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A Show About Nothing

"Seinfeld," the most successful American sitcom of the 1990's was famously "a show about nothing." Something joked about by the shows creators, writers, and performers, even in the episodes themselves. The phrase and the concept have joined several other phrases from the show—such as "shrinkage," "yada yada"—in the lexicon.

But the creative team behind "Seinfeld" weren't the first to believe that their work was about nothing: “A card-carrying intellectual, a critic with a strong theoretical bias before he turned to filmmaking, Antonioni flirted with superficiality. On a visit to Mark Rothko’s studio, he coolly opined that they both made ‘work about nothing…but with precision.’”—J. Hoberman, “Seeing and Nothingness,” The Village Voice, July 7-13, 2006, p. 60.

How It's Used

"But yesterday, the city said that there would be no party after all to mark the show that is, after all, about nothing."

"Soon enough these spots, in their unruffled, understated way, became some of the most radical commercials on television - just one guy not doing much while complaining about the product he's selling because of what it wouldn't do.

"Anticipating Seinfeld - the 'show about nothing' - the Maytag spots also showed Old Lonely sitting there just snoring or filling up the empty hour by teaching a parrot how to speak. These non-events have since gone off to make for the longest-running TV campaign with a real character."

"The closest similar show: Seinfeld, about friends in New York but billed as a show about nothing and based on the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld.

"Friends, which made its debut in 1994, focused also on friends in New York, but it was about something, Rapping says -- specifically, a way of life. She says Friends will go down in history as doing for twentysomethings what The Mary Tyler Moore Show did in portraying the single working woman for the '70s: Both showed friends becoming family."

"Former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), the study group's co-chairmen, called a briefing yesterday to give a "progress report" on their activities. A dozen television cameras and scores of reporters filled the hall -- only to discover that Baker and Hamilton had revived Jerry Seinfeld's "show about nothing" format.

"'We're not going to speculate with you today about recommendations,' Baker announced at the session, hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

"Can the war in Iraq be won?

"'We're not going to make any assessments today about what we think the status of the situation is in Iraq,' said Hamilton.

"Could they at least explain their definitions of success and failure in Iraq?

"'We're not going to get into that today,' Baker replied."

"The moral of the tale, because every feature-length cartoon needs a moral, is similarly hard to locate, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. Maybe Bee Movie is another ground-breaking show about nothing – a hornet's nest of hype for a fat hive of nothing. If so, pay up and get stung."

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