The Original Seinfeld Pitch Confirms It's Not A 'Show About Nothing'

It's been widely disseminated that "Seinfeld" is "a show about nothing." Creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David famously demanded that the series serve as an anti-sitcom, undercutting the morals and treacly lessons that had come to dominate the genre. Instead, David and Seinfeld wanted the main characters of their show to be shallow, petty, and awful, more or less assuring that they would never learn anything by the end of an episode. One of the show's mandates was "no hugging, no learning." There would be no teary reconciliation, no warmth, and no growth from past mistakes. By the end of "Seinfeld," the main characters (as played by Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards, but not David) would be just as petty and shallow as they were in the first episode.

The "'Seinfeld' is a show about nothing" descriptor has become so well known that the special features on the "Seinfeld" DVD box sets were called "Notes About Nothing." There was even a meta-commentary in an episode of "Seinfeld" itself wherein the fictional version of Jerry Seinfeld — who is also a standup comedian like the real-life Jerry Seinfeld — was approached about starring in his very own sitcom-within-the-sitcom called "Jerry." That meta-sitcom was described by several "Seinfeld" characters as "a show about nothing" as well. It's a nothing within a nothing. Seinfeld-ception.

But then, the "nothing" descriptor doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. Not only has David noted (on the DVD commentaries) that there is indeed a theme to "Seinfeld," but Seinfeld himself (the real one) once took to Reddit to reveal the real pitch to the series. As noted, both the fictional and real-life versions of Seinfeld were comedians, and many episodes began and/or ended with him riffing on something that was about to happen (or had happened) to the show's main characters. However, it seems that "Seinfeld" was an explorative essay about where he gets his material.

In a way, "Seinfeld" is a dramatized version of the stories that standup comedians tell. In comedians' stories, they usually exaggerate or tell tales of their weird, quirky, petty friends. "Seinfeld" simply imagines what the world would be like if the petty weirdos in a standup story were real. That was a good angle, it seems, to take into the NBC studio and pitch to its execs way back in 1988. Seinfeld and David, after all, couldn't lead their pitch with "It's a show about nothing," so Seinfeld came up with an angle. Indeed, the "it's about nothing" angle wasn't even initially intended. As Seinfeld wrote on Reddit:

"The pitch for the show — the real pitch — when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was: we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The 'show about nothing' was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I, to this day, are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us, it's the opposite of that."

On the "Seinfeld" DVDs, David (who eventually left the series) expounded on the actual texture and thematic thrust of the show, saying that it was a series about the modern city-dweller's pettiest impulses. David imagined that all beings have bleak, selfish, petty thoughts all the time, and imagined a world — through Seinfeld's standup comedy — where people indulged in those impulses. As he put it:

"I like taking the worst qualities that a person has and trying to make something funny out of it. Doesn't everybody do terrible things and have terrible thoughts? Just by trying to be as funny, you're going to deal with a lot of things that are real, so the show's really about something. The whole thing about the show being about nothing is ridiculous."

So, "Seinfeld" is about something and impacted the world of comedy forever. It's only the characters on "Seinfeld" who would think it's about nothing.