First of all, yeah, come at me. “Seinfeld” is only kinda-sorta funny, at best. Seinfeld himself is really not funny at all. His act is perpetually stuck between the oldschool, early 1950s-style, cigar-waving “hyuk-hyuk, get a load of all my jokes about women drivers” comedians and the post-Lenny Bruce era, where everything just boils down to telling boring “slice of life” stories with mildly clever exaggerations.
Seinfeld manages to pick and choose all the worst elements of both those eras and smush them together into a tremendously boring, un-funny standup act.
Annnnd that’s what gets translated to the show. Boring, egotistical, overly-New-York-focused, pretentious nonsense.
Like I said, come at me about that. I know people disagree. I truly do not care what you want to say to me, about it. You’re simply wrong. If you like his comedy or his show, you just have bad taste. I can’t fix that. I can’t change your mind. You can’t change mine, either. But I’m objectively correct that he and his comedy material both suck.
But the whole “show about nothing” thing is what really boils my ass. You can argue that the show wasn’t “about nothing,” in the first place. And that’s, like, whatever. There are valid arguments, there. In fact, I’d like to accept those arguments, then proceed under the assumption that the “show about nothing” concept really is a “show about nothing, and therefore about everything.”
This is the important point: the thing I disagree with is this wretched and insulting notion that “Seinfeld” was somehow a PIONEERING television show, in this context of being about nothing and/or everything.
That’s my problem. The claim that “Seinfeld” did any of that shit first. The implication is that all prior television, especially all prior comedies, were somehow locked into a “this is a show about a particular topic” mentality. And, like, “nobody had the GENIUS and the GUTS to make a freewheeling show about just, like, whatever topics came to the minds of the genius writers, and their groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness comedy process.”
That’s fucking horseshit. Horseshit of the highest fucking caliber.
I suppose these turd-brained fucksticks believe that “I Love Lucy” was about a Cuban guy who had a job as a bandleader and his wife, who sometimes tried to get into showbusiness. And “The Honeymooners” would be about a guy who has a job as a bus driver. And “Taxi” was a show about cab drivers, driving their cabs.
Of course, that’s not what those shows were ACTUALLY ABOUT. They were basically shows about nothing, just as much as “Seinfeld” was. They were often about relatable problems in domestic life, they were sometimes about people trying zany get-rich-quick schemes, they were sometimes about the fears and perils and hopes that surround pregnancy and childbirth, they were often about the uncertainty and passion and sacrifice that people put themselves through, for their budding careers, or their workaday jobs. And they were about a million other things that all fit the “show about nothing” mold BETTER than “Seinfeld” ever did.
I say they did it better, because they weren’t exclusively about sad, angry, borderline-psychopathic reprobates, who seem to have no goals or aspirations, beyond smirking and talking shit about people behind their backs, swilling coffee, and occasionally trying to get laid. They were shitty people, with shitty attitudes. I know that’s part of the joke…but it wears thin very quickly, and my point is that other shows did a similar “it’s a show about nothing…but really everything” theme, but their casts of characters WEREN’T entirely populated by malignant, fundamentally worthless narcissists.
Basically, I implore people to stop worshipping that fucking show, as if it was some kind of groundbreaking, high art. There were way better classic comedy shows than that piece of shit, from its own era and the TV eras before it.
Oh, and before you point out that I accused Seinfeld of being overly New York focused, but also used three other shows set in New York as counterexamples, I realized that just now.
And I don’t give a shit. I can keep going. “Green Acres” wasn’t really about farming. “The Bob Newhart Show” wasn’t really about psychiatry, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” wasn’t really about TV production, and “WKRP in Cincinnati” wasn’t really about radio production.
The shows about nothing and everything are THE MAJORITY of all the shows. Certainly, all the good ones. It’s harder for me to think of reversed examples, where the show is just what it was supposed to be “about.”
Like, yeah, “Flipper” really was about a fucking dolphin, and “The Flying Nun” really was about a flying fucking nun. And those shows fucking sucked.
I think I can consider my point thoroughly made.
Now, all you assholes can start typing abuse at me, for daring to dislike your idol. I won’t be reading that shit. Not sorry.
Those may be the facts, and I’m glad to see a very concise summary of them, from you. But honestly, in order for those facts to be REALLY relevant to my rant, you’d have to tell all the people who believe the show WAS “a show about nothing” and think that’s AWESOME.
It’s those people (who believe the myth but applaud its premise) that prompted me to make this post, in the first place.
Who are these people? Show me. You’ve got an image in your mind of some blithering idiot who drools over the show strictly because “it’s a show about nothing” and that makes you mad. Can’t really argue with a strawman like that, but if you ever come across them rest assured they’re wrong in their premise and feel good about yourself
People like Seinfeld because it’s a light sitcom that can make a majority of them laugh at the situations it’s characters get into. Nothing more.
I’ll just have to basically concede to this particular whole comment. I can’t point you to any specific time or instance when I’ve heard people extolling the virtues of “Seinfeld” as being a genius progenitor of the “show about nothing” concept. Not because I’m making the whole thing up as a strawman, but because it’s not really things I can cite. It’s bits of small talk, over the years, in contexts where I didn’t want to argue about it. Reddit comments from years ago, that I’d never be able to find. Stuff people said in chat, in MMO games that no longer exist. That sort of thing.
But yeah, in that vein, I also concede that it’s petty enough of me to want to yell into the ether, in the unknowable direction of whoever and wherever those people are. Fine.
On the other hand, this is a place specifically for saying unpopular things. Maybe I take it too far in the direction of “also, saying it in a provocative manner, to vent my existential frustrations,” but I think that’s as good a way of wasting time as anything else.
And on the OTHER other hand, the whole conversation has sparked some really interesting and valid discussion, as well.
I fully hear you and I liked talking about it. Your rant was the perfect spot for me to get out that same aggression and counter-rant.
And it’s important to put these unpopular opinions out there and fight it out. Sometimes I google “does anyone else hate this popular shit?” and it’s annoying when I can’t find other people with the same takes.