Here's the deal: I felt EXACTLY the way you felt about two months ago. Almost to the letter. I grew up watching episodes on PBS when I was a kid, ran around the house with a laundry hamper on my head pretending I was a Dalek (I was very bad at pretending I was a hero as a child) and the whole deal. When the new series started up, the Dr. was some guy running around in a black leather jacket and seemed to take himself so damn seriously all the time. And that chick he was with just had too many teeth. She might as well have been a cartoon. I never made it more than about 10 minutes in, decided this was a childhood memory left best undisturbed and abandoned it for something like 7 years.
This Thanksgiving my family informed me that we were all going to the movie theater for the special 50th anniversary episode. I honestly didn't want to go, but it sold out and tickets were hard to come by so I felt like just not going after my parents shelled out for tickets was pretty rude. I was kind of annoyed when I got there because I found out that this was essentially an overlong episode that dealt with a number of themes that had been played out for an entire season. I figured I was destined to be lost and confused for two hours, since I was several years behind and the episode starred multiple iterations of the Dr. that I was unfamiliar with (although Tom Baker himself made a cameo, and was every bit as weird and delightful as I remembered).
To my surprise I not only was able to largely follow what was going on (although I still believe I would have been totally lost if I didn't have a basic familiarity with the premise and some conventions) but I enjoyed it immensely. I decided to stop being such a grump and give the new series and real shot with new eyes. Although I specifically asked my parents if it was a good idea to skip the one season starring the guy in the leather jacket, and they told me I'd be fine. I launched in with series two and haven't looked back. I've burned through about three seasons in two months and have generally enjoyed it immensely.
People who pretend that no one watches the show are immensely silly though. It's wildly popular by almost any measure, although not to the degree that it is successful in the UK.
The real problem Seinfeld has is that something like 70% of the plots are completely resolved by the existence of the cell phone.
I assume you're talking about Chevy Chase. Does anyone even like Chevy Chase?
Not particularly surprised. I suspect it's philosophically not for you.
I've watched some of the classic episodes again and my experience is that they vary in quality quite a bit (a criticism that is also true of the new show and is probably endemic to any show that swings for the fences on big concepts with virtually every storyline) but that the ones that aren't good are incredibly draggy because the pacing is significantly slower to fill out those four hours per story.
