by Herbie J Pilato
The Seinfeld-inspired Super Bowl spot was okay, but nothing to write home about, although at least enough to write about here.
First, the positive:
1] It was the first time we see Jerry (as “Jerry Seinfeld”) and Jason Alexander (as “George Costanza) inside the real Tom’s Restaurant (which was known as “Monk’s” on the show).
2] It combined the real Jerry Seinfeld’s new show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, with the original Seinfeld series (if to an exaggerated extent).
That said, my big issues with the latter seasons of the original Seinfeld series were front and center in the new Super Bowl Seinfeld skit.
Jerry and George (the characters) were too mean-spirited, and the carefree likable PERFORMANCES (not the characters but the PERFORMANCES) that were so much delightfully presented by Jerry and Jason (the real people) in the initial Seinfeld seasons were no where to be seen in the new Super Bowl spot (or for that matter, in the latter five years of the original Seinfeld show).
In the early genius years of Seinfeld, and really, too, in Jerry’s wonderful new Cars Getting Coffee show, he is nothing but charming.
But in the Super Bowl spot, his performance as the Jerry Seinfeld character was mean-spirited, sarcastic, and stressed-out to the nth degree, as was Jason as George.
The first few seasons of Seinfeld were pure gold.
The characters may have been unlikable, but that didn’t matter – because the PERFORMANCES of the actors in their roles were so likable.
You know, how like…Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing on Dallas was a “bad” character, but Hagman’s performance in the part was nothing less than deliriously delightful (if the use the “d-word” again).
I’m so very sorry – and sad – that I can’t say the same for the Seinfeld-inspired Super Bowl spot which seemed, ironically enough, as if it was filmed in the “Bizarro World” sector of the Superman arena, a franchise that both the real Jerry and the fake Jerry so very much embrace.
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