C'mon man. Seinfeld show couldn't have been that bad!

It wasn't that pleasant for me to read in TV Guide that the NBC viewer survey of a Seinfeld pilot a quarter century ago scorned the show in its infancy.  What's that?  By whom?

Well, for starters, the network's stop banana in the entertainment  division, Brandon Tartikoff.  "Too New York, too Jewish,'  complained Tartikoff, himself a Jew. And the awful results of  telephone survey of 400 households were described as a "dagger to the heart" to what would become one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history. Hooray for that,  even if some later critics snipped that the so-called "show about nothing" featured a  bunch of socially worthless  people totally unaware of a world beyond.

The network's  research department,TV Guide reported, quoted an NBC  executive  who described the pilot as "weak weak".

"None of the supports were particularly liked,  and viewers felt that Jerry needed a better backup ensemble," the Guide noted.   George (Jason Alexander) was dismissed as a loser and whining "wimp". (That he was for 25 years.  So?  It's a sitcom!)   Kessler (Michael Richards) later renamed Kramer, had "low scores".  And Jerry, known by some of the viewers as a standup comedian who opened the pilot, drew complaints that his routine was interrupted by the show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) didn't show up until the second episode.

Well, how horribly inattentive can  viewers be when they rain on a series pilot? Besides, it would be put up against CBS' Jake and the Fatman,  a cop show.   Remember?

Whatever happened to Jake anyway?  On the other hand, my friend Howard and I often drift off in conversation to reciting lines from the show that, by the way, you can still see regularly as a popular rerun.

A comedic recall scheme expands to oust Wayne Jones

THERE'S A scene in Seinfeld in which Jerry and George Costanza turn up in the office of a TV network producer to hawk their proposed comedy series.  When he is asked about  the theme of the still-unwritten series (nor will it ever be) , George has a confident response:  "It's a show about nothing!"  Ha, Ha.  

About nothing?  I recall those prophetic words every time the hyperkinetic Mendenhall Mud Machine lowers the bar still further in the recall campaign against Mayor Don Plusquellic. It just happened again with comedic force  with the word from the front that Warner  & Co. now want to remove  Summit County Democratic Chairman Wayne Jones from the Board of Elections and have asked Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to do the heavy lifting.  The charge against Jones:  He's "overly partisan" in the recall competition.  I can't make this up.  

I have to think about this, while Mendenhall obviously hasn't.  Long before there were hi-tech voting machines and other far-out paraphernalia, partisanship  was never a disqualifier to serve on the Board.   Each party is allotted two seats to duke it out.  Even the Board's Deputy Director, Bryan Williams, a Republican still brooding over his loss to Plusquellic in an earlier election,  has said that he has offered Mendenhall "spiritual"  guidance.  (My hunch is that it is a lot more than that.)

Another curious element in all of this:  Brunner is a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in what is shaping up as a tough primary campaign and I'll let you guess how deeply she wants to be involved  in an effort against Plusquellic, the most prominent Democrat in the city. (I thought you'd see it that way.)

No, mark the paper-thin challenge to Jones as still another stunt that, like George and Jerry's ill-fated comedy shows,  is about nothing.