Last week's pilot for the new series "It's Like, You Know..." showed
promising signs Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman may be poised to be able take the
Seinfeld style and scope to new places with original material. The quality was
there.
(I was afraid we might see derivative, or cheap imitation "Seinfeld",
like "Mad About You" so often fell into- like a weak wannabe echo. Or
Mehlman just cashing in his Seinfeld credentials.)It's still WAY too early to tell. And I've only seen that first installment. Others around here or passing through who are among the connected or the dedicated, may have seen more.
The title seems too awkward, and seems like it probably won't help in the crucial word of mouth area. I still don't see how people are gonna warm to the Jennifer Gray situation. Rest of the cast solid and Ackerman had his directing dead on. Mehlman apparently learned well the top secrets of precision casting at Seinfeld. (Secrets mastered by no one else in comedy save John Hughes, - and no one else in TV so far.) It still remains to be seen if Mehlman can cast the extras as well as Jerry and Larry did.
The new show has been panned, but Mehlman was the #3 at "Seinfeld", and "Seinfeld" bashing is still fashionable in town within the industry I gather. I still can't believe what they got away with doing to them over the years at the Emmys! Anyway, all that's gonna matter is the audience and the work itself.
A lot of people called Seinfeld the "anti-sitcom" and predicted it was an evolutionary dead end in the genre. (Including perhaps the most important article on Seinfeld, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in '92 right before the show took off for the stratosphere. That article is also a great artifact because the writer noted at the end that Jerry had told TV Guide earlier that year that when he got tired of doing the show, his character would get a TV show and have to move to L.A. Most here surely remember all the press last spring about the fake script that showed up on the internet with this very same plot. No one seemed to remember TV Guide article, or the Atlantic Monthly one either- which is fairly famous, because in it, "Hipster Doofus" was coined by the writer of the article and of course the term became the definitive description of Cosmo Kramer- (Jerry and company read the Atlantic article and
incorporated it into the episode with the handicap parking spot I think it was.) Francis Davis wrote that article- pretty sure you can still get it online at the Atlantic Monthly's site (in their archives somewhere). I stumbled upon it accidentally not too long ago.