Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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91 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still good old Seinfeld but playing with new ideas, 22 May 2007
The richness of season 8 comes from familiarity with what has gone before and how the characters have been established. This is more of the entertaining series of contrived events we've come to know and love, but here it's taken up a notch in the surreality stakes and plays brilliantly with our attachment to Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer.
Perhaps due to Larry David's departure from the show, this season moves off in a new direction: a slightly wackier one. Although it often annoyed me in other Seinfeld seasons how episodes would feel contrived with everything being tweaked annoyingly conveniently for supposed maximum comedy effect (ruined if it's too contrived, because you can see it all coming), in this season the unapologetic and knowing way that the episodes play out put a new spin on things that brought the humour back.
Like all Seinfeld, it's essential viewing, far, far, ahead of almost all American sitcom competition but don't worry that this is just more of the same - although by this point the show had been spun out for 8 seasons, the makers treat the viewer to a more personal, in-jokey and silly variation on the classic formula, and the show is all the better for it.
My favourite episode in this season is probably no.4, "The Little Kicks" where Kramer and Jerry catch a film with a friend who makes bootleg tapes (amusing) and Elaine (adorable as ever) does a hilarious dance which has social repercussions.
This probably isn't my favourite season due to a lot of the best ideas seeming to have been used already but the creators have certainly outdone themselves by refusing to allow Seinfeld to go stale and still keep energy in the show up to season 8.
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44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Let's keep on ironing out that 1 star review!, 1 Aug 2007
Too right, what the last reviewer said. In fact even though it isn't my favourite season, I still think it's worth 5 stars. My favourite episode was "The Fatigues", although I think this was a duff title, and "The Mentor" would have been a thousand times better. I wonder how much people would have made of the supposed differences in Season 8 if Larry David's departure had been kept secret. The oldest review on here gives the impression that common-sense reality is being left behind for the first time. What about Kramer and the "pig-man" many, many moons ago? Well established characters like Steinbrenner and Peterman? Or episodes like "The Big Race", "The Limousine" and "The Invitations"? In Season 8 there is perhaps less of the "how to deal with awkward social situations" that is so closely linked to David's sense of humour (as constantly underlined in "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), but the contrast is slight.
All in all: great episodes, great extras and, if your Seinfelding is a little conservative, don't be put off by exaggerated rumours of some sort of paradigm switch. Honestly, you'd think some of these Seinfeld fans were junior academics in search of an article (maybe they are and they were practicing!) Enjoy.
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105 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Muffin Top of 'Seinfeld', 9 April 2007
This show started as an exemplary slow-burner, and the next thing you knew - yada yada yada - it became a cultural phenomenon. There is something you may call a Seinfeld experience, and I want to appraise the 8th installment of it.
The eight season marked two departures: one of the co-creator/scriptwriter/producer Larry David, and second of the show itself into the realm of pure wackiness. The season seven much-maligned finale, 'The Invitations' (S07E22), can be properly understood only in the context of general quality of season eight, which was one of craziness let loose. Susan's death marked the exact moment in which the entire show made 'ping!', and flew way off into the space of absurd. From the word go in 8ht's season's opener, 'The Foundation (S08E01)', there is no way you can relate to the characters as real people. Right until the very last episode they will be first and foremost CHARACTERS - ones we all love and we all laugh our brains out at - but, nonetheless, CHARACTERS. In all of the previous seasons - despite the famous claim that it's all about nothing - there was a sense that IF any of those people encounter a real-life tragedy that touches them personally, they would stop cracking jokes and cry just as you or me would (remember Elaine's tears shed on behalf of the bubble boy...?). 'The Invitations' proved otherwise and the show really became one about nothing: just the four pop-culture characters thrown into wackier and wackier situations. To my mind, this time no Sein-imation is needed, since season 8 (and 9) simply is the live-action equivalent of traditional cartoon.
And what a cartoon it is! One of the benefits of a then well-established mega-popularity of the show is the delight the screenwriters take in self-references. One of the most hilarious episodes of this season, 'The Bizarro Jerry' (S08E03), is the best example of what I'm talking about. It takes for granted our familiarity with all the patterns, all the characters and all the soundstages even - and twirls them around in a way that makes the entire episode a comment on the Seinfeld universe itself. By showing us the opposite (ha!) of Jerry's world within the 'Seinfeld' world, and laughing it up, the show gives a finger to all the reality that didn't absorb Seinfeld and even had the nerve to denounce it's mastery (of the domain). And no, I'm not misinterpreting the show's nose-scratching for an offensive gesture (or even for an actual pick).
The key word to the last two seasons of Seinfeld is irony: the show has become so self-aware, that it could go either way: mocking itself, mythologizing itself, aping itself - and the audience would love it even more than before because it was all so wacky and so familiar at the same time. The ideas were so crazy you sometimes went "Sweet holy Moses" - but the little kicks never stopped. And we all loved every minute of them.
The 8 & 9 season are my favourites. To my mind they simply are the muffin tops: with all the stems of society, emotion and common sense neatly sliced off. M-m!
Michal Oleszczyk, Krakow, Poland
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