Seinfeld

I had reason to think about Seinfeld this week. About a month ago, Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander were seen filming at Tom's Diner, the upper-Manhattan diner that stood in for Monk's. Then Seinfeld hinted that there would a reunion of sorts. Of course, that turned out to be a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, but it conjured up all sorts of memories.

It is my view that Seinfeld is the best network sit-com of all time. It's main rivals are Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, and M*A*S*H. The latter two went on too long, so the former is really the standard-bearer. Seinfeld went on perhaps a season or two too long, but I think it hit higher heights.

It's something of an anniversary for me and Seinfeld. Looking at the list of Seinfeld episodes on Wikipedia, the first one I ever saw was on February 13, 1991. It was "The Phone Message," during the second abbreviated season. That episode only drew 13 million viewers, but by the time it was over the audience would almost triple.

It's hard to think of another TV show that so captivated American culture (by this I mean white middle-class culture--Seinfeld was never big in the inner city). Before the Internet was so prevalent, before the advent of original series on cable television, NBC's Thursday night lineup was legendary, and Seinfeld was the cornerstone. Everyone I knew watched it. The cover photo by Entertainment Weekly, shown here, comparing them to The Beatles, was not a huge stretch.

The show was jokingly referred to as "about nothing," but it was really about everything. Even twenty years later, I will be in a conversation and hear about a situation and think to myself, "There's a Seinfeld episode about that." The show, an outgrowth of observational stand-up comedy, bathed in the minutiae of every day life, and was a kind of primer. How long to keep a greeting card? What is the proper etiquette for dipping a chip? How long should a shower last? How should one punctuate a note that says a friend had a baby? How long should one be friends before asking one's help in moving? Almost all answers to the annoying questions of hum-drum life can be found in one of the 180 episodes of the show that aired.

And there were so many catch-phrases that entered our lexicon. "Yada yada." "Serenity now." "These pretzels are making me thirsty." "No soup for you!" "Sponge-worthy." "I have hand." "Puffy shirt." And "close talker," "low talker," and "high talker." These are just the ones that come to mind in a minute.

The show also had a genius for the set-up. Most of my favorites were the ones that had unity of time and space, where the whole thing was in real-time in one setting. "The Chinese Restaurant" (the only episode that did not feature Kramer), "The Parking Garage," or "The Subway." I, like almost everyone else, also loved the most celebrated episode, "The Contest," which was about masturbation but never uttered the word.

The show also developed a large cast of characters, beyond the core four. Newman, played by Wayne Knight; Jerry Stiller, in a career resurrection as Frank Costanza; Bania, the comic with a passion for soup; Mickey, Kramer's pugnacious little person friend; and John O'Hurley as the gloriously vain and obtuse J. Peterman.

Today the show thrives in syndication, and usually I just stumble into one while channel-surfing. I can instantly figure out which one it is, and all it's various subplots, and it's like listening to a favorite song on the radio. Today, the show can seem dated. There are shows built around cultural artifacts like JFK, Melrose Place, and The English Patient, and that it exists in a white-only world where there was no Internet and no cell phones make it seem like from another (Bizarro) world. Perhaps future generations won't get the all the fuss. But I do.