The creator ofSeinfeldhas a definitive answer to the question, “What wasSeinfeldreally about?“Seinfeldis arguably one of the first modern sitcoms.It’s one of the best sitcoms, that’s for sure, but it’s modern in that it premiered in 1989, and over 30 years later, it can still make you crack up.
Seinfeldis pretty simple in its premise. The show follows four friends, Jerry, Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards), living in the Upper West Side of New York City. The personal lives of each character, along with interactions with the kooky denizens of NYC, make up the main thrust of the show.
Episodes rarely require you to watch them in order, and like the show’s successor,Curb Your Enthusiasm, don’t expect anyone tochange much over the course of the 9 seasons. For as simple and unchanging as the series is,Seinfeldis more than the tagline it’s been given, just ask the show’s creator.
Seinfeld Was Not A Show About Nothing, According To Jerry Seinfeld
Seinfeld Said The Show Is About How A Comedian Gets His Jokes
It’s common on the internet to hearSeinfeldreferred to as a “show about nothing”. It’s even called that in the second paragraph of theSeinfeldWikipediapage. However, Jerry Seinfeld himself disagrees. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) onReddit, he said about the show,
“The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it’s the opposite of that.”
That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.Seinfeldisn’t a show about nothing; it’s a show about how a comedian gets his material. A comedian gets his material by observing the minutiae of life and the social contracts and faux pas that we encounter every day. The episodes even open with Jerry doing his comedy routine.
Once you hear that, it sounds pretty obvious. Sure, a comedian can get his ideas from something that may seem like “nothing” to everyone else, but that doesn’t mean it’s a show about nothing.IfSeinfeldis a show about nothing, then so is every single sitcomwithout a strict genre conceit.
Why Seinfeld Became Known As The Show About Nothing
It’s Unclear When The Show First Received That Tagline
It’s not clear exactly whenSeinfeldbegan to be referred to as a show about nothing, but a 2006 article from theBBCrefers to it as “a show about nothing” though claims that “a show about nothing” is a famed tagline for the series, suggesting it was around far longer than 2006.
In season 4 ofSeinfeld, George and Jerry pitch a television show that they refer to as a “show about nothing,” and, as a meta joke, their show does have some similarities withSeinfeld. Beyond that, though, there’s no one starting place where that tagline started, but Jerry Seinfeld’s comment should be the ending place.
