The weekly situation comedy Seinfeld, which aired on NBC from 1990 to 1998, was the most highly-rated show on American television during much of its production run. The show marked the revival of a comic subgenre that had originated on radio and then was adapted for early television by such stars as Jack Benny and the team of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Jerry Seinfeld plays himself, a standup comedian starring in a sitcom about the life of a standup comedian. Like Benny and Burns, Seinfeld retained the privilege of walking back and forth across a metaphoric proscenium, speaking to the audience presentationally (i.e., in the second person) as a standup comic in a nightclub, and representationally (in the actions of a third person). The TV Jerry is a well-to-do New Yorker with a Manhattan apartment, a small group of "off-beat" friends, a career, an active sex life, and...