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Just watched the first two seasons of Friends and the first season of Seinfeld (never seen them before so a trip to the past) and Seinfeld is so much more intelligent and Friends so shallow and boring (outside some Joey gimmicks). Is there any such show with playful intelligent humor as Seinfeld these days?
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
If you like that type of writing, the British Comedy ‘Coupling’ does the multiple story lines coalescing quite well. IMO even better than Seinfeld.
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
I think this was mostly Larry David's work. Jason Alexander once mentioned in an interview that after David left, this "dovetailing" of story lines kind of stopped, and I tend to agree. David continued it (even more pronounced) in "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Even the golf ball twist was kind of repeated - in extreme form and with a baseball - in "Curb".
Side note: another early TV show that often pulled this off to great effect was "The Honeymooners". I think this is the show that had the most influence on Seinfeld. Ed Norton is basically Kramer, Ralph Kramden is basically George, Alice is Elaine, and Alice's mother is Newman (you can also map "The Honeymooners" characters, and even entire plot lines, to "The Flintstones", but that is another story, and AFAIK Jacky Gleason, the creator of "The Honeymooners", considered suing Hanna-Barbera in the 60ies).
Jerry Seinfeld himself once said that we should wait and see if "Seinfeld" is still funny in 50 years like "The Honeymooners" (that was 20 years ago).
"Fawlty Towers" also did this very well.
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
Seinfeld was also very good at basically dropping stories after they ceased to be funny.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frasier is the epitome of hilarious and intelligent humor. In my personal opinion it is 10x more intelligent and funny than Seinfeld.
Interesting to hear. I watched Cheers, almost religiously (a time ago, I suppose), and I could just never get into Frasier. I'm not sure I've ever laughed as hard as I did when watching Cheers; it unfortunately doesn't hold up all that well, but I still hold it dear nonetheless. It's been a while, but maybe I'll give Frasier another shot, even if only as some quasi-filler. :)
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
"I’d like to say it worked organically or it worked from going backwards, but it worked and didn’t work in all of those ways. It never really happened the same way twice. A couple of times, I would think that I had it down pat, like in the episode with Teri Hatcher, “The Implant.” I had stories, but I also started off with four or five really great scenes. They had nothing to do with each other, but I knew they would make great scenes, so I started finding a way of mating them together. That episode came out great, so I thought that that was the way I would always do it. It never worked that way again. The process of that was pretty much a struggle every time."
https://www.vulture.com/2014/07/classic-seinfeld-episodes-wr...
On reading The Contest:
"David: As soon as the read-through started, the laughs were huge. Big, satisfying laughs. I would glance at [the executives’] faces and they seemed to be enjoying it. You could sense it was a very special show. Then we all walked back to our office afterwards and I think one or two NBC executives were there and they had nothing. They just said, “Very funny.” And I was shocked.
Littlefield: They read it and it was hilarious. And Rick, as an executive for NBC, knew, “Uh-oh, shit’s going to hit the fan.” The broadcast standards executive who was there, was like, “What the fuck?” And Rick was like, “I didn’t know!”
https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/seinfeld-the-contest-oral-hi...
Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole. The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.
If you like that type of writing, the British Comedy ‘Coupling’ does the multiple story lines coalescing quite well. IMO even better than Seinfeld.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Jerry Seinfeld many times seems to be smiling in a "this scene is so funny I can't hold on not to laugh" way? I mean, some scenes would be more convincing/funny if he looked more serious. This still strikes me as weird. Has this been discussed somewhere (I would surprised if not, perhaps I should ask GPT4)? Do we know why this happens?
Just watched the first two seasons of Friends and the first season of Seinfeld (never seen them before so a trip to the past) and Seinfeld is so much more intelligent and Friends so shallow and boring (outside some Joey gimmicks). Is there any such show with playful intelligent humor as Seinfeld these days?
For sure. I've never been able to watch an entire episode of Friends. The Seinfeld ensemble were all brilliantly drawn characters, while the actors in Friends were just boring and narcissistic twits.