After I announced earlier today that the Garveys of “Benidorm” are the greatest sitcom family of all time, my husband reminded me of the Costanzas. Of “Seinfeld” should this not be obvious to all. Yes, it’s true, some people have to (or get to) hear my thoughts on sitcoms irl. Two people, to be precise, only one of whom is old enough to make sense of them.
So the Costanzas and the Garveys are the same family. Not in the sense of the characters matching up, show for show. The Garveys are a middle-aged couple with teen children, a baby grandchild, a mother/mother-in-law, and her new husband. The Costanzas are an elderly couple with a middle-aged son. No one is anyone else. There are occasional overlaps (George and Mick’s shared committment to idleness), but for the most part, nope. Yet their dysfunction is eerily the same.
How so? There’s the obvious: both families get into a lot of yelling and public scene-making. But neither is messed up on a level that would demand a tragic, rather than sitcom, treatment. There’s no abuse. But there’s not exactly warmth, either.
But they should be different! The Garveys drink more or less continuously. (They’re on holiday, and drinks are part of the all-inclusive.) Estelle Costanza says, of Merlot, “did they just invent it?” The ‘Italian-American’ Costanzas are heavily coded as Jewish. The Garveys are from northern England and are in some ways an embodiment of old-school (derogatory) stereotypes of what gentiles are like, as held by not-un-Costanza-like Jews. (Being Jewish, I can admit to elements of accuracy in Costanzaland.)
In some ways: Mick being hilarious and sarcastic wouldn’t fit, and I suppose nor would Janice’s doting interest in her children and grandchild, and actually Madge has a bit of Joan Rivers, and I guess what I’ve landed on (and I’ve also landed on this in life) is, all human beings, every last one, are exactly the same.