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Whatever I am about to say aboutJerry Seinfeldsnew special,23 Hours to Kill, Seinfeld has already preempted.
Sucks and great are the only two ratings, Seinfeld says.
The first half is great, and the second half sucks.
That binary is at least a little ridiculous, and way too simple.
Are It sucks and Its great empty, cop-out shrugs of response?
Do you instantly understand what they mean?
It is Seinfeld Classic.
But the thing none of the parodies can ever pull off is how tightly he writes.
I dont know why it matters, but its weird how fast the doors of portable toilets swing open.
Its remarkable how fully the dynamic changes when Seinfeld turns his eye on his own life.
He has shrunken and forcefully cut himself down to size with the blunt ax of his own self-consciousness.
He has been married for 19 years, and it isexhausting.
Marriage, Seinfeld says, is two people trying to stay together without saying the words I hate you.
At his best, his comedy teeters in between magic trick and dad joke.
Its frustrated, full of buried anger, and trope-y.
He writes it well.
The images are clear.
But they never have that ping of tiny surprise.
Half of it sucks; half is great.
But Seinfeld knows that, too.
The cleverest one is at the end: an ice-cream cone he imagines falling on the ground.
Ice cream falls off the top of the cone, hits the pavement.
And what do you say?
he says, shifting to a tone of dry annoyance.
Of course he chooses to end with that one.
Its punctured-balloon final deflation is the funniest, and the worldview is closest to his pervasive grumpiness.
But an earlier one feels truer to the special as a whole.
He describes a hot dog eaten at Yankee Stadium.
The hot dog is cold.
And yet, Seinfeld concludes, You love that hot dog every time.
