Seinfeld Transcripts

[spaceman_2020]

Seinfeld’s real genius was always the way the script managed to tie together multiple storylines into a cohesive whole.

The best example is probably the Marine Biologist episode. You could have never predicted that there would be any connection between golf balls and whales.

[remarkEon]

Surprised someone hasn't posted this yet, but some guy named Billy Domineau (who I guess wrote/writes for SNL) wrote a spec script for a Seinfeld episode that takes place surrounding the events of 9/11, and it does not disappoint.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/911-seinfeld-september-11_n_5...

[billforsternz]

I love this. I picked one at random https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheCigarStoreIndian.htm I haven't seen this one, but it's great. The characters are so familiar you can construct the whole thing perfectly in your head, now I don't really need to see it. Although I can't picture Elaine's apartment. Was that a regular set?

The script is put together like a Swiss watch. Every line fits perfectly in place. Kudos to the craftsmen involved.

[code_runner]

I think Elaine had a couple of apartments! Kramer helped her with the car next door once. Anything with puddy. I think the keys episode and of course sponge worthy!!

[atlanta90210]

Maybe the downloadable text of the script was generated by OCR with minor errors?

[PrimeMcFly]

Reading the transcript still isn't close to actually seeing the episode. Is this some sort of younger trend, like people who watch 30 minute movie summary videos and then say they don't need to watch the movie?

[wilg]

These are transcripts, not the actual ”teleplays”, FYI.

[crazygringo]

Yeah, I've actually never seen this type of "script" before.

It's absolutely not the original shooting scripts. Multicam sitcom scripts have a very specific style of formatting, and these are just missing details they would contain in terms of scene descriptions, etc.

But this also isn't just a transcript of subtitles or closed captioning. It's full of things like:

> KRAMER: [glues the article back with his own saliva and puts the magazine back on the table] When you're done, let me know.

> % Jerry shows Elaine some movie from the Adult section that's probably % called "The Sperminator", or something...

So fans transcribed these and then tried to fill in the visual details as well?

What a labor of love. I'm curious if there's a specific term or name for this type of transcription-with-visual-details.

[dang]

Ok, we've added trans to the scripts in the title above. Thanks!

p.s. Makes me wonder what the diffs are between the scripts and the transcripts...

[dctoedt]

In class, when I mention Seinfeld, or for that matter, Friends, to illustrate a point, many of my students (law students, mostly in their early- to mid-20s) barely know what I'm talking about. You can imagine how my pop-culture references from the '60s and '70s sail right over their heads. (When that happens, I use the occasion to joke about my old-fart status.)

[massysett]

I was listening to the 1980s radio station when I realized that 1980s music right now is older than 1950s "oldies" music was when I was a kid - and when I was a kid that stuff seemed ancient - relics of the days of black-and-white television and a segregated South. What seems like yesterday to an older person happened before a younger person was even born.

[quechimba]

This website is great. I'm a huge Seinfeld fan and it's really good for finding quotes from the show.

I got all episodes in my phone so I can watch Seinfeld wherever I am even if there's no internet. Good to have when traveling

[nihlaak]

There's some code for parsing all Seinfeld scripts and putting them into a SQLite database [1] here.

[1]: https://github.com/colinpollock/seinfeld-scripts

[Gatsky]

Reading this makes you realise how much of what makes Seinfeld good is in the skillful delivery. I wonder how much they would have to rehearse to get it spot on.

[neilv]

IIRC, Seinfeld scripts have a very distinct style. Would be interesting to see whether an LLM can mimic it as well as some humans can.

[mtlynch]

How are these generated? They seem to have errors that neither a computer nor a English-speaking human would make. They're sort of like how a child or a person unfamiliar with English might try to transcribe words they don't recognize:

>Dugan: That's Sam, the new girl in the counting.

...

>Sam: Everybody told what a catty shrude you are. Your horrible!

https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheSummerofGeorge.htm

[ricktdotorg]

obligatory mention of the Vandelay Industries slack app[1].

usage is: /vandelay <seinfeld dialog you're looking for>.

it returns an animated gif of the scene & dialog you searched for (if it exists).

details about how it was made here[2] but the TL;dr is that the entire Seinfeld catalog were in MKV, the subs were extracted, then the sub time ranges were looped through and animated gifs were made. then the whole lot made searchable.

it's a great slack app.

code here[3].

[1] https://vandelayindustries.online/

[2] https://medium.com/free-code-camp/unfundable-slack-bots-9369...

[3] https://github.com/bertrandom/vandelayindustries-slack-serve...

(edited for clarity & added github url)

[bitL]

Just watched the first two seasons of Friends and the first season of Seinfeld (never seen them before so a trip to the past) and Seinfeld is so much more intelligent and Friends so shallow and boring (outside some Joey gimmicks). Is there any such show with playful intelligent humor as Seinfeld these days?

[Cyph0n]

Arrested Development up to Season 3 (the rest doesn’t exist). In my opinion, it is the most rewardingly rewatchable comedy show of all time. Extremely dense packing of humor that takes multiple passes to fully appreciate.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, as others have mentioned. It has an improvised feel to it (intentionally!) which makes it quite unique.

What We Do in the Shadows is more modern but also a brilliant comedy.

The Office is amazing too, though it’s not for everyone and has its downs.

[acak]

If you cast the net to include British comedies, I’d venture to say Yes Minister and Yes Prime Ministry are deeply intelligent and uproariously funny.

[syngrog66]

Curb Your Enthusiasm

if you loved Seinfeld but never tried CYE you're missing out.

I love them both in different ways, but lots of overlap (because of Larry David), and overall I've had way more LOL moments with CYE.

By the end of a typical episode (esp in the first few seasons) by the time the end credits roll I'm chuckling non-stop right up through the start of the next one, simply by replaying portions of the episode in my mind. Such a treasure of comedy.

[clemailacct1]

Frasier is the epitome of hilarious and intelligent humor. In my personal opinion it is 10x more intelligent and funny than Seinfeld.

[AlbertCory]

For sure. I've never been able to watch an entire episode of Friends.

The Seinfeld ensemble were all brilliantly drawn characters, while the actors in Friends were just boring and narcissistic twits.

[ttymck]

What We Do In The Shadows and The Righteous Gemstones are the only shows that come to mind. Certainly neither is as broadly observant as Seinfeld was.

Curb Your Enthusiasm might be the easy answer.

[footlose_3815]

IT Crowd was pure gold start to finish IMHO.

[sdwr]

I keep coming back to:

- 30 rock

- arrested development

- curb your enthusiasm

and

- jake and amir

- joel haver

- brian david gilbert

all in short clips on youtube

[quechimba]

Curb Your Enthusiasm. Took a while for me to get into it but it's really good. :)

[SteveNuts]

Better off Ted is pretty good

[PrimeMcFly]

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

[mkbkn]

Yes, Seinfeld is great. However, I would urge you to watch all the seasons of both. They're fun.

[listenallyall]

Not "these days," given that it ended before Seinfeld, but The Larry Sanders Show. Hey now!

[spaceman_2020]

30 Rock.

It’s incredibly layered and packs in more jokes than you can count.

The first few seasons of Community are also great.

[lapcat]

Check out Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal on HBO.

The Good Place is a good semi-recent example.

[schwartzworld]

The IT crowd

[voisin]

The Office

[ec109685]

Friends gets better.

[thejazzman]

You can also access every quote/meme from the show at https://carpeme.me/

Pretty much my favorite thing on the internet. Link unfurling in iMessages and everything. (Or whatever app you're using that has unfurling)

[geuis]

Just an fyi based on the other comments. This isn't some funny AI generated script site.

These are actual scripts from the archive of the show.

[PrimeMcFly]

Not to be rude, but why are you summarizing/repeating other comments on a post with only ~30 comments?

[irrational]

Looks like they need a spell checker. "Apron" is spelled "aprin" in the "muffin tops" episode.

[endorphine]

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Jerry Seinfeld many times seems to be smiling in a "this scene is so funny I can't hold on not to laugh" way?

I mean, some scenes would be more convincing/funny if he looked more serious.

This still strikes me as weird. Has this been discussed somewhere (I would surprised if not, perhaps I should ask GPT4)? Do we know why this happens?

[hifromLA]

I’ve always felt jerry is the worst part of Seinfeld. Larry David is the brains as evidenced by CYE and the other actors outshined Jerry.

[throwawaylinux]

I dislike Jerry, I don't like scenes or episodes with too much Jerry (especially about his love life), and think his character is unfunny and unlikable in a way that none of the big 3 are, even George. He was even outshone by many of the minor recurring characters even: George's parents, Newman, Peterman, Susan, etc.

But I don't know if the show would have been as good without him. His boring normalness and bemused reaction to the chaos unfolding around him. Even his breaking of the fourth wall. Maybe he's a grounding rod that serves to contrast everything else against, maybe he's the character we can see ourselves as.

[conradfr]

You must hate Curb where they just laugh at the improv.

[papito]

Right. It did bother me. Jerry is just NOT a good actor, but the rest of the cast carried it.

[mbg721]

There is also the subreddit /r/redditwritesseinfeld for unofficial addenda.

[jpm_sd]

This is so delightfully web 1.0

[pachico]

This looks like gold for a project that would create scripts via LLM

[quickthrower2]

Funny just to read!