Seinfeld

[Mr. Mike]

I never watched Seinfeld when it was on originally, or even after that. Recently when I am on Facebook, however, I am getting these excerpts from the show, some of which are very funny. Of course, if you click on one of these excerpts on Facebook, you will be flooded with them. Anyway, I borrowed the first Seinfeld set (seasons 1 and 2) from the library...

This set is really annoying. They have the shows that were originally broadcast but they also have the same shows which have been modified slightly for syndication purposes. I didn't compare these yet; maybe they cut out the baloney in the nightclub which bookends early episodes.

In addition to this they have the stars doing commentary so you have to watch the thing twice if you want to listen to this, and then they have all this trivia from how the episode was made and blah blah blah. So trying to manipulate your way through the episodes (and the set I have from the library has four DVDs for the first and the second seasons together) becomes very frustrating because you totally get lost in all of this material.

I thought the episode where Kramer was trying to dump concrete in a laundromat's washing machine to get revenge on the boss of the place was very funny, though...

[ringfire211]

Seinfeld is a very funny show. I don’t think it’s the greatest sitcom of all time as many claim (but that’s just due to my personal preferences) but it really is a funny show and maybe the last truly funny sitcom. I never could get into the overrated crap like The Office or Big Bang Theory or anything from the last 10-20 years. I suppose Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens were pretty good too but that’s about it.

I didn’t watch Seinfeld when it was new in the 90s. I caught it in reruns in the 2000s but not being a die hard fan there’s still a whole lot of episodes that I haven’t seen. I watched it whenever I caught it. So there’s still a whole lot for me to explore there.

Interestingly enough Jerry Seinfeld has been in the news recently. He was booed at some university by Palestinian supporters since Jerry is very pro-Israel.

[Bobbi]

Interestingly enough Jerry Seinfeld has been in the news recently. He was booed at some university by Palestinian supporters since Jerry is very pro-Israel.

He was giving the commencement address at Duke. Why, I have no idea. There are so many other people who would be better.

As far as The Big Bang Theory, I like that one a lot. But it's a personal preference. I could never get into Seinfeld.

[Todd]

You may not understand the subject matter, but here's a little Seinfeld skit I did using AI tools.

It wasn't completely AI generated. It took me a few hours to create and edit. I wrote the script myself. The AI just did the voices, and it didn't do them perfectly, causing me to have to edit them, or do additional "takes".

The skit is based upon the infamous "rental car reservation" scene. I'll post my version, and then the original. My version was about a poker room in Las Vegas (MGM Grand) which kept reneging on their guarantees. This went semi-viral on Twitter, causing MGM to reverse their policy!

[Mr. Mike]

I find the music in Seinfeld (such as it is, this bass guitar stuff) is really annoying after a while.

When I am watching the show, I use the fast-forward and "next" buttons to skip through the nightclub stuff which is at the beginning and end of the episodes.

They keep cutting to people in the audience who are just about dying with laughter during these sections...

[ringfire211]

Mike, how come you don’t like the nightclub stuff? There’s some funny stuff there. Plus it’s very brief so it never bothered me. I wouldn’t fast forward.

[Mr. Mike]

I wanted to get through this show as quickly as possible considering all the extra features on the DVDs I borrowed from the library -- trivia, behind-the-scenes stuff and so forth.

But it looks like I probably should have paid attention to that.

[Mr. Mike]

I watched some of the standup routines, the laughs did not really reflect how the people in the audience who the camera showed were reacting to the jokes. (Were these the same people who were laughing at the show itself?) The laugh track for these standup routines at the beginning and end of the show struck me as being kind of phony. Most of the laughs in the show were from a live audience, but according to some sources, they also added canned laughter to supplement this. The show was filmed in front of a live audience, but how the heck did they do this? There seemed to be a few sets which were used frequently: Jerry's apartment, the hallway outside the apartment and the restaurant, for example. Were these on a rotating set or something? I don't understand what the audience saw when there were some other sets or locations which were only seen occasionally in the series. Were scenes involving these other locations (like those outside on a street) filmed and shown to the live audience on a monitor or something between those scenes which were on the set(s) in the studio?

[ringfire211]

Not sure how all that stuff in front of a live audience works in sitcoms. Pretty much every sitcom past and present used more than just one set. And some sets not very often at all. If they were even sets. Yet they always say it’s in front of a live audience. Don’t know if it’s the same audience or a different one or if it’s canned laughter.

[Mr. Mike]

The comedy club routines seen in the show, according to one WWW page I read the other day, were not filmed in the same place where the show was filmed; they were filmed at a real "comedy club."

I saw a photo of the filming being done in Jerry's apartment, and there were 2 or 3 Panavision cameras recording this ... this was supposedly done in front of a live audience, sort of like how I Love Lucy was done in the 1950s, I think. As mentioned elsewhere, I find the laughter in the comedy club to be really phony compared with that in the show, especially with these shots of the audience members all smiling and chuckling.

There was at least one instance of the comedy club routines being interrupted in a way which was sort of like "breaking the fourth wall," where this guy who was in one of the actual episodes showed up in the club and started heckling Seinfeld.

But I still don't understand how they did scenes in multiple locations, i.e., first in Jerry's apartment, then in the hallway outside the apartment, then in the restaurant, etc. Did the audience have to sit still or did they move around the studio to see the other locations? Or were the scenes in the other locations shown on monitors? This obviously happened on the shows which were in a parking garage or on the subway.

There are numerous books written about the show, I'm sure this is discussed somewhere. Exact information about this on the Internet seems kind of scarce.