As with any career and its required skills, some comedians do things better than others.
For Jerry Seinfeld, his specialty – as evidenced in his TV show – is dissecting some of the most trivial, mundane moments in life and finding the humour of the situation.
He's not edgy, and he's not crude; that's never been his territory. On stage he's a married father of three who finds laughs in the little things in life.
Performing Saturday night to a sold-out show at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, or our "hockey arena theatre" as he called it, Jerry Seinfeld, the 59-year-old comedian, was the very same same-named character we watched for nearly a decade on NBC.
Many of his jokes – especially his newer stuff, where he riffs on cellphones and those window stickers families put on their minivan – could easily be used as fodder for great conversational scenes involving Kramer, George and Elaine, if the show was still around.
Those high-pitched inflections in his voice when he gets exasperated, and the facial expressions he makes to sell the authenticity of every joke that little bit more gives off the impression that the Seinfeld character he played on TV is the same guy who's performing live in Victoria.
Despite his wealth and fame, he doesn't come off as being any different than you or I. As a father and a husband, the animated comedian is your everyman who encounters the same type of people and gets himself in the same situations we do – he's just talented enough to make a living out of commenting on it.
That was reaffirmed by the woman sitting behind me, who would exclaim, "That's so true!," through fits of laughter after every joke.
While irritating, she couldn't have been more correct.
His source material is the world we all know, and he has a natural ability to pick apart the little moments in life we all experience and find those silver linings.
But the world is changing fast, and Seinfeld's slowly beginning to lag behind.
Outdated bits about *69 and caffeine addictions would've been more relevant and a lot funnier a decade ago when people still used home phones and energy drinks were in their heyday.
Nothing stood out as being exceptionally funnier than the rest or more memorable, for that matter.
It was a good show, put on by a practiced comedian who knows he's a master of his domain and doesn't stray from it – not that there's anything wrong with that.
Rating: 3/5
Review by Kyle Slavin
kslavin@saanichnews.com