Originally broadcast on NBC from 1989 to 1998, this series violated all TV rules until then. A show about nothing is defined by the authors themselves in The Pitch (Season 4, Ep.3). It has no strong narrative pretexts and speaks of everyday life, trivia, and common things, but brightly. All this makes Seinfeld the sitcom grandma.

Still a bubbly granny…

The strength of this sitcom is to transform any small event into comic hooks. So you can say that it became a series about everything, or rather about how you can humorously respond to anything.

In the pre-Seinfeld era, the sitcom was a genre created to pamper audiences. Contemporary series like Married…With Children, The Cosby Show, and Cheers followed a familiar format. Seinfeld gave us the experiences of a different group and it had to fight for survival during the first seasons. Through time, it became television critics’ favorite: the quality of the sitcom was in rapid and constant improvement.

Although, audiences love to see the moments in which the characters must be sensitive and emotional, in which they must put their sins or admit a fault, and in this Seinfeld flaws.

…and full of personality…

“Single, in their 30’s, rootless, with vague identities, and with a conscious indifference to morality.” This is how Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Seinfeld‘s authors, describe their characters. The series shows neither a group of friends nor colleagues, let alone roommates. Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer apparently have nothing to do with each other. 

Being aired by NBC, the show had an obligation to be politically correct, even though it was staging ethically questionable characters. They don’t grow, they don’t change, they don’t move forward; they live like New Yorkers, day by day. On average, each character was selfish, insecure, immature, and lying. They were bad people who didn’t have to worry about how others would react because there would be no lessons, messages, or morals at the end of the episode. The mantra of the producers of the show was: “No Hugging, no learning”, meaning the intention to avoid the more corny moments present in other sitcoms.

…also with a great career

Seinfeld won ten Primetime Emmy Awards despite being nominated for 68. It also won three Golden Globes in 1994 and three Directors Guild of America Awards for “Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series”. From 1996 to 1998 the show won four People’s Choice Awards.

The serialization and self-referential nature of modern giants such as The Office, How I Met Your Mother, and Community is a notable example of his influence on modern sitcoms and for this, people identify Seinfeld as ‘the sitcom grandma’.