Is 'Seinfeld' the Next 'Friends' Now That It's Coming to Netflix?

Seinfeld will be available to stream in its entirety on Netflix on October 1st. While the show was available to stream on Hulu as recently as June, it's been relegated to TBS for the last few months. When it shows up on Netflix in a few weeks is Seinfeld going to find a new generation of fans the way that Friends did?

I realize trying to predict trend pieces a year in advance is impossible, but will the best sitcom ever moving to the biggest streaming service give it a third wave of popularity? And will we even be able to tell if it does?

Seinfeld was a very big deal in the 90s and it's been a syndication staple - especially on TBS - for decades now. Every Seinfeld fan has seen every episode numerous times because for a while there it was just always on. Now the coveted "young people" demographic will find the show readily available on the Netflix home screen starting in October.

Is Seinfeld about to become essential? Was it not always? Will young people be able to sit thorugh the Seinfeld Chronicles era? The show has a very different tone from Friends. And the early 90s seasons have such a different athetotic than what Friends started with in 1994.

I know it doesn't matter at all. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and the rest of the cast are set. The only people who should actually care are executives at Netflix and other streaming services who have to think about how much they'll have to pay for the 180 episodes when this Netflix deal runs out. At one point the streaming giant paid $100 million for a year of Friends because it was so damn popular. Quite frankly, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't need the kind of money that Seinfeld having a rebirth or renaissance on Netflix will earn him. It is completely unnecessary.

And then there's the Friends reunion thing that happened on HBO Max. Could this lead to a Seinfeld reunion? We've seen it before on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Did you know that was 12 years ago now? Could this end up leading to a sit down? A Peacock revival? In the words of a Seinfeld character, "Maybe."