Word: seinfeldisms
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Flash forward to the year 2000. Seinfeld, the NBC sitcom starring Jerry Seinfeld as one of a quartet of angst-ridden New Yorkers, is finally going off the air after 10 acclaimed seasons. For the gala final episode, Julia Louis- Dreyfus makes a return appearance as Elaine (the movie career didn't work out) and meets her successor in the cast, Melanie Mayron. In a typically Seinfeldian life-imitates-art riff, George (Jason Alexander), now head of network programming, tells Jerry his sitcom is being canceled. Kramer (Michael Richards), elected to Congress in the eighth season, finds himself involved...
Hold on. One farewell at a time. The Seinfeld gang may be the hottest in TV comedy right now, but they are hardly the type to horn in on somebody else's celebration. And Cheers, as everybody knows, is the show saying the lavish goodbyes this month: only three more episodes left, culminating in a 90-minute finale on May 20 in which Shelley Long (who left after the fifth season) returns as Diane Chambers. And the festivities don't end there. Preceding the last show will be a 30-minute special featuring clips from past seasons. Following...
...reigned in the Nielsen Top 10 for eight straight seasons. Yet Cheers' departure dovetails so neatly with the emergence of the show that will take over its time slot next season that the transition seems almost a generational passing of the torch. As the Cheers era ends, the Seinfeld era begins...
...shows have a few obvious similarities. Both are intelligent, verbally sophisticated sitcoms that focus on a group of friends linked by locale rather than family. Both are proof, moreover, of the oft-repeated TV adage that good shows take time to find their audience. Seinfeld went on the air in May 1990 but broke into the Top 10 only two months ago, when it was moved to Thursday nights after Cheers...
...most ways, though, Cheers and Seinfeld line up on opposite sides of TV's generational divide. Cheers is the product of a group of writers and producers who learned their craft in the 1970s at the MTM factory and created such hits as Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi. Their shows typically revolve around the workplace rather than the family, are filled with intricately crafted one- liners and feature ensemble casts of exaggerated comic types. By the end of its run, the Cheers laughpoints had become so familiar -- Woody's naivete, Carla's surly put-downs, mailman Cliff...