Only a Few Shows Capture a Generation

“Seinfeld” announces it’s going off the air and it’s front page news across the country. Viewers whine. Pundits weigh in. Even the Soup Nazi--a real-life restaurateur parodied on the show--is asked how he feels.

As star Jerry Seinfeld would say, What’s the deal with that? It’s a television show!

But Seinfeld’s leave-taking is not just the disappearance of a half-hour sitcom. It’s the departure of that rarest of television series--the ones that capture not merely an audience but a zeitgeist.

Every decade, a few shows manage to transcend mere cleverness and good ratings to become pop culture touchstones--and water-cooler talk. “Seinfeld” is not just the show that gave us Kramer’s hair, George’s conniving, Elaine’s bad dancing and the Soup Nazi’s dictates. It is also part of a tradition that stretches from “I Love Lucy” and “Bonanza” to “Dallas” and “Friends.”

The show captured our obsessive-compulsive, selfish-yet-darkly-funny side--the perfect skewering of a ‘90s society freed of nuclear war worries, able to concentrate on whether our cafe lattes have low-fat or regular milk. But it was only the most recent televised skewering of American society.

“Seinfeld and those shows are therapeutic,” said Ray Browne, founder of the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Seinfeld wittily exposed our foibles, according to Browne. “If you repress it, you turn into a totalitarian society. If you bring it out, it’s a kind of group psychology.”

Television is never a perfect mirror of who we are, though. “It does not so much reflect but refract,” said Michael Marsden, dean of the college of arts and sciences at Northern Michigan University and editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television.

“What it shows is society’s hope rather than society’s reality. If you look at TV as a medium, it is trying to offer a coherence and meaning when life doesn’t.”

In the ‘50s, viewers found that kind of meaning in the housewifely antics of Lucille Ball on “I Love Lucy” and the uncompromising strength of “Gunsmoke’s” Marshal Matt Dillon. As times changed, “Gunsmoke” changed too; the series, which ran from 1955 to 1975, evolved to include social issues, even race relations. (A Jewish rabbi went to live in the West in one episode, facing a largely Gentile population, Marsden noted.)

“Lucy,” meanwhile, transcended time with comic brilliance. The show is still in re-runs, as each generation rediscovers it.

“It’s very difficult to forget Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln--and Lucy,” said Ray Browne. “Some people are monuments on Mt. Rushmore, and you simply cannot take them down. Even those who didn’t care for the slapstick realized she was simply unequaled.”

The ‘60s, on the other hand, reflected our worries about the traditional family. “The Ed Sullivan Show” may have been the last time an entire family could gather around one TV show--on a Sunday night no less--and all love it. “Bonanza,” like “Gunsmoke,” reinforced our love of the Western frontier myth.

“It always helps to look at the president,” said Christian Williams, a veteran television producer who wrote for “Hill Street Blues” and created the hit syndicated show “Hercules.”

“John Kennedy was a big strong man. Lyndon Johnson was a big strong man. You can see what people wanted.

“Big strong men are out of fashion now. Short, smart New Yorkers are more in fashion.”

In the ‘70s, Archie Bunker put race on the table just as the society was doing that. “All in the Family” simultaneously shocked and amused us, liberating us to talk about race in a way that had never been done before a racially mixed public audience.

Most of these shows used family as their vehicle for exploring life. In the ‘70s, the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” was about making a family in the workplace. A plaque outside the sound stage where the show was filmed commemorates the labors of the family of actors and writers and producers who made the show.

“Dallas” fueled our ‘80s fascination with conspicuous wealth and power. Remember the summer we all obsessed about who shot J.R.? (That was also the summer that ushered in the era of TV season-ending cliffhangers.)

“The Cosby Show,” on the other hand, showcased a sophisticated but cozy domesticity. If Archie Bunker put race on the table, the Cosby family took it off, refracting American life once again--this time from the perspective of the black middle class.

Meanwhile, “Miami Vice” portrayed yet another side of the ‘80s--a sensuality that was taking over fashion and music.

“When ‘Miami Vice’ was on the air, Miami defined the United States,” said Christian Williams. “It was where we were going--which was V-neck T-shirts under sports jackets, $100 bills and sexy music. Well, we’ve been there, done that.”

Some of the ‘90s shows reflect our cynicism with institutions, with family. Witness NBC’s other current hit, “Friends.” The characters wander from job to job, relationship to relationship, some of their real families split up or far away. “Institutions no longer love you, they’ll fire you,” Williams said. “I think they look at each other and say, ‘Do I have any friends?’ ”

Just think of a line from the theme song: “When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year. . . . I’ll be there for you.”

Needless to say, television producers haven’t a clue as to the proper formula for making a show that so galvanizes viewers it becomes more legend than program.

“We create shows, and nobody has any idea whether they will be adopted as true barometers of society that week,” said Williams (who this past season was co-executive producer of a drama show, “C-16,” that was just canceled.)

“Only in seeing these shows can people decide if they refect the barometric pressure of that week and time, but when they do, everybody knows it. The commonality has been discovered--something that is if not true then familiar. The phrase ‘the ring of truth’ is the Super Bowl ring of television.”

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Times staff writers Larry Gordon and Brian Lowry contributed to this story.