I agree that his style is dated nowadays. Fair comment. But in the 90s his humour chops centred around absurdity and it was fresh. You needed to have seen him with 90’s eyes to see how well he fitted the times. I watch reruns of him now and he often seems flat. His observational style has moved on and the times don’t suit him anymore. But please don’t make the mistake that back in the day he wasn’t a comedy superstar. Of course, Larry David in his corner didn’t hurt.
Change '90s to the '80s and you might have a point. Seinfeld debuted in 1989. His stand up career peaked in the mid '80s. Which makes me think you don’t actually know what you’re talking about and are just repeating something you heard from someone else.
Kinda mean making this personal just for having a different opinion to you, but this is the internet, I guess.
Anyway, I’m an old fart and used to watch him before re-runs, ya know. It’s possible to form an opinion on tv shows without running around asking folk beforehand. If you don’t agree that at a certain point in time JS was good, that’s fine too.
A couple of verified facts:
“A favorite among critics, the series led the Nielsen ratings in Seasons 6 and 9 and finished among the top two (along with ER of the same network) every year from 1994 to 1998. Only two other shows—I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show—have finished their runs at the top of the ratings.”
Also…
“By its third season, Seinfeld had become the most watched sitcom on American television. The final episode aired in 1998, and the show has been a popular syndicated re-run ever since. NBC offered Seinfeld $110 million—a record $5 million an episode for a 22-episode tenth season—but he declined.”
But, yes, tell me again how unfunny Seinfeld was back in the day. My entire point was at that period he was comedy gold, and no amount of revisionist snottyness changes that fact.
and not even Amy Schumer or Melissa McCarthy could save it huh?
He should really just retire and get back to dating 17 year old high schoolers like he did when he was 38
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.