Why is seinfeld funny

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The first time in the series when several plot points perfectly intersect — plus a frantic powerhouse performance by Louis-Dreyfus her first in the series, arguably when Elaine tries to get a disheveled, unwanted houseguest out of her apartment and to the airport. Plus: Susan and George are back together! For now, anyway. You know what is funny? Seems low on the list, huh? Like many two-parters, this one starts to sag when it reaches its second half. What is it with Seinfeld using Asian culture as a setup for punch lines?

They do it a lot! At the least now we know what an allergy to mohair looks like. Another great physical performance from Richards, whose reaction after sticking the lit end of a cigarette in his mouth is priceless. What a hipster doofus. Sometimes all you need is one unforgettable moment to make a Seinfeld episode — and here, Jerry clapping his fingers together for the Tweety bird Pez dispenser is that moment.

What a stupid episode, right? Sure, but TV is stupid, and even with the heaps of praise that Seinfeld receives, it can be plenty stupid in ways both good and bad.

Tightly scripted, thoroughly reprehensible. Classic George. Newman, as you can imagine, is a fan. Nazi leader George Costanza — what will his parents think? But you know what? George has told a lot of lies — a lot of lies — throughout Seinfeld , but his pretending to be a marine biologist to impress a former classmate-cum-love-interest is one of his greatest and most flimsy.

And yet, he almost pulls it off. More physical-comedy genius from Richards, too, as he shakes sand out of his pockets following a disastrous golfing day at the beach. Also: George in a toupee. The people who run the Roasters restaurant chain liked this episode so much that they actually held a Seinfeld -themed party for their employees. A lot of exposition around a broken condom and a possible pregnancy builds to one of the best endings of the entire series, as George repulses his girlfriend Cynthia with his slovenly eating habits.

Also, the woman playing Cynthia? Very interesting. You've already got a better foundation than someone who's bringing up something that does not need to be discussed. I find the chair very funny. That excites me.

No one's really interested in that — but I'm going to get you interested! That, to me, is just a fun game to play. And it's the entire basis of my career. One episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee does attempt to get more serious: it features Seinfeld's former co-star Michael Richards, and concerns the shockingly racist tirade , directed at black hecklers, that ended Richards's standup career in But a miscalculation, he insists, is what it was; it's a misunderstanding of standup to conclude that it showed Richards to be a racist himself.

He already did it! It's a knife-throwing act, and unfortunately Michael missed. In a recent New York Times profile of Seinfeld, another guest on the series, Sarah Silverman, called him "the least neurotic Jew on earth". But his early life was highly typical for Jewish New York.

The son of Austrian and Syrian immigrants, he was raised in the Long Island town of Massapequa, which he likes to say is "an old Indian name, meaning 'by the mall'". The family kept strictly kosher and attended synagogue; the teenage Jerome spent time on an Israeli kibbutz.

He seems never to have considered any career but comedy: as a college student in Queens, he managed to persuade his tutors to let him study standups — and perform himself — for course credit.

Jackie Mason, in the audience one night, delivered praise that kept him going for years: "It makes me sick, you're going to be such a big hit. Seven years later, over coffee in a New York diner of course with Larry David, the sitcom, originally entitled The Seinfeld Chronicles, was born.

All the way through, from first standup shows to stardom, he forced himself to work by marking a cross on a calendar for every day he wrote material; soon enough, he had a long chain of crosses, and kept going partly because he didn't want to break the chain.

Since he revealed this trick to a would-be comedian years ago, "Seinfeld's Productivity Secret" has achieved cult status online: there are at least three apps and one website dedicated to helping people emulate it. This amuses its inventor no end. I can't believe this was useful information to anybody! There are people who think, 'I'll just sit around and do absolutely nothing, and somehow the work will get done'?

Earlier in his career, it was Seinfeld's life outside work that consumed the media most: first when, in his late 30s, he began dating the year-old Shoshanna Lonstein, now a fashion designer ; and again at 45, when he began a relationship with a PR executive, Jessica Sklar, made public mere weeks after she'd returned from honeymoon with her husband, the scion of a family of Broadway theatre owners.

But 15 years later, he touts the conventionality of his domestic arrangements: he and Sklar, now Jessica Seinfeld, have three children aged between eight and 13, and he is openly judgmental of celebrities incapable of such stability. If you're smart, you stay married if you can. Marriage is hard for everyone — that's a basic fact — but it's a better life if you can do it. Believe it or not, I was asked to perform at the White House.

They were honoring Paul McCartney. Even at the White House, where you would think it would be hard—not really. It went well, and it was a huge thrill.

Sir Paul, you have written some of the most beautiful music ever heard by humans in this world. And yet, some of the lyrics and some of the songs, as they go by, you can make one, unsure, even concerned sometimes, about what exactly is happening in this song. As Jerry tours the country now with his stand-up, other issues emerge. And I try and do new stuff there. I still struggle with it. Look at Don Rickles, who, at 84, was not in great shape.

There were no elliptical machines at the Sahara in the 60s! I got to see him at Town Hall with Chris Rock, who had never seen him in person. And after the show, they set up a chair backstage, in this horrible, not even a real backstage area. They just put a chair on the ground and everyone stands there, and we wait for Don to come out. We wait like forty minutes.

Jerry shakes his head. For Don, forty minutes later, he comes out, he sits down in the chair, Chris and I stand there, and he just insults us all for another twenty minutes. Before I was really known, I went to see Don in Vegas. He was remarkable for the antenna he had for what he could say to you. And he improvised all the time. There was no real structure to it, just so purely funny. Back to stand-up. It always somehow comes back to stand-up. Jerry and I agree—which is probably why after decades writing, producing, and starring in the most successful comedy series of all time, Jerry is back to doing stand-up in clubs across the country.

Excerpted from Inside Comedy by David Steinberg.