![]() ![]() They were what made Seinfeld a comedy institution, fearless in their rejection of any conventional ploys to be liked. These four were the unrepeatable formula. It was Jerry (played, obviously, by Seinfeld), the neurotic comedian who served as the axis for the others George (Jason Alexander), the cheap, petty, and horny screw-up and a stand-in for Larry David Elaine (Louis-Dreyfus), the lone female in the group, judgmental and prone to be a little frightening in her fury, both a girl and just one of the guys and the wild card, Kramer (Michael Richards), the rubber-limbed "hipster doofus" who was liable to say or do anything. They were like the Beatles of comedy, where every person served the right function and the resulting chemistry was new and exciting also like the Beatles, they've all struggled to match past accomplishments in the solo careers that followed. The core cast of the show remained constant for all nine seasons, and the construction of the team was such that the show couldn't have functioned without any one of them missing for any extended length of time (in fact, after "The Pen" in Season 3, there was never another show where any of the main quartet was missing, barring Julia Louis-Dreyfus' maternity leave). Like a fun-house mirror, it took all of our private anxieties and blew them up to a gargantuan public spectacle. ![]() They were our avatars, the ones who were "just saying what we're all thinking." Granted, they took it farther than any of us ever would, even if given the space to cut loose, but that's what made it so damn funny. In the characters of George, Jerry, Elaine, and even Kramer, we were able to let fly with all the things that weren't necessarily acceptable in everyday life. Seinfeld made it okay to be a little mean, and by being mean, to be more honest. Instead, what we got was adult humor, caustic sentiment, and none-too-gentle elbows poked into the awkwardness of modern living. Before Seinfeld, would anyone have dared talk about masturbation or feminine hygiene products on a network sitcom? Was anyone ever killed off for comic effect on Three's Company or Too Close for Comfort? Not bloody likely! Those would require "very special episodes." Such notions were ushered out by Seinfeld. Running nine seasons, it pushed all the boundaries, from how the stories were told to testing the strength of accepted taboos. Of course, as we all know, they succeeded, and Seinfeld became one of the most influential series ever beamed over the airwaves. He and Jerry Seinfeld wanted to bust conventions, to do something different in short, to be themselves. He speaks about it a little on the bonus features on the DVDs collected in Seinfeld - The Complete Series. People like Larry David, who saw the potential in the sitcom format and jumped into the fray with the intention of fixing the things that had always bugged him about TV shows. I also think there was an influx of people who, like myself, had grown up nurtured by the glow of the glass teat, people who truly loved TV with such force that they wanted to be a part of it but also saw the errors of its ways. Increased competition meant the people actually making these shows had to try harder to stand out from the pack. A lot of this had to do with cable TV and new networks upping the ante. It wasn't until the 1990s that television began to move into a whole new era of quality. While a few series survived the transition, much of what endures, at least for me, was shot in gorgeous black-and-white. In a lot of ways, the introduction of color spelled the death of the first wave of classic television the way the introduction of sound was expected to kill motion pictures. The little brother who wants to play along but can't manage to keep up with his older sibling due to his stubby little legs. Perhaps the golden age of television, of personalities like Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke and Sid Caesar, loomed so large, producers felt like they could only chase after what had already passed, never quite catching up to it. ![]() The drama is hackneyed and over simplified, and the sitcoms rely on hokey jokes and recycled ideas. Let's be honest, though, when one looks back at those decades, the vast majority of the series that were popular haven't aged all that well. I grew up on the television of the 1970s and '80s and loved a whole hell of a lot of it back then.
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