Why are there no real Seinfeld clones.

I think it's a bit more involved than just that. Seinfeld has more depth to it than most people would realise and so there would be more factors to judge other shows by, such as, the actual relationships between the characters; the storylines; whether the shows have a certain amount of allegory (ie. try to moralise or preach to you, whether it's in an overt or covert way); where they live and what they do (ie. big city vs rural town, professional vs blue-collar worker); the demographics of the characters (ie. all white/black/asian, all male/female/mixture, all young/middle aged/old etc.). These shows may or may not share these and other characteristics in common with Seinfeld, but as I said you can't compare them on just one factor.

And for these shows to be clones would imply that they're also as funny as Seinfeld, which isn't the case, but maybe I'm taking the word too literally.

Just a few thoughts.

Brendan Bugeja

On Sat, 5 Apr 1997, joro wrote:

In article , [email] says...

A very lucid post. But yes, you are taking the word "clone" too literally in this case. This word is actually used in the TV industry, along with its cousin, "recombinant." There are no clones of TV shows using a strict definition of "clone," or rather, if there were you wouldn't be able to tell because _everything_ would be the same. Remember the thief that stole everything from comedian Steven Wright one night and put it back where it came from before he woke up?

Anyway, a TV clone is a show that attempts to copy many of the elements of another, but changes small things so that it can supposedly claim to be a different show. An extreme example would be 20/20, which is a clone of 60 Minutes. A "recombinant" is a show that is created as a result of combining two or more other shows' concepts, or by putting some spin on one that requires a bit more restructuring than a clone would. The line is thin between clone and recombinant, and people don't always agree on what to term a show. A recombinant example would be The Flintstones, I think. It's Honeymooners animated, and in the Stone Age. There are better examples but I can't think of them right now...In the film world, the beginning of Robert Altman's The Player features some funny ideas (fictitious I would hope) for movies that would be recombinants pitched by people to studio execs. (Out of Africa meets Top Gun, etc. That's not from the movie either, but again, I can't think of actual lines).

Unoriginal shows are often labeled clones when they are actually recombinants. After awhile, a clone show can develop its own flavor and shed the label.