How Well Do You Know Seinfeld?

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9 Questions

What is Seinfeld about?

What is the show's humor based upon?

What is Seinlanguage?

What is Seinfeld's theme music composed of?

What is the Seinfeld curse?

What was the show's final season like compared to earlier seasons?

What is Nothing, Forever?

What was the audience size for the series finale of Seinfeld?

What is Seinfeld's legacy?

Summary

Summary Title: Seinfeld - The Iconic American TV Series

  • Seinfeld is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld that aired on NBC from 1989 to 1998.

  • The show is about a fictionalized version of Jerry Seinfeld's personal life with three of his friends: best friend George Costanza, former girlfriend Elaine Benes, and his neighbor from across the hall, Cosmo Kramer.

  • It is set mostly in an apartment building in Manhattan's Upper West Side in New York City, and it has been described as "a show about nothing".

  • The series was largely written by David and Seinfeld, with scriptwriters who included Larry Charles, Peter Mehlman, Gregg Kavet, Carol Leifer, David Mandel, Jeff Schaffer, Steve Koren, Jennifer Crittenden, Tom Gammill, Max Pross, Dan O'Keefe, Charlie Rubin, Marjorie Gross, Alec Berg, Elaine Pope and Spike Feresten.

  • Seinfeld is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms of all time and has been ranked among television's best shows in publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and TV Guide.

  • The show led the Nielsen ratings in Seasons 6 and 9 and finished among the top two every year from 1994 to 1998.

  • Seinfeld broke several conventions of mainstream television, offering no growth or reconciliation to its characters and eschewing sentimentality.

  • The show's humor is based upon repeated use of irony, incongruity, and coincidences and often makes light of tough topics, from death to illness to disability.

  • The show's lexicon of Seinfeldian code words and recurring phrases that evolved around particular episodes is referred to as Seinlanguage, which is also the title of Jerry Seinfeld's best-selling book on humor.

  • Seinfeld features numerous celebrities who appear as themselves or girlfriends, boyfriends, bosses, and other acquaintances, and many actors who made guest appearances became household names later in their careers or were already well-known.

  • Seinfeld's theme music, composed by Jonathan Wolff, consists of distinct solo sampled electric bass riffs that open the show and connect the scenes, often accompanied by beatboxing.

  • The show maintains a strong sense of continuity, as characters and plots from past episodes are often referenced or expanded on, and occasionally, story arcs span multiple episodes and even entire seasons.Seinfeld: An Overview

  • NBC ordered 13 more episodes of Seinfeld after the first season, despite David's belief that they had no more stories to tell.

  • Seinfeld was slow to cultivate a substantial audience in its early seasons, but TV critics championed it.

  • A few episodes set a benchmark for later seasons, including "The Deal," "The Parking Garage," and "The Keys."

  • Season 4 marked Seinfeld's entry into the Nielsen ratings Top 30, coinciding with several popular episodes.

  • Season 5 was an even bigger ratings hit, with popular episodes including "The Puffy Shirt" and "The Opposite."

  • Seasons 6 and 7 introduced story arcs involving George getting engaged to his ex-girlfriend and Elaine working as a personal assistant.

  • Seinfeld's final two seasons were regarded as being distinct from the earlier seasons, with David leaving the writing crew and Seinfeld taking over as showrunner.

  • The final season included a story arc in which Elaine has an on/off relationship with Puddy.

  • Seinfeld ended after Season 9 despite NBC offering over $100 million for a tenth season.

  • The series finale, written by Larry David, aired on May 14, 1998, and was watched by an audience of 76.3 million viewers.

  • Seinfeld made an estimated $4.06 billion in syndication as of February 2017.

  • The Seinfeld Chronicles initially tested poorly with audiences, but Castle Rock Entertainment focused on another series they produced instead.Seinfeld: A Summary of the Show's History, Legacy, and Home Media

  • The Seinfeld Chronicles was not initially included in NBC's 1989-1990 primetime schedule but was later ordered for four more episodes after positive ratings and encouragement from supporters.

  • The show was first repeated on July 5, 1990, and received high enough ratings to secure a second season, with NBC research showing that the show was popular with young male adults.

  • The series was filmed at CBS Studio Center, in Studio City, Los Angeles, with numerous establishing shots taken in New York City.

  • The small sets, especially that of Jerry's apartment, were a source of problems for the cast, and the scripts contained only minimal physical direction, leaving the actors struggling to come up with actions to perform while speaking.

  • Filming usually went long, as the cast and David were perfectionists, and laugh tracks were used only for matching shots, not for artificially adding laughter.

  • Seinfeld referenced the Superman franchise in more than 120 episodes, with various locations used for establishing shots, including Tom's Restaurant at 112th Street and Broadway (Monk's Cafe).

  • Seinfeld is less popular among non-English speakers as its unique style of humor is "too cultural and word-based to make for easy translation."

  • Seinfeld has received numerous awards and nominations, including the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993 and the Golden Globe Award for Best TV-Series (Comedy) in 1994.

  • TV Guide named it the greatest TV show of all time in 2002, and in 2013, the magazine ranked it as the second-greatest TV show.

  • American Express created a webisode where Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman starred in its commercial, and many advertisers capitalized on the show's popularity.

  • All nine seasons of Seinfeld have been released on DVD, and the series has streamed on various platforms, including Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix.

  • Netflix acquired the exclusive global streaming rights for Seinfeld, starting on October 1, 2021, but was criticized for converting the show's original 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9.The Legacy of Seinfeld: From Unaired Scenes to AI-generated Parodies

  • Jerry Seinfeld mentioned the possibility of shooting one last scene after the characters leave jail.

  • Seinfeld and Jason Alexander spoke about this scene being in Monk's Cafe, with George saying "That was brutal" about the foursome's stint in prison.

  • A sketch was produced on an episode of Saturday Night Live that showed what life was like for Jerry behind bars after being transferred to the fictional prison portrayed on the HBO series Oz.

  • Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander, and Richards have all tried to launch new sitcoms as title-role characters, but almost every show was canceled quickly.

  • The Seinfeld curse is the failure of a sitcom starring one of the three, despite the conventional wisdom that each person's Seinfeld popularity should almost guarantee a strong, built-in audience for the actor's new show.

  • Louis-Dreyfus broke the curse with the success of The New Adventures of Old Christine, which included winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2006.

  • The Seinfeld cast reunited for season seven of Curb Your Enthusiasm, with the season-long story that Larry David tries to initiate a Seinfeld reunion show as a ploy to win back his ex-wife, Cheryl.

  • Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, and Wayne Knight appeared in a spot presented during halftime of Super Bowl XLVIII on February 2, 2014.

  • An AI-generated parody of Seinfeld called Nothing, Forever was created in December 2022.

  • The show makes use of machine learning tools to generate completely novel scripts, spoken dialogue, blocking, and music, within an animated version of Jerry's apartment.

  • On February 6, 2023, the show was temporarily banned on Twitch due to Larry Feinberg (the show's version of Seinfeld) making a "transphobic" joke.

  • The show gained popularity due to its bizarre nature.

Description

Think you know everything about the iconic American sitcom, Seinfeld? Test your knowledge with our Seinfeld quiz! From Jerry's apartment to the Soup Nazi, this quiz covers all the classic moments and characters from the show. Get ready to relive the laughs and see how much you remember about the show about nothing. Put your Seinfeld knowledge to the test and take the quiz now!

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