Jason Alexander shares his thoughts on how his character George Costanza on Seinfeld would react to the pandemic. The hit comedy co-created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld ran for nine seasons on NBC starting in 1989, revolving around the daily lives of four friends living in New York City. The show stars Seinfeld playing a fictionalized version of himself, Alexander as his neurotic, insecure best friend, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as his former girlfriend Elaine Benes, and Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer, his wacky, rogue neighbor across the hall. Seinfeld is also known for having many memorable recurring characters including Newman, Jackie Chiles, David Puddy, and The Soup Nazi.
The series has often been described as "a show about nothing", refusing to have any episode where any of the characters learned life lessons or achieved personal growth, and instead gained its humor exploring the minute aspects and indifference of life; none more evident than the character of George Costanza. The character, who is loosely based off of Larry David, is known for being self-loathing and eccentric, going to extreme lengths to not look like those traits, especially when he is lying about something. The role garnered Alexander much acclaim, including a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for numerous Emmy and Golden Globe Awards.
In an interview with Us Weekly, Alexander reveals how he thinks George Costanza would handle the current pandemic. The show ended with all four characters being sentenced for a year in prison for mocking a carjacking. Since then, the characters' fate have been mentioned during an episode of David's subsequent HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, with George striking it rich for inventing a toilet app before losing it all in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Alexander's comment on where George would be now can be seen below:
"You’d have to think today, because apparently, he made all his money. If you saw the Curb [Your Enthusiasm] reunion, he made all his money with the iToilet app and then lost it to Bernie Madoff. So, my imagining is that George is probably quarantined in with his parents and refuses to leave the room. He only eats through some sort of food app and will not come out of his room. His parents are wearing 15 masks. He was crazy about Lupus, imagine what he’d do with COVID. He would not be weathering this pandemic very well, I’m sure!"
A lot of George's unappealing characteristics can be explained by his dysfunctional childhood with his bickering and melodramatic parents played by Estelle Harris and the late Jerry Stiller. With a father who invented the holiday Festivus as an alternative to Christmas and a mother who threw out her back when she caught George during a private moment, fans of the show can only surmise the unpleasantness and pure torment that George would have to go through if he had to live with his parents for that immense period of time.
Seinfeld has never been a show to follow the sitcom formula, in a time when many comedies had resolving storylines and the hope for romantic relationships, which is what made the show so unique and influential. The series is considered one of the greatest sitcoms in the history of television and ended with a finale that brought in 76 million viewers. With Seinfeld landing a lucrative streaming deal on Netflix, viewers can now have another series to watch during the rest of quarantine and see the absurdity and hilarity of George Costanza.
Source: Us Weekly