7 Things Fans Couldn’t Get Enough Of In Seinfeld

As Friends was so evidently influenced by Seinfeld, it’s perhaps apt to invert the appropriation here because it seems that no one told Michael Richards “that life was gonna be this way”.

Riding high from the world’s most famous TV show, Richards who played the ‘too eccentric to function’ yet affable Kramer, made Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace look like a tumble. Whilst working on his stand-up comedy Richards was filmed racially abusing audience members who hadn’t enjoyed his performance. The outburst went viral and despite public apologies, including an appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee many years later, Richard’s career, like the man himself, is cast in the long shadow of the incident. However, before the Laugh Factory, sporadic TV appearances and suffering the Seinfeld Curse there was of course Kramer.

Whilst the show’s strength was the lack of a weak character, with Jerry, Elaine and George all capable of flexing their impressive comedic muscle, the certainty with which the mere entrance of Kramer into Jerry’s apartment was met with ebullient applause demonstrates clearly that whilst it’s not his name on the show, it’s his time on screen that fans yearned for.

The velocity and variation with which Kramer burst into scenes, combined with the frantic and abrasive silliness of Richard’s performance means that fans always hoped for a “Kramer episode”. Richards stole the show more times than Jay Leno nicked The Tonight Show from Conan- with Kramer’s sheer presence eliciting laughs.

It’s hard to steal the spotlight on a show like Seinfeld. But Kramer had the whole Kenny Rogers Chicken Sign beaming down on him.