That's how he got the show to begin with. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
shareFacepalm all you want, but you are mistaken. He was still a nobody when he was on Carson, and that got him some looks from NBC which ultimately led to him becoming friends with Larry David who liked his comedy and thought they should write a show together. He definitely wasn't a mainstream popular stand up comic when the show started. I just wondered if he ever got there when the show was still going. I know afterwards he sold out arenas, but that makes sense.
shareNBC "gave him some looks" because of his stand-up comedy. They contacted him and asked him to write and star in a show. It's not complicated. Same stuff happened with Freddie Prinze, Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres, Redd Foxx, Ray Romano and a host of others. They all got their TV shows as a direct result of their stand-up comedy. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤣🤣🤣🤣
shareYou're obviously ignoring my point entirely to avoid looking foolish, because you know you are wrong, so you've simply moved the goalpost. Laughing emojis don't change facts. My question never had anything to do with the quality of his material or recognition of talent. I very clearly asked if he was KNOWN for his stand-up, which he was not. Discovering and exploiting talent is not the same as being a public figure in comedy. Thanks for playing, but stick to the point next time and you might not look so silly.
shareIn May 1981, Seinfeld made a successful appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, impressing Carson and the audience, leading to frequent appearances on that show and others, including Late Night with David Letterman. On September 5, 1987, his first one-hour special Stand-Up Confidential aired live on HBO.
So, yes he was known for standup as far back as 1981. He would not have been invited on Carson unless he had been successful in comedy clubs.
I take it you didn't watch much late night talk shows in the 80s. Literally hundreds of comedians got sets on talk shows, and most of them never amounted to anything. Being on talk shows is the beginning, not the goal, just as it was for Jerry. Yup, I'm aware that he had a hbo special, and it wasn't a success from my understanding. It got poor ratings and he wasn't asked to do another by any other networks. Polarize this with Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Robin Williams, Richard Prior, etc... they're stand up was so pertinent to pop culture that they all did multiple movies and TV shows while still doing stand-up. They also released several comedy albums, something Seinfeld never did until after the show. I'm not saying he wasn't part of the comedy scene, but when compared to comedians who were actually known to the public in general, he simply isn't in the same league.
shareApparently, NBC saw the situation differently from you.
shareNot at all, I never suggested they didn't recognize his talent. I'm very clearly suggesting that the general public didn't. Even your cut and paste reply indicates that his first performance on Carson was an unexpected surprise, so until that point he was essentially undiscovered. I can guarantee that most of the people watching the show Seinfeld were not familiar with his stand-up, simply because the opportunity to see/hear it was very limited. Nobody was having water cooler conversations about Jerry Seinfeld bits in the 80s, but they were definitely talking about Dice Clay, Prior and Eddie Murphy.
share🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/18/0e/a7/180ea7792da2151bc12fc09c2b89aaeb.gif
Ah yes, cartoon emojis and gifs. The last vestige of someone with nothing to say, but not mature enough to simply admit they were mistaken. You sure showed me with your emoji counterpoint.
shareWhy do you ask a question you apparently already know the answer to (or at least suddenly claim to know the answer to)?
shareGoogle "rhetorical question", and that should clear up your confusion.
shareWell thanks for clearing that up... next time just leave out the rhetorical question... It will make you look less like a douche...
shareYour post just confirmed that there is an abundance of douchbaggery already in existence on these boards. Why are you concerned about more, regardless of your incorrect assumption about me?
shareI very clearly asked if he was KNOWN for his stand-up, which he was not.share
After reading all of these comments it is clear Burk got himself into a situation where he looked like an idiot and decided to argue semantics rather than accept being wrong. Classic
shareyou, sir. are correct.
share+ 1 re what happened here.
But the thing is even his semantics were wrong! His OP is not the even the rhetorical question he claimed it to be... 😂
I saw him 10 years ago doing his stand up he’s actually really funny and curses very little during his show.
shareI know he really blew up after the show. I think he'd honed his craft by then. I remember him getting crazy big dollars for tickets after the show wrapped. I tried watching his hbo special from the mid 80s, and it was brutally bad, and had a terrible reception. I'd like to see him today, with a good set. I knew he was known for clean humor, which was part of the joke to the episode with the little kid that swears.
shareJust getting invited to be on The Tonight Show once was a huge achievement. Then to have Johnny invite you over to the couch was almost like becoming a "made guy". So yes, he was very well known for his stand up.
I'm guessing you're too young to remember how big of a deal The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was. Just to give you an idea, in May of 1981 (when Seinfeld first appeared) The Tonight show averaged an 8.1 rating. Colbert was the highest rated show last year with a 2.95. And if you added his show with Kimmel and Fallon, it's still under 6.5.
I was pretty young when he was on Carson, and I'm not taking anything away from that achievement. Yeah, it definitely was a big deal to get invited to the couch. I remember a lot of comedians went at the very end of the show, and clearly had a lot of their material cut short because it simply wasn't very good. I remember seeing a lot of people one time, and never again. Obviously that wasn't Jerry. However, I guess it's hard for me to put that level of success on the same level as guys doing multiple specials that were so big you'd rent them at the video store, like Cosby,Murphy, Prior, Dice Clay. And everyone knew there sets from tapes,records and CDs. Their material was a part of the pop culture zeitgeist. And being on Carson is definitely a huge deal, particularly as a regular, yet it still seems small compared to where other people were able to take it.
shareAfter repeated disappointment, I learned to skip over his stand-up segments on the show. For me, his show was a bad advertisement for his stand-up ability. But I like him as a sit-com writer and actor.
shareSomeone actually pointed out that, at least on the show, the joke seems to be he's a bad comedian. He gets rattled during his sets, forgets jokes, etc. Maybe the bad material was intentional. I also skip the standup segments.
shareThat’s plausible. But if he had even a bit of an ego, I’d think he’d want to show his stand-up chops occasionally.
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