Seinfeld at 35: An Off-Balance Retrospective.
Serenity now! Insanity later.
Staying power in our current entertainment space, TV in particular, can be a nigh-impossible thing to master (much like one’s domain).
There is always new content, new creatives and new viewing experiences, all vying for the same fraction of our ever-limited attention.
Establishing momentum is one thing, maintaining it is another: let alone for over three decades.
Seinfeld, however, is one of the rare projects which has done just that.
The sitcom, which redefined comedy for a generation, turns 35 later this week: having first premiered, with its pilot episode, The Seinfeld Chronicles, on July 5th, 1989.
Both a blueprint for what would follow but also, completely, its own beast.
Though like any good enterprise, it wasn’t without a few early stumbles: among them disbelieving executives, creative growing pains and a refusal to submit to the status quo.
It was something I looked back on, the long-time Off-Balance reader might remember, last year - when the show turned 34.
For one, considering its later success, Seinfeld struggled mightily to get off the ground.
The pilot, while decidedly raw, still had some potential, even if it is a product very clearly in its infancy (Kramer, “Kessler” here, is simply odd rather than the eccentric mastermind he would become, Elaine doesn’t appear, etc).
Mixed reception however, meant the second episode wouldn’t air until the spring of 1990, some ten months later.
So the story goes, it was only through the intervention of one NBC executive, Rick Ludwin, who saw the inherent promise and pushed for the show to be picked up.
Even then, that first “season” of Seinfeld remains one of the smallest in television history: just five episodes.
Talk about hedging your bets.
And the second season, when it began in the winter of 1991? Yeah, it didn’t fare much better. Beset with diminishing ratings after the fourth episode, Seinfeld was put on a network-imposed hiatus.
It wouldn’t return to air until that April
But when it did come back, with The Apartment, it did so to the tune of 25 million viewers: with Jerry and Elaine, in their own ways, dancing around the topic of their forever-complex relationship, Kramer, learning to help the humans and George, making one of his bolder proclamations: he was, thereafter, “Constanza, Lord of the Idiots.”
Because while the suits no doubt fretted, concerned with ratings, mass appeal and the almighty dollar, Seinfeld, instead, had been steadily refining its craft, approach and storytelling acumen.
There was nothing quite like it on American primetime television.
And within two years? It was a cultural phenomenon.
Hedging your bets, indeed.
While it would, in time, become known as “The Show About Nothing”, the initial genesis of Seinfeld, as per co-creator Larry David?
It was based in something much more concrete: how a comedian, going through his day-to-day, developed material.
It tracks.
Fictional Jerry’s career as a stand-up was a central element of the show, even as it became less of a fixture as the series went on (outside of his opening and closing monologues which bookended virtually all episodes of the first seven seasons).
After all, theory is one thing, putting it into practice is another.
Because what really made Seinfeld work, it wasn’t through honing in on that specific niche (as in, a comedy for comedians) but instead, through its New York City-based, slice-of-life misadventures. Accented by the occasional foray into the more-serious (albeit in its own idiosyncratic way, from abortion rights and birth control, to kinda-sorta race relations).
But at the centre of it all, was the show’s unlikely quartet, four friends, misanthropes of the highest order, who cared little for anyone or anything that couldn’t benefit them personally.
Spending their days in Jerry’s apartment or the coffee shop, obsessing over the smallest of slights, petty grievances and the trivialities of everyday life - from sex and Kung Pao chicken to a girlfriend who committed the worst of sins: eating her peas one at a time.
They went through relationships like Lloyd Braun-approved chewing gum, were emotionally stunted, had no real ambition and would routinely wreck havoc on just about any poor sap who had the gall to disrupt their insular social balance: including the variety of memorable (and often equally wacky) supporting characters who were unfortunate enough to enter their crosshairs.
It was a creative approach that stood in stark contrast to both its most prominent television contemporaries (Cheers, Frasier) and the shows that would follow it (Friends, The King of Queens and later still, The Big Bang Theory) where despite the classical sitcom framework, an honesty of sorts, a genuine humanity, was always present, in some respect.
People who you rooted for, if only because, deep down, they cared for each other - you, as a viewer, wanted them to succeed.
On Seinfeld though?
By design, there were no lessons to be learned.
No insights to be gained. No sort of compassion or shred of decency of any kind. And even when someone in the gang did have a brief moment of altruism, it wouldn’t last, often brought down, to great humorous effect, by their own neurosis.
These were, in totality, dangerously uncaring individuals by whatever your merit of choice - a strong premise, however, can only carry so much weight and on two specific fronts, Seinfeld was undeniably successful by way of its execution: from the writing, to the performances which brought it all to life.
That in itself, something the show always seemed to find particularly amusing.
Consider, when George and Jerry begin developing their doomed show-within-a-show, Jerry, during the fourth season:
JERRY: Since when are you a writer?
GEORGE: What writing? We’re talking about a sitcom.
Such self-deprecation, it no doubt masked (probably purposely) what truly elevated Seinfeld - a somewhat unexpected, if hard-won relatability.
Famously, the show’s creatives actively pulled and repurposed their actual life experiences when crafting characters, storylines and even specific lines of dialogue, many of which, become iconic catchphrases all their own (from The Contest, Festivus and the Airing of Grievances, to regifters and man-hands - Festivus, to name one example, having been a legitimate anti-holiday celebrated by the father of Seinfeld writer, Dan O’Keefe).
In that sense, while Jerry, obviously, is among the easiest characters to pinpoint (with co-creator Seinfeld playing a fictionalized version of himself), Seinfeld was chock full of additional real-world inspiration.
Jason Alexander’s George, by his own admission, was a stand-in for co-creator Larry David and Michael Richards’ Cosmo Kramer, somewhat infamously, was based on David’s one-time neighbour, comedian Kenny Kramer, who has never shied away from exploiting his name-sake connection (something Seinfeld would openly poke fun at with various storylines during its nine seasons).
Elaine?
The character was, more than the others, the ultimate pastiche: a combination of various former girlfriends of the co-creators, Seinfeld writer Carol Leifer (who wrote/co-wrote six episodes from the fifth to seventh seasons) and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus herself.
Now, any measure of Jerry Seinfeld’s acting talent has always been a matter of some conjecture but the trick was, as, objectively, the weakest actor of the bunch, he played the straight man (to a tee) surrounded by far stronger performers.
In Louis-Dreyfus’, case, by the time she began her run on Seinfeld, at just 29, she was already established on the TV-comedy circuit, having, most prominently, three years of SNL under her belt.
And her character, right from the beginning feels the most fully-formed: quick-witted, charming and tremendously intelligent but equally neurotic, insecure and vindictive.
From imitating Marlon Brando, kidnapping dogs, reading one too many Billy Mumphrey stories or taking down a particularly hard-line soup entrepreneur simply out of armoire-adjacent spite, there was an Elaine for seemingly every circumstance.
On paper, it is an impossible balance to truly nail - a character who is both endearing and disagreeable at once… but Louis-Dreyfus made it look easy, as she became the true heart of Seinfeld.
The show, one of many high-water marks in a career that is one of the greatest, if not the greatest in the history of the medium (Louis-Dreyfus, as of this writing, having won the most Emmys by any performer, ever).
Maybe though, it was Michael Richards, whose interpretation of Kramer, combined impeccable physical comedy with an innate understanding of Cosmo’s unbeatable wackiness: from the ridiculous scheming, to his retro-inspired clothing, to the ever-bizarre verbal tics creating a character who just feels so lived-in.
His development, in contrast, was a slow-burn.
Evolving from quiet oddball in the beginning to total chaos element by the series’ mid-point. Kramer, becoming something for which other sitcoms, in the years since, have tried to replicate but for which there is no true equal.
A perfect storm of character work, performance and writing.
Though while Louis-Dreyfus may have been the heart, Jason Alexander, as George? He was perhaps Seinfeld’s Swiss Army knife, remaining one of the most notable contradictions of performer and character ever put to screen.
Alexander, being a Tony Award winner and accomplished theatre actor before he ever set foot on West 81st Street and then… there was George. A man for whom lies and deception were nothing if not second nature, very rarely content to simply be himself (or noted architect Art Vandelay) and only then, if his conniving immorality could help him to escape whatever personal or professional jam he found himself in (and often of his own design).
And while much has been made over the years, of how George was simply Larry David’s alter-ego, such a blanket statement, in many respects, seems to be a disservice to what Alexander brought to life.
While fictional Larry would become his own unique creation on Curb Your Enthusiasm (and forever be linked to Seinfeld, right to the end), George was something else entirely.
A stocky, slow-witted bald man, who was petty, obsessed with outside perception and lacking even the occasional backbone his friends possessed. There was no ethical line he wouldn’t cross in pursuit of his basest pleasures, whatever the consequences.
Heck, when his long-suffering fiancé Susan died, indirectly, by way of his own cheapskate nature? You couldn’t be too mad at George: he was simply more concerned with grabbing a coffee.
Such memorability, it speaks to the inherent consistency Seinfeld developed over its nine years on air (even as the final two seasons, with Seinfeld as the sole show-runner, hit on a much broader style of comedy when compared to their predecessors).
But it was something that extended beyond the leads, with the series cultivating a fantastically impressive host of supporting characters - from the recurring to the one-off cameos. Even if, when considering the big picture, they could never truly be the focus.
Bania, Crazy Joe Davolva and Newman!
The Maestro, Peterman, Mister Bookman and Ramon the Pool Guy. The Soup Nazi, Puddy, Mickey and Tim Whatley.
Uncle Leo, Izzy Mandelbaum, Frank and Estelle, Morty and Helen.
Wayne Knight as Newman appeared in 48 of the show’s 180 episodes, the most of any supporting character - but it seems too little, right? Len Lesser’s Uncle Leo? Just 15, while Frank and Estelle, George’s long-suffering parents, made 29 appearances each.
Phil Morris’ Jackie Chiles, just six.
Outrageous, egregious and preposterous, indeed.
But even with relatively limited screen-time they all contributed expertly to just what made Seinfeld, well, Seinfeld.
The show’s finale was and remains, controversial but here now, with 35 years of hindsight on the whole affair, it seems particularly apt - how else could it have ended? A year in prison, on account of the gang’s emotional malpractice, the only true measure of comeuppance for their near-decade of shenanigans.
Some elements of Seinfeld haven’t aged particularly well but that should be expected, frankly, after three-plus decades.
The show was ahead of its time when it came to tackling more heavy-handed subjects with a comedy-first approach, although in ways that could feel outdated now - specifically in its handling of marginalized groups resulting in what is a certain discomfort by more modern standards.
Though the simple fact that in remains in the cultural conversation? That alone, speaks its oft-understated timelessness.
There have many others, sure - but there has never been another Seinfeld.
Great article about a great show! I feel lucky to have watched it every Thursday night in the 90s.