To all the long-time SEINFELD fans

if you have liked SEINFELD from the begging--what are all of your thoughts? this season was okay so far. nothing great------- i think THE VOICE was creative, and the rest were just okay. SERNITY NOW was pretty stupid--i'm surprised everyone likes it. the parents of the characters have become less and less funny each time they are on the show. dan also-what were SEINFELDS previous timeslots?

I am a dedicated Seinfeld fan who simply has enjoyed the good writing from the first 6 seasons. But the last three seasons have been sub-par, especially this season and last season. I'm just sick of the show now. Some of the worst writing I've seen in a long time. I'll stick with the reruns for intelligent comedy, not the crap from this season.

Justin T.

[email] (KramerTV) wrote:

the newer episodes are bad compared to the first 7 seasons(the 7th season was great) but they aren't horrible. i wish SUSAN actually married george--he was much funnier in a heavy relationship

SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW!!

you are about as creative as the writers of SEINFELD have become.

You old farts are all alike: "Everything was funnier in the good old days." "Everything today sucks."

Ohh, nevermind that we are RIGHT!!!!

"Dionysius" wrote:

Oh, come off it, Tribble. You post an OPINION, then tell me it's right? Divine intervention makes yours right and others wrong? You sound like one of those religious nuts on Sunday morning TV.

It would have been really dumb for George to marry Susan. It was obvious it wasnt going to happen. Him trying to get out was far funnier. Half of the shows plots involve George and a new girlfriend. Susan was getting old, and if she didnt die, an entire season would had to have been rewritten. You knew he would get out of the marriage somehow, and it was fun and surprising to find out how. To the people who say this season and last season arent as good as previous ones, I guess you arent true fans of the show, because ANYTHING they do is hilarious and would never run out of good material. THAT IS WHY SEINFELD IS STILL RATED #1!!! It would be alot worse if the show werent on at all. So far this is season is vintage Kramer and George, and if you cant appreciate it, why dont you just go watch Beverly Hills 90210 or party of five!!!! OHH.... YEAHHHHH!!!!

ANYTHING they do is hilarious??? That statement proves right there that you don't know what you're talking about. How would you know if the shows are hilarious if you're going to laugh at anything that they do no matter what? That is obviously your OPINION and it makes no sense.

SEINFELD IS STILL RATED #1!!!

Sorry, but the major reason Seinfeld is still #1 is because of the outstanding seasons in the past. People tune in because they're longtime fans and they hope they will see another classic. If Seinfeld was a new show this year and it wasn't on before ER, it WOULD NOT be #1, trust me. I'm not saying that this seasons episodes have been terrible, but they can't compare to pre-1996 episodes. This seasons episodes have been relying on slapstick and humor that mostly appeals to pre-teens.

The whole Susan thing was going nowhere, and it was funny to see George's attempts to get out of the marriage, although whenever Susan would catch him trying, he would always back down, which made it even funnier and true to character. George couldn't just end the marriage, he had to do it behind Susan's back. When they killed her off, it was almost like the writers were trying hard to figure out a good way to end it and that was what they settled on. I heard an interview with Jerry Seinfeld before that show aired and he said he was sick of all the other sitcoms putting these story lines where someone gets sick and everyone becomes sensitive and touching (like Murphy Brown getting cancer, etc..) and that show was like a parody of those shows.

My take is that the older shows not only had lots of funny bits in them, but the whole show was great from beginning to end, whereas now it seems like it's just a bunch of funny bits thrown together. Someone said in another post that Seinfeld had been reduced to "gutter humor," and that may be true, but it's far and away THE BEST DARN GUTTER HUMOR ON TV, BAR NONE!!!!!! Plus the little digs at the rest of TV, like when he purposely bombs in his act so that Banya can't ride his coatails, are great! That's my 2 cents.

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In , Kristopher Grant writes:

I'm sure "POF" is great, and I'm sure they have a great newsgroup.

Go there.

I know you're very eager to defend Seinfeld, but if you read the post you were responding to carefully enough, you'd have known that you were wasting your time with your smarmy retort.

Save your energy for the trolls, and not for those who are fans of the show.

Oh, Michael, you've been away for a while. Things have changed here recently. There are far more "the old shows were great, the new shows suck" people in here than ever before. They will continue to watch, and they will continue to bash. Most of them are stuck somewhere in season 5, and their hardons for Larry David have not subsided. Every Friday, you can be sure to find many posts complaining about how bad they're slipping, and how the writing sucks and how Kramer's antics aren't funny anymore, and how the plots don't 'connect' like they used to, and how the wrong recurring characters are being brought back, and how the Costanza's aren't funny anymore, and how Lanie has just turned into a bitch with no redeeming qualities, and how the old episodes are just sooooo much better...

It's enough to make you wanna puke.

But there's no use bitching about it. they're not going away. They just troll away, spewing their 'anti-season 9' tripe until we're all sick of reading it, but what can you do??

Seinfeld's only other previous time slot was Wednesday at 9:30EST...unti it replaced Cheers at Thursday at 9:00EST

Maybe Larry David leaving the show has something to do with its losing some of its humor, but I dont think so. It is still the best show on TV anyway you look at it. I wish they still did THE VOICE. The idea of Jerry choosing doing a voice over dating a woman s very funny. Kramer sitting there helpless, unable to do anything but yell "Hoochie Mama!!" as the "neighborhood kids" sprayed him with silly string was hilarious. Bringing back previous characters like Bania, David Putty and LLoyd Brawn worked really well. I cant wait until they bring back Baboo Bott, the guy Jerry got deported back to Pakistan. Next weeks episode sounds like the funniest yet. Jerry needs blood and Kramer donates it, Elaine takes a babysitting job, and George and his new girlfriend use food in their lovemaking... also something about George wanting to use Pastromi on Rye. That sounds hilarious! ~Dan S.

I think I've figured out one reason why Seinfeld is so good and why some diehard fans hate the newer shows so much. This occurred to me after watching last week's entire Thursday night line-up starting with "Friends" and ending with "Veronica's Closet". The difference between those shows and Seinfelds is that where the other shows rely on funny lines, "Seinfeld" has evolved past that, where it can rely on funny concepts and ideas.

(Sort of an aside; "Friends" had a line that knocked me to the floor, particularly in light of it's 8:00 time slot. Having been offered a pastry or something by a subordinate currying favor, her female boss replied "Thanks, I'll put it up my butt along with your nose" (!!!) This is a show with no real funny story ideas that relies solely on character one-liners for it's comedy. Same for "Union Square" and "Veronica's Closet.")

It dawned on me after I was on the phone talking to my sister about what I liked about the 10/9 Seinfeld episode. The more I talked about the show's ideas, the better and funnier they got; Elaine being kissed dead on the lips by a 13 year old, Kramer getting his screen-door toilet papered by neighborhood kids, Jerry failing at getting mad. Funny stuff, but I can't recall a single one-liner associated with them. Didn't need 'em.

This happens often. I'll see a new episode, not think much of it, read this newgroup trash the hell out of it, yet when I give somebody who missed it a synopsis of what happened, I realize how funny the show was. "Seinfeld" is rich with funny ideas that are complemented by the lines but not dependent on them. For example, the idea of George's father's sales boiler-room competition with Lloyd Braun was made even richer by it's allusion to the film "Glengarry Glenn Ross" as well as George's father's allusion to an earlier episode that Lloyd was still insane ("he just likes to ring the bell."). The idea of Kramer taking something as simple as a screendoor and pushing it to it's extreme of barbeque grill, toilet papering and silly-string attacks is a funny idea. Ideas seems to be the key to why even recent re-runs are so watchable and is what seperates "Seinfeld" from it's competition.

It's apparent that the Larry David loyalists would rather the show stay exactly the way it was, but that couldn't happen even if David were still there. A show that's been around as long as Seinfeld either evolves or gets worse by copying itself. It's undeniable that the writing has changed, but I would contend that the quality hasn't, it's just different. Just how long can you mine material from movies, restaurants, girlfriends, bosses, George being a loser, Kramer being wacko etc.

In it's ninth year, the writers no longer have to rely on character quips and can set up humor and satire that works on more than one level. I for one think it's great that they do so. For example, Jerry's quip about Banya riding on his coat-tails as an allusion to what NBC does to his show in real life was extremely clever. It may have been a laborious setup, but whatever the writers had to do to lead up to the David Lynchian image of Kramer as a roast turkey was worth it for me. My jaw dropped watching it. Where the earlier shows were more about 3 sub-plots of "nothing in particular" resolving humorously, this seasons shows seem to be taking chances with ever more outrageous ideas. I conceed that sometimes the resolutions seem forced and not as neatly wrapped up as before, but that doesn't mean the shows failed.

I look at it this way. If Seinfeld is really sincere about ending the show this year, I'd rather see him push hard on the envelope of where a sit-com can go rather than play it safe by mining the same old formula that has succeded so far. Seinfeld may be thinking "been there, done that", I'm sure he'd rather go out at the top of his game, creatively, rather than watch his show dwindle away into irrelevance.

Just my 2 cents. Yours are welcome at [email] (removing the NOSPAM of course. . .)

No, this was worth much more that .02.  This was a beautiful post.
I think you've hit the nail on the head.   Thank you for taking the
time to write this out.  It mirrors my feelings exactly!
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What a country. A Mac guy finds common ground with an IBM guy. . .

Look to the Cookie!!!

Be forewarned that my intro got a lot more boring than I expected:

The post "'d below is a good long assessment of the ridiculous old/new controversy. I would agree but probably with stronger language. I'm quite tired of the cliched observation that the show sucks since the departure of Larry David. He obviously contributed a great deal but the show has continued to roll on and it is still cutting edge state- of-the-art comedy. Comparing it to any of the other lameass pieces of crap sitcoms that befoul cables and airwaves spanning the globe provides all the proof anyone needs. Pardon my run-on.

Detour: ( Yeah, yeah, Fraser's a very good, very competently put together TV show but I think Seinfeld walks on water in comparison. When Fraser lines up dates with three hot babes, as happened on a recently aired episode, everyone in the friggin' world knows that, with numbing pre- dictability, something will go awry with each date. Of course, this follows The Honeymooners' law which demands that Ralph will never get the promotion he always strives for. Seinfeld, by contrast, blows these conventions to dust. You may counter by saying that, equally predictably, Seinfeld has a different girlfriend every week and he never finds true love. But on this show true love does not equate to true happiness as Seinfeld is blissfully shallow. And, unlike with Fraser or The Honeymooners, there's no emotion invested in the hope that Seinfeld will find monogamy so there's no sense of manipu- lation. And the show goes on to derive laughs from it's own keen awareness of this predictability. Whew, that took longer than I thought. )

I don't think the show has deteriorated. Obviously this boils down to opinion but comparing Elaine's airplane scene from this year's season opener with Elaine's "kosher meal" airplane scene from a much earlier episode backs me up. I think the kosher meal scene with Elaine being miserable in coach was really pretty hackneyed while her irritation with the way that Putty (or Puddy or whatever the f**k) could be content staring into space in this year's premier was great. Also, the business with Magnus was funny.

Why don't the complainers go create some sort of Larry David Award for Comedic Excellence and knock off the griping.

Signed, An Old Coot (not sitting on a goldmine) Who Likes The New Episodes

Friends has gotten sooooooo not funny.

I think you have said it precisely. I e-mailed NBC with a message that said the new season's writers seem to feel as though they have nothing to lose; that the show has a"we'll try anything once" feel to it.

I loved the old Seinfeld up through last season. I loved the Kremer "front porch" episode last week, it was very "old" Seinfeld touch that, for me at least, was missing this week.

The real reason I responded with this post was to ask the group if that awful laugh track has been there all along or is that new?

D. St. James

JPM wrote:

I am a long-time Seinfeld viewer, and have noticed a slight trend in recent episodes. Perhaps they've run out of "everyday life" ideas, becase many are now filled with wacky and ridiculous plots. I'm not saying that's bad---it's still a hilarious show! I just think the writers should renew their focus on shows of that type--which were what originally made Seinfeld a hit. Don't get me wrong, it remains the funniest show on TV, but I want to see more that are reminiscent of older episodes.

As for recent seasons, yes they are not as good as the older ones. But, I still find them hilarious--the writers still have it (most of the time <g>) . The first 3 shows were good, especially the last one and I'm hoping that they'll continue to improve as the season progresses. I'm expecting a classic or two to appear during the November Sweeps. We deserve at least one where we can LOL the entire time. They've had all summer to create story ideas--let's just hope they were good ones.

The always optimistic,

MFLuder848

I am deeply disappointed. The change this year is so obvious and overwhelming that I am stunned. Three shows -- three absolute turkeys. The writing has dropped like a rock. The directing and staging are pedestrian. Other series fade away; this one is attempting suicide. The actors look like they're trying, but they can't work with that tripe. If this were a new series, it wouldn't make it past mid-season.

I've been happily on board this series' boat since the beginning. It's sinking fast. If somebody doesn't bail it out pretty quickly, I'm ready to abandon ship.

In article , [email] wrote:

Bye bye! More food and drink to go around for the rest of us..

Here, let me open the gate in the rail for you. Be sure to jump out away from the ship so you won't get sucked under..

In , [email] writes:

No. Just one turkey. Newman hallucinated it.

As long as they don't try to rely on attempting to develop any more single-show-inside-joke-lines like 'serenity now' or (I can think of a mess of them).

And no Over Acting. George was guilty of that last season, but he seems to have it under control so far this season.