I’m talking about as far as there sitcoms are concerned not that mooseport movie or those godawful microsoft commercials. whose acting was of a higher suckitude?
Seinfeld. Great comedian, but a one-note actor.
Romano was much better, and he’s doing great work on Men of a Certain Age.
Well, I’m going to be a bit biased because Seinfeld is my favourite TV show of all time, but I think Romano was worse. Seinfeld, I think, turned out to be quite a good comedic actor, especially in the later seasons. Even though I never liked Everybody Loves Raymond (although it had its moments) it was played so much on TV that I feel as though I’ve seen every episode and they all tended to feel the same, and one of the reasons they felt that way was because the plot lines and acting was so similar every time. Great actors can save a formulaic show (think The Golden Girls), but I don’t think they did in this case.
I also think Jerry was “supported” really well by his supporting cast and they made him look better, while the only actor I like on Everybody Loves Raymond was Doris Roberts.
(I haaaaate Patricia Heaton but that’s not relevant to this thread)
As one note as Romano was, Seinfeld was no note. I always got the sense Romano was, at least, playing a character. Seinfeld wasn’t.
The character of Jerry Seinfeld was more like Jerry Seinfeld hte actor than Ray Barone was like Ray Romano.
Seinfeld was worse. The first season is almost unwatchable now, with all of the repressed smiles and bad writing. He did get a bit better as the show aged, to the point where I didn’t think he was out of step with any of the other cast members. But the first few seasons were not so good, season 1 especially.
Romano was much better. In fact, I can’t recall one episode that I thought “he should have stayed a comedian”. I thought Ray always held his own.
Like Superman you never saw the two together so I think they’re the same person.
I’ve seen every episode of both shows many times. Romano is acceptable as an actor, since he did play a character who was distinct from himself. Seinfeld was merely Seinfeld.
As I don’t know Ray Romano, I’ll take people’s word that Ray Barone was distinct from Ray Romano. That said, I find his character on Men of a Certain Age to be nearly the same as his character from Everybody Loves Raymond.
I also don’t know Seinfeld the character from Seinfeld the person, and while neither is an appealing character, I liked Seinfeld the character much more than Ray Barone.
Not everybody loves Raymond.
I thought Romano was a pretty good comic actor–his sense of timing, his comedic pauses, his pained reactions, etc. In a very strong cast of comedic actors, he didn’t feel out of his league to me. I thought he added something to the material.
Seinfeld, on the other hand, didn’t detract from the material, but I don’t think his acting added anything to it either. And it was always clear to me that the rest of the cast had comedic acting chops that Seinfeld simply did not. Any conversation or exchange that didn’t simply follow the basic rhythm of his stand-up delivery felt awkward, or at least not polished.
Seinfeld was worse. Very one-note. Ray Romano was very realistic as Raymond (believe me, I KNOW some whiny clueless men) and fit right in the ensemble. RR occasionally would do something out of character, while Jerry Seinfeld never evolved (or devolved) - he was the same in every episode.
He never hugged, never learned.
Seinfeld was worse.
I couldn’t stand Seinfeld when it was new. It wasn’t until syndication that I got into the show.
And yes, George, Kramer, and Elaine, and don’t forget Newman and George’s parents carry the whole thing. Jerry did get better as the show went on, but man; that sniggering and shifty eyes thing he did through a lot of the show only made me want to punch him in the face.
Seinfeld was marginal. But the show Seinfeld was never really “deep and heavy.”
The characters didn’t have “real” emotions for the most part. Everything was treated as a joke.
George’s finace dying was a classic example. You couldn’t have any emotion so the other characters just “wrote it off.”
It was like that for everything. When Elaine had a crying jag, you never got the feeling she was really sad, only that she cried for comic effect. When George decided to poison his boss, you didn’t think, “George is evil.”
The whole thing was played off a joke. Acting wasn’t a necessary in “Seinfeld.”
This doesn’t mean it wasn’t good or funny. It was both. But it was written so there was no deep emotion. Similar to the way on “I Love Lucy,” when Lucy let’s go with a crying jag, no one ever really felt Lucy Ricardo was suffering
Then this is even more irrelevant, but I’ll post it anyway:
Leslie Jordan told a story in a one-man show I attended about working on the series SORDID LIVES with Rue McClanahan. I’m paraphrasing, but, between scenes she and her husband and Jordan were watching an Everybody Loves Raymond episode when Rue’s husband commented that he hated Heaton’s posture or, in his opinion, her lack of, which sent Rue into a tizzy. “Why is it that a 50 year old male actor can have a big gut or date a 22 year old starlet or have no comic timing and that’s alright, but anything from posture to laugh lines to a 2 pound weight gain is just open season for female actresses? Patricia Heaton is one of the most lauded actresses on TV but all people care about is looking for some minor imperfection yadda yadda blah…”. The husband withdrew his criticism.
Jordan told her “I couldn’t care less about her posture, I can’t stand her for her politics.” McClanahan asked “Who on Earth cares about her politics?” Jordan googled up some of Heaton’s comments and editorials on things from gay rights (against 'em) to George Bush and the war in Iraq (for 'em) to stem cell research and abortion (against 'em), etc., and Rue- a frequently married yellow dog Democrat and liberal- read through them and then said “Well… she’s pretty full of herself for a bitch who can’t even stand up straight!”
Both Seinfeld and Romano were pretty bad when their shows started (to be fair, most standup comics start out as pretty bad actors – just look at Tim Allen and Roseanne, or for that matter, Bill Cosby back in the days of I Spy). Both of them were carried by supporting casts that were much better actors.
Romano got to the point where he could at least play quiet and whiny along with loud and whiny, which gave him two notes. Seinfeld got along perfectly well with one.
Romano has told the story about how Patricia Heaton was the only actress tested who played the audition with Romano “naturally.” Tim Allen said something similar about Patricia Richardson. So it seems the key to being the sitcom spouse of a standup comic is not to be a great actor, but to make the star not look stiff and awkward.
Jerry Seinfeld looks so much like the lead singer of Tears For Fears that I could never think of them as two different people. It’s hard to watch the second half of this video without expecting Kramer to barge in.
That’s dumb. I never thought Patricia Heaton was very entertaining, but I don’t just a performance based on someone’s political bent. I’ll use Alec Baldwin as an example. I absolutely hate the guy on a personal level, he’s an absolute anathema to most of the things I stand for, and he’s ridiculously arrogant and ivory tower elitist to boot. However, I think he’s hilarious on 30 Rock and anything comedic he does. I also enjoyed a few of his film offerings. I have no problem with Alec Baldwin as a performer, and I can easily separate his job performance from his personal politics, they’re totally separate issues. I can dislike Baldwin the man without having any issue with his ability on the screen.
I think Seinfeld is a much worse actor than Romano. Everybody Loves Raymond has its moments, but I mostly thought it was a fairly boring show most of the time. However, I felt Romano really portrayed a character, Jerry Seinfeld just read lines that setup jokes.
Seinfeld is my favorite sitcom of all time, and I think it immeasurably funnier than Everybody Loves Raymond, but Jerry Seinfeld can’t act. However, the formula of the show didn’t really require a good actor playing Jerry, and the show sort of was tied together by his character so I do think he was necessary for the show. He really paled in comparison to Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. If you’ve seen Larry David’s show (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Larry is a lot like Jerry in that regard. However, even Larry David can act a little bit. But Larry’s character on Curb is definitely a modern day example of a Seinfeldesque “non-actor” as the anchor point of a comedy.