Bill Murray knew he hated ‘Seinfeld’ after watching one episode: “It’s terrible”
Bill Murray might not be the most enjoyable person to work with, but he is one of the most gifted comedians of the past four decades. Like Robin Williams, he had a habit of stealing scenes whenever he was brought in to play a minor role in movies back in the 1980s. Caddyshack, for example, is often thought of as a Bill Murray film, but pay attention to how much time he’s actually on screen, and it’s pretty obvious that he’s only supposed to offer fleeting comic interludes.
Like every comedian, Murray’s track record is rocky. We can chuckle over his perfect line delivery in Groundhog Day or What About Bob? or admire the fact that he somehow makes Scrooged work on an emotional and comedic level, but it’s undeniable that even he can’t make everything work.
There was that terrible Charlie’s Angels movie, for example, and who can forget (no matter how hard they try) that mind-numbingly atrocious Garfield adaptation? To his credit, Murray claimed that he thought the director Joel Cohen was Joel Coen of the Coen brothers fame. It was an easy mistake to make, though not, probably, once you’ve turned up on set and met the man for yourself.
Considering that he has a decidedly mixed bag of a filmography, you might think that Murray would be sympathetic towards other comedians who are not on their best game, but in the case of one famous performer and his eponymous television show, that was not the case. Perhaps if the Ghostbusters star had watched more than one episode, he might have felt differently. In a 2011 interview with GQ, Murray said that one episode of Seinfeld was torture enough. “I never saw Seinfeld until the final episode, and that’s the only one I saw,” he admitted. “And it was terrible. I’m watching, thinking, ‘This isn’t funny at all. It’s terrible!'”
If he had been intentionally looking for the worst possible episode to watch, he couldn’t have picked better. Before Daenerys Targaryen blindsided the Game of Thrones fandom with a deft swerve into fascism, no television show produced as terrible an ending as Seinfeld. After nine seasons of irascible observations about daily life from a group of irritating, neurotic New Yorkers, Seinfeld shat the proverbial bed by turning in a finale that was the epitome of laziness.
The group of friends get hauled before a judge after failing to intervene during a robbery and are confronted with a series of clips from previous episodes demonstrating how terrible they have been all along. It’s boring and, crucially, completely unfunny. Coming directly after an episode made entirely of clips, this two-parter felt cowardly and shameless at the same time.
In truth, Murray’s humour doesn’t really dovetail with that of Seinfeld’s. They both lean into cynicism, but Murray is more downbeat, melancholy, and off-the-cuff, while Seinfeld’s has punchlines, veers into ‘zany’ territory, and is built almost exclusively on observation. The Stripes star was probably going to dislike the sitcom no matter what, but he chose the worst possible episode to make his assessment.
