Did anyone see the tabloid Star on the newsstand? I am paraphrasing from memory, but Jerry said, "I don't think anyone ever got the joke (or understood the show); it is about obsessive people; because everyone in America is obsessive. They can't buy one donut, they have to buy a dozen. I can buy just one." He went on to say that the actors are bright people who are nothing like their characters (dysfunctional, neurotic). We knew that already. We know they are actors.
It is a fact that we do get the joke. It's the only sitcom I can stand precisely because it is about sick, obsessive people, who look like they are managing on the surface but are deeply codependent, and will do anything to ruin any improvement in their lives - and it is not just going for the joke. The scripts, some of them, are so well written that it isn't just a bunch of gags strung together. Over and over there is a moral - these people are all disturbed, including Jerry: don't be like them! It does a service by pointing out the flaws, both sad and hilarious, that so many of us and our friends/relatives (and public figures) are prone to in today's world. Don't you all know someone who acts like those characters? Don't you also see your darkest side in them? We laugh because it is so familiar. Who hasn't combed stores obsessively for the last of a discontinued product?
Some of the scenes lately have been stressful to watch. There is a set-up that looks funny, but it's not funny - it's a horrible tale of mistaken behaviour. Like when Jerry gives in to Kramer's urging to cash his grandma's checks. I've done that, forgotten to cash birthday checks, but when I run across them years later I'm not stupid enough to cash them - you can't assume there will still be funds to cover them. This skit was funny precisely because of the terrible consequences of doing such a stupid act. And this was Jerry, the supposedly least neurotic of the bunch (I used to think he was supposed to be the sane one - now realize he is equal to the others - after all, they are his best friends).
The scene of his grandma setting her alarm, getting dressed and going to the bank which is no longer there hits too close to home. My mother (87) does precisely that sort of thing - makes an event of going to her bank for every transaction or question just to have an activity. Only the bank trip on the show could have ended tragically, as they pointed out, with the bank having burned down and the man who looks menacing (using horror movie music as he approaches), instead of attacking her as we expect, telling her where the bank is now located. This is beyond funny, it is completely about our total selfishness contrasted with the innocents of the world (represented by his grandma), and how they are put in danger by the selfish and thoughtless acts of the sophisticated younger people.
Throughout the episodes there runs a thread of hysterical fear that their life of carefree, frenetic activity both isn't enough, and is all they know but has to end - they feel the desire to marry, then the fear of being tied down - the callous relief at Susan's death - the scene of the future imagined by Jerry when Elaine and George are both married and all he has left in life is sitting reading the paper, with Kramer still popping through his door expounding some new ridiculous invention.
I tape and save all the episodes now precisely because it is an important document of our times. Sometimes I watch them several times. There's nothing else like it in terms of modern morality plays. There are times when the characters shine (it actually hurts George to see that the security guard has no chair); and times when you want to shake them for their lowdown evil ways (Elaine and Jerry gleefully plotting to date a newly separated couple by saying they are "there for them").
Jerry!!! If you read this, we got the jokes.