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this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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What's funny about this is there's never been anything edgy about Jerry Seinfeld's standup act. And as far as Seinfeld goes he was barely involved in the writing. That was all Larry David and other talented writers. Of 180 episodes Jerry Seinfeld had 18 writing credits and all of them were shared with Larry David. Of those 18 credits 5 were in the first season which is undeniably the show's weakest and most forgettable. Jerry was always just the name. Larry was the talent.
I guess that's probably why Larry David just wrapped the final season of Curb this year while never once complaining about "not being allowed to do comedy" anymore like Jerry is. Turns out, you've always been allowed to do whatever comedy you like, you just have to actually be funny.
It’s also funny because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still airing too, and that is massively more edgy than anything seinfeld ever did.
I think that the problem is that jerry want to be edgy and still be considered the good guy. Which is not how Curb, IASIP or even the Seinfeld tv show ever was. They always were presented as bad/flawed people doing bad stuff. You 100% can still do that type of comedy. But you can’t do comedy where the characters are supposed to be good but do bad stuff
And that’s always been my argument when it comes to this particular dead horse. I don’t think any jokes are off the table, you just really have to make whatever discomfort you’re summoning be worth the punchline. The edgier something is the more it has to be funny to compensate, the point of offensive humor is to be funny not to offend, right? This has to be common sense. I don’t get how it flies over the head of so many people.
There are a lot of people who seem to think offending is all it takes. I think Sam McMurray’s character “Glen” in Raising Arizona, who is constantly telling “jokes” about Polish people being stupid that none of the other characters find funny, is a perfect example of the type.
Exactly. Either risk it and have a big payoff, or insert a point behind it. Make the audience think after they laugh, or search within themselves why that was funny, or the context behind the joke.
Or if you go for the edgy or dark joke, and get called out - you rolled that die, live with it. Crying “it’s just a joke” or “comedy is cancelled” after your bit failed to land is hacky
Same thing with folks who say they are in to the ‘brutal honesty’ thing, it should be about the honesty…essentially it’s about the earnestness of the thing instead of just using comedy/etc as cover to be an asshole (like Chappel).
Man that whole ‘being funny’ thing sounds really hard
Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the best & funniest shows I’ve ever seen
It's just years of "what's the deal with ______________" jokes, and 4 of the shittiest narcissistic people ever.
Are you talking about Seinfeld the show? The show is amazing. Jerry Seinfeld just isn't funny as a comedian.
Yes, I'm talking about the show. I didn't find it amazing, and felt that all of them going to jail in the end was a bit overdue
Yeah it was absolutely Larry David's show. But Seinfeld is a genius stand-up comedian in his own right.
He's categorically wrong on his conclusion here.
I’ve seen his stand up. It’s nothing special.
So much of his standup depends on making initial observations of seemingly absurd things and then not putting a single ounce of thought or research into them to determine if they're actually absurd. It's low-hanging fruit for tipsy people at a comedy club.
He was utterly, perfectly cast as a supposed straight-man who's just as callously thoughtless as his bizarre friends but with a veneer of "insight". It was brilliant. I wonder if he quite realized why.
Whats the deaaaal with airline food?
MY FIRST ILL-INFORMED IMPRESSION OF EVERYTHING IS WORTH MINING FOR IMAGINED ABSURDITY!
seinfeld pilot
seinfeld final episode:
...what particularly about these bits is either edgy or genius?
The last office bit is so true specially on Fridays when people have the wonderful idea of pushing to prod, instead of waiting to Monday with all hands available and everything triple checked
You don't have to find it funny. Did people laugh at it how and when he said it? If so, it was funny. Too late to cast your vote now. That's how comedy works.
I'm just saying that its pretty funny in and of itself that Jerry Seinfeld is like "you can't say anything in comedy any more" and all his bits are about losing a sock in the washing machine
Yeah he's obviously wrong about that and lives in N elite bubble. He's colored by how he saw the left treat Dave Chappelle and Louie CK, for example. But he also saw how the right treated Lenny Bruce and Dice Clay, for example. He should know better that nobody on the left is actually wanting to put comedians in jail for their jokes, that's exclusively the province of the right.
Also, this is the daily mail. It's probably not even real quote.
Unfortunately for Chapelle and Seinfeld, James Acaster did that bit that absolutely destroyed their whining.
And Unfortunately for Louis CK, his sex-pest-intimidation is just too memorable.
Why don't we mention Michael Richards (Cosmo Kramer) while we're at it.
Maybe the issue isn't "you can't say anything nowadays" and instead it's "you can't say the n-word, the t-slur, and look-its-my-dick-im-jacking-off-at-you nowadays"
As for Andrew Dice Clay, the man's schtick was just racism, sexism and pretending to light a cigarette. it was hardly one for the ages.
And then as for Bruce, yes, him being arrested for saying cocksucker is the only legitimate example of being cancelled for comedy on the list - but also he impersonated a priest and stole donations meant for a leprosy charity, which you'd be cancelled for in 200BC as well as 2024 AD
I don't think anyone was "cancelled." That's a righty-wing bogeyman word with no definition.
Nothing any of these comedians said or did takes away the fact that when they deliver their acts, they bring down the house. They connect with the crowd and the crowd laughs, involuntarily! The crowds are voting with their laughs and any one of these legendary comedians on an average day can play any room and get laughs. You'd be lucky to witness it. Laughing is involuntary. If the crowd is laughing, can't say the act isn't funny, that's some election denying bullshit. You certainly won't find it funny if you don't realize it's an act. Punchlines aren't true statements of the comedian's personal point of view or opinion, they are an act. Sometimes the joke is that the thing was even said in the first place.
At any rate, all the examples I gave are real things that happened. The three most justifiable shit storms, against Kramer, CK, and to a lesser extent Chappelle, are examples I gave of the left coming after a comedian.
Bruce, you agree, is as an example of the right coming after a comedian. You are wrong to lump Dice Clay in with CK and Kramer; Dice Clay cleared the way for comedy as an artform, and, again, the crowds laughed.
A better example I'm sure you'll also agree is not justified is South Africa, where the political right simply banned stand up comedy as a practice. That's the usual example, too, in far right countries: no laughing allowed!
Man, if you can't find the humor in these people's acts, not just Seinfeld, but also Dice Clay, or whatever other dirty or sexist or whatever fart jokes you think you're too whatever to laugh at, all these comics would laugh at your discomfort, which is with one person standing in front of a room full of people and talking for an hour straight. Anyone can buy a ticket. How provocative could it possibly get before they get booed off stage? You should go to a Chappelle set and turn the crowd against him; just explain why he's not funny like you do online. Should be no problem for you.
I'm not debating that they had good gigs and at those gigs made people laugh.
I'm saying that they did some shitty things, and their problem is not what they claim - that you can't do comedy any more. Its that society moved on without them and they don't know how to be funny any more. Yes they were funny, in context, in their respective haydays, but have since
If I was an Olympic figure skater arrested for robbing and killing the attendant at the gas station, it would be incorrect for me to say "Man people really hate Olympic figure skating nowadays - I guess everyone's too sensitive about skating, you just can't skate any more"
No, bruv, you blew a teenagers brains out over a kitkat, it's nothing to do with figure skating.
Without the show and its success, he wouldn’t be a well known Stand up today. He’s still surfing that wave.
He was a well-known comic before he did the show. Perhaps not a household name but very few comics ever are. He had already been on Carson like a dozen times, as a stand up in the 80s that's like the height of fame. You might even say that Seinfeld's TV show elevated him to a status that no comic had ever before achieved.
Certainly a status he couldn’t have achieved on his own merits. 95% of the people going to his shows go there because they know him through the TV show, not because they’re interested in his stand-up. Nowadays he’s mostly famous for being famous. But a douche, too.