Passing The Sitcom Torch

As Cheers says goodbye after 11 seasons, the Seinfeld era is ready to begin

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In most ways, though, Cheers and Seinfeld line up on opposite sides of TV's generational divide. Cheers is the product of a group of writers and producers who learned their craft in the 1970s at the MTM factory and created such hits as Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi. Their shows typically revolve around the workplace rather than the family, are filled with intricately crafted one- liners and feature ensemble casts of exaggerated comic types. By the end of its run, the Cheers laughpoints had become so familiar -- Woody's naivete, Carla's surly put-downs, mailman Cliff's out-to-lunch monologues -- that the show seemed almost to write itself:

Frasier (reading a goodbye letter from Lilith): "Dear Frasier: Life in the Eco Pod is wonderful. Gogie and I are happier than we've ever been. Please start divorce proceedings. Our marriage is . . ." (He is overcome.)

Woody (dumbly): Made in heaven?

Frasier: ". . . our marriage is over."

Cliff: That really burns my hide that Lilith sent him that mailgram.

Frasier: Well, thank you, Cliff.

Cliff: All of a sudden a first-class stamp isn't any good anymore?

Cheers was TV's most well-oiled comedy engine, but that machinelike predictability was its major drawback. Regular characters came and went, coupled and uncoupled, but the relationships seemed inspired less by anything organic in the show than by the simple need to open up new gag territory. Gags, moreover, that too often depended on the quaint TV fiction that people always play out their intimate moments in front of at least four other people. Cheers was a bar where everybody not only knew your name; they also knew your embarrassing secrets and the details of your sex life.

The characters in Seinfeld talk about intimate things too, but they at least come across as friends who might really confide in one another. Maybe because they are, in a sense, all variations on the same person. The series (created by Seinfeld with writer Larry David) is, like several other new-generation sitcoms, an outgrowth of stand-up comedy material. Episodes spin off the sort of trivial incidents and observations that Seinfeld dwells on in his monologues. (Jerry feels guilty over a gift pen; Jerry's girlfriend thinks he picks his nose.)

Unlike the well-made, two-act structure of Cheers, Seinfeld episodes are freewheeling, anecdotal and -- paradoxically, for a show based on stand-up material -- almost devoid of typical sitcom one-liners. Here is George, for example, complaining that his new job as a comedy writer is going to waste: "Can you believe my luck? The first time in my life I have a good answer to the question 'What do you do?' and I have a girlfriend. I mean, you don't need a girlfriend when you can answer that question. That's what you say in order to get girlfriends. Once you can get girlfriends, you don't want a girlfriend, you just want more girlfriends." Jerry's deadpan reply: "You're going to make a very good father someday."

The characters on Seinfeld are more rounded and less stereotyped than practically any on TV. Kramer, for example, the next-door neighbor with the electric hair and thrift-shop wardrobe, could have been a typical sitcom shtick figure. Instead he's an impassioned eccentric with endless reserves of nuttiness. (After the group orders Chinese food, he shouts a final request into the phone: "And extra MSG!")

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