If you always thought that what Seinfeld was missing was an unnervingly crisp resolution that made you see every bead of sweat on George Costanza’s head or every ultra-refined ruffle on Jerry’s puffy shirt, then the show’s arrival on Netflix in 4K will surely make you cheer. But if what you liked most about the show was… the jokes… then you’ll probably be frustrated by the decision to release it in a 16:9 aspect ratio, cropping out some of the beloved series’ visual gags.
The influential New York-set sitcom’s long heralded arrival on Netflix went live on October 1, and fans were quick to pick up on changes in the presentation. Initially, the ire was focused around the Season 8 episode “The Pothole,” in which George loses his keys in a pothole that is paved over. As you can imagine, seeing the titular pothole is crucial, but on Netflix the adjusted aspect ratio gets rid of it entirely. Other shots of the core four characters in Jerry’s apartment were shared as proof of the show’s peculiar look.
The streaming service spent a staggering $500 million on the NBC classic to ensure that it’d remain people’s preferred destination for 22-minute comfort viewing after losing both Friends and The Office in the last couple years. Seinfeld is so beloved that people are incensed when it’s only ranked the third-best sitcom ever, and it has been earning billions from reruns into the 2010s.
Fans did point out that this isn’t a new problem, as the show was widescreen when it was on Hulu, too, but the service move has brought up the issue once more. It’s particularly unnerving for some that one of the defining shows of the ‘90s no longer looks of its era (though the wardrobe still makes that abundantly clear).
Seinfeld was originally shot in 4:3, a boxier framing that was used until widescreen TVs were commonplace. As The Verge noted, the 16:9 iteration of the show is the only one we have in HD, which explains why it was the choice for Netflix. Seinfeld diehards were hoping that the 4K take would be created by “rescanning the film in the highest possible quality,” an expensive process that would’ve given us a version of the show in both high quality and the original aspect ratio.
As one Twitter user pointed out though, it’s not necessarily as simple as just rescanning the film, since the shots were planned in 4:3 and “often outside the frame are the edge of sets, boom mikes, lighting, crew members, whatever. They didn’t intentionally shoot them full-frame to begin with, plus the absurd cost of doing that anyway.”
This isn’t the first time a streaming giant has brought a popular show to its platform in a manner that upset fans. When Disney+ put The Simpsons on, it was also in a 16:9 aspect ratio in lieu of 4:3, meaning a slew of jokes were botched (and also a whole cottage industry of websites explaining how you could change the aspect ratio emerged, to boot). Eventually, Disney+ did add the ability to toggle aspect ratios, though it was months after The Simpsons launched. Netflix caught flack in August 2020 for adding the animated show The Legend of Korra in too fast a frame rate, creating uncanny movements.
Last year, Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things was released in 4:3 by Netflix, though the writer-director told DAZED the company feared viewers would think there was a problem with their TV, and had to be convinced to allow it. “[We] found there was a certain tension in 4:3 that wasn’t in the wider ones. It made it feel more worrisome and claustrophobic,” he said. There have been a handful of recent popular releases in 4:3, including The Lighthouse, Ida, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, indicating a potential comeback for the style.
Given the widespread frustration, it’s quite possible Netflix remedies the situation with a 4:3 option like Disney+ did. But until then, just imagine Kramer careening into Jerry’s apartment, making this face, and yelling “The ratio is wrong!”