Authors Note:Sorry I got carried away and made it long, but then, its SEINFELD!
It's a gathering at Springfield (from The Simpsons) and the citizens are worried that the city is losing its popularity on the Tourist Map.
Mayor Quimby (always looking for a quick Buck!) asks the citizens for suggestions.
Patty and Selma (smoking guns!),the sisters of Marge Simpson walk up to the stage write SPRINGFIELD on the board and one of them says (in her usual deep-throated voice).
''In order to increase the popularity of this city we need to rename it in honor of someone popular and hence we propose changing it to SEINFELD''
That in a nutshell was the popularity of Seinfeld (you have to be pretty popular to be mentioned on The Simpsons!).
I confess to be one of the biggest fans of the F.R.I.E.N.D.S and I have watched re-runs and even re-re-runs of the show.
The actors and the style of the show make Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Phoebe and Joey at the best AMATEURISH.
Seinfeld has to be the best-written shows ever.
Each show has different sub-plots that are no way related to each other for 25 minutes of the show and then they all come together in the last 5 minutes in some sense of brutal irony that leaves the characters invariably looking foolish and leaves the viewer gasping for more.
The show revolves around the lives of four friends in New York and is basically about their activities. Each of these four characters has personalities that would drive a psychiatrist crazy.
I have another confession to make.
When the advertisements for the show first appeared on Zee English, I didn't find them funny and worse still Seinfeld's tone irritating. I stayed ''off'' the show for nearly a month and gosh! I regret that even today.
Jerry Seinfeld himself is the main character in the series and he is a stand up comedian in the show. His character meets different women and then breaks off the relationship due to a plethora of reasons. Most of the show takes place in his apartment.
Elaine Benis (Julia Louis Dreyfuss) is the only woman among the four and was a former girlfriend of Jerry's. They decide to be friends and she is in an eternal quest to find the right man. She works in a company that produces catalogues for other companies and her boss Mr.Peterman makes constant references to his tours to Burma or Myanmar.
George Costanza (Jason Alexander) is the kind of guy who you might come across once in a while. He is never good with the ladies, he is always grumbling about ricing prices,his parents and in general his life. He always goes to Jerry for advice.
Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) is the weirdest character ever to be portrayed on television. You can never predict what the guy is going to do next.
He plans to open a make your own pizza restaurant where people go in to a restaurant and then take ingredients they want to make their own pizza.
He plots with Newman(Wayne Knight) to take aluminum cans, and bottles to a state with a higher deposit, and cash in on the amount using Newman's postman truck!
He purchases what he believed to be a chicken so that he can enjoy fresh eggs. He soon discovers that he purchased a rooster and not a chicken. After Jerry passes a bad check in a small store, Kramer agrees to have his rooster (little Jerry Seinfeld) cock fight another rooster in exchange for the check being taken down. In the end Kramer just couldn't let little Jerry be hurt so he intervenes during the cock fight and gets attacked by the rooster!
Do watch out for the spectacular manner in which Kramer enters the apartment every time.
Some of the best episodes of Seinfeld (not in any order)
- The episode with John Paul:
The guy is a marathon runner who misses the event at the Barcelona Olympics because he doesn't wake up in time. He is a friend of Elaine's and Jerry takes it up as his responsibility to wake him on time in the morning of the New York Marathon.
He does! wake him up on time and the runner does take part in the event. What happens next is something I am not going to give away.
- The episode with Elaine's Dancing!
People who have watched this episode will no doubt be laughing at this moment remembering it.
Elaine takes George to a party and she notices that all he co-workers poke fun at her next day.
She feels its because of George but little does she realize its due to her pathetic dancing.
Kramer and Seinfeld go to a movie premier along with Kramer's friend who happens to be a pirated movie filmmaker. The guy falls sick during the show and he threatens Jerry to film the rest of the movie.
Well, Jerry does shoot the movie and it happens to be the best-pirated movie shot in a long time.
Watch out for the ending and her dancing!
3. The Episode about the contest
The four friends have a bet on who can abstain from having sex for the longest time. Jerry meanwhile is dating a girl who claims that she is a virgin. The same actress who portrays Daphne on Frasier plays the virgin.
Elaine meets John F Kennedy Jr at the gym and ends up spending the night with him.
Throughout the show you see the four sleeping at night and their disturbed sleep due to their abstinence and the blissful sleep after they do it!.
What happens in the end will leave the viewer dying with laughter.
- The One with the Soup-Nazi
This will have to be one of the most loved episodes and deals with a eccentric but a brilliant soup-maker who demands that his customers act politely while waiting for his soup. He also wants them to keep conversation to a bare minimum.
Kramer (who else!) becomes a friend of the Soup-Nazi whereas Elaine incurs the wrath of the chef.
- The finale
I got an opportunity to watch this recently and I have to admit that it was brilliant.
Only the creators and the writers of this show could have come with such a terrific ending.(The thing about the end is that Jerry utters the same lines to George as he did in the first episode!)
Most of the guest characters including the virgin and the Soup-Nazi make an appearance on this finale.
