Seinfeld creator mocks Rand Paul

[dannno]

Seinfeld was one of the greatest comedy shows of all time.

If not the greatest comedy show of all time..

 

[dannno]

It was just people yelling at each other. There were some good jokes, and some good episodes. But after I realized that they're all just bitching all the time, it lost all appeal. I can't watch anyone on the show and say that they're a sympathetic character, yet they're presented as being sympathetic.

Did you ever see the series finale? They all went and visited a small town and ended up in prison after failing to help a person in distress and several character witnesses came to testify against them all... like some sort of ultimate kramer, I mean karma..

 

[PaulConventionWV]

If not the greatest comedy show of all time..

Why do people keep saying this? It was a pretty good show, but what makes it so much more special than all the others? I watch it and it seems like a pretty normal show to me.

 

[Occam's Banana]

If not the greatest comedy show of all time..

Meh. Not even close, IMO. Shows with good, solid absurdist sensibilities are much more enjoyable.

I'll take the likes of The Drew Carey Show, Malcolm in the Middle, or Scrubs over Seinfeld any day.

I'd much rather hang with fun, likeable guys like Lewis & Oswald or Turk & Dorian than a sniveling little neurotic like George Costanza. In fact, if I had to spend any significant amount of time with most of the characters on Seinfeld, you'd probably end up reading a story about yet another mass-shooting followed by a suicide ...

 

[dannno]

Meh. Not even close, IMO. Shows with good, solid absurdist sensibilities are much more enjoyable.

I'll take the likes of The Drew Carey Show, Malcolm in the Middle, or Scrubs over Seinfeld any day.

I don't know if you watched enough of the show, Seinfeld is about as absurd as it gets. Admittedly I stopped watching Malcolm after season 1 or 2 and thought it was pretty good, but I will say I did not like the Drew Carrey show at all.. For that kind of show I think I preferred something like News Radio.

 

[dannno]

Why do people keep saying this? It was a pretty good show, but what makes it so much more special than all the others? I watch it and it seems like a pretty normal show to me.

I guess watch more.. There are like 120 or 140 episodes or something and many are just huge classics.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I guess watch more.. There are like 120 or 140 episodes or something and many are just huge classics.

IMO, nah. The Festivus episode and a few others. There are good scenes in a lot of the others, but they certainly aren't classics.

 

[Occam's Banana]

I don't know if you watched enough of the show, Seinfeld is about as absurd as it gets.

I've seen enough of Seinfeld to conclude that it isn't really all that absurd. It's more trivial than anything.
(There's a very good reason that Seinfeld is said to be a "show about nothing.")
Triviality is easy to mistake for absurdity, but it's not really the same thing.
Which is NOT to say it wasn't funny or clever. It was. But it just left me cold.
(Mostly because of the extreme unlikeability of the characters ... clique-ish, neurotic, etc. ...)

 

[mczerone]

Did you ever see the series finale? They all went and visited a small town and ended up in prison after failing to help a person in distress and several character witnesses came to testify against them all... like some sort of ultimate kramer, I mean karma..

Yeah, I saw it, and abhorred it.

1st - failing to help is not a crime, generally.

2nd - it tried to list all these bad things in a way that was supposed to absolve them to the viewer while indict them to the judge. As a storytelling device, it failed.

3rd - that's not how character witnesses work in real courts.

There was just too much for me to overcome to actually suspend disbelief/immerse myself in the story. Add to that the fact that I'd already written off the series as "anger masquerading as funny" - and the finale was just horrible.

 

[specsaregood]

I don't know if you watched enough of the show, Seinfeld is about as absurd as it gets. Admittedly I stopped watching Malcolm after season 1 or 2 and thought it was pretty good, but I will say I did not like the Drew Carrey show at all.. For that kind of show I think I preferred something like News Radio.

I always liked Rosanne. Seinfeld was just ok.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Big Bang Theory is like the new Seinfeld...

 

[dannno]

List of SOME of the classic Seinfeld episodes (in order of appearance):

"The Pony Remark"

"The Chinese Restaurant"

"The Parking Garage"

"The Pez Dispenser"

"The Virgin" & "The Contest" (If you haven't seen "The Contest" then you haven't seen Seinfeld.. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer make a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating)

"The Junior Mint"

"The Smelly Car"

"The Puffy Shirt" (I don't wanna be a pirate!!)

"The Marine Biologist" (My personal all time favorite!!)

"The Hamptons" (It's shrinkage!!)

"The Cigar Store Indian"

"The Fusilli Jerry"

"The Engagement" & "The Postponement" & "The Maestro"

"The Soup Nazi"

"The Sponge"

"The Yada Yada" (George: You can't Yada Yada sex.... Elaine: I've Yada Yada'd sex...)

"The Summer of George"

"The Merv Griffin Show"

"The Puerto Rican Day" (Banned from TV)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Seinfeld_episodes

 

[dannno]

Yeah, I saw it, and abhorred it.

1st - failing to help is not a crime, generally.

2nd - it tried to list all these bad things in a way that was supposed to absolve them to the viewer while indict them to the judge. As a storytelling device, it failed.

3rd - that's not how character witnesses work in real courts.

There was just too much for me to overcome to actually suspend disbelief/immerse myself in the story. Add to that the fact that I'd already written off the series as "anger masquerading as funny" - and the finale was just horrible.

That wasn't the point, I wasn't horribly enthralled with the finale either.. but your previous post was trying to say that the characters major flaws were supposed to be celebrated or something, when in fact the show ended up putting them all in prison because of their character flaws.

Not to mention, everything you just said about the episode is what I would call "absurd" and we have complaints coming in that the show was not absurd enough.

George finds a woman (Susan) who is kind of pretty and he doesn't really love her but he doesn't think he can do any better and her parents are rich so he decides to continue the relationship and get engaged and eventually he is responsible for her death - because he bought cheap wedding invitations and he didn't help her send them out so she ended up licking all of them and was poisoned by the cheap glue. That is absurd, ironic and funny.

 

[dannno]

Big Bang Theory is like the new Seinfeld...

Big Bang Theory = Seinfeld + Friends + Frazier + ridiculously hot girls + young geeky beta males

 

[Occam's Banana]

George finds a woman (Susan) who is kind of pretty and he doesn't really love her but he doesn't think he can do any better and her parents are rich so he decides to continue the relationship and get engaged and eventually he is responsible for her death - because he bought cheap wedding invitations and he didn't help her send them out so she ended up licking all of them and was poisoned by the cheap glue. That is absurd, ironic and funny.

I saw that one. I didn't think it was any of those things. I just thought it was pathetic.
Okay, I guess it was ironic, too. But it was a pedestrian & uninspired sort of irony.

We apparently have very different notions of what is absurd. Monty Python is absurd. Seinfeld is not absurd. (It perhaps skirts the suburbs of absurdity with some of the Kramer stuff, but it would more accurate to call that stuff "odd" or "strange" - which is not the same thing.)

 

[Rudeman]

Everyone's sense of humor is a bit different. I've tried watching Seinfeld but never really got into it, same thing with the Big Bang Theory. Favorite current comedies are It's Always Sunny and Community.

 

[jkob]

What an insane douchebag, he literally calls his own work irrelevant(which he made a career out of and continues to milk) because he hates Rand so much. The fact that he's fawning like a schoolgirl when politicians he likes make reference to it just makes him look absolutely pathetic.

 

[dannno]

I saw that one. I didn't think it was any of those things. I just thought it was pathetic.
Okay, I guess it was ironic, too. But it was a pedestrian & uninspired sort of irony.

It was a series of episodes, you probably caught one in the middle or something.

We apparently have very different notions of what is absurd. Monty Python is absurd. Seinfeld is not absurd. (It perhaps skirts the suburbs of absurdity with some of the Kramer stuff, but it would more accurate to call that stuff "odd" or "strange" - which is not the same thing.)

There is massive absurdity hidden within the social situations in every single Seinfeld episode. You have to be one of those people who are interested in why people act certain ways during certain social situations to be interested in Seinfeld, I guess.

 

[angelatc]

List of SOME of the classic Seinfeld episodes (in order of appearance):

"The Contest" (If you haven't seen "The Contest" then you haven't seen Seinfeld.. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer make a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating)

Heh. When Seinfeld first came on, I was just re-entering the world of television. I had seen it couple of times and thought it was stupid, not funny. After a couple of years, hearing my co-workers talk about it so much ...thought that maybe it was getting better. "The Contest" was the episode that I happened to watch when giving it a second try.

It was then that I realized that TV must indeed rot brain cells. That's the only thing I can explain an entire nation snickering over that particular script.

 

[angelatc]

George finds a woman (Susan) who is kind of pretty and he doesn't really love her but he doesn't think he can do any better and her parents are rich so he decides to continue the relationship and get engaged and eventually he is responsible for her death - because he bought cheap wedding invitations and he didn't help her send them out so she ended up licking all of them and was poisoned by the cheap glue. That is absurd, ironic and funny.

No, that just serves to illustrate how unlikeable George is, and why the show was unwatchable to some of us.