This Award-Winning Series Is Still the Greatest American TV Show Ever Made

Ask someone what their favorite TV show is, and you’ll get a variety of answers. Maybe The Sopranos is your all-time fave. Perhaps it’s The Simpsons, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or countless others. However, to be the greatest TV show ever made requires more than just personal taste. To be considered for such elite status, a series must not only be high quality, but it must also transcend limitations and influence pop culture and entertainment that comes after. You won’t find a better TV show that fits these criteria than Seinfeld. It was the epitome of 90s culture, and nearly 30 years after its end, it’s still as important as ever.

‘Seinfeld’ Tore Down Sitcoms Tropes and Inspired Shows That Came After

When Seinfeld debuted on NBC in 1989, audiences had expectations for sitcoms. The genre, half as long as a drama, was meant to be quick, breezy entertainment. Audiences didn’t watch sitcoms to get overly invested like they would with a drama. A comedy series is what you watched at the end of a long day as a way to relax before bed, laughing with characters who felt almost like family. They weren’t too complicated, and at the end of the half hour, the leads made up, the in-studio audience applauded, and next week it was more of the same.

Seinfeld was different. Co-created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, they famously didn’t want their show to be about hugs and lessons learned. It was a show about nothing. On the surface, its premise is familiar. Seinfeld plays a fictionalized version of himself, a single stand-up comedian living in New York City. Across the hall lives his zany neighbor, Kramer (Michael Richards). There’s also Jerry’s best friend since childhood, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), a highly anxious man who blames everyone else for his failures. Last, and certainly not least, as the only woman in the group, is Jerry’s ex-girlfriend, Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who must navigate through the men in her life.

Despite this, Seinfeld wasn’t a will-they-won’t-they between Jerry and Elaine. Very early in its run, they did tease putting them back together, but that’s never what the show was about. These two are definitely not meant to be together romantically. Instead, Seinfeld was about these off-the-wall characters doing whatever they had to to get what they wanted. The humor was found in how far these selfish characters would go and in seeing them get their comeuppance. Rather than ending an episode with a hug, someone got their just desserts.

Seinfeld broke out of the cutesy, family-centric sitcom mold and thrived on unpredictability. Its edginess lived on long after the show came to an end after nine seasons in 1998. There’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, of course, but also the likes of Everybody Loves Raymond, Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, and Veep, which succeeded in finding comedy with the unlikable. No matter how great they are, though, none did it first or better than Seinfeld.

‘Seinfeld’ Won Several Emmys, but Its Best Character Was Shut Out

Unless you were alive and watching during the 90s, it’s impossible to describe just how pervasive Seinfeld was in society. While most shows began to lose their audience over the years, Seinfeld somehow continued to grow season by season, quickly becoming the most-watched show in America. And it wasn’t just that we were watching. It’s what we talked about. Seinfeld was the water cooler show on Friday mornings. Every episode seemed to birth a new quote that millions were soon saying themselves, whether it was “Yada, yada, yada,” “No soup for you!” or “Serenity now!” What other sitcom can say that?

Seinfeld was 1990s America, even more than The Simpsons, Michael Jordan, or Bill Clinton. It was the message of an era where the economy was booming, everyone felt safe, and selfish desires were at the forefront, while we also stayed connected. These characters aren’t lost in their smartphones, and they have no clue that 9/11 is coming. Seinfeld is incredibly smart while also being incredibly simple. Its intelligence is found not only in the wild plots but in the supporting cast as well. Jerry Stiller and Estelle Harris became iconic as George’s parents. And someone like Patrick Warburton could find forever-fame as Elaine’s dunce boyfriend David Puddy, even though he was only in 11 episodes. Oftentimes, the supporting characters were stranger and more incomprehensible than the leads, giving them a reason for their bad behavior.

Seinfeld was nominated for multiple Emmys every year, yet it was still a show taken for granted, and perhaps even a bit before its time with voters, who often gifted trophies to more traditional sitcoms like Frasier. Seinfeld did get its share of award show recognition, but Jerry Seinfeld never took home a single acting trophy, and neither did Jason Alexander, even while doing his best Larry David imitation. The show itself won for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993. Michael Richards’ over-the-top physicality won him three trophies, and the brilliance of Julia Louis-Dreyfus got her one. Over nine seasons, Seinfeld was nominated for 68 Emmys and won 10.

Today, Seinfeld is still popular, whether it be TV syndication or dominating the Netflix charts. In these strange and uncertain times, where TV is about dark dramas and sitcoms no longer have a huge impact, it’s clear audiences still want to laugh, and there’s no better show to turn to than the greatest of all time.