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In one of the episodes from the highly popular TV series Seinfeld, George (Jason Alexander) and Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) are both struggling to come up with an idea for a TV situation comedy. After much deliberation, George has the brainstorm idea that they could simply do a "show about nothing."1 In fact, Elayne Rapping has lamented that Seinfeld along with its friends-oriented clones (Mad about You, Ellen, Friends) fills its storylines with the endless "trivia of everyday life." After all, show topics have included such matters as: how do you get that funny smell out of the back of Jerry's car? or how do you get a table at your favorite Chinese restaurant? or the last loaf of marble rye? She finds in these sitcoms about young urbanites with no apparent family or career responsibilities and with plenty of time to just hang out and talk, a disturbing message about the end of work and family life, but without offering much in the way of compensation except celebrating the trivial (Rapping 37).
Frank McConnell has suggested that Seinfeld may be best described as a "modern comedy of manners," rather than a traditional domestic TV sitcom. At first glance, it may seem absurd to suggest that Seinfeld has anything in common with the witty, refined, upper-class dramas of Moliere and Goldsmith. However, the characters of Seinfeld are just as obsessed and frustrated with following and often circumventing the prevailing social codes (of an American middle-class civility) as the English Restoration comedies of Congreve and Sheridan. One of the central differences between Seinfeld and more traditionally oriented TV sitcoms like Coach is that the main characters "know" they are involved in an elaborate, largely contrived social game of witty dialogue, false deceptions, and desires. Unlike the characters of the standard sitcom genre, they continuously watch themselves play out these absurd situations even as they realize they cannot avoid the comic "pull of the absurd." Within the world of Seinfeld, the absurd does not exist in well-conceived comic gags or wisecracks, but rather in the small social blunders which comprise the spectrum of social manners in the nineties (McConnell 19-20).
John Bryant has suggested that the American TV situation comedy genre does, in fact, create its own distinct...