I’ve seen maybe a dozen episodes. A few were very funny, a couple really grated on me, and the rest were okay.
A thing l liked about the series…
All the main characters were selfish/stupid/whatever…
Many of the episode plots had a thing where some main character did something selfish/stupid/whatever that got the episode going…
Then funny stuff happened along the way…
Then, at the end, the selfish/stupid/whatever bite somebody (often the owner) in the ass…
IMO… the show was often about round about karma…
I think it was quite funny, but I disliked the characters too much to want to spend any time in their company.
I think I watched about 5 episodes from somewhere in the middle. They didn’t do anything for me. Each episode, the characters went around, did some mildly silly things, and then the episode would end. I didn’t find the humor to be particularly biting, sufficiently silly, or the topics to be sufficiently engaging to really care about any of it. So, I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t see anything interesting in it. You need to ramp all that up to Arrested Development level and then, even if I don’t love it, I at least understand the level of fandom.
Never liked it, never understood the appeal.
I thought it was incredibly stupid and boring.
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t think it was funny and did not watch it
I like it, but the quality of TV shows has gone up so much in the last 20 years that I don’t feel that much affinity for it now. Now it is just another good show, while at the time it was in a league all its own.
I liked “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” but once Jason Alexander joined the show, I hated it. Alexander was completely annoying and was the antithesis of funny: he made everything around him less funny. The show was quickly unwatchable.
I would give it another try occasionally, and couldn’t watch more than two minutes without changing the channel. Even episodes that sounded good in theory were terrible on the screen.
George Costanza and his family are the only characters in the show that I liked.
Off and on watched a few minutes of it, didn’t enjoy what I watched, and went on to other things to do. Another vote for “none of the above.”
In general my taste does not run to “discomfort humor” which is what my sampling of the show led me to conclude was its mainstay. Maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance but the characters just seemed unlikable and without much redeemable underneath. Compare and contrast to say Archie Bunker of All in the Family … he was also unlikable … a racist and more … but the writing still showed him as redeemable. Archie reminded many of us of people in our families, fathers, uncles … who possessed some very ignorant and hurtful beliefs … but who we still saw as people with good in their hearts. Arrested Development too had characters who were at least meaning to not be schmucks. My sense of these characters was that they would be family I would just try to avoid.
But again, I never really gave it much of a chance. It was during my years of several kids ten or so and under in the house and the television was usually on Nick or such.
I think it would have been a lot better if they had included at least a little humor.
See, the “discomfort humor” aspect of it never quite got to me, probably because it felt so much like a sitcom and the situations felt a bit unreal and vaguely absurdist to me. Then there’s a show like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” which plays off discomfort humor in a much more realistic manner/style, and that’s one in which (while I do like the show) I do find myself sometimes feeling really uncomfortable watching it, whereas with Seinfeld, I do not. There’s a breezy airiness about Seinfeld which helps create an emotional distance. Same with my relationship with the characters. Maybe I’m a sociopath or hang around a bunch of assholes, but I never really found them that despicable within the show. It’s only analyzing them and their actions in a somewhat academic manner after-the-fact that I see them as reprehensible characters, but within the show and its style, I see them more as comedic characters and not really hatable.
It’s a classic in my family. I like the show and have seen most of the episodes several times.
Can’t it be both?
Hate it. I hate discomfort humor and I hate neurotic people. Can’t stand anything Larry David has laid a finger on.
I’m willing to bet that the people clocking in to say how unlikable the characters were watch Game of Thrones, or other shows with truly repellent people.
Isn’t this a little ridiculous to say that these characters were so negative as to be unwatchable in light of what TV consists of? I don’t see it. Every bit of their characters was the vision of the writers to maximize the funny, period. They did a good job by most accounts. The idea that they were horrible people is just as odious as that the show was about nothing, if not more so.
Are you that thin skinned? You don’t see yourself in any of the characters worries, schemes and attempts to get by? Tough crowd.
I enjoyed it when it was new, but I don’t feel any need to watch it again.
You asked about “like,” but I love it. After the first season or so, pretty damn consistently funny. Friends and I are constantly noting Seinfeldesque moments in our lives.
That’s bogus man!!!
I liked it the first few years but the characters became intolerable and the finale is one of the worst ever.