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The least promising opening of any comedy series

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    The least promising opening of any comedy series

    it takes some balls to put together a pilot for a comedy show containing no jokes whatsoever, despite contain several lengthy segments of stand up comedy. Here;s the opening monologue of seinfeld

    JERRY: You know, why we're here? [he means: here in the Comedy club] To be out, this is out...and out is one of the single most enjoyable experiences of life. People...did you ever hear people talking about "We should go out"? This is what they're talking about...this whole thing, we're all out now, no one is home. Not one person here is home, we're all out! There are people tryin' to find us, they don't know where we are. [imitates one of these people tryin' to find us; pretends his hand is a phone] "Did you ring?, I can't find him." [imitates other person on phone] "Where did he go?" [the first person again] "He didn't tell me where he was going". He must have gone out. You wanna go out: you get ready, you pick out the clothes, right? You take the shower, you get all ready, get the cash, get your friends, the car, the spot, the reservation...There you're staring around, whatta you do? You go: "We gotta be getting back". Once you're out, you wanna get back! You wanna go to sleep, you wanna get up, you wanna go out again tomorrow, right? Where ever you are in life, it's my feeling, you've gotta go.

    but there's more of this stuff in comedy clubs.

    JERRY: "Laundry-day" is the only exciting day in the live of clothes. It is...no, think about it: the washing machine is the nightclub of clothes. Ya know, it's dark, there's bubbles happening, they're all kind a dancing around in there...shirt grabs the underwear: "C'mon babe, let's gather". You come by, you open up the lid and they'll: [shows how clothes are acting when you open the lid]...Socks are the most amazing article of clothing. They hate their lives, they're in the shoes with stinky feet, the boring drawers...the dryer is their only chance to escape and they all know it. They knew a escape from the dryer. They plan it in the hamper, the night before: [sock's voice] "Tomorrow, the dryer, I'm goin'...you wait here!" The dryer-door swings open and the sock is waiting up against the side wall. They hope you don't see him and then he goes down the road [shows how the sock is going down the road]. They got buttons sowed on their faces: join the puppet show...So they're showing me on television the detergent for getting out blood-stains...Is this a violent image to anybody? Blood-stains? I mean, I, come on, you got a T-shirt with blood-stains all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem right now...Maybe you oughtta get the harpoon out your chest first.

    then there's this scintillating segment

    JERRY: The dating world is not a fun world...it's a pressure world, it's a world of tension, it's a world of pain...and ya know, if a woman comes over to my house, I gotta get that bathroom ready, 'cause she needs things. Women need equipment. I don't know what they need. I know I don't have it, I know that...Ya know what they need, women seem to need a lot of cotton-balls. This is the one I'm, always has been one of the amazing things to me...I have no cotton-balls, we're all human beings, what is the story? I've never had one...I never bought one, I never needed one, I've never been in a situation, when I thought to myself: "I could use a cotton-ball right now"...I can certainly get out of this mess...Women need them and they don't need one or two, they need thousands of them, they need bags, they're like peat-moss(?) bags, have you ever seen these giant bags? They're huge and two days later, they're out, they're gone, the, the bag is empty, where are the cotton-balls, ladies? What are you doin' with them? The only time I ever see'em is in the bottom of your little waste basket, there's two orthree, that look like they've been through some horrible experience... tortured, interrogated, I don't know what happened to them...I once went out with a girl who's left a little zip-lock-baggy of cotton-balls over my house. I don't know what to do with them, I took them out, I put them on my kitchen floor like little tumbleweeds. I thought maybe the cockroaches would see it, figure this is a dead town: "Let's move on"... The dating world is a world of pressure. Let's face it: a date is a job-interview, that lasts all night. The only difference between a date and a job-interview is: not many job-interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it...ya know: "Well, Bill, the boss thinks you're the man for the position, why don't you strip down and meet some of the people you'll be workin' with?".

    I appreciate that looking at comedy scripts may not be the truest test of how funny things are, but changing the font to comic sans would give it better comic delivery than from jerry seinfeld. here's a link to the show in its awful glory

    How did this show get made? Does Jerry seinfeld give the best head in hollywood? I was going to watch the rest of the first series to see if I had been unduly harsh on it in the past, but I honestly don't have the fucking will or strength.

    #2
    The least promising opening of any comedy series

    I don’t know whether he’s well known outside of German-speaking countries, but Mario Barth is very popular here. Unbelievably popular. “120,000 people at one of his shows in Berlin”-popular.

    I once watched the first half an hour of one of his shows on television. He told a non-joke about how crap women are at parking and a non-joke about how difficult it is to understand announcements in railway stations.

    There weren’t even any amusing observations; the general tone was, “And then you see her, don’t you, with her hands on the steering wheel, don’t you, looking in the mirror, isn’t she, like, looklooklook, trying to park the car, reverse, brake, reverse, brake. And then the angle’s wrong, so what does she do? Yes, that’s right, she starts all over again.”

    And the people in the audience were pissing themselves laughing.

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      #3
      The least promising opening of any comedy series

      That's remarkably similar to the humour of seinfeld. The disturbing thing about seinfeld is that he is an heir to one of the richest most gag heavy cultural traditions, where the ability to perform is a social must (certainly if old jews telling jokes is anything to go by)

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        #4
        The least promising opening of any comedy series

        Berb, are you basing your opinion of Seinfeld on S01E01, or have you watched loads of it?

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          #5
          The least promising opening of any comedy series

          I've watched a couple of episodes over the years. The characters don't get any more sympathetic. Jerry seinfeld doesn't get any funnier. Part of the reason I couldn't get into it at all is the idea that he's a stand up comic in the show. The stand up comedy sections are generally pretty terrible. that should be the easiest bit to get right.

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            #6
            The least promising opening of any comedy series

            I believe I can say, without much fear of causing a ruck, that the show improves to the point of near-genius in later years. It really didn't pick up steam and hit its stride until easily the third season. But when it was at its peak, it was brilliant. It may surprise you to learn that they dialled back the stand-up bit each year.

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              #7
              The least promising opening of any comedy series

              well the third season opens with jerry in the club, he's talking a little faster, a little more confidently and he's doing a very unfunny observational routine about doctors. But what's that, It's the trademark seinfeld Bass. this is not a good start.

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                #8
                The least promising opening of any comedy series

                more bass. Jerry is getting a massage from a chatty masseuse who is boring him. He asks her what would be the worst part about being blind. when she offers no opinion, he lets her know that for him it would not being able to know if there would be bugs in his food. I'm already flagging

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                  #9
                  The least promising opening of any comedy series

                  he takes her offering some nugget of information about her son to launch into a schtick about child abduction, and how those child kidnappers are everywhere. If she were to kill him now, no-one would blame her

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                    #10
                    The least promising opening of any comedy series

                    now he's relating the story to the short fat one, and the shrewish one with a bad hair, and they're telling him he's a dick.

                    now the short fat one is upset that his masseuse is going to be a masseur. It;s going to be an uncomfortable about gays episode.

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                      #11
                      The least promising opening of any comedy series

                      well it had a plot where they all got notes from jerry's friend the dentist to claim their massages on their insurance. (apparently this is a big issue) but the dentist gets caught, so they have to get the therapist to say that it was a dentally related massage. Unfortunately the dentist thinks that jerry is going to abduct and rape her child, and has been refusing to see him. Meanwhile the short fat one, has been struggling with the definition of his sexuality (the masseuse used to be an airline steward) and the fucking weirdo has spotted Joe Di Maggio in a shitty doughnut shop. there's a big spiel about that, and they don't believe him, and the fucking weirdo keeps bangning on about it, and the payoff of the whole show is that they see joe di maggio in their cafe, having a doughnut, and george says he's a handsome man.

                      It's the bass though. This is the whitest show ever made, why do they have this funky bass?

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                        #12
                        The least promising opening of any comedy series

                        The tallish bald one doesn't like Seinfeld very much, it seems. The handsome German/South African one rather disagrees with him. And with the idea that white people are biologically precluded from funkiness.

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                          #13
                          The least promising opening of any comedy series

                          Seinfeld has come in for a bit (though not a lot) of criticism for his whiter-than-white show(s). Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (which I think is very well done) is equally white on white on white.

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                            #14
                            The least promising opening of any comedy series

                            the fucking seinfeld characters are precluded from funkiness. a faux Irish sting would be equally out of place.

                            I think the problem is that the characters are small, petty and uninteresting. I don't find curb your enthusiasm funny, but larry david's character is a vast cavernous baroque monster, and the situations are a thousand times more credible and well crafted. Larry david really commits, and you can believe that he is capable of getting into these situations. Seinfeld is a watery streak of piss. and his career as a stand up comedian is less credible than the basic premise of friends.

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                              #15
                              The least promising opening of any comedy series

                              The character of George is meant to be David.

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                                #16
                                The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                Chris Rock and George Wallace (the comedian, not the dead racist cunt) were on it. And Louis CK has been made an honorary black. But that's about it.

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                                  #17
                                  The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                  On which? Comedians in Cars?

                                  Seinfeld was asked about the black thing on a talk show and he got really shitty about it. A bit of the shine went off of him, for me.

                                  Just watched it again. I wouldn't say 'shitty', but I'd say the non-answer answer about people 'calculating' spoke plenty.

                                  http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarettwieselman/jerry-seinfeld-on-diversity-in-comedy-who-cares-are-you-maki#3x9n3vk

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                                    #18
                                    The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                    The character of George is meant to be David.

                                    hmmm. he doesn't do a good job. He's just an arsehole. Larry david's character in CYE is the sort of dysfunctional loon that lengthy case studies could be written about.

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                                      #19
                                      The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                      First line of this article in today's Guardian seems apposite:
                                      http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/23/seinfeld-was-right-innocent-bystander

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                                        #20
                                        The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                        You are quite mad. Seinfeld was one of the best sitcoms ever made.

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                                          #21
                                          The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                          ad hoc wrote: You are quite mad. Seinfeld was one of the best sitcoms ever made.
                                          No, I'm with TAB on this one.

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                                            #22
                                            The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                            I really liked it when it was on. It was everything that Friends aspired to be and failed.

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                                              #23
                                              The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                              There was always a moral to the tale with friends - to the extent that the stories overtook the gags as time progressed - and in that sense it was a typical American sitcom playing for the big crowd. They should have let Matthew Perry loose in more scenes like the ATM one. As a comedy showcase he kills it. 'This gum is perfection' will remain with me until the end.

                                              A morality play for pretty people, as I saw it once described.

                                              That's what surprised me the most about Seinfeld when I first started watching it as a twelve year-old. It was the way that everybody was kind of a jerk and out for themselves which contrasted to pretty much every kind of comedy out there at the time. It was positively revelatory.

                                              Back in the early nineties, Seinfeld was aired at ridiculous times in the UK, but I used to look forward to staying up late on a Tuesday school night, and first caught it whilst BBC two were showing season three, though it used to be moved about the schedule mercilessly.

                                              I deliberately mentioned season three, as that's when Seinfeld began to gather real momentum...I've long since gone back and bought the boxset, and season one is extremely slow-paced compared to two, as two is to three, but it builds.

                                              On the directors commentary, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld themselves refer to how slow-paced the first episodes are compared to what it grew into...which is to say I'd personally recommend sticking with it, judge it as of its time, - though it may well be that it's passed you by altogether, that you just can't go back, which is fair enough - not against the success it enjoyed, and you have a very enjoyable sitcom with some brilliantly stupid moments.

                                              Some random Seinfeld moments that just made me smile whilst recalling them:

                                              Art Vandelay of Vandelay industries

                                              Hennigans whisky

                                              "you're just part of the problem"

                                              Kramer turning his peephole around so people could see into his front room

                                              Kramer ending up with the set of an old chat show and turning into a chat show host

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                                                #24
                                                The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                                Also thought the stand-up bits were unnecessary, and quite unfunny, indeed they are phased out altogether as the show progresses.

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                                                  #25
                                                  The least promising opening of any comedy series

                                                  AND...the slap bass is pish, but I like watching justified, and that has a shit theme tune as well. It's no indicator of the shows quality, is what I wanted to say.

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