It seems so old it is almost hard to place Seinfeld in the contemporary world. This was a television series that began before the Soviet Union collapsed and in its own cynical way noted some of the diaspora in New York such as a Serbian "tennis pro" who sells Jerry a very expensive racket, only for Jerry to find out the Serbian can't play tennis at all, and almost ends up sleeping with his wife because the Serbian is so desperate not to have Jerry tell anyone that he pimps out his own wife. We find out about "Latvian Orthodoxism" in another episode where George decides to convert to be closer to a Latvian girl, and Kramer almost gets a nun to give up her vows because of his "kavorka," or lure of the animal. I hadn't watched these episodes in years, decades even, but thanks to Netflix, which has become the new "Nick at Nite," I could watch Seinfeld in its entirety from 1989-98.
Now I can rest easy having finally finished Seinfeld. I moved to Lithuania during the ninth season and was never able to watch the last episodes until recently. I decided to start at the beginning to reacquaint myself with the show. I have to say it was a wildly uneven ride. There are some absolute gems but they are hidden among a bunch of not-so-great episodes, 180 of them in all, which would have been a daunting task if they weren't so easy to watch. You end up gobbling them down like Elaine does jujyfruits, much to her boyfriend's chagrin when she chooses to buy a box after the usher tells her that her boyfriend had been rushed to the hospital. It's this callous indifference that became the scarlet S of the show.
For the most part, Daina found the show insufferable and would roll over on the couch and scroll through her cellphone. Still, the whiny voices bothered her, particularly that of Jerry and George, and she would ask me to turn the volume down to the point I was following along with subtitles. She did like Elaine and would occasionally turnover when she heard her voice. Funny enough, Elaine was an afterthought. NBC executives insisted there be at least one recurring female character. Something that Jerry and George poke fun at when the show focuses on the pilot that Jerry had been asked to create. The actual pilot was pretty hard to watch. The only thing that was really funny was to see George had more hair in the beginning. However, the series hit its stride by the fourth season and never looked back, becoming one of the most popular shows ever on television.
Oddly enough, it didn't win that many awards - 10 Emmys out of 68 nominations. That's a pretty low batting average, roughly 0.150, for such a long running show, but it was up against some pretty tough competition in Murphy Brown, Cheers and Frasier. Kramer pops up on a Murphy Brown episode in his ill-fated road trip to LA at the end of Season 3, and Ted Danson becomes George's nemesis throughout the series.
Seinfeld only managed to pull off best comedy series in 1993, after that it was all Frasier. As far as the cast, only Julia Dreyfus-Lewis and Michael Richards won Emmys for their performances. Jerry and George were shut out. Jerry was understandable. He never was much of an actor, but you would think Jason Alexander would have grabbed at least one Emmy. It was pretty tough to play such an unlikable character as George and make him compelling for so many seasons. Even the writing, which was the hallmark of the show, won only two Emmys in 1992 and 1993.
Unfortunately, Seinfeld appeared to hit a brick wall in Season 8 after Larry David's departure. I suppose you can only write this stuff for so long. There were still a few good episodes, but overall the show fell into a tailspin, never really able to recover after Susan's surprising end. There wasn't room for two recurring female characters, as we found out when "worlds collide." Susan had to be written out although few would have expected for her character to end this badly. Yet, George couldn't completely shake Susan as her parents later made him chairman of the board for a charitable foundation set up in her name, only for George to learn how fabulously rich her parents are and that he is getting none of that wealth.
Seinfeld just became mean from this point onward, making you wonder how these "friends" could possibly stay together. Jerry and George made some sense as they had grown up together, which is hilariously recalled in "The Library" episode from Season 3, but why Jerry ever gave Kramer so much free space in his apartment is a real mystery, especially knowing all the things he did in there, not to mention literally eat him out of flat and home. Elaine makes even less sense as by Season 8 you can see she can't stand to be with these guys, and Jerry had never stuck with a girlfriend for more than a few dates, even when he met his "kindred spirit" in Janeane Garofalo. She was dropped almost immediately.
As the series wound to its inevitable end, you could only imagine what they would come up with for a finale. Larry David was even invited back to make something special out of the nearly one-hour last episode. You knew it would be packed with all the actors that had memorable scenes in the past, including Jackie Childs, but who would figure our jaded foursome would get stuck in Latham, Massachusetts, witnessing a carjacking that led to them getting arrested for not being "Good Samaritans." The idea was funny enough but the overlong episode just came across as another collage that Seinfeld had just done in the previous two-part episode. I suppose they got what was coming to them, to the gleeful delight of Newman, but the writers should have given Jackie a chance to cross examine all these bad character witnesses, not just hop in the sack with the lovely Sidra, whose gorgeous breasts once again took front and center.
The funny part was that Bob Odenkirk had a brief role as a medical intern that Elaine was dating in one episode. If you ever were to recast the final episode it would be great to have Bob reprise Saul Goodman to defend Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine, who still find themselves stuck in jail 26 years later, but I don't think Jerry has any intention of rebooting Seinfeld. He's too busy giving car interviews to fellow comics. Here's one where he gets back together with Kramer, or rather Michael Richards in an old VW cut open van no less.
There was some talk that Jerry had short-changed his fellow actors by cutting the series after they had all gotten hefty raises from NBC, but it sounds like they all had enough. Unfortunately, Michael never got a chance to be anyone other than Kramer afterward. The only fulltime cast members to have memorable post-Seinfeld careers have been Julia Dreyfus-Lewis and Larry David. Even Jason, a great actor in his own right, found limited action. Meanwhile, Jerry seems to enjoy going to Knicks games and lamenting "wokeness" on talk shows. Although he is due to appear in a comedy with Melissa McCarthy called Unfrosted. Jerry always had an obsession with breakfast cereals, so I guess pop tarts are well within in his comedic range.
Seinfeld probably would have been forgotten had it not been picked up by Netflix. Friends has definitely enjoyed a far greater international appeal with its easily translatable humor. Supposedly when asked what it was like to be on the greatest sitcom of all time, Courtney Cox started talking about Friends only for the host to say he meant Seinfeld. Yep, there she was in the episode "The Wife," yet surprisingly no references to Friends on Seinfeld or vice-versa, although Kramer popped up on Mad About You. They were all living in New York in the same time frame.
The cameos were probably the best part of the series. You never knew who would turn up as Jerry's or George's girlfriend or as Elaine's boyfriend. Even Marisa Tomei appeared in one episode, but unfortunately George was still engaged to Susan at the time, so we will never know what might have happened. However, it is Terry Hatcher as the sultry Sidra that so many fans remember.
Love it or hate it, Seinfeld certainly made an impression, albeit an often uncomfortable one. After watching so many episodes I figured out the key to the great punchlines. The writers worked backward from the hilarious endings to create the absurd situations that led up to them. None better than when Kramer gets arrested as a pimp, after having picked up his accoutrements one piece at a time through a series of highly amusing encounters.
Maybe now I will try my hand at a final episode as I would have enjoyed it.
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