Steaming Pile of Hate: Seinfeld
Posted by Dan July 11th, 2006 at 05:57pm In Steaming Pile of Hate
This is the first of a whenever-we-feel-like-it series of taking on classic TV series and calling them out as crap. For every entry, another TiFauxer will provide a rebuttal in the series' defense. We should also note that we stole this concept from The Onion.
Of all of television's sacred cows, there's none that I'd rather slaughter, grind, add cilantro/worcestershire sauce/finely chopped onion to, grill and devour than Seinfeld.
That is, I hate that God damned show.
While I can probably expound upon a list of reasons to hate Seinfeld, most of them are based in this one sentiment: the characters are so unlikable and annoying that it sours any sort of comic nuggets the show contains.
I'm not saying all comedies must have likable characters. Obviously, Dwight from The Office is a gas and a half even though no one would really say he's likable, per se. But, then again, Dwight isn't the heart of The Office — Jim and Pam are. Even Michael, with his desperate clawing for affection and admiration, is sympathetic much of the time.
Now, given that Seinfeld is one of the Jewiest shows to ever hit it big, I feel like I can throw in some Yiddish here. This whole series is full of mishigas ('craziness' for the goyim). Everyone's just so nutty and neurotic, so full of irrationality, that I find it hard to get invested in any of the characters. Whether it's Jerry's something's-always-going-wrong mentality, George's shrill complaining, Elaine's self-involvement or Kramer's collection of tics and mischief, I just want to throw my hands in the air and say "feh" at all of their antics.
I find Kramer and George to be the worst characters, with Kramer having a wacky, rubber chicken approach to comedy and George just being endlessly grating.
Furthermore, I feel like there's an underlying meanspiritedness to the show. It's not overwhelming, in fact, it's pretty subtle. It's probably more apparent in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld mastermind (and basis for George) Larry David's current HBO series. David is a curmudgeon and while (I guess) that can be played up for comedic effect in instances where he's a fish out of water, most of the time I just find it wearying. Seinfeld's meanspiritedness is most evident in parts like the characters' interactions with annoying neighbor Newman and the death of George's fiance Susan.
Funny material can come from a lot of places: exaggerated characters, outlandish situations and calling out bullshit/hypocrisy. To me, being mean is the opposite of funny (Carlos Mencia, I'm looking at you), and the Larry David-inspired curmudgeonry (new word – I just made it up) never makes me laugh.
I have one final point, but it's one that I can't really fault the show for. But it adds to my general hatred of the show nonetheless: Seinfeld is one of those shows where people tend to repeat the jokes/plots of episodes and try to recapture the comedic essence. Never works. Whether it's saying in some sort of garbled, almost racist accent "No soup for you!" or doing the Elaine dance, it's the kind of thing that your pit-stained, cream polo shirt-wearing, fifty-something co-worker in accounts payable will try to "have a moment" with you about. And it's always awkward and you try to force a smile before getting off the elevator.
By the way, when I say "you," I probably just mean "me." And again, this isn't the show's fault, but it just adds fuel to the fire.
Kyle Responds:
Dan, I was prepared to accept a drubbing of Seinfeld. It was my favorite show when I was in high school, but I have problems with it now. It feels a little creaky and 4-camera-y when you compare it to the best that sitcoms have to offer these days. As you vividly described, after multiple syndicated viewings its jokes have gone beyond stale. But I can't sit back and allow you to besmirch a fundamental buliding block of comedy. Everything about comedy is mean in some way. Mel Brooks once said "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." Of course, Mel Brooks hasn't been funny in over 20 years, so I'll assume he said that in the 70s. Carls Mencia's crime is not meanness, but having a retrograde and unoriginal viewpoint that happens to be mean and entirely unfunny.
There isn't a lot of good scholarly writing about comedy. If you've ever slogged through English translations of Sigmund Freud attempting to explain German jokes, you know just how bad it can be. But Henri Bergson articulated things best in "Laughter: an Essay on The Meaning of the Comic." He said characters that are funny show "a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being." Think about any character you find funny. Michael/David from The Office is one of the purest examples of this idea in contemporary comedy. Almost everything he does follows rigid ideas he has about himself that simply don't jive with reality.
The same is true with the self-involved foursome on Seinfeld. None of them is a hero, or even a likable human being. If you were friends with them you would constantly be asking yourself why. But they're funny because of those fundamental problems in their characters. They can't be happy. And a lot of people recognize their own failings in those meshugoyim, and it makes them laugh. Some people don't. Anyone who claims humor is universal or timeless hasn't watched M*A*S*H* lately.
And speaking of unlikable jerks, what about that band of misfits living in a model home in the O.C. (don't call it that) that we all like so damn much? Michael was a condescending asshole who thought he was always right, but was almost always wrong about everything. And he was the nice one in the Bluth family.
I will say one more bad thing about Seinfeld. They had terrible cast photos.
P.S. – Curmudgeonry gets 426,000 hits on Google. Saying you invented the word is like Richard Lewis on Curb Your Enthusiasm claiming he invented the phrase "the [blank] from hell." That was a funny idea. I think of it a lot. Nobody "invented" that phrase, and if someone did it certainly wasn't Richard Lewis. But his mechanical insistence on such a patently obvious falsehood is funny. Richard Lewis was in a not very funny Mel Brooks movie in 1993. In it, he saved a mime from execution saying "A mime is a terrible thing to waste."
13 Comments Add your own
1.
Maggie | July 11th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
I do hope this series won’t herald the end of our peaceful tifaux coexistence. We can all pull together around Project Runway, right?
2. sara | July 12th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
God, I hate Seinfeld, and by extension, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Well said, Dan.
3. Ekrobi | July 12th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
I always thought I was the only one who hated Seinfeld. Solidarity!
4. jesse | July 14th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
First, Seinfeld is a far more lighthearted show than Curb. It’s not particularly mean as it is pitiless. After all, the four central jerks on the show often get some kind of comeuppance or karmic payback (especially George).
But you miss another point: Seinfeld is THE sitcom. It is the apex of the sitcom in its traditional form, and this should be celebrated, not looked upon as dated-at-best. Even its defender, above, calls it a creaky four-camera show that looks outdated next to (I can only presume) Arrested Development and The Office. But there’s about 40-50 years’ worth of classic (and extremely non-classic) sitcoms, few of which ventured beyond the three-camera format; is The Office (which I love) really automatically better than all of those because of format?
I would agree that the three-camera sitcom format is dying and that is a good thing. But there is no “regular” sitcom as clever, fast-paced, or joyful as Seinfeld. Simpsons and Futurama are both masterpieces, but they’re animated and thus free of any kind of real boundaries. Arrested Development is genius — one of the best TV comedies ever — but it’s also innovative in its single-camear, quasi-doc format, with tons of cutaways.
Seinfeld took a lot of typical sitcom components — catchphrases, studio audiences, shticky wisecracks, the comedian as central figure, ridiculous plots — and made them, brilliantly, into a sort of unstoppable sitcom machine. It is a bunch of dumb sitcom tropes done right — with the useless ones jettisoned (as enscapsulated by the “no hugging, no learning” mantra of the show’s creators). When the show copped to being “about nothing,” it was actually putting the entire sitcom format in its place: sitcoms in *general* are about nothing, so why not admit it, dispense with “likable” characters and the pretenses of life lessons, and make a sublimely goofy and well-tuned farce?
Look at the other sitcoms of its time: Frasier is just as farcical, but with the smug sense that it is the more “intelligent” comedy (even though it is actually just about an intelligent person; not the same thing). Friends is just as minutae-obsessed, but with that puppyish desire to please and endear. Will & Grace is just as cartoonish, but more grotesque. Post-Seinfeld, you could feel the gears grinding through even the better traditional sitcoms. Effectively, it destroyed the sitcom in order to rebuild it. It basically took the big step that made shows like Arrested and The Office possible.
5.
Kyle | July 14th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
It was a damn funny show. One of the best. It made me a better comedy writer, no question about it. For the last episode I had a party that included a marble rye, pez dispensers, and a Glamour magazine. I know every episode almost by heart. That said, breaking ground is great and all, but I reserve the right to enjoy things less as time passes. People tell me I’m supposed to enjoy All in the Family because it was groundbreaking, but to me it’s just not funny. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hilarious at the time. Things change. And I’m bored with the old-timey sitcom format right now. It’s too stagey. That certainly doesn’t make every single-camera show automatically good. Malcolm in the MIddle is a terrible single-camera show that comes to mind. Also Scrubs. But if someone makes something that’s really great in the old sitcom format (and no, Lucky Louie is not doing it for me) then I’d be happy to blog excitedly about it.
6. Attmay | December 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
God bless you, Dan. I always found Seinfeld to be a cold, off-putting, and unfunny show. I really resent all the worshipful treatment that it has received. Plus it made Friends, the show that made me question the First Amendment, possible. Seinfeld is a fraud, plain and simple.
And anyone who thinks All in the Family and M*A*S*H are not funny should not be allowed to have electricity in their house.
And as for the “pretenses of life lessons”? It wasn’t Seinfeld that killed this, it was Blossom’s overuse of the “very special episodes” that did it. Furthermore, life is all about growth and learning, otherwise we stagnate. The real problem is when this is used as an excuse for sanctimonious political agit-prop (i.e. the later years of M*A*S*H, Julia Sugarbaker’s annoying sermons on Designing Women, or the second acts of most Norman Lear sitcoms). And this affects shows I actually like.
Comedy is dying in part because of political correctness, and TV comedy is being written by college boys with no life experience, which is why current sitcoms are uniformly terrible. No timing, wooden acting by forgettable, plastic people, (quick, name someone on the dreadful “How I Met Your Mother” other than Neil Patrick Harris) unfunny jokes (the first thing people notice), and boring situations. I am starting to hate single-camera shows because they wear the absence of a studio audience as an indication of quality, because they can’t claim good writing or acting.
7. Brian Solanto | March 9th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Man, I also thought I was the only person that hated that damn show. Every character is so damned annoying that I can’t even sit through an entire episode. I guess I just don’t get that kind of humor. For funny, watch “The Simpsons.”
8. ken | June 28th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I don’t know, I don’t know, dudes. I have a friend who recently began to make stupid jokes and apparently found them very funny. Basically he often contrived a comparison of something mentioned to something implicitly sexual. I don’t find that funny because it’s a contrivance, just like the characters and situations in Seinfeld–they are overly and overtly exaggerated. Compare it to the show Friends: the characters were real and situations relate-able. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with the masses who find Seinfeld funny–or rather what’s wrong with me!
9. free2fly | July 4th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Thank, it’s like you read my mind.
Seinfeld is the worst excuse for a sitcom..this god damn show got popular after that masturbation episode “the contest”
10. TOM | August 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
I agree, seinfeld is possibly theeeeeeee worst show to ever be made….. ever!!!!
11. Joel | December 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
While the show does have its funny moments, I’m usually ready to strangle someone from getting so annoyed at the characters. Although to be fair, a lot of it is done purposely. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a more extreme version of Seinfeld in which he makes a character so unlikeable, it makes you want to hunt Larry David down and make a clean headshot.
12. Luis V | March 19th, 2010 at 1:20 am
I have tried many times to find something likeable about Seinfeld and haven’t been able to do it. It had terrible scripts and not a pinch of funny stuff in it. Inane situations that telegraphed (Twitted?) the canned laughter and aplause minutes before they came up. It’s not a question of you liking or not the characters. All in the family had one of the most despicable characters in the history of TV comedy, but his ignorance, bigotry and stupidity made him likeable, if that makes any sense. It also had incredible writing and acting. Seinfeld always seemed to me like a paint by number show, they went through the paces. It was just one of those shows that become so trendy that if you don’t talk about it the next day at the office, they think you are out of it. Maybe I don’t have a sense of humor but the only funny thing on TV these days is The Family Guy, and it’s animated. 2 and a half men is incredibly dumb, and The big bang theory is almost making me forgo my American frequent traveller miles and go to another airline. Can’t they show something else except sports and dumb comedies?
13. EJK | April 2nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Hiya, Dan. Newbie here.
Great blog and I love this very funny thread.
I’m sort of the opposite from most of the posters: I hated the show when it was on, and have only come to love it recently, when someone gave me the Seinfeld Black Box for Christmas.
I’m a born-and-bred New Yorker (mostly on the Upper West Side) and I hated the show in the 90s because I hated what Manhattan became in the 90s: a skanky Yuppie playground. (Now it has no identity, maybe for the first time in its history.) It was often impossible not to suffocate from the atmosphere of nitwit self-satisfaction which held the city in grip pre-9/11. So anything that added to that, I loathed. Seinfeld added to that, and I lumped it with truly narcissistic dumps such as “Friends” or “Sex in the City”. (The two worst shows ever created.)
Now the New York of Seinfeld seems as vanished as The Hippodrome. Looked at apart from the ridiculous non-stop copy it got, apart from the public obnoxiousness of Larry David, and unplugged from the rot of its time — it seems pretty special. Obviously there are problems: Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is endlessly peevish and knowing and ordinary, just about anyone would have been a fresher Elaine; the coldness; the racism(ever notice how every black actor on the show[all four of them] is pretty hateful?); and the last few seasons often fall into a self-referential campiness.
Yet. Overall, I find it to be human and brilliant and somewhat sad, when it is self-contained. (Not self-referential.) A good example of that is “The Subway” — as perfect a piece of popular art as I can think of, its own little world. (Others: “The Parking Garage,” “The Chinese Restaurant,” “The Pez Dispenser” etc) Detached from its publicity, it really does stand up, IMHO.
However, if you can’t stand George Cantstandya or Jerry’s voice, well. . .
For those minds still open, a nice copy of “The Subway” can be seen here:
http://ejkred.blogspot.com/2010/03/holiday.html
Happy Easter!
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