It seems sad to think that in this instance, Seinfeld is riffing on a problem that has become a public-health crisis rather than a laughing matter.
By HANNAH BROWNJERRY SEINFELD – sharing his latest grievances.(photo credit: NETFLIX)Jerry Seinfeld started out as a stand-up comic, and he returns to his roots in the just-released and often very funny Netflix special, Jerry Seinfeld, 23 Hours to Kill. It’s an hour-long comedy performance filmed at the Beacon Theatre in New York, where he dusts off the quirky, cranky, standoffish persona he made famous in the Seinfeld series, which went off the air 22 years ago but which remains a vibrant part of our culture thanks to reruns and streaming.The subject of Seinfeld was not, as Seinfeld famously claimed, “nothing,” but the daily lives of the comic and his friends, who refused, for different reasons, to conform. They said out loud what lots of us were really thinking but rarely admitted and people loved them for it.But the success of the series brought Seinfeld to a level of comfort and celebrity where he could buy his way out of nearly every annoyance that had so preoccupied him. He married, raised a family and collected cars for the better part of two decades, returning in 2014 with the series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, now in its final season on Netflix, which combined three of his passions.Now, though, it seems there is enough in his life to really tick him off, so he has returned to share his latest grievances.“This is in fact my favorite type of intimate relationship. I love you, you love me and we will never meet,” he tells the crowd, as he presents Jerry the philosopher: “Everyone’s life sucks.” Even his, sometimes, since he’s been eating at a lot of fancy restaurants “that aren’t half as good as a bowl of Lucky Charms and a Pepsi anyway.”So many of the funniest story lines on Seinfeld involved the malevolent mailman, Newman, and Seinfeld doesn’t miss an opportunity to kick the US Postal service now that it’s down: “I would say to the postal service, if you actually wanted to be helpful to us, open the letters, read ‘em and email us what it says.”Eventually he settles into a rant about marriage, in the “Take my wife, please!” comic mode, although he manages to stay just this side of politically correct by focusing on the differences between men and women rather than carping about his own wife.“A lot of wives complain their husbands do not listen. I have never heard my wife say this. She may have. I don’t know.... That’s what marriage is. It’s two people, trying to stay together without saying the words, ‘I hate you.’”In the one bit that eerily presages the current pandemic, he talks about the annoyances of being in the crowded city, a theme that has long been part of his schtick.“We live here in New York. That makes no sense.... Let’s pack in here, tight! Uncomfortable, on top of each other, traffic, congestion! That’s what we like!”It seems sad to think that in this instance, Seinfeld is riffing on a problem that has become a public-health crisis rather than a laughing matter.Amazon Prime Video (available on Cellcom TV and Partner TV) is offering Upload, an inventive and witty series by Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) about an only slightly far-fetched future in which people who know they are about to die can upload their brains into a slightly creepy and very expensive VR theme park that looks like an Adirondacks resort, and live forever, sort of. It’s an often sharp commentary on the increasingly digital world we are living in, particularly recently, but with an inventive plot that veers into a mystery.If you enjoyed the Netflix series The Spy, or are just interested in the story of Eli Cohen, the legendary Israeli spy in Syria, you should watch Eli Cohen: Fighter 566, a new documentary on KAN 11. It’s running on Sundays at 9:15 p.m., but the first episodes are available on the website, kan.org.il. Featuring interviews with his widow, his children and his surviving handlers, it’s a grittier portrait of Cohen that delves into the stress that made him withdraw from his family, his affairs with high-society Syrian women and more.
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