On Friday night I watched the original pilot of Seinfeld. This is a testament to a couple of things: (1) my undying devotion to a show whose final curtain closed over ten years ago; and (2) my undying devotion to all things homebody-ish, like a Friday night at home with my old friends Jerry and Elaine.
If you weren’t a Seinfeld fan, this post may be lacking in metaphor for you. And I apologize. Not for the post, but for the ways you missed out on those happy Thursday nights in the 90’s.
To clear up any confusion, when I say pilot I’m not referring to the episode where Jerry and George pitch a pilot to NBC. I’m talking about the real pilot of the actual show.
Before I tell you what I thought of the pilot, allow me to explain my love of all things Seinfeld. The show was fresh and original and made ordinary crap seem funny and personal and oh so familiar. The characters were real and vivid, and made something out of a show about nothing.
And guess what? The pilot totally sucked. I feel like a complete traitor even typing that, but sheesh! Holy awkward and uncomfortable and oh-for-the-love-of-Larry-David squeamishness. It was actually kind of boring and not very funny. And worst of all, it was trying too hard.
Luckily, the episode previewed a few delicious glimpses of the glory the show would eventually grow to become. So two points I want to make about that:
(1) Even something as wonderful as Seinfeld started out being way less than wonderful. Things take time to grow and develop. Art needs nurturing. Characters become more authentic as they live out the lives of the role they play. The whole entity of the show itself needed time to get comfortable in its own skin, work out the kinks, refine the relationships, polish the humor.
(2) Someone (much savvier than myself) still saw the potential and gave it a shot. And geez am I grateful for that. Because no idea or craft or “thing” starts out fully formed and organically awesome.
They had the shell of a great show: the actors and writers and creators and story (or innate storylessness). But everything needed time to deepen in complexity, to build the confidence to take risks, and let the heart of the show start beating on its own. And not only did the show itself need time to develop; so did its audience. We needed time to catch on, to connect with the show in order to allow it to affect us.
And yeah, same is true for us. Our thing needs time, space, (cheese alert) love. What a relief.
Interestingly, the series finale also sucked wasn’t my cup of tea. Remember? The trial and everyone being sent to jail? Yuck. It was time to move on and the talented people involved in the show knew it. The rest of us didn’t want to let it go. But the actors and creators were ready to go build new things, to create fresh stuff, to start over.
(Totally random endnote: If there had been blogs in the 90’s, can you imagine the comment debate there would have been over that last episode? Pretty heated. Or is it just me?)
(Totally random endnote number two: the September newsletter for blisscovery went out today! Hooray! Join the party and subscribe in the sidebar.)
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you know, this is an excellent and insightful post. I love how you find lessons in seinfield and it reminds me of what I already know (but try to push past anyway), let the art grow.
thank you.
And you want to be my latex salesman…
Great post. Love the Seinfeld reference.
Excellent reminder that we shouldn’t be too caught up in being perfect right out of the box. We need to give ourselves time to fail and try again.
Being willing to suck is exactly what I’m having an issue with. I even acknowledge this daily when I look at (run away from) my writing. This little case study totally helped me : ) Thank you!
The story of how Seinfeld came into being is a fascinating one. The pilot was poorly received, and it was really just one executive at NBC who gave the show a chance. For all the details, check out “The Seinfeld Story,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZtu2WBO48U&NR=1.
Just stumbled upon this post, almost 2 years later, but it still holds up.
As far as tv pilots go, and this one in particular –
Very talented (and usually very *experienced*) network programming executives get to be successful by figuring out how to tell the true promise of a series proposal by (among other things) knowing what to look for in a produced pilot – usually at a cost of only a fraction of what future episodes will be should the show get “picked up” by a network. Such network execs are, unfortunately, rare and seldom exist in great numbers within any one network at any given time. Although NBC almost didn’t “pick up” the series and only one exec initially was truly interested in it, there were plenty of others well-regarded in the business who knew the quality of the people involved in the project and who subsequently lent their support. Thus the decision was made by NBC to pick up the series in spite of the “shortcomings” of the pilot (virtually ALL pilots have serious shortcomings; they’re not intended to be fully-fleshed out and/or finalized representations of a series to begin with… THAT doesn’t begin to happen unless someone actually signs a contract for X-number of episodes to be produced).
As far as the final Seinfeld episode goes -
I too happen to believe that it “sucked.” So did a LOT of other people at the time. But a LOT of other folks at the time happened to think that it was GREAT. And yes, it was a topic of a LOT of discussion and debate at the time… and although at the time of its original airing there was nothing known as website-based “blogging” per se, there WAS indeed a vast amount of online debate nonetheless (we just didn’t call it “blogging” in those days).
Anyway, the point of this post’s author is well taken. The undertaking of development of a new tv series, especially up to the point of actually getting financing for and producing that first “pilot” episode, is a GREAT example of the importance of being willing to undertaking substantial risks if one is to ever achieve true success in life. And this point is particularly well understood by anyone who has achieved any real degree of success in the entertainment in industry.