View Full Version : This ‘Seinfeld’ 9/11 Spec Script Is Insane and Incredible


TMC
08-04-2016, 01:36 AM
http://splitsider.com/2016/08/this-seinfeld-911-spec-script-is-insane-and-incredible/

Here’s a great way to make a name for yourself as a comedy writer: write a pitch-perfect spec script for the classic sitcom Seinfeld… set in the days after 9/11. Yes, Seinfeld may have gone off the air in 1998, but comedian Billy Domineau imagined a world in which the show kept airing and Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer acted like the entitled, selfish, near-sociopathic New Yorkers that they always were during one of the most trying and intense times in the city’s history. It also includes Newman, George’s parents, Uncle Leo, Jackie Chiles, Mr. Wilhelm, and George Steinbrenner. Reading the resulting pitch-black script, it’s impossible to not picture it perfectly.

Domineau, a freelance joke contributor for Weekend Update and former Onion News Network writer, wrote the script as a lark and uploaded it to Google Docs — you can read it here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B50l484pDaMobXI2Wk5CX0NMbkU/view) or embedded below — and it’s currently blowing up amongst comedians on Facebook. He told Sean McCarthy of The Comic’s Comic (http://thecomicscomic.com/2016/08/03/the-911-seinfeld-spec-script-you-absolutely-have-to-read-today/) that he “was helping someone write a sketch a few months back and told them theirs needed to be an exercise in bad taste, ‘Like imagine if there was a 9/11 episode of Seinfeld…wait a minute.” So, naturally, he wrote it. Now read it below.

TMC
06-08-2023, 05:29 AM
It was probably a huge blessing in hindsight that a show like (https://theoutline.com/post/5542/bring-back-irony) Seinfeld wasn't on the air in 2001 and come 9/11 (https://www.salon.com/2014/05/18/irony_sincerity_normcore_jon_stewart_stephen_colbert_david_foster_wallace_and_the_end_of_rebellion/). Somebody said it best (https://www.quora.com/Would-Spin-City-have-lasted-a-few-more-seasons-had-Michael-J-Fox-not-left-after-season-4-and-had-9-11-happened/answer/Nick-Hodgson-1) in that would still want to watch a show (https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/xv0gbk/if_911_happened_in_the_seinfeld_universe/) about a group of self-centered (https://www.theodysseyonline.com/seinfeld-and-postmodernism) New Yorkers (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/seinfeld-1990s.html) and their ridiculous (https://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/irony/) crisis’s (the puffy shirt, the close talker, etc.) when the part of the city they live in had just been attacked so brutally?