There are some aspects about Seinfeld that could be fixed, according to its titular star. The show about nothing was headlined by Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards. It created iconic episodes out of mundane situations, such as waiting for a table at a restaurant or getting lost in a parking lot, and it’s remained in the public conversation long after it ended in 1998. The comedy has continued to be so popular, in fact, that Seinfeld has regularly dismissed reboot and reunion discussions.
The familiarity the audience has with the NBC sitcom, co-created by Larry David and Seinfeld, has led Netflix to think outside the box in terms of advertising. Now that every season of the series is available on the streaming service, Netflix has cheekily tried to present the comedy as a brand-new groundbreaking program. In an even stranger move, for one of its promos, it turned Seinfeld into a LEGO. However, for all of its familiarity, and despite its legacy, Seinfeld confesses he would change some parts of the show.
Per Deadline, Seinfeld’s remarks came as he was promoting the sitcom’s new streaming home. The comedian stressed that, as a general rule, he doesn’t like to live with regret or think too much about the past. But he added that if he had to or if he had access to a time machine, there would be aspects of the show he’d like to fix. Seinfeld’s quote is included below.
“There’s a number of them that I would love to have a crack at, but I don’t really believe, philosophically, in changing or even thinking about the past,” he said. “My philosophy of life is that [it] happened the way it happened, and we’re going to go from here. And that’s the best way to … live. I think regret is a philosophical position that I disagree with. It kind of assumes you could have changed the past, so I wouldn’t even think of that. But if you forced me or you gave me a time machine, yeah, there’s a few — I would fix some things.”
The actor and comedian didn’t provide any specifics about which storylines or shortcomings he would seek to alter. Still, when it was originally airing, Seinfeld was occasionally called out by critics and audiences for lacking diversity. And, in episodes that did tackle subjects such as sexism and racism, the series’ writing could at times go in a cartoonish and offensive direction. One example occurs during “The Café,” episode 7 of season 3, as a Pakistani immigrant is depicted in a broad manner and his deportation is treated as a punchline. Part of this is, of course, to illustrate the privilege that the four characters possess. But even with that particular reading, there are likely to be many storylines of the NBC classic that will cause viewers to raise their eyebrows as they’re watching the comedy for the first time or revisiting it.
No one series is unique in these flaws, of course. The exact same complaints have been leveled at Friends. And even a show as groundbreaking as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or as warm and generally upbeat as the early seasons of Gilmore Girls, occasionally include lines and supposedly lighthearted moments that would not be acceptable today. While few would seriously advocate throwing away such important pieces of pop culture from the 1990s and 2000s, it is important to take stock of how things were and how things could be. And, after saying in the past that he didn’t consider diversity because his show “wasn’t the census,” the star of Seinfeld seems to be doing just that.
Source: Deadline