Have attempted to watch Seinfeld a couple of times and did not enjoy it...other than the Paul O'Neill episode.
Friends was fun to watch for me so that gets my vote.
Have attempted to watch Seinfeld a couple of times and did not enjoy it...other than the Paul O'Neill episode.
Friends was fun to watch for me so that gets my vote.
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I like both so it's a tough decision, but Seinfeld is more ground breaking than Friends was. Seinfeld made huge success from a show that just examines social norms and deviance. The R rated version of Seinfeld (Curb Your Enthusiasm) is also fantastic with Larry David. Seinfeld wins.
Seinfeld by a mile. The writing is genius, they continued to make episodes from the most ordinary subjects and make it funny, the acting was great, the characters awesome, especially some of the secondary (Puddy, Peterman, Newman), and it stands the test of time, being just as funny today. It's the best comedic sitcom ever made for me, with Cheers right behind it.
rhino17 put Friends perfectly in his post on page 1. Like, I can't put it any better...
If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love.
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I never watched a full episode of Friends. Maybe caught a glimpse here and there flipping through channels.
I didn't know so many people on PSD (or anywhere actually) liked King of Queens.
It's weird too because I loved Kevin James on King of Queens but the vast majority of his movies are terrible. Like his humor completely changed.
If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love.
I love King of Queens. Arthur is one of my favorite characters in any TV show.
One of my favorite scenes from the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tbf-pBUAU
Friends was and remains the ultimate generic sitcom. It took a basic formula, never deviated from it, and enjoyed a full decade's worth of success because the average American viewer is terrified by change and for the most part just wants the same story recycled and regurgitated to them a thousand times over.
Seinfeld was the polar opposite. They took a similar basic formula (small group of friends, rather than the family dynamic) and went weird and wild ways with it every week. In it's infancy, Seinfeld struggled for ratings because no one had ever seen a show where the main characters simply sit and talk about mundane aspects of daily life for an entire episode. In time, people gradually appreciated the nuance, and as has already been mentioned - a seemingly endless cavalcade of secondary and tertiary characters (see finale for reference) helped explode the show into what it became.
When I saw the title of this thread I knew precisely which two shows this was going to be before ever clicking into it, this is a conversation that's had all the time, even a decade and a half after both shows went off the air.
One of the things I find most telling - where Seinfeld really took off in the middle to later years, as I mentioned, was based heavily off the secondary characters and the relationships they cultivated with the primary four. In those same middle to later seasons, Friends went the cliched route of reaching out to celebrity guest stars for ratings. Seinfeld, in its own right, had tons of celebrity guest stars as well. The fascinating thing is the overwhelming majority of them because famous *after* their cameos on Seinfeld. That was the eye for talent that Larry David had. Dude is incredible.
I don't particularly like either as much as many people I know, but I think Seinfeld is unequivocally a better show. I think it was more groundbreaking, unique and ahead of it's time. I think it was funnier. I think the characters are far more memorable. I like cynicism, bizarreness and rawer comedy than otherwise. So on and so forth.
But, like most anything else, there are tons of subjective factors in play, so like whatever the hell you want to like. And I think the shows are different enough that fighting too passionately about either one isn't really necessary. They did not approach things at all in a similar manner.
this my sig
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