Jerry Seinfeld, the creator of the hit sitcom Seinfeld which ran for nine seasons from 1989 to 1999, has said he couldn’t make the show today because comedy is being killed by ‘people worried about offending everyone’.
Speaking to The New Yorker ahead of the release of his directorial debut Unfrosted on Netflix, the Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee star declared that television comedy is on the verge of extinction, and that people don’t get their comedy fix from their television sets like they used to back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
Seinfeld is widely considered to be the torch-bearer for successful situational comedy. Often described as a “show about nothing”, the nine seasons chart the relationship between four friends who live in New York and how each of them tackles and overcomes the mundanity and stress of normal, everyday life.
The framework of Seinfeld was followed by the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm (the star and creator of which, Larry David, also co-created Seinfeld), Friends and Frasier, all of which ran for several years and remain as popular nowadays as they were back when they first appeared on television screens across the globe.
When asked by editor of The New Yorker David Remnick how the seriousness of what is going on in the world right now affects comedy, Seinfeld replied: “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.
“It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘m*a*s*h’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on.’ You just expected, There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.
“Well, guess what—where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. Now they’re going to see standup comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly.
“But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—’Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
The ten-time Emmy award winner went on to reference an episode of Seinfeld which aired in the nineties where “Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway.’
“Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?”, he asks.
“We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom.”
He adds: “Culture—the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.”
Creator and star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rob McElhenney posted a subtle strike back at Seinfeld’s comments on Twitter by attaching a picture of long-running It’s Always Sunny character Matthew “Rickety Cricket” Mara, played by David Hornsby.
In the show, Rickety Cricket is a former school friend of the central characters who is first seen onscreen as a priest. Over the course of the show his interactions with the gang lead him into a downward spiral that eventually results in him becoming a homeless crack addict.
McElhenney’s implication being that Rickety Cricket’s dire circumstances make Kramer’s scheme look tame by comparison.
One user commented underneath the post: “Seinfeld walked so Rickety Cricket could run.”
Another wrote: “He must not have seen IASIP, Rick & Morty, most of Curb Your Enthusiasm, among others. Lot of stuff on streaming, HBO, etc. But he did get Hugh Grant to be Tony the Tiger in his new movie. So…interested.”
Jerry Seinfeld’s feature film Unfrosted is due to be released on Netflix later this month. It is loosely based on the true story of the creation of Pop–Tarts toaster pastries and stars Hugh Grant, Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer.
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