Seinfeld

01:45:27 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[01:45:27] S1: Yep. But it still hasn't cracked the Nielsen top 30. [01:45:30] S0: Which is crazy, though. I gotta interrupt you. The 18,000,000... That's not in the Nielsen top 30? Today, you would never ever ever see 18,000,000 people watching a single thing no matter how good a show is other than, like, NFL and NBA games. I mean, there were four networks. That's what you watched. No Internet, baby. Phones, podcasts, short form video. I mean, cable had just started coming up, but most of America's attention is still on one of those four broadcast networks in primetime. So 18,000,000 viewers an episode not cracking the top 30 is nuts.

01:46:04 · David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:46:04] S1: I mean, I think we're still a year away from the Mosaic web browser. Right? 1992? Yep. Yeah. There's no competition. Yep. It's a great time to be in television. Yep. Meanwhile, though, NBC, the network, has a problem because Cheers, the anchor of its whole comedy lineup, is on its final season. And Warren and the whole crew, the executives there, don't know what they're gonna do to replace it. So Time Magazine ran an article from this time. NBC, the one time kingpin of primetime, has seen its fortunes turn sour almost overnight. Its biggest hit of the eighties, The Cosby Show, took an early retirement last spring. The network's last remaining top 10 hit, Cheers, we'll call it quits at the end of the season. Highly regarded younger shows like Seinfeld have not lived up to ratings expectations. The network is desperately in need of a miracle. And then on top of that, so Seinfeld is running on Wednesday nights currently here going into season four. ABC, a competitor, moves their big new comedy hit sitcom, Home Improvement, to compete directly against Seinfeld in the Wednesday night slot. So for the first time, Seinfeld not only, you know, has to prove that it can get a bigger audience, but it has to do so against a big challenge, a direct competition in the same time slot from another network. Yep. And, home improvement kicks its butt. Yep. So by mid season, home improvement is pulling 28% share of audience in its time slot, and Seinfeld is down at 17.

01:48:01 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:48:01] S0: Not great and doesn't feel to me like the future of the network. I mean, the 17%, if you're thinking, oh, 17% versus 28%, they're like a close second or something like that. They got so much of it for free. Yeah. It's like, if you're gonna turn on your TV, there's four options, more or less, that people are actually watching in this time slot. So it should be very competitive. [01:48:22] S1: Yep. Larry and Jerry, though, and especially Larry, they don't care. Like, they're not making the show for the ratings. So this season, season four, they just go on like a... An all timer. So they start with... I I think the first season long meta arc ends up becoming a show long meta arc where they have NBC, a fictional NBC, ask Jerry in to pitch a TV show Called Jerry. Called Jerry. [01:48:55] S0: They went with his other name. Yeah. His other called Seinfeld. [01:48:58] S1: And he and George come up with the idea of a show about nothing to pitch it to NBC. That's the first episode of season four. That then continues off and on throughout the whole season. [01:49:08] S0: And the off and on is important because each of these episodes still can stand on its own. You don't have to be invested in the story, the multi episode season long arc in order to get it. [01:49:20] S1: Yep. Episode seven of season four is the Bubble Boy, another classic. [01:49:26] S0: I'm not sure you could make that now. Like, if that was actually a news story right now, making fun of the Bubble Boy that everyone is writing articles about is completely off limits.

01:49:26 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:49:26] S0: I'm not sure you could make that now. Like, if that was actually a news story right now, making fun of the Bubble Boy that everyone is writing articles about is completely off limits. [01:49:38] S1: Well, speaking of completely off limits, that brings us to the critical midpoint of the season where everything changes. Episode 11. [01:49:51] S0: Isn't the outing also in season four? [01:49:53] S1: Yes. But later after episode 11. [01:49:55] S0: Ah, I see. [01:49:56] S1: Also so good. [01:49:57] S0: Not that there's anything wrong with that. [01:49:58] S1: Not as good as episode 11. Not that there's anything wrong with the outing, but but it's not as good as episode 11. The contest. So... Oh, man. We've alluded to this. But for anybody listening who hasn't seen or heard of this episode, this is the master of your domain episode with the four characters making a bet to see who can go the longest. [01:50:25] S0: The episode opens. George walks into a diner, and the opening line that he gives Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer in the booth is, my mother caught me. [01:50:39] S1: I can't even keep it together just talking about the episode. [01:50:42] S0: They don't need to do much from there. They go the entire episode without saying what they are having a contest to try not to do. There's just this giant, unstated elephant. You know exactly what the elephant is the entire episode, and yet it's perfect. It doesn't break any rules, but they break all this new comedic ground.

01:50:42 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:50:42] S0: They don't need to do much from there. They go the entire episode without saying what they are having a contest to try not to do. There's just this giant, unstated elephant. You know exactly what the elephant is the entire episode, and yet it's perfect. It doesn't break any rules, but they break all this new comedic ground. [01:51:07] S1: So apparently, like all or almost all great Seinfeld episodes, this actually also happened to Larry in real life. Course, it did. And Larry... Even Larry was scared of this episode. He would been thinking, no, we can't do it. It's it's too much. But finally here by season four, they've got enough confidence and enough, you know, just no fear attitude. Larry's talking to Jerry and says the idea. And Jerry says, that's funny. Let's do it. So they write the episode, the two of them, in secret. Usually, what they would do in their office on the on the set, the Larry and Jerry's office that they shared together, They had a a whiteboard. So if you watch the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, it's in the office. You can see the whiteboard. And on the whiteboard, they have all the plot points for all the characters and the candidates, etcetera, etcetera. So anybody could come in their office, the other writers, the NBC executives, they'd see what's on the whiteboard. They didn't put this one on. They just wrote it in secret. I don't know if they put decoys. That would be even better. [01:52:18] S0: Word did get out though.

01:52:18 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:52:18] S0: Word did get out though. [01:52:19] S1: Well, so the story continues. So they have it in secret all throughout the writing process, and then it gets to the table read. So the way the week would work was the cast would do a table read of the script first, and then do some rehearsals, and then they would shoot the episode. This is pretty close to filming. Like, you're well into production week at this point. They bring out the script, and NBC is just like, oh my god. [01:52:48] S0: We're gonna talk about the full schedule, the weekly schedule of making a Seinfeld episode in a few minutes. But know this. When you're at the table read, you are six days from shooting the episode for real in front of a live audience in studio.