Re: Seinfeld

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On Fri, 15 May 1998, Terrence M. Wood wrote:

> Marty, I'm with you, I have never seen Sienfeld, except in bits and pieces
> of the hype and it wasn't funny!  So why waste my valuable time to watch
> something that doesn't make you laugh when its supposed to!
> I guess now that it's over it won't even be memorable like "I love Lucy"
> and Cheers and M*A*S*H !

Well, it was one of the highest rated shows on TV, so a lot of people must
have thought it was funny.  However, it happens that I saw the finale of
Ellen this week, too, and I thought that was much funnier.

Some have said that Ellen was supposed to be a female Seinfeld show.  If
such is possible, I thought it tended to be even more about "nothing" that
Seinfeld.  But the finale was a spoof of the Hollywood tribute show, which
featured Linda Ellerbee interviewing Ellen about a fictionalized life
story, in which she began as a child star in Vaudeville, then did a
ventriloquist act on radio a la Edgar Bergen, etc.  One "flashback" showed
the 1959 "pilot" of her show, in an "I Love Lucy" style, in which Ellen
and her friend are grinding coffee beans with their feet, in the same way
that Luch and Ethel were once shown stomping grapes.  Ellen's friend even
mentions that she's glad Ellen had the chocolate conveyer belt taken out.

Another "flashback" shows Ellen hosting a game/panel show on the DuMont
Network called "Who's a Commie?"  There are "flashbacks" from the 1970s,
showing Ellen and friends wearing 1970s-style clothes and making anti-war
protest signs, while Ellen's TV father does an Archie Bunker tirade.

I thought it was ironic.  I never liked Ellen, even though I watched it
occasionally.  I frequently liked Seinfeld, but grew tired of it and
thought the show had gotten tired.  I didn't like the Seinfeld finale,
even though I did sort of like the way it turned out.  But the Ellen
finale was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

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 A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                         617.367.0468
 15 Court Square                                      lawyer@world.std.com
 Boston, MA 02108-2503                       http://world.std.com/~lawyer/
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