What's funny about this is there's never been anything edgy about Jerry Seinfeld's standup act. And as far as Seinfeld goes he was barely involved in the writing. That was all Larry David and other talented writers. Of 180 episodes Jerry Seinfeld had 18 writing credits and all of them were shared with Larry David. Of those 18 credits 5 were in the first season which is undeniably the show's weakest and most forgettable. Jerry was always just the name. Larry was the talent.
I guess that's probably why Larry David just wrapped the final season of Curb this year while never once complaining about "not being allowed to do comedy" anymore like Jerry is. Turns out, you've always been allowed to do whatever comedy you like, you just have to actually be funny.
It’s also funny because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still airing too, and that is massively more edgy than anything seinfeld ever did.
I think that the problem is that jerry want to be edgy and still be considered the good guy. Which is not how Curb, IASIP or even the Seinfeld tv show ever was. They always were presented as bad/flawed people doing bad stuff. You 100% can still do that type of comedy. But you can’t do comedy where the characters are supposed to be good but do bad stuff
It’s also funny because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still airing too, and that is massively more edgy than anything seinfeld ever did.
And that’s always been my argument when it comes to this particular dead horse. I don’t think any jokes are off the table, you just really have to make whatever discomfort you’re summoning be worth the punchline. The edgier something is the more it has to be funny to compensate, the point of offensive humor is to be funny not to offend, right? This has to be common sense. I don’t get how it flies over the head of so many people.
You know, why we're here? [he means: here in the "Comedy club"] To be out, this is out...and out is one of the single most enjoyable experiences of life. People...did you ever hear people talking about "We should go out"? This is what they're talking about...this whole thing, we're all out now, no one is home. Not one person here is home, we're all out! There are people tryin' to find us, they don't know where we are. [imitates one of these people "tryin' to find us"; pretends his hand is a phone] "Did you ring?, I can't find him." [imitates other person on phone] "Where did he go?" [the first person again] "He didn't tell me where he was going". He must have gone out. You wanna go out: you get ready, you pick out the clothes, right? You take the shower, you get all ready, get the cash, get your friends, the car, the spot, the reservation...There you're staring around, whatta you do? You go: "We gotta be getting back". Once you're out, you wanna get back! You wanna go to sleep, you wanna get up, you wanna go out again tomorrow, right? Where ever you are in life, it's my feeling, you've gotta go.
seinfeld final episode:
It seems like whenever these office people call you in for a meeting, the whole thing is about the sitting down. I would really like to sit down with you. I think we need to sit down and talk. Why don't you come in, and we'll sit down. Well, sometimes the sitting down doesn't work. People get mad at the sitting.You know, we've been sitting here for I don't know how long. How much longer are we just going to sit here? I'll tell you what I think we should do. I think we should all sleep on it. Maybe we're not getting down low enough. Maybe if we all lie down, then our brains will work.
...what particularly about these bits is either edgy or genius?
Weird how these woke kids keep killing comedy while still being the best comedians, and it's always the ones leaning on their 30+ year old sets that think it's a problem.
What's the deal with time passing? It just happens! You don't want it to, but it does. One day you're riding high, one hand on Larry David's coattails and the other up some high school girl's skirt. You're thinking, "I'm gonna be on top forever. Everyone loves me now and it's always gonna be this way." Then the next day you're complaining about woke on a drive time radio show with Kid Rock. What's his deal anyway? He's not a rock, or even a kid. He's a man. He should be called Man Man.
You know who had a 30 year old set that was still awesome and hysterical to the very end? The Amazing Jonathan.
I got to see him in Vegas probably a few years before he died, he was doing shows in what amounted to a fancy conference room somewhere. I was the person called up to the stage, and even though I knew every single thing he was going to say and do, it was still just funny. I got to look him right in the eyes up close, and it was clear that he knew he was doing the same set he's done forever, in a conference room. and it seemed like we both knew that "WTF am I doing here?" added a whole other layer of funny to the whole thing.
Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe it was just the methamphetamine.
If you haven’t heard it: Bill Burr Philadelphia Rant.
Look it up on YouTube. It’s unfortunately a crappy video, but the audio is straight gold. For 30 whole minutes it’s just Burr trashing the audience and Philadelphia and its perfection. Better than any stand up of the last few years because it’s organic and in the moment.
Bo Burnham is also fantastic if you want something introspective at the same time. Inside, by Bo Burnham was a critical piece of Covid media.
I have a favorite link that for “full stand up comedy special” on YouTube and new ones pop up like every day. Listen to it on my commute, shower, dishes, etc.
The deal with airline food has nothing to do with the food, but everything to deal with the dry, low preassure air in an airplane lowering the sensitivity of our tastebuds, making thw food taste bland.
It’s not low pressure. The cabin is pressurized to 5k feet.
Are you saying that people that live in Colorado or other high altitude locations have trouble enjoying their food because of “low pressure”? The answer is no.
The reason airline food sucks is because it’s highly processed and filled with preservatives to keep it “fresh”. In other words the food sucks.
I don't think he was ever funny. Larry David may have been funny, and Seinfeld was fortunate enough to be involved with the show, but Jerry himself has always been a poor comedian and a tool.
I think Seinfeld was pretty funny in the 80s. His style of observational comedy was fresh back then though. Then there were a million Seinfeld copycats and there wasn't anything special about him anymore.
The same thing happened with Carlin. So he kept reinventing himself and updating his comedy with the times and that's why people loved him until the day he died.
"The show was great, hilarious even, until Jerry opened his mouth and said something." - Me imitating Seinfeld
But seriously. I loved a few of the kooky characters, and would always stop channel surfing on a Kramer scene. But Jerry would always say something dumb and I'd move on.
Absolutely. He always came off as an arrogant prick and none of his shit was funny to me. But I might have missed many a point because I'm not from the USA.
It means he lacks the ability to reinvent his comedy to fit the times. Instead he just complains.
We all need to continue to reinvent ourselves over time. Things change. We need to retool for the times ahead. Reality is Seinfeld doesn’t need to because he already made his money.
So instead of him getting back on the horse he just sits back and complains like the out of touch old turd that he is. He sucks but just can’t accept it or admit it. It’s easier to whine.
"Reactionary" means regressive conservative/anti-progressive. It originates from, as much political terminology on the regressive vs. progressive divide does (including the terms "left", "right", and "conservative" themselves), the French revolution, where people who favored opposing the revolution (i.e. reacting to the revolution) were called "réactionnaires" in French.
Reactionary can be seen as a more extreme version of conservatism.
Conservatives want to keep things as they are and oppose change.
Reactionaries want to turn back to some previous, supposedly better state.
I listened to much of the interview on the radio. He touched on a lot of good points and then came to the absolutely wrong conclusion. He talked about how many writing rooms are "writing by committee" where jokes will go through a review by many different groups. If this is truly the case (I don't know) that is not an issue if the "far left mob" but rather the enshitification of comedy due to corporations and Wall Street bankrolling these productions wanting to ensure return on investment. This kills creativity by reducing risks. Topical comedy is a risky medium by default.
Also, shout out to Rob McElhenney for his sarcastic one word response. In Jerry's imagined world, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia can't exist.
But see, he wants it to be funny because he thinks making fun of homeless people is funny. It would instead be funny because of how fucking stupid Kramer is. That's really the big turn in recent comedy: laughing at bad characters doing shitty things (and usually getting their comeuppance) instead of laughing at shitty things happening to people.
people seeing issues brought about by capitalism and concluding that the people who are fighting against capitalism are the REAL problem, a tale as old as time.
You really think the average Barbie-watching lefty can be equated to the communism bordering Lemmy dweller? Please, just because they're not on the right doesn't make them the same.
But the thing is... writing by committee has always been the norm- including for Seinfeld, which makes me wonder how much he was actually involved in the writing process.
The very idea of a writer's room is writing by committee.
I got the sense he meant more that it would go up through business-side committees to double check the work and make sure it wasn't inappropriate. If that was the case that again would be an indication of corporations being risk adverse.
Yeah, but Jimmy Carr's greatest achievement is beating Father Time by transforming himself into a plastic vampire. Jerry Seinfeld's greatest achievement is making a movie where a bumblebee cucks Kronk.
That’s weird about this to me, I never would have called Seinfeld right leaning. Like every one of his standups I’ve ever seen is very neutral, and the show was actually pretty progressive for the time. Chapelle did the punching down, got called out on it (rightfully so), and then doubled down and swung to the right because now he’s the victim! But as far as I know, Jerry didn’t do anything (In terms of jokes, ignoring the… youthfulness… issues for the moment) He just decided to bust out with I’m a victim too stop censoring me? Was there any preface to all this?
I think it's just anger about being out of touch. You can't make comedy in a vacuum, it necessarily draws on contemporary culture, and Jerry's probably feeling a bit left in the dust. But he frames it in a way where he feels victimized. That's my reading for most embarrassing or offensive old comedians though, so maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush.
OP mentioned 3 prominent Democrats as examples of right-wingers. You can have opinions that aren't lock-step with whatever the current hot button issues are without being a right-winger. Democrats are supposed to be the more independently thinking party, but we're seeing a hell of a lot of tribalism these days from both parties. It's honestly pretty disturbing.
Both seemed to have turned recently. Both of them in recent stand up specials they've released since 2019 have said, on stage, they are Republicans and expressed views consistent with that in their routines. It was a shock to me, considering I remember them being very anti-conservative back in the 90's.
I seem to remember Maher seeming more leftist at some point, but that might be because of his unabashed atheism. He's always been insufferably arrogant though.
Man I don't think it's fair for Chappelle to be on the list. I wouldn't even call him right-leaning, but in today's sociopolitical landscape, anything not left-leaning is by default right-leaning and all centrists or near-neutrals are closet fascists who want to pick the worst candidate at all times because that's what their satanic cult taught them to do, according to social science graduates. Just like how unprovoked hatred towards men or whites is never sexist or racist because men were historically oppressors.
The court of public opinion really do be wil'in sometimes frfr but hey I guess at least they have some science to back them up....
Anyway, as always, downvote and insult away, idgaf about ur opinion or whether mine digress' from the status quo
edit: all this said, I never found Chappelle funny and his social commentary was hit/miss
I can understand maybe thinking she was older when he talked to her and then finding out later she was underage and backing off, but he definitely just went for it. Creep.
I remember seeing a post on r/agedlikemilk which theorised that Russell Brand was leaning more into right wing talking points in anticipation of the looming rape accusations being made public.
Yeah, how foolish to demand actual justice in form of a criminal conviction for crimes instead of just letting people get away with it by paying hush money.
my favorite part of Seinfeld complaining that woke has killed comedy is that Curb Your Enthusiasm just finished a 24 year, 12 season run and their last season has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
You see, "crackers" means White People. Really, he was trying to start a conversation about race relations. Or was that when Jerry ate a black and white and got sick after comparing the cookie to race relations?
During the first two years of Seinfeld Jerry would stop by The Howard Stern show once a week trying to get the word out about the show. Howard said multiple times when the show takes off and is doing well Jerry would find a reason to stop coming in. Sure enough Robin reported the story of Jerry dating Shoshanna and Jerry stopped coming on.
Normally when people identify all the "P.C. crap" that Seinfeld complains about as coming from the "extreme left" I figure it's because they've gone so far to the right that from way out there Bill Gates looks like a communist. But it's tempting to give Seinfeld the benefit of the doubt and assume that he might just be confused and ill-informed. The same refusal to accept reality that leaves him unable to let go of the urge to put a llama with a human head in his movie about Pop-Tarts may also have been sufficient to prevent him learning anything at all about politics for the past 30 years.
Seinfeld is very exceptional in that it was a show which featured unapologetically bad people, and glorified them, very effectively.
You can be extremely cynical in your scripting while still holding up characters who have some sort of moral center and are trying to do the right thing. Old-season Simpsons did this very well. The characters are not bad. They are not nice and they have genuine failings, and the situations they find themselves in are not sugarcoated. But, it's still a show about trying to maintain your humanity, in a pretty realistic portrayal of the grim reality we all find ourselves in. The original "Arrested Development" is similar although a little more upper-class and light hearted.
Maybe I am a corny motherfucker but I do think that it's important to try to keep your eye on doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing, because it's real shit that every human being runs into and it's definitely not easy. Art does influence the ways people behave and the way they perceive the world. Seinfeld is a show about absolute horrible sociopaths, who ruin relationships and other people's lives over and over again because of their commitment to selfishness, and if you only look superficially, how relatable and fun and entertaining they can be to spend time with, and how easy it is to overlook what abominably bad people they are as long as it all seems fun.
Somewhere there is a video talking about how Jerry Seinfeld is actually one of the darkest comedians working. I don't even know where I could start to find it, but the guy talks about watching a Seinfeld bit about throwing trash in the movie theater before he leaves for someone else to clean up, and how the guy watching got this chilling feeling he never got from much more serious topics: Like it's not an act, he genuinely just feels nothing below surface level, and doesn't give a fuck what happens.
Seinfeld is very exceptional in that it was a show which featured unapologetically bad people, and glorified them, very effectively.
I think that this contrasts rather heavily with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I had a lot of trouble getting into the show because I thought that that was what they were doing. But, in reality, we're NOT supposed to empathize with or relate to them. The Gang are unapologetically awful people who, despite never really getting what they deserve, cause nearly all of their own problems through their greed and selfishness (plus, Dennis is probably a serial killer).
Yeah I consistently find myself appreciating that show more and more. One of my favorite themes is with the recurring characters. Consistently if they give in to the gang’s bullshit like Cricket their life gets worse and worse, but if like Carmen they don’t their life gets better every time you see them.
And each of the characters seems to understand that the others suck. Like, Mac calls out Dennis and Dee’s rape. Everyone in the gang acknowledges that Charlie is a stalker and that Mac is a hypocrite. It’s a group of terrible people who push away everyone else so they keep coming back to each other.
I don't think it's either/or. IASIP is good because it both mocks the characters for being awful while simultaneously making you like and empathize with them. You can think someone is horrible and a human that deserves things at the same time. In fact I think what makes that show exceptional is exactly these two viewpoints having truth to them. It would've gotten old really fast to me if it was just laughing at assholes.
That’s fair. Like, the spiritual successor to Seinfeld, Always Sunny, is made by people who hate their characters as people. The show goes out of its way to explain to the audience that Dennis and Dee are both rapists because some of the audience didn’t see it. In Seinfeld I can absolutely imagine a scene in which the characters describe sexually violating someone and acting like the victim is overreacting, and the narrative treating that person like they might’ve overreacted. Things are left open to audience interpretation as they consistently act like everyday sociopaths
Seinfeld is very exceptional in that it was a show which featured unapologetically bad people, and glorified them, very effectively.
I think that's more just the consequence of celebrity. They're supposed to be normal New Yorkers, which is to say petty and superficial and cheap and rude. And that's supposed to be a funny thing to watch.
But by the ninth season, you've developed a parasocial relationship with them. You find the petty rudeness and the stingy superficiality endearing. And they've been one-upping themselves for so long, a lot of it just looks absurd rather than obnoxious.
Somewhere there is a video talking about how Jerry Seinfeld is actually one of the darkest comedians working. I don’t even know where I could start to find it, but the guy talks about watching a Seinfeld bit about throwing trash in the movie theater before he leaves for someone else to clean up, and how the guy watching got this chilling feeling he never got from much more serious topics: Like it’s not an act, he genuinely just feels nothing below surface level, and doesn’t give a fuck what happens.
Go back and listen to "I'm Telling You For The Last Time", the comedy album he put out right after the show rapped.
I think a lot of the show is Larry David's own brand of cynical humor. But Seinfield was the perfect vehicle precisely because he's just this soulless husk of a human being who has filled his emptiness with unlimited money.
I agree! I think just about anyone who has stupid amounts of money has no conscience, personally. Maybe Bill Gates a little. But I especially believe that Seinfeld was showing us who he really was during the whole show. Well maybe not the first year when he was relatively normal, but after success hit, I honestly think he just became a narcissist.
Nah, Bill Gates is just like the rest of them. He pushed for a Covid vaccine just so he could own it. The researchers didn't want to profit from it and he shot that down. Check the Behind the Bastards episode on him.
But you have to look at it within the context of the time. At that point, even the horrible people had redeeming qualities. Archie Bunker was a right-wing racist, but his heart was often in the right place. Murphy Brown was horrible to her coworkers, but she fought for the right causes.
And then Seinfeld came out. Everyone in it was horrible. Irredeemably so. There was just nothing else like it at the time.
It also did some really interesting things in terms of experimentation with what you could do with a sitcom, like the episode that takes place entirely while they are waiting in a restaurant for Chinese takeout.
It's a totally outdated concept now because it's been done again and again, but it was pretty revolutionary at the time. Personally, I credit this to Larry David, not Jerry Seinfeld.
Jerry, kids aren't laughing at you because you're still doing the same style of comedy you did in the 90s and they don't think it's funny.
And I say that as someone who does think he's funny.
Edit: I did standup in the 90s too (obviously nowhere near his level). There are many reasons why I don't do it anymore, but realizing that what I was doing was getting out of date was definitely a factor. Get out when you can and people might still think of you fondly.
I watched a woman do stand up recently who looked to be in her late 30s/early 40s. All of it was unironically about those stupid millennial kids and how they're running comedy because they "are woke". Seriously.
The material is 20 years out of date and she's a member of that group (or damn close). I think she stole the act from someone 20 years ago who thought a movie like Tropic Thunder would never get made.
"It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on," he said in the interview. "‘Oh, M.A.S.H. is on, oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on.' You just expected, there'll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups - ‘Here's our thought about this joke' - well, that's the end of your comedy."
So he picks shows that had some racism in them as justification that we should still have racism around for entertainment purposes?
What an idiot. I’ve heard plenty of comedy that’s funny as hell without being a knuckle dragging buffoon and going after low hanging fruit like racism or making fun of women.
The clown admits he’s just not creative or smart enough to make decent comedy that isn’t easy cheap shots.
So he picks shows that had some racism in them as justification that we should still have racism around for entertainment purposes?
He also picked shows that were "extreme left" for their time. M*A*S*H was full of left-wing morals and speeches from the pens of both Larry Gelbart and Alan Alda and was savagely critical of an American war against communists while America was still in Vietnam.
Mary Tyler Moore was about an independent career woman in the 1960s, when women weren't allowed to have their own credit cards.
All in the Family was about a conservative racist constantly being shown that the world had moved on from his archaic ideas about the way things should be.
So what is his issue with the "extreme left" exactly if those were the shows he picked?
MAS*H had an episode in 1974 about the injustice of a decorated soldier having to fear being dishonorably discharged for being a homosexual. That was way, way ahead of its time.
Seriously. MASH had episodes around racism, and every time denigrating the racism and the fool perpetuating it. It never pushed a racist message.. at least from what my memory can recall all these decades afterwards.
I think the two that come immediately to mind are racist general who is clearly looney toons asking a black soldier to dance cause its in his blood, properly being demonstrated as off his rocker and crazy to believe such racist bullshit and just a downright mockery of those who think like that.
and there was the one where the guy didnt want blood from any black person, and they spend the episode fucking with him with makeup and claiming he got the wrong color blood... and the episode ends with him thanking them for giving him something to think about, then salutes a black woman before leaving.
So what is his issue with the "extreme left" exactly if those were the shows he picked?
You could legit just read the screenshot and answer your own question.
Looks like Jerry is a pretty mainstream liberal who is okay with shows tackling issues of their own volition, but doesn't appreciate the current production model of everything having to pass through focus groups, committees, and wanker consultants, coming out the other side so impotent and safe that it doesn't arouse the intellect enough to really make a point or stand for anything specific.
Like if you watch Disney stuff and think that's normal, you're part of the problem.
Also his frame of reference is TV shows that aired at specific times. Few people under 60 watch TV like that anymore. Where is the funny stuff? On the fucking streaming services, YouTube, TikTok, etc.
Where is the funny stuff? On the fucking streaming services, YouTube, TikTok, etc.
You may have just made his argument for him. If Ticktok is what passes for comedy today, loud, obnoxious reaction bits from people who think a bad hair day is literal, all delivered in 10 second disposable bytes, yeah nah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XieGJCKk9Ms here's the new bohemia that has me laughin my ass off. Wrt standups and writing rooms oprev generations? Ive always loved comedy but these punch-down clowns are wearing out their own welcome.
Is this guy actually invoking All in the Family in this discussion? Anyone reading this should find the pilot of All in the Family and watch it right now. That is so much more woke than anything that's been on TV lately. Yea Archie Bunker used racial slurs, because the era equivalent of a fox news viewer spoke exactly like that at the time and the whole point was to show how backward and ignorant that was. Jerry Seinfeld is ignorant if he is bringing that show up as an example of an era where TV wasnt woke.
Exactly what comes to my mind every time he brings up his gripes about "PC culture". Seinfeld isn't worried about his comedy -- he's worried about his personal life.
Why does that matter? Is he wrong? Maybe your insinuation that this is about him is incorrect and he just sees it as a blemish on comedy as a whole? Could it be that he just cares about the profession?
It's so peculiar that people would rather argue something irrelevant rather than admit that they agree with someone they don't like.
Yes. There's plenty of politically incorrect comics and they're thriving. Dave Chappelle took a lot of heat on social media for being transphobic (not even as a joke) and he got 2 Netflix specials out of it.
Dude was dating a 16y old I believe when he was near 40. In fact, if you look at the female secondary cast (like Jerry’s love interests), they all got increasingly more beautiful as the show went on, where he was basically casting models near the end.
Dude is a pedophile but since he was making $1m per show and Hollywood is just a scum bucket, he was featured on People and the media was like awwwww, Seinfeld found love!
Jerry Seinfeld has never been considered a controversial comic. His jokes are all very tame observational humor. If he's complaining he's getting canceled by the "woke mob" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), it's probably not for that reason. Either his material just isn't funny or he's being genuinely bigoted/racist and trying to hide it behind a smokescreen of comedic license.
Yeah, it's like what jokes exactly have they killed...? Because you can still tell those jokes, it's just that you probably won't like the kind of audience it attracts.
When your brand of comedy deals heavily in the prejudices of a time (and most do) be prepared to adapt when times change. If you can’t or won’t, your career ends. That’s comedy, Jerry.
I partly agree. It’s okay to make fun of just about anyhing as long as it’s not biased(repetitive jokes always agaisnt the same people/group). It feels like nowadays people will be offended by everything. You can make fun of, say, gays, without being agaisnt them. Look at South Park, they’ve made fun of literally every possible group but it feels like so many of these episodes wouldn’t be received well id they came out today.
Thats the thing, comedy hasn't stopped. Regular people aren't offended if you make a funny joke about a sensitive topic.
Rob McElhenney from It's always sunny was just talking about this the other day. They make racist jokes, gay jokes, jokes about abortion, mocking the homeless. There's a WHOLE episode done a la The Whiz where the gang wakes up in black people's bodies. You just have to be sure that the joke is told in a way that doesn't lift it's message above being just a joke, and that means the person telling it has to be relatively clear on the side of the joke's subject. You can't punch down, that's never been funny.
South Park and it's always sunny and family guy and those kinds of shows haven't neutered their jokes, so why do people keep saying that you can't make fun of anything anymore? The only people I see that say that are parroting comedians like Seinfeld and Chapelle and THEY'RE STILL SELLING TICKETS, so they're not 'canceled' and their livelihoods aren't affected, so why are they saying they can't make the jokes they continue to sell tickets for?
South Park and it’s always sunny and family guy and those kinds of shows haven’t neutered their jokes, so why do people keep saying that you can’t make fun of anything anymore?
Because they just want to say racist shit and not have anyone call them out on it, which isn't quite the same thing.
True comedy doesn't need a victim. That shitty humor is comedy at its basics. Juxtaposition is universal in animals and recognized as "funny". Juxtaposition with inherit victims is low class low effort shit posting rage baiting humor. It relies on a weak mind accepting it.
My main point/perspective is all humans posses inherit indestructible dignity and I will fight anyone who fights my fellows on this s
Journey we are all taking called life.
Jimmy Carr is makes fun of gay people. He just does it in a funny way without trying to be offensive, so people still like his comedy specials. It helps that he is incredibly self-deprecating and does things like suggest he's a pedophile.
There are ways to make jokes about sexuality without being mean. That's the trick.