Seinfeld

I haven’t been reading much lately, and that’s a shame. Until a couple of years ago I used to be involved in reading some kind of series or anthology. It’s as if I don’t want to make the effort of parsing and understanding content on my own. So I have fallen to reading’s step brother, and that is watching TV shows.

Of the ones I have been watching lately, I found Seinfeld the most interesting. I so-called “show about nothing” has a very weird cast of characters. The indifferent yet genial comedian Jerry Seinfeld, the free spirited Elaine Benes, the conniving loser George Costanza, and Kramer. Jerry is an observational comedian, a fictional version of the show’s creator, Jerry Seinfeld. His friends sort of hang around at his apartment,

The thing I love about Seinfeld is that it isn’t scared to be weird. There are episodes about Kramer’s madcap schemes for making money. Then there are ones about Jerry’s doomed romances where some random quirk of one of his dates causes him to break it off. I particularly love the ones where George takes subterfuge to unimaginable levels for extremely petty reasons. Where Seinfeld truly clicks for me, though is in the episodes with Newman- the fat, “merry” postman from the other wing who is Jerry’s arch-nemesis.

Newman is quite eloquent, with a vocabulary befitting a fantasy writer. You know you are in for a treat when one of the characters enters his lair seeking his experience on some difficult issue. As Newman sits on his couch, like Zeus on his throne, smoking a cigar, emitting grandoise prose, the characters describe their problems- be it Elaine asking him to “take care” of a barking neihbourhood dog who disturbs her sleep, or Kramer visiting him to resolve his dilema of being an “honourable friend” to Jerry against him being convinced that Jerry’s librarian girlfriend is his “soulmate”. And then the rotund Newman launches into his rants, loud, sweating, expressing his angst against the world. In fact, it was a particularly crazy episode where Newman investigates Jerry for postal fraud, where an assistant moves printed photos to create a slideshow as Newman clicks his (obviously defunct) pointer which prompted me to write this.

Newmann!

Besides Newman, the show boasts of quite a quriky cast of side characters- Jerry’s thrifty British parents- Helen and Morty, with their own world of machinations and manipulation in their Florida retirement townshipt, his seedy “Uncle Leo” and his unseen son who works for the parks department. There is of course Mr. Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, whose face remains unseen for the entire duration of the series. And there is George’s lovely fiance` Susan, who he is always trying to escape by cooking up byzantine schemes (which involve a lot of lying).

I once described the show as “A show where weird people are horrid to one another and to others”. But that’s unfair. Seinfeld, though unrealistic at times, captures and criticises, and turns life’s cliches, oftimes by taking them to their extremes. Here are characters who aren’t afraid to express out loud (or even follow) that inner voice you dismissed as weird or unpractical To round it off, most episodes start with a clip of on-screen-jerry’s comedy bits, somewhat related to the episode’s content. (the wikipedia page says that the creator described the show as one which shows how a comedian gets his material). The bits are nicely contrasted by the main theme, tweaked for every episode by the composer, Jonathan Wolf. (It’s quriky nature makes it a great alarm)

If you hate sitcoms for their repetitive jokes- here’s one which is very entertaining inspite of being repetitive. One thing I noticed about the show is that the 20-minute episodes actually seem to last for a long time, with their parallely running sideplots and frequent laughs. If you like sitcoms- here is one you cannot miss.

Anyway, take it easy!