Go to the Notes to read why this picture is relevant to this post. It’s too long to write in a caption.

(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 18)

This week I finished re-watching Seinfeld.

I mentioned I was doing this a couple of times in different contexts - but just to recap:

I think I started on January 1, and I watched it on Netflix from the beginning.

I think it’s a total of 180 episodes - and I finished the last week of April, so it took me pretty much four months.

Some days I watched one episode, some days two or three, and some days none.

But it was an interesting experience re-watching a show I hadn’t seen in about 25 years.

I think the thing that fascinated me most as I watched the show again was my memory. There were parts of the show I remembered word for word…and there were other episodes I barely remembered.

Some of that is obviously because of syndication. There were episodes I was watching for the tenth time and other episodes that this was probably the first time I watched since it originally aired. And even those - there were pieces I remembered in my brain…and that was 25 years ago! How does the kind of thing wedge in there?

I definitely appreciated a lot of the humor and other parts of the writing more as an adult than I did when I was younger. (I was in high school and college for the original run of the show. I remember watching episodes both in my living room at home and in my dorm rooms in Boston.)

I also appreciate just the plethora of ideas that made up the show. The big joke was it was a show about nothing but in reality it was a show about very specific things that became big things. I’m reminded that I wished I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm more, because it’s a lot of the same kind of story. I just never had HBO consistently enough to watch it. (I’ve seen a lot of it, but not later seasons. I never saw any of the Seinfeld reunion episodes of Curb.)

I also realize there is a lot of humor in the show that wouldn’t fly these days. But overall it was a great use of my time to take in that comedy writing.

The other interesting thing about what I remembered is how some of my initial thoughts were dead-on, and some have changed over the years. I remember being annoyed by George in general, which is what was supposed to happen. He’s an annoying character.

But then I remembered just amping up that annoyance towards the end. That’s how I felt again in the re-watch. He just became a caricature of a caricature in the final season. I didn't like it.

But the finale - I remember not liking it 25 years ago. And I don’t think I had seen it in the years since. This time around I really appreciated it. It wasn’t funny, but it was a great callback to almost the entire series.

And, for a show that prided itself on not teaching lessons…I don’t know. The main characters kind of got what was coming to them in the end. And in that way it was kind of a huge change from the rest of the series.

So an episode devoted to capturing the 9 years of the show all rolled into one..but the overall tone of that show was entirely different? Pretty clever.

Just like the rest of the series.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

Holy Smokes! Matt’s new album is out.

That’s not excitement over the album….well, I’m excited for the album, but Holy Smokes is also the name of the album.

It’s great, I recommend you listen. You can find everything you need to know at Matt’s website here. Some really good writing and some really great music.

As I mentioned many times in past weeks, last night was also his album release party, which I probably enjoyed. Maybe I saw you there? I am writing this in the past and predicting the Saturday night future.

Notes

*So let’s quickly touch on the picture above here: I just didn’t have a good Seinfeld-related picture for this post, and I’ve done too many posts where the picture is just a picture of my TV. I came across this one, and it’s tangentially related since it’s stand-up. And Jerry Seinfeld is a big reason why I aways wanted to perform stand-up comedy. So it works. (Will I perform again? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. It’s just not in the cards right now for a variety of reasons.)

*The Mets had a rough week. My older age might be softening me as a fan. I was very understanding of the Mets’ losses. After the very good west coast swing that I mentioned last week the Mets dropped four in a row, including two to the Washington Nationals, who aren’t supposed to be very good. And I was so exhausted from staying up for even just parts of the west coast games that I was like, “Well of course these guys are tired. They had to deal with the time changes and stay up for the entire games and play baseball the whole time, and now they’re back on east coast time…give them a break.” They’ve had a lot of road games and have barely been able to settle into a home schedule. Call me a sucker but I think they’ll be OK in the long run.

*I’m supposed to go to the Sunday game (this afternoon when you’re reading this? earlier today?) but we’re running up against weather. It’s not looking promising, but who knows. (That predicting the future I mentioned earlier was not true. I was just guessing.) There are days I will stress about the Mets weather, if I’m making the trip to New York for a game. But since we were coming down anyway for Matt’s show, it’s OK if this one gets washed out.

*I decided I’m not going to stress about the Rangers. I just hope they keep playing and avoid elimination.

*Social media links are below. Go ahead and like or follow. Maybe I’ll get back to running this week…check out the Instagram for updates on that.