Seinfeld the TV series

[Jon Ford]

Michael-- good critique of Stenfeld's show ( I still catch it every now and 
then in reruns). Your comment about Jerry being a bland comic of minimal 
gifts is quite true; ironically, his dull qualities worked well in the 
series because he was designated  the "straight man" (like "designated 
driver"?) the other zany friends played off of. He was like the still point 
of the turning wheel, giving the whole thing a kind of dramatic unity, 
especially when he tried to be "rational" in the face of the lunatic ravings 
of George and Kramer. Yet his character, too, was tremendously neurotic in 
his cleanliness fetish and attitude towards little tics that would 
instantaneously arouse or turn him off on various women.

Jon

>From: "Michael Eisenstadt" <michaele@HotPOP.com>
>Reply-To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
>To: <austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net>
>Subject: Seinfeld the TV series
>Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:06:02 -0600
>
>Wayne wrote:
>
> > I never understood what the buzz on
> > Seinfeld was all about.
>
>I didn't either, the usual Seinfeld episode
>being set in a Manhattan apartment with
>3 agitated friends of Seinfeld running in
>and out and doing shtick humor.
>
>Life in NYC is a very special pressure-cooker
>and commercial TV and Hollywood has
>taken full advantage of it in many many
>successful comedy and crime series.
>
>And in terms of NYC based entertainment,
>the 4 making up the Seinfeld gang were
>cleverly type cast. So George the short
>bald guy is more than believable as a
>horny overweight bachelor, Elaine the
>ex-girlfriend can mug convincingly,
>Kramer the tall excentric big city doofus
>does physical comedy as good as the
>next second banana.
>
>Compared to their personas, Seinfeld
>is wan and anethetized, a comic if
>comic he be of very slight gifts.
>
>Yet the episode of how the Seinfelders
>wound up watching the wrong movie
>(Rachel Rachel, the story of the erotic
>awakening of a young woman on her
>journey from Milan to Minsk) is
>exceptionally good (I've seen it twice
>and I am right about this, right I tell
>you). <-anything I say twice is true
>Perhaps it works better because it
>isn't set in an apartment.
>
>The usual Seinfeld episode set in an
>apartment or at a restaurant table is
>predictable and boring. It was said
>that the program was about nothing
>or close to it.
>
>Mike
>

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