Yeah it was absolutely Larry David’s show. But Seinfeld is a genius stand-up comedian in his own right.
He’s categorically wrong on his conclusion here.
Without the show and its success, he wouldn’t be a well known Stand up today. He’s still surfing that wave.
He was a well-known comic before he did the show. Perhaps not a household name but very few comics ever are. He had already been on Carson like a dozen times, as a stand up in the 80s that’s like the height of fame. You might even say that Seinfeld’s TV show elevated him to a status that no comic had ever before achieved.
seinfeld pilot
You know, why we’re here? [he means: here in the “Comedy club”] To be out, this is out…and out is one of the single most enjoyable experiences of life. People…did you ever hear people talking about “We should go out”? This is what they’re talking about…this whole thing, we’re all out now, no one is home. Not one person here is home, we’re all out! There are people tryin’ to find us, they don’t know where we are. [imitates one of these people “tryin’ to find us”; pretends his hand is a phone] “Did you ring?, I can’t find him.” [imitates other person on phone] “Where did he go?” [the first person again] “He didn’t tell me where he was going”. He must have gone out. You wanna go out: you get ready, you pick out the clothes, right? You take the shower, you get all ready, get the cash, get your friends, the car, the spot, the reservation…There you’re staring around, whatta you do? You go: “We gotta be getting back”. Once you’re out, you wanna get back! You wanna go to sleep, you wanna get up, you wanna go out again tomorrow, right? Where ever you are in life, it’s my feeling, you’ve gotta go.
seinfeld final episode:
It seems like whenever these office people call you in for a meeting, the whole thing is about the sitting down. I would really like to sit down with you. I think we need to sit down and talk. Why don’t you come in, and we’ll sit down. Well, sometimes the sitting down doesn’t work. People get mad at the sitting.You know, we’ve been sitting here for I don’t know how long. How much longer are we just going to sit here? I’ll tell you what I think we should do. I think we should all sleep on it. Maybe we’re not getting down low enough. Maybe if we all lie down, then our brains will work.
…what particularly about these bits is either edgy or genius?
You don’t have to find it funny. Did people laugh at it how and when he said it? If so, it was funny. Too late to cast your vote now. That’s how comedy works.
I’m just saying that its pretty funny in and of itself that Jerry Seinfeld is like “you can’t say anything in comedy any more” and all his bits are about losing a sock in the washing machine
So much of his standup depends on making initial observations of seemingly absurd things and then not putting a single ounce of thought or research into them to determine if they’re actually absurd. It’s low-hanging fruit for tipsy people at a comedy club.
He was utterly, perfectly cast as a supposed straight-man who’s just as callously thoughtless as his bizarre friends but with a veneer of “insight”. It was brilliant. I wonder if he quite realized why.
