Seinfeld is back - and it's a big deal!

 

Society has changed a lot since Seinfeld’s heyday…

I was ecstatic to hear Seinfeld was on Netflix! And yes, I too am watching it and revisiting the familiar characters and the comedic flair of a 30 -year-old show about nothing.

I was more than a little surprised that Netflix acquired the exclusive streaming rights to the show from was it reportedly more than half a billion dollars and began hosting it in October.

I’m thoroughly enjoying its single half-hour episodes sometimes almost playing in the background while I prepare dinner do stuff around the house.

While Co-creator Larry David has continued to explore the same comedy mode in his HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, that premiered in 1999, I never became a fan as much as I was of Seinfeld. Experts in the network television industry state that shows like Seinfeld, as well as Friends, The Office, and The Big Bang Theory, have had staggering streaming-rights acquisition deals over the last few years. These shows are said to be “a carefully calibrated unit of content designed to go down as easy as possible.”

I always thought of Seinfeld as a state of mind and not just a sitcom. To this day, it doesn’t fail to put me in a “Seinfeld mood” in my own life. I’ve been quoting some of the antics from the show long after it aired its final episode. It was a show that invited us to participate in the terminology of the characters (shrinkage, the Jesus Freak, the High Talker, etc.). I still find myself quoting it 30 years later.

These days when I watch Seinfeld, I realize that I’m confronting my age. It takes me back to the days of NBC’s Must See TV — definitely a “must see” in our house. I remember how it made everyone mad when the series finale aired in 1998 — even the DJ’s on the radio were complaining about it.

Now when I re-watch it, I’m taken back to the decade of the 90’s in which the show was based. In particular, the anxieties that belonged to that decade — answering machines, VCR’s, straight characters confronting queer people (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”). Most interestingly for me is that the show communicated the things about humanity we are most ashamed to acknowledge. A lot of it was about shame, which is a social emotion that requires other people to function.

Personally, I’m delighted to see Seinfeld now on Netflix, and that others are watching it too. Perhaps even those who didn’t watch it the first time around.