We can never say it enough: Seinfeld was not just “a show about nothing”. It wasn’t just emptiness in what Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine said. Seinfeld was a sitcom which caricatured the nihilistic, pessimistic, deeply cynical inclination of narcissistic and egocentric characters, without morality or empathy. A quartet with yet painfully credible interactions.
Emil Cioran would not have done better than Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld if he had had to design a TV series in 180 episodes. American television had never known such antiheroes. There would be quantities thereafter ( Sopranos at Succession Passing by breaking Bad). Seinfeld will have in fact, small.
Jerry himself presented himself as a retarded teenager. A hardened bachelor who dated women mainly for their looks feared bacteria like the plague, but even more so, the prospect of a lasting relationship.
He changed his blonde like he changed his socks. Among the actresses who embodied one of his many conquests, there were Catherine Keener, Teri Hatcher, Courteney Cox, Lauren Graham, Lori Laughlin, Marcia Cross, Debra Messing, Janeane Garofalo, Kristin Davis and Jennifer Coolidge, in masseuse that Jerry leaves because she does not offer his services to him for free …
Her high school friend George rarely made a gesture out of sheer kindness or generosity. Everything about him was contemptible. He tried to escape at every opportunity. He was weak, cowardly, lazy, stingy, a liar and was inextricably mired in misunderstandings and misunderstandings for which he was solely responsible.
His neighbor Kramer, behind his harmless Jerry Lewis-style physical humor, was a conspiratorial believer who preferred to take dog medicine rather than see a doctor. And her ex-blonde Elaine, even though she handed the boys club in its place, was as superficial as the others. She allegedly sold her mother to date such a wealthy and famous man as John Kennedy Jr.
And yet, we loved them with unconditional love. We excused them for everything, the worst meanings – Jerry who steals bread from an old lady in the street, George who pushes women and children to get out of an apartment where a kitchen fire starts -, because they were endearing, unintentionally comical, and reminded us of our own flaws, weaknesses and inglorious or downright shameful episodes.
The secret ingredient to the success of Seinfeldis that we recognized ourselves in his more than imperfect characters. They perhaps consoled us for our own turpitude.
To go back chronologically in the nine seasons of this cult show, it is to find with happiness this mismatched quartet, but also a quantity of secondary characters sometimes recurring, sprinkled here and there, in spite of the intrigues without continuation. The lawyer Jackie Chiles, the restaurateur Babu Bhatt, the disturbing Joe Davola …
Watch all episodes of Seinfeld in less than a month, we see that the television form has aged, obviously, but that the subject remains surprisingly topical.
Elaine ends her relationship with an attractive mover when she realizes that he opposes free choice of abortion. “Where do you find all this? Jerry asks Kramer, disheartened by another of his questionable claims. “Alternative media, Jerry! This is where you can hear the truth… ”
When an Aboriginal friend of Elaine is annoyed by the kitsch sculpture of a “Cigar Shop Indian” that Jerry gives to her friend, Seinfeld looks at cultural appropriation, 30 years before the subject was in the air. ” I do not understand. Aren’t we made too sensitive? Jerry asks, making more mistakes.
“Making fun of disabled people, is that what you stooped to?” Kramer asks him in another episode, as Jerry involuntarily offended a one-legged store owner, who had just congratulated him on his tasteful humor.
With hindsight, we can safely say that some Seinfeld have aged badly. Today, he would no doubt be accused of grossophobia and machismo, in particular. But for the most part, the show’s humor was good-natured, harmless, and inconsequential, like the numbers of stand-up by Jerry, in the opening credits of the first seasons of the show. So-called “observation” humor, which the authors (Seinfeld, Larry David, Larry Charles and several others, including the Farrelly brothers) laughed at with self-mockery.
Topics covered by Seinfeld might seem trivial, but they said a lot about us, our family, friendships and work environments. The dynamics have not changed, despite the different eras.
Jerry gives his father, retired in Florida, a state-of-the-art electronic diary and despairs that he only uses the calculator function. Today, he would give him an electronic tablet which he would use as a camera …
One of the recurring jokes of the series is that Jerry was for those around him a more or less famous comedian who was not to be very successful. George and Kramer sighed when Jerry said he knew the world of showbiz. His parents were constantly worried about his future and doubted that he would manage to make a living. In fact, in an attempt to dissuade Seinfeld from leaving the air after the ninth season of the show bearing his name, NBC offered him a fee of 5 million… per episode of 22 minutes!
Nothing was won, however. The success was not instantaneous. As in this awesome mise en abyme episode from the fourth (best) season where Jerry shoots a pilot of a show “about nothing”, featuring his friends and neighbors, NBC took a year to give the green light to the series. Of esteem success, Seinfeld has become a phenomenal popular success.
Some 75 million people watched the final episode in the spring of 1998, featuring several of the show’s most notable supporting characters, testifying against Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer in court for failing to assist a person in danger. An end that did not please everyone, perhaps because it depicted the quartet in all the splendor of its insensitivity to its neighbor. In all that is less honorable.
There were no good feelings in Seinfeld. “What is this salty concoction?” Jerry, the master of understatement, wonders as a tear rolls down his cheek because a woman just broke up with him. ” Oh no ! I feel something! ”
Above all, there were no moral lessons in this brilliantly constructed, sometimes childish series which, despite its appearances, raised the level of humor on American television up a notch. What other sitcom people allowed themselves at the time of jokes nestled on Andrei Sakharov, Leo Tolstoy, Salman Rushdie, Idi Amin Dada, Louis Farrakhan, David Duke or Benito Mussolini? This is also what makes Seinfeld, still today, a unique series.