“No Lessons, No Hugs”
Until today, I never considered “Seinfeld” as innovative. Au contraire.
This morning I was watching that James Lipton show, “Inside the Actor’s Studio” where he interviews stars in a college lecture setting. Today’s rerun featured an interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, erstwhile star of 8os “SNL” and 90s “Seinfeld.” She discussed, amongst other things, how different “Seinfeld” seemed the first time she read a script. She didn’t really capture the essence of what made “Seinfeld” different until she revealed the engraving on the rings presented to each “Seinfeld” star at the end of the series’ run: “No Lessons, No Hugs.”
She went on to explain that “lessons and hugs” was series creator Larry David’s disdainful reference to the ‘formula’ situation comedy, in which the laughs are on the surface, while at the core the characters learn life lessons and maybe fall in love. In contrast, “Seinfeld” had a core of pure cynicism and dark comedy. The featured characters learned nothing, made the same mistakes over and over, loved themselves far too much to love anyone else, and were designed to be basically unlikeable and untrustworthy. This made “Seinfeld” so different from everything else that it caught on big after three hard seasons…and the rest is history.
This of course tweaked the connection with the creative thinking tool “reversing assumptions.” Every aspect of “Seinfeld” reversed the assumptions for the format of successful situation comedies. The resulting series was so different it stood out and attracted a huge audience (eventually) for doing so.
Learn this technique, and it will make your ideas stand out bigger than a puffy shirt.
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