Seinfeld

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Seinfeld is a television sitcom, considered to be one of the most popular and influential of the 1990s in the U.S., to the point where it is often cited as epitomizing the self-obsessed and ironic culture of the decade. It stars Jerry Seinfeld playing a character named after and based largely on himself, and is set predominantly in an apartment block in Manhattan's Upper West Side, New York. It features an eclectic cast of characters, mainly Jerry's friends and acquaintances – Cosmo Kramer, George Costanza and Elaine Benes.

The show was famously described as "the show about nothing," and this remark is largely accurate, as most of the comedy was based around the largely inconsequential minutiae of everyday life, often involving petty rivalries and elaborate schemes to gain the smallest advantage over other individuals. The characters have also been described as utterly selfish and amoral, and to a degree that is accurate, the show stands out in deriving nothing but amusement from it; unlike other sitcoms, even The Simpsons, when a moment was just about to lapse into sentimentality, it managed to regain its balance. However, themes of illogical social graces and customs, neurotic and obsessive behavior, and the mysterious workings of relationships run in numerous episodes, making it possible to categorize the show as a comedy of manners. The show is also unique in reflecting the activities of real people, rather than the idealized escapist characters often seen on television, although many episodes do feature surreal escapades, often based on scenes in famous movies.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine, and Jerry Seinfeld as himself

Previous shows on television were almost always family or co-worker driven, and Seinfeld holds itself up as being a then-rare example of a sitcom wherein none of the characters were related by blood or employed, if at all, in the same building or business.

Tom's Restaurant, a diner at 112th and Broadway in Manhattan, referred to as "Monk's Cafe" in the show.

According to Bruce Fretts' 1993 The "Entertainment Weekly" "Seinfeld" Companion, Seinfeld's audience was, "TV-literate, demographically desirable urbanites, for the most part-who look forward to each weekly episode in the Life of Jerry with a baby-boomer generation's self-involved eagerness." Likewise, in episodes adhering to the original concept, the show featured clips of Seinfeld himself delivering a standup routine at the beginning and end of each episode, the theme of which relates to the events depicted in the plot. By this device the distinction between the actor Jerry Seinfeld and the character who is portayed by him is deliberately blurred. In later seasons, these standup clips became less frequent. All the main characters were modeled after Seinfeld's nonfictional acquaintences. (Gantz 2000)

Another violation of the fiction convention of isolating characters from the actors playing them, and separating the characters' world from the actors' and audiences' world, was a story arc that concerned the characters' roles in promoting a television sitcom series named Jerry. Jerry was much like Seinfeld in that Seinfeld played himself, and that the show was "about nothing." Jerry was launched in the 1993 season premiere of Seinfeld, in an episode titled "The Pilot". This story arc, along with other examples of self-reference, have led many critics to point out the postmodern nature of the show.

According to Katherine Gantz, "This multi-layered Möbius strip of person/actor/character relationships seems to be a part of the shows's complex appeal. Whereas situation comedies often dilute their cast, adding and removing characters in search of new plot possibilities, Seinfeld instead interiorizes; the narrative creates new configurations of the same limited cast to keep the viewer and the characters intimately linked. In fact, it is precisely this concentration on the nuclear set of four personalities that creates the Seinfeld community."

Another attribute that makes Seinfeld exceptional is that in almost every episode, several story threads are presented at the beginning of the plot, generally involving the various characters in separate and unrelated situations, which then converge and are interwoven towards the end of the episode in an ironic fashion. Due to the densely-plotted construction of the storylines, attempts to summarize the action in a given script are generally more verbose than one would expect for a sitcom. Despite any separate plot strands, the narratives show a "consistent efforts to maintain [the] intimacy," between the "decidedly small cast" of characters. "Much of Seinfeld's plot and humor (and consequently, the viewer's pleasure) hinge on outside personalities threatening--and ultimately failing--to invade the foursome," "especially where Jerry and George are concerned." (Gantz 2000)

Another factor in, or further proof of, a community of Seinfeld spectators' and characters' participation in a what Gantz calls "a certain delineated 'lifestyle'" is the large amount of in-slang, "a lexicon of Seinfeldian code words and recurring phrases that go unnoticed by the infrequent or 'unknowing' viewer." These include Snapple, Bubble Boy, Cuban cigars, Master of My Domain, Junior Mints, Mulva, Crazy Joe Davola, Pez, Sponge Worthy, and Vandelay Industries. (Gantz 2000)

The show premiered on July 5, 1989. After nine years on the air and 180 episodes filmed, the series finale of Seinfeld aired on NBC on May 14, 1998. It was watched by a huge audience, estimated at 76 million viewers. Jerry Seinfeld holds both the record for the "most money refused" according to the Guinness Book of World Records by refusing an offer to continue the show for 5 million dollars per episode, and another record for the Highest Ever Annual Earnings For A TV Actor, while the show itself holds the record for the Highest Television Advertising Rates.

In 2004 a deal was negotiated to make Seinfeld available on DVD for the first time. Due to legal problems with the cast involving episode commentary and other DVD extras, the release was pushed back. The first 3 seasons were released November 23, 2004.

Contents

Characters

Jerry Seinfeld (played by Jerry Seinfeld)—A standup comedian, who seeks out relationships with attractive women which rarely last more than one episode. A number of episodes involve some obsession of Jerry's that results in offending the romantic interest and ruining the relationship. Among his strongest obsessions are his anal retentive neatness, other mundanely bizarre standards, and his love of Superman and Lois Lane. There is a reference, either visual, conversational, or thematic to Superman in many episodes of the series.

George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander)—A "short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man," the neurotic George is domineered by his parents, especially his father Frank. He held many jobs, including as a real estate agent, as assistant to the traveling secretary for the New York Yankees, and briefly worked at a sporting equipment company called Play Now, and at Kruger Industrial Smoothing. The character of George was largely based on the show's co-creator and Seinfeld's nonfictional best-friend Larry David (Gantz 2000).

Cosmo Kramer (played by Michael Richards)—Tall, wild-haired, Kramer is the Seinfeld character with the loosest grip on reality, decorum, and concepts of property and propriety. He is frequently involved in hare-brained schemes to get rich. Of all the characters on the show, Kramer tends closest to following the sitcom formula: He is a classic example of the "wacky neighbor." In one show, Kramer is called a "hipster doofus." He is based on Larry David's sometime neighbour (Gantz 2000), Kenny Kramer.

Elaine Benes (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus)—Like Jerry, much of Elaine's life revolves around trying to arrange relationships with attractive individuals, although some of hers last rather longer than Jerry's. She has held jobs for Pendant Publishing, The J. Peterman Catalog, and as a personal assistant to Mr. Pitt. Elaine was a composite of two girlfriends of the creators, one being writer Carol Leifer, Seinfeld's nonfictional ex-girlfriend. In the show Elaine and Jerry dated, and "broke up", timeline-wise, just before the first episode, remaining friends over the course of the show.

Newman (played by Wayne Knight) — Jerry and Kramer's over estatic neighbour, Wayne Knight has only appeared from 1992 onwards. During Season 2, we only hear his voice and hear him over the phone when he annoys Kramer by telling him he's planning to commit suicide. Originally, Larry David would do some of the voice work for him, before he was conceptualized as a character (his original description was : "the son of the landlord, and he 'tells' on everyone", though this obviously changed as time progressed). In subsequent reworkings of the early episodes his voice was re-dubbed with Wayne Knight's. Jerry has decribed Newman as "pure evil" and greets him with "Hello...Newman" in a sarcastic, digusted tone. Newman worked as a postman.

References

Jerry Seinfeld, Sein Language, Bantam, ISBN 0553096060 (hardcover, 1993)
Bruce Fretts, Entertainment Weekly Seinfeld Companion, Warner Books, ISBN 0446670367 (paperback, 1993)
William Irwin (editor), Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing, Open Court Publishing Company, ISBN 0812694090 (paperback, 1999)
Greg Gattuso, The Seinfeld Universe: The Entire Domain, Citadel Press, ISBN 0806520019 (paperback, 1996)

Sources

Fretts, Bruce (1993). The "Entertainment Weekly" "Seinfeld" Companion. New York: Warner Books.
Gantz, Katherine (2000). "Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Reading the Queer in Seinfeld", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. Ed. Calvin Thomas. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Seinfeld.

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