Why "Seinfeld" Is The Most Villainous Sitcom In Human History

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Seinfeld debuted in July of 1989. Considering the limitations of what network television was (or could be) in '89, it has proven to be the most imperative live-action sitcom of the modern era. Nothing else comes close. Like the music of Zeppelin or the teen archetypes of Salinger, its subsistence in the culture scarcely dissipates. Its four principal characters are so engrained in the American consciousness that there's no need for me to name them or describe who they are. Seinfeld will live in syndication forever, partially because the show exists within its own evergreen reality: a version of New York that's obviously based in Los Angeles, populated by a collection of impossible personalities who are caricatures of actual people. Like traditional sitcoms, Seinfeld emphasized character over plot; unlike traditional sitcoms, the audience was never supposed to empathize with any of the characters they loved. When describing the program's brilliance, it became common (in fact, cliché) to say Seinfeld was a farcical "show about nothing." But that description was lazy. It was not a farce. It was social satire. And to nonchalantly claim it was "a show about nothing" erroneously suggests that its vision was empty. Seinfeld was never a show about nothing, even when nothing happened. Seinfeld simply argued that nothing is all that any rational person can expect out of life. It was hilarious, but profoundly bleak. By consciously stating it had no higher message—the creators referred to this as the "no hugging, no learning" rule—it was able to goof around with concepts that battered the deepest tenets of institutionalized society. It was satire so severe that we pretend it wasn't satire at all.

Most episodes of Seinfeld circuitously forward two worldviews: The first is that most people are bad (and not very smart). The second is that caring about other people is absurd (and not very practical). It is the most villainous sitcom ever made, particularly since its massive audience never seemed to fully grasp what it was literally seeing. This was true from its inception. There's an episode from the first season ("Male Unbonding") in which Jerry reconsiders his lifelong friendship with a self-absorbed man he hates. The relationship is based on nostalgia; as a child, the despised man's family owned a Ping-Pong table. Jerry longs to sever this relationship and resents that the man still desires his company. "I would have been friends with Stalin if he had a Ping-Pong table," he tells George (a different self-absorbed friend Jerry actually likes). All of this is funny, because Jerry Seinfeld is funny; it's also relatable, because adolescent familiarity sometimes lasts longer than it should. But consider what this premise is really doing: It is satirizing the notion that relationships matter. It suggests that healthy friendships are disposable, and that the commitments we make to nonessential acquaintances are absurd extensions of social politeness. And this is not the subtext. This is the text. Like The Prince, the collected Seinfeld teleplays generate an ironic instruction manual for not caring about other people. Kramer expresses a few altruistic feelings, but Jerry, Elaine, and George do not. They sometimes exhibit qualities of loyalty, but mainly to "the vault." What they call "the vault" is the tacit agreement that they can tell each other anything, without fear that the information will be leaked to other involved parties (they stick the information "in the vault"). Their deepest loyalty is to the art of keeping secrets.

Certainly, most of the retrospective credit for this weltanschauung is directed toward Larry David, the bald misanthrope who created Seinfeld in orchestra with its namesake star. As noted by virtually everyone who has ever written about this program in any context, Jerry's fictional friendship with George is a simulation of Seinfeld's real friendship with David. But that connection is only a fraction of the influence. David's deeper contribution was the injection of his solipsistic morality (which ended up becoming the whole enchilada). Smarter critics had suspected this throughout the nineties, but it became undeniable once David's improv exhibition Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered on HBO in the fall of 2000. Curb Your Enthusiasm was everything understated about Seinfeld, amplified into aesthetic totality. David will even use random episodes of Curb to directly point out incidents from Seinfeld that were based on his life, almost as if he wants to make sure everyone knows he was the wizard behind the curtain. At times, this preoccupation can almost seem petty. But it's never invasive, because that pettiness is just about the only emotion we see from anyone in this universe.

Most of the time, television depends on emotion. Emotion is the intangible drug that passive audiences crave; we immerse ourselves in fictional drama to feel something we want (or miss) from real life. But not in the faux reality of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and not in the pseudo-reality of Seinfeld. On Seinfeld, the characters express contempt for emotion. It is the weakest quality a human can possess. This could be demonstrated in roughly half of the show's 180 episodes, but one does so overtly: In an episode titled "The Serenity Now," Jerry's thirty-minute girlfriend (ex–Full House star Lori Loughlin) pushes him to get angry, simply to see if he has the ability to express any kind of emotion in any given scenario. This is both a commentary on Seinfeld's fictional character (who doesn't empathize with anyone) and a meta-commentary on Seinfeld's technical ability as an actor (which borders on nonexistent). When the girlfriend's plan succeeds, the floodgates open. Jerry becomes an emotional wreck who cries constantly, much to his own confusion ("What is this salty discharge?" he wonders aloud). His emotional instability makes him creepy and annoying, ultimately prompting him to propose marriage to Elaine for no rational reason. By the end of the episode, his hysteria has passed. Jerry returns to his former uncaring self, and everyone (including the audience) is relieved.