There is no more stringent and standard TV genre than sitcoms. Over a 22-minute, growing span, the writer must introduce, escalate and resolve the situation. Usually, it only takes a week from table leads to filming. This produces room for adjustment, but does not get in the way of experiments. It all needs to be on the page.
Even shows like “Seinfeld” where the cast maintains a high degree of spontaneity throughout each episode? Does Kramer’s (Michael Richards) sudden entrance seem to abandon the entire gravity of Jerry’s (Jerry Seinfeld) apartment? Do you feel like Elaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus)’s signature comes out of nowhere? Does the joke take so many unpredictable twists and turns that it seems the actor is consistently out of guard?
If you’re not familiar with the mechanisms of sitcom production, then “Seinfeld”‘s extremely talented Fab 4 isn’t sometimes improvised to keep things fresh or send scenes soaring over the top It may be difficult to believe that. (Stopping the baby from Mohell in Season 5 episode “The Bris.”) Years ago, Seinfeld himself was asked about the improvisation of the sitcom he named, and his answer may surprise you.
Seinfeld was an almost improvised sitcom
During Reddit AMA in 2014Seinfeld revealed that almost everything he saw over nine seasons of “Seinfeld” has been scripted. According to comedy legend:
“The truth is, we were virtually nothing improvised. That’s how good the actors are, sometimes they seem improvised. The natural thing is, they’re as people and it’s a TV series. I knew it was really fun. Inspire the actors and it becomes tropical depression.”
Television writers barely regained their brilliance in the 1990s (i.e., the peak era of television when casual television fans discovered the existence of showrunners), but most “Seinfeld” fans now Knowing amazing and funny people who summoned such epic jokes. Along with Seinfeld and Larry David, we couldn’t miss the writing staff, including people like Carol Leifer, Peter Mehlman, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.
This does not mean that the actors didn’t add their prosperity. Kramer’s entrance was a bit more reliable after Richards was delayed in the season 1 episode “The Robbery.” Amazing news. The show’s writers also sometimes adjusted at the last minute. Most famously, in the season 4 episode “The Impant,” Jerry’s Kane Bean girlfriend Sidra (Terri Hatcher) kiss offline. According to Hatcher (as she said Vanity Fair (2014), David gave her a line just before the filming: “They are real, they are spectacular.” Clearly, everyone in “Seinfeld” was standing up right away, but when it came to delivering verbal goods, they almost always stuck to the script.
