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Giving Seinfeld shit for having a laugh track doesn't make sense. There are shows from eras before and after using laugh tracks, so Seinfeld is not an outlier in that regard. However, Jerry's occupation is literally a comedian. Having a laugh track in Seinfeld thus makes more sense than most shows that have one.
The laugh track is also used to fill in the pause the actors had to take due to the audience reaction. Just like with comedy shows people in groups laugh more than when you are watching at home.
This has always bugged me. In any bygone, popular TV show when an actor first shows up there's a roar of applause, claps, stomps, whistling and shouting for 10 seconds where they just stand, kind of awkwardly waiting for noise to stop in order to say their line. I mean it's ok for a live crowd, but cut that shit off my TV show for fuck's sake.
Was it a laugh track? Was it not live audience?
People seem to forget that Live Audience used to be a thing
I don’t have a problem with laugh tracks existing. I have a problem with shows not recorded before a live audience having laughter added in.
Seinfeld had an episode about cell phones, though.
I don't remember the exact plot, but I think it was Elaine called somebody about something serious, like expressing condolences for a death or something, and she called from a cell phone while she was out and about, instead of calling from a land line at home. This was seen as a faux pas.
That sounds vaguely familiar.. did she have bad reception or something and her condolences came across as insulting as words got cut
My memory was that she had bad reception, but that the call wasn't cut, and when she hung up, she thought she had done a good job until corrected by Jerry. But I haven't seen this episode in over two decades probably, so my memory isn't going to be exactly right.
Out of nowhere? MapQuest and printed out directions were a thing for many years.
Not to mention mapping GPS receivers. Google maps was probably the most obvious use case for a smart phone after making phone calls and listening to music.
Was PayPal always evil, though? The concept of it wasn't. People wanted an easier way to conduct transactions electronically. Something faster and more convenient than, say, a Western Union money transfer order.
it was created by merging a company started by peter thiel with one started by elon musk. how much more evil can you get?
Almost every country around the world has a free way of moving money between people without using an app or third party website. It's just a standard part of banking. I haven't looked into it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Paypal has bribed and lobbied to keep that kind of functionality out of the US. So, the US has a shittier, more expensive, less convenient, more privacy-invasive version of what everybody else takes for granted. Just like with medical care, taxes, etc.
Kramer: Look Jerry, twenty thousand dollars in ethereum.
Jerry: but who's gonna pay for that?
K: You know my friend Bob Sacamano he just bought three of those bored monkeys for ten thousand last week and they are now fifteen a piece, I tell you Jerry this is a great business.
J: but they are JAY PEE GEES!
Only bad thing is that you need to watch a long series of near constant laugh tracks to see the plots. Ive only seen a few episodes though, so might have a gotten a bad impression of an otherwise good show?
And that the show has Jerry Seinfeld, a known Zionist supporter of genocide, in it.
Jerry is the worst part.
The supporting cast is what was most memorable
The art is good. Beyond the entertainment value, it's a way to understand the zeitgeist of the era... you can watch it even from an anthropological perspective. It stings a little to admit that im old enough that periods of my own life could be studied from the standpoint of a historical science, but, that's just how she goes.
Several of the actors ended up being gigantic pieces of shit. While I think it's worth accepting that truth, I think the hard reality is that material success and any meaningful period of public reverence does that to a person. Any media you enjoy now, the reality is that the actors are probably pieces of shit too and it just hasn't come out yet... and again, that's just how she goes.
"Good" and "bad" are far more subjective than with most shows, in this case.
The problem with being one of the shows that popularised - if not outright created - a lot of what became staple sitcom tropes is that people tend to look back with the modern lens, of those being extremely over-used and stale. Is just that they weren't, when the show was current.
A lot of viewers also tend to get stuck on the "wow, these are some truly awful people" part, which similarly was the point. To directly quote Larry David; "No hugging, no learning".
To dramatically over-simplify things, it is a show about three terrible people going about their lives, and failing to learn any lessons in the process; as is so famously quoted, a show about nothing.
Whether good or bad, it was still important. Walked, so a generation of later shows could run, if you will. (Or even if you won't, I don't think anyone could deny that)
it is a show about three terrible people going about their lives, and failing to learn any lessons in the process
Only three terrible people? Which of the four main characters are you excluding?
It’s particularly funny if you view the entire thing as Larry David doing a terrifically slow burn on how shitty Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy actually is.
Also: see Gary Gulman’s special Born on Third Base for an excellent rip on wealth inequality regarding “the guy who played Jerry on Seinfeld”
It is a show of its time. Seinfeld revolutionized a lot regarding what sitcoms could be, but it was still operating somewhat in the rules of the time.
Regarding the laugh track, every US sitcom of the era was filmed in front of a live audience. It goes back to the tradition of the medium where it was meant to be a remote viewing of a play which oddly stuck with sitcoms.
I would say it's worth watching even if you dislike "laugh tracks" (live studio audience).
If you want the modern, better version of Seinfeld then there is It's always sunny in Philadelphia.
Same setup of the show of the main characters being terrible people, but much more critical of issues.
Their episodes on Gun control and Genderless bathroom are some of my favorites.
They do have a meta episode where they criticize laugh tracks too.
I can already see Kramer running NFT scams... or crypto rug pull xD
Kramer would spend all his money on NFTs and then freak out trying to flip them. He would enlist George as a fictional investor who would try to inflate the value of the NFTs by offering exorbitant amounts for them in front of potential buyers.
Jerry would riff on the copyability of NFTs and try to talk Kramer out of it, but would secretly sell an NFT of himself for a low amount of money.Elaine would secretly purchase the Jerry NFT and hold it over him forever.
In the end, Newman would buy all of Kramer's NFTs and think he was getting a steal. George, who was promised 50% of the profits would be aghast when he learns Kramer lost a thousand bucks in the transaction, even more so when Kramer requests $500 from George for his share of the negative profits.
Newman would then flip the NFTs for a genuine profit.
I just watched 22 minutes of Seinfeld in a 90 second read.
I could see george having FOMO and doing most of this shit. Kramer would fall for the AI chatbot.
America's screen writers adopted the Seinfeld paradigm years ago:
No hugging, no learning.
To go a little more in-depth, if a product would simplify certain aspects of life, make them more straightforward and less prone to a chain of comedic errors, then it's a good product.
If a product makes things more complex, has more things to go wrong, and more corners and edge cases for some weirdo like Kramer or George to think they've spotted a killer side hustle, then it's a bad product.
Now, I'm not saying that smartphones and computers and the Internet aren't complicated, but they are far simpler to how things were done before. Read old hobbyist magazines to get a sense of the complex system of self-addressed stamped envelopes and hand-compiled mailing lists it used to take to get info on your hobby. Meeting a friend in a nearby town to go see a movie at a theater you haven't been to before required a shocking number of cross-referenced paper resources.
Something something Seinfeld something something Epstein island lemonade
Seinfeld is the single biggest unc show
I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t know a couple of the “Bad tech” ideas. I can figure out the metaverse land sales but have no idea what a blind box is.
Ironically, there are companies that put rubber bladders in shipping vessels to prevent leaks. I got in early at Kramerica, but sold before Darren joined the Nazi party.
Hmm. Do we want good tech, or do we want to inspire new Seinfeld episodes? This is a tough one.
Well, the show has been off the air for a long time, but I absolutely could see Kramer having an AI chatbot girlfriend, or George Costanza trying to get people suckered into an NFT grift/cryptocurrency side hustle.
