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As Seinfeld is the first to admit, it's been an impressive and improbable run for a show he has famously said is about nothing, which, of course, is charmingly disingenuous. Because if Seinfeld--arguably television's first genuine comedy of manners since Leave It to Beaver--is about nothing, then so are the works of Jane Austen and Noel Coward. If Seinfeld seems trivial, it is only because manners have so devolved over the course of our century. Like the rest of us, the show's overly analytic foursome must pick their way through an increasingly chaotic social battlefield, forced to write their own etiquette for even the most insignificant encounters. And then there are the big questions, like what do you do when your girlfriend suggests sharing a toothbrush?
But aside from jokes about masturbation and oral sex, the fundamental difference between Seinfeld and Pride and Prejudice, say, is that Seinfeld in its heart of hearts is concerned with avoiding romantic attachment, with repulsion (and its twin, self-loathing)--the starkest example being George's relief when his fiance dies licking the envelopes of cheap wedding invitations. The supposed callousness of that episode, a season finale, received more criticism than any other, but Seinfeld is unrepentant. "I think if I had to do it again," he confesses, " I would have had George do a worse job of containing his glee. It would have been funnier if he'd really lost it." Never before has television been host to such unreconstructed misanthropy. As Larry David, the show's co-creator and longtime guiding light, once quipped, if the show had a motto it was "no learning, no hugging."
Just as Seinfeld is quick to give his co-stars and collaborators the lion's share of credit for the show's success ("My real talent," he says, "is in picking people"), he is loath to ascribe any cultural significance to Seinfeld, even while in a somewhat valedictory mood. The show's aims, he insists, are entirely unpretentious: "I really aspire to The Abbott and Costello Show. That's my favorite sitcom. We walk down the street and bump into Bania, the bad comedian, the way Lou Costello would bump into Stinky, and then a scene comes out of it. That's classic. It's burlesque." One quickly learns that Seinfeld, like most comedians, can talk about comedy endlessly and with great depth of knowledge of both its history and its craft. He refers almost mystically to "the funny" and cites old masters: "Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the purest element. It can't be improved upon as a substance. It's impervious to style, to time. That's the only significant thing about this show: it's funny."