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Didn’t millennials watch it growing up? Someone’s not getting their generational terms right
Hell, I was even old enough when it was airing to think it was overrated then.
Seinfeld is one of the best sitcoms of all time.
See, that’s the real issue. I don’t have a problem with acknowledging it’s high concept, ocassionally funny and mostly easy watching.
But everybody insisting it’s endless comedic, best-sitcom-ever brilliance is overrating it. It’s overrated.
Ok, maybe I just don’t like sitcoms.
An extremely 90s take.
Real heads will know the genre peaked with Cheers.
I didn’t necessarily mind it, but Jerry’s awful standup shoved in there on the other hand…
Generational labels tend to divide by arbitrary boundaries more than actually give you insightful information about something exclusive to the group.
Sounds like someone’s born on a cusp. Or right in the middle.
lol, yes
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96, Seinfeld finished in 98. I doubt many that young would have seen it. I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
Seinfeld was hugely syndicated. I was born in the 90s and watched tons of reruns of it. I think they played it after or before the Simpsons which my family always watched.
Yeah same I watched reruns of Seinfeld every weeknight growing up from '98-05 at least if not later
I was born in 84 and have seen every episode multiple times. Except the clip shows, because once you figure out that’s what’s happening you know better next time around and skip them.
I was born in 92 and have probably seen almost every episode. Idk if it’s generational or if it’s just person to person.
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96
?? What do you think millennials were doing after 1996? Did they just phase out of existence?
I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
People had Seinfeld on in my college dorm during the mid-00s. It was one of the most syndicated shows of its era. If you remember 9/11, you remember Seinfeld.
It’s not like every millennial watched it growing up. It’s not inconceivable that there are millennials who are seeing it now for only the first time and find it offensive.
To boomers and idiots, millennials just means “younger than me”
Ummmm, the whole point of the show was that the people were horrible.
The show ended with them jailed after they made fun of a guy who was getting mugged.
The gang on It’s Always Sunny is worse but they are obviously not people we’re supposed to empathise with. It’s quite a bit less obvious on Seinfeld.
Always Sunny was taking the idea of Seinfeld and dialing it up to 11.
I feel like the distinction is that on Sunny the gang is “punished” for their shitty behavior, and on Seinfeld they basically never were. (I don’t include the season finale because that was just a cop-out to give the show an ending.)
I feel like Seinfeld reveled in the naughty pleasure of schadenfreude
I might be overthinking it but feel like Seinfeld was more a show about normal people who sometimes do shitty things - just like real life. I can’t think of anything truly horrible any of them did on the show, just a bunch of “social” wrongdoing. Telling a secret, sleeping at work, the perfect comeback, etc. It’s famously a show about “nothing”
Then IASIP is about a bunch of assholes riling each other up to be horrible for their own benefit.
I think Seinfeld is the more “important” in the grand scheme of television for it’s groundbreaking approach but in a vacuum, IAS is the better show.
Jerry purposely drugging his girlfriend so he could play with her toys was pretty shitty AND horrible.
Yes, but that’s season 9, which is after Larry David left as writer. While Larry David was there thru season 7 the characters were quirky regular people who sometimes made bad choices like all humans do sometimes. After Larry David left and Jerry Seinfeld was writing the show by himself from season 8 forward, the characters became much more fucked up, and the show was also way less funny
That’s a fair point. Season 9 was certainly a vibe I can’t quite find the words for.
Good one, I hardly remember the last couple of seasons and forgot that
George and Elaine are pretty psychopathic in the show. Jerry occasionally gets to be the good guy, but isn’t much be better than them. It’s way beyond social faux paus.
The show is still a very 90s show with 90s sensibilities. There is a lot of media from that time that hasn’t aged well.
If 90s shows make you clutch your pearls god help you if you catch something from the 80s or 70s.
Millennials are like 40 years old now. Does this article writer think Millennial just means “kid”?
Millennials are like 40 years old now.
PS. I’m not actually 40 but I’m getting there before I even realise it.
I just turned 40. It’s fine. Same joints ache as when I turned 30, less heartburn (because I’ve figured out my triggers).
It’s worded like we’re all still in our early 20s.
It’s just hot clickbait garbage for boomers
I’m a millennial and watched the Seinfeld finale live…
Millennial here. I tried to watch Seinfeld back in the day, and I thought it was kind of meh. But there was one character I really hated on the show. He had a whiny pathetic voice, was always complaining about something or another, and was just an awful actor, unlike the rest of the cast. I thought, if they just removed that one guy, the show would be great and I’d enjoy it so much more.
I found out later, that guy was Seinfeld. So… I never really got into the show.
THANK YOU! I can’t stand that guy. His voice kills me and I never found him funny. Nothing against him personally, he might be a great person, but I can’t understand how people can stand the content he makes.
Goodnews! Seinfeld is a pedophile and supposedly kind of a sociopath. He’s also tried to hop on the anti-woke train a couple of times in the past few years.The man made a major contribution to western cultus as a whole, but man is he a bastard.
I’ve seen a few episodes of his show where he takes comedians to get a coffee in his fancy cars. He often comes across like an asshole. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in charge of the show why he would want to be portrayed that way? Presumably he could edit some stuff out?
He was definitely the weakest actor of the 4, and had the poorest story lines.
He was supposed to be the outside observer making the jokes about his crazy friends. That’s why early episodes had him literally doing stand up in the intro and outro.
We were the ones watching it when it was first airing. I don’t think there was anyone in my highschool that wasn’t watching it.
If you’re a boomer, the older half of Gen X are also boomers and everyone younger is a millennial.
For the first time? We grew up with this show.
Ya know how growing up, our parents called every system a “Nintendo”, even if it was clearly a Playstation or a Sega Genesis?
Yeah that’s what boomers do with age groups. Anyone younger than them is a “Millenial Zoomer on Youtube’s TikTok app”
Ya know how growing up, our parents called every system a “Nintendo”, even if it was clearly a Playstation or a Sega Genesis?
My parents called everything an Atari
It’s weird that “this group of people don’t like that show that you like” is supposed to create some sort of negative reaction. My enjoyment of a thing does not depend on a certain number of other people liking it.
I must be numb to “outrage is the best way to engage people” that everyone uses these days.
To be fair, Outrage Marketing does work, but it usually isn’t this obvious.
Like when Disney announced that the Snow White remake would have Seven Multicolored Normal Sized Human People? And later it turned out the final movie will indeed have dwarves?
That was just done to get bigots talking about the flick. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn Aerial being black in the newer Mermaid movie was the same thing. I mean it worked, people were too busy defending Disney from criticism for this move that they didn’t notice the movie is, like most Live Action Remakes of Non-Live Action media, shit.
Hey Disney, bring back your 2D Animation, have them do another Lion King, then dub it over with the audio for the Mufasa film. I guarantee I’ll actually consider watching the damn thing if you do that. (These Live Action remakes have got to be a Money Laundering scheme or something)
Before The Little Mermaid Disney made live-action remakes of Pinnochio and Peter Pan. Neither of them had a substantial outrage associated with them and I didn’t hear about either of them until they’d already released and flopped.
Hey Disney, bring back your 2D Animation
Disney used to churn out plenty of entertaining live action shows without issue.
The problem isn’t with the medium, it’s with the company. They’ve fired too many writers, put too much stock in CGI, and devolved too much of the editing process to the marketing department.
But the idea that the folks who brought you Tron, The Mighty Ducks, and Pirates of the Caribbean can’t make good live action cinema is crazy.
I fucking hate Gossip Girl.
I’m also a 40yo man… so… that tracks.
The original or the reboot?
What‽ I grew up on it and I’m as young as we get. No it’s his current stand up that’s in poor taste and one night of Kramer’s stand-up that’s actually offensive
I got a few laughs with Kramer’s stand-up. Not at the racist non-jokes themselves, but when those lines were remixed with out-of-context scenes from Seinfeld.
George: “He’s black? I thought he looked Irish… What’s his last name?”
Kramer: yells the N-word
George: calmly…That’s not Irish
☝️; this.
Are we talking about “Seinfeld”, the slightly overrated comedy TV series, or “Seinfeld”, the horrible human being?
Yes
I watched the first episode and found it dull and boring. Is it representative for the whole show?
The past decade of tv has spoiled people with quality TV shows.
Back in the old days of tv, we didn’t have story arcs. First seasons of shows were still rough. Networks often gave shows a lot longer of a lifeline to prove themselves. For example: Parks and Rec didn’t hit their stride into mid-Season 2.
For 90s shows, I recommend finding a Top 10 episodes list and seeing if you enjoy it.
This, there’s a LOT of shows before streaming services where I just beg people to skip the first season.
Always Sunny is definitely one that suffers from a lot of Early Installment Weirdness, it’s clear they had no idea what the hell they wanted the show to be at the start… Also Danny DeVito improves anything he touches.
Funny story, Season 1 was so bad the network said they would cancel them unless they could get an A-List Actor to guest star in an episode for a ratings’ boost, which went so well that said guest star wound up being a permanent mainstay.
Some episodes are legendarily funny, but a lot are very forgettable. It’s more of a cultural bellwether.
Seinfeld was one of those shows that talked about certain issues that weren’t broached on network tv. I think the masturbation episode was the first time it was even alluded to on any mainstream tv.
But at the end of the day it’s a sitcom with laugh tracks, so it doesn’t age super well.
Not really, the pilot is the weakest episode I can think of. Not that it turns into an action thriller or anything, but the plotlines and characters certainly get zanier and (arguably) funnier.
It’s sort of like it’s always sunny, but with less to no storyline. There are some funny episodes, but there are also a lot of episodes. Seinfeld was a big celebrity at the time and that carried it more often than not.
Bla bla blaNo. Some of them aren’t good, and some of them are hilarious. Some of them are a little offensive based on today’s standards. But the show overall is pretty great. There are a lot of references used by older people that you’ll start understanding if you watch the show. Popular TV shows used to be social glue, everyone watched them, so themes from the shows worked their way into our social vocabularies.
You’d be correct, the first episode is indeed very dull and boring. I’d recommend to start from Season 4.
Id say The best 10 episodes are some of the greatest prime time comedy ever made. Theres probably another 20 or 30 episodes with jokes, arcs or bits that are also comedy gold with a fair bit of filler. But theres 172 episodes…
But I also defend Big Bang Theory as “6 seasons of a good and funny show, dragged out over 12” so maybe I’m just easily amused.
I’m working my way through now, in season 4. Later seasons get better, but there’s a lot more bad than good imo. I’m not sure I’ve seen an episode that’s consistently funny, just the occasional good joke.
It’s not a formula I find enjoyable, always sunny follows the same pattern.
Honestly, Seinfeld paved the way for a lot of quality cringe comedy.
It’s like watching the Matrix and being bored with the beats/effects, because it’s now the norm everywhere.
God, Matrix is such a trip, it’s a real showcase of how society actively learns.
When it came out, I was a kid who was considered intelligent by peers simply because I was capable of understanding the film whereas even a lot of grown-ups found it hard to grok.
Nowadays the idea of our entire world being fabricated is so basic and so often the butt of jokes that you can’t ever tell if someone’s kidding or not when they talk about Simulation Theory.
And this is one of many reasons why The Matrix Resurrected was doomed to fail.
Relevant Youtube Video - https://youtu.be/7WqVXT5ofDs
You aren’t alone. Not liking the show has its own tvtropes page
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
It’s wild to think that it never occurred to me that Bugs Bunny calmly standing next to Elmer Fudd and simply asking what he’s doing was a bit in and of itself, simply because it just seemed so normal and expected for Bugs to do that.
Yet if you showed it to a world that doesn’t know who Bugs is, yeah that would seem odd
“What the fuck? The rabbit’s just calmly approaching and casually observing the hunter? He’s not running away or begging for his life? Well this is wacky.”
Oh looney tunes had a lot of stuff like that. Like did you know it accidentally coined the meaning of nimrod as an idiot? Before bugs called Elmer it it was just the name of a great hunter in the Bible
Would you leave us the fuck alone, we’re old now!
Must be the youngest millennials then, this was airing live when I was a kid and apparently I’m a millennial.
Even when it aired, it was walking the line of generally offensive. That line didn’t have to move far to tip the show out of favour on average. Seinfeld himself addressed it, initially being upset that his brand of comedy was falling out of favour, but eventually coming to terms with the fact that he himself was out of touch and would benefit from adapting.
Has he? Last I heard he was still complaining that “yOu CoUlDnT dO sEiNfElD tOdAy BeCaUsE wOkE” with Rob McElhenney begging to differ.
Hopefully that link isn’t broken or bad. But yeah, he basically said he was wrong and out of touch. And that he could stand to make an effort to get with the times.
His style of comedy has always been about finding where the current edge is and seeing how far you can cross it and still be funny. But the drawback is that the edge moves. So you have to keep seeing where it is, and what you said 10 years ago probably isn’t funny anymore. It’s normal to get frustrated when something you put effort and work into is no longer seen as a good thing even though it was liked well enough at the time. But he really should have expected that result. And I think he knew that when he made it, but had since got caught up in the false validation that can come from being out of touch.
Gosh. I am unironically impressed, it’s rare for people to actually take stuff back and say they were wrong. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Aside:
Representatives for Seinfeld did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Weird how it’s impossible for celebrities to just be taken at their word without a representative being contacted for clarification.
What made him unique is that he’d walk that line, but do it without profanity or theatrics, so it seemed like he was very tame. In fact a lot of what he was doing was right on the line.
They said “not that there’s anything wrong with that” about gay people in the 90s. WAY better than most of the shit at the time.
I found it funny but curb your enthusiasm is much better
Curb Your Enthusiasm convinced me Seinfeld was like 95% Jerry riding Larry David’s coattails. Jerry is so rarely funny to supposedly be “the guy.”
