I don't care for Seinfeld. I'm bothered by the character of Kramer. I find it hard to watch shows where there is one character that is so obnoxious that no one would hang out with him. That's also my problem with Will & Grace. I don't understand why Jack was his best friend. He's unpleasant and dishonest. Why would anyone want to put up with a Jack or a Kramer? It's discordant for me to think about.While I can't say that this is particularly true of Kramer, this reminds me of one of my consistent annoyances with scripted television: characters are written with a particular set of traits, which are the key to the character's personality, but over time those traits get exaggerated and exaggerated until the character can't be recognized as anything remotely like an actual human. (I say scripted TV shows, but actually I think reality "stars" are often guilty of exaggerating the qualities that they are known for, in order to strengthen the brand, or whatever the fuck.)
The best example I can think of this is kind of embarrassing. In the recent Disney Channel show the Suite Life of Zach and Cody (I have nieces, alright?), the character of London Tipton, an obvious Paris Hilton knockoff, started off as a generally ditzy but still sweet and connectible character. (You can imagine how disturbing it was to see the actress who played her sucking off Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network.) But as the show petered on for season after season, and into the execrable spin-off the Suite Life On Deck, every other element of her character was ground out in the efforts to make her more and more stupid and unaware. By the last few episodes I saw, she was a complete grotesque; no human could behave the way she behaved on the show, unless he or she suffered a massive brain injury. I think this is the general tendency of long-lived shows. New writers can't think outside of the narrow constraints of the character as already presented, and long running series believe that they are giving the people what they want in doing so.
That's not an example likely to resonate with many of you but I'm sure you can think of your own. I shudder to think of what has become of Homer, once one of the great characters in television history, as the Simpsons has destroyed its own legacy more and more in the last decade and a half. This gets back to my old jam about why I'll never be into TV and why I was constantly frustrated when I read comic books. No dramatic setup can exist in perpetuity and remain high quality. Stories require arc. I know it's a perfectly common middlebrow sentiment, but I really wish we had more of the British, short series model. Perpetual narrative doesn't work.
Update: Commenter Jack Crow points out that the TV Tropes crew has the money on this phenomenon.
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