Why Did I Like Seinfeld When I Was Ten Years Old?

What does a fifth grader know about close talkers, the Kiss Hello, and guys who don’t “do everything”?

Seinfeld is, without a doubt, my favorite TV show of all time.  Throughout my life, I don’t think there’s a single piece of entertainment I’ve found to be more captivating.  There are episodes I’ve seen at least fifty times where I’ll drop everything I’m doing and watch if they’re playing on Comedy Central or TBS.  During the COVID summer of 2020, when my wife and I were living with my in-laws and the country was melting down, I kept myself sane by rewatching the entire series on Netflix.  My nightly ritual consisted of pouring a glass of Jack Daniel’s, going down to the basement, and watching three or four episodes before bed.  I had seen the entire series in syndication over the years, one episode at a time.  Watching it from beginning to end in chronological order felt like a big accomplishment.

Seinfeld is also a major reason why I became a comedian.  Dave Coulier as Joey Gladstone on Full House was my first exposure to stand-up comedy when I was very young, but Jerry Seinfeld fully brought me into that world.  From the moment I started watching, I was fascinated by the bits Jerry did at the beginning and end of each episode.  Not only did I find them funny and interesting in and of themselves, but I loved how they tied into things that occurred during the show.  It felt like seeing someone turn life into art in real time.  Watching Seinfeld was when the lightbulb first went on for me and I realized, “I think this is what I’d like to do with my life.”

There’s something odd about the whole thing though.  Obviously, the fact that I love Seinfeld is not abnormal.  It’s one of the most popular shows of all time.  And the fact that it made me want to become a comedian isn’t that strange either.  I’m sure it’s inspired plenty of other people to do the same.  The weird part for me is that my Seinfeld fandom started when I was ten years old.  

I was living in suburban Philadelphia at the time, and the local Fox affiliate would play two episodes every night, one at 7:00 and another at 7:30.  I never missed them.  I still have very vivid memories of finishing my dinner and running over to the living room so I could be in front of the TV in time to watch.  This was the fall of 1996, so new episodes were also airing every Thursday night on NBC.  I never missed those either.  It’s like I had a new favorite toy, and I didn’t want to play with anything else.

This all begs the question, what the hell does a ten-year-old find interesting about Seinfeld?

Seinfeld is a very adult show.  I’m not just talking about the sexual aspects of it, of which there are many.  I’m talking about the way it tackles the everyday and the mundane.  Plot points revolve around petty grievances, misunderstandings, annoyances, and social obligations.  These are things you don’t really have to contend with until you’re grown up.  On its face, I shouldn’t have cared about a TV show where major conflicts are driven by someone standing too close to you when they talk, or not wanting to give your neighbor a kiss hello when you see them.

The sexual storylines are of secondary concern here, but they were lost on me as well.  There’s an episode where Elaine complains to Jerry that her new boyfriend, saxophone player John Jermaine,  doesn’t “do everything.”  She means he won’t perform oral sex on her.  The episode ends with him finally trying to “do everything” only to have it ruin his ability to play the saxophone at a major audition.  It’s a hilarious story with a perfect ending, and it completely went over my head.  Yet, I still wanted to watch this show every night of the week.  Why?

I think it’s two things.  The first is the mystique that surrounded the show in the mid-90s.  The second is a lot more personal.

I knew about Seinfeld before I ever saw it.  I’d see commercials for new episodes, hear my parents and their friends talking about it, see stories on the cover of the TV Guide my mom had delivered to the house every week (Just like Frank Constanza, although she didn’t collect them), but I was told I wasn’t allowed to watch it.  The fact that it was illicit drew me in.  When something is very popular, but you’re not allowed to participate in it, your curiosity naturally grows.  I felt the same way about Howard Stern.  The night my parents went to see Private Parts felt like a major event.  They hired a babysitter to watch me and my brother and went off to the theater with their friends.  The next day, I kept asking them about the experience.  “How crowded was the theater?”  Sold out.  “How loud were people laughing?”  Very, very loud.  “What happened in the movie that was so funny?”  Please stop asking questions and eat your Cocoa Puffs.  It all sounded so special and magical to me, but I was on the outside looking in.

I think my initial interest in Seinfeld stemmed from a desire to know what was going in rooms I wasn’t allowed to enter.  There was this world of adult humor and conversation that I was forbidden from experiencing as a kid, and it seemed like a lot of fun.  Seinfeld was a major part of that, and I wanted to get my foot in the door.  I don’t remember how I did it, but eventually I convinced my mom to let me watch the show.    

Once I started watching, you might have expected me to lose interest in Seinfeld, simply based on its aforementioned inaccessible nature.  Except I didn’t lose interest.  In fact, I only became more obsessed with the show.  The luster that comes with the forbidden had been lost, and I was still hooked.  So what was it about this show specifically that kept me coming back for more?

My natural instinct is to say that Kramer is silly, and that was enough for a ten-year-old.  Also Seasons 8 and 9, which were airing weekly on NBC as I began watching the show, had a more zany quality to them than previous seasons.  A friend of mine describes those later episodes as “Looney Tunes for adults.”  So that probably appealed to a younger version of me as well.  But that’s not quite right.

I don’t think we change much throughout our lives.  Our interests and motivations change, but not our core personalities.  As an adult, I’m someone who sees the potential for conflict in everyday social interactions.  There are unseen rules and regulations that govern our daily behaviors, and there’s always a chance you’re going to get them wrong and upset somebody.  You might have a misunderstanding with a coworker, struggle to find a way to break up with someone you’re dating, or accidentally find yourself in the middle of a conflict between two other people.  You might think I’m being dramatic, but there’s an obscene amount of stress and pressure that goes along with living your everyday life within a larger society.  You’re always at risk of transgressing against someone, somewhere.

This is what Seinfeld is really about.  It’s about four people trying to navigate the social pitfalls that surround them everywhere they go.  If you look closely, you’ll notice that every single person on that show who is not one of the four main characters is an antagonist.  They’re constant sources of conflict.  This includes Jerry’s parents, George’s parents, Newman, J. Peterman, Puddy, Bania, Elaine’s old roommate Tina, Babu Bhatt, Crazy Joe Davola, Elaine’s dad, Jake Jarmel, Pat Buckles, Kramer’s mom, Mr. Pitt, Jack Klompus, Bob Sacamano (Even though he’s never seen), Russell Dalrymple, Mr. Kruger, and George Steinbrenner, just to name a few.  This might be too cynical of me, but I relate to a worldview that sees potential strife and struggle in every little interaction.  There’s a lot going on out there, and sometimes it can all be a bit much.

If this is how I feel as an adult, I believe this is something I intuited as a kid.  I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time, but I must have felt overwhelmed by all of the social norms I observed at play around me.  The sheer volume of these norms makes them impossible to keep track of and follow all the time.  As someone who loves following the rules, the inevitability of breaking one or many of them scares me.  And what do you do when you’re scared of something?  You make fun of it.  

From my point of view as a child, Jerry Seinfeld (And unbeknownst to me at the time, future comedy hero Larry David) made fun of these seemingly arbitrary rules better than anybody.  Even though I didn’t have experience with the specific things they were discussing, I understood the vibe they were going for.  All of this was happening at a level beyond my conscious understanding, but Seinfeld made me feel seen and understood and relieved.  Again, I couldn’t have told you any of this when I was ten years old, all I could have told you was that watching it made me happy.  So I clung to Seinfeld’s point of view, as well as its key mode of expression - stand-up comedy.

Like all great art, Seinfeld combats isolation by building a shared sense of recognition.  That’s why I was, and still am, so obsessed with this show.  It lets me know that I’m not the only person who feels the way that I feel.  So I’ve kept watching, from prime time to syndication to DVDs to streaming, and I tried to replicate the peace and satisfaction it provided me by attempting to build my own stand-up comedy career.  And even though stand-up didn’t work out, the attempt made my life richer and more meaningful in the long run.

For Christmas in 1998, my parents bought me the CD recording of Jerry’s HBO special from that same year, I’m Telling You For The Last Time.  In the liner notes, Jerry talks about sitting on his floor as a child and laughing endlessly at stand-up albums from Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, and Steve Martin.  He thanked them for the inspiration.  I remember reading that and thinking to myself, at all of twelve years old, “When I have a stand-up comedy album, I’ll be thanking Jerry Seinfeld!”  I did eventually put out a stand-up album, although it was completely digital so there were no liner notes.  So I’ll share here, in this extremely low circulation Substack, my profound gratitude and respect for both Seinfeld the man and Seinfeld the show, (Which includes all of the cast and crew who made it what it was).  

I wouldn’t have tried to become a comedian, and experienced all of the ups and downs that came with that, without Seinfeld.  More importantly, Seinfeld has made it easier for me and literally millions of other people to navigate the world and laugh at the things that bother us.  That’s not nothing.  In fact, I’d say that’s really quite something.