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Some say 'Seinfeld' is the best sitcom ever
In this story:
December 26, 1997
- 'I've never seen more bizarre characters'
- The ultimate water-cooler show
- Seinfeld goes out in style
Web posted at: 11:55 p.m. EST (0455 GMT)LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- In Neil Simon's "The Sunshine Boys," two aging vaudevillians engage in a discussion about what makes something funny.
Words starting with certain sounds are funny, says one. They might also have agreed, had the timing been a little different, that "Seinfeld" was funny, too.
Other TV sitcoms are funny, but not in the same way, and there are those who believe that "Seinfeld" is in a category all its own.
Classic Seinfeld moments 1.2M/34 sec./160x120
1.9M/53 sec./160x120
QuickTime movie"I think I might rank it as the best comedy of all times," says Los Angeles Times media critic Howard Rosenberg. "I just think it's out of sight. For me, anyway, it resonates in a way that other comedies haven't. I've never seen more bizarre characters."
Critics say "I Love Lucy" was, in many ways, TV's seminal situation comedy, helping to define a specific time and place -- the 1950s.
As television and its audience matured, so have the shows. With "All in the Family," "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Cosby Show," TV comedy has grown increasingly sophisticated.
The ultimate water-cooler show
But "Seinfeld" may have done them all one better. The show claimed to be about nothing, and nothing was too trivial to inspire an episode. The cast once spent the entire show trying to buy soup from an authoritarian chef.
The show developed its own dialect -- including "Yada, yada, yada" and "Not that there's anything wrong with that" -- and dwelled on such concepts as "re-gifting" (repackaging a gift from one person and giving it to another) and "double-dipping" (putting a partially eaten chip back into the dip for more).
It became the ultimate water-cooler show, a topic of conversation on Friday mornings. It had wide-ranging impact: a Milwaukee jury awarded $26 million to an executive who was fired for telling a female colleague about an episode in which Seinfeld forgets his girlfriend's name and remembers only that it rhymes with a part of the female anatomy.
Seinlanguage: Certain words, phrases and characters from the show have found their way into everyday usage.Some examples:
"Yada, yada, yada"
"Not that there's anything wrong with that"
"Master of your domain"
"Festivus.....a holiday for the rest of us"
"They do things that nobody has the guts to do," a passerby said when stopped for comment on a Los Angeles street.
"His humor is so universal," said another. "The situations are -- they are just universal situations."
"This is one of those rare moments in TV where you have a convergence of great writing and brilliant acting," Rosenberg said.
Seinfeld ends it with style
For its daring, its humor and the sheer strength of its characters, many believe the show elevated the sitcom to the level of art.
Syracuse University professor Robert J. Thompson sees in its farewell another influence he finds especially admirable.
"One of the disadvantages of American series television is this obligation to keep going as long as someone will continue to pay," said Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television.
"You look at 'L.A. Law,' which would have gone down as one of the great series of all time, yet completely compromised its reputation in the last couple of years it was on the air."
Jerry Seinfeld, by comparison, reportedly turned his back on an offer of $5 million an episode when he decided it was time to stop.
The show is "the greatest love affair of my life," he told The New York Times. "We all felt we wanted to leave in love."
Correspondent Charles Feldman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Message board:
Related stories:
- 'Seinfeld' signs off at end of this season - December 26, 1997
- Seinfeld retains his No. 1 appeal - December 24, 1997
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- Seinfeld-O-Matic - generates thousands of possible plots
- Seinfeld Soup Nazi Page
- AMAZING Seinfeld Stories!!! - jokes and funny stories based on Seinfeld episodes.
- Castle Rock Entertainment
- Columbia TriStar Television - Seinfeld
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