Seinfeld: Classic or Dud

he's worse than kenny bania!

yeah the standup in the show is pretty bad, though I think Seinfeld's actual stand-up routine is pretty funny. idk if that's on purpose or not, as mentioned a few posts ago one of the best running jokes in the show is that Jerry is a hack comedian who nobody really likes. the only people who defend him are his parents. they have the Kenny Bania character who clearly is supposed to be a stand-in for Jerry, a guy whose entire life is like a bad stand-up act. and of course Jerry hates him.

they establish that pretty early too, I think one of the first S2 episodes is the one where he tries to break up with a girl because she won't stop boring him with banal observations about her day, only to have her break up with him first upon seeing his stand-up act

hardcore dilettante to thread.

The Curb finale was very cute. Wonder if I'll ever see another thing he's doing.

they have the Kenny Bania character who clearly is supposed to be a stand-in for Jerry

One of my favorite Seinfeld moments is when he offers to write for Bania and the result is the terrible "What's the deal with Ovaltine" routine.

the only reason you "couldn't do" the homeless rickshaw bit now is it would read as too obvious satire of half of Big Tech's business model

Great soref post up there.

It’s great to be 70, because you really get to preach with some authority: Get good at something. That’s it. Everything else is bullshit.

Jerry is certainly out of touch with humor and all that but I have to say he's right on the money here. Some good life advice. Hate admitting this

nah it's a fine life to be shit at everything

the creator of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee boldly comes out against doing something at a mediocre level

You can be a dilettante and get good at things, just seems mean hating on a harmless personality type.

I understand the appeal of Getting Good At Something, as a way to infuse some meaning into our intrinsically random existence it's not the worst option, as ever the problem is when you start judging others based on this.

like i said i hate admitting it and I am judging him so

I don't think he's striving to be good at comedy so much as he wants to be the world's greatest hack. For a guy whose sitcom broke a lot of staid rules, he really doesn't seem interested in doing any convention-breaking or form-elevating in his standup. He doesn't even work blue?

If your entire ethos is incremental, robot-like improvements, why not surrender to an AI now instead of waiting till 70?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_iHIwHwJE

Jerry saying hello at the end from the Black Lodge.

it's sad that ai is now too good to make things like that

one thing I've realized through this is that Jerry is one of the few people whose work I really do enjoy (well, at least Seinfeld, which is the greatest sitcom ever) where I don't really care at all what he's like in real life. I don't really connect with him on a human level at all. its funny because he's a guy who not only can separate comedy from comedian (see: the fact that he *still* brings up how much he likes Bill Cosby) but seems baffled when others can't. its like there's no empathy center in his brain.

through Curb you sorta get the impression that Larry was the neurotic one while Jerry was a more or less normal dude doing observational comedy. I think it's kind of the opposite. might explain why those last 2 Seinfeld seasons (after Larry left) were so strange.

They're both neurotic, but Larry (at least the version of himself on Curb) approaches his tribulations with a mischievous glee that makes you want to root for him. Jerry is always a bit aloof and never all that believable when his sitcom self is required to have a big emotional reaction. It's observational comedy in its truest sense, I suppose: standing apart from the world rather than getting involved in it. Seinfeld the show works in part because George brings a Larry-like energy to counter Jerry.

With Larry David, "no hugging, no learning" seems like an aesthetic choice -- it's like he has no particular interest, as a performer, in seriousness. With Jerry it seems more like deliberate avoidance -- he seems emotionally incapable of hugging or learning (unless it's learning "the craft").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujVDvbz3s7c

With Jerry it seems more like deliberate avoidance -- he seems emotionally incapable of hugging or learning (unless it's learning "the craft").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX3_L8z2uw4

lol

its funny because he's a guy who not only can separate comedy from comedian (see: the fact that he *still* brings up how much he likes Bill Cosby) but seems baffled when others can't. its like there's no empathy center in his brain.

Watch the Garry Shandling episode of Comedians Getting Coffee. Specifically at 9:30. It's awesome how Shandling calls him out on something along those lines.

one of the best running jokes in the show is that Jerry is a hack comedian who nobody really likes

false. his closest friends don’t like his act, but his character on the show is offered a major network sitcom, his a regular guest on the tonight show, and kramer is shocked when he finds out how much money he makes. jerry plays a very successful comedian, similar to the level of success jerry himself had in the late 80s

re: curb being grandfathered in, i don’t think it’s always sunny is a good counterexample. the first season of its always sunny was only 5 years after the first season of curb, and 2005 wasn’t much more politically correct than 2000. curious if anyone itt can come up with a counterexample that debuted in the last 10 years.

michael mcintyre is a hack comedian who no one really likes but he's very successful. lots of other examples

he acknowledges that though, whenever he talks about the show's success (including in this very interview) he mentions that it was maybe a decent fringe thing that only got elevated into what it was thanks to the other 3 leads

i’ve definitely seen or read interviews where he unmodestly says that he and larry david were writing the funniest material ever and that their high standards and perfectionism made the show what it was. the fact that neither jason alexander or michael were never funny in anything ever again supports this (and julia louis-dreyfus wasn’t funny until veep)

michael mcintyre is a hack comedian who no one really likes but he's very successful. lots of other examples

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 May 2024 6:31 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

nearly every episode of the tv show seinfeld starts and ends with clips of jerry performing at comedy clubs and killing. everyone in the audience is laughing, and the jokes are indeed very funny. the theory that the character in the show is a bad comedian is idiotic

it's less that he's a bad comic and more that his friends and relatives don't hold the profession in very high regard

they have the Kenny Bania character who clearly is supposed to be a stand-in for Jerry, a guy whose entire life is like a bad stand-up act. and of course Jerry hates him.

― frogbs, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 9:44 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i really don’t get this at all.. thought bania was just a hack comedian who jerry dislikes but who gains some success

false. his closest friends don’t like his act, but his character on the show is offered a major network sitcom, his a regular guest on the tonight show, and kramer is shocked when he finds out how much money he makes. jerry plays a very successful comedian, similar to the level of success jerry himself had in the late 80s

one of the big jokes during the NBC sitcom season is that Jerry pitches the execs a version of the real life Seinfeld show (which at that point was very successful) and they don't really get it. they only buy in once he pitches them the stupid "butler" plot which George made up on the fly.

i really don’t get this at all.. thought bania was just a hack comedian who jerry dislikes but who gains some success

I always thought his jokes and personality were an exaggerated version of Jerry, hence why Jerry dislikes him. at the end of S7 he proposes to a woman who's basically just a female Jerry (played by Janeane Garafalo) which he breaks off once he realizes he actually hates himself.

i think inferring from this evidence that jerry-in-the-show is an unsuccessful and/or hack comedian is a stretch. but i’ll keep it in mind next time i rewatch the series

one thing i find amusing about the current backlash to jerry’s comments in the new yorker interview is how much of it comes from his repugnant late-career public image. larry david has made almost identical statements several times but it doesn’t stick, because unlike jerry he comes off as a likeable (if curmudgeonly) guy

I have a couple buddies who make Seinfeld references constantly, it really does pigeonhole you as a GenXer

he's not unsuccessful, but I think he's definitely supposed to be a hack. even in the episode where he gets that big check he winds up getting his father impeached from the condo association since the other members couldn't believe he made enough money to buy him a Cadillac, because "we've seen his act"

Bania was originally supposed to be more of a comedic rival but the actor played it more like he liked and looked up to Jerry in the rehearsals and they thought that more funny.

he's not unsuccessful, but I think he's definitely supposed to be a hack. even in the episode where he gets that big check he winds up getting his father impeached from the condo association since the other members couldn't believe he made enough money to buy him a Cadillac, because "we've seen his act"

― frogbs, Wednesday, 1 May 2024 9:17 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

that’s a better example, but I don’t buy that the residents of del boca vista are being presented as arbiters of good comedy

Can't find a clip, but Gary Shandling's Larry Sanders (and maybe Shandling in real life, I don't know) was also a near-phobic no-hugger.

It's awesome how Shandling calls him out on something along those lines.

that clip is great.

maybe you’re right about all that flopson i guess it is just hard to square with how terrible the jokes in the standup bits are. even compared with jerry’s real-life routines. but sometimes this stuff ages badly. i remember laughing at a lot of it when i was a teenager.

I think comedy ages the worst of all, like herring left on the kitchen counter. "Humor" i.e. Will Rogers, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Tom Lehrer is almost evergreen, but the standup stuff we found funny as kids is sometimes really tiresome and often offensive

i think jerry appealed to the insecure teenage boy part of my brain in that here was this guy totally sure of himself and of how stupid everybody else was. the actual jokes were maybe secondary

maybe you’re right about all that flopson i guess it is just hard to square with how terrible the jokes in the standup bits are

i find them funny 🤷🏻‍♂️

isn't Seinfeld kind of a victim of his own success to some extent, that kind of "what's the deal with [banal thing]" style has become a shorthand for tired, hack comedy, but it was genuinely distinctive and original when he started doing it, and it feels overfamiliar because he was so successful and frequently imitated

I didnt think they were meant to be funny when I did a little re-watch of it, just amusing bits that were providing commentary on what happened.

I wasn't really laughing that much but then by the end you are laughed out.

xp like, 'take my wife - please!' was probably funny the first time people heard it, it's not Henny Youngman's fault it became a cliche

I remember liking Seinfeld (the show) quite a lot when it was on 25 years ago, but ever since whenever I catch a bit of it I can't see at all what I liked about it.

However, this one scene will always fondly stay with me: Jerry has to do a show for kids, chats a bit with George before he's on, then walks in the room and you just see George listening in on his opening: "Hi kids! So what's the deal with homework? You're not working on your home!" after which he's booed by all the kids. George smiles, shakes his head and walks off.

isn't Seinfeld kind of a victim of his own success to some extent, that kind of "what's the deal with [banal thing]" style has become a shorthand for tired, hack comedy, but it was genuinely distinctive and original when he started doing it, and it feels overfamiliar because he was so successful and frequently imitated.

I was just trying to unpick the whole 'how much of a hack is Jerry?' thing in my head*, and was pleased to find someone's done the research on 'what's the deal with...' in Seinfeld

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/59044/whats-deal-whats-deal-did-seinfeld-actually-say-it

* I'm on something like 'it depends on the needs of the episode/joke but our baseline is that he's definitely successful and probably good; however, as time goes on we suspect this whole stand-up thing is sociopathic'

The clip with Seinfeld and Shandling discussing Robin Williams is great - they're both batting this joke back and forth about how you "never hear of 63 being young unless somebody dies". When Shandling does the gag, it's soulful, existential, disturbing. Then Seinfeld repeats the gag back to him, except more condensed, pithier, with more precise timing - and it's funnier but it's suddenly become just "a bit".