Rating:  - The first season without Larry David is still great comedy
"Seinfeld" did a pretty good job rebounding from Larry David's departure from the show. Jerry doesn't have as many segments featured around him this season, possibly because of the stepped up demands on his time behind the camera. However, the ones in which he is featured are very funny. For example, Jerry has a check bounce, and the unfriendly merchant puts the returned check on display in his store. Word gets back to Jerry's parents, and they jump to conclusions and decide that Jerry must be broke. Jerry's dad decides to return to work to help support Jerry. Unfortunately, the job his dad takes is working for Elaine, and the situation doesn't work out for anyone.
George, reeling from the mixed emotions he had at losing Susan at the end of season seven, prepares to go on without her, but finds that he really can't. Instead, Susan's parents start a charitable foundation in her memory and have George installed on the board with a large framed photograph of Susan framed on the wall in the room where the foundation meetings are held. Later in the season, George does meet a woman he is interested in, and she seems to be interested in him. George, always trying to better his position through lying but usually just worsening his lot because of it, does the same thing in this instance. The woman believes George is a tourist from Arkansas, and George decides to continue the deception by faking a move to the city so he can continue the relationship. The way George sees it, if you condense everything he has accomplished in the last ten years into just a few weeks, it seems quite impressive.
Elaine enters an alternate universe when she meets Kevin and his friends, who turn out to be the opposite of Jerry and his friends in every way. She likes the fact that Kevin and his friends inspire her to be a better person - they are genuinely kind and helpful and they enjoy reading. However, ultimately Elaine is just not cut out to be among them because of her own selfish personality traits. Perhaps the funniest episode featuring Elaine is "The English Patient", titled after the Best Picture winner of 1996. Her boss, the eccentric Peterman, loves the film and forces her to go see it with him. Elaine hates the movie, and just can't take sitting through it in its entirety without blurting out how she feels. Peterman gives her a chance to do penance for her bad attitude which involves a most hilarious assignment. In "The Susie", due to a series of mix-ups, Elaine winds up with an alternate identity at work - "Susie". Her coworkers begin discussing her as though Elaine and Susie are two different people. Her ultimate solution to the problem is to have Susie "die", complete with a memorial service for the fictitious woman that winds up packed with mourners.
Of course, Kramer's adventures are as unbelievable as ever. This season his apartment turns into "The Red Planet" due to a neon sign from the Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurant shining through his window all night. At first he is doing everything he can to put the restaurant out of business, but when he and Jerry temporarily switch apartments the pressure is off, and Kramer finds himself addicted to the restaurant's food. In another episode, Elaine's boss Jay Peterman is trying to write his memoirs, but finds his own life isn't very interesting. His solution is to buy Kramer's life story and use it as his own. Kramer and Peterman eventually get into an argument over the details of the arrangement, and Kramer answers back by starting his own "Peterman Reality Tours". Finally, Kramer is incensed by the fact that he can no longer find a public place in which he can light up a cigar, and opens a smoking lounge in his own apartment. As a result of all of the exposure to tobacco smoke, Kramer ages prematurely and goes to his attorney friend, the fast-talking and flamboyant Jackie Chiles, to file suit against the tobacco companies. When Kramer negotiates a deal with the tobacco companies without Jackie's approval, Jackie declares the results to be "the most public of his many humiliations".
In summary, this season is very good with more of an emphasis on fast-paced zaniness rather than the comedy that made more of a commentary on human nature that you saw during the Larry David years. However, I still highly recommend it.
Rating: - Nothing Better.
This is the best TV possible. Season 8 is the Seinfeld genius at full capacity. This is Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine at the top of their game.
This was the season where we get Elaine's little kicks, George poses for his photo shop admirer, Frank returning to cooking (perhaps my favorite episode), George showing an Adrea Doria survivor a thing or two about traumatic experiences, little Jerry Seinfeld, Morty working at Peterman's, "Jerkstore," George and Kramer suggesting the department store management trainee position to Jerry, "Susie," Kramer adopting a stretch of the expressway, the Mandelbaum crepes, Whatley converting to judiasm, the Newmanium, muffin tops and Kramer wins a Tony...
It's amazing stuff. I couldn't recommend anything any higher than this. It's the funniest stuff that's ever been done.
Rating: - The Muffin Top of 'Seinfeld'
This show started as an exemplary slow-burner, and the next thing you knew - yada yada yada - it became a cultural phenomenon. There is something you may call a Seinfeld experience, and I want to appraise the 8th installment of it.
The eight season marked two departures: one of the co-creator/scriptwriter/producer Larry David, and second of the show itself into the realm of pure wackiness. The season seven much-maligned finale, 'The Invitations' (S07E22), can be properly understood only in the context of general quality of season eight, which was one of craziness let loose. Susan's death marked the exact moment in which the entire show made 'ping!', and flew way off into the space of absurd. From the word go in 8ht's season's opener, 'The Foundation (S08E01)', there is no way you can relate to the characters as real people. Right until the very last episode they will be first and foremost CHARACTERS - ones we all love and we all laugh our brains out at - but, nonetheless, CHARACTERS. In all of the previous seasons - despite the famous claim that it's all about nothing - there was a sense that IF any of those people encounter a real-life tragedy that touches them personally, they would stop cracking jokes and cry just as you or me would (remember Elaine's tears shed on behalf of the bubble boy...?). 'The Invitations' proved otherwise and the show really became one about nothing: just the four pop-culture characters thrown into wackier and wackier situations. To my mind, this time no Sein-imation is needed, since season 8 (and 9) simply is the live-action equivalent of traditional cartoon.
And what a cartoon it is! One of the benefits of a then well-established mega-popularity of the show is the delight the screenwriters take in self-references. One of the most hilarious episodes of this season, 'The Bizarro Jerry' (S08E03), is the best example of what I'm talking about. It takes for granted our familiarity with all the patterns, all the characters and all the soundstages even - and twirls them around in a way that makes the entire episode a comment on the Seinfeld universe itself. By showing us the opposite (ha!) of Jerry's world within the 'Seinfeld' world, and laughing it up, the show gives a finger to all the reality that didn't absorb Seinfeld and even had the nerve to denounce it's mastery (of the domain). And no, I'm not misinterpreting the show's nose-scratching for an offensive gesture (or even for an actual pick).
The key word to the last two seasons of Seinfeld is irony: the show has become so self-aware, that it could go either way: mocking itself, mythologizing itself, aping itself - and the audience would love it even more than before because it was all so wacky and so familiar at the same time. The ideas were so crazy you sometimes went "Sweet holy Moses" - but the little kicks never stopped. And we all loved every minute of them.
The 8 & 9 season are my favourites. To my mind they simply are the muffin tops: with all the stems of society, emotion and common sense neatly sliced off. M-m!
Michal Oleszczyk, Krakow, Poland
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