Bathroom Reads #6: SEINFELDIA by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

 

In a previous entry in this series, I talked about my interest in 90s sitcoms, especially the NBC "Big Three" of FRASIER, FRIENDS and SEINFELD. The latter show is the subject of today's blog entry. Of the three aforementioned shows, I believe it was SEINFELD that we first latched onto, sometime around mid-season 5: the first episode we ever saw was "The Stall," so this would be sometime in 1994 (shortly after that we began watching FRASIER, then late into its first season, while FRIENDS we would not start to watch until sometime in season 4: by "we" I mean me and my brothers). By this point in time SEINFLED had become syndicated, so we were able to catch up with the past episodes we had missed very easily. One thing I remember about this time in my life was it was that pre-to-early high school period where we were still getting sent to bed at 9 p.m., which meant that our parents would tape new episodes of the show on VCR  and we'd watch it the following day: sometimes when I was falling asleep I could hear the show playing downstairs, and I can distinctly remember hearing (before watching) that season 6 episode where Kramer loudly passes a kidney stone while at the circus. I also remember that SEINFELD was very popular with my fellow students during my high school days, and how it would often be discussed in class the day after each new show aired. And certainly I remember the hysteria and media frenzy when the show announced it was going off the air in 1998. At that time in my life, I couldn't really appreciate the impact it had on the sitcom as a medium: certainly on some level I was aware that it was a very different type of show than the 80s sitcoms I was more familiar with (PERFECT STRANGERS, FAMILY MATTERS) in that it seemed to have zero interest in putting across a moral message, and also the complexity and intertwined nature of each episode's plotlines. I would come to appreciate all that years later, but back in the day, all I really cared about was that I found it funny and it made me laugh. 

I'm not quite sure when it was that I got Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's book SEINFELDIA: HOW A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING CHANGED EVERYTHING. It might have been shortly before the pandemic, or maybe shortly after it started: anyway, I got the book at work one night a couple of years ago. At around 300 pages with fairly large print it's a brisk and breezy read, covering how the show was conceived by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, the early seasons where it struggled to find its footing, its inconceivable rise to become one of the most popular TV shows of all-time, and the effect it had on pop culture as a whole. In my opinion it only has one big flaw: while Armstrong interviews many people associated with the show (chiefly the writers, along with assorted network executives, or people with some link to the show, like the guy who played the Soup Nazi, or Kenny Kramer, who inspired the show Kramer), she didn't interview any of the show's four main stars or Larry David himself, so as a result the book, while affable in tone and very readable, can come off as a bit lightweight. But certainly it does a good job examining the impact the show had on 90s pop culture (and beyond). 

Bathroom Reads #5: FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON by James Hibberd

 

I began watching the GAME OF THRONES TV show in 2013, having purchased the DVD box set of the first season on a whim at the (now closed) Newbury Comics in Bellingham, Massachusetts (yeah, I had $60 to blow that day). I quickly became a big fan, not only of the TV show itself but also the book series that inspired it: shortly after I watched the first season I read the first book... then in the summer of 2013 I read the second book before watching the second season... then I read the remaining 3 books (in fact by the end of 2013 I had the entire 5 book series read) before watching season 3. At some point I got some of my younger brothers interested in the show as well, so I watched the first 3 seasons again (this time with them), and by the time we were done with that season 4 had just been released on DVD, so we caught that as well. By season 5 we started to watch the shows as they aired in real time (our dad subscribed to HBO for the two months or so they were on, then cancelled once the season was done, only to repeat the process the following year). At some point our parents also got interested so we watched the early seasons with them: as a result of all this I actually ended up seeing the first 3 seasons 3 times and saw seasons 4, 5 and 6 twice. It's a period of my life I'm quite nostalgic about: I remember, from season 5 on, how after each watching each new episode I would go onto various web forums and see how the fanbase had reacted to it, places like the Westeros forums and the (now sadly defunct) Watchers on the Wall site, along with reading reviews of the episodes from various websites that did such things, like ROLLING STONE and the A.V. CLUB. I also began to collect some of the other media that spun off from the show, such as the trading card sets and the CD soundtracks and also some of the associated books (while on the subject, I HIGHLY recommend GAME OF THRONES: THE COSTUMES by Michele Clapton, which is just a beautiful book). It's gotten to the point that a lot of my friends like to tease me about my obsession with the show, and it's hard for me to pinpoint just why I fell for it: I think some big things were the show's quasi-medieval look/feel and also the fact that it had a big ensemble cast: I like shows and books and movies with big ensemble casts (one reason why I've gravitated to THE OFFICE (American version) in recent years). And in all actuality it was a very well-made show, with (mostly) impeccable production values, great sets, incredible costumes... I remember how one of my friends at the time, the now sadly deceased Kevin Killian, once told me he was really impressed because the show really put its money on the screen. 

One fairly recent associated book is FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON by James Hibberd. Unlike some of the other books I've featured in this series, this book I read in an official context, when it first came out in the autumn of 2020, so as a result it shows up in my reading lists. It's one of those "oral history" pop culture books which I notice have become increasingly popular: in recent years I've also got one for the making of David Lynch's DUNE, DAZED & CONFUSED, and STAR WARS (the latter of which I'll spotlight at some future point). With such books the author interviews a bunch of people associated with the show or movie in question, then breaks the quotes up into a chronological order. Such books tend to be breezily readable and the different viewpoints/contrasting opinions offered up by the contributors in regards to the pop culture artifact on discussion can be interesting to observe. In regards to FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON, Hibberd was EW's official GAME OF THRONES writer, and over the years he visited the show's sets many times and spoke to many of the people involved with the show. Some of the material that appeared in his EW articles reappear here (yes, I collected the EW GOT issues as well), but there's also lots of new interviews as well, not only with many members of the show's cast but also the people involved in the making of the show, from producers to the showrunners to even George RR Martin himself. It's well illustrated with over 80 color photographs, and provides some highly interesting observations: for example, we find out the reasons why the book character Lady Stoneheart was cut from the adaptation (reasons I agree with, incidentally). I know some people have accused Hibberd of being a shill and a bit too fawning when it comes to the showrunners, but really, considering how much over-the-top vitriol that has been directed at the show by the toxic fandom since its controversial conclusion in 2019, it's nice to see someone with something positive to say about it (speaking as someone whose defense of the show on the A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE reddit forums is notorious: yeah, if you see someone on there defending the show with the handle James_Champagne, it's me... needless to say, I get downvoted a lot, but I like to think I'm a well-informed and articulate defender, at least).