SEINFELD: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1989- 1998)
35 Anniversary
24-Disc 4K Ultra HD Set
Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 4152 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p Ultra HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards
Sony celebrates the 35th Anniversary of the iconic sitcom Seinfeld with a Limited Edition 24-disc 4K Ultra set, notable for presenting the series in it's original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, having only been available in HD in a 1.78:1 widescreen crop job on digital platforms. I remember watching the original episode in the summer of 1989 with my dad when I was just sixteen years old, I was hooked, the opening scenes of Jerry Seinfeld and his pal George having coffee and discussing Jerry having met a woman while on tour and thinking that they had a connection while George quickly dispels that myth and explains he's not reading the "signs" and "signals" correctly. Jerry ends up letting the woman spend the weekend at her apartment looking for fireworks only to find out that George was right all along, she's engaged. While my dad didn't quite "get it" I found the sitcom refreshing and funny as hell. The series is largely set in NYC's Upper West Side, the main cast includes Jerry Seinfeld (Bee Movie) playing a slightly fictionalized and very shallow version of himself, Jason Alexander (The Burning) as his neurotic sidekick George Costanza, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) as his usually frustrated ex girlfriend Elaine Benes, and Michael Richards (TVs Fridays) as his freeloading :hipster doofus" neighbor Cosmo Kramer. Over the course of nine seasons the show's hilarity only grew, this was water cooler TV of the highest order, endlessly quotable, with interesting characters chock full of neurosis, phobias, dating and coupling woes, and enough caustic situational shenanigans that it kept me coming back for more every week as the important issue of our time like "are they sponge-worthy?" and "are you still the master of your domain" were discussed. This is the show that introduced us to "Festivus", pointed out the difference between a scratch and pick when it comes to matters of the nostril, and what exactly is a "yadda, yadda, yadda" when it comes to polite conversation. These absurd and delightfully acerbic conversations became part of the pop-culture vernacular of my youth, and I still quote this show on what must be at least a weekly basis.
Sony celebrates the 35th Anniversary of the iconic sitcom Seinfeld with a Limited Edition 24-disc 4K Ultra set, notable for presenting the series in it's original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, having only been available in HD in a 1.78:1 widescreen crop job on digital platforms. I remember watching the original episode in the summer of 1989 with my dad when I was just sixteen years old, I was hooked, the opening scenes of Jerry Seinfeld and his pal George having coffee and discussing Jerry having met a woman while on tour and thinking that they had a connection while George quickly dispels that myth and explains he's not reading the "signs" and "signals" correctly. Jerry ends up letting the woman spend the weekend at her apartment looking for fireworks only to find out that George was right all along, she's engaged. While my dad didn't quite "get it" I found the sitcom refreshing and funny as hell. The series is largely set in NYC's Upper West Side, the main cast includes Jerry Seinfeld (Bee Movie) playing a slightly fictionalized and very shallow version of himself, Jason Alexander (The Burning) as his neurotic sidekick George Costanza, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) as his usually frustrated ex girlfriend Elaine Benes, and Michael Richards (TVs Fridays) as his freeloading :hipster doofus" neighbor Cosmo Kramer. Over the course of nine seasons the show's hilarity only grew, this was water cooler TV of the highest order, endlessly quotable, with interesting characters chock full of neurosis, phobias, dating and coupling woes, and enough caustic situational shenanigans that it kept me coming back for more every week as the important issue of our time like "are they sponge-worthy?" and "are you still the master of your domain" were discussed. This is the show that introduced us to "Festivus", pointed out the difference between a scratch and pick when it comes to matters of the nostril, and what exactly is a "yadda, yadda, yadda" when it comes to polite conversation. These absurd and delightfully acerbic conversations became part of the pop-culture vernacular of my youth, and I still quote this show on what must be at least a weekly basis.
The show was co-created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, the latter of whom filled the void left after Seinfeld signed-off with his own show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing a fictionalized version of himself, and when you watch that series you can see how much of a stand-in George was for co-creator Larry David, a sort of always irate asshole plagued by insecurity and myriad neurosis, which play beautifully on the small screen week to week. There were so many "classic" episodes, like "The Revenge" when petty George vows revenge on his employer for not allowing him to use the executive toilet, with hilarious results. "The Chinese Restaurant" wherein Jerry, George, and Elaine try in vain to get a table at a restaurant, prior to going to a one-night showing of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space. The incredible James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China) shows up here as the maître d'. The season three banger "The Note" features the notoriously fickle George getting a massage from a male masseuse, causing him to have a melt-down when he feels movement in his nether region that make him question his sexuality, while Kramer encounter baseball hall of famer Joe DiMaggio at a Dinky Donuts, and hilariously yelps and bangs on his table to prove how focused the player was and still is. Season four is ripe with classic episodes, but for me I love "The Contest" wherein the guys decide to see who can go without masturbating the longest and remain "the master of their domain", all the while never once uttering the word "masturbation", using a colorful array of euphemisms in it's place. We even get a couple of storylines about Jerry and George creating a sitcom, a show about nothing called "Jerry", which is deliciously self-referential. In season five's "The Marine Biologist" George must pretend to be a marine biologist to curry favor with hi college crush, his non-existent skills are put to the test when they encounter a beached whale while visiting the ocean! Season six highlights for me are Elaine's boss Mr. Pitt eating candy bars with a knife and fork in The Pledge Drive", and in ""The Fusilli Jerry" Kramer mistakenly gets a vanity plate for his car that reads "Assman", meant for a proctologist, that opens up a peculiar new dating world for him. Season seven bangers come by way of "The Soup Nazi", which I think might be the best known episode after "The Strike" which introduced us to the made-up holiday "Festivus" which was created by George's always irate father, followed by Elaine's quest to horde her favorite birth control in "The Sponge", making her question weather her suitor's are truly "sponge worthy". I could go on and on, there's not a bad episode in the bunch, well, maybe the season finale, but the more i think on it, I think we were just angry that our favorite show was going away, and it didn;t matter what they did, I still would have been mad at 'em. For a better series resolution watch the series finale for Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which not directly addresses the Seinfeld finale, but improves on it.
We also has a terrific cast of returning characters, such as Newman (Wayne Night, Jurassic Park) who is Jerry's nemesis, Jerry's parents Morty (Barney Martin, Hot Stuff) and Helen (Liz Sheridan, TV's Alf), George's scene-stealing parents Frank (Jerry Stiller, Hot Pursuit) and Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris, Toy Story 2), Jerry's Uncle Leo (Len Lesser, Blood and Lace) Elaine's on-again/off-again meat headed boyfriend Puddy (Patrick Warburton, TV's The Tick), Elaine's various bosses Mr. Lippman (Richard Fancy, Lords of Salem) and Mr. Pitt (Ian Abercrombie, Army of Darkness). The cast of side characters is pretty terrific, plus we have Jerry's girlfriends of the week, who through the year included memorable names and faces like Tawny Kitaen (Witchboard), Catherine Keener (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Terri "They're real and they're spectacular" Hatche (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), Jennifer Coolidge (American Pie), Jami Gertz (The Lost Boys), future Friends star Courteney Cox, Janeane Garofalo (Mystery Men), Debra Messing (Will & Grace), Lauren Graham (Bad Santa) and Lori Loughlin (Full House); being a Jerry's Girl was the sitcom equivalent of being a Bond Girl.
This is a show that I would say is absolutely timeless in it's situational comedy, sure there's some dated pop-culture references and technology, but the comedy beats are tight, the rapport between the characters is so razor-sharp and the writing is funny on paper, and only gets funnier in the hands of this small ensemble of talent who just come together so well on the small screen, the chemistry of it all from the writing tot he cast just seems unrepeatable to me. Very few shows have had such a devoted following and became part of not just the pop-culture fabric of it's time, but even still decades later this stuff still soars. Re-watching these together with my son has been just a wonderful time, revisiting these humorously shallow, self-obsessed, narcissistic New Yorkers as the navigate not just the social perils of friendships and relationships, but their own pertly grievances, personal foibles, and general disdain for humanity in the 90's had me in stitches yet again, a testament to how awesome this show was.
Audio/Video: Seinfeld: The Complete Series Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD set presents the whole nine season shebang in wonderful 2160p 4K resolution with HDR10 color-grade in its original 1.33 aspect ratio. The series was shot on film with the exception of the pilot episode which has SD elements and does indeed look a bit shoddy upscaled to 4K, I found it a bit jarring on first watch, but folks, that's baked into it, given that I think it looks fine, and it's not an indicator of the level of quality of the rest of the episodes. After that the show looks pretty dang stellar on 4K, with well-resolved film grain and nicely vivid colors that are not too plumped by the HDR. Fine detail is not what I would call copious by any means but the textures and detail are quite improved compared to both the DVD and the widescreen cropped Netflix versions certainly. The textures of sweaters, Jerry's signature couch, and Kramer's vintage clothing are much improved. The egregious cropping issues that plagued Netflix streams of "The Pothole" and The Pledge Drive", actually cropping out key elements/gags in the process are nowhere to be found here. The HDR color-grade looks excellent, it's not overcooked, it's not going for a revisionist showiness like the Friends 4K set which is a little too hot for TV IMO, just staying true to the original color scheme and giving primaries a bit of new life, and skin tones are warm and healthy looking. The DVD set was overly bright with blown highlights, but the HDR10 is more restrained and natural looking. Also, I must say that I love having these in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio is wonderful, this is how they were meant to be seen, and oddly the Blu-ray edition which is simultaneously available as a separately release is cropped to a screen-filling 1.78:1, and having seen this version streaming on Netflix, which is fine for casual streaming of episodes I guess, it's quite wonderful. When I watch a TV series as well as when I watch a film, I want the intact and complete image in their proper aspect ratio as intended, and this limited edition set is the only wat to get that other than the original DVD editions. Watching these they look refreshed and refined, I was really quite taken with how great they looked in 4K, Sony did excellent work restoring these episodes to a near perfect state. These are 100GB disc with the exception of season one, which gets a 66GB disc, they are well authored and compression looks solid.
All nine seasons get uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. The track is clean and well-balanced, no issues with sibilance, hiss or distortion. The show was very dialogue exchange heavy, so don't expect a lot of surround activity, but the track delivers these often hilarious exchanges of verbal sparring with plenty of nuance and aplomb. I was slightly surprised that Jonathan Wolff's signature slap bassline from wasn't a little more deepfelt, but otherwise a rock solid uncompressed track for this iconic sitcom.
The extras are plentiful, but not complete. We get all the Audio Commentaries, Bloopers, Deleted Scenes, Inside Looks, "The Seinfeld Chronicles" - Alternate Episode,
and the "The Revenge" - Alternate Episode, plus the The Roundtable: The Cast of "Seinfeld" and Larry David, and these are all terrific, especially the Inside Looks with the cast, crew and writers talking about the genesis of each episode and the story ideas. There are hours of extras here, but they've left a lot of material off this set, including most of the long form documentary and featurettes, that were present on the previous DVD editions. What I think is a complete list of missing extras can be found below in the special features list, for the curious. Personally, I was hoping to give someone my season DVD sets, they take up a hefty chunk of real estate on my shelf, but there's so much cool stuff missing from this 4K Ultra HD that I think I'm going to have to hang into 'em, and if you're a bonus junk junkie like me you might want to hold onto them as well.
The 24-disc arrives in eight keepcases, each season getting a dedicated keepcase with the exception of seasons 1 & 2 which share one keepcase with a flipper tray housing 3-discs, so there's no stacked discs here folks, which I appreciated. These discs average 5-8 episodes per disc. These are housed in a sideloading slipbox, which like the Friends set is pretty shabby, but also perfectly fine, I am more keen on the 4K presentation than the packaging, and at least we get dedicated black 4K logo'd keepcase per season version an Epik-Pak high-volume case or worse, stacked discs. The slipbox itself is white background, large Seinfeld logo on three sides, and three different images of the main cast on the front, back and spine. The keepcase artworks all feature different promotional images of the cast on the front covers with differently colored backgrounds, using the same background colors and images used for the previous DVD season set releases. On the backside of the wraps we get a disc episode guide with synopsis, plus a list of the special features on each season. The discs themselves are uniform, with a white background, the Seinfeld logo, indicating the season, disc numbers, and how many episodes per disc.
.jpg)
Special Features:
Season 1 & 2
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
- The Seinfeld Chronicles - Alternate Episode (23:05)
- The Revenge - Alternate Episode (23:00) SD, Dolby Digital
Season 3
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
Season 4:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Inside Looks
- Bloopers
- The Handicap Spot - Syndicated Version (22:22)
- The Airport Alternate Ending
Season 5:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
Season 6:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
Season 7:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
Season 8:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
Season 9:
- Select Episode Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- Bloopers
- Inside Looks
- The Roundtable: The Cast of "Seinfeld" and Larry David
Here's a list of the extras not carried over from the DVD editions:
- Introduction on "The Stake Out"
- "Introduction on "The Boyfriend"
- Introduction to "The Chronicle"
- "The Betrayal" Back-To-Front
- How It Began (Making of Documentary)
- Kramer vs. Kramer: Kenny to Cosmo
- The Breakthrough Season (Documentary)
- Regis & Kathy Lee Parody (Featurette)
- Jason + Larry = George (Featurette)
- Running with the Egg: Making a Seinfeld, Parts 1 and 2 (Featurette)
- Sein-Imation Scenes
- Jerry Seinfeld: Submarine Captain (Documentary)
- Queen of Her Castle: The Elaine Benes Story
- Where's Larry? Seinfeld Secret Guest Stars
- Larry David's Farewell
- The Last Lap (23 min)
- Notes About Nothing (Trivia Track)
- Tonight Show Appearances
- Master of His Domain (Exclusive Stand-up Material)
- Sponsored by Vandelay Industries (NBC Promos + TV Spots)
- Alternate Version: The Original Pilot
- ALternate Version: The Non Fat Yogurt, The Betrayal
- Easter Eggs
- Photo Galleries
Seinfeld has long been one of my favorite TV shows of all-time, and I went into this with some serious expectation about how the show would appear in 4K, and those expectation were met and exceeded an every level. Just having these in 4K resolution in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio makes this an easy recommend, though I will say that if you are an extras junkie hang onto those DVD editions, the lack of long-form featurettes and other extras deny this remarkable set from truly being definitive, but as far as the A/V presentation goes, this is phenomenal, and there is simply no better way to watch the series. This set is advertised a limited edition, and I am hearing that it will not be re-pressed on 4K, so if you thinks it's sponge-worthy don't wait, snag it quick, or you might just regret it!
Buy It!
4K UHD
Blu-ray:
