To Costanza: lord of the idiots, king of quitters

By GREG DIXON

Seinfeld, it's been famously said, was a comedy about nothing.

This, of course, is complete and absolute tosh. Across its eight years and 180 episodes, Seinfeld mercilessly explored birth, death and everything in between in minute and unnecessary detail.

But all that stuff was not what it was actually about. This show's chief concern, its raison d'etre - for my money, anyway - was George Louis Costanza. He alone is the reason why I haven't missed an episode since Prime began repeating this classic 90s sitcom a little over three weeks ago.

George is ... well, here are a few words to describe him: bald, short, chubby, dishonest, disloyal, cheap, nasty, monstrously selfish, unethical, hateful, whiny, neurotic, short-tempered - in fact you can't find a nice word to say about the guy.

Which is his comic beauty.

If Jerry Seinfeld was the straight guy, Kramer the hipster doofus and Elaine the queen of confrontation, Jason Alexander's George was something much richer, nastier and scarier and much, much funnier than the other three put together.

Let's do a taste test to prove my point. Here's Jerry on George: "Knowing you is like going into the jungle. I don't know what I'll find next, and I'm real scared."

Sure, that's true and amusing, but it's neither as insightful nor as laugh-out-loud funny as George on George: "I come from a long line of quitters. My father was a quitter. My grandfather was a quitter. I was raised to give up."

But the best line on himself was this: "For I am Costanza, lord of the idiots."

But if George was a masterpiece of self-loathing created week after week by a gifted actor, it's a curious thing indeed that although Seinfeld earned Emmys (though not nearly as many as it deserved), Alexander never picked one up for creating television's greatest quitter.

Perhaps George was so awful, nobody could bring themselves to give the actor who played him an Emmy.

But then Seinfeld, despite its now classic status, was sometimes treated rather oddly by the entertainment industry.

For the 90s' most watched sitcom was almost never made.

American network NBC decided it wasn't interested in the show after test audiences decided the Seinfeld pilot was "weak".

It was saved only at the last minute by a relatively minor senior executive at the network, who found money in his budget for four more episodes - and the rest was, well, history.

That's not what George would have wanted. "I don't want to be remembered," he said in one episode. "I want to be forgotten."

Not likely if they repeat this so-called show about nothing until the end of time - which I fervently hope they do.

For I am Dixon, lord of the Seinfeld fans.

* Seinfeld, Prime, 7pm, weeknights