So, what, as Jerry Seinfeld might say, was the deal with “Seinfeld”?
Yes, like millions of other Americans, I felt I had to watch the last show of the 9-year-old series on Thursday night. With all the hype that preceded it, I would have felt downright unpatriotic had I not watched.
It was easy. Unlike most of my fellow African-Americans, I like the show.
Most black viewers tell pollsters that they can relate more easily to programs featuring black stars and black culture. Surveys taken by advertising giant BBDO New York since 1985 have shown “Seinfeld” consistently dragging along the bottom of black viewing habits while shows with black casts, like “Martin,” “Living Single” and “The Wayans Brothers,” rank at the top.
Yes, I agree that it is refreshing to see some racial diversity on the airwaves. Network programming in the 1950s and 1960s featured black performers about as often as today’s programming features Samoans.
But I have enjoyed “Seinfeld,” too, perhaps because it reflects another minority I belong to: the smugly self-absorbed.
Sure, like most Americans I try to speak and behave as though I were generous, sensitive and sympathetic. But I have another side that is selfish, callous, greedy and indifferent to the pain of others.
That side would like to make as much money as possible, spend it on a lavish lifestyle, tell the needy to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and celebrate the “winners” in our society that Rush Limbaugh is always talking about.
This is the side of me that I usually repress in the interest of building a better society and keeping what few friends I have. “Seinfeld” gives that naughty side a release, a safety valve through the angst and antics of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, four characters who are the very embodiment of the side of myself that I would rather not invite to dinner.
At least I have no plans to run for office. I know what I am and so does Seinfeld, the man and the program. The difference between us is that Seinfeld took this anti-heroic side of human nature and shaped it into the most successful comedy series of this decade.
As such, “Seinfeld” tells us as much about the ’90s as “I Love Lucy” or “Father Knows Best” told us about the ’50s, as “The Dick Van Dyke Show” told us about the ’60s, as “All in the Family” told us about the ’70s and “The Cosby Show” (which was “Father Knows Best” with an all-black cast) told us about the ’80s.
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What other decade would have been cynical enough to romanticize the ramblings and ravings of four thoroughly self-absorbed, upwardly mobile, young, single adults in Manhattan?
It was an easy series to create, Jerry says. He simply lifted his characters from real life. No doubt.
The program is an extension of Seinfeld’s comedy monologues, which draw their humor from the annoyances of everyday life. Petty annoyances are funny only when we don’t have more urgent matters pressing down on us. With that in mind, it makes sense that “Seinfeld,” which started out slow in ratings, picked up popularity as America’s economy improved to its highest level since the 1960s. Don’t worry, be happy, watch Jerry complain about the paradox of salad bars.
With that in mind, I thought the final show appropriately scraped the very bottom of its characters’ characters.
After a display of breathtaking callousness, in which the four stars gawk and make fun of a carjacking victim in sleepy little Latham, Mass., they are arrested under a new Good Samaritan law and charged with “criminal indifference” for doing what the show is purported to be about, nothing.
They hire the spitting image of Johnnie Cochran, who argues passionately that, “You don’t have to help anybody. That’s what this country is all about.”
Hungry media, represented appropriately by Geraldo Rivera, and a publicity-seeking prosecutor put the Seinfeld Four on trial for the offenses they have committed against the Soup Nazi, Bubble Boy and the series’ other memorable characters. Of course, they are convicted and wind up in prison, chattering the same hilariously self-absorbed nonsense they normally babble in the neighborhood diner.
Everyone talks about how Seinfeld is a show “about nothing.” They’re wrong. Drawn from contemporary American life, it holds up a mirror to modern urban life that is more fun to laugh at than to think much about.
Which may explain why many of the final program’s viewers went away disappointed. If they were expecting the ultimate show “about nothing,” they didn’t get it. This program wanted us to think. As Jerry might say, I don’t have a problem with that.
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