HTF REVIEW: Seinfeld Season 4 (RECOMMENDED) (2 Viewers)

[Carlos Garcia]

Aaron, while I felt Jerry was more a watcher than a contributor during his commentary on "The Contest", I found it far from being considered an "embarrassment". If you want to watch an episodes of a show that contains what I consider to be the most embarrasing audio commentary, then take a look at the classic Twilight Zone episode "Mr. Dingle, the Strong", in which Don Rickles actually gets so fed up with the show (probably considering it to be beneath him) that he leaves the commentary just several minutes into the episode (actually insulting the plot before he leaves) and never returns. How they would allow that commentary to find its way onto such a classic set is beyond me.

 

[David Galindo]

@ Casey

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Wow. Wow. I am speechless!

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Didn't find a season 3 thread, didn't want to make a new topic. I was watching disc 4 of season 3 tonight and I was shocked to see Janice with a normal smooth voice!

 

[R. Kay]

The only funny part of the Series finale is the standup Jerry does in jail.

The rest isnt funny at all.

I bet Jerry & Larry had a good private laugh to screw the viewing public who made them zillionaires in the first place.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

I feel your anger.

 

[Jay Pennington]

I disagree. With the exception of their behavior in that episode, I'd say they were basically good, if very flawed and selfish, people.

What ticked me off about the finale was a feeling of betrayal. For eight years we'd been conditioned to feel a little less guilty about our own foibles in comparison to these extreme examples. "Okay, so everyone's quirky in one way or another, and at least I'm not THAT bad".

Then the finale comes along with a twelfth hour bait-and-switch with the message "no, these are rotten, rotten people and so are you for enjoying them".

Well, thannnnk you, Larry.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Agreed. None of them are nasty or evil - they're just self-absorbed and not tremendously concerned about others. But they do occasionally show signs of caring, such as Jerry's attempts to help Babu. They worry more about what others think of them than whether they do good, but isn't that just like most of us? They're normal people blown up to a comedic extreme...

 

[Jerry R Colvin]

I don't know why their behavior in that episode was considered so bad. So they saw somebody being carjacked at gunpoint. Would you risk your life to stop a carjacking? Really... risking your life to prevent theft of a car? Wow. What about the policeman who saw it all, and walked right up and arrested them for not helping. Why didn't he arrest himself for watching those four instead of stepping in to prevent the carjacking?

It just plain doesn't make any sense.

 

[TravisR]

Can't everyone cry about this episode when the Season Nine set comes out?

Jerry, the cop didn't help because he arrived on the scene after the carjacking and the fat guy told him that the gang just watched and laughed. The cop didn't witness the carjacking or them not helping him.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

Maybe Larry held a grudge because he thought the show would never make it after he left, and its success continued for the final 2 seasons without him. Maybe he wrote the finale as spite, to show his hatred for these characters that started out as flawed people, and he ended them as vicious human beings not to be pitied. Anyway, the bottom line is that for 9 seasons we watched these guys and could identify with their imperfections. Sure they made mistakes, but they always made us laugh. Then, for whatever reason, Larry David comes back to write the finale, and in doing so, let down the majority of the fanbase that made him his fortune. I remember watching that finale stunned that such a great show could leave us on such a down note. To this day I can't watch the episode without cringing.

 

[Mike Williams]

OMG . . . I think some of these people's attitudes toward Larry David writing the finale is WORSE than what some people accuse George Lucas of doing with his special editions of Star Wars and the first two episodes of the prequel trilogy. I mean, c'mon, people, you should really listen to yourselves. George Costanza has got nothing on you guys.

 

[Sam Davatchi]

I saw the episode "Limo" tonight. Was kind of surprised. I don't think anyone would make anything like this today in a sitcom. Was there any controversies when they showed this?

 

[Seth--L]

Wow. Like Mike said, this is starting to sound like a Star Wars thread.

First, Larry David threatened to quit every season because producing a TV show was took so much time. If you watch "Curb," the Larry David character on it is pretty close to the real life Larry David. From reading and listening to interviews, it's clear that David is incredibly lazy, but completely devoted to any project he's working on. As eccentric as he is, I doubt he was hoping that the show would bomb once he left. He probably genuinely hoped it would do well just so he'd make lots of money.

Re: the finale, pissing of fans, whether or not the characters were as bad as the episode made them out to be

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are pretty cynical people. This comes out in interviews, as well as Jerry's stand up and "Curb." David and Seinfeld purposely did not give fans what they wanted because "Seinfeld" was all about going against TV norms. The finale begins as the cliche TV series finale, neatly wrapping everything up, even giving us a moment where it seems like Elaine and Jerry are going to admit to each other that they've been in-love for the entirety of the season, and that the show may end with them getting back together. I'm sure that this is what many people wanted, but ending the show with people getting married would have been generic, which the show was always trying not to be.

Whether you like it or not, the characters are pretty self absorbed and shallow. This is the genius of the show, and it took a lot of balls to point it out to people who never got it. A running joke of the series is that everyone is single because they find the most superficial flaws in their girl friends/boy friends. And the characters are identifiable because we are all really like that.

 

[Mike Williams]

In "The Junior Mint," George buys $1,900 worth of Art from Elaine's boyfriend who's in the hospital, thinking the guy is going to die and his art might actually be worth something post mortem. He then gets very upset when the guy recovers, saying, "Where's the luck? $1,900 down the drain."

When his fiancee, Susan, dies, as a result of cheap glue on cheap envelopes George bought to save money, all he can think of is how happy he is to be single again.

Oh yeah . . . these are basically GOOD people, just a little selfish and self-absorbed. PUH-LEEZE!!!! I repeat, these are NOT good people . . .and we love them anyway.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

Your repeating it doesn't make it so. These are people who do bad and selfish things, but that doesn't make them bad people. Most of the things they do, especially early on, are based on real things that real people do. If Larry David and Larry Charles and co. did a lot of the things that find their way into the show, does that make them "bad people?" (Even Larry David probably doesn't really believe he's a bad person in real life, even though he comes close to playing one on TV.) The Seinfeld gang looks worse because they get to do all the selfish things that are done only occasionally by real-life people, but none of the things they do are things that can't be done by basically good people. And that includes wishing someone were dead, which is a normal human emotion, albeit one we're ashamed of. (If George actually murdered someone to get them out of the way, then he'd be a bad person.)

Anyway, if you look at the first few seasons, one thing that's clear about the main characters is that even if they weren't nice to other people, they had a very strong bond among each other and would go out of their way to help each other. People fell in love with the characters, in part, because they liked and admired the way, say, Jerry and Elaine would help each other in their wacky schemes. The friendship theme of the show definitely helped inspire Friends (and once that show came on the air, I think Seinfeld reacted by making the main characters a bit more hostile to each other, so the friendship theme was de-emphasized). The characters' redeeming quality was that they stuck together against the petty annoyances of everyday life.

Anyway, the biggest characterization problem with the finale was Kramer. Kramer was always more good-hearted and less cynical than his friends, and it didn't make sense that he wouldn't help the guy. It seemed that he was written out of character for Larry David to make a point. But the biggest problem with the finale, like the whole last season of Seinfeld, was that it had very little to do with real life and was instead a long inside joke about the show itself. David, like a lot of writers who spend too long a time in Hollywood, had lost the ability to find humor in everyday life and instead mined lame jokes from his own showbiz bubble.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

As I said, they're really just normal people played to comedic extremes. Seinfeld was willing to get into subjects usually regarded as too nasty and to portray people as they really are, not as they're usually seen. They're not meant to be realistic portrayals - they're caricatures. But they're still not BAD people - they never actively attempt harm. George's disappointment when the artist survives makes him callous but not BAD...

 

[Mike Williams]

Your rosy attitudes toward the show and its characters certainly explains your disappointment with the finale . . but now I understand why . . . evidently you're not in on the joke. Because if the two guys who created the show spend an hour to show step-by-step and incident-by-incident that these really are NOT good people, then I think they would know more than those who just choose to NOT believe them. In that case, the joke of the Finale really is on you. And that makes the Finale even funnier than I already thought it was.

By the way, I never said they were bad people . . .I said they weren't good people. And until you can show me evidence to the contrary, I'll stand by that, since I've got about 180 episodes to support my theory.

Colin, if you don't think George is not a good person for WANTING someone to die (he wasn't just disappointed) so the value of his just purchased art will increase in value (art he only bought thinking he could die to begin with -- we already know George "doesn't GET art"), then regardless of what it says about George, maybe we should examine what it says about YOU.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

I dunno. We've all had horrible thoughts. George just thinks them more openly than we do -- he's a more extreme version of our own faults. If we don't think of ourselves as less than basically good, why should we think that way about George, who is like us, only exaggerated?

Now, if George started making angry posts with BLOCK CAPITALS all but accusing some other person of being a bad guy for liking a TV character... then, yeah, maybe I'd start to dislike him.

 

[Colin Jacobson]