The least promising opening of any comedy series

[wingco]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

TAB, Seinfeld is, as ad hoc says, one of greatest sitcoms ever made but you're right in that it begins very inauspiciously indeed. It's probably been spoiled forever for you now which is a shame because you're missing out on so much, so much that goes way, way beyond the admittedly lame routines you quote. Seinfeld himself, as a character and his routines are the weakest thing in it. But Elaine, Kramer, George . . .!

[meregreen]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

George Costanza is one of the great comic characters. He represents men at their most small minded and insecure.

Chuckling just thinking of the Jerk Store episode and the one in which he skimps on the stationery for his wedding.

No hugs, no learning. It was such an antidote to most US comedies of the time - not least Friends.

As mentioned, it was shown really late here on BBC 2 as a double bill with the misanthropic Larry Sanders show. Perfect end to the night.

[MsD]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I really liked it, too.

Don't understand why anyone would want a black character shoehorned into this circle of petty, snobby, selfish, insecure people who don't like themselves much, let alone anyone else; to fit in as a friend he'd have to have something in common, or else be a stock character like a janitor (no thanks) or landlord (so even more unpleasant).

It makes sense that Jerry the character is a mediocre comedian, he's a bit of a failure at life, even if that flat looks palatial by London standards.

[Borracho]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

meregreen wrote: George Costanza is one of the great comic characters. He represents men at their most small minded and insecure.

"Jerry, it's not a lie if you believe it!"

[Valentino Mazzola]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I feel I can only watch an episode of Seinfeld if I watch an episode of Larry Sanders straight after it. This will probably also be the case in 20 years time.

[Lucy Waterman]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: 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.

"I don't like Wings, but I still believe they are the band the Beatles could have been."

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

If seinfeld was the beatles, then 75% of the beatles would be paul mcCartney's bass.

Season 5 episode 3 opens with Jerry in the club (I thought you people promised me this wouldn't happen) you can barely hear what he's saying over the Bass guitar, but he's complaining about how mr Nightime guy wants to stay up all night, with no concern for mr morning guy, and the only way mr morning guy can get revenge is to sleep in, get fired so mr nighttime doesn't have any money to spend on staying out all night.

weird Kramer is going to help Gerry get an airconditioning unit to appease a girlfriend who has appeared in the 50 or so episodes I've skipped. The audience applaud his appearance at the door. They then applaud the appearance of little fat george who turns up wearing swimming goggles, indicating that there are going to be shennaningans afoot.

the Air conditioning unit is called a commando 8. I sense that wacky weirdo Kramer's plan to get an air conditioner isn't going to run smoothly. But lets see what happens.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

oh, he's wearing the eye goggles because while he was swimming someone stole his glasses, and he has prescription goggles. They're making some rather unfunny jokes at his expense

now wacky weird kramer has returned and is suggesting that he can hook him up with some new glasses at a discount. Much like with the air conditioner, I smell shenanigans.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

so the trip to the opticians doesn't go to plan. As george struggles to choose between pairs of glasses, then the short one who isn't fat grows bored with him and decides to pet a dog that has just come into the store. The Dog bites her. The dog and man are asked to leave by Dick dietrich the optician, and a squinting george decides he's not going to be pushed around any more and follows man and dog out into the street wearing the glasses frames. While out there he loses sight of the man and dog, but imagines he sees gerry's girlfriend kissing gerry's cousin. for some fucking inexplicable reason he tells him.

cue Neurosis. meanwhile they leave to go to the hospital, well the woman anyway, gerry has largely forgotten about her. He picks a hideous pair of lenses in the absence of his 'friends' and his efforts to get kramer's discount fall embarrassingly flat

in the emergency room gerry obsesses neurotically over himself as always. foreign doctor pronounces that she is fine. just dog bite. When she asks does she not need a shot, he says no. Dog bite. not shot. Woof woof, not bang bang. hilarious punchline almost ruined by premature bass-gasm

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

now neurotic gerry is having a neurotic conversation with SKYLER. he's confronting her. it doesn't go well. she's going away.

there is a discussion then about george's legendary ability to squint. he can't really see, but he can spot a dime across the room on the floor. elaine is now afraid of dogs, and her neuroses are mocked. george eats an onion, thinking it is an apple. has to finish it to disguise that he didn't make a mistake.

Elaine starts to think she has rabies.

[WOM]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I sense you're now approaching these with a bad attitude.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

ok. Well. she doesn't have rabies. Skyler didn't kiss gerry's cousin, george saw a police woman with blonde hair talking to her horse. it doesn't stop gerry from taking her over to his cousins apartment to have them confront each other. we meet gerry's uncle stereotype, who may as well have only left the pale of settlement yesterday. a misunderstanding happens which gerry takes to mean that his cousin was cheating with his girlfriend. It quickly transpires this was not so. Skyler fucks off and leaves him.

Oh, and the airconditioner was only in the window for 10 minutes before falling out and landing on the dog that bit elaine. george gives him gerry's address for some inexplicable reason. George swaps glasses frames with a blind man that he meets at the swimming pool.

The show finishes with gerry's stand up schtick about how glasses used to be a medical purchase, and now they're a fashion purchase. I bet michael mcIntyre uses that one today.

I think I've figured out my problem with this show. I don't think that neurotic people are funny. And There is nothing intrinsically funny about poorly drawn 2 dimensional neurotic people. maybe it had an element of novelty 25 years ago, but now it is as flat as flat could be. There is no reason for these four people to know each other. They don't like each other. all they do for each other is stand there and pretend to be sounding boards for the other person's neuroses, while they think about themselves.

perhaps looking at say wingco's plea in its favour, there might be something to the characters of george, but he's just a prick. Perhaps he was a quantum leap forward in terms of american comedy in the early 1990's. in the way that digital watches must have looked stunning 10 years earlier, but no-one is impressed in the days of smart watches. However a character as thinly drawn, and as unfunny as george can't survive on shock value or petty minded meanness, when there is an eric cartman in the world, filming crack babies fighting over a ball of crack, under the auspices of a non-profit he set up to eerily mimic the NCAA. or when there is a homer simpson acting out all the foibles and weaknesses known to man, but with much greater humour, human warmth, and oddly enough for a two dimensional cartoon, much greater depth.

I suspect that if any of you who were such fans back in the day, were to watch a couple of episodes, now,

The other thing is that it is a bit of an awful halfway house. it's a jewish show, with jewish characters, that has had to tone down the jewishness to escape the catskills, and grab the wider domestic market. So you get the preparedness to carry on the pointless conversations, or the bizarre fixation with discounts, but none of the self confidence to come out with something like This. I suspect that at the time of its launch it was all "like Annie Hall, then you'll love this" as it clung to an extra air of sophistication that it just really didn't have.

Imagine the impact on Father ted, if someone, somewhere along the line had gotten them to tone down the irishness of the show for the UK market. however those characters also inspired our affection and weren't worn out by having to come up with 178 episodes, without referencing current affairs, or the outside world in any way shape or form. Humour cannot survive under such conditions.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

WOM wrote: I sense you're now approaching these with a bad attitude.

not true. jerry's comedy monologues that are half drowned out by the ridiculous bass make for a terrible start. it's simply an awful show, or at the very least a show that has aged terribly.

[Borracho]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: The other thing is that it is a bit of an awful halfway house. it's a jewish show, with jewish characters, that has had to tone down the jewishness to escape the catskills, and grab the wider domestic market. So you get the preparedness to carry on the pointless conversations, or the bizarre fixation with discounts, but none of the self confidence to come out with something like This. I suspect that at the time of its launch it was all "like Annie Hall, then you'll love this" as it clung to an extra air of sophistication that it just really didn't have.

Only one of the four characters is Jewish. Elaine and George aren't, and with Kramer it's never stated one way or the other. (Michael Richards isn't Jewish.)

[WOM]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

No, that may be one of things that he's gotten right. It's a very Jewish type of humour, from Jerry all the way to George's parents. It's the over-the-top kvetching style that you either love or hate.

[ursus arctos]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

Jew or Not Jew (yes, really) has given all of the characters "Jew Scores".

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

oops. Either way, with Larry david, jerry seinfeld, george alexander, (changed the name but kept the religion,) and julia louis dreyfus {kept the name but changed the religion) It's still a pretty jewish show, that goes a certain way down the road of a certain set of cultural norms, but tries to update them unsuccessfully.

[WOM]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

You're consistent, I'll say that for you.

[ursus arctos]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

Jason Alexander (aka Jay Greenspan), Berba.

I know that the fiction/reality thing is hard for you.

In any event, Jew or Not Jew scores both the actors and the characters (they are really heartbroken about Elaine).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I didn't see the other two posts there for some reason.

[Patrick Thistle]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

TAB. Forget the early series. Start watching when George gets his job with the New York Tankees. That's when the series comes alive.

The first 2 series are terrible and the nightclub scenes are awful.

The point of the show is that all the characters are horrible people.

[Bored Of Education]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I like bits and pieces of Seinfeld but I never found it to be at the levels of genius that others do. Similar with Curb Your Enthusiasm. Part of it, I am sure, is due to the hopping around the schedules that they did but they just didn't make me laugh out loud that much. Don't get me wrong, I love Stewart Lee so don't need it to be gag, gag, gag but if it isn't making me laugh every minute, it should be engaging me or challenging me in some form and, if not, to giving me the feeling that is is building up to a genius s punchline even if I have to wait until the end of the episode to see it.

[Hofzinser]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

I'm in the camp that says Seinfeld is one of the greatest sitcoms ever, and George Costanza one of the greatest sitcom characters.

Incidentally, the stand-up comedy routines may look superfluous (and they are, admittedly, pretty crap much of the time) but they are more integral to the birth of the show than you might think. Seinfeld is often talked about as "the show about nothing" - and this is played upon in the 4th season episode "The Pitch" - but in fact it was originally pitched to TV execs as a show about where a stand-up comic gets his ideas from - hence every show being bookended with a stand-up routine loosely deriving its material from the events of the episode.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

It would help if Berbaslug shared with us what sitcoms he does like. That way we could see where Seinfield falls short for him.

[Bored Of Education]

The least promising opening of any comedy series

Selected Ambient Works 85-92 wrote: I really liked it when it was on. It was everything that Friends aspired to be and failed.

No, you are absolutely wrong there. Friends never aspired to make a whole cast of dislikable characters (if you met them in real life, like). Friends was also much more gag heavy. To me the writing on Friends was much sharper (as it should be with such a massive writing team) and, of course, more populist - not an insult, by the way. Friends was much much better than it is derided for.

Seinfeld was much more like, say, Taxi, Frasier or partly, Cheers, inasmuch as it was looking at the darker less savoury sides of people's characters. Friends wasn't like that. Friends was lighter and more positive in tone.