TIL Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David did not pitch “a show about nothing” when originally meeting with executives to create Seinfeld, they pitched the idea of the show as being “how a comedian gets his material.” The “show about nothing” concept was what George pitched for the fake show-within-a-show
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Gosh that was a good episode
I gotta say that whether it was their intention or not, if the vast majority of people saw that episode and thought it fit perfectly with the show, then chances are, it does. Regardless of what their original pitch or vision was.
They may have pitched the show about a comedian getting his materials, but that only fits for season 1 up until season 2-3ish. And I’m being generous here.
The “show about nothing” is a much better fit for what Seinfeld actually is.
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Its sorta the same thing, good comedy comes from stuff people can relate to, from normal everyday ‘nothing’ situations.
If I had to honestly tell someone what the show was about (without doing the ‘It’s about nothing’ bit) I’d say it’s basically just about navigating awkward social interactions
I just discovered It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, today. Now I wonder if Seinfeld borrowed some of the base concept from it.
It was self-aware, but it was a show about comedian Garry Shandling as comedian Garry Shandling. His friends all visit his condo in Sherman Oaks. So you have the comedian playing themselves in a sitcom.
When I say it was self-aware, I mean he directly addresses and messes with the studio audience. I could see a line being drawn with how in Seinfeld, he performs standup bits relevant to the plot. In Garry Shandling’s show, he performs directly to the audience and acknowledges them.
There’s also the pop culture elements and celebrities playing more crazy versions of themselves. One episode turns literally into an episode of The Fugitive. I mean the characters are named the same. Garry has a flashback to a scene from that show. Then the entire arc of the episode leads to them inadvertently recreating that same scene. Seinfeld had the great movie and tv homages.
The show-within-a-show sitcom is also a meta narrative that is the basis for Garry Shandling’s show. Both shows aren’t really about any overarching thing.
Now after a deeper dive, it looks like The George Burns Show was the progenitor of both.
And IIRC, the character of George was based on Larry David. So in a way, Larry David did pitch the “show about nothing” concept.
I think the “show about nothing” moniker pre-dates the whole pilot storyline and the show just took advantage of the narrative to create episodes about them making a show.
[Jerry Seinfeld 2016 – made up by the press](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/jerry-seinfeld-show-about-nothing-tag-is-nonsense-248863/)
Kinda make sense right? Does Seinfield always conclude with Jerry’s doing stand-up?
I know it wasn’t how they actually pitched the show, but was that phrase really never applied to *Seinfeld* until after George pitched Jerry’s pilot? I always thought that the reason they used the phrase was specifically because TV reviewers had described the show that way.
Of course, I might just be misremembering. I was a kid at the time and I didn’t read *that* much reporting on the entertainment industry. (I mean, more than most children my age did. But that was easy given that most children were not reading such stuff at all.)
IIRC the “show about nothing” thing was how the media described Seinfeld when it exploded in popularity. It must have come from an early adopter TV critic/columnist. Everyone was trying to dissect why a show that violated all the SITCOM tropes was so good and “a show about nothing” was a reference to the fact that the “Situation” part of the SITCOM wasn’t really a factor in the show. Usually the life situation of the characters is the frame for the comedy and the characters interactions and helps relate the characters to the audience. Seinfeld didn’t do that. To this day it’s hard to describe exactly what Seinfeld did that worked so well. All you can say for certain is it was not what previous shows had done!
Like Breaking Bad, Seinfeld was a cultural moment for TV and everyone started studying it and borrowing from it (there’s a clear pre and post Seinfeld era of SITCOMs). Rather than a show about nothing Seinfeld was more a “Situation Comedy where the writers didn’t really care about the situation and just wrote comedy”. One way to look at it is that Seinfeld could never “jump the shark” because there wasn’t any box they had to write within. As long as the jokes were funny and we’re true to the characters, you could write about pimps, proctologists, accidentally winning a Tony award, Soup Nazis, intentionally trying to get fired by the Yankees, training a serial killer to write shoe ad copy. Anything – because it was accountable to nothing but being funny.
George’s pitch for “a show about nothing” was a meta joke where the characters were trying (unsuccessfully) to create Seinfeld.
The comments are confusing… Like the TV show is not real life guys, why did people assume everything must have gone down exactly like it did in the show for that storyline? Why is it not being that disappointing to people?
If you watch the first season, the concept is obviously about a comedian’s life providing material for his jokes. The show opened with Jerry on stage doing some jokes. There was usually a stand-up segment in the middle, and it always closed with Jerry on stage doing jokes about what happened in the episode. Those on-stage segments went away after a while.
When Larry David finds a style of glasses he likes, he sticks with them
Find it amusing it’s supposed to be mindblowing (if totally inaccurate) Seinfeld is about “nothing.” It’s not, for one thing (It’s mainly about etiquette, what is or isn’t appropriate, such as close talkers, the use of “yadayadayada,” gift policies for attending parties and weddings, etc.), and for the other, how many sitcoms are about anything? Very, very often, they’re about a group of friends who hang out, as Seinfeld is. Actually nothing even wrong with that.
Larry David is like a Buddha that can’t be bothered with nirvana
Larry hasn’t aged a day in 25 years.
A show about a comedian, where the comedian is the least funny person on the show. I love all the actors and the show…
Ended up being a show about food. The big salad, T-Bone steaks, calzones, soup, Junior Mints, Oh Henry candybars, gum, rye bread, etc etc.
RUSSELL: Well, why am I watching it?
GEORGE: Because it’s on TV.
RUSSELL: *Not yet.*
The phenomenon described in OP’s title should be called the ‘Seinfeld effect’ or something.
I still hear people mistaking the origins of the real show for George’s pitch, despite this fact commonly being posted on trivia sites and reddit.
Yeah, I always thought that was just George’s interpretation of the show….there are clearly plotlines and character arcs all throughout the show.
I know lots of people compare Always Sunny to modern day Seinfeld, and I see it, in a sense, but I’d compare it more to a SFW (most of the time) version of a show called You’re the Worst.
Always Sunny is more about their schemes and activities than just “life” so to speak
Yeah the whole “show about nothing” thing was sort of annoying. It was always a show about 30-something relationships and a comedian’s life in New York City.
Those scenes where George and Kramer were meeting and interacting with the people who would be playing them was the weirdest thing I have ever seen on TV.
It’s gold Jerry! Gold!
People in this thread complaining about the phrase “a show about nothing” don’t know what hyperbole means
Which makes more sense, since the show routinely segued into Seinfeld on stage talking exactly about what you just saw in his life.