this used to be about breaking bad but it's kinda just about tv now so idk yeah

[rtjhbfvsrry]

I am well aware of the workings of irony and exaggeration, thank you, and I have also watched enough of Seinfeld to recognize "the joke". You act as if it is a hidden depth which I find midly concerning considering not only was it obvious enough for it to become one of the biggest shows of the 90's in America, but they also go out of their way to repeatedly bludgeon the viewer to death with the joke hamfistedly even before they repeatedly explain it outright with their ridiculous and masturbatory "show within a show" conceit. You do not need to hear writer's commentary to know this show is, in essence, about nothing because the show is the writer's soapbox.

Honestly, I get what they were trying to do with Seinfeld and I recognize how it changed the game concerning sitcoms. I also recognize that the characters are iconic, but the key factor to making inherently unlikable characters sympathetic is depth and the characters in Seinfeld do not possess any - in fact their lack of depth is part of the point. The show was meant to get away from "lesson learned" plots and overdone character growth arcs, but unlikable characters such as these only work when they interact in an interesting way and Seinfeld fails completely on this level because the characters only work as a sounding board for each other to make wrong conclusions about before heading back to their own wacky hijink of the week and there's only so many George Costanza Plots that can blow up in his own face before it becomes stale and formulaic. You linked the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect earlier, ironically I think Seinfeld is NOT an example of that because Seinfeld cannibalized itself to death far before other shows did (excluding, of course, Friends, which ripped entire episodes). If you want to keep your characters bankable by keeping their iconic state, eventually you will run out of new places to take your show and this happened very early on.

I find Seinfeld to be ambitious, but on a whole I think it is a grand failure of an experiment. I appreciate the show for what it brought to the table but as a whole I find it to be completely unwatchable affair. I also think comparing it to George Carlin is an insult to the man because he is right up there with the great Bill Hicks and Richard Pryor and a mainstream laughtrack sitcom most definitely does not and will never compare in my eyes.

But it's obvious we won't agree on this because you obviously really like it and I obviously really dislike it, so I just wasted a bunch of time because I am addicted to arguing on the internet. : /