Although we’ve got season 1-6 of Seinfeld on DVD, in the name of economy (relocating 12,000 miles is not cheap) I was all set to wait, showing signs of extreme virtue, until Wellington Public Library got this DVD box set into stock rather than pay $90.00. True, the fact that WPL have a great collection meant I didn’t think I would have had to wait too long, which was a factor – but my brother (unknown to me) came up with a better solution and bought me it for Christmas and we've gorged on it already. So much for my supposed restraint.
Before they started releasing these box sets I’d only seen a handful of Seinfeld episodes, so I had no idea how consistently funny this show was until very recently – either they never showed it much on UK terrestrial TV, or I just missed it (the few episodes I had seen were on cable TV). Six seasons later I feel like Seinfeld is a required part of my life – the unique comedic style, the endlessly repetitive yet endlessly inventive and (increasingly) amoral universe of Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine is like a second home, a deeply satisfying, and funny, parallel universe. TV shows seem to work best when they successfully turn only on their own invented logic, to the point of solipsistic madness, and Seinfeld season 7 certainly does that, in the form of Soup Nazis and Wig Masters, Marble Rye theft and toxic glue to name just a few of these episodes’ plot devices. After six years of creating, embellishing, and pruning the basic template every episode shares, this season runs like a well-oiled machine, with hardly a trace of slack in the scripts and a truly impressive standard maintained – in short, these episodes are uniformly hilarious.
As I discovered in looking at the DVD extras, Larry David left the show at the end of Season 7 but it carried on, with Jerry Seinfeld taking sole charge, for another two seasons. I haven’t yet seen any of these episodes, so I don’t know how this worked out – and, especially after having seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, it’s hard to imagine Seinfeld without Larry David’s influence - but hopefully I won’t have to wait too long to find out though as these box-sets have been coming thick and fast so far. The only question is, do I wait for WPL library to acquire it, or...
2 comments:
My favourite bit of Seinfeld was always the 'slap bass' that played in between most scenes
I don't know - I've always been disturbed by the way it sounds like it's about to go into a version of bobby brown's "my prerogative"?
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