Acquired
01:11:31 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:11:31] S1: It's Sam and Diane in cheers. Yes. It's Ross and Rachel. Blah blah blah. [01:11:35] S0: Eventually, Jim and Pam. Like, this is the formula. And the way that Jerry and Larry chose to interpret the note is literally, but we're not gonna do any of that other stuff. [01:11:46] S1: Yeah. We're just gonna need a girl. So, George Shapiro, the talent manager, has a great quote about this, about what you need a girl means. He says, the network wanted Jerry and Julia to be married or dating. That was normal network thinking. Fortunately, we had two creators who didn't give a crap. Jerry and Larry felt strongly that Jerry and Julia shouldn't have a relationship, and they were ready to walk away from the show because of it. [01:12:10] S0: And the way that they pulled this off is Elaine is a former love interest. Yes. Like, they've already had a relationship, and it didn't work, and they broke up. And so, viewers, you don't even need to take your minds there because we already told you it's not gonna work. There is one episode where they explore deal. Yes. Incredible episode. But then after that, the the... I think that's the end of a season. They come back the next season. The whole thing is forgotten. They don't take it anywhere. These characters are not a love interest, period.
01:12:10 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:12:10] S0: And the way that they pulled this off is Elaine is a former love interest. Yes. Like, they've already had a relationship, and it didn't work, and they broke up. And so, viewers, you don't even need to take your minds there because we already told you it's not gonna work. There is one episode where they explore deal. Yes. Incredible episode. But then after that, the the... I think that's the end of a season. They come back the next season. The whole thing is forgotten. They don't take it anywhere. These characters are not a love interest, period. [01:12:37] S1: That episode, the deal where they... The two of them reexplore the romantic relationship is even more subversive to the network because they do it. Larry Larry and Jerry do that episode, and then they just never mention it again. There's no resolution. There's no... They continued. They didn't continue. There's no development. There's no relationship. It's just, that didn't happen. [01:12:59] S0: This show would go on to be number one by throwing out the playbook entirely and going straight off of the thing that Jerry and Larry wanted to make with no, like, reverence for the roles that you were supposed to do to get to number one.
01:12:59 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:12:59] S0: This show would go on to be number one by throwing out the playbook entirely and going straight off of the thing that Jerry and Larry wanted to make with no, like, reverence for the roles that you were supposed to do to get to number one. [01:13:14] S1: Exactly. So this is why, you know, when I said that the Elaine character makes Seinfeld what it is. So what is Seinfeld? It is a merging of stand up and the sitcom. Just like the whole development of the show, this is what it's leading to. Like a sitcom, Seinfeld, the show has continuity of characters, places, relationships, across episodes, across seasons, across years of the show. You get to know these characters. You know the apartment. You know the coffee shop. [01:13:44] S0: You know George just can't help himself. [01:13:46] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [01:13:47] S0: Every time, you can count on them to do the wrong thing, to see the temptation and to give in to the temptation. And by creating these consistent characters, it helps have a framework for those jokes. [01:13:59] S1: What does stand up comedy not have? Continuity. Consistency. That doesn't exist in the stand up world. Okay. Now flip it on the other side. Like stand up, Seinfeld doesn't have any development of these characters and places and relationships. Jerry is always Jerry. George is always George. Elaine is always Elaine. You could tune in in any episode. There's no development of the relationship, the characters. They never learn anything. The places don't change. The apartment is the same. The coffee shop is the same.
01:13:59 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:13:59] S1: What does stand up comedy not have? Continuity. Consistency. That doesn't exist in the stand up world. Okay. Now flip it on the other side. Like stand up, Seinfeld doesn't have any development of these characters and places and relationships. Jerry is always Jerry. George is always George. Elaine is always Elaine. You could tune in in any episode. There's no development of the relationship, the characters. They never learn anything. The places don't change. The apartment is the same. The coffee shop is the same. [01:14:29] S0: It's a situational comedy. But the situation is static. Or I would say the characters are static. The characters are vessels Yes. For humorous situations. Whereas, they call them sitcoms before that, but really what they were were these [01:14:44] S1: They were dramas with jokes. [01:14:46] S0: Yes. And Seinfeld drops that and just creates situations that are inherently funny with characters that are static versus needing to insert isolated jokes to sorta, like, lighten the mood of a dramatic situation that has a beginning, middle, and end.
01:14:46 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:14:46] S0: Yes. And Seinfeld drops that and just creates situations that are inherently funny with characters that are static versus needing to insert isolated jokes to sorta, like, lighten the mood of a dramatic situation that has a beginning, middle, and end. [01:15:04] S1: And those dramatic situations, as we were pointing out with the, you know, the network note, sort of the unsaid subtext of you need a love interest, are almost always either romantic relationships or family relationships. And they develop over the course of the show. And the characters grow and learn and change and come together. Seinfeld is so radical by saying, absolutely not. We are not doing any of that. So one of the writers that I talked with for research is Jeff Schaeffer, and he wrote for the [01:15:36] S0: show in the the later years. His comment to me was, the plot itself has to be funny when you retell it. Like, that's how they know they're onto something is if literally describing the situation is the humorous part. And the best illustration of this is how Seinfeld episodes end. They don't resolve the plot in a satisfying way. It's it's just like stand up. When the joke [01:15:59] S1: ends consequences. It's just funny.
01:15:59 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:15:59] S1: ends consequences. It's just funny. [01:16:01] S0: Right. So the characters find themselves in a tough situation, but there's sort of no funny arc remaining after that. That's okay. The show just ends. Freeze frame. You don't get to know how they get out of the jam. There's no continuity into the next episode. They start fresh next episode. It's literally a stand up act, but the people are in the situations instead of the jokes being purely verbal. [01:16:24] S1: Yep. You led me right into the perfect Jerry quote about this. He says, I personally believe that what Larry and I brought to the sitcom format, a twenty two minute format, was a stand up comedian structural sensibility. We didn't really have time to tell what the characters were all about because we had jokes to do. We weren't really storytellers. We became that, but only through that lens, the jokes. It's so true. Yep. [01:16:51] S0: And the thing that makes it so universally appealing is that the characters they developed, we see ourselves in these characters. They they represent a side of ourselves. We've all wanted to grab the eclair from the top of the trash can, but we have restraint. We're real people who move around the world. We're complex. We have multidimensions. But Seinfeld represents wish fulfillment. George has no restraint. George is an avatar of our worst qualities. You know, Elaine has a lot of them. Kramer has our most insane qualities. And the recognition of this very basic human element in these characters is surprisingly timeless and durable.