I’m not sure Jerry Seinfeld has ever been funny. He’s more of a straight man for people with actual chops like Michael Richards.
He reminds me of those 1950s post vaudeville supper club comedians whose sets were all the same.
Seinfeld was very funny in the 90’s. His stand-up was very original, and entertaining. He was also pretty wholesome, so it was something you could watch with the whole family. I get that a lot of people don’t like him now, but he didn’t build his immense success off of nothing. He is one of the comedy greats.
I think you bring up the context of the 90’s as a good point. That was the shock-jock era of comedy, and I think Seinfeld presented himself as foil to that. By being so ‘beige’ with his art, his was actually able to stand out when people were trying to be as extreme as possible.
I saw him a few years ago when he came to town. Felt weird giving an immensely rich man more money to deliver dated material to us but it was indeed a good show.
He did ten minutes on raisins. It wasn’t mind-blowingly funny but who else could do ten minutes on raisins?
All in all I’m glad I got a chance to see one of the greats live.
I’ve seen him, Gallagher (when I was young enough that he was still funny to me, plus I was in the front row), George Carlin, Stephen Wright, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Tig Notaro, Maria Bamford, and at least a dozen others plus openers that I’m not remembering at the moment.
Not one show has been a bad one.
Wow, that’s quite the list. I wanted to see Gallagher so bad as a kid. I thought he was hilarious. A few years ago I found out that he had become the epitome of bitter old man, and was a far right wack-a-doodle in his final days. Sad stuff, man.
We had a load of observational comedy in the 80’s.
He continued the dull American style of being an outsider watching bad things happen to other people, and never being the butt of the joke.
Americans like to harp on about it being unique and original and It only losing it’s shine because of other comedies copying it. It wasn’t.
He was considered funny in the 90’s because Boomers and Gen Xers dominated the TV market. He put a new spin on a very old and tired form of comedy. That of the squeaky clean, mundane and apolitical observational act. Boomers and Gen Xers were too cynical to admit they enjoyed the exact same comedy about “airline food” and other cliché idiosyncrasies as their parents and memed that the show was about “nothing”.