NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

By: James Parker
December 10, 2021

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of (one of) their nerdy obsessions.

NBC TV/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock, via Indiewire

SEINFELDIA

It concerns me sometimes, how very content, how very soothed I am, re-re-re-watching an episode of Seinfeld. It feels like a kind of idiocy: thought-free, mouth open, occasionally emitting a mechanical mirth-noise. I know this show backwards, almost literally. I have followed it from my TV to my laptop, and from platform to platform to platform. Was there ever a time when I wasn’t watching Seinfeld? Presumably there was. But it doesn’t feel like it. Which is of course the point.

What is it about me in 2021 that I should require such pacification? And what is about Seinfeld that supplies it? The first question answers itself. The second is a bit more complicated. Let’s start with the technical reasons. In Seinfeld the sitcom form achieves a kind of perfection, and the soul is calmed and nourished (I feel like Thomas Aquinas writing this) by the contemplation of perfection. The Swiss watch plotting, the revolutionary pacing, the chemistry of the cast, the reality-altering perspective, the generation of laughter from spaces previously thought empty, the smirk of meta that flickers perpetually around Jerry’s mouth… Beautiful to behold, simply as a fully-achieved thing.

Then there’s the personal. I first encountered Seinfeld in the ‘90s, on Virgin Atlantic flights from London to Boston, flying over to be with my then-girlfriend, now my wife. The show spoke to me then of amazing American sophistication and charm. ‘The Contest’: had I ever seen an episode of anything to match that? Once arrived in Massachusetts, I would install myself in my mother-in-law’s bathroom and read her copy of SeinLanguage – Jerry’s standup bits rendered (with surprising effectiveness) as prose.

The show’s applicability is a byword. A truism, almost – “There’s a Seinfeld episode for everything.” Every cultural quirk, cracked taboo, scapegoat syndrome and social misfire. But there are also Seinfelds for cancer, death, divorce, violence and madness – not because these are ever explicitly discussed on the show (although they are sometimes: “Was he on his deathbed?” “No, I think he was on his regular bed.”) but because it models a complete comic universe. And a complete universe, comic or tragic, contains everything.

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Featured image for post on HILOBROW home page features from left: Michael Richards, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jerry Seinfeld, 1989-1998. © Castle Rock Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection

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NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

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