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Didn’t millennials watch it growing up? Someone’s not getting their generational terms right
Hell, I was even old enough when it was airing to think it was overrated then.
Seinfeld is one of the best sitcoms of all time.
See, that’s the real issue. I don’t have a problem with acknowledging it’s high concept, ocassionally funny and mostly easy watching.
But everybody insisting it’s endless comedic, best-sitcom-ever brilliance is overrating it. It’s overrated.
It’s not overrated. It set the standard. It’s easy to call it overrated when you live in world influenced by it. It’s like calling the Model T overrated as a car. There’s even a TVTrope for this concept. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
Exactly. Seinfeld isn’t funny now because all the shows after it copied it. When Seinfeld came out, it was revolutionary. No one was doing that humor. They invented it. Now, everyone and their mother has copied them, so it’s played out. And since all these newer sitcoms had time and previous examples to improve on, they do it better, so Seinfeld looks lame by comparison. However, when I as a millennial was watching Seinfeld when it was being originally aired, I thought it was great.
Oh, hell, no. It’s not like Seinfeld invented sitcoms, or even modern sitcoms. It’s not the Model T, it’s the Ford Escort. Maybe.
And I’m not saying it’s unfunny, I’m saying it’s a solid 90s sitcom that for some reason people are out here saying is the Model T of sitcoms. I feel like the level of hyperbole puts the burden of proof elsewhere.
And it’s also not a case of it now being standard, because I assure you I’ve had this opinion since it was airing. I very much was of the batch of people who flip-flopped on Family Guy, but I was in the “Seinfeld was mid” camp before anybody ever called anything “mid”.
Agree to disagree then
Been agreeing to disagree on this one for like 35 years, I’m good with that.
Underrated comment
An extremely 90s take.
Real heads will know the genre peaked with Cheers.
Ok, maybe I just don’t like sitcoms.
I didn’t necessarily mind it, but Jerry’s awful standup shoved in there on the other hand…
Yeah that is funny. It’s like Dee doing her standup except Seinfeld is more subdued and not gagging.
Generational labels tend to divide by arbitrary boundaries more than actually give you insightful information about something exclusive to the group.
Sounds like someone’s born on a cusp. Or right in the middle.
lol, yes
To boomers and idiots, millennials just means “younger than me”
Same goes for younger generations. Everyone old is a boomer.
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96, Seinfeld finished in 98. I doubt many that young would have seen it. I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
Seinfeld was hugely syndicated. I was born in the 90s and watched tons of reruns of it. I think they played it after or before the Simpsons which my family always watched.
Yeah same I watched reruns of Seinfeld every weeknight growing up from '98-05 at least if not later
I was born in 84 and have seen every episode multiple times. Except the clip shows, because once you figure out that’s what’s happening you know better next time around and skip them.
I was born in 92 and have probably seen almost every episode. Idk if it’s generational or if it’s just person to person.
Of course it’s a person to person thing.
The years for Millennials go up to 94-96
?? What do you think millennials were doing after 1996? Did they just phase out of existence?
I was born in 86 and I barely watched Seinfeld re-runs.
People had Seinfeld on in my college dorm during the mid-00s. It was one of the most syndicated shows of its era. If you remember 9/11, you remember Seinfeld.
I commented on someone who seemed to think that millennials wasn’t the correct generation because millennials must have grown up watching Seinfeld. Many did, but many didn’t. I know many people around my age that didn’t watch it so it’s fairly safe to assume that people who were 2-4 years old when the show ended might not have seen it, even re-runs. Remembering it and watching it enough to have an opinion on it are two different things.
It’s not like every millennial watched it growing up. It’s not inconceivable that there are millennials who are seeing it now for only the first time and find it offensive.
I mean, it was genuinely hard to avoid for a while there.
Gen Z, maybe.
My partner is a millennial and she had never seen Seinfeld until we first watched it together a few years ago. It’s not that inconceivable to imagine not everyone grew up watching the same things as you.
No, it’s definitely fine and possible. A thriving industry of Youtube reaction channels hinges on that plausibility. It’s just the concept of the OP’s headline implying it’s a generational thing when it definitely isn’t.
Ummmm, the whole point of the show was that the people were horrible.
The show ended with them jailed after they made fun of a guy who was getting mugged.
The gang on It’s Always Sunny is worse but they are obviously not people we’re supposed to empathise with. It’s quite a bit less obvious on Seinfeld.
Always Sunny was taking the idea of Seinfeld and dialing it up to 11.
I feel like the distinction is that on Sunny the gang is “punished” for their shitty behavior, and on Seinfeld they basically never were. (I don’t include the season finale because that was just a cop-out to give the show an ending.)
I feel like Seinfeld reveled in the naughty pleasure of schadenfreude
I might be overthinking it but feel like Seinfeld was more a show about normal people who sometimes do shitty things - just like real life. I can’t think of anything truly horrible any of them did on the show, just a bunch of “social” wrongdoing. Telling a secret, sleeping at work, the perfect comeback, etc. It’s famously a show about “nothing”
Then IASIP is about a bunch of assholes riling each other up to be horrible for their own benefit.
I think Seinfeld is the more “important” in the grand scheme of television for it’s groundbreaking approach but in a vacuum, IAS is the better show.
Jerry purposely drugging his girlfriend so he could play with her toys was pretty shitty AND horrible.
Yes, but that’s season 9, which is after Larry David left as writer. While Larry David was there thru season 7 the characters were quirky regular people who sometimes made bad choices like all humans do sometimes. After Larry David left and Jerry Seinfeld was writing the show by himself from season 8 forward, the characters became much more fucked up, and the show was also way less funny
That’s a fair point. Season 9 was certainly a vibe I can’t quite find the words for.
Good one, I hardly remember the last couple of seasons and forgot that
George and Elaine are pretty psychopathic in the show. Jerry occasionally gets to be the good guy, but isn’t much be better than them. It’s way beyond social faux paus.
The show is still a very 90s show with 90s sensibilities. There is a lot of media from that time that hasn’t aged well.
If 90s shows make you clutch your pearls god help you if you catch something from the 80s or 70s.
I think that 90s media may be a bit more problematic because it was more willing to have the kinds of discussions that 80s media would never had.
Yeah, the “discussions” in the 90s where about normal behavior in the 70s and 80s.
Hell the 80s religious and political scene in America is what inspired A Handmaids Tail.
Millennial here. I tried to watch Seinfeld back in the day, and I thought it was kind of meh. But there was one character I really hated on the show. He had a whiny pathetic voice, was always complaining about something or another, and was just an awful actor, unlike the rest of the cast. I thought, if they just removed that one guy, the show would be great and I’d enjoy it so much more.
I found out later, that guy was Seinfeld. So… I never really got into the show.
THANK YOU! I can’t stand that guy. His voice kills me and I never found him funny. Nothing against him personally, he might be a great person, but I can’t understand how people can stand the content he makes.
Goodnews! Seinfeld is a pedophile and supposedly kind of a sociopath. He’s also tried to hop on the anti-woke train a couple of times in the past few years.The man made a major contribution to western cultus as a whole, but man is he a bastard.
I’ve seen a few episodes of his show where he takes comedians to get a coffee in his fancy cars. He often comes across like an asshole. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in charge of the show why he would want to be portrayed that way? Presumably he could edit some stuff out?
I assume it’s supposed to be part of the comedy, that’s kind of the point of the show, they’re all terrible, so assuming he’s kinda playing the character that could make sense.
Not Seinfeld the show, I’m talking about an interview show Seinfeld the man does. I dont think it’s scripted. But yea he could just be playing up his persona, idk.
Right, I do mean even in the interview show I bet he’s playing the character to an extent
He was definitely the weakest actor of the 4, and had the poorest story lines.
He was supposed to be the outside observer making the jokes about his crazy friends. That’s why early episodes had him literally doing stand up in the intro and outro.
I thought all the episodes had that. I never really watched the show much though.
They phased it out after the first or second season.
According to other sources I have found, the show had them for the first seven seasons. They were removed when Larry David left the show.
My mistake.
Seinfeld is definitely the weakest character and the show is the most memorable from everyone else
That is about the best burn on Seinfeld I’ve ever read. Bravo!
Yeah also a millennial and it’s just… not that funny? I get that plenty of shows haven’t aged perfectly, so it’s not that. Friends has plenty of moments that haven’t aged well (lots of gay jokes about Chandler come to mind), but the comedy still holds up really well. Seinfeld… Not so much.
Millennials are like 40 years old now. Does this article writer think Millennial just means “kid”?
Millennials are like 40 years old now.
PS. I’m not actually 40 but I’m getting there before I even realise it.
I just turned 40. It’s fine. Same joints ache as when I turned 30, less heartburn (because I’ve figured out my triggers).
It’s worded like we’re all still in our early 20s.
It’s just hot clickbait garbage for boomers
I’m a millennial and watched the Seinfeld finale live…
It’s weird that “this group of people don’t like that show that you like” is supposed to create some sort of negative reaction. My enjoyment of a thing does not depend on a certain number of other people liking it.
I must be numb to “outrage is the best way to engage people” that everyone uses these days.
To be fair, Outrage Marketing does work, but it usually isn’t this obvious.
Like when Disney announced that the Snow White remake would have Seven Multicolored Normal Sized Human People? And later it turned out the final movie will indeed have dwarves?
That was just done to get bigots talking about the flick. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn Aerial being black in the newer Mermaid movie was the same thing. I mean it worked, people were too busy defending Disney from criticism for this move that they didn’t notice the movie is, like most Live Action Remakes of Non-Live Action media, shit.
Hey Disney, bring back your 2D Animation, have them do another Lion King, then dub it over with the audio for the Mufasa film. I guarantee I’ll actually consider watching the damn thing if you do that. (These Live Action remakes have got to be a Money Laundering scheme or something)
Hey Disney, bring back your 2D Animation
Disney used to churn out plenty of entertaining live action shows without issue.
The problem isn’t with the medium, it’s with the company. They’ve fired too many writers, put too much stock in CGI, and devolved too much of the editing process to the marketing department.
But the idea that the folks who brought you Tron, The Mighty Ducks, and Pirates of the Caribbean can’t make good live action cinema is crazy.
Before The Little Mermaid Disney made live-action remakes of Pinnochio and Peter Pan. Neither of them had a substantial outrage associated with them and I didn’t hear about either of them until they’d already released and flopped.
Imagine making a live action Pinocchio and not putting Guillermo del Toro in charge
I fucking hate Gossip Girl.
I’m also a 40yo man… so… that tracks.
The original or the reboot?
For the first time? We grew up with this show.
Ya know how growing up, our parents called every system a “Nintendo”, even if it was clearly a Playstation or a Sega Genesis?
Yeah that’s what boomers do with age groups. Anyone younger than them is a “Millenial Zoomer on Youtube’s TikTok app”
Ya know how growing up, our parents called every system a “Nintendo”, even if it was clearly a Playstation or a Sega Genesis?
My parents called everything an Atari
We were the ones watching it when it was first airing. I don’t think there was anyone in my highschool that wasn’t watching it.
If you’re a boomer, the older half of Gen X are also boomers and everyone younger is a millennial.
Are we talking about “Seinfeld”, the slightly overrated comedy TV series, or “Seinfeld”, the horrible human being?
Yes
Meh, Jerry Seinfeld has been pushing the “I’m too offensive for young people” and “I’ve been cancelled” nonsense for a while now. He’s just old and not funny anymore. Turns out telling the same jokes for 30 years doesn’t get a lot of laughs. What is the deal with millennials anyway!
he unequivocally walked that back recently. said he was wrong to think that and it isn’t a thing. he probably had a talk with his kid or something.
He probably had a long talk with his PR counselor and was advised that he stood to loose more then he would gain if he stuck to that.
I don’t care honestly. the message is more important than the motive.
It’s not offensive, it’s just not that funny.
97% of Seinfeld’s entertainment value is the bass line.
But if you make an observation and draw it out for a long time, that automatically makes it funny, right?
BA DOUH BUH shikka shikka BAH-DA (et al)
That’s what’s offensive
I’m an Xer and I didn’t like Seinfeld, but that’s mostly because I don’t like embarrassment comedy. It’s the same reason I don’t like Will Ferrel and Ben Stiller, but to each their own. I don’t begrudge anyone else finding it funny, it’s just not my vibe.
I’m not saying you have to like Seinfeld or anything, but I wouldn’t consider it embarrassment comedy. It’s more about the gang being a bunch of sociopaths, like an early version of IASIP.
I agree on the embarrassment humor. Cringey stuff is worse than the most hellacious and gory horror to me most of the time.
Sienfeld never really hit me that way, though. It just seemed stupid and contrived in a very “look how edgy and relevant I am” sort of way.
That right there is some clickbait. I’m millennial and I was watching the show when it was on and loved it.
Yeah, not sure how old they think millennials are or when they thought Seinfeld aired
#HEY IT’S THE ASSMAN!
I wasted many homework nights watching this until 2am, same goes for friends and frasier.
But tbh i’m easily amused as long as it isn’t short form brainrot.
What‽ I grew up on it and I’m as young as we get. No it’s his current stand up that’s in poor taste and one night of Kramer’s stand-up that’s actually offensive
I got a few laughs with Kramer’s stand-up. Not at the racist non-jokes themselves, but when those lines were remixed with out-of-context scenes from Seinfeld.
George: “He’s black? I thought he looked Irish… What’s his last name?”
Kramer: yells the N-word
George: calmly…That’s not Irish
☝️; this.
Yeah as another one of the youngest millennial (or the oldest gen Z depending on which year you classify the generational turn-over) I’ve never really understood the whole millennials are offended trope.
I grew up watching south park, family guy, ATHF, honestly pretty much everything on adult swim or comedy Central. There isn’t much that offends me except glorifying ultra wealth, and that isn’t offensive, it pisses me off personally.
All of my friends are the same way, honestly they are mostly more offensive than me even.
There has been exactly 1 millennial I know of that has shit takes like this and he’s 2-3 years older than me. That’s it 1 even though college, of course these articles aren’t written to be accurate, it’s just rage bait.
I’m definitely not gen z (30), but yeah. I do definitely think there are lines in comedy as do many of my friends, but I grew up on some really tasteless shit. As a teenager I liked a lot of it, but as an adult I’ve come to want nothing to do with comedy that’s offensive to be offensive unless there’s a point. I still love Always Sunny, but south park stopped amusing me when I became an adult.
I honestly think a lot of it comes down to millennials seeing jokes explicitly at the expense of people just living their lives as offensive or in poor taste.
But also I think the concept of offensive has basically become so culturally loaded as to be difficult to use for anything other than mocking those whose sensibilities or sense of humor differ from yours.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the immorality of Kramer’s racist stand-up was exaggerated. It was absolutely offensive and 100% not acceptable. There was nothing funny about it, and there was no possible current setting in which that would be okay. Especially when the audience member became upset, Kramer needed to drop the show immediately and apologize. However, it is obvious he did not mean it as real. I believe he was trying to shock the crowd by being offensive and picked the wrong thing to be offensive about. From what I can tell, the n-word and racism to Kramer are so absurd, that the bit was to make fun of racists by taking on the role of someone that would believe in it to show how stupid it is. It was a caricature. Unfortunately, our society is still racist and the victims haven’t healed yet because it’s still ongoing, so it didn’t land right at all. His white privilege made him tone deaf, so it was less about him being purposely racist and more about showing how racism is still alive. It also gave racists a possible pass at being overly racist if he were allowed to get away with it. I think in the future, society will either not care about it as much or find it makes sense because they will agree with the spirit in their time.
Again, i am not excusing his standup or saying it was okay. It was not okay. But, I also think it’s not what people make it out to be. In fact, he owned it and apologized for it a lot. He was clearly regretful and wanted to point out how much it hurt him as well. This made him a perfect target for mob justice using shame as a weapon because he believed he deserved it and would not fight back. It ended his career, and he’s been in hiding ever since. He was one of the first celebrities to be canceled by social media. The only time I remember him coming back out was on an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and he looked like a broken person. The backlash was so intense, that even South Park made a show about it called With Apologies to Jesse Jackson (S11E1).
I understand I might be misunderstanding the situation, so I do not mean to profess my opinion as fact and am open to other interpretations.
Would you leave us the fuck alone, we’re old now!
Almost every time an article like this is posted, the contents are the result of one or two comments out of thousands, or a Reddit post that didn’t gain much traction outside of “eh, sure, I guess?”
Tangentially related, IMO there should be an “author review” site, where if someone posts a stupid article like this, it is referenced in a database against their name and their frame of reference for the content is called out. Rank “journalists” against this, and eventually the people starting out in the industry posting AI-generated shite that doesn’t hold up will start to err on the side of caution.
You’ve just re-invented journalistic standards and peer review.
It is how the news cycle is supposed to work. One journalist says something, others verify or disprove it publicly.
The problem is that there is now no difference between journalism and content or between news channels and platforms.
Most journalists are just doing Op-Ed now anyways.
