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Newsweek examines if Seinfeld still holds up after ten years
Wow, it's hard to believe that it's been ten years since Seinfeld aired its monumental finale. Newsweek decided to celebrate the anniversary by having two of its writers debate whether the show has held up over the years. One minor problem with the article, though: the arguments made on either side don't make any sense.One of the reasons Marc Peyser didn't think the show held up was because, after watching the show's reruns for the first time in years, he found that "The pacing - no show had ever packed in so many scenes, some of them lasting a few seconds - now seems formulaic and forced." Well, duh, of course it seems formulaic now, since almost every sitcom that has come since has adopted that method of storytelling.
If he had argued that the later episodes became formulaic, I'd be more inclined to agree; after Larry David left, the writers were too busy trying to shoehorn plots for each main character into each episode to make sure the stories flowed together well or were even very funny.
Peyser then goes on to say that the plots were incredibly insignificant, about clothes and meals and George Steinbrenner rants. But then he says that's why people likd the show. He blunts that contradiction, though, by saying we've outgrown the show now, using M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, and Taxi as three examples of sitcoms that people haven't outgrown. I beg to differ in one case: how many people now say the last four seasons of M*A*S*H were preachy and unfunny? I guarantee people weren't saying that back around, say, 1981 or so.
David Noonan's article in support of Seinfeld was even worse, though. Did he argue that the show still holds up because of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer? Because of the funny plots? Nope; he decided that the key to the show's longevity was Uncle Leo, Morty and Helen Seinfeld, Newman, Frank and Estelle Costanza, and Jackie Chiles. It was the side characters that made Seinfeld so great! Oh, and the sets! The sets were awesome!
Excuse me while I bang my head on a table. I loved the side characters as much as the next guy, but without the Big Four, the show would have never worked. And I don't think I ever really took notice of the sets, aside from the fact that Jerry had a blue-and-black couch early on before it gave way to the all-grey couch (Noonan noticed Jerry had a a white coffee table early on, something I never even caught).
How about this: If you still laugh at the reruns, then you think the show has held up. If you don't laugh, then the show hasn't held up. I'm in the first camp. How 'bout you? Let me know in the comments.
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