I don't think you should be criticizing Cindy here in the de facto Cindy thread. ( That was her secret plan, all along!:)

edited to add smiley.

I also hated it. I thought they were all mean, mean people,

This is what made the finale so freakin' great.

I, too, however, was really snapped out of it by the whole Susan arc.

By the Susan arc I was very "see! Horrible people. Why don't they suffer more? Why don't I suffer less?" and then I realised I'd been watching it and not enjoying it.

Curse my need to have material for an opinion.

You are all mad! Seinfeld was brilliant from beginning to end. The sheer virtuousity of the plotting alone, the way all the disparate plot strands of each episode would come together in the final scene, puts it right at the top of the heap for me. Also, the point isn't just that the characters are unpleasant, it's that at some level they know they're unpleasant, but they persistently and hilariously undermine their own and each other's efforts to be better.

(Oh, and I can state with some certainty that Allan was joking.)

I'm in the 'hate it' camp for all the reasons people have already put forward: unengaging, irritating etc. It makes me cringe and seeth rather than laugh.

I don't think I've ever been able to sit through an entire episode of Seinfeld (I worried that all the cringing I was doing was going to give me premature wrinkles), but objectively I appreciate it. Well, sort of--the repetition of the dumb sitcom formula of having the character do something stupid/horrible and then spend the rest of the episode attempting to cover it up from their girlfriend/boss/whoever was a bit tedious.

mommy, don't let the bad man hurt me.

< - - pointing at Angus

nubmer

Just out of curiousity, how did Tim get the death rep? I haven't been keeping track of authors, so I'd love to know; who'd he kill?

( That was her secret plan, all along!:)

Tattle tale! Looks like I'm going to have to let Ashcr*ft know about your WMD, Nou.

You are all mad! Seinfeld was brilliant from beginning to end. The sheer virtuousity of the plotting alone, the way all the disparate plot strands of each episode would come together in the final scene, puts it right at the top of the heap for me. Also, the point isn't just that the characters are unpleasant, it's that at some level they know they're unpleasant, but they persistently and hilariously undermine their own and each other's efforts to be better.

Yes! Susan's death was cold, though. I think that was part of the in-joke. In this whole show about nothing, in following these silly characters along and seeing how shallow and self-absorbed they were, when something actually horrible happened (like Susan's death), the focus was never on the events, but on the thought processes and motivations of the characters. In an odd way, the Seinfeld storytelling (overall) reminds me of the way Joss revealed Buffy's odd, and sometimes inappropriate thoughts, in The Body. My favorite forever will be the one in which Elaine was trapped on the train, trying to get to a wedding.

who'd he kill?

Uh, off the top of my head the major/semi-significant characters who have died onscreen in Tim episodes are: Doyle, Angel's mother, father and sister, Darla has died a total of four times as a character and Tim was involved in portraying three of those deaths, Holland was sucked dry, Merl got torn to pieces, Holtz had an unfortunate run in with the man, and Connor died in the sense that Tim had Angel slash his throat and get him a new boring life&personality package.

Eta to add that Tim is the master of extraneous character death, so the above body-count isn't really a fair representation. He wacked an entire cellar-full of lawyers along with Holland, for instance.