“David’s penchant for using real names and real-life stories in Seinfeld scripts, week after week, without any effort to conceal constructed a third dimension: There was reality; there was television; and there was Seinfeldia, where the elements of both comingled, passed through, and, as the show’s audience grew, enticed fans into feeling like this was more than just another sitcom. This was a feeling, a place, another world, and one they could visit whenever they wished.”
-Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (from Seinfeldia)
What’s the deal with people who write books about TV shows? I wanna know!
Have you ever shortened a verbal story by saying “yadda yadda yadda”? Have you even come across someone who talked so low you couldn’t understand them or too close they made you uncomfortable? Has a person ever violated one of your rules and you yelled “No soup for you!”? If you understand those references, then you have seen Seinfeld, arguably the most popular and significant live-action television show ever. Its history and wide ranging influence are the subject of Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, a new book by entertainment journalist and author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.
Seinfeldia is not unlike your typical biography of a TV show: It begins with a history of the acclaimed comedy about the adventures of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, from conception to completion (the original name for the show was The Seinfeld Chronicles, which would have also been a fitting title for this volume), with informative mini-bios of the principle cast and writers. The final quarter recounts tales of Seinfeld’s wide-ranging and almost mystical influence on society (which could have been a book all by itself). Armstrong cleverly begins most of the chapter titles with “The” like (almost) every episode of the series, a nice touch. And it’s packed with interesting anecdotes about the origins of storylines, many of which were fresh even to a devotee like myself.
There were a few facts in Seinfeldia that did not match up with what I already knew, however. For example on pages 203-204 Seinfeldia says that there were 180 original episodes and that “The Cartoon” was number 169, but according to a book I read about 12 years ago, Seinfeld and Philosophy (edited by William Irwin, Open Court Books, ed. 2004), which lists at the back all the Seinfeld episodes, “The Cartoon” was number 161, and they produced 169 in total. Wikipedia, which I used in this case as a tie-breaker, agrees with Armstrong (IMDb says 173…what’s going on here!?!). And on page 142 Armstrong writes that the character Kramer tried to “goad” actor Jon Voight into biting his arm, but as I recall Voight bit him because he mistakenly thought the “hipster doofus” was trying to steal his cab (although to be fair that could be just a different interpretation).
I rarely comment on the photos in a book, but the ones in Seinfeldia seem almost random and underwhelming, as if they grabbed whatever they could get and shoved them in just for the sake of having pictures. They did not add all that much to the text.
There is a great line in one of the Batman movies: “…you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.” Among my all-time favourite TV sitcoms are Buffalo Bill starring Dabney Coleman and John Cleese’s britcom Fawlty Towers. Combined they did not produce more than 40 episodes, so they never had a chance to “jump the shark” like The Simpsons (but who knows what would have happened with the aforementioned two shows if they had lasted longer). I guess part of Seinfeld’s appeal is that they walked away on top.
Certainly they captured lightning in a bottle, and Seinfeldia does convey this; overall it is skillfully written, erudite, often amusing, and never obtuse (I read it in two sittings). I recommend Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything as a treat for anyone who loves “The Sein.”
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