Seinfeld: Encyclopedia II - Seinfeld - Overview

Seinfeld - Overview

The show has been famously described as "the show about nothing" (a self-referential phrase from an episode describing Jerry and George's attempt to create a sitcom idea), as most of the comedy was based around the largely inconsequential minutiae of everyday life, and often involved petty rivalries and elaborate schemes to gain the smallest advantage over other individuals. Seinfeld himself notes that his original premise - and the purpose for the standup excerpts that bookended each show - was that the show would be about how a comedian gathers material for his act. The characters have also been described as utterly selfish and amoral; the show stood out by depicting these traits in a comedic fashion (However, it should be noted that a common motif concerns characters' attempts to do nice things for people, only to have them backfire exponentially). In contrast to many other sitcoms, the allowing of scenes to lapse into sentimentality was generally avoided, and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David's dictum of "no hugging, no learning" gave the show its distinctively cold and cynical tone. However, themes of illogical social graces and customs, neurotic and obsessive behavior, and the mysterious workings of relationships ran in numerous episodes, making it possible to categorize the show as a comedy of manners. The show's creators made a conscious effort to reflect the activities of real people, rather than the idealized escapist characters often seen on television, although many of the show's plots involve intricate, and often cyclical strings of events that converge in the end to form a grand irony.

Previous shows on television were almost always family or co-worker driven, but Seinfeld holds itself up as being a then-rare example of a sitcom wherein none of the characters were related by blood or employed in the same building or business. In fact, many characters were not employed at all.

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 portrayed by him is deliberately blurred. In later seasons, these standup clips became less frequent. All of the main characters were modeled after Seinfeld's or Larry David's real-life acquaintances. In fact, many of the plot devices are based on real-life counterparts - such as the Soup Nazi (based on Al Yeganeh) and J. Peterman of the J. Peterman catalogue.

Another violation of the fiction convention of isolating characters from the actors playing them, and separating the characters' world from the actors' and audience's 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 finale 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 entanglement of character and actor relationships "seems to be a part of the show'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, 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 "consistent efforts to maintain [the] intimacy" between the small cast of characters. "Much of Seinfeld's plot and humor hinge on outside personalities threatening—and ultimately failing—to invade the foursome, ... especially where Jerry and George are concerned." (Gantz 2000)

Gantz maintains that another factor in, or further proof of, spectators' and characters' participation in a Seinfeld community 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 "Bubble Boy", "Master of My Domain", "Shrinkage", "Mulva", "Crazy Joe Davola", "Man Hands", "Yada Yada Yada", "Dr. Van Nostrand", "Spongeworthy", and "Art Vandelay".

The show premiered as The Seinfeld Chronicles on Thursday, May 31, 1990 on NBC. Seinfeld was not an immediate success. After the pilot was shown, on July 5, 1989, a pickup by NBC did not seem likely and the show was actually offered to Fox, which declined to pick up the show. It was only thanks to Rick Ludwin, head of late night and special events for NBC, for diverting money from his budget, that the next four episodes were filmed. After nine years on the air and 180 episodes filmed, the series finale of Seinfeld aired on Thursday, 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^[1], while the show itself holds the record for the Highest Television Advertising Rates^[2].

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, and season 4 was released on May 17, 2005. Season 5 and season 6 were released on November 22, 2005.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki