Spoilers TV Shows with Great Endings

[Gradine]

Seinfeld is incredibly well written and performed from season 2 or 3 to 6. It loses something after Larry David leaves.

My favorite Seinfeld story is how Jason Alexander simply could not wrap his head around the character of George Costanza and why we would be so deliberately self-destructive, so Jerry basically had the two of them spend the day with Larry David, and by the end of the day Jason had absolutely zero confusion about the role anymore.

Might be apocryphal but damn if it doesn't check out.

 

[Guest 85555]

Seinfeld is incredibly well written and performed from season 2 or 3 to 6. It loses something after Larry David leaves.

I agree. I do enjoy those later seasons because of the characters, and they go in an....unusual direction which is at least engaging, but the magic feels like it faded when he departed. The first season took time to get its footing (there are episodes in that first season that feel really out of place with the rest of the show)

 

[Ryujin]

I didn't like Seinfeld back in the day. I was probably to young and the show was to American.

Recently watched season 1 and part of season 2. Wouldn't call it great but it's OK. I can at least see why people liked it.

Other People - They use such funny, nonsense words!

Me - That's Yiddish.

 

[Guest 85555]

Other People - They use such funny, nonsense words!

Me - That's Yiddish.

I assumed most people knew the yiddish that was in the show as a lot of them were pretty widely used

 

[Ryujin]

I assumed most people knew the yiddish that was in the show as a lot of them were pretty widely used

You would think so, but I ran into a lot of viewers who had never heard Yiddish before Seinfeld.

 

[Deset Gled]

Once More With Feeling gets all the credit, and not undeserved, but for my money the toast of Season 6 is Tabula Rosa. You want to talk about harsh truths setting up season long plotlines...

While I think Tabula Rasa is a great episode overall, it's also a good example of the unevenness that @Stalker0 rightfully pointed out a about season 6. Specifically, that stupid loan shark demon. That latex mask was simply cheap and terrible looking. It was over the top camp and, more importantly, didn't match any of the Buffy aesthetic. I actually don't mind the gag itself (it could have been pulled off with the right FX), but it was executed not just terribly, but in a non-Buffy style that really broke immersion. It's a good example of another way that season 6 was jarring for fans.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Rather than actually provide my own insight on this or your previous post, I will direct people to TV Tropes. They used to have a section called "Seinfeld is Unfunny" discussing this; it has now been mostly renamed to Once Original Now Common, with the main name being given to a supertrope with many other subcategories beneath it. Seinfeld is Unfunny.

I must defend the Seinfeld show here. I remember seeing things like this online, like Cracked articles-videos and the like. And when I read them they often seemed to make a convincing case. For example one of the things I saw, it may have been cracked but can't recall, made the point that Seinfeld has no real jokes or punchlines and backed it up with clips. But then I decided to watch the entire show again from episode 1 to the finale and I quickly realized 1) the show is still very funny if you have a sense of humor and like smart jokes, 2) they had been cherry picking to make a case that there were no jokes. It very clearly has jokes and punchlines. Especially when you think of the pablum that came before Seinfeld on sitcoms

Another thing I realized watching it with my wife, whose first language isn't English, was how universal the humor in the show is thanks to characters like Kramer and Newman who do a lot of very physical comedy.

Bedrockgames, nothing you say is incorrect (and I certainly remember a number of Cracked articles that were less than fair to their subject), however I don't think that was Deset Gled's point. He's referencing a TV Trope term that used to be called 'Seinfeld is Unfunny.' Even then, the trope wasn't actually saying that Sienfeld wasn't funny--but instead that so many people have henceforth replicated what Sienfeld groundbreakingly did that someone coming to it after the fact might not find it notable (or even rife with cliched comedy elements).

 

[Zardnaar]

Which is fair. If you don't find it great, you don't find it great. Humor is very subjective. I think what bothers me is people are often willfully misreading the show and completely ignoring the context of the show as well when they write these articles (American TV was just different before Seinfeld and you wouldn't have shows like Friends, Always Sunny in Philidelphia, etc without it). Before that we were watching stuff like Family Ties and Full House. And it had been a long time since we had a show where characters were a bit despicable (apparently they were very influenced by the Abbot and Costello Show which is very apparent if you go back and watch that).

To your point some of it is certainly cultural. I think it relies heavily on humor that is oriented around north eastern US culture, and a lot the jokes are about the subtleties of social interaction in American society. When I watched it with my wife some of the very American specific things didn't land as well with her (and some things landed only after I clarified the meaning). I also noticed she had a much more negative reaction to George but a positive reaction to Kramer and Elaine (which was interesting because George was such a popular character in the 90s)

Yeah contemporary comedy from the time is worse than Seinfeld.

Not only is it very American it's very NYC based so a lot of references or whatever won't land.

 

[Zardnaar]

Other People - They use such funny, nonsense words!

Me - That's Yiddish.

Back then I had no idea what Yiddish was. I think I was 12 or 13 when it started screening here.

Mother didn't get it either. Some people liked it but it never blew up like Simpsons. Married With Children, Friends, Southpark etc.

It was also competing with British stuff (Red Dwarf, Bottom, Mr Bean etc) and Australian stuff which was culturally closer.

 

[Clint_L]

My spouse and I are in the middle of rewatching both Buffy and Angel. In Buffy, we are on Season 5, which I now think is better than I thought back then (for my money, 2 is the best season. Come at me!). I remember thinking 6 was hit or miss and 7 was not bad but very inconsistent; I look forward to seeing how it hits me now.

Rewatching Angel in the context of later revelations is a bit sad at times.

I've also read a lot of the Buffy Season 8 (and beyond) comics. Meh.