Seinfeld re-explained

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on April 28th, 2005

If an alien were to drop down on the planet and he wanted an explanation of the television show called Seinfeld, we’d give him the link to this article in something called Juice News Daily.

Another violation of the fiction convention of isolating characters from the actors playing them, and separating the characters’ world from the actors’ and audience’s world, was a story arc that concerned the characters’ roles in promoting a television sitcom series named Jerry. Jerry was much like Seinfeld in that Seinfeld played himself, and that the show was “about nothing”. Jerry was launched in the 1993 season premiere of Seinfeld, in an episode titled “The Pilot”. This story arc, along with other examples of self-reference, have led many critics to point out the postmodern nature of the show.

Although we find most musings on the departed “sitcom about nothing,” to be soporific and derivative, this one made some worthwhile points. (And we stumbled across a question for the ages: If Seinfeld was the sitcom about nothing, what, exactly, was I Love Lucy about?)

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