Hey! There was some learning invovled: Learning unconventionality from Seinfeld

After Seinfeld’s successful endeavor of changing the face of sitcoms, many shows followed their lead in hope of the same success. One of the post- Seinfeld sitcoms that followed is Girlfriends. The show is about four female friends living the sometime single life in California, which is fairly different from that of the ironic New York bunch. However, there are some similarities that are very noticeable in regards to structure, character and the non-traditional look of sitcoms.

Girlfriends is based around four African-American women who live a crazy and sometime single life. The foremost reason why this show is non-conventional is the main characters are black. This was one of the first shows to be based around such and also depict them in a positive light, or at least some of them. Many of the traditional shows always depict promising characters that can’t go wrong. Lynn Searcy (who is very much like Cosmo Kramer) is unpromising and is not your typical role model, which is the opposite of how sitcoms portray characters.

Lastly, like Seinfeld’s modest amount of estrogen, Girlfriends do the same with testosterone—William Dent the only main male character in the show. Many sitcoms are based solely on masculinity and men being in charge. However, Girlfriends was one of the first to change this occurrence and show that women can run things. Girlfriends used its Seinfeldian training of unconventionality to have a successful running in the revamping attempts of many post- Seinfeld sitcoms. With that being said the creators of Seinfeld should never say there was no learning involved.