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Seinfeld on All4

Started by Bad Ambassador, February 11, 2020, 10:27:42 AM

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ajsmith2

#120
Susan's presence and fate strike me as a clear forerunner to Frank Grimes in the Simpsons the following year: a more 'realistic' character who gets involved with the leads and whose presence (and eventual death as a result of their self centred negligence) serves to ultimately highlight how through years of crazy comic antics they're very much not average archetypal people anymore, and that  if they behaved like that in real life they'd be psychopaths.

It's quite a meta move that Seinfeld was able to get away with more cos it ended 2 seasons later, whereas The Simpsons continues to trudge on into infinity with it's characters debased mutated and diluted beyond anyone in the world being invested in their current iterations.

sevendaughters

yeah the basis for the first 4 series is 'stuff Larry and Jerry and other writers have done' and the final 2-3 is 'twisting the now-cartoonish expectations of Seinfeld in an interesting way' with a middle patch of transition that has some good ('The Race' is my favourite episode) and bad.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: ajsmith2 on September 24, 2020, 10:14:45 AM
serves to ultimately highlight how through years of crazy comic antics they're very much not average archetypal people anymore, and that their if they behaved like that in real life they'd be psychopaths.



I think they're all definitely sociopaths, aside from Kramer who tries to reason with them throughout the series when he witnesses objectionable behaviour.

Captain Crunch

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 24, 2020, 09:12:36 AM
A question re: Heidi Swedberg aka Susan (who imo is the hottest partner of any of them closely followed by the librarian Kramer seduces in the one with the Library detective) - when did Jason Alexander decide he had no comic energy with her? Was it during S4 when she's in it quite a bit, or was it when they brought her back for most of S7? Something about this whole story whiffed for me.

They say (politely) that the actress was a bit humourless, you can see in this blooper clip (from 1 minute in), where they're cracking up and she's just, not.

They also mention in a couple of the commentaries how Karen, the Risotto Broad, was underused and they could have done a lot with her and George following in the footsteps of Frank and Estelle. 




Puce Moment

Wasn't it Dreyfus who wanted her character killed?

sevendaughters

Quote from: Captain Crunch on September 24, 2020, 05:06:02 PM
They say (politely) that the actress was a bit humourless, you can see in this blooper clip (from 1 minute in), where they're cracking up and she's just, not.

They also mention in a couple of the commentaries how Karen, the Risotto Broad, was underused and they could have done a lot with her and George following in the footsteps of Frank and Estelle.

Yeah, I sort of allude to their characterisation in my question - Alexander says he had no working rapport with her but was told to get along with his job, until she had some scenes with others and they all felt the same. It just doesn't feel like a good excuse, given that she was there for quite a while in series 4 and they brought her back for a whole series run in 7. Not only that, without the anchoring of Susan in that series, the descent into pure self-parody and wackiness hastens. They know Karen is good after 1 episode but Susan gets 28? Not buying it. Think they were probably low-level bullies and she likely exhibited an independent streak.

Quote from: Captain Crunch on September 24, 2020, 05:06:02 PM
They say (politely) that the actress was a bit humourless, you can see in this blooper clip (from 1 minute in), where they're cracking up and she's just, not.

Hmm, that's not really true though is it? Look at the bit after "one child" and you can see her crack up and after the mouth to mouth bit at 1min she has to lower her head because she's smiling. Maybe she's more of a smiler rather than loud chuckler...

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth



El Unicornio, mang

I seem to remember watching the bloopers on the Seinfeld DVDs and noting that Michael Richards tended not to laugh/looked a bit pissed off.

I've heard there was generally a bit of a closed-off thing with the principal cast.

QuoteAccording to Gammill and Pross, most guest stars on Seinfeld kept a polite distance from the regular cast during production, but Kathy Griffin would freely, and sometimes loudly, engage the show's stars in conversation.[1] Griffin later performed a stand-up comedy routine alleging that Jerry Seinfeld was rude to her during filming. Seinfeld was so amused by this he had it written into a later episode, "The Cartoon", where Griffin returned as Sally Weaver.

olliebean

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 24, 2020, 05:29:35 PM
Wasn't it Dreyfus who wanted her character killed?

The implication here is that whilst the four of them were shit-talking Swedberg after a taping, Louis-Dreyfus made an offhand remark about wanting to kill her that gave David the idea to kill off the character.

good times

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 24, 2020, 09:12:36 AM
A question re: Heidi Swedberg aka Susan (who imo is the hottest partner of any of them closely followed by the librarian Kramer seduces in the one with the Library detective) - when did Jason Alexander decide he had no comic energy with her? Was it during S4 when she's in it quite a bit, or was it when they brought her back for most of S7? Something about this whole story whiffed for me.

Just rewatching season 7 now having just recently heard Alexander's comments and it's sort of soured it for me as it's all I can think about when they're on screen.

Thought from the first viewing they were awkward together on screen but it seemed to fit and most of Seinfeld's guest stars are quite cartoony and unnatural.

As you say it makes no sense to bring her back if she wasn't rated as an actress, they probably just didn't get on with her and this became more apparent when she was working more regularly with them.

Still a shitty thing for him to say I thought.

thr0b

Alexander often comes across as quite shitty in interviews. He doesn't appear to have a politeness filter. There's an interview with him on one of the DVDs of the early series where he expresses his anger that they didn't include him in an episode (the one where Jerry and Elaine go to Florida) and the attitude comes across as fairly unpleasant and entitled - he says something along the lines of "I told them, you ever write me out of an episode again, you don't include me in any more either."

And I just thought that was terribly cuntish. You're in a huge show. The episode storyline doesn't need your character. You'd prefer to be included as lip-service? Fuck off.

neveragain

Quote from: olliebean on September 24, 2020, 07:48:24 PM
The implication here is that whilst the four of them were shit-talking Swedberg after a taping, Louis-Dreyfus made an offhand remark about wanting to kill her that gave David the idea to kill off the character.

There's an interview with Larry David on one of the DVDs (probably the Inside Look on The Invitations) where he claims to have jokingly thrown "Why can't we just kill her?" into a writing discussion, when they were stuck on how to end the Season 7 arc.

magval

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on September 24, 2020, 07:08:23 PM
I seem to remember watching the bloopers on the Seinfeld DVDs and noting that Michael Richards tended not to laugh/looked a bit pissed off.


There's a lot of discussion of this in the extras, and footage of him actually telling Julia stop laughing. He had a real issue with corpsing.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Which is very odd, considering how badly he reacted when that one bloke didn't laugh at his stand up gig.

Icehaven

You people are ruining Seinfeld for me.

Thursday

Quote from: thr0b on September 24, 2020, 09:30:34 PM
Alexander often comes across as quite shitty in interviews. He doesn't appear to have a politeness filter. There's an interview with him on one of the DVDs of the early series where he expresses his anger that they didn't include him in an episode (the one where Jerry and Elaine go to Florida) and the attitude comes across as fairly unpleasant and entitled - he says something along the lines of "I told them, you ever write me out of an episode again, you don't include me in any more either."

And I just thought that was terribly cuntish. You're in a huge show. The episode storyline doesn't need your character. You'd prefer to be included as lip-service? Fuck off.

Aye that was so odd, and the fact that he's happily talking about it as if it's not something that reflects incredibly poorly on him.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on September 21, 2020, 07:37:10 PM
One thing I had never noticed until watching the HD versions is Jerry's eclectic video and computer game collection. Back to the Future III (but not the first two), Child's Play 2, The Crying Game among them. Nice to see Goodfellas in there.



His back shelf has always been something in the background I've kept an eye on. I'm sure his hifi stack gained and lost components at random. And I like the evolution of his computer desk, even if it's an obvious Apple product-placement, because it culminates in the now rare anniversary macintosh.



I wonder if this was one of Apple's earlier attempts to be prominent props in television.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: thr0b on September 24, 2020, 09:30:34 PM
Alexander often comes across as quite shitty in interviews. He doesn't appear to have a politeness filter. There's an interview with him on one of the DVDs of the early series where he expresses his anger that they didn't include him in an episode (the one where Jerry and Elaine go to Florida) and the attitude comes across as fairly unpleasant and entitled - he says something along the lines of "I told them, you ever write me out of an episode again, you don't include me in any more either."

And I just thought that was terribly cuntish. You're in a huge show. The episode storyline doesn't need your character. You'd prefer to be included as lip-service? Fuck off.

He had them over a barrel though. They knew he could have easily gone back to do more of these at the click of a finger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1kmVwS4Hw 

ajsmith2

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 25, 2020, 01:16:18 AM
His back shelf has always been something in the background I've kept an eye on. I'm sure his hifi stack gained and lost components at random. And I like the evolution of his computer desk, even if it's an obvious Apple product-placement, because it culminates in the now rare anniversary macintosh.



I wonder if this was one of Apple's earlier attempts to be prominent props in television.

I find it fascinating how Seinfeld's computer is in every episode but he's never seen using it even once. Presumably it's reason for inclusion in the set (other than product placement) was that that's how he types up his routines. It's just kind of interesting from the point of view of the show being just before computer/laptop usage as a facet of everyday life became ubiquitous. I think the internet is mentioned once on Seinfeld, in the last season, and of course it could only be crazy old Kramer who's the early adopter.

QDRPHNC

I remember reading some article about that, that it was some very rare kind of Mac.

Also, yes, I thought Jason Alexander was a twat after that interview about the Florida episode. But the Seinfeldia book expanded on it, basically he knew he was on to a good thing and was terrified that JLD was going to get more popular than him and be the sidekick and he'd be off the show, so his insecurity made him act like an arse. Which is quite a Costanza thing to do.

samadriel

Quote from: ajsmith2 on September 25, 2020, 04:15:15 AM
I find it fascinating how Seinfeld's computer is in every episode but he's never seen using it even once.
There's one episode where he's using it; season 5, "The Stall".  Kramer comes in to use Jerry's phone to call phone sex lines, and he's busy at his computer.

good times

Quote from: Twonty Gostelow on September 25, 2020, 02:08:25 AM
He had them over a barrel though. They knew he could have easily gone back to do more of these at the click of a finger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1kmVwS4Hw

His mannerisms at the start of that really remind me of a Limmy sketch, think it might be the one where he convinces the lads to pretend fight (couldn't find it on YouTube soz)

poodlefaker

The idea of an elaborate double carton to keep the salad from getting warm fits very comfortably into the Seinfeld universe, I think. Maybe  McDonalds stole it from a young George Costanza and allowed him to be in the commercial  to keep him quiet.

"Look at this, again with the warm lettuce. I can't believe it never took off, Jerry. It was a GREAT IDEA!"

Puce Moment

I think the problem Richards' had with corpsing (especially from Dreyfus) might be explained by how incredibly method he is in terms of prepping to get into his role. It's no accident that he became the most popular character - and although the writers can take some credit, both David and Seinfeld have stated how incredible he was at owning that role and pushing it WAY beyond what they had in their heads. In the end they wrote for the way he played Kramer - rather than Richards' having to fit his characterisation around their writing.

I can't remember who spoke about this in an interview, but it was probably Seinfeld himself, who spoke at some length about how prior to filming they would be sitting around shooting the shit, and Richards' would be in his changing room running through lines all day, talking in character, sudden whoops and doors opening. He really inhabited that part and the constant corpsing really doesn't help with that immersion.

I love the Seinfeld bloopers, and at first I thought Richards' frustration was both petty and failed to account for how funny the writing is - but when you realise how hard he worked to get into that character that is one of the best in all sitcom history, it sort of does make some sense.

DrGreggles

It must have also been frustrating for Richards when they corpsed at one of his pieces of physical comedy, as that's pretty difficult to pull off repeated takes of the same quality.
To be fair to the others, some of those are fucking hilarious, and I don't think they knew just how big he'd go in terms of the final performance.

Twonty Gostelow

It feels like a lot of the bloopers became falser as the seasons went on, when they were flush with money and could do no wrong. Same applies to the Friends outtakes.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: Twonty Gostelow on September 25, 2020, 02:08:25 AM
He had them over a barrel though. They knew he could have easily gone back to do more of these at the click of a finger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1kmVwS4Hw

Jason Alexander: The Squashed Steve Guttenberg Years.

undeliberated

Greggles has it right about Michael Richards' war on corpsing, I think: Richards is often doing completely one-off improvisational stuff, and if someone in the same shot is laughing they can't use that take however good it is. So a lot of unique excellence is cast into the void.

There are some of the bloopers where he almost explicitly explains this - I think the pipe scene as Kramer and Elaine are getting ready to go into the apartment and reclaim the jacket, there are like 10 cuts where JLD collapses laughing and Richards explains at one point that he did something funny with the tobacco for the pipe but they can't use it now.

Once you've seen the bloopers you can also pick up on a few bits that made it into the show where they had to make a cut or crop a shot just to keep what he'd done, even though in the original the tape runs or the screen is widened to include other actors corpsing. I seem to remember the "look away I'm hideous" bit of the smoking room episode is one of these. If you know what you're looking for you can see even in the broadcast version that Seinfeld is laughing for the last 5 seconds or so but it's cut in such a way that it draws attention away from him.