Monday, June 06, 2005
DVDs will kill us with nostalgia
We're pretty much addicted to watching old television shows on DVD. That was basically all I got for my birthday last week, along with a few clothes and a cd or two, and so for ten days now all my wife and I have done at night is sit at home and watch old tv. And damn if it ain't fun. I've long said that Newsradio was probably a better show than Seinfeld, but reassessed that claim after getting hooked on reruns of the latter over the past year or so. I was as big a fan of Seinfeld as possible during the first four seasons, but felt that it got markedly worse as it went on. I had stopped watching it entirely by November 1994, specifically after the episode when George ate a snack cake out of his girlfriend's parents' trash-can. By that point the show had become a caricature of itself, I thought. I didn't watch an episode again until its last three weeks on the air, in 1998. There are probably a hundred episodes I had never seen until the last year, and through syndication I've been able to catch up on many of them. For the most part, they've all been pretty great, and, having not seen Newsradio in five years or so, started to think that Seinfeld must have been better.
The first two seasons of Newsradio are now on DVD, having been released around the same time as the fourth season of Seinfeld. I can't say that Newsradio is a better show overall, but I find it undeniable that these first two seasons are far better than Seinfeld's first two years, and also better than what I've seen of Seinfeld's last four seasons. Newsradio is more like a typical sitcom, but it's a sitcom that's perfectly cast, excellently written, and highly adept at straddling both straight-forward, nominally realistic sit-com humor, and the sort of absurdism found in more bizarre shows like Get a Life and The Young Ones. Whereas Seinfeld actively strove to break through the strictures of network situation comedy, Newsradio maximized the potential within that framework. Seinfeld was the more adventurous program, but, in many ways, Newsradio was more likable, and, with the exception of one, maybe two, years of Seinfeld, the more humorous. I respect Seinfeld greatly, and believe the fourth season to be maybe the greatest season of any live-action television show ever, but, overall, I personally enjoy Newsradio more. I realized that after finishing up the first two seasons Saturday night; it was really quite depressing, knowing that, after four or five nights of continuous viewing, it would be months before I got to watch more Newsradio. We immediately followed that up with the aforementioned season four of Seinfeld, which, like I said, is one of television's most impregnable fortresses of excellence. It truly is as close to genius as television can come. And yet, coming after such a concentrated dose of Newsradio, a show I hadn't seen a minute of in five years, even this unassailable masterwork is kind of a let-down. So, yes, I realize and freely acknowledge that Seinfeld, specifically the fourth season, and perhaps the third as well, is a better show than Newsradio. But that doesn't change the fact that I personally enjoy Newsradio more.
We're pretty much addicted to watching old television shows on DVD. That was basically all I got for my birthday last week, along with a few clothes and a cd or two, and so for ten days now all my wife and I have done at night is sit at home and watch old tv. And damn if it ain't fun. I've long said that Newsradio was probably a better show than Seinfeld, but reassessed that claim after getting hooked on reruns of the latter over the past year or so. I was as big a fan of Seinfeld as possible during the first four seasons, but felt that it got markedly worse as it went on. I had stopped watching it entirely by November 1994, specifically after the episode when George ate a snack cake out of his girlfriend's parents' trash-can. By that point the show had become a caricature of itself, I thought. I didn't watch an episode again until its last three weeks on the air, in 1998. There are probably a hundred episodes I had never seen until the last year, and through syndication I've been able to catch up on many of them. For the most part, they've all been pretty great, and, having not seen Newsradio in five years or so, started to think that Seinfeld must have been better.
The first two seasons of Newsradio are now on DVD, having been released around the same time as the fourth season of Seinfeld. I can't say that Newsradio is a better show overall, but I find it undeniable that these first two seasons are far better than Seinfeld's first two years, and also better than what I've seen of Seinfeld's last four seasons. Newsradio is more like a typical sitcom, but it's a sitcom that's perfectly cast, excellently written, and highly adept at straddling both straight-forward, nominally realistic sit-com humor, and the sort of absurdism found in more bizarre shows like Get a Life and The Young Ones. Whereas Seinfeld actively strove to break through the strictures of network situation comedy, Newsradio maximized the potential within that framework. Seinfeld was the more adventurous program, but, in many ways, Newsradio was more likable, and, with the exception of one, maybe two, years of Seinfeld, the more humorous. I respect Seinfeld greatly, and believe the fourth season to be maybe the greatest season of any live-action television show ever, but, overall, I personally enjoy Newsradio more. I realized that after finishing up the first two seasons Saturday night; it was really quite depressing, knowing that, after four or five nights of continuous viewing, it would be months before I got to watch more Newsradio. We immediately followed that up with the aforementioned season four of Seinfeld, which, like I said, is one of television's most impregnable fortresses of excellence. It truly is as close to genius as television can come. And yet, coming after such a concentrated dose of Newsradio, a show I hadn't seen a minute of in five years, even this unassailable masterwork is kind of a let-down. So, yes, I realize and freely acknowledge that Seinfeld, specifically the fourth season, and perhaps the third as well, is a better show than Newsradio. But that doesn't change the fact that I personally enjoy Newsradio more.
