The internet, like a ’90s comedian standing on a stage and pointing out the absurdities of daily life, is currently consumed with a single observation-based question: Have you ever noticed Jerry’s apartment layout in Seinfeld?
The show’s Reddit was recently made to reckon with a post called “Jerry’s Hallway Can’t Exist.” It consists of nothing but an overhead computer generated mock-up of the familiar apartment, including a helpful diagram showing that its door opens at an angle that would make the outside hallway an architectural impossibility. After so, so many years of watching Jerry and friends crack wise in front of this portal to the unknown, we were lulled into a false sense of security. Never again will we be able to watch Seinfeld with the innocent belief that the cast wasn’t hurtling through a strange dimension where the rules of logic don’t apply just before they came into Jerry’s apartment. In hindsight, it’s no wonder that Kramer always looked so rattled when he burst into frame.
In an article about the Lovecraftian apartment, Esquire is quick to point out that one can accept the impossible space with the same kind of suspended disbelief that allows us to buy into a show where “a moderately successful comedian” can “afford an Upper West Side apartment” that would probably cost about $4,600 a month in rent if adjusted for inflation. This is true, of course, but it’s only a very small comfort when we realize that so much chaos has hidden in plain sight for so long.
We can now add Jerry’s impossible hallway to a long list of internet-generated Seinfeld horrors, which currently includes imagined coronavirus episodes, a Twin Peaks mash-up, a fan Twitter account faking a feud with Ben Shapiro, and a full-on video game that blends the show with Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Before much longer, if this keeps up, the name “Seinfeld” will evoke only shudders.
[via Esquire]
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