Netflix is now in the Jerry Seinfeld business, and then some. Earlier this year, the streaming service paid an astronomical $100m to buy two new standup specials plus Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. But the first fruits of this deal is the just-released Jerry Before Seinfeld special.
Ostensibly, Jerry Before Seinfeld is the comedian’s version of 700 Sundays; a sepia-tinged nostalgia-fest about his childhood and adolescence and first steps into comedy. But that is derailed right from the word go because – for better or worse – Jerry Seinfeld is incapable of the self-examination required to pull something as personal as that.
He starts by discussing growing up on Long Island. Only nobody ever says they’re in Long Island, he quickly points out. They’re always only on it. Immediately, his childhood memories are jettisoned in favour of a long, Seinfeldian look at preposition use. You can feel him stretch out as he does this, because it puts him right back in his comfort zone. This tract, it must be pointed out, is also a great deal funnier than his attempts at straight nostalgia.
This pattern repeats itself again and again throughout the special. The blueprint for his jokes tends to be “In the past we did this, but now you have this and what’s the deal with this thing you all have now?”, which is no bad thing. Seinfeld is not Louis CK. Even under the heaviest scrutiny, he will not divulge much about the flaws and tics and squandered ambitions of his own life.
What he is, though, is a joke machine. Jerry Seinfeld has always delighted in presenting immaculate, word-perfect gags – fired from a laboratory and guided by laser – that deal with the mundane details from everyday life. You may have previously wondered why the two main US parties are represented by a donkey and an elephant, for instance, but Jerry Seinfeld has done it far more meticulously, mining every last possible potential for humour from its carcass before moving on.
So Jerry Before Seinfeld is basically a sleight of hand. Everything about it – the intimate setting, the brief documentary interludes, the conversations with other comedians – seems to suggest that this will all be new and revelatory. The fact that he even made these concessions to a new form show some effort on his part. Surely most people’s first impulse, given such a fortune from a streaming company, would be to go out and prove they’re worthy of the investment. They’d have turned in a gleaming Kevin Hart of a show, presenting themselves as a dot in a sprawling enormodome full of screaming fans, where all the jokes have to be screamed as unsubtly as possible to reach the back row.
But that isn’t what Jerry Before Seinfeld is. The small room means that every word and pause and gesture hits like a mallet. He could go big – my assumption is that his next special will do exactly that – but Jerry Before Seinfeld serves as a neat reintroduction to the man. This is watching a craftsman at work. And forget all the nostalgia hoo-hah, that’s why anyone has ever watched Seinfeld the standup; to marvel at the craft of it all.
Jerry Before Seinfeld is on Netflix now.
