There is no more rigidly formula television type than the sitcom. During a closely telescopée of 22 minutes, the writers must present, degenerate and resolve a situation, while giving the public the laughs of the belly which, we hope, made the meeting meeting. They generally only have one week, from reading the table to filming, which leaves production to adjustments, but little experimentation. Everything must be on the page.
Even for a show like “Seinfeld”, where the casting maintained a high degree of spontaneity throughout each episode? Where do Kramer’s steep entries (Michael Richards) seem to eliminate the gravity of Jerry’s apartment (Jerry Seinfeld)? Where do Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) sign up out of nowhere? Where do the jokes take so many unpredictable twists and turns that the actors seem to be constantly offset?
If you are not familiar with the functioning of sitcom production, you might have trouble believing that the fabulous fabulous remarkably talented of “Seinfeld” was not improvised on the occasion to keep things fresh or send A arrow scene over it (like Kramer to tear the baby from Mohel into the episode of season 5 “The Bris”). Many years ago, Seinfeld himself was asked about improvisation in the sitcom which bore his name, and his answer could surprise you.
Seinfeld was a sitcom mainly without improvisation
During an Ama Reddit in 2014Seinfeld revealed that almost everything you saw during nine seasons of “Seinfeld” was scripted. According to the legend of comedy:
“We have improvised practically nothing, in fact. It is how good the actors, that it sometimes seems that they improvised. But we knew each other as well as we knew exactly what sentences to put in their mouths which would seem Natural.
Television writers did not get enough shine in the 1990s (that is to say the era of pre-pique television, when occasional television fans discovered the existence of showrunners), But most fans of “Seinfeld” are now aware of funny phenomenal people who have summoned these spectacular jokes. You just couldn’t miss writing staff who, with Seinfeld and Larry David, understood people like Carol Leifer, Peter Mehlman, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.
This does not mean that the actors have not added their own frills. Kramer’s entries became a little essential after Richards was late on a signal in the episode of season 1 “The Robbery”, while the cooks of Elaine were transported to the Louis-Louis- Dreyfus to push his friends by hearing incredible or simply surprising news. The screenwriters of the show also made last minute adjustments on occasion, the most famous being the kiss line of Jerry’s girlfriend, Sidra (Teri Hatcher) in the episode of season 4 “The implant “. According to Hatcher (as she said Vanity In 2014), David nourished the line “They are real, and they are spectacular” just before the shooting. Obviously, everyone on “Seinfeld” was fast on their feet, but when it was a question of delivering the verbal goods, they almost always stuck in the script.
