Comedies have apparently gotten a lot better in the last few years. They’re the one genre of television show I tend not to go back and re-watch at some point; they’re almost never plot heavy and the highlights are often quotable material, so re-watching them isn’t often necessary. Unfortunately I found myself watching old episodes of Seinfeld, and man, that show doesn’t hold up to today’s television.
I suppose it’s more likely that Seinfeld just isn’t the kind of comedy I like. A lot of the humor derived from an episode of Seinfeld is awkward moments – like a precursor to the overwhelming awkward atmosphere created by a show like The Office, which is another show I just can’t watch. I just can’t enjoy an event that’s entire purpose is to make me cringe as many times in a half hour as humanly possible. In fact, one of the only characters from The Office I enjoy is Jim, who is less focused on awkward moments and more on sarcasm and wit.
It’s why I think shows like Community are awesome. They’re a half hour of fun, not a half hour of pain.
Recently a friend of mine demanded I start watching The League, a show I originally had avoided because it’s based on football. After being ordered to give it a shot I sat down and watched the first episode and laughed more than I have ever laughed at a television show before. By the time that episode ended I already had the second queued up, and then by the end of that I had decided to watch the entire three seasons in marathon style.
The humor in The League is rather crude, to be blunt. It’s almost entirely just a group of friends being total assholes to each other and the various people they come in contact with on a per episode basis, liberally seasoned with dick jokes and other offensive topics. Despite that, it manages to deliver in an almost entirely funny way.
At least, I think it does. By the time I finished watching the entire run of The League a second time I began wondering if maybe I just preferred the lowest common denominator for my humor. There was a brief moment when I thought that maybe I shouldn’t be talking about comedies at all. Certainly there’s somebody out there who can swoop in and call me on my crappy taste in television.
That moment quickly passed when I saw an ad for Two and a Half Men. I can’t stand that show, and other shows like The Big Bang Theory are just as bad. Those are two of the truest form of lowest common denominator, and it aggravates me that both of those can remain on the air when real gems like CHAOS and The Defenders get canned.
But back to my original point: Seinfeld just isn’t as funny as I remember it being. Maybe it’s because it’s getting to the point where it’s dated, but something about it just doesn’t click anymore. When that show was fresh it was inarguably one of the best comedies on the air, but the continued reverence for it just astounds me. You can take a mediocre episode of almost any other show named in this post (with the exception of Two and a Half Men) and it will hold its own against any episode of Seinfeld you pit it against.
Am I insane? Do I just have terrible taste in television shows? If I were to tell you that you absolutely needed to watch The League, would you go do it as soon as possible? That’s kind of my ace in the hole, here. The way I see it, if I tell you The League is better than one of the most well regarded comedies of our generation, and you watch it and love it as much as I did, I win, right? I dunno. Hit the comments and give me a piece of your mind. Do you love Seinfeld? Do you have a defense of it that might sway me from my heretic opinion? It’s all on you, readers.
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