Even as online message boards expanded the scope of TV fandom, Internet connections started to invade more homes and make media executives nervous: Was this screechy modem thing possible competition, or not? But Seinfeld gave NBC suits hope that TV was safe for now. In fact, America Online’s vice chairman, Ted Leonsis, said in an interview that his only competition was Seinfeld. When the show came on, he said, the network’s numbers (an average of 450,000 people were online each hour from 7:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M.) dropped. At the time, a dip in online engagement meant television was drawing people away; most viewers had not yet learned to interact with one another to discuss a show while it aired. Seinfeld drew 30 million viewers for a single half hour. With just 1.8 million users over the prime-time period, AOL pulled in numbers closer to MTV’s or Larry King’s. For the moment, AOL couldn’t hope to dominate television. It would have to settle for running its Jetsons-themed ad spot, announcing “The Future—Now Available on America Online,” during Seinfeld.
THOSE AOL ADS WEREN’T THE only ones jockeying for an increasingly higher-priced slot during Seinfeld. Seinfeld wasn’t just popular; it commanded the commercial realm like no sitcom before it. With the help of Friends’ blockbuster debut as part of NBC’s Thursday lineup in 1994, Seinfeld made “Must See TV” the rare slogan that meant something. It meant so much that the shows hammocked in the spots between those powerhouses included a notorious number of duds that still put up huge numbers. The Single Guy, Caroline in the City, Suddenly Susan, Union Square, Veronica’s Closet, and Jesse were hardly classics, but could pull in nearly 20 million households, ranking in the top ten of all television shows at the time.
Thursday had become the most important night of the week for television programmers, a time when a large proportion of the young, wealthy demographic that advertisers coveted were watching. Movie studios in particular liked to buy up Thursday-night ad time to launch blockbusters on Friday nights, as did car companies pushing weekend sales.
As far back as 1982, NBC had branded the evening, particularly during its stronger seasons. The network promoted that year’s lineup of Fame, Cheers, Taxi, and Hill Street Blues as “The Best Night of Television on Television.” The marketing aimed to combat what then NBC president Grant Tinker often noted, that viewers were more loyal to shows than to networks. The night had become important to NBC as it rose from the last-place network in the late 1970s and early ’80s to the first-place network in 1985 with Thursday favorites like The Cosby Show and Cheers. Most in the industry attributed this ascendance to Tinker’s leadership, specifically his ability to nurture creativity—a reputation he earned as the head of MTM Enterprises, which he started in 1969 to produce his ex-wife’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show and which went on to produce respected series such as Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and Newhart.
Brandon Tartikoff served as Tinker’s second-in-command at NBC until Tinker’s departure in 1986; then Tartikoff took over with a vow to uphold the quality and burnish the brand further, to take it, as he said, from “Kmart” to “Saks Fifth Avenue.”
Seinfeld had helped do that, boosting the network’s demographic reach in large cities, among upwardly mobile professionals, and among young audiences that advertisers craved. In the entertainment industry, such success led inevitably to imitators. Shows about young, single urbanites proliferated across networks, though that particular form of flattery came at least as much from other NBC series as from any other source.
David and Seinfeld noticed, carping that Friends had ripped off their show’s concept—a group of single friends in New York City. And it was certainly true that from the beginning, Friends had Seinfeld DNA. Courteney Cox, who had played one of Jerry’s girlfriends and went on to star as the uptight Monica on Friends, took charge at her new show by saying, “Listen, I just did a Seinfeld, and they all help each other. They say, ‘Try this.’ Or, ‘This would be funny.’ ” She continued: “You guys, feel free to tell me. If I could do anything funnier, I want to do it.”
But Friends differed quite a bit from Seinfeld. Upon seeing Friends as it developed, Littlefield thought, This is a Shakespearean soap opera. It’s a drama that’s really, really funny, and with complex architecture. Seinfeld, on the other hand, prioritized humor and disdained feelings. As Friends cocreator David Crane said, his show went for the emotion every time, rather than focusing on the minutiae of New York life and rapid-fire references to everything from John Cheever to babka. “That’s why we were always surprised when people compared us to Seinfeld,” Crane said. Added Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey on Friends, “You cared about these people. You were invested in these relationships.” Seinfeld was the opposite: You cared what happened to the characters because they were fun to watch, not because you cared a whit for their relationships or, God forbid, feelings.
Friends’ producers felt equally resentful of Seinfeld, which they saw as an older brother who got to do whatever he wanted. When the Friends producers wanted to show a condom wrapper on-screen, NBC’s standards and practices department balked; Seinfeld, on the other hand, had already aired its masturbation episode. “Seinfeld had different rules,” Crane said. “Apparently, you can masturbate at nine but not at eight.”
The double standard annoyed even network president Warren Littlefield: “That made me crazy,” he wrote. “I had a lot of battles with broadcast standards over that. What could be more socially responsible than these characters practicing safe sex?”
Another show in the Must See TV lineup came closer to being Seinfeld-inspired, and got its good spot on the air because of it: Mad About You, starring Seinfeld’s longtime friend and admirer Paul Reiser. “Paul Reiser, like Jerry Seinfeld, was a stand-up comedian, but Paul also had some serious acting experience, particularly his wonderful turn in Diner,” Littlefield later wrote. “In a sense, then, we were working an improvement on the Seinfeld equation by going into business with a comedian who could already act.”
Littlefield thought Mad About You could make a good scheduling companion to his now-major hit, and it eventually got a prime Thursday spot. Audiences responded to it, even if it didn’t permeate the culture as thoroughly as Seinfeld. The two shows had a symbiotic relationship: Seinfeld took a friendly swipe at Mad About You when Susan forced an exasperated George to watch the show with her instead of a Yankees game. And Mad About You got a Seinfeld-ian blessing in the form of a cameo by Michael Richards as Kramer—who, it turns out, lives in Reiser’s character’s old apartment. Given Seinfeld’s previous resistance to crossover gimmicks, this was a coup.
And in 1998 came yet another clear Seinfeld descendant on NBC, with only its approach to sexuality to set it apart: Will & Grace brought us a core cast of four cynical, self-obsessed New Yorkers with trivial problems as well; it’s just that two of them happened to be gay men, two of them straight women. The show emulated Seinfeld right down to its composer, hiring Jonathan Wolff to produce the theme and score. This time, he chose to play an exuberant piano solo instead of a spare bass solo. Even though Wolff had plenty of work before Seinfeld, he’d now become one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, which is, as he told me, “a me-too town.” He went on to score The King of Queens, The Hughleys, and Reba, among many others.
The networks would take any little piece of Seinfeld they could get.
NBC’S STRONG COMEDY LINEUP, LED by Seinfeld, made everyone in Hollywood want to work with the network. Everyone now wanted to make “the next Seinfeld.” Even with barely any room left on the schedule to fill and agents warning their clients against trying to sell to the overstuffed network, NBC received a barrage of pitches. NBC became a brand name in itself, not merely a channel some shows happened to be on.
Seinfeld guest-starred on an episode of fellow NBC sitcom NewsRadio as himself, the surprise radio-show guest who would help boost sagging ratings. He had gone from network pariah to the very embodiment of a ratings savior.
In 1996, largely due to Seinfeld’s success, NBC’s revenues had ballooned to m
ake it seven times more profitable than ABC—the only other network to turn any profit that year. The show contributed $200 million to that billion-dollar bottom line. A good thing, since General Electric, which had purchased NBC as part of its deal with RCA a decade earlier, required its companies to rank first or second in earnings in their respective industries, or be sold off. GE had jettisoned several of RCA’s holdings but kept NBC, not only because it was the first-place network but also because an internal analysis showed revenue growth of 11.4 percent yearly between 1980 and 1984, despite the encroachment of cable and VCRs.
By 1997, Seinfeld had become the first television show to bring in more than $1 million per minute of advertising, something previously accomplished only by the Super Bowl. It could launch new shows for the network, keep weaker ones afloat, and help bring viewers to the network’s news broadcasts, morning shows, and late-night lineup. The money pouring in allowed NBC to plan for its inevitable Seinfeld-free future, investing in cable networks, international markets, and long-term rights to broadcast the Olympics. “It almost defies logic what the value of that program is,” a media buyer told Businessweek. “Seinfeld is one of the most important shows in history.” Businessweek declared it a “TV supershow.”
Seinfeld was now big enough that David—who once thought a down payment on a Lexus was as good as his career would ever get—bought himself a Porsche. Then he worried that it was too much and he didn’t deserve it. So he returned it a week later and took a $16,000 loss.
WITH A HUGE SWATH OF America now watching every week, even the famous were now fans. Director Stanley Kubrick had tapes of the show sent to him in England. Advice columnist Ann Landers, comedian Phyllis Diller, and author Dave Barry were among regular viewers.
The Seinfeld stars got to meet their idols as they became sought-after names for industry events. Louis-Dreyfus served alongside one of her role models, Teri Garr, on the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee when it publicly supported first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care reform efforts. Alexander became friends with William Shatner, whom he had admired as an actor and because Alexander was a hard-core Star Trek fan. Shatner told Alexander that his own experience on a hugely influential television show had embittered him at first; when it ended, he was angry that his career had possibly peaked with Captain Kirk, and he tried to distance himself from the character. It took him twenty years to finally embrace his fans from that time. “You might want to think about embracing it now,” Shatner advised Alexander. George was going to be Alexander’s Kirk, no doubt.
The show’s famous fans now happily lined up for guest-star spots, too, often playing versions of themselves. Marisa Tomei romanced George. Mets player Keith Hernandez romanced Elaine. Raquel Welch played herself as a terrifying diva; Bette Midler played herself as the star of Rochelle Rochelle: The Musical.
Jon Voight appeared as himself in the episode in which George buys a used car that may or may not have belonged to the actor. Voight coincidentally crosses paths with Kramer, who can prove whether Voight is the car’s former owner if he can get an impression of the actor’s teeth marks to be analyzed and compared with a bitten pencil left in the vehicle. He decides to goad Voight into biting his arm.
Before shooting the scene, Voight gleefully declared to director Andy Ackerman, “I’m going to really bite him! Don’t tell him.”
When the cameras rolled, Voight did indeed grab Richards’s arm and sink his teeth into it. Shocked, Richards screamed. Voight laughed. “Damn method actors,” Richards muttered after the take was over. The famous were now regular folk on the set of Seinfeld.
MEANWHILE, EVEN THE SHOW’S RELATIVELY minor characters became national sensations.
There was Jerry and Kramer’s mail-carrier neighbor Newman, who became Jerry’s nemesis. Wayne Knight, who’d appeared in such films as JFK and Basic Instinct, played him with evil aplomb and got to deliver one of the show’s most popular catchphrases: “Hello, Jerry.” There was Elaine’s monosyllabic boyfriend David Puddy, played by the hunky Patrick Warburton as either the dumbest or smartest character on Seinfeld—it was impossible to tell.
But George’s and Jerry’s parents rose to something far beyond recurring characters, ranking among sitcom history’s most memorable parental figures and becoming career-defining roles even for actors with long Hollywood backstories.
Jerry Stiller joined the show in 1993 as Frank, the father figure who made us understand why George was who he was. Stiller found the Seinfeld family welcoming when he arrived on the set: On his first taping night, Alexander, Seinfeld, Louis-Dreyfus, and Richards surrounded him and wished him good luck. He felt a particular connection to the eccentric Richards. That day kicked off what Stiller would later call “the best years of my life as an actor.”
Seinfeld came at a good time for Stiller, which is to say, at a bad time for him as an actor. He was sixty-five and short on the kind of work that could sustain him. He had just done a TV pilot called Civil Wars, from which his scene was cut. He and wife, Anne Meara, had just performed in a run of their longtime dual comedy act, featuring material they had once done on The Ed Sullivan Show decades earlier. He got a role in a staging of the comedy Three Men on a Horse with Tony Randall at the National Actors Theatre, for which he originally turned down the Seinfeld role. Then the play closed and he realized: His destiny was to play Frank Costanza—a role that had already been played on the show once by a different actor, John Randolph—after all.
Stiller thought he’d wear a bald wig for the role, to match both George and Randolph, but soon that plan was abandoned. More important than the Costanza bald gene was the Costanza capacity for anger—Stiller would spend most of his time yelling and hitting Alexander.
Though director Andy Ackerman described Stiller as “the sweetest man on the face of the earth,” anger was even more critical to the role of Frank than to the role of George. At first, Stiller resisted. Alexander suggested Stiller slap him in the face. “I can’t do that!” Stiller said. Eventually, he did.
Richards lent his choreography expertise to Stiller: When the Costanzas planned their Festivus celebration, Stiller had to schlep an aluminum Festivus pole into Monk’s Café. “Don’t forget to drag it on the floor,” Richards told Stiller, “so they can hear the sound.”
Stiller had trouble remembering his lines, but the Seinfeld cast and crew developed patience with him because of how spectacular his performances were. In fact, what look like Frank’s angry gestures are often Stiller’s gestures of frustration with his inability to remember his lines. Everything about him looked pained, a perfect expression of Frank Costanza.
Stiller felt brave around these actors. And he had never seen himself as a courageous actor. He felt total freedom on the set. Stiller appeared on the show twenty-six times, doing plays on and off-Broadway, and getting a hip replacement, in between. He always looked forward to returning to work with his on-screen son. He loved to see the glint in Alexander’s eye in response to Stiller’s funny work in a scene.
Alexander wasn’t the only one who cracked up over Stiller’s antics. Louis-Dreyfus, too, was prone to breaking up in scenes with Stiller. In one scene, Frank had to challenge Elaine: “You saying you want a piece of me?” It took five or six times before she could get through it without doubling over in laughter. He could ask for no more as an actor.
Sixty-four-year-old Estelle Harris served as Stiller’s irritable and irritating on-screen wife, Estelle Costanza—a defining role she played so well that Alexander felt, in scenes with his on-screen parents, that all he had to do was “stand in the middle.” She came to Seinfeld with a résumé full of mother roles in films such as Stand and Deliver and the TV shows Night Court and Brooklyn Bridge. On Seinfeld, she got to use her nasal whine to its greatest effect as George’s overbearing mother.
She made her first appearance on the show in the fourth-season episode “The Contest.” Alexander was startled to see the five-foot-two-inch woman with a cloud of short red curls
, who looked so much like his own mother. Her voice struck him as instant comedy. In the episode, she lands in the hospital, having thrown out her back during her aghast reaction to the discovery of George masturbating. “I go out for a quart of milk,” she screeches, “I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park.” She got even more screen time when George moved back in with her and Frank in Flushing, Queens, for a season.
The Costanzas’ ethnicity went technically unspoken. Estelle constantly made paella. Their last name was clearly Italian. References were made to Christmas celebrations in the home. But when Harris—a Jewish New Yorker born Estelle Nussbaum—was cast as Estelle, Alexander knew for sure that he was playing a Jew because “she can’t be anything but Jewish.” Coming close to confirming this, Estelle Costanza once forbade Frank from buying a Mercedes because it’s a German car. Stiller, also Jewish, described the Costanzas as “a Jewish family in the witness protection program.”
THE TV VERSION OF MR. and Mrs. Seinfeld didn’t have as much raw emotion to draw on for their characters. But they did provide a more normal model of aging parents than the Costanzas, with passive-aggressive guilt-tripping more their speed than screaming and violent outbursts. They also lived in a retirement community rife with political intrigue, hilarious bit characters, and the potential for entirely different sources of humor than Seinfeld’s standard apartments and coffee shops could provide.
Jerry’s father, Morty, first appeared on the show in the first-season episode “The Stakeout”—like Frank Costanza, he was played by two different actors as the series evolved in its early years, free of mass scrutiny. At first, Morty was played by Phil Bruns. By the time he appeared again in the second season, he’d gotten more hair, distinctive dark-framed glasses, and a much jumpier persona, courtesy of Bruns’s replacement, Barney Martin.
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