Before 'Seinfeld' became 'Seinfeld'

Since "Seinfeld" went off the air in 1998, the show's co-creators, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, have remained idiosyncratically true to their artistic selves. Seinfeld the polished comedian returned to stand-up and buried his old act in an HBO special, "I'm Telling You for the Last Time," then built up new material and filmed that process too, in the 2002 documentary "Comedian." Just as Seinfeld played the comedian Jerry Seinfeld in "Comedian," David is now playing the dyspeptic "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the HBO series that begins production for a fifth season in January.

What Seinfeld and David continue to say about themselves as artists is that they're micro-view people. They don't have anything big to say about politics or art or even comedy, just little side observations based on what they did today or yesterday or the day before. That's their comfort zone. That's a show.

And so it comes as no surprise that "The Seinfeld Story," a one-hour special airing at 10 p.m. Thanksgiving on NBC, is not a grand thing, not a retrospective or a reunion show or anything that might reek of self-examination. It's more a window onto a great sitcom's accidental beginnings, not to mention a promotional push for the DVD of the first three seasons, which Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment released Tuesday, in the thick of the holiday season.

The special, edited from material on the DVD, makes no attempt to analyze what "Seinfeld" meant to popular culture. Nor is it feel-good or wistfully nostalgic: Cast members Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus appear on screen, but not together in anything resembling a group hug.

Like an episode of VH1's "Behind the Music" or an "E! True Hollywood Story" without the madness, drugs and the stock shot of an ambulance, "The Seinfeld Story" follows the show's early progression from failed pilot to full-fledged series. Though it's by now a familiar story, the show's beginnings remain remarkable. Networks seldom do what NBC inadvertently did with "Seinfeld" -- left it on the air to find its voice. The special relives this lore: How after getting dumped on the air as a failed pilot, the show was kept on life support by NBC's Rick Ludwin, who gave up two hours of his specials budget so that four more episodes could be made. "I have to say, my initial reaction was not joy," David says. The four episodes led to an order for 13 more in 1991 (David: "I couldn't believe it; this thing now is getting much bigger than it was supposed to ... "), which became a full order for 22 more (David: "I cried on my bed at the prospect of coming up with 22 more of these things"). Along the way, "Seinfeld" was regarded inside the network as quirky but plot-less, an oddity. Nowadays it would be canceled, quickly, without a fruit basket.