Friday 10 May 2019

Why Did the Seinfeld Strategy of 'Nothing' Work

I was one of those people who who actually didn't watch Seinfeld during the years that it was on (yes, I lived overseas and simply never caught it).  So it was around a decade later....that I finally sat down and began watching the episodes....one after another. 

Presently, I've watched some of these at least twenty times (my all-time favorite one is the one about the golf ball and the whale, where George becomes a Marine biologist).

I've tended to disagree that it's a series about nothing.  It's presented four central characters, and least forty additional characters that people were simply charmed to meet.

It's like talking over the guys in Elaine's life, the jobs that George had and lost, or the innovations that Kramer tried to sell people.  It was the same principle that Andy Griffith used with unique characters.  People latch onto things like this.

The Limo episode with the Nazis?  People could sit there and imagine this happening because this involved George's little world of impossibilities.  The same is true with George getting a job with the Yankees...it was simply possible.

I was reading a piece around two years ago....on how some Iranian guy had found a way to bring in the complete series, and began to loan it out to friends.  Over the course of a year or two.....every single person who'd watched the DVDs......got into the show and actively discussed the topics of each show. 

It's not about 'nothing', it's more of a 'something'.