The 'Seinfeld' Legacy: Groundbreaking Sitcom About Nothing Changed Pop Culture

[Zoneboy]

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Trapped somewhere in eternal syndication, Jerry Seinfeld is still rotting in a jail cell, sentenced to a lifetime of nitpicking at the hands of George, Elaine and Kramer.

In the real world, Jerry Seinfeld will bring his stand-up act back to the Louisville Palace on Friday, Feb. 20. He doesn't need the money, and he doesn't need to burnish his legacy. Even if Seinfeld became some eccentric recluse, his sensibility and his series would still endure — and not only at 11 p.m. weeknights on WMYO-10.

Yes, 11 years after the "Seinfeld" finale, the influence of the show about nothing is still everywhere. It remains the model of the perfect modern sitcom.

"The TV comedy is so depleted now. There's nothing that has that kind of buzz around it (that 'Seinfeld' had)," said Matt Roush, TV Guide's senior television critic. "No matter how many awards you give '30 Rock,' it's never going to be 'Seinfeld.' It's just too strange a show. It's brilliant for sure, but it's not what 'Seinfeld' is.

"Everybody got 'Seinfeld,'" Roush said. "When it went away, it was almost like we didn't want to settle for anything that wasn't 'Seinfeld.' It changed what we wanted TV comedy to be."

"Seinfeld's" stamp remains all over TV and movie screens in both obvious and subtle ways. According to Dr. David Lavery, co-editor of the book "Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain: Revisiting Television's Greatest Sitcom," its most sweeping, sitcom-changing legacy was its focus "on a rather disparate group rather than a family structure or a workplace." Shows from "Friends" to "How I Met Your Mother" have copied that approach. And now even the workplace comedies, like "The Office," are "Seinfeld"-ian in the way that they are shot and their focus on finding comedy in the small details of everyday life.

One thing the show's legacy has not been able to provide, however, is another big hit for members of the "Seinfeld" cast.

For the last three years, viewers could still get a weekly dose of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a divorced mom on "The New Adventure of Old Christine." Louis-Dreyfus won the 2006 Emmy for best actress in a comedy series, but the show may not be returning this year.

Louis-Dreyfus' earlier post-"Seinfeld" stab at a sitcom, "Watching Ellie" only lasted one season.

Jason Alexander and Michael Richards, meanwhile have suffered from a "Seinfeld" curse. Alexander's most recent sitcom effort, "Bob Patterson," in which he played a motivational speaker, bombed almost immediately. Richards' "Trial and Error," which cast the former Cosmo Kramer as an actor pretending to be a lawyer, fizzled as well. And given his disgrace after a racist comedy club rant in 2006 was caught on tape, it's unlikely he'll have a comeback anytime soon.

That said, behind-the-scenes "Seinfeld" veterans have played a big role in several wildly successful — and confrontational — comedies. "Seinfeld" writer and producer Larry Charles directed both "Borat" and Bill Maher's "Religulous."

And the closest thing to a "Seinfeld" spinoff is the 9-year-old HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." It's the abrasive, brilliantly obnoxious brainchild of "Seinfeld" co-creator and writer Larry David. Filmed documentary-style, it follows the existential misadventures of David, who plays himself: a misanthropic, filthy-rich creator of one of TV's biggest hits whose social skills don't match up to his success.

It's also a taste of what "Seinfeld" might have been on cable — if they'd had the creative freedom of HBO. Without the constraints of network censorship, David can present his pure, twisted and often profane vision. And it goes far beyond sponge-worthiness and mastering one's domain.

That said, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is an acquired taste, and so deeply uncomfortable that it is not for everyone.

A more accessible program with "Seinfeld" parallels is "How I Met Your Mother," a CBS half-hour sitcom that debuted in 2005. Starring Neil Patrick Harris and Allyson Hannigan, it focuses on a witty friend family and its members' random existences. According to Lavery, the fact that this show can be so daring is directly attributed to the ways "Seinfeld" shook up the sitcom.

Though "Mother" and other "Seinfeld"-ish series have achieved moderate success, networks are still starved for the next "Seinfeld."

"What we're waiting for is that voice that is able to turn a point of view into a TV comedy," Roush says. "Something's wrong, because nothing in its wake has popped the way that it did. TV comedy is still trying to find itself in the wake of 'Seinfeld.'"

[catlover79]

Great article - thanks for sharing, Charles.

[Marvo301]

Very interesting article. I also see "The Big Bang Theory" echoing "Seinfeld" in many ways.

[browneyes106]

Cool article thanks for posting.

[steevo]

Jason's problems with getting work after Seinfeld was addressed in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", where Jason and Larry David get into an argument about how their meeting turned into a meeting about "having a meeting". Funny scene.

Thanks for posting the article, Zoneboy. I enjoyed it.