The Art of...

I think Jerry Seinfeld is right.  Standup comedy is an art.  And so is his Internet creation, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee."

Art is shaping something beautiful and unique out of nothing.  Art has an identifiable form, a shape, that feels right, for various, often inexplicable reasons.  Every episode--well, very nearly every episode of "Comedians"--has a marvelous shape to it.  Seinfeld understands editing.  The music, the cars, the details of the cars, the phone call to the guest, the greeting at the door, the drive to the coffee shop, the entrance, the conversation--it has an identifiable, well-plotted pace and structure, like the finest jazz riffs, like any good poem or story.

"You've finally made a show about nothing," Larry David says to Jerry, and it's true--but the show is about everything, too, in the same way that conversations with our best friends are about everything--life, death, misery, happiness, work, marriage, sex, politics, comedy, music, cars, donuts, drugs, etc. etc.  In the same way that a good joke can have a lot of pain and sadness stashed in it, Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," this unassuming little chat show, has a lot of life and art running through it.