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Seinfeld isn’t genius.

There. I said it.
I’ll probably take some flack for this but I stand by that statement nonetheless.

Seinfeld isn’t genius. And the reason is this; it has fooled people into thinking that the mundane, ordinary nothingness of everyday life is actually entertaining. I suppose it can be given the credit of manipulative, or well marketed but certainly not genius. Somehow this show has managed to convince us all that there is something inherently humorous about waiting in line or ordering Chinese Food. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy the show. On the contrary, there are some episodes that I find quite funny.

But that is my point. It’s not the situation that is humorous so much as the people who are sharing it. To say that Seinfeld has some subtly genius insight into life would suggest that my friends and I had that same insight at the age of 15 when we were inventing ways in which to make our life experiences even more ridiculous than they already seemed.

Take any ordinary, every-day life experience; perhaps waiting in a bank line. The humor of the situation would ultimately be relative to the experience of the people waiting in line. A chartered accountant*, for example, may not find anything overly laughable about the situation, whereas someone with a better sense of humor would relay that experience in a totally different view.

It isn’t that Seinfeld, or many comedians for that matter, provide some new and humorous hidden insight into life so much as it is the viewers of the show who have already previously found those situations laughable and enjoy the show for that reason. There is no hidden wisdom to be found in the show. The shows success rests in its ability to target an audience whose own senses of humor allow the show to retell their private experiences through a public lens.

This is why telling someone who doesn’t find Seinfeld funny that they just “don’t understand the subtle genius of the show” is both arrogant and futile. There is no subtle genius and I’m sure Jerry Seinfeld knows this. There are those who laugh at life and there are those who don’t. If one falls under the latter category, trying to understand some hidden insight will only result in frustration because it doesn’t exist. And for those who fall under the former, stop kidding yourself, there is nothing that Seinfeld has that you don’t other than a budget and an audience.

*I apologize for the general assumption that those in this line of work have no real sense of humor. I am sure that there are many chartered accountants in this world who laugh. I just have yet to meet any.