WE LIVE (to a lesser extent) in SEINFELD

In theory, all multi-camera sitcoms follow a similar format. We have the cast of characters talking mostly trying to get in and out of absurd situations. These situations center around the five key pillars of our lives: work, romance, friends, family, and hobbies. So if they're all trying to hit these similar notes, how are they not fundamentally the same?

It all comes down to one key word: Tone

George, is he funny? He's funny. Every sitcom has a tone to its comedy, a distinctive voice that encapsulates the world in which the jokes are written. To better understand tone, you don't just look at what jokes they tell, but what jokes they avoid because what's absent from the page creates a unique lens through which to understand the world of the show.

For example, Seinfeld is famous for being a show about NOTHING, although Jerry later clarified that it was actually pitched as a show about how a comedian gets his material and each episode is actually about something, but co-creator Larry David had two key rules for writing the show: no hugging and no learning. This immediately sets the show apart from its competitors, where characters despite any conflict they endure tend to openly love and show affection for each other creating a more wholesome viewing experience or characters learn lessons, suffer real losses so that we don’t just relate to their mistakes, but learn from them.

On some level this can make a sitcom a bit like an adult version of a children’s show instilling values that could make the world a better place. Whereas Seinfeld does the opposite. It tells stories that involve these same key pillars, but, it strips them of their moral weight or emotional underpinning even though these characters have families, we know people they hang out with and colleagues they work with, other people are still largely seen as a burden. They are the worst unlike other sitcoms, Seinfeld takes a very cynical view of social interactions where there are arguably two layers to our behaviour: the public face we put on to appear polite, affable and nice and then the private face that only friends see, where we unload our true feelings on the people in our lives, we all do this in small doses but in Larry and Jerry’s scripts it is a constant theme.

The characters are all misanthropes who largely look out for themselves. Sure they may try to do each other favours from time to time but no one is to be trusted as if they don’t screw up by mistake their own self-interest may get in the way or they may just put their friend in an awkward position because it will be fun for them to witness. This makes the writing feel more unpredictable, as the characters don't have a clear moral compass guiding them, but with enough episodes, the tone and style of each sitcom becomes formulaic, as once they stray from the original voice the time in which the show is written stops feeling like itself, so think about it, if you were writing an episode of Seinfeld, what details would you have to include? What jokes would you have to tell? And what narrative structure would you have to follow to make it fit in with the rest?

Right off the bat, we'd obviously start with a stand-up routine from the comedian himself. It could be waiting in line, awkward handshakes, chewing gum, answering machine messages, whatever, it's going to set one of the episode's themes, but now it's time to decide what kind of episode it's going to be, and for Seinfeld there are three main episode markers:

There's the episode out of nowhere, where the entire show takes place in the time that most other sitcoms would skip, like waiting for your table at a restaurant, finding your car in a parking lot, or buying a gift to bring to dinner.

There’s the car accident episode where your character makes it clear from the start that there’s an outcome they don’t want, like telling people their ATM code or waking up in time for a race and now, throughout the episode The Perfect Storm will occur where no matter what they do, that exact outcome will happen.

Or the ironic unintended sequence episode where character plot lines converge to create an absurd outcome that no one could have seen coming. This is the most common type of Seinfeld episode and the formula usually involves the same elements: George’s stinginess, insecurity or laziness will create a problem that could have easily been avoided. Jerry will date or deal with someone who irritates him. Elaine will work with or date someone who turns out to be weird and Kramer will become obsessed with a new hobby or get rich quick and since Kramer is an unpredictable character, more often than not it’s his plot that will tie in perfectly to the ending, but before they get there, the characters must wrestle with an issue related to social etiquette. What are the unspoken rules of society that we must obey to avoid being criticized? For example, how long are we supposed to keep a thank you card? Inevitably, it will be thrown away, but when does it become socially acceptable to just throw it away? 2 weeks, 2 days, 2 minutes - what's the difference?

Once you've seen it, you've technically gotten the message - whatever the social issue is, it will usually involve a grey area and the characters will each have a slightly different degree to which they agree or disagree on every little detail to determine if a social crime has been committed.

The Seinfeld writers really specialize in honing in on a small preference that may have crossed the viewers' minds and then blowing it out of proportion to the point where the characters are willing to fight over it, because as offensive as it may seem, these are things we care about, we just don't make a big deal out of it because we don't want to seem petty, so having characters verbalize our own quiet background thoughts and support them as if they were the most important thing in the world is a classic Seinfeld trope that you just don’t find any other sitcoms without Larry David around, that’s because Seinfeld isn’t really a sitcom about anything, it’s a sitcom about the little things that put us off or disgust us that we can’t help but notice. This is particularly true when it comes to dating, characters will zero in on one little detail that becomes their dates entire personality, the talkative one, the close talker, the one who needs a nose job, the one who laughs like Elmer’s foot or the one who doesn’t laugh at all. Elaine even breaks up with someone for not using an exclamation point on an “I heard” left for her and she just can’t let it go.

The ultimate feel of the show is that hell is other people - even the people you like come with side effects - which is why Seinfeld's characters tend to always have a definable quirk that starts out nice in small doses but eventually builds to an irritating effect on everyone around them. It's like each character is comically trapped in a prison of their own idiosyncrasies, and while the main gang can't help but notice everyone else's annoying patterns, even they're stuck in a cycle with their own predictable one-liners. Elaine will push someone when she says get out, Kramer will say "oh yeah" and fall over a bunch, George will slip the word "baby" into most conversations, and Jerry will sarcastically say "shame" and reluctantly wave to Newman.

In any sitcom, the most defining stylistic quality is the rhythm of the dialogue. How does it sound as it unfolds, for example, if you swapped actors in sitcoms and had them perform each other's scripts? Can you identify what it was? This is one of Seinfeld's strongest characteristics - it just doesn't sound or feel like anything else given that it's a show about repetitive cycles of behavior. It's only fitting that the dialogue flows in the same way. So a certain word will often take a leading role in an exchange and will be repeated consistently back and forth. It's almost as if the actors are doing a dance with the dialogue by rearranging and repeating the same word over and over again with different punctuation. This gives Seinfeld a unique frequency, a tone that you just can't hear anywhere else, but not all characters will fit into the set rhythm. In fact, the personal gift of certain individuals is their charismatic communication styles. In these cases they may not be acting with the same voice but their delivery is still in keeping with the show's over-the-top style as in the Seinfeld joke universe everything is a circus nothing is normal everyone is irritating and nothing means anything things just happen it doesn't matter if it's fair or not you have the same chance of something good happening as something bad happening and the outcome you wanted today may be the reality you fear tomorrow so you better not take it too seriously whether you like it or not.

The show's formula of story irony makes it seem like an air of inevitability to the outcome of each episode that of course Kramer's golf ball will be discovered in a whale's hole by George pretending to be a marine biologist who of course the same host Elaine pretended to be deaf in front of now doesn't he'll believe the real deaf girl who just got in the back of his car who, of course, Susan's dad's cigars Cubans that George secretly gave to Kramer and end up burning down Dan's cabin because once you understand the formula and the tone and the idiosyncrasies that rule this world, then there's really no other way this is going to go.

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