I watched the first episode and found it dull and boring. Is it representative for the whole show?
The past decade of tv has spoiled people with quality TV shows.
Back in the old days of tv, we didn’t have story arcs. First seasons of shows were still rough. Networks often gave shows a lot longer of a lifeline to prove themselves. For example: Parks and Rec didn’t hit their stride into mid-Season 2.
For 90s shows, I recommend finding a Top 10 episodes list and seeing if you enjoy it.
This, there’s a LOT of shows before streaming services where I just beg people to skip the first season.
Always Sunny is definitely one that suffers from a lot of Early Installment Weirdness, it’s clear they had no idea what the hell they wanted the show to be at the start… Also Danny DeVito improves anything he touches.
Funny story, Season 1 was so bad the network said they would cancel them unless they could get an A-List Actor to guest star in an episode for a ratings’ boost, which went so well that said guest star wound up being a permanent mainstay.
Some episodes are legendarily funny, but a lot are very forgettable. It’s more of a cultural bellwether.
Seinfeld was one of those shows that talked about certain issues that weren’t broached on network tv. I think the masturbation episode was the first time it was even alluded to on any mainstream tv.
But at the end of the day it’s a sitcom with laugh tracks, so it doesn’t age super well.
Elaine was part of the masturbation episode and lost, which further speaks to the progressiveness of the show because a woman was portrayed as having sexuality that was outside of acceptable limits at the time (for love only, preferably in marriage). They also presented being gay as acceptable, which was quite progressive at the time where people were calling each other “gay” and the f-word as a terrible insult.
No. Some of them aren’t good, and some of them are hilarious. Some of them are a little offensive based on today’s standards. But the show overall is pretty great. There are a lot of references used by older people that you’ll start understanding if you watch the show. Popular TV shows used to be social glue, everyone watched them, so themes from the shows worked their way into our social vocabularies.
Id say The best 10 episodes are some of the greatest prime time comedy ever made. Theres probably another 20 or 30 episodes with jokes, arcs or bits that are also comedy gold with a fair bit of filler. But theres 172 episodes…
But I also defend Big Bang Theory as “6 seasons of a good and funny show, dragged out over 12” so maybe I’m just easily amused.
I’m working my way through now, in season 4. Later seasons get better, but there’s a lot more bad than good imo. I’m not sure I’ve seen an episode that’s consistently funny, just the occasional good joke.
It’s not a formula I find enjoyable, always sunny follows the same pattern.
Honestly, Seinfeld paved the way for a lot of quality cringe comedy.
It’s like watching the Matrix and being bored with the beats/effects, because it’s now the norm everywhere.
God, Matrix is such a trip, it’s a real showcase of how society actively learns.
When it came out, I was a kid who was considered intelligent by peers simply because I was capable of understanding the film whereas even a lot of grown-ups found it hard to grok.
Nowadays the idea of our entire world being fabricated is so basic and so often the butt of jokes that you can’t ever tell if someone’s kidding or not when they talk about Simulation Theory.
And this is one of many reasons why The Matrix Resurrected was doomed to fail.
Relevant Youtube Video - https://youtu.be/7WqVXT5ofDs
You aren’t alone. Not liking the show has its own tvtropes page
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
It’s wild to think that it never occurred to me that Bugs Bunny calmly standing next to Elmer Fudd and simply asking what he’s doing was a bit in and of itself, simply because it just seemed so normal and expected for Bugs to do that.
Yet if you showed it to a world that doesn’t know who Bugs is, yeah that would seem odd
“What the fuck? The rabbit’s just calmly approaching and casually observing the hunter? He’s not running away or begging for his life? Well this is wacky.”