re: I'm watching Seinfeld for the first time...

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I'M OUT!

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Elaine's conversation with Jerry (and then Kramer) after her date with Jerry's friend who "took it out" should be shown to every actress in order to teach them comedic timing.

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I like when the story is told to George later on

He took it
it?
Out
out?

And then the guy tells Jerry how he doesn't know what went wrong with Elaine and Jerry responds "well you showed her who you are".

The first few seasons are quite honestly not all that great. I consider myself a massive fan and follower of the show, but those first few had to really find themselves. As you said, starting around 3 is when it really grew legs, and starting around season 5 I would contend that there isn't an episode that'd be lower than a 7/10 from there throughout the end of the series.

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Still might be my favorite episode / scene LINK

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I've never seen that episode but that scene was painful to watch, totally cringeworthy.

Julia Louis Dreyfus is the most talented female comedian of her generation...she carried Seinfeld and is currently killing it on veep.

don't be a name calling jackass to strangers on the Internet
she was the fulcrum for dozens of the series best moments and easily the best actor. take Kramer or George away you still have a series

take her away and you eliminate the foil for all three other main characters

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In fairness, The Tonight Show was already a hot commodity. I love Conan, but I think that audience needs a more conventional, safe host. Again, I love Conan, but I don't think Jerry was wrong.

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That may or may not be true, but it's really a moot point because Conan wasn't given a reasonable opportunity to prove himself. If he had been given a year and the decent lead-ins that Leno and Fallon were consistently given, I think more meaningful conclusions could have been drawn based on whatever performance he might have garnered under those circumstances. True, Fallon is tearing it up and his "safeness" is no doubt a reason, but it doesn't feel right to judge Conan as a failure considering his unique, bizarre, and very short-lived situation. I mean, there's a reason they wrote a book about it.

Either way, Seinfeld was full of shite because he was applying a double standard, and it was nakedly because of his relationship with Leno.

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've yet to see an episode myself. Should I start from the beginning or is each episode it's own story? TIA

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No no no..whatever you do do not start from the beginning. This isn't like a breaking bad, every episode is pretty much able to stand on its own. Sure there are commmon themes and character backgrounds that help to know, but if you start at the beginning of about season 3 and just go from there you aren't really missing much.

Hopefully the OP forgives me for causing this derail. Conan's Tonight Show remain remains a fascinating chapter in TV history.

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It's really NBC's fault for pushing Jay out the door and not giving Conan a smooth transition. I think he would have been more successful had Jay gone out on his own terms at that time and I think he was set up to fail. It was a situation that he couldn't win, IMO.

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100% spot-on.

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Unfortunately you don't get as much time to bring in the numbers before getting the ax, especially on network TV. These are different times than the days of Cheers and Seinfeld.

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Of course, but you can't bring that up without also bringing up that no other Tonight Show host had to deal with their damned predecessor doing an ill-conceived variety show at 10pm, which NBC cancelled five hours of high-rated primetime programming to plug in. The reality is that Conan had about three months to build his audience. He was doing OK during the summer, but once The Jay Leo Show premiered in the fall it had a cascading effect on the local news and Conan. It harmed everything, leading the affiliates to revolt. But here's the thing...

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I don't think he would have ever brought in the numbers that Jimmy does.

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Actually, Conan did do Fallon's numbers in the demo (which is all advertisers care about.) In fact they both debuted with the very same number: 3.8. Of course, premieres are higher than average, and Fallon's average performance in the demo is something like 1.1, and he's considered dynamite at that figure. Conan was in fact above that for his debut summer and of course during that last crazy month - Conan's finale got ridiculous numbers that I don't believe Fallon ever touched (though again, that's an outlier episode). And during the infamous fall period where everything went to shite? Conan's average was about what Fallon's is now. ( Source)

Don't blame yourself for thinking otherwise though. Once they made they decision to reinstate Leno, NBC waged a PR campaign to paint Conan as a ratings failure, so as to have a cleaner narrative. They spun his numbers one way during 2009, and quite another once things got nasty.

The issue really wasn't about Conan's numbers. It was about Jay's. But for complicated reasons, Jay couldn't go away, and Conan could. Calling Conan an "astounding failure" (as that a-hole Dick Eberosl, serving as NBC's hatchet man, did) was just an easier way to explain it to the public. Many still believe it.