I mean, it is offensive. Everyone knows it (I hope).
The actor of Kramer was even caught throwing racist insults in public so you know.
An actor saying the N word and the show being offensive are not anyhow related.
The show is certainly reflective of its time. If someone is offended by it, I won’t tell them that they’re wrong, but I don’t see it as offensive.
“Reflective of its time” so of a time where being offensive and discriminatory was seen as fine or even cool. The show is more offensive than the first Star Trek that was decades earlier. Being offensive has nothing to do with the time period, if people were fine with it, it doesn’t mean that it is fine and not offensive.
And this show was mostly made of jokes targeting a minority or showing horrible behaviours as funny. Seems like enough to call it offensive.
This is simply not true, at least for the vast majority of the show. Any jokes that might be read as punching down are generally being told by characters who are themselves the actual butt of the joke. Example: the episode where Jerry and George keep getting misinterpreted as being a gay couple. The jokes are all built around their embarrassment about the fact, and the punchline is never “lol gay people exist”.
Can I get some specific examples of the jokes from the show that you find offensive?
Ummmm, the whole point of the show was that the people were horrible.
The show ended with them jailed after they made fun of a guy who was getting mugged.
The gang on It’s Always Sunny is worse but they are obviously not people we’re supposed to empathise with. It’s quite a bit less obvious on Seinfeld.
I feel like the distinction is that on Sunny the gang is “punished” for their shitty behavior, and on Seinfeld they basically never were. (I don’t include the season finale because that was just a cop-out to give the show an ending.)
I might be overthinking it but feel like Seinfeld was more a show about normal people who sometimes do shitty things - just like real life. I can’t think of anything truly horrible any of them did on the show, just a bunch of “social” wrongdoing. Telling a secret, sleeping at work, the perfect comeback, etc. It’s famously a show about “nothing”
Then IASIP is about a bunch of assholes riling each other up to be horrible for their own benefit.
I think Seinfeld is the more “important” in the grand scheme of television for it’s groundbreaking approach but in a vacuum, IAS is the better show.
Jerry purposely drugging his girlfriend so he could play with her toys was pretty shitty AND horrible.
Yes, but that’s season 9, which is after Larry David left as writer. While Larry David was there thru season 7 the characters were quirky regular people who sometimes made bad choices like all humans do sometimes. After Larry David left and Jerry Seinfeld was writing the show by himself from season 8 forward, the characters became much more fucked up, and the show was also way less funny
The show is still a very 90s show with 90s sensibilities. There is a lot of media from that time that hasn’t aged well.
If 90s shows make you clutch your pearls god help you if you catch something from the 80s or 70s.
I think that 90s media may be a bit more problematic because it was more willing to have the kinds of discussions that 80s media would never had.
We were the ones watching it when it was first airing. I don’t think there was anyone in my highschool that wasn’t watching it.
Didn’t millennials watch it growing up? Someone’s not getting their generational terms right
Hell, I was even old enough when it was airing to think it was overrated then.
See, that’s the real issue. I don’t have a problem with acknowledging it’s high concept, ocassionally funny and mostly easy watching.
But everybody insisting it’s endless comedic, best-sitcom-ever brilliance is overrating it. It’s overrated.
I didn’t necessarily mind it, but Jerry’s awful standup shoved in there on the other hand…
It’s not like every millennial watched it growing up. It’s not inconceivable that there are millennials who are seeing it now for only the first time and find it offensive.
My partner is a millennial and she had never seen Seinfeld until we first watched it together a few years ago. It’s not that inconceivable to imagine not everyone grew up watching the same things as you.
Generational labels tend to divide by arbitrary boundaries more than actually give you insightful information about something exclusive to the group.
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96, Seinfeld finished in 98. I doubt many that young would have seen it. I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
Seinfeld was hugely syndicated. I was born in the 90s and watched tons of reruns of it. I think they played it after or before the Simpsons which my family always watched.
I was born in 92 and have probably seen almost every episode. Idk if it’s generational or if it’s just person to person.
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96
?? What do you think millennials were doing after 1996? Did they just phase out of existence?
I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
People had Seinfeld on in my college dorm during the mid-00s. It was one of the most syndicated shows of its era. If you remember 9/11, you remember Seinfeld.
I commented on someone who seemed to think that millennials wasn’t the correct generation because millennials must have grown up watching Seinfeld. Many did, but many didn’t. I know many people around my age that didn’t watch it so it’s fairly safe to assume that people who were 2-4 years old when the show ended might not have seen it, even re-runs. Remembering it and watching it enough to have an opinion on it are two different things.
Millenial here, I always just thought it was shit!