Seinfeld:
Back on the Laugh Track
Illustration by Zach Trenholm
Slump or dip? Over or ongoing? Pack it in or give it another season?
"Seinfeld" fans have a lot to ponder after a year of waiting for NBC's highest-rated sitcom to make them laugh till it hurt again. If this is a genuine slump, did it start in the bodily-function-obsessed '94-95 season (incontinent gentleman soils Jerry's new couch, George faces banishment from the health club because he urinates in the shower), or does it actually date back to the anticlimactic, overwritten '92-93 season finale about the airing of Jerry and George's TV show within a TV show? Even if "Seinfeld" is on the comeback trail, can the show ever match the sustained hilarity of its first two seasons, which are now in nightly syndicated rerun for anyone who cares to make comparisons?
And what's with Elaine's hair lately? Didn't corkscrew curls go out with Sally Struthers?
Whether you believe "Seinfeld's" glory days are over, or take the recent "Soup Nazi" and "Sponge" episodes as proof that the show can still hit it out of the park, the fact that viewers are arguing at all about the state of "Seinfeld" only illustrates its singularity. "Seinfeld's" highs are so high that fans get disappointed when an episode is "merely" funny. Hey, it could be worse -- or haven't you seen NBC's latest "Seinfeld" clone, "The Single Guy"?
"Seinfeld," which debuted on NBC in the spring of 1990, took the adult sitcom formula of "Cheers" a step over the edge. On "Cheers," the bar provided the excuse to get its characters together and talking; "Seinfeld" removed the safety net of the conventional setting and concentrated instead on the talk.
And where "Cheers" would occasionally pour on the syrup, co-producers Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David refused to tone down their show's abrasiveness. "Seinfeld's" characters are self-centered, neurotic, dishonest. And those are their good qualities.
Next page: An immaturity-fueled comeback
