Friends are merely a copy of Seinfeld. Like all the sitcoms post Seinfeld. Maybe not one to one copy but in all of them have references to Seinfeld and even replicate jokes from it. The office is full of Seinfeld references. In the last season of the office, Curb is directly advertised by Saul Goodman. His way younger self as an actor dated Elaine in Seinfeld.
What exactly am I wrong about? Labeling Seinfeld as the GOAT or friends being the start of conedy mediocrity and below mediocre? I don't mean to bad mouth the dead, but Matthew Perry at some point, within SNL context, told a costar that he invented sarcasm. He must of been high on strawberry jam at that time. Aside from The Office which was pretty good up to a point, friends, gang bang theory, two men cut in half or whatever that garbage was called, king of queens, and any sitcom you can think of, tried to dethrone Seinfeld. But it's simply not possible. And it never will be. That king of queens is nothing more than a poor copy of not even Seimfeld as a whole, but a single unmatched aspect of Seinfeld. The F. Costanza and son magical chemistry.
soup nazi and the close talker, shrinkage, man hands, the double dipper, yada yada, master of your domain are still part of our lexicon 20 plus years later.
I completely acknowledge the show went very cartoonish in the last couple seasons but I still enjoy those too. Yes they are not the same kind of humour that the show was founded on, I get it. But they are still incredibly hilarious in their own right.
I like the later ones where they get more insane the Finale kinda sucked, just a re-cap of what they did over the shows run. Still gotta respect Jerry for ending it while the show was still bigtime even though he already made enough cash for 10 lifetimes
it may have strayed away from the original vision the writers had but i still think its great silly humor, not everything needs to take itself seriously
The finale had my favourite line in the show. Frank Costanza yelling at George Steinbrenner, “How could you give twelve million dollars to Hideki Irabu?!”
Condolences. My dad was a fan of Seinfeld and even though I didn’t understand much at the time, I picked it up again as an adult when it finally clicked and made me a lifelong fan. My dad had passed by then but I always remember him snickering at Seinfeld on TV
My old man was a big fan as well; his favorite joke was the cold open with Jerry and George having mustaches out of nowhere. That one always got him howling.
Something similar happened to me too. Back in the 90s, I didn't have much brain power to understand the Seinfeld structure. That's what makes it so good. They were ahead of their time. I used to laugh drooling at married with children when Al was scratching his bellybutton and then held out his arm to his wife for her to sample the content of his bellybutton too. I laughed at that cause I didn't know any better. Seinfeld is a very acquired taste as in what values and morals it promotes or makes fun of. I tried a while back to see how will I perceive married with children with new and improved brain power of understanding comedy, and......I could barely crack a smile at what the Bundy's were promoting.
Larry David fixed the ending with the Curb finale where he did a shot for shot remake. Larry is in jail & Jerry comes to pick him up because a juror was caught failing to sequester & the conviction was overturned. That was a smarter ending because of course when they’re finally getting their comeuppance, some random technicality gets them off the hook. He acknowledges that this was how Seinfeld should’ve ended & I agree
I see your point, and you make a reasonable case, however, even in it's demise Seinfeld was still funnier than anything else on television. It's tone had changed the last two years and it was certainly not the clever and original concept that Larry David's acerbic sensibilities had brought to the reading table, but it still made people laugh and gave millions fodder to discuss the next day.
Pretty much what I’m saying. The show was still good when compared to others, but its quality went down as it became more and more like a parody of itself, especially once Larry left.
It’s funny that when Larry David left is when many ppl think Seinfeld became a parody of itself, but ironically it’s Curb Your Enthusiasm which I feel like began completely grounded in reality, feeling like Larry David’s real life, and suffered becoming a total parody of itself to a much higher degree than Seinfeld ever did
those last couple seasons are where it drew in its widest audience, including me. i didn't follow it til the last few years, the absurdity brought me in i guess
I really think you're wrong. 8&9 had some classic episodes including one of my all time favs The Car Dealership. You're overthinking it man, its a show about nothing
There has never been a television show where I couldn't wait for the next episode and go into work the next morning to discuss and laugh with my co workers.
I was in college and Thursday nights we'd watch Seinfeld, then go to the bars. The night the soup nazi episode premiered I remember going out to the bar and people just saying "no soup for you" and just laughing historically. Then, we get home and I'm watching sports center and a baseball highlight of a guy robbing a home run. No soup for you. To this day I don't think I've experienced anything like that. Literally watch an episode and minutes later it's just everywhere.
I loved it when it was on, right starting from Seinfeld Chronicles, and I never noticed that the quality dropped. However, now, I cannot go back and rewatch them.
Hey JJ. I thought an AI voiceover with a native American accent would be less distracting than my own voice, but enough people have complained about it sounding robotic and fake so I guess I was wrong. I guess I'll have to start recording the whole narration myself. Thanks for your input!
@@BigFilmRevI personally think the ai is fine but don't be scared to upload with your own unique cadence and voice. You've inspired me to start my channel now I know I don't have to use my own though tbh I have the same fears so I get it. You do you brother!
The finale is a rip off of, or tribute to, The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt. Bilko). It ends with the protagonists going to jail for their (hilarious) crimes against society. It also has a touch of Barney Miller, in that some of the popular characters from the show's past come back for one last appearance.
Seasons 8 and 9 weren't funny, just silly, but most people think silly is funnier than funny, New fans jumped on board in the later seasons and didn't have anything to compare them to.
Actually it is. I watched from the beginning and began rewatching it on Netlfix last year. It holds up. The first two seasons are mostly unwatchable, and of course some things are dated, but that's the case with all tv shows. Otherwise, I can watch the rest of the run and it holds up much, much better than any other 90s sitcom.
I think the same but of the last two seasons. I couldn't even watch them. I immediately felt the shift when Larry David went away. The first couple of seasons are standard. They're fine.
Sorry for your loss, my mom and I watched the show together too. And she’s the same age as your mom was, 1958. I agree with you, for the most part, about it jumping the shark. The last 2 seasons are fun though, for the fans. It jumped when George calls Marisa Tomei, before the funeral.
I thought a better way to get cameos in a finale would to have Elaine and Jerry get married and when they say speak now or forever hold your peace, all the characters come in one after the other
How on earth could you call season 8 and 9 a mess? About a dozen of the best espisodes are from those seasons. Who cares if it slipped from realism? Its ultimately a comedy, and it's supposed to make you laugh
NOTHING was more important to the American television industry than the end of MASH, Cheers, and Seinfeld. Those season finales were cultural milestones, and guess which one is not like the others???
A show finding it's identity, having it's Hey Days, losing it's luster and going for a season or two in decline, is no unique phenomenon. Iconic shows like Cheers or MASH went way longer than their peak and had poor ending shows to close the series out. I do think that one of the very final Seinfeld shows in the last season, the Puerto Rican Parade, was a real stinker, and representative of the decline and running out of ideas.
Jerry and Larry may have been the co-conceiver of Seinfeld but don’t forget the team of writers. They’re really the unsung heroes here without their input. It would’ve been literally a story about nothing
I can see your point of view. I myself am a psycho fan of Seinfeld. Ending it with the Susan incident would have been really something. Watching your review, I see Seinfeld like Mike Tyson. It's not fully fledged without it's downs. That's what makes Mike the GOAT, his prime along with his now mythical defeats, so is Seinfeld. The office had it way worse. Really relatable chemistry up until Steve left. After that they were completely aimless. The last episode was excruciating. But still, incomparable. Seinfeld with it's perceived downs still the very best, and the office with it's downs. When the office went down, it did it like the titanic.
I agree 100%. When Larry left, many of the episodes became embarrassing to watch. All of the characters became cartoons. Most people don’t notice the transition.
I guess I don't mind cartoonish humor. Some people have critiqued it's always sunny in Philadelphia for going that way, but it still gives me a tickle in my funny bone. And as far as I know no one's forcing anybody to watch anything
Huh. I clicked to agree and am actually grateful I disagreed! I saw it from the beginning as a kid all the way to being an older teenager and it still holds up for me today. I like the ridiculous older seasons more than the earliest ones. 🤷🏼♀️ anyway, great video. Subscribed!
I always took the ending , with them in jail, and one of them saying "haven't we talked about that before" as a sign that they had just run out of material. Fantastic show.
This is dead-on. It's the greatest situation comedy of all-time, but it got away from what made it truly great. The ridiculous, over the top episodes of the last two seasons were reflected not only in the writing, but the acting. George's character became a blow hard when he used to have more subtlety. The situations didn't tap into the real situations it once did, which made it iconic. It just became a cartoon - and, yes, a parody, of what made it great. The newsflash is that, apparently, Seinfeld is going to revisit the show's finale with something new he and Larry David are cooking up. That reunion arc in 2009 on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was funnier than anything from the last two seasons of "Seinfeld" because it actually got back to more realistic - everyday - a show about "nothing" - situations. I hope whatever it is they're doing, it's something special.
Very true. It's exactly the point I was trying to make. I still think Seinfeld, even at its worst, was still good, but it's a shame to see it get so far away from what made it great to begin with, and maybe people are used to seeing the episodes out of order as they shuffle through them on Netflix or catch them on TV from time to time. But when you watch them chronologically, you notice a pattern of the stories getting more and more ridiculous, and it's sad that it seems to start with one of my all time favorite episodes: The Marine Biologist.
Yes! It’s funny you mention that because I just binged the entire series over a course of a few weeks and I noticed the last two seasons really were not that good relating to everything you just said
"The newsflash is that, apparently, Seinfeld is going to revisit the show's finale with something new he and Larry David are cooking up. " I assume that this was the finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Did you see it? If so, what did you think?
Like most sitcoms, Seinfeld had a few memorable episodes, but essentially its like Seinfeld himself admits, most television is 'just about a place you like to hang out'.
Now that we have Unfrosted, it seems like everything you say you hate about Seinfeld is actually just Jerry’s sense of humor. Larry carried the show. When he started getting burnt out Jerry had to start pulling some weight. Jerry’s perspective is actually a bit out of touch, and it became more apparent as his star grew. Larry is the one firmly rooted in reality. Although he can also write slightly elevated he never actually goes over the top. He knows how to use the tiniest of circumstance to his advantage when writing an episode.
If you think the final episode of Seinfeld was bad, the subsequent careers of Michael Richards, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis Dreyfuss are the stuff of nightmare levels of cringe.
Such a spot on review, thank you. I’m such a lifelong fan of the show but hate how it turned for the wacky worse, I agree with nearly everything you said, other than I felt the first 3 are better than 3,4,5, way more grounded and smart. Definitely 1-5 was the magic, 6-7 still had some great moments, 8-9 the few great moments it had were tragically overshadowed by the ridiculous stories and cartooned versions of the characters.
Those last two years weren't the same format but that doesn't make them bad. I could see hating them if there were more than two or three seasons of far-fetched writing, like the Office--which had an endless stream of crazy seasons--but two hilarious seasons hardly seem like a betrayal. (Not to mention the fact that high-concept plots, like Jerry befriending Keith Hernandez or them producing their own TV show were there already from the second season.)
I really don't hate the finale as it's generally said. I think it's much more than the chance of past characters to appear again. The idea of them removed from society is like evening the odds. They should pay for all the emotional abuse they subjected the people they came across with. Basically saying that, we're deserving of some jail time for what we did and rightfully so. All of you at home, don't be like us. That's what I always loved about Seinfeld and Curb. Their ability to question the viewer's sense of morality.
While there is, of course, some truth to what this AI guy is saying, I have to point out that, in spite of some of the groaner episodes in the last two seasons (like the appallingly bad The Butter Shave) there were also some straight-up masterpieces Season 8: "The Soul Mate" is one of my top 20 episodes. The Abstinence, The Little Jerry, The Little Kicks, and The Bizzaro Jerry are all brilliant. The Fatigues, The Pothole (with their take on a classic Marx Bros bit of a packed storage room, and then when the door opens, they all tumble out) are solid. And The Muffin Tops, with George pretending to be a tourist, is sohhh good. Steinbrenner's phone call w/ the Tyler Chicken guy is pure gold. Season 7: The Wink, The Hot Tub, The Pool Guy, The Gum (hysterically funny bit w/ the gum and Jerry's thick glasses), The Rye, The Wig Master, The Bottle Deposit all brilliant. Even Season 9, with its flops and terrible finale, had some incredible work (thanks in part to David Puddy): The Blood, The Junk Mail, The Merv Griffin Show, The Strike (Festivus), The Reverse Peephole, The Strongbox, The Frogger, and The Maid all have segments that are spectacularly funny: Jerry's textbook marathon breakup w/ Julia Campbell in The Frogger; Puddy with the fur coat and then the 8-ball coat, everyone having a "job" at the party; the final scene of The Maid, with Kramer acting like a naive, lost girl getting into the "pimp's" car is incredible. So, in spite of the lousy episodes in S8 and S9, if they had stopped after S6, it would have been a huge mistake.
I don't "remember" anything, because I only started to watch Seinfeld in the last 2 or 3 years. It is not that well-known in Germany, and I would never watch a dubbed TV version of it. So I watched it in its original language - more than once lol. A few dozen episodes are on constant rotation. It is a masterpiece, at least seasons 2-8. It is incredibly funny, insightful and deep and the best Sitcom I have ever watched. This is Sopranos-level humour (despite being a product of an earlier time in the TV landscape and therefore "cheaper" looking). Absolutely amazing writing and acting. George Costanza alone is possibly the greatest TV character of all time.
Just saw this for the first time. As a huge Seinfeld fan, I could not agree more. When it went away from the ironies of life in NYC, it was done. From Del Boca Vista to Play Now and Kruger, they totally lost it. Everyone became a parody of themselves instead of being themselves. When reruns are on, I can't even watch the later shows.
It was a classic moment when Jerry was so offended by Larry King asking if the show had been canceled. King might be remembered if he had shown some guts by pressing Jerry to say if he thought the years without Larry David were any good.
How many of us have watched the show , in reruns for years on end , probably seeing each episode 5 --10 times at least ? That's gotta tell you something.
We were vacationing in NZ staying in a traveling van. Our US produced Siefield DVD's disks did not play with sound. We watched them in silence and somehow knowing the lines from memory it was as funny or sometimes even more funny.....We picked up on more of the physical comedy.
They didn't go to prison in the finale, they went to Hell. They were killed in the airplane crash and the court scenes are them in Purgatory being judged.
The simplicity of Seinfeld was its genius. Every great show eventually loses its steam and the writers are forced to make changes to adjust .....it doesn't always work. Furthermore the characters were just getting too old to be acting like that anymore.
