Seinfeld

01:13:59 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[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 RosenthalPlay from here

[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 GilbertPlay from here

[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.

01:16:51 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[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. [01:17:34] S1: So all of this comes together and crystallizes during this kinda first season timeline in Larry's famous rule for the show. There's only one rule. [01:17:46] S0: Which I've heard this is not a stated rule. This was more sort of like something that bubbled up later that they realized they all had a shared understanding around. But Jerry, Larry, the writers, everyone had this ethos for sure. [01:17:57] S1: Yep. No hugging, no learning. Which again is the the exact opposite of every other sitcom that had ever been made to this point.

01:17:57 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[01:17:57] S1: Yep. No hugging, no learning. Which again is the the exact opposite of every other sitcom that had ever been made to this point. [01:18:05] S0: Right. The characters never hug and make up. There's no, in Full House, you know, how the end of every episode would be Danny sitting down on the bed explaining some law of life to his daughters. And, you know, you did a bad thing, but you learned your lesson. Seinfeld is you did a bad thing. You got caught. You lied about it. You dug yourself into a deeper hole. You learn nothing. [01:18:28] S1: We end the episode. You do it again the next time. [01:18:31] S0: Yep. Right. No one ever learns from their mistakes, and it provides this, like, perfect substrate for the jokes to happen, these insane situations that they get themselves into. And I think... I was trying to reflect back on all this. I think Jerry and Larry viewed it as respect for the audience, that we don't need to spoon feed you what emotions you should be having, and you don't need to hug and make up and, like, put a bow on everything. You get it. You're in on the joke with us. The joke's over. You're a smart person who can figure it out. And at first, that leads to a very niche audience. That is not a recipe to have a breakthrough season one or two or three, but that will earn the respect of some small group of people who are obsessed with it.

01:18:31 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[01:18:31] S0: Yep. Right. No one ever learns from their mistakes, and it provides this, like, perfect substrate for the jokes to happen, these insane situations that they get themselves into. And I think... I was trying to reflect back on all this. I think Jerry and Larry viewed it as respect for the audience, that we don't need to spoon feed you what emotions you should be having, and you don't need to hug and make up and, like, put a bow on everything. You get it. You're in on the joke with us. The joke's over. You're a smart person who can figure it out. And at first, that leads to a very niche audience. That is not a recipe to have a breakthrough season one or two or three, but that will earn the respect of some small group of people who are obsessed with it. [01:19:18] S1: You're so right. I think that's exactly how they thought about it. And it's so ahead of its time, and it's why Seinfeld is still so watchable and relevant today. Because TV sitcoms, all that others, you know, the hugging, the learning, the emotional arcs, it was all fake. It was all just fake. And eventually, thanks to cable and then the Internet, audiences on mass eventually just kinda came to see that for what it is of... It's fake. And Seinfeld was really, great. We're not gonna give you the fake stuff. [01:19:52] S0: We're gonna give you something that you actually see in your life too, that that feels more like real life. [01:19:57] S1: Yeah. Your friends and your family, they don't grow. They don't change.