Today is the 25th anniversary of Seinfelds premiere. The most common praise it receives is for the clever dovetailing at the end of each episode of interleaving plot lines -- like how in “The Marine Biologist” George saves a whale whose blowhole, it turns out, was actually plugged up by Kramer’s golf ball. No show before or since could come together at the end so well. Of course, Seinfeld also had important fundamentals like good acting and funny material. But for me, what truly set it apart, was that it deals mostly in funny trivialities and it trivializes just about everything else. Every other show tackles something serious at some point. Even South Park moralizes, and even Family Guy will occasionally get emotional. But Seinfeld never lets its guard down. Everything that could possibly challenge or scare an actual emotional human being is just ignored -- even if a situation gets bad, like if someone dies or if a relationship goes south, the characters always engage it and emerge from it with the same Seinfeldian stance: they live their lives at arm’s length, at the level of a joke. That’s why the show offers such a nice escape and is so much fun to watch. It allows us to disengage from reality more effectively than we would while watching Friends or Modern Family. Because in those shows conflict matters -- amid the humor and upbeat escapism there is real tension and real danger. In Seinfeld, though, it’s all soups and yada yada and feats of strength and parking spaces.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 15:07:34 +0000
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