âabout nothing,â in the first place. And thatâs, like, whatever. There are valid arguments, there. In fact, Iâd like to accept those arguments, then proceed under the assumption that the âshow about nothingâ concept really is a âshow about nothing, and therefore about everything.â
This is the important point: the thing I disagree with is this wretched and insulting notion that âSeinfeldâ was somehow a PIONEERING television show, in this context of being about nothing and/or everything.
Thatâs my problem. The claim that âSeinfeldâ did any of that shit first. The implication is that all prior television, especially all prior comedies, were somehow locked into a âthis is a show about a particular topicâ mentality. And, like, ânobody 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.â
Thatâs fucking horseshit. Horseshit of the highest fucking caliber.
I suppose these turd-brained fucksticks believe that âI Love Lucyâ was about a Cuban guy who had a job as a bandleader and his wife, who sometimes tried to get into showbusiness. And âThe Honeymoonersâ would be about a guy who has a job as a bus driver. And âTaxiâ was a show about cab drivers, driving their cabs.
Of course, thatâs not what those shows were ACTUALLY ABOUT. They were basically shows about nothing, just as much as âSeinfeldâ 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 âshow about nothingâ mold BETTER than âSeinfeldâ ever did.
I say they did it better, because they werenât 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 thatâs part of the jokeâŠbut it wears thin very quickly, and my point is that other shows did a similar âitâs a show about nothingâŠbut really everythingâ theme, but their casts of characters WERENâT 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 donât give a shit. I can keep going. âGreen Acresâ wasnât really about farming. âThe Bob Newhart Showâ wasnât really about psychiatry, âThe Mary Tyler Moore Showâ wasnât really about TV production, and âWKRP in Cincinnatiâ wasnât really about radio production.
The shows about nothing and everything are THE MAJORITY of all the shows. Certainly, all the good ones. Itâs harder for me to think of reversed examples, where the show is just what it was supposed to be âabout.â
Like, yeah, âFlipperâ really was about a fucking dolphin, and âThe Flying Nunâ 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 wonât be reading that shit. Not sorry.
I agree that it is generally overrated. However, I have not seen the other shows and have never heard of most of them. I think the same would be true for most people outside USA and UK. Maybe thatâs why it was a pioneer? Not that it invented it, but made it big?
Now, thatâs an interesting line of inquiry. Since the show did self-reference that whole thing, with the âshow about nothing,â that is what made superfans begin crediting it with inventing the concept, even though it didnâtâŠbut I never really thought about how many people had probably never even thought about any of this, prior to âSeinfeldâ bringing it up, in their minds.
I think I did make an error. Note, first of all, that I did know about the âitâs a show about nothingâ concept being in the show itself. Iâm not mistaken about my premise, because of that. Iâm deliberately reiterating this point, because so many people in these comments seem to think I got that wrong, or didnât know about it.
Anyway, I know the show had that arc. But it was intended to be self-referential, and people who really love the show will point to that whole thing and say âGENIUS! THIS IS A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING, AND IT EVEN HAS A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING INSIDE OF IT!â
But the thing is, I think I did still make an error. I made the assumption that those people were doing that shit in bad faith. At the very least, itâs unfair of me to make that assumption. Seeing that meta-humor in âSeinfeldâ may have provoked them to start thinking about the meta-concepts of media and writing and human culture, for the very first time.
Just because I was already familiar with those concepts the first time I saw any of âSeinfeldâ doesnât mean everyone was. I have no evidence to suggest that people were being willfully ignorant, and instead I may be bashing on people who are having completely honest reactions to a concept theyâd really never thought about.
That shouldnât be something I rant and shake my fist about.