jerry seinfeld used a live set at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival in Los Angeles to revive one of television’s longest-running comparisons. He said NBC watched Seinfeld and then tried the same formula with Friends, only with “good-looking people.”
“Here’s my theory on ‘Friends,’” he told the crowd, adding, “My show came on — ’89, ’90. ‘Friends’ came on a few years later.” The joke landed because it came from the creator and star of one NBC sitcom talking about another that became a rival-era benchmark for the network.
Los Angeles Crowd Reaction
The audience erupted when he made the comparison. He first got there after people shouted out guesses for his favorite TV series during the set, prompting him to answer, “Seinfeld? I am Seinfeld. Why would I watch ‘Seinfeld?'”
He kept the bit going with, “Would you go up to your bathroom mirror and go, ‘This is fantastic. I love this show. I’m in every episode?'” That line pushed the set from self-reference into a jab at the premise of being asked to admire your own work, a cleaner punch than a simple reunion anecdote.
NBC in 1989
Seinfeld premiered on NBC in 1989 and ran through 1998 with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards. A few years later, Friends arrived with David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc, giving NBC two defining sitcoms from the same era and a comparison that never really went away.
Seinfeld said, “I think NBC was watching my show and went, ‘Hey, this is working pretty well. Why don’t we try the same thing with good-looking people?’” He followed that with, “And that was a pretty good idea,” and, “I think that kind of worked.” The line lands differently because both shows became long-tail assets for the network, with Lisa Kudrow still earning $20M a year in residuals more than 30 years after Friends premiered.
Friends and residuals
The remark also sharpened the contrast between the two sitcoms’ afterlives. Seinfeld is now treated as a 1990s classic, but the joke underscored how Friends kept generating money and attention long after its original run, including Kudrow’s reported $20M annual residual stream.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: Seinfeld was not making a sober history lecture. He was turning a familiar TV-business comparison into a live joke, and NBC’s two biggest sitcoms still have enough overlap in the public mind that one punch line can pull both back into the same conversation.
