SOMEBODY WHO knows about these things once described Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot as a play in which nothing happens . . . twice. You just know that old Sam, Godot bless him, would have enjoyed Seinfeld, an American situation comedy in which nothing happened consistently for nine years. Now, sadly, it's over. Nothing will not happen again. Ever.
Thankfully, here in Ireland, we still have several years to wait before seeing the final episode which was broadcast recently in the States, to much public hysteria. (The final scenes were shot behind closed doors, 657,431 different endings were filmed, allegedly, and everyone involved, including the 225 strong studio audience had their fingers nailed to a table so that they couldn't cross them while they promised not to divulge the episode's content, allegedly.) Now, the climax has unfolded before a rapt audience of millions, and if you haven't yet gone to the trouble of finding out what happened, I won't spoil it for you here. Suffice to say, it's a good 'un. By the time we see it, it'll be an old 'un . . . but still a good 'un.
Surprisingly, Seinfeld has never really gripped the Irish public imagination with anywhere near the same intensity as it has Stateside. Why? It's difficult to tell. Perhaps it's because it used to go out at the same time as Upwardly Mobile, a home-based situation comedy which has gripped the Irish public imagination with an intensity that is worrying. Nothing ever happens on that either, but for different reasons which have been addressed in these pages before.
The show began as a pilot entitled The Seinfeld Chronicles and was first broadcast on NBC in 1989. Set in New York, it boasted a core cast of four:
Jerry Seinfeld: The brains behind the show, who co-wrote it with his close friend Larry David, a former comic who Jerry cites as one of his main influences. Anyone who has seen Seinfeld being interviewed will vouch for the fact that the character he plays in the show is almost a mirror image of himself, from the stand-up comedian with an obsession with the minutiae of life right down to the ever-present pristine white trainers.
George Costanza: Played by Jason Alexander and based on Larry David, George Costanza is a loser who spends a large proportion of his life arguing with Jerry over such important issues as the merits of movies based on novels over actual novels. Unemployed, fat, balding and hurtling towards middle-age, George lives with his overbearing parents. His myriad neuroses ensure that he is incapable of holding down a relationship and when he does eventually find the woman of his dreams, she dies after being poisoned by the glue on the envelopes of the wedding invitations purchased by her cheapskate fiancee.
Kramer: Played by Michael Richards, Kramer is the unhinged, twitching, electro-haired lunatic that lives across the hall from Jerry. As fabled for his novel schemes (a coffee table book about coffee tables that also doubles as a coffee table, anyone?) Kramer is based on a real-life friend of Larry David's who glories in the same name. Interestingly, when the real Kramer approached David and demanded the role, logically stating that he was the obvious choice, David refused, telling him that Richards was able to portray him better.
Elaine: Played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elaine is an old flame of Jerry's. Essentially, she is everything that George isn't: intelligent, reasonably successful, pleasant on the eye and popular with the opposite sex. Although an integral part of the cast, Elaine is certainly the most colourless of the characters, serving largely as a foil for the antics of her more dysfunctional adherents.
So what is the point of Seinfeld? It's simple, the point is there is no point. Almost everything that happens is completely inconsequential. It's always been the way. After all, Larry David once famously cited the Seinfeld motto as "no hugging, no learning." And yet there have been some timelessly funny moments: the one (in the very first episode) where George and Jerry, sitting across a table in the coffee shop and argue earnestly about the placement of shirt buttons; the one where Jerry's parents find out that he was snogging his girlfriend in a movie theatre during Schindler's List; the one in which George's mother catches him masturbating and while sitting in the famous coffee shop, he, Kramer and Jerry strike up a wager to see who can go the longest without shooting from the wrist; the one where the expression "yada, yada, yada" (a mongoloid twist on "etc. etc.") is coined; the one where George realises that the only way in which he can achieve any success in life is by going against his every instinct and the proceeds to land the job of his dreams by choosing to tell the owner of the New York Yankees exactly what he thinks of him . . . yada, yada, yada.
Seinfeld's stand-up also featured regularly on the show, invariably at the beginning or end where we saw him pontificating on life's small print in a New York club: "You know, there are a lot of advantages to homosexuality. Look at it this way, if you're gay and you start dating someone your own size, you immediately double your wardrobe."
Indeed, it is because he wants to return to his stand-up roots that Seinfeld decided to knock his phenomenally successful television show on the head, despite being offered a reputed $2 million dollars per episode to continue.
There were other reasons, of course, which he explained in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine: "The arc of a diver," he mused. "You know - Stevie Winwood, 'Arc Of A Diver'. It's the arc, you know. There's that moment that the surfer pulls out of the wave after it's reached it's full crest. We had a long peak. It's like anything else - when Larry and I would get an idea for a bit, or some jokes about a subject, you make a certain number of jokes. How do you know when you've made enough? You just know. There's this feeling that, 'OK, I think we got all of this one.' And I have to have that feeling about the show: 'OK, I think we've got all of it'."
By all accounts, the wrap party for the last series of Seinfeld was an emotional affair, with Seinfeld and Louis-Dreyfus shedding enough tears to sink a ship. Sadly, the party is over now and whether or not there will be life after Seinfeld for the fab four remains to be seen. There are no plans for any spin-off series and for Richards, life without Kramer will be difficult. Ditto for Alexander, who is just as typecast, although he has said that he will soon direct a movie. Louis-Dreyfus, a mother of two, has no immediate plans and has stated that, for the time being at least, she will concentrate on raising her children.
Jerry Seinfeld, however, has made no secret of his intentions - having locked in storage his chosen keepsakes from the show (the front door, the couch, the chair, the coffee table, the pictures on his apartment wall and a booth from the coffee shop), he will embark on a short American tour and then perform a one-off TV special entitled I'm telling You This For The Last Time, an apt title, as after the show he will never perform any of his old stand-up material again.
"That is my solemn promise," he told Rolling Stone. "I'm pledging that in my special. To push myself forward, so I have to do new things."
Once the special is out of the way, Jerry will head back to the drawing board, slave over a new routine and then go on tour supporting one of his colleagues. And while he may only be the support act, there's no doubt who the punters will be coming to see.
"A stand-up comedian is like a scared animal, a deer caught in the headlights, y'know, and he'll grab at anything to save himself," he told one US chat show host in the days before Seinfeld. It's difficult to imagine Jerry Seinfeld struggling on stage at this late stage of his career, but although he'll be able to dine out on the reputation garnered through his television series for five minutes a night, from there on in, however, it'll be business as usual and he'll be on his own, a scared animal in front of the headlights. Failure at that point would be all the more crushing and undignified.
It's strange really, the blindingly obvious option would be to accept one of the many movie offers which will inevitably flood in, but he's not interested in that. He says himself that it's what people would expect and tales of the unexpected have always been Jerry Seinfeld's stock in trade. Seinfeld the series may well have shot its bolt, but only a fool would suggest the same of Seinfeld the stand-up comedian. n